Give to barrows, trays and pans Grace and glimmer of romance; Bring the moonlight into noon
Was never form and never face So sweet to SEYD as only grace Which did not slumber like a stone,
'May be true what I had heard,-- Earth's a howling wilderness, Truculent with fraud and force,'
Darlings of children and of bard, Perfect kinds by vice unmarred, All of worth and beauty set
FROM THE FRENCH Some of your hurts you have cured, And the sharpest you still have survived,
READ IN MUSIC HALL, JANUARY 1, 1863 The word of the Lord by night To the watching Pilgrims came,
I am not wiser for my age, Nor skilful by my grief; Life loiters at the book's first page,--
That you are fair or wise is vain, Or strong, or rich, or generous; You must add the untaught strain
The mountain and the squirrel Had a quarrel, And the former called the latter 'Little Prig;
Her planted eye to-day controls, Is in the morrow most at home, And sternly calls to being souls
Long I followed happy guides, I could never reach their sides; Their step is forth, and, ere the day
Once I wished I might rehearse Freedom's paean in my verse, That the slave who caught the strain
Thou foolish Hafiz! Say, do churls Know the worth of Oman's pearls? Give the gem which dims the moon
A ruddy drop of manly blood The surging sea outweighs, The world uncertain comes and goes;
I said to heaven that glowed above, O hide yon sun-filled zone, Hide all the stars you boast;
Mortal mixed of middle clay, Attempered to the night and day, Interchangeable with things,
Ruby wine is drunk by knaves, Sugar spends to fatten slaves, Rose and vine-leaf deck buffoons;
There is in all the sons of men A love that in the spirit dwells, That panteth after things unseen,
I mourn upon this battle-field, But not for those who perished here. Behold the river-bank
Power that by obedience grows, Knowledge which its source not knows, Wave which severs whom it bears
Go, speed the stars of Thought On to their shining goals;-- The sower scatters broad his seed;
Tell me, maiden, dost thou use Thyself thro' Nature to diffuse? All the angles of the coast
Two well-assorted travellers use The highway, Eros and the Muse. From the twins is nothing hidden,
Night-dreams trace on Memory's wall Shadows of the thoughts of day, And thy fortunes, as they fall,
I cannot spare water or wine, Tobacco-leaf, or poppy, or rose; From the earth-poles to the Line,
Thousand minstrels woke within me, 'Our music's in the hills;'-- Gayest pictures rose to win me,
If I could put my woods in song And tell what's there enjoyed, All men would to my gardens throng,
The gale that wrecked you on the sand, It helped my rowers to row; The storm is my best galley hand
October woods wherein The boy's dream comes to pass, And Nature squanders on the boy her pomp,
[Knows he who tills this lonely field To reap its scanty corn, What mystic fruit his acres yield
Ever the Poet from the land Steers his bark and trims his sail; Right out to sea his courses stand,
Cast the bantling on the rocks, Suckle him with the she-wolf's teat, Wintered with the hawk and fox,
His tongue was framed to music, And his hand was armed with skill; His face was the mould of beauty,
When success exalts thy lot, God for thy virtue lays a plot: And all thy life is for thy own,
Theme no poet gladly sung, Fair to old and foul to young; Scorn not thou the love of parts,
Have ye seen the caterpillar Foully warking in his nest? 'T is the poor man getting siller,
Though her eye seek other forms And a glad delight below, Yet the love the world that warms
The living Heaven thy prayers respect, House at once and architect, Quarrying man's rejected hours,
Would you know what joy is hid In our green Musketaquid, And for travelled eyes what charms
A JOURNAL DEDICATED TO MY FELLOW TRAVELLERS IN AUGUST, 1858 Wise and polite,--and if I drew
Think me not unkind and rude That I walk alone in grove and glen; I go to the god of the wood
I love thy music, mellow bell, I love thine iron chime, To life or death, to heaven or hell,
I like a church; I like a cowl; I love a prophet of the soul; And on my heart monastic aisles
You shall not be overbold When you deal with arctic cold, As late I found my lukewarm blood
Askest, 'How long thou shalt stay?' Devastator of the day! Know, each substance and relation,
A Queen rejoices in her peers, And wary Nature knows her own By court and city, dale and down,
Set not thy foot on graves; Hear what wine and roses say; The mountain chase, the summer waves,
Thee, dear friend, a brother soothes, Not with flatteries, but truths, Which tarnish not, but purify
From thy worth and weight the stars gravitate, And the equipoise of heaven is thy house's equipoise.
Thy summer voice, Musketaquit, Repeats the music of the rain; But sweeter rivers pulsing flit
Roving, roving, as it seems, Una lights my clouded dreams; Still for journeys she is dressed;
It fell in the ancient periods Which the brooding soul surveys, Or ever the wild Time coined itself
In my garden three ways meet, Thrice the spot is blest; Hermit-thrush comes there to build,
This is he, who, felled by foes, Sprung harmless up, refreshed by blows: He to captivity was sold,