Death

What are those of the known, but to ascend and enter the Unknown?
And what are those of life, but for Death?

Unless I learn to ask no help
From any other soul but mine,
To seek no strength in waving reeds
Nor shade beneath a straggling pine;
Unless I learn to look at Grief
Unshrinking from her tear-blind eyes,
And take from Pleasure fearlessly
Whatever gifts will make me wise
Unless I learn these things on earth,
Why was I ever given birth?

Milton! I think thy spirit hath passed away
From these white cliffs and high-embattled towers;
This gorgeous fiery-coloured world of ours
Seems fallen into ashes dull and grey,
And the age changed unto a mimic play
Wherein we waste our else too-crowded hours:
For all our pomp and pageantry and powers
We are but fit to delve the common clay,
Seeing this little isle on which we stand,
This England, this sea-lion of the sea,
By ignorant demagogues is held in fee,
Who love her not: Dear God! is this the land
Which bare a triple empire in her hand
When Cromwell spake the word Democracy!

And is it true indeed, and must you go,
Set out alone across that moorland track,
No love avail, though we have loved you so,
No voice have any power to call you back?
And losing hands stretch after you in vain,
And all our eyes grow empty for your lack,
Nor hands, nor eyes, know aught of you again.

Dear friend, I shed no tear while yet you stayed,
Nor vexed your soul with unavailing word,
But you are gone, and now can all be said,
And tear and sigh too surely fall unheard.
So long I kept for you an undimmed eye,
Surely for grief this hour may well be spared,
Though could you know I still must keep it dry.

For what can tears avail you? the spring rain
That softly pelts the lattice, as with flowers,
Will of its tears a daisied counterpane
Weave...

A TALE OF TRANSFORMATIONS.


A little Brook, that babbled under grass,
Once saw a Poet pass--
A Poet with long hair and saddened eyes,
Who went his weary way with woeful sighs.
And on another time,
This Brook did hear that Poet read his rueful rhyme.
Now in the poem that he read,
This Poet said--
"Oh! little Brook that babblest under grass!
(Ah me! Alack! Ah, well-a-day! Alas!)
Say, are you what you seem?
Or is your life, like other lives, a dream?
What time your babbling mocks my mortal moods,
Fair Naïad of the stream!
And are you, in good sooth,
Could purblind poesy perceive the truth,
A water-sprite,
Who sometimes, for man's dangerous delight,
Puts on a human form and face,
To wear them with a superhuman grace?

The cypress stood up like a church
That night we felt our love would hold,
And saintly moonlight seemed to search
And wash the whole world clean as gold;
The olives crystallized the vales'
Broad slopes until the hills grew strong:
The fireflies and the nightingales
Throbbed each to either, flame and song.
The nightingales, the nightingales.

Upon the angle of its shade
The cypress stood, self-balanced high;
Half up, half down, as double-made,
Along the ground, against the sky.
And we, too! from such soul-height went
Such leaps of blood, so blindly driven,
We scarce knew if our nature meant
Most passionate earth or intense heaven.
The nightingales, the nightingales.

We paled with love, we shook with love,
We kissed so close we could no...

    The lamp of day, with ill-presaging glare,
        Dim, cloudy, sunk beneath the western wave;
    Th' inconstant blast howl'd thro' the darkening air,
        And hollow whistled in the rocky cave.

    Lone as I wander'd by each cliff and dell,
        Once the lov'd haunts of Scotia's royal train;[1]
    Or mus'd where limpid streams once hallow'd well,[2]
        Or mould'ring ruins mark the sacred fane.[3]

    Th' increasing blast roared round the beetling rocks,
        The clouds, swift-wing'd, flew o'er the starry sky,
    The groaning trees untimely shed their locks,
        And shooting meteors caught the startled eye.

    The paly moon rose in the livid east,
        And 'mong the cliffs disclos'd a stately for...

The grave is deep and soundless,
Its brink is ghastly lone;
With veil all dark and boundless
It hides a land unknown.

The nightingale's sweet closes
Down there come not at all;
And friendship's withered roses
On the mossy hillock fall.

Their hands young brides forsaken
Wring bleeding there in vain;
The cries of orphans waken
No answer to their pain.

Yet nowhere else for mortals
Dwells their implored repose;
Through none but those dark portals
Home to his rest man goes.

The poor heart, here for ever
By storm on storm beat sore,
Its true peace gaineth never
But where it beats no more.

A REQUIEM FOR ONE ALIVE.


From fleeting pleasures and abiding cares,
From sin's seductions and from Satan's snares,
From woes and wrath to penitence and prayers,
Veni in pace!

Sweet absolution thy sad spirit heal;
To godly cares that end in endless weal,
To joys man cannot think or speak or feel,
Vade in pace!

From this world's ways and being led by them,
From floods of evil thy youth could not stem,
From tents of Kedar to Jerusalem,
Veni in pace!

Blest be thy worldly loss to thy soul's gain,
Blest be the blow that freed thee from thy chain,
Blest be the tears that wash thy spirit's stain,
Vade in pace!

Oh, dead, and yet alive! Oh, lost and found!
Salvation's walls now compass thee around,
Thy weary feet are se...

"I rode to death, for I fought for shame--
The Lady Maurine of noble name,

"The fair and faithless!--Though life be long
Is love the wiser?--Love made song

"Of all my life; and the soul that crept
Before, arose like a star and leapt:

"Still leaps with the love that it found untrue,
That it found unworthy.--Now run me through!

"Yea, run me through! for meet and well,
And a jest for laughter of fiends in hell,

"It is that I, who have done no wrong,
Should die by the hand of Hugh the Strong,

"Of Hugh her leman!--What else could be
When the devil was judge twixt thee and me?

