Courage

Now since nor grief nor fear was longer there,
Each thought on her fair face was clear to see,
Composed into the calmness of despair -
Not like a flame extinguished violently,
But one consuming of its proper light.
Even so, in peace, serene of soul, passed she.
Even as a lamp, so lucid, softly-bright,
Whose sustenance doth fail by slow degrees,
Wearing unto the end, its wonted plight.
Not pale, but whiter than the snow one sees
Flaking a hillside through the windless air.
Like one o'erwearied, she reposed in peace
As 't were a sweet sleep filled each lovely eye,
The soul already having fled from there.
And this is what dull fools have named to die.
Upon her fair face death itself seemed fair.

What counsel has the hooded moon
Put in thy heart, my shyly sweet,
Of Love in ancient plenilune,
Glory and stars beneath his feet,
A sage that is but kith and kin
With the comedian Capuchin?

Believe me rather that am wise
In disregard of the divine,
A glory kindles in those eyes
Trembles to starlight. Mine, O Mine!
No more be tears in moon or mist
For thee, sweet sentimentalist.

I.

Brows wan thro' blue-black tresses
Wet with sharp rain and kisses;
Locks loose the sea-wind scatters,
Like torn wings fierce for flight;
Cold brows, whose sadness flatters,
One kiss and then - good-night.


II.

Can this thy love undo me
When in the heavy waves?
Nay; it must make unto me
Their groaning backs but slaves!
For its magic doth indue me
With strength o'er all their graves.


III.

Weep not as heavy-hearted
Before I go! For thou
Wilt follow as we parted -
A something hollow-hearted,
Dark eyes whence cold tears started,
Gray, ghostly arms out-darted
To take me, even as now,
To drag me, their weak lover,
To caves where sirens hover,
Deep caves the dark waves cover,
Down...

A little while to walk with thee, dear child;
To lean on thee my weak and weary head;
Then evening comes: the winter sky is wild,
The leafless trees are black, the leaves long dead.

A little while to hold thee and to stand,
By harvest-fields of bending golden corn;
Then the predestined silence, and thine hand,
Lost in the night, long and weary and forlorn.

A little while to love thee, scarcely time
To love thee well enough; then time to part,
To fare through wintry fields alone and climb
The frozen hills, not knowing where thou art.

Short summer-time and then, my heart's desire,
The winter and the darkness: one by one
The roses fall, the pale roses expire
Beneath the slow decadence of the sun.

The day is cold; the wind is strong;
And through the sky great cloud-banks throng,
While swathes of snow lie on the ground
O'er which I walk without a sound,
But I have vowed to fly to-day
Though winds are fierce, and clouds are grey.
My aeroplane is on the field;
So I must fly - my fate is sealed,
And no excuses can I make;
Within its back my place I take.
I strap myself inside the seat
And press the rudder with my feet,
And hold the wheel with nervous grip
And gaze around my little ship -
For on its wire-rigging taut
Depends my life - which will be short
If it should fail me in the air;
Swift then my fall, and short my prayer,
And these my wings would be my pyre -
So well I scrutinise each wire!
Then out across the field I go
In shak...

Beloved, gaze in thine own heart,
The holy tree is growing there;
From joy the holy branches start,
And all the trembling flowers they bear.
The changing colours of its fruit
Have dowered the stars with metry light;
The surety of its hidden root
Has planted quiet in the night;
The shaking of its leafy head
Has given the waves their melody,
And made my lips and music wed,
Murmuring a wizard song for thee.
There the Joves a circle go,
The flaming circle of our days,
Gyring, spiring to and fro
In those great ignorant leafy ways;
Remembering all that shaken hair
And how the winged sandals dart,
Thine eyes grow full of tender care:
Beloved, gaze in thine own heart.
Gaze no more in the bitter glass
The demons, with their subtle guile.
L...

Each heart has its haunted chamber,
    Where the silent moonlight falls!
On the floor are mysterious footsteps,
    There are whispers along the walls!

