Death

All silent is the room,
There is no stir of breath,
Save mine, as in the gloom
I sit alone with Death.

Short life it had, the sweet,
Small babe here lying dead,
With tapers at its feet
And tapers at its head.

Dear little hands, too frail
Their grasp on life to hold;
Dear little mouth so pale,
So solemn, and so cold;

Small feet that nevermore
About the house shall run;
Thy little life is o’er!
Thy little journey done!

Sweet infant, dead too soon,
Thou shalt no more behold
The face of sun or moon,
Or starlight clear and cold;

Nor know, where thou art gone,
The mournfulness and mirth
We know who dwell upon
This sad, glad, mad, old earth.

The foolish hopes and fond
That cheat us to th...

Tread lightly, she is near
Under the snow,
Speak gently, she can hear
The daisies grow.

All her bright golden hair
Tarnished with rust,
She that was young and fair
Fallen to dust.

Lily-like, white as snow,
She hardly knew
She was a woman, so
Sweetly she grew.

Coffin-board, heavy stone,
Lie on her breast,
I vex my heart alone,
She is at rest.

Peace, Peace, she cannot hear
Lyre or sonnet,
All my life's buried here,
Heap earth upon it.

AVIGNON

Storm and strife and stress,
Lost in a wilderness,
Groping to find a way,
Forth to the haunts of day

Sudden a vista peeps,
Out of the tangled deeps,
Only a point--the ray
But at the end is day.

Dark is the dawn and chill,
Daylight is on the hill,
Night is the flitting breath,
Day rides the hills of death.

Kneel down, fair Love, and fill thyself with tears,
Girdle thyself with sighing for a girth
Upon the sides of mirth,
Cover thy lips and eyelids, let thine ears
Be filled with rumour of people sorrowing;
Make thee soft raiment out of woven sighs
Upon the flesh to cleave,
Set pains therein and many a grievous thing,
And many sorrows after each his wise
For armlet and for gorget and for sleeve.

O Love’s lute heard about the lands of death,
Left hanged upon the trees that were therein;
O Love and Time and Sin,
Three singing mouths that mourn now underbreath,
Three lovers, each one evil spoken of;
O smitten lips wherethrough this voice of mine
Came softer with her praise;
Abide a little for our lady’s love.
The kisses of her mouth were more than win...

When I shall go
Into the narrow home that leaves
No room for wringing of the hands and hair,
And feel the pressing of the walls which bear
The heavy sod upon my heart that grieves,
(As the weird earth rolls on),
Then I shall know
What is the power of destiny. But still,
Still while my life, however sad, be mine,
I war with memory, striving to divine
Phantom to-morrows, to outrun the past;
For yet the tears of final, absolute ill
And ruinous knowledge of my fate I shun.
Even as the frail, instinctive weed
Tries, through unending shade, to reach at last
A shining, mellowing, rapture-giving sun;
So in the deed of breathing joy's warm breath,
Fain to succeed,
I, too, in colorless longings, hope till death.

1

The dew was full of sun that morn
(Oh I heard the doves in the ladyricks coop!)
As he crossed the meadows beyond the corn,
Watching his falcon in the blue.
How could he hear my song so far,
The song of the blood where the pulses are!
Straight through the fields he came to me,
(Oh I saw his soul as I saw the dew!)
But I hid my joy that he might not see,
I hid it deep within my breast,
As the starling hides in the maize her nest.


2

Back through the corn he turned again,
(Oh little he cared where his falcon flew!)
And my heart lay still in the hand of pain,
As in winter's hand the rivers do.
How could he hear its secret cry,
The cry of the dove when the cummers die!
Thrice in the maize he turned to me,...

Always suddenly they are gone -
    The friends we trusted and held secure -
Suddenly we are gazing on,
    Not a smiling face, but the marble-pure
Dead mask of a face that nevermore
    To a smile of ours will make reply -
    The lips close-locked as the eyelids are -
Gone - swift as the flash of the molten ore
    A meteor pours through a midnight sky,
    Leaving it blind of a single star.

Tell us, O Death, Remorseless Might!
    What is this old, unescapable ire
You wreak on us? - from the birth of light
    Till the world be charred to a core of fire!
We do no evil thing to you -
    We seek to evade you - that is all -
    That is your will - you will not be known
Of men. What, then, would you have us do? -
    Cringe, and wait ti...

I Dreamed that one had died in a strange place
Near no accustomed hand,
And they had nailed the boards above her face,
The peasants of that land,
Wondering to lay her in that solitude,
And raised above her mound
A cross they had made out of two bits of wood,
And planted cypress round;
And left her to the indifferent stars above
Until I carved these words:
I(She was more beautiful than thy first love,)
I(But now lies under boards.)

I

Can death be sleep, when life is but a dream,
And scenes of bliss pass as a phantom by?
The transient pleasures as a vision seem,
And yet we think the greatest pain's to die.

II

How strange it is that man on earth should roam,
And lead a life of woe, but not forsake
His rugged path; nor dare he view alone
His future doom which is but to awake.

        Down, you mongrel, Death!
            Back into your kennel!
        I have stolen breath
            In a stalk of fennel!
        You shall scratch and you shall whine
            Many a night, and you shall worry
            Many a bone, before you bury
        One sweet bone of mine!

        When shall I be dead?
            When my flesh is withered,
        And above my head
            Yellow pollen gathered
        All the empty afternoon?
            When sweet lovers pause and wonder
            Who am I that lie thereunder,
        Hidden from the moon?

