Identity

Poets, painters, and puddings; these three
Make up the World as it ought to be.

Poets make faces
And sudden grimaces:
They twit you, and spit you
On words: then admit you
To heaven or hell
By the tales that they tell.

Painters are gay
As young rabbits in May:
They buy jolly mugs,
Bowls, pictures, and jugs:
The things round their necks
Are lively with checks,
(For they like something red
As a frame for the head):
Or they'll curse you with oaths,
That tear holes in your clothes.
(With nothing to mend them
You'd best not offend them.)

Puddings should be
Full of currants, for me:
Boiled in a pail,
Tied in the tail
Of an old bleached shirt:
So hot that they hurt,
So huge that they last
From th...

    I see the work of others, and my heart
    Sinks as my own achievement I compare.
    I will not be irresolute, nor despair,
    But battle strongly for my struggling art

    Convinced against conviction that my part
    Equally with my masters I can bear;
    Although their monuments are very fair,
    Enriched with statues, and I stand apart

    And gaze upon my little heap of stones
    Which I was given to build with, very few
    As yet laid into place, but I will lay

    Blind to these marble monuments and thrones,
    Building as though I confidently knew
    My ultimate end,, a stone in place each day.

The pines were dark on Ramoth hill,
Their song was soft and low;
The blossoms in the sweet May wind
Were falling like the snow.

The blossoms drifted at our feet,
The orchard birds sang clear;
The sweetest and the saddest day
It seemed of all the year.

For, more to me than birds or flowers,
My playmate left her home,
And took with her the laughing spring,
The music and the bloom.

She kissed the lips of kith and kin,
She laid her hand in mine
What more could ask the bashful boy
Who fed her father’s kine?

She left us in the bloom of May
The constant years told o’er
Their seasons with as sweet May morns,
But she came back no more.

I walk, with noiseless feet, the round
Of uneventful years;
Still o’er and ...

I

We are old,
Old as song.
Before Rome was
Or Cyrene.
Mad nights knew us
And old men's wives.
We knew who spilled the sacred oil
For young-gold harlots of the town....
We knew where the peacocks went
And the white doe for sacrifice.

II

We were the Sons of Belial.
One black night
Centuries ago
We beat at a door
In Gilead....
We took the Levite's concubine
We plucked her hands from off the door....
We choked the cry into her throat
And stuck the stars among her hair....
We glimpsed the madly swaying stars
Between the rhythms of her hair
And all our mute and separate strings
Swelled in a raging symphony....
Our blood sang paeans
All that night
Till dawn fell like a wounded swan
Upon the...

I.

Who hath e'er felt the change of love,
And known those pangs that losers prove,
May paint my face without seeing me,
And write the state how my fancies be,
The loathsome buds grown on Sorrow's tree.

But who by hearsay speaks, and hath not fully felt
What kind of fires they be in which those spirits melt,
Shall guess, and fail, what doth displease,
Feeling my pulse, miss my disease.

II.

O no!    O no! trial only shows
The bitter juice of forsaken woes;
Where former bliss, present evils do stain;
Nay, former bliss adds to present pain,
While remembrance doth both states contain.
Come, learners, then to me, the model of mishap,
Ingulphed in despair, slid down from Fortune's lap;
And, as you like my double lot,
Tread in my...

I
Locke sank into a swoon;
The Garden died;
God took the spinning-jenny
Out of his side.

II
Where got I that truth?
Out of a medium's mouth.
Out of nothing it came,
Out of the forest loam,
Out of dark night where lay
The crowns of Nineveh.

It should not be doubted that at least one-third of the affection with which we regard the elder poets of Great Britain should be attributed to what is, in itself, a thing apart from poetry we mean to the simple love of the antique and that, again, a third of even the proper poetic sentiment inspired by their writings should be ascribed to a fact which, while it has strict connection with poetry in the abstract, and with the old British poems themselves, should not be looked upon as a merit appertaining to the authors of the poems.

Almost every devout admirer of the old bards, if demanded his opinion of their productions,would mention vaguely, yet with perfect sincerity, a sense of dreamy,wild, indefinite, and he would perhaps say, indefinable delight; on being required to point out the source of this so shadowy pleasure, he wo...

From the depth of the dreamy decline of the dawn through a notable nimbus of nebulous noonshine,
Pallid and pink as the palm of the flag-flower that flickers with fear of the flies as they float,
Are they looks of our lovers that lustrously lean from a marvel of mystic miraculous moonshine,
These that we feel in the blood of our blushes that thicken and threaten with throbs through the throat?
Thicken and thrill as a theatre thronged at appeal of an actor's appalled agitation,
Fainter with fear of the fires of the future than pale with the promise of pride in the past;
Flushed with the famishing fullness of fever that reddens with radiance of rathe recreation,
Gaunt as the ghastliest of glimpses that gleam through the gloom of the gloaming when ghosts go aghast?
Nay, for the nick of the tick of the ...

"We had a dream which was not all a dream." - Byron.


        I laid me down one day in June,
        It was late long afternoon,
        A very sultry summer's eve,
        Such times the senses oft deceive,
        The place was 'neath a maple tree,
        Soon from all cares and troubles free,
        By a gentle, kindly slumber,
        No more our sorrows we could number,
        But we heard a plaintive wail
        Such as we find in fairy tale,
        It was the genius of the tree
        Who in sad guise appeared to me,
        And then she sadly did give vent
        Unto this awful grave lament:
        Though I am gay in month of June,
        All decked in green, yet very soon,
        Alas my beauty will be faded
        An...

I.

