I.

Beyond lost seas of summer she
Dwelt on an island of the sea,
Last scion of that dynasty,
Queen of a race forgotten long.
With eyes of light and lips of song,
From seaward groves of blowing lemon,
She called me in her native tongue,
Low-leaned on some rich robe of Yemen.

II.

I was a king. Three moons we drove
Across green gulfs, the crimson clove
And cassia spiced, to claim her love.
Packed was my barque with gums and gold;
Rich fabrics; sandalwood, grown old
With odor; gems; and pearls of Oman,
Than her white breasts less white and cold;
And myrrh, less fragrant than this woman.

III.

From Bassora I came. We saw
Her eagle castle on a claw
Of soaring precipice, o'erawe
The surge and thunder of the s...

On the river of life, as I float along,
    I see with the spirit's sight
That many a nauseous weed of wrong
    Has root in a seed of right.
For evil is good that has gone astray,
    And sorrow is only blindness,
And the world is always under the sway
    Of a changeless law of kindness.

The commonest error a truth can make
    Is shouting its sweet voice hoarse,
And sin is only the soul's mistake
    In misdirecting its force.
And love, the fairest of all fair things
    That ever to man descended,
Grows rank with nettles and poisonous things
    Unless it is watched and tended.

There could not be anything better than this
    Old world in the way it began;
And though some matters have gone amiss
    From the great original plan,<...

What dainty note of long-drawn melody
Athwart our dreamless sleep rings sweet and clear,
Till all the fumes of slumber are brushed by,


And with awakened consciousness we hear
The pipe of birds?    Look forth!    The sane, white day
Blesses the hilltops, and the sun is near.


All misty phantoms slowly roll away
With the night's vapors toward the western sky.
The Real enchants us, the fresh breath of hay


Blows toward us; soft the meadow-grasses lie,
Bearded with dew; the air is a caress;
The sudden sun o'ertops the boundary


Of eastern hills, the morning joyousness
Thrills tingling through the frame; life's pulse beats strong;
Night's fancies melt like dew.    So ends the song!

Up from the South come the birds that were banished,
    Frightened away by the presence of frost.
Back to the vale comes the verdure that vanished,
    Back to the forest the leaves that were lost.
Over the hillside the carpet of splendor,
    Folded through Winter, Spring spreads down again;
Along the horizon, the tints that were tender,
    Lost hues of Summer time, burn bright as then.

Only the mountains' high summits are hoary,
    To the ice-fettered river the sun gives a key.
Once more the gleaming shore lists to the story
    Told by an amorous Summer-kissed sea.
All things revive that in Winter time perished,
    The rose buds again in the light o' the sun,
All that was beautiful, all that was cherished,
    Sweet things and dear things and all thing...

(For Aline)



From what old ballad, or from what rich frame
    Did you descend to glorify the earth?
Was it from Chaucer's singing book you came?
    Or did Watteau's small brushes give you birth?

Nothing so exquisite as that slight hand
    Could Raphael or Leonardo trace.
Nor could the poets know in Fairyland
    The changing wonder of your lyric face.

I would possess a host of lovely things,
    But I am poor and such joys may not be.
So God who lifts the poor and humbles kings
    Sent loveliness itself to dwell with me.

(See Note 27)

I read once of a flower that lonely grew,
Apart, with trembling stem and pale of hue;
The mountain-world of cold and strife
    Gave little life
    And less of color.

A botanist the flower chanced to see
And glad exclaimed: Oh, this must sheltered be,
Must seed produce, renewing birth,
    In sun-warmed earth
    Become a thousand.

But as he dug and drew it from the ground,
Strange glitterings upon his hands he found;
For to its roots clung dust of golden hue;
    The flower grew
    On golden treasure!

And from the region wide came all the youth
To see the wonder; they divined the truth:
Here lay their country's future might;
    A ray of light
    From God that flower! -

This I recall now ...

Also written at the request of Lady Austen.


Air—“The Lass of Peatie’s Mill.”


When all within is peace,
How Nature seems to smile!
Delights that never cease
The livelong day beguile.
From morn to dewy eve
With open hand she showers
Fresh blessings, to deceive
And soothe the silent hours.


It is content of heart
Gives Nature power to please;
The mind that feels no smart
Enlivens all it sees;
Can make a wintry sky
Seem bright as smiling May,
And evening’s closing eye
As peep of early day.


The vast majestic globe,
So beauteously array’d
In Nature’s various robe,
With wondrous skill display’d,
Is to a mourner’s heart
A dreary wild at best;
It flutters to depart,
And longs to...

Such a dear little street it is, nestled away
From the noise of the city and heat of the day,
In cool shady coverts of whispering trees,
With their leaves lifted up to shake hands with the breeze
Which in all its wide wanderings never may meet
With a resting-place fairer than Lockerbie street!

There is such a relief, from the clangor and din
Of the heart of the town, to go loitering in
Through the dim, narrow walks, with the sheltering shade
Of the trees waving over the long promenade,
And littering lightly the ways of our feet
With the gold of the sunshine of Lockerbie street.

And the nights that come down the dark pathways of dusk,
With the stars in their tresses, and odors of musk
In their moon-woven raiments, bespangled with dews,
And looped up with...

His eyes are quickened so with grief,
He can watch a grass or leaf
Every instant grow; he can
Clearly through a flint wall see,
Or watch the startled spirit flee
From the throat of a dead man.
    Across two counties he can hear,
And catch your words before you speak.
The woodlouse or the maggot's weak
Clamour rings in his sad ear;
And noise so slight it would surpass
Credence: drinking sound of grass,
Worm-talk, clashing jaws of moth
Chumbling holes in cloth:
The groan of ants who undertake
Gigantic loads for honour's sake,
Their sinews creak, their breath comes thin:
Whir of spiders when they spin,
And minute whispering, mumbling, sighs
Of idle grubs and flies.
    This man is quickened so with grief,
He wanders god-like or like thie...

