The change has come, and Helen sleeps--
Not sleeps; but wakes to greater deeps
Of wisdom, glory, truth, and light,
Than ever blessed her seeking sight,
In this low, long, lethargic night,
Worn out with strife
Which men call life.

The change has come, and who would say
"I would it were not come to-day"?
What were the respite till to-morrow?
Postponement of a certain sorrow,
From which each passing day would borrow!
Let grief be dumb,
The change has come.

The trees
are forming hands
to cloak the sky
with pillow whispers,
until the soft equilibrium
behind laughing eyes
departs down the moon dark world.

Daughters of Time, the hypocritic Days,
Muffled and dumb like barefoot dervishes,
And marching single in an endless file,
Bring diadems and fagots in their hands.
To each they offer gifts after his will,
Bread, kingdoms, stars, and sky that holds them all.
I, in my pleached garden, watched the pomp,
Forgot my morning wishes, hastily
Took a few herbs and apples, and the Day
Turned and departed silent. I, too late,
Under her solemn fillet saw the scorn.

    Cities drowned in olden time
    Keep, they say, a magic chime
    Rolling up from far below
    When the moon-led waters flow.

    So within me, ocean deep,
    Lies a sunken world asleep.
    Lest its bells forget to ring,
    Memory! set the tide a-swing!

This cool quiet of trees
In the grey dusk of the north,
In the green half-dusk of the west,
Where fires still glow;
These glimmering fantasies
Of foliage branching forth
And drooping into rest;
Ye lovers, know
That in your wanderings
Beneath this arching brake
Ye must attune your love
To hushed words.
For here is the dreaming wisdom of
The unmovable things...
And more: - walk softly, lest ye wake
A thousand sleeping birds.

Between two kinds of food, both equally
Remote and tempting, first a man might die
Of hunger, ere he one could freely choose.
E'en so would stand a lamb between the maw
Of two fierce wolves, in dread of both alike:
E'en so between two deer a dog would stand,
Wherefore, if I was silent, fault nor praise
I to myself impute, by equal doubts
Held in suspense, since of necessity
It happen'd. Silent was I, yet desire
Was painted in my looks; and thus I spake
My wish more earnestly than language could.

As Daniel, when the haughty king he freed
From ire, that spurr'd him on to deeds unjust
And violent; so look'd Beatrice then.

"Well I discern," she thus her words address'd,
"How contrary desires each way constrain thee,
So that thy anxious thought is ...

Why sleeps the future, as a snake enrolled,
Coil within coil, at noon-tide? For the WORD
Yields, if with unpresumptuous faith explored,
Power at whose touch the sluggard shall unfold
His drowsy rings. Look forth! that Stream behold,
That stream upon whose bosom we have passed
Floating at ease while nations have effaced
Nations, and Death has gathered to his fold
Long lines of mighty Kings look forth, my Soul!
(Nor in this vision be thou slow to trust)
The living Waters, less and less by guilt
Stained and polluted, brighten as they roll,
Till they have reached the eternal City built
For the perfected Spirit of the just!

    The lone man gazed and gazed upon his gold,
    His sweat, his blood, the wage of weary days;
    But now how sweet, how doubly sweet to hold
    All gay and gleamy to the campfire blaze.
    The evening sky was sinister and cold;
    The willows shivered, wanly lay the snow;
    The uncommiserating land, so old,
    So worn, so grey, so niggard in its woe,
    Peered through its ragged shroud. The lone man sighed,
    Poured back the gaudy dust into its poke,
    Gazed at the seething river listless-eyed,
    Loaded his corn-cob pipe as if to smoke;
    Then crushed with weariness and hardship crept
    Into his ragged robe, and swiftly slept.

    . . . . .

    Hour after hour went by; a shadow slipped
    From vasts of shadow to the camp-fire...

    The moon's a drowsy fool to-night,
    Wrapped in fleecy clouds and white;
    And all the while Endymion
    Sleeps on Latmos top alone.

    Not a single star is seen:
    They are gathered round their queen,
    Keeping vigil by her bed,
    Patient and unwearièd.

    Now the poet drops his pen
    And moves about like other men:
    Tom o' Bedlam now is still
    And sleeps beneath the hawthorn'd hill.

    Only the Latmian shepherd deems
    Something missing from his dreams
    And tosses as he sleeps alone.
    Alas, alas, Endymion!

    Image throttled in the subconscious,
    romantic throwback -
    the mind on a voyage round land's end
    to eclipse pyramidal fires
    set as beacons along rock strewn shores -
    her skeletal inhabitants on ice flows
    wrapped in bearskins
    with dirks between their teeth
    slapping one another to keep warm.

    Then, alpine ranges carrying
    the plight of the Andes in their mouth;
    a dull, white sail propped against ship's bow
    with a noise like an anvil
    coming loose in the brain.

    More frightening, sailors mutiny on a diet
    of bread as sallow maggots
    march in a quarter horse sized trot
    across the floorboards.
    Such men in the bellows of one's mind
    break out rubber dinghies
    i...

