To come in touch with mysteries
Of beauty idealizing Earth,
Go seek the hills, grown old with trees,
The old hills wise with death and birth.

There you may hear the heart that beats
In streams, where music has its source;
And in wild rocks of green retreats
Behold the silent soul of force.

Above the love that emanates
From human passion, and reflects
The flesh, must be the love that waits
On Nature, whose high call elects

None to her secrets save the few
Who hold that facts are far less real
Than dreams, with which all facts indue
Themselves approaching the Ideal.

Newly Translated Into English Verse By R. Martin Pope is below this original.

Hymnus Post Ieiunium


Christe servorum regimen tuorum,
mollibus qui nos moderans habenis
leniter frenas facilique septos
            lege coerces:

ipse cum portans onus inpeditum
corporis duros tuleris labores,
maior exemplis famulos remisso
            dogmate palpas.

Nona submissum rotat hora solem
partibus vixdum tribus evolutis,
quarta devexo superest in axe
            portio lucis.

Nos brevis voti dape vindicata
solvimus festum fruimurque mensis
adfatim plenis, quibus inbuatur
            prona voluptas.

Tantus aeterni favor est magistri,
doctor indulgens ita nos amico
lactat hortatu, levis obsequela ut
         ...

I

He called her in from me and shut the door.
And she so loved the sunshine and the sky! -
She loved them even better yet than I
That ne'er knew dearth of them - my mother dead,
Nature had nursed me in her lap instead:
And I had grown a dark and eerie child
That rarely smiled,
Save when, shut all alone in grasses high,
Looking straight up in God's great lonesome sky
And coaxing Mother to smile back on me.
'Twas lying thus, this fair girl suddenly
Came to me, nestled in the fields beside
A pleasant-seeming home, with doorway wide -
The sunshine beating in upon the floor

Like golden rain. -
O sweet, sweet face above me, turn again
And leave me! I had cried, but that an ache
Within my throat so gripped it I could make
No sound but a thi...

Lord of all the Universe, when I think of YOU,
Flinging stars out into space, moving suns and tides;
Then this little mortal mind gets the larger view,
And the carping self of me runs away and hides.

Then I see all shadowed paths leading out to Light;
See the false things fade away, leaving but the True;
See the wrong things slay themselves, leaving only Right;
When this little mortal mind gets the larger view.

Cavillings at this and that, censure, doubt and fear,
Fly, as fly before the dawn, insects of the night;
Life and Death are understood; everything seems clear,
All the wrong things slay themselves, leaving only Right.

The World has walked with fever in its veins
For many and many a day.    Oh, poor, sick world!
Not knowing all its dreams of gree...

At morn the wise man walked abroad,
    Proud with the learning of great fools.
He laughed and said, "There is no God -
    'Tis force creates, 'tis reason rules."

Meek with the wisdom of great faith,
    At night he knelt while angels smiled,
And wept and cried with anguished breath,
    "Jehovah, God, save thou my child."

I

Fair Lady, whose harmonious name the Rheno
    Through all his grassy vale delights to hear,
    Base were, indeed, the wretch, who could forbear
    To love a spirit elegant as thine,
That manifests a sweetness all divine,
    Nor knows a thousand winning acts to spare,
    And graces, which Love's bow and arrows are,
    Temp'ring thy virtues to a softer shine.
When gracefully thou speak'st, or singest gay
    Such strains as might the senseless forest move,
    Ah then--turn each his eyes and ears away,
Who feels himself unworthy of thy love!
    Grace can alone preserve him, e'er the dart
    Of fond desire yet reach his inmost heart.

II

As on a hill-top rude, when closing day
    Imbrowns the scene, some past'ral maiden fair
...

Man's works grow stale to man: the years destroy
The charm they once possessed; the city tires;
The terraces, the domes, the dazzling spires
Are in the main but an attractive toy -
They please the man not as they pleased the boy;
And he returns to Nature, and requires
To warm his soul at her old altar fires,
To drink from her perpetual fount of joy.

It is that man and all the works of man
Prepare to pass away; he may depend
    On naught but what he found her stores among;
But she, she changes not, nor ever can;
He knows she will be faithful to the end,
    For ever beautiful, for ever young.

No, this is January, dear,
    The almanac's untrue;
For roaring Boreas, 'tis clear,
In sleet and snow and atmosphere,
Will be the monarch of the year,
    And terror, too.

"Is it a blessing in disguise?"
    Of course, things always are;
But Arctic blasts with ardent skies
Somehow do not quite harmonize,
That try to cheat by weather-lies
    The calendar.

Old Janus must be double-faced;
    He promised long ago
The maple syrup not to taste,
Nor steal the roses from the waist
Of one, a damsel fair and chaste
    As April snow.

O winter of our discontent!
    Your reign was for a day;
Behold! a scene of wonderment,
A thousand tongues are eloquent,
For spring, in bud and bloom and scent,
    Is on the way.

    A parish priest was of the pilgrim train;
    An awful, reverend, and religious man.
    His eyes diffused a venerable grace,
    And charity itself was in his face.
    Rich was his soul, though his attire was poor;
    (As God had clothed his own ambassador;)
    For such, on earth, his bless'd Redeemer bore.
    Of sixty years he seem'd; and well might last
    To sixty more, but that he lived too fast;
    Refined himself to soul, to curb the sense;
    And made almost a sin of abstinence,
    Yet, had his aspect nothing of severe,
    But such a face as promised him sincere.
    Nothing reserved or sullen was to see;
    But sweet regards, and pleasing sanctity:
    Mild was his accent, and his action free.
    With eloquence innate his tongue was arm...

