Inspirational

These bays be thine; and, tho' not form'd to shine
Clear as thy colour, faultless as thy line,
Yet shall the Muse essay, in humble verse,
Thy merits, lovely Painting! to rehearse.
As when the demon of the winter storm
Robs each sweet flow'ret of its beauteous form,
The Spirit of the stream, in crystal wave,
Sleeps whilst the chilling blasts above him rave,
Till the Sun spreads his animating fires,
And sullen Darkness from the scene retires,
Then mountain-nymphs discard their robes of snow,
And in green mantles smile in roseate glow,
And rivers, loosen'd from their icy chain,
Spread joy and richness thro' the verdant plain,
Thus, in those climes where skies are ever fair,
Each infant Science breath'd a genial air,
Climes where the Earth her stores to all resign...

From Recollections of Early Childhood

The Child is father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.


I

There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparelled in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it hath been of yore;
Turn wheresoe'er I may,
By night or day,
The things which I have seen I now can see no more.


II

The Rainbow comes and goes,
And lovely is the Rose,
The Moon doth with delight
Look round her when the heavens are bare;
Waters on a starry night
Are beautiful and fair;
The sunshine is a glorious birth;
But yet I know, where'er I go,
That there ha...

I mourn no more my vanished years
Beneath a tender rain,
An April rain of smiles and tears,
My heart is young again.

The west-winds blow, and, singing low,
I hear the glad streams run;
The windows of my soul I throw
Wide open to the sun.

No longer forward nor behind
I look in hope or fear;
But, grateful, take the good I find,
The best of now and here.

I plough no more a desert land,
To harvest weed and tare;
The manna dropping from God's hand
Rebukes my painful care.

I break my pilgrim staff, I lay
Aside the toiling oar;
The angel sought so far away
I welcome at my door.

The airs of spring may never play
Among the ripening corn,
Nor freshness of the flowers of May
Blow through the autumn morn.

Proud of our lyric Galaxy, I hear
    Of faded Genius with supreme disdain;
    As when we see the Miser bend insane
    O'er his full coffers, and in accents drear
Deplore imagin'd want; - and thus appear
    To me those moody Censors, who complain,
    As [1]Shaftsbury plain'd in a now boasted reign,
    That "POESY had left our darken'd sphere."
Whence may the present stupid dream be traced
    That now she shines not as in days foregone?
    Perchance neglected, often shine in waste
Her LIGHTS, from number into confluence run,
    More than when thinly in th' horizon placed
    Each Orb shone separate, and appear'd a Sun.

1: Of the Poets, who were cotemporary with Lord Shaftsbury, Dryden, Cowley, Pope, Prior, Congreve, Gay, Addison, &c. in th...

I

With nodding plumes, and lightly drest
Like foresters in leaf-green vest,
The Helvetian Mountaineers, on ground
For Tell's dread archery renowned,
Before the target stood, to claim
The guerdon of the steadiest aim.
Loud was the rifle-gun's report
A startling thunder quick and short!
But, flying through the heights around,
Echo prolonged a tell-tale sound
Of hearts and hands alike "prepared
The treasures they enjoy to guard!"
And, if there be a favoured hour
When Heroes are allowed to quit
The tomb, and on the clouds to sit
With tutelary power,
On their Descendants shedding grace
This was the hour, and that the place.

II

But Truth inspired the Bards of old
When of an iron age they told,
Which to unequal laws gav...

        I may not reach the heights I seek,
    My untried strength may fail me,
        Or, half-way up the mountain peak,
    Fierce tempests may assail me.
        But though that place I never gain,
        Herein lies comfort for my pain -
    I will be worthy of it.

        I may not triumph in success,
    Despite my earnest labor;
        I may not grasp results that bless
    The efforts of my neighbor;
        But though my goal I never see,
        This thought shall always dwell with me -
    I will be worthy of it.

        The golden glory of Love's light
    May never fall on my way;
        My path may always lead through night,
    Like some deserted by-way;
        But though life's dearest joy I miss
        There l...

