Death

I

The eyes of heaven were on her bent,
In a rapture of loving wonderment,
As her song with the nightingale's was blent:
And one yearn'd for a love, and one sigh'd for a soul!

Moonlight and starlight alike seemed cold,
As their silver glanced on her locks of gold;
And the dream on her face was a dream of old,
Whose sorrow no sunrise might smile away.

I read her yearning and weary smile,
As her song rang sadder and sadder the while,
With its weird refrain of a magic isle,
Where some might have rest, but never might she!

She, the darling of Sky and Stream,
She was but as wind, or as wave, or as dream,
To play for a while in life's glory and gleam:
But what would be left at the end of the day?

II

The sun smiles down up...

    All sights and sounds of every year,
All groups and forms, each leaf and gem,
Are thine, O God, nor need I fear
To speak to Thee of them.

    Too great thy heart is to despise;
Thy day girds centuries about;
From things which we count small, thine eyes
See great things looking out.

    Therefore this prayerful song I sing
May come to Thee in ordered words;
Therefore its sweet sounds need not cling
In terror to their chords.

            *            *            *            *            *

    I know that nothing made is lost;
That not a moon hath ever shone,
That not a cloud my eyes hath crost,
But to my soul hath gone.

    That all the dead years garnered lie
In this gem-casket, my dim soul;
And that thy hand m...

A month or twain to live on honeycomb
Is pleasant; but one tires of scented time,
Cold sweet recurrence of accepted rhyme,
And that strong purple under juice and foam
Where the wine’s heart has burst;
Nor feel the latter kisses like the first.

Once yet, this poor one time; I will not pray
Even to change the bitterness of it,
The bitter taste ensuing on the sweet,
To make your tears fall where your soft hair lay
All blurred and heavy in some perfumed wise
Over my face and eyes.

And yet who knows what end the scythèd wheat
Makes of its foolish poppies’ mouths of red?
These were not sown, these are not harvested,
They grow a month and are cast under feet
And none has care thereof,
As none has care of a divided love.

I know each shadow ...

Once more, dear friends, you meet beneath
A clouded sky
Not yet the sword has found its sheath,
And on the sweet spring airs the breath
Of war floats by.

Yet trouble springs not from the ground,
Nor pain from chance;
The Eternal order circles round,
And wave and storm find mete and bound
In Providence.

Full long our feet the flowery ways
Of peace have trod,
Content with creed and garb and phrase:
A harder path in earlier days
Led up to God.

Too cheaply truths, once purchased dear,
Are made our own;
Too long the world has smiled to hear
Our boast of full corn in the ear
By others sown;

To see us stir the martyr fires
Of long ago,
And wrap our satisfied desires
In the singed mantles that our sires
H...

He stands on the kerb
Watching the street.
He's always watching there,
Listening to the beat
Of time in the street,
Listening to the thronging feet,
Laughing at the world that goes
Scowling or laughing by.

He sees Time go by,
An old lonely man,
Crooked and furtive and slow.
He laughs as he sees
Time shambling by
While he stands at his ease,
Until Time smiles wanly back
At his laughing eye.

Greed's great paunch,
Lean Envy's ill looks,
Fond forgetful Love,
He reads them like books:
Whatever their tongue
He reads them like children's books,
Stands staring and laughing there
As all they go by.

O, he laughs as he sees
The fat and the thin,
The simple, the solemn and wise
Nod-nodding by.
H...

When April bends above me
And finds me fast asleep
Dust need not keep the secret
A live heart died to keep.

When April tells the thrushes,
The meadow-larks will know,
And pipe the three words lightly
To all the winds that blow.

Above his roof the swallows,
In notes like far-blown rain,
Will tell the little sparrow
Beside his window-pane.

O sparrow, little sparrow,
When I am fast asleep,
Then tell my love the secret
That I have died to keep.

Quel sempre acerbo ed onorato giorno.

HE RECALLS HER AS HE SAW HER WHEN IN TEARS.


