Works

'Tis the time of the year's sundown, and flame
Hangs on the maple bough;
And June is the faded flower of a name;
The thin hedge hides not a singer now.
Yet rich am I; for my treasures be...

I
Is it Midsummer here in the heavens that illumine October on earth?
Can the year, when his heart is fulfilled with desire of the days of his mirth,
Redeem them, recall, or remember?...

Adown the track that skirts the shallow stream
I wandered with blank mind; a bypath drew
My aimless steps aside, and, ere I knew,
The forest closed around me like a dream....

Patrician to my plebian,
aristocratic leaning versus
unbridled backwoods feeling -
distinct Old World breeding
countering rudest colonial lean-to;
his carcass lay, roadworthy,...

If thro' the sea of night which here surrounds me,
I could swim out beyond the farthest star,
Break every barrier of circumstance that bounds me,
And greet the Sun of sweeter life afar,
...

Heh! Walk her round. Heave, ah, heave her short again!
Over, snatch her over, there, and hold her on the pawl.
Loose all sail, and brace your yards aback and full,
Ready jib to pay her off and heave short all!...

I.
Birds of omen dark and foul,
Night-crow, raven, bat, and owl,
Leave the sick man to his dream,
All night long he heard you scream.
Haste to cave and ruin'd tower,
Ivy tod, or dingled-bower,...

It's Epsom but could pass for Epping,
New Forest or Dumbarton Wood.

There's ivy of the thickest
English sort not commonly
found in America; sprigs
growing across open ground
mantling it....

It's my grief that I am not a little white duck,
And I'd swim over the sea to France or to Spain;
I would not stay in Ireland for one week only,
To be without eating, without drinking, without a full jug.
...

An as it's going often at love's breaking,
The ghost of first days came again to us,
The silver willow through window then stretched in,
The silver beauty of her gentle branches....

'Te somnia nostra reducunt.'
OVID.

And ask ye why these sad tears stream?
Why these wan eyes are dim with weeping?
I had a dream'a lovely dream,
Of her that in the grave is sleeping.
...

And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England's mountains green?
And was the holy Lamb of God
On England's pleasant pastures seen?

And did the Countenance Divine...

And doth not a meeting like this make amends,
For all the long years I've been wandering away--
To see thus around me my youth's early friends,
As smiling and kind as in that happy day?...

1712.


Parnassia laurus
Parva sub ingenti matris se subjicit umbra.

VIRG.


When Rome, my lord, in her full glory shone,
And great Augustus rul'd the globe alone,...

(Tennyson)

Time and its ally, Dark Disarmament,
Have compassed me about,
Have massed their armies, and on battle bent
My forces put to rout;
But though I fight alone, and fall, and die,...

'"And if your Nancy frowns, my lad,
And scorns a jacket blue,
Just hoist your sails for other ports,
And find a maid more true."'

And is it among rude untutored Dales,
There, and there only, that the heart is true?
And, rising to repel or to subdue,
Is it by rocks and woods that man prevails?...

When love has changed to kindliness,
Oh, love, our hungry lips, that press
So tight that Time's an old god's dream
Nodding in heaven, and whisper stuff
Seven million years were not enough...

And must I sing? what subject shall I chuse?
Or whose great name in Poets heaven use?
For the more countenance to my active Muse?


Hercules? alas his bones are yet sore,...

No, now I wish the sunshine would stop, and the white shining houses, and the gay red flowers on the balconies and the bluish mountains beyond, would be crushed out between two valves of darkness; the darkness falling, the dark...