Death

Heart, my heart, thou hast found thy home!
From gloom and sorrow thou hast come forth,
Thou who wast foolish, and sought to roam
'Neath the cruel stars of the frozen North.

Thou hast returned to thy dear delights;
The golden glow of the quivering days,
The silver silence of tropical nights,
No more to wander in alien ways.

Here, each star is a well-loved friend;
To me and my heart at the journey's end.

These are my people, and this my land,
I hear the pulse of her secret soul.
This is the life that I understand,
Savage and simple and sane and whole.

Washed in the light of a clear fierce sun, -
Heart, my heart, the journey is done.

See! the painted piece of the skies,
Where the rose-hued opal of sunset lies.
Hear the pass...

Love, that is first and last of all things made,
The light that has the living world for shade,
The spirit that for temporal veil has on
The souls of all men woven in unison,
One fiery raiment with all lives inwrought
And lights of sunny and starry deed and thought,
And alway through new act and passion new
Shines the divine same body and beauty through,
The body spiritual of fire and light
That is to worldly noon as noon to night;
Love, that is flesh upon the spirit of man
And spirit within the flesh whence breath began;
Love, that keeps all the choir of lives in chime;
Love, that is blood within the veins of time;
That wrought the whole world without stroke of hand,
Shaping the breadth of sea, the length of land,
And with the pulse and motion of his breath

Not only men of stormy minds,
    The storms of trouble know,
All creatures of this earth must find
    A share of earthly woe!

Ye whose pure hearts with pity swell,
    For pain by all incurr'd;
Hear how affliction once befell,
    Serenity's sweet bird.

Ye fair, who in your carols praise
    The Halcyon's happy state;
Hear in compassionate amaze,
    One Halcyon's hapless fate.

A nymph, Selina is her name,
    Lovely in mind and mien,
When spring, however early, came,
    Was fond of walks marine.

Between a woman and a child,
    In tender charms she grew,
And lov'd with fancy sweetly wild,
    The lonely shore to view.

Nature she studied, every spring,
    To all her offspring kind,
And taught the ...

O Time! who know'st a lenient hand to lay
Softest on Sorrow's wound, and slowly thence
(Lulling to sad repose the weary sense)
The faint pang stealest unperceived away;
On thee I rest my only hope at last,
And think, when thou hast dried the bitter tear
That flows in vain o'er all my soul held dear,
I may look back on every sorrow past,
And meet life's peaceful evening with a smile:
As some lone bird, at day's departing hour,
Sings in the sunbeam, of the transient shower
Forgetful, though its wings are wet the while:
Yet ah! how much must that poor heart endure,
Which hopes from thee, and thee alone, a cure!

AN INDIAN TRADITION; VERSIFIED FROM SCHOOLCRAFT


It was a day of festive-mirth,
    And bright the Indian wigwams shone,
For 'twas a chieftain's bridal-day,
    And gladness dwelt in every tone;
But ere the glow of sunset hours
    Upon the western hills was shed,
Deep sadness rested on those bowers -
    The bride was numbered with the dead.

Days passed; and still beside her tomb
    The stricken lover bowed his head;
And-nightly, through the forest's gloom
    The stars beheld him with his dead.
In vain did grey-haired chieftains urge
    The youthful hunter to the chase; -
He heard, yet heeded not their words,
    For grief had chained him to the place.

They laid his war-club by his side,
    His bow and arrows, too, they br...

It fell on a day I was happy,
And the winds, the concave sky,
The flowers and the beasts in the meadow
Seemed happy even as I;
And I stretched my hands to the meadow,
To the bird, the beast, the tree:
"Why are ye all so happy?"
I cried, and they answered me.

What sayest thou, Oh meadow,
That stretches so wide, so far,
That none can say how many
Thy misty marguerites are?
And what say ye, red roses,
That o'er the sun-blanched wall
From your high black-shadowed trellis
Like flame or blood-drops fall?
"We are born, we are reared, and we linger
A various space and die;
We dream, and are bright and happy,
But we cannot answer why."

What sayest thou, Oh shadow,
That from the dreaming hill
All down the broadening valley
...

