I In a far country, and a distant age, Ere sprites and fays had bade farewell to earth, A boy was born of humble parentage; The stars that shone upon his lonely birth Did seem to promise sovereignty and fame— Yet no tradition hath preserved his name.
II ’T is said that on the night when he was born, A beauteous shape swept slowly through the room; Its eyes broke on the infant like a morn, And his cheek brightened like a rose in bloom;
I I weep for Adonais—he is dead! Oh, weep for Adonais! though our tears Thaw not the frost which binds so dear a head! And thou, sad Hour, selected from all years To mourn our loss, rouse thy obscure compeers, And teach them thine own sorrow, say: "With me Died Adonais; till the Future dares Forget the Past, his fate and fame shall be An echo and a light unto eternity!"
II Where wert thou, mighty Mother, when he lay, When thy Son lay, pierc'd by the shaft which flies In darkness? where was lorn Urania
When the breeze of a joyful dawn blew free In the silken sail of infancy, The tide of time flow'd back with me, The forward-flowing tide of time; And many a sheeny summer-morn, Adown the Tigris I was borne, By Bagdat's shrines of fretted gold, High-walled gardens green and old;
Woods. A stand, waiting for the bite, the teeth. Joshua Briggs picks logs from the stack he’s cut, Sticks them in the black belly, fixing dinner— Pork, beans and slaw—before the night’s concert. Tunes shimmy in pieces. He looks out at his lot, his stand of Woods. Notes the green. That shine. “Play a tune on a jug; the moon pops out like a cork. But that’s nothing to playing a saw.”
Close by those meads, for ever crown'd with flow'rs, Where Thames with pride surveys his rising tow'rs, There stands a structure of majestic frame, Which from the neighb'ring Hampton takes its name. Here Britain's statesmen oft the fall foredoom Of foreign tyrants and of nymphs at home; Here thou, great Anna! whom three realms obey, Dost sometimes counsel take—and sometimes tea.
Hither the heroes and the nymphs resort, To taste awhile the pleasures of a court; In various talk th' instructive hours they pass'd, Who gave the ball, or paid the visit last; One speaks the glory of the British queen, And one describes a charming Indian screen;
Once more the storm is howling, and half hid Under this cradle-hood and coverlid My child sleeps on. There is no obstacle But Gregory's Wood and one bare hill Whereby the haystack and roof-levelling wind, Bred on the Atlantic, can be stayed; And for an hour I have walked and prayed Because of the great gloom that is in my mind.
I have walked and prayed for this young child an hour, And heard the sea-wind scream upon the tower, And under the arches of the bridge, and scream In the elms above the flooded stream; Imagining in excited reverie That the future years had come
1 Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road, Healthy, free, the world before me, The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.
Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good-fortune, Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing, Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms, Strong and content I travel the open road.
The earth, that is sufficient, I do not want the constellations any nearer, I know they are very well where they are, I know they suffice for those who belong to them.
Not in the world of light alone, Where God has built his blazing throne, Nor yet alone in earth below, With belted seas that come and go, And endless isles of sunlit green, Is all thy Maker’s glory seen: Look in upon thy wondrous frame,— Eternal wisdom still the same!
Five hours, (and who can do it less in?) By haughty Celia spent in dressing; The goddess from her chamber issues, Arrayed in lace, brocades and tissues. Strephon, who found the room was void, And Betty otherwise employed, Stole in, and took a strict survey, Of all the litter as it lay; Whereof, to make the matter clear, An inventory follows here. And first a dirty smock appeared, Beneath the armpits well besmeared. Strephon, the rogue, displayed it wide, And turned it round on every side. On such a point few words are best,
1 Meryon saw it coming (who was he?): No people, so no noise. As it should be. The Bridge. The Morgue. Ghostly round his bed Antipodean atolls and tattoos had fluted,
Volcanoes puffed. Then borborygmic sea Forked, at its last gasp, into a V: Down that black gallery and backward slid
Prosaic miles of streets stretch all round, Astir with restless, hurried life and spanned By arches that with thund’rous trains resound, And throbbing wires that galvanize the land; Gin-palaces in tawdry splendor stand; The newsboys shriek of mangled bodies found; The last burlesque is playing in the Strand— In modern prose all poetry seems drowned. Yet in ten thousand homes this April night An ancient People celebrates its birth To Freedom, with a reverential mirth, With customs quaint and many a hoary rite, Waiting until, its tarnished glories bright, Its God shall be the God of all the earth.
The time has been that these wild solitudes, Yet beautiful as wild, were trod by me Oftener than now; and when the ills of life Had chafed my spirit—when the unsteady pulse Beat with strange flutterings—I would wander forth And seek the woods. The sunshine on my path Was to me a friend. The swelling hills, The quiet dells retiring far between, With gentle invitation to explore Their windings, were a calm society That talked with me and soothed me. Then the chant Of birds, and chime of brooks, and soft caress Of the fresh sylvan air, made me forget The thoughts that broke my peace, and I began
Prodigal, what were your wanderings about? The smoke of homecoming, the smoke of departure. The earth grew music and the tubers sprouted to Sesenne's singing, rain-water, fresh patois in a clay carafe, a clear spring in the ferns, and pure things took root like the sweet-potato vine. Over the sea at dusk, an arrowing curlew,
I shall never get you put together entirely, Pieced, glued, and properly jointed. Mule-bray, pig-grunt and bawdy cackles Proceed from your great lips. It’s worse than a barnyard.
Perhaps you consider yourself an oracle, Mouthpiece of the dead, or of some god or other. Thirty years now I have labored
All power is saved, having no end. Rises in the green season, in the sudden season the white the budded and the lost. Water celebrates, yielding continually sheeted and fast in its overfall slips down the rock, evades the pillars building its colonnades, repairs
Comment form: