Illustration Of A Picture

They bid me strike the idle strings,
As if my summer days
Had shaken sunbeams from their wings
To warm my autumn lays;
They bring to me their painted urn,
As if it were not time
To lift my gauntlet and to spurn
The lists of boyish rhyme;
And were it not that I have still
Some weakness in my heart
That clings around my stronger will
And pleads for gentler art,
Perchance I had not turned away
The thoughts grown tame with toil,
To cheat this lone and pallid ray,
That wastes the midnight oil.

Alas! with every year I feel
Some roses leave my brow;
Too young for wisdom's tardy seal,
Too old for garlands now.
Yet, while the dewy breath of spring
Steals o'er the tingling air,
And spreads and fans...

Greek:

Ha barbitos de chordais
Erota mounon aechei. [1]

Anacreon ['Ode' 1].


1.

Away with your fictions of flimsy romance,
Those tissues of falsehood which Folly has wove;
Give me the mild beam of the soul-breathing glance,
Or the rapture which dwells on the first kiss of love.


2.

Ye rhymers, whose bosoms with fantasy glow,
Whose pastoral passions are made for the grove;
From what blest inspiration your sonnets would flow,
Could you ever have tasted the first kiss of love.


3.

If Apollo should e'er his assistance refuse,
Or the Nine be dispos'd from your service to rove,
Invoke them no more, bid adieu to the Muse,
And try the effect, of the first kiss of love.

Bonny little Blue-bells
Mid young brackens green,
'Neath the hedgerows peeping
Modestly between;
Telling us that Summer
Is not far away,
When your beauties blend with
Blossoms of the May.

Sturdy, tangled hawthorns,
Fleck'd with white or red,
Whilst their nutty incense,
All around is shed.
Bonny drooping Blue-bells,
Happy you must be
With your beauties sheltered
'Neath such fragrant tree.

You need fear no rival, -
Other blossoms blown,
With their varied beauties
But enhance your own.
Steals the soft wind gently,
'Round th' enchanted spot,
Sets your bells a-ringing
Though we hear them not.

Idle Fancy wanders
As you shake and swing,
Our hearts shape the message
We would have you bring.
...

This is the mockery of the moving years;
Youth's colour dies, the fervid morning glow
Is gone from off the foreland; slow, slow,
Even slower than the fount of human tears
To empty, the consuming shadow nears
That Time is casting on the worldly show
Of pomp and glory. But falter not; - below
That thought is based a deeper thought that cheers.

Glean thou thy past; that will alone inure
To catch thy heart up from a dark distress;
It were enough to find one deed mature,
Deep-rooted, mighty 'mid the toil and press;
To save one memory of the sweet and pure,
From out life's failure and its bitterness.

When we as strangers sought
Their catering care,
Veiled smiles bespoke their thought
Of what we were.
They warmed as they opined
Us more than friends -
That we had all resigned
For love's dear ends.

And that swift sympathy
With living love
Which quicks the world maybe
The spheres above,
Made them our ministers,
Moved them to say,
"Ah, God, that bliss like theirs
Would flush our day!"

And we were left alone
As Love's own pair;
Yet never the love-light shone
Between us there!
But that which chilled the breath
Of afternoon,
And palsied unto death
The pane-fly's tune.

The kiss their zeal foretold,
And now deemed come,
Came not: within his hold
Love lingered-numb.
Why cast he on our port<...

Some poets sing of sweethearts dead,
    Some sing of true loves far away;
Some sing of those that others wed,
    And some of idols turned to clay.
    I sing a pensive roundelay
To sweethearts of a doubtful lot,
    The passions vanished in a day,
The little loves that I've forgot.

For, as the happy years have sped,
    And golden dreams have changed to gray,
How oft the flame of love was fed
    By glance, or smile, from Maud or May,
    When wayward Cupid was at play;
Mere fancies, formed of who knows what,
    But still my debt I ne'er can pay,
The little loves that I've forgot.

