Death

Œnone sat within the cave from out
Whose ivy-matted mouth she used to gaze
Down at the Troad; but the goodly view
Was now one blank, and all the serpent vines
Which on the touch of heavenly feet had risen,
And gliding thro’ the branches over-bower’d
The naked Three, were wither’d long ago,
And thro’ the sunless winter morning-mist
In silence wept upon the flowerless earth.
And while she stared at those dead cords that ran
Dark thro’ the mist, and linking tree to tree,
But once were gayer than a dawning sky
With many a pendent bell and fragrant star,
Her Past became her Present, and she saw
Him, climbing toward her with the golden fruit,
Him, happy to be chosen judge of Gods,
Her husband in the flush of youth and dawn,
Paris, himself as beauteous as a God....

And Emer took the head of Cuchulain in her hands, and she washed it clean, and put a silk cloth about it, and she held it to her breast, and she began to cry heavily over it, and she made this complaint:

Och, head! Ochone, O head! you gave death to great heroes, to many hundreds; my head will lie in the same grave, the one stone will be made for both of us.

Och, hand! Ochone, hand, that was once gentle. It is often it was put under my head; it is dear that hand was to me.

Dear mouth! Ochone, kind mouth that was sweet-voiced telling stories; since the time love first came on your face, you never refused either weak or strong.

Dear the man, dear the man, that would kill the whole of a great army; dear his cold bright hair, and dear his bright cheeks!

Dear the king, dear the king, that n...

I.
Dinas Emlinn, lament; for the moment is nigh,
When mute in the woodlands thine echoes shall die:
No more by sweet Teivi Cadwallon shall rave,
And mix his wild notes with the wild dashing wave.

II.
In spring and in autumn thy glories of shade
Unhonour'd shall flourish, unhonour'd shall fade;
For soon shall be lifeless the eye and the tongue,
That view'd them with rapture, with rapture that sung.

III.
Thy sons, Dinas Emlinn, may march in their pride,
And chase the proud Saxon from Prestatyn's side;
But where is the harp shall give life to their name?
And where is the bard shall give heroes their fame?

IV.
And oh, Dinas Emlinn! thy daughters so fair,
Who heave the white bosom, and wave the dark hair;
What tuneful enthusiast shall wo...

She died, -- this was the way she died;
And when her breath was done,
Took up her simple wardrobe
And started for the sun.

Her little figure at the gate
The angels must have spied,
Since I could never find her
Upon the mortal side.

Around Sebago's lonely lake
There lingers not a breeze to break
The mirror which its waters make.

The solemn pines along its shore,
The firs which hang its gray rock o'er,
Are painted on its glassy floor.

The sun looks o'er, with hazy eye,
The snowy mountain tops which lie
Piled coldly up against the sky.

Dazzling and white! Save where the bleak,
Wild winds have bared some splintering peak,
Or snow-slide left its dusky streak.

Yet green are Saco's banks below,
And belts of spruce and cedar show,
Dark fringing round those cones of snow.

The earth hath felt the breath of spring,
Though yet on her deliverer's wing
The lingering frosts of winter cling.

Fresh grasses fringe the meadow-brooks,
And mildly from its su...

This is the place.    Stand still, my steed,
    Let me review the scene,
And summon from the shadowy Past
    The forms that once have been.

The Past and Present here unite
    Beneath Time's flowing tide,
Like footprints hidden by a brook,
    But seen on either side.

Here runs the highway to the town;
    There the green lane descends,
Through which I walked to church with thee,
    O gentlest of my friends!

The shadow of the linden-trees
    Lay moving on the grass;
Between them and the moving boughs,
    A shadow, thou didst pass.

Thy dress was like the lilies,
    And thy heart as pure as they:
One of God's holy messengers
    Did walk with me that day.

I saw the branches of the trees
    Bend down t...

Died at Hartford, December 30th, 1861.


Sorrow and Joy collude. One mansion hears
The children shouting o'er their Christmas Tree,
While in the next resound the widow's wail
And weeping of the fatherless. So walk
Sickness and health. One rounds the cheek at morn,
The other with a ghost-like movement glides
Unto the nightly couch, and lo! the wheels
Of life drive heavily, and all its springs
Revolving in mysterious mechanism
Are troubled.
                    And how slight the instrument
That sometimes sends the strong man to his tomb,
Revealing that the glory of his prime,
Is as the flower of grass.

                    Of this we thought
When looking on the face that lay so calm
And comely in its narrow coffin-bed,
Remembering how th...

The leaves that rustled on this oak-crowned hill,
And sky that danced among those leaves, are still;
Rest smooths the way for sleep; in field and bower
Soft shades and dews have shed their blended power
On drooping eyelid and the closing flower;
Sound is there none at which the faintest heart
Might leap, the weakest nerve of superstition start;
Save when the Owlet's unexpected scream
Pierces the ethereal vault; and ('mid the gleam
Of unsubstantial imagery, the dream,
From the hushed vale's realities, transferred
To the still lake) the imaginative Bird
Seems, 'mid inverted mountains, not unheard.

Grave Creature! whether, while the moon shines bright
On thy wings opened wide for smoothest flight,
Thou art discovered in a roofless tower,
Rising from what ma...

Maddened by Earth's wrong and evil,
"Lord!" I cried in sudden ire,
"From Thy right hand, clothed with thunder,
Shake the bolted fire!

"Love is lost, and Faith is dying;
With the brute the man is sold;
And the dropping blood of labor
Hardens into gold.

"Here the dying wail of Famine,
There the battle's groan of pain;
And, in silence, smooth-faced Mammon
Reaping men like grain.

