Death

So, as Thou wert the seed and not the flower,
Having no form or comeliness, in chief
Sharing thy thoughts with thine acquaintance Grief;
Thou wert despised, rejected in thine hour
Of loneliness and God-triumphant power.
Oh, not three days alone, glad slumber brief,
That from thy travail brought Thee sweet relief,
Lay'st Thou, outworn, beneath thy stony bower;
But three and thirty years, a living seed,
Thy body lay as in a grave indeed;
A heavenly germ dropt in a desert wide;
Buried in fallow soil of grief and need;
'Mid earthquake-storms of fiercest hate and pride,
By woman's tears bedewed and glorified.

The world was widowed by the death of Christ:
Vainly its suffering soul for peace has sought
    And found it not.
For nothing, nothing, nothing has sufficed
To bring back comfort to the stricken house
From whence has gone the Master and the Spouse.

In its long widowhood the world has striven
To find diversion.    It has turned away
From the vast aweful silences of Heaven
(Which answer but with silence when we pray)
And sought for something to assuage its grief.
    Some surcease and relief
From sorrow, in pursuit of mortal joys.
It drowned God's stillness in a sea of noise;
It lost God's presence in a blur of forms;
Till, bruised and bleeding with life's brutal storms,
Unto immutable and speechless space
    The World lifts up its face,
    It...

1.
O world! O life! O time!
On whose last steps I climb,
Trembling at that where I had stood before;
When will return the glory of your prime?
No more - Oh, never more!

2.
Out of the day and night
A joy has taken flight;
Fresh spring, and summer, and winter hoar,
Move my faint heart with grief, but with delight
No more - Oh, never more!

The lily's withered chalice falls
Around its rod of dusty gold,
And from the beech-trees on the wold
The last wood-pigeon coos and calls.

The gaudy leonine sunflower
Hangs black and barren on its stalk,
And down the windy garden walk
The dead leaves scatter, hour by hour.

Pale privet-petals white as milk
Are blown into a snowy mass:
The roses lie upon the grass
Like little shreds of crimson silk.

Dream on, for dreams are sweet:
Do not awaken!
Dream on, and at thy feet
Pomegranates shall be shaken.

Who likeneth the youth
Of life to morning?
'Tis like the night in truth,
Rose-coloured dreams adorning.

The wind is soft above,
The shadows umber.
(There is a dream called Love.)
Take thou the fullest slumber!

In Lethe's soothing stream,
Thy thirst thou slakest.
Sleep, sleep; 't is sweet to dream.
Oh, weep when thou awakest!

                    Ye have sung me your songs, ye have chanted your rimes
                    (I scorn your beguiling, O sea!)
                    Ye fondle me now, but to strike me betimes.
                    (A treacherous lover, the sea!)
                    Once I saw as I lay, half-awash in the night
                    A hull in the gloom -- a quick hail -- and a light
                    And I lurched o'er to leeward and saved her for spite
                    From the doom that ye meted to me.

                    I was sister to 'Terrible', seventy-four,
                    (Yo ho! for the swing of the sea!)
                    And ye sank her in fathoms a thousand or more
                    (Alas! for the might of the sea!)
                    Ye taunt me and si...

Quanto più m' avvicino al giorno estremo.

HE CONSOLES HIMSELF THAT HIS LIFE IS ADVANCING TO ITS CLOSE.


    Near and more near as life's last period draws,
Which oft is hurried on by human woe,
I see the passing hours more swiftly flow,
And all my hopes in disappointment close.
And to my heart I say, amidst its throes,
"Not long shall we discourse of love below;
For this my earthly load, like new-fall'n snow
Fast melting, soon shall leave us to repose.
With it will sink in dust each towering hope,
Cherish'd so long within my faithful breast;
No more shall we resent, fear, smile, complain:
Then shall we clearly trace why some are blest,
Through deepest misery raised to Fortune's top,
And why so many sighs so oft are heaved in vain."

