Death

They're taking me to the gallows, mother--they mean to hang me high;
They're going to gather round me there, and watch me till I die;
All earthly joy has vanished now, and gone each mortal hope,--
They'll draw a cap across my eyes, and round my neck a rope;
The crazy mob will shout and groan--the priest will read a prayer,
The drop will fall beneath my feet and leave me in the air.
They think I murdered Allen Bayne; for so the Judge has said,
And they'll hang me to the gallows, mother--hang me till I'm dead!

The grass that grows in yonder meadow, the lambs that skip and play,
The pebbled brook behind the orchard, that laughs upon its way,
The flowers that bloom in the dear old garden, the birds that sing and fly,
Are clear and pure of human blood, and, mother, so am I!
By f...

I hate this City, seated on the Plain,
    The clang and clamour of the hot Bazar,
Knowing, amid the pauses of my pain,
    This month the Almonds bloom in Kandahar.

The Almond-trees, that sheltered my Delight,
    Screening my happiness as evening fell.
It was well worth - that most Enchanted Night -
    This life in torment, and the next in Hell!

People are kind to me; one More than Kind,
    Her lashes lie like fans upon her cheek,
But kindness is a burden on my mind,
    And it is weariness to hear her speak.

For though that Kaffir's bullet holds me here,
    My thoughts are ever free, and wander far,
To where the Lilac Hills rise, soft and clear,
    Beyond the Almond Groves of Kandahar.

He followed me to Sibi, to the Fair,
  ...

Long time beside the squatter's gate
A great grey Box-Tree, early, late,
Or shine or rain, in silence there
Had stood and watched the seasons fare:
Had seen the wind upon the plain
Caress the amber ears of grain;
The river burst its banks and come
Far past its belt of mighty gum:
Had seen the scarlet months of drought
Scourging the land with fiery knout;
And seasons ill and seasons good
Had alternated as they would.
The years were born, had grown and gone,
While suns had set and suns had shone;
Fierce flames had swept; chill waters drenched;
That sturdy yeoman never blenched.

The Tree had watched the station grow,
The buildings rising row on row;
And from that point of vantage green,
Peering athwart its leafy screen,
The wondering sol...

I felt a funeral in my brain,
And mourners, to and fro,
Kept treading, treading, till it seemed
That sense was breaking through.

And when they all were seated,
A service like a drum
Kept beating, beating, till I thought
My mind was going numb.

And then I heard them lift a box,
And creak across my soul
With those same boots of lead, again.
Then space began to toll

As all the heavens were a bell,
And Being but an ear,
And I and silence some strange race,
Wrecked, solitary, here.

Red of the Dawn!
Screams of a babe in the red-hot palms of a Moloch of Tyre,
Man with his brotherless dinner on man in the tropical wood,
Priests in the name of the Lord passing souls through fire to the fire,
Head-hunters and boats of Dahomey that float upon human blood!


Red of the Dawn!
Godless fury of peoples, and Christless frolic of kings,
And the bolt of war dashing down upon cities and blazing farms,
For Babylon was a child newborn, and Rome was a babe in arms,
And London and Paris and all the rest are as yet but in leading strings.


Dawn not Day,
While scandal is mouthing a bloodless name at her cannibal feast,
And rake-ruined bodies and souls go down in a common wreck,
And the Press of a thousand cities is prized for it smells of the beast,

I.

The flower that she gave to me
    Has withered now and died--
But yet with fond fidelity
    Its faded leaves abide.


II.

The petals that so fragrant then
    She wore upon her breast--
Still clinging to the lifeless stem,
    With miser care possessed.


III.

As when in sweetest purity
    It shed its perfume rare,
A symbol dear 'twill ever be
    Of one divinely fair!


IV.

Plucked by the cruel hand of Death
    In beauty's youthful bloom--
She perished with his chilling breath,
    And withered in the tomb.


V.

But I will cherish ever thus
    The token that she gave
When sun-lit skies were over us,
    Unclouded by the grave!

