WILL O THE WISP
Follow me, follow me,
Over brake and under tree,
Thro the bosky tanglery,
Brushwood and bramble!
Follow me, follow me,
Laugh and leap and scramble!
Follow, follow,
Hill and hollow,
Fosse and burrow,
Fen and furrow,
Down into the bulrush beds,
Midst the reeds and osier heads,
In the rushy soaking damps,
Where the vapours pitch their camps,
Follow me, follow me,
For a midnight ramble!
O! what a mighty fog,
What a merry night O ho!
Follow, follow, nigher, nigher
Over bank, and pond, and briar,
Down into the croaking ditches,
Rotten log,
Spotted frog,
Beetle bright
With crawling light,
What a joy O ho!
Deep into the purple bog
What a joy O ho!
Where like hosts of puckered witches
All the shivering agues sit
Warming hands and chafing feet,
By the blue marsh-hovering oils:
O the fools for all their moans!
Not a forest mad with fire
Could still their teeth, or warm their bones,
Or loose them from their chilly coils.
What a clatter,
How they chatter!
Shrink and huddle,
All a muddle!
What a joy O ho!
Down we go, down we go,
What a joy O ho!
Soon shall I be down below,
Plunging with a grey fat friar,
Hither, thither, to and fro,
Breathing mists and whisking lamps,
Plashing in the shiny swamps;
While my cousin Lantern Jack,
With cook ears and cunning eyes,
Turns him round upon his back,
Daubs him oozy green and black,
Sits upon his rolling size,
Where he lies, where he lies,
Groaning full of sack
Staring with his great round eyes!
What a joy O ho!
Sits upon him in the swamps
Breathing mists and whisking lamps!
What a joy O ho!
Such a lad is Lantern Jack,
When he rides the black nightmare
Through the fens, and puts a glare
In the friars track.
Such a frolic lad, good lack!
To turn a friar on his back,
Trip him, clip him, whip him, nip him.
Lay him sprawling, smack!
Such a lad is Lantern Jack!
Such a tricksy lad, good lack!
What a joy O ho!
Follow me, follow me,
Where he sits, and you shall see!
SONG
Fair and false! No dawn will greet
Thy waking beauty as of old;
The little flower beneath thy feet
Is alien to thy smile so cold;
The merry bird flown up to meet
Young morning from his nest i the wheat
Scatters his joy to wood and wold,
But scorns the arrogance of gold.
False and fair! I scarce know why,
But standing in the lonely air,
And underneath the blessed sky,
I plead for thee in my despair;
For thee cut off, both heart and eye
From living truth; thy spring quite dry;
For thee, that heaven my thought may share,
Forgethow false! and thinkhow fair!
SONG
Two wedded lovers watched the rising moon,
That with her strange mysterious beauty glowing,
Over misty hills and waters flowing,
Crowned the long twilight loveliness of June:
And thus in me, and thus in me, they spake,
The solemn secret of fist love did wake.
Above the hills the blushing orb arose;
Her shape encircled by a radiant bower,
In which the nightingale with charméd power
Poured forth enchantment oer the dark repose:
And thus in me, and thus in me, they said,
Earths mists did with the sweet new spirit wed.
Far up the sky with ever purer beam,
Upon the throne of night the moon was seated,
And down the valley glens the shades retreated,
And silver light was on the open stream.
And thus in me, and thus in me, they sighed,
Aspiring Love has hallowed Passions tide.
SONG
I cannot lose thee for a day,
But like a bird with restless wing
My heart will find thee far away,
And on thy bosom fall and sing,
My nest is here, my rest is here;
And in the lull of wind and rain,
Fresh voices make a sweet refrain,
His rest is there, his nest is there.
With thee the wind and sky are fair,
But parted, both are strange and dark;
And treacherous the quiet air
That holds me singing like a lark,
O shield my love, strong arm above!
Till in the hush of wind and rain,
Fresh voices make a rich refrain,
The arm above will shield thy love.
DAPHNE
Musing on the fate of Daphne,
Many feelings urged my breast,
For the God so keen desiring,
And the Nymph so deep distrest.
Never flashed thro sylvan valley
Visions so divinely fair!
He with early ardour glowing,
She with rosy anguish rare.
