Ask not why hearts turn Magazines of passions,
And why that grief is clad in sev'ral fashions;
Why She on progress goes, and doth not borrow
The smallest respite from th'extreams of sorrow,
Her misery is got to such an height,
As makes the earth groan to support its weight,
Such storms of woe, so strongly have beset her,
She hath no place for worse, nor hope for better;
Her comfort is, if any for her be,
That none can shew more cause of grief then she.
Ask not why some in mournfull black are clad;
The Sun is set, there needs must be a shade.
Ask not why every face a sadness shrowdes;
The setting Sun ore-cast us hath with Clouds.
Ask not why the great glory of the Skye
That gilds the stars with heavenly Alchamy,
Which all the world doth lighten with his rayes,<...

“Tandem venias precamur
Nube candentes humeros amictus
Augur Apollo.”


Lord of the golden lyre
Fraught with the Dorian fire,
Oh! fair-haired child of Leto, come again;
And if no longer smile
Delphi or Delos’ isle,
Come from the depth of thine Aetnean glen,
Where in the black ravine
Thunders the foaming green
Of waters writhing far from mortals’ ken;
Come o’er the sparkling brine,
And bring thy train divine,
The sweet-voiced and immortal violet-crownèd Nine.

For here are richer meads,
And here are goodlier steeds
Than ever graced the glorious land of Greece;
Here waves the yellow corn,
Here is the olive born,
The gray-green gracious harbinger of peace;
Here too hath taken root
A tree with golden fruit,
...

I

Now that the farewell tear is dried,
Heaven prosper thee, be hope thy guide
Hope be thy guide, adventurous Boy;
The wages of thy travel, joy!
Whether for London bound, to trill
Thy mountain notes with simple skill;
Or on thy head to poise a show
Of Images in seemly row;
The graceful form of milk-white Steed,
Or Bird that soared with Ganymede;
Or through our hamlets thou wilt bear
The sightless Milton, with his hair
Around his placid temples curled;
And Shakespeare at his side, a freight,
If clay could think and mind were weight,
For him who bore the world!
Hope be thy guide, adventurous Boy;
The wages of thy travel, joy!

II

But thou, perhaps, (alert as free
Though serving sage philosophy)
Wilt ramble over hill ...

Clear are her eyes,
Like purest skies;
Discovering from thence
A baby there
That turns each sphere,
Like an Intelligence.

Don told me that he loved me dear
Where down the range Whioola pours;
And when I laughed and would not hear
He flung away to fight the wars.
He flung away, how should he know
My foolish heart was dancin' so?
How should he know that at his word
My soul was trillin' like a bird?

He went out in the cannon smoke.
He did not seek to ask me why.
Again each day my poor heart broke
To see the careless post go by.
I cared not for their Emperors,
For me there was this in the wars;
My brown boy in the shell-clouds dim,
And savage devils killin' him!

They told me on the field he fell,
And far they bore him from the fight,
But he is whole, he will be well
Now in a ward by day and night
A fair, tall nurse with slim, neat hands
By his whi...

Sad is the thought of sunniest days
    Of love and rapture perished,
And shine through memory's tearful haze
    The eyes once fondliest cherished.
Reproachful is the ghost of toys
    That charmed while life was wasted.
But saddest is the thought of joys
    That never yet were tasted.

Sad is the vague and tender dream
    Of dead love's lingering kisses,
To crushed hearts haloed by the gleam
    Of unreturning blisses;
Deep mourns the soul in anguished pride
    For the pitiless death that won them, -
But the saddest wail is for lips that died
    With the virgin dew upon them.

Nurse not your grief, nor make obsequious moan
When I have shed this flesh I love so well,
Nor slowly toll the dull heart-bruising knell,
Nor carve my name in customary stone;
But let the generous earth reclaim her own
And my usurious profit who can tell?
Dash tears aside, let joy resume her spell;
Stars glitter where the storm is overblown.
Because I have lived I would not have one say:
“Here long ago a man of such a name
Was left to moulder in his pit of clay.”
Let only love remember how I came
And built an earthen altar in my day
And lit thereon a comfortable flame.

Monarch Love, resistless boy,
With whom the rosy Queen of Joy,
And nymphs, whose eyes have Heaven's hue,
Disporting tread the mountain-dew;
Propitious, oh! receive my sighs,
Which, glowing with entreaty, rise
That thou wilt whisper to the breast
Of her I love thy soft behest:
And counsel her to learn from thee.
That lesson thou hast taught to me.
Ah! if my heart no flattery tell,
Thou'lt own I've learned that lesson well!

The night would sadden us with wind and rain
Let's to sweet Comedy and scorn the night!
Let's read together: how, by silver light,
The fairies went, a most enchanting train.
Amid those clowns and lovers; how the twain,
Celia and Rosalind, as shepherds dight.
Frolicked through Arden; or of that rare sprite,
That Ariel, who could trick the mortal brain
To strange beliefs. What! wilt have nothing glad?
Wilt read, while winds are moaning out regret.
The fate of Desdemona, Juliet?
Lovest the rain to come and make thee sad?
Ah, well!, I know!, How sweet the tragic part!
I am grown old, but once, was what thou art I

From the depth of the dreamy decline of the dawn through a notable nimbus of nebulous noonshine,
Pallid and pink as the palm of the flag-flower that flickers with fear of the flies as they float,
Are they looks of our lovers that lustrously lean from a marvel of mystic miraculous moonshine,
These that we feel in the blood of our blushes that thicken and threaten with throbs through the throat?
Thicken and thrill as a theatre thronged at appeal of an actor's appalled agitation,
Fainter with fear of the fires of the future than pale with the promise of pride in the past;
Flushed with the famishing fullness of fever that reddens with radiance of rathe recreation,
Gaunt as the ghastliest of glimpses that gleam through the gloom of the gloaming when ghosts go aghast?
Nay, for the nick of the tick of the ...

