Identity

Twilight, a blossom grey in shadowy valleys dwells:
Under the radiant dark the deep blue-tinted bells
In quietness reïmage heaven within their blooms,
Sapphire and gold and mystery. What strange perfumes,
Out of what deeps arising, all the flower-bells fling,
Unknowing the enchanted odorous song they sing!
Oh, never was an eve so living yet: the wood
Stirs not but breathes enraptured quietide.
Here in these shades the Ancient knows itself, the Soul,
And out of slumber waking starts unto the goal.
What bright companions nod and go along with it!
Out of the teeming dark what dusky creatures flit,
That through the long leagues of the island night above
Come by me, wandering, whispering, beseeching love;
As in the twilight children gather close and press
Nigh and more ...

Through my north window, in the wintry weather, -
My airy oriel on the river shore, -
I watch the sea-fowl as they flock together
Where late the boatman flashed his dripping oar.

The gull, high floating, like a sloop unladen,
Lets the loose water waft him as it will;
The duck, round-breasted as a rustic maiden,
Paddles and plunges, busy, busy still.

I see the solemn gulls in council sitting
On some broad ice-floe pondering long and late,
While overhead the home-bound ducks are flitting,
And leave the tardy conclave in debate,

Those weighty questions in their breasts revolving
Whose deeper meaning science never learns,
Till at some reverend elder's look dissolving,
The speechless senate silently adjourns.

But when along the waves the shr...

If the red slayer think he slays,
Or if the slain think he is slain,
They know not well the subtle ways
I keep, and pass, and turn again.

Far or forgot to me is near;
Shadow and sunlight are the same;
The vanished gods to me appear;
And one to me are shame and fame.

They reckon ill who leave me out;
When me they fly, I am the wings;
I am the doubter and the doubt,
And I the hymn the Brahmin sings.

The strong gods pine for my abode,
And pine in vain the sacred Seven;
But thou, meek lover of the good!
Find me, and turn thy back on heaven.

Although I shelter from the rain
Under a broken tree,
My chair was nearest to the fire
In every company
That talked of love or politics,
Ere Time transfigured me.
Though lads are making pikes again
For some conspiracy,
And crazy rascals rage their fill
At human tyranny,
My contemplations are of Time
That has transfigured me.
There's not a woman turns her face
Upon a broken tree,
And yet the beauties that I loved
Are in my memory;
I spit into the face of Time
That has transfigured me.

I.

His eyes found nothing beautiful and bright,
Nor wealth nor, honour, glory nor delight,
Which he could grasp and keep with might and right.

Flowers bloomed for maidens, swords outflashed for boys,
The world’s big children had their various toys;
He could not feel their sorrows and their joys.

Hills held a secret they would not unfold,
In careless scorn of him the ocean rolled,
The stars were alien splendours high and cold.

He felt himself a king bereft of crown,
Defrauded from his birthright of renown,
Bred up in littleness with churl and clown.



II.

How could he vindicate himself? His eyes,
That found not anywhere their proper prize,
Looked through and through the specious earth and skies,

They prob...

        I into life so full of love was sent
    That all the shadows which fall on the way
    Of every human being could not stay,
        But fled before the light my spirit lent.

        I saw the world through gold and crimson dyes:
    Men sighed and said, "Those rosy hues will fade
    As you pass on into the glare and shade!"
        Still beautiful the way seems to mine eyes.

        They said, "You are too jubilant and glad;
    The world is full of sorrow and of wrong.
    Full soon your lips shall breathe forth sighs - not song."
        The day wears on, and yet I am not sad.

        They said, "You love too largely, and you must,
    Through wound on wound, grow bitter to your kind."
    They were false prophets; day by day I find
  ...

1.
She saw me not - she heard me not - alone
Upon the mountain's dizzy brink she stood;
She spake not, breathed not, moved not - there was thrown
Over her look, the shadow of a mood
Which only clothes the heart in solitude,
A thought of voiceless depth; - she stood alone,
Above, the Heavens were spread; - below, the flood
Was murmuring in its caves; - the wind had blown
Her hair apart, through which her eyes and forehead shone.

