Death

‘From that sky livid, bizarre
as your tortured destiny,
what thoughts fill your empty heart,
Freethinker, answer me.’

Insatiable and avid
for vague and obscure skies,
I’ll not groan like Ovid,
banned from Rome and paradise.

Skies, shores split and seamed,
my pride’s mirrored in you:
your clouds in mourning, too,

are the hearses of my dreams,
Hell’s reflected in your light,
where my heart takes delight.

I am tired of cursing the Bishop,
(Said Crazy Jane)
Nine books or nine hats
Would not make him a man.
I have found something worse
To meditate on.
A King had some beautiful cousins.
But where are they gone?
Battered to death in a cellar,
And he stuck to his throne.
Last night I lay on the mountain.
(Said Crazy Jane)
There in a two-horsed carriage
That on two wheels ran
Great-bladdered Emer sat.
Her violent man
Cuchulain sat at her side;
Thereupon'
Propped upon my two knees,
I kissed a stone
I lay stretched out in the dirt
And I cried tears down.

1. The Spanish noon is a blaze of azure fire, and the dusty pilgrims crawl like an endless serpent along treeless plains and bleached highroads, through rock-split ravines and castellated, cathedral-shadowed towns.

2. The hoary patriarch, wrinkled as an almond shell, bows painfully upon his staff. The beautiful young mother, ivory-pale, well-nigh swoons beneath her burden; in her large enfolding arms nestles her sleeping babe, round her knees flock her little ones with bruised and bleeding feet. "Mother, shall we soon be there?"

3. The youth with Christ-like countenance speaks comfortably to father and brother, to maiden and wife. In his breast, his own heart is broken.

4. The halt, the blind, are amid the train. Sturdy pack-horses laboriously drag the tented wagons wherein lie the sick athirst with fever....

    When we were children, long ago,
    And crept to bed at close of day,
    With backward glance and footstep slow,
    Though all aweary with our play,
    Do you remember how the room -
    The little room with window deep -
    Would fill with shadows and with gloom,
    And fright us so we could not sleep?

    For O! the things we see at night -
    The dragons grim, the goblins tall,
    And, worst of all, the ghosts in white
    That range themselves along the wall!

    We could but cover up our head,
    And listen to our heart's wild beat -
    Such dreadful things about our bed,
    And no protection save a sheet!
    Then slept, and woke quite unafraid.
    The sun was shining, and we found
    Our shadows and our ghosts all ...

Argument.

The Second Day.

Night, Spirit of the Andes, Valdivia, Lautaro, Missionary, The
Hermitage.

The night was still and clear, when, o'er the snows,
Andes! thy melancholy Spirit rose,
A shadow stern and sad: he stood alone,
Upon the topmost mountain's burning cone;
And whilst his eyes shone dim, through surging smoke,
Thus to the spirits of the fire he spoke:

Ye, who tread the hidden deeps,
Where the silent earthquake sleeps;
Ye, who track the sulphurous tide,
Or on hissing vapours ride,                                                                    
Spirits, come!
From worlds of subterraneous night;
From fiery realms of lurid light;
From the ore's unfathomed bed;
From the lava's whirlpools red,
Spirits, co...

I have been across the bridges of the years.
    Wet with tears
Were the ties on which I trod, going back
    Down the track
To the valley where I left, 'neath skies of Truth,
    My lost youth.

As I went, I dropped my burdens, one and all -
    Let them fall;
All my sorrows, all my wrinkles, all my care,
    My white hair,
I laid down, like some lone pilgrim's heavy pack,
    By the track.

As I neared the happy valley with light feet,
    My heart beat
To the rhythm of a song I used to know
    Long ago,
And my spirits gushed and bubbled like a fountain
    Down a mountain.

On the border of that valley I found you,
    Tried and true;
And we wandered through the golden Summer-Land
    Hand in hand.
And my pulses...

Still on the tower stood the vane,
A black yew gloomed the stagnant air,
I peered athwart the chancel pane
And saw the altar cold and bare.
A clog of lead was round my feet,
A band of pain across my brow;
“Cold altar, Heaven and earth shall meet
Before you hear my marriage vow.”

II.
I turned and hummed a bitter song
That mocked the wholesome human heart,
And then we met in wrath and wrong,
We met, but only met to part.
Full cold my greeting was and dry;
She faintly smiled, she hardly moved;
I saw with half-unconscious eye
She wore the colours I approved.

III.
She took the little ivory chest,
With half a sigh she turned the key,
Then raised her head with lips comprest,
And gave my letters back to me.
And gave the trinke...

    Her soul is like a wolf that stands
    Where sunlight falls between the trees
    Of a sparse forest's leafless edge,
    When Spring's first magic moveth these.

    Her soul is like a little brook,
    Thin edged with ice against the leaves,
    Where the wolf drinks and is alone,
    And where the woodbine interweaves.

    A bank late covered by the snow,
    But lighted by the frozen North;
    Her soul is like a little plot
    That one white blossom bringeth forth.

    Her soul is slim, like silver slips,
    And straight, like flags beside a stream.
    Her soul is like a shape that moves
    And changes in a wonder dream.

    Who would pursue her clasps a cloud,
    And taketh sorrow for his zeal.
    Memory shall ...

The night is folly without the moon,
trees blank space against a frontal sky
where lattice work from a bled fish reveals
skeletal markings will not administer
the red jack of hearts to a mistress sea.

Most fickle, the ways of a cockroach
(I don't recommend them) to offerings
of white linen, cold squares atop
a stone diamonded floor.