    That ever-painful, ever-honour'd day
So left her living image on my heart
Beyond or lover's wit or poet's art,
That oft to it will doting memory stray.
A gentle pity softening her bright mien,
Her sorrow there so sweet and sad was heard,
Doubt in the gazer's bosom almost stirr'd
Goddess or mortal, which made heaven serene.
Fine gold her hair, her face as sunlit snow,
Her brows and lashes jet, twin stars her eyne,
Whence the young archer oft took fatal aim;
Each loving lip--whence, utterance sweet and low
Her pent grief found--a rose which rare pearls line,
Her tears of crystal and her sighs of flame.

MACGREGOR.


    That ever-hon...

Brooks, for they call’d you so that knew you best,
Old Brooks, who loved so well to mouth my rhymes,
How oft we two have heard St. Mary’s chimes!
How oft the Cantab supper, host and guest,
Would echo helpless laughter to your jest!
How oft with him we paced that walk of limes,
Him, the lost light of those dawn-golden times,
Who loved you well! Now both are gone to rest.
You man of humorous-melancholy mark,
Dead of some inward agony-is it so?
Our kindlier, trustier Jaques, past away
I cannot laud this life, it looks so dark
????? ????-dream of a shadow, go-
God bless you. I shall join you in a day.

On southern winds shot through with amber light,
Breathing soft balm and clothed in cloudy white,
The lily-fingered Spring came o'er the hills,
Waking the crocus and the daffodils.
O'er the cold Earth she breathed a tender sigh
The maples sang and flung their banners high,
Their crimson-tasselled pennons, and the elm
Bound his dark brows with a green-crested helm.
Beneath the musky rot of Autumn's leaves,
Under the forest's myriad naked eaves,
Life woke and rose in gold and green and blue,
Robed in the starlight of the twinkling dew.
With timid tread adown the barren wood
Spring held her way, when, lo! before her stood
White-mantled Winter wagging his white head,
Stormy his brow and stormily he said:
'The God of Terror, and the King of Storm,
Must I remin...

Gentle lady, do not sing
Sad songs about the end of love;
Lay aside sadness and sing
How love that passes is enough.

Sing about the long deep sleep
Of lovers that are dead, and how
In the grave all love shall sleep:
Love is aweary now.

I

Right upward on the road of fame
With sounding steps the poet came;
Born and nourished in miracles,
His feet were shod with golden bells,
Or where he stepped the soil did peal
As if the dust were glass and steel.
The gallant child where'er he came
Threw to each fact a tuneful name.
The things whereon he cast his eyes
Could not the nations rebaptize,
Nor Time's snows hide the names he set,
Nor last posterity forget.
Yet every scroll whereon he wrote
In latent fire his secret thought,
Fell unregarded to the ground,
Unseen by such as stood around.
The pious wind took it away,
The reverent darkness hid the lay.
Methought like water-haunting birds
Divers or dippers were his words,
And idle clowns beside the mere
At the new visi...

Banagher Rhue of Donegal,
(Holy Mary, how slow the dawn!)
This is the hour of your loss or gain:
Is go d-tigheadh do, mhûirnín slan! {21}

Banagher Rhue, but the hour was ill
(O Mary Mother, how high the price!)
When you swore you’d game with Death himself;
Aye, and win with the devil’s dice.

Banagher Rhue, you must play with Death,
(Mary, watch with him till the light!)
Through the dark hours, for the words you said,
All this strange and noisy night.

Banagher Rhue, you are pale and cold;
(How the demons laugh through the air!)
The anguish beads on your frowning brow;
Mary set on your lips a prayer!

Banagher Rhue, you have won the toss:
(Mother, pray for his soul’s release!)
Shuffle and deal ere the black cock cro...

