Spirituality

        Oh, I am weary, weary, weary
            Of Pan and oaten quills
        And little songs that, from the dictionary,
            Learn lore of streams and hills,
        Of studied laughter, mocking what is merry,
            And calculated thrills!

        Are we grown old and past the time of singing?
            Is ardor quenched in art
        Till art is but a formal figure, bringing
            A money-measured heart,
        Procrustean cut, and, with old echoes, ringing
            Its bells about the mart?

        The race moves on, and leaves no wildernesses
            Where rugged voices cry;
        It reads its prayer, and with set phrase it blesses
            The souls of men who die,
        And step by even step its rank p...

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 caroling.

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,

Hush, hush! my thoughts are resting on a changeless world of bliss;
Oh! come not with the voice of mirth to lure them back to this.
'Tis true, we've much of sadness in our weary sojourn here,
That fades, and leaves no deeper trace than childhood's reckless tear;
But there are woes which scathe the heart till all its bloom is o'er,
A deadly blight we feel but once, that once for evermore.

Oh, then, 'tis sweet on fancy's wing to cleave that bright domain!
The loved and the redeemed are there, why lure me back again?
The cadences of gladness to your hearts may yet be dear;
They have no melody for mine, all, all is desert here.
The sunshine still is bright to you, the moonlight and the flowers;
To me they tell a harrowing tale of dear departed hours.

I would not cu...

Because there is safety in derision
I talked about an apparition,
I took no trouble to convince,
Or seem plausible to a man of sense.
Distrustful of thar popular eye
Whether it be bold or sly.
i[Fifteen apparitions have I seen;]
i[The worst a coat upon a coat-hanger.]

I have found nothing half so good
As my long-planned half solitude,
Where I can sit up half the night
With some friend that has the wit
Not to allow his looks to tell
When I am unintelligible.
i[Fifteen apparitions have I seen;]
i[The worst a coat upon a coat-hanger.]

When a man grows old his joy
Grows more deep day after day,
His empty heart is full at length,
But he has need of all that strength
Because of the increasing Night
That opens her mystery and frig...

The splendor of the kindling day,
The splendor of the setting sun,
These move my soul to wend its way,
And have done
With all we grasp and toil amongst and say.

The paling roses of a cloud,
The fading bow that arches space,
These woo my fancy toward my shroud;
Toward the place
Of faces veiled, and heads discrowned and bowed.

The nation of the awful stars,
The wandering star whose blaze is brief,
These make me beat against the bars
Of my grief;
My tedious grief, twin to the life it mars.

O fretted heart tossed to and fro,
So fain to flee, so fain to rest!
All glories that are high or low,
East or west,
Grow dim to thee who art so fain to go.

Wild-eyed woodlands, here I rest me, underneath the gaunt and ghastly trees;
Underneath fantastic-fronted caverns crammed with many a muffled breeze.
Far away from dusky towns and cities twinkling with the feet of men;
Listening to a sound of mellow music fleeting down the gusty glen;
Sitting by a rapid torrent, with the broken sunset in my face;
By a rapid, roaring torrent, tumbling through a dark and lonely place!
And I hear the bells beyond the forest, and the voice of distant streams;
And a flood of swelling singing, wafting round a world of ruined dreams.

Like to one who watches daylight dying from a lofty mountain spire,
When the autumn splendour scatters like a gust of faintly-gleaming fire;
So the silent spirit looketh through a mist of faded smiles and tears,
While acro...

They lean their faces to me through
Green windows of the woods;
Their white throats sweet with honey-dew
Beneath low leafy hoods -
No dream they dream but hath been true
Here in the solitudes.

Star trillium, in the underbrush,
In whom Spring bares her face;
Sun eglantine, that breathes the blush
Of Summer's quiet grace;
Moon mallow, in whom lives the hush
Of Autumn's tragic pace.

For one hath heard the dryad's sighs
Behind the covering bark;
And one hath felt the satyr's eyes
Gleam in the bosky dark;
And one hath seen the naiad rise
In waters all a-spark.