"'Where is God, that we should fear Him?'
Thus the earth-born Titans say
'God! if Thou art living, hear us!'
Thus the weak ones pray."

"Thou, the patient Heaven upbraiding,"
Spake a solemn Voice within;
"Weary of our Lord's forbearance,
Art thou free from sin?

"Fearless brow to Him uplifting,
Canst thou for His thunders call,
Kno...

If tolling bell I ask the cause.
'A soul has gone to God,'
I'm answered in a lonesome tone;
Is heaven then so sad?

That bells should joyful ring to tell
A soul had gone to heaven,
Would seem to me the proper way
A good news should be given.

Tis a song of the Never Never land
Set to the tune of a scorching gale
On the sandhills red,
When the grasses dead
Loudly rustle, and bow the head
To the breath of its dusty hail:

Where the cattle trample a dusty pad
Across the never-ending plain,
And come and go
With muttering low
In the time when the rivers cease to flow,
And the Drought King holds his reign;

When the fiercest piker who ever turned
With lowered head in defiance proud,
Grown gaunt and weak,
Release doth seek
In vain from the depths of the slimy creek
His sepulchre and his shroud;

His requiem sung by an insect host,
Born of the pestilential air,
That seethe and swarm
In hideous form
Where the stagnant waters lie thick and warm,
And Fever lur...

I

Had this effulgence disappeared
With flying haste, I might have sent,
Among the speechless clouds, a look
Of blank astonishment;
But 'tis endued with power to stay,
And sanctify one closing day,
That frail Mortality may see,
What is? ah no, but what 'can' be!
Time was when field and watery cove
With modulated echoes rang,
While choirs of fervent Angels sang
Their vespers in the grove;
Or, crowning, star-like, each some sovereign height,
Warbled, for heaven above and earth below,
Strains suitable to both. Such holy rite,
Methinks, if audibly repeated now
From hill or valley, could not move
Sublimer transport, purer love,
Than doth this silent spectacle, the gleam,
The shadow and the peace supreme!

II

No sound is...

Greystone, Aug. 4, 1886.


Once more, O all-adjusting Death!
The nation's Pantheon opens wide;
Once more a common sorrow saith
A strong, wise man has died.

Faults doubtless had he. Had we not
Our own, to question and asperse
The worth we doubted or forgot
Until beside his hearse?

Ambitious, cautious, yet the man
To strike down fraud with resolute hand;
A patriot, if a partisan,
He loved his native land.

So let the mourning bells be rung,
The banner droop its folds half way,
And while the public pen and tongue
Their fitting tribute pay,

Shall we not vow above his bier
To set our feet on party lies,
And wound no more a living ear
With words that Death denies

Come, let's climb into our attic,
In our house that's old and gray!
Life, you're old and I'm rheumatic,
And it's close of day.

Lay aside your rags and tatters,
Shirt and shoes so soiled with clay!
They're no use now. Nothing matters
It is close of day.

Let's to bed. It's cold. No fire.
And no lamp to make a ray.
Where's our servant, young Desire?
Gone at close of day.

Oft she served us with fine glances,
Helped us out at work and play:
She is gone now; better chances;
And it's close of day.

Where is Hope, who flaunted scarlet?
Hope, who led us oft astray?
Has she proved herself a harlot
At the close of day?

What's become of Dream and Vision?
Friends we thought were here to stay?
Has life clapped the t...

Let us be drunk, and for a while forget,
Forget, and, ceasing even from regret,
Live without reason and despite of rhyme,
As in a dream preposterous and sublime,
Where place and hour and means for once are met.

Where is the use of effort?    Love and debt
And disappointment have us in a net.
Let us break out, and taste the morning prime . . .
Let us be drunk.

In vain our little hour we strut and fret,
And mouth our wretched parts as for a bet:
We cannot please the tragicaster Time.
To gain the crystal sphere, the silver dime,
Where Sympathy sits dimpling on us yet,
Let us be drunk!



***



When you are old, and I am passed away -
Passed, and your face, your golden face, is gray -
I think, whate'er the end, ...

O Son of mine, when dusk shall find thee bending
    Between a gravestone and a cradle's head---
Between the love whose name is loss unending
    And the young love whose thoughts are liker dread,---
Thou too shalt groan at heart that all thy spending
    Cannot repay the dead, the hungry dead.

I.

Friend of the dead, and friend of all my days
Even since they cast off boyhood, I salute
The song saluting friends whose songs are mute
With full burnt-offerings of clear-spirited praise.
That since our old young years our several ways
Have led through fields diverse of flower and fruit
Yet no cross wind has once relaxed the root
We set long since beneath the sundawn’s rays,
The root of trust whence towered the trusty tree,
Friendship this only and duly might impel
My song to salutation of your own;
More even than praise of one unseen of me
And loved the starry spirit of Dobell,
To mine by light and music only known.



II.

But more than this what moves me most of all
To leave not all unworded and unsped
The whole heart’...

O I admire and sorrow! The heart's eye grieves
Discovering you, dark tramplers, tyrant years.
A juice rides rich through bluebells, in vine leaves,
And beauty's dearest veriest vein is tears.



Happy the father, mother of these! Too fast:
Not that, but thus far, all with frailty, blest
In one fair fall; but, for time's aftercast,
Creatures all heft, hope, hazard, interest.

And are they thus? The fine, the fingering beams
Their young delightful hour do feature down
That fleeted else like day-dissolvèd dreams
Or ringlet-race on burling Barrow brown.

She leans on him with such contentment fond
As well the sister sits, would well the wife;
His looks, the soul's own letters, see beyond,
Gaze on, and fall directly forth on life.

But...