Let those who will stride on their barren roads
And prick themselves to haste with self-made goads,
Unheeding, as they struggle day by day,
If flowers be sweet or skies be blue or gray:
For me, the lone, cool way by purling brooks,
The solemn quiet of the woodland nooks,
A song-bird somewhere trilling sadly gay,
A pause to pick a flower beside the way.

Tune - "Druimion dubh."


I.

    Musing on the roaring ocean,
        Which divides my love and me;
    Wearying heaven in warm devotion,
        For his weal where'er he be.

II.

    Hope and fear's alternate billow
        Yielding late to nature's law,
    Whisp'ring spirits round my pillow
        Talk of him that's far awa.

III.

    Ye whom sorrow never wounded,
        Ye who never shed a tear,
    Care-untroubled, joy-surrounded,
        Gaudy day to you is dear.

IV.

    Gentle night, do thou befriend me;
        Downy sleep, the curtain draw;
    Spirits kind, again attend me,
        Talk of him that's far awa!

I.

Land-Marks

The way is rock and rubbish to a road
That leads through woods of stunted oaks and thorns
Into a valley that no flower adorns,
One mass of blackened brier; overflowed
With desolation: whence their mighty load
Of lichened limbs, like two colossal horns,
Two dead trees lift: trees, that the foul earth scorns
To vine with poison, spotted like the toad.
Here, on gaunt boughs, unclean, red-beaked, and bald,
The buzzards settle; roost, since that fierce night
When, torched with pine-knots, grim and shadowy,
Judge Lynch held court here; and the dark, appalled,
Heard words of hollow justice; and the light
Saw, on these trees, dread fruit swing suddenly.

II.

The Ox-Team

An ox-team, its lean oxen, slow of tread,

We stood by a pond that winter day,
And the sun was white, as though chidden of God,
And a few leaves lay on the starving sod,
They had fallen from an ash, and were gray.

Your eyes on me were as eyes that rove
Over tedious riddles solved years ago;
And some words played between us to and fro -
On which lost the more by our love.

The smile on your mouth was the deadest thing
Alive enough to have strength to die;
And a grin of bitterness swept thereby
Like an ominous bird a-wing . . .

Since then, keen lessons that love deceives,
And wrings with wrong, have shaped to me
Your face, and the God-curst sun, and a tree,
And a pond edged with grayish leaves.

1867.

In the courts of truth tread softly,
Though your tread be firm and bold;
Your steps may awaken echoes,
Resounding through years untold.
The trend of the age is onward,
And you should not lag behind;
If men's minds are bound with fetters,
Perchance you may some unbind.

Our creed, say you, needs revising,
In line with the growth of light;
Be sure you have made real progress
Before you assume the right,
By stroke of pen, to unsettle
The faith of the long ago;
For many who err in judgment
Stand fast to the truth they know.

You bring from the mine rare jewels,
That you think the world should see;
But, perhaps, their estimation
With your own may not agree;
They may lack discrimination,
And their worth may not discern;
So pol...

No more shall I, since I am driven hence,
Devote to thee my grains of frankincense;
No more shall I from mantle-trees hang down,
To honour thee, my little parsley crown;
No more shall I (I fear me) to thee bring
My chives of garlic for an offering;
No more shall I from henceforth hear a choir
Of merry crickets by my country fire.
Go where I will, thou lucky Lar stay here,
Warm by a glitt'ring chimney all the year.

Untouched through all severity of cold;
Inviolate, whate'er the cottage hearth
Might need for comfort, or for festal mirth;
That Pile of Turf is half a century old:
Yes, Traveler! fifty winters have been told
Since suddenly the dart of death went forth
'Gainst him who raised it, his last work on earth:
Thence has it, with the Son, so strong a hold
Upon his Father's memory, that his hands,
Through reverence, touch it only to repair
Its waste. Though crumbling with each breath of air,
In annual renovation thus it stands
Rude Mausoleum! but wrens nestle there,
And red-breasts warble when sweet sounds are rare.

Rocks, trees and rocks; and down a mossy stone
The murmuring ooze and trickle of a stream
Through bushes, where the mountain spring lies lone,
A gleaming cairngorm where the shadows dream,
And one wild road winds like a saffron seam.

Here sang the thrush, whose pure, mellifluous note
Dropped golden sweetness on the fragrant June;
Here cat and blue-bird and wood-sparrow wrote
Their presence on the silence with a tune;
And here the fox drank 'neath the mountain moon.

Frail ferns and dewy mosses and dark brush
Impenetrable briers, deep and dense,
And wiry bushes, brush, that seemed to crush
The struggling saplings with its tangle, whence
Sprawled out the ramble of an old rail-fence.

A wasp buzzed by; and then a butterfly
In orange and amber, lik...

Trampled yet red is the last of the embers,
Red the last cloud of a sun that has set;
What of your sleeping though Flanders remembers,
What of your waking, if England forget?

Why should you share in the hearts that we harden,
In the shame of our nature, who see it and live?
How more than the godly the greedy can pardon,
How well and how quickly the hungry forgive.

Ah, well if the soil of the stranger had wrapped you,
While the lords that you served and the friends that you knew
Hawk in the marts of the tyrants that trapped you,
Tout in the shops of the butchers that slew.

