Death

Hearken, thou craggy ocean pyramid!
Give answer by thy voice, the sea-fowls' screams!
When were thy shoulders mantled in huge streams?
When, from the sun, was thy broad forehead hid?
How long is't since the mighty Power bid
Thee heave to airy sleep from fathom dreams?
Sleep in the lap of thunder or sunbeams,
Or when grey clouds are thy cold coverlid.
Thou answer'st not; for thou art dead asleep;
Thy life is but two dead eternities,
The last in air, the former in the deep;
First with the whales, last with the eagle-skies,
Drowned wast thou till an earthquake made thee steep,
Another cannot wake thy giant-size!

The linnet in the rocky dells,
The moor-lark in the air,
The bee among the heather bells
That hide my lady fair:

The wild deer browse above her breast;
The wild birds raise their brood;
And they, her smiles of love caressed,
Have left her solitude!

I ween, that when the grave's dark wall
Did first her form retain,
They thought their hearts could ne'er recall
The light of joy again.

They thought the tide of grief would flow
Unchecked through future years;
But where is all their anguish now,
And where are all their tears?

Well, let them fight for honour's breath,
Or pleasure's shade pursue,
The dweller in the land of death
Is changed and careless too.

And, if their eyes should watch and weep
Till sorrow's so...

O memory, take my hand to-day
And lead me thro' the darkened bridge
Washed by the wild Atlantic spray
And spanning many a wind-swept ridge
Of sorrow, grief, of love and joy,
Of youthful hopes and manly fears!
O! let me cross the bridge of years
And see myself again a boy!

The shadows pass- I see the light,
O morning light, how clear and strong!
My native skies are smiling bright,
No more I grope my way along,
It comes, the murmur of the tide
Upon my ear - I hear the cry
Of wandering sea birds as they fly
In trooping squadrons far and near.

The breeze that blows o'er Mullaghmore
I feel against my boyish cheek
The white-walled huts that strew the shore
From Castlegal to old Belleek,
The fisher folk of Donegal,
Kindly of heart...

The spare-room windows wide were raised,
And you could look that summer day
On pastures green, and sunny hills,
And low rills wandering away.
Near by, the square front yard was sweet
With rose and caraway.

Upon a couch drawn near the light,
The Deacon's only daughter lay,
Bending upon the distant hills
Her eyes of dark and thoughtful gray;
The blue veins on her forehead shone
'Twas wasted so away.

She moved, and from her slender hand
Fell off her mother's wedding-ring;
She smiled into her father's face -
"So drops from me each earthly thing;
My hands are free to hold the flowers
Of the eternal spring."

She had ever walked in quiet ways,
Not over beds of flowery ease,
But Sundays in the village choir
She sweetly sang o...

I cried all night to you,
        I called till day was here;
Perhaps you could not come,
        Or were too tirèd, dear.

Your chair I set by mine,
        I made the dim hearth glow,
I whispered, “When he comes
        I shall not let him go.”

I closed the shutters tight,
        I feared the dawn of day,
I stopped the busy clock
        That timed your hours away.

Loud howled my neighbour’s dog,
        O glad was I to hear.
The dead are going by,
        Now you will come, my dear,

To take the chair by mine-
        Until the cock would crow-
O, if it be you came
        And could not let me know,

For once a shadow passed
        Behind me in the room,
I thought your loving eyes
        Would...

Bereaved of all, I went abroad,
No less bereaved to be
Upon a new peninsula, --
The grave preceded me,

Obtained my lodgings ere myself,
And when I sought my bed,
The grave it was, reposed upon
The pillow for my head.

I waked, to find it first awake,
I rose, -- it followed me;
I tried to drop it in the crowd,
To lose it in the sea,

In cups of artificial drowse
To sleep its shape away, --
The grave was finished, but the spade
Remained in memory.

Always the same, when on a fated night
At last the gathered snow lets down as white
As may be in dark woods, and with a song
It shall not make again all winter long
Of hissing on the yet uncovered ground,
I almost stumble looking up and round,
As one who overtaken by the end
Gives up his errand, and lets death descend
Upon him where he is, with nothing done
To evil, no important triumph won,
More than if life had never been begun.

Yet all the precedent is on my side:
I know that winter death has never tried
The earth but it has failed: the snow may heap
In long storms an undrifted four feet deep
As measured again maple, birch, and oak,
It cannot check the peeper's silver croak;
And I shall see the snow all go down hill
In water of a slender Apr...

[1]


Silence is in our festal halls,--
    Sweet Son of Song! thy course is o'er;
In vain on thee sad Erin calls,
    Her minstrel's voice responds no more;--
All silent as the Eolian shell
    Sleeps at the close of some bright day,
When the sweet breeze that waked its swell
    At sunny morn hath died away.

Yet at our feasts thy spirit long
    Awakened by music's spell shall rise;
For, name so linked with deathless song
    Partakes its charm and never dies:
And even within the holy fane
    When music wafts the soul to heaven,
One thought to him whose earliest strain
    Was echoed there shall long be given.

But, where is now the cheerful day.
    The social night when by thy side
He who now weaves this part...

