Earth hath her images of utterance,
Her hieroglyphic meanings which elude;
A symbol language of similitude,
Into whose secrets science may not glance;
In which the Mind-in-Nature doth romance
In miracles that baffle if pursued
No guess shall search them and no thought intrude
Beyond the limits of her sufferance.
So doth the great Intelligence above
Hide His own thought's creations; and attire
Forms in the dream's ideal, which He dowers
With immaterial loveliness and love
As essences of fragrance and of fire
Preaching th' evangels of the stars and flowers.

        You remember the nursery legend
            We heard in the early days,
        Ere we knew of the world's deception
            Or walked in its dusty ways,
        And dwelt in a land of the fairies
            Where the air was golden haze

        Of the maid, o'er whom the Summers
            Of youth passed, like a swell
        Of melody all unbroken,
            Till evil wrought its spell,
        And dream-embroidered curtains
            Of slumber round her fell.

        The wood grew up round her castle,
            The centuries o'er it rolled,
        Wrapping its slumb'rous turrets
            In clinging robes of mould,
        And her name became a legend
            By Winter fire-sides told.

        Till t...

As the caged eagle neared the mountain range,
O'er which he oft had soared on pinions strong,
He clapped his wings, moved by some impulse strange,
And then fell dead his prison floor along.

So Moses stood on Pisgah's heights alone,
With sight undimmed, and unabated strength;
He gazed with rapture on the vision shown,
Of the fair land in all its breadth and length;

He saw the vale of Eschol clad with vine,
Mount Libbanus adorned with lordly trees,
Gilead and Achor, with their lowing kine,
And verdant Sharon swept by the sea breeze;

He saw the spot where Jacob's ladder stood,
The oaks at Mamre where their father prayed,
Saw Bashan with its pastures and its wood,
And the rude cave where Abram Sarah laid.

Saw the whole land--its hills and v...

Long I followed happy guides,
I could never reach their sides;
Their step is forth, and, ere the day
Breaks up their leaguer, and away.
Keen my sense, my heart was young,
Right good-will my sinews strung,
But no speed of mine avails
To hunt upon their shining trails.
On and away, their hasting feet
Make the morning proud and sweet;
Flowers they strew,--I catch the scent;
Or tone of silver instrument
Leaves on the wind melodious trace;
Yet I could never see their face.
On eastern hills I see their smokes,
Mixed with mist by distant lochs.
I met many travellers
Who the road had surely kept;
They saw not my fine revellers,--
These had crossed them while they slept.
Some had heard their fair report,
In the country or the court.
Fleete...

It is Isis the mystery
Must be in love with me.

Here this round ball of earth
Where all the mountains sit
Solemn in groups,
And the bright rivers flit
Round them for girth.

Here the trees and troops
Darken the shining grass,
And many people pass
Plundered from heaven,
Many bright people pass,
Plunder from heaven.

What of the mistresses
What the beloved seven?
- They were but witnesses,
I was just driven.

Where is there peace for me?
Isis the mystery
Must be in love with me.

    I am a certain god
    Who slipped down from a remote height
    To a place of pools and stars.
    And I sat invisible
    Amid a clump of trees
    To watch the madmen.

    There were cries and groans about me,
    And shouts of laughter and curses.
    Figures passed by with self-absorbed contempt,
    Wrinkling in bitter smiles about their lips.
    Others hurried on with set eyes
    Pursuing something.
    Then I said this is the place for mad Frederick -
    Mad Frederick will be here.

    But everywhere I could see
    Figures sitting or standing
    By little pools.
    Some seemed grown into the soil
    And were helpless.
    And of these some were asleep.
    Others laughed the laughter
    That comes from d...

Singing, as if enamour'd, she resum'd
And clos'd the song, with "Blessed they whose sins
Are cover'd." Like the wood-nymphs then, that tripp'd
Singly across the sylvan shadows, one
Eager to view and one to 'scape the sun,
So mov'd she on, against the current, up
The verdant rivage. I, her mincing step
Observing, with as tardy step pursued.