Token of friendship true and tried,
From one whose fiery heart of youth
With mine has beaten, side by side,
For Liberty and Truth;
With honest pride the gift I take,
And prize it for the giver's sake.
But not alone because it tells
Of generous hand and heart sincere;
Around that gift of friendship dwells
A memory doubly dear;
Earth's noblest aim, man's holiest thought,
With that memorial frail inwrought!
Pure thoughts and sweet like flowers unfold,
And precious memories round it cling,
Even as the Prophet's rod of old
In beauty blossoming:
And buds of feeling, pure and good,
Spring from its cold unconscious wood.
Relic of Freedom's shrine! a brand
Plucked from its burning! let it be
Dear as a jewel from the hand
Of a lost friend to me!...

1. Through cycles of darkness the diamond sleeps in its coal-black prison.

2. Purely incrusted in its scaly casket, the breath-tarnished pearl slumbers in mud and ooze.

3. Buried in the bowels of earth, rugged and obscure, lies the ingot of gold.

4. Long hast thou been buried, O Israel, in the bowels of earth; long hast thou slumbered beneath the overwhelming waves; long hast thou slept in the rayless house of darkness.

5. Rejoice and sing, for only thus couldst thou rightly guard the golden knowledge, Truth, the delicate pearl and the adamantine jewel of the Law.

How sweet the cadence of his lyre!
    What melody of words!
They strike a pulse within the heart
    Like songs of forest-birds,
Or tinkling of the shepherd's bell
    Among the mountain-herds.

His mind's a cultured garden,
    Where Nature's hand has sown
The flower-seeds of poesy--
    And they have freshly grown,
Imbued with beauty and perfume
    To other plants unknown.

A bright career's before him--
    All tongues pronounce his praise;
All hearts his inspiration feel,
    And will in after-days;
For genius breathes in every line
    Of his soul-thrilling lays.

A nameless grace is round him--
    A something, too refined
To be described, yet must be felt
    By all of human kind--
An emanation of the soul,...

Where are the Poets, unto whom belong
    The Olympian heights; whose singing shafts were sent
    Straight to the mark, and not from bows half bent,
    But with the utmost tension of the thong?
Where are the stately argosies of song,
    Whose rushing keels made music as they went
    Sailing in search of some new continent,
    With all sail set, and steady winds and strong?
Perhaps there lives some dreamy boy, untaught
    In schools, some graduate of the field or street,
    Who shall become a master of the art,
An admiral sailing the high seas of thought,
    Fearless and first and steering with his fleet
    For lands not yet laid down in any chart.

June 22, 1782.


My dear Friend,
If reading verse be your delight,
“Tis mine as much, or more, to write;
But what we would, so weak is man,
Lies oft remote from what we can.
For instance, at this very time
I feel a wish by cheerful rhyme
To soothe my friend, and, had I power,
To cheat him of an anxious hour;
Not meaning (for I must confess,
It were but folly to suppress)
His pleasure, or his good alone,
But squinting partly at my own.
But though the sun is flaming high
In the centre of yon arch, the sky,
And he had once (and who but he?)
The name for setting genius free,
Yet whether poets of past days
Yielded him undeserved praise.
And he by no uncommon lot
Was famed for virtues he had not;
Or whether, which is like enou...

Care is a Poet fine:
He works in shade or shine,
And leaves, you know his sign!
No day without its line.

He writes with iron pen
Upon the brows of men;
Faint lines at first, and then
He scores them in again.

His touch at first is light
On Beauty’s brow of white;
The old churl loves to write
On foreheads broad and bright.

A line for young love crossed,
A line for fair hopes lost
In an untimely frost,
A line that means Thou Wast.

Then deeper script appears:
The furrows of dim fears,
The traces of old tears,
The tide-marks of the years.

To him with sight made strong
By suffering and wrong,
The brows of all the throng
Are eloquent with song.

