Happiness

Joy, how I sought thee!
Silver I spent and gold,
On the pleasures of this world,
    In splendid garments clad;
The wine I drank was sweet,
Rich morsels I did eat,
    Oh, but my life was sad!
Joy, how I sought thee!

Joy, I have found thee!
Far from the halls of Mirth,
Back to the soft green earth,
    Where people are not many;
I find thee, Joy, in hours
With clouds, and birds, and flowers,
    Thou dost not charge one penny.
Joy, I have found thee!

    The softest beams of the stars are born in the farthest skies,
    And fairest rays of the sun where evening shadows rise;
    The sweetest songs of the bird are sung in the darkest days,
    And rarest blooms of the spring are found in the wildest ways.

    The brightest blush of the rose is blown as the petals fade.
    The greenest grass of the earth is grown in the hidden glade;
    The fondest rhyme of the rill is heard in the secret vale,
    And lightest lays of the breeze are borne from the dying gale.

    The highest hopes of the heart in saddest of sorrows grow,
    The purest pleasures of joy arise in the wane of woe;
    The gladdest smiles of the lips are seen in the hours of pain,
    And proudest days of the free are spent by the broken chain.

Best and brightest, come away!
Fairer far than this fair Day,
Which, like thee to those in sorrow,
Comes to bid a sweet good-morrow
To the rough Year just awake
In its cradle on the brake.
The brightest hour of unborn Spring,
Through the winter wandering,
Found, it seems, the halcyon Morn
To hoar February born,
Bending from Heaven, in azure mirth,
It kissed the forehead of the Earth,
And smiled upon the silent sea,
And bade the frozen streams be free,
And waked to music all their fountains,
And breathed upon the frozen mountains,
And like a prophetess of May
Strewed flowers upon the barren way,
Making the wintry world appear
Like one on whom thou smilest, dear.

Away, away, from men and towns,
To the wild wood and the downs -

In desultory walk through orchard grounds,
Or some deep chestnut grove, oft have I paused
The while a Thrush, urged rather than restrained
By gusts of vernal storm, attuned his song
To his own genial instincts; and was heard
(Though not without some plaintive tones between)
To utter, above showers of blossom swept
From tossing boughs, the promise of a calm,
Which the unsheltered traveler might receive
With thankful spirit. The descant, and the wind
That seemed to play with it in love or scorn,
Encouraged and endeared the strain of words
That haply flowed from me, by fits of silence
Impelled to livelier pace. But now, my Book!
Charged with those lays, and others of like mood,
Or loftier pitch if higher rose the theme,
Go, single yet aspiring to be joined
W...

How clear she shines! How quietly
I lie beneath her guardian light;
While heaven and earth are whispering me,
"To morrow, wake, but dream to-night."
Yes, Fancy, come, my Fairy love!
These throbbing temples softly kiss;
And bend my lonely couch above,
And bring me rest, and bring me bliss.

The world is going; dark world, adieu!
Grim world, conceal thee till the day;
The heart thou canst not all subdue
Must still resist, if thou delay!

Thy love I will not, will not share;
Thy hatred only wakes a smile;
Thy griefs may wound, thy wrongs may tear,
But, oh, thy lies shall ne'er beguile!
While gazing on the stars that glow
Above me, in that stormless sea,
I long to hope that all the woe
Creation knows, is held in thee!

And this s...

Thou who singest through the earth,
    All the earth's wild creatures fly thee,
Everywhere thou marrest mirth.
    Dumbly they defy thee.
There is something they deny thee.

Pines thy fallen nature ever
For the unfallen Nature sweet.
But she shuns thy long endeavour,
    Though her flowers and wheat
Throng and press thy pausing feet.

Though thou tame a bird to love thee,
Press thy face to grass and flowers,
All these things reserve above thee
    Secrets in the bowers,
Secrets in the sun and showers.

Sing thy sorrow, sing thy gladness.
In thy songs must wind and tree
Bear the fictions of thy sadness,
    Thy humanity.
For their truth is not for thee.