Only still more sweet and lovely
For those terrors on her brows,
Those swift glances wild and brilliant,
Those delicious panting vows.
Timidly the timid shoulders
Shrinking from the fervid hand!
Dark the tide of hair back-flowing
From the blue-veined temples bland!
Lovely, too, divine Apollo
In the speed of his pursuit;
With his eye an azure lustre,
And his voice a summer lute!
Looking like some burnished eagle
Hovering oer a fluttered bird;
Not unseen of silver Naiad,
And of wistful Dryad heard!
Many a morn the naked beauty
Saw her bright reflection drown
In the flowing smooth-faced river,
While the god came sheening down.
Down from Pindus bright Peneus
Tells its muse-melodious source;
Sacred is its fountained birthplace,
And the Orient floods its course.
Many a morn the sunny darling
Saw the rising chariot-rays,
From the winding river-reaches,
Mellowing in amber haze.
Thro the flaming mountain gorges
Lo, the River leaps the plain;
Like a wild god-stridden courser,
Tossing high its foamy mane.
Then he swims thro laurelled sunlight,
Full of all sensations sweet,
Misty with his morning incense,
To the mirrored maidens feet!
Wet and bright the dinting pebbles
Shine where oft she paused and stood;
All her dreamy warmth revolving,
While the chilly waters wooed.
Like to rosy-born Aurora,
Glowing freshly into view,
When her doubtful foot she ventures
On the first cold morning blue.
White as that Thessalian lily,
Fairest Tempes fairest flower,
Lo, the tall Peneïan virgin
Stands beneath her bathing bower.
There the laurelld wreaths oerarching
Crownd the dainty shuddering maid;
There the dark prophetic laurel
Kissd her with its sister shade.
There the young green glistening leaflets
Hushd with love their breezy peal;
There the little opening flowerets
Blushd beneath her vermeil heel!
There among the conscious arbours
Sounds of soft tumultuous wail,
Mysteries of love, melodious,
Came upon the lyric gale!
Breathings of a deep enchantment,
Effluence of immortal grace,
Flitted round her faltering footstep,
Spread a balm about her face!
Witless of the enamourd presence,
Like a dreamy lotus bud
From its drowsy stem down-drooping,
Gazed she in the glowing flood.
Softly sweet with fluttering presage,
Felt she that ethereal sense,
Drinking charms of love delirious,
Reaping bliss of love intense!
All the air was thrilld with sunrise,
Birds made music of her name,
And the god-impregnate water
Claspt her image ere she came.
Richer for that glance unconscious!
Dearer for that soft dismay!
And the sudden self-possession!
And the smile as bright as day!
Plunging mid her scattered tresses,
With her blue invoking eyes;
See her like a star descending!
Like a rosebud see her rise!
Like a rosebud in the morning
Dashing off its jewelld dews,
Ere unfolding all its fragrance
It is gathered by the muse!
Beauteous in the foamy laughter
Bubbling round her shrinking waist,
Lo! from locks and lips and eyelids
Rain the glittering pearl-drops chaste!
And about the maiden rapture
Still the ruddy ripples playd,
Ebbing round in startled circlets
When her arms began to wade;
Flowing in like tides attracted
To the glowing crescent shine!
Clasping her ambrosial whiteness
Like an Autumn-tinted vine!
Sinking low with loves emotion!
Levying with look and tone
All loves rosy arts to mimic
Cythereas magic zone!
Trembling up with adoration
To the crimson daisy tip
Budding from the snowy bosom
Fainter than the rose-red lip!
Rising in a storm of wavelets,
That for shelter, feigning fright,
Prest to those twin-heaving havens,
Harbourd there beneath her light;
Gleaming in a whirl of eddies
Round her lucid throat and neck;
Eddying in a gleam of dimples
Up against her bloomy cheek;
Bribing all the breezy water
With rich warmth, the nymph to keep
In a self-imprisond plaisance,
Tempting her from deep to deep.
Till at last delirious passion
Thrilld the god to wild excess,
And the fervour of a moment
Made divinity confess;
And he stood in all his glory!
But so radiant, being near,
That her eyes were frozen on him
In a fascinated fear!
All with orient splendour shining,
All with roseate birth aglow,
Gleamd the golden god before her,
With his golden crescent bow.
