Jenny Kissed Me

JENNY kiss'd me when we met,

Jumping from the chair she sat in;

Time, you thief, who love to get

Sweets into your list, put that in!

Say I'm weary, say I'm sad,

Say that health and wealth have miss'd me,

Say I'm growing old, but add,

Jenny kiss'd me.

James Leigh Hunt

Abou Ben Adhem

ABOU Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!)

Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace,

And saw, within the moonlight in his room,

Making it rich, and like a lily in bloom,

An Angel writing in a book of gold:

Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold,

And to the Presence in the room he said,

"What writest thou?" The Vision raised its head,

And with a look made of all sweet accord

Answered, "The names of those who love the Lord."

"And is mine one?" said Abou. "Nay, not so,"

Replied the Angel. Abou spoke more low,

But cheerily still; and said, "I pray thee, then,

Write me as one who loves his fellow men."

The Angel wrote, and vanished. The next night

It came again with a great wakening light,

And showed the names whom love of God had blessed,

And, lo! Ben Adhem's name led all the rest!

James Leigh Hunt

To a Fish

YOU strange, astonished-looking, angle-faced,

Dreary-mouthed, gaping wretches of the sea,

Gulping salt water everlastingly,

Cold-blooded, though with red your blood be graced,

And mute, though dwellers in the roaring waste;

And you, all shapes beside, that fishy be--

Some round, some flat, some long, all devilry,

Legless, unmoving, infamously chaste:

O scaly, slippery, wet, swift, staring wights,

What is't ye do? What life lead? eh, dull goggles?

How do ye vary your vile days and nights?

How pass your Sundays? Are ye still but joggles

In ceaseless wash? Still naught but gapes and bites,

And drinks and stares, diversified with boggles?

James Leigh Hunt

A Fish Answers

AMAZING monster! that for aught I know,

With the first sight of thee didst make our race

For ever stare! O flat and shocking face,

Grimly divided from the breast below!

Thou that on dry land horribly dost go

With a split body and most ridiculous pace,

Prong after prong, disgracer of all grace,

Long-useless-finned, haired, upright, unwet, slow!

O breather of unbreathable, sword-sharp air,

How canst exist? How bear thyself, thou dry

And dreary sloth? What particle canst share

Of the only blessed life, the watery?

I sometimes see of ye an actual pair

Go by! linked fin by fin! most odiously.

James Leigh Hunt

The Glove and the Lions

KING Francis was a hearty king, and loved a royal sport,

And one day, as his lions fought, sat looking on the court.

The nobles filled the benches, with the ladies in their pride,

And 'mongst them sat the Count de Lorge, with one for whom he signed:

And truly 'twas a gallant thing to see that crowning show,

Valor and love, and a king above, and the royal beasts below.

Ramped and roared the lions, with horrid laughing jaws;

They bit, they glared, gave blows like beams, a wind went with their paws;

With wallowing might and stifled roar they rolled on one another,

Till all the pit with sand and mane was in a thunderous smother;

The bloody foam above the bars came whisking through the air;

Said Francis then, "Faith, gentlemen, we're better here than there."

De Lorge's love o'er heard the King, a beauteous lively dame,

With smiling lips and sharp bright eyes, which always seemed the same;

She thought, The Count my lover is brave as brave can be;

He surely would do wondrous things to show his love of me;

King, ladies, lovers, all look on; the occasion is divine;

I'll drop my glove, to prove his love; great glory will be mine.

She dropped her glove, to prove his love, then looked at him and smiled;

He bowed, and in a moment leaped among the lions wild:

The leap was quick, return was quick, he has regained his place,

Then threw the glove, but not with love, right in the lady's face.

"By Heaven," said Francis, "rightly done!" and he rose from where he sat;

"No love," quoth he, "but vanity, sets love a task like that."

James Leigh Hunt

The Nile

IT flows through old hushed Ægypt and its sands,

Like some grave mighty thought threading a dream,

And times and things, as in that vision, seem

Keeping along it their eternal stands,--

Caves, pillars, pyramids, the shepherd bands

That roamed through the young world, the glory extreme

Of high Sesostris, and that southern beam,

The laughing queen that caught the world's great hands.

