Death

'Tis death! and peace, indeed, is here,
And ease from shame, and rest from fear.
There's nothing can dismarble now
The smoothness of that limpid brow.
But is a calm like this, in truth,
The crowning end of life and youth,
And when this boon rewards the dead,
Are all debts paid, has all been said?
And is the heart of youth so light,
Its step so firm, its eye so bright,
Because on its hot brow there blows
A wind of promise and repose
From the far grave, to which it goes;
Because it hath the hope to come,
One day, to harbour in the tomb?
Ah no, the bliss youth dreams is one
For daylight, for the cheerful sun,
For feeling nerves and living breath,
Youth dreams a bliss on this side death.
It dreams a rest, if not more deep,
More grateful than th...

"I Can love thee well, believe me,
As a sister true;
Other love, Sir Knight, would grieve me,
Sore my heart would rue.
Calmly would I see thee going,
Calmly, too, appear;
For those tears in silence flowing
Find no answer here."

Thus she speaks, he hears her sadly,
How his heartstrings bleed!
In his arms he clasps her madly,
Then he mounts his steed.
From the Switzer land collects he
All his warriors brave;
Cross on breast, their course directs he
To the Holy Grave.

In triumphant march advancing,
Onward moves the host,
While their morion plumes are dancing
Where the foes are most.
Mortal terror strikes the Paynim
At the chieftain's name;
But the knight's sad thoughts enchain him
Grief consumes his frame.

Hence a while, severer Muses;
Spare your slaves till drear October.
Hence; for Alma Mater chooses
Not to be for ever sober:
But, like stately matron gray,
Calling child and grandchild round her,
Will for them at least be gay;
Share for once their holiday;
And, knowing she will sleep the sounder,
Cheerier-hearted on the morrow
Rise to grapple care and sorrow,
Grandly leads the dance adown, and joins the children's play.
    So go, for in your places
    Already, as you see,
(Her tears for some deep sorrow scarcely dried),
Venus holds court among her sinless graces,
With many a nymph from many a park and lea.
She, pensive, waits the merrier faces
Of those your wittier sisters three,
O'er jest and dance and song who still preside,
To cheer her...

The less our sorrows here and suff'rings cease,
The more our crowns of glory there increase.

'I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.' - PSALM CXXI. 1.


Æons ago ye were,
Before the struggling changeful race of man
Wrought into being, ere the tragic stir
Of human toil and deep desire began:
So shall ye still remain,
Lords of an elder and immutable race,
When many a broad metropolis of the plain,
Or thronging port by some renownèd shore,
Is sunk in nameless ruin, and its place
Recalled no more.

Empires have come and gone,
And glorious cities fallen in their prime;
Divine, far-echoing, names once writ in stone
Have vanished in the dust and void of time;
But ye, firm-set, secure,
Like Treasure in the hardness of God's palm,
Are yet the same for ever; ye endure
By virtue of an old slow-ripening word,...

How clear she shines! How quietly
I lie beneath her guardian light;
While heaven and earth are whispering me,
"To morrow, wake, but dream to-night."
Yes, Fancy, come, my Fairy love!
These throbbing temples softly kiss;
And bend my lonely couch above,
And bring me rest, and bring me bliss.

The world is going; dark world, adieu!
Grim world, conceal thee till the day;
The heart thou canst not all subdue
Must still resist, if thou delay!

Thy love I will not, will not share;
Thy hatred only wakes a smile;
Thy griefs may wound, thy wrongs may tear,
But, oh, thy lies shall ne'er beguile!
While gazing on the stars that glow
Above me, in that stormless sea,
I long to hope that all the woe
Creation knows, is held in thee!

And this s...

If he should lie a-dying

I am not willing you should go
Into the earth, where Helen went;
She is awake by now, I know.
Where Cleopatra's anklets rust
You will not lie with my consent;
And Sappho is a roving dust;
Cressid could love again; Dido,
Rotted in state, is restless still:
You leave me much against my will.

The sin was mine; I did not understand.
So now is music prisoned in her cave,
Save where some ebbing desultory wave
Frets with its restless whirls this meagre strand.
And in the withered hollow of this land
Hath Summer dug herself so deep a grave,
That hardly can the leaden willow crave
One silver blossom from keen Winter's hand.

But who is this who cometh by the shore?
(Nay, love, look up and wonder!)    Who is this
Who cometh in dyed garments from the South?
It is thy new-found Lord, and he shall kiss
The yet unravished roses of thy mouth,
And I shall weep and worship, as before.

Down the goldenest of streams,
    Tide of dreams,
The fair cradled man-child drifts;
Sways with cadenced motion slow,
    To and fro,
As the mother-foot poised lightly, falls and lifts.


He, the firstling, - he, the light
    Of her sight, -
He, the breathing pledge of love,
'Neath the holy passion lies,
    Of her eyes, -
Smiles to feel the warm, life-giving ray above.


She believes that in his vision,
    Skies elysian
O'er an angel-people shine.
Back to gardens of delight,
    Taking flight,
His auroral spirit basks in dreams divine.


But she smiles through anxious tears;
    Unborn years
Pressing forward, she perceives.
Shadowy muffled shapes, they come
    Deaf and dumb,
Bringing what? d...

