Now would I be in that removèd place
        Where the dim sunlight hardly comes at all
        And branches of the young trees interlace
        And long swathes of the brambles twine and fall;
        A space between the hedgerow and a road
        Not trod by foot of any known to me,
        Where now and then a cart with scented load
    Goes sleepy down the lane with creaking axle-tree.

        And there I'd lie upon the tumbled leaves,
        Watching a square of the all else hidden sky,
        And made such songs a drowsy mind believes
        To be most perfect music.    So would I
    Keep my face heavenwards and bless eternity,
        Wherein my heart could be as glad as this
        And lazily I'd bid all men come hither
        And in m...

If thou art tempted by a thought of ill,
Crave not too soon for victory, nor deem
Thou art a coward if thy safety seem
To spring too little from a righteous will;
For there is nightmare on thee, nor until
Thy soul hath caught the morning's early gleam
Seek thou to analyze the monstrous dream
By painful introversion; rather fill
Thine eye with forms thou knowest to be truth;
But see thou cherish higher hope than this,--
hope hereafter that thou shall be fit
Calm-eyed to face distortion, and to sit
Transparent among other forms of youth
Who own no impulse save to God and bliss.

As evening falls,
And the yellow lights leap one by one
Along high walls;
And along black streets that glisten as if with rain,
The muted city seems
Like one in a restless sleep, who lies and dreams
Of vague desires, and memories, and half-forgotten pain . . .
Along dark veins, like lights the quick dreams run,
Flash, are extinguished, flash again,
To mingle and glow at last in the enormous brain
And die away . . .
As evening falls,
A dream dissolves these insubstantial walls,
A myriad secretly gliding lights lie bare . . .
The lovers rise, the harlot combs her hair,
The dead man’s face grows blue in the dizzy lamplight,
The watchman climbs the stair . . .
The bank defaulter leers at a chaos of figures,
And runs among them, and is beaten down;
T...

O rain, Summer Rain! forever,
    Out of the crystal spheres,
And cool from my brain the fever,
    And wash from my eyes the tears

Stir gently the blossoming clover,
    In the hollows dewy and deep,--
Somewhere they are blossoming over
    The spot where I shall sleep.

Asleep from this wearisome aching,
    With my arms crossed under my head,
I shall hear without awaking,
    The rain that blesses the dead.

And the ocean of man's existence,--
    The surges of toil and care,
Shall break and die in the distance,
    But never reach me there.

And yet--I fancy it often--
    I should stir in my shrouded sleep,
And struggle to rise in my coffin,
    If he came there to weep.

Among the dead--or the angels--
 ...

I'll tell thee why this weary world meseemeth
But as the visions light of one who dreameth,
Which pass like clouds, leaving no trace behind;
Why this strange life, so full of sin and folly,
In me awakeneth no melancholy,
Nor leaveth shade, or sadness, on my mind.
'Tis not that with an undiscerning eye
I see the pageant wild go dancing by,
Mistaking that which falsest is, for true;
'Tis not that pleasure hath entwined me,
'Tis not that sorrow hath enshrined me;
I bear no badge of roses or of rue,
But in the inmost chambers of my soul
There is another world, a blessed home,
O'er which no living power holdeth control,
Anigh to which ill things do never come.
There shineth the glad sunlight of clear thought,
With hope, and faith, holding communion high,
...

Some of the Wonders Told at the Great in the East of the World by the Voice of Philip the Apostle, that Was Like the Laughter of an Army, and With that No Louder than the Talk of Friend in the Ear of Friend;


I. The Seven Heavens


As to the Seven Heavens that are around the earth, the first of them is the bright cloudy heaven that is the nearest and that has shining out of it the moon and the scattering of stars.    Beyond that are two flaming heavens, angels are in them and the breaking loose of winds. Beyond those an ice-cold heaven, bluer than any blue, seven times colder than any snow, and it is out of that comes the shining of the sun. Two heavens there are above that again, bright like flame, and it is out of them shine the fiery stars that put fruitfulness in the clouds and in the sea. ...

