("Enfants! Oh! revenez!")

[XXII, April, 1837]


Children, come back - come back, I say -
You whom my folly chased away
A moment since, from this my room,
With bristling wrath and words of doom!
What had you done, you bandits small,
With lips as red as roses all?
What crime? - what wild and hapless deed?
What porcelain vase by you was split
To thousand pieces? Did you need
For pastime, as you handled it,
Some Gothic missal to enrich
With your designs fantastical?
Or did your tearing fingers fall
On some old picture? Which, oh, which
Your dreadful fault? Not one of these;
Only when left yourselves to please
This morning but a moment here
'Mid papers tinted by my mind
You took some embryo verses near -
Half formed, ...

    Dawn has flashed up the startled skies,
    Night has gone out beneath the hill
    Many sweet times; before our eyes
    Dawn makes and unmakes about us still
    The magic that we call the rose.
    The gentle history of the rain
    Has been unfolded, traced and lost
    By the sharp finger-tips of frost;
    Birds in the hawthorn build again;
    The hare makes soft her secret house;
    The wind at tourney comes and goes,
    Spurring the green, unharnessed boughs;
    The moon has waxed fierce and waned dim:
    He knew the beauty of all those
    Last year, and who remembers him?

    Love sometimes walks the waters still,
    Laughter throws back her radiant head;
    Utterly beauty is not gone,
    And wonder is not wholly dead.

The Noon-Sun prayed a prairie rose
To blanch for him her blossom's hue,
But to the Plain all love she owes;
Beneath that mother's grass she grew.

And sheltered by her verdant blades,
Their tints of green she made her own;
But still the Sun sought out her shades
And said, "Be my white bride alone!"

Then, sorrowing for his grievous pain,
Her sister loved the amorous god,
And blushed, ashamed, as o'er the plain
His parting beams illumed the sod.

So one sweet rose yet wears the green,
And one in sunset's crimson glows;
Still one untouched by love is seen,
And one in conscious beauty blows.

    I.

    Night, with her power to silence day,
        Filled up my lonely room,
    Quenching all sounds but one that lay
        Beyond her passing doom,
    Where in his shed a workman gay
        Went on despite the gloom.

    I listened, and I knew the sound,
        And the trade that he was plying;
    For backwards, forwards, bound on bound,
        A shuttle was flying, flying--
    Weaving ever--till, all unwound,
        The weft go out a sighing.


    II.

    As hidden in thy chamber lowest
        As in the sky the lark,
    Thou, mystic thing, on working goest
        Without the poorest spark,
    And yet light's garment round me throwest,
        Who else, as thou, were dark.

    With bod...

Darling little woman, just a little line,
Just a little silver word
For that dear gold of thine,
Only a whisper you have so often heard:

Only such a whisper as hidden in a shell
Holds a little breath of all the mighty sea,
But think what a little of all its depth and swell,
And think what a little is this little note of me.

'Darling, I love thee, that is all I live for' -
There is the whisper stealing from the shell,
But here is the ocean, O so deep and boundless,
And each little wave with its whisper as well.

Breathless was she and would not have us part:
"Adieu, my Saint," I said, "'tis come to this."
But she leaned to me, one hand at her heart,
And all her soul sighed trembling in a kiss.

With sweet Regret—(the dearest thing that Yesterday has left us)—
We often turn our homeless eyes to scenes whence Fate has reft us.
Here sitting by a fading flame, wild waifs of song remind me
Of Annie with her gentle ways, the Girl I left behind me.

I stood beside the surging sea, with lips of silent passion—
I faced you by the surging sea, O brows of mild repression!
I never said—“My darling, stay!”—the moments seemed to bind me
To something stifling all my words for the Girl I left behind me.

The pathos worn by common things—by every wayside flower,
Or Autumn leaf on lonely winds, revives the parting hour.
Ye swooning thoughts without a voice—ye tears which rose to blind me,
Why did she fade into the Dark, the Girl I left behind me.

At night they always come...

The spirit of beautiful faces,
The light on the forehead of Love,
And the spell of past visited places,
And the songs and the sweetness thereof;
These, touched by a hand that is hoary;
These, vext with a tune of decay,
Are spoiled of their glow and their glory;
And the burden is, “Passing away!
Passing away!”

Old years and their changes come trooping
At nightfall to you and to me,
When Autumn sits faded and drooping
By the sorrowful waves of the sea.
Faint phantoms that float in the gloaming,
Return with the whispers that say,
“The end which is quiet is coming;
Ye are weary, and passing away!
Passing away!”

It is hard to awake and discover
The swiftness that waits upon Time;
But youth and its beauty are over,
And Love has a...

    Dear are some hidden things
            My soul has sealed in silence; past delights,
    Hope unconfessed; desires with hampered wings,
            Remembered in the nights.

    But my best treasures are
            Ignoble, undelightful, abject, cold;
    Yet O! profounder hoards oracular
            No reliquaries hold.

