Death

"A German aeroplane flew over Greek territory dropping a bomb which killed a shepherd."


'Sitting on a stone a Shepherd,
Stone and Shepherd sleeping,
Under the high blue Attic sky;
Along the green monotony
Grey sheep creeping, creeping'.

Deep down on the hill and valley,
At the bottom of the sunshine,
Like great Ships in clearest water,
Water holding anchored Shadows,
Water without wave or ripple,
Sunshine deep and clear and heavy,
Sunshine like a booming bell
Made of purest golden metal,
White Ships heavy in the sky
Sleep with anchored shadow.

Pipe a song in that still air
And the song would be of crystal
Snapped in silence, or a bronze vase
Smooth and graceful, curved and shining.
Tell an old tale or a history;

I have been so innerly proud, and so long alone,
Do not leave me, or I shall break.
Do not leave me.

What should I do if you were gone again
So soon?
What should I look for?
Where should I go?
What should I be, I myself,
"I"?
What would it mean, this
I?

Do not leave me.

What should I think of death?
If I died, it would not be you:
It would be simply the same
Lack of you.
The same want, life or death,
Unfulfilment,
The same insanity of space
You not there for me.

Think, I daren't die
For fear of the lack in death.
And I daren't live.

Unless there were a morphine or a drug.

I would bear the pain.
But always, strong, unremitting
It would make me not me.
The thing with my bo...

Before the April night was late
A rider came to the castle gate;
A rider breathing human breath,
But the words he spoke were the words of Death.

"Greet you well from the King our lord,
He marches hot for the eastward ford;
Living or dying, all or one,
Ye must keep the ford till the race be run.

Sir Alain rose with lips that smiled,
He kissed his wife, he kissed his child:
Before the April night was late
Sir Alain rode from the castle gate.

He called his men-at-arms by name,
But one there was uncalled that came:
He bade his troop behind him ride,
But there was one that rode beside.

        "Why will you spur so fast to die?
        Be wiser ere the night go by.
        A message late is a message lost;
        For all your...

Ah, my Perilla, dost thou grieve to see
Me day by day to steal away from thee?
Age calls me hence, and my grey hairs bid come,
And haste away to mine eternal home.
'Twill not be long, Perilla, after this,
That I must give thee the supremest kiss.
Dead when I am, first cast in salt, and bring
Part of the cream from that religious spring,
With which, Perilla, wash my hands and feet.
That done, then wind me in that very sheet
Which wrapped thy smooth limbs when thou didst implore
The gods' protection but the night before.
Follow me weeping to my turf, and there
Let fall a primrose, and with it a tear;
Then, lastly, let some weekly-strewings be
Devoted to the memory of me:
Then shall my ghost not walk about, but keep
Still in the cool and silent shades of sle...

Though flowers have perished at the touch
Of Frost, the early comer,
I hail the season loved so much,
The good St. Martin’s summer.

O gracious morn, with rose-red dawn,
And thin moon curving o’er it!
The old year’s darling, latest born,
More loved than all before it!

How flamed the sunrise through the pines!
How stretched the birchen shadows,
Braiding in long, wind-wavered lines
The westward sloping meadows!

The sweet day, opening as a flower
Unfolds its petals tender,
Renews for us at noontide’s hour
The summer’s tempered splendor.

The birds are hushed; alone the wind,
That through the woodland searches,
The red-oak’s lingering leaves can find,
And yellow plumes of larches.

But still the balsam-breathing pine<...

I sing the Body electric;
The armies of those I love engirth me, and I engirth them;
They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them,
And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the Soul.

Was it doubted that those who corrupt their own bodies conceal themselves;
And if those who defile the living are as bad as they who defile the dead?
And if the body does not do as much as the Soul?
And if the body were not the Soul, what is the Soul?

The love of the Body of man or woman balks account - the body itself balks account;
That of the male is perfect, and that of the female is perfect.

