Death

(For Thomas Walsh)



    I


On nights like this the huddled sheep
    Are like white clouds upon the grass,
And merry herdsmen guard their sleep
    And chat and watch the big stars pass.

It is a pleasant thing to lie
    Upon the meadow on the hill
With kindly fellowship near by
    Of sheep and men of gentle will.

I lean upon my broken crook
    And dream of sheep and grass and men --
O shameful eyes that cannot look
    On any honest thing again!

On bloody feet I clambered down
    And fled the wages of my sin,
I am the leavings of the town,
    And meanly serve its meanest inn.

I tramp the courtyard stones in grief,
    While sleep takes man and beast to her.
And every cloud is calling ...

Soon as the spring its earliest visit pays,
And buds with March and April's lengthen'd days
Of mingled suns and shades, and snow, and rain,
Forcing the crackling frost to melt again;
Oft sprinkling from their bosoms, as they come,
A dwindling daisy here and there to bloom;
I mark the widow, and her orphan boy,
In preparation for their old employ.
The cloak and hat that had for seasons past
Repell'd the rain and buffeted the blast,
Though worn to shreddings, still are occupied
In make-shift way their nakedness to hide;
For since her husband died her hopes are few,
When time's worn out the old, to purchase new.
Upon the green they're seen by rising sun,
To sharp winds croodling they would vainly shun,
With baskets on their arm and hazel crooks
Dragging the ...

This man has taken my Husband's life
    And laid my Brethren low,
No sister indeed, were I, no wife,
    To pardon and let him go.

Yet why does he look so young and slim
    As he weak and wounded lies?
How hard for me to be harsh to him
    With his soft, appealing eyes.

His hair is ruffled upon the stone
    And the slender wrists are bound,
So young! and yet he has overthrown
    His scores on the battle ground.

Would I were only a slave to-day,
    To whom it were right and meet
To wash the stains of the War away,
    The dust from the weary feet.

Were I but one of my serving girls
    To solace his pain to rest!
Shake out the sand from the soft loose curls,
    And hold him against my breast!

Have we such...

Ye brown old oaks that spread the silent wood,
How soothing sweet your stillness used to be;
And still could bless, when wrapt in musing mood,
But now confusion suits the best to me.
"Is it for love," the breezes seem to say,
"That you forsake our woodland silence here?
Is it for love, you roam so far away
From these still shades you valu'd once so dear?"
"No, breezes, no!"--I answer with a sigh,
"Love never could so much my bosom grieve;
Turnhill, my friend!--alas! so soon to die--
That is the grief which presses me to leave:
Though noise can't heal, it may some balm bestow;
But silence rankles in the wounds of woe."

Ring out your bells, let mourning shows be spread,
For Love is dead:
All Love is dead, infected
With plague of deep disdain:
Worth, as nought worth, rejected,
And faith fair scorn doth gain.
From so ungrateful fancy;
From such a female frenzy;
From them that use men thus,
Good Lord, deliver us.

Weep, neighbours, weep, do you not hear it said
That Love is dead:
His death-bed, peacock's folly:
His winding-sheet is shame;
His will, false-seeming holy,
His sole executor, blame.
From so ungrateful fancy;
From such a female frenzy;
From them that use men thus,
Good Lord, deliver us.

Let dirge be sung, and trentals rightly read,
For Love is dead:
Sir Wrong his tomb ordaineth
My mistress' marble heart;
Which epitaph ...

Morning and evening are mine,
And the bright noon-day;
But night to no man doth belong
When the sad ghosts play.

From Kelso town I took the road
By the full-flood Tweed;
The black clouds swept across the moon
With devouring greed.

Seek ye no peace who tread the night;
I felt above my head
Blowing the cloud's edge, faces wry
In pale fury spread.

Twelve surly elves were digging graves
Beside black Eden brook;
Eleven dug and stared at me,
But one read in a book.