I bend my soul unto them, stilled
In worship man hath lost;
The old-world myths that science killed
Are living things almost
To me through these whose forms are...

Atoms as old as stars,
Mutation on mutation,
Millions and millions of cells
Dividing yet still the same,
From air and changing earth,
From ancient Eastern rivers,
From turquoise tropic seas,
Unto myself I came.

My spirit like my flesh
Sprang from a thousand sources,
From cave-man, hunter and shepherd,
From Karnak, Cyprus, Rome;

The living thoughts in me
Spring from dead men and women,
Forgotten time out of mind
And many as bubbles of foam.

Here for a moment's space
Into the light out of darkness,
I come and they come with me
Finding words with my breath;

From the wisdom of many life-times
Seek for Beauty, she only
Fights with man against Death!"

Night of Mid-June, in heavy vapours dying,
Like priestly hands thy holy touch is lying
Upon the world's wide brow;
God-like and grand all nature is commanding
The "peace that passes human understanding";
I, also, feel it now.

What matters it to-night, if one life treasure
I covet, is not mine! Am I to measure
The gifts of Heaven's decree
By my desires? O! life for ever longing
For some far gift, where many gifts are thronging,
God wills, it may not be.

Am I to learn that longing, lifted higher,
Perhaps will catch the gleam of sacred fire
That shows my cross is gold?
That underneath this cross - however lowly,
A jewel rests, white, beautiful and holy,
Whose worth can not be told.

Like to a scene I watched one day in wonder: -
A ...

The shadow of Dawn;
Stillness and stars and over-mastering dreams
Of Life and Death and Sleep;
Heard over gleaming flats the old unchanging sound
Of the old unchanging Sea.

My soul and yours,
O hand in hand let us fare forth, two ghosts,
Into the ghostliness,
The infinite and abounding solitudes,
Beyond, O beyond! beyond . . .

Here in the porch
Upon the multitudinous silences
Of the kingdoms of the grave,
We twain are you and I, two ghosts Omnipotence
Can touch no more, no more!

'Tis a little room, my friend;
A baby-walk from end to end;
All the things look sadly real,
This hot noontide's Unideal.
Seek not refuge at the casement,
There's no pasture for amazement
But a house most dim and rusty,
And a street most dry and dusty;
Seldom here more happy vision
Than water-cart's blest apparition,
We'll shut out the staring space,
Draw the curtains in its face.

Close the eyelids of the room,
Fill it with a scarlet gloom:
Lo! the walls on every side
Are transformed and glorified;
Ceiled as with a rosy cloud
Furthest eastward of the crowd,
Blushing faintly at the bliss
Of the Titan's good-night kiss,
Which her westward sisters share,--
Crimson they from breast to hair.
'Tis the faintest lends its dye
To...

The unpretentious flowers of the woods,
That rise in bright and banded brotherhoods,
Waving us welcome, and with kisses sweet
Laying their lives down underneath our feet,
Lesson my soul more than the tomes of man,
Packed with the lore of ages, ever can,
In love and truth, hope and humility,
And such unselfishness as to the bee,
Lifting permissive petals dripping nard,
Yields every sweet up, asking no reward.

The many flowers of wood and field and stream,
Filling our hearts with wonder and with dream,
That know no ceremony, yet that are
Attended of such reverence as that star
That punctual point of flame, which, to our eyes,
Leads on the vast procession of the skies,
Sidereal silver, glittering in the west
Compels, assertive of heaven's loveliest.

        1.

        I TO myself have neither power nor worth,
        Patience nor love, nor anything right good;
        My soul is a poor land, plenteous in dearth--
        Here blades of grass, there a small herb for food--
        A nothing that would be something if it could;
        But if obedience, Lord, in me do grow,
        I shall one day be better than I know.

        2.

        The worst power of an evil mood is this--
        It makes the bastard self seem in the right,
        Self, self the end, the goal of human bliss.
        But if the Christ-self in us be the might
        Of saving God, why should I spend my force
        With a dark thing to reason of the light--
        Not push it rough aside, and hold obedient course?

