Desiring what is mingled with past

years,

In yearnings that can never be exprest

By signs or groans or tears;

Because all words, tho' cull'd with choicest art,

Failing to give the bitter of the sweet, Wither beneath the palate, and the heart Faints, faded by its heat.

THE BLACKBIRD

First published in 1842, but written in 1833.

O BLACKBIRD! sing me something well:

While all the neighbors shoot thee round, I keep smooth plats of fruitful ground, Where thou mayst warble, eat, and dwell.

The espaliers and the standards all

Are thine; the range of lawn and park; The unnetted black-hearts ripen dark, All thine, against the garden wall.

Yet, tho' I spared thee all the spring,
Thy sole delight is, sitting still,
With that gold dagger of thy bill
To fret the summer jenneting.

A golden bill! the silver tongue,
Cold February loved, is dry;
Plenty corrupts the melody

That made thee famous once when young;

And in the sultry garden-squares,

Now thy flute- notes are changed to

coarse,

I hear thee not at all, or hoarse As when a hawker hawks his wares.

Take warning! he that will not sing While yon sun prospers in the blue, Shall sing for want, ere leaves are new, Caught in the frozen palms of Spring.

THE DEATH OF THE OLD YEAR

Reprinted in 1842 from the volume of 1833.

FULL knee-deep lies the winter snow,

And the winter winds are wearily sighing;

Toll ye the church-bell sad and slow,
And tread softly and speak low,
For the old year lies a-dying.

Old year, you must not die;
You came to us so readily,
You lived with us so steadily,
Old year, you shall not die.

He lieth still, he doth not move;
He will not see the dawn of day.
He hath no other life above.
He gave me a friend, and a true true-love,
And the New-year will take 'em away.

Old year, you must not go;

So long as you have been with us,
Such joy as you have seen with us,
Old year, you shall not go.

He froth'd his bumpers to the brim;
A jollier year we shall not see.
But tho' his eyes are waxing dim,
And tho' his foes speak ill of him,
He was a friend to me.

Old year, you shall not die;
We did so laugh and cry with you,
I've half a mind to die with you,
Old year, if you must die.

He was full of joke and jest,
But all his merry quips are o'er.
To see him die, across the waste
His son and heir doth ride post-haste,
But he 'll be dead before.

Every one for his own.

The night is starry and cold, my friend,

And the New-year blithe and bold, my friend,

Comes up to take his own.

How hard he breathes! over the snow
I heard just now the crowing cock.
The shadows flicker to and fro;
The cricket chirps; the light burns low;
'Tis nearly twelve o'clock.

Shake hands, before you die.
Old year, we'll dearly rue for you.
What is it we can do for you?
Speak out before you die.

His face is growing sharp and thin.
Alack! our friend is gone.
Close up his eyes; tie up his chin;
Step from the corpse, and let him in
That standeth there alone,

ON A MOURNER

First printed in the 'Selections' of 1865.

I

NATURE, so far as in her lies,

Imitates God, and turns her face To every land beneath the skies,

Counts nothing that she meets with base, But lives and loves in every place;

II

Fills out the homely quickset-screens,
And makes the purple lilac ripe,
Steps from her airy hill, and greens

The swamp, where humm'd the dropping snipe,

With moss and braided marish-pipe;

III

And on thy heart a finger lays,

Saying, 'Beat quicker, for the time Is pleasant, and the woods and ways Are pleasant, and the beech and lime Put forth and feel a gladder clime.'

IV

And murmurs of a deeper voice,

Going before to some far shrine, Teach that sick heart the stronger choice, Till all thy life one way incline

With one wide Will that closes thine.

V

And when the zoning eve has died

Where yon dark valleys wind forlorn, Come Hope and Memory, spouse and bride, From out the borders of the morn, With that fair child betwixt them born.

VI

And when no mortal motion jars

The blackness round the tombing sod, Thro' silence and the trembling stars Comes Faith from tracts no feet have trod,

And Virtue, like a household god

VII

Promising empire; such as those

Once heard at dead of night to greet Troy's wandering prince, so that he rose With sacrifice, while all the fleet Had rest by stony hills of Crete.

This and the two following poems, written in 1833, were first printed in 1842, and have been altered but slightly. See Notes.

You ask me, why, tho' ill at ease,
Within this region I subsist,
Whose spirits falter in the mist,
And languish for the purple seas..

It is the land that freemen till,

That sober-suited Freedom chose, The land, where girt with friends or foes A man may speak the thing he will;

A land of settled government,

A land of just and old renown, Where Freedom slowly broadens down From precedent to precedent;

Where faction seldom gathers head,

But, by degrees to fullness wrought,
The strength of some diffusive thought
Hath time and space to work and spread.

Should banded unions persecute
Opinion, and induce a time

When single thought is civil crime,
And individual freedom mute,

Tho' power should make from land land

The name of Britain trebly great Tho' every channel of the State Should fill and choke with golden sand -

Yet waft me from the harbor-mouth,

Wild wind! I seek a warmer sky,
And I will see before I die
The palms and temples of the South.

Not swift nor slow to change, but firm; And in its season bring the law,

That from Discussion's lip may fall
With Life that, working strongly, binds
Set in all lights by many minds,
To close the interests of all.

For Nature also, cold and warm,
And moist and dry, devising long,
Thro' many agents making strong,
Matures the individual form.

Meet is it changes should control

Our being, lest we rust in ease. We all are changed by still degrees, All but the basis of the soul.

So let the change which comes be free
To ingroove itself with that which flies,
And work, a joint of state, that plies
Its office, moved with sympathy.

A saying hard to shape in act;

For all the past of Time reveals
A bridal dawn of thunder-peals,
Wherever Thought hath wedded Fact.

Even now we hear with inward strife
A motion toiling in the gloom
The Spirit of the years to come
Yearning to mix himself with Life.

A slow-develop'd strength awaits
Completion in a painful school;
Phantoms of other forms of rule,
New Majesties of mighty States

The warders of the growing hour,

But vague in vapor, hard to mark; And round them sea and air are dark With great contrivances of Power.

Of many changes, aptly join'd,

Is bodied forth the second whole. Regard gradation, lest the soul Of Discord race the rising wind;

A wind to puff your idol-fires,

And heap their ashes on the head; To shame the boast so often made, That we are wiser than our sires.

O, yet, if Nature's evil star

Drive men in manhood, as in youth,

60

70