("Sonnez, clairons de la pensée!")

[Bk. VII. i., March 19, 1853.]


Sound, sound for ever, Clarions of Thought!

When Joshua 'gainst the high-walled city fought,
He marched around it with his banner high,
His troops in serried order following nigh,
But not a sword was drawn, no shaft outsprang,
Only the trumpets the shrill onset rang.
At the first blast, smiled scornfully the king,
And at the second sneered, half wondering:
"Hop'st thou with noise my stronghold to break down?"
At the third round, the ark of old renown
Swept forward, still the trumpets sounding loud,
And then the troops with ensigns waving proud.
Stepped out upon the old walls children dark
With horns to mock the notes and hoot the ark.
At the fourth turn, braving th...

Departing summer hath assumed
An aspect tenderly illumed,
The gentlest look of spring;
That calls from yonder leafy shade
Unfaded, yet prepared to fade,
A timely carolling.
No faint and hesitating trill,
Such tribute as to winter chill
The lonely redbreast pays!
Clear, loud, and lively is the din,
From social warblers gathering in
Their harvest of sweet lays.

Nor doth the example fail to cheer
Me, conscious that my leaf is sere,
And yellow on the bough:-
Fall, rosy garlands, from my head!
Ye myrtle wreaths, your fragrance shed
Around a younger brow!

Yet will I temperately rejoice;
Wide is the range, and free the choice
Of undiscordant themes;
Which, haply, kindred souls may prize
Not less than vernal ecstasies,
An...

But what of her whose heart is troubled by it,
The mother who would soothe and set him free,
Fearing the song’s storm-shaken ecstasy
Oh, as the moon that has no power to quiet
The strong wind-driven sea.

One night I lingered in the wood
And saw a spirit-form that stood
Among the wildflowers. Like the dew
It twinkled; partly wind and scent;
Then down a moonbeam there it blew,
And like a gleam of water went.
Or was it but a dream that grew
Out of the wind and dew and scent.
Could I have seized it, made it mine,
As poets have the thought divine
Of Nature, then I too might know,
(Like them who once wild magic bound
Into their rhymes of long-ago),
Such ecstasy of earth around
As never yet held heart before
Or language for its beauty found.

To The Publisher! - Drink!
Let his virtue be shown
In the Good Works of others
If not in his own.

What though around thee blazes
No fiery rallying sign?
From all thy own high places,
Give heaven the light of thine!
What though unthrilled, unmoving,
The statesman stand apart,
And comes no warm approving
From Mammon's crowded mart?
Still, let the land be shaken
By a summons of thine own!
By all save truth forsaken,
Stand fast with that alone!
Shrink not from strife unequal!
With the best is always hope;
And ever in the sequel
God holds the right side up!
But when, with thine uniting,
Come voices long and loud,
And far-off hills are writing
Thy fire-words on the cloud;
When from Penobscot's fountains
A deep response is heard,
And across the Western mountains
Rolls back thy rallying word;
Shall thy line of battle falter,...

Launcelot loved Guinevere,
Ages and ages ago,
Beautiful as a bird was she,
Preening its wings in a cypress tree,
Happy in sadness, she and he,
They loved each other so.

Helen of Troy was beautiful
As tender flower in May,
Her loveliness from the towers looked down,
With the sweet moon for silver crown,
Over the walls of Troy Town,
Hundreds of years away.

Cleopatra, Egypt's Queen,
Was wondrous kind to ken,
As when the stars in the dark sky
Like buds on thorny branches lie,
So seemed she too to Antony,
That age-gone prince of men.

The Pyramids are old stones,
Scarred is that grey face,
That by the greenness of Old Nile
Gazes with an unchanging smile,
Man with all mystery to beguile
And give his thinking grace.

Where dips the rocky highland
Of Sleuth Wood in the lake,
There lies a leafy island
Where flapping herons wake
The drowsy water-rats;
There we've hid our faery vats,
Full of berries
And of reddest stolen cherries.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

Where the wave of moonlight glosses
The dim grey sands with light,
Far off by furthest Rosses
We foot it all the night,
Weaving olden dances,
Mingling hands and mingling glances
Till the moon has taken flight;
To and fro we leap
And chase the frothy bubbles,
While the world is full of troubles
And is anxious in its sleep.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and...

"I am here to time, you see;
The glade is well-screened - eh? - against alarm;
Fit place to vindicate by my arm
The honour of my spotless wife,
Who scorns your libel upon her life
In boasting intimacy!

"'All hush-offerings you'll spurn,
My husband. Two must come; one only go,'
She said. 'That he'll be you I know;
To faith like ours Heaven will be just,
And I shall abide in fullest trust
Your speedy glad return.'"

"Good. Here am also I;
And we'll proceed without more waste of words
To warm your cockpit. Of the swords
Take you your choice. I shall thereby
Feel that on me no blame can lie,
Whatever Fate accords."

So stripped they there, and fought,
And the swords clicked and scraped, and the onsets sped;
Till the husband fell...