        This my personal death?--
            That lungs be failing
        To inhale the breath
            Others are exhaling?
        This my subtle spirit...

I

How shall the burial rite be read?
The solemn song be sung?
The requiem for the loveliest dead,
That ever died so young?


II

Her friends are gazing on her,
And on her gaudy bier,
And weep! oh! to dishonor
Dead beauty with a tear!


III

They loved her for her wealth
And they hated her for her pride
But she grew in feeble health,
And they love her that she died.


IV

They tell me (while they speak
Of her "costly broider'd pall")
That my voice is growing weak
That I should not sing at all


V

Or that my tone should be
Tun'd to such solemn song
So mournfully so mournfully,
That the dead may feel no wrong.


VI

But she is gone a...

Be not dismayed, be not dismayed when death
Sets its white seal upon some worshipped face.
Poor human nature for a little space
Must suffer anguish, when that last drawn breath
Leaves such long silence; but let not thy faith
    Fail for a moment in God's boundless grace.
    But know, oh know, He has prepared a place
Fairer for our dear dead than worlds beneath,
Yet not beneath; for those entrancing spheres
    Surround our earth as seas a barren isle.
Ours is the region of eternal fears;
    Theirs is the region where God's radiant smile
Shines outward from the centre, and gives hope
Even to those who in the shadows grope.
They are not far from us.    At first though long
    And lone may seem the paths that intervene,
    If ever on the staff of prayer we l...

O Wholesome Death, thy sombre funeral-car
    Looms ever dimly on the lengthening way
    Of life; while, lengthening still, in sad array,
My deeds in long procession go, that are
As mourners of the man they helped to mar.
    I see it all in dreams, such as waylay
    The wandering fancy when the solid day
Has fallen in smoldering ruins, and night's star,
Aloft there, with its steady point of light
    Mastering the eye, has wrapped the brain in sleep.
Ah, when I die, and planets take their flight
    Above my grave, still let my spirit keep
Sometimes its vigil of divine remorse,
'Midst pity, praise, or blame heaped o'er my corse!

If days should pass without a written word
    To tell me of thy welfare, and if days
    Should lengthen out to weeks, until the maze
Of questioning fears confused me, and I heard.
    Life-sounds as echoes; and one came and said
    After these weeks of waiting: "He is dead!"

Though the quick sword had found the vital part,
    And the life-blood must mingle with the tears,
    I think that, as the dying soldier hears
The cries of victory, and feels his heart
    Surge with his country's triumph-hour, I could
    Hope bravely on, and feel that God was good.

I could take up my thread of life again
    And weave my pattern though the colors were
    Faded forever. Though I might not dare
Dream often of thee, I should know that when
    Death came t...

One day the dreary old King of Death
Inclined for some sport with the carnal,
So he tied a pack of darts on his back,
And quietly stole from his charnel.

His head was bald of flesh and of hair,
His body was lean and lank,
His joints at each stir made a crack, and the cur
Took a gnaw, by the way, at his shank.

And what did he do with his deadly darts,
This goblin of grisly bone?
He dabbled and spill'd man's blood, and he kill'd
Like a butcher that kills his own.

The first he slaughter'd, it made him laugh,
(For the man was a coffin-maker,)
To think how the mutes, and men in black suits,
Would mourn for an undertaker.

Death saw two Quakers sitting at church,
Quoth he, "We shall not differ."
And he let them alone, like figures of...

'Tis a bleak wild hill, but green and bright
In the summer warmth and the mid-day light;
There's the hum of the bee and the chirp of the wren,
And the dash of the brook from the alder glen;
There's the sound of a bell from the scattered flock,
And the shade of the beech lies cool on the rock,
And fresh from the west is the free wind's breath,
There is nothing here that speaks of death.

Far yonder, where orchards and gardens lie,
And dwellings cluster, 'tis there men die.
They are born, they die, and are buried near,
Where the populous grave-yard lightens the bier;
For strict and close are the ties that bind
In death the children of human-kind;
Yea, stricter and closer than those of life,
'Tis a neighbourhood that knows no strife.
They are noiselessly gat...

I
Here in the self is all that man can know
Of Beauty, all the wonder, all the power,
All the unearthly colour, all the glow,
Here in the self which withers like a flower;
Here in the self which fades as hours pass,
And droops and dies and rots and is forgotten
Sooner, by ages, than the mirroring glass
In which it sees its glory still unrotten.
Here in the flesh, within the flesh, behind,
Swift in the blood and throbbing on the bone,
Beauty herself, the universal mind,
Eternal April wandering alone;
The God, the holy Ghost, the atoning Lord,
Here in the flesh, the never yet explored.

II
What am I, Life? A thing of watery salt
Held in cohesion by unresting cells
Which work they know not why, which never halt,
Myself unwitting where their ma...

Death himself in the rain . . . death himself . . .
Death in the savage sunlight . . . skeletal death . . .
I hear the clack of his feet,
Clearly on stones, softly in dust;
He hurries among the trees
Whirling the leaves, tossing he hands from waves.
Listen! the immortal footsteps beat.
Death himself in the grass, death himself,
Gyrating invisibly in the sun,
Scatters the grass-blades, whips the wind,
Tears at boughs with malignant laughter:
On the long echoing air I hear him run.
Death himself in the dusk, gathering lilacs,
Breaking a white-fleshed bough,
Strewing purple on a cobwebbed lawn,
Dancing, dancing,
The long red sun-rays glancing
On flailing arms, skipping with hideous knees
Cavorting grotesque ecstasies:
I do not see him, but I see th...