Soon the dazzled light subsided,
And he seemd a beauteous youth,
Formd to gain the maidens murmurs,
And to pledge the vows of truth.
Ah! that thus he had continued!
O, that such for her had been!
Graceful with all godlike beauty,
But so humanly serene!
Cheeks, and mouth, and mellow ringlets,
Bounteous as the mid-day beam;
Pleading looks and wistful tremour,
Tender as a maidens dream!
Palms that like a birds throbbd bosom
Palpitate with eagerness,
Lips, the bridals of the roses,
Dewy sweet from the caress!
Lips and limbs, and eyes and ringlets,
Swaying, praying to one prayer,
Like a lyre, swept by a spirit,
In the still, enrapturd air.
Like a lyre in some far valley,
Uttering ravishments divine!
All its strings to viewless fingers
Yearning, modulations fine!
Yearning with melodious fervour!
Like a beauteous maiden flower,
When the young beloved three paces
Hovers from the bridal bower.
Throbbing thro the dawning stillness!
As a heart within a breast,
When the young beloved is stepping
Radiant to the nuptial nest.
O for Daphne! gentle Daphne
Ever warmer by degrees
Whispers full of hopes and visions
Throng her ears like honey bees!
Never yet was lonely blossom
Wood with such delicious voice!
Never since hath mortal maiden
Dwelt on such celestial choice!
Love-suffused she quivers, falters
Falters, sighs, but never speaks,
All her rosy blood up-gushing
Overflows her ripe young cheeks.
Blushing, sweet with virgin blushes,
All her loveliness a-flame,
Stands she in the orient waters,
Stricken oer with speechless shame!
Ah! but lovelier, ever lovelier,
As more deep the colour glows,
And the honey-laden lily
Changes to the fragrant rose.
While the god with meek embraces,
Whispering all his sacred charms,
Softly folds her, gently holds her,
In his white encircling arms!
But, O Dian! veil not wholly
Thy pale crescent from the morn!
Vanish not, O virgin goddess,
With that look of pallid scorn!
Still thy pure protecting influence
Shed from those fair watchful eyes!
Lo! her angry orb has vanished,
And the bright sun thrones the skies!
Voicelessly the forest Virgin
Vanished! but one look she gave
Keen as Niobean arrow
Thro the maidens heart it drave.
Thus toward that throning bosom
Where all earth is warmed,each spot
Nourished with autumnal blessings
Icy chill was Daphne caught.
Icy chill! but swift revulsion
All her gentler self renewed,
Even as icy Winter quickens
With bud-opening warmth imbued.
Even as a torpid brooklet,
That to the night-gleaming moon
Flashed in turn the frozen glances,
Melts upon the breast of noon.
But no moreO never, never,
Turns she to that bosom bright,
Swiftly all her senses counsel,
All her nerves are strung to flight.
Oer the brows of radiant Pindus
Rolls a shadow dark and cold,
And a sound of lamentation
Issues from its mournful fold.
Voice of the far-sighted Muses!
Cry of keen foreboding song!
Every cleft of startled Tempe
Tingles with it sharp and long.
Over bourn and bosk and dingle,
Over rivers, over rills,
Runs the sad subservient Echo
Toward the dim blue distant hills!
And another and another!
Tis a cry more wild than all;
And the hills with muffled voices
Answer Daphne! to the call.
And another and another!
Tis a cry so wildly sweet,
That her charmed heart turns rebel
To the instinct of her feet;
And she pauses for an instant;
But his arms have scarcely slid
Round her waist in cestian girdles,
And his low voluptuous lid
Lifted pleading, and the honey
Of his mouth for hers athirst,
Ruby glistening, raised for moisture
Like a bud that waits to burst
In the sweet espousing showers
And his tongue has scarce begun
With its inarticulate burthen,
And the clouds scarce show the sun
As it pierces thro a crevice
Of the mass that closed it oer,
When again the horror flashes
And she turns to flight once more!
And again oer radiant Pindus
Rolls the shadow dark and cold,
And the sound of lamentation
Issues from its sable fold!
And again the light winds chide her
As she darts from his embrace
And again the far-voiced echoes
Speak their tidings of the chase.
Loudly now as swiftly, swiftly,
Oer the glimmering sands she speeds;
Wildly now as in the furzes
From the piercing spikes she bleeds.