Then comes a mightier silence, stern and strong,

As of a world left empty of its throng,

And the void weighs on us; and then we wake,

And hear the fruitful stream lapsing along

Twixt villages, and think how we shall take

Our own calm journey on for human sake.

James Leigh Hunt

To the Grasshopper and the Cricket

GREEN little vaulter in the sunny grass

Catching your heart up at the feel of June,

Sole voice that's heard amidst the lazy noon,

When ev'n the bees lag at the summoning brass;

And you, warm little housekeeper, who class

With those who think the candles come too soon,

Loving the fire, and with your tricksome tune

Nick the glad silent moments as they pass;

Oh sweet and tiny cousins, that belong,

One to the fields, the other to the hearth,

Both have your sunshine; both though small are strong

At your clear hearts; and both were sent on earth

To sing in thoughtful ears this natural song,--

In doors and out, summer and winter, Mirth.

James Leigh Hunt

Death

DEATH is a road our dearest friends have gone;

Why with such leaders, fear to say, "Lead on?"

Its gate repels, lest it too soon be tried,

But turns in balm on the immortal side.

Mothers have passed it: fathers, children; men

Whose like we look not to behold again;

Women that smiled away their loving breath;

Soft is the travelling on the road to death!

But guilt has passed it? men not fit to die?

O, hush -- for He that made us all is by!

Human we're all -- all men, all born of mothers;

All our own selves in the worn-out shape of others;

Our used, and oh, be sure, not to be ill-used brothers!

James Leigh Hunt

May and the Poets

THERE is May in books forever;

May will part from Spenser never;

May's in Milton, May's in Prior,

May's in Chaucer, Thomson, Dyer;

May's in all the Italian books:--

She has old and modern nooks,

Where she sleeps with nymphs and elves,

In happy places they call shelves,

And will rise and dress your rooms

With a drapery thick with blooms.

Come, ye rains, then if ye will,

May's at home, and with me still;

But come rather, thou, good weather,

And find us in the fields together.

James Leigh Hunt

Fairies' Song

Translation of a Latin poem by Thomas Randolph

WE the fairies blithe and antic

Of dimensions not gigantic,

Though the moonshine mostly keep us,

Oft in orchards frisk and peep us.

Stolen sweets are always sweeter;

Stolen kisses much completer;

Stolen looks are nice in chapels;

Stolen, stolen be your apples.

When to bed the world are bobbing,

Then's the time for orchard robbing;

Yet the fruit were scarce worth peeling

Were it not for the stealing, stealing.

James Leigh Hunt

A Night-Rain in Summer

[Ed. Note: To "keep coil" (in lines 7-8} means to create a noisy disturbance. --Nelson]

OPEN the window, and let the air

Freshly blow upon face and hair,

And fill the room, as it fills the night,

With the breath of the rain's sweet might.

Hark! the burthen, swift and prone!

And how the odorous limes are blown!

Stormy Love's abroad, and keeps

Hopeful coil for gentle sleeps.

Not a blink shall burn to-night

In my chamber, of sordid light;

Nought will I have, not a window-pane,

'Twixt me and the air and the great good rain,

Which ever shall sing me sharp lullabies;

And God's own darkness shall close mine eyes;

And I will sleep, with all things blest,

In the pure earth-shadow of natural rest.

Leigh Hunt

An Angel in the House

HOW sweet it were, if without feeble fright,

Or dying of the dreadful beauteous sight,

An angel came to us, and we could bear

To see him issue from the silent air

At evening in our room, and bend on ours

His divine eyes, and bring us from his bowers

News of dear friends, and children who have never

Been dead indeed,--as we shall know forever.

Alas! we think not what we daily see

About our hearths,--angels that are to be,

Or may be if they will, and we prepare

Their souls and ours to meet in happy air;--

A child, a friend, a wife whose soft heart sings

In unison with ours, breeding its future wings.

