(Time -- the Ninth Century)
To-morrow, comrade, we
On the battle-plain must be,
There to conquer, or both lie low!
Of Nature I shall have enough
When I have entered these
Entitled to a Bumble bee's
Familiarities.
One day I wrote her name upon the strand,
But came the waves and washed it away:
Again I wrote it with a second hand,
But came the tide, and made my pains his prey.
Bright be the place of thy soul!
No lovelier spirit than thine
E'er burst from its mortal control,
In the orbs of the blessed to shine.
This is a spray the bird clung to,
Making it blossom with pleasure,
Ere the high tree-top she sprung to,
Fit for her nest and her treasure.
The dewdrops on every blade of grass are so much like silver drops
that I am obliged to stoop down as I walk to see if they are pearls,
and those sprinkled on the ivy-woven beds of primroses underneath the
hazels, whitethorns and maples are so like gold beads that I stooped
I like to hear of wealth and gold,
And El Doradoes in their glory;
I like for silks and satins bold
To sweep and rustle through a story.
Smiles soon abate; the boisterous throes
Of anger long burst forth;
Inconstantly the south-wind blows,
But steadily the north.
Time does go on --
I tell it gay to those who suffer now --
They shall survive --
There is a sun --
"Alas! they had been friends in youth;
But whispering tongues can poison truth:
And Constancy lives in realms above;
And Life is thorny; and youth is vain:
The death-bell beats!--
The mountain repeats
The echoing sound of the knell;
And the dark Monk now
The day was wet, the rain fell souse
Like jars of strawberry jam, [1] a
sound was heard in the old henhouse,
A beating of a hammer.
Dance little baby, dance up high,
Never mind baby, mother is by;
Crow and caper, caper and crow,
There little baby, there you go;
Who would not laugh, if Lawrence hired to grace
His costly canvas with each flattered face,
Abused his art, till Nature, with a blush,
Saw cits grow Centaurs underneath his brush?
Oft seems the Time a market-town
Where many merchant-spirits meet
Who up and down and up and down
Cry out along the street
Stern, stern is the voice of fate's fearful command,
When accents of horror it breathes in our ear,
Or compels us for aye bid adieu to the land,
Where exists that loved friend to our bosom so dear,
The first Day that I was a Life
I recollect it -- How still --
That last Day that I was a Life
I recollect it -- as well --
A something in a summer's Day
As slow her flambeaux burn away
Which solemnizes me.
A something in a summer's noon --
Joust First.
I.
Bright shone the lists, blue bent the skies,
And the knights still hurried amain
OUT of the murk of heaviest clouds,
Out of the feudal wrecks, and heap’d-up skeletons of kings,
Out of that old entire European debris—the shatter’d mummeries,
Ruin’d cathedrals, crumble of palaces, tombs of priests,