Death

I.

Sun, whom the faltering snow-cloud fears,
Rise, let the time of year be May,
Speak now the word that April hears,
Let March have all his royal way;
Bid all spring raise in winter’s ears
All tunes her children hear or play,
Because the crown of eight glad years
On one bright head is set to-day.

II.

What matters cloud or sun to-day
To him who wears the wreath of years
So many, and all like flowers at play
With wind and sunshine, while his ears
Hear only song on every way?
More sweet than spring triumphant hears
Ring through the revel-rout of May
Are these, the notes that winter fears.

III.

Strong-hearted winter knows and fears
The music made of love at play,
Or haply loves the tune he hears
From hear...

One with the ruined sunset,
The strange forsaken sands,
What is it waits and wanders
And signs with desperate hands?

What is it calls in the twilight,
Calls as its chance were vain?
The cry of a gull sent seaward
Or the voice of an ancient pain?

The red ghost of the sunset,
It walks them as its own,
These dreary and desolate reaches . . .
But O that it walked alone!

"Here the hangman stops his cart:
Now the best of friends must part.
Fare you well, for ill fare I:
Live, lads, and I will die."

"Oh, at home had I but stayed
'Prenticed to my father's trade,
Had I stuck to plane and adze,
I had not been lost, my lads."

"Then I might have built perhaps
Gallows-trees for other chaps,
Never dangled on my own,
Had I but left ill alone."

"Now, you see, they hang me high,
And the people passing by
Stop to shake their fists and curse;
So 'tis come from ill to worse."

"Here hang I, and right and left
Two poor fellows hang for theft:
All the same's the luck we prove,
Though the midmost hangs for love."

"Comrades all, that stand and gaze,
Walk henceforth in other ways;
See my ...

Greta, what fearful listening! when huge stones
Rumble along thy bed, block after block:
Or, whirling with reiterated shock,
Combat, while darkness aggravates the groans:
But if thou (like Cocytus from the moans
Heard on his rueful margin) thence wert named
The Mourner, thy true nature was defamed,
And the habitual murmur that atones
For thy worst rage, forgotten. Oft as Spring
Decks, on thy sinuous banks, her thousand thrones
Seats of glad instinct and love's caroling,
The concert, for the happy, then may vie
With liveliest peals of birth-day harmony:
To a grieved heart, the notes are benisons.

Just whistle a bit, if the day be dark,
And the sky be overcast:
If mute be the voice of the piping lark,
Why, pipe your own small blast.

And it's wonderful how o'er the gray sky-track
The truant warbler comes stealing back.
But why need he come? for your soul's at rest,
And the song in the heart,--ah, that is best.

Just whistle a bit, if the night be drear
And the stars refuse to shine:
And a gleam that mocks the starlight clear
Within you glows benign.

Till the dearth of light in the glooming skies
Is lost to the sight of your soul-lit eyes.
What matters the absence of moon or star?
The light within is the best by far.

Just whistle a bit, if there 's work to do,
With the mind or in the soil.
And your note will turn out a tal...

I have no children:

But tonight a poem came
in which a small child,
my daughter, appeared at the door
of a half-lit room
where late one night I wrote
at a heavy desk.

And though interruption
was hardly welcome
I took her to myself,
just as the poem,
comforted this daughter
until she found peace.

The poems as the children
come as they will come.

When I am tired of earnest men,
    Intense and keen and sharp and clever,
Pursuing fame with brush or pen
    Or counting metal disks forever,
Then from the halls of Shadowland
    Beyond the trackless purple sea
Old Martin's ghost comes back to stand
    Beside my desk and talk to me.

Still on his delicate pale face
    A quizzical thin smile is showing,
His cheeks are wrinkled like fine lace,
    His kind blue eyes are gay and glowing.
He wears a brilliant-hued cravat,
    A suit to match his soft grey hair,
A rakish stick, a knowing hat,
    A manner blithe and debonair.

How good that he who always knew
    That being lovely was a duty,
Should have gold halls to wander through
    And should himself inhabit beauty.
How like ...

I can recall the day
When childhood died.
I had grown thin and tall
And eager-eyed.

Such a false happiness
Had seized me then;
A child, I saw myself
Man among men.

Now I see that I was
Ignorant, surprised,
As one for the surgeon's knife
Anæsthetized.

So that I did not know
What loomed before,
Nor how, a child, I became
A child no more.

The world's sharpened knife
Cut round my heart;
Then something was taken
And flung apart.

I did not, could not know
What had been done.
Under some evil drag
I lived as one

At home in the seeming world;
Then slowly came
Through years and years to myself
And was no more the same.

I know now an ill thing was done
To a young ch...

I

Serene and beautiful and very wise,
Most erudite in curious Grecian lore,
You lay and read your learned books, and bore
A weight of unshed tears and silent sighs.
The song within your heart could never rise
Until love bade it spread its wings and soar.
Nor could you look on Beauty's face before
A poet's burning mouth had touched your eyes.

Love is made out of ecstasy and wonder;
Love is a poignant and accustomed pain.
It is a burst of Heaven-shaking thunder;
It is a linnet's fluting after rain.
Love's voice is through your song; above and under
And in each note to echo and remain.


II

Because Mankind is glad and brave and young,
Full of gay flames that white and scarlet glow,
All joys and passions that Mankind may know<...

        Cometh the night.    The wind falls low,
        The trees swing slowly to and fro:
        Around the church the headstones grey
        Cluster, like children strayed away
        But found again, and folded so.

        No chiding look doth she bestow:
        If she is glad, they cannot know;
        If ill or well they spend their day,
            Cometh the night.

