Death

When I am dead unto myself, and let,
O Father, thee live on in me,
Contented to do nought but pay my debt,
And leave the house to thee,

Then shall I be thy ransomed--from the cark
Of living, from the strain for breath,
From tossing in my coffin strait and dark,
At hourly strife with death!

Have mercy! in my coffin! and awake!
A buried temple of the Lord!
Grow, Temple, grow! Heart, from thy cerements break!
Stream out, O living Sword!

When I am with thee as thou art with me,
Life will be self-forgetting power;
Love, ever conscious, buoyant, clear, and free,
Will flame in darkest hour.

Where now I sit alone, unmoving, calm,
With windows open to thy wind,
Shall I not know thee in the radiant psalm
Soaring from heart and mind...

    Pilgrim, no shrine is here, no prison, no inn:
        Thy fear and thy belief alike are fond:
    Death is a gate, and holds no room within:
        Pass--to the road beyond.

So we settled it all when the storm was done
As comfy as comfy could be;
And I was to wait in the barn, my dears,
Because I was only three;
And Teddy would run to the rainbow’s foot
Because he was five and a man;
And that’s how it all began, my dears,
And that’s how it all began!



Then we brought the lances down, then the trumpets blew
When we went to Kandahar, ridin’ two an’ two.
Ridin’, ridin’, ridin’, two an’ two!
Ta-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-a!
All the way to Kandahar,
Ridin’ two an’ two.



The, wolf-cub at even lay hid in the corn,
When the smoke of the cooking hung grey.
He knew where the doe made a couch for her fawn,
And he looked to his strength for his prey.
But the moon swept the smoke-wreaths away,
And he turned...

If these brief Records, by the Muses' art
Produced as lonely Nature or the strife
That animates the scenes of public life
Inspired, may in thy leisure claim a part;
And if these Transcripts of the private heart
Have gained a sanction from thy falling tears;
Then I repent not. But my soul hath fears
Breathed from eternity; for, as a dart
Cleaves the blank air, Life flies: now every day
Is but a glimmering spoke in the swift wheel
Of the revolving week. Away, away,
All fitful cares, all transitory zeal!
So timely Grace the immortal wing may heal,
And honour rest upon the senseless clay.

You lived in a land horror-haunted,
    And wrote with a pen half-divine;
You drank bitter sorrow, undaunted
    And cast precious pearls before swine.

Sound the deep waters: -
    Who shall sound that deep? -
Too short the plummet,
    And the watchmen sleep.
Some dream of effort
    Up a toilsome steep;
Some dream of pasture grounds
    For harmless sheep.

White shapes flit to and fro
    From mast to mast;
They feel the distant tempest
    That nears them fast:
Great rocks are straight ahead,
    Great shoals not past;
They shout to one another
    Upon the blast.

Oh, soft the streams drop music
    Between the hills,
And musical the birds' nests
    Beside those rills:
The nests are types of home
    Love-hidden from ills,
The nests are types of spirits
    Love-music fills.

So dream the sleepers,
    Each man in his place;
The lightning ...

(For the Rev. James B. Dollard)



The Kings of the earth are men of might,
And cities are burned for their delight,
And the skies rain death in the silent night,
And the hills belch death all day!

But the King of Heaven, Who made them all,
Is fair and gentle, and very small;
He lies in the straw, by the oxen's stall --
Let them think of Him to-day!

Watching here alone by the fire whereat last year
Sat with me the friend that a week since yet was near,
That a week has borne so far and hid so deep,
Woe am I that I may not weep,
May not yearn to behold him here.
Shame were mine, and little the love I bore him were,
Now to mourn that better he fares than love may fare
Which desires, and would not have indeed, its will,
Would not love him so worse than ill,
Would not clothe him again with care.
Yet can love not choose but remember, hearts but ache,
Eyes but darken, only for one vain thought's poor sake,
For the thought that by this hearth's now lonely side
Two fast friends, on the day he died,
Looked once more for his hand to take.
Let thy soul forgive them, and pardon heal the sin,
Though their hearts be hea...

        Cherish you then the hope I shall forget
        At length, my lord, Pieria?--put away
        For your so passing sake, this mouth of clay
        These mortal bones against my body set,
        For all the puny fever and frail sweat
        Of human love,--renounce for these, I say,
        The Singing Mountain's memory, and betray
        The silent lyre that hangs upon me yet?
        Ah, but indeed, some day shall you awake,
        Rather, from dreams of me, that at your side
        So many nights, a lover and a bride,
        But stern in my soul's chastity, have lain,
        To walk the world forever for my sake,
        And in each chamber find me gone again!

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light;
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind,
For those that here we see no more,
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care the sin,
The faithless coldness of the times;
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes,
But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out fa...

Oh! give me the night, the dark, dark night,
    The night with never a star.
When the stars are veiled and the moon has sailed
    Beyond the horizon's bar.
When thought grows weary of groping its way
    Through darkness dense and deep,
And buries its head in oblivion's bed,
    Wrapped warm in the mantle of sleep.

