From childhood's hour I have not been
As others were; I have not seen
As others saw; I could not bring
My passions from a common spring.
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow; I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone;
And all I loved, I loved alone.
Then- in my childhood, in the dawn
Of a most stormy life- was drawn
......
Life is a privilege. Its youthful days
Shine with the radiance of continuous Mays.
To live, to breathe, to wonder and desire,
To feed with dreams the heart’s perpetual fire,
To thrill with virtuous passions, and to glow
With great ambitions – in one hour to know
The depths and heights of feeling – God! in truth,
How beautiful, how beautiful is youth!
Life is a privilege. Like some rare rose
......
O fleece, that down the neck waves to the nape!
O curls! O perfume nonchalant and rare!
O ecstasy! To fill this alcove shape
With memories that in these tresses sleep,
I would shake them like penions in the air!
Languorous Asia, burning Africa,
And a far world, defunct almost, absent,
Within your aromatic forest stay!
As other souls on music drift away,
......
When Julius Fabricius, Sub-Prefect of the Weald,
In the days of Diocletian owned our Lower River-field,
He called to him Hobdenius-a Briton of the Clay,
Saying: "What about that River-piece for layin' in to hay?"
And the aged Hobden answered: "I remember as a lad
My father told your father that she wanted dreenin' bad.
An' the more that you neeglect her the less you'll get her clean.
Have it jest as you've a mind to, but, if I was you, I'd dreen."
......
When the warm sun, that brings
Seed-time and harvest, has returned again,
'T is sweet to visit the still wood, where springs
The first flower of the plain.
I love the season well,
When forest glades are teeming with bright forms,
Nor dark and many-folded clouds foretell
The coming-on of storms.
......
They fall from grace to grass,
aged, scorched and dehydrated,
fluttering away further
the vanity of previous
greenness and elevated times,
reminding us of the fragility
of life,
the futility of striving to hang on
when time is up.
In the hour when senile summer breathes her last,
The vim of her ego births a somnolent child.
Rising forth from the yawning pit of newness,
Dyed with shades of seasonal confetti,
Fall rises with a spectrumed diadem.
October reigns with a high degree of splendour,
Braiding strands of leaves with threads of gold.
Fall
captured
my blithe heart
Such parting songs
on pretty pathways,
with colors in my eyes
Crisp days of cool circumstance
and fires at flickering evening
Final flowers stain the grass with hues
Filled with goodbye blues, the sun's retreating.
......
Autumn is golden
mirrored in still glinting lake
Sunbeams through plum trees
Nature's so long symphony
when birds soar in sympathy
Tiffany skies chills
pink robin is still singing
to an empty hall
Last beats of butterfly wings
......
The flickering, dreamy firelight, does a sultry dance,
Upon the walls of cozy evening, at autumn's arrival.
The fading sun left its memory, the crackling flames;
And bluebird sings sunshine in lush, scented tropics.
The shadows are in rhythm, with the whirling snow,
On the edge of chill November, flying by my window.
In the joy of swift, vivid seasons, blooms are coming,
For when nature's not singing, it's sweetly humming.