        Singing or sad, intent they go;
        They do not see the shadows grow;
        "There yet is time," they lightly say,
        "Before our work aside we lay";
        Their task is but half-done, and lo!
            Cometh the night.

I.

Mother of light! how fairly dost thou go
Over those hoary crests, divinely led! -
Art thou that huntress of the silver bow,
Fabled of old? Or rather dost thou tread
Those cloudy summits thence to gaze below,
Like the wild Chamois from her Alpine snow,
Where hunter never climb'd, - secure from dread?
How many antique fancies have I read
Of that mild presence! and how many wrought!
Wondrous and bright,
Upon the silver light,
Chasing fair figures with the artist, Thought!


II.

What art thou like? - Sometimes I see thee ride
A far-bound galley on its perilous way,
Whilst breezy waves toss up their silvery spray; -
Sometimes behold thee glide,
Cluster'd by all thy family of stars,
Like a lone widow, through the welkin wide,<...

I am the maid of the lustrous eyes
Of great fruition,
Whom the sons of men that are over-wise
Have called Ambition.

And the world's success is the only goal
I have within me;
The meanest man with the smallest soul
May woo and win me.

For the lust of power and the pride of place
To all I proffer.
Wilt thou take thy part in the crowded race
For what I offer?

The choice is thine, and the world is wide,
Thy path is lonely.
I may not lead and I may not guide,
I urge thee only.

I am just a whip and a spur that smites
To fierce endeavour.
In the restless days and the sleepless nights
I urge thee ever.

Thou shalt wake from sleep with a startled cry,
In fright unleaping
At a rival's step as it passes by
W...

        "It fell on a day, that he went out to his father to the reapers.
        And he said unto his father, My head, my head.    And he said to a lad,
        Carry him to his mother.    And . . . he sat on her knees till noon,
        and then died.    And she went up, and laid him on the bed. . . .
        And shut the door upon him and went out."



        Immortal story that no mother's heart
        Ev'n yet can read, nor feel the biting pain
        That rent her soul!    Immortal not by art
        Which makes a long past sorrow sting again

        Like grief of yesterday:    but since it said
        In simplest word the truth which all may see,
        Where any mother sobs above her dead
        And plays anew the silent tragedy.

Everything goes to its rest;
    The hills are asleep in the noon;
And life is as still in its nest
    As the moon when she looks on a moon
In the depth of a calm river's breast
    As it steals through a midnight in June.

The streams have forgotten the sea
    In the dream of their musical sound;
The sunlight is thick on the tree,
    And the shadows lie warm on the ground,--
So still, you may watch them and see
    Every breath that awakens around.

The churchyard lies still in the heat,
    With its handful of mouldering bone,
As still as the long stalk of wheat
    In the shadow that sits by the stone,
As still as the grass at my feet
    When I walk in the meadows alone.

The waves are asleep on the main,
    And the ships ...

Che fai? che pensi? che pur dietro guardi.

HE ENCOURAGES HIS SOUL TO LIFT ITSELF TO GOD, AND TO ABANDON THE VANITIES OF EARTH.


    What dost thou? think'st thou? wherefore bend thine eye
Back on the time that never shall return?
The raging fire, where once 'twas thine to burn,
Why with fresh fuel, wretched soul, supply?
Those thrilling tones, those glances of the sky,
Which one by one thy fond verse strove to adorn,
Are fled; and--well thou knowest, poor forlorn!--
To seek them here were bootless industry.
Then toil not bliss so fleeting to renew;
To chase a thought so fair, so faithless, cease:
Thou rather that unwavering good pursue,
Which guides to heaven; since nought below can please.
Fatal for us that beauty's torturing view,
Living o...

Across the room my silent love I throw,
    Where you sit sewing in bed by candlelight,
        Your young stern profile and industrious fingers
Displayed against the blind in a shadow-show,
    To Dinda's grave delight.

The needle dips and pokes, the cheerful thread
    Runs after, follow-my-leader down the seam:
        The patchwork pieces cry for joy together,
O soon to sit as a crown on Dinda's head,
    Fulfilment of their dream.

Snippets and odd ends folded by, forgotten,
    With camphor on a top shelf, hard to find,
        Now wake to this most happy resurrection,
To Dinda playing toss with a reel of cotton
    And staring at the blind.

Dinda in sing-song stretching out one hand
    Calls for the playthings; mother does not hear:

Lay me low, my work is done;
I am weary. Lay me low,
Where the wild flowers woo the sun,
Where the balmy breezes blow,
Where the butterfly takes wing,
Where the aspens, drooping, grow,
Where the young birds chirp and sing,
I am weary, let me go.

I have striven hard and long
In the world’s unequal fight,
Always to resist the wrong,
Always to maintain the right.
Always with a stubborn heart,
Taking, giving blow for blow;
Brother, I have played my part,
And am weary, let me go.

Stern the world and bitter cold,
Irksome, painful to endure;
Everywhere a love of gold,
Nowhere pity for the poor.
Everywhere mistrust, disguise,
Pride, hypocrisy, and show,
Draw the curtains, close mine eyes,
I am weary, let me go.

There are some qualities some incorporate things,
That have a double life, which thus is made
A type of that twin entity which springs
From matter and light, evinced in solid and shade.
There is a twofold Silence sea and shore
Body and soul. One dwells in lonely places,
Newly with grass o'ergrown; some solemn graces,
Some human memories and tearful lore,
Render him terrorless: his name's "No More."
He is the corporate Silence: dread him not!
No power hath he of evil in himself;
But should some urgent fate (untimely lot!)
Bring thee to meet his shadow (nameless elf,
That haunteth the lone regions where hath trod
No foot of man), commend thyself to God!