Death

Even the bravest that are slain
Shall not dissemble their surprise
On waking to find valor reign,
Even as on earth, in paradise;
And where they sought without the sword
Wide fields of asphodel fore'er,
To find that the utmost reward
Of daring should be still to dare.

The light of heaven falls whole and white
And is not shattered into dyes,
The light forever is morning light;
The hills are verdured pasture-wise;
The angle hosts with freshness go,
And seek with laughter what to brave;
And binding all is the hushed snow
Of the far-distant breaking wave.

And from a cliff-top is proclaimed
The gathering of the souls for birth,
The trial by existence named,
The obscuration upon earth.
And the slant spirits trooping by
In streams ...

I know that I shall meet my fate
Somewhere among the clouds above:
Those that I fight I do not hate,
Those that I guard I do not love:
My country is Kiltartan Cross,
My countrymen Kiltartan's poor,
No likely end could bring them loss
Or leave them happier than before.
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
Nor public men, nor cheering crowds,
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.

"Late, late yestreen I saw the new moone
Wi' the auld moone in hir arme."
'Ballad of Sir Patrick Spence, Percy's Reliques.'


Once I could hail (howe'er serene the sky)
The Moon re-entering her monthly round,
No faculty yet given me to espy
The dusky Shape within her arms imbound,
That thin memento of effulgence lost
Which some have named her Predecessor's ghost.

Young, like the Crescent that above me shone,
Nought I perceived within it dull or dim;
All that appeared was suitable to One
Whose fancy had a thousand fields to skim;
To expectations spreading with wild growth,
And hope that kept with me her plighted troth.

I saw (ambition quickening at the view)
A silver boat launched on a boundless flood;
A pearly crest, like Dian's when...

Day, you have bruised and beaten me,
As rain beats down the bright, proud sea,
Beaten my body, bruised my soul,
Left me nothing lovely or whole,

Yet I have wrested a gift from you,
Day that dies in dusky blue:
For suddenly over the factories
I saw a moon in the cloudy seas,

A wisp of beauty all alone
In a world as hard and gray as stone,
Oh who could be bitter and want to die
When a maiden moon wakes up in the sky?

He slept as weary toilers do,
    She gazed up at the moon.
He stirred and said, "Wife, come to bed";
    She answered, "Soon, full soon."
(Oh! that strange mystery of the dead moon's face.)

Her cheek was wan, her wistful mouth
    Was lifted like a cup,
The moonful night dripped liquid light:
    She seemed to quaff it up.
(Oh! that unburied corpse that lies in space.)

Her life had held but drudgery -
    She spelled her Bible thro';
Of books and lore she knew no more
    Than little children do.
(Oh! the weird wonder of that pallid sphere.)

Her youth had been a loveless waste,
    Starred by no holiday.
And she had wed for roof, and bread;
    She gave her work in pay.
(Oh! the moon-memories, vague and strange and dear.)

The sad nights are here and the sad mornings,
The air is filled with portents and with warnings,
Clouds that vastly loom and winds that cry,
A mournful prescience
Of bright things going hence;
Red leaves are blown about the widowed sky,
And late disconsolate blooms
Dankly bestrew
The garden walks, as in deserted rooms
The parted guest, in haste to bid adieu,
Trinklets and shreds forgotten left behind,
Torn letters and a ribbon once so brave -
Wreckage none cares to save,
And hearts grow sad to find;
And phantom echoes, as of old foot-falls,
Wander and weary out in the thin air,
And the last cricket calls -
A tiny sorrow, shrilling "Where? ah! where?"

Part I.

Deep in the forest shades there dwelt
A Muni and his wife,
Blind, gray-haired, weak, they hourly felt
Their slender hold on life.

No friends had they, no help or stay,
Except an only boy,
A bright-eyed child, his laughter gay,
Their leaf-hut filled with joy.

Attentive, duteous, loving, kind,
Thoughtful, sedate, and calm,
He waited on his parents blind,
Whose days were like a psalm.

