Death

I had a guinea golden;
I lost it in the sand,
And though the sum was simple,
And pounds were in the land,
Still had it such a value
Unto my frugal eye,
That when I could not find it
I sat me down to sigh.

I had a crimson robin
Who sang full many a day,
But when the woods were painted
He, too, did fly away.
Time brought me other robins, --
Their ballads were the same, --
Still for my missing troubadour
I kept the 'house at hame.'

I had a star in heaven;
One Pleiad was its name,
And when I was not heeding
It wandered from the same.
And though the skies are crowded,
And all the night ashine,
I do not care about it,
Since none of them are mine.

My story has a moral:
I have a missing friend, --
Ple...

Lie here, without a record of thy worth,
Beneath a covering of the common earth!
It is not from unwillingness to praise,
Or want of love, that here no Stone we raise;
More thou deserv'st; but 'this' man gives to man,
Brother to brother, 'this' is all we can.
Yet they to whom thy virtues made thee dear
Shall find thee through all changes of the year:
This Oak points out thy grave; the silent tree
Will gladly stand a monument of thee.
We grieved for thee, and wished thy end were past;
And willingly have laid thee here at last:
For thou hadst lived till everything that cheers
In thee had yielded to the weight of years;
Extreme old age had wasted thee away,
And left thee but a glimmering of the day;
Thy ears were deaf, and feeble were thy knees,
I saw thee st...

Adieu, Rydalian Laurels! that have grown
And spread as if ye knew that days might come
When ye would shelter in a happy home,
On this fair Mount, a Poet of your own,
One who ne'er ventured for a Delphic crown
To sue the God; but, haunting your green shade
All seasons through, is humbly pleased to braid
Ground-flowers, beneath your guardianship, self-sown.
Farewell! no Minstrels now with harp new-strung
For summer wandering quit their household bowers;
Yet not for this wants Poesy a tongue
To cheer the Itinerant on whom she pours
Her spirit, while he crosses lonely moors,
Or musing sits forsaken halls among.

I loved a little maiden
    In the golden years gone by;
She lived in a mill, as they all do
    (There is doubtless a reason why).
But she faded in the autumn
    When the leaves began to fade,
And the night before she faded,
    These words to me she said:
'Do not forget me, Henry,
    Be noble and brave and true;
But I must not bide, for the world is wide,
    And the sky above is blue.'

So I said farewell to my darling,
    And sailed away and came back;
And the good ship Jane was in port again,
    And I found that they all loved Jack.
But Polly and I were sweethearts,
    As all the neighbours know,
Before I met with the mill-girl
    Twenty years ago.
So I thought I would go and see her,
    But alas, she had faded ...

Sleep, gentle, mysterious healer,
    Come down with thy balm-cup to me!
Come down, O thou mystic revealer
    Of glories the day may not see!
For dark is the cloud that is o'er me,
    And heavy the shadows that fall,
And lone is the pathway before me,
    And far-off the voice that doth call -
        Faintly, yet tenderly ever,
            From over the dark river, call.

Let me bask for an hour in the sun-ray
    That wraps him forever in light;
Awhile tread his flowery pathway
    Through bowers of unfailing delight; -
Again clasp the hands I lost sight of
    In the chill mist that hung o'er the tide,
What time, with the pale, silent boatman,
    I saw him away from me glide -
        Out into the fathomless myst'ry,
            All s...

Then up the orient heights to the zenith that balanced a crescent, -
Up and far up and over, - a warm erubescence liquescent
Rioted roses and rubies; eruptions of opaline gems,
Flung and wide sown, blushed crushed, and crumbled from diadems
Wealth of the kings of the Sylphs; whence, old alchemist, Earth -
Dewed down - by chemistry occult fashions petrified waters of worth. -
Then out of the stain and rash furor, the passionate pulver of stone,
The trembling suffusion that dazzled and awfully shone,
Chamelion-convulsion of color, hilarious ranges of glare -
Like a god who for vengeance ires, nodding battle from every hair,
Fares forth with majesty girdled and clangs with hot heroes for life,
Till the brazen gates boom bursten hells and the walls roar bristling strife, -
Athwart wi...

