Strange Sea! why is it that you never rest?
And tell me why you never go to sleep?
Thou art like one so sad and sin-oppressed --
(And the waves are the tears you weep) --
And thou didst never sin -- what ails the sinless deep?

To-night I hear you crying on the beach,
Like a weary child on its mother's breast --
A cry with an infinite and lonesome reach
Of unutterably deep unrest;
And thou didst never sin -- why art thou so distressed?

But, ah, sad Sea! the mother's breast is warm,
Where crieth the lone and the wearied child;
And soft the arms that shield her own from harm;
And her look is unutterably mild --
But to-night, O Sea! thy cry is wild, so wild!

What ails thee, Sea? The midnight stars are bright --
How safe they lean on heaven's sinl...

God permits industrious angels
Afternoons to play.
I met one, -- forgot my school-mates,
All, for him, straightway.

God calls home the angels promptly
At the setting sun;
I missed mine. How dreary marbles,
After playing Crown!

Ye silent shades, whose each tree here
Some relique of a saint doth wear;
Who for some sweet-heart's sake, did prove
The fire and martyrdom of Love:
Here is the legend of those saints
That died for love, and their complaints;
Their wounded hearts, and names we find
Encarved upon the leaves and rind.
Give way, give way to me, who come
Scorch'd with the self-same martyrdom!
And have deserved as much, Love knows,
As to be canonized 'mongst those
Whose deeds and deaths here written are
Within your Greeny-kalendar.
By all those virgins' fillets hung
Upon! your boughs, and requiems sung
For saints and souls departed hence,
Here honour'd still with frankincense;
By all those tears that have been shed,
As a drink-offering to the dead;
By all those ...

Oh thou sweet maiden fair,
Thou with the raven hair,

Why to the window go?

While gazing down below,
Art standing vainly there?

Oh, if thou stood'st for me,
And lett'st the latch but fly,

How happy should I be!
How soon would I leap high!

Once I wished I might rehearse
Freedom's paean in my verse,
That the slave who caught the strain
Should throb until he snapped his chain,
But the Spirit said, 'Not so;
Speak it not, or speak it low;
Name not lightly to be said,
Gift too precious to be prayed,
Passion not to be expressed
But by heaving of the breast:
Yet,--wouldst thou the mountain find
Where this deity is shrined,
Who gives to seas and sunset skies
Their unspent beauty of surprise,
And, when it lists him, waken can
Brute or savage into man;
Or, if in thy heart he shine,
Blends the starry fates with thine,
Draws angels nigh to dwell with thee,
And makes thy thoughts archangels be;
Freedom's secret wilt thou know?--
Counsel not with flesh and blood;
Loiter not for c...

Pale faces looked up at me, up from the earth, like flowers;
Pale hands reached down to me, out of the air, like stars,
As over the hills, robed on with the twilight, the Hours,
The Day's last Hours, departed, and Dusk put up her bars.

Pale fingers beckoned me on; pale fingers, like starlit mist;
Dim voices called to me, dim as the wind's dim rune,
As up from the night, like a nymph from the amethyst
Of her waters, as silver as foam, rose the round, white breast of the moon.

And I followed the pearly waving and beckon of hands,
The luring glitter and dancing glimmer of feet,
And the sibilant whisper of silence, that summoned to lands
Remoter than legend or faery, where Myth and Tradition meet.

And I came to a place where the shadow of ancient Night
Brooded ...

Enamour'd, artless, young, on foreign ground,
Uncertain whither from myself to fly,
To thee, dear Lady, with an humble sigh
Let me devote my heart, which I have found
By certain proofs not few, intrepid, sound,
Good, and addicted to conceptions high:
When tempests shake the world, and fire the sky,
It rests in adamant self-wrapt around,
As safe from envy, and from outrage rude,
From hopes and fears, that vulgar minds abuse,
As fond of genius, and fix'd fortitude,
Of the resounding lyre, and every Muse.
Weak you will find it in one only part,
Now pierc'd by Love's immedicable dart.

In my Autumn garden I was fain
To mourn among my scattered roses;
Alas for that last rosebud which uncloses
To Autumn's languid sun and rain
When all the world is on the wane!
Which has not felt the sweet constraint of June,
Nor heard the nightingale in tune.

Broad-faced asters by my garden walk,
You are but coarse compared with roses:
More choice, more dear that rosebud which uncloses
Faint-scented, pinched, upon its stalk,
That least and last which cold winds balk;
A rose it is though least and last of all,
A rose to me though at the fall.

To-night retir'd the queen of heaven
With young Endymion stays:
And now to Hesper is it given
Awhile to rule the vacant sky,
Till she shall to her lamp supply
A stream of brighter rays.

O Hesper, while the starry throng
With awe thy path surrounds,
Oh listen to my suppliant song,
If haply now the vocal sphere
Can suffer thy delighted ear
To stoop to mortal sounds.
So may the bridegroom's genial strain
Thee still invoke to shine:
So may the bride's unmarried train
To Hymen chaunt their flattering vow,
Still that his lucky torch may glow
With lustre pure as thine.
Far other vows must I prefer
To thy indulgent power.
Alass, but now I paid my tear
On fair Olympia's virgin tomb:
And lo, from thence, in quest I roam
Of Philom...

In April's gilded morn when south winds blow,
    And gently shake the hawthorn's silver crown,
    Wafting its scent the forest-glade adown,
    The dewy shelter of the bounding Doe,
Then, under trees, soft tufts of primrose show
    Their palely-yellowing flowers; - to the moist Sun
    Blue harebells peep, while cowslips stand unblown,
    Plighted to riper May; - and lavish flow
The Lark's loud carols in the wilds of air.
    O! not to Nature's glad Enthusiast cling
    Avarice, and pride. - Thro' her now blooming sphere
Charm'd as he roves, his thoughts enraptur'd spring
    To HIM, who gives frail Man's appointed time
    These cheering hours of promise, and of prime.