We should be hidden from their eyes,
Being but holy shows
And bodies broken like a thorn
Whereon the bleak north blows,
To think of buried Hector
And that none living knows.

The women take so little stock
In what I do or say
They’d sooner leave their cosseting
To hear a jackass bray;
My arms are like the twisted thorn
And yet there beauty lay;

The first of all the tribe lay there
And did such pleasure take,
She who had brought great Hector down
And put all Troy to wreck,
That she cried into this ear,
‘Strike me if I shriek.’

Over his millions Death has lawful power,
But over thee, brave D’Ossoli! none, none.
After a longer struggle, in a fight
Worthy of Italy, to youth restor’d,
Thou, far from home, art sunk beneath the surge
Of the Atlantic; on its shore; in reach
Of help; in trust of refuge; sunk with all
Precious on earth to thee... a child, a wife!
Proud as thou wert of her, America
Is prouder, showing to her sons how high
Swells woman’s courage in a virtuous breast.
She would not leave behind her those she lov’d:
Such solitary safety might become
Others; not her; not her who stood beside
The pallet of the wounded, when the worst
Of France and Perfidy assail’d the walls
Of unsuspicious Rome. Rest, glorious soul,
Renown’d for strength of genius, Margaret!
Rest with th...

"What ails the world?" the poet cried;
    "And why does death walk everywhere?
    And why do tears fall anywhere?
    And skies have clouds, and souls have care?"
Thus the poet sang, and sighed.

For he would fain have all things glad,
    All lives happy, all hearts bright;
    Not a day would end in night,
    Not a wrong would vex a right --
And so he sang -- and he was sad.

Thro' his very grandest rhymes
    Moved a mournful monotone --
    Like a shadow eastward thrown
    From a sunset -- like a moan
Tangled in a joy-bell's chimes.

"What ails the world?" he sang and asked --
    And asked and sang -- but all in vain;
    No answer came to any strain,
    And no reply to his refrain --
The mystery moved 'round him masked....

    Taken as metaphor ...
    Ophelia's funeral oration,
    derogatory snout
    of the Morning Glory
    breathing pollened fire
    overladen steps of the church.

    II
    Limestone rock
    caulking in grey
    limpid cracks ...
    doublet and hose
    then gold doubloons
    down sunlit honey
    where a smear of red lichen
    onto brown-yellow moss
    colonizes rock.

    III
    Poor Ophelia, dicing
    for a sedentary-free Hamlet,
    duty-free of fissures + frost.

    IV
    Elusiveness,
    water rushing over stone
    torrent of words
    (Ophelia receiving these),
    red hand of the berry
    swollen shut,
    prisoner in the dock
    bird of quarry, pit
    &am...

The poet's song, and the bird's,
    And the waters' that chant as they run
And the waves' that kiss the beach,
    And the wind's--they are but one.
He who may read their words,
And the secret hid in each,
May know the solemn monochords
That breathe in vast still places;
And the voices of myriad races,
    Shy, and far-off from man,
That hide in shadow and sun,
    And are seen but of him who can
To him the awful face is shown
Swathed in a cloud wind-blown
Of Him, who from His secret throne,
In some void, shadowy, and unknown land
Comes forth to lay His mighty hand
On the sounding organ keys,
    That play deep thunder-marches,
Like the rush and the roar of seas,
    And fill the cavernous arches
Of antique wildernesses hoary,
  ...

There were two youths of equal age,
Wit, station, strength, and parentage;
They studied at the selfsame schools,
And shaped their thoughts by common rules.

One pondered on the life of man,
His hopes, his ending, and began
To rate the Market's sordid war
As something scarce worth living for.

"I'll brace to higher aims," said he,
"I'll further Truth and Purity;
Thereby to mend the mortal lot
And sweeten sorrow. Thrive I not,

"Winning their hearts, my kind will give
Enough that I may lowly live,
And house my Love in some dim dell,
For pleasing them and theirs so well."

Idly attired, with features wan,
In secret swift he laboured on:
Such press of power had brought much gold
Applied to things of meaner mould.

Somet...

Wine can clothe the most sordid hole
in miraculous luxury,
and let many a fabulous portico float free
in the gold of its red glow,
like a setting sun in the sky’s cloudy sea.

Opium expands things without boundaries,
extends the limitless,
makes time profounder, deepens voluptuousness,
fills the soul beyond its capacities,
with the pleasures of gloom and of darkness.

None of that equals the poison that flows
from your eyes, your eyes of green,
lakes where, mirrored, my trembling soul is seen…
my dreams come flocking, a host,
to quench their thirst in the bitter stream.

None of that equals the dreadful marvel though
of your saliva’s venom,
that plunges my soul, remorseless, into oblivion,
and causing vertigo,
rolls it swooning to...

When the night wind howls in the chimney cowls, and the bat in the moonlight flies,
And inky clouds, like funeral shrouds, sail over the midnight skies
When the footpads quail at the night-bird's wail, and black dogs bay the moon,
Then is the spectres' holiday - then is the ghosts' high noon!

As the sob of the breeze sweeps over the trees, and the mists lie low on the fen,
From grey tombstones are gathered the bones that once were women and men,
And away they go, with a mop and a mow, to the revel that ends too soon,
For cockcrow limits our holiday - the dead of the night's high noon!

And then each ghost with his ladye-toast to their churchyard beds take flight,
With a kiss, perhaps, on her lantern chaps, and a grisly grim "good night";
Till the welcome knell of the midnight be...

We sow the glebe, we reap the corn,
We build the house where we may rest,
And then, at moments, suddenly,
We look up to the great wide sky,
Inquiring wherefore we were born…
For earnest or for jest?

The senses folding thick and dark
About the stifled soul within,
We guess diviner things beyond,
And yearn to them with yearning fond;
We strike out blindly to a mark
Believed in, but not seen.

We vibrate to the pant and thrill
Wherewith Eternity has curled
In serpent-twine about God’s seat;
While, freshening upward to His feet,
In gradual growth His full-leaved will
Expands from world to world.

And, in the tumult and excess
Of act and passion under sun,
We sometimes hear, oh, soft and far,
As silver star did touch with st...

Oh! this is a joyful dirge, my friends, and this is a hymn of praise;
And this is a clamour of Victory, and a pæan of Ancient Days.
It isn’t a Yelp of the Battlefield; nor a Howl of the Bounding Wave,
But an ode to the Things that the War has Killed, and a lay of the Festive Grave.
’Tis a triolet of the Tomb, you bet, and a whoop because of Despair,
And it’s sung as I stand on my hoary head and wave my legs in the air!

Oh! I dance on the grave of the Suffragette (I dance on my hands and dome),
And the Sanctity-of-the-Marriage-Tie and the Breaking-Up-of-the-Home.
And I dance on the grave of the weird White-Slave that died when the war began;
And Better-Protection-for-Women-and-Girls, and Men-Made-Laws-for-Man!

Oh, I dance on the Liberal Lady’s grave and the Labour Woman’s, too;<...

    Go, dream no more of a sun-bright sky
        With never a cloud to dim! -
Thou hast seen the storm in its robes of night,
Them hast felt the rush of the whirlwind's might,
Thou hast shrunk from the lightning's arrowy flight,
        When the Spirit of Storms went by!

    Go, dream no more of a crystal sea
        Where never a tempest sweeps! -
For thy riven bark on a surf-beat shore,
Where the wild winds shriek, and the billows roar,
A shattered wreck to be launched no more,
        Will mock at thy dream and thee!

    Go, dream no more of a fadeless flower
        With never a cankering blight' -
For the queenliest rose in thy garden bed,
The pride of the morn, ere the noon is fled,
With the worm at its heart, withers cold and dead
    ...