human
When Nature from her far-off glen Flutes her soft messages to men, The flute can say them o'er again; Yea, Nature, singing sweet and lone, Breathes through life's strident polyphone The flute-voice in the world of tone. Sweet friends, Man's love ascends To finer and diviner ends Than man's mere thought e'er comprehends. For I, e'en I, As here I lie, A petal on a harmony, Demand of Science whence and why Man's tender pain, man's inward cry, When he doth gaze on earth and sky? Behold, I grow more bold: I hold Full powers from Nature manifold. I speak for each no-tonguèd tree That, spring by spring, doth nobler be, And dumbly and most wistfully His mighty prayerful arms outspreads Above men's oft-unheeding heads, And his big blessing downward sheds. I speak for all-shaped blooms and leaves, Lichens on stones and moss on eaves, Grasses and grains in ranks and sheaves; Broad-fronded ferns and keen-leaved canes, And briery mazes bounding lanes, And marsh-plants, thirsty-cupped for rains, And milky stems and sugary veins; For every long-armed woman-vine That round a piteous tree doth twine; For passionate odors, and divine Pistils, and petals crystalline; All purities of shady springs, All shynesses of film-winged things That fly from tree-trunks and bark-rings; All modesties of mountain-fawns That leap to covert from wild lawns, And tremble if the day but dawns; All sparklings of small beady eyes Of birds, and sidelong glances wise Wherewith the jay hints tragedies; All piquancies of prickly burs, And smoothnesses of downs and furs Of eiders and of minevers; All limpid honeys that do lie At stamen-bases, nor deny The humming-birds' fine roguery, Bee-thighs, nor any butterfly; All gracious curves of slender wings, Bark-mottlings, fibre-spiralings, Fern-wavings and leaf-flickerings; Each dial-marked leaf and flower-bell Wherewith in every lonesome dell Time to himself his hours doth tell; All tree-sounds, rustlings of pine-cones, Wind-sighings, doves' melodious moans, And night's unearthly undertones; All placid lakes and waveless deeps, All cool reposing mountain-steeps, Vale-calms and tranquil lotos-sleeps; Yea, all fair forms, and sounds, and lights, And warmths, and mysteries, and mights, Of Nature's utmost depths and heights,-- --These doth my timid tongue present, Their mouthpiece and lead instrument And servant, all love-eloquent. I heard, when '_All for love_' the violins cried: Nature through me doth take their human side. That soul is like a groom without a bride That ne'er by Nature in great love hath sighed. Much time is run, and man hath changed his ways, Since Nature, in the antique fable-days, Was hid from man's true love by proxy fays, False fauns and rascal gods that stole her praise. The nymphs, cold creatures of man's colder brain, Chilled Nature's streams till man's warm heart was fain Never to lave its love in them again. Later, a sweet Voice _Love thy neighbor_ said; Then first the bounds of neighborhood outspread Beyond all confines of old ethnic dread. Vainly the Jew might wag his covenant head: '_All men are neighbors_,' so the sweet Voice said. So, when man's arms had measure as man's race, The liberal compass of his warm embrace Stretched bigger yet in the dark bounds of space; With hands a-grope he felt smooth Nature's grace, Drew her to breast and kissed her sweetheart face: His heart found neighbors in great hills and trees And streams and clouds and suns and birds and bees, And throbbed with neighbor-loves in loving these. But oh, the poor! the poor! the poor! That stand by the inward-opening door Trade's hand doth tighten ever more, And sigh with a monstrous foul-air sigh For the outside heaven of liberty, Where Nature spreads her wild blue sky For Art to make into melody! Thou Trade! thou king of the modern days! Change thy ways, Change thy ways; Let the sweaty laborers file A little while, A little while, Where Art and Nature sing and smile. Trade! is thy heart all dead, all dead? And hast thou nothing but a head? I'm all for heart,
gpt
O Trade! O Trade! the Lady said,
human
I too will wish thee utterly dead If all thy heart is in thy head. For O my God! and O my God! What shameful ways have women trod At beckoning of Trade's golden rod! Alas when sighs are traders' lies, And heart's-ease eyes and violet eyes Are merchandise! O purchased lips that kiss with pain! O cheeks coin-spotted with smirch and stain! O trafficked hearts that break in twain! --And yet what wonder at my sisters' crime? So hath Trade withered up Love's sinewy prime, Men love not women as in olden time. Ah, not in these cold merchantable days Deem men their life an opal gray, where plays The one red sweet of gracious ladies' praise. Now comes a suitor with sharp prying eye-- Says, _Here, you Lady, if you'll sell, I'll buy: Come, heart for heart--a trade? What! weeping? why?_ Shame on such wooers' dapper mercery! I would my lover kneeling at my feet In humble manliness should cry, _O sweet! I know not if thy heart my heart will meet: I ask not if thy love my love can greet: Whatever thy worshipful soft tongue shall say, I'll kiss thine answer, be it yea or nay: I do but know I love thee, and I pray To be thy knight until my dying day._ Woe him that cunning trades in hearts contrives! Base love good women to base loving drives. If men loved larger, larger were our lives; And wooed they nobler, won they nobler wives.
gpt
Now comfort thee, said he,
human
Fair Ladye. Soon shall God right thy grievous wrong, Soon shall man sing thee a true-love song, Voiced in act his whole life long, Yea, all thy sweet life long, Fair Ladye. Where's he that craftily hath said The day of chivalry is dead? I'll prove that lie upon his head, Or I will die instead, Fair Ladye. Is Honor gone into his grave? Hath Faith become a caitiff knave, And Selfhood turned into a slave To work in Mammon's cave, Fair Ladye? Will Truth's long blade ne'er gleam again? Hath Giant Trade in dungeons slain All great contempts of mean-got gain And hates of inward stain, Fair Ladye? For aye shall Name and Fame be sold, And Place be hugged for the sake of gold, And smirch-robed Justice feebly scold At Crime all money-bold, Fair Ladye? Shall self-wrapt husbands aye forget Kiss-pardons for the daily fret Wherewith sweet wifely eyes are wet-- Blind to lips kiss-wise set-- Fair Ladye? Shall lovers higgle, heart for heart, Till wooing grows a trading mart Where much for little, and all for part, Make love a cheapening art, Fair Ladye? Shall woman scorch for a single sin That her betrayer can revel in, And she be burnt, and he but grin When that the flames begin, Fair Ladye? Shall ne'er prevail the woman's plea, _We maids would far, far whiter be If that our eyes might sometimes see Men maids in purity_, Fair Ladye? Shall Trade aye salve his conscience-aches With jibes at Chivalry's old mistakes, The wars that o'erhot knighthood makes For Christ's and ladies' sakes, Fair Ladye? Now by each knight that e'er hath prayed To fight like a man and love like a maid, Since Pembroke's life, as Pembroke's blade, I' the scabbard, death, was laid, Fair Ladye. I dare avouch my faith is bright That God doth right and God hath might, Nor time hath changed His hair to white, Nor His dear love to spite, Fair Ladye. I doubt no doubts: I strive, and shrive my clay, And fight my fight in the patient modern way For true love and for thee--ah me! and pray To be thy knight until my dying day, Fair Ladye,
gpt
Huge Trade! he said,
human
Would thou wouldst lift me on thy head, And run where'er my finger led! Once said a Man--and wise was He-- _Never shalt thou the heavens see, Save as a little child thou be_.