Sweet, sweet!
I rise to greet
The sapphire sky
The air slips by
On either side
As up I ride
On mounting wing,
And sing and sing -
Then reach my bliss,
The sun's great kiss;
And poise a space
To see his face,
Sweet, sweet,
In radiant grace,
Ah, sweet! ah, sweet!

Sweet, sweet!
Beneath my feet
My nestlings call:
And down I fall
Unerring, true,
Through heaven's blue;
And haste to fill
Each noisy bill.
My brooding breast
Stills their unrest.
Sweet, sweet,
Their quick hearts beat,
Safe in the nest:
Ah, sweet, sweet, sweet!
Ah, sweet!

Sweet, sweet
The calling sky
That bids me fly
Up--up--on high.
Sweet, sweet
The claiming earth;
It holds my nest
And dr...

As one, who, journeying westward with the sun,
Beholds at length from the up-towering hills,
Far off, a land unspeakable beauty fills,
Circean peaks and vales of Avalon:
And, sinking weary, watches, one by one,
The big seas beat between; and knows it skills
No more to try; that now, as Heaven wills,
This is the helpless end, that all is done:
So 'tis with him, whom long a vision led
In quest of Beauty, and who finds at last
She lies beyond his effort. All the waves
Of all the world between them: While the dead,
The myriad dead, who people all the Past
With failure, hail him from forgotten graves.

Strophe I

My two-fold Book! single in show
    But double in Contents,
Neat, but not curiously adorn'd
    Which in his early youth,
A poet gave, no lofty one in truth
Although an earnest wooer of the Muse--
Say, while in cool Ausonian[2] shades
    Or British wilds he roam'd,
Striking by turns his native lyre,
    By turns the Daunian lute
    And stepp'd almost in air,--

Antistrophe

Say, little book, what furtive hand
Thee from thy fellow books convey'd,
What time, at the repeated suit
        Of my most learned Friend,
I sent thee forth an honour'd traveller
From our great city to the source of Thames,
                    Caerulean sire!
Where rise the fountains and the raptures ring,
        Of the Aoni...

Be those few hours, which I have yet to spend,
Blest with the meditation of my end;
Though they be few in number, I'm content;
If otherwise, I stand indifferent,
Nor makes it matter, Nestor's years to tell,
If man lives long, and if he live not well.
A multitude of days still heaped on
Seldom brings order, but confusion.
Might I make choice, long life should be with-stood;
Nor would I care how short it were, if good;
Which to effect, let ev'ry passing bell
Possess my thoughts, next comes my doleful knell;
And when the night persuades me to my bed,
I'll think I'm going to be buried;
So shall the blankets which come over me
Present those turfs, which once must cover me;
And with as firm behaviour I will meet
The sheet I sleep in, as my winding-sheet.
W...

"And send the godly in a pet to pray."

Pope.


    O thou, wha in the heavens dost dwell,
    Wha, as it pleases best thysel',
    Sends ane to heaven, and ten to hell,
        A' for thy glory,
    And no for ony gude or ill
        They've done afore thee!

    I bless and praise thy matchless might,
    Whan thousands thou hast left in night,
    That I am here afore thy sight,
        For gifts and grace,
    A burnin' and a shinin' light
        To a' this place.

    What was I, or my generation,
    That I should get sic exaltation,
    I wha deserve sic just damnation,
        For broken laws,
    Five thousand years 'fore my creation,
        Thro' Adam's cause.

    When frae my mither's womb I fell,...

"Ce sont les amours
Qui font les beaux jours."


What is a Patron? JOHNSON knew,
And well that lifelike portrait drew.
He is a Patron who looks down
With careless eye on men who drown;
But if they chance to reach the land,
Encumbers them with helping hand.
Ah! happy we whose artless rhyme
No longer now must creep to climb!
Ah! happy we of later days,
Who 'scape those Caudine Forks of praise!
Whose votive page may dare commend
A Brother, or a private Friend!
Not so it fared with scribbling man,
As POPE says, "under my Queen ANNE."

