The wild bee reels from bough to bough
With his furry coat and his gauzy wing,
Now in a lily-cup, and now
Setting a jacinth bell a-swing,
In his wandering;
Sit closer love: it was here I trow
I made that vow,

Swore that two lives should be like one
As long as the sea-gull loved the sea,
As long as the sunflower sought the sun,
It shall be, I said, for eternity
'Twixt you and me!
Dear friend, those times are over and done;
Love's web is spun.

Look upward where the poplar trees
Sway and sway in the summer air,
Here in the valley never a breeze
Scatters the thistledown, but there
Great winds blow fair
From the mighty murmuring mystical seas,
And the wave-lashed leas.

Look upward where the white gull screams,
What do...

(Athenaeum, October 21, 1848)


I did not chide him, though I knew
    That he was false to me.
Chide the exhaling of the dew,
    The ebbing of the sea,
The fading of a rosy hue, -
    But not inconstancy.

Why strive for love when love is o'er?
    Why bind a restive heart? -
He never knew the pain I bore
    In saying: 'We must part;
Let us be friends and nothing more.'
    - Oh, woman's shallow art!

But it is over, it is done, -
    I hardly heed it now;
So many weary years have run
    Since then, I think not how
Things might have been, - but greet each one
    With an unruffled brow.

What time I am where others be,
    My heart seems very calm -
Stone calm; but if all go from me,
    There c...

"Up!" said the Spirit and ere I could pray
One hasty orison, whirled me away
To a Limbo, lying--I wist not where--
Above or below, in earth or air;
For it glimmered o'er with a doubtful light,
One couldn't say whether 'twas day or night;
And 'twas crost by many a mazy track,
One didn't know how to get on or back;
And I felt like a needle that's going astray
(With its one eye out) thro' a bundle of hay;
When the Spirit he grinned, and whispered me,
"Thou'rt now in the Court of Chancery!"

Around me flitted unnumbered swarms
Of shapeless, bodiless, tailless forms;
(Like bottled-up babes that grace the room
Of that worthy knight, Sir Everard Home)--
All of them, things half-killed in rearing;
Some were lame--some wanted hearing;

        When Indian tribes in the Northwest
            Rebelled against the Eastern laws,
        Canadian courage it did test,
            All were united in the cause.

        But how shall volunteers proceed
            Such distance, several thousand miles,
        Will they in their dark hour of need
            Ask Uncle Sam with pleasant smiles

        For to allow our volunteers
            To pass o'er their north railroad,
        Perhaps subject to doubts and fears,
            Where British soldiers never trod.

        But there went up a glad hurrah
            When it was found that in our land,
        Almost finished was railway,
            And trains do wait for word command,

        To bear away our volunteers
 ...

While I have been fumbling over books
And thinking about God and the Devil and all,
Other young men have been battling with the days
And others have been kissing the beautiful women.
They have brazen faces like battering-rams.
But I who think about books and such -
I crumble to impotent dust before the struggling,
And the women palsy me with fear.
But when it comes to fumbling over books
And thinking about God and the Devil and all,
Why, there I am.
But perhaps the battering-rams are in the right of it,
Perhaps, perhaps ... God knows.

January

The first fair month! In singing Summer’s sphere
She glows, the eldest daughter of the year.
All light, all warmth, all passion, breaths of myrrh,
And subtle hints of rose-lands, come with her.
She is the warm, live month of lustre she
Makes glad the land and lulls the strong, sad sea.
The highest hope comes with her. In her face
Of pure, clear colour lives exalted grace;
Her speech is beauty, and her radiant eyes
Are eloquent with splendid prophecies.



February

The bright-haired, blue-eyed last of Summer. Lo,
Her clear song lives in all the winds that blow;
The upland torrent and the lowland rill,
The stream of valley and the spring of hill,
The pools that slumber and the brooks that run
Where dense the leaves are, gr...

    Nor wilt thou rest forever, weary heart.
    The last illusion is destroyed,
    That I eternal thought. Destroyed!
    I feel all hope and all desire depart,
    For life and its deceitful joys.
    Forever rest! Enough! Thy throbbings cease!
    Naught can requite thy miseries;
    Nor is earth worthy of thy sighs.
    Life is a bitter, weary load,
    The world a slough. And now, repose!
    Despair no more, but find in Death
    The only boon Fate on our race bestows!
    Still, Nature, art thou doomed to fall,
    The victim scorned of that blind, brutal power
    That rules and ruins all.

    Regret not me;
    Beneath the sunny tree
I lie uncaring, slumbering peacefully.

    Swift as the light
    I flew my faery flight;
Ecstatically I moved, and feared no night.

    I did not know
    That heydays fade and go,
But deemed that what was would be always so.

    I skipped at morn
    Between the yellowing corn,
Thinking it good and glorious to be born.

    I ran at eves
    Among the piled-up sheaves,
Dreaming, "I grieve not, therefore nothing grieves."

    Now soon will come
    The apple, pear, and plum
And hinds will sing, and autumn insects hum.

    Again you will fare
    To cider-makings rare,
And junketings; but I shall not be there.

    Yet gaily sing
    Until the pe...

    It's mighty lonesome-like and drear.
    Above the Wild the moon rides high,
    And shows up sharp and needle-clear
    The emptiness of earth and sky;
    No happy homes with love a-glow;
    No Santa Claus to make believe:
    Just snow and snow, and then more snow;
    It's Christmas Eve, it's Christmas Eve.

    And here am I where all things end,
    And Undesirables are hurled;
    A poor old man without a friend,
    Forgot and dead to all the world;
    Clean out of sight and out of mind . . .
    Well, maybe it is better so;
    We all in life our level find,
    And mine, I guess, is pretty low.

