"'He cometh not,' she said."

Mariana


It will not be to-day and yet
I think and dream it will; and let
The slow uncertainty devise
So many sweet excuses, met
With the old doubt in hope's disguise.

The panes were sweated with the dawn;
Yet through their dimness, shriveled drawn,
The aigret of one princess-feather,
One monk's-hood tuft with oilets wan,
I glimpsed, dead in the slaying weather.

This morning, when my window's chintz
I drew, how gray the day was! Since
I saw him, yea, all days are gray!
I gazed out on my dripping quince,
Defruited, gnarled; then turned away

To weep, but did not weep: but felt
A colder anguish than did melt
About the tearful-visaged year!
Then flung the lattice wide, and smelt

I.
All June I bound the rose in sheaves.
Now, rose by rose, I strip the leaves
And strew them where Pauline may pass.
She will not turn aside? Alas!
Let them lie. Suppose they die?
The chance was they might take her eye.

II.
How many a month I strove to suit
These stubborn fingers to the lute!
To-day I venture all I know.
She will not hear my music? So!
Break the string; fold music’s wing:
Suppose Pauline had bade me sing!

III.
My whole life long I learned to love.
This hour my utmost art I prove
And speak my passion, Heaven or hell?
She will not give me heaven? ’Tis well!
Lose who may, I still can say,
Those who win heaven, blest are they!

My friend the Sun--like all my friends
Inconstant, lovely, far away -
Is out, and bright, and condescends
To glory in our holiday.

A furious march with him I'll go
And race him in the Western train,
And wake the hills of long ago
And swim the Devon sea again.

I have done foolishly to head
The footway of the false moonbeams,
To light my lamp and call the dead
And read their long black printed dreams.

I have done foolishly to dwell
With Fear upon her desert isle,
To take my shadowgraph to Hell,
And then to hope the shades would smile.

And since the light must fail me soon
(But faster, faster, Western train!)
Proud meadows of the afternoon,
I have remembered you again.

And I'll go seek through moor and dale
A...

I

There are beggars in Iran and Araby,
SAID was hungrier than all;
Hafiz said he was a fly
That came to every festival.
He came a pilgrim to the Mosque
On trail of camel and caravan,
Knew every temple and kiosk
Out from Mecca to Ispahan;
Northward he went to the snowy hills,
At court he sat in the grave Divan.
His music was the south-wind's sigh,
His lamp, the maiden's downcast eye,
And ever the spell of beauty came
And turned the drowsy world to flame.
By lake and stream and gleaming hall
And modest copse and the forest tall,
Where'er he went, the magic guide
Kept its place by the poet's side.
Said melted the days like cups of pearl,
Served high and low, the lord and the churl,
Loved harebells nodding on a rock,
A cabin hun...

And you're the poet of this concern?
    I've seed your name in print
A dozen times, but I'll be dern
    I'd 'a' never 'a' took the hint
O' the size you are - fer I'd pictured you
    A kind of a tallish man -
Dark-complected and sallor too,
    And on the consumpted plan.

'Stid o' that you're little and small,
    With a milk-and-water face -
'Thout no snap in your eyes at all,
    Er nothin' to suit the case!
Kind o'look like a - I don't know -
    One o' these fair-ground chaps
That runs a thingamajig to blow,
    Er a candy-stand perhaps.

'Ll I've allus thought that poetry
    Was a sort of a - some disease -
Fer I knowed a poet once, and he
    Was techy and hard to please,
And moody-like, and kindo' sad
    And didn'...

My bonnie flower, with truest joy
Thy welcome face I see,
The world grows brighter to my eyes,
And summer comes with thee.
My solitude now finds a friend,
And after each hard day,
I in my mountain garden walk,
To rest, or sing, or pray.

All down the rocky slope is spread
Thy veil of rosy snow,
And in the valley by the brook,
Thy deeper blossoms grow.
The barren wilderness grows fair,
Such beauty dost thou give;
And human eyes and Nature's heart
Rejoice that thou dost live.

Each year I wait thy coming, dear,
Each year I love thee more,
For life grows hard, and much I need
Thy honey for my store.
So, like a hungry bee, I sip
Sweet lessons from thy cup,
And sitting at a flower's feet,
My soul learns to look up.
...

(For Thomas Augustine Daly)



The Judge's house has a splendid porch, with pillars and steps of stone,
And the Judge has a lovely flowering hedge that came from across the seas;
In the Hales' garage you could put my house and everything I own,
And the Hales have a lawn like an emerald and a row of poplar trees.

Now I have only a little house, and only a little lot,
And only a few square yards of lawn, with dandelions starred;
But when Winter comes, I have something there that the Judge and the Hales have not,
And it's better worth having than all their wealth -- it's a snowman in the yard.

The Judge's money brings architects to make his mansion fair;
The Hales have seven gardeners to make their roses grow;
The Judge can get his trees from Spain and France a...

Green star Sirius
Dribbling over the lake;
The stars have gone so far on their road,
Yet we're awake!

Without a sound
The new young year comes in
And is half-way over the lake.
We must begin

Again. This love so full
Of hate has hurt us so,
We lie side by side
Moored - but no,

Let me get up
And wash quite clean
Of this hate. -
So green

The great star goes!
I am washed quite clean,
Quite clean of it all.
But e'en

So cold, so cold and clean
Now the hate is gone!
It is all no good,
I am chilled to the bone

Now the hate is gone;
There is nothing left;
I am pure like bone,
Of all feeling bereft.