And mine at times is haunted
    By phantoms of the Past
As motionless as shadows
    By the silent moonlight cast.

A form sits by the window,
    That is not seen by day,
For as soon as the dawn approaches
    It vanishes away.

It sits there in the moonlight
    Itself as pale and still,
And points with its airy finger
    Across the window-sill.

Without before the window,
    There stands a gloomy pine,
Whose boughs wave upward and downward
    As wave these thoughts of mine.

And underneath its branches
    Is the grave of a little child,
Who died u...

("Allah! qui me rendra-")

[XVL, May, 1828.]


Oh, Allah! who will give me back my terrible array?
My emirs and my cavalry that shook the earth to-day;
My tent, my wide-extending camp, all dazzling to the sight,
Whose watchfires, kindled numberless beneath the brow of night,
Seemed oft unto the sentinel that watched the midnight hours,
As heaven along the sombre hill had rained its stars in showers?
Where are my beys so gorgeous, in their light pelisses gay,
And where my fierce Timariot bands, so fearless in the fray;
My dauntless khans, my spahis brave, swift thunderbolts of war;
My sunburnt Bedouins, trooping from the Pyramids afar,
Who laughed to see the laboring hind stand terrified at gaze,
And urged their desert horses on amid the ripening maize?<...

Brown foundling of the Western wood,
Babe of primeval wildernesses!
Long on my table thou hast stood
Encounters strange and rude caresses;
Perchance contented with thy lot,
Surroundings new, and curious faces,
As though ten centuries were not
Imprisoned in thy shining cases.

Thou bring’st me back the halcyon days
Of grateful rest, the week of leisure,
The journey lapped in autumn haze,
The sweet fatigue that seemed a pleasure,
The morning ride, the noonday halt,
The blazing slopes, the red dust rising,
And then the dim, brown, columned vault,
With its cool, damp, sepulchral spicing.

Once more I see the rocking masts
That scrape the sky, their only tenant
The jay-bird, that in frolic casts
From some high yard his broad blue pennant.

1 Generous, gay, and gallant nation,
Bold in arms, and bright in arts;
Land secure from all invasion,
All but Cupid's gentle darts!
From your charms, oh! who would run?
Who would leave you for the sun?
Happy soil, adieu, adieu!

2 Let old charmers yield to new;
In arms, in arts, be still more shining:
All your joys be still increasing;
All your tastes be still refining;
All your jars for ever ceasing;
But let old charmers yield to new:
Happy soil, adieu, adieu!

(Aetat Six)


Now every night we light the grate
And I sit up till really late;
My Father sits upon the right,
My Mother on the left, and I
Between them on an ancient chair,
That once belonged to my Great-Gran,
Before my Father was a man.
We sit without another light;
I really, truly never tire
Watching that space, as black as night,
That hangs behind the fire;
For there sometimes, you know,
The dearest, queerest little sparks,
Without a sound creep to and fro;
Sometimes they form in rings
Or lines that look like many things,
Like skipping ropes, or hoops, or swings:
Before you know what you're about,
They all go out!

My Father says that they are gnomes,
Beyond the grate they have their homes,
In a tall, bla...

Serene she looks, she wears an angel's form,
Her arching eyes are fix'd upon the sky,
Gloomy, yet glist'ning 'tween black curls wip'd by,
Like a bright rainbow painted on the storm:
Her blue-vein'd breasts religion's comforts warm,
The bible open'd on her lap doth lie.
What mixing beauties in her face appear!
Charms more than mortal lighten up her smiles;
Strong Faith and Hope unite her soul to cheer,
And Resignation makes her smiles more dear.
No earthly thoughts her purity defile;
As vap'ring clouds by summer's suns are driven,
Sin's temptings from the scriptures' charm recoil,
And all her soul transported seems in heaven.

(1860-1.)


