(For Joyce Kilmer)


When the dreamy night is on, up the Hudson river,
And the sheen of modern taste is dim and far away,
Ghostly men on phantom rafts make the waters shiver,
Laughing in the sibilance of the silver spray.
Yea, and up the woodlands, staunch in moonlit weather,
Go the ghostly horsemen, adventuresome to ride,
White as mist the doublet-braize, bandolier and feather,
Fleet as gallant Robin Hood in an eventide.

Times are gone that knew the craft in the role of rovers,
Fellows of the open, care could never load:
Unalarmed for bed or board, they were leisure's lovers,
Summer bloomed in story on the Hyde Park Road.
Summer was a blossom, but the fruit was autumn,
Fragrant haylofts for a bed, cider-cakes in store,
Warmer was a cup they know, w...

The mad wind is the warden,
And the smiling dahlias nod
To the dahlias across the garden,
And the wastes of the golden rod.

They never pray for pardon,
Nor ask his way nor forego,
Nor close their hearts nor harden
Nor stay his hand, nor bestow

Their hearts filched out of their bosoms,
Nor plan for dahlias to be.
For the wind blows over the garden
And sets the dahlias free.

They drift to the song of the warden,
Heedless they give him heed.
And he walks and blows through the garden
Blossom and leaf and seed.

("Jamais elle ne raille.")

[Bk. III. xiii.]


Where your brood seven lie,
Float in calm heavenly,
Life passing evenly,
Waterfowl, waterfowl! often I dream
        For a rest
        Like your nest,
    Skirting the stream.

Shine the sun tearfully
Ere the clouds clear fully,
Still you skim cheerfully,
Swallow, oh! swallow swift! often I sigh
        For a home
        Where you roam
    Nearing the sky!

Guileless of pondering;
Swallow-eyes wandering;
Seeking no fonder ring
Than the rose-garland Love gives thee apart!
        Grant me soon -
        Blessed boon!
    Home in thy heart!

A light exists in spring
Not present on the year
At any other period.
When March is scarcely here

A color stands abroad
On solitary hills
That science cannot overtake,
But human nature feels.

It waits upon the lawn;
It shows the furthest tree
Upon the furthest slope we know;
It almost speaks to me.

Then, as horizons step,
Or noons report away,
Without the formula of sound,
It passes, and we stay:

A quality of loss
Affecting our content,
As trade had suddenly encroached
Upon a sacrament.

    Wind waves the reeds by the river,
    Grey sky lids the leaden water.
    Ducks fly low across the water,
    Three flying: one quacks sadly.

    Grey are the sky and the water,
    Green the lost ribbons of reed-beds,
    Small in the silence a black boat
    Floats upon wide pale mirrors.

Ubens, oblivious garden of indolence,
Pillow of cool flesh where no man dreams of love,
Where life flows forth in troubled opulence,
As airs in heaven and seas in ocean move.

Leonard Da Vinci, sombre and fathomless glass,
Where lovely angels with calm lips that smile,
Heavy with mystery, in the shadow pass,
Among the ice and pines that guard some isle.

Rembrandt, sad hospital that a murmuring fills,
Where one tall crucifix hangs on the walls,
Where every tear-drowned prayer some woe distils,
And one cold, wintry ray obliquely falls.

Strong Michelangelo, a vague far place
Where mingle Christs with pagan Hercules;
Thin phantoms of the great through twilight pace,
And tear their shroud with clenched hands void of ease.

The fighter's anger,...

This is my brave singer,
        With his beak of gold;
Now my heart’s a captive
        In his song’s sweet hold.

O, the lark’s a rover,
        Seeking fields above:
But my serenader
        Hath a human love.

“Hark!” he says, “in winter
        Nests are full of snow,
But a truce to wailing
        Summer breezes blow.”

“Hush!” he sings, “with night-time
        Phantoms cease to be,
Join your serenader
        Piping on his tree.”

O, my little lover,
        Warble in the blue;
Wingless must I envy
        Skies so wide for you.

Maud Muller all that summer day
Raked the meadow sweet with hay;

Yet, looking down the distant lane,
She hoped the Judge would come again.

But when he came, with smile and bow,
Maud only blushed, and stammered, “Ha-ow?”

And spoke of her “pa,” and wondered whether
He’d give consent they should wed together.

Old Muller burst in tears, and then
Begged that the Judge would lend him “ten;”

For trade was dull, and wages low,
And the “craps,” this year, were somewhat slow.

And ere the languid summer died,
Sweet Maud became the Judge’s bride.

But on the day that they were mated,
Maud’s brother Bob was intoxicated;

And Maud’s relations, twelve in all,
Were very drunk at the Judge’s hall.

And when the summe...

Splendour, whom lately on your glowing flight
    Athwart the chill and cheerless winter-skies
I marked and welcomed with a futile right,
    And then a futile left, and strained my eyes
To see you so magnificently large,
Sinking to rest beyond the fir-wood's marge -

Not mine, not mine the fault: despise me not
    In that I missed you; for the sun was down,
And the dim light was all against the shot;
    And I had booked a bet of half-a-crown.
My deadly fire is apt to be upset
By many causes - always by a bet.

Or had I overdone it with the sloes,
    Snared by their home-picked brand of ardent gin
Designed to warm a shivering sportsman's toes
    And light a fire his reckless head within?
Or did my silly loader put me off
With aimless chatter...

I Stood upon a height and listened to
The solemn psalmody of many pines,
And with the sound I seemed to see long lines
Of mountains rise, blue peak on cloudy blue,
And hear the roar of torrents hurling through
Riven ravines; or from the crags' gaunt spines
Pouring wild hair, where, as an eyeball shines,
A mountain pool shone, clear and cold of hue.
And then my soul remembered felt, how once,
In ages past, 't was here that I, a Faun,
Startled an Oread at her morning bath,
Who stood revealed; her beauty, like the sun's,
Veiled in her hair, heavy with dews of dawn,
Through which, like stars, burnt blue her eyes' bright wrath.

