Louise Imogen Guiney

“ With boughs and the sun about, with bowl and book,
At the flood-tide of my youth, in the pearl of springs,
Cydippe’s hand in my hair.... Ah, horrible thrill!
Once I was rash, once I was wrong. Quick, look,
My heart! in thy tremor, over the herded hill,
In clefts of the moss, in swirls of the sliding brook:
Somewhere the Vengeance lurks to defile and kill!
My arrow back to me somewhere hisses and sings,
Aye, justly; aye, bitterly, justly. Steady, heart! there.
See, I laugh as I lie: on the brink of the jar yet clings
Sweet foam; and I kiss Cydippe’s hand thro’ my hair.’ ”

“ This night my heart’s world-roaming dreams are met,
The while I gaze across the river-brim,
Beyond the anchored ships with cordage dim,
To the clear lights, that like a coronet
On thee, my noble city, nobly set,
Along thy summits trail their golden rim.
Peril forsake thee! so shall peal my hymn;
Glory betide thee! Nor may men forget,
Shelter of scholars, poets, artisans!
The sap that filled the perfect vein of Greece,
And hung with bloom her fair, illustrious tree,
Unheeded, thro’ dull eras made advance,
Unfruitful, stole to topmost boughs in peace
Twice centuries twelve ”

“ Who fill one gourd with me, who cheer my heart,
Who come in, warm and singing, to the tent,
And miss me who am gone away, I think,
Forever, though a day; out of their world, 2
Though over a few leagues of upland grass!
Why hast Thou laid on me magic of pain,
God unrevealèd? Was I drawn from sleep,
Man’s duty, body’s health, to be mere wind,
Wind undirected over fallow wastes?
What wouldst Thou ask of me, no sword of Thine,
No ark of service? Yet aware of Thee
I am and shall be. ”

“ A Song of Far Travel Many a time some drowsy oar from the nearer bank invited,
Crossed a narrow stream, and bore in among the reeds moon-lighted,
There to leave me on a shore no ferryman hath sighted.
Many a time a mountain stile, dark and bright with sudden wetting,
Lured my vagrant foot the while 'twixt uplifting and down-setting,—
Whither? Thousand mile on mile, beyond the last forgetting.
Long by hidden ways I wend (past occasion grown a ranger) ;
Yet enchantment, like a friend, takes from death the tang of danger:
Hardly river or road can end where I need step a stranger. ”

“ How singularly fresh and sweet is Mozart's music!—like the cadence of waters over a rocky bed, or the bird-chorus of a May morning. His melodies and those of Nature have always some subtle association. It is as if we knew the noble mother, and walked often by her side, and some fine day we meet the intelligent and sportive child, finding in his voice, his gestures, his salutation, something foreshadowed to us in that other, and beautiful in both.
Life is a breathing-space between two eternities, a holiday with appalling realities behind and before. ”

“ Henri de La Rochejaquelein, zigzagging in the teeth of the enemy, doing deeds with his own hands which are not common in salons; Henri, with his slender height, his shy caressing voice and smile, having no tenderer talisman to carry than the sign of the cross, no parting look at anything more responsive than a torn white flag,—such a Henri, jarring with prescriptive ideas, calls for reform. It is ungracious that a chevalier of twenty should have no leisure for a personal romance ”

“ Safeguard with general mind
Our pact as brothers kind,
And, ever nearer to our star,
Adore indeed not what we are,
But wise reprovings hold
Thankworthier than gold;
And bear in faith and rapture such
As can eternal issues touch,
Whole from the final field,
Our father Sherman’s shield.
32 When on the Marge of Evening
WHEN on the marge of evening the last blue light is broken,
And winds of dreamy odor are loosened from afar,
Or when my lattice opens, before the lark has spoken,
On dim laburnum-blossoms, and morning’s dying star,
I think of thee, (O mine the more if other eyes be sleeping!) ”

“ Hath pastured, from the violent time apart,
And laved in supersensual light the heart
Alone with thy magnificent No More?
Sweet court of roses now, sweet camp of bees!
The hills that lean to thy white bed at dawn,
Hear, for the clash of raging dynasties,
Laughter of boys about a branchy lawn.
Hast thou a stain? Let ivy cover all;
Nor seem of greatness disinhabited,
While spirits in their wonted splendour tread
From close to close, by Wolvesey’s idle wall.
Bright fins against thy lucid water leap,
And nigh thy towers the nesting wood-dove dwell ”

“ He who comes close to the heart-beat of progress and dissolution in the wilderness, the vicissitudes of the vegetable world, must feel that, save in an allegory, these things are not for him: they go under him as a swimmer's wave. "Change upon change: yet one change cries out to another, like the alternate seraphim, in praise and glory of their Maker." The human atom gets into the mood of the according leaf, caring not how long it has hung there, how soon it may fall. God's will, in short, is nowhere so plain and acceptable as on a lonely stretch of moor or water. ”

“ JOHN BROWN: A PARADOX.
COMPASSIONATE eyes had our brave John Brown,
And a craggy stern forehead, a militant frown;
He, the storm-bow of peace. Give him volley on volley,
The fool who redeemed us once of our folly,
And the smiter that healed us, our right John Brown!
Too vehement, verily, was John Brown!
For waiting is statesmanlike; his the renown
Of the holy rash arm, the equipper and starter
Of freedmen; aye, call him fanatic and martyr:
He can carry both halos, our plain John Brown.
A scandalous stumbling-block was John Brown,
And a jeer; but ah! ”

“ His own solitude, the washing tide, the one towering linden yonder, the gambrel roofs and ancient gardens, the felt neighborhood of the dear wild little graveyard where his forbears slept, steeped his heart in overwhelming melancholy. He had already passed a week at the Rockingham. It was a strange date to choose, out of all his free and prosperous life, for a first visit since childhood to the fair old New England borough where he was born. ”

“ With what unction, from an actor’s lips, falls his manifold and glowing praise of theatres! What a pretty picture, a broad wash of rose-purple and white, he can make of the interior seen from the wings! “There’s such a hurry of pleasure to transport us; the bustle, noise, gallantry, equipage, garters, feathers, wigs, bows, smiles, ogles, love, music, and applause!” And again, in another mood: “The playhouse is the element of poetry, because the region of beauty; the ladies, methinks, have a more inspiring, triumphant air in the boxes than anywhere else. ”