Bother Bulleys, let us sing
From the dawn till evening! -
For we know not that we go not
When the day's pale pinions fold
Unto those who sang of old.

When I flew to Blackmoor Vale,
Whence the green-gowned faeries hail,
Roosting near them I could hear them
Speak of queenly Nature's ways,
Means, and moods, - well known to fays.

All we creatures, nigh and far
(Said they there), the Mother's are:
Yet she never shows endeavour
To protect from warrings wild
Bird or beast she calls her child.

Busy in her handsome house
Known as Space, she falls a-drowse;
Yet, in seeming, works on dreaming,
While beneath her groping hands
Fiends make havoc in her bands.

How her hussif'ry succeeds
She unknows or she unheeds,
All thi...

America will not turn back;
    She did not idly start,
But weighed full carefully and well
    Her grave, important part.
She chose the part of Freedom's friend,
And will pursue it, to the end.

Great Liberty, who guards her gates,
    Will shine upon her course,
And light the long, adventurous path
    With radiance from God's Source.
And though blood dye that ocean track,
America will not turn back.

She will not turn until that hour
    When thunders through the world
The crash of tyrant monarchies
    By Freedom's hand down-hurled.
While Labour's voice from sea to sea
Sings loud, 'My country, 'tis of thee.'

Then will our fair Columbia turn,
    While all wars' clamours cease,
And with our banner lifted high
    Pro...

As a pale phantom with a lamp
    Ascends some ruin's haunted stair,
So glides the moon along the damp
    Mysterious chambers of the air.

Now hidden in cloud, and now revealed,
    As if this phantom, full of pain,
Were by the crumbling walls concealed,
    And at the windows seen again.

Until at last, serene and proud
    In all the splendor of her light,
She walks the terraces of cloud,
    Supreme as Empress of the Night.

I look, but recognize no more
    Objects familiar to my view;
The very pathway to my door
    Is an enchanted avenue.

All things are changed.    One mass of shade,
    The elm-trees drop their curtains down;
By palace, park, and colonnade
    I walk as in a foreign town.

The very ground b...

By voyages in air,
With constant thought and care,
Much knowledge had a swallow gain'd,
Which she for public use retain'd,
The slightest storms she well foreknew,
And told the sailors ere they blew.
A farmer sowing hemp, once having found,
She gather'd all the little birds around,
And said, 'My friends, the freedom let me take
To prophesy a little, for your sake,
Against this dangerous seed.
Though such a bird as I
Knows how to hide or fly,
You birds a caution need.
See you that waving hand?
It scatters on the land
What well may cause alarm.
'Twill grow to nets and snares,
To catch you unawares,
And work you fatal harm!
Great multitudes I fear,
Of you, my birdies dear,
That falling seed, so little,
Will bring to cage or kettl...

Glide gently, thus for ever glide,
O Thames! that other bards may see
As lovely visions by thy side
As now, fair river! come to me.
O glide, fair stream! for ever so,
Thy quiet soul on all bestowing,
Till all our minds for ever flow
As thy deep waters now are flowing.

Vain thought! Yet be as now thou art,
That in thy waters may be seen
The image of a poet's heart,
How bright, how solemn, how serene!
Such as did once the Poet bless,
Who murmuring here a later ditty,
Could find no refuge from distress
But in the milder grief of pity.

Now let us, as we float along,
For 'him' suspend the dashing oar;
And pray that never child of song
May know that Poet's sorrows more.
How calm! how still! the only sound,
The dripping of the oar...

I dreamed a Voice, of one God-authorised,
Cried loudly thro' the world, 'Disarm!    Disarm!'
And there was consternation in the camps;
And men who strutted under braid and lace
Beat on their medalled breasts, and wailed, 'Undone!'
The word was echoed from a thousand hills,
And shop and mill, and factory and forge,
Where throve the awful industries of death,
Hushed into silence.    Scrawled upon the doors,
The passer read, 'Peace bids her children starve.'
But foolish women clasped their little sons
And wept for joy, not reasoning like men.

Again the Voice commanded:    'Now go forth
And build a world for Progress and for Peace.
This work has waited since the earth was shaped;
But men were fighting, and they could not toil.
The needs of life outnumber nee...

Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,
So do our minutes hasten to their end;
Each changing place with that which goes before,
In sequent toil all forwards do contend.
Nativity, once in the main of light,
Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crown’d,
Crooked eclipses ’gainst his glory fight,
And Time that gave doth now his gift confound.
Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth
And delves the parallels in beauty’s brow,
Feeds on the rarities of nature’s truth,
And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow:
And yet to times in hope, my verse shall stand.
Praising thy worth, despite his cruel hand.

I

Oft have I seen at some cathedral door
    A laborer, pausing in the dust and heat,
    Lay down his burden, and with reverent feet
    Enter, and cross himself, and on the floor
Kneel to repeat his paternoster o'er;
    Far off the noises of the world retreat;
    The loud vociferations of the street
    Become an undistinguishable roar.
So, as I enter here from day to day,
    And leave my burden at this minster gate,
    Kneeling in prayer, and not ashamed to pray,
The tumult of the time disconsolate
    To inarticulate murmurs dies away,
    While the eternal ages watch and wait.


II

How strange the sculptures that adorn these towers!
    This crowd of statues, in whose folded sleeves
    Birds build their nests; while ca...

Eyes aloft over dangerous places,
The children follow where Psyche flies,
And, in the sweat of their upturned faces,
Slash with a net at the empty skies.

So it goes they fall amid brambles,
And sting their toes on the nettle-tops
Till after a thousand scratches and scrambles
They wipe their brows, and the hunting stops.

