The evening star will twinkle presently.
The last small bird is silent, and the bee
Has gone into his hive, and the shut flowers
Are bending as if sleeping on the stem,
And all sweet living things are slumbering
In the deep hush of nature's resting time.
The faded West looks deep, as if its blue
Were searchable, and even as I look,
The twilight hath stole over it, and made
Its liquid eye apparent, and above
To the far-stretching zenith, and around,
As if they waited on her like a queen,
Have stole out the innumerable stars
To twinkle like intelligence in heaven.
Is it not beautiful, my fair Adel?
Fit for the young affections to come out
And bathe in like an element! How well
The night is made for tenderness - so still
That the low whisper, scarcely a...

As I gird on for fighting
My sword upon my thigh,
I think on old ill fortunes
Of better men than I.

Think I, the round world over,
What golden lads are low
With hurts not mine to mourn for
And shames I shall not know.

What evil luck soever
For me remains in store,
‘Tis sure much finer fellows
Have fared much worse before.

So here are things to think on
That ought to make me brave,
As I strap on for fighting
My sword that will not save.

Spend, harmless shade, thy nightly hours
Selecting here both herbs and flowers;
Of which make garlands here and there
To dress thy silent sepulchre.
Nor do thou fear the want of these
In everlasting properties,
Since we fresh strewings will bring hither,
Far faster than the first can wither.

    A field in common share
        A partridge and a hare,
    And live in peaceful state,
    Till, woeful to relate!
    The hunters' mingled cry
    Compels the hare to fly.
    He hurries to his fort,
    And spoils almost the sport
    By faulting every hound
    That yelps upon the ground.
    At last his reeking heat
    Betrays his snug retreat.
Old Tray, with philosophic nose,
Snuffs carefully, and grows
    So certain, that he cries,
        "The hare is here; bow wow!"
        And veteran Ranger now,--
    The dog that never lies,--
    "The hare is gone," replies.
    Alas! poor, wretched hare,
    Back comes he to his lair,
    To meet destruction there!
    The partridge, void of fear,
    Begins her friend to ...

To-day, across our fathers' graves,
The astonished years reveal
The remnant of that desperate host
Which cleansed our East with steel.

Hail and farewell! We greet you here,
With tears that none will scorn,
O Keepers of the House of old,
Or ever we were born!

One service more we dare to ask,
Pray for us, heroes, pray,
That when Fate lays on us our task
We do not shame the Day!

Thou wast that all to me, love,
For which my soul did pine,
A green isle in the sea, love,
A fountain and a shrine,
All wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers,
And all the flowers were mine.

Ah, dream too bright to last!
Ah, starry Hope! that didst arise
But to be overcast!
A voice from out the Future cries,
"On! on!", but o'er the Past
(Dim gulf!) my spirit hovering lies
Mute, motionless, aghast!

For, alas! alas! with me
The light of Life is o'er!
"No more, no more, no more",
(Such language holds the solemn sea
To the sands upon the shore)
Shall bloom the thunder-blasted tree,
Or the stricken eagle soar!

And all my days are trances,
And all my nightly dreams
Are where thy dark eye glances,
And where thy foo...

Of all the souls that stand create
I have elected one.
When sense from spirit files away,
And subterfuge is done;

When that which is and that which was
Apart, intrinsic, stand,
And this brief tragedy of flesh
Is shifted like a sand;

When figures show their royal front
And mists are carved away, --
Behold the atom I preferred
To all the lists of clay!

Voi, ch' ascoltate in rime sparse il suono.

HE CONFESSES THE VANITY OF HIS PASSION


    Ye who in rhymes dispersed the echoes hear
Of those sad sighs with which my heart I fed
When early youth my mazy wanderings led,
Fondly diverse from what I now appear,
Fluttering 'twixt frantic hope and frantic fear,
From those by whom my various style is read,
I hope, if e'er their hearts for love have bled,
Not only pardon, but perhaps a tear.
But now I clearly see that of mankind
Long time I was the tale: whence bitter thought
And self-reproach with frequent blushes teem;
While of my frenzy, shame the fruit I find,
And sad repentance, and the proof, dear-bought,
That the world's joy is but a flitting dream.

CHARLEMONT.


    O...

The wave is breaking on the shore,
The echo fading from the chime;
Again the shadow moveth o'er
The dial-plate of time!
O seer-seen Angel! waiting now
With weary feet on sea and shore,
Impatient for the last dread vow
That time shall be no more!
Once more across thy sleepless eye
The semblance of a smile has passed:
The year departing leaves more nigh
Time's fearfullest and last.
Oh, in that dying year hath been
The sum of all since time began;
The birth and death, the joy and pain,
Of Nature and of Man.
Spring, with her change of sun and shower,
And streams released from Winter's chain,
And bursting bud, and opening flower,
And greenly growing grain;
And Summer's shade, and sunshine warm,
And rainbows o'er her hill-tops bowed,
An...