In Birgham trees and hedges rocked,
The moon was drowned in black;
At Hirsel woods I shrieked to find
A fiend astride my back.

His legs he closed about my breast,
His hands upon my head,
Till Coldstream lights beamed in the trees
And he wail...

Not with a flash that rends the blue
    Shall fall the avenging sword.
Gently as the evening dew
    Descends the mighty Lord.

His dreadful balances are made
    To move with moon and tide;
Yet shall not mercy be afraid
    Nor justice be denied.

The dreams that seemed to waste away,
    The kindliness forgot,
Were singing in your heart today
    Although you knew them not.

The sun shall not forget his road,
    Nor the high stars their rhyme,
The traveller with the heavier load
    Has one less hill to climb.

And, though a darker shadow fall
    On every struggling age,
How shall it be if, after all,
    He share our pilgrimage?

The end we mourn is not the end.
    The dust has nimble wings.
But tru...

How many bards gild the lapses of time!
A few of them have ever been the food
Of my delighted fancy, I could brood
Over their beauties, earthly, or sublime:
And often, when I sit me down to rhyme,
These will in throngs before my mind intrude:
But no confusion, no disturbance rude
Do they occasion; 'tis a pleasing chime.
So the unnumbered sounds that evening store;
The songs of birds the whispering of the leaves
The voice of waters the great bell that heaves
With solemn sound, and thousand others more,
That distance of recognizance bereaves,
Makes pleasing music, and not wild uproar.

"Glenara, Glenara, now read me my dream."
Campbell.

Father, I have dreamed a dream,
    When the rosy morning hour
Poured its light on field and stream,
    Kindling nature with its pow'r; -

O'er the meadow's dewy breast,
    I had chased a butterfly,
Tempted by its gaudy vest,
    Still my vain pursuit to ply, -

Till my limbs were weary grown,
    With the distance I had strayed,
Then to rest I laid me down,
    Where a beech tree cast its shade,

Soon a heaviness came o'er me,
    And a deep sleep sealed my eyes;
And a vision past before me,
    Full of changing phantasies.

First I stood beside a bower,
    Green as summer bow'r could be;
Vine and fruit, and leaf and flower,
    Mixed to weave its canopy....

Out of the past the dim leaves spoke to me
The thoughts of Pindar with a voice so sweet
Hyblæan bees seemed swarming my retreat
Around the reedy well of Poesy.
I closed the book. Then, knee to neighbor knee,
Sat with the soul of Plato, to repeat
Doctrines, till mine seemed some Socratic seat
High on the summit of Philosophy.
Around the wave of one Religion taught
Her first rude children. From the stars that burned
Above the mountained other, Science learned
The first vague lessons of the work she wrought.
Daughters of God, in whom we still behold
The Age of Iron and the Age of Gold.

I was the height of a folio, my bed just
backed on the bookcases’ sombre Babel,
everything, Latin ashes, Greek dust
jumbled together: novel, science, fable.


Two voices spoke to me. One, firmly, slyly,
said: ‘The Earth’s a cake filled with sweetness:
I can give you (and your pleasure will be
endless!) an appetite of comparable vastness.’


The other said: ‘Come! Come voyage in dream,
beyond the known, beyond the possible!’
And that one sang like the ocean breeze,
phantom, from who knows where, its wail


caressing the ear, and yet still frightening.
You I answered: ‘Yes! Gentle voice!’ My
wound and what, I’d call my fatality, begins
alas, from then. From behind the scenery


of vast existence, in voids without light,

May! Be thou never grac'd with birds that sing,
        Nor Flora's pride!
In thee all flowers and roses spring,
        Mine only died.

W. B.

I come to you grown weary of much laughter,
From jangling mirth that once seemed over-sweet,
From all the mocking ghosts that follow after
A man's returning feet;
Give me no word of welcome or of greeting
Only in silence let me enter in,
Only in silence when our eyes are meeting,
Absolve me of my sin.