Out of the body for ever,
Wearily sobbing, “Oh, whither?”
A Soul that hath wasted its chances
Floats on the limitless ether.

Lost in dim, horrible blankness;
Drifting like wind on a sea,
Untraversed and vacant and moaning,
Nor shallow nor shore on the lee!

Helpless, unfriended, forsaken;
Haunted and tracked by the Past,
With fragments of pitiless voices,
And desolate faces aghast!

One saith “It is well that he goeth
Naked and fainting with cold,
Who worshipped his sweet-smelling garments,
Arrayed with the cunning of old!

“Hark! how he crieth, my brothers,
With pain for the glittering things
He saw on the shoulders of Rulers,
And the might in the mouths of the Kings!

“This Soul hath been one of the idlers
W...

Two years ago I was thinking
On the changes that years bring forth;
Now I stand where I then stood drinking
The gust and the salt sea froth;
And the shuddering wave strikes, linking
With the waves subsiding and sinking,
And clots the coast herbage, shrinking,
With the hue of the white cere-cloth.

Is there aught worth losing or keeping?
The bitters or sweets men quaff?
The sowing or the doubtful reaping?
The harvest of grain or chaff?
Or squandering days or heaping,
Or waking seasons or sleeping,
The laughter that dries the weeping,
Or the weeping that drowns the laugh?

For joys wax dim and woes deaden,
We forget the sorrowful biers,
And the garlands glad that have fled in
The merciful march of years;
And the sunny skies, and the...

So rest, for ever rest, O princely Pair!
In your high church, ’mid the still mountain air,
Where horn, and hound, and vassals never come.
Only the blessed Saints are smiling dumb,
From the rich painted windows of the nave,
On aisle, and transept, and your marble grave:
Where thou, young Prince! shalt never more arise
From the fringed mattress where thy Duchess lies,
On autumn-mornings, when the bugle sounds,
And ride across the drawbridge with thy hounds
To hunt the boar in the crisp woods till eve;
And thou, O Princess! shalt no more receive,
Thou and thy ladies, in the hall of state,
The jaded hunters with their bloody freight,
Coming benighted to the castle-gate.
So sleep, for ever sleep, O marble Pair!
Or, if ye wake, let it be then, when fair
On the ...

        Glide soft, ye silver floods,
        And every spring:
        Within the shady woods
        Let no bird sing!
    Nor from the grove a turtle-dove
    Be seen to couple with her love;
But silence on each dale and mountain dwell,
Whilst Willy bids his friend and joy farewell.

        But (of great Thetis' train)
        Ye mermaids fair,
        That on the shores do plain
        Your sea-green hair,
    As ye in trammels knit your locks,
    Weep ye; and so enforce the rocks
In heavy murmurs through the broad shores tell
How Willy bade his friend and joy farewell.

        Cease, cease, ye murd'ring winds,
        To move a wave;
        But if with troubled minds
        You seek his grave;
    Know 'tis as various a...

I thought of you and how you love this beauty,
And walking up the long beach all alone
I heard the waves breaking in measured thunder
As you and I once heard their monotone.

Around me were the echoing dunes, beyond me
The cold and sparkling silver of the sea,
We two will pass through death and ages lengthen
Before you hear that sound again with me.

I.

Small twilight singer
Of dew and mist: thou ghost-gray, gossamer winger
Of dusk's dim glimmer,
How chill thy note sounds; how thy wings of shimmer
Vibrate, soft-sighing,
Meseems, for Summer that is dead or dying.
I stand and listen,
And at thy song the garden-beds, that glisten
With rose and lily,
Seem touched with sadness; and the tuberose chilly,
Breathing around its cold and colorless breath,
Fills the pale evening with wan hints of death.