April 29th, 1782.

Signor mio caro, ogni pensier mi tira.

HE LAMENTS HIS ABSENCE FROM LAURA AND COLONNA, THE ONLY OBJECTS OF HIS AFFECTION.


    My lord and friend! thoughts, wishes, all inclined
My heart to visit one so dear to me,
But Fortune--can she ever worse decree?--
Held me in hand, misled, or kept behind.
Since then the dear desire Love taught my mind
But leads me to a death I did not see,
And while my twin lights, wheresoe'er I be,
Are still denied, by day and night I've pined.
Affection for my lord, my lady's love,
The bonds have been wherewith in torments long
I have been bound, which round myself I wove.
A Laurel green, a Column fair and strong,
This for three lustres, that for three years more
In my fond breast, nor wish'd it free, I bore.
<...

I.
The sea shall praise him and the shores bear part
That reared him when the bright south world was black
With fume of creeds more foul than hell’s own rack,
Still darkening more love’s face with loveless art
Since Paul, faith’s fervent Antichrist, of heart
Heroic, haled the world vehemently back
From Christ’s pure path on dire Jehovah’s track,
And said to dark Elisha’s Lord, ‘Thou art.’
But one whose soul had put the raiment on
Of love that Jesus left with James and John
Withstood that Lord whose seals of love were lies,
Seeing what we see how, touched by Truth’s bright rod,
The fiend whom Jews and Africans called God
Feels his own hell take hold on him, and dies.

II.
The world has no such flower in any land,
And no such pearl in any gulf the sea,...

You read, what is it, then that you are reading?
What music moves so silently in your mind?
Your bright hand turns the page.
I watch you from my window, unsuspected:
You move in an alien land, a silent age . . .

. . . The poet, what was his name? Tokkei, Tokkei,
The poet walked alone in a cold late rain,
And thought his grief was like the crying of sea-birds;
For his lover was dead, he never would love again.

Rain in the dreams of the mind, rain forever,
Rain in the sky of the heart, rain in the willows,
But then he saw this face, this face like flame,
This quiet lady, this portrait by Hiroshigi;
And took it home with him; and with it came

What unexpected changes, subtle as weather!
The dark room, cold as rain,
Grew faintly fragrant, stirred ...

            'Twas on a day
When the immortals at their banquet lay;
            The bowl
    Sparkled with starry dew,
The weeping of those myriad urns of light,
    Within whose orbs, the Almighty Power,
    At nature's dawning hour,
Stored the rich fluid of ethereal soul.
            Around,
Soft odorous clouds, that upward wing their flight
            From eastern isles
(Where they have bathed them in the orient ray,
And with rich fragrance all their bosoms filled).
In circles flew, and, melting as they flew,
A liquid daybreak o'er the board distilled.

            All, all was luxury!
    All must be luxury, where Lyaeus smiles.
        His locks divine
            Were crowned
        With a bright meteor-braid,
Which, lik...

From God's all bounteous hand descend
Rare gifts in rich effusion,
And with those gifts no poisons blend,
Nor is their end delusion;
So do not spurn if He bestow
Those forms arrayed in beauty;
If thus His gifts with radiance glow,
Enjoyment is a duty.

Come, deck your brows with leaves and flowers,
Ye fair ones, nothing fearing;
Adorn your homes and train your bowers
Nor deem this sin's appearing;
We do not fit ourselves for bliss
By scorning all adorning;
We may enjoy the good of this
And share heaven's brighter morning.

A garment plain may have its stain,
And saintly brows lack sweetness;
But he who would heaven's glory gain
Must here acquire a meetness;
So eat and drink, rejoice and sing,
But don't forget the ending;

Not far away does that bright city stand,
'Tis but the mist o'er its dividing stream,
That wraps the glory of its glitt'ring strand,
Its radiant skies, and mountains silvery gleam;
Oh, often in the blindness of our fate
We wander very near the city's gate.

We love that unseen city, and we yearn
Ever within our earthly homes to see
Its golden towers, that in the sunset burn,
Its white walls rising from the quiet sea;
Its mansions gleaming with immortal glow,
Filled with the treasure lost to us below.

Yes, dear ones that we loved and lost are there;
Bright in that fair clime beam those sweet eyes now;
Fanned by its soft breeze floats the shining hair,
Hair we have smoothed back from the gentlest brow;
Softest white hands we kissed and clasped in ours...

(Beareth all things. - 1 Cor. xiii. 7.)

Gently I took that which ungently came,
And without scorn forgave: Do thou the same.
A wrong done to thee think a cat's-eye spark
Thou wouldst not see, were not thine own heart dark.
Thine own keen sense of wrong that thirsts for sin,
Fear that, the spark self-kindled from within,
Which blown upon will blind thee with its glare,
Or smother'd stifle thee with noisome air.
Clap on the extinguisher, pull up the blinds,
And soon the ventilated spirit finds
Its natural daylight. If a foe have kenn'd,
Or worse than foe, an alienated friend,
A rib of dry rot in thy ship's stout side,
Think it God's message, and in humble pride
With heart of oak replace it; thine the gains
Give him the rotten timber for his pains!

There is a flower, whose modest eye
Is turn'd with looks of light and love,
Who breathes her softest, sweetest sigh.
Whene'er the sun is bright above.

Let clouds obscure, or darkness veil,
Her fond idolatry is fled,
Her sighs no more their sweets exhale.
The loving eye is cold--and dead.

Canst thou not trace a moral here,
False flatterer of the prosperous hour?
Let but an adverse cloud appear,
And Thou art faithless, as the Flower!