Weep with me, all you that read
This little story;
And know for whom a tear you shed,
Death's self is sorry.
'Twas a child that so did thrive
In grace and feature,
As Heaven and Nature seemed to strive
Which owned the creature.
Years he numbered scarce thirteen
When Fates turned cruel,
Yet three filled zodiacs had he been
The stage's jewel;
And did act (what now we moan)
Old men so duly,
As, sooth, the Parcae thought him one,
He played so truly.
So, by error, to his fate
They all consented;
But viewing him since (alas, too late),
They have repented,
And have sought (to give new birth)
In baths to steep him;
But, being so much too good for earth,
Heaven vows to keep him.

The sunlight glitters keen and bright,
Where, miles away,
Lies stretching to my dazzled sight
A luminous belt, a misty light,
Beyond the dark pine bluffs and wastes of sandy gray.

The tremulous shadow of the Sea!
Against its ground
Of silvery light, rock, hill, and tree,
Still as a picture, clear and free,
With varying outline mark the coast for miles around.

On, on, we tread with loose-flung rein
Our seaward way,
Through dark-green fields and blossoming grain,
Where the wild brier-rose skirts the lane,
And bends above our heads the flowering locust spray.

Ha! like a kind hand on my brow
Comes this fresh breeze,
Cooling its dull and feverish glow,
While through my being seems to flow
The breath of a new life, the healing of the...

I see the starting buds, I catch the gleam
    In the near distance of a sun-kissed pool,
    The blessed April air blows soft and cool,
Small wonder if all sorrow grows a dream,
    And we forget that close around us lie
    A city's poor, a city's misery.

Of every outward vision there is some
    Internal counterpart. To-day I know
    The blessedness of living, and the glow
Of life's dear spring-tide. I can bid thee come
    In thought and wander where the fields are fair
    With bursting life, and I, rejoicing, there.

Yet have I passed, Beloved, through the vale
    Of dark dismay, and felt the dews of death
    Upon my brow, have measured out my breath
Counting my hours of joy, as misers quail
    At every footfall in the quiet night
   ...

        A soaking sedge,
        A faded field, a leafless hill and hedge,

        Low clouds and rain,
        And loneliness and languor worse than pain.

        Mottled with moss,
        Each gravestone holds to heaven a patient Cross.

        Shrill streaks of light
        Two sycamores' clean-limbed, funereal white,

        And low between,
        The sombre cedar and the ivy green.

        Upon the stone
        Of each in turn who called this land his own

        The gray rain beats
        And wraps the wet world in its flying sheets,

        And at my eaves
        A slow wind, ghostlike, comes and grieves and grieves.

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 its 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's decree;
To t...

The heron-billed pale cattle-birds
That feed on some foul parasite
Of the Moroccan flocks and herds
Cross the narrow Straits to light
In the rich midnight of the garden trees
Till the dawn break upon those mingled seas.
Often at evening when a boy
Would I carry to a friend --
Hoping more substantial joy
Did an older mind commend --
Not such as are in Newton's metaphor,
But actual shells of Rosses' level shore.
Greater glory in the Sun,
An evening chill upon the air,
Bid imagination run
Much on the Great Questioner;
What He can question, what if questioned I
Can with a fitting confidence reply.

O Earth, lie heavily upon her eyes;
    Seal her sweet eyes weary of watching, Earth;
    Lie close around her; leave no room for mirth
With its harsh laughter, nor for sound of sighs.
She hath no questions, she hath no replies,
    Hushed in and curtained with a blessèd dearth
    Of all that irked her from the hour of birth;
With stillness that is almost Paradise.
Darkness more clear than noon-day holdeth her,
    Silence more musical than any song;
Even her very heart has ceased to stir:
Until the morning of Eternity
Her rest shall not begin nor end, but be;
    And when she wakes she will not think it long.

There's no dew or grass on Cluan Leathan. The cuckoo is not to be seen on the furze; the leaves are withering and the trees complaining of the cold. There is no sun or moon in the air or in the sky, or no light in the stars coming down, with the stretching of O'Kelly in the grave.

My grief to tell it! he to be laid low; the man that did not bring grief or trouble on any heart, that would give help to those that were down.

No light on the day like there was; the fruits not growing; no children on the breast; there's no return in the grain; the plants don't blossom as they used since O'Kelly with the fair hair went away; he that used to forgive us a great share of the rent. Since the children of Usnach and Deirdre went to the grave, and Cuchulain, who as the stories tell us, would gain victory in every step he would ta...

When I am dead, my dearest,
    Sing no sad songs for me;
Plant thou no roses at my head,
    Nor shady cypress tree:
Be the green grass above me
    With showers and dewdrops wet;
And if thou wilt, remember,
    And if thou wilt, forget.

I shall not see the shadows,
    I shall not feel the rain;
I shall not hear the nightingale
    Sing on, as if in pain:
And dreaming through the twilight
    That doth not rise nor set,
Haply I may remember,
    And haply may forget.

The heavens look down with chilly frown,
The sun blinks oot wi' watery e'e,
The drift flies fast upon the blast,
The naked trees moan shiveringly.

The sun is gone, by mists withdrawn,
Muffling his head in snow-clouds grey,
The earth turns white, against the night,
The laden winds drive furiously.

The flowers are slain that graced the plain,
The earth is locked wi' bitter frost;
And my heart cries to stormy skies
After the dreary loved and lost.

The spring will come, the flowers will bloom,
The leaves in beauty clothe the tree,
But never more, oh, never more,
Will my lost darling come to me.

Beyond the skies her happy eyes
Look fearlessly in eyes Divine;
The bitter smart, the hungry heart,
Waiting with empty arms, is mine.