Death

Summer's last sun nigh unto setting shines
Through yon columnar pines,
And on the deepening shadows of the lawn
Its golden lines are drawn.

Dreaming of long gone summer days like this,
Feeling the wind's soft kiss,
Grateful and glad that failing ear and sight
Have still their old delight,

I sit alone, and watch the warm, sweet day
Lapse tenderly away;
And, wistful, with a feeling of forecast,
I ask, "Is this the last?

"Will nevermore for me the seasons run
Their round, and will the sun
Of ardent summers yet to come forget
For me to rise and set?"

Thou shouldst be here, or I should be with thee
Wherever thou mayst be,
Lips mute, hands clasped, in silences of speech
Each answering unto each.

For this still hour, ...

TORQUEMADA

In the heroic days when Ferdinand
And Isabella ruled the Spanish land,
And Torquemada, with his subtle brain,
Ruled them, as Grand Inquisitor of Spain,
In a great castle near Valladolid,
Moated and high and by fair woodlands hid,
There dwelt as from the chronicles we learn,
An old Hidalgo proud and taciturn,
Whose name has perished, with his towers of stone,
And all his actions save this one alone;
This one, so terrible, perhaps 't were best
If it, too, were forgotten with the rest;
Unless, perchance, our eyes can see therein
The martyrdom triumphant o'er the sin;
A double picture, with its gloom and glow,
The splendor overhead, the death below.

This sombre man counted each day as lost
On which his feet no sacred threshold cros...

Let be at last; give over words and sighing,
Vainly were all things said:
Better at last to find a place for lying,
Only dead.

Silence were best, with songs and sighing over;
Now be the music mute;
Now let the dead, red leaves of autumn cover
A vain lute.

Silence is best: for ever and for ever,
We will go down and sleep,
Somewhere beyond her ken, where she need never
Come to weep.

Let be at last: colder she grows and colder;
Sleep and the night were best;
Lying at last where we cannot behold her,
We may rest.

The quiet graves of our country's braves
    Through thirty Junes and Decembers
Have solemnly lain under sun and rain,
    And yet the Nation remembers.

The marching of feet and the flags on the street
    Told once again this morning,
In the voice of the drum how the day had come
    For those lowly beds' adorning.

Then swiftly back on Time's worn track
    His three decades seemed driven,
And with startled eyes I saw arise,
    From graves by fancy riven,

The Gray and Blue in a grand review.
    Oh! vast were the hosts they numbered,
As they wheeled and swayed in a dress parade
    O'er the graves where they long had slumbered.

The colours were not, as when they fought,
    Ranked one against the other,
But a mingled hue of ...

Were you but lying cold and dead,
And lights were paling out of the West,
You would come hither, and bend your head,
And I would lay my head on your breast;
And you would murmur tender words,
Forgiving me, because you were dead:
Nor would you rise and hasten away,
Though you have the will of the wild birds,
But know your hair was bound and wound
About the stars and moon and sun:
O would beloved that you lay
Under the dock-leaves in the ground,
While lights were paling one by one.

Stay, little cheerful Robin! stay,
And at my casement sing,
Though it should prove a farewell lay
And this our parting spring.

Though I, alas! may ne'er enjoy
The promise in thy song;
A charm, 'that' thought can not destroy,
Doth to thy strain belong.

Methinks that in my dying hour
Thy song would still be dear,
And with a more than earthly power
My passing Spirit cheer.

Then, little Bird, this boon confer,
Come, and my requiem sing,
Nor fail to be the harbinger
Of everlasting Spring.

Be not proud, but now incline
Your soft ear to discipline;
You have changes in your life,
Sometimes peace, and sometimes strife;
You have ebbs of face and flows,
As your health or comes or goes;
You have hopes, and doubts, and fears,
Numberless as are your hairs;
You have pulses that do beat
High, and passions less of heat;
You are young, but must be old:
And, to these, ye must be told,
Time, ere long, will come and plow
Loathed furrows in your brow:
And the dimness of your eye
Will no other thing imply,
But you must die
As well as I.

I beg your pity, You, my only love;
My fallen heart lies in a deep abyss,
A universe of leaden heaviness,
Where cursing terrors swim the night above!

For six months stands a sun with heatless beams,
The other months are spent in total night;
It is a polar land to human sight
No greenery, no trees, no running streams!

But there is not a horror to surpass
The cruelty of that blank sun's cold glass,
And that long night, that Chaos come again!

I'm jealous of the meanest of the beasts
Who plunge themselves into a stupid sleep -
So slowly does the time unwind its skein!

Her younger sister, that Speranza hight.

England puts on her purple, and pale, pale
    With too much light, the primrose doth but wait
To meet the hyacinth; then bower and dale
    Shall lose her and each fairy woodland mate.
April forgets them, for their utmost sum
Of gift was silent, and the birds are come.

The world is stirring, many voices blend,
    The English are at work in field and way;
All the good finches on their wives attend,
    And emmets their new towns lay out in clay;
Only the cuckoo-bird only doth say
Her beautiful name, and float at large all day.

Everywhere ring sweet clamours, chirrupping,
    Chirping, that comes before the grasshopper;
The wide woods, flurried with the pulse of spring,
    Shake out their wrink...

It was bound fast here you saw him, and wondered to see him,
Our fair-haired Donough, and he after being condemned;
There was a little white cap on him in place of a hat,
And a hempen rope in the place of a neck-cloth.

