Too frail to keep the lofty vow
That must have followed when his brow
Was wreathed, "The Vision" tells us how
With holly spray,
He faltered, drifted to and fro,
And passed away.

Well might such thoughts, dear Sister, throng
Our minds when, lingering all too long,
Over the grave of Burns we hung
In social grief
Indulged as if it were a wrong
To seek relief.

But, leaving each unquiet theme
Where gentlest judgments may misdeem,
And prompt to welcome every gleam
Of good and fair,
Let us beside this limpid Stream
Breathe hopeful air.

Enough of sorrow, wreck, and blight;
Think rather of those moments bright
When to the consciousness of right
His course was true,
When Wisdom prospered in his sight
And virtue grew.<...

I.

O roads, O paths, O ways that lead
Through woods where all the oak-trees bleed
With autumn! and the frosty reds
Of fallen leaves make whispering beds
For winds to toss and turn upon,
Like restless Care that can not sleep,
Beneath whose rustling tatters wan
The last wildflow'r is buried deep:
One way of all I love to wend,
That towards the golden sunset goes,
A way, o'er which the red leaf blows,
With an old gateway at its end,
Where Summer, that my soul o'erflows,
My summer of love, blooms like a wildwood rose.

II.

O winter ways, when spears of ice
Arm every bough! and in a vice
Of iron frost the streams are held;
When, where the deadened oak was felled
For firewood, deep the snow and sleet,
Where lone the muffled ...

I have enough treasures from the past
to last me longer than I need, or want.
You know as well as I . . . malevolent memory
won't let go of half of them:
a modest church, with its gold cupola
slightly askew; a harsh chorus
of crows; the whistle of a train;
a birch tree haggard in a field
as if it had just been sprung from jail;
a secret midnight conclave
of monumental Bible-oaks;
and a tiny rowboat that comes drifting out
of somebody's dreams, slowly foundering.
Winter has already loitered here,
lightly powdering these fields,
casting an impenetrable haze
that fills the world as far as the horizon.
I used to think that after we are gone
there's nothing, simply nothing at all.
Then who's that wandering by the porch
again and calling us by na...

When you had played with life a space
    And made it drink and lust and sing,
You flung it back into God's face
    And thought you did a noble thing.
"Lo, I have lived and loved," you said,
    "And sung to fools too dull to hear me.
Now for a cool and grassy bed
    With violets in blossom near me."

Well, rest is good for weary feet,
    Although they ran for no great prize;
And violets are very sweet,
    Although their roots are in your eyes.
But hark to what the earthworms say
    Who share with you your muddy haven:
"The fight was on -- you ran away.
    You are a coward and a craven.

"The rug is ruined where you bled;
    It was a dirty way to die!
To put a bullet through your head
    And make a silly woman cry!
You cou...

Dimly and dumbly under the ground,
Groping the walls of their prison round,
The roots of the aged and garrulous trees
Are sending electrical messages
    From the under-world to the world without
And quickening pulses that course in each
    Fettered and bound and frozen thing,
Rootlets that tremble, and fibres that reach
    Are pushing inanimate fingers out,
To ask further inarticulate speech
        For tidings of Spring

And the fine invisible sprite which dwells
In cups and discs, in blossoms and bells,
Fleeter than Ariel's wing hath flown
Beyond this cloudy and frozen zone,
    To the summer land of the South,
Beyond those rugged sentinels
Which winter seta in the snow-capped hills,
    From the breath of whose cruel mouth,
Sighing, t...

No brigadier throughout the year
So civic as the jay.
A neighbor and a warrior too,
With shrill felicity

Pursuing winds that censure us
A February day,
The brother of the universe
Was never blown away.

The snow and he are intimate;
I 've often seen them play
When heaven looked upon us all
With such severity,

I felt apology were due
To an insulted sky,
Whose pompous frown was nutriment
To their temerity.

The pillow of this daring head
Is pungent evergreens;
His larder -- terse and militant --
Unknown, refreshing things;

His character a tonic,
His future a dispute;
Unfair an immortality
That leaves this neighbor out.

    A month or twain to live on honeycomb
    Is pleasant, but to eat it for a year
    Is simply beastly.    Thus the poet spake,
    Feeling how sticky all his stomach was
    With hivings of ten thousand cheated bees.
    O wisdom that could shape immortal words
    And frame a diet for dyspeptic man!
    But what of turnips?    Come, a lyric now
    Upon the luscious roots unsung as yet,
    (Not roots I know but stalks; still, never mind,
    Metre and sauce will suit them just as well)
    Or shall we speak of omelettes?    Muse, begin!
    To feed a fortnight on transmuted eggs
    Would doubtless be both comforting and cheap
    But oh, the nausea on the fourteenth day!
    I'd rather read a book by Ezra Pound
    Then choke the seven hundredth omelett...

Along the hard crust of deep snows,
To the secret, white house of yours,
So gentle and quiet – we both
Are walking, in silence half-lost.
And sweeter than all songs, sung ever,
Are this dream, becoming the truth,
Entwined twigs’ a-nodding with favor,
The light ring of your silver spurs...

Friend of my peaceful days! substantial friend,
Whom wealth can never change, nor int'rest bend,
I love thee like a child. Thou wert to me
The dumb companion of my misery,
And oftner of my joys; - then as I spoke,
I shar'd thy sympathy, Old Heart of Oak!
For surely when my labour ceas'd at night,
With trembling, feverish hands, and aching sight,
The draught that cheer'd me and subdu'd my care,
On thy broad shoulders thou wert proud to bear
O'er thee, with expectation's fire elate,
I've sat and ponder'd on my future fate:
On thee, with winter muffins for thy store,
I've lean'd, and quite forgot that I was poor.