He roamed the woods for luscious fruits,
He brought them water pure,
He cooked their simple mess of roots,
Content to live obscure.

To fretful questions, answers mild
He meekly ever gave,
If they reproved, he only smiled,
He loved to be their slave.

Not that to him they were austere,
But age is peevish ...

If haply thou, O Desdemona Morn,
Shouldst call along the curving sphere, "Remain,
Dear Night, sweet Moor; nay, leave me not in scorn!"
With soft halloos of heavenly love and pain; -

Shouldst thou, O Spring! a-cower in coverts dark,
'Gainst proud supplanting Summer sing thy plea,
And move the mighty woods through mailed bark
Till mortal heart-break throbbed in every tree; -

Or (grievous `if' that may be `yea' o'er-soon!),
If thou, my Heart, long holden from thy Sweet,
Shouldst knock Death's door with mellow shocks of tune,
Sad inquiry to make - `When may we meet?'

Nay, if ye three, O Morn! O Spring! O Heart!
Should chant grave unisons of grief and love;
Ye could not mourn with more melodious art
Than daily doth yon dim sequestered dove.

...

Ill-Fated hour! oft as thy annual reign
Leads on th'autumnal tide, my pinion'd joys
Fade with the glories of the fading year;
"Remembrance 'wakes with all her busy train,"
And bids affection heave the heart-drawn sigh
O'er the cold tomb, rich with the spoils of death,
And wet with many a tributary tear!

Eight times has each successive season sway'd
The fruitful sceptre of our milder clime
Since My Loved ****** died! but why, ah! why
Should melancholy cloud my early years?
Religion spurns earth's visionary scene,
Philosophy revolts at misery's chain:
Just Heaven recall'd it's own, the pilgrim call'd
From human woes, from sorrow's rankling worm;
Shall frailty then prevail?

                Oh! be it mine
To curb the sigh which bursts o'er Heaven'...

The night is dark, and evermore
    The thick drops patter on the pane
    The wind is weary of the rain,
And round the thatches moaneth sore;
    Dark is the night, and cold the air;
    And all the trees stand stark and bare,
With leaves spread dank and sere below,
    Slow rotting on the plashy clay,
    In the God's-acre far away,
Where she, O God! lies cold below--
        Cold, cold below!

And many a bitter day and night
    Have pour'd their storms upon her breast,
    And chill'd her in her long, long rest,
With foul corruption's icy blight;
    Earth's dews are freezing round the heart,
    Where love alone so late had part;
And evermore the frost and snow
    Are burrowing downward through the clay,
    In the God's-acre far away...

THEN

He loved her, and through many years,
Had paid his fair devoted court,
Until she wearied, and with sneers
Turned all his ardent love to sport.

That night within his chamber lone,
He long sat writing by his bed
A note in which his heart made moan
For love; the morning found him dead.

NOW

Like him, a man of later day
Was jilted by the maid he sought,
And from her presence turned away,
Consumed by burning, bitter thought.

He sought his room to write--a curse
Like him before and die, I ween.
Ah no, he put his woes in verse,
And sold them to a magazine.

Though o'er the darksome northern hill
Old ambush'd winter frowning flies,
And faintly drifts his threatenings still
In snowy sweet and blackening skies;
Yet here the willow leaning lies
And shields beneath the budding flower,
Where banks to break the wind arise,
'Tis sweet to sit and spend an hour.

Though floods of winter bustling fall
Adown the arches bleak and blea,
Though snow-storms clothe the mossy wall,
And hourly whiten o'er the lea;
Yet when from clouds the sun is free
And warms the learning bird to sing,
'Neath sloping bank and sheltering tree
'Tis sweet to watch the creeping spring.

Though still so early, one may spy
And track her footsteps every hour;
The daisy with its golden eye,
And primrose bursting into flower;
...

I.