        Once on a time, in solemn state,
        Death, in his pomp of terror, sate.
        Attendant on his gloomy reign,
        Sadness and Madness, Woe and Pain,
        His vassal train. With hollow tone
        The tyrant muttered from his throne:

        "We choose a minister to-night;
        Let him who wills prefer his right,
        And unto the most worthy hand
        We will commit the ebon wand."

        Fever stood forth: "And I appeal
        To weekly bills to show my zeal.
        Repelled, repulsed, I persevere;
        Often quotidian through a year."

        Gout next appeared to urge his claim
        For the racked joints of tortured frame:
        He, too, besieged the man oppressed,
        Nor would depart, al...

PART FIRST

ALL by the moonlight river side
Groaned the poor Beast alas! in vain;
The staff was raised to loftier height,
And the blows fell with heavier weight
As Peter struck and struck again.

"Hold!" cried the Squire, "against the rules
Of common sense you're surely sinning;
This leap is for us all too bold;
Who Peter was, let that be told,
And start from the beginning."

"A Potter, Sir, he was by trade,"
Said I, becoming quite collected;
"And wheresoever he appeared,
Full twenty times was Peter feared
For once that Peter was respected.

"He, two-and-thirty years or more,
Had been a wild and woodland rover;
Had heard the Atlantic surges roar
On farthest Cornwall's rocky shore,
And trod the cliffs of Dover.

I

Her eyes are wild, her head is bare,
The sun has burnt her coal-black hair;
Her eyebrows have a rusty stain,
And she came far from over the main.
She has a baby on her arm,
Or else she were alone:
And underneath the hay-stack warm,
And on the greenwood stone,
She talked and sung the woods among,
And it was in the English tongue.

II

"Sweet babe! they say that I am mad,
But nay, my heart is far too glad;
And I am happy when I sing
Full many a sad and doleful thing:
Then, lovely baby, do not fear!
I pray thee have no fear of me;
But safe as in a cradle, here,
My lovely baby! thou shalt be:
To thee I know too much I owe;
I cannot work thee any woe.

III

"A fire was once within my brain;
And in ...

THE LEADEN ECHO

How to keep - is there ány any, is there none such, nowhere known some, bow or brooch or braid or brace, láce, latch or catch or key to keep
Back beauty, keep it, beauty, beauty, beauty, . . . from vanishing away?

Ó is there no frowning of these wrinkles, rankèd wrinkles deep,
Dówn? no waving off of these most mournful messengers, still
messengers, sad and stealing messengers of grey?
No there's none, there's none, O no there's none,
Nor can you long be, what you now are, called fair,
Do what you may do, what, do what you may,
And wisdom is early to despair:
Be beginning; since, no, nothing can be done
To keep at bay
Age and age's evils, hoar hair,
Ruck and wrinkle, drooping, dying, death's worst, winding
sheets, tombs and worms and tumbling ...

Christina Rossetti died December 29, 1894


The stars are strong in the deeps of the lustrous night,
Cold and splendid as death if his dawn be bright;
Cold as the cast-off garb that is cold as clay,
Splendid and strong as a spirit intense as light.
A soul more sweet than the morning of new-born May
Has passed with the year that has passed from the world away.
A song more sweet than the morning's first-born song
Again will hymn not among us a new year's day.
Not here, not here shall the carol of joy grown strong
Ring rapture now, and uplift us, a spell-struck throng,
From dream to vision of life that the soul may see
By death's grace only, if death do its trust no wrong.
Scarce yet the days and the starry nights are three
Since here among us a spirit abo...

    Life's a jail where men have common lot.
    Gaunt the one who has, and who has not.
    All our treasures neither less nor more,
    Bread alone comes thro' the guarded door.
    Cards are foolish in this jail, I think,
    Yet they play for shoes, for drabs and drink.
    She, my lawless, sharp-tongued gypsy maid
    Will not scorn with me this jail-bird trade,
    Pets some fox-eyed boy who turns the trick,
    Tho' he win a button or a stick,
    Pencil, garter, ribbon, corset-lace -
    HIS the glory, MINE is the disgrace.

    Sweet, I'd rather lose than win despite
    Love of hearty words and maids polite.
    "Love's a gamble," say you.    I deny.
    Love's a gift.    I love you till I die.
    Gamblers fight like rats.    I will not play.

