Death

        To what purpose, April, do you return again?
        Beauty is not enough.
        You can no longer quiet me with the redness
        Of little leaves opening stickily.
        I know what I know.
        The sun is hot on my neck as I observe
        The spikes of the crocus.
        The smell of the earth is good.
        It is apparent that there is no death.
        But what does that signify?
        Not only under ground are the brains of men
        Eaten by maggots,
        Life in itself
        Is nothing,
        An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs.
        It is not enough that yearly, down this hill,
        April
        Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.

I miss thee from my side, beloved,
    I miss thee from my side;
And wearily and drearily
    Flows Time's resistless tide.
The world, and all its fleeting joys,
    To me are worse than vain,
Until I clasp thee to my heart,
    Beloved one, again.

The wildwood and the forest-path,
    We used to thread of yore,
With bird and bee have flown with thee,
    And gone for ever more!
There is no music in the grove,
    No echo on the hill;
But melancholy boughs are there--
    And hushed the whip-poor-will.

I miss thee in the town, beloved,
    I miss thee in the town;
From morn I grieve till dewy eve
    Spreads wide its mantle brown.
My spirit's wings, that once could soar
    In Fancy's world of air,
Are crushed and beat...

I cannot die, who drank delight
From the cup of the crescent moon,
And hungrily as men eat bread,
Loved the scented nights of June.
The rest may die, but is there not
Some shining strange escape for me
Who sought in Beauty the bright wine
Of immortality?

            I.    The Voice of the Man Impatient with Visions and Utopias

    We find your soft Utopias as white
    As new-cut bread, and dull as life in cells,
    O, scribes who dare forget how wild we are
    How human breasts adore alarum bells.
    You house us in a hive of prigs and saints
    Communal, frugal, clean and chaste by law.
    I'd rather brood in bloody Elsinore
    Or be Lear's fool, straw-crowned amid the straw.
    Promise us all our share in Agincourt
    Say that our clerks shall venture scorns and death,
    That future ant-hills will not be too good
    For Henry Fifth, or Hotspur, or Macbeth.
    Promise that through to-morrow's spirit-war
    Man's deathless soul will hack and hew its way,
    Each flaunting Caesar climbing to his...

Yesterday I held your hand,
Reverently I pressed it,
And its gentle yieldingness
From my soul I blessed it.

But to-day I sit alone,
Sad and sore repining;
Must our gold forever know
Flames for the refining?

Yesterday I walked with you,
Could a day be sweeter?
Life was all a lyric song
Set to tricksy meter.

Ah, to-day is like a dirge,--
Place my arms around you,
Let me feel the same dear joy
As when first I found you.

Let me once retrace my steps,
From these roads unpleasant,
Let my heart and mind and soul
All ignore the present.

Yesterday the iron seared
And to-day means sorrow.
Pause, my soul, arise, arise,
Look where gleams the morrow.

The daylight is dying,
The Flying fox flying,
    Amber and amethyst burn in the sky.
See, the sun throws a late,
Lingering, roseate
    Kiss to the landscape to bid it good-bye.

The time of our Trysting!
Oh, come, unresisting,
    Lovely, expectant, on tentative feet.
Shadow shall cover us,
Roses bend over us,
    Making a bride chamber, sacred and sweet.

We know not life's reason,
The length of its season,
    Know not if they know, the great Ones above.
We none of us sought it,
And few could support it,
    Were it not gilt with the glamour of love.

But much is forgiven
To Gods who have given,
    If but for an hour, the Rapture of Youth.
You do not yet know it,
But Kama shall show it,
    Changing your d...

"O memory, where is now my youth,
Who used to say that life was truth?"

"I saw him in a crumbled cot
Beneath a tottering tree;
That he as phantom lingers there
Is only known to me."

"O Memory, where is now my joy,
Who lived with me in sweet employ?"

"I saw him in gaunt gardens lone,
Where laughter used to be;
That he as phantom wanders there
Is known to none but me."