    Yet as I sit with pipe alight
    Beside the cabin-fire, it's queer
    This mind of mine must take to-night
    The backw...

My stretcher is one scarlet stain,
And as I tries to scrape it clean,
I tell you wot - I'm sick with pain
For all I've 'eard, for all I've seen;
Around me is the 'ellish night,
And as the war's red rim I trace,
I wonder if in 'Eaven's height,
Our God don't turn away 'Is Face.

I don't care 'oose the Crime may be;
I 'olds no brief for kin or clan;
I 'ymns no 'ate: I only see
As man destroys his brother man;
I waves no flag: I only know,
As 'ere beside the dead I wait,
A million 'earts is weighed with woe,
A million 'omes is desolate.

In drippin' darkness, far and near,
All night I've sought them woeful ones.
Dawn shudders up and still I 'ear
The crimson chorus of the guns.
Look! like a ball of blood the sun
'Angs o'er the sce...

The lights have faded from the little casement,
    As though her closing eyes had brought on night;
    And now she dreams--Ah! dreams supremely bright,
While silence reigns around from roof to basement.
    And slow the moon is mounting up the sky,
Drawing Heaven's myriads in her queenly train,
    Flinging rich largesse, as she passes by,
Of beauty freely over hill and plain.

Around the lattice creep the pure white roses,
    And one light bough rests gently on the pane,
    The diamond pane, through which the angel train
Gaze on the sister saint who there reposes;
    The moonlight silvers softly o'er it now;
And round the eaves the south wind whispers lowly,
    Waving the leaves like curls on maiden's brow;
The peace and stillness make the place seem ho...

The sun rode high in a cloudless sky
    Of a perfect summer morn.
She stood and gazed out into the street,
    And wondered why she was born.
On the topmost branch of a maple-tree
    That close by the window grew,
A robin called to his mate enthralled:
    "I love but you, but you, but you."

A soft look came in her hardened face -
    She had not wept for years;
But the robin's trill, as some sounds will,
    Jarred open the door of tears.
She thought of the old home far away;
    She heard the whr-r-r of the mill;
She heard the turtle's wild, sweet call,
    And the wail of the whip-poor-will, whip-poor-will, whip-poor-will.

She saw again that dusty road
    Whence he came riding down;
She smelled once more the flower she wore
   ...

    Once, when beside me in that sacred place
        I saw my lady lift her lovely head,
    And saw the Chalice gleam above her face
        And her dear lips with life immortal red,
    Then, born again beyond the mist of years,
        I knelt in Heaven, and drank the wine of tears.

"Buy,--who'll buy?" In the market-place,
Out of the market din and clatter,
The quack with his puckered persuasive face
Patters away in the ancient patter.

"Buy,--who'll buy? In this flask I hold--
In this little flask that I tap with my stick, Sir--
Is the famed, infallible Water of Gold,--
The One, Original, True Elixir!

"Buy--who'll buy? There's a maiden there,--
She with the ell-long flaxen tresses,--
Here is a draught that will make you fair,
Fit for an emperor's own caresses!

"Buy,--who'll buy? Are you old and gray?
Drink but of this, and in less than a minute,
Lo! you will dance like the flowers in May,
Chirp and chirk like a new-fledged linnet!

"Buy,--who'll buy? Is a baby ill?
Drop but a drop of this in his throttle,
...

The skies are strown with stars,
The streets are fresh with dew
A thin moon drifts to westward,
The night is hushed and cheerful.
My thought is quick with you.

Near windows gleam and laugh,
And far away a train
Clanks glowing through the stillness:
A great content's in all things,
And life is not in vain.

1877

When earth was young and men were few,
And all things freshly born and new
Seemed made for blessing, not for ban,
Kintu, the god, appeared as man.
Clad in the plain white priestly dress,
He journeyed through the wilderness,
His wife beside. A mild-faced cow
They drove, and one low-bleating lamb;
He bore a ripe banana-bough,
And she a root of fruitful yam:
This was their worldly worth and store,
But God can make the little more.
The glad earth knew his feet; her mould
Trembled with quickening thrills, and stirred.
Miraculous harvests spread and rolled,
The orchards shone with ruddy gold;
The flocks increased, increased the herd,
And a great nation spread and grew
From the swift lineage of the two,
Peopling the solitary place;
A fair and stro...

(April, 1887)


I traced the Circus whose gray stones incline
Where Rome and dim Etruria interjoin,
Till came a child who showed an ancient coin
That bore the image of a Constantine.

She lightly passed; nor did she once opine
How, better than all books, she had raised for me
In swift perspective Europe's history
Through the vast years of Caesar's sceptred line.

For in my distant plot of English loam
'Twas but to delve, and straightway there to find
Coins of like impress. As with one half blind
Whom common simples cure, her act flashed home
In that mute moment to my opened mind
The power, the pride, the reach of perished Rome.

FROM THE BANKS OF THE ST. LAWRENCE.


Not many months have now been dreamed away
Since yonder sun, beneath whose evening ray
Our boat glides swiftly past these wooded shores,
Saw me where Trent his mazy current pours,
And Donington's old oaks, to every breeze,
Whisper the tale of by-gone centuries;--
Those oaks, to me as sacred as the groves,
Beneath whose shade the pious Persian roves,
And hears the spirit-voice of sire, or chief,
Or loved mistress, sigh in every leaf.
There, oft, dear Lady, while thy lip hath sung
My own unpolished lays, how proud I've hung
On every tuneful accent! proud to feel.
That notes like mine should have the fate to steal,
As o'er thy hallowing lip they sighed along.
Such breath of passion and such soul of song.
Yes,--...