Shall love as the bridal wreath, wither and die?
    Or remain ever constant and sure,
As the years of the future pass rapidly by,
And the waves of adversity's tempest roll high,
    Ever changeless and fervent endure?

Mistake not the fancy, that lasts but a day,
    For the love which eternally thrives;
That sentiment false, is as prone to decay
As the wreath is to fade and to wither away;
    And like it, it never revives.

Ghosts walk the Earth, that rise not from the grave.
The Dead Past hath its living dead. We see
All suddenly, at times, and shudder then,
Their faces pale, and sad accusing eyes.

Last night, within the crowded street, I saw
A Phantom from the Past, with pallid face
And hollow eyes, and pale, cold lips, and hair
Faded from that imperial hue of gold
Which was my pride in days that are no more.

That pallid face I knew in its young bloom,
A radiant lily with a rose-flushed heart,
Most beautiful, a vision of delight;
And seeing it again, so changed, so changed,
I felt as if the icy hand of Death
Had touched my forehead and his voice said “Come!”

Ah, pale, cold lips that once were rosy-red!
Lips I have kissed on golden afternoons,
Past, past, ...

Airly Beacon, Airly Beacon;
    Oh the pleasant sight to see
Shires and towns from Airly Beacon,
    While my love climbed up to me!

Airly Beacon, Airly Beacon;
    Oh the happy hours we lay
Deep in fern on Airly Beacon,
    Courting through the summer's day!

Airly Beacon, Airly Beacon;
    Oh the weary haunt for me,
All alone on Airly Beacon,
    With his baby on my knee!

1847.

Two children of the olden time
    In Flora's primrose season,
Were born.    The name of one was Rhyme
    That of the other Reason.
And both were beautiful and fair,
And pure as mountain stream and air.

As the boys together grew,
    Happy fled their hours--
Grief or care they never knew
    In the Paphian bowers.
See them roaming, hand in hand,
The pride of all the choral band!

Music with harp of golden strings,
    Love with bow and quiver,
Airy sprites on radiant wings,
    Nymphs of wood and river,
Joined the Muses' constant song,
As Rhyme and Reason passed along.

But the scene was changed--the boys
    Left their native soil--
Rhyme's pursuit was idle joys,
    Reason's manly toil:
Soon Rhyme was starving i...

On the wide lawn the snow lay deep,
Ridged o’er with many a drifted heap;
The wind that through the pine-trees sung
The naked elm-boughs tossed and swung;
While, through the window, frosty-starred,
Against the sunset purple barred,
We saw the sombre crow flap by,
The hawk’s gray fleck along the sky,
The crested blue-jay flitting swift,
The squirrel poising on the drift,
Erect, alert, his broad gray tail
Set to the north wind like a sail.

It came to pass, our little lass,
With flattened face against the glass,
And eyes in which the tender dew
Of pity shone, stood gazing through
The narrow space her rosy lips
Had melted from the frost’s eclipse
“Oh, see,” she cried, “the poor blue-jays!
What is it that the black crow says?
The squirrel ...

PAT M‘DURMER brought the tidings to the town of God-Forgotten :
‘There are lively days before ye, commin Parlymint’s dissolved!’
And the boys were all excited, for the State, of course, was ‘rotten,’
And, in subsequent elections, God-Forgotten was involved.
There was little there to live for save in drinking beer and eating;
But we rose on this occasion ere the news appeared in print,
For the boys of God-Forgotten, at a wild, uproarious meeting,
Nominated Billy Blazes for the commin Parlymint.

Other towns had other favourites, but the day before the battle
Bushmen flocked to God-Forgotten, and the distant sheds were still;
Sheep were left to go to glory, and neglected mobs of cattle
Went a-straying down the river at their sweet bucolic will.
William Spouter stood for Freetr...

The Shepherd, looking eastward, softly said
"Bright is thy veil, O Moon, as thou art bright!"
Forthwith, that little cloud, in ether spread
And penetrated all with tender light,
She cast away, and showed her fulgent head
Uncovered; dazzling the Beholder's sight
As if to vindicate her beauty's right
Her beauty thoughtlessly disparaged.
Meanwhile that veil, removed or thrown aside,
Went floating from her, darkening as it went;
And a huge mass, to bury or to hide,
Approached this glory of the firmament;
Who meekly yields, and is obscured content
With one calm triumph of a modest pride.

Child, child, love while you can
The voice and the eyes and the soul of a man;
Never fear though it break your heart,
Out of the wound new joy will start;
Only love proudly and gladly and well,
Though love be heaven or love be hell.

Child, child, love while you may,
For life is short as a happy day;
Never fear the thing you feel,
Only by love is life made real;
Love, for the deadly sins are seven,
Only through love will you enter heaven.

With a whirl of thought oppress'd,
I sunk from reverie to rest.
An horrid vision seized my head;
I saw the graves give up their dead!
Jove, arm'd with terrors, bursts the skies,
And thunder roars and lightning flies!
Amaz'd, confus'd, its fate unknown,
The world stands trembling at his throne!
While each pale sinner hung his head,
Jove, nodding, shook the heavens, and said:
"Offending race of human kind,
By nature, reason, learning, blind;
You who, through frailty, stepp'd aside;
And you, who never fell - through pride:
You who in different sects were shamm'd,
And come to see each other damn'd;
(So some folk told you, but they knew
No more of Jove's designs than you;)
- The world's mad business now is o'er,
And I resent these prank...

I bear in youth the sad infirmities
That use to undo the limb and sense of age;
It hath pleased Heaven to break the dream of bliss
Which lit my onward way with bright presage,
And my unserviceable limbs forego.
The sweet delight I found in fields and farms,
On windy hills, whose tops with morning glow,
And lakes, smooth mirrors of Aurora's charms.
Yet I think on them in the silent night,
Still breaks that morn, though dim, to Memory's eye,
And the firm soul does the pale train defy
Of grim Disease, that would her peace affright.
Please God, I'll wrap me in mine innocence,
And bid each awful Muse drive the damned harpies hence.

