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SONGS
HOW are songs begot and bred? | |
| How do golden measures flow? | |
| From the heart, or from the head? | |
| Happy Poet, let me know. | |
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| Tell me first how folded flowers | 5 |
| Bud and bloom in vernal bowers; | |
| How the south wind shapes its tune, | |
| The harper, he, of June. | |
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| None may answer, none may know, | |
| Winds and flowers come and go, | 10 |
| And the selfsame canons bind | |
| Nature and the Poet’s mind. | |
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THE SEA
THROUGH the night, through the night, | |
| In the saddest unrest, | |
| Wrapt in white, all in white, | 15 |
| With her babe on her breast, | |
| Walks the mother so pale, | |
| Staring out on the gale, | |
| Through the night. | |
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| Through the night, through the night, | 20 |
| Where the sea lifts the wreck, | |
| Land in sight, close in sight, | |
| On the surf-flooded deck, | |
| Stands the father so brave, | |
| Driving on to his grave, | 25 |
| Through the night. | |
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BIRDS
BIRDS are singing round my window, | |
| Tunes the sweetest ever heard, | |
| And I hang my cage there daily, | |
| But I never catch a bird. | 30 |
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| So with thoughts my brain is peopled, | |
| And they sing there all day long: | |
| But they will not fold their pinions | |
| In the little cage of Song! | |
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THE SKY
THE SKY is a drinking-cup, | 35 |
| That was overturned of old, | |
| And it pours in the eyes of men | |
| Its wine of airy gold. | |
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| We drink that wine all day, | |
| Till the last drop is drained up, | 40 |
| And are lighted off to bed | |
| By the jewels in the cup! | |
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THE SHADOW
THERE is but one great sorrow, | |
| All over the wide, wide world; | |
| But that in turn must come to all— | 45 |
| The Shadow that moves behind the pall, | |
| A flag that never is furled. | |
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| Till he in his marching crosses | |
| The threshold of the door, | |
| Usurps a place in the inner room, | 50 |
| Where he broods in the awful hush and gloom, | |
| Till he goes, and comes no more— | |
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| Save this there is no sorrow, | |
| Whatever we think we feel; | |
| But when Death comes all’s over: | 55 |
| ’T is a blow that we never recover, | |
| A wound that never will heal. | |
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A CATCH
ONCE the head is gray, | |
| And the heart is dead, | |
| There ’s no more to do: | 60 |
| Make the man a bed | |
| Six foot under ground, | |
| There he ’ll slumber sound. | |
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| Golden was my hair, | |
| And my heart did beat | 65 |
| To the viol’s voice | |
| Like the dancers’ feet. | |
| Not colder now his blood | |
| Who died before the flood. | |
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| Fair, and fond, and false, | 70 |
| Mother, wife, and maid, | |
| Never lived a man | |
| They have not betrayed. | |
| None shall ’scape my mirth | |
| But old Mother Earth. | 75 |
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| Safely housed with her, | |
| With no company | |
| But my brother Worm, | |
| Who will feed on me, | |
| I shall slumber sound, | 80 |
| Deep down under ground. | |
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