Wait, and many a secret nest,
Many a hoarded winter-store

1. Through cycles of darkness the diamond sleeps in its coal-black prison.

2. Purely incrusted in its scaly casket, the breath-tarnished pearl slumbers in mud and ooze.

3. Buried in the bowels of earth, rugged and obscure, lies the ingot of gold.

4. Long hast thou been buried, O Israel, in the bowels of earth; long hast thou slumbered beneath the overwhelming waves; long hast thou slept in the rayless house of darkness.

5. Rejoice and sing, for only thus couldst thou rightly guard the golden knowledge, Truth, the delicate pearl and the adamantine jewel of the Law.

Dawn-cool, dew-cool
Gleams the surface of my pool
Bird haunted, fern enchanted,
Where but tempered spirits rule;
Stars do not trace their mystic lines
In my confines;
I take a double night within my breast
A night of darkened heavens, a night of leaves,
And in the two-fold dark I hear the owl
Puff at his velvet horn
And the wolves howl.
Even daylight comes with a touch of gold
Not overbold,
And shows dwarf-cornel and the twin-flowers,
Below the balsam bowers,
Their tints enamelled in my dew-drop shield.
Too small even for a thirsty fawn
To quench upon,
I hold my crystal at one level
There where you see the liquid bevel
Break in silver and go free
Singing to its destiny.

Give, Poet, give!
Thus only shalt thou live.
...

My thoughts go back to last July,
Sweet happy thoughts and tender;
“The bridal of the earth and sky,”
A day of noble splendour;
A day to make the saddest heart
In joy a true believer;
When two good friends we roamed apart
The shady walks of Belvoir.

A maiden like a budding rose,
Unconscious of the golden
And fragrant bliss of love that glows
Deep in her heart infolden;
A Poet old in years and thought,
Yet not too old for pleasance,
Made young again and fancy-fraught
By such a sweet friend's presence.

The other two beyond our ken
Most shamefully deserted,
And far from all the ways of men
Their stealthy steps averted:
Of course our Jack would go astray,
Erotic and erratic;
But Mary! well, I own the day
Was really to...

[Greek poem here--Euripides.]



Pleasant it was, when woods were green,
    And winds were soft and low,
To lie amid some sylvan scene.
Where, the long drooping boughs between,
Shadows dark and sunlight sheen
    Alternate come and go;

Or where the denser grove receives
    No sunlight from above,
But the dark foliage interweaves
In one unbroken roof of leaves,
Underneath whose sloping eaves
    The shadows hardly move.

Beneath some patriarchal tree
    I lay upon the ground;
His hoary arms uplifted he,
And all the broad leaves over me
Clapped their little hands in glee,
    With one continuous sound;--

A slumberous sound, a sound that brings
    The feelings of a dream,
As of innumerable wings,
A...

POET.
My haunting grief has vanished like a dream,
Its floating fading memory seems one
With those frail mists born of the dawn's first beam,
Dissolving as the dew melts in the sun.


MUSE.
What ailed thee then, O poet mine;
What secret misery was thine,
Which set a bar 'twixt thee and me?
Alas, I suffer from it still;
What was this grief, this unknown ill,
Which I have wept so bitterly?


POET.
'T was but a common grief, well known of men.
But, look you, when our heavy heart is sore,
Fond wretches that we are! we fancy then
That sorrow never has been felt before.


MUSE.
There cannot be a common grief,
Save that of common souls; my friend,
Speak out, and give thy heart relief,
Of this grim secret make an ...

    Make the most of this life; where the shadow reposes
        The beams of the summer shall gather in glee,
    And the snow on the graves of the lilies and roses
        But cradles the blooms that shall whiten the lea;
    Though the hopes of the heart be encircled with sorrow
        And billows of wretchedness mutter and roll,
    There shall come with the morn of the bountiful morrow
        The pleasures that gladden the desolate soul.

    Make the most of this life; where the carols are sleeping
        That rose in their rapture from lips of the spring,
    That awakened the world from its winter of weeping,
        Sweet songs shall be sung by the birds on the wing.
    Though the bosom be dark with the dirges of sadness
        And solitudes gather so heav...