Midsummer midnight skies,
Midsummer midnight influences and airs,
The shining, sensitive silver of the sea
Touched with the strange-hued blazonings of dawn;
And all so solemnly still I seem to hear
The breathing of Life and Death,
The secular Accomplices,
Renewing the visible miracle of the world.

The wistful stars
Shine like good memories.    The young morning wind
Blows full of unforgotten hours
As over a region of roses.    Life and Death
Sound on - sound on . . . And the night magical,
Troubled yet comforting, thrills
As if the Enchanted Castle at the heart
Of the wood's dark wonderment
Swung wide his valves, and filled the dim sea-banks
With exquisite visitants:
Words fiery-hearted yet, dreams and desires
With living looks intolerable...

'Twas ever thus from childhood's hour!
My fondest hopes would not decay:
I never loved a tree or flower
Which was the first to fade away!
The garden, where I used to delve
Short-frock'd, still yields me pinks in plenty:
The peartree that I climb'd at twelve
I see still blossoming, at twenty.

I never nursed a dear gazelle;
But I was given a parroquet -
(How I did nurse him if unwell!)
He's imbecile, but lingers yet.
He's green, with an enchanting tuft;
He melts me with his small black eye:
He'd look inimitable stuff'd,
And knows it - but he will not die!

I had a kitten - I was rich
In pets - but all too soon my kitten
Became a full-sized cat, by which
I've more than once been scratch'd and bitten.
And when for sleep her limbs she...

Some sigh for the breath of the desert
    Where the stifling heat waves blow;
Some pant for the trackless tundra
    And the sting of the cold and snow;
Some long for the wash of a sultry sea
    As it breaks on a tropic shore;
Some pine for the breeze of the northern seas
    And the sound of the Arctic's roar.

The things that men love be countless
    But they're seldom the same with two,
For the things I care for most of all
    Might never appeal to you.
Some men run to wine and woman,
    Some long for a wife and a home,
And he drifts with the tide, unsatisfied,
    Who leaves these things to roam.

For he hates the sands of the desert
    And the slimy tropic south,
Or his dreams of a northern fortune
    Are as ashes in his mo...

Ay, 'twas here, on this spot,
In that summer of yore,
Atalanta did not
Vote my presence a bore,
Nor reply to my tenderest talk "She had
heard all that nonsense before."

She'd the brooch I had bought
And the necklace and sash on,
And her heart, as I thought,
Was alive to my passion;
And she'd done up her hair in the style that
the Empress had brought into fashion.

I had been to the play
With my pearl of a Peri,
But, for all I could say,
She declared she was weary,
That "the place was so crowded and hot,
and she couldn't abide that Dundreary."

Then I thought "Lucky boy!
'Tis for you that she whimpers!"
And I noted with joy
Those sensational simpers:
And I said "This is scrumptious!"
a phrase I had learned from...

        Now would I be in that removèd place
        Where the dim sunlight hardly comes at all
        And branches of the young trees interlace
        And long swathes of the brambles twine and fall;
        A space between the hedgerow and a road
        Not trod by foot of any known to me,
        Where now and then a cart with scented load
    Goes sleepy down the lane with creaking axle-tree.

        And there I'd lie upon the tumbled leaves,
        Watching a square of the all else hidden sky,
        And made such songs a drowsy mind believes
        To be most perfect music.    So would I
    Keep my face heavenwards and bless eternity,
        Wherein my heart could be as glad as this
        And lazily I'd bid all men come hither
        And in m...

WRITTEN IN NOVEMBER, 1693


Thrice, with a prophet's voice, and prophet's power,
    The Muse was called in a poetic hour,
And insolently thrice the slighted maid
Dared to suspend her unregarded aid;
Then with that grief we form in spirits divine,
Pleads for her own neglect, and thus reproaches mine.
    Once highly honoured! false is the pretence
You make to truth, retreat, and innocence!
Who, to pollute my shades, bring'st with thee down
The most ungenerous vices of the town;
Ne'er sprung a youth from out this isle before
I once esteem'd, and loved, and favour'd more,
Nor ever maid endured such courtlike scorn,
So much in mode, so very city-born;
'Tis with a foul design the Muse you send,
Like a cast mistress, to your wicked friend;
But find s...

See how the trees and the osiers lithe
Are green bedecked and the woods are blithe,
The meadows have donned their cape of flowers,
The air is soft with the sweet May showers,
And the birds make melody:
But the spring of the soul, the spring of the soul,
Cometh no more for you or for me.

The lazy hum of the busy bees
Murmureth through the almond trees;
The jonquil flaunteth a gay, blonde head,
The primrose peeps from a mossy bed,
And the violets scent the lane.
But the flowers of the soul, the flowers of the soul,
For you and for me bloom never again.

    From those drear solitudes and frowsy cells,
    Where infamy with sad repentance dwells;
    Where turnkeys make the jealous portal fast,
    And deal from iron hands the spare repast;
    Where truant 'prentices, yet young in sin,
    Blush at the curious stranger peeping in;
    Where strumpets, relics of the drunken roar,
    Resolve to drink, nay, half to whore, no more;
    Where tiny thieves not destin'd yet to swing,
    Beat hemp for others, riper for the string:
    From these dire scenes my wretched lines I date,
    To tell Maria her Esopus' fate.

    "Alas! I feel I am no actor here!"
    'Tis real hangmen, real scourges bear!
    Prepare, Maria, for a horrid tale
    Will turn thy very rouge to deadly pale;
    Will make they hair, tho'...