Thou'rt free! thou'rt free. Ah, surely a bird can smile! Dost know me, Petrel? Dost remember how I fed thee in the wake for many a mile, Whilst thou wouldst pat the waves, then, rising, take The morsel up and wheel about the wake? Thou 'rt free, thou 'rt free, but for thine own dear sake I keep thee caged awhile. Away to sea! no matter where the coast: The road that turns to home turns never wrong: Where waves run high my bird will not be lost: His home I know: 't is where the winds are strong, Where, on her throne of billows, rolling THE SONNET'S VOICE (A METRICAL LESSON BY THE SEASHORE) YON silvery billows breaking on the beach Fall back in foam beneath the star-shine clear, The while my rhymes are murmuring in your ear A restless lore like that the billows teach; For on these sonnet-waves my soul would reach From its own depths, and rest within you, dear, As, through the billowy voices yearning here, Great nature strives to find a human speech. A sonnet is a wave of melody: From heaving waters of the impassion'd soul A billow of tidal music one and whole COLERIDGE I SEE thee pine like her in golden story Who, in her prison, woke and saw, one day, The gates thrown open - saw the sunbeams play, With only a web 'tween her and summer's glory; Who, when that web-so frail, so transitory It broke before her breath-had fallen away, Saw other webs and others rise for aye Which kept her prison'd till her hair was hoary. Those songs half-sung that yet were alldivine That woke Romance, the queen, to reign afresh Had been but preludes from that lyre of thine, Could thy rare spirit's wings have pierced the mesh Spun by the wizard who compels the flesh, But lets the poet see how heav'n can shine. THE DEAR OLD TOILING ONE Он, many a leaf will fall to-night, I wonder if she's past the bridge, While rain-drops clash in planted lines Disease hath laid his palsied palm The headlong blood of twenty-one 'Tis nearly ten! A fearful night, To light the shadow on her soul The moon is canopied with clouds, What would wee Jackie do, if he "T will be a beacon on the hill All drench'd will be her simple gown, To take the burden from her back, With words of cheerful condolence, Not utter'd to repine. You have a kindly mother, dears, And Heaven knows I love her well Ah me! I never thought that she A web of fantasies. How the winds beat this home of ours With arrow-falls of rain; LUX EST UMBRA DEI NAY, Death, thou art a shadow! Even as light Is but the shadow of invisible God, So art Thou but the shadow of this life, And as frail Night, following the flight of earth, Obscures the world we breathe in, for a while, So Thou, the reflex of our mortal birth, Veilest the life wherein we weep and smile : But when both earth and life are whirl'd away, What shade can shroud us from God's deathless day? THE NIGHTINGALE I WENT a roaming through the woods alone, And heard the nightingale that made her moan. Hard task it were to tell how dewy-still Were flowers and ferns and foliage in the rays Of Hesper, white amid the daffodil Of twilight fleck'd with faintest chrysoprase; And all the while, embower'd in leafy bays, The bird prolong'd her sharp soul-thrilling tone. I went a roaming through the woods alone, And heard the nightingale that made her moan. But as I stood and listened, on the air Arose another voice more clear and keen, That startled silence with a sweet despair, And still'd the bird beneath her leafy screen: The star of Love, those lattice-boughs between, Grew large and lean'd to listen from his zone. |