Leigh Hunt

A Thought or Two on Reading Pomfret's "Choice"

[Ed. Note: In line 52, "Chiswick" and "Chatsworth" are two large, grandiose estates of noble families; in lines 69-71, Suckling, Killigrew, and Carey are 17th Century poets; in line 95, "Isaak" is Isaak Walton, the 17th Century author of The Compleat Angler; the reference to the dog and "equal sky" in line 102 is to Pope's Essay on Man, "Epistle I," lines 111-112; "Captain Sword," in line 114, is a character in a series of poems by Hunt. --Nelson]

I HAVE been reading Pomfret's "Choice" this spring,

A pretty kind of--sort of--kind of thing,

Not much a verse, and poem none at all,

Yet, as they say, extremely natural.

And yet I know not. There's an art in pies,

In raising crusts as well as galleries;

And he's the poet, more or less, who knows

The charm that hallows the least truth from prose,

And dresses it in its mild singing clothes.

Not oaks alone are trees, nor roses flowers;

Much humble wealth makes rich this world of ours.

Nature from some sweet energy throws up

Alike the pine-mount and the buttercup;

And truth she makes so precious, that to paint

Either, shall shrine an artist like a saint,

And bring him in his turn the crowds that press

Round Guido's saints or Titian's goddesses.

Our trivial poet hit upon a theme

Which all men love, an old, sweet household dream:--

Pray, reader, what is yours?--I know full well

What sort of home should grace my garden-bell,--

No tall, half-furnish'd, gloomy, shivering house,

That worst of mountains labouring with a mouse;

Nor should I choose to fill a tawdry niche in

A Grecian temple, opening to a kitchen.

The frogs in Homer should have had such boxes,

Or Aesop's frog, whose heart was like the ox's.

Such puff about high roads, so grand, so small,

With wings and what not, portico and all,

And poor drench'd pillars, which it seems a sin

Not to mat up at night-time, or take in.

I'd live in none of those. Nor would I have

Veranda'd windows to forestall my grave;

Veranda'd truly, from the northern heat!

And cut down to the floor to comfort one's cold feet!

My house should be of brick, more wide than high,

With sward up to the path, and elm-trees nigh;

A good old country lodge, half hid with blooms

Of honied green, and quaint with straggling rooms,

A few of which, white-bedded and well swept,

For friends, whose name endear'd them, should be kept.

The tip-toe traveller, peeping through the boughs

O'er my low wall, should bless the pleasant house:

And that my luck might not seem ill-bestow'd,

A bench and spring should greet him on the road.

My grounds should not be large. I like to go

To Nature for a range, and prospect too,

And cannot fancy she'd comprise for me,

Even in a park, her all-sufficiency.

Besides, my thoughts fly far, and when at rest

Love not a watch-tow'r but a lulling nest.

A Chiswick or a Chatsworth might, I grant,

Visit my dreams with an ambitious want;

But then I should be forc'd to know the weight

Of splendid cares, new to my former state;

And these 'twould far more fit me to admire,

Borne by the graceful ease of noblest Devonshire.

Such grounds, however, as I had should look

Like "something" still; have seats, and walks, and brook;

One spot for flowers, the rest all turf and trees;

For I'd not grow my own bad lettuces.

I'd build a cover'd path too against rain,

Long, peradventure, as my whole domain,

And so be sure of generous exercise,

The youth of age and med'cine of the wise.

And this reminds me, that behind some screen

About my grounds, I'd have a bowling-green;

Such as in wits' and merry women's days

Suckling preferr'd before his walk of bays.

You may still see them, dead as haunts of fairies,

By the old seats of Killigrews and Careys,

Where all, alas! is vanish'd from the ring,

Wits and black eyes, the skittles and the king!

Fishing I hate, because I think about it,

Which makes it right that I should do without it.

A dinner, or a death, might not be much,

But cruelty's a rod I dare not touch.

I own I cannot see my right to feel

For my own jaws, and tear a trout's with steel;

To troll him here and there, and spike, and strain,

And let him loose to jerk him back again.

Fancy a preacher at this sort of work,

Not with his trout or gudgeon, but his clerk:

The clerk leaps gaping at a tempting bit,

And, hah! an ear-ache with a knife in it!

That there is pain and evil is no rule

That I should make it greater, like a fool;

Or rid me of my rust so vile a way,

As long as there's a single manly play.

