Among the fields the camomile
Seems blown mist in the lightning's glare:
Cool, rainy odors drench the air;
Night speaks above; the angry smile
Of storm within her stare.
The way that I shall take to-night
Is through the wood whose branches fill
The road with double darkness, till,
Between the boughs, a window's light
Shines out upon the hill.
The fence; and then the path that goes
Around a trailer-tangled rock,
Through puckered pink and hollyhock,
Unto a latch-gate's unkempt rose,
And door whereat I knock.
Bright on the oldtime flower place
The lamp streams through the foggy pane;
The door is opened to the rain:
And in the door her happy face
And outstretched arms again.

Left in the world alone,
Where nothing seems my own,
And everything is weariness to me,
'T is a life without an end,
'T is a world without a friend,
And everything is sorrowful I see.

There's the crow upon the stack,
And other birds all black,
While bleak November's frowning wearily;
And the black cloud's dropping rain,
Till the floods hide half the plain,
And everything is dreariness to me.

The sun shines wan and pale,
Chill blows the northern gale,
And odd leaves shake and quiver on the tree,
While I am left alone,
Chilled as a mossy stone,
And all the world is frowning over me.

Written on a blank leaf of his memoirs.


Dear friends, who read the world aright,
And in its common forms discern
A beauty and a harmony
The many never learn!

Kindred in soul of him who found
In simple flower and leaf and stone
The impulse of the sweetest lays
Our Saxon tongue has known,

Accept this record of a life
As sweet and pure, as calm and good,
As a long day of blandest June
In green field and in wood.

How welcome to our ears, long pained
By strife of sect and party noise,
The brook-like murmur of his song
Of nature's simple joys!

The violet' by its mossy stone,
The primrose by the river's brim,
And chance-sown daffodil, have found
Immortal life through him.

The sunrise on his bre...

AFTER READING A LIFE AND LETTERS


‘Cursed be he that moves my bones.’

Shakespeare’s Epitaph.



You might have won the Poet’s name,
If such be worth the winning now,
And gain’d a laurel for your brow
Of sounder leaf than I can claim;

But you have made the wiser choice,
A life that moves to gracious ends
Thro’ troops of unrecording friends,
A deedful life, a silent voice.

And you have miss’d the irreverent doom
Of those that wear the Poet’s crown;
Hereafter, neither knave nor clown
Shall hold their orgies at your tomb.

For now the Poet cannot die,
Nor leave his music as of old,
But round him ere he scarce be cold
Begins the scandal and the cry:

‘Proclaim the faults he would not show;
Br...

October's bellowing anger breaks and cleaves
The bronzed battalions of the stricken wood
In whose lament I hear a voice that grieves
For battle's fruitless harvest, and the feud
Of outraged men. Their lives are like the leaves
Scattered in flocks of ruin, tossed and blown
Along the westering furnace flaring red.
O martyred youth and manhood overthrown,
The burden of your wrongs is on my head.

The Autumn is old,
The sere leaves are flying; -
He hath gather'd up gold,
And now he is dying; -
Old Age, begin sighing!

The vintage is ripe,
The harvest is heaping; -
But some that have sow'd
Have no riches for reaping; -
Poor wretch, fall a-weeping!

The year's in the wane,
There is nothing adorning,
The night has no eve,
And the day has no morning; -
Cold winter gives warning.

The rivers run chill,
The red sun is sinking,
And I am grown old,
And life is fast shrinking;
Here's enow for sad thinking!

Some of my friends (for friends I must suppose
All, who, not daring to appear my foes,
Feign great good will, and, not more full of spite
Than full of craft, under false colours fight),
Some of my friends (so lavishly I print),
As more in sorrow than in anger, hint
(Though that indeed will scarce admit a doubt)
That I shall run my stock of genius out,
My no great stock, and, publishing so fast,
Must needs become a bankrupt at the last.
'The husbandman, to spare a thankful soil,
Which, rich in disposition, pays his toil
More than a hundredfold, which swells his store
E'en to his wish, and makes his barns run o'er,
By long Experience taught, who teaches best,
Foregoes his hopes a while, and gives it rest:
The land, allow'd its losses to repair,
Refresh'd, a...

A late snow beats
With cold white fists upon the tenements -
Hurriedly drawing blinds and shutters,
Like tall old slatterns
Pulling aprons about their heads.

Lights slanting out of Mott Street
Gibber out,
Or dribble through bar-room slits,
Anonymous shapes
Conniving behind shuttered panes
Caper and disappear...
Where the Bowery
Is throbbing like a fistula
Back of her ice-scabbed fronts.

Livid faces
Glimmer in furtive doorways,
Or spill out of the black pockets of alleys,
Smears of faces like muddied beads,
Making a ghastly rosary
The night mumbles over
And the snow with its devilish and silken whisper...
Patrolling arcs
Blowing shrill blasts over the Bread Line
Stalk them as they pass,
Silent as though accouc...

Tune - "Rothemurche."


I.