Far reaching down's a solid sea sunk everlastingly to rest,
And yet whose billows seem to be for ever heaving toward the west
The tiny fieldmice make their nests, the summer insects buzz and hum
Among the hollows and the crests of this wide ocean stricken dumb,
Whose rollers move for ever on, though sullenly, with fettered wills,
To break in voiceless wrath upon the crumbled bases of far hills,
Where rugged outposts meet the shock, stand fast, and hurl them back again,
An avalanche of earth and rock, in tumbled fragments on the plain;
But, never heeding the rebuff, to right and left they kiss the feet
Of hanging cliff and bouldered bluff till on the farther side they meet,
And once again resume their march to where the afternoon sun dips
Toward the west, and Heaven's arch salutes the ...

Oh! say, shall those ties, now so sacred and dear,
That with rainbow hues tint all our wanderings here,
Be regarded no more in that heavenly sphere
Whose portal's the grave?

When, "washed and forgiven," our spirits ascend
To the home of the blest where all sorrowings end,
O, will not a parent, a sister, a friend,
Haste to welcome us there?

Shall we see no loved form we have gazed on before,
To commune with of times that are faded and o'er?
Will the "dear chosen few" be remembered no more
In that haven of bliss?

O my heart must believe, 'mid ethereal chimes
A gloom would steal over my spirit sometimes,
If the friends I have loved, in these heavenly climes,
Seemed to know me no more.

But hope fondly whispers it shall not be so;
Each ...

FIRST SPIRIT:
O thou, who plumed with strong desire
Wouldst float above the earth, beware!
A Shadow tracks thy flight of fire -
Night is coming!
Bright are the regions of the air,
And among the winds and beams
It were delight to wander there -
Night is coming!

SECOND SPIRIT:
The deathless stars are bright above;
If I would cross the shade of night,
Within my heart is the lamp of love,
And that is day!
And the moon will smile with gentle light
On my golden plumes where'er they move;
The meteors will linger round my flight,
And make night day.

FIRST SPIRIT:
But if the whirlwinds of darkness waken
Hail, and lightning, and stormy rain;
See, the bounds of the air are shaken -
Night is coming!
The red swift clouds of th...

The days go by, the days go by,
Sadly and wearily to die:
Each with its burden of small cares,
Each with its sad gift of gray hairs
For those who sit, like me, and sigh,
“The days go by! The days go by!”
Ah, nevermore on shining plumes,
Shedding a rain of rare perfumes
That men call memories, they are borne
As in life’s many-visioned morn,
When Love sang in the myrtle-blooms,
Ah, nevermore on shining plumes!

Where is my life? Where is my life?
The morning of my youth was rife
With promise of a golden day.
Where have my hopes gone? Where are they,
The passion and the splendid strife?
Where is my life? Where is my life?

My thoughts take hue from this wild day,
And, like the skies, are ashen gray;
The sharp rain, falling constantly...

Hide and seek, says the Wind,
    In the shade of the woods;
Hide and seek, says the Moon,
    To the hazel buds;
Hide and seek, says the Cloud,
    Star on to star;
Hide and seek, says the Wave,
    At the harbour bar;
Hide and seek, say I,
    To myself, and step
Out of the dream of Wake
    Into the dream of Sleep.

Corn-Colored clouds upon a sky of gold,
And 'mid their sheaves, where, like a daisy bloom
Left by the reapers to the gathering gloom,
The star of twilight flames, as Ruth, 't is told,
Dreamed homesick 'mid the harvest fields of old,
The Dusk goes gleaning color and perfume
From Bible slopes of heaven, that illume
Her pensive beauty deep in shadows stoled.
Hushed is the forest; and blue vale and hill
Are still, save for the brooklet, sleepily
Stumbling the stone, its foam like some white foot:
Save for the note of one far whippoorwill,
And in my heart her name, like some sweet bee
Within a flow'r, blowing a fairy flute.