    Hail Poesie! thou Nymph reserv'd!
    In chase o' thee, what crowds hae swerv'd
    Frae common sense, or sunk enerv'd
        'Mang heaps o' clavers;
    And och! o'er aft thy joes hae starv'd
        Mid a' thy favours!

    Say, Lassie, why thy train amang,
    While loud the trump's heroic clang,
    And sock or buskin skelp alang,
        To death or marriage;
    Scarce ane has tried the shepherd-sang
        But wi' miscarriage?

    In Homer's craft Jock Milton thrives;
    Eschylus' pen Will Shakspeare drives;
    Wee Pope, the knurlin, 'till him rives
        Horatian fame;
    In thy sweet sang, Barbauld, survives
        Even Sappho's flame.

    But thee, Theocritus, wha matches?
    They're no herd's ballats, Mar...

Up with me! up with me into the clouds!
For thy song, Lark, is strong;
Up with me, up with me into the clouds!
Singing, singing,
With clouds and sky about thee ringing,
Lift me, guide me till I find
That spot which seems so to thy mind!

I have walked through wildernesses dreary
And to-day my heart is weary;
Had I now the wings of a Faery,
Up to thee would I fly.
There is madness about thee, and joy divine
In that song of thine;
Lift me, guide me high and high
To thy banqueting-place in the sky.

Joyous as morning
Thou art laughing and scorning;
Thou hast a nest for thy love and thy rest,
And, though little troubled with sloth,
Drunken Lark! thou would'st be loth
To be such a traveller as I.
Happy, happy Liver,
With a so...

Thou who singest through the earth,
    All the earth's wild creatures fly thee,
Everywhere thou marrest mirth.
    Dumbly they defy thee.
There is something they deny thee.

Pines thy fallen nature ever
For the unfallen Nature sweet.
But she shuns thy long endeavour,
    Though her flowers and wheat
Throng and press thy pausing feet.

Though thou tame a bird to love thee,
Press thy face to grass and flowers,
All these things reserve above thee
    Secrets in the bowers,
Secrets in the sun and showers.

Sing thy sorrow, sing thy gladness.
In thy songs must wind and tree
Bear the fictions of thy sadness,
    Thy humanity.
For their truth is not for thee.

Wait, and many a secret nest,
Many a hoarded winter-store

SEVEN YEARS AFTER HIS DEATH

I shiver, Spirit fierce and bold,
At thought of what I now behold:
As vapours breathed from dungeons cold,
Strike pleasure dead,
So sadness comes from out the mould
Where Burns is laid.

And have I then thy bones so near,
And thou forbidden to appear?
As if it were thyself that's here
I shrink with pain;
And both my wishes and my fear
Alike are vain.

Off weight, nor press on weight! away
Dark thoughts! they came, but not to stay;
With chastened feelings would I pay
The tribute due
To him, and aught that hides his clay
From mortal view.

Fresh as the flower, whose modest worth
He sang, his genius "glinted" forth,
Rose like a star that touching earth,
For so it seems,
Doth glori...

Fragment of a Dream.--The great Painters supposed to be Magicians.--The Beginnings of the Art.--Gildings on the Glories and Draperies.-- Improvements under Giotto, etc.--The first Dawn of the true Style in Masaccio.--Studied by all the great Artists who followed him.--Leonardo da Vinci, with whom commenced the Golden Age of Painting.--His Knowledge of Mathematics and of Music.--His female heads all like each other.-- Triangular Faces.--Portraits of Mona Lisa, etc.--Picture of Vanity and Modesty.--His chef-d'oeuvre, the Last Supper.--Faded and almost effaced.


Filled with the wonders I had seen
    In Rome's stupendous shrines and halls,
I felt the veil of sleep serene
Come o'er the memory of each scene,
    As twilight o'er the landscape falls.
Nor was it slumber, sound and deep,