English

Let Burns and old Chaucer unite
The praise of the Daisy to sing,—
Let Wordsworth of Celandine write,
And crown her the Queen of the Spring;
The Hyacinth's classical fame
Let Milton embalm in his verse;
Be mine the glad task to proclaim
The Charms of untrumpeted Furze!

Of all other bloom when bereft,
And Sol wears his wintery screen,
Thy sunshining blossoms are left
To light up the common and green
O why should they envy the peer
His perfume of spices and myrrhs,
When the poorest their senses may cheer

From the prisons dark of the circling bark
The leaves of tenderest green are glancing;
They gambol on high in the bright blue sky,
Fondly with spring's young Zephyrs dancing,
While music and joy and jubilee gush
From the lark and linnet, the blackbird and thrush.

The butterfly springs on its new-born wings,
The dormouse starts from his wintry sleeping;
The flowers of earth find a second birth,
To light and life from the darkness leaping:
The roses and tulips will soon resume
Their youth's first perfume and primitive bloom.

The crowder's tune
Down a street in Babylon—
His fiddle to the moon
With notes like stars that one by one
Glittered upon the empty street,
Glittered and laughed and went
(But there was a lisp of ghostly feet)
To build a firmament.

“Who walks by night in Babylon?
‘I,’ said a lady, ‘because
Of the wonderful thing I was,
And the beautiful things all done,
I walk in Babylon.’

Who seeks for a lady by night?
‘I,’ said a king, ‘My throne
Is empty in Babylon.
She fled from the light to the light,

Just a door between us,—no more,
And your hand on the bell,
When a voice inside of the door
Broke the spell.

And you turned, perhaps with a sigh,
From the small garden gate,
And I never knew you were by
Till too late.

So near, so near, yet so far!
Just a thin narrow door
Shut between us,—just a far
Evermore!

And now, perhaps with a sigh,
Or a smile,—who can tell?—
I think what we missed, you and I,
For that bell.

God knew best, though when your last letter

Our bark is on the waters! wide around,
The wandering wave; above, the lonely sky.
Hush! a young sea-bird floats, and that quick cry
Shrieks to the levelled weapon's echoing sound,
Grasps its lank wing, and on, with reckless bound!
Yet, creature of the surf, a sheltering breast
To-night shall haunt in vain thy far-off nest,
A call unanswered, search the rocky ground.
Lord of Leviathan! when Ocean heard,
Thy gathering voice, and sought his native breeze;
When whales first plunged with life, and the proud deep

Give me the wings, magician. I will know
What blooms on airy precipices grow
That no hand plucks, large unexpected blossoms,
Scentless, with cry of curlews in their bosoms,
And the great winds like grasses where their stems
Spangle the universe with diadems.
I will pluck those flowers and those grasses, I,
Icarus, drowning upwards through the sky
With air that closes underneath my feet
As water above the diver. I will meet
Life with the dawn in heaven, and my fingers
Dipped in the golden floss of hair that lingers

A ROO , but there's singin' I've struck up
Wid niver a note to be heard,
When me heart widout sthirrin' the silence
Shtood by me and sang like a bird!

So if all the ould dreams that escaped me
Were sung to the chunes that got free,
I'd be weavin' ye rainbows av rapture
And shamin' the thrush, ma-chree!

But och, 'tis the birds that are ailin',
Bide close by our coaxin' and sing;
'Tis the music worth housin' and keepin'
Foriver makes off on the wing!

They do me wrong who show me sad of face,
Slender and stooped, gentle, and meek, and mild,
As if I were forever reconciled
To sting of hate and bitter of disgrace.
I was youth's lover, swiftest in the race,
Gay friend of beggars, brother to the wild,
No lily-featured, woman-hearted child,
But a great laugher, confident of place.

Shepherd and fisher, sailor, carpenter,
I strode the hills and fellowed with the sun,
Knew arms and bosoms and slow steady eyes,
Felt each new April through my body stir,—

The little lonely souls go by
Seeking their God who lives on high
With conscious step and hat and all
As if on Him they meant to call
In some sad ceremonial.

But I who am a pagan child,
Who know how dying Plato smiled,
And how Confucius lessoned kings,
And of the Buddha's wanderings
Find God in very usual things.

Mohammed and the Brahma led
Me past the gateway of the dead,
And even Astarte's temple dim
No less than Raphael's cherubim
Have somehow led me back to Him.

If I could purge my love and make it pure
Of all except the essence of divine;
If I could turn to crystal flood its wine
And change to peace its passion and allure,
Then, like a holy flame in paths obscure,
Lift its translucent light and make it shine
A beacon to some other soul than mine,
Perchance I might my loneliness endure.
But I am weak and woman, and my heart
Falters before the last great sacrifice,
A stumbling-block to stay my ardent will;
And thus I must accept the lesser part
And try forever just to blind my eyes