    'Tis strange what different thoughts inspire
In men, Possession and Desire!
Think what they wish so great a blessing;
So disappointed when possessing!
    A moralist profoundly sage
(I know not in what book or page,
Or whether o'er a pot of ale)
Related thus the following tale.
    Possession, and Desire, his brother,
But still at variance with each other,
Were seen contending in a race;
And kept at first an equal pace;
'Tis said, their course continued long,
For this was active, that was strong:
Till Envy, Slander, Sloth, and Doubt,
Misled them many a league about;
Seduced by some deceiving light,
They take the wrong way for the right;
Through slippery by-roads, dark and deep,
They often climb, and often creep.
    Desire, the swifter ...

I lift my spirit to your cloudy thrones,
    And feel it broaden to your vast expanse,
        Oh! mountains, so immeasurably old,
        Crowned with bald rocks and everlasting cold,
    That melts not underneath the sun's fierce glance,
Peak above peak, fixed, dazzling, ice and stones.

Down your steep sides quick torrents leap and roar,
    And disappear, in gloomy gorges sunk,
        Fringed with black pines on dizzy verges high--
        Poised, trembling to the thunder and the cry
    Of the lost waters, through each giant trunk,
And farthest twig and tassel evermore.

Behold far down the mountain herdsman's ranche,
    The rough road winding past his lonely door,
        And in his ears, by day and night, the sound
        Of mad waves plunging d...

[Greek (transliterated):
                Kai pagas fileoimi ton enguthen aechon achthein,
                A terpei psopheoisa ton agrikon, thchi tarassei.

MOSCHOS.]



Faint gleams the evening radiance thro' the sky,
    The sober twilight dimly darkens round;
In short quick circles the shrill bat flits by,
    And the slow vapour curls along the ground.

Now the pleas'd eye from yon lone cottage sees
    On the green mead the smoke long-shadowing play;
    The Red-breast on the blossom'd spray
    Warbles wild her latest lay,
And sleeps along the dale the silent breeze.
Calm CONTEMPLATION,'tis thy favorite hour!
Come fill my bosom, tranquillizing Power.

Meek Power! I view thee on the calmy shore
    When Ocean stills his waves ...

A boat, beneath a sunny sky
Lingering onward dreamily
In an evening of July,

Children three that nestle near,
Eager eye and willing ear
Pleased a simple tale to hear,

Long has paled that sunny sky:
Echoes fade and memories die:
Autumn frosts have slain July.

Still she haunts me, phantomwise
Alice moving under skies
Never seen by waking eyes.

Children yet, the tale to hear,
Eager eye and willing ear,
Lovingly shall nestle near.

In a Wonderland they lie,
Dreaming as the days go by,
Dreaming as the summers die:

Ever drifting down the stream,
Lingering in the golden gleam,
Life what is it but a dream?

You think the ridge hills flowing, breaking
with ups and downs will, though,
building constancy into the black foreground

for each sunset, hold on to you, if dreams
wander, give reality recurrence enough to keep
an image clear, but then you realize, time

going on, that time's residual like the last
ice age's cool still in the rocks, averaged
maybe with the cool of the age before, that

not only are you not being held onto but where
else could time do so well without you,
what is your time where so much time is saved?

He lets me listen, when he moves me,
Words are not like other words
He takes me, from under my arms
He plants me, in a distant cloud
And the black rain in my eyes
Falls in torrents, torrents
He carries me with him, he carries me
To an evening of perfumed balconies


And I am like a child in his hands
Like a feather carried by the wind
He carries for me seven moons in his hands
and a bundle of songs
He gives me sun, he gives me summer
and flocks of swallows
He tells me that I am his treasure
And that I am equal to thousands of stars
And that I am treasure, and that I am
more beautiful than he has seen of paintings
He tells me things that make me dizzy
that make me forget the dance and the steps


Words...which overturn my...