Death

It is done! in the fire's fitful flashes,
    The last line has withered and curled.
In a tiny white heap of dead ashes
    Lie buried the hopes of your world.
There were mad foolish vows in each letter,
    It is well they have shrivelled and burned,
And the ring! oh, the ring was a fetter,
    It was better removed and returned.

But ah, is it done?    In the embers
    Where letters and tokens were cast,
Have you burned up the heart that remembers,
    And treasures its beautiful past?
Do you think in this swift reckless fashion
    To ruthlessly burn and destroy
The months that were freighted with passion,
    The dreams that were drunken with joy?

Can you burn up the rapture of kisses
    That flashed from the lips to the soul,
Or the...

My short and happy day is done,
The long and dreary night comes on;
And at my door the Pale Horse stands,
To carry me to unknown lands.

His whinny shrill, his pawing hoof,
Sound dreadful as a gathering storm;
And I must leave this sheltering roof,
And joys of life so soft and warm.

Tender and warm the joys of life, -
Good friends, the faithful and the true;
My rosy children and my wife,
So sweet to kiss, so fair to view.

So sweet to kiss, so fair to view, -
The night comes down, the lights burn blue;
And at my door the Pale Horse stands,
To bear me forth to unknown lands.

She passed the thorn-trees, whose gaunt branches tossed
Their spider-shadows round her; and the breeze,
Beneath the ashen moon, was full of frost,
And mouthed and mumbled to the sickly trees,
Like some starved hag who sees her children freeze.

Dry-eyed she waited by the sycamore.
Some stars made misty blotches in the sky.
And all the wretched willows on the shore
Looked faded as a jaundiced cheek or eye.
She felt their pity and could only sigh.

And then his skiff ground on the river rocks.
Whistling he came into the shadow made
By that dead tree. He kissed her dark brown locks;
And round her form his eager arms were laid.
Passive she stood, her secret unbetrayed.

And then she spoke, while still his greeting kiss
Ached in her hair. She did not...

The fields which with covetous spirit we sold,
Those beautiful fields, the delight of the day,
Would have brought us more good than a burthen of gold,
Could we but have been as contented as they.

When the troublesome Tempter beset us, said I,
"Let him come, with his purse proudly grasped in his hand;
But, Allan, be true to me, Allan, we'll die
Before he shall go with an inch of the land!"

There dwelt we, as happy as birds in their bowers;
Unfettered as bees that in gardens abide;
We could do what we liked with the land, it was ours;
And for us the brook murmured that ran by its side.

But now we are strangers, go early or late;
And often, like one overburthened with sin,
With my hand on the latch of the half-opened gate,
I look at the fields, but I...

    What doest thou in heaven, O moon?
    Say, silent moon, what doest thou?
    Thou risest in the evening; thoughtfully
    Thou wanderest o'er the plain,
    Then sinkest to thy rest again.
    And art thou never satisfied
    With going o'er and o'er the selfsame ways?
    Art never wearied? Dost thou still
    Upon these valleys love to gaze?
    How much thy life is like
    The shepherd's life, forlorn!
    He rises in the early dawn,
    He moves his flock along the plain;
    The selfsame flocks, and streams, and herbs
    He sees again;
    Then drops to rest, the day's work o'er;
    And hopes for nothing more.
    Tell me, O moon, what signifies his life
    To him, thy life to thee? Say, whither tend
    My weary, short-lived pilgr...

That for seven lusters I did never come
To do the rites to thy religious tomb;
That neither hair was cut, or true tears shed
By me, o'er thee, as justments to the dead,
Forgive, forgive me; since I did not know
Whether thy bones had here their rest or no,
But now 'tis known, behold! behold, I bring
Unto thy ghost th' effused offering:
And look what smallage, night-shade, cypress, yew,
Unto the shades have been, or now are due,
Here I devote; and something more than so;
I come to pay a debt of birth I owe.
Thou gav'st me life, but mortal; for that one
Favour I'll make full satisfaction;
For my life mortal rise from out thy hearse.
And take a life immortal from my verse.

There is something in the sound of drum and fife
That stirs all the savage instincts into life.

In the old times of peace we went our ways,
Through proper days
Of little joys and tasks.    Lonely at times,
When from the steeple sounded wedding chimes,
Telling to all the world some maid was wife -
But taking patiently our part in life
As it was portioned us by Church and State,
Believing it our fate.
    Our thoughts all chaste
Held yet a secret wish to love and mate
    Ere youth and virtue should go quite to waste.
But men we criticised for lack of strength,
And kept them at arm's length.
Then the war came -
The world was all aflame!
The men we had thought dull and void of power
Were heroes in an hour.
He who had seemed a slave to petty g...

