WHAT heartache-ne'er a hill! Inexorable, vapid, vague and chill
The drear sand-levels drain my spirit low.
With one poor word they tell me all they know; Whereat their stupid tongues, to tease my pain, Do drawl it o'er again and o'er again.
They hurt my heart with griefs I cannot name : Always the same, the same.
Nature hath no surprise,
No ambuscade of beauty 'gainst mine eyes From brake or lurking dell or deep defile; No humors, frolic forms-this mile, that mile; No rich reserves or happy-valley hopes
Beyond the bend of roads, the distant slopes. Her fancy fails, her wild is all run tame : Ever the same, the same.
Oh might I through these tears
But glimpse some hill my Georgia high uprears, Where white the quartz and pink the pebble shine, The hickory heavenward strives, the muscadine Swings o'er the slope, the oak's far-falling shade Darkens the dogwood in the bottom glade, And down the hollow from a ferny nook Lull sings a little brook!
SUPERB and sole, upon a pluméd spray That o'er the general leafage boldly grew, He summ'd the woods in song; or typic drew The watch of hungry hawks, the lone dismay Of languid doves when long their lovers stray, And all birds' passion-plays that sprinkle dew At morn in brake or bosky avenue.
Whate'er birds did or dreamed, this bird could say, Then down he shot, bounced airily along
The sward, twitched in a grasshopper, made song Midflight, perched, prinked, and to his art again. Sweet Science, this large riddle read me plain : How may the death of that dull insect be The life of yon trim Shakspere on the tree?
THE robin laughed in the orange-tree :
Ho, windy North, a fig for thee :
While breasts are red and wings are bold And green trees wave us globes of gold, Time's scythe shall reap but bliss for me -Sunlight, song, and the orange-tree.
Burn, golden globes in leafy sky, My orange-planets: crimson I
Will shine and shoot among the spheres (Blithe meteor that no mortal fears) And thrid the heavenly orange-tree With orbits bright of minstrelsy.
If that I hate wild winter's spite- The gibbet trees, the world in white, The sky but gray wind over a grave— Why should I ache, the season's slave?
I'll sing from the top of the orange-tree Gramercy, winter's tyranny.
I'll south with the sun, and keep my clime; My wing is king of the summer-time ; My breast to the sun his torch shall hold ; And I'll call down through the green and gold Time, take thy scythe, reap bliss for me, Bestir thee under the orange-tree."
AT midnight, death's and truth's unlocking time, When far within the spirit's hearing rolls
The great soft rumble of the course of things— A bulk of silence in a mask of sound,- When darkness clears our vision that by day Is sun-blind, and the soul's a ravening owl For truth and flitteth here and there about Low-lying woody tracts of time and oft Is minded for to sit upon a bough,
Dry-dead and sharp, of some long-stricken tree And muse in that gaunt place,-'twas then my heart, Deep in the meditative dark, cried out :
"Ye companies of governor-spirits grave, Bards, and old bringers-down of flaming news From steep-wall'd heavens, holy malcontents, Sweet seers, and stellar visionaries, all That brood about the skies of poesy, Full bright ye shine, insuperable stars; Yet, if a man look hard upon you, none With total lustre blazeth, no, not one But hath some heinous freckle of the flesh Upon his shining cheek, not one but winks His ray, opaqued with intermittent mist
Of defect; yea, you masters all must ask
Some sweet forgiveness, which we leap to give,
We lovers of you, heavenly-glad to meet
Your largesse so with love, and interplight
Your geniuses with our mortalities.
Thus unto thee, O sweetest Shakspere sole, A hundred hurts a day I do forgive
('Tis little, but, enchantment! 'tis for thee): Small curious quibble; Juliet's prurient pun In the poor, pale face of Romeo's fancied death; Cold rant of Richard; Henry's fustian roar Which frights away that sleep he invocates; Wronged Valentine's unnatural haste to yield; Too-silly shifts of maids that mask as men In faint disguises that could ne'er disguise- Viola, Julia, Portia, Rosalind;
Fatigues most drear, and needless overtax Of speech obscure that had as lief be plain; Last I forgive (with more delight, because 'Tis more to do) the labored-lewd discourse That e'en thy young invention's youngest heir Besmirched the world with.
Thee also I forgive thy sandy wastes
Of prose and catalogue, thy drear harangues That tease the patience of the centuries, Thy sleazy scrap of story,-but a rogue's Rape of a light-o'-love,-too soiled a patch To broider with the gods.
Thou dear and very strong one, I forgive Thy year-worn cloak, thine iron stringencies
That were but dandy upside-down, thy words
Of truth that, mildlier spoke, had mainlier wrought.
So, Buddha, beautiful! I pardon thee
That all the All thou hadst for needy man
Was Nothing, and thy Best of being was
« AnkstesnisTęsti » |