Deeply and with direful anguish,
As above each crimson drop
Passion checks the god Apollo,
And love bids him weep and stop.
He above each drop of crimson
Shadowinglike the laurel leaf
That above himself will shadow
Sheds a fadeless look of grief.
Then with loves remorseful discord,
With its own desire at war,
Sighing turns, while dimly fleeting
Daphne flies the chase afar.
But all nature is against her!
Pan, with all his sylvan troop,
Thro the vistad woodland valleys
Blocks her course with cry and whoop!
In the twilights of the thickets
Trees bend down their gnarled boughs,
Wild green leaves and low curved branches
Hold her hair and beat her brows.
Many a brake of brushwood covert,
Where cold darkness slumbers mute,
Slips a shrub to thwart her passage,
Slides a hand to clutch her foot.
Glens and glades of lushest verdure
Toil her in their tawny mesh,
Wilder-woofed ways and alleys
Lock her struggling limbs in leash.
Feathery grasses, flowery mosses,
Knot themselves to make her trip;
Sprays and stubborn sprigs outstretching
Put a bridle on her lip;
Many a winding lane betrays her,
Many a sudden bosky shoot,
And her knee makes many a stumble
Oer some hidden damp old root,
Whose quaint face peers green and dusky
Mongst the matted growth of plants,
While she rises wild and weltering,
Speeding on with many pants.
Tangles of the wild red strawberry
Spread their freckled trammels frail;
In the pathway creeping brambles
Catch her in their thorny trail.
All the widely sweeping greensward
Shifts and swims from knoll to knoll;
Grey rough-fingered oak and elm wood
Push her by from bole to bole.
Groves of lemon, groves of citron,
Tall high-foliaged plane and palm,
Bloomy myrtle, light-blue olive,
Wave her back with gusts of balm.
Languid jasmine, scrambling briony,
Walls of close-festooning braid,
Fling themselves about her, mingling
With her wafted looks, waylaid.
Twisting bindweed, honeyd woodbine,
Cling to her, while, red and blue,
On her rounded form ripe berries
Dash and die in gory dew.
Running ivies dark and lingering
Round her light limbs drag and twine;
Round her waist with languorous tendrils
Reels and wreathes the juicy vine;
Reining in the flying creature
With its arms about her mouth;
Bursting all its mellowing bunches
To seduce her husky drouth;
Crowning her with amorous clusters;
Pouring down her sloping back
Fresh-born wines in glittering rillets,
Following her in crimson track.
Buried, drenched in dewy foliage,
Thus she glimmers from the dawn,
Watched by every forest creature,
Fleet-foot Oread, frolic Faun.
Silver-sandalled Arethusa
Not more swiftly fled the sands,
Fled the plains and fled the sunlights,
Fled the murmuring ocean strands.
O, that now the earth would open!
O, that now the shades would hide!
O, that now the gods would shelter!
Caverns lead and seas divide!
Not more faint soft-lowing Io
Panted in those starry eyes,
When the sleepless midnight meadows
Piteously implored the skies!
Still her breathless flight she urges
By the sanctuary stream,
And the god with golden swiftness
Follows like an eastern beam.
Her the close bewildering greenery
Darkens with its duskiest green,
Him each little leaflet welcomes,
Flushing with an orient sheen.
Thus he nears, and now all Tempe
Rings with his melodious cry,
Avenues and blue expanses
Beam in his large lustrous eye!
All the branches start to music!
As if from a secret spring
Thousands of sweet bills are bubbling
In the nest and on the wing.
Gleams and shines the glassy river
And rich valleys every one;
But of all the throbbing beauty
Brightest! singled by the sun!
Ivy round her glimmering ancle,
Vine about her glowing brow,
Never sure was bride so beauteous,
Daphne, chosen nymph, as thou!
Thus he nears! and now she feels him
Breathing hot on every limb;
And he hears her own quick pantings
Ah! that they might be for him.
O, that like the flower he tramples,
Bending from his golden tread,
Full of fair celestial ardours,
She would bow her bridal head.
O, that like the flower she presses,
Nodding from her lily touch,
Light as in the harmless breezes,
She would know the god for such!
See! the golden arms are round her
To the air she grasps and clings!
See! his glowing arms have wound her
To the sky she shrieks and springs!
