Death

Wild wild wind, wilt thou never cease thy sighing?
    Dark dark night, wilt thou never wear away?
Cold cold church, in thy death sleep lying,
    The Lent is past, thy Passion here, but not thine Easter-day.

Peace, faint heart, though the night be dark and sighing;
    Rest, fair corpse, where thy Lord himself hath lain.
Weep, dear Lord, above thy bride low lying;
    Thy tears shall wake her frozen limbs to life and health again.

Eversley, 1848.

I.

Masks

Death rides black-masked to-night; and through the land
Madness beside him brandishes a torch.
The peaceful farmhouse with its vine-wreathed porch
Lies in their way. Death lifts a bony hand
And knocks, and Madness makes a wild demand
Of fierce Defiance: then the night's deep arch
Reverberates, and under beech and latch
A dead face stares; shot where one took his stand.
Then down the night wild hoofs; the darkness beats;
And like a torrent through the startled town
Destruction sweeps; high overhead a flame;
And Violence that shoots amid the streets.
A piercing whistle: one who gallops down:
And Death and Madness go the way they came.

II.

The Raid

Rain and black night. Beneath the covered bridge
The rushing F...

Two children in two neighbor villages
Playing mad pranks along the heathy leas;
Two strangers meeting at a festival;
Two lovers whispering by an orchard wall:
Two lives bound fast in one with golden ease;
Two graves grass-green beside a gray church-tower,
Wash’d with still rains and daisy-blossomed;
Two children in one hamlet born and bred:
So runs the round of life from hour to hour.

Come hither all sweet Maidens soberly
Down looking aye, and with a chasten'd light
Hid in the fringes of your eyelids white,
And meekly let your fair hands joined be,
As if so gentle that ye could not see,
Untouch'd, a victim of your beauty bright,
Sinking away to his young spirit's night,
Sinking bewilder'd 'mid the dreary sea.
'Tis young Leander toiling to his death.
Nigh swooning he doth purse his weary lips
For Hero's cheek, and smiles against her smile.
O horrid dream! see how his body dips
Dead-heavy; arms and shoulders gleam awhile;
He's gone; up bubbles all his amorous breath!

I

THE RIVER

Still glides the stream, slow drops the boat
Under the rustling poplars’ shade;
Silent the swans beside us float
None speaks, none heeds, ah, turn thy head.

Let those arch eyes now softly shine,
That mocking mouth grow sweetly bland:
Ah, let them rest, those eyes, on mine;
On mine let rest that lovely hand.

My pent-up tears oppress my brain,
My heart is swoln with love unsaid:
Ah, let me weep, and tell my pain,
And on thy shoulder rest my head.

Before I die, before the soul,
Which now is mine, must re-attain
Immunity from my control,
And wander round the world again:

Before this teas’d o’erlabour’d heart
For ever leaves its vain employ,
Dead to its deep habitual smart,
And dead to hopes o...

Who cometh from fields of the south
With raiment of weeping and woe,
And a cry of the heart in her mouth,
And a step that is muffled and slow?

Her paths are the paths of the sun;
Her house is a beautiful light;
But she boweth her head, and is one
With the daughters of dolour and night.

She is fairer than flowers of love;
She is fiercer than wind-driven flame;
And God from His thunders above
Hath smitten the soul of her shame.

She saith to the bloody one curst
With the fever of evil, she saith
“My sorrow shall strangle thee first
With an agony wilder than death!

“My sorrow shall hack at thy life!
Thou shalt wrestle with wraiths of thy sin,
And sleep on a pillow of strife
With demons without and within!”

She whis...

    I have loved to-night; from love's last bordering steep
    I have fallen at last with joy and forgotten the shore;
    I have known my love to-night as never before,
    I have flung myself in the deep, and drawn from the deep,
    And kissed her lightly, and left my beloved to sleep.
    And now I sit in the night and my heart is still:
    Strong and secure; there is nothing that's left to will,
    There is nothing to win but only a thing to keep.

    And I look to-night, completed and not afraid,
    Into the windy dark where shines no light;
    And care not at all though the darkness never should fade,
    Nor fear that death should suddenly come to-night.
    Knowing my last would be surely my bravest breath,
    I am happy to-night: I have laughed to-night...

Leagues north, as fly the gull and auk,
Point Judith watches with eye of hawk;
Leagues south, thy beacon flames, Montauk!

Lonely and wind-shorn, wood-forsaken,
With never a tree for Spring to waken,
For tryst of lovers or farewells taken,

Circled by waters that never freeze,
Beaten by billow and swept by breeze,
Lieth the island of Manisees,

Set at the mouth of the Sound to hold
The coast lights up on its turret old,
Yellow with moss and sea-fog mould.

Dreary the land when gust and sleet
At its doors and windows howl and beat,
And Winter laughs at its fires of peat!

But in summer time, when pool and pond,
Held in the laps of valleys fond,
Are blue as the glimpses of sea beyond;

When the hills are sweet with the bri...

The lady lay in her bed,
Her couch so warm and soft,
But her sleep was restless and broken still;
For turning often and oft
From side to side, she mutter'd and moan'd,
And toss'd her arms aloft.

At last she startled up,
And gazed on the vacant air,
With a look of awe, as if she saw
Some dreadful phantom there -
And then in the pillow she buried her face
From visions ill to bear.

The very curtain shook,
Her terror was so extreme;
And the light that fell on the broider'd quilt
Kept a tremulous gleam;
And her voice was hollow, and shook as she cried: -
"Oh me! that awful dream"!