The Persian's flowery gifts, the shrine
Of fruitful Ceres, charm no more;
The woven wreaths of oak and pine
Are dust along the Isthmian shore.

But beauty hath its homage still,
And nature holds us still in debt;
And woman's grace and household skill,
And manhood's toil, are honored yet.

And we, to-day, amidst our flowers
And fruits, have come to own again
The blessings of the summer hours,
The early and the latter rain;

To see our Father's hand once more
Reverse for us the plenteous horn
Of autumn, filled and running o'er
With fruit, and flower, and golden corn!

Once more the liberal year laughs out
O'er richer stores than gems or gold;
Once more with harvest-song and shout
Is Nature's bloodless triumph told.

O...

In the rapture of life and of living,
    I lift up my heart and rejoice,
And I thank the great Giver for giving
    The soul of my gladness a voice.
In the glow of the glorious weather,
    In the sweet-scented sensuous air,
My burdens seem light as a feather -
    They are nothing to bear.

In the strength and the glory of power,
    In the pride and the pleasure of wealth,
(For who dares dispute me my dower
    Of talents and youth-time and health?)
I can laugh at the world and its sages -
    I am greater than seers who are sad,
For he is most wise in all ages
    Who knows how to be glad.

I lift up my eyes to Apollo,
    The god of the beautiful days,
And my spirit soars off like a swallow
    And is lost in the light of its rays...

They left their home of summer ease
Beneath the lowland’s sheltering trees,
To seek, by ways unknown to all,
The promise of the waterfall.

Some vague, faint rumor to the vale
Had crept, perchance a hunter’s tale,
Of its wild mirth of waters lost
On the dark woods through which it tossed.

Somewhere it laughed and sang; somewhere
Whirled in mad dance its misty hair;
But who had raised its veil, or seen
The rainbow skirts of that Undine?

They sought it where the mountain brook
Its swift way to the valley took;
Along the rugged slope they clomb,
Their guide a thread of sound and foam.

Height after height they slowly won;
The fiery javelins of the sun
Smote the bare ledge; the tangled shade
With rock and vine their steps delay...

Lo, I am happy, for my eyes have seen
Joy glowing here before me, face to face;
His wings were arched above me for a space,
I kissed his lips, no bitter came between.
The air is vibrant where his feet have been,
And full of song and color is his place.
His wondrous presence sheds about a grace
That lifts and hallows all that once was mean.
I may not sorrow for I saw the light,
Tho' I shall walk in valley ways for long,
I still shall hear the echo of the song,
My life is measured by its one great height.
Joy holds more grace than pain can ever give,
And by my glimpse of joy my soul shall live.

I.

Wisely a woman prefers to a lover a man who neglects her.
    This one may love her some day, some day the lover will not.

II.

There are three species of creatures who when they seem coming are going,
    When they seem going they come:    Diplomates, women, and crabs.

III.

Pleasures too hastily tasted grow sweeter in fond recollection,
    As the pomegranate plucked green ripens far over the sea.

IV.

As the meek beasts in the Garden came flocking for Adam to name them,
    Men for a title to-day crawl to the feet of a king.

V.

What is a first love worth, except to prepare for a second?
    What does the second love bring?    Only regret for the first.

VI.

Health was wooed by the Romans in gr...

"Why urge the long, unequal fight,
Since Truth has fallen in the street,
Or lift anew the trampled light,
Quenched by the heedless million's feet?
"Give o'er the thankless task; forsake
The fools who know not ill from good:
Eat, drink, enjoy thy own, and take
Thine ease among the multitude.
"Live out thyself; with others share
Thy proper life no more; assume
The unconcern of sun and air,
For life or death, or blight or bloom.
"The mountain pine looks calmly on
The fires that scourge the plains below,
Nor heeds the eagle in the sun
The small birds piping in the snow!
"The world is God's, not thine; let Him
Work out a change, if change must be:
The hand that planted best can trim
And nurse the old unfruitful tree."
So spake the Tempter, when ...