DICK DOVECOT (this was long, be sure,
Ere he attained his Wiltshire cure,
And settled down, like humbler folks,
To cowslip wine and country jokes)
Once hoped--as who will not?--for fame,
And dr...

The treacherous sands had caught our boat,
    And held it with a strong embrace
And death at our imprisoned crew
    Was sternly looking face to face.

With anxious hearts, but failing strength,
    We strove to push the boat from shore;
But all in vain, for there we lay
    With bated breath and useless oar.

Around us in a fearful storm
    The fiery hail fell thick and fast;
And we engirded by the sand,
    Could not return the dreadful blast.

When one arose upon whose brow
    The ardent sun had left his trace,
A noble purpose strong and high
    Uplighting all his dusky face.

Perchance within that fateful hour
    The wrongs of ages thronged apace;
But with it came the glorious hope
    Of swift deliverance to his rac...

From brightening fields of ether fair-disclos'd,
Child of the sun, refulgent Summer comes,
In pride of youth, and felt through nature's depth:
He comes, attended by the sultry Hours
And ever-fanning Breezes, on his way;
While, from his ardent look, the turning Spring
Averts her blushful face; and earth and skies,
All-smiling, to his hot dominion leaves.

Hence, let me haste into the mid-wood shade,
Where scarce a sunbeam wanders through the gloom
And on the dark-green grass, beside the brink
Of haunted stream, that by the roots of oak
Rolls o'er the rocky channel, lie at large,
And sing the glories of the circling year.

Come, Inspiration! from thy hermit-seat,
By mortal seldom found: may Fancy dare,
From thy fix'd serious eye, and raptur'd glance

I have read, in some old, marvellous tale,
    Some legend strange and vague,
That a midnight host of spectres pale
    Beleaguered the walls of Prague.

Beside the Moldau's rushing stream,
    With the wan moon overhead,
There stood, as in an awful dream,
    The army of the dead.

White as a sea-fog, landward bound,
    The spectral camp was seen,
And, with a sorrowful, deep sound,
    The river flowed between.

No other voice nor sound was there,
    No drum, nor sentry's pace;
The mist-like banners clasped the air,
    As clouds with clouds embrace.

But when the old cathedral bell
    Proclaimed the morning prayer,
The white pavilions rose and fell
    On the alarmed air.

Down the broad valley fast and far

Far to the Northward there lies a land,
A wonderful land that the winds blow over,
And none may fathom or understand
The charm it holds for the restless rover;
A great grey chaos, a land half made,
Where endless space is and no life stirreth;
There the soul of a man will recoil afraid
From the sphinx-like visage that Nature weareth.
But old Dame Nature, though scornful, craves
Her dole of death and her share of slaughter;
Many indeed are the nameless graves
Where her victims sleep by the Grey Gulf-water.

Slowly and slowly those grey streams glide,
Drifting along with a languid motion,
Lapping the reed-beds on either side,
Wending their way to the North Ocean.
Grey are the plains where the emus pass
Silent and slow, with their dead demeanour;
Ov...

A GREAT BOTTLE OF WINE, LONG BURIED, BEING THAT DAY DUG UP. 1722-3


Resolv'd my annual verse to pay,
By duty bound, on Stella's day,
Furnish'd with paper, pens, and ink,
I gravely sat me down to think:
I bit my nails, and scratch'd my head,
But found my wit and fancy fled:
Or if, with more than usual pain,
A thought came slowly from my brain,
It cost me Lord knows how much time
To shape it into sense and rhyme:
And, what was yet a greater curse,
Long thinking made my fancy worse.
    Forsaken by th'inspiring Nine,
I waited at Apollo's shrine:
I told him what the world would say,
If Stella were unsung to-day:
How I should hide my head for shame,
When both the Jacks and Robin came;
How Ford would frown, how Jim would leer,
How Sher...

The Day brims high its ewer
Of blue with starry light,
And crowns as King that hewer
Of clouds (which take their flight
Across the sky) old Night.

And Tempest there, who houses
Within them, like a cave,
Lies down and dreams and drowses
Upon the Earth's huge grave,
With wandering wind and wave.

The storm moves on; and winging
From out the east a bird,
The moon drifts, calmly bringing
A message and a word
Of peace, in Heaven it heard.

