Enough for me the leafy woods to rove,
And gather simple cups of morning dew,
Or, in the fields and meadows that I love,
Find beauty in their bells of every hue.
Thus round my cottage floats a fragrant air,
And though the rustic plot be humbly laid,
Yet, like the lilies gladly growing there,
I have not toil'd, but take what God has made.
My Lord Ambition pass'd, and smiled in scorn;
I pluck'd a rose, and, lo! it had no thorn.
G. J. Romanes
'DE GUSTIBUS
Your ghost will walk, you lover of trees
(If our loves remain),
By a cornfield-side a-flutter with poppies.
Hark, those two in the hazel coppice -
A boy and a girl, if the good fates please,
Making love, say,--
Draw yourself up from the light of the moon,
And let them pass, as they will too soon,
With the bean-flowers' boon,
And the blackbird's tune,
And May, and June!
What I love best in all the world
Is a castle, precipice-encurl'd,
In a gash of the wind-grieved Apennine.
Or look for me, old fellow of mine
(If I get my head from out the mouth
O' the grave, and loose my spirit's bands,
And come again to the land of lands),-
In a sea-side house to the farther South,
Where the baked cicala dies of drouth,
And one sharp tree-'tis a cypress-stands,
By the many hundred years red-rusted,
Yough iron-spiked, ripe fruit-o'ercrusted,
My sentinel to guard the sands
To the water's edge. For, what expands
Before the house, but the great opaque
Blue breadth of sea without a break?
While, in the house, for ever crumbles
Some fragment of the frescoed walls,
From blisters where a scorpion sprawls.
A girl bare-footed brings, and tumbles
Down on the pavement, green-flesh melons,
And says there's news to-day--the king
Was shot at, touch'd in the liver-wing,
Goes with his Bourbon arm in a sling:
-She hopes they have not caught the felons.
Italy, my Italy!
Queen Mary's saying serves for me
(When fortune's malice
Lost her-Calais)
Open my heart and you will see
Graved inside of it, Italy.'
Such lovers old are I and she:
So it always was, so shall ever be !
Here sparrows build upon the trees,
And stockdove hides her nest;
The leaves are winnow'd by the breeze
Into a calmer rest;
The black-cap's song was very sweet,
That used the rose to kiss ;
It made the Paradise complete :
My early home was this.
The redbreast from the sweet-briar bush
Drop't down to pick the worm;
On the horse-chestnut sang the thrush,
O'er the house where I was born;
The moonlight, like a shower of pearls,
Fell o'er this 'bower of bliss,'
And on the bench sat boys and girls :
My early home was this.
The old house stoop'd just like a cave,
Thatch'd o'er with mosses green;
Winter around the walls would rave,
But all was calm within;
The trees are here all green agen,
Here bees the flowers still kiss,
But flowers and trees seem'd sweeter then :
My early home was this.
I wonder do you feel to-day
As I have felt, since, hand in hand,
We sat down on the grass, to stray
In spirit better through the land,
This morn of Rome and May?
For me, I touch'd a thought, I know,
Has tantalized me many times,
(Like turns of thread the spiders throw
Mocking across our path) for rhymes
To catch at and let go.
Help me to hold it! First it left
The yellowing fennel, run to seed
There, branching from the brickwork's cleft,
Some old tomb's ruin; yonder weed
Took up the floating weft,
Where one small orange cup amass'd
Five beetles,-blind and green they grope
Among the honey-meal and last,
Everywhere on the grassy slope
I traced it. Hold it fast!
The champaign with its endless fleece
Of feathery grasses everywhere!
Silence and passion, joy and peace,
An everlasting wash of air-
Rome's ghost since her decease.
Such life there, through such lengths of hours,
Such miracles perform'd in play,
Such primal naked forms of flowers,
Such letting Nature have her way
While Heaven looks from its towers!
How say you? Let us, O my dove,
Let us be unashamed of soul,
As earth lies bare to heaven above!
How is it under our control
To love or not to love?
I would that you were all to me,
You that are just so much, no more.
Nor yours, nor mine,-nor slave nor free!
Where does the fault lie? what the core
Of the wound, since wound must be?
I would I could adopt your will,
See with your eyes, and set my heart
Beating by yours, and drink my fill
At your soul's springs,-your part, my part In life, for good and ill.
No. I yearn upward, touch you close,
Catch your soul's warmth,—I pluck the rose And love it more than tongue can speakThen the good minute goes.
Already how am I so far
Out of that minute? Must I go
Still like the thistle-ball, no bar,
Onward, whenever light winds blow,
Fix'd by no friendly star?
Just when I seem'd about to learn! Where is the thread now? Off again! The old trick! Only I discern—
Infinite passion, and the pain
of finite hearts that yearn.
I come from haunts of coot and hern,
I make a sudden sally,
And sparkle out among the fern,
To bicker down a valley.
By thirty hills I hurry down,
Or slip between the ridges,
By twenty thorps, a little town,
And half a hundred bridges.
Till last by Philip's farm I flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on for ever.
I chatter over stony ways,
In little sharps and trebles,
I bubble into eddying bays,
I babble on the pebbles.
With many a curve my banks I fret
By many a field and fallow,
And many a fairy foreland set
With willow-weed and mallow.
I chatter, chatter, as I flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on for ever.
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