For I hate the night, the moon-white night,
    The night with a pallid face,
When a million eyes from the watchful skies
    Peers into each secret place.
For thought awakes and the old wound aches,
    And Sorrow she cannot rest,
But all night long walks to and fro
    Through the aisles of my troubled breast.

And Memory thinks it her royal hour
    When the heavens glitter and shine;
And she fills the cup of the past well ...

    My glass is filled, my pipe is lit,
    My den is all a cosy glow;
    And snug before the fire I sit,
    And wait to FEEL the old year go.
    I dedicate to solemn thought
    Amid my too-unthinking days,
    This sober moment, sadly fraught
    With much of blame, with little praise.

    Old Year! upon the Stage of Time
    You stand to bow your last adieu;
    A moment, and the prompter's chime
    Will ring the curtain down on you.
    Your mien is sad, your step is slow;
    You falter as a Sage in pain;
    Yet turn, Old Year, before you go,
    And face your audience again.

    That sphinx-like face, remote, austere,
    Let us all read, whate'er the cost:
    O Maiden! why that bitter tear?
    Is it for dear one ...

Care is a Poet fine:
He works in shade or shine,
And leaves, you know his sign!
No day without its line.

He writes with iron pen
Upon the brows of men;
Faint lines at first, and then
He scores them in again.

His touch at first is light
On Beauty’s brow of white;
The old churl loves to write
On foreheads broad and bright.

A line for young love crossed,
A line for fair hopes lost
In an untimely frost,
A line that means Thou Wast.

Then deeper script appears:
The furrows of dim fears,
The traces of old tears,
The tide-marks of the years.

To him with sight made strong
By suffering and wrong,
The brows of all the throng
Are eloquent with song.

Shepherd That cry’s from the first cuckoo of the year
I wished before it ceased.

Goatherd Nor bird nor beast
Could make me wish for anything this day,
Being old, but that the old alone might die,
And that would be against God’s Providence.
Let the young wish. But what has brought you here?
Never until this moment have we met
Where my goats browse on the scarce grass or leap
From stone to stone.

Shepherd. I am looking for strayed sheep;
Something has troubled me and in my trouble
I let them stray. I thought of rhyme alone,
For rhyme can beat a measure out of trouble
And make the daylight sweet once more; but when
I had driven every rhyme into its place
The sheep had gone from theirs.

Goatherd. I know right well
What turned so good a ...

Departed the pride, and the glory of Mardi:
The vaunt of her isles sleeps deep in the sea,
That rolls o'er his corse with a hush,
His warriors bend over their spears,
His sisters gaze upward and mourn.
Weep, weep, for Adondo is dead!
The sun has gone down in a shower;
Buried in clouds the face of the moon;
Tears stand in the eyes of the starry skies,
And stand in the eyes of the flowers;
And streams of tears are the trickling brooks,
Coursing adown the mountains.--
Departed the pride, and the glory of Mardi:
The vaunt of her isles sleeps deep in the sea.
Fast falls the small rain on its bosom that sobs,--
Not showers of rain, but the tears of Oro.

I.

Beautiful Evelyn Hope is dead!
Sit and watch by her side an hour.
That is her book-shelf, this her bed;
She plucked that piece of geranium-flower,
Beginning to die too, in the glass;
Little has yet been changed, I think
The shutters are shut, no light may pass
Save two long rays through the hinge’s chink.

II.

Sixteen years old when she died!
Perhaps she had scarcely heard my name
It was not her time to love; beside,
Her life had many a hope and aim,
Duties enough and little cares,
And now was quiet, now astir,
Till God’s hand beckoned unawares,
And the sweet white brow is all of her.

III.

Is it too late then, Evelyn Hope?
What, your soul was pure and true,
The good stars met in your horoscope,
Made...

If Thou hadst been a Poet! On my heart
The thought dashed. It recoiled, as, with the gift,
Light-blinded, and joy-saddened, so bereft.
And the hot fountain-tears, with sudden start,
Thronged to mine eyes, as if with that same smart
The husk of vision had in twain been cleft,
Its hidden soul in naked beauty left,
And we beheld thee, Nature, as thou art.
O Poet, Poet, Poet! at thy feet
I should have lien, sainted with listening;
My pulses answering aye, in rhythmic beat,
Each parting word that with melodious wing
Moved on, creating still my being sweet;
My soul thy harp, thy word the quivering string.

A waxing moon that, crescent yet,
In all its silver beauty set,
And rose no more in the lonesome night
To shed full-orbed its longed-for light.
Then was it dark; on wold and lea,
    In home, in heart, the hours were drear.
Father and mother could no light see,
    And the hearts trembled and there was fear.
- So on the mount, Christ's chosen three,
Unware that glory it did shroud,
Feared when they entered into the cloud.

She was the best part of love's fair
Adornment, life's God-given care,
As if He bade them guard His own,
Who should be soon anear His throne.
Dutiful, happy, and who say
When childhood smiles itself away,
'More fair than morn shall prove the day.'
Sweet souls so nigh to God that rest,
How shall be bettering of your best!<...