With plumes to which the dewdrops cling,
Wide waves the morn her golden wing;
With countless variegated beams
The empurpled orient glows and gleams;
A gorgeous mass of crimson clouds
The mountain's soaring summit shrouds;
Along the wave the blue mist creeps,
    The towering forest trees are stirred
By the low wind that o'er them sweeps,
    And with the matin song of bird,
    The hum of early bee is heard,
Hailing with his shrill, tiny horn,
The coming of the bright-eyed morn;
And, with the day-beam's earliest dawn,
    Her couch the fair Mazelli quits,
And gaily, fleetly as a fawn,
    Along the wildwood paths she flits,
Hieing from leafy bower to bower,
Culling from each its bud and flower,
Of brightest hue and sweetest breath,...

Oft have I seen, ere Time had ploughed my cheek,
Matrons and Sires who, punctual to the call
Of their loved Church, on fast or festival
Through the long year the house of Prayer would seek:
By Christmas snows, by visitation bleak
Of Easter winds, unscared, from hut or hall
They came to lowly bench or sculptured stall,
But with one fervour of devotion meek.
I see the places where they once were known,
And ask, surrounded even by kneeling crowds,
Is ancient Piety for ever flown?
Alas! even then they seemed like fleecy clouds
That, struggling through the western sky, have won
Their pensive light from a departed sun!

She sleeps and I see through a shadowy haze,
Where the hopes of the past and the dreams that I cherished
In the sunlight of brighter and happier days,
As the mists of the morning, have faded and perished.
She sleeps and will waken to bless me no more;
Her life has died out like the gleam on the river,
And the bliss that illumined my bosom of yore
Has fled from its dwelling for ever and ever.

I had thought in this life not to travel alone,
I had hoped for a mate in my joys and my sorrow
But the face of my idol is colder than stone,
And my path will be lonely without her to-morrow.
I was hoping to bask in the light of her smile
When Fortune and Fame with their laurels had crown’d me
But the fire in her eyes has been dying the while,
And the thorns of affliction...

If a leaf rustled, she would start:
    And yet she died, a year ago.
How had so frail a thing the heart
    To journey where she trembled so?
And do they turn and turn in fright,
    Those little feet, in so much night?

The light above the poet's head
    Streamed on the page and on the cloth,
And twice and thrice there buffeted
    On the black pane a white-wing'd moth;
'Twas Annie's soul that beat outside
    And 'Open, open, open!' cried:

'I could not find the way to God;
    There were too many flaming suns
For signposts, and the fearful road
    Led over wastes where millions
Of tangled comets hissed and burned--
    I was bewilder'd and I turned.

'O, it was easy then! I knew
    Your window and no star beside.

In the long, sleepless watches of the night,
    A gentle face--the face of one long dead--
    Looks at me from the wall, where round its head
    The night-lamp casts a halo of pale light.
Here in this room she died; and soul more white
    Never through martyrdom of fire was led
    To its repose; nor can in books be read
    The legend of a life more benedight.
There is a mountain in the distant West
    That, sun-defying, in its deep ravines
    Displays a cross of snow upon its side.
Such is the cross I wear upon my breast
    These eighteen years, through all the changing scenes
    And seasons, changeless since the day she died.

"Come, pensive nun, devout and pure,
Sober, steadfast and demure."

            -- [Milton]


White-robed nun, I pray thee tell me
    Whatsoe'er my life shall be;
Thou of God art purely chosen,
    Ne'er can I be like to thee.

There is sunlight in the shadow
    Of the lives we live below;
There is starlight in the darkness
    Of the night of human woe.

Yet I pray thee, sweet-voiced woman,
    Tell me of thy life and thee;
Can the soul to heaven given
    Yield its secrets unto me?

Nevermore the earth shall claim thee,
    Only lilies bloom for thee;
All the world is full of beauty
    That thy eyes may never see.

On the hill the daisies springing,
    Lift their heads to greet the morn;
Yet tho...