AFTER LOVE AND FEAR

After love and fear, there’s pride;

After tears, the night;

After all the words are gone,

A chair with just one light.

After memories, the dream

That you will come home safe;

After sleep, another day

Of waiting for my life.

After hope, the happiness

Of thinking of your love;

After moments of despair

A stone no thought can move.

After all the sacrifice,

The hunger and the pain,

The passions and the promises,

The losses and the gains,

There’s nothing but my love for you,

Which waits upon the wind?

To bring you from the barricades

That now you must defend.

DO NOT LOVE ME YET

Do not love me yet, for I

Am still a slender moon,

A scimitar about the heart

Too sharp to touch too soon.

Before I’m touched I need to grow

More full in golden light;

I need to smile upon my earth

And rule some patch of night.

I need to know what roads and fields

Lie in my domain

And dull my brand new ecstasies

With sophomoric pain.

I need the love of some blank boy

As cold and dark as me,

That we might grope in ignorance

And fear of what might be.

And then, when I’m a silver bowl

And know what I can hold,

Then, then, perhaps, we could try love

If you are not too old

you & I

You're still the same as you've ever been

In my mind's eye, though far removed

From yourself the very image of you;

That I know not the man, nor need to know,

By whose arrow we two shall victim be;

And suffer as much as he alone hath suffered

At the expense of night's ink, all wrapped in darkness,

Which in words, who hath eyes enough to see,

Where uncertain scope of things most abound,

Is yet by one single ray of light revealed,

Whereupon I myself from myself should hide.

So I, my promise, hath kept, not by words,

But by false pretense to make believe it,

What exists not but in self-created illusion,

Unknown, unseen secret of invisible world;

For words oft deceive us, bereaved of light,

When with me thy much quoted tale is writ,

I think not on thee, more or less than mine,

While in such thoughts I spend time with thee,

Love! how divided we live, but together die!

What passion cannot Music raise and quell

What passion cannot Music raise and quell!

When Jubal struck the corded shell,

His list'ning brethren stood around,

The trumpet's loud clangour

Excites us to arms,

With shrill notes of anger

And mortal alarms.

The double double double beat

Of the thund'ring drum

Cries, Hark! the foes come;

Charge, charge, 'tis too late to retreat.

The soft complaining flute

In dying notes discovers

The woes of hopeless lovers,

Whose dirge is whisper'd by the warbling lute.

Sharp violins proclaim

Their jealous pangs, and desperation,

Fury, frantic indignation,

Depth of pains, and height of passion,

For the fair, disdainful dame.

But oh! what art can teach,

What human voice can reach,

The sacred organ's praise?

Notes inspiring holy love,

Notes that wing their heavenly ways

To mend the choirs above.

We will not think of themes like these

We will not think of themes like these!

It made Anacreon's song divine:

He served--but served Polycrates--

A Tyrant; but our masters then

Were still, at least, our countrymen.

The Tyrant of the Chersonese

Was Freedom's best and bravest friend;

That tyrant was Miltiades!

Oh! that the present hour would lend

Another despot of the kind!

Such chains as his were sure to bind.

Fill high the bowl with Samian wine!

On Suli's rock, and Parga's shore,

Exists the remnant of a line

Such as the Doric mothers bore;

And there, perhaps, some seed is sown,

The Heracleidan blood might own.

Trust not for freedom to the Franks--

They have a king who buys and sells;

In native swords, and native ranks,

The only hope of courage dwells;

But Turkish force, and Latin fraud,

Would break your shield, however broad.

Fill high the bowl with Samian wine!

Our virgins dance beneath the shade--

I see their glorious black eyes shine;

But gazing on each glowing maid,

My own the burning tear-drop laves,

To think such breasts must suckle slaves.

Were we long alone?

Were we long alone?

"The sea grows stormy, the little ones moan.

Long prayers," I said, "in the world they say.

Come," I said, and we rose through the surf in the bay.

We went up the beach, by the sandy down

Where the sea-stocks bloom, to the white-walled town.

Through the narrow paved streets, where all was still,

To the little grey church on the windy hill.

 From the church came a murmur of folk at their prayers,

But we stood without in the cold blowing airs.

We climbed on the graves, on the stones, worn with rains,

And we gazed up the aisle through the small leaded panes.

She sate by the pillar; we saw her clear:

"JULIE, hist! come quick, we are here.

Dear heart," I said, "we are long alone.

The sea grows stormy, the little ones moan."

But, ah, she gave me never a look,

For her eyes were sealed to the holy book.

"Loud prays the priest; shut stands the door."

when the sun was low

On Linden, when the sun was low,

All bloodless lay th' untrodden snow;

And dark as winter was the flow

Of Iser, rolling rapidly.

But Linden saw another sight,

When the drum beat, at dead of night,

Commanding fires of death to light

The darkness of her scenery.

By torch and trumpet fast array'd,

Each horseman drew his battle blade,

And furious every charger neigh'd,

To join the dreadful revelry.

Then shook the hills with thunder riv'n,

Then rush'd the steed to battle driv'n,

And louder than the bolts of heaven,

Far flash'd the red artillery.

But redder yet that light shall glow,

On Linden's hills of stained snow,

And bloodier yet the torrent flow

Of Iser, rolling rapidly.

'Tis morn, but scarce yon level sun

Can pierce the war-clouds, rolling dun,

Where furious Frank, and fiery Hun,

Shout in their sulph'rous canopy.

The combat deepens. On, ye brave,

Who rush to glory, or the grave!

Wave, Munich, all thy banners wave!

And charge with all thy chivalry!

Few, few, shall part where many meet!

The snow shall be their winding sheet,

And every turf beneath their feet,

Shall be a soldier's sepulchre.

Where are the songs of Spring?

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?

Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,--

While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,--

And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;

Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn

Among the river sallows, borne aloft

Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;

And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;

Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft

The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;

And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

fly away

Away! away! for I will fly to thee,

Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,

But on the viewless wings of Poesy,

Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:

Already with thee! tender is the night,

And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,

Cluster'd around by all her starry Fays;

But here there is no light,

Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown

Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.

bride of quietness

Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness,

Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,

Sylvan historian, who canst thus express

A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:

What leaf-fring'd legend haunts about thy shape

Of deities or mortals, or of both,

In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?

What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?

What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?

What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?

Beneath those rugged elms

Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade,

Where heaves the turf in many a mould'ring heap,

Each in his narrow cell for ever laid,

The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.

The breezy call of incense-breathing morn,

The swallow twitt'ring from the straw-built shed,

The cock's shrill clarion, or the echoing horn,

No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed.

For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn,

Or busy housewife ply her evening care;

No children run to lisp their sire's return,

Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share.

Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield,

Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke:

How jocund did they drive their team afield!

How bow'd the woods beneath their sturdy stroke.

At the midnight in the silence of the sleep-time

At the midnight in the silence of the sleep-time,

When you set your fancies free,

Will they pass to where-

-by death, fools think, imprisoned-

- Low he lies who once so loved you, whom you

loved so, --Pity me?

Oh to love so, be so loved, yet so mistaken!

What had I on earth to do

With the slothful, with the mawkish, the unmanly?

Like the aimless, helpless, hopeless, did I drivel

--Being--who?

One who never turned his back but marched breast forward,

Never doubted clouds would break,

Never dreamed, though right were worsted,

wrong would triumph, Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight

better,

Sleep to wake.

No, at noonday in the bustle of man's work-time

Greet the unseen with a cheer!

Bid him forward, breast and back as either should be,

"Strive and thrive!" cry "Speed,--fight on, fare ever

There as here!"