O joyous hours forever fled!
    O sudden hopes that would not stay!
Held only by the slender thread
    Of memory that's all astray.
    Their ver...

Oh, dim and wan came in the dawn,
And gloomy closed the day;
The killdee whistled among the weeds,
The heron flapped in the river reeds,
And the snipe piped far away.

At dawn she stood - her dark gray hood
Flung back - in the ferry-boat;
Sad were the eyes that watched him ride,
Her raider love, from the riverside,
His kiss on her mouth and throat.

Like some wild spell the twilight fell,
And black the tempest came;
The heavens seemed filled with the warring dead,
Whose batteries opened overhead
With thunder and with flame.

At night again in the wind and rain,
She toiled at the ferry oar;
For she heard a voice in the night and storm,
And it seemed that her lover's shadowy form
Beckoned her to the shore.

And swift to sa...

Oh! the days are gone, when Beauty bright
        My heart's chain wove;
When my dream of life, from morn till night,
        Was love, still love.
        New hope may bloom,
        And days may come,

    Of milder, calmer beam,
But there's nothing half so sweet in life
    As love's young dream;
No, there's nothing half so sweet in life
    As love's young dream.

Tho' the bard to purer fame may soar,
            When wild youth's past;
Tho' he win the wise, who frowned before,
            To smile at last;
            He'll never meet
            A joy so sweet,
    In all his noon of fame,
As when first he sung to woman's ear
    His soul-felt flame,
And, at every close, she blushed to hear
    The one lov'd name.
...

Tune - "Rinn Meudial mo Mhealladh."


I.

    As I was a-wand'ring ae midsummer e'enin',
        The pipers and youngsters were making their game;
    Amang them I spied my faithless fause lover,
        Which bled a' the wound o' my dolour again.
    Weel, since he has left me, may pleasure gae wi' him;
        I may be distress'd, but I winna complain;
    I flatter my fancy I may get anither,
        My heart it shall never be broken for ane.

II.

    I could na get sleeping till dawin for greetin',
        The tears trickled down like the hail and the rain:
    Had I na got greetin', my heart wad a broken,
        For, oh! luve forsaken's a tormenting pain.

III.

    Although he has left me for greed o' the sille...

When through our bodies our two spirits burn
Escaping, and no more our true eyes turn
Outwards, and no more hands to fond hands yearn;

Then over those poor grassy heaps we'll meet
One morning, tasting still the morning's sweet,
Sensible still of light, dark, rain, cold, heat;

And see 'neath the green dust that dust of gray
Which was our useless bodies laid away,
Mocked still with menace of a Judgment Day.

We then that waiting dust at last will call,
Each to the other's,--"Rise up at last, O small
Ashes that first-love held loveliest of all!

"'Tis Judgment Day, arise!" And they will arise,
The dust will lift, and spine, ribs, neck, head, knees
At the sound remember their old unities,

And stand there, yours with mine, as once they stood<...

Our ancient church! its lowly tower,
Beneath the loftier spire,
Is shadowed when the sunset hour
Clothes the tall shaft in fire;
It sinks beyond the distant eye
Long ere the glittering vane,
High wheeling in the western sky,
Has faded o'er the plain.

Like Sentinel and Nun, they keep
Their vigil on the green;
One seems to guard, and one to weep,
The dead that lie between;
And both roll out, so full and near,
Their music's mingling waves,
They shake the grass, whose pennoned spear
Leans on the narrow graves.

The stranger parts the flaunting weeds,
Whose seeds the winds have strown
So thick, beneath the line he reads,
They shade the sculptured stone;
The child unveils his clustered brow,
And ponders for a while
The graven...

    O touch me with your hands -
                For pity's sake!
    My brow throbs ever on with such an ache
    As only your cool touch may take away;
    And so, I pray
                You, touch me with your hands!

    Touch - touch me with your hands. -
                Smooth back the hair
    You once caressed, and kissed, and called so fair
    That I did dream its gold would wear alway,
    And lo, to-day -
            O touch me with your hands!