II.

I see thee quaintly
Beneath the leaf; thy shell-shaped winglets faintly
(As thin as spangle
Of cobwebbed rain) held up at airy angle;
I hear thy tinkle
With faery notes the silvery stillness sprinkle;
Investing wholly
The moonlight with divinest melancholy:
Until, in ...

See wither'd WINTER, bending low his head;
    His ragged locks stiff with the hoary dew;
    His eyes, like frozen lakes, of livid hue;
    His train, a sable cloud, with murky red
Streak'd. - Ah! behold his nitrous breathings shed
    Petrific death! - Lean, wailful Birds pursue,
    On as he sweeps o'er the dun lonely moor,
    Amid the battling blast of all the Winds,
That, while their sleet the climbing Sailor blinds,
    Lash the white surges to the sounding shore.
    So com'st thou, WINTER, finally to doom
The sinking year; and with thy ice-dropt sprays,
    Cypress and yew, engarland her pale tomb,
    Her vanish'd hopes, and aye-departed days.

Long the road,
Till Love came down it!
Dark the life,
Till Love did crown it!
Dark the life,
And long the road,
Till Love came
To share the load!
For the touch
Of Love transfigures
All the road
And all its rigours.
Life and Death,
Love's touch transfigures.
Life and Death
And all that lies
In between,
Love sanctifies.
Once the heavenly spark is lighted,
Once in love two hearts united,
Nevermore
Shall aught that was be
As before.

I was reading a letter of yours to-day,
The date - O a thousand years ago!
The postmark is there - the month was May:
How, in God's name, did I let you go?
What wonderful things for a girl to say!
And to think that I hadn't the sense to know -
What wonderful things for a man to hear!
O still beloved, O still most dear.

"Duty" I called it, and hugged the word
Close to my side, like a shirt of hair;
You laughed, I remember, laughed like a bird,
And somehow I thought that you didn't care.
Duty! - and Love, with her bosom bare!
No wonder you laughed, as we parted there -
Then your letter came with this last good-by -
And I sat splendidly down to die.

Nor Duty, nor Death, would have aught of me:
"He is Love's," they said, "he cannot be ours;"
...

A hunter once in that grove reclined,
    To shun the noon's bright eye,
And oft he wooed the wandering wind,
    To cool his brow with its sigh,
While mute lay even the wild bee's hum,
    Nor breath could stir the aspen's hair,
His song was still "Sweet air, oh come?"
    While Echo answered, "Come, sweet Air!"

But, hark, what sounds from the thicket rise!
    What meaneth that rustling spray?
"'Tis the white-horned doe," the Hunter cries,
    "I have sought since break of day."
Quick o'er the sunny glade he springs,
    The arrow flies from his sounding bow,
"Hilliho-hilliho!" he gayly sings,
    While Echo sighs forth "Hilliho!"

Alas, 'twas not the white-horned doe
    He saw in the rustling grove,
But the bridal veil, as pure as snow...

EZEKIEL XXXVII.


The Spirit of God with resistless control,
Like a sunbeam, illumined the depths of my soul,
And visions prophetical burst on my sight,
As he carried me forth in the power of his might.
Around me I saw in a desolate heap
The relics of those who had slept their death-sleep,
In the midst of the valley, all reckless and bare,
Like the hope of my country, lie withering there,--

"Son of man! can these dry bones, long bleached in decay,
Ever feel in their flesh the warm beams of the day;
Can the spirit of life ever enter again
The perishing heaps that now whiten the plain?"
"Lord, thou knowest alone, who their being first gave:
Thy power may be felt in the depths of the grave;
The hand that created again may impart
The rich tide of f...

Fall, leaves, fall; die, flowers, away;
Lengthen night and shorten day;
Every leaf speaks bliss to me
Fluttering from the autumn tree.

I shall smile when wreaths of snow
Blossom where the rose should grow;
I shall sing when night's decay
Ushers in a drearier day.