AN OLD STORY.


I.
It was roses, roses, all the way,
With myrtle mixed in my path like mad:
The house-roofs seemed to heave and sway,
The church-spires flamed, such flags they had,
A year ago on this very day.

II.
The air broke into a mist with bells,
The old walls rocked with the crowd and cries.
Had I said, “Good folk, mere noise repels
But give me your sun from yonder skies!”
They had answered, “And afterward, what else?”

III.
Alack, it was I who leaped at the sun
To give it my loving friends to keep.
Nought man could do, have I left undone:
And you see my harvest, what I reap
This very day, now a year is run.

IV.
There’s nobody on the house-tops now
Just a palsied few at the windows set
For ...

("Toujours lui! lui partout!")

[XL., December, 1828.]


Above all others, everywhere I see
His image cold or burning!
My brain it thrills, and oftentime sets free
The thoughts within me yearning.
My quivering lips pour forth the words
That cluster in his name of glory -
The star gigantic with its rays of swords
Whose gleams irradiate all modern story.

I see his finger pointing where the shell
Should fall to slay most rabble,
And save foul regicides; or strike the knell
Of weaklings 'mid the tribunes' babble.
A Consul then, o'er young but proud,
With midnight poring thinned, and sallow,
But dreams of Empire pierce the transient cloud,
And round pale face and lank locks form the halo.

And soon the Caesar, with an eye ...

The reason to be autonomous is to stand there,
a cleared instrument, ready to act, to search

the moral realm and actual conditions for what
needs to be done and to do it: fine, the

best, if it works out, but if, like a gun, it
comes in handy to the wrong choice, why then

you see the danger in the effective: better
then an autonomy that stands and looks about,

negotiating nothing, the supreme indifferences:
is anything to be gained where as much is lost:

and if for every action there is an equal and
opposite reaction has the loss been researched

equally with the gain: you can see how the
milling actions of millions could come to a

buzzard-like glide as from a coincidental,
warm bottom of water stuck between chilled

        I saw a King, who spent his life to weave
        Into a nation all his great heart thought,
        Unsatisfied until he should achieve
        The grand ideal that his manhood sought;
        Yet as he saw the end within his reach,
        Death took the sceptre from his failing hand,
        And all men said, "He gave his life to teach
        The task of honour to a sordid land!"
        Within his gates I saw, through all those years,
        One at his humble toil with cheery face,
        Whom (being dead) the children, half in tears,
        Remembered oft, and missed him from his place.
        If he be greater that his people blessed
        Than he the children loved, God knoweth best.

Fear me, virgin whosoever
Taking pride from love exempt,
Fear me, slighted. Never, never
Brave me, nor my fury tempt:
Downy wings, but wroth they beat
Tempest even in reason's seat.

Filled is Life's goblet to the brim;
And though my eyes with tears are dim,
I see its sparkling bubbles swim,
And chant a melancholy hymn
    With solemn voice and slow.

No purple flowers,--no garlands green,
Conceal the goblet's shade or sheen,
Nor maddening draughts of Hippocrene,
Like gleams of sunshine, flash between
    Thick leaves of mistletoe.

This goblet, wrought with curious art,
Is filled with waters, that upstart,
When the deep fountains of the heart,
By strong convulsions rent apart,
    Are running all to waste.

And as it mantling passes round,
With fennel is it wreathed and crowned,
Whose seed and foliage sun-imbrowned
Are in its waters steeped and drowned,
    And give a bitter taste.

Above the lowly ...

Forth from its scabbard, pure and bright,
    Flashed the sword of Lee!
Far in the front of the deadly fight,
High o'er the brave in the cause of Right,
Its stainless sheen, like a beacon light,
    Led us to Victory!

Out of its scabbard, where, full long,
    It slumbered peacefully,
Roused from its rest by the battle's song,
Shielding the feeble, smiting the strong,
Guarding the right, avenging the wrong,
    Gleamed the sword of Lee!

Forth from its scabbard, high in air
    Beneath Virginia's sky --
And they who saw it gleaming there,
And knew who bore it, knelt to swear
That where that sword led they would dare
    To follow -- and to die!

Out of its scabbard!    Never hand
    Waved sword from stain as free,
Nor purer...

Said God, "You sisters, ere ye go
Down among men, my work to do,
I will on each a badge bestow:
Hope I love best, and gold for her,
Yet a silver glory for Despair,
For she is my angel too."

Then like a queen, Despair
Put on the stars to wear.
But Hope took ears of corn, and round
Her temples in a wreath them bound.
Which think ye lookt the more fair?