Art thou already weary of the way?
    Thou who hast yet but half the way gone o'er:
    Get up, and lift thy burthen: lo, before
Thy feet the road goes stretching far away.
If thou already faint, who hast but come
Through half thy pilgrimage, with fellows gay,
Love, youth, and hope, under the rosy bloom
And temperate airs, of early breaking day;
Look yonder, how the heavens stoop and gloom,
There cease the trees to shade, the flowers to spring,
And the angels leave thee; what wilt thou become
Through yon drear stretch of dismal wandering,
Lonely and dark?    I shall take courage, friend,
For comes not every step more near the end?

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream:
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep
While I weep while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

    "I wish I had a quiet tomb,
    Beside a little rill;
    Where birds, and bees, and butterflies,
    Would sing upon the hill."

SEVEN TIMES ONE. EXULTATION.

There's no dew left on the daisies and clover,
There's no rain left in heaven:
I've said my "seven times" over and over,
Seven times one are seven.

I am old, so old, I can write a letter;
My birthday lessons are done;
The lambs play always, they know no better;
They are only one times one.

O moon! in the night I have seen you sailing
And shining so round and low;
You were bright! ah bright! but your light is failing -
You are nothing now but a bow.

You moon, have you done something wrong in heaven
That God has hidden your face?
I hope if you have you will soon be forgiven,
And shine again in your place.

O velvet bee, you're a dusty fellow,
You've powdered your legs with gold!
O brave mar...

Here I myself might likewise die,
And utterly forgotten lie,
But that eternal poetry
Repullulation gives me here
Unto the thirtieth thousand year,
When all now dead shall reappear.

Muses which sadly sit about my chayre,
Drownd in the teares extorted by my lines,
With heauy sighs whilst thus I breake the ayre,
Paynting my passions in these sad dissignes,
Since she disdaines to blesse my happy verse,
The strong built Trophies to her liuing fame,
Euer hence-forth my bosome be your hearse,
Wherein the world shal now entombe her name,
Enclose my musick you poor sencelesse walls,
Sith she is deafe and will not heare my mones,
Soften your selues with euery teare that falls,
Whilst I like Orpheus sing to trees and stones:
    Which with my plaints seeme yet with pitty moued,
    Kinder then she who I so long haue loued.

Within our happy Castle there dwelt One
Whom without blame I may not overlook;
For never sun on living creature shone
Who more devout enjoyment with us took:
Here on his hours he hung as on a book,
On his own time here would he float away,
As doth a fly upon a summer brook;
But go to-morrow, or belike to-day,
Seek for him, he is fled; and whither none can say.

Thus often would he leave our peaceful home,
And find elsewhere his business or delight;
Out of our Valley's limits did he roam:
Full many a time, upon a stormy night,
His voice came to us from the neighbouring height:
Oft could we see him driving full in view
At mid-day when the sun was shining bright;
What ill was on him, what he had to do,
A mighty wonder bred among our quiet crew.

(ORSON GROUT),

One of the victims of the Southern Prisons.


Sit by me comrade, thou and I have stood
    Shoulder to shoulder on the battle-field,
And bore us there like men of British blood,
    But comrade this is death, and I must yield.

You have been leal, my friend, and true and tried
    In battle, in captivity of me;
Since we went up to worship side by side
    O'er the green hills I never more shall see.

From this dread prison pen, thou shalt go forth;
    But I, I know it, never more shall rise,
Nor see my home in the cool pleasant North,
    Nor see again my wife's dark mournful eyes.

Nor see my children, every shining head
    And merry eye, for what know they of grief;
'Twill still their play to know that I...

Strawberries that in gardens grow
Are plump and juicy fine,
But sweeter far as wise men know
Spring from the woodland vine.

No need for bowl or silver spoon,
Sugar or spice or cream,
Has the wild berry plucked in June
Beside the trickling stream.

One such to melt at the tongue's root,
Confounding taste with scent,
Beats a full peck of garden fruit:
Which points my argument.

May sudden justice overtake
And snap the froward pen,
That old and palsied poets shake
Against the minds of men;

Blasphemers trusting to hold caught
In far-flung webs of ink
The utmost ends of human thought,
Till nothing's left to think.

But may the gift of heavenly peace
And glory for all time
Keep the boy Tom who tending geese

When the lad for longing sighs,
Mute and dull of cheer and pale,
If at death's own door he lies,
Maiden, you can heal his ail.

Lovers' ills are all to buy:
The wan look, the hollow tone,
The hung head, the sunken eye,
You can have them for your own.

Buy them, buy them: eve and morn
Lovers' ills are all to sell.
Then you can lie down forlorn;
But the lover will be well.

I’ll say and maybe dream I have drawn content—
Seeing that time has frozen up the blood,
The wick of youth being burned and the oil spent—
From beauty that is cast out of a mould
In bronze, or that in dazzling marble appears,
Appears, and when we have gone is gone again,
Being more indifferent to our solitude
Than ’twere an apparition. O heart, we are old,
The living beauty is for younger men,
We cannot pay its tribute of wild tears.