Her courts are by the flux of flaming ways,
Between the rivers and the illumined sky
Whose fervid depths reverberate from on high
Fierce lustres mingled in a fiery haze.
They mark it inland; blithe and fair of face
Her suitors follow, guessing by the glare
Beyond the hilltops in the evening air
How bright the cressets at her portals blaze.
On the pure fronts Defeat ere many a day
Falls like the soot and dirt on city-snow;
There hopes deferred lie sunk in piteous seams.
Her paths are disillusion and decay,
With ruins piled and unapparent woe,
The graves of Beauty and the wreck of dreams.

"But, sir," I said, "they tell me the man is like to die!"
The Canon shook his head indulgently. "Young blood, Cousin," he boomed.
"Young blood! Youth will be served!" -- D'Hermonville's Fabliaux.



He woke up with a sick taste in his mouth
And lay there heavily, while dancing motes
Whirled through his brain in endless, rippling streams,
And a grey mist weighed down upon his eyes
So that they could not open fully. Yet
After some time his blurred mind stumbled back
To its last ragged memory -- a room;
Air foul with wine; a shouting, reeling crowd
Of friends who dragged him, dazed and blind with drink
Out to the street; a crazy rout of cabs;
The steady mutter of his neighbor's voice,
Mumbling out dull obscenity by rote;
And then... well, they had brou...

I

He called her in from me and shut the door.
And she so loved the sunshine and the sky! -
She loved them even better yet than I
That ne'er knew dearth of them - my mother dead,
Nature had nursed me in her lap instead:
And I had grown a dark and eerie child
That rarely smiled,
Save when, shut all alone in grasses high,
Looking straight up in God's great lonesome sky
And coaxing Mother to smile back on me.
'Twas lying thus, this fair girl suddenly
Came to me, nestled in the fields beside
A pleasant-seeming home, with doorway wide -
The sunshine beating in upon the floor

Like golden rain. -
O sweet, sweet face above me, turn again
And leave me! I had cried, but that an ache
Within my throat so gripped it I could make
No sound but a thi...

Old tree thou art wither'd--I pass'd thee last year,
And the blackbird snug hid in thy branches did sing,
Thy shadow stretch'd dark o'er the grass sprouting near,
And thou wert as green as thy mates of the spring.
How alter'd since then! not a leaf hast thou got,
Thy honours brown round thee that clothed the tree;
The clown passeth by thee and heedeth thee not,
But thou'rt a warm source of reflection for me.

I think, while I view thee and rest on the stile,
Life's bloom is as frail as the leaves thou hast shed;
Like thee I may boast of my honours awhile,
But new springs may blossom, and mine may be fled:
Fond friends may bend o'er the rais'd turf where I'm laid,
And warm recollection the past may look o'er,
And say by my life, as I say by thy shade,
"Last spr...

THE FIRST VOICE


He trilled a carol fresh and free,
He laughed aloud for very glee:
There came a breeze from off the sea:

It passed athwart the glooming flat,
It fanned his forehead as he sat,
It lightly bore away his hat,

All to the feet of one who stood
Like maid enchanted in a wood,
Frowning as darkly as she could.

With huge umbrella, lank and brown,
Unerringly she pinned it down,
Right through the centre of the crown.

Then, with an aspect cold and grim,
Regardless of its battered rim,
She took it up and gave it him.

A while like one in dreams he stood,
Then faltered forth his gratitude
In words just short of being rude:

For it had lost its shape and shine,
And it had cost him four-and-nine,...

I.

I stood in an ancient garden
With high red walls around;
Over them grey and green lichens
In shadowy arabesque wound.

The topmost climbing blossoms
On fields kine-haunted looked out;
But within were shelter and shadow,
With daintiest odours about.

There were alleys and lurking arbours,
Deep glooms into which to dive.
The lawns were as soft as fleeces,
Of daisies I counted but five.

The sun-dial was so aged
It had gathered a thoughtful grace;
'Twas the round-about of the shadow
That so had furrowed its face.

The flowers were all of the oldest
That ever in garden sprung;
Red, and blood-red, and dark purple
The rose-lamps flaming hung.

Along the borders fringed
With broad thick edges of box