Betrayal

They cannot see the wreaths we place
    Upon the silent bier,
They cannot see the tear-stained face,
    Nor feel the scalding tear,
And now can flowers or graven stone,
For wrongs done them in life atone?

Better the flower that smooths the thorns
    On earthly pathway found,
Than that which uselessly adorns
    The bier or silent mound.
And neither tear nor floral token
Retracts the hasty word, when spoken.

Then strew the flowers ere life has fled,
    While yet their eyes discern;
Why waste their fragrance on the dead
    Who no fond smile return?
The heaving breast with sorrow aches,
Comfort the throbbing heart which breaks.

A moony breadth of virgin face,
By thought unviolated;
A patient mouth, to take from scorn
The hook with bank-notes baited!
Its self-complacent sleekness shows
How thrift goes with the fawner;
An unctuous unconcern of all
Which nice folks call dishonor!
A pleasant print to peddle out
In lands of rice and cotton;
The model of that face in dough
Would make the artist's fortune.
For Fame to thee has come unsought,
While others vainly woo her,
In proof how mean a thing can make
A great man of its doer.
To whom shall men thyself compare,
Since common models fail 'em,
Save classic goose of ancient Rome,
Or sacred ass of Balaam?
The gabble of that wakeful goose
Saved Rome from sack of Brennus;
The braying of the prophet's ass
Betray...

Bees make their honey out of coloured flowers,
Through the June day, with all its beam and scent,
Heather of breezy hills, and idle bowers,
Brushing soft doors of every blossoming tent,
Filling gold thighs in drowsy ravishment,
Pillaging vines on the hot garden wall,
Taking of each small bloom its little rent -
Poets must make their honey out of gall.

Singers, not so this craven life of ours,
Our honey out of bitter herbs is blent;
The songs that fall as soft as April showers
Came of the whips and scorns of chastisement,
From smitten lips and hearts in sorrow bent,
Distilled of blood and wormwood are they all -
Idly you heard, indifferent what they meant:
Poets must make their honey out of gall.

You lords and ladies sitting high in towers,
Sca...

"Bring out your dead!" The midnight street
Heard and gave back the hoarse, low call;
Harsh fell the tread of hasty feet,
Glanced through the dark the coarse white sheet,
Her coffin and her pall.
"What, only one!" the brutal hack-man said,
As, with an oath, he spurned away the dead.

How sunk the inmost hearts of all,
As rolled that dead-cart slowly by,
With creaking wheel and harsh hoof-fall!
The dying turned him to the wall,
To hear it and to die!
Onward it rolled; while oft its driver stayed,
And hoarsely clamored, "Ho! bring out your dead."

It paused beside the burial-place;
"Toss in your load!" and it was done.
With quick hand and averted face,
Hastily to the grave's embrace
They cast them, one by one,
Stranger and friend, the evi...

Hear the loud swell of it, mighty pell mell of it,
Thousands of voices all blent into one:
See “hell for leather” now trooping together, now
Down the long slope of the range at a run,
Dust in the wake of ’em: see the wild break of ’em,
Spear-horned and curly, red, spotted and starred:
See the lads bringing ’em, blocking ’em, ringing ’em.
Fetching ’em up to the wings of the yard.

Mark that red leader now: what a fine bleeder now,
Twelve hundred at least if he weighs half a pound,
None go ahead of him. Mark the proud tread of him,
See how he bellows and paws at the ground.
Watch the mad rush of ’em, raging and crush of ’em.
See when they struck how the corner post jarred.
What a mad chasing and wheeling and racing and
Turbulent talk ’twixt the wings of the yard...

The cowbells wander through the woods,
'Neath arching boughs a stream slips by,
In all the ferny solitude
A chipmunk and a butterfly
Are all that is - and you and I.

This summer day, with all its flowers,
With all its green and gold and blue,
Just for a little while is ours,
Just for a little - I and you:
Till the stars rise and bring the dew.

One perfect day to us is given;
Tomorrow - all the aching years;
This is our last short day in heaven,
The last of all our kisses nears -
Then life too arid even for tears.