MUSKOKA

A stream of tender gladness,
Of filmy sun, and opal tinted skies;
Of warm midsummer air that lightly lies
In mystic rings,
Where softly swings
The music of a thousand wings
That almost tones to sadness.

Midway 'twixt earth and heaven,
A bubble in the pearly air, I seem
To float upon the sapphire floor, a dream
Of clouds of snow,
Above, below,
Drift with my drifting, dim and slow,
As twilight drifts to even.

The little fern-leaf, bending
Upon the brink, its green reflection greets,
And kisses soft the shadow that it meets
With touch so fine,
The border line
The keenest vision can't define;
So perfect is the blending.

The far, fir trees that cover
The brownish hills with needles green and gold,

As o'er these hills I take my silent rounds,
Still on that vision which is flown I dwell,
On images I loved, alas, too well!
Now past, and but remembered like sweet sounds
Of yesterday! Yet in my breast I keep
Such recollections, painful though they seem,
And hours of joy retrace, till from my dream
I start, and find them not; then I could weep
To think how Fortune blights the fairest flowers;
To think how soon life's first endearments fail,
And we are still misled by Hope's smooth tale,
Who, like a flatterer, when the happiest hours
Pass, and when most we call on her to stay,
Will fly, as faithless and as fleet as they!

That painter has not with a careless smutch
Accomplished his despair?--one touch revealing
All he had put of life, thought, vigor, feeling,
Into the canvas that without that touch
Showed of his love and labor just so much
Raw pigment, scarce a scrap of soul concealing!
What poet has not found his spirit kneeling
A sudden at the sound of such or such
Strange verses staring from his manuscript,
Written he knows not how, but which will sound
Like trumpets down the years? So Accident
Itself unmasks the likeness of Intent,
And ever in blind Chance's darkest crypt
The shrine-lamp of God's purposing is found.

Let History boast of her Romans and Spartans,
And tell how they stood against tyranny's shock;
They were all, I confess, in my eye, Betty Martins
    Compared to George Grote and his wonderful Box.

Ask, where Liberty now has her seat?--Oh, it isn't
    By Delaware's banks or on Switzerland's rocks;--
Like an imp in some conjuror's bottle imprisoned,
    She's slyly shut up in Grote's wonderful Box.

How snug!--'stead of floating thro' ether's dominions,
    Blown this way and that, by the "populi vox,"
To fold thus in silence her sinecure pinions,
    And go fast asleep in Grote's wonderful Box.

Time was, when free speech was the life-breath of freedom--
    So thought once the Seldens, the Hampdens, the Lockes;
But mute be <...

LX.

They have company this evening,
And the house is full of light;
Up there at the shining window
Moves a shadowy form in white.

Thou seest me not--in the darkness
I stand here below, apart;
Yet less, ah less thou seest
Into my gloomy heart!

My gloomy heart it loves thee,
Loves thee in every spot:
It breaks, it bleeds, it shudders--But
into it thou seest not!


LXII.

Diamonds hast thou, and pearls,
And all by which men lay store;
And of eyes thou hast the fairest--
Darling, what wouldst thou more?

Upon thine eyes so lovely
Have I a whole army-corps
Of undying songs composed--
Dearest, what wouldst thou more?

And with thine eyes so lovely
Thou hast tortured me very sore,
And ...

    He that goes to see his wheat in May,
    Comes weeping away.

Let the superstitious wife
Near the child's heart lay a knife:
Point be up, and haft be down
(While she gossips in the town);
This, 'mongst other mystic charms,
Keeps the sleeping child from harms.

    "Once they were lovers," says the world, "with young hearts all aglow;
    They have forgotten," says the world, "forgotten long ago."
    Between ourselves - just whisper it - the old world does not know.

    They walk their lone, divided ways, but ever with them goes
    Remembrance, the subtle breath of love's sweet thorny rose.

I have seen that which sweeter is
Than happy dreams come true.
I have heard that which echo is
Of speech past all I ever knew.
Vision and echo, come again,
Nor let me grieve in easeless pain!

It was a hill I saw, that rose
Like smoke over the street,
Whose greening rampires were upreared
Suddenly almost at my feet;
And tall trees nodded tremblingly
Making the plain day visionary.

But ah, the song, the song I heard
And grieve to hear no more!
It was not angel-voice, nor child's
Singing alone and happy, nor
Note of the wise prophetic thrush
As lonely in the leafless bush.

It was not these, and yet I knew
That song; but now, alas,
My unpurged ears prove all too gross
To keep the nameless air that was
And is not; and...