I

O the clammy cold November,
And the winter white and dead,
And the terror dumb with stupor,
And the sky a sheet of lead;
And events that came resounding
With the cry that All was lost,
Like the thunder-cracks of massy ice
In intensity of frost -
Bursting one upon another
Through the horror of the calm.
The paralysis of arm
In the anguish of the heart;
And the hollowness and dearth.
The appealings of the mother
To brother and to brother
Not in hatred so to part -
And the fissure in the hearth
Growing momently more wide.
Then the glances 'tween the Fates,
And the doubt on every side,
And the patience under gloom
In the stoniness that waits
The finality of doom.


II
...

Adown the west a golden glow
Sinks burning in the sea,
And all the dreams of long ago
Come flooding back to me.
The past has writ a story strange
Upon my aching heart,
But time has wrought a subtle change,
My wounds have ceased to smart.

No more the quick delight of youth,
No more the sudden pain,
I look no more for trust or truth
Where greed may compass gain.
What, was it I who bared my heart
Through unrelenting years,
And knew the sting of misery's dart,
The tang of sorrow's tears?

'Tis better now, I do not weep,
I do not laugh nor care;
My soul and spirit half asleep
Drift aimless everywhere.
We float upon a sluggish stream,
We ride no rapids mad,
While life is all a tempered dream
And every joy half sad.

Not with the splendors of the days of old,
The spoil of nations, and barbaric gold;
No weapons wrested from the fields of blood,
Where dark and stern the unyielding Roman stood,
And the proud eagles of his cohorts saw
A world, war-wasted, crouching to his law;
Nor blazoned car, nor banners floating gay,
Like those which swept along the Appian Way,
When, to the welcome of imperial Rome,
The victor warrior came in triumph home,
And trumpet peal, and shoutings wild and high,
Stirred the blue quiet of the Italian sky;
But calm and grateful, prayerful and sincere,
As Christian freemen only, gathering here,
We dedicate our fair and lofty Hall,
Pillar and arch, entablature and wall,
As Virtue's shrine, as Liberty's abode,
Sacred to Freedom, and to Freedom's God!...

Phoebus, arise!
And paint the sable skies
With azure, white, and red;
Rouse Memnon’s mother from her Tithon’s bed,
That she thy càreer may with roses spread;
The nightingales thy coming each-where sing;
Make an eternal spring!
Give life to this dark world which lieth dead;
Spread forth thy golden hair
In larger locks than thou wast wont before,
And emperor-like decore
With diadem of pearl thy temples fair:
Chase hence the ugly night
Which serves but to make dear thy glorious light.
This is that happy morn,
That day, long wishèd day
Of all my life so dark
(If cruel stars have not my ruin sworn
And fates not hope betray),
Which, only white, deserves
A diamond for ever should it mark:
This is the morn should bring into this grove
My ...

Lofty and enduring is the monument I've reared,--
Come, tempests, with your bitterness assailing;
And thou, corrosive blasts of time, by all things mortal feared,
Thy buffets and thy rage are unavailing!

I shall not altogether die; by far my greater part
Shall mock man's common fate in realms infernal;
My works shall live as tributes to my genius and my art,--
My works shall be my monument eternal!

While this great Roman empire stands and gods protect our fanes,
Mankind with grateful hearts shall tell the story,
How one most lowly born upon the parched Apulian plains
First raised the native lyric muse to glory.

Assume, revered Melpomene, the proud estate I've won,
And, with thine own dear hand the meed supplying,
Bind thou about the forehead of thy cel...

Roses all the rosy way!
    Roses to the rosier west
Where the roses of the day
    Cling to night's unrosy breast!

Thou who mak'st the roses, why
    Give to every leaf a thorn?
On thy rosy highway I
    Still am by thy roses torn!

Pardon! I will not mistake
    These good thorns that make me fret!
Goads to urge me, stings to wake,
    For my freedom they are set.

Yea, on one steep mountain-side,
    Climbing to a fancied fold,
Roses grasped had let me slide
    But the thorns did keep their hold.

Out of darkness light is born,
    Out of weakness make me strong:
One glad day will every thorn
    Break into a rose of song.

Though like sparrow sit thy bird
    Lonely on the house-top dark,
By the rosy...