Between us not an hundred paces trod,
The bank, on each side bending equally,
Gave me to face the orient. Nor our way
Far onward brought us, when to me at once
She turn'd, and cried: "My brother! look and hearken."
And lo! a sudden lustre ran across
Through the great forest on all parts, so bright
I doubted whether lightning were abroad;
But that expiring ever in the spleen,
That doth unfold it, and this during st...

If the wind and the sunlight of April and August had mingled the past and hereafter
In a single adorable season whose life were a rapture of love and of laughter,
And the blithest of singers were back with a song; if again from his tomb as from prison,
If again from the night or the twilight of ages Aristophanes had arisen,
With the gold-feathered wings of a bird that were also a god upon earth at his shoulders,
And the gold-flowing laugh of the manhood of old at his lips, for a joy to beholders,
He alone unrebuked of presumption were able to set to some adequate measure
The delight of our eyes in the dawn that restores them the sun of their sense and the pleasure.
For the days of the darkness of spirit are over for all of us here, and the season
When desire was a longing, and absence a thorn, ...

When the cock crows loud from the glen,
And the moor-cock chirrs from the heather,
What hear ye and see ye then,
Ye children of air and ether?

1st Echo.
                    A thunder as of waves at the rising of the moon,
                    And a darkness on the graves though the day is at its noon.

2nd Echo. A springing as of grass though the air is damp and chill,
    And a glimmer from the river that winds about the hill.

1st Echo. A lapse of crags that leant from the mountain's earthen
sheath,
    And a shock of ruin sent on the river underneath.

2nd Echo. A sound as of a building that groweth fair and good,
    And a piping of the thrushes from the hollow of the wood.

1st Echo. A wailing as of lambs ...

The mighty ocean rolls and raves,
To part us with its angry waves;
But arch on arch from shore to shore,
In a vast fabric reaching o’er,

With careful labours daily wrought
By steady hope and tender thought,
The wide and weltering waste above,
Our hearts have bridged it with their love.

There fond anticipations fly
To rear the growing structure high;
Dear memories upon either side
Combine to make it large and wide.

There, happy fancies day by day,
New courses sedulously lay;
There soft solicitudes, sweet fears,
And doubts accumulate, and tears.

While the pure purpose of the soul,
To form of many parts a whole,
To make them strong and hold them true,
From end to end, is carried through.

Then when the waters war b...

While we slumber and sleep,
The sun leaps up from the deep, -
Daylight born at the leap, -
Rapid, dominant, free,
Athirst to bathe in the uttermost sea.

While we linger at play -
If the year would stand at May! -
Winds are up and away,
Over land, over sea,
To their goal, wherever their goal may be.

It is time to arise,
To race for the promised prize;
The sun flies, the wind flies,
We are strong, we are free,
And home lies beyond the stars and the sea.

    Friend, old friend in the Manse by the fireside sitting,
        Hour by hour while the grey ash drips from the log;
    You with a book on your knee, your wife with her knitting,
    Silent both, and between you, silent, the dog.

    Silent here in the south sit I; and, leaning,
        One sits watching the fire, with chin upon hand;
    Gazes deep in its heart--but ah! its meaning
        Rather I read in the shadows and understand.

    Dear, kind she is; and daily dearer, kinder,
        Love shuts the door on the lamp and our two selves:

Not my stirring awakened the flame that behind her
        Lit up a face in the leathern dusk of the shelves.

    Veterans are my books, with tarnished gilding:
        Yet there is one gives back to the wint...

& R Fenton Gower

The merchant Abu Khan shunned the customs of his race,
And sought the cultured wisdom of the West.
His daughter fair Leola had the desert’s supple grace,
With an English education of the best.

