Be ye happy, if ye may,
In the years that pass away.
Ye shall pass and be forgot,
And your place shall know you not.

Other generations rise,
With the same hope in their eyes
That in yours is kindled now,
And the same light on their brow.

They shall see the selfsame sun
That your eyes now gaze upon,
They shall breathe the same sweet air,
And shall reck not who ye were.

Yet they too shall fade at last
In the twilight of the past,
They and you alike shall be
Lost from the world's memory.

Then, while yet ye breathe and live,
Drink the cup that life can give.
Be ye happy, if ye may,
In the years that pass away,

Ere the golden bowl be broken,
Ere ye pass and leave no token,
Ere the silver cord be loosed,

"O maiden, peerless, come dwell with me,
And bright shall I render thy destiny:
Thou shalt leave thy cot by the green hillside,
To dwell in a palace home of pride,
Where crowding menials, with lowly mien,
Shall attend each wish of their lovely queen."

"Ah! stranger my cot by the green hillside
Hath more charms for me than thy halls of pride;
If the roof be lowly, the moss rose there
Rich fragrance sheds on the summer air;
And the birds and insects, with joyous song,
Are more welcome far than a menial throng."

"Child, tell me not so! too fair art thou,
With thy starry eyes and thy queenlike brow,
To dwell in this spot, sequestered and lone,
Thy marvelous beauty to all unknown;
And that form, which might grace a throne, arrayed
In the lowly garb...

Yes, fairest Proof of Beauty's Pow'r,
Dear Idol of My panting Heart,
Nature points This my fatal Hour:
And I have liv'd; and We must part.

While now I take my last Adieu,
Heave Thou no Sigh, nor shed a Tear;
Lest yet my half-clos'd Eye may view
On Earth an Object worth it's Care.

From Jealousy's tormenting Strife
For ever be Thy Bosom free'd:
That nothing may disturb Thy Life,
Content I hasten to the Dead.

Yet when some better-fated Youth
Shall with his am'rous Parly move Thee;
Reflect One Moment on His Truth,
Who dying Thus, persists to love Thee.

    I.

    We bore him through the golden land,
    One early harvest morn;
    The corn stood ripe on either hand--
    He knew all about the corn.

    How shall the harvest gathered be
    Without him standing by?
    Without him walking on the lea,
    The sky is scarce a sky.

    The year's glad work is almost done;
    The land is rich in fruit;
    Yellow it floats in air and sun--
    Earth holds it by the root.

    Why should earth hold it for a day
    When harvest-time is come?
    Death is triumphant o'er decay,
    And leads the ripened home.


    II.

    And though the sun be not so warm,
    His shining is not lost;
    Both corn and hope, of heart and farm,
    Lie hid from coming...

A thousand perfect men and women appear,
Around each gathers a cluster of friends, and gay children and youths, with offerings.

Ah, empty are the mother's arms
    Which clasp a vanished form;
A darling spared from life's alarms,
    And safe from earthly storm.

In absent reverie, she hears
    That voice, nor can forget;
The fond illusion disappears,--
    Her arms are empty, yet.

The world forsaken, all its busy cares
And stirring interests shunned with desperate flight,
All trust abandoned in the healing might
Of virtuous action; all that courage dares,
Labour accomplishes, or patience bears
Those helps rejected, they, whose minds perceive
How subtly works man's weakness, sighs may heave
For such a One beset with cloistral snares.
Father of Mercy! rectify his view,
If with his vows this object ill agree;
Shed over it thy grace, and thus subdue
Imperious passion in a heart set free:
That earthly love may to herself be true,
Give him a soul that cleaveth unto thee.

A budding mouth and warm blue eyes;
A laughing face; and laughing hair, -
So ruddy was its rise
From off that forehead fair;

Frank fervor in whate'er she said,
And a shy grace when she was still;
A bright, elastic tread;
Enthusiastic will;

These wrought the magic of a maid
As sweet and sad as the sun in spring; -
Joyous, yet half-afraid
Her joyousness to sing.

This ancient silver bowl of mine, it tells of good old times,
Of joyous days and jolly nights, and merry Christmas times;
They were a free and jovial race, but honest, brave, and true,
Who dipped their ladle in the punch when this old bowl was new.

A Spanish galleon brought the bar, - so runs the ancient tale;
'T was hammered by an Antwerp smith, whose arm was like a flail;
And now and then between the strokes, for fear his strength should fail,
He wiped his brow and quaffed a cup of good old Flemish ale.

'T was purchased by an English squire to please his loving dame,
Who saw the cherubs, and conceived a longing for the same;
And oft as on the ancient stock another twig was found,
'T was filled with candle spiced and hot, and handed smoking round.

But, changing...

1. Over a boundless plain went a man, carrying seed.

2. His face was blackened by sun and rugged from tempest, scarred and distorted by pain. Naked to the loins, his back was ridged with furrows, his breast was plowed with stripes.

3. From his hand dropped the fecund seed.

4. And behold, instantly started from the prepared soil a blade, a sheaf, a springing trunk, a myriad-branching, cloud-aspiring tree. Its arms touched the ends of the horizon, the heavens were darkened with its shadow.