    Fairest maid on Devon banks,
        Crystal Devon, winding Devon,
    Wilt thou lay that frown aside,
        And smile as thou were wont to do?
    Full well thou know'st I love thee, dear!
    Could'st thou to malice lend an ear!
    O! did not love exclaim "Forbear,
        Nor use a faithful lover so."

II.

    Then come, thou fairest of the fair,
    Those wonted smiles, O let me share;
    And by thy beauteous self I swear,
        No love but thine my heart shall know.
            Fairest maid on Devon banks,
                Crystal Devon, winding Devon,
            Wilt thou lay that frown aside,
                And smile as thou were wont to do?

Think me not unkind and rude
That I walk alone in grove and glen;
I go to the god of the wood
To fetch his word to men.

Tax not my sloth that I
Fold my arms beside the brook;
Each cloud that floated in the sky
Writes a letter in my book.

Chide me not, laborious band,
For the idle flowers I brought;
Every aster in my hand
Goes home loaded with a thought.

There was never mystery
But 'tis figured in the flowers;
Was never secret history
But birds tell it in the bowers.

One harvest from thy field
Homeward brought the oxen strong;
A second crop thine acres yield,
Which I gather in a song.

Yes; since she knows not need,
Nor walks in blindness,
I may without unkindness
A true thing tell:

Which would be truth, indeed,
Though worse in speaking,
Were her poor footsteps seeking
A pauper's cell.

I judge, then, better far
She now have sorrow,
Than gladness that to-morrow
Might know its knell. -

It may be men there are
Could make of union
A lifelong sweet communion -
A passioned spell;

But I, to save her name
And bring salvation
By altar-affirmation
And bridal bell;

I, by whose rash unshame
These tears come to her:-
My faith would more undo her
Than my farewell!

Chained to me, year by year
My moody madness
Would wither her old gladness
Like famine fell.

An altered look about the hills;
A Tyrian light the village fills;
A wider sunrise in the dawn;
A deeper twilight on the lawn;
A print of a vermilion foot;
A purple finger on the slope;
A flippant fly upon the pane;
A spider at his trade again;
An added strut in chanticleer;
A flower expected everywhere;
An axe shrill singing in the woods;
Fern-odors on untravelled roads, --
All this, and more I cannot tell,
A furtive look you know as well,
And Nicodemus' mystery
Receives its annual reply.

Night hides our thefts, all faults then pardon'd be;
All are alike fair when no spots we see.
Lais and Lucrece in the night-time are
Pleasing alike, alike both singular:
Joan and my lady have at that time one,
One and the self-same priz'd complexion:
Then please alike the pewter and the plate,
The chosen ruby, and the reprobate.

Warped... gland-dry...
With spine askew
And body shrunken into half its space...
Well-used as some cracked paving-stone...
Bearing on his grimed and pitted front
A stamp... as of innumerable feet.

Tune - "Liggeram Cosh."



I.

    Blythe hae I been on yon hill
        As the lambs before me;
    Careless ilka thought and free
        As the breeze flew o'er me.
    Now nae langer sport and play,
        Mirth or sang can please me;
    Lesley is sae fair and coy,
        Care and anguish seize me.

II.

    Heavy, heavy is the task,
        Hopeless love declaring:
    Trembling, I dow nocht but glow'r,
        Sighing, dumb, despairing!
    If she winna ease the thraws
        In my bosom swelling,
    Underneath the grass-green sod
        Soon maun be my dwelling.

The Spring is gone, the Summer-beauty wanes,
Like setting sunbeams, in their last decline;
As evening shadows, lingering on the plains,
Gleam dim and dimmer till they cease to shine:
The busy bee hath humm'd himself to rest;
Flowers dry to seed, that held the sweets of Spring;
Flown is the bird, and empty is the nest,
His broods are rear'd, no joys are left to sing.
There hangs a dreariness about the scene,
A present shadow of a bright has been.
Ah, sad to prove that Pleasure's golden springs,
Like common fountains, should so quickly dry,
And be so near allied to vulgar things!--
The joys of this world are but born to die.

All hail, once pleasing, once inspiring shade!
Scene of my youthful loves and happier hours!
Where the kind Muses met me as I stray'd,
And gently press'd my hand, and said "Be ours!
Take all thou e'er shalt have, a constant Muse:
At Court thou may'st be liked, but nothing gain:
Stock thou may'st buy and sell, but always lose,
And love the brightest eyes, but love in vain."

The ceaseless rain is falling fast,
    And yonder gilded vane,
Immovable for three days past,
    Points to the misty main,

It drives me in upon myself
    And to the fireside gleams,
To pleasant books that crowd my shelf,
    And still more pleasant dreams,

I read whatever bards have sung
    Of lands beyond the sea,
And the bright days when I was young
    Come thronging back to me.

In fancy I can hear again
    The Alpine torrent's roar,
The mule-bells on the hills of Spain,
    The sea at Elsinore.

I see the convent's gleaming wall
    Rise from its groves of pine,
And towers of old cathedrals tall,
    And castles by the Rhine.

I journey on by park and spire,
    Beneath centennial trees,
Throug...