We never meet; yet we meet day by day
    Upon those hills of life, dim and immense:
    The good we love, and sleep--our innocence.
O hills of life, high hills!    And higher than they,

Our guardian spirits meet at prayer and play.
    Beyond pain, joy, and hope, and long suspense,
    Above the summits of our souls, far hence,
An angel meets an angel on the way.

Beyond all good I ever believed of thee
    Or thou of me, these always love and live.
And though I fail of thy ideal of me,

My angel falls not short.    They greet each other.
    Who knows, they may exchange the kiss we give,
Thou to thy crucifix, I to my mother.

He listened at the porch that day,
To hear the wheel go on, and on;
And then it stopped, ran back away,
While through the door he brought the sun:
But now my spinning is all done.

He sat beside me, with an oath
That love ne'er ended, once begun;
I smiled, believing for us both,
What was the truth for only one:
And now my spinning is all done.

My mother cursed me that I heard
A young man's wooing as I spun:
Thanks, cruel mother, for that word,
For I have, since, a harder known!
And now my spinning is all done.

I thought, O God! my first-born's cry
Both voices to mine ear would drown:
I listened in mine agony,
It was the silence made me groan!
And now my spinning is all done.

Bury me 'twixt my mother's grave,
(Who...

    Farewell, fair Armida, my joy and my grief,
    In vain I have loved you, and hope no relief;
    Undone by your virtue, too strict and severe,
    Your eyes gave me love, and you gave me despair;
    Now call'd by my honour, I seek with content
    The fate which in pity you would not prevent:
    To languish in love, were to find by delay
    A death that's more welcome the speediest way.
    On seas and in battles, in bullets and fire,
    The danger is less than in hopeless desire;
    My death's-wound you give, though far off I bear
    My fall from your sight--not to cost you a tear:
    But if the kind flood on a wave should convey,
    And under your window my body should lay,
    The wound on my breast when you happen to see,
    You'll say with a sigh...

    PSALM LXXXIV.


A brackish lake is there with bitter pools
Anigh its margin, brushed by heavy trees.
A piping wind the narrow valley cools,
Fretting the willows and the cypresses.
Gray skies above, and in the gloomy space
An awful presence hath its dwelling-place.


I saw a youth pass down that vale of tears;
His head was circled with a crown of thorn,
His form was bowed as by the weight of years,
His wayworn feet by stones were cut and torn.
His eyes were such as have beheld the sword
Of terror of the angel of the Lord.


He passed, and clouds and shadows and thick haze
Fell and encompassed him. I might not see
What hand upheld him in those dismal ways,
Wherethrough he staggered with his misery.
The creeping mists that t...

Again a verse for sake of you,
You soldiers in the ranks--you Volunteers,
Who bravely fighting, silent fell,
To fill unmention'd graves.

Ashes of soldiers!
As I muse, retrospective, murmuring a chant in thought,
Lo! the war resumes--again to my sense your shapes,
And again the advance of armies.

Noiseless as mists and vapors,
From their graves in the trenches ascending,
From the cemeteries all through Virginia and Tennessee,
From every point of the compass, out of the countless unnamed graves,
In wafted clouds, in myraids large, or squads of twos or threes, or single ones, they come,
And silently gather round me.

Now sound no note, O trumpeters!
Not at the head of my cavalry, parading on spirited horses,
With sabres drawn and glist'ning, and ...

TO THE MEMORY OF PATRICK KELLEY, WHO BY HIS MANY GOOD QUALITIES DURING SOME YEARS' RESIDENCE IN MY FAMILY, GREATLY ENDEARED HIMSELF TO ME AND MINE.


From Erin's fair Isle to this country he came,
And found brothers and sisters to welcome him here;
Though then but a youth, yet robust seemed his frame,
And life promised fair for many a long year.

A place was soon found where around the same board,
He with two of his sisters did constantly meet;
And when his day's work had all been performed,
At the same fireside he found a third seat.

His faithfulness such, so true-hearted was he,
That love in return could not be denied;
As one of the family - he soon ceased to be
The stranger, who lately for work had applied.

Youth passed into manhoo...