English

The Piper Spring
Has come once more
With his dapple green investiture;
His great cloak pied with petal and wing,
And his red locks spangling everything.

But after the gold
And after the green,
And all the treasures that lie between,
He laughed and plucked from a hidden fold
A magic flower of dusk and gold.

Oh, what have you done,
You Piper Spring?
You have robbed my wits of everything,
And nothing remains beneath the sun
But the wild, sweet rose that I have won!

A human Niagara, plunging from the height
Of vain presumption to the sea of wrath
Below. An Alpine avalanche, in its might,
Strewing the giddy traveller's upward path
With devastation; whirling him adown
Into the steep abyss. The unchained bolt
Of sin's dread electricity. The revolt
Of judgment. Agent of the arch-traitor's frown.
The midnight tempest on a stormy sea.
Reason's eclipse. The Mephistophiles
That points the murderer's weapon: Like to these,
And in its headlong fury ever thus,

I want to sing what's righteous, but I'm apt to sing what's wrong,
For I cannot control the eccentricities of song.
My verses whirl like autumn leaves upon a windy day.
Before I've told them half my mind, they flutter far away,

Full of moonlight, love, and laughter, mixed with other dim affairs
As far removed from economic profit as from prayers
The quaint, fantastic creatures shake their skirtless limbs and dance
And my brain goes dancing after them, the dizzy sport of chance.

I AM an exile, in disgrace,
And sorrow banished from her face:
Now some such woe as mine, I ween,
Napoleon knew at Saint Helene.

I am an exile, fettered, ta'en
To deserts drear of her disdain;
Will pity ne'er her bosom stir
For my high crime of loving her?

“Tarry ye here!” the Saviour said
And to the deeper shade withdrew
Of that dark spot near Kedron's bed
Where high, o'er-arching olives grew.

“Tarry ye here!” nor friend, nor foe
Must on this dreadful hour intrude,
My soul must face its bitterest woe
In silence and in solitude.

“Tarry ye here!” for I alone
Must enter dark Gethsemane,
No ear but God's must list my moan,
Though ye without may watch with me.”

“Tarry ye here,” each sufferer says,
“Pain's common portals open wide,

Once , long agone, I saw the lunar bow
Set in a western vapour, dim and pale,
Cloud-piered, mist-built of moonbeams, rising frail,
Bridging the night that drifted black below,
While far above faint stars shed gleam and glow;
And fancy there, as through a filmy veil,
Beheld true saintly knights in silver mail
Armed, on the archway, pacing to and fro.
This was my love that spanned the east and west,
And these my thoughts, ambitions, hopes and prayers,
That turned devoted service to their Queen.

Throw open wide your golden gates,
O poet-landed month of June,
And waft me, on your spicy breath,
The melody of birds in tune.

O fairest palace of the three,
Wherein Queen Summer holdeth sway,
I gaze upon your leafy courts
From out the vestibule of May.

I fain would tread your garden walks,
Or in your shady bowers recline;
Then open wide your golden gates,
And make them mine, and make them mine.

Dark are the waters of sorrow, Mavourneen,
Bleak the grey rocks that surround the cold wave;
Pale are the small silver daisies that borrow
Life from the green sod that's laid on a grave.

Cheerless the songs of the thrushes, Mavourneen,
Scentless the blossom of each hawthorn tree;
Salt is the hot tear that bitterly rushes,
Kneeling by green altar sacred to thee.

Blue is the low, misty mountain, Mavourneen,
We lived on, loved on, and toiled on of yore;
Clear the bright torrent that runs from its fountain,

Here there are rarely things one rarely sees.
Nothing to swell the dictionary for.
Trees and poppies, rosy intimacies.
A crab that treads a stream or walks ashore.
Never a sudden noise except the crows.
Small bird songs and insects and toads until
Ears with little further to hear must close;
Or if they're still open close to the whippoorwill.

Let those who love the ocean dredge the ocean,
Or those who praise the Rockies, find new peaks.
The itch for progress never set me in motion.
I love a man the more the less he speaks.

'Twas the dusky Hallowe'en—
Hour of fairy and of wraith,
When in many a dim-lit green,
'Neath the stars' prophetic sheen,
As the olden legend saith,
All the future may be seen,
And when—an older story hath—
Whate'er in life hath ever been
Loveful, hopeful, or of wrath,
Cometh back upon our path.
I was dreaming in my room,
'Mid the shadows, still as they;
Night, in veil of woven gloom,
Wept and trailed her tresses gray
O'er her fair, dead sister—Day.
To me from some far-away
Crept a voice—or seemed to creep—