My heart is a garden tired with autumn,
Heaped with bending asters and dahlias heavy and dark,
In the hazy sunshine, the garden remembers April,
The drench of rains and a snow-drop quick and clear as a spark;

Daffodils blowing in the cold wind of morning,
And golden tulips, goblets holding the rain,
The garden will be hushed with snow, forgotten soon, forgotten,
After the stillness, will spring come again?

The listless beauty of the hour
When snow fell on the apple trees
And the wood-ash gathered in the fire
And we faced our first miseries.

Then the sweeping sunshine of noon
When the mountains like chariot cars
Were ranked to blue battle - and you and I
Counted our scars.

And then in a strange, grey hour
We lay mouth to mouth, with your face
Under mine like a star on the lake,
And I covered the earth, and all space.

The silent, drifting hours
Of morn after morn
And night drifting up to the night
Yet no pathway worn.

Your life, and mine, my love
Passing on and on, the hate
Fusing closer and closer with love
Till at length they mate.

THE CEARNE

    AULD NIBOR,
    I'm three times doubly o'er your debtor,
    For your auld-farrent, frien'ly letter;
    Tho' I maun say't, I doubt ye flatter,
        Ye speak sae fair.
    For my puir, silly, rhymin clatter
        Some less maun sair.

    Hale be your heart, hale be your fiddle;
    Lang may your elbuck jink and diddle,
    To cheer you thro' the weary widdle
        O' war'ly cares,
    Till bairn's bairns kindly cuddle
        Your auld, gray hairs.

    But Davie, lad, I'm red ye're glaikit;
    I'm tauld the Muse ye hae negleckit;
    An' gif it's sae, ye sud be licket
        Until yo fyke;
    Sic hauns as you sud ne'er be faiket,
        Be hain't who like.

    For me, I'm on Parnassus' brink,
    Rivin' the ...

When I was a boy, and saw bright rows of icicles
In many lengths along a wall
I was dissappointed to find
That I could not play music upon them:
I ran my hand lightly across them
And they fell, tinkling.
I tell you this, young man, so that your expectations of life
Will not be too great.

The Farmer Discourses of his Son.

Tom was goin' for a poet, an' said he'd a poet be;
One of these long-haired fellers a feller hates to see;
One of these chaps forever fixin' things cute and clever;
Makin' the world in gen'ral step 'long to tune an' time,
An' cuttin' the earth into slices an' saltin' it down into rhyme.

Poets are good for somethin', so long as they stand at the head:
But poetry's worth whatever it fetches in butter an' bread.
An' many a time I've said it: it don't do a fellow credit,
To starve with a hole in his elbow, an' be considered a fool,
So after he's dead, the young ones 'll speak his pieces in school.

An' Tom, he had an opinion that Shakspeare an' all the rest,
With all their winter clothin', couldn't make him a decent vest;
But th...

    April rain, delicious weeping,
        Washes white bones from the grave,
    Long enough have they been sleeping.
        They are cleansed, and now they crave
    Once more on the earth to gather
    Pleasure from the springtime weather.

    The pine trees and the long dark grass
        Feed on what is placed below.
    Think you not that there doth pass
        In them something we did know?
    This spell, well, friends, I greet ye once again
    With joy, but with a most unuttered pain.

If he whose bosom with no transport swells
    In vernal airs and hours commits the crime
    Of sullenness to Nature, 'gainst the Time,
    And its great RULER, he alike rebels
Who seriousness and pious dread repels,
    And aweless gazes on the faded Clime,
    Dim in the gloom, and pale in the hoar rime
    That o'er the bleak and dreary prospect steals. -
Spring claims our tender, grateful, gay delight;
    Winter our sympathy and sacred fear;
    And sure the Hearts that pay not Pity's rite
O'er wide calamity; that careless hear
    Creation's wail, neglect, amid her blight,
    THE SOLEMN LESSON OF THE RUIN'D YEAR.

December 1st, 1782.

Tune - "Craigie-burn-wood."


Chorus.

    Beyond thee, dearie, beyond thee, dearie,
        And O, to be lying beyond thee;
    O sweetly, soundly, weel may he sleep
        That's laid in the bed beyond thee!

I.

    Sweet closes the evening on Craigie-burn-wood,
        And blithely awaukens the morrow;
    But the pride of the spring in the Craigie-burn-wood
        Can yield to me nothing but sorrow.

II.

    I see the spreading leaves and flowers,
        I hear the wild birds singing;
    But pleasure they hae nane for me,
        While care my heart is wringing.

III.

    I canna tell, I maunna tell,
        I darena for your anger;
    But secret love will break my heart,
     ...

An April day, when skies are blue,
And earth rejoices to renew
Her vernal youth by lawn and lea,
And sap mounts upward in the tree,
And ruddy buds come bursting through;

When violets of tender hue
And trilliums keep the morning dew
Through all the sweet forenoon - give me
            An April day;

When surly Winter's roystering crew
Have said the last of their adieux,
And left the fettered river free,
And buoyant hope and ecstasy
Of life awake, my wants are few -
            An April day.

And one, perchance, will read and sigh:
"What aimless songs! Why will he sing
Of nature that drags out her woe
Through wind and rain, and sun, and snow,
From miserable spring to spring?"
    Then put me by.

And one, perhaps, will read and say:
"Why write of things across the sea;
Of men and women, far and near,
When we of things at home would hear -
Well, who would call this poetry?"
    Then toss away.

A hopeless task have we, meseems,
At this late day; whom fate hath made
Sad, bankrupt heirs of song; who, filled
With kindred yearnings, try to build
A tower like theirs, that will not fade,
    Out of our dreams.