Joy of the Morning

I hear you, little bird,

Shouting aswing above the broken wall.
Shout louder yet: no song can tell it all.
Sing to my soul in the deep still wood:
'Tis wonderful beyond the wildest word:
I'd tell it, too, if I could.

Oft when the white, still dawn

Lifted the skies and pushed the hills apart,

I've felt it like a glory in my heart

(The world's mysterious stir)

But had no throat like yours, my bird,
Nor such a listener.

Youth and Time

Once, I remember, the world was young;
The rills rejoiced with a silver tongue;
The field-lark sat in the wheat and sang;
The thrush's shout in the woodland rang;
The cliffs and the perilous sands afar

Were softened to mist by the morning star;
For Youth was with me (I know it now!),
And a light shone out from his wreathèd brow.
He turned the fields to enchanted ground,
He touched the rains with a dreamy sound.

But alas, he vanished, and Time appeared,
The Spirit of Ages, old and weird.
He crushed and scattered my beamy wings;
He dragged me forth from the court of kings;
He gave me doubt and a bloom of beard,

This Spirit of Ages, old and weird.

Youth and Time

The wonder went from the field of corn,
The glory died on the craggy horn;
And suddenly all was strange and gray,
And the rocks came out on the trodden way.

I hear no more the wild thrush sing:
He is silent now on the peach aswing.
Something is gone from the house of mirth
Something is gone from the hills of Earth.
Time hurries me on with a wizard hand;
He turns the Earth to a homeless land;
He stays my life with a stingy breath,
And darkens its depths with foreknowledge of
death;

Calls memories back on their path apace;

Sends desperate thoughts to the soul's dim place.

Time murders our youth with his sorrow and

sin,

And pushes us on to the windowless inn.

A Satyr Song

I know by the stir of the branches
The way she went;

And at times I can see where a stem
Of the grass is bent.

She's the secret and light of my life, She allures to elude;

But I follow the spell of her beauty, Whatever the mood.

I have followed all night in the hills,
And my breath is deep,

But she flies on before like a voice
In the vale of sleep.

I follow the print of her feet

In the wild river bed,

And lo, she calls gleefully down

From a cliff overhead.

A Cry in the Night

Wail, wail, wail,

For the fleering world goes

down:

Into the song of the poet pale
Mixes the laugh of the clown.

Grim, grim, grim,

Is the road we go to the dead;
Yet we must on, for a Something dim

Pushes the soul ahead.

Where, where, where,

Through the dust and shadow of things, Will the fleeing Fates with their wild manes bear

These tribes of slaves and kings?