From “Sonnets in Shadow”
THERE is such power even in smallest things
To bring the dear past back; a flower’s tint,
A snatch of some old song, the fleeting glint
Of sunbeams on the wave—each vivid brings
The lost days up, as from the idle strings
Of wind-harp sad a breeze evokes the hint
Of antique tunes. A glove which keeps...
During His Solitary Abode in the Island of Juan Fernandez
I AM monarch of all I survey,—
My right there is none to dispute;
From the centre all round to the sea,
I am lord of the fowl and the brute.
O Solitude! where are the charms
That sages have seen in thy face?
Better dwell in the midst of alarms
Than reign in this...
From the German by Thomas Carlyle
From “Wilhelm Meister”
“KNOW’ST thou the land where citron-apples bloom,
And oranges like gold in leafy gloom,
A gentle wind from deep-blue heaven blows,
The myrtle thick, and high the laurel grows?
Know’st thou it then?
’T is there! ’T is there,
O my true loved one, thou with me...
Oft in the stilly night,
Ere slumber’s chain has bound me,
Fond Memory brings the light
Of other days around me:
The smiles, the tears,
Of boyhood’s years,
The words of love then spoken;
The eyes that shone,
Now dimmed and gone,
The cheerful hearts now broken.
Thus in the stilly night,...
Where now these mingled ruins lie
A temple once to Bacchus rose,
Beneath whose roof, aspiring high,
Full many a guest forgot his woes.
No more this dome, by tempests torn,
Affords a social safe retreat;
But ravens here, with eye forlorn,
And clustering bats henceforth will meet.
The Priestess of this ruined shrine,...
’t Is but a little faded flower,
But oh, how fondly dear!
’T will bring me back one golden hour,
Through many a weary year.
I may not to the world impart
The secret of its power,
But treasured in my inmost heart,
I keep my faded flower.
Where is the heart that doth not keep,
Within its inmost core,
Some...
Ha! bully for me again, when my turn for picket is over,
And now for a smoke as I lie, with the moonlight, out in the clover.
My pipe, it ’s only a knot from the root of a brier-wood tree,
But it turns my heart to the Northward—Harry gave it to me.
And I ’m but a rough at best, bred up to the row and the riot;
But a softness comes over my heart, when...
From the Greek by Robert Bland
ALL hail, Remembrance and Forgetfulness!
Trace, Memory, trace whate’er is sweet or kind:
When friends forsake us or misfortunes press,
Oblivion, ’rase the record from our mind.
Most sweet it is with unuplifted eyes
To pace the ground, if path there be or none,
While a fair region round the traveller lies
Which he forbears again to look upon;
Pleased rather with some soft ideal scene,
The work of fancy, or some happy tone
Of meditation, slipping in between
The beauty coming and the beauty gone.
If Thought...
Thought is deeper than all speech,
Feeling deeper than all thought;
Souls to souls can never teach
What unto themselves was taught.
We are spirits clad in veils;
Man by man was never seen;
All our deep communing fails
To remove the shadowy screen.
Heart to heart was never known;
Mind with mind did never meet...
