Go, Winter!    Go thy ways!    We want again
    The twitter of the bluebird and the wren;
    Leaves ever greener growing, and the shine
            Of Summer's sun - not thine. -

    Thy sun, which mocks our need of warmth and love
    And all the heartening fervencies thereof,
    It scarce hath heat enow to warm our thin
            Pathetic yearnings in.

    So get thee from us!    We are cold, God wot,
    Even as thou art. - We remember not
    How blithe we hailed thy coming. - That was O
            Too long - too long ago!

    Get from us utterly!    Ho!    Summer then
    Shall spread her grasses where thy snows have been,
    And thy last icy footprint melt and mold
            In her first marigold.

If I could put my woods in song
And tell what's there enjoyed,
All men would to my gardens throng,
And leave the cities void.

In my plot no tulips blow,--
Snow-loving pines and oaks instead;
And rank the savage maples grow
From Spring's faint flush to Autumn red.

My garden is a forest ledge
Which older forests bound;
The banks slope down to the blue lake-edge,
Then plunge to depths profound.

Here once the Deluge ploughed,
Laid the terraces, one by one;
Ebbing later whence it flowed,
They bleach and dry in the sun.

The sowers made haste to depart,--
The wind and the birds which sowed it;
Not for fame, nor by rules of art,
Planted these, and tempests flowed it.

Waters that wash my garden-side
Play not in Nat...

There seemed a smell of autumn in the air
At the bleak end of night; he shivered there
In a dank, musty dug-out where he lay,
Legs wrapped in sand-bags, - lumps of chalk and clay
Spattering his face. Dry-mouthed, he thought, "To-day
We start the damned attack; and, Lord knows why,
Zero's at nine; how bloody if I'm done in
Under the freedom of that morning sky!"
And then he coughed and dozed, cursing the din.

Was it the ghost of autumn in that smell
Of underground, or God's blank heart grown kind,
That sent a happy dream to him in hell? -
Where men are crushed like clods, and crawl to find
Some crater for their wretchedness; who lie
In outcast immolation, doomed to die
Far from clean things or any hope of cheer,
Cowed anger in their eyes, till darkness br...

Where the short-legged Esquimaux
Waddle in the ice and snow,
And the playful Polar bear
Nips the hunter unaware;
Where by day they track the ermine,
And by night another vermin,
Segment of the frigid zone,
Where the temperature alone
Warms on St. Elias’ cone;
Polar dock, where Nature slips
From the ways her icy ships;
Land of fox and deer and sable,
Shore end of our western cable,
Let the news that flying goes
Thrill through all your Arctic floes,
And reverberate the boast
From the cliffs off Beechey’s coast,
Till the tidings, circling round
Every bay of Norton Sound,
Throw the vocal tide-wave back
To the isles of Kodiac.
Let the stately Polar bears
Waltz around the pole in pairs,
And the walrus, in his glee,
Bare his tu...

Since I left the city's heat
For this sylvan, cool retreat,
High upon the hill-side here
Where the air is clean and clear,
I have lost the urban ways.
Mine are calm and tranquil days,
Sloping lawns of green are mine,
Clustered treasures of the vine;
Long forgotten plants I know,
Where the best wild berries grow,
Where the greens and grasses sprout,
When the elders blossom out.
Now I am grown weather-wise
With the lore of winds and skies.
Mine the song whose soft refrain
Is the sigh of summer rain.
Seek you where the woods are cool,
Would you know the shady pool
Where, throughout the lazy day,
Speckled beauties drowse or play?
Would you find in rest or peace
Sorrow's permanent release?--
Leave the city, grim and gray,
Come wit...

(Musa loquitur.)

I hung my verses in the wind,
Time and tide their faults may find.
All were winnowed through and through,
Five lines lasted sound and true;
Five were smelted in a pot
Than the South more fierce and hot;
These the siroc could not melt,
Fire their fiercer flaming felt,
And the meaning was more white
Than July's meridian light.
Sunshine cannot bleach the snow,
Nor time unmake what poets know.
Have you eyes to find the five
Which five hundred did survive?

"Some are born with a wooden spoon in their mouths,
and some with a golden ladle."        GOLDSMITH.

"Some are born with tin rings in their noses, and
with silver ones."                SILVERSMITH.


Who ruined me ere I was born,
Sold every acre, grass or corn,
And left the next heir all forlorn?
                    My Grandfather.

Who said my mother was no nurse.
And physicked me and made me worse,
Till infancy became a curse?
                    My Grandmother.

Who left me in my seventh year,
A comfort to my mother dear,
And Mr. Pope, the overseer?
                My Father.

Who let me starve, to buy her gin,
Till all my bones came through my skin,
Then called me "ugly little sin?"
                My Mother.

Ah, give again the pitiless snow and sleet
November's leaves, or raving winds, that beat
The heart's own doors, or rain's long ache and fret!
Only, not spring and all this delicate sweet!
Or not this vision of a girl, so set
In April grass, in April violet!

Quella fenestra, ove l' un sol si vede.

RECOLLECTIONS OF LOVE.


    That window where my sun is often seen
Refulgent, and the world's at morning's hours;
And that, where Boreas blows, when winter lowers,
And the short days reveal a clouded scene;
That bench of stone where, with a pensive mien,
My Laura sits, forgetting beauty's powers;
Haunts where her shadow strikes the walls or flowers,
And her feet press the paths or herbage green:
The place where Love assail'd me with success;
And spring, the fatal time that, first observed,
Revives the keen remembrance every year;
With looks and words, that o'er me have preserved
A power no length of time can render less,
Call to my eyes the sadly-soothing tear.

