Where are those gates through which so long ago
Orpheus descended to the realms below
To seek his lost one? Little daughter, I
Would find that path and pass that ford whereby
The grim-faced boatman ferries pallid shades
And drives them forth to joyless cypress glades.
But do thou not desert me, lovely lute!
Be thou the furtherance of my mournful suit
Before dread Pluto, till he shall give ear
To our complaints and render up my dear.
To his dim dwelling all men must repair,
And so must she, her father's joy and heir;
But let him grant the fruit now scarce in flower
To fill and ripen till the harvest hour!
Yet if that god doth bear a heart within
So hard that one in grief can nothing win,
What can I but renounce this upper air
And lose my soul, but also los...

    I'll keep a little tavern
        Below the high hill's crest,
    Wherein all grey-eyed people
        May set them down and rest.

    There shall be plates a-plenty,
        And mugs to melt the chill
    Of all the grey-eyed people
        Who happen up the hill.

    There sound will sleep the traveller,
        And dream his journey's end,
    But I will rouse at midnight
        The falling fire to tend.

    Aye, 'tis a curious fancy--
        But all the good I know
    Was taught me out of two grey eyes
        A long time ago.

There is an end of joy and sorrow;
Peace all day long, all night, all morrow,
But never a time to laugh or weep.
The end is come of pleasant places,
The end of tender words and faces,
The end of all, the poppied sleep.

No place for sound within their hearing,
No room to hope, no time for fearing,
No lips to laugh, no lids for tears.
The old years have run out all their measure;
No chance of pain, no chance of pleasure,
No fragment of the broken years.

Outside of all the worlds and ages,
There where the fool is as the sage is,
There where the slayer is clean of blood,
No end, no passage, no beginning,
There where the sinner leaves off sinning,
There where the good man is not good.

There is not one thing with another,
But Evil sa...

I.

Annisquam

Old days, old ways, old homes beside the sea;
Old gardens with old-fashioned flowers aflame,
Poppy, petunia, and many a name
Of many a flower of fragrant pedigree.
Old hills that glow with blue- and barberry,
And rocks and pines that stand on guard, the same,
Immutable, as when the Pilgrim came,
And here laid firm foundations of the Free.
The sunlight makes the dim dunes hills of snow,
And every vessel's sail a twinkling wing
Glancing the violet ocean far away:
The world is full of color and of glow;
A mighty canvas whereon God doth fling
The flawless picture of a perfect day.

II.

"The Highlands, " Annisquam

Here, from the heights, among the rocks and pines,
The sea and shore seem some tremendous page

I hate this grinding poverty,
To toil, and pinch, and borrow,
And be for ever haunted by
The spectre of to-morrow.
It breaks the strong heart of a man,
It crushes out his spirit,
Do what he will, do what he can,
However high his merit!

I hate the praise that Want has got
From preacher and from poet,
The cant of those who know it not
To blind the men who know it.
The greatest curse since man had birth,
An everlasting terror:
The cause of half the crime on earth,
The cause of half the error.

[1]


"I've been, oh, sweet daughter,
    "To fountain and sea,
"To seek in their water
    "Some bright gem for thee.
"Where diamonds were sleeping,
    "Their sparkle I sought,
"Where crystal was weeping,
    "Its tears I have caught.

"The sea-nymph I've courted
    "In rich coral halls;
"With Naiads have sported
    "By bright waterfalls.
"But sportive or tender,
    "Still sought I around
"That gem, with whose splendor
    "Thou yet shalt be crowned.

"And see, while I'm speaking,
    "Yon soft light afar;--
"The pearl I've been seeking
    "There floats like a star!
"In the deep Indian Ocean
    "I see the gem shine,
"And quick as light's motion
    "Its wealth shall be thine."
<...

Wherefore drag me to yon glittering eddy,

With resistless might?
Was I, then, not truly blest already

In the silent night?

In my secret chamber refuge taking,

'Neath the moon's soft ray,
And her awful light around me breaking,

Musing there I lay.

And I dream'd of hours with joy o'erflowing,

Golden, truly blest,
While thine image so beloved was glowing

Deep within my breast.

Now to the card-table hast thou bound me,

'Midst the torches glare?
Whilst unhappy faces are around me,

Dost thou hold me there?

Spring-flow'rs are to me more rapture-giving,

Now conceal'd from view;
Where thou, angel, art, is Nature living,

Love and kindness too.

Slow figures in some live remorseless frieze,
The approaching days escapeless and unguessed,
With mask and shroud impenetrably dressed;
Time, whose inexorable destinies
Bear down upon us like impending seas;
And the huge presence of this world, at best
A sightless giant wandering without rest,
Agèd and mad with many miseries.

The weight and measure of these things who knows?
Resting at times beside life's thought-swept stream,
Sobered and stunned with unexpected blows,
We scarcely hear the uproar; life doth seem,
Save for the certain nearness of its woes,
Vain and phantasmal as a sick man's dream.

Looking o'er this written page,
Many blurs and blots are seen;
Crooked strokes, at every stage--
Oh, that it again were clean,
As at first I found it, when
I defiled it with my pen!