Then to quiet them comes their father
And stills the riot of pain and grief,
Saying, ‘Little ones, go and gather
Out of my garden a cabbage leaf.

‘You will find on it whorls and clots of
Dull grey eggs that, properly fed,
Turn by way of the worm to lots of
Radiant Psyches raised from the dead.’
.    .    .    .    .
‘Heaven is beautiful, Earth is ugly,’
The three-dimensioned preacher saith.
So we must not look w...

The green grass is bowing,
The morning wind is in it;
'T is a tune worth thy knowing,
Though it change every minute.

'T is a tune of the Spring;
Every year plays it over
To the robin on the wing,
And to the pausing lover.

O'er ten thousand, thousand acres,
Goes light the nimble zephyr;
The Flowers--tiny sect of Shakers--
Worship him ever.

Hark to the winning sound!
They summon thee, dearest,--
Saying, 'We have dressed for thee the ground,
Nor yet thou appearest.

'O hasten;' 't is our time,
Ere yet the red Summer
Scorch our delicate prime,
Loved of bee,--the tawny hummer.

'O pride of thy race!
Sad, in sooth, it were to ours,
If our brief tribe miss thy face,
We poor New England flowers.

A budding mouth and warm blue eyes;
A laughing face; - and laughing hair,
    So ruddy does it rise
    From off that forehead fair;

Frank fervor in whate'er she said,
And a shy grace when she was still;
    A bright, elastic tread;
    Enthusiastic will;

These wrought the magic of a maid
As sweet and sad as the sun in spring,
    Joyous, yet half-afraid
    Her joyousness to sing.

What weighs the unworthiness of earth
When beauty such as this finds birth?
    Rare maid, to look on thee
    Gives all things harmony!

’Tis said that the Passion Flower,
With its figures of spear and sword
And hammer and nails, is a symbol
Of the Woe of our Blessed Lord.

So still in the Heart of Beauty
Has been hidden, since Life drew breath,
The sword and the spear of Anguish,
And the hammer and nails of Death.

I was thinking last night, as I sat in the cars,
With the charmingest prospect of cinders and stars,
Next Thursday is - bless me! - how hard it will be,
If that cannibal president calls upon me!

There is nothing on earth that he will not devour,
From a tutor in seed to a freshman in flower;
No sage is too gray, and no youth is too green,
And you can't be too plump, though you're never too lean.

While others enlarge on the boiled and the roast,
He serves a raw clergyman up with a toast,
Or catches some doctor, quite tender and young,
And basely insists on a bit of his tongue.

Poor victim, prepared for his classical spit,
With a stuffing of praise and a basting of wit,
You may twitch at your collar and wrinkle your brow,
But you're up on your legs, ...

Yes! yes! I dare say it is so,
And you should be pitied, but how could I know,
Watching alone by the moon-lit bay;
But that is past for many a day,
For the woman that loved, died years ago,
    Years ago.

She had loving eyes, with a wistful look
In their depths that day, and I know you took
Her face in your hands and read it o'er,
As if you should never see it more;
You were right, for she died long years ago,
    Years ago.

Had I trusted you - for trust, you know
Will keep love's fire forever aglow;
Then what would have mattered storm or sun,
But the watching - the waiting, all is done;
For the woman that loved, died years ago,
    Years ago.

Yes; I think you are constant, true and good,
I am tired, and would love you if I cou...

Sit still, a word, a breath may break
(As light airs stir a sleeping lake)
The glassy calm that soothes my woes,
The sweet, the deep, the full repose.
O leave me not! for ever be
Thus, more than life itself to me!

Yes, close beside thee let me kneel,
Give me thy hand, that I may feel
The friend so true, so tried, so dear,
My heart's own chosen, indeed is near;
And check me not, this hour divine
Belongs to me, is fully mine.

'Tis thy own hearth thou sitt'st beside,
After long absence, wandering wide;
'Tis thy own wife reads in thine eyes
A promise clear of stormless skies;
For faith and true love light the rays
Which shine responsive to her gaze.

Ay, well that single tear may fall;
Ten thousand might mine eyes recall,
Which...

When winds blow high and leaves begin to fall,
And the wan sunlight flits before the blast;
When fields are brown and crops are garnered all,
And rooks, like mastered ships, drift wide and fast;
Maid Artemis, that feeleth her young blood
Leap like a freshet river for the sea,
Speedeth abroad with hair blown in a flood
To snuff the salt west wind and wanton free.

Then would you know how brave she is, how high
Her ancestry, how kindred to the wind,
Mark but her flashing feet, her ravisht eye
That takes the boist'rous weather and feels it kind:
And hear her eager voice, how tuned it is
To Autumn's clarion shrill for Artemis.

When you're feelin' blue as ink
    An' your spirits 'gin to sink,
Don't be weak an' take a drink
    But
    Keep Tryin'.

There are times when all of us
    Get riled up and start a muss,
But there ain't no use to cuss,
    Just
    Keep Tryin'.

When things seem to go awry,
    And the sun deserts your sky,
Don't sit down somewhere and cry,
    But
    Keep Tryin'.

Everybody honors grit,
    Men who never whine a bit--
Men who tell the world, "I'm IT"
    And
    Keep Tryin'.

Get a hustle on you NOW,
    Make a great, big solemn vow
That you'll win out anyhow,
    And
    Keep Tryin'.

All the world's a battlefield
    Where the true man is revealed,
But the ones who never yie...

Love is a leaven; and a loving kiss
The leaven of a loving sweetheart is.