The suitors for her hand were as grains of desert sand
But the merchant bade the Arab swarm begone:
And he swore a mighty oath, she should only make troth
With an Englishman an Englishman or none!

The chieftain Ben Kamir, tho’ rejected, stayed to plead,
But Abu Khan replied, ‘Thy suit is vain.
I cast aside my kinsmen and I scorn the prophet’s creed;
So get thee to thy tents, across the plain.’

‘Enough,’ the Chief replied, ‘Thine eyes are blind with pride,
But Allah hears my prayers and guides my star,
With patience I shall w...

The highest marble Sorrow vanishes
Before a weeping child.[2] The one doth seem,
The other is. And wherefore do we dream,
But that we live? So I rejoice in this,
That Thou didst cast Thyself, in all the bliss
Of conscious strength, into Life's torrent stream,
(Thy deeds fresh life-springs that with blessings teem)
Acting, not painting rainbows o'er its hiss.
Forgive me, Lord, if in these verses lie
Mean thoughts, and stains of my infirmity;
Full well I know that if they were as high
In holy song as prophet's ecstasy,
'Tis more to Thee than this, if I, ah me!
Speak gently to a child for love of Thee.

Out of the golden remote wild west where the sea without shore is,
Full of the sunset, and sad, if at all, with the fulness of joy,
As a wind sets in with the autumn that blows from the region of stories,
Blows with a perfume of songs and of memories beloved from a boy,
Blows from the capes of the past oversea to the bays of the present,
Filled as with shadow of sound with the pulse of invisible feet,
Far out to the shallows and straits of the future, by rough ways or pleasant,
Is it thither the wind’s wings beat? is it hither to me, O my sweet?
For thee, in the stream of the deep tide-wind blowing in with the water,
Thee I behold as a bird borne in with the wind from the west,
Straight from the sunset, across white waves whence rose as a daughter
Venus thy mother, in years when the w...

The sunshine of thy Father's fame
Sleeps in the shadows of thy eyes,
And flashes sometimes when his name
Like a lost star seeks its skies.

In the horizons of thy heart
His memory shines for aye,
A light that never shall depart
Nor lose a single ray.

Thou passest thro' the crowds unknown,
So gentle, so sweet, and so shy;
Thy heart throbs fast and sometimes may grow low;
                    Then alone
Art the star in thy Father's sky.

'Tis fame enough for thee to bear his name --
Thou couldst not ask for more;
Thou art the jewel of thy Father's fame,
He waiteth on the bright and golden shore;
He prayeth in the great Eternity
Beside God's throne for thee.

God has his plans, and what if we
With our sight be too blind to see
Their full fruition; cannot he,
Who made it, solve the mystery?
One whom we loved has fall'n asleep,
Not died; although her calm be deep,
Some new, unknown, and strange surprise
In Heaven holds enrapt her eyes.

And can you blame her that her gaze
Is turned away from earthly ways,
When to her eyes God's light and love
Have giv'n the view of things above?
A gentle spirit sweetly good,
The pearl of precious womanhood;
Who heard the voice of duty clear,
And found her mission soon and near.

She loved all nature, flowers fair,
The warmth of sun, the kiss of air,
The birds that filled the sky with song,
The stream that laughed its way along.
Her home to her was shrine...

1.
Arethusa arose
From her couch of snows
In the Acroceraunian mountains, -
From cloud and from crag,
With many a jag,
Shepherding her bright fountains.
She leapt down the rocks,
With her rainbow locks
Streaming among the streams; -
Her steps paved with green
The downward ravine
Which slopes to the western gleams;
And gliding and springing
She went, ever singing,
In murmurs as soft as sleep;
The Earth seemed to love her,
And Heaven smiled above her,
As she lingered towards the deep.

2.
Then Alpheus bold,
On his glacier cold,
With his trident the mountains strook;
And opened a chasm
In the rocks - with the spasm
All Erymanthus shook.
And the black south wind
It unsealed behind
The urns of the sil...