    Just touch me with your hands,
                And let them press
    My weary eyelids with the old caress,
    And lull me till I sleep.    Then go your way,
    That Death may say:
                    He touched her with his hands.

Through vaults of pain,
Enribbed and wrought with groins of ghastliness,
I passed, and garish spectres moved my brain
To dire distress.

And hammerings,
And quakes, and shoots, and stifling hotness, blent
With webby waxing things and waning things
As on I went.

"Where lies the end
To this foul way?" I asked with weakening breath.
Thereon ahead I saw a door extend -
The door to death.

It loomed more clear:
"At last!" I cried. "The all-delivering door!"
And then, I knew not how, it grew less near
Than theretofore.

And back slid I
Along the galleries by which I came,
And tediously the day returned, and sky,
And life - the same.

And all was well:
Old circumstance resumed its former show,
And on my head the...

I saw one hanging on a tree,
And O his face was sad to see,--
            Misery, misery me!

There were berries red upon his head,
And in his hands, and on his feet,
But when I tried to pick and eat,
They were his blood, and he was dead;--
            Misery, misery me!

It broke my heart to see him there,
So lone and sad in his despair;
The nails of woe were through his hands,
And through his feet,--ah, misery me!

With beak and claws I did my best
To loose the nails and set him free,
But they were all too strong for me;--
            Misery, misery me!

I picked and pulled, and did my best,
And his red blood stained all my breast;
I bit the nails, I pecked the thorn,
O, never saw I thorn so worn;
But yet I could not g...

Massachusetts Bay, 1760.


The robins sang in the orchard, the buds into blossoms grew;
Little of human sorrow the buds and the robins knew!
Sick, in an alien household, the poor French neutral lay;
Into her lonesome garret fell the light of the April day,
Through the dusty window, curtained by the spider's warp and woof,
On the loose-laid floor of hemlock, on oaken ribs of roof,
The bedquilt's faded patchwork, the teacups on the stand,
The wheel with flaxen tangle, as it dropped from her sick hand.

What to her was the song of the robin, or warm morning light,
As she lay in the trance of the dying, heedless of sound or sight?

Done was the work of her bands, she had eaten her bitter bread;
The world of the alien people lay behind her dim and dead.

Where had her sweetness gone?
What fanatics invent
In this blind bitter town,
Fantasy or incident
Not worth thinking of,
put her in a rage.
I had forgiven enough
That had forgiven old age.
All lives that has lived;
So much is certain;
Old sages were not deceived:
Somewhere beyond the curtain
Of distorting days
Lives that lonely thing
That shone before these eyes
Targeted, trod like Spring.

Which is the weakest thing of all
Mine heart can ponder?
The sun, a little cloud can pall
With darkness yonder?
The cloud, a little wind can move
Where'er it listeth?
The wind, a little leaf above,
Though sere, resisteth?

What time that yellow leaf was green,
My days were gladder;
But now, whatever Spring may mean,
I must grow sadder.
Ah me! a leaf with sighs can wring
My lips asunder
Then is mine heart the weakest thing
Itself can ponder.

Yet, Heart, when sun and cloud are pined
And drop together,
And at a blast, which is not wind,
The forests wither,
Thou, from the darkening deathly curse
To glory breakest,
The Strongest of the universe
Guarding the weakest!

Go, let me weep--there's bliss in tears,
When he who sheds them inly feels
Some lingering stain of early years
    Effaced by every drop that steals.
The fruitless showers of worldly woe
Fall dark to earth and never rise;
While tears that from repentance flow,
    In bright exhalement reach the skies.
        Go, let me weep.

Leave me to sigh o'er hours that flew
More idly than the summer's wind,
And, while they past, a fragrance threw,
But left no trace of sweets behind.--
The warmest sigh that pleasure heaves
Is cold, is faint to those that swell
The heart where pure repentance grieves
    O'er hours of pleasure, loved too well.
        Leave me to sigh.