Ah, happy day, refuse to go! Lie like dissolving amethyst Deep in the distant dales, and shed Thy mellow glory overhead! Yet wilt thou wander,-call the thrush, And have the wilds and waters hush To hear his passion-broken tune, Ah, happy day of happy June! MEASURE FOR MEASURE. What love do I bring you? The earth, Earth full and heaven full were less MOTHER MINE. When by the ruddy fire I spelled In storied song she dwelt, where dwell Strange things and sweet of eld and eerie, The foam of Binnorie's bonny mill-dams, The bowing birks, the wells o' Wearie. All the Queen's Maries she did know, And saw the perch play in Lochleven. Burd Helen had those great gray eyes, Their rays from shadowy lashes flinging; That smile the winsome bride of Yarrow Before her tears were set to singing. That mouth was just the mouth that kissed In those fixed fancies of my childhood. And when she sang-ah, when she sang! Birds are less sweet, and flutes not clearer— In ancient halls I saw the minstrel, And shapes long dead arose to hear her! Darlings of song I've heard since then, But no such voice as hers was, swelling Like bell-notes on the winds of morning, No more within those regions dim Of rich romance my thoughts would place her, Her life itself is such a poem She does not need old names to grace her. Long years have fled, but left her charm Smiling to see that years are fleeter, Those ballads are as sweet as ever, But she is infinitely sweeter. For love, that shines through all her ways, Has come to blossom in her beauty. While the low brow, the silver curl. The twilight glance, the perfect features, The rose upon a creamy pallor, Make her the loveliest of creatures. Now with the glow that on the face Like moonlight on a flower has found her, With the tone's thrill, a faint remoteness, Half like a halo hangs around her. Half like a halo? Nay, indeed, I never saw a picture painted— Such holy work the years have rendered— So like a woman that is sainted, WITNESSES. Whenever my heart is heavy, The rumor of outrage and wrong, And I cry, O Lord, how long, Their forces around them draw? Then at last the blazing brightness Of day forsakes its height, Slips like a splendid curtain From the awful and infinite night; And out of the depths of distance, The gulfs of purple space, The stars steal, slow and silent, Each in the ancient place,Each in armor shining, The hosts of heaven arrayed, And wheeling through the midnight As they did when the world was made. And I lean out among the shadows Cast by that far white gleam, And I tremble at the murmur Of one mote in the mighty beam, As the everlasting squadrons Their fated influence shed, While the vast meridians sparkle With the glory of their tread. That constellated glory The primal morning saw, And I know God moves to his purpose, And still there is life in his law! I have a little kinsman Whose earthly summers are but three, And yet a voyager is he Greater than Drake or Frobisher, Than all their peers together! He is a brave discoverer, And, far beyond the tether Of them who seek the frozen Pole, Has sailed where the noiseless surges roll. Ay, he has travelled whither A winged pilot steered his bark Suddenly, in his fair young hour, With this command: |