Yea, constant through the changeful year,
This queenly Height commands our praise.
To stand in meek unflinching hardihood
When fortune blows its storm of fright,
And work to full effect that good
Resolved in open days of clearer sight-
O, this is worth!
That daily sees the soul
To braver liberties give birth,
That heeds not time's annoy,
And hears surrounding voices roll
Perennial circumstance of joy.
Then come not only when the springtime blows
The old familiar strangeness of its breath
Across the long-lain snows,
And chants her resurrected songs
About the tombs of death;
Nor yet when summer glows
In roseate throngs
And works her plenitude of deeds
By tangled dells and waving meads,
Come here in beauty's pilgrimage:
Nor when the ...

I.

Fate summoned, in gray-bearded age, to act
A history stranger than his written fact,
Him who portrayed the splendor and the gloom
Of that great hour when throne and altar fell
With long death-groan which still is audible.
He, when around the walls of Paris rung
The Prussian bugle like the blast of doom,
And every ill which follows unblest war
Maddened all France from Finistere to Var,
The weight of fourscore from his shoulders flung,
And guided Freedom in the path he saw
Lead out of chaos into light and law,
Peace, not imperial, but republican,
And order pledged to all the Rights of Man.

II.

Death called him from a need as imminent
As that from which the Silent William went
When powers of evil, like the smiting seas
On Holla...

The parting of King David and Barzillai the Gileadite after the revolt of Absolam.

A little way farther to guide thee I go
Where the footing is firm and the waters are low;
Then we part, O my King, thou once more to thy throne,
I to dwell, in the house of my fathers, alone.

Yet think not, O David, one pang of regret
Would tempt the recall of the youth I have set
In thy presence; the strong-armed, the true-hearted one,
Last gift of my loyalty, even my son.

Ere my hand to the husbandman’s toil had been trained,
Or my foot to the slow-moving flocks had been chained,
I, too, would have marched in the long line of spears,
With the youthful, the courtly, the brave for my peers.

The days when I dreamt but of battle! The lamp
Which all night I kep...

What here we hope for, we shall once inherit;
By faith we all walk here, not by the Spirit.

Oft the savage Tale in telling
Less of Love than Wrath and Hate,
Hath within its fierceness dwelling
Some pure note compassionate.

Mark, if rude their nature, stronger,
Manlier are the minds that keep
Thought on rightful vengeance longer
Than on those who can but weep.

Better sing the horrid battle
Than its cause of crime and wrong;
Sing great life-deeds! the death-rattle
Is too common for a song.

Lays where man in fight rejoices
Sang our Sires, from Sire to Son;
Heard and loved the hero voices,
"Dare, and more than life is won!"

When the motive is right and the will is strong
    There are no limits to human power;
    For that great Force back of us moves along
And takes us with it, in trial's hour.

And whatever the height you yearn to climb,
    Though it never was trod by the foot of man,
    And no matter how steep -I say you CAN,
If you will be patient -and use your time.

At evening when the aspens rustled soft
And the last blackbird by the hedge-nest laughed,
And through the leaves the moon's unmeaning face
Looked, and then rose in dark-blue leafless space;
Watching the trees and moon she could not bear
The silence and the presence everywhere.
The blackbird called the silence and it came
Closing and closing round like smoke round flame.
Into her heart it crept and the heart was numb,
Even wishes died, and all but fear was dumb--
Fear and its phantoms. Then the trees were enlarged,
And from their roundness unguessed shapes emerged,
Or no shape but the image of her fear
Creeping forth from her mind and hovering near.
If a bat flitted it was an evil thing;
Sadder the trees grew with every shadowy wing--
Their shape enlarged, thei...

What are these bustlers at the gate
Of now or yesterday,
These playthings in the hand of Fate,
That pass, and point no way;

These clinging bubbles whose mock fires
For ever dance and gleam,
Vain foam that gathers and expires
Upon the world's dark stream;

These gropers betwixt right and wrong,
That seek an unknown goal,
Most ignorant, when they seem most strong;
What are they, then, O Soul,

That thou shouldst covet overmuch
A tenderer range of heart,
And yet at every dreamed-of touch
So tremulously start?

Thou with that hatred ever new
Of the world's base control,
That vision of the large and true,
That quickness of the soul;

Nay, for they are not of thy kind,
But in a rarer clay
God dowered thee with ...

Lord of all strength, behold, I am but frail!
Lord of all harvest, few the grapes and pale
Allotted for my wine-press! Thou, Lord,
Who boldest in thy gift the tempered sword.
Hast armed me with a sapling! Lest I die,
Then hear my prayer, make answer to my cry:

Grant me, I pray, to tread my grapes as one
Who hath full vineyards, teeming in the sun;
Let me dream valiantly; and undismayed
Let me lift up my sapling like a blade;
Then, Lord, thy cup for mine abundant wine,
Thy foeman. Lord, for that white steel of mine!

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

1875