"O Memory, where is now my hope,
Who charged with deeds my skill and scope?"

"I saw her in a tomb of tomes,
Where dreams are wont to be;
That she as spectre haunteth there
Is only known to me."

"O Memory, where is now my faith,
One time a champion, now a wraith?"

"I saw her in a ravaged aisle,
Bowed down on bended knee;
That h...

Once more the windless days are here,
Quiet of autumn, when the year
Halts and looks backward and draws breath
Before it plunges into death.
Silver of mist and gossamers,
Through-shine of noonday's glassy gold,
Pale blue of skies, where nothing stirs
Save one blanched leaf, weary and old,
That over and over slowly falls
From the mute elm-trees, hanging on air
Like tattered flags along the walls
Of chapels deep in sunlit prayer.
Once more ... Within its flawless glass
To-day reflects that other day,
When, under the bracken, on the grass,
We who were lovers happily lay
And hardly spoke, or framed a thought
That was not one with the calm hills
And crystal sky. Ourselves were nought,
Our gusty passions, our burning wills
Dissolved in boundlessn...

That Captain Kidd scribbling of rock in the fields
yellowed bristle of pages
back of a farm where
piratical breaking of land knocks
clean holes in the soil,
gypsy dancers vernal growth before
a spy-glass hour moon.

And black print smudged
on a thumb, a child's glossary of tales
thick with terror
before the faceless wretch
crawls for grog,
his peg-leg
in step with
one part of my brain
Old Phew hardly
any Smee from Peter Pan
but the holocaust    -
the raven in the tree
eyeing the baby Treasure Island,
that fledgling reason
butchering both nostrils
at the skunk cabbage whose nectar
is the prize of cemeteries
& wild reunion of the bees.

Poet of Nature, thou hast wept to know
That things depart which never may return:
Childhood and youth, friendship and love's first glow,
Have fled like sweet dreams, leaving thee to mourn.
These common woes I feel. One loss is mine
Which thou too feel'st, yet I alone deplore.
Thou wert as a lone star, whose light did shine
On some frail bark in winter's midnight roar:
Thou hast like to a rock-built refuge stood
Above the blind and battling multitude:
In honoured poverty thy voice did weave
Songs consecrate to truth and liberty, -
Deserting these, thou leavest me to grieve,
Thus having been, that thou shouldst cease to be.

'Tis strange to think, there was a time
When mirth was not an empty name,
When laughter really cheered the heart,
And frequent smiles unbidden came,
And tears of grief would only flow
In sympathy for others' woe;

When speech expressed the inward thought,
And heart to kindred heart was bare,
And Summer days were far too short
For all the pleasures crowded there,
And silence, solitude, and rest,
Now welcome to the weary breast,

Were all unprized, uncourted then,
And all the joy one spirit showed,
The other deeply felt again;
And friendship like a river flowed,
Constant and strong its silent course,
For nought withstood its gentle force:

When night, the holy time of peace,
Was dreaded as the parting hour;
When speech and mirt...

Once a poet, long ago,
Wrote a song as void of art
As the songs that children know,
And as pure as a child’s heart.

With a sigh he threw it down,
Saying, “This will never shed
Any glory or renown
On my name when I am dead.

“I will sing a lordly song
Men shall hear, when I am gone,
Through the years sound clear and strong
As a golden clarion.”

So this lordly song he sang
That would gain him deathless fame,
When the death-knell o’er him rang
No man even knew its name.

Ay, and when his way he found
To the place of singing souls,
And beheld their bright heads crowned
With song-woven aureoles,

He stood shame-faced in the throng,
For his brow of wreath was bare,
And, alas! his lordly song
Sere had grow...