Of peace and times called golden,
Whose beauty makes it glow
With love, like that of olden,
Which mortals used to know
There in the long-ago.

Clouds rosy-tinted in the setting sun,
Depths of the azure eastern sky between,
Plains where the poplar-bordered highways run,
Patched with a hundred tints of brown and green, -
Beauty of Earth, when in thy harmonies
The cannon's note has ceased to be a part,
I shall return once more and bring to these
The worship of an undivided heart.
Of those sweet potentialities that wait
For my heart's deep desire to fecundate
I shall resume the search, if Fortune grants;
And the great cities of the world shall yet
Be golden frames for me in which to set
New masterpieces of more rare romance.

"Are hearts here strong enough to found
A glorious people's sway?"
Ask of our rivers as they bound
From hill to plain, or ocean-sound,
If they are strong to-day?
If weakness in their floods be found,
Then may ye answer "Nay!"

"Is union yours? may foeman's might
Your love ne'er break or chain?"
Go see if o'er our land the flight
Of Spring be stayed by blast or blight;
If Fall bring never grain;
If Summer suns deny their light,
Then may our hope be vain!

"Yet far too cramped the narrow space
Your country's rule can own?"
Ah! travel all its bounds and trace
Each Alp unto its fertile base,
Our realm of forests lone,
Our world of prairie, like the face
Of ocean, hardly known!

"Yet for the arts to find a shrine,
Too ro...

So you think you will be a Scotch lassie;
    The braw Hieland lad in a kilt
Has taken your fancy, dear, has he?
    And you, too, would be clad in a "tilt."

Well, not one will gainsay you nor blame you,
    For your wishes are ever fulfilt;
And how proudly your father will claim you,
    When arrayed in a tartan and "tilt"!

And your mother will certainly further
    The hopes that her Ethel has built;
You have only to ask to ensure their
    Fulfilment concerning the "tilt."

And I--(Oh! I know I don't count, dear,
    And for speaking acknowledge my guilt,
For my wishes to nothing amount, dear,)
    I would rather you hadn't a "tilt."

For although thou wilt take us by storm, dear,
    Looking sweet, as thou certainly wilt,
Ye...

Pause here and think: a monitory rhyme
Demands one moment of thy fleeting time.
Consult life’s silent clock, thy bounding vein;
Seems it to say—“Health here has long to reign?”
Hast thou the vigour of thy youth? an eye
That beams delight? a heart untaught to sigh?
Yet fear. Youth, ofttimes healthful and at ease,
Anticipates a day it never sees;
And many a tomb, like Hamilton’s, aloud
Exclaims “Prepare thee for an early shroud.”

What though while the wonders of nature exploring,
I cannot your light, mazy footsteps attend;
Nor listen to accents, that almost adoring,
Bless Cynthia's face, the enthusiast’s friend:

Yet over the steep, whence the mountain stream rushes,
With you, kindest friends, in idea I rove;
Mark the clear tumbling crystal, its passionate gushes,
Its spray that the wild flower kindly bedews.

Why linger you so, the wild labyrinth strolling?
Why breathless, unable your bliss to declare?
Ah! you list to the nightingale’s tender condoling,
Responsive to sylphs, in the moon beamy air.

'Tis morn, and the flowers with dew are yet drooping,
I see you are treading the verge of the sea:
And now! ah, I see it, you just now are stooping
To pick up the keep-sake intend...

From the madding crowd they stand apart,
The maidens four and the Work of Art;

And none might tell from sight alone
In which had culture ripest grown,

The Gotham Million fair to see,
The Philadelphia Pedigree,

The Boston Mind of azure hue,
Or the soulful Soul from Kalamazoo,

For all loved Art in a seemly way,
With an earnest soul and a capital A.

    *    *    *    *    *

Long they worshiped; but no one broke
The sacred stillness, until up spoke

The Western one from the nameless place,
Who blushing said, "What a lovely vace!"

Over three faces a sad smile flew,
And they edged away from Kalamazoo.

But Gotham's haughty soul was stirred
To crush the stranger with one small word.

Deftly hidi...