Why should you wake for a realm that is rotten,
Stuffed with their bribes and as dead to their debts?
Sleep and forget us, as we have forgotten;
For Flanders remembers and Englan...

Hark, the storm is raging high;
Beat the breakers on the coast,
And the wintry waters cry
Like the wailing of a ghost.

On the rugged coast of Maine
Stands the frugal farmer's cot:
What if drive the sleet and rain?
John and Hannah heed it not.

On the hills the mad winds roar,
And the tall pines toss and groan;
Round the headland down the shore
Stormy spirits shriek and moan.

Inky darkness wraps the sky;
Not a glimpse of moon or star;
And the stormy-petrels cry
Out along the harbor-bar.

Seated by their blazing hearth
John and Hannah snug and warm
What if darkness wrap the earth?
Drive the sleet and howl the storm!

Let the stormy-petrels fly!
Let the moaning breakers beat!
Hark! I hear an infant cry

Southey! high placed on the contested throne
Of modern verse, a Muse, herself unknown,
Sues that her tears may consecrate the strains
Pour'd o'er the urn enrich'd with WHITE'S Remains!
While touch'd to transport, Taste's responding tone
Makes the rapt poet's ecstasies thine own;
Ah! think that he, whose hand supremely skill'd,
The heart's fine chords with deep vibration thrill'd,
In stagnant silence and petrific gloom,
Unconscious sleeps, the tenant of the tomb!
Extinct that spirit, whose strong-bidding drew
From Fancy's confines Wonder's wild-eyed crew,
Which bade Despair's terrific phantoms pass
Like Macbeth's monarchs in the mystic glass.
Before the youthful bard's impassion'd eye,
Like him, led on, to triumph and to die;
Like him, by mighty magic compass'd...

"'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...

In sky and wave the white clouds swam,
And the blue hills of Nottingham
Through gaps of leafy green
Across the lake were seen,

When, in the shadow of the ash
That dreams its dream in Attitash,
In the warm summer weather,
Two maidens sat together.

They sat and watched in idle mood
The gleam and shade of lake and wood;
The beach the keen light smote,
The white sail of a boat;

Swan flocks of lilies shoreward lying,
In sweetness, not in music, dying;
Hardback, and virgin's-bower,
And white-spiked clethra-flower.

With careless ears they heard the plash
And breezy wash of Attitash,
The wood-bird's plaintive cry,
The locust's sharp reply.

And teased the while, with playful band,
The shaggy dog of Newfoundland,

I knocked upon thy door ajar,
While yet the woods with buds were grey;
Nought but a little child I heard
Warbling at break of day.

I knocked when June had lured her rose
To mask the sharpness of its thorn;
Knocked yet again, heard only yet
Thee singing of the morn.

The frail convolvulus had wreathed
Its cup, but the faint flush of eve
Lingered upon thy Western wall;
Thou hadst no word to give.

Once yet I came; the winter stars
Above thy house wheeled wildly bright;
Footsore I stood before thy door -
Wide open into night.

I

The hot sunflowers by the glaring pike
Lift shields of sultry brass; the teasel tops,
Pink-thorned, advance with bristling spike on spike
Against the furious sunlight. Field and copse
Are sick with summer: now, with breathless stops,
The locusts cymbal; now grasshoppers beat
Their castanets: and rolled in dust, a team, -
Like some mean life wrapped in its sorry dream, -
An empty wagon rattles through the heat.

II

Where now the blue wild iris? flowers whose mouths
Are moist and musky? Where the sweet-breathed mint,
That made the brook-bank herby? Where the South's
Wild morning-glories, rich in hues, that hint
At coming showers that the rainbows tint?
Where all the blossoms that the wildwood knows?
The frail oxalis hidden in its leaves;<...

I'll write, because I'll give
You critics means to live;
For should I not supply
The cause, th' effect would die.

Dark head by the fireside brooding,
    Sad upon your ears
Whirlwinds of the earth intruding
    Sound in wrath and tears:

Tender-hearted, in your lonely
    Sorrow I would fain
Comfort you, and say that only
    Gods could feel such pain.

Only spirits know such longing
    For the far away;
And the fiery fancies thronging
    Rise not out of clay.

Keep the secret sense celestial
    Of the starry birth;
Though about you call the bestial
    Voices of the earth.

If a thousand ages since
    Hurled us from the throne:
Then a thousand ages wins
    Back again our own.

Sad one, dry away your tears:
    Sceptred you shall rise,
Equal mid the crystal spheres
    With seraphs kingly wise.

--...

PIANO DI SORRENTO


Fortù, Fortù, my beloved one,
Sit here by my side,
On my knees put up both little feet!
I was sure, if I tried,
I could make you laugh spite of Scirocco:
Now, open your eyes,
Let me keep you amused till he vanish
In black from the skies,
With telling my memories over
As you tell your beads;
All the memories plucked at Sorrento
The flowers, or the weeds.

Time for rain! for your long hot dry Autumn
Had net-worked with brown
The white skin of each grape on the bunches,
Marked like a quail’s crown,
Those creatures you make such account of,
Whose heads, speckled with white
Over brown like a great spider’s back,
As I told you last night,
Your mother bites off for her supper;
Red-ripe as could b...