He who could view the book of destiny,
And read whatever there was writ of thee,
O charming youth, in the first opening page,
So many graces in so green an age,
Such wit, such modesty, such strength of mind,
A soul at once so manly and so kind;
Would wonder, when he turn'd the volume o'er,
And after some few leaves should find no more,
Nought but a blank remain, a dead void space,
A step of life that promised such a race.
We must not, dare not think, that Heaven began
A child, and could not finish him a man;
Reflecting what a mighty store was laid
Of rich materials, and a model made:
The cost already furnish'd; so bestow'd,
As more was never to one soul allow'd:
Yet after this profusion spent in vain,
Nothing but mouldering ashes to remain,
I guess n...

    "Friendship! mysterious cement of the soul!
    Sweet'ner of life and solder of society!
    I owe thee much!"

Blair.


    Dear Smith, the sleest, paukie thief,
    That e'er attempted stealth or rief,
    Ye surely hae some warlock-breef
    Owre human hearts;
    For ne'er a bosom yet was prief
    Against your arts.

    For me, I swear by sun an' moon,
    And ev'ry star that blinks aboon,
    Ye've cost me twenty pair o' shoon
    Just gaun to see you;
    And ev'ry ither pair that's done,
    Mair ta'en I'm wi' you.

    That auld capricious carlin, Nature,
    To mak amends for scrimpit stature,
    She's turn'd you aff, a human creature
    On her first plan;
    And in her freaks, on every feature

As, when the seaward ebbing tide doth pour
    Out by the low sand spaces,
The parting waves slip back to clasp the shore
    With lingering embraces,--

So in the tide of life that carries me
    From where thy true heart dwells,
Waves of my thoughts and memories turn to thee
    With lessening farewells;

Waving of hands; dreams, when the day forgets;
    A care half lost in cares;
The saddest of my verses; dim regrets;
    Thy name among my prayers.

I would the day might come, so waited for,
    So patiently besought,
When I, returning, should fill up once more
    Thy desolated thought;

And fill thy loneliness that lies apart
    In still, persistent pain.
Shall I content thee, O thou broken heart,
    As the tide comes...

to -----

Sometimes my heart by cruel care opprest
Faints from the weight of woe upon my breast,
My soul embittered far beyond belief; -
As damned one, drinking galling draughts of grief,
Which boils and burns within without relief,
While fervid flames inflict the wounds unhealed,
With hellish horrors not to man revealed;
When Peace and Joy seem wrapt in sable shrouds,
And young Hope's heaven is black with lowering clouds
'Tis then thy vision comes before my view,
'Tis then I see those beaming eyes of blue,
And hear thy gentle voice in accents kind,
And see thy cheerful smile before my mind;
And taking heart, I battle on anew;
And thank my God for sending to my soul
His own blest, soothing balm of peace again,
Who sometimes still as in the days of ol...

    "More than half my life long
Did they weigh me falsely, to my bitter wrong,
But they all have shrunk away into the silence
    Like a lost song.

    "And the day has dawned and come
For forgiveness, when the past may hold it dumb
On the once reverberate words of hatred uttered
    Half in delirium . . .

    "With folded lips and hands
They lie and wait what next the Will commands,
And doubtless think, if think they can: 'Let discord
    Sink with Life's sands!'

    "By these late years their names,
Their virtues, their hereditary claims,
May be as near defacement at their grave-place
    As are their fames."

    Such thoughts bechanced to seize
A traveller's mind a man of memories -
As he set foot within the western city

A Sense of something that is sad and strange;
Of something that is felt as death is felt,
As shadows, phantoms, in a haunted grange,
Around me seems to melt.

It rises, so it seems, from the decay
Of the dim woods; from withered leaves and weeds,
And dead flowers hanging by the woodland way
Sad, hoary heads of seeds.

And from the cricket's song, so feeble now
'T is like a sound heard in the heart, a call
Dreamier than dreams; and from the shaken bough,
From which the acorns fall.

From scents and sounds it rises, sadly slow,
This presence, that hath neither face nor form;
That in the woods sits like demented woe,
Whispering of wreck and storm.

A presence wrought of melancholy grief,
And dreams that die; that, in the streaming night,<...