Gladly would I all erase;
But along the lines of blue
You could still the failure trace
In the paper's darkened hue;
Though the words could not be seen,
You could trace where they had been.

I will try to do my best,
Though my ideal be not gained;
On the Master's scrip shall rest
Eager eyes, till is attained
Some resemblance to His hand;
If no more I can command.

Like my life, this written sheet,
So unlike the pattern given;
Crooked strokes, I oft repeat;
Oh, that from it could be riven
All the blurs and blots of sin;
All the self...

I

I thought they'd be strangers aroun' me,
But she's to be there!
Let me jump out o' waggon and go back and drown me
At Pummery or Ten-Hatches Weir.

II

I thought: "Well, I've come to the Union -
The workhouse at last -
After honest hard work all the week, and Communion
O' Zundays, these fifty years past.

III

"'Tis hard; but," I thought, "never mind it:
There's gain in the end:
And when I get used to the place I shall find it
A home, and may find there a friend.

IV

"Life there will be better than t'other.
For peace is assured.
THE MEN IN ONE WING AND THEIR WIVES IN ANOTHER
Is strictly the rule of the Board."

V

Just then one young Pa'son arriving
Steps up out of breath
To th...

I

"Soul! Shall I see thy face," she said,
"In one brief hour?
And away with thee from a loveless bed
To a far-off sun, to a vine-wrapt bower,
And be thine own unseparated,
And challenge the world's white glower?

II

She quickened her feet, and met him where
They had predesigned:
And they clasped, and mounted, and cleft the air
Upon whirling wheels; till the will to bind
Her life with his made the moments there
Efface the years behind.

III

Miles slid, and the sight of the port upgrew
As they sped on;
When slipping its bond the bracelet flew
From her fondled arm. Replaced anon,
Its cameo of the abjured one drew
Her musings thereupon.

IV

The gaud with his image once had been
A gift from h...

What will you give me, if I will wed?
        “A golden gown
        To come sweetly down,
And deck you from foot to head.”

How will you keep me, if I am cold?
        “By a heart so warm,
        The bravest storm
Dare not force through my strong hands’ hold.”

How will you please me, if I should thirst?
        “Why by the rape
        Of the purple grape,
Which the summer and sun have nursed.”

If I should hunger what may I eat?
        “For you the skies
        The falcon flies,
And the hounds on the stag are fleet.”

How can you comfort when fair youth dies,
        When the spirit’s fain
        For a purer gain,
Than the satisfied flesh supplies?

“But this I promise, when starved and cold
        A lo...

I care not what the sailors say:
All those dreadful thunder-stones,
All that storm that blots the day
Can but show that Heaven yawns;
Great Europa played the fool
That changed a lover for a bull.
Fol de rol, fol de rol.

To round that shell's elaborate whorl,
Adorning every secret track
With the delicate mother-of-pearl,
Made the joints of Heaven crack:
So never hang your heart upon
A roaring, ranting journeyman.
Fol de rol, fol de rol.

The stones in the streamlet I make my bright pillow,
And open my arms to the swift-rolling billow,

That lovingly hastens to fall on my breast.
Then fickleness soon bids it onwards be flowing;
A second draws nigh, its caresses bestowing,

And so by a twofold enjoyment I'm blest.

And yet thou art trailing in sorrow and sadness
The moments that life, as it flies, gave for gladness,

Because by thy love thou'rt remember'd no more!
Oh, call back to mind former days and their blisses!
The lips of the second will give as sweet kisses

As any the lips of the first gave before!

"It is not death that harrows us," they lipped,
"The soundless cell is in itself relief,
For life is an unfenced flower, benumbed and nipped
At unawares, and at its best but brief."

The speakers, sundry phantoms of the gone,
Had risen like filmy flames of phosphor dye,
As if the palest of sheet lightnings shone
From the sward near me, as from a nether sky.

And much surprised was I that, spent and dead,
They should not, like the many, be at rest,
But stray as apparitions; hence I said,
"Why, having slipped life, hark you back distressed?

"We are among the few death sets not free,
The hurt, misrepresented names, who come
At each year's brink, and cry to History
To do them justice, or go past them dumb.

"We are stript of rights; our shames...

Here in the shade of the tree
The hours go by
Silent and swift,
Lightly as birds fly.
Then the deep clouds broaden and drift,
Or the cloudless darkness and the worn moon.
Waking, the dreamer knows he is old,
And the day that he dreamed was gone
Is gone.

Rush saves his shoes in wet and snowy weather;
And fears in summer to wear out the leather;
This is strong thrift that wary Rush doth use
Summer and winter still to save his shoes.

In her dark eyes dreams poetize;
The soul sits lost in love:
There is no thing in all the skies,
To gladden all the world I prize,
Like the deep love in her dark eyes,
Or one sweet dream thereof.

In her dark eyes, where thoughts arise,
Her soul's soft moods I see:
Of hope and faith, that make life wise;
And charity, whose food is sighs
Not truer than her own true eyes
Is truth's divinity.

In her dark eyes the knowledge lies
Of an immortal sod,
Her soul once trod in angel-guise,
Nor can forget its heavenly ties,
Since, there in Heaven, upon her eyes
Once gazed the eyes of God.