CAMBRIDGE, 1827.

RAPHAEL.

The sun still chaunts, as in old time,

With brother-spheres in choral song,
And with his thunder-march sublime

Moves his predestined course along.
Strength find the angels in his sight,

Though he by none may fathomed be;
Still glorious is each work of might

As when first form'd in majesty.

GABRIEL.

And swift and swift, in wondrous guise,

Revolves the earth in splendour bright,
The radiant hues of Paradise

Alternating with deepest night.
From out the gulf against the rock,

In spreading billows foams the ocean,
And cliff and sea with mighty shock,

The spheres whirl round in endless motion.

MICHAEL.

And storms in emulation growl

From land to sea, from ...

Beloved, let us once more praise the rain.
Let us discover some new alphabet,
For this, the often praised; and be ourselves,
The rain, the chickweed, and the burdock leaf,
The green-white privet flower, the spotted stone,
And all that welcomes the rain; the sparrow too,
Who watches with a hard eye from seclusion,
Beneath the elm-tree bough, till rain is done.
There is an oriole who, upside down,
Hangs at his nest, and flicks an orange wing,
Under a tree as dead and still as lead;
There is a single leaf, in all this heaven
Of leaves, which rain has loosened from its twig:
The stem breaks, and it falls, but it is caught
Upon a sister leaf, and thus she hangs;
There is an acorn cup, beside a mushroom
Which catches three drops from the stooping cloud.
The tim...

Introductory

Art thou beautiful, O my daughter, as the budding rose of April?
Are all thy motions music, and is poetry throned in thine eye?
Then hearken unto me; and I will make the bud a fair flower,
I will plant it upon the bank of Elegance, and water it with the water of Cologne;
And in the season it shall "come out," yea bloom, the pride of the parterre;
Ladies shall marvel at its beauty, and a Lord shall pluck it at the last.

Of Propriety.

Study first Propriety: for she is indeed the Polestar
Which shall guide the artless maiden through the mazes of Vanity Fair;
Nay, she is the golden chain which holdeth together Society;
The lamp by whose light young Psyche shall approach unblamed her Eros.
Verily Truth is as Eve, which was ashamed being naked;
Where...

My familiar ghost again
Comes to see what he can see,
Critic, son of Conscious Brain,
Spying on our privacy.

Slam the window, bolt the door,
Yet he'll enter in and stay;
In tomorrow's book he'll score
Indiscretions of today.

Whispered love and muttered fears,
How their echoes fly about!
None escape his watchful ears,
Every sigh might be a shout.

No kind words nor angry cries
Turn away this grim spoilsport;
No fine lady's pleading eyes,
Neither love, nor hate, nor ... port.

Critics wears no smile of fun,
Speaks no word of blame nor praise,
Counts our kisses one by one,
Notes each gesture, every phrase.

My familiar ghost again
Stands or squats where suits him best;
Critic, son of Conscious Brain,
L...

Last Sunday night I read the saddening story
    Of the unanswered love of fair Elaine,
The 'faith unfaithful' and the joyless glory
    Of Lancelot, 'groaning in remorseful pain.'

I thought of all those nights in wintry weather,
    Those Sunday nights that seem not long ago,
When we two read our Poet's words together,
    Till summer warmth within our hearts did glow.

Ah, when shall we renew that bygone pleasure,
    Sit down together at our Merlin's feet,
Drink from one cup the overflowing measure,
    And find, in sharing it, the draught more sweet?

That time perchance is far, beyond divining.
    Till then we drain the 'magic cup' apart;
Yet not apart, for hope and memory twining
    Smile upon each, uniting heart to heart.

I.

O the hills of old Lincoln!--I can see them to-day
As they stretch in dim distance far, far away,
And on Fancy's swift pinions my spirit hath flown
To rest 'mid the scenes which my childhood has known--
Where the old Hanging Fork, with its silvery gleam,
Glides away 'tween the meadows like thoughts in a dream,
And far to the south, with their outlines so blue,
The rugged knobs blend into heaven's own hue!


II.

O the hills of old Lincoln!--how fondly I gaze
On their wildwoods and thickets and deep-tangled ways
When memory's mirror presents them to view,
And I dream once again that I tread them anew,
While raptured I listen to the music of love
That the song-birds are singing in the tree-tops above,
And the soul drifts away in a swoon o...

The expense of spirit in a waste of shame
Is lust in action: and till action, lust
Is perjur’d, murderous, bloody, full of blame,
Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust;
Enjoy’d no sooner but despised straight;
Past reason hunted; and no sooner had,
Past reason hated, as a swallow’d bait,
On purpose laid to make the taker mad:
Mad in pursuit and in possession so;
Had, having, and in quest, to have extreme;
A bliss in proof, and prov’d, a very woe;
Before, a joy propos’d; behind a dream.
All this the world well knows; yet none knows well
To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.

On Petrarch's heart, all other days before,

In flaming letters written, was impress d

GOOD FRIDAY. And on mine, be it confess'd,
Is this year's ADVENT, as it passeth o'er.

I do not now begin, I still adore

Her whom I early cherish'd in my breast;,

Then once again with prudence dispossess'd,
And to whose heart I'm driven back once more.

The love of Petrarch, that all-glorious love,

Was unrequited, and, alas, full sad;

One long Good Friday 'twas, one heartache drear

But may my mistress' Advent ever prove,

With its palm-jubilee, so sweet and glad,

One endless Mayday, through the livelong year!