I.
art’s use; what is it but to touch the springs
Of nature? But to hold a torch up for
Humanity in Life’s large corridor,
To guide the feet of peasants and of kings!
What is it but to carry union through
Thoughts alien to thoughts kindred, and to merge
The lines of color that should not diverge,
And give the sun a window to shine...
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A Song of Derivations
I COME from nothing; but from where
Come the undying thoughts I bear?
Down, through long links of death and birth,
From the past poets of the earth.
My immortality is there.I am like the blossom of an hour.
But long, long vanished sun and shower
Awoke my breath i’ the young world’s air.
I... -
[Published in a volume by several authors for the benefit of the starving weavers of Lancashire during the American civil war.]
THE WORLD! Was jester ever in
A viler than the present?
Yet if it ugly be—as sin,
It almost is—as pleasant!
It is a merry world (pro tem.);
And some are gay, and therefore
It pleases them—but some... -
Far out at sea—the sun was high,
While veered the wind, and flapped the sail—
We saw a snow-white butterfly
Dancing before the fitful gale,
Far out at sea!The little wanderer, who had lost
His way, of danger nothing knew;
Settled awhile upon the mast,
Then fluttered o’er the waters blue,... -
From “Edwin the Fair”
THIS life, and all that it contains, to him
Is but a tissue of illuminous dreams
Filled with book-wisdom, pictured thought and love
That on its own creations spends itself.
All things he understands, and nothing does.
Profusely eloquent in copious praise
Of action, he will talk to you as one
Whose wisdom lay... -
Music, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory,—
Odors, when sweet violets sicken,
Live within the sense they quicken.Rose-leaves, when the rose is dead,
Are heaped for the belovèd’s bed;
And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,
Love itself shall slumber on. -
From the French by Gertrude Hall
“Son joyeux, importun, d’un clavecin sonore.”
—PÉTRUS BOREL.THE KEYBOARD, over which two slim hands float,
Shines vaguely in the twilight pink and gray,
Whilst with a sound like wings, note after note
Takes flight to form a pensive little lay
That strays, discreet and charming, faint, remote,... -
Hack and Hew were the sons of God
In the earlier earth than now:
One at his right hand, one at his left,
To obey as he taught them how.And Hack was blind, and Hew was dumb,
But both had the wild, wild heart;
And God’s calm will was their burning will,
And the gist of their toil was art.They made the moon and the...
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From “Malcolm’s Katie”
HIGH grew the snow beneath the low-hung sky,
And all was silent in the wilderness;
In trance of stillness Nature heard her God
Rebuilding her spent fires, and veiled her face
While the Great Worker brooded o’er His work.“Bite deep and wide, O Axe, the tree!
What doth thy bold voice promise me?”“I...
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We plough and sow—we ’re so very, very low
That we delve in the dirty clay,
Till we bless the plain with the golden grain,
And the vale with the fragrant hay.
Our place we know—we ’re so very low,
’T is down at the landlord’s feet:
We ’re not too low the bread to grow,
But too low the bread to eat.Down, down we go—we ’...