I meditate upon a swallow's flight,
Upon a aged woman and her house,
A sycamore and lime-tree lost in night
Although that western cloud is luminous,
Great works constructed there in nature's spite
For scholars and for poets after us,
Thoughts long knitted into a single thought,
A dance-like glory that those walls begot.

There Hyde before he had beaten into prose
That noble blade the Muses buckled on,
There one that ruffled in a manly pose
For all his timid heart, there that slow man,
That meditative man, John Synge, and those
Impetuous men, Shawe-Taylor and Hugh Lane,
Found pride established in humility,
A scene well Set and excellent company.

They came like swallows and like swallows went,
And yet a woman's powerful character
Could keep ...

The valley rings with mirth and joy;
Among the hills the echoes play
A never never ending song,
To welcome in the May.
The magpie chatters with delight;
The mountain raven's youngling brood
Have left the mother and the nest;
And they go rambling east and west
In search of their own food;
Or through the glittering vapors dart
In very wantonness of heart.

Beneath a rock, upon the grass,
Two boys are sitting in the sun;
Their work, if any work they have,
Is out of mind, or done.
On pipes of sycamore they play
The fragments of a Christmas hymn;
Or with that plant which in our dale
We call stag-horn, or fox's tail,
Their rusty hats they trim:
And thus, as happy as the day,
Those Shepherds wear the time away.

Along the river...

A lily-girl, not made for this world's pain,
With brown, soft hair close braided by her ears,
And longing eyes half veiled by slumberous tears
Like bluest water seen through mists of rain:
Pale cheeks whereon no love hath left its stain,
Red underlip drawn in for fear of love,
And white throat, whiter than the silvered dove,
Through whose wan marble creeps one purple vein.
Yet, though my lips shall praise her without cease,
Even to kiss her feet I am not bold,
Being o'ershadowed by the wings of awe,
Like Dante, when he stood with Beatrice
Beneath the flaming Lion's breast, and saw
The seventh Crystal, and the Stair of Gold.

My head is aching, and I wish
    That I could feel tonight
One well-remembered, tender touch
That used to comfort me so much,
    And put distress to flight.

There's not a soothing anodyne
    Or sedative I know,
Such potency can ever hold
As that which lovingly controlled
    My spirit long ago.

How oft my burning cheek as if
    By Zephyrus was fanned,
And nothing interdicted pain
Or seemed to make me well again
    So quick as mother's hand.

'Tis years and years since it was laid,
    In her own gentle way,
On tangled curls of brown and jet
Above the downy coverlet
    'Neath which the children lay.

As bright as blessed sunlight ray
    The past comes back to me;
Her fingers turn the sacred page
Fo...

This is your cup, the cup assigned to you
From the beginning. Yea, my child, I know

How much of that dark drink is your own, brew
Of fault and passion. Ages long ago,

In the deep years of yesterday, I knew.

This is your road, a painful road and drear.

I made the stones, that never give you rest;
I set your friend in pleasant ways and clear.

And he shall come, like you, unto my breast;
But you, my weary child!, must travel here.

This is your work. It has no fame, no grace,
But is not meant for any other hand.

And in my universe hath measured place.
Take it; I do not bid you understand;

I bid you close your eyes, to see my face!

When the great universe was wrought
To might and majesty from naught,
The all creative force was -
        THOUGHT.

That force is thine.    Though desolate
The way may seem, command thy fate.
Send forth thy thought -
        Create - CREATE!

I

My ardours for emprize nigh lost
Since Life has bared its bones to me,
I shrink to seek a modern coast
Whose riper times have yet to be;
Where the new regions claim them free
From that long drip of human tears
Which peoples old in tragedy
Have left upon the centuried years.

II

For, wonning in these ancient lands,
Enchased and lettered as a tomb,
And scored with prints of perished hands,
And chronicled with dates of doom,
Though my own Being bear no bloom
I trace the lives such scenes enshrine,
Give past exemplars present room,
And their experience count as mine.

i(Three Voices together].) Hurry to bless the hands that play,
The mouths that speak, the notes and strings,
O masters of the glittering town!
O! lay the shrilly trumpet down,
Though drunken with the flags that sway
Over the ramparts and the towers,
And with the waving of your wings.
i(First Voice.) Maybe they linger by the way.
One gathers up his purple gown;
One leans and mutters by the wall --
He dreads the weight of mortal hours.
i(Second Voice.) O no, O no! they hurry down
Like plovers that have heard the call.
i(Third Voice.) O kinsmen of the Three in One,
O kinsmen, bless the hands that play.
The notes they waken shall live on
When all this heavy history's done;
Our hands, our hands must ebb away.
i(Three Voices together].) The proud and carel...

All green and fair the Summer lies,
Just budded from the bud of Spring,
With tender blue of wistful skies,
And winds which softly sing.

Her clock has struck its morning hours;
Noon nears--the flowery dial is true;
But still the hot sun veils its powers,
In deference to the dew.

Yet there amid the fresh new green,
Amid the young broods overhead,
A single scarlet branch is seen,
Swung like a banner red;

Tinged with the fatal hectic flush
Which, when October frost is in the near,
Flames on each dying tree and bush,
To deck the dying year.

And now the sky seems not so blue,
The yellow sunshine pales its ray,
A sorrowful, prophetic hue
Lies on the radiant day,

As mid the bloom and tenderness
I catch that scarle...

The shadows round the inland sea
Are deepening into night;
Slow up the slopes of Ossipee
They chase the lessening light.
Tired of the long day’s blinding heat,
I rest my languid eye,
Lake of the Hills! where, cool and sweet,
Thy sunset waters lie!