Nightingales warbled without,
Within was weeping for thee;
Shadows of three dead men
Walk’d in the walks with me,
Shadows of three dead men, and thou wast one of the three.

Nightingales sang in his woods,
The Master was far away;
Nightingales warbled and sang
Of a passion that lasts but a day;
Still in the house in his coffin the Prince of courtesy lay.

Two dead men have I known
In courtesy like to thee;
Two dead men have I loved
With a love that ever will be;
Three dead men have I loved, and thou art last of the three.

God with a Roll of Honour in His hand
Sits welcoming the heroes who have died,
While sorrowless angels ranked on either side
Stand easy in Elysium's meadow-land.
Then you come shyly through the garden gate,
Wearing a blood-soaked bandage on your head;
And God says something kind because you're dead,
And homesick, discontented with your fate.

If I were there we'd snowball Death with skulls;
Or ride away to hunt in Devil's Wood
With ghosts of puppies that we walked of old.
But you're alone; and solitude annuls
Our earthly jokes; and strangely wise and good
You roam forlorn along the streets of gold.

He had offices in Sydney, not so many years ago,
And his shingle bore the legend `Peter Anderson and Co.'
But his real name was Careless, as the fellows understood,
And his relatives decided that he wasn't any good.
'Twas their gentle tongues that blasted any `character' he had,
He was fond of beer and leisure, and the Co. was just as bad.
It was limited in number to a unit, was the Co.
'Twas a bosom chum of Peter and his Christian name was Joe.

'Tis a class of men belonging to these soul-forsaken years:
Third-rate canvassers, collectors, journalists and auctioneers.
They are never very shabby, they are never very spruce,
Going cheerfully and carelessly and smoothly to the deuce.
Some are wanderers by profession, `turning up' and gone as soon,
Travelling second-class, ...

    Like the herald hope of a fairer clime,
The brightest link in the chain of time,
The youngest and loveliest child of day,
I mingle and soften each glowing ray;
Weaving together a tissue bright
Of the beams of day and the gems of night.--
I pitch my tent in the glowing west,
And receive the sun as he sinks to rest;
He flings in my lap his ruby crown,
And lays at my feet his glory down;
But ere his burning eyelids close,
His farewell glance the day-king throws
On Nature's face--till the twilight shrouds
The monarch's brow in a veil of clouds--
Oh then, by the light of mine own fair star,
I unyoke the steeds from his beamy car.
Away they start from the fiery rein,
With flashing hoofs, and flying mane,
Like meteors speeding on the wind,
They lea...

I push on through the shaggy wood,
I round the hill: 't is here it stood;
And there, beyond the crumbled walls,
The shining Concord slowly crawls,

Yet seems to make a passing stay,
And gently spreads its lilied bay,
Curbed by this green and reedy shore,
Up toward the ancient homestead's door.

But dumbly sits the shattered house,
And makes no answer: man and mouse
Long since forsook it, and decay
Chokes its deep heart with ashes gray.

On what was once a garden-ground
Dull red-bloomed sorrels now abound;
And boldly whistles the shy quail
Within the vacant pasture's pale.

Ah, strange and savage, where he shines,
The sun seems staring through those pines
That once the vanished home could bless
With intimate, sweet loneliness....

Remember all those renowned generations,
They left their bodies to fatten the wolves,
They left their homesteads to fatten the foxes,
Fled to far countries, or sheltered themselves
In cavern, crevice, or hole,
Defending Ireland's soul.
i(Be still, be still, what can be said?
My father sang that song,
But time amends old wrong,
All that is finished, let it fade.)
Remember all those renowned generations,
Remember all that have sunk in their blood,
Remember all that have died on the scaffold,
Remember all that have fled, that have stood,
Stood, took death like a tune
On an old,tambourine.
i(Be still, be still, what can be said?
My father sang that song,
But time amends old wrong,
And all that's finished, let it fade.)
Fail, and that history tu...

Last eve the sun went down
Like a globe of glorious fire;
Into a sea of gold
I watched the orb expire.
It seemed the fitting end
For the brightness it had shed,
And the cloudlets he had kissed
Long lingered over head.