Here, as the day ends, we two end,
Two that were one, we said, for ever;
We had Eternity to spend,
And laughed for joy to know that never
Two so divinely one could sever.

A year ago - how rich we seemed!

When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain,
Before high piled books, in charactry,
Hold like rich garners the full-ripen'd grain;
When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love; then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.

It is evening, Senlin says, and in the evening
The throbbing of drums has languidly died away.
Forest and sea are still. We breathe in silence
And strive to say the things flesh cannot say.
The soulless wind falls slowly about the earth
And finds no rest.
The lover stares at the setting star, the wakeful lover
Who finds no peace on his lover’s breast.
The snare of desire that bound us in is broken;
Softly, in sorrow, we draw apart, and see,
Far off, the beauty we thought our flesh had captured,
The star we longed to be but could not be.
Come back! We will laugh once more at the words we said!
We say them slowly again, but the words are dead.
Come back beloved! . . . The blue void falls between,
We cry to each other: alone; unknown; unseen.
We are the grains of...

How sweet the sacred legend - if unblamed
In my slight verse such holy things are named -
Of Mary's secret hours of hidden joy,
Silent, but pondering on her wondrous boy!
Ave, Maria! Pardon, if I wrong
Those heavenly words that shame my earthly song!
The choral host had closed the Angel's strain
Sung to the listening watch on Bethlehem's plain,
And now the shepherds, hastening on their way,
Sought the still hamlet where the Infant lay.
They passed the fields that gleaning Ruth toiled o'er, -
They saw afar the ruined threshing-floor
Where Moab's daughter, homeless and forlorn,
Found Boaz slumbering by his heaps of corn;
And some remembered how the holy scribe,
Skilled in the lore of every jealous tribe,
Traced the warm blood of Jesse's royal son
To that fa...

Go, my Flocke, go, get you hence,
Seeke a better place of feeding,
Where you may haue some defence
Fro the stormes in my breast breeding,
And showers from mine eyes proceeding.

Leaue a wretch, in whom all wo
Can abide to keepe no measure;
Merry Flocke, such one forego,
Vnto whom mirth is displeasure,
Onely rich in mischiefs treasure.

Yet, alas, before you go,
Heare your wofull Maisters story,
Which to stones I els would show:
Sorrow only then hath glory
When 'tis excellently sorry.

Stella, fiercest shepherdesse,
Fiercest, but yet fairest euer;
Stella, whom, O heauens still blesse,
Though against me she perseuer,
Though I blisse enherit neuer:

Stella hath refused me!
Stella, who more loue hath proued,
In thi...

Pansies, lilies, kingcups, daisies,
Let them live upon their praises;
Long as there's a sun that sets,
Primroses will have their glory;
Long as there are violets,
They will have a place in story:
There's a flower that shall be mine,
'Tis the little Celandine.

Eyes of some men travel far
For the finding of a star;
Up and down the heavens they go,
Men that keep a mighty rout!
I'm as great as they, I trow,
Since the day I found thee out,
Little Flower! I'll make a stir,
Like a sage astronomer.

Modest, yet withal an Elf
Bold, and lavish of thyself;
Since we needs must first have met
I have seen thee, high and low,
Thirty years or more, and yet
'Twas a face I did not know;
Thou hast now, go where I may,
Fifty greetings...

The days are past, the days are past,
    When we did meet, my love and I;
And youthful joys are fading fast,
    Like radiant angels up the sky;
But still with every dawning day
    Come back the blessed thoughts of old,
Like sunshine in a morn of May,
    To keep the heart from growing cold.

The flowers are gone, the leaves are shed,
    That waved about us as we stray'd;
And many a bird for aye has fled,
    That chaunted to us from the glade;
Yet every leaf and flower that springs
    In beauty round the ripening year,
And every summer carol brings
    New sweetness from the old time dear.

Misguided man, thy turbid life
This day in shameful death shall close,
And thou shalt ne'er behold the sun,
That in thy sight, this morn, arose.