PENN.


    Tha...

I.

Just for a handful of silver he left us,
Just for a riband to stick in his coat
Found the one gift of which fortune bereft us,
Lost all the others she lets us devote;
They, with the gold to give, doled him out silver,
So much was theirs who so little allowed:
How all our copper had gone for his service!
Rags were they purple, his heart had been proud!
We that had loved him so, followed him, honoured him,
Lived in his mild and magnificent eye,
Learned his great language, caught his clear accents,
Made him our pattern to live and to die!
Shakespeare was of us, Milton was for us,
Burns, Shelley, were with us, they watch from their graves!
He alone breaks from the van and the free-men,
He alone sinks to the rear and the slaves!

II.

W...

Spring's sweets they are not fled, though Summer's blossom
Has met its blight of sadness, drooping low;
Still flowers gone by find beds in memory's bosom,
Life's nursling buds among the weeds of woe.
Each pleasing token of Spring's early morning
Warms with the pleasures which we once did know;
Each little stem the leafy bank adorning,
Reminds of joys from infancy that flow.
Spring's early heralds on the winter smiling,
That often on their errands meet their doom,
Primrose and daisy, dreary hours beguiling,
Smile o'er my pleasures past whene'er they come;
And the speckt throstle never wakes his song,
But Life's past Spring seems melting from his tongue.

"How shall I be a poet?
How shall I write in rhyme?
You told me once 'the very wish
Partook of the sublime.'
The tell me how! Don't put me off
With your 'another time'!"

The old man smiled to see him,
To hear his sudden sally;
He liked the lad to speak his mind
Enthusiastically;
And thought "There's no hum-drum in him,
Nor any shilly-shally."

"And would you be a poet
Before you've been to school?
Ah, well! I hardly thought you
So absolute a fool.
First learn to be spasmodic,
A very simple rule.

"For first you write a sentence,
And then you chop it small;
Then mix the bits, and sort them out
Just as they chance to fall:
The order of the phrases makes
No difference at all.

'Then, if you'd be impress...

The day is cold, and dark, and dreary
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
The vine still clings to the mouldering wall,
But at every gust the dead leaves fall,
        And the day is dark and dreary.

My life is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
My thoughts still cling to the mouldering Past,
But the hopes of youth fall thick in the blast,
        And the days are dark and dreary.

Be still, sad heart! and cease repining;
Behind the clouds is the sun still shining;
Thy fate is the common fate of all,
Into each life some rain must fall,
        Some days must be dark and dreary.

Why should we dream of days gone by?
    Why should we wait and wonder?
Sweet summer days have come and gone,
    The leaves are falling yonder.

The wee sweet flowers we loved the best,
    The king of frost has chosen;
And now the sun looks sadly down
    Upon his darlings frozen.

Ah! summer sun and autumn frost,
    You are at war forever;
For all the ties that one would make
    The other fain would sever.

With autumn days remembrance comes
    Of golden glories fleeting;
Of pleasures gone and sorrows come--
    Of parting and of meeting.

Oh! summer days, why haunt us still?
    Remembrance is a sorrow;
And all the dreams we dream to-day
    Will fade upon the morrow.

Each life has some sweet summer-time,

Written during a severe Winter.


Why, trembling, silent, wand'rer! why,
From me and Pity do you fly?
Your little heart against your plumes
Beats hard - ah! dreary are these glooms!
Famine has chok'd the note of joy
That charm'd the roving shepherd-boy.
Why, wand'rer, do you look so shy?
And why, when I approach you, fly?
The crumbs which at your feet I strew
Are only meant to nourish you;
They are not thrown with base decoy,
To rob you of one hour of joy.
Come, follow to my silent mill,
That stands beneath yon snow-clad hill;
There will I house your trembling form,
There shall your shiv'ring breast be warm:
And, when your little heart grows strong,
I'll ask you for your simple song;
And, when you will not tarry more,
Open ...

I heard them in their sadness say,
    "The earth rebukes the thought of God:
We are but embers wrapt in clay
    A little nobler than the sod."

But I have touched the lips of clay--
    Mother, thy rudest sod to me
Is thrilled with fire of hidden day,
    And haunted by all mystery.

--May 15, 1894

Il cantar novo e 'l pianger degli augelli.

MORNING.


    The birds' sweet wail, their renovated song,
At break of morn, make all the vales resound;
With lapse of crystal waters pouring round,
In clear, swift runnels, the fresh shores among.
She, whose pure passion knows nor guile nor wrong,
With front of snow, with golden tresses crown'd,
Combing her aged husband's hoar locks found,
Wakes me when sportful wakes the warbling throng.
Thus, roused from sleep, I greet the dawning day,
And its succeeding sun, with one more bright,
Still dazzling, as in early youth, my sight:
Both suns I've seen at once uplift their ray;
This drives the radiance of the stars away,
But that which gilds my life eclipses e'en his light.

NOTT.

O ye dead Poets, who are living still
    Immortal in your verse, though life be fled,
    And ye, O living Poets, who are dead
    Though ye are living, if neglect can kill,
Tell me if in the darkest hours of ill,
    With drops of anguish falling fast and red
    From the sharp crown of thorns upon your head,
    Ye were not glad your errand to fulfil?
Yes; for the gift and ministry of Song
    Have something in them so divinely sweet,
    It can assuage the bitterness of wrong;
Not in the clamor of the crowded street,
    Not in the shouts and plaudits of the throng,
    But in ourselves, are triumph and defeat.