2.
A cloud was hanging o'er the western mountains;
Before its blue and moveless depth were flying
Gray mists poured forth from the unresting fountains
Of darkness in the North: - the day was dying: -
Sudden, the sun shone forth, its beams were lying
Like boiling gold on Ocean, strange to see,
And on the shattered vapours, whi...

    The morning rain, when, from her coop released,
    The hen, exulting, flaps her wings, when from
    The balcony the husbandman looks forth,
    And when the rising sun his trembling rays
    Darts through the falling drops, against my roof
    And windows gently beating, wakens me.
    I rise, and grateful, bless the flying clouds,
    The cheerful twitter of the early birds,
    The smiling fields, and the refreshing air.
    For I of you, unhappy city walls,
    Enough have seen and known; where hatred still
    Companion is to grief; and grieving still
    I live, and so shall die, and that, how soon!
    But here some pity Nature shows, though small,
    Once in this spot to me so courteous!
    Thou, too, O Nature, turn'st away thy gaze
    From mis...

I.
All I believed is true!
I am able yet
All I want, to get
By a method as strange as new:
Dare I trust the same to you?

II.
If at night, when doors are shut,
And the wood-worm picks,
And the death-watch ticks,
And the bar has a flag of smut,
And a cat’s in the water-butt,

III.
And the socket floats and flares,
And the house-beams groan,
And a foot unknown
Is surmised on the garret-stairs,
And the locks slip unawares,

IV.
And the spider, to serve his ends,
By a sudden thread,
Arms and legs outspread,
On the table’s midst descends,
Comes to find, God knows what friends!

V.
If since eve drew in, I say,
I have sat and brought
(So to speak) my thought
To bear on the woman away,

The Poet is the loneliest man that lives;
Ah me! God makes him so --
The sea hath its ebb and flow,
He sings his songs -- but yet he only gives
In the waves of the words of his art
Only the ~foam~ of his heart.

Its sea rolls on forever, evermore,
Beautiful, vast, and deep;
Only his ~shallowest~ thoughts touch the shore
Of Speech; his ~deepest~ sleep.

The foam that crests the wave is pure and white;
The ~foam~ is not the ~wave~;
The wave is not the sea -- ~it rolls~ forever on;
The winding shores will crave
A kiss from ev'ry wavelet on the deep;
~Some come~; some always ~sleep~.

Souls of Poets dead and gone,
What Elysium have ye known,
Happy field or mossy cavern,
Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern?
Have ye tippled drink more fine
Than mine host’s Canary wine?
Or are fruits of Paradise
Sweeter than those dainty pies
Of venison? O generous food!
Drest as though bold Robin Hood
Would, with his maid Marian,
Sup and bowse from horn and can.

I have heard that on a day
Mine host’s sign-board flew away,
Nobody knew whither, till
An astrologer’s old quill
To a sheepskin gave the story,
Said he saw you in your glory,
Underneath a new old sign
Sipping beverage divine,
And pledging with contented smack
The Mermaid in the Zodiac.

Souls of Poets dead and gone,
What Elysium have ye known,
Happy field...

We are in Fate and Fate's and do but lack
Outness from soul to know ourselves its dwelling,
And do but compel Fate aside or back
By Fate's own immanence in the compelling.
We are too far in us from outward truth
To know how much we are not what we are,
And live but in the heat of error's youth,
Yet young enough its acting youth to ignore.
The doubleness of mind fails us, to glance
At our exterior presence amid things,
Sizing from otherness our countenance
And seeing our puppet will's act-acting strings.
    An unknown language speaks in us, which we
    Are at the words of, fronted from reality.

O to make the most jubilant poem!
Even to set off these, and merge with these, the carols of Death.
O full of music! full of manhood, womanhood, infancy!
Full of common employments! full of grain and trees.