5. It bare blossoms of gold and blossoms of blood, fruitage of health and fruitage of poison; birds sang amid its foliage, and a serpent was coiled about its stem.

6. Under its branches a divinely beautiful man, crowned with thorns, was nailed to a cross.

7. And the tree put forth treachero...

Is it a sin to wish that I may meet thee
    In that dim world whither our spirits stray,
    When sleep and darkness follow life and day?
Is it a sin, that there my voice should greet thee
    With all that love that I must die concealing?
    Will my tear-laden eyes sin in revealing
The agony that preys upon my soul?
Is't not enough through the long, loathsome day,
To hold each look, and word, in stern control?
    May I not wish the staring sunlight gone,
    Day and its thousand torturing moments done,
And prying sights and sounds of men away?
    Oh, still and silent Night! when all things sleep,
    Locked in thy swarthy breast my secret keep:
    Come, with thy vision'd hopes and blessings now!
    I dream the only happiness I know.

("Non! je n'y puis tenir.")

[CROMWELL, Act III. sc. iv.]


Stay! I no longer can contain myself,
But cry you: Look on John, who bares his mind
To Oliver - to Cromwell, Milton speaks!
Despite a kindling eye and marvel deep
A voice is lifted up without your leave;
For I was never placed at council board
To speak my promptings. When awed strangers come
Who've seen Fox-Mazarin wince at the stings
In my epistles - and bring admiring votes
Of learned colleges, they strain to see
My figure in the glare - the usher utters,
"Behold and hearken! that's my Lord Protector's
Cousin - that, his son-in-law - that next" - who cares!
Some perfumed puppet! "Milton?" "He in black -
Yon silent scribe who trims their eloquence!"
Still 'chroniclin...

I have been reading Pomfret’s “Choice” this spring,
A pretty kind of—sort of—kind of thing,
Not much a verse, and poem none at all,
Yet, as they say, extremely natural.
And yet I know not. There’s an art in pies,
In raising crusts as well as galleries;
And he’s the poet, more or less, who knows
The charm that hallows the least truth from prose,
And dresses it in its mild singing clothes.
Not oaks alone are trees, nor roses flowers;
Much humble wealth makes rich this world of ours.
Nature from some sweet energy throws up
Alike the pine-mount and the buttercup;
And truth she makes so precious, that to paint
Either, shall shrine an artist like a saint,
And bring him in his turn the crowds that press
Round Guido’s saints or Titian’s goddesses.

Our trivi...

And this place our forefathers made for man!
This is the process of our love and wisdom,
To each poor brother who offends against us -
Most innocent, perhaps -and what if guilty?
Is this the only cure? Merciful God!
Each pore and natural outlet shrivelled up
By Ignorance and parching Poverty,
His energies roll back upon his heart,
And stagnate and corrupt; till changed to poison,
They break out on him, like a loathsome plague-spot;
Then we call in our pampered mountebanks -
And this is their best cure! uncomforted
And friendless solitude, groaning and tears,
And savage faces, at the clanking hour,
Seen through the steam and vapours of his dungeon,
By the lamp's dismal twilgiht! So he lies
Circled with evil, till his very soul
Unmoulds its essence, hopeles...

Exiled afar from youth and happy love,
If Death should ravish my fond spirit hence
I have no doubt but, like a homing dove,
It would return to its dear residence,
And through a thousand stars find out the road
Back into earthly flesh that was its loved abode.

It was a wet wan hour in spring,
And Nature met King Doom beside a lane,
Wherein Hodge trudged, all blithely ballading
The Mother's smiling reign.

"Why warbles he that skies are fair
And coombs alight," she cried, "and fallows gay,
When I have placed no sunshine in the air
Or glow on earth to-day?"

"'Tis in the comedy of things
That such should be," returned the one of Doom;
"Charge now the scene with brightest blazonings,
And he shall call them gloom."

She gave the word: the sun outbroke,
All Froomside shone, the hedgebirds raised a song;
And later Hodge, upon the midday stroke,
Returned the lane along,

Low murmuring: "O this bitter scene,
And thrice accurst horizon hung with gloom!
How deadly like this sky, these fields, the...

Hast never come to thee an hour,
A sudden gleam divine, precipitating, bursting all these bubbles, fashions, wealth?
These eager business aims--books, politics, art, amours,
To utter nothingness?

We build with strength the deep tower-wall
    That shall be shattered thus and thus.
And fair and great are court and hall,
    But how fair-this is not for us,
Who know the lack that lurks in all.

We know, we know how all too bright
    The hues are that our painting wears,
And how the marble gleams too white;-
    We speak in unknown tongues, the years
Interpret everything aright,

And crown with weeds our pride of towers,
    And warm our marble through with sun,
And break our pavements through with flowers,
    With an Amen when all is done,
Knowing these perfect things of ours.

O days, we ponder, left alone,
    Like children in their lonely hour,
And in our secrets keep your own,
    As seeds the colour of the flower.