"He splintered my lance, and my blade he broke--
Now finish me thou 'neath the trysting oak!" ...

The crest of his foeman,--a heart of white

You've seen balloons set, haven't you?
So stately they ascend
It is as swans discarded you
For duties diamond.

Their liquid feet go softly out
Upon a sea of blond;
They spurn the air as 't were too mean
For creatures so renowned.

Their ribbons just beyond the eye,
They struggle some for breath,
And yet the crowd applauds below;
They would not encore death.

The gilded creature strains and spins,
Trips frantic in a tree,
Tears open her imperial veins
And tumbles in the sea.

The crowd retire with an oath
The dust in streets goes down,
And clerks in counting-rooms observe,
''T was only a balloon.'

On great cathedral window I have seen
A summer sunset swoon and sink away,
Lost in the splendours of immortal art.
Angels and saints and all the heavenly hosts,
With smiles undimmed by half a thousand years,
From wall and niche have met my lifted gaze.
Sculpture and carving and illumined page,
And the fair, lofty dreams of architects,
That speak of beauty to the centuries -
All these have fed me with divine repasts.
Yet in my mouth is left a bitter taste,
The taste of blood that stained that age of art.

Those glorious windows shine upon the black
And hideous structure of the guillotine;
Beside the haloed countenance of saints
There hangs the multiple and knotted lash.
The Christ of love, benign and beautiful,
Looks at the torture-rack, by hate conce...

You want me to tell you a story, a yarn of the firin' line,
Of our thin red kharki 'eroes, out there where the bullets whine;
Out there where the bombs are bustin', and the cannons like 'ell-doors slam -
Just order another drink, boys, and I'll tell you of Soulful Sam.

Oh, Sam, he was never 'ilarious, though I've 'ad some mates as was wus;
He 'adn't C. B. on his programme, he never was known to cuss.
For a card or a skirt or a beer-mug he 'adn't a friendly word;
But when it came down to Scriptures, say! Wasn't he just a bird!

He always 'ad tracts in his pocket, the which he would haste to present,
And though the fellers would use them in ways that they never was meant,
I used to read 'em religious, and frequent I've been impressed
By some of them bundles of 'oly dope he ca...

You have shut me out from your tears and grief
Over the man laid low and hoary.
Listen to me now: I am no thief!
You have shut me out from your tears and grief,
Listen to me, I will tell my story.

The love of a man is transitory.
What do you know of his past? the years
He gave to another his manhood's glory?
The love of a man is transitory.
Listen to me now: open your ears.

Over the dead have done with tears!
Over the man who loved to madness
Me the woman you met with sneers,
Over the dead have done with tears!
Me the woman so sunk in badness.

He loved me ever, and that is gladness!
There by the dead now tell her so;
There by the dead where she bows in sadness.
He loved me ever, and that is gladness!
Mine the gladness and hers ...

        Doubt no more that Oberon--
        Never doubt that Pan
        Lived, and played a reed, and ran
        After nymphs in a dark forest,
        In the merry, credulous days,--
        Lived, and led a fairy band
        Over the indulgent land!
        Ah, for in this dourest, sorest
        Age man's eye has looked upon,
        Death to fauns and death to fays,
        Still the dog-wood dares to raise--
        Healthy tree, with trunk and root--
        Ivory bowls that bear no fruit,
        And the starlings and the jays--
        Birds that cannot even sing--
        Dare to come again in spring!

Night of Mid-June, in heavy vapours dying,
Like priestly hands thy holy touch is lying
Upon the world's wide brow;
God-like and grand all nature is commanding
The "peace that passes human understanding";
I, also, feel it now.

What matters it to-night, if one life treasure
I covet, is not mine! Am I to measure
The gifts of Heaven's decree
By my desires? O! life for ever longing
For some far gift, where many gifts are thronging,
God wills, it may not be.

Am I to learn that longing, lifted higher,
Perhaps will catch the gleam of sacred fire
That shows my cross is gold?
That underneath this cross - however lowly,
A jewel rests, white, beautiful and holy,
Whose worth can not be told.

Like to a scene I watched one day in wonder: -
A ...

Is then the final page before me spread,
Nor further outlet left to mind or heart?
Presumptuous Book! too forward to be read,
How can I give thee licence to depart?
One tribute more: unbidden feelings start
Forth from their coverts; slighted objects rise;
My spirit is the scene of such wild art
As on Parnassus rules, when lightning flies,
Visibly leading on the thunder's harmonies.

All that I saw returns upon my view,
All that I heard comes back upon my ear,
All that I felt this moment doth renew;
And where the foot with no unmanly fear
Recoiled--and wings alone could travel--there
I move at ease; and meet contending themes
That press upon me, crossing the career
Of recollections vivid as the dreams
Of midnight, cities, plains, forests, and mighty s...

The Text is given from Scott's Minstrelsy (1803). He remarks, 'The ballad is given from tradition.' No. 29 in the Abbotsford MS., 'Scotch Ballads, Materials for Border Minstrelsy,' is Young Benjie (or Boonjie as there written) in thirteen stanzas, headed 'From Jean Scott,' and written in William Laidlaw's hand. All of this except the first stanza is transferred, with or without changes, to Scott's ballad, which is nearly twice as long.


The Story of this ballad, simple in itself, introduces to us the elaborate question of the 'lyke-wake,' or the practice of watching through the night by the side of a corpse. More about this will be found under The Lyke-Wake Dirge, and in the Appendix at the end of this volume. Here it will suffice to quote Sir Walter Scott's introduction:--

'In this ballad t...