O for the voices of animals! O for the swiftness and balance of fishes!
O for the dropping of rain-drops in a poem!
O for the sunshine, and motion of waves in a poem.

O the joy of my spirit! it is uncaged! it darts like lightning!
It is not enough to have this globe, or a certain time I will have thousands of globes, and all time.

O the engineer's joys!
To go with a locomotive!
To hear the hiss of steam the merry shriek the steam-whistle the laughing locomotive!
To push with resistless way, and speed off in the distance.

O the gleesome saunter over...

Now Morning from her orient chamber came,
And her first footsteps touch'd a verdant hill;
Crowning its lawny crest with amber flame,
Silv'ring the untainted gushes of its rill;
Which, pure from mossy beds, did down distill,
And after parting beds of simple flowers,
By many streams a little lake did fill,
Which round its marge reflected woven bowers,
And, in its middle space, a sky that never lowers.

There the king-fisher saw his plumage bright
Vieing with fish of brilliant dye below;
Whose silken fins, and golden scales' light
Cast upward, through the waves, a ruby glow:
There saw the swan his neck of arched snow,
And oar'd himself along with majesty;
Sparkled his jetty eyes; his feet did show
Beneath the waves like Afric's ebony,
And on his back a ...

I

When I remember them, those friends of mine,
    Who are no longer here, the noble three,
    Who half my life were more than friends to me,
    And whose discourse was like a generous wine,
I most of all remember the divine
    Something, that shone in them, and made us see
    The archetypal man, and what might be
    The amplitude of Nature's first design.
In vain I stretch my hands to clasp their hands;
    I cannot find them.    Nothing now is left
    But a majestic memory.    They meanwhile
Wander together in Elysian lands,
    Perchance remembering me, who am bereft
    Of their dear presence, and, remembering, smile.


II

In Attica thy birthplace should have been,
    Or the Ionian Isles, or where the seas
    Encircl...

I walk down the Valley of Silence --
Down the dim, voiceless valley -- alone!
And I hear not the fall of a footstep
Around me, save God's and my own;
And the hush of my heart is as holy
As hovers where angels have flown!

Long ago was I weary of voices
Whose music my heart could not win;
Long ago was I weary of noises
That fretted my soul with their din;
Long ago was I weary of places
Where I met but the human -- and sin.

I walked in the world with the worldly;
I craved what the world never gave;
And I said:    "In the world each Ideal,
That shines like a star on life's wave,
Is wrecked on the shores of the Real,
And sleeps like a dream in a grave."

And still did I pine for the Perfect,
And still found the False with the True;

        The ordered intermingling
            of the real and the dream,--
        The mill above the river,
            and the mist above the stream;
        The life of ceaseless labor,
            brave with song and cheery call--
        The radiant skies of evening,
            with its rainbow o'er us all.


        AN OLD SWEETHEART OF MINE!--Is this
            her presence here with me,
        Or but a vain creation of
            a lover's memory?

        A fair, illusive vision
            that would vanish into air
        Dared I even touch the silence
            with the whisper of a prayer?

        Nay, let me then believe in all
            the blended false a...

Through fields of ash, burnt, without verdure,
where I was complaining one day to Nature,
and slowly sharpened the knife of my thought,
as I wandered aimlessly, against my heart,
I saw descend, at noon, on my brow,
a storm-filled and a sinister cloud,
holding a vicious demonic horde,
resembling cruel, and curious dwarfs.
They gazing at me, considering me, as cool
as passers-by admiring a fool,
I heard them laughing and whispering in synch,
exchanging many a nudge and a wink:

‘ Let’s contemplate this caricature,
this Hamlet’s shadow, echoing his posture,
his indecisive looks, and wild hair.
It’s a shame to see that epicure there,
that pauper, that actor on holiday, that droll
fellow, because he can play a fine role,
trying to interest with his t...