Palaver shacks drone in ghostly light
communicating some message about eel runs
up the black river, the equivalent brush
of tombstones against dark nightsoil.

Tiny bars open as cubicles.
proverbial flashes of the coming evening,
haciendas to count every blessing.

The road to such places
snarls a dusty pleasure
and will heat thin blood
to boil in the daylight hours.

II

Swe...

The leaf that ripens only in the sun
Is dull and shrivelled ere its race is run.
The leaf that makes a carnival of death
Must tremble first before the north wind's breath.

The life that neither grief nor burden knows
Is dwarfed in sympathy before its close.
The life that grows majestic with the years
Must taste the bitter tonic found in tears.

I.

    Wherever I am, and whatever I do,
    My Phyllis is still in my mind;
    When angry, I mean not to Phyllis to go,
    My feet, of themselves, the way find:
    Unknown to myself I am just at her door,
    And when I would rail, I can bring out no more,
    Than, Phyllis too fair and unkind!

    When Phyllis I see, my heart bounds in my breast,
    And the love I would stifle is shown;
    But asleep or awake I am never at rest,
    When from my eyes Phyllis is gone.
    Sometimes a sad dream does delude my sad mind;
    But, alas! when I wake, and no Phyllis I find,
    How I sigh to myself all alone!

    Should a king be my rival in her I adore,
    He should offer his treasure in vain:
    Oh, let me alone to be happy and poor,...

Thy dewy looks sink in my breast;
Thy gentle words stir poison there;
Thou hast disturbed the only rest
That was the portion of despair!
Subdued to Duty's hard control,
I could have borne my wayward lot:
The chains that bind this ruined soul
Had cankered then - but crushed it not.

Mid-noon is past; upon the sultry mead
No zephyr breathes, no cloud its shadow throws:
If we advance unstrengthened by repose,
Farewell the solace of the vagrant reed!
This Nook with woodbine hung and straggling weed
Tempting recess as ever pilgrim chose,
Half grot, half arbour, proffers to enclose
Body and mind, from molestation freed,
In narrow compass, narrow as itself:
Or if the Fancy, too industrious Elf,
Be loth that we should breathe awhile exempt
From new incitements friendly to our task,
Here wants not stealthy prospect, that may tempt
Loose Idless to forego her wily mask.

A Fragment.

In the dungeon-crypts idly did I stray,
Reckless of the lives wasting there away;
"Draw the ponderous bars! open, Warder stern!"
He dared not say me nay, the hinges harshly turn.

"Our guests are darkly lodged," I whisper'd, gazing through
The vault, whose grated eye showed heaven more gray than blue;
(This was when glad Spring laughed in awaking pride;)
"Ay, darkly lodged enough!" returned my sullen guide.

Then, God forgive my youth; forgive my careless tongue;
I scoffed, as the chill chains on the damp flagstones rung:
"Confined in triple walls, art thou so much to fear,
That we must bind thee down and clench thy fetters here?"

The captive raised her face; it was as soft and mild
As sculptured marble saint, or slumbering unwean'd chi...

Who knows what days I answer for to-day:
    Giving the bud I give the flower.    I bow
    This yet unfaded and a faded brow;
Bending these knees and feeble knees, I pray.

Thoughts yet unripe in me I bend one way,
    Give one repose to pain I know not now,
    One leaven to joy that comes, I guess not how.
I dedicate my fields when Spring is grey.

Oh, rash! (I smile) to pledge my hidden wheat.
    I fold to-day at altars far apart
Hands trembling with what toils?    In their retreat
    I seal my love to-be, my folded art.
I light the tapers at my head and feet,
    And lay the crucifix on this silent heart.

They are chanting now the service of All the Dead
And the village folk outside in the burying ground
Listen - except those who strive with their dead,
Reaching out in anguish, yet unable quite to touch them:
Those villagers isolated at the grave
Where the candles burn in the daylight, and the painted wreaths
Are propped on end, there, where the mystery starts.

The naked candles burn on every grave.
On your grave, in England, the weeds grow.

But I am your naked candle burning,
And that is not your grave, in England,
The world is your grave.
And my naked body standing on your grave
Upright towards heaven is burning off to you
Its flame of life, now and always, till the end.

It is my offering to you; every day is All Souls' Day.

I forget y...

These have a life that hath no part in death;
These circumscribe the soul and make it strong;
Between the breathing of a dream and song,
Building a world of beauty in a breath.
Unto the heart the voice of this one saith
Ideals, its emotions live among;
Unto the mind the other speaks a tongue
Of visions, where the guess, we christen faith,
May face the fact of immortality
As may a rose its unembodied scent,
Or star its own reflected radiance.
We do not know these save unconsciously.
To whose mysterious shadows God hath lent
No certain shape, no certain countenance.

Underneath the autumn sky,
Haltingly, the lines go by.
Ah, would steps were blithe and gay,
As when first they marched away,
Smile on lip and curl on brow,--
Only white-faced gray-beards now,
Standing on life's outer verge,
E'en the marches sound a dirge.

Blow, you bugles, play, you fife,
Rattle, drums, for dearest life.
Let the flags wave freely so,
As the marching legions go,
Shout, hurrah and laugh and jest,
This is memory at its best.
(Did you notice at your quip,
That old comrade's quivering lip?)

Ah, I see them as they come,
Stumbling with the rumbling drum;
But a sight more sad to me
E'en than these ranks could be
Was that one with cane upraised
Who stood by and gazed and gazed,
Trembling, solemn, lips compresse...