    There lie my trespasses,
            Abjured but not disowned.    I’ll not accuse
    Determinism, nor, as the Master {26} says,
            Charge even "the poor Deuce."

    Under my hand they lie,
            My very own, my proved iniquities,
    And though the glory of my life go by
            I hold and garner these.

    How else, how otherwhere.
            How otherwise, shall I discern and grope<...

With changeful sound life beats upon the ear;
Yet striving for release
The most delighting string's
Sweet jargonings,
The happiest throat's
Most easeful, lovely notes
Fall back into a veiling silentness.

Even 'mid the rumour of a moving host,
Blackening the clear green earth,
Vainly 'gainst that thin wall
The trumpets call,
Or with loud hum
The smoke-bemuffled drum:
From that high quietness no reply comes forth.

When all at peace, two friends at ease alone
Talk out their hearts, - yet still,
Between the grace-notes of
The voice of love
From each to each
Trembles a rarer speech,
And with its presence every pause doth fill.

Unmoved it broods, this all-encompassing hush
Of one who stooping near,
No smallest sti...

Omit, omit, my simple friend,
Still to inquire how parties tend,
Or what we fix with foreign powers.
If France and we are really friends,
And what the Russian Czar intends,
Is no concern of ours.

Us not the daily quickening race
Of the invading populace
Shall draw to swell that shouldering herd.
Mourn will we not your closing hour,
Ye imbeciles in present power,
Doom’d, pompous, and absurd!

And let us bear, that they debate
Of all the engine-work of state,
Of commerce, laws, and policy,
The secrets of the world’s machine,
And what the rights of man may mean,
With readier tongue than we.

Only, that with no finer art
They cloak the troubles of the heart
With pleasant smile, let us take care;
Nor with a lighter hand disp...

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...

She sung of Love, while o'er her lyre
    The rosy rays of evening fell,
As if to feed with their soft fire
    The soul within that trembling shell.
The same rich light hung o'er her cheek,
    And played around those lips that sung
And spoke, as flowers would sing and speak,
    If Love could lend their leaves a tongue.

But soon the West no longer burned,
    Each rosy ray from heaven withdrew;
And, when to gaze again I turned,
    The minstrel's form seemed fading too.
As if her light and heaven's were one,
    The glory all had left that frame;
And from her glimmering lips the tone,
    As from a parting spirit, came.

Who ever loved, but had the thought
    That he and all he loved must part?
Filled with this fear, I flew and c...

To venerate the simple days
Which lead the seasons by,
Needs but to remember
That from you or me
They may take the trifle
Termed mortality!

To invest existence with a stately air,
Needs but to remember
That the acorn there
Is the egg of forests
For the upper air!

    "O last days of the year!" she whispered low,
    "You fly too swiftly past. Ah, you might stay
    A while, a little while. Do you not know
    What tender things you bear with you away?

    "I'm thinking, sitting in the soft gloom here,
    Of all the riches that were mine the day
    There crept down on the world the soft New Year,
    A rosy thing with promise filled, and gay.

    "But twelve short months ago! a little space
    In which to lose so much - a whole life's wealth
    Of love and faith, youth and youth's tender grace -
    Things that are wont to go from us by stealth.

    "Laughter and blushes, and the rapture strong,
    The clasp of clinging hands, the ling'ring kiss,
    The joy of living, and the glorious song
    That dr...

Eileen of four,
Eileen of smiles;
Eileen of five,
Eileen of tears;
Eileen of ten, of fifteen years,
Eileen of youth
And woman's wiles;
Eileen of twenty,
In love's land,
Eileen all tender
In her bliss,
Untouched by sorrow's treacherous kiss,
And the sly weapon in life's hand, -
Eileen aroused to share all fate,
Eileen a wife,
Pale, beautiful,
Eileen most grave
And dutiful,
Mourning her dreams in queenly state.
Eileen! Eileen!....

The friends that are, and friends that were,
What shallow waves divide!
I miss the form for many a year
Still seated at my side.

I miss him, yet I feel him still
Amidst our faithful band,
As if not death itself could chill
The warmth of friendship's hand.

His story other lips may tell, -
For me the veil is drawn;
I only knew he loved me well,
He loved me - and is gone!

What of our life when this frail flesh lies low
A withered clod, and the free soul has burst
Through the world-fetters? Not of souls accursed
With cherished lusts that mar them, those who sow
Evil and reap the harvest, and who bow
At Mammon's golden shrine, but those who thirst
For Truth, and see not, - spirits deep immersed
In doubt and trouble, - hearts that fain would know?

The soul is satisfied. The spirit trained
For the divine, because the beautiful,
Now with the body gone, free and unstained,
Doubts swept away like clouds of scattering wool
Before a blast, - e'er Heaven's pure paths are trod
Is perfected to understand its God.