The expression of the face balks account;
But the expression of a well-made man appears not only in his face;
It is in his limbs and joints also, it is c...

Thou art, and, therefore, Thou art near, oh God!
    Thick darkness covers me, I cannot see;
Is this the Shepherd's crook, or the correcting rod,
    And by Thy hand, O Father, laid on me?

I cry to Thee, and shall I cry in vain?
    My soul looks up as if through prison bars,
Up through the silent Heaven, ah, turn again
    Thy face to me, hide not behind the stars.

Thy presence hath been with me in the past,
    Where "heaps of witness" mark out all the way;
Thy years change not, Thy love is still as vast,
    I look to Thee, I trust Thee though Thou slay.

My friends walk on the hills the sun hath kissed,
    Flowers at their feet, their sky is blue and fair;
I'm prisoned in this vale of tearful mist,
    Shut in with sorrow, darkened by despair....

What dainty note of long-drawn melody
Athwart our dreamless sleep rings sweet and clear,
Till all the fumes of slumber are brushed by,


And with awakened consciousness we hear
The pipe of birds?    Look forth!    The sane, white day
Blesses the hilltops, and the sun is near.


All misty phantoms slowly roll away
With the night's vapors toward the western sky.
The Real enchants us, the fresh breath of hay


Blows toward us; soft the meadow-grasses lie,
Bearded with dew; the air is a caress;
The sudden sun o'ertops the boundary


Of eastern hills, the morning joyousness
Thrills tingling through the frame; life's pulse beats strong;
Night's fancies melt like dew.    So ends the song!

Oh, roses, roses everywhere but only one for me!
But one wild-rose for me, my boy, your face that's like the morn's;
My rose of roses, dear my lad, my dark-eyed Romany;
The world may keep its roses now, that gave me only thorns.

Oh, song and singing everywhere; the woods are wild with song:
One simple song I knew, my lad, you crooned it in my ears;
It cheered my way by night and day; but, oh, the way was long!
And all the hard world gave to me was evil words and sneers.

Oh, song and blossoms everywhere and nature full of love:
But one sweet look of love was mine, and that you gave, my joy:
A look of love, a look of trust they helped my heart enough;
They helped me bear the look of scorn, the world's black look, my boy.

Oh, spring and love are everywhere; soft br...

Del cibo onde 'l signor mio sempre abbonda.

HE DESCRIBES THE APPARITION OF LAURA.


    Food wherewithal my lord is well supplied,
With tears and grief my weary heart I've fed;
As fears within and paleness o'er me spread,
Oft thinking on its fatal wound and wide:
But in her time with whom no other vied,
Equal or second, to my suffering bed
Comes she to look on whom I almost dread,
And takes her seat in pity by my side.
With that fair hand, so long desired in vain,
She check'd my tears, while at her accents crept
A sweetness to my soul, intense, divine.
"Is this thy wisdom, to parade thy pain?
No longer weep! hast thou not amply wept?
Would that such life were thine as death is mine!"

MACGREGOR.


    With grief and t...

I slumbered with your poems on my breast
Spread open as I dropped them half-read through
Like dove wings on a figure on a tomb
To see, if in a dream they brought of you,

I might not have the chance I missed in life
Through some delay, and call you to your face
First soldier, and then poet, and then both,
Who died a soldier-poet of your race.

I meant, you meant, that nothing should remain
Unsaid between us, brother, and this remained
And one thing more that was not then to say:
The Victory for what it lost and gained.

You went to meet the shell's embrace of fire
On Vimy Ridge; and when you fell that day
The war seemed over more for you than me,
But now for me than you the other way.

How over, though, for even me who knew
The foe thr...