September On Cape Ann

The partridge-berry flecks with flame the way
That leads to ferny hollows where the bee
Drones on the aster. Far away the sea
Points its deep sapphire with a gleam of grey.
Here from this height where, clustered sweet, the bay
Clumps a green couch, the haw and barberry
Beading her hair, sad Summer, seemingly,
Has fallen asleep, unmindful of the day.
The chipmunk barks upon the old stone wall;
And in the shadows, like a shadow, stirs
The woodchuck where the boneset's blossom creams.
Was that a phoebe with its pensive call?
A sighing wind that shook the drowsy firs?
Or only Summer waking from her dreams?

II.

In An Annisquam Garden

Old phantoms haunt it of the long ago;
Old ghosts of old-time l...

Children of earth are we,
Lovers of land and sea,
Of hill, of brook, of tree,
    Of all things fair;
Of all things dark or bright,
Born of the day and night,
Red rose and lily white
    And dusky hair.

Yet not alone from earth
Do we derive our birth.
What were our singing worth
    Were this the whole?
Somewhere from heaven afar
Hath dropped a fiery star,
Which makes us what we are,
    Which is our soul.

Two well-assorted travellers use
The highway, Eros and the Muse.
From the twins is nothing hidden,
To the pair is nought forbidden;
Hand in hand the comrades go
Every nook of Nature through:
Each for other they were born,
Each can other best adorn;
They know one only mortal grief
Past all balsam or relief;
When, by false companions crossed,
The pilgrims have each other lost.

About the time when bluebells swing
Their elfin belfries for the bee
And in the fragrant House of Spring
Wild Music moves; and Fantasy
Sits weaving webs of witchery:
And Beauty's self in silence leans
Above the brook and through her hair
Beholds her face reflected there,
And wonders what the vision means
About the time when bluebells swing,
I found a path of glooms and gleams,
A way that Childhood oft has gone,
That leads into the Wood of Dreams,
Where, as of old, dwell Fay and Faun,
And Faërie dances until dawn;
And Elfland calls from her blue cave,
Or, starbright, on her snow-white steed,
Rides blowing on a silver reed
That Magic follows like a slave
I found a path of glooms and gleams.

And in that Wood I came again
On old ench...

I.

There was a naughty boy,
A naughty boy was he,
He would not stop at home,
He could not quiet be
He took
In his knapsack
A book
Full of vowels
And a shirt
With some towels,
A slight cap
For night cap,
A hair brush,
Comb ditto,
New stockings
For old ones
Would split O!
This knapsack
Tight at's back
He rivetted close
And followed his nose
To the north,
To the north,
And follow'd his nose
To the north.

II.

There was a naughty boy
And a naughty boy was he,
For nothing would he do
But scribble poetry
He took
An ink stand
In his hand
And a pen
Big as ten
In the other,
And away
In a pother
He ran
To the mountains
And fountai...

1.

Montgomery! true, the common lot
Of mortals lies in Lethe's wave;
Yet some shall never be forgot,
Some shall exist beyond the grave.


2.

"Unknown the region of his birth,"
The hero [2] rolls the tide of war;
Yet not unknown his martial worth,
Which glares a meteor from afar.


3.

His joy or grief, his weal or woe,
Perchance may 'scape the page of fame;
Yet nations, now unborn, will know
The record of his deathless name.


4.

The Patriot's and the Poet's frame
Must share the common tomb of all:
Their glory will not sleep the same;
'That' will arise, though Empires fall.


5.

The lustre of a Beauty's eye
Assumes the ghastly stare of death;
The ...

I've left my own old home of homes,
Green fields and every pleasant place;
The summer like a stranger comes,
I pause and hardly know her face.
I miss the hazel's happy green,
The blue bell's quiet hanging blooms,
Where envy's sneer was never seen,
Where staring malice never comes.

I miss the heath, its yellow furze,
Molehills and rabbit tracks that lead
Through beesom, ling, and teazel burrs
That spread a wilderness indeed;
The woodland oaks and all below
That their white powdered branches shield,
The mossy paths: the very crow
Croaks music in my native field.

I sit me in my corner chair
That seems to feel itself from home,
And hear bird music here and there
From hawthorn hedge and orchard come;
I hear, but all is strange and ne...

Peace is declared, and I return
To 'Ackneystadt, but not the same;
Things 'ave transpired which made me learn
The size and meanin' of the game.
I did no more than others did,
I don't know where the change began;
I started as a average kid,
I finished as a thinkin' man.

If England was what England seems
An' not the England of our dreams,
But only putty, brass, an' paint,
'Ow quick we'd drop 'er! But she ain't!

Before my gappin' mouth could speak
I 'eard it in my comrade's tone;
I saw it on my neighbour's cheek
Before I felt it flush my own.
An' last it come to me, not pride,
Nor yet conceit, but on the 'ole
(If such a term may be applied),
The makin's of a bloomin' soul.

Rivers at night that cluck an' jeer,
Plains whic...

If I should quit thee, sacrifice, forswear,
    To what, my art, shall I give thee in keeping?
    To the long winds of heaven?    Shall these come sweeping
My songs forgone against my face and hair?

Or shall the mountain streams my lost joys bear,
    My past poetic pain in the rain be weeping?
    No, I shall live a poet waking, sleeping,
And I shall die a poet unaware.

From me, my art, thou canst not pass away;
    And I, a singer though I cease to sing,
            Shall own thee without joy in thee or woe.

Through my indifferent words of every day,
    Scattered and all unlinked the rhymes shall ring
            And make my poem; and I shall not know.