While beams of orient light shoot wide and high,
Deep in the vale a little rural Town
Breathes forth a cloud-like creature of its own,
That mounts not toward the radiant morning sky,
But, with a less ambitious sympathy,
Hangs o'er its Parent waking to the cares
Troubles and toils that every day prepares.
So Fancy, to the musing Poet's eye,
Endears that Lingerer. And how blest her sway
(Like influence never may my soul reject)
If the calm Heaven, now to its zenith decked
With glorious forms in numberless array,
To the lone shepherd on the hills disclose
Gleams from a world in which the saints repose.

Thou art the soul of a summer's day,
Thou art the breath of the rose.
But the summer is fled
And the rose is dead
Where are they gone, who knows, who knows?

Thou art the blood of my heart o' hearts,
Thou art my soul's repose,
But my heart grows numb
And my soul is dumb
Where art thou, love, who knows, who knows?

Thou art the hope of my after years--
Sun for my winter snows
But the years go by
'Neath a clouded sky.
Where shall we meet, who knows, Who knows?

Sweet the memory is to me
Of a land beyond the sea,
Where the waves and mountains meet,
Where, amid her mulberry-trees
Sits Amalfi in the heat,
Bathing ever her white feet
In the tideless summer seas.

In the middle of the town,
From its fountains in the hills,
Tumbling through the narrow gorge,
The Canneto rushes down,
Turns the great wheels of the mills,
Lifts the hammers of the forge.

'T is a stairway, not a street,
That ascends the deep ravine,
Where the torrent leaps between
Rocky walls that almost meet.
Toiling up from stair to stair
Peasant girls their burdens bear;
Sunburnt daughters of the soil,
Stately figures tall and straight,
What inexorable fate
Dooms them to this life of toil?

Lord of vineyards...

What will it please you, my darling, hereafter to be?
Fame upon land will you look for, or glory by sea?
Gallant your life will be always, and all of it free.

Free as the wind when the heart of the twilight is stirred
Eastward, and sounds from the springs of the sunrise are heard:
Free, and we know not another as infinite word.

Darkness or twilight or sunlight may compass us round,
Hate may arise up against us, or hope may confound;
Love may forsake us; yet may not the spirit be bound.

Free in oppression of grief as in ardour of joy
Still may the soul be, and each to her strength as a toy:
Free in the glance of the man as the smile of the boy.

Freedom alone is the salt and the spirit that gives
Life, and without her is nothing that verily lives:
...

Ere on my bed my limbs I lay,
It hath not been my use to pray
With moving lips or bended knees;
But silently, by slow degrees,
My spirit I to Love compose,
In humble trust mine eyelids close,
With reverential resignation,
No wish conceived, no thought expressed,
Only a sense of supplication;
A sense o'er all my soul impressed
That I am weak, yet not unblessed,
Since in me, round me, every where
Eternal strength and wisdom are.

But yester-night I prayed aloud
In anguish and in agony,
Up-starting from the fiendish crowd
Of shapes and thoughts that tortured me:
A lurid light, a trampling throng,
Sense of intolerable wrong,
And whom I scorned, those only strong!
Thirst of revenge, the powerless will
Still baffled, and yet burning sti...

Poor Dick nah sleeps quietly, his labor is done,
Deeath shut off his steam tother day;
His engine, long active, has made its last run,
An his boiler nah falls to decay.
Maybe he'd his faults, but he'd vartues as well,
An tho' dearly he loved a gooid spree;
If he did onny harm it wor done to hissel: -
He wor allus a gooid friend to me.

His heart it wor tender, - his purse it wor free,
To a friend or a stranger i' need;
An noa matter ha humble or poor they might be,
At his booard they wor welcome to feed.
Wi' his pipe an his glass bi his foirside he'd sit,
Yet some fowk wi' him couldn't agree,
An tho' monny's the time 'at we've differed a bit,
He wor allus a gooid friend to me.

His word wor his bond, for he hated a lie,
An sickophants doubly des...

    O woman full of wiliness!
        Although for love of me you pine,
    Withhold your hand adventurous,
        It holdeth nothing holding mine.

    Look on my head, how it is grey!
        My body's weakness doth appear;
    My blood is chill and thin; my day
        Is done, and there is nothing here.

    Do not call me a foolish man,
        Nor lean your lovely cheek to mine
    O slender witch, our bodies can
        Not mingle now, nor any time.

    So take your mouth from mine, your hand
        From mine, ah, take your lips away!
    Lest heat to will should ripen, and
        All this be grave that had been gay.

    It is this curl, a silken nest,
        And this grey eye bright as the dew,
    And this round, lo...

1.
That time is dead for ever, child!
Drowned, frozen, dead for ever!
We look on the past
And stare aghast
At the spectres wailing, pale and ghast,
Of hopes which thou and I beguiled
To death on life's dark river.

2.
The stream we gazed on then rolled by;
Its waves are unreturning;
But we yet stand
In a lone land,
Like tombs to mark the memory
Of hopes and fears, which fade and flee
In the light of life's dim morning.