Thou art not dead, O sweet lost melody,
    Sung beyond memory,
When golden to the winds this world of ours
    Waved wild with boundless flowers;
Sung in some past when wildernesses were,-
    Not dead, not dead, lost air!
Yet in the ages long where lurkest thou,
    And what soul knows thee now?
Wert thou not given to sweeten every wind
    From that o'erburdened mind
That bore thee through the young world, and that tongue
    By which thou first wert sung?
Was not the holy choir the endless dome,
    And nature all thy home?
Did not the warm gale clasp thee to his breast.
    Lulling thy storms to rest?
And is the June air laden with thee now,
    Passing the summer-bough?
And is the dawn-wind on a lonely sea
    Balmy with thoughts of thee?<...

"Poet by the grace of God."


    You sing of winter gray and chill,
    Of silent stream and frozen lake,
    Of naked woods, and winds that wake
    To shriek and sob o'er vale and hill.

    And straight we breathe the bracing air,
    And see stretched out before our eyes
    A white world spanned by brooding skies,
    And snowflakes drifting everywhere.

    You sing of tender things and sweet,
    Of field, of brook, of flower, of bush,
    The lilt of bird, the sunset flush,
    The scarlet poppies in the wheat.

    Until we feel the gleam and glow
    Of summer pulsing through our veins,
    And hear the patter of the rains,
    And watch the green things sprout and grow.

    You sing of joy, and we do mark<...

The rosy day was sweet and young,
The clod-brown lark that hail'd the morn
Had just her summer anthem sung,
And trembling dropped in the corn;
The dew-rais'd flower was perk and proud,
The butterfly around it play'd;
The sky's blue clear, save woolly cloud
That pass'd the sun without a shade.

On the pismire's castle hill,
While the burnet-buttons quak'd,
While beside the stone-pav'd rill
Cowslip bunches nodding shak'd,
Bees in every peep did try,
Great had been the honey shower,
Soon their load was on their thigh,
Yellow dust as fine as flour.

Brazen magpies, fond of clack,
Full of insolence and pride,
Chattering on the donkey's back
Perch'd, and pull'd his shaggy hide;
Odd crows settled on the path,
Dames from milking trot...

Up from the spirit-depths ringing,
        Softly your melody swells,
Sweet as a seraphim's singing,
        Tender-toned memory-bells!
                The laughter of childhood,
                The song of the wildwood,
The tinkle of streams through the echoing dell,
                The voice of a mother,
                The shout of a brother.
Up from life's morning melodiously swell.

Up from the spirit-depths ringing
        Richly your melody swells,
Sweet reminiscences bringing,
        Joyous-toned memory-bells! -
                Youth's beautiful bowers,
                Her dew-spangled flowers,
The pictures which Hope of futurity drew, -
                Love's rapturous vision
                Of regions Elysian,
In glowing perspect...

By the sad waters of separation
Where we have wandered by divers ways,
I have but the shadow and imitation
Of the old memorial days.

In music I have no consolation,
No roses are pale enough for me;
The sound of the waters of separation
Surpasseth roses and melody.

By the sad waters of separation
Dimly I hear from an hidden place
The sigh of mine ancient adoration:
Hardly can I remember your face.

If you be dead, no proclamation
Sprang to me over the waste, gray sea:
Living, the waters of separation
Sever for ever your soul from me.

No man knoweth our desolation;
Memory pales of the old delight;
While the sad waters of separation
Bear us on to the ultimate night.

Roses are sweet to smell and see,
And lilies on the stem;
But rarer, stranger buds there be,
And she was like to them.

The little moon that April brings,
More lovely shade than light,
That, setting, silvers lonely hills
Upon the verge of night -

Close to the world of my poor heart
So stole she, still and clear;
Now that she's gone, O dark, and dark,
The solitude, the fear.

Where had her sweetness gone?
What fanatics invent
In this blind bitter town,
Fantasy or incident
Not worth thinking of,
put her in a rage.
I had forgiven enough
That had forgiven old age.
All lives that has lived;
So much is certain;
Old sages were not deceived:
Somewhere beyond the curtain
Of distorting days
Lives that lonely thing
That shone before these eyes
Targeted, trod like Spring.