Where dropp'd the acorn that gave birth to thee?
Can'st thou trace back thy line of ancestry?
We're match'd, old friend, and let us not repine,

Sigh on, sad heart, for Love's eclipse
And Beauty's fairest queen,
Though 'tis not for my peasant lips
To soil her name between:
A king might lay his sceptre down,
But I am poor and nought,
The brow should wear a golden crown
That wears her in its thought.

The diamonds glancing in her hair,
Whose sudden beams surprise,
Might bid such humble hopes beware
The glancing of her eyes;
Yet looking once, I look'd too long,
And if my love is sin,
Death follows on the heels of wrong,
And kills the crime within.

Her dress seem'd wove of lily leaves,
It was so pure and fine,
O lofty wears, and lowly weaves, -
But hodden-gray is mine;
And homely hose must step apart,
Where garter'd princes stand,
But may he wear my love at heart

Rude is this Edifice, and Thou hast seen
Buildings, albeit rude, that have maintained
Proportions more harmonious, and approached
To closer fellowship with ideal grace.
But take it in good part: alas! the poor
Vitruvius of our village had no help
From the great City; never, upon leaves
Of red Morocco folio, saw displayed,
In long succession, pre-existing ghosts
Of Beauties yet unborn the rustic Lodge
Antique, and Cottage with verandah graced,
Nor lacking, for fit company, alcove,
Green-house, shell-grot, and moss-lined hermitage.
Thou see'st a homely Pile, yet to these walls
The heifer comes in the snow-storm, and here
The new-dropped lamb finds shelter from the wind.
And hither does one Poet sometimes row
His pinnace, a small vagrant barge, up-piled

Your ghost will walk, you lover of trees,
(If our loves remain)
In an English lane,
By a cornfield-side a-flutter with poppies.
Hark, those two in the hazel coppice
A boy and a girl, if the good fates please,
Making love, say,
The happier they!
Draw yourself up from the light of the moon,
And let them pass, as they will too soon,
With the bean-flowers’ boon,
And the blackbird’s tune,
And May, and June!


What I love best in all the world
Is a castle, precipice-encurled,
In a gash of the wind-grieved Apennine
Or look for me, old fellow of mine,
(If I get my head from out the mouth
O’ the grave, and loose my spirit’s bands,
And come again to the land of lands)
In a sea-side house to the farther South,
Where the baked cicala die...

I went in the fields with the leisure I got,
The stranger might smile but I heeded him not,
The hovel was ready to screen from a shower,
And the book in my pocket was read in an hour.

The bird came for shelter, but soon flew away;
The horse came to look, and seemed happy to stay;
He stood up in quiet, and hung down his head,
And seemed to be hearing the poem I read.

The ploughman would turn from his plough in the day
And wonder what being had come in his way,
To lie on a molehill and read the day long
And laugh out aloud when he'd finished his song.

The pewit turned over and stooped oer my head
Where the raven croaked loud like the ploughman ill-bred,
But the lark high above charmed me all the day long,
So I sat down and joined in the chorus of so...

    I.

    Back shining from the pane, the fire
    Seems outside in the snow:
    So love set free from love's desire
    Lights grief of long ago.

    The dark is thinned with snow-sheen fine,
    The earth bedecked with moon;
    Out on the worlds we surely shine
    More radiant than in June!

    In the white garden lies a heap
    As brown as deep-dug mould:
    A hundred partridges that keep
    Each other from the cold.

    My father gives them sheaves of corn,
    For shelter both and food:
    High hope in me was early born,
    My father was so good.


    II.

    The frost weaves ferns and sultry palms
    Across my clouded pane;
    Weaves melodies of ancient psalms
    All through my...

I could hear a gown-skirt rustling
Before I could see her shape,
Rustling through the heather
That wove the common's drape,
On that evening of dark weather
When I hearkened, lips agape.

And the town-shine in the distance
Did but baffle here the sight,
And then a voice flew forward:
Dear, is't you? I fear the night!"
And the herons flapped to norward
In the firs upon my right.

There was another looming
Whose life we did not see;
There was one stilly blooming
Full nigh to where walked we;
There was a shade entombing
All that was bright of me.

The abode of the nightingale is bare,
Flowered frost congeals in the gelid air,
The fox howls from his frozen lair:
    Alas, my loved one is gone,
    I am alone:
    It is winter.

Once the pink cast a winy smell,
The wild bee hung in the hyacinth bell,
Light in effulgence of beauty fell:
    Alas, my loved one is gone,
    I am alone:
    It is winter.

My candle a silent fire doth shed,
Starry Orion hunts o'erhead;
Come moth, come shadow, the world is dead:
    Alas, my loved one is gone,
    I am alone:
    It is winter.

Put forth thy leaf, thou lofty plane,
East wind and frost are safely gone;
With zephyr mild and balmy rain
The summer comes serenly on;
Earth, air, and sun and skies combine
To promise all that's kind and fair: -
But thou, O human heart of mine,
Be still, contain thyself, and bear.

December days were brief and chill,
The winds of March were wild and drear,
And, nearing and receding still,
Spring never would, we thought, be here.
The leaves that burst, the suns that shine,
Had, not the less, their certain date: -
And thou, O human heart of mine,
Be still, refrain thyself, and wait.

This thing, that thing is the rage,
Helter-skelter runs the age;
Minds on this round earth of ours
Vary like the leaves and flowers,
Fashion’d after certain laws;
Sing thou low or loud or sweet,
All at all points thou canst not meet,
Some will pass and some will pause.

What is true at last will tell:
Few at first will place thee well;
Some too low would have thee shine,
Some too high—no fault of thine—
Hold thine own, and work thy will!
Year will graze the heel of year,
But seldom comes the poet here,
And the Critic’s rarer still.