"That weary, weary walk,
In the churchyard's dismal ground!
And those horrible things, with shady wings,
That came and flitted round, -
Dea...

THE CHORUS

Well hath he done who hath seiz’d happiness.
For little do the all-containing Hours,
Though opulent, freely give.
Who, weighing that life well
Fortune presents unpray’d,
Declines her ministry, and carves his own:
And, justice not infring’d,
Makes his own welfare his unswerv’d-from law.

He does well too, who keeps that clue the mild
Birth-Goddess and the austere Fates first gave.
For from the clay when these
Bring him, a weeping child,
First to the light, and mark
A country for him, kinsfolk, and a home,
Unguided he remains,
Till the Fates come again, alone, with death.

In little companies,
And, our own place once left,
Ignorant where to stand, or whom to avoid,
By city and household group’d, we live: and many sh...

Under this stone lies Dick and Dolly.
Doll dying first, Dick grew melancholy;
For Dick without Doll thought living a folly.

Dick lost in Doll a wife tender and dear:
But Dick lost by Doll twelve hundred a-year;
A loss that Dick thought no mortal could bear.

Dick sigh'd for his Doll, and his mournful arms cross'd;
Thought much of his Doll, and the jointure he lost;
The first vex'd him much, the other vex'd most.

Thus loaded with grief, Dick sigh'd and he cried:
To live without both full three days he tried;
But liked neither loss, and so quietly died.

Dick left a pattern few will copy after:
Then, reader, pray shed some tears of salt water;
For so sad a tale is no subject of laughter.

Meath smiles for the jointure, though gotten so late...

True as the church clock hand the hour pursues
He plods about his toils and reads the news,
And at the blacksmith's shop his hour will stand
To talk of "Lunun" as a foreign land.
For from his cottage door in peace or strife
He neer went fifty miles in all his life.
His knowledge with old notions still combined
Is twenty years behind the march of mind.
He views new knowledge with suspicious eyes
And thinks it blasphemy to be so wise.
On steam's almighty tales he wondering looks
As witchcraft gleaned from old blackletter books.
Life gave him comfort but denied him wealth,
He toils in quiet and enjoys his health,
He smokes a pipe at night and drinks his beer
And runs no scores on tavern screens to clear.
He goes to market all the year about
And keeps one hou...

Psyche moans, in deep-sunk, darksome prison,
For redemption; ah! for light she aches;
Fears, hopes, after every noise doth listen--
Whether Fate her bars of iron breaks.

Bound are Psyche's pinions--airy, soaring;
Yet high-hearted is she, groaning low;
Knows that under clouds whence rain is pouring
Sprouts the palm that crowns the victor's brow;

Knows among the thorns the rose yet reigneth;
Golden flowers spring from the desert grave
She her garland through denial gaineth,
And her strength is steeled by winds that rave.

'Tis through lack that she her blisses buyeth;
Sorrow's dream comes true by longing long;
Lest light break the sleep wherein she lieth,
Round her tree of life the shadows throng.

Psyche's wail is but a fluted sadness

All that's beautiful in woman,
    All we in her nature love,
All that's good in all that's human,
    Passed this gate to courts above.

THE BIRDS OF KILLINGWORTH

It was the season, when through all the land
    The merle and mavis build, and building sing
Those lovely lyrics, written by His hand,
    Whom Saxon Caedmon calls the Blitheheart King;
When on the boughs the purple buds expand,
    The banners of the vanguard of the Spring,
And rivulets, rejoicing, rush and leap,
And wave their fluttering signals from the steep.

The robin and the bluebird, piping loud,
    Filled all the blossoming orchards with their glee;
The sparrows chirped as if they still were proud
    Their race in Holy Writ should mentioned be;
And hungry crows assembled in a crowd,
    Clamored their piteous prayer incessantly,
Knowing who hears the ravens cry, and said:
"Give us, O Lord, this day our daily bre...

Dead love, by treason slain, lies stark,
White as a dead stark-stricken dove:
None that pass by him pause to mark
Dead love.

His heart, that strained and yearned and strove
As toward the sundawn strives the lark,
Is cold as all the old joy thereof.

Dead men, re-risen from dust, may hark
When rings the trumpet blown above:
It will not raise from out the dark
Dead love.

They know the time to go!
The fairy clocks strike their inaudible hour
In field and woodland, and each punctual flower
Bows at the signal an obedient head
And hastes to bed.

The pale Anemone
Glides on her way with scarcely a good-night;
The Violets tie their purple nightcaps tight;
Hand clasped in hand, the dancing Columbines,
In blithesome lines,

Drop their last courtesies,
Flit from the scene, and couch them for their rest;
The Meadow Lily folds her scarlet vest
And hides it 'neath the Grasses' lengthening green;
Fair and serene,

Her sister Lily floats
On the blue pond, and raises golden eyes
To court the golden splendor of the skies,--
The sudden signal comes, and down she goes
To find repose,

In the cool depths b...

Dirge the sorrows by time made dim:
    Seas are sullen in rain and mist.
Regret the woes that behind us swim:
    Sullen's the north and grey the east.

Black boats speck the horizon's rim:
    The north is heavy and grey the east.
They plash to shore in unison grim:
    The breakers roar through rain and mist.

Ah! the ravening Dane of old!
    Joys are born of time and sorrow.
He was beautiful, cruel and bold:
    Death yesterday is life to-morrow.

The slain lie stark on bented mounds:
    Winds are calling in rain and mist.
There's blood and smoke and wide red wounds,
    And black boats make to north and east.

Through murky weltering seas they row:
    Dirge the eyes their deed...