The moon, which yestere'en so clear,
Shone thro' thy cell's small window pane -
No more shalt thou behold its light,
Or see its chasten'd rays, again.

No more thy voice, 'mong savage hordes,
Shall sound, with baneful, potent spell,
To make them rise with savage force,
And 'gainst their country's laws, rebel.

And thou art calm in trustful hope,
And conscience gives thee little pain,
'Tis strange, but man's a myst'ry deep,
Unsolv'd in finite thought's domain.

The scaffold's there, and thou art firm;
Thou walkest forth upon it now;
The thoughts within thy breast are hid,
But calm an...

Sunder me from my bones, O sword of God,
Till they stand stark and strange as do the trees;
That I whose heart goes up with the soaring woods
May marvel as much at these.

Sunder me from my blood that in the dark
I hear that red ancestral river run,
Like branching buried floods that find the sea
But never see the sun.

Give me miraculous eyes to see my eyes,
Those rolling mirrors made alive in me,
Terrible crystal more incredible
Than all the things they see.

Sunder me from my soul, that I may see
The sins like streaming wounds, the life's brave beat;
Till I shall save myself, as I would save
A stranger in the street.

From the lyrical eclogue "One Day and Another"


Now rests the season in forgetfulness,
Careless in beauty of maturity;
The ripened roses round brown temples, she
Fulfills completion in a dreamy guess.
Now Time grants night the more and day the less:
The gray decides; and brown
Dim golds and drabs in dulling green express
Themselves and redden as the year goes down.
Sadder the fields where, thrusting hoary high
Their tasseled heads, the Lear-like corn-stocks die,
And, Falstaff-like, buff-bellied pumpkins lie. -
Deepening with tenderness,
Sadder the blue of hills that lounge along
The lonesome west; sadder the song
Of the wild redbird in the leafage yellow. -
Deeper and dreamier, aye!
Than woods or waters, leans the languid sky
Above lone or...

Through still, bare streets, and cold moonshine
    His homeward way he bent;
The clocks gave out the midnight sign
    As lost in thought he went
Along the rampart's ocean-line,
Where, high above the tossing brine,
    Seaward his lattice leant.

He knew not why he left the throng,
    Why there he could not rest,
What something pained him in the song
    And mocked him in the jest,
Or why, the flitting crowd among,
A moveless moonbeam lay so long
    Athwart one lady's breast!

He watched, but saw her speak to none,
    Saw no one speak to her;
Like one decried, she stood alone,
    From the window did not stir;
Her hair by a haunting gust was blown,
Her eyes in the shadow strangely shown,
    She looked a wanderer.

H...

By thy habitation dread,
In the valley of the dead,
Where no sun, nor day, nor night,
Breaks the red and dusky light;
By the grisly troops, that ride,
Of slaughtered Spaniards, at thy side,--
Slaughtered by the Indian spear,
Mighty Epananum, hear!
Hark, the battle! Hark, the din!
Now the deeds of Death begin!
The Spaniards come, in clouds! above,
I hear their hoarse artillery move!
Spirits of our fathers slain,
Haste, pursue the dogs of Spain!
The noise was in the northern sky!
Haste, pursue! They fly--they fly!
Now from the cavern's secret cell,
Where the direst phantoms dwell,
See they rush, and, riding high,
Break the moonlight as they fly;
And, on the shadowed plain beneath,
Shoot, unseen, the shafts of Death!
O'er the devoted...

Sleep, gentle, mysterious healer,
    Come down with thy balm-cup to me!
Come down, O thou mystic revealer
    Of glories the day may not see!
For dark is the cloud that is o'er me,
    And heavy the shadows that fall,
And lone is the pathway before me,
    And far-off the voice that doth call -
        Faintly, yet tenderly ever,
            From over the dark river, call.

Let me bask for an hour in the sun-ray
    That wraps him forever in light;
Awhile tread his flowery pathway
    Through bowers of unfailing delight; -
Again clasp the hands I lost sight of
    In the chill mist that hung o'er the tide,
What time, with the pale, silent boatman,
    I saw him away from me glide -
        Out into the fathomless myst'ry,
            All s...