I am after walking here all through the night,
Like a young lamb in a great flock of sheep;
My breast open, my hair loosened out,
And how did I find my brother but stretched before me!

The first place I cried my fill was at the top of the lake;
The second place was at the foot of the gallows;
The third place was at the head of your dead body
Among the Gall, and my own head as if cut in two.

If you were with me in the place you had a right to be,
Down in Sligo or down in Ballinrobe,
It is the gallows would be broken, it is the rope would ...

(Westminster, October 12, 1892)

Great man of song, whose glorious laurelled head
    Within the lap of death sleeps well at last,
Down the dark road, seeking the deathless dead,
    Thy faithful, fearless, shining soul hath passed.

Fame blows his silver trumpet o'er thy sleep,
    And Love stands broken by thy lonely lyre;
So pure the fire God gave this clay to keep,
    The clay must still seem holy for the fire.

Poor dupes of sense, we deem the close-shut eye,
    So faithful servant of his golden tongue,
Still holds the hoarded lights of earth and sky,
    We deem the mouth still full of sleeping song.

We mourn as though the great good song he gave
    Passed with the singer's own informing breath:
Ah, golden book, for thee there is no gr...

Love me a little, Lord, or let me go,
I am so weary walking to and fro
Through all your lonely halls that were so sweet
Did they but echo to your coming feet.

When by the flowered scrolls of lace-like stone
Our women's windows - I am left alone,
Across the yellow Desert, looking forth,
I see the purple hills towards the north.

Behind those jagged Mountains' lilac crest
Once lay the captive bird's small rifled nest.
There was my brother slain, my sister bound;
His blood, her tears, drunk by the thirsty ground.

Then, while the burning village smoked on high,
And desecrated all the peaceful sky,
They took us captive, us, born frank and free,
On fleet, strong camels through the sandy sea.

Yet, when we rested, night-times, on the sand
B...

When from our mortal vision
    Grown men and women go
To sail strange fields Elysian
    And know what spirits know,
I think of them as tourists,
    In some sun-gilded clime,
'Mong happy sights and dear delights
    We all shall find, in time.

But when a child goes yonder
    And leaves its mother here,
Its little feet must wander,
    It seems to me, in fear.
What paths of Eden beauty,
    What scenes of peace and rest,
Can bring content to one who went
    Forth from a mother's breast?

In palace gardens, lonely,
    A little child will roam
And weep for pleasures only
    Found in its humble home.
It is not won by splendour,
    Nor bought by costly toys;
To hide from harm on mother's arm
    Makes all its sum...

Over two shadowless waters, adrift as a pinnace in peril,
Hangs as in heavy suspense, charged with irresolute light,
Softly the soul of the sunset upholden awhile on the sterile
Waves and wastes of the land, half repossessed by the night.
Inland glimmer the shallows asleep and afar in the breathless
Twilight: yonder the depths darken afar and asleep.
Slowly the semblance of death out of heaven descends on the deathless
Waters: hardly the light lives on the face of the deep
Hardly, but here for awhile. All over the grey soft shallow
Hover the colours and clouds of the twilight, void of a star.
As a bird unfledged is the broad-winged night, whose winglets are callow
Yet, but soon with their plumes will she cover her brood from afar,
Cover the brood of her worlds that cumber the ski...

All grim and soiled and brown with tan,
I saw a Strong One, in his wrath,
Smiting the godless shrines of man
Along his path.
The Church, beneath her trembling dome,
Essayed in vain her ghostly charm:
Wealth shook within his gilded home
With strange alarm.
Fraud from his secret chambers fled
Before the sunlight bursting in:
Sloth drew her pillow o'er her head
To drown the din.
"Spare," Art implored, "yon holy pile;
That grand, old, time-worn turret spare;"
Meek Reverence, kneeling in the aisle,
Cried out, "Forbear!"
Gray-bearded Use, who, deaf and blind,
Groped for his old accustomed stone,
Leaned on his staff, and wept to find
His seat o'erthrown.
Young Romance raised his dreamy eyes,
O'erhung with paly locks of gold,
"Why smite,"...

    As Mailie, an' her lambs thegither,
    Were ae day nibbling on the tether,
    Upon her cloot she coost a hitch,
    An' owre she warsl'd in the ditch:
    There, groaning, dying, she did lie,
    When Hughoc[1] he cam doytin by.
    Wi' glowing e'en an' lifted han's,
    Poor Hughoc like a statue stan's;
    He saw her days were near-hand ended,
    But, waes my heart! he could na mend it!
    He gaped wide but naething spak,
    At length poor Mailie silence brak.

        "O thou, whose lamentable face
    Appears to mourn my woefu' case!
    My dying words attentive hear,
    An' bear them to my master dear.

        "Tell him, if e'er again he keep
    As muckle gear as buy a sheep,
    O bid him never tie them mair

Fare thee well, fare thee well, for thy journey is o'er,
And the place that has known thee, shall know thee no more;
The eye that has seen thee, shall seek thee in vain,
And thy kindness will soothe us, oh, never again!
Yet we cannot forget thee, for, shrined in the heart,
Is the memory of virtues that will not depart,
Generosity, candor, integrity, worth,
An assemblage of all that is lovely on earth.
Thou wert guardian, guide, and instructor to me,
And I lose, with thy children, a father in thee.
Thy children, alas! they are orphans indeed.
Who now shall direct them in seasons of need?
The smile that has blest them will bless them no more,
And approval and counsel forever are o'er.
But the angel of mercy recorded thy prayers,
And in gloom and in sunshine thy