See! the flushing chace of Tempe
Trembles with Olympian air
See! green sprigs and buds are shooting
From those white raised arms of prayer!
In the earth her feet are rooting!
Breasts and limbs and lifted eyes,
Hair and lips and stretching fingers,
Fade awayand fadeless rise.
And the god whose fervent rapture
Clasps her finds his close embrace
Full of palpitating branches,
And new leaves that bud apace,
Bound his wonder-stricken forehead;
While in ebbing measures slow
Sounds of softly dying pulses
Pause and quiver, pause and go;
Go, and come again, and flutter
On the verge of life,then flee!
All the white ambrosial beauty
Is a lustrous Laurel Tree!
Still with the great panting love-chase
All its running sap is warmed;
But from head to foot the virgin
Is transfigured and transformed.
Changed!yet the green Dryad nature
Is instinct with human ties,
And above its anguishd lover
Breathes pathetic sympathies;
Sympathies of love and sorrow;
Joy in her divine escape;
Breathing through her bursting foliage
Comfort to his bending shape.
Vainly now the floating Naiads
Seek to pierce the laurel maze,
Nought but laurel meets their glances,
Laurel glistens as they gaze.
Nought but bright prophetic laurel!
Laurel over eyes and brows,
Over limbs and over bosom,
Laurel leaves and laurel boughs!
And in vain the listening Dryad
Shells her hand against her ear!
All is silencesave the echo
Travelling in the distance drear.
LONDON BY LAMPLIGHT
LONDON BY LAMPLIGHT
There stands a singer in the street,
He has an audience motley and meet;
Above him lowers the London night,
And around the lamps are flaring bright.
His minstrelsy may be unchaste
Tis much unto that motley taste,
And loud the laughter he provokes
From those sad slaves of obscene jokes.
But woe is many a passer by
Who as he goes turns half an eye,
To see the human form divine
Thus Circe-wise changed into swine!
Make up the sum of either sex
That all our human hopes perplex,
With those unhappy shapes that know
The silent streets and pale cock-crow.
And can I trace in such dull eyes
Of fireside peace or country skies?
And could those haggard cheeks presume
To memories of a May-tide bloom?
Those violated forms have been
The pride of many a flowering green;
And still the virgin bosom heaves
With daisy meads and dewy leaves.
But stygian darkness reigns within
The river of death from the founts of sin;
And one prophetic water rolls
Its gas-lit surface for their souls.
I will not hide the tragic sight
Those drownd black locks, those dead lips white,
Will rise from out the slimy flood,
And cry before Gods throne for blood!
Those stiffened limbs, that swollen face,
Pollutions last and best embrace,
Will call, as such a picture can,
For retribution upon man.
Hark! how their feeble laughter rings,
While still the ballad-monger sings,
And flatters their unhappy breasts
With poisonous words and pungent jests.
O how would every daisy blush
To see them mid that earthy crush!
O dumb would be the evening thrush,
And hoary look the hawthorn bush!
The meadows of their infancy
Would shrink from them, and every tree,
And every little laughing spot,
Would hush itself and know them not.
Precursor to what black despairs
Was that childs face which once was theirs!
And O to what a world of guile
Was herald that young angel smile!
That face which to a fathers eye
Was balm for all anxiety;
That smile which to a mothers heart
Went swifter than the swallows dart!
O happy homes! that still they know
At intervals, with what a woe
Would ye look on them, dim and strange,
Suffering worse than winter change!
And yet could I transplant them there,
To breathe again the innocent air
Of youth, and once more reconcile
Their outcast looks with natures smile;
Could I but give them one clear day
Of this delicious loving May,
Release their souls from anguish dark,
And stand them underneath the lark;
I think that Nature would have power
To graft again her blighted flower
Upon the broken stem, renew
Some portion of its early hue;
The heavy flood of tears unlock,
More precious than the Scriptured rock;
At least instil a happier mood,
And bring them back to womanhood.
Alas! how many lost ones claim
This refuge from despair and shame!
How many, longing for the light,
Sink deeper in the abyss this night!
O, crying sin! O, blushing thought!
Not only unto those that wrought
The misery and deadly blight;
But those that outcast them this night!
O, agony of grief! for who
Less dainty than his race, will do
Such battle for their human right,