Along the sky, in wavy lines,
O’er isle and reach and bay,
Green-belted with eternal pines,
The mountains stretch away.
Below, the maple masses sleep
Where shore with water blends,
While midway on the tranquil deep
The evening light descends.

So seemed it when yon hill’s red crown,
Of old, the Indian trod,
And, through the sunset air, looked down
Upon the Smile of God.
To him of light and shade the laws
No forest skeptic taught;
Their living and eternal Cause
His truer i...

    As Jupiter I made my court in vain;
    I'll now assume my native shape again.
    I'm weary to be so unkindly used,
    And would not be a god to be refused.
    State grows uneasy when it hinders love;
    A glorious burden, which the wise remove.
    Now, as a nymph I need not sue, nor try
    The force of any lightning but the eye.
    Beauty and youth more than a god command;
    No Jove could e'er the force of these withstand.
    'Tis here that sovereign power admits dispute;
    Beauty sometimes is justly absolute.
    Our sullen Catos, whatsoe'er they say,
    Even while they frown, and dictate laws, obey.
    You, mighty sir,[2] our bonds more easy make,
    And gracefully, what all must suffer, take:
    Above those forms the grave af...

When I first ended, then I first began;
The more I trauell, further from my rest;
Where most I lost, there most of all I wan;
Pyned with hunger, rysing from a feast.
Mee thinks I flee, yet want I legs to goe,
Wise in conceite, in acte a very sot;
Rauisht with ioy amidst a hell of woe,
What most I seeme, that surest I am not.
I build my hopes a world aboue the skye,
Yet with a Mole I creepe into the earth:
In plenty am I staru'd with penury,
And yet I serfet in the greatest dearth.
    I haue, I want, dispayre, and yet desire,
    Burn'd in a Sea of Ice, and drown'd amidst a fire.

Glooms of the live-oaks, beautiful-braided and woven
With intricate shades of the vines that myriad-cloven
Clamber the forks of the multiform boughs, -
Emerald twilights, -
Virginal shy lights,
Wrought of the leaves to allure to the whisper of vows,
When lovers pace timidly down through the green colonnades
Of the dim sweet woods, of the dear dark woods,
Of the heavenly woods and glades,
That run to the radiant marginal sand-beach within
The wide sea-marshes of Glynn; -

Beautiful glooms, soft dusks in the noon-day fire, -
Wildwood privacies, closets of lone desire,
Chamber from chamber parted with wavering arras of leaves, -
Cells for the passionate pleasure of prayer to the soul that grieves,
Pure with a sense of the passing of saints through the wood,
...

Prometheus, forming Mr. Day,
Carved something like a man in clay:
The mortal's work might well miscarry;
He that does heaven and earth control
Has only power to form a soul;
His hand is evident in Harry,
Since one is but a moving clod,
Th' other the lively form of God.
'Squire Wallis, you will scarce be able
To prove all poetry but fable.

Away, away, o'er the bounding sea
My spirit flies like a gull;
For I know my Mary is watching for me,
And the moon is bright and full.

She sits on the rock by the sounding shore,
And gazes over the sea;
And she sighs, "Will my sailor-boy come no more?
Will he never come back to me?"

The moonbeams play in her raven hair;
And the soft breeze kisses her brow;
But if your sailor-boy, love, were there,
He would kiss your sweet lips I trow.

And mother she sits in the cottage-door;
But her heart is out on the sea;
And she sighs, "Will my sailor-boy come no more?
Will he never come back to me?"

Ye winds that over the billows roam
With a low and sullen moan,
O swiftly come to waft me home;
O bear me back to my own.

For ...

Dozens of damp little curls;
One little short upper lip;
Two rows of teeth like diminutive pearls;
Eyes clear and grey as the creek where it swirls
Over the ledges that's Tip!
With a skip!
A perfectly hopeless young nip!

Smudge on the tip of his nose;
Mischievous glance of a Puck;
Heart just as big as the rents in his clothes;
Lungs like a locust and cheeks like a rose;
Total it! there you have Tuck!
And bad luck
To the man who would question his pluck!

School is all over at last,
School with its pothooks and strokes:
Homeward they toddle, but who could go fast?
So many wonderful things to be passed
Froggie, for instance, who croaks
'Neath the oaks
By the creek where the watercress soaks.

Sandpipers dance on the bars;...

What flecks the outer gray beyond
The sundown's golden trail?
The white flash of a sea-bird's wing,
Or gleam of slanting sail?
Let young eyes watch from Neck and Point,
And sea-worn elders pray,
The ghost of what was once a ship
Is sailing up the bay.

From gray sea-fog, from icy drift,
From peril and from pain,
The home-bound fisher greets thy lights,
O hundred-harbored Maine!
But many a keel shall seaward turn,
And many a sail outstand,
When, tall and white, the Dead Ship looms
Against the dusk of land.

She rounds the headland's bristling pines;
She threads the isle-set bay;
No spur of breeze can speed her on,
Nor ebb of tide delay.
Old men still walk the Isle of Orr
Who tell her date and name,
Old shipwrights sit in ...

Who comes (my soul no longer doubt),
Rising from earth's wormy sod,
And whilst ten thousand angels sing,
Ascends - ascends to heaven, a God?

Saviour, Lord, I know thee now!
Mighty to redeem and save,
Such glory blazes on thy brow,
Which lights the darkness of the grave.

Saviour, Lord, the human soul,
Forgotten every sorrow here,
Shall thus, aspiring to its goal,
Triumph in its native sphere.