Nay, "fool"'s a word my pen unjustly writes,

Knowing what hearts and brains have dozed o'er "bites";

But the next inference to be drawn might be,

That higher beings made a trout of me;

Which I would rather should not be the case,

Though Isaak were the saint to tear my face,

And, stooping from his heaven with rod and line,

Made the fell sport, with his old dreams divine,

As pleasant to his taste, as rough to mine.

Such sophistry, no doubt, saves half the hell,

But fish would have preferr'd his reasoning well,

And, if my gills concern'd him, so should I.

The dog, I grant, is in that "equal sky,"

But, heaven be prais'd, he's not my deity.

All manly games I'd play at,--golf and quoits,

And cricket, to set lungs and limbs to rights,

And make me conscious, with a due respect,

Of muscles one forgets by long neglect.

With these, or bowls aforesaid, and a ride,

Books, music, friends, the day I would divide,

Most with my family, but when alone,

Absorb'd in some new poem of my own,

A task which makes my time so richly pass,

So like a sunshine cast through painted glass

(Save where poor Captain Sword crashes the panes),

That cold my friends live too, and were the gains

Of toiling men but freed from sordid fears,

Well could I walk this earth a thousand years.

Leigh Hunt

Sudden Fine Weather

[Ed. Note: In lines 40-43, the "Swedish sage" is Linnaeus, the 18th Century botanist who first developed the modern system of scientific classification for living things; in line 46, "Swift's giant" refers to Gulliver's Travels, Book I; in line 47, a "levee" is a gathering of guests, often early in the morning when the host is arising from bed; in line 60, "tusted" means to move in a hurried, somewhat disordered manner, to hustle and bustle. --Nelson]

READER! what soul that laoves a verse can see

The spring return, nor glow like you and me?

Hear the quick birds, and see the landscape fill,

Nor long to utter his melodious will?

This more than ever leaps into the veins,

When spring has been delay'd by winds and rains,

And coming with a burst, comes like a show,

Blue all above, and basking green below,

And all the people culling the sweet prime:

Then issues forth the bee to clutch the thyme,

And the bee poet rushes into rhyme.

For lo! no sooner has the cold withdrawn,

Than the bright elm is tufted on the lawn;

The merry sap has run up in the bowers,

And bursts the windows of the buds in flowers;

With song the bosoms of the birds run o'er,

The cuckoo calls, the swallow's at the door,

And apple-tree at noon with bees alive

Burn with the golden chorus of the hive.

Now all these sweets, these sounds, this vernal blaze,

Is but one joy, express'd a thousand ways:

And honey from the flowers and song from birds

Are from the poet's pen his oeverflowing words.

Ah friends! methinks it were a pleasant sphere,

If, like the trees, we blossom'd every year;

If locks grew thick again, and rosy dyes

Return'd in cheeks, and raciness in eyes,

And all around us, vital to the tips,

The human orchard laugh'd with cherry lips!

Lord! what a burst of merriment and play,

Fair dames, were that! and what a first of May!

So natural is the wish, that bards gone by

Have left it, all, in some immortal sigh!

And yet the winter months were not so well:

Who would like changing, as the seasons fell?

Fade every year, and stare, midst ghastly friends,

With falling hairs, and stuck-out fingers' ends?

Besides, this tale of youth that comes again

Is no more true of apple-trees than men.

The Swedish sage, the Newton of the flow'rs,

Who first found out those worlds of paramours,

Tells us, that every blossom that we see

Boasts in its walls a separate family;

So that a tree is but a sort of stand

That holds those afilial fairies in its hand;

Just as Swift's giant might have held a bevy

Of Lilliputian ladies, or a levee.

It is not her that blooms: it is his race,

Who honour his old arms, and hide his rugged face.

Ye wits and bards, then, pray discern your duty,

And learn the lastingness of human beauty.

Your finest fruit to some two months may reach:

I've known a cheek at forth like a peach.

But see! the weather calls me. Here's a bee

Comes bounding in my room imperiously,

And talking to himself, hastily burns

About mine ear, and so in heat returns.

O little brethren of the fervid soul,

Kissers of flowers, lords of the golden bowl,

I follow to your fields and tusted brooks:

Winter's the time to which the poet looks

For hiving his sweet thoughts, and making honied books.

Leigh Hunt