No sun--no moon--no morn--no noon,
No dawn--no dusk--no proper time of day,
No warmth--no cheerfulness--no healthful ease,
No road, no street, no t' other side the way,
No comfortable feel in any member--
No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees,
No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds,
November!
Dame Fortune is a fickle gipsy,
And always blind, and often tipsy;
Sometimes for years and years together,
She 'll bless you with the sunniest weather,
Bestowing honour, pudding, pence,
You can't imagine why or whence;--
Then in a moment--Presto, pass!--
Your joys are withered like the grass;
Genius hath electric power
Which earth can never tame,
Bright suns may scorch and dark clouds lower,
Its flash is still the same.
Warm lights are on the sleepy uplands waning
Beneath dark clouds along the horizon rolled,
Till the slant sunbeams through the fringes raining
Bathe all the hills in melancholy gold.
I wiped away the weeds and foam,
I fetched my sea-born treasures home;
But the poor, unsightly, noisome things
Had left their beauty on the shore,
With the sun and the sand and the wild uproar.
Olympian bards who sung
Divine ideas below,
Which always find us young
And always keep us so.
To be great is to be misunderstood.
Like ships, that sailed for sunny isles,
But never came to shore.
Yet spirit immortal, the tomb can not bind thee,
But like thine own eagle that soars to the sun
Thou springest from bondage and leavest behind thee
A name which before thee no mortal hath won.
Tho' nations may combat, and war's thunders rattle,
No more on thy steed wilt thou sweep o'er the plain:
Thou sleep'st thy last sleep, thou hast fought thy last battle,
No sound can awake thee to glory again.
He sendeth sun, he sendeth shower,
Alike they're needful to the flower;
And joys and tears alike are sent
To give the soul fit nourishment.
As comes to me or cloud or sun,
Father! thy will, not mine, be done.
Our glories float between the earth and heaven
Like clouds which seem pavilions of the sun.
I'm bidding you a long farewell,
My Mary, kind and true,
But I'll not forget you, darling,
In the land I'm going to.
They say there's bread and work for all,
And the sun shines always there;
But I'll not forget old Ireland,
Were it fifty times as fair.
Ye are better than all the ballads
That ever were sung or said;
For ye are living poems
And all the rest are dead.
The Beauty which old Greece or Rome
Sung, painted, wrought, lies close at home.
The harp at Nature's advent strung
Has never ceased to play;
The song the stars of morning sung
Has never died away.
Sweeter than any sung
My songs that found no tongue;
Nobler than any fact
My wish that failed of act.
Others shall sing the song,
Others shall right the wrong,--
Finish what I begin,
And all I fail of win.
We have been friends together
In sunshine and in shade.
Since first beneath the chestnut-tree
In fancy we played
But coldness dwells within thine heart
A cloud is on thy brow.
We have been friends together,--
Shall a light word part us now?
Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondman's two-hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, "The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."
Oh would I were a boy again,
When life seemed formed of sunny years,
And all the heart then knew of pain
Was wept away in transient tears!
When every tale Hope whispered then,
My fancy deemed was only truth.
Oh, would that I could know again,
The happy visions of my youth.
Whether we wake or we sleep,
Whether we carol or weep,
The Sun with his Planets in chime,
Marketh the going of Time.
Yet I doubt not through the ages one increasing purpose runs,
And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns.
As she fled fast through sun and shade
The happy winds upon her played,
Blowing the ringlet from the braid.
There sinks the nebulous star we call the sun.
Thy leaf has perished in the green,
And while we breathe beneath the sun,
The world which credits what is done
Is cold to all that might have been.
Yet the moonlight is the sunlight and the sun himself will pass.