I come to you grown weary of much living,
Open your door and lift me of your grace,
I ask for no compassion, no forgiving,
Only your face, your face;
Only in that white peace that is your dwelling
To come again, before your feet to sink,
And of your quiet as of wine compelling
Drink as the thirsting drink.

Be kind to me as sleep is kind that closes
With tender hands men's fever-wearied eyes,
Your arms are as a garden of white roses
Wher...

        I

    Our brains ache, in the merciless iced east winds that knife us . . .
    Wearied we keep awake because the night is silent . . .
    Low drooping flares confuse our memory of the salient . . .
    Worried by silence, sentries whisper, curious, nervous,
            But nothing happens.

    Watching, we hear the mad gusts tugging on the wire.
    Like twitching agonies of men among its brambles.
    Northward incessantly, the flickering gunnery rumbles,
    Far off, like a dull rumour of some other war.
            What are we doing here?

    The poignant misery of dawn begins to grow . . .
    We only know war lasts, rain soaks, and clouds sag stormy.
    Dawn massing in the east her melancholy army
    Attacks once more in ranks on shive...

Sing the song of the reckless, who care not what they do;
Sing the song of a sinner and the song of a writer, too,
Down in a pub in the alleys, in a dark and dirty hole,
With every soul a drunkard and the boss with never a soul.

Uncollared, unkempt, unshaven, sat the writer whose fame was fair,
And the girls of the streets were round him, and the bullies and bludgers there;
He was one of themselves and they told him the things that they had to tell,
He was studying human nature with his brothers and sisters in hell.

He was neither poor nor lonely, for a place in the world he’d won,
And up in the heights of the city he’d a thousand friends or none;
But he knew that his chums could wait awhile, that he’d reckon with foes at last,
For he lived far into a future that he knew b...

[1]

A husband's death brings always sighs;
The widow sobs, sheds tears - then dries.
Of Time the sadness borrows wings;
And Time returning pleasure brings.
Between the widow of a year
And of a day, the difference
Is so immense,
That very few who see her
Would think the laughing dame
And weeping one the same.
The one puts on repulsive action,
The other shows a strong attraction.
The one gives up to sighs, or true or false;
The same sad note is heard, whoever calls.
Her grief is inconsolable,
They say. Not so our fable,
Or, rather, not so says the truth.

To other worlds a husband went
And left his wife in prime of youth.
Above his dying couch she bent,
And cried, 'My love, O wait for me!
My soul would gladly g...

O frivolous mind of man,
Light ignorance, and hurrying, unsure thoughts,
Though man bewails you not,
How I bewail you!

Little in your prosperity
Do you seek counsel of the Gods.
Proud, ignorant, self-adored, you live alone.
In profound silence stern
Among their savage gorges and cold springs
Unvisited remain
The great oracular shrines.

Thither in your adversity
Do you betake yourselves for light,
But strangely misinterpret all you hear.
For you will not put on
New hearts with the inquirer’s holy robe,
And purged, considerate minds.

And him on whom, at the end
Of toil and dolour untold,
The Gods have said that repose
At last shall descend undisturb’d,
Him you expect to behold
In an easy old age, in a happy home;

("Un jour, Kanut mourut.")

[Bk. X. i.]


King Canute died.[1] Encoffined he was laid.
Of Aarhuus came the Bishop prayers to say,
And sang a hymn upon his tomb, and held
That Canute was a saint - Canute the Great,
That from his memory breathed celestial perfume,
And that they saw him, they the priests, in glory,
Seated at God's right hand, a prophet crowned.

I.

        Evening came,
And hushed the organ in the holy place,
And the priests, issuing from the temple doors,
Left the dead king in peace. Then he arose,
Opened his gloomy eyes, and grasped his sword,
And went forth loftily. The massy walls
Yielded before the phantom, like a mist.

There is a sea where Aarhuus, Altona,
And Elsinore's vast domes...