Our God who made two lovers in a garden,
And smote them separate and set them free,
Their four eyes wild for wonder and wrath and pardon
And their kiss thunder as lips of land and sea:
Each rapt unendingly beyond the other,
Two starry worlds of unknown gods at war,
Wife and not mate, a man and not a brother,
We thank thee thou hast made us what we are.

Make not the grey slime of infinity
To swamp these flowers thou madest one by one;
Let not the night that was thine enemy
Mix a mad twilight of the moon and sun;
Waken again to thunderclap and clamour
The wonder of our sundering and the song,
Or break our hearts with thine hell-shattering hammer
But leave a shade between us all day long.

Shade of high shame and honourable blindness
When youth, i...

        Well, how has it been with you since we met
    That last strange time of a hundred times?
        When we met to swear that we could forget -
    I your caresses, and you my rhymes -
        The rhyme of my lays that rang like a bell,
        And the rhyme of my heart with yours, as well?

        How has it been since we drank that last kiss,
    That was bitter with lees of the wasted wine,
        When the tattered remains of a threadbare bliss,
    And the worn-out shreds of a joy divine,
        With a year's best dreams and hopes, were cast
        Into the rag-bag of the Past?

        Since Time, the rag-buyer, hurried away,
    With a chuckle of glee at a bargain made,
        Did you discover, like me, one day,
    That, hid in the fold...

It's "Gallop and go!" and "Slow, now, slow!"
With every man in this life below
But the things of this world are a fleeting show.

The postchaise Time that all must take
Is old with clay and dust;
Two horses strain its rusty brake
Named Pleasure and Disgust.

Our baggage totters on its roof,
Of Vanity and Care,
As Hope, the postboy, spurs each hoof,
Or heavy-eyed Despair.

And now a comrade with us rides,
Love, haply, or Remorse;
And that dim traveler besides,
Gaunt Memory on a horse.

And be we king or be we kern
Who ride the roads of Sin,
No matter how the roads may turn
They lead us to that Inn.

Unto that Inn within that land
Of silence and of gloom,
Whose ghastly landlord takes our hand
And leads us to...

. . . They caught them at the bend. He and his son
Sat in the car, revolvers in their laps.
From either side the stone-walled wintry road
There flashed thin fire-streaks in the rainy dusk.
The father swayed and fell, shot through the chest.
The son was up, but one more fire-streak leaped
Close from the pitch-black of a thick-set bush
Not five yards from him, and lit all the face
Of him whose sweetheart walked the Dublin streets
For lust of him who gave one yell and fell
Flat on the stony road, a sweltering corse.
Then they came out, the men who did this thing,
And looked upon their hatred's retribution,
While heedlessly the rattling car fled on.
Grey-haired old wolf, your letch for peasants' blood,
For peasants' sweat turned gold and silver and bronze,
Is done...

I.

    O bonnie bird, that in the brake, exultant, dost prepare thee -
    As poets do whose thoughts are true, for wings that will upbear thee -
            Oh! tell me, tell me, bonnie bird,
            Canst thou not pipe of hope deferred?
    Or canst thou sing of naught but Spring among the golden meadows?


II.

    Methinks a bard (and thou art one) should suit his song to sorrow,
    And tell of pain, as well as gain, that waits us on the morrow;
            But thou art not a prophet, thou,
            If naught but joy can touch thee now;
    If, in thy heart, thou hast no vow that speaks of Nature's anguish.


III.

    Oh! I have held my sorrows dear, and felt, tho' poor and slighted,
    The songs we love are those we hea...

How comes it that, at even-tide,
When level beams should show most truth,
Man, failing, takes unfailing pride
In memories of his frolic youth?

Venus and Liber fill their hour;
The games engage, the law-courts prove;
Till hardened life breeds love of power
Or Avarice, Age's final love.

Yet at the end, these comfort not
Nor any triumph Fate decrees
Compared with glorious, unforgot
Ten innocent enormities

Of frontless days before the beard,
When, instant on the casual jest,
The God Himself of Mirth appeared
And snatched us to His heaving breast

And we not caring who He was
But certain He would come again
Accepted all He brought to pass
As Gods accept the lives of men...

Then He withdrew from sight and speech,

How yesterday is long ago! The past
Is a fixed infinite distance from to-day,
And bygone things, the first-lived as the last,
In irreparable sameness far away.
How the to-be is infinitely ever
Out of the place wherein it will be Now,
Like the seen wave yet far up in the river,
Which reaches not us, but the new-waved flow!
This thing Time is, whose being is having none,
The equable tyrant of our different fates,
Who could not be bought off by a shattered sun
Or tricked by new use of our careful dates.
    This thing Time is, that to the grave-will bear
    My heart, sure but of it and of my fear.

Thou hast made many houses for the dead;
When my lot calls me to be buried,
For love or pity, prithee let there be
I' th' churchyard made one tenement for me.

I hear some say, "This man is not in love!"
"Who! can he love? a likely thing!" they say.
"Read but his verse, and it will easily prove!"
O, judge not rashly, gentle Sir, I pray!
    Because I loosely trifle in this sort,
As one that fain his sorrows would beguile,
You now suppose me all this time in sport,
And please yourself with this conceit the while.
    Ye shallow cens'rers! sometimes, see ye not,
In greatest perils some men pleasant be,
Where fame by death is only to be got,
They resolute! So stands the case with me.
    Where other men in depth of passion cry,
    I laugh at fortune, as in jest to die.