Away from Home are some and I --
An Emigrant to be
In a Metropolis of Homes
Is easy, possibly --
The Habit of a Foreign Sky
We -- difficult -- acquire
As Children, who remain in Face
The more their Feet retire.
Twice had Summer her fair Verdure
Proffered to the Plain --
Twice a Winter's silver Fracture
On the Rivers been --
Two full Autumns for the Squirrel
Bounteous prepared --
Nature, Had'st thou not a Berry
For thy wandering Bird?
Star of the East, that long ago
Brought wise men on their way
Where, angels singing to and fro,
The Child of Bethlehem lay--
Above that Syrian hill afar
Thou shinest out to-night, O Star!
Star of the East, the night were drear
But for the tender grace
That with thy glory comes to cheer
Earth's loneliest, darkest place;
For by that charity we see
Where there is hope for all and me.
Star of the East! show us the way
In wisdom undefiled
To seek that manger out and lay
Our gifts before the child--
OFTEN and often it came back again
To mind, the day I passed the horizon ridge
To a new country, the path I had to find
By half-gaps that were stiles once in the hedge,
The pack of scarlet clouds running across
The harvest evening that seemed endless then
And after, and the inn where all were kind,
All were strangers. I did not know my loss
Till one day twelve months later suddenly
I leaned upon my spade and saw it all,
Though far beyond the sky-line. It became
Almost a habit through the year for me
To lean and see it and think to do the same
Again for two days and a night. Recall
Was vain: no more could the restless brook
Ever turn back and climb the waterfall
THE skylarks are far behind that sang over the
down;
I can hear no more those suburb nightingales;
Thrushes and blackbirds sing in the gardens of the
town
In vain: the noise of man, beast, and machine
prevails.
But the call of children in the unfamiliar streets
That echo with a familiar twilight echoing,
Sweet as the voice of nightingale or lark, completes
A magic of strange welcome, so that I seem a king
Among man, beast, machine, bird, child, and the
ghost
That in the echo lives and with the echo dies.
The friendless town is friendly; homeless, I
not lost;
WILL you come?
Will you come?
Will you ride
So late
At my side?
O, will you come?
Will you come?
Will you come
If the night
Has a moon,
Full and bright?
O, will you come?
Would you come?
Would you come
If the noon
Gave light,
Helen, thy beauty is to me
Like those Nicean barks of yore,
That gently, o'er a perfumed sea,
The weary, wayworn wanderer bore
To his own native shore.
On desperate seas long wont to roam,
Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,
Thy Naiad airs have brought me home
To the glory that was Greece,
To the grandeur that was Rome.
Lo! in yon brilliant window niche,
How statue-like I see thee stand,
The agate lamp within thy hand!
Ah, Psyche, from the regions which
Are Holy Land!
Gaily bedight,
A gallant knight,
In sunshine and in shadow,
Had journeyed long,
Singing a song,
In search of Eldorado.
But he grew old--
This knight so bold--
And o'er his heart a shadow
Fell as he found
No spot of ground
That looked like Eldorado.
And, as his strength
Failed him at length,
He met a pilgrim shadow--
"Shadow," said he,
Huge vapours brood above the clifted shore,
Night on the ocean settles dark and mute,
Save where is heard the repercussive roar
Of drowsy billows on the rugged foot
Of rocks remote; or still more distant tone
Of seamen in the anchored bark that tell
The watch relieved; or one deep voice alone
Singing the hour, and bidding "Strike the bell!"
All is black shadow but the lucid line
Marked by the light surf on the level sand,
Or where afar the ship-lights faintly shine
Like wandering fairy fires, that oft on land
Misled the pilgrim--such the dubious ray
That wavering reason lends in life's long darkling way.
"To see my love suffices me."
--Ballades in Blue China.
Some men to carriages aspire;
On some the costly hansoms wait;
Some seek a fly, on job or hire;
Some mount the trotting steed, elate.
I envy not the rich and great,
A wandering minstrel, poor and free,
I am contented with my fate --
An omnibus suffices me.
In winter days of rain and mire
I find within a corner strait;
The 'busmen know me and my lyre
From Brompton to the Bull-and-Gate.
When summer comes, I mount in state
The topmost summit, whence I see