1.

        ALAS, my tent! see through it a whirlwind sweep!
        Moaning, poor Fancy's doves are swept away.
        I sit alone, a sorrow half asleep,
        My consciousness the blackness all astir.
        No pilgrim I, a homeless wanderer--
        For how canst Thou be in the darkness deep,
        Who dwellest only in the living day?

        2.

        It must be, somewhere in my fluttering tent,
        Strange creatures, half tamed only yet, are pent--
        Dragons, lop-winged birds, and large-eyed snakes!
        Hark! through the storm the saddest howling breaks!
        Or are they loose, roaming about the bent,
        The darkness dire deepening with moan and scream?--
        My Morning, rise, and all shall be a dream....

Like an opera-house is the world, I ween,
Where the passionate lover of music is seen
    In the balcony near the roof:
While the very best seat in the first stage-box
Is filled by the person who laughs and talks
    Through the harmony's warp and woof.

This is the scene of a man’s despair, and a soul’s release
From the difficult traits of the flesh; so, it seeking peace,
A shot rang out in the night; death’s doors were wide;
And you stood alone, a stranger, and saw inside.

Coward flesh, brave soul, which was it?    One feared the world,
The pity of men, or their scorn; yet carelessly hurled
All on the balance of Chance for a state unknown;
Fled the laughter of men for the anger of God-alone.

Perhaps when the hot blood streamed on the daisied sod,
Poor soul, you were likened to Cain, and you fled from God;
Men say you fought hard for your life, when the deed was done;
But your body would rise no more ’neath this world’s sun.

I’d choose-should I do the act-such a night as this,
When the sea throws up white ...

This day, whate'er the Fates decree,
Shall still be kept with joy by me:
This day then let us not be told,
That you are sick, and I grown old;
Nor think on our approaching ills,
And talk of spectacles and pills;
To-morrow will be time enough
To hear such mortifying stuff.
Yet, since from reason may be brought
A better and more pleasing thought,
Which can, in spite of all decays,
Support a few remaining days;
From not the gravest of divines
Accept for once some serious lines.
    Although we now can form no more
Long schemes of life, as heretofore;
Yet you, while time is running fast,
Can look with joy on what is past.
    Were future happiness and pain
A mere contrivance of the brain;
As atheists argue, to entice
And fit their proselyt...

Now lonely is the wood:
    No flower now lingers, none!
The virgin sisterhood
    Of roses, all are gone;
Now Autumn sheds her latest leaf;
And in my heart is grief.

Ah me, for all earth rears,
    The appointed bound is placed!
After a thousand years
    The great oak falls at last:
And thou, more lovely, canst not stay,
Sweet rose, beyond thy day.

Our life is not the life
    Of roses and of leaves;
Else wherefore this deep strife,
    This pain, our soul conceives?
The fall of ev'n such short-lived things
To us some sorrow brings.

And yet, plant, bird, and fly
    Feel no such hidden fire.
Happy they live; and die
    Happy, with no desire.
They in their brief life have fulfill'd
All Nature in them will'...

What is it to grow old?
Is it to lose the glory of the form,
The lustre of the eye?
Is it for beauty to forego her wreath?
Yes, but not for this alone.

Is it to feel our strength,
Not our bloom only, but our strength, decay?
Is it to feel each limb
Grow stiffer, every function less exact,
Each nerve more weakly strung?

Yes, this, and more! but not,
Ah, 'tis not what in youth we dreamed 'twould be!
'Tis not to have our life
Mellowed and softened as with sunset-glow,
A golden day's decline!

'Tis not to see the world
As from a height, with rapt prophetic eyes,
And heart profoundly stirred;
And weep, and feel the fulness of the past,
The years that are no more!

It is to spend long days
And not once feel that we were...

In the morning of life, when all things appear bright,
And far in the distance the shadows of night,
With kind parents still spared thee, and health to enjoy,
What period more fitting thy powers to employ
In the service of him, who his own life has given
To procure thee a crown and a mansion in Heaven.
As a dream that is gone at the breaking of day,
And a tale that's soon told, so our years pass away.
"Then count that day lost, whose low setting sun
Can see from thy hand no worthy act done."
Midst the roses of life many thorns thou wilt find,
"But the cloud that is darkest, with silver is lined."
As the children of Israel were led on their way
By the bright cloud at night, and the dark cloud by day,
So the Christian is led through the straight narrow road
That brin...

Mere living wears the most of life away:
Even the lilies take thought for many things,
For frost in April and for drought in May,
And from no careless heart the skylark sings.

Those cheap utilities of rain and sun
Describe the foolish circle of our years,
Until death takes us, doing all undone,
And there's an end at last to hopes and fears.

Though song be hollow and no dreams come true,
Still songs and dreams are better than the truth:
But there's so much to get, so much to do,
Mary must drudge like Martha, dainty Ruth

Forget the morning music in the corn,
And Rachel grudge when Leah's boys are born.

"You never attained to Him?" "If to attain
    Be to abide, then that may be."
"Endless the way, followed with how much pain!"
    "The way was He."

Before me grew the human soul,
And after I am dead and gone,
Through grades of effort and control
The marvellous work shall still go on.

Each mortal in his little span
Hath only lived, if he have shown
What greatness there can be in man
Above the measured and the known;

How through the ancient layers of night,
In gradual victory secure,
Grows ever with increasing light
The Energy serene and pure:

The Soul, that from a monstrous past,
From age to age, from hour to hour,
Feels upward to some height at last
Of unimagined grace and power.

Though yet the sacred fire be dull,
In folds of thwarting matter furled,
Ere death be nigh, while life is full,
O Master Spirit of the world,

Grant me to know, to seek, to find,

Life is full of trouble,
Love is full of care,
Joy is like a bubble
Shining in the air,
For you cannot
Grasp it anywhere.

Love is not worth getting,
It doth fade so fast.
Life is not worth fretting
Which so soon is past;
And you cannot
Bid them longer last.

Yet for certain fellows
Life seems true and strong;
And with some, they tell us,
Love will linger long;
Thus they cannot
Understand my song.

Did we but know what lurks beyond the NOW;
Could we but see what the dim future hides;
Had we some power occult that would us show
The joy and sorrow which in THEN abides;
Would life be happier, - or less fraught with woe,
Did we but know?

I long, yet fear to pierce those clouds ahead; -
To solve life's secrets, - learn what means this death.
Are fresh joys waiting for the silent dead?
Or do we perish with am fleeting breath?
If not; then whither will the spirit go?
Did we but know.

'Tis all a mist. Reason can naught explain,
We dream and scheme for what to-morrow brings;
We sleep, perchance, and never wake again,
Nor taste life's joys, or suffer sorrow's stings.
Will the soul soar, or will it sink below?
How can we know.

"You must ...

When I am buried, all my thoughts and acts
Will be reduced to lists of dates and facts,
And long before this wandering flesh is rotten
The dates which made me will be all forgotten;
And none will know the gleam there used to be
About the feast days freshly kept by me,
But men will call the golden hour of bliss
'About this time,' or 'shortly after this.'

Men do not heed the rungs by which men climb
Those glittering steps, those milestones upon time,
Those tombstones of dead selves, those hours of birth,
Those moments of the soul in years of earth.
They mark the height achieved, the main result,
The power of freedom in the perished cult,
The power of boredom in the dead man's deeds
Not the bright moments of the sprinkled seeds.

By many waters and on ...

We, O Nature, depart:
Thou survivest us: this,
This, I know, is the law.
Yes, but more than this,
Thou who seest us die
Seest us change while we live;
Seest our dreams one by one,
Seest our errors depart:
Watchest us, Nature, throughout,
Mild and inscrutably calm.

Well for us that we change!
Well for us that the Power
Which in our morning prime
Saw the mistakes of our youth,
Sweet, and forgiving, and good,
Sees the contrition of age!

Behold, O Nature, this pair!
See them to-night where they stand,
Not with the halo of youth
Crowning their brows with its light,
Not with the sunshine of hope,
Not with the rapture of spring,
Which they had of old, when they stood
Years ago at my side
In this self same garden, an...

You are here, and you are wanted,
    Though a waif upon life's stair;
Though the sunlit hours are haunted
    With the shadowy shapes of care.
Still the Great One, the All-Seeing
Called your spirit into being -
Gave you strength for any fate.
Since your life by Him was needed,
All your ways by Him are heeded -
    You can trust and you can wait.

You can wait to know the meaning
    Of the troubles sent your soul;
Of the chasms intervening
    'Twixt your purpose and your goal;
Of the sorrows and the trials,
Of the silence and denials,
    Ofttimes answering to your pleas;
Of the stinted sweets of pleasure,
And of pain's too generous measure -
    You can wait the WHY of these.

Forth from planet unto planet,
    You have go...

I'm not sorry I am older, love - are you?
Over all youth's fuss and flurry,
All its everlasting hurry,
All its solemn self-importance and to-do.
Perhaps we missed the highest reaches of high art;
Love we missed not, and the laughter,
Seeing both before and after -
Life was such a serious business at the start!

We've lost nothing worth the keeping - do you think?
You are just as slim and elfish,
And I've grown a world less selfish;
We look back on life together - and we wink.
Over all those old misgivings of the heart,
Growing pains of love and lover;
Life's fun begins, its fevers over -
Life was such a serious business at the start!

Garners full, life's grain and chaff we have sifted;
Youth went by in idle tasting,
Now we drink the cup, u...

We sow the glebe, we reap the corn,
We build the house where we may rest,
And then, at moments, suddenly,
We look up to the great wide sky,
Inquiring wherefore we were born…
For earnest or for jest?

The senses folding thick and dark
About the stifled soul within,
We guess diviner things beyond,
And yearn to them with yearning fond;
We strike out blindly to a mark
Believed in, but not seen.

We vibrate to the pant and thrill
Wherewith Eternity has curled
In serpent-twine about God’s seat;
While, freshening upward to His feet,
In gradual growth His full-leaved will
Expands from world to world.

And, in the tumult and excess
Of act and passion under sun,
We sometimes hear, oh, soft and far,
As silver star did touch with st...

Solea dalla fontana di mia vita.

MEMORY IS HIS ONLY SOLACE AND SUPPORT.


    I who was wont from life's best fountain far
So long to wander, searching land and sea,
Pursuing not my pleasure, but my star,
And alway, as Love knows who strengthen'd me,
Ready in bitter exile to depart,
For hope and memory both then fed my heart;
Alas! now wring my hands, and to unkind
And angry Fortune, which away has reft
That so sweet hope, my armour have resign'd;
And, memory only left,
I feed my great desire on that alone,
Whence frail and famish'd is my spirit grown.

As haply by the way, if want of food
Compel the traveller to relax his speed,
Losing that strength which first his steps endued,
So feeling, for my weary life, the need
Of ...