Sonnets

Poet! if on a lasting fame be bentThy unperturbing hopes, thou will not roamToo far from thine own happy heart and home;Cling to the lowly earth, and be content!So shall thy name be dear to many a heart;So shall the noblest truths by thee be taught;The flower and fruit of wholesome human thoughtBless the sweet labors of thy gentle art.The brightest stars are nearest to the earth,And we may track the mighty sun above,Even by the shadow of a slender flower.Always, O bard, humility is power!And thou mayst draw from matters of the hearthTruths wide as nations, and as deep as love.

Most men know love but as a part of life;They hide it in some corner of the breast,Even from themselves; and only when they restIn the brief pauses of that daily strife,Wherewith the world might else be not so rife,They draw it forth (as one draws forth a toyTo soothe some ardent, kiss-exacting boy)And hold it up to sister, child, or wife.Ah me! why may not love and life be one?Why walk we thus alone, when by our side,Love, like a visible God, might be our guide?How would the marts grow noble! and the street,Worn like a dungeon-floor by weary feet,Seem then a golden court-way of the Sun!

Life ever seems as from its present siteIt aimed to lure us. Mountains of the pastIt melts, with all their crags and caverns vast,Into a purple cloud! Across the nightWhich hides what is to be, it shoots a lightAll rosy with the yet unrisen dawn.Not the near daisies, but yon distant heightAttracts us, lying on this emerald lawn.And always, be the landscape what it may--Blue, misty hill or sweep of glimmering plain--It is the eye's endeavor still to gainThe fine, faint limit of the bounding day.God, haply, in this mystic mode, would fainHint of a happier home, far, far away!

They dub thee idler, smiling sneeringly,And why? because, forsooth, so many moons,Here dwelling voiceless by the voiceful sea,Thou hast not set thy thoughts to paltry tunesIn song or sonnet. Them these golden noonsOppress not with their beauty; they could prate,Even while a prophet read the solemn runesOn which is hanging some imperial fate.How know they, these good gossips, what to theeThe ocean and its wanderers may have brought?How know they, in their busy vacancy,With what far aim thy spirit may be fraught?Or that thou dost not bow thee silentlyBefore some great unutterable thought?

Some truths there be are better left unsaid;Much is there that we may not speak unblamed.On words, as wings, how many joys have fled!The jealous fairies love not to be named.There is an old-world tale of one whose bedA genius graced, to all, save him, unknown;One day the secret passed his lips, and spedAs secrets speed--thenceforth he slept alone.Too much, oh! far too much is told in books;Too broad a daylight wraps us all and each.Ah! it is well that, deeper than our looks,Some secrets lie beyond conjecture's reach.Ah! it is well that in the soul are nooksThat will not open to the keys of speech.

I scarcely grieve, O Nature! at the lotThat pent my life within a city's bounds,And shut me from thy sweetest sights and sounds.Perhaps I had not learned, if some lone cotHad nursed a dreamy childhood, what the martTaught me amid its turmoil; so my youthHad missed full many a stern but wholesome truth.Here, too, O Nature! in this haunt of Art,Thy power is on me, and I own thy thrall.There is no unimpressive spot on earth!The beauty of the stars is over all,And Day and Darkness visit every hearth.Clouds do not scorn us: yonder factory's smokeLooked like a golden mist when morning broke.

Grief dies like joy; the tears upon my cheekWill disappear like dew. Dear God! I knowThy kindly Providence hath made it so,And thank thee for the law. I am too weakTo make a friend of Sorrow, or to wear,With that dark angel ever by my side(Though to thy heaven there be no better guide),A front of manly calm. Yet, for I hearHow woe hath cleansed, how grief can deify,So weak a thing it seems that grief should die,And love and friendship with it, I could pray,That if it might not gloom upon my brow,Nor weigh upon my arm as it doth now,No grief of mine should ever pass away.

At last, beloved Nature! I have metThee face to face upon thy breezy hills,And boldly, where thy inmost bowers are set,Gazed on thee naked in thy mountain rills.When first I felt thy breath upon my brow,Tears of strange ecstasy gushed out like rain,And with a longing, passionate as vain,I strove to clasp thee. But, I know not how,Always before me didst thou seem to glide;And often from one sunny mountain-side,Upon the next bright peak I saw thee kneel,And heard thy voice upon the billowy blast;But, climbing, only reached that shrine to feelThe shadow of a Presence which had passed.

I know not why, but all this weary day,Suggested by no definite grief or pain,Sad fancies have been flitting through my brain;Now it has been a vessel losing way,Rounding a stormy headland; now a grayDull waste of clouds above a wintry main;And then, a banner, drooping in the rain,And meadows beaten into bloody clay.Strolling at random with this shadowy woeAt heart, I chanced to wander hither! Lo!A league of desolate marsh-land, with its lush,Hot grasses in a noisome, tide-left bed,And faint, warm airs, that rustle in the hush,Like whispers round the body of the dead!

Were I the poet-laureate of the fairies,Who in a rose-leaf finds too broad a page;Or could I, like your beautiful canaries,Sing with free heart and happy, in a cage;Perhaps I might within this little space(As in some Eastern tale, by magic power,A giant is imprisoned in a flower)Have told you something with a poet's grace.But I need wider limits, ampler scope,A world of freedom for a world of passion,And even then, the glory of my hopeWould not be uttered in its stateliest fashion;Yet, lady, when fit language shall have told it,You'll find one little heart enough to hold it!

Which are the clouds, and which the mountains? See,They mix and melt together! Yon blue hillLooks fleeting as the vapors which distillTheir dews upon its summit, while the freeAnd far-off clouds, now solid, dark, and still,An aspect wear of calm eternity.Each seems the other, as our fancies will--The cloud a mount, the mount a cloud, and weGaze doubtfully. So everywhere on earth,This foothold where we stand with slipping feet,The unsubstantial and substantial meet,And we are fooled until made wise by Time.Is not the obvious lesson something worth,Lady? or have I wov'n an idle rhyme?

What gossamer lures thee now? What hope, what nameIs on thy lips? What dreams to fruit have grown?Thou who hast turned ONE Poet-heart to stone,Is thine yet burning with its seraph flame?Let me give back a warning of thine own,That, falling from thee many moons ago,Sank on my soul like the prophetic moanOf some young Sibyl shadowing her own woe.The words are thine, and will not do thee wrong,I only bind their solemn charge to song.Thy tread is on a quicksand--oh! be wise!Nor, in the passionate eagerness of youth,

I thank you, kind and best belovëd friend,With the same thanks one murmurs to a sister,When, for some gentle favor, he hath kissed her,Less for the gifts than for the love you send,Less for the flowers than what the flowers convey,If I, indeed, divine their meaning truly,And not unto myself ascribe, unduly,Things which you neither meant nor wished to say,Oh! tell me, is the hope then all misplaced?And am I flattered by my own affection?But in your beauteous gift, methought I tracedSomething above a short-lived predilection,And which, for that I know no dearer name,I designate as love, without love's flame.

Are these wild thoughts, thus fettered in my rhymes,Indeed the product of my heart and brain?How strange that on my ear the rhythmic strainFalls like faint memories of far-off times!When did I feel the sorrow, act the part,Which I have striv'n to shadow forth in song?In what dead century swept that mingled throngOf mighty pains and pleasures through my heart?Not in the yesterdays of that still lifeWhich I have passed so free and far from strife,But somewhere in this weary world I know,In some strange land, beneath some orient clime,I saw or shared a martyrdom sublime,And felt a deeper grief than any later woe.