All vegetation drooped,
As if with pleasure faint:
The lily closed its cup
To guard 'gainst storm and taint.
The cool refreshing dew
Fell softly to the earth,
All lovely things to cheer,
And call more beauties forth.

And as I sat and thought
On Nature's wond'rous plan,
I felt with some regret,
How small a thing is man.
However bright he be,
His efforts are confined,
Yet maybe, if he will,
Leave some rich fruits behind.


The sun that kissed the flowers,
And made the earth look gay...

The Play is over. While the light
Yet lingers in the darkening hall,
I come to say a last Good-night
Before the final Exeunt all.

We gathered once, a joyous throng:
The jovial toasts went gayly round;
With jest, and laugh, and shout, and song,
We made the floors and walls resound.

We come with feeble steps and slow,
A little band of four or five,
Left from the wrecks of long ago,
Still pleased to find ourselves alive.

Alive! How living, too, are they
Whose memories it is ours to share!
Spread the long table's full array, -
There sits a ghost in every chair!

One breathing form no more, alas!
Amid our slender group we see;
With him we still remained "The Class," -
Without his presence what are we?

The hand...

A man came slowly from the setting sun,
To Emer, raddling raiment in her dun,
And said, "I am that swineherd whom you bid
Go watch the road between the wood and tide,
But now I have no need to watch it more."
Then Emer cast the web upon the floor,
And raising arms all raddled with the dye,
Parted her lips with a loud sudden cry.
That swineherd stared upon her face and said,
"No man alive, no man among the dead,
Has won the gold his cars of battle bring."
"But if your master comes home triumphing
Why must you blench and shake from foot to crown?"
Thereon he shook the more and cast him down
Upon the web-heaped floor, and cried his word:
"With him is one sweet-throated like a bird."
"You dare me to my face," and thereupon
She smote with raddled fist, and whe...

Here when the cloudless April days begin,
And the quaint crows flock thicker day by day,
Filling the forests with a pleasant din,
And the soiled snow creeps secretly away,
Comes the small busy sparrow, primed with glee,
First preacher in the naked wilderness,
Piping an end to all the long distress
From every fence and every leafless tree.

Now with soft slight and viewless artifice
Winter's iron work is wondrously undone;
In all the little hollows cored with ice
The clear brown pools stand simmering in the sun,
Frail lucid worlds, upon whose tremulous floors
All day the wandering water-bugs at will,
Shy mariners whose oars are never still,
Voyage and dream about the heightening shores.

The bluebird, peeping from the gnarlèd thorn,
Prattles upon...

In the greenest of our valleys
By good angels tenanted,
Once a fair and stately palace
Radiant palace reared its head.
In the monarch Thought's dominion
It stood there!
Never seraph spread a pinion
Over fabric half so fair!

Banners yellow, glorious, golden,
On its roof did float and flow,
(This all this was in the olden
Time long ago),
And every gentle air that dallied,
In that sweet day,
Along the ramparts plumed and pallid,
A winged odor went away.

Wanderers in that happy valley,
Through two luminous windows, saw
Spirits moving musically,
To a lute's well-tunëd law,
Bound about a throne where, sitting
(Porphyrogene!)
In state his glory well befitting,
The ruler of the realm was seen.

And all with pear...

The hoar-frost hisses 'neath the feet,
And the worm-fence's straggling length,
Smote by the morning's slanted strength,
Sparkles one rib of virgin sleet.

To withered fields the crisp breeze talks,
And silently and sadly lifts
The bronz'd leaves from the beech and drifts
Them wadded down the woodland walks.

Reluctantly and one by one
The worthless leaves sift slowly down,
And thro' the mournful vistas blown
Drop rustling, and their rest is won.

Where stands the brook beneath its fall,
Thin-scaled with ice the pool is bound,
And on the pebbles scattered 'round
The ooze is frozen; one and all

White as rare crystals shining fair.
There stirs no life: the faded wood
Mourns sighing, and the solitude
Seems shaken with a mighty c...