Night, and beneath star-blazoned summer skies
    Behold the Spirit of the musky South,
A creole with still-burning, languid eyes,
    Voluptuous limbs and incense-breathing mouth:
    Swathed in spun gauze is she,
From fibres of her own anana tree.


Within these sumptuous woods she lies at ease,
    By rich night-breezes, dewy cool, caressed:
'Twixt cypresses and slim palmetto trees,
    Like to the golden oriole's hanging nest,
    Her airy hammock swings,
And through the dark her mocking-bird yet sings.


How beautiful she is!    A tulip-wreath
    Twines round her shadowy, free-floating hair:
Young, weary, passionate, and sad as death,
    Dark visions haunt for her the vacant air,
    While movelessly she lies
With lithe, lax, fo...

Isabelle has gold, and lands,
Fate gave her a fair lot;
Like the white lilies of the field
Her soft hands toil not.
I gaze upon her splendor
Without an envious sigh;
I have no wealth in lands and gold,
And yet sweet peace have I.

I know the blue sky smiles as bright
On the low field violet,
As on the proud crest of the pine
On loftiest mountain set.
I am content - God loveth all,
And if He tenderly
The sparrow guides, He knoweth best
The place where I should be.

Her violet velvet curtains trail
Down to the floor,
But brightly God's rich sunshine streams
Into my cottage door;
And not a picture on her walls,
Hath beauty unto me,
Like that which from my window frame
I daily lean to see.

She has known such ...

When evening's shadowy fingers fold
The flowers of every hue,
Some shy, half-opened bud will hold
Its drop of morning's dew.

Sweeter with every sunlit hour
The trembling sphere has grown,
Till all the fragrance of the flower
Becomes at last its own.

We that have sung perchance may find
Our little meed of praise,
And round our pallid temples bind
The wreath of fading bays.

Ah, Poet, who hast never spent
Thy breath in idle strains,
For thee the dewdrop morning lent
Still in thy heart remains;

Unwasted, in its perfumed cell
It waits the evening gale;
Then to the azure whence it fell
Its lingering sweets exhale.

One effort more, one cheerful sally more,
Our destin'd course will finish. and in peace
Then, for an offering sacred to the powers
Who lent us gracious guidance, we will then
Inscribe a monument of deathless praise,
O my adventurous song. With steady speed
Long hast thou, on an untried voyage bound,
Sail'd between earth and heaven: hast now survey'd,
Stretch'd out beneath thee, all the mazy tracts
Of passion and opinion; like a waste
Of sands and flowery lawns and tangling woods,
Where mortals roam bewilder'd: and hast now
Exulting soar'd among the worlds above,
Or hover'd near the eternal gates of heaven,
If haply the discourses of the Gods,
A curious, but an unpresuming guest,
Thou might'st partake, and carry back some strain
Of divine wisdom, lawful to...

Weary of jangling noises never stilled,
The skeptic's sneer, the bigot's hate, the din
Of clashing texts, the webs of creed men spin
Round simple truth, the children grown who build
With gilded cards their new Jerusalem,
Busy, with sacerdotal tailorings
And tinsel gauds, bedizening holy things,
I turn, with glad and grateful heart, from them
To the sweet story of the Florentine
Immortal in her blameless maidenhood,
Beautiful as God's angels and as good;
Feeling that life, even now, may be divine
With love no wrong can ever change to hate,
No sin make less than all-compassionate

The summer day is closed, the sun is set:
Well they have done their office, those bright hours,
The latest of whose train goes softly out
In the red West. The green blade of the ground
Has risen, and herds have cropped it; the young twig
Has spread its plaited tissues to the sun;
Flowers of the garden and the waste have blown
And withered; seeds have fallen upon the soil,
From bursting cells, and in their graves await
Their resurrection. Insects from the pools
Have filled the air awhile with humming wings,
That now are still for ever; painted moths
Have wandered the blue sky, and died again;
The mother-bird hath broken for her brood
Their prison shell, or shoved them from the nest,
Plumed for their earliest flight. In bright alcoves,
In woodland cottages with ...