When by the green-wood side, at summer eve,
Poetic visions charm my closing eye;
And fairy-scenes, that Fancy loves to weave,
Shift to wild notes of sweetest Minstrelsy;
'Tis thine to range in busy quest of prey,
Thy feathery antlers quivering with delight,
Brush from my lids the hues of heav'n away,
And all is Solitude, and all is Night!
--Ah now thy barbed shaft, relentless fly,
Unsheaths its terrors in the sultry air!
No guardian sylph, in golden panoply,
Lifts the broad shield, and points the glittering spear.
Now near and nearer rush thy whirring wings,
Thy dragon-scales still wet with human gore.
Hark, thy shrill horn its fearful laram flings!
--I wake in horror, and 'dare sleep no more!'

    Along the way
    He walked that day,
Watching shapes that reveries limn,
    And seldom he
    Had eyes to see
The moment that encompassed him.

    Bright yellowhammers
    Made mirthful clamours,
And billed long straws with a bustling air,
    And bearing their load
    Flew up the road
That he followed, alone, without interest there.

    From bank to ground
    And over and round
They sidled along the adjoining hedge;
    Sometimes to the gutter
    Their yellow flutter
Would dip from the nearest slatestone ledge.

    The smooth sea-line
    With a metal shine,
And flashes of white, and a sail thereon,
    He would also descry
    With a half-wrapt eye
Between the projects he mused upon.

  ...

A little bird woke singing in the night,
    Dreaming of coming day,
And piped, for very fulness of delight,
    His little roundelay.

Dreaming he heard the wood-lark's carol loud,
    Down calling to his mate,
Like silver rain out of a golden cloud,
    At morning's radiant gate.

And all for joy of his embowering woods,
    And dewy leaves he sung,--
The summer sunshine, and the summer floods
    By forest flowers o'erhung.

Thou shalt not hear those wild and sylvan notes
    When morn's full chorus pours
Rejoicing from a thousand feathered throats,
    And the lark sings and soars,

Oh poet of our glorious land so fair,
    Whose foot is at the door;
Even so my song shall melt into the air,
    And die and be no more.

There is a power whose inspiration fills
Nature's fair fabric, sun- and star-inwrought,
Like airy dew ere any drop distils,
Like perfume in the laden flower, like aught
Unseen which interfused throughout the whole
Becomes its quickening pulse and principle and soul.
Now when, the drift of old desire renewing,
Warm tides flow northward over valley and field,
When half-forgotten sound and scent are wooing
From their deep-chambered recesses long sealed
Such memories as breathe once more
Of childhood and the happy hues it wore,
Now, with a fervor that has never been
In years gone by, it stirs me to respond, -
Not as a force whose fountains are within
The faculties of the percipient mind,
Subject with them to darkness and decay,
But something absolute, somethi...

At purple eyes beside the grain,
Our loves on altars we had burned,
And mixed our tribute with the dew,
Our tears, when rosy dawn returned.

Our voices we had joined with song
Of bird ecstatic, light, and free;
Our laughter rollicked with the brook
Running through darkness merrily.

At purple eyes beside the rim
Of frozen lakes our loves we burned,
And slid away when stillness reigned:
Deep the vast woods our bodies urned.

In starlit night along the shade
Of our dusk tombs our spirits glide;
We hear the echoing of the wind,
We breathe the sighs we living sighed.

Quick through the gates of Fairyland
The South Wind forced his way.
'Twas his to make the Earth forget
Her grief of yesterday.
"'Tis mine," cried he, "to bring her joy!"
And on his lightsome feet
In haste he slung the snowdrop bells,
Pushed past the Fairy sentinels,
And out with laughter sweet.

Clear flames of Crocus glimmered on
The shining way he went.
He whispered to the trees strange tales
Of wondrous sweet intent,
When, suddenly, his witching voice
With timbre rich and rare,
Rang through the woodlands till it cleft
Earth's silent solitudes, and left
A Dream of Roses there!

All night under the moon
Plovers are flying
Over the dreaming meadows of silvery light,
Over the meadows of June,
Flying and crying -
Wandering voices of love in the hush of the night.

All night under the moon,
Love, though we're lying
Quietly under the thatch, in silvery light
Over the meadows of June
Together we're flying -
Rapturous voices of love in the hush of the night?

FROM BERMUDA.[1]


"The daylight is gone--but, before we depart,
"One cup shall go round to the friend of my heart,
"The kindest, the dearest--oh! judge by the tear
"I now shed while I name him, how kind and how dear."

    'Twas thus in the shade of the Calabash-Tree,
With a few, who could feel and remember like me,
The charm that, to sweeten my goblet, I threw
Was a sigh to the past and a blessing on you.

    Oh! say, is it thus, in the mirth-bringing hour,
When friends are assembled, when wit, in full flower,
Shoots forth from the lip, under Bacchus's dew,
In blossoms of thought ever springing and new--
Do you sometimes remember, and hallow the brim
Of your cup with a sigh, as you crown it to him
Who is lonely and sad in these val...