Tell me, Lydia, tell me why,
By the gods that dwell above,
Sybaris makes haste to die
Through your cruel, fatal love.

Now he hates the sunny plain;
Once he loved its dust and heat.
Now no more he leads the train
Of his peers on coursers fleet.

Now he dreads the Tiber's touch,
And avoids the wrestling-rings,--
He who formerly was such
An expert with quoits and things.

Come, now, Mistress Lydia, say
Why your Sybaris lies hid,
Why he shuns the martial play,
As we're told Achilles did.

Long ago, there lived far to the west a very young man, good, but extremely odd. He tormented himself continually about this nothing and that nothing, always walked in silence and straight before him, sat down alone when the others were at their sports and merry-makings, and brooded over strange things. Caves and woods were his dearest haunts; and there he talked on and on with beasts and birds, with trees and rocks--of course not one rational word, but mere idiotic stuff, to make one laugh to death. He continued, however, always moody and serious, in spite of the utmost pains that the squirrel, the monkey, the parrot, and the bullfinch could take to divert him, and set him in the right way. The goose told stories, the brook jingled a ballad between, a great thick stone cut ridiculous capers, the rose stole lovingly about him from behind ...

Go thou gentle whispering wind,
Bear this sigh; and if thou find
Where my cruel fair doth rest,
Cast it in her snowy breast,
So, enflam'd by my desire,
It may set her heart a-fire.
Those sweet kisses thou shalt gain,
Will reward thee for thy pain:
Boldly light upon her lip,
There suck odours, and thence skip
To her bosom; lastly fall
Down, and wander over all:
Range about those ivory hills,
From whose every part distills
Amber dew; there spices grow,
There pure streams of nectar flow;
There perfume thyself, and bring
All those sweets upon thy wing:
As thou return'st, change by thy power,
Every weed into a flower;
Turn each thistle to a vine,
Make the bramble eglantine.
For so rich a booty made,
Do but this, and I am paid.

        The hills again reach skyward with a smile.
            Again, with waking life along its way,
        The landscape marches westward mile on mile
            And time throbs white into another day.

        Though eager life must wait on livelihood,
            And all our hopes be tethered to the mart,
        Lacking the eagle's wild, high freedom, would
            That ours might be this day the eagle's heart!

("A Juana la Grenadine!")

[XXIX., October, 1843.]


To Juana ever gay,
Sultan Achmet spoke one day
"Lo, the realms that kneel to own
Homage to my sword and crown
All I'd freely cast away,
Maiden dear, for thee alone."

"Be a Christian, noble king!
For it were a grievous thing:
Love to seek and find too well
In the arms of infidel.
Spain with cry of shame would ring,
If from honor faithful fell."

"By these pearls whose spotless chain,
Oh, my gentle sovereign,
Clasps thy neck of ivory,
Aught thou askest I will be,
If that necklace pure of stain
Thou wilt give for rosary."

JOHN L. O'SULLIVAN.

"Black Sheep, Black Sheep,
Have you any wool?"
"That I have, my Master,
Three bags full."

One is for the mother who prays for me at night--
A gift of broken promises to count by candle-light.

One is for the tried friend who raised me when I fell--
A gift of weakling's tinsel oaths that strew the path to hell.

And one is for the true love--the heaviest of all--
That holds the pieces of a faith a careless hand let fall.

Black Sheep, Black Sheep,
Have you ought to say?
A word to each, my Master,
Ere I go my way.

A word unto my mother to bid her think o' me
Only as a little lad playing at her knee.

A word unto my tried friend to bid him see again
Two laughing lads in S...

Will you conquer my heart with your beauty; my sould going out from afar?
Shall I fall to your hand as a victim of crafty and cautions shikar?

Have I met you and passed you already, unknowing, unthinking and blind?
Shall I meet you next session at Simla, O sweetest and best of your kind?

Does the P. and O. bear you to meward, or, clad in short frocks in the West,
Are you growing the charms that shall capture and torture the heart in my breast?

Will you stay in the Plains till September, my passion as warm as the day?
Will you bring me to book on the Mountains, or where the thermantidotes play?

When the light of your eyes shall make pallid the mean lesser lights I pursue,
And the charm of your presence shall lure me from love of the gay "thirteen-two";

When the...

I once knew all the birds that came
And nested in our orchard trees;
For every flower I had a name--
My friends were woodchucks, toads, and bees;
I knew where thrived in yonder glen
What plants would soothe a stone-bruised toe--
Oh, I was very learned then;
But that was very long ago!

I knew the spot upon the hill
Where checkerberries could be found,
I knew the rushes near the mill
Where pickerel lay that weighed a pound!
I knew the wood,--the very tree
Where lived the poaching, saucy crow,
And all the woods and crows knew me--
But that was very long ago.

And pining for the joys of youth,
I tread the old familiar spot
Only to learn this solemn truth:
I have forgotten, am forgot.
Yet here's this youngster at my knee
Knows al...

There is the warm, congenial smile,
    Benign, and honest, too,
Free from deception, fraud, and guile;
    The smile of friendship true.

There is the smile most fair to see,
Which wreathes the modest glance
Of spotless maiden purity;
    The smile of innocence.

There is the smile of woman's love,
    That potent, siren spell,
Which uplifts men to heaven above,
    Or lures them down to hell!

There is the vain, derisive smile,
    Of cynical conceit;
The drunken leer, the grimace vile,
    Of lives with crime replete.

There is the smile of vacancy,
    Expressionless, we find
On idiot physiognomy,
    The vacuum of a mind.

There is a smile, which more than tears
    Or language can express;
The grim d...