Blythe bell, that calls to bridal halls,
Tolls deep a darker day;
The very shower that feeds the flower
Weeps also its decay.

Forth from the dust and din,
The crush, the heat, the many-spotted glare,
The odour and sense of life and lust aflare,
The wrangle and jangle of unrests,
Let us take horse, Dear Heart, take horse and win -
As from swart August to the green lap of May -
To quietness and the fresh and fragrant breasts
Of the still, delicious night, not yet aware
In any of her innumerable nests
Of that first sudden plash of dawn,
Clear, sapphirine, luminous, large,
Which tells that soon the flowing springs of day
In deep and ever deeper eddies drawn
Forward and up, in wider and wider way,
Shall float the sands, and brim the shores,
On this our lith of the World, as round it roars
And spins into the outlook of the Sun
(The Lord's first gift, the Lord's especial charge),
...

The troubles of life are many,
The pleasures of life are few;
When we sat in the sunlight, Annie,
I dreamt that the skies were blue,
When we sat in the sunlight, Annie,
I dreamt that the earth was green;
There is little colour, if any,
’Neath the sunlight now to be seen.

Then the rays of the sunset glinted
Through the blackwoods’ emerald bough
On an emerald sward, rose-tinted,
And spangled, and gemm’d; and now
The rays of the sunset redden
With a sullen and lurid frown,
From the skies that are dark and leaden,
To earth that is dusk and brown.

To right and to left extended
The uplands are blank and drear,
And their neutral tints are blended
With the dead leaves sombre and sere;
The cold grey mist from the still side
Of the l...

Ah! days so dark with death's eclipse!
    Woe are we! woe are we!
And the nights are ages long!
From breaking hearts, thro' pallid lips
    O my God! woe are we!
Trembleth the mourner's song;
    A blight is falling on the fair,
    And hope is dying in despair,
    And terror walketh everywhere.

All the hours are full of tears --
    O my God! woe are we!
Grief keeps watch in brightest eyes --
Every heart is strung with fears,
    Woe are we! woe are we!
All the light hath left the skies,
    And the living awe struck crowds
    See above them only clouds,
    And around them only shrouds.

Ah! the terrible farewells!
    Woe are they! woe are they!
When last words sink into moans,
While life's trembling vesper bells --

No Muse will I invoke; for she is fled!
Lo! where she sits, breathing, yet all but dead.
She loved the heavens of old, she thought them fair;
And dream'd of Gods in Tempe's golden air.
For her the wind had voice, the sea its cry;
She deem'd heroic Greece could never die.
Breathless was she, to think what nymphs might play
In clear green depths, deep-shaded from the day;
She thought the dim and inarticulate god
Was beautiful, nor knew she man a sod;
But hoped what seem'd might not be all untrue,
And feared to look beyond the eternal blue.
But now the heavens are bared of dreams divine.
Still murmurs she, like Autumn, _This was mine!_
How should she face the ghastly, jarring Truth,
That questions all, and tramples without ruth?
And still she clings to Ida of her...

    The sky-like girl whom we knew!
        She dressed herself to go to the fair
    In a dress of white and blue;
    A white lace cap, and ribbons white
        She wore in her hair;
    She does not hear in the night
    Her mother crying for her,
        Where,
            Deep down in the sea,
    She rolls and lingers to and fro
            Unweariedly.

Man of virtue has need;-into life with boldness he plunges,
Entering with fortune more sure into the hazardous strife;
But to woman one virtue suffices; it is ever shining
Lovingly forth to the heart; so let it shine to the eye!

Woman's faith, and woman's trust
Write the characters in the dust;
Stamp them on the running stream,
Print them on the moon's pale beam,
And each evanescent letter
Shall be clearer, firmer, better,
And more permanent, I ween,
Than the thing those letters mean.

I have strain'd the spider's thread
'Gainst the promise of a maid;
I have weigh'd a grain of sand
'Gainst her plight of heart and hand;
I told my true love of the token,
How her faith proved light, and her word was broken:
Again her word and truth she plight,
And I believed them again ere night.

Autumn, I love thy parting look to view
In cold November's day, so bleak and bare,
When, thy life's dwindled thread worn nearly thro',
With ling'ring, pott'ring pace, and head bleach'd bare,
Thou, like an old man, bidd'st the world adieu.
I love thee well: and often, when a child,
Have roam'd the bare brown heath a flower to find;
And in the moss-clad vale, and wood-bank wild
Have cropt the little bell-flowers, pearly blue,
That trembling peep the shelt'ring bush behind.
When winnowing north-winds cold and bleaky blew,
How have I joy'd, with dithering hands, to find,
Each fading flower; and still how sweet the blast,
Would bleak November's hour restore the joy that's past.

Come up from the fields, father, here's a letter from our Pete;
And come to the front door, mother--here's a letter from thy dear son.

Lo, 'tis autumn;
Lo, where the trees, deeper green, yellower and redder,
Cool and sweeten Ohio's villages, with leaves fluttering in the moderate wind;
Where apples ripe in the orchards hang, and grapes on the trellis'd vines;
(Smell you the smell of the grapes on the vines?
Smell you the buckwheat, where the bees were lately buzzing?)

