Sonnet

The other two, slight air, and purging fire Are both with thee, wherever I abide; The first my thought, the other my desire,

Hark! like the sea in wrath the heavens assailing, Or like a brook through rocky basin wailing, Comes from below, in groaning agony,

Great forests you frighten me, like vast cathedrals: You roar like an organ, and in our condemned souls, aisles of eternal mourning, where past death-rattles

I care not what the sailors say: All those dreadful thunder-stones, All that storm that blots the day

In my mind's eye a Temple, like a cloud Slowly surmounting some invidious hill, Rose out of darkness: the bright Work stood still:

Far stretched the landscape, fair, without a flaw, Down to one silver sheet, some stream or cloud, Through glamorous mists. Midway, an engine ploughed

Lament! for Diocletian's fiery sword Works busy as the lightning; but instinct With malice ne'er to deadliest weapon linked

In the long, sleepless watches of the night, A gentle face--the face of one long dead-- Looks at me from the wall, where round its head

Nothing in life has been made by man for man's using But it was shown long since to man in ages Lost as the name of the maker of it,

Chains may subdue the feeble spirit, but thee, Tell, of the iron heart! they could not tame! For thou wert of the mountains; they proclaim

Behold that Tree, in Autumn's dim decay, Stript by the frequent, chill, and eddying Wind; Where yet some yellow, lonely leaves we find

Enough of garlands, of the Arcadian crook, And all that Greece and Italy have sung Of Swains reposing myrtle groves among!

Hark! 'tis the Thrush, undaunted, undeprest, By twilight premature of cloud and rain; Nor does that roaring wind deaden his strain

When she had left us but a little while Methought I sensed her spirit here and there About my house: upon the empty stair

We held the book together timidly, Whose antique music in an alien tongue Once rose among the dew-drenched vines that hung

Hanging from the beam, Slowly swaying (such the law), Gaunt the shadow on your green,

To ports of balm through isles of musk The gentle airs are leading us; To curtained calm and tents of dusk,

Earth has not anything to show more fair: Dull would he be of soul who could pass by A sight so touching in its majesty:

I sat within the temple of her heart, And watched the living Soul as it passed through, Arrayed in pearly vestments, white and pure.

A thin wet sky, that yellows at the rim, And meets with sun-lost lip the marsh's brim. The pools low lying, dank with moss and mould,

My soul goes out to meet her, and my heart Flings wide the portals of its love, and yearns To have her enter its serene retreat.

Was the aim frustrated by force or guile, When giants scooped from out the rocky ground, Tier under tier, this semicirque profound?

Hast thou the infant seen that yet, unknowing of the love Which warms and cradles, calmly sleeps the mother's heart above Wandering from arm to arm, until the call of passion wakes,

Son of the old Moon-mountains African! Chief of the Pyramid and Crocodile! We call thee fruitful, and that very while

A satyr once did run away for dread, With sound of horn which he himself did blow: Fearing and feared, thus from himself he fled,

Festivals have I seen that were not names: This is young Buonaparte's natal day, And his is henceforth an established sway,

A thought ay like a flower upon mine heart, And drew around it other thoughts like bees For multitude and thirst of sweetnesses;

Foil'd by our fellow-men, depress'd, outworn, We leave the brutal world to take its way, And, Patience! in another life, we say

Thou art not lovelier than lilacs,--no, Nor honeysuckle; thou art not more fair Than small white single poppies,--I can bear

With supple boughs and new-born leaflets crowned, Rejoicing in fresh verdure stands the tree, Though weather-scarred and scooped by fire may be

So many stones have been thrown at me, That I'm not frightened of them anymore, And the pit has become a solid tower,

Her little face is like a walnut shell With wrinkling lines; her soft, white hair adorns Her withered brows in quaint, straight curls, like horns;

Bless'd be the hour that gave my LYDIA birth, The day be sacred 'mid each varying year; How oft the name recals thy spotless worth,

The pipes of Pan! Not idler now are they Than when their cunning fashioner first blew The pith of music from them: Yet for you

"A soldier of the Union mustered out," Is the inscription on an unknown grave At Newport News, beside the salt-sea wave,

Oh earth, oh dewy mother, breathe on us Something of all thy beauty and thy might, Us that are part of day, but most of night,

O wholesome Death, thy sombre funeral-car Looms ever dimly on the lengthening way Of life; while, lengthening still, in sad array,

Sad thoughts, avaunt! partake we their blithe cheer Who gathered in betimes the unshorn flock To wash the fleece, where haply bands of rock,

And is not Earth thy living picture, where Thou utterest beauty, simple and profound, In the same form by wondrous union bound;

Picture Diana decked out for the chase, Charging through forests, beating brush aside, Drunk with the action, wind around her face,

When forty winters shall besiege thy brow, And dig deep trenches in thy beauty's field, Thy youth's proud livery so gazed on now,

When I'm among a blaze of lights, With tawdry music and cigars And women dawdling through delights,

With stammering lips and insufficient sound I strive and struggle to deliver right That music of my nature, day and night

I Love to peep out on a summer's morn, Just as the scouting rabbit seeks her shed, And the coy hare squats nestling in the corn,

The road leads up a hill through many a brake, Blueberry and barberry, bay and sassafras, By an abandoned quarry, where, like glass,

Ah, my Anthea! Must my heart still break? (Love makes me write, what shame forbids to speak.) Give me a kiss, and to that kiss a score;

But do thy worst to steal thyself away, For term of life thou art assured mine; And life no longer than thy love will stay,

In times when madcap Nature in her verve Conceived each day a hatch of monstrous spawn, I might have lived near some young giantess,

Not home to land and kindred wast thou brought, Nor laid 'mid trampled dead of battle won,-- Nor after long life filled with duty done

Dark and more dark the shades of evening fell; The wished-for point was reached, but at an hour When little could be gained from that rich dower