Oh, come with me to the Happy Isles
In the golden haze off yonder,
Where the song of the sun-kissed breeze beguiles,
And the ocean loves to wander.
'Twas in the year of 1898, ond on the 21st of June,
The launching of the Battleship Albion caused a great gloom,
Amongst the relatives of many persons who were drowned in the River Thames,
Which their relatives will remember while life remains.
This is the treacherous month when autumn days
With summer's voice come bearing summer's gifts.
Beguiled, the pale down-trodden aster lifts
Her head and blooms again. The soft, warm haze
Long years!--It tries the thrilling frame to bear
And eagle-spirit of a Child of Song--
Long years of outrage--calumny--and wrong;
Imputed madness, prisoned solitude,
My love she wears a cotton plaid,
A bonnet of the straw;
Her cheeks are leaves of roses spread,
Her lips are like the haw.
NEAR yon bleak mountain's dizzy height,
That hangs o'er AVON's silent wave;
By the pale Crescent's glimm'ring light,
I sought LORENZO's lonely grave.
Of old sat Freedom on the heights,
The thunders breaking at her feet:
Above her shook the starry lights:
She heard the torrents meet.
In the heart of the Hills of Life, I know
Two springs that with unbroken flow
Forever pour their lucent streams
Into my soul's far Lake of Dreams.
What beckoning ghost, along the moonlight shade
Invites my steps, and points to yonder glade?
'Tis she!--but why that bleeding bosom gored,
Why dimly gleams the visionary sword?
Now, God be thanked Who has watched us with His hour,
And caught our youth, and wakened us from sleeping,
With hand made sure, clear eye, and sharpened power,
To turn, as swimmers into cleanness leaping,
So was their sanctuary violated,
So their fair college turned to hospital;
At first with all confusion: by and by
Sweet order lived again with other laws:
PROM THE GREEK OF BION.
I mourn Adonis dead--loveliest Adonis--
Dead, dead Adonis--and the Loves lament.
Sleep no more, Venus, wrapped in purple woof--
Lad of Athens, faithful be
To Thyself,
And Mystery --
All the rest is Perjury --
When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste:
1
STARTING from fish-shape Paumanok, where I was born,
Well-begotten, and rais’d by a perfect mother;
After roaming many lands—lover of populous pavements;
WHEN by Zeus relenting the mandate was revoked,
Sentencing to exile the bright Sun-God,
Mindful were the ploughmen of who the steer had yoked,
Who: and what a track show'd the upturn'd sod!
First was the world as one great cymbal made,
Where jarring winds to infant Nature played.
All music was a solitary sound,
To hollow rocks and murm'ring fountains bound.
1 With what deep murmurs through time's silent stealth
2 Doth thy transparent, cool, and wat'ry wealth
3 Here flowing fall,
4 And chide, and call,
Believe me, dear patrons, I have wand'red too far,
Without any compass, or planet or star;
My dear native village I scarcely can see
So I'll hie to my hive like the tempest-tost bee.
Sybil of months, and worshipper of winds,
I love thee, rude and boisterous as thou art;
And scraps of joy my wandering ever finds
Mid thy uproarious madness--when the start