Above all, lo, the sky, so calm, so transparent after the rain, and with wondrous clouds;
Below, too, all calm, all vital and beautiful--and the farm prospers well.


Down in the fields all prospers well;
But now from the fields come, father--come at the daughter's call;
And come to the entry, ...

Well! I'm determin'd; that's enough: -
Gee, Bayard! move your poor old bones,
I'll take to-morrow, smooth or rough,
To go and court the Widow Jones.

Our master talks of stable-room,
And younger horses on his grounds;
'Tis easy to foresee thy doom,
Bayard, thou'lt go to feed the hounds.

The first Determination.

But could I win the widow's hand,
I'd make a truce 'twixt death and thee;
For thou upon the best of land
Should'st feed, and live, and die with me.

And must the pole-axe lay thee low?
And will they pick thy poor old bones?
No - hang me if it shall be so, -
If I can win the Widow Jones.

Twirl went his stick; his curly pate
A bran-new hat uplifted bore;
And Abner, as he leapt the gate,
Had never look'd so g...

JANUARY

Janus am I; oldest of potentates;
    Forward I look, and backward, and below
I count, as god of avenues and gates,
    The years that through my portals come and go.
I block the roads, and drift the fields with snow;
I chase the wild-fowl from the frozen fen;
My frosts congeal the rivers in their flow,
My fires light up the hearths and hearts of men.


FEBRUARY

I am lustration, and the sea is mine.
    I wash the sands and headlands with my tide;
My brow is crowned with branches of the pine;
    Before my chariot-wheels the fishes glide.
By me all things unclean are purified,
    By me the souls of men washed white again;
E'en the unlovely tombs of those who died
    Without a dirge, I cleanse from every stain.

No wonder bards, both high and low,
    From Byron down to ***** and me,
Should seek the fame which all bestow
    On him whose task is praising thee.

Let but the theme be Jersey's eyes,
    At once all errors are forgiven;
As even old Sternhold still we prize,
    Because, tho' dull, he sings of heaven.

As those who eat a Luscious Fruit, sunbaked,
    Full of sweet juice, with zest, until they find
It finished, and their appetite unslaked,
    And so return and eat the pared-off rind; -

We, who in Youth, set white and careless teeth
    In the Ripe Fruits of Pleasure while they last,
Later, creep back to gnaw the cast-off sheath,
    And find there is no Rival like the Past.

I am the voice of the voiceless;
    Through me the dumb shall speak;
Till the deaf world's ear be made to hear
    The cry of the wordless weak.
From street, from cage, and from kennel,
    From jungle and stall, the wail
Of my tortured kin proclaims the sin
    Of the mighty against the frail.

I am a ray from the centre;
    And I will feed God's spark,
Till a great light glows in the night and shows
    The dark deeds done in the dark.
And full on the thoughtless sleeper
    Shall flash its glaring flame,
Till he wakens to see what crimes may be
    Cloaked under an honoured name.

The same Force formed the sparrow
    That fashioned man, the king;
The God of the Whole gave a spark of soul
    To furred and to feathered thing.

A vision beauteous as the morn,
    With heavenly eyes and tresses streaming,
Slow glided o'er a field late shorn
    Where walked a poet idly dreaming.
He saw her, and joy lit his face,
    "Oh, vanish not at human speaking,"
He cried, "thou form of magic grace,
    Thou art the poem I am seeking.

"I've sought thee long!    I claim thee now -
    My thought embodied, living, real."
She shook the tresses from her brow.
    "Nay, nay!" she said, "I am ideal.
I am the phantom of desire -
    The spirit of all great endeavour,
I am the voice that says, 'Come higher,'
    That calls men up and up for ever.

"'Tis not alone thy thought supreme
    That here upon thy path has risen;
I am the artist's highest dream,
    The ray of light he c...

Hence vain deluding joyes,
The brood of folly without father bred,
How little you bested,
Or fill the fixèd mind with all your toyes;
Dwell in some idle brain,
And fancies fond with gaudy shapes possess,
As thick and numberless
As the gay motes that poeple the Sun Beams,
Or likest hovering dreams
The fickle Pensioners of Morpheus train.
But hail thou Goddess, sage and holy,
Hail divinest Melancholy,
Whose Saintly visage is too bright
To hit the Sense of human sight;
And therefore to our weaker view,
Ore laid with black staid Wisdoms hue.
Black, but such as in esteem,
Prince Memnons sister might beseem,
Or that starr’d Ethiope Queen that strove
To set her beauties praise above
The Sea Nymphs, and their powers offended,
Yet thou art high...

For ages on our river borders,
These tassels in their tawny bloom,
And willowy studs of downy silver,
Have prophesied of Spring to come.

For ages have the unbound waters
Smiled on them from their pebbly hem,
And the clear carol of the robin
And song of bluebird welcomed them.

But never yet from smiling river,
Or song of early bird, have they
Been greeted with a gladder welcome
Than whispers from my heart to-day.

They break the spell of cold and darkness,
The weary watch of sleepless pain;
And from my heart, as from the river,
The ice of winter melts again.

Thanks, Mary! for this wild-wood token
Of Freya’s footsteps drawing near;
Almost, as in the rune of Asgard,
The growing of the grass I hear.

It is as if the ...