Death

I.
How happy he, who free from care
The rage of courts, and noise of towns;
Contented breaths his native air,
In his own grounds.

II.
Whose herds with milk, whose fields with bread,
Whose flocks supply him with attire,
Whose trees in summer yield him shade,
In winter fire.

III.
Blest! who can unconcern'dly find
Hours, days, and years slide swift away,
In health of body, peace of mind,
Quiet by day,

IV.
Sound sleep by night; study and ease
Together mix'd; sweet recreation,
And innocence, which most does please,
With meditation.

V.
Thus let me live, unheard, unknown;
Thus unlamented let me dye;
Steal from the world, and not a stone
Tell where I lye.

It was far in the sameness of the wood;
I was running with joy on the Demon's trail,
Though I knew what I hunted was no true god.
i was just as the light was beginning to fail
That I suddenly head, all I needed to hear:
It has lasted me many and many a year.

The sound was behind me instead of before,
A sleepy sound, but mocking half,
As one who utterly couldn't care.
The Demon arose from his wallow to laugh,
Brushing the dirt from his eye as he went;
And well I knew what the Demon meant.

I shall not forget how his laugh rang out.
I felt as a fool to have been so caught,
And checked my steps to make pretense
I was something among the leaves I sought
(Though doubtful whether he stayed to see).
Thereafter I sat me against a tree.

Under green apple-boughs
That never a storm will rouse,
My lady hath her house
Between two bowers;
In either of the twain
Red roses full of rain;
She hath for bondwomen
All kind of flowers.

She hath no handmaid fair
To draw her curled gold hair
Through rings of gold that bear
Her whole hair’s weight;
She hath no maids to stand
Gold-clothed on either hand;
In all the great green land
None is so great.

She hath no more to wear
But one white hood of vair
Drawn over eyes and hair,
Wrought with strange gold,
Made for some great queen’s head,
Some fair great queen since dead;
And one strait gown of red
Against the cold.

Beneath her eyelids deep
Love lying seems asleep,
Love, swift to wake, to weep,<...

Loud is the Vale! the Voice is up
With which she speaks when storms are gone,
A mighty unison of streams!
Of all her Voices, One!

Loud is the Vale; this inland Depth
In peace is roaring like the Sea
Yon star upon the mountain-top
Is listening quietly.

Sad was I, even to pain deprest,
Importunate and heavy load!
The Comforter hath found me here,
Upon this lonely road;

And many thousands now are sad,
Wait the fulfilment of their fear;
For he must die who is their stay,
Their glory disappear.

A Power is passing from the earth
To breathless Nature's dark abyss;
But when the great and good depart
What is it more than this.

That Man, who is from God sent forth,
Doth yet again to God return?
Such ebb and flo...

O Power to whom this earthly clime
Is but an atom in the whole,
O Poet-heart of Space and Time,
O Maker and Immortal Soul,
Within whose glowing rings are bound,
Out of whose sleepless heart had birth
The cloudy blue, the starry round,
And this small miracle of earth:

Who liv'st in every living thing,
And all things are thy script and chart,
Who rid'st upon the eagle's wing,
And yearnest in the human heart;
O Riddle with a single clue,
Love, deathless, protean, secure,
The ever old, the ever new,
O Energy, serene and pure.

Thou, who art also part of me,
Whose glory I have sometime seen,
O Vision of the Ought-to-be,
O Memory of the Might-have-been,
I have had glimpses of thy way,
And moved with winds and walked with stars,

(THE PARSON'S BROTHER, SISTER, AND TWO CHILDREN)


Preface.

What wonder man should fail to stay
A nursling wafted from above,
The growth celestial come astray,
That tender growth whose name is Love!

It is as if high winds in heaven
Had shaken the celestial trees,
And to this earth below had given
Some feathered seeds from one of these.

O perfect love that 'dureth long!
Dear growth, that shaded by the palms.
And breathed on by the angel's song,
Blooms on in heaven's eternal calms!

How great the task to guard thee here,
Where wind is rough and frost is keen,
And all the ground with doubt and fear
Is checkered, birth and death between!

Space is against thee - it can part;
Time is against thee - it can ...

Through what long heaviness, assayed in what strange fire,
Have these white monks been brought into the way of peace,
Despising the world's wisdom and the world's desire,
Which from the body of this death bring no release?

Within their austere walls no voices penetrate;
A sacred silence only, as of death, obtains;
Nothing finds entry here of loud or passionate;
This quiet is the exceeding profit of their pains.

From many lands they came, in divers fiery ways;
Each knew at last the vanity of earthly joys;
And one was crowned with thorns, and one was crowned with bays,
And each was tired at last of the world's foolish noise.

It was not theirs with Dominic to preach God's holy wrath,
They were too stern to bear sweet Francis' gentle sway;
Theirs was a hig...

It fell upon a summer night
The village folk were soundly sleeping,
Unconscious of the glamour white
In which the moon all things was steeping;
One window only showed a light;
Behind it, silent vigil keeping,
Sat Margaret, as one in trance,
The dark-eyed daughter of the Manse.

A flood of strange, sweet thoughts was surging
Her passionate heart and brain within.
At last, some secret impulse urging,
She laid aside her garment thin,
And from its snowy folds emerging,
Like Lamia from the serpent-skin,
She stood before her mirror bright
Naked, and lovely as the night.

Her dark hair o’er her shoulders flowing
Might well have been a silken pall
O’er Galatea’s image glowing
To life and love: she was withal
The lamplight o’er her radianc...

        Be to her, Persephone,
        All the things I might not be;
        Take her head upon your knee.
        She that was so proud and wild,
        Flippant, arrogant and free,
        She that had no need of me,
        Is a little lonely child
        Lost in Hell,--Persephone,
        Take her head upon your knee;
        Say to her, "My dear, my dear,
        It is not so dreadful here."




CHORUS

        Give away her gowns,
        Give away her shoes;
        She has no more use
        For her fragrant gowns;
        Take them all down,
        Blue, green, blue,
        Lilac, pink, blue,
        From their padded hangers;
        She will dance no more
        In her narrow shoes;
     ...

I had rather write one word upon the rock
Of ages than ten thousand in the sand.
The rock of ages! lo I cannot reach
Its lofty shoulders with my puny hand:
I can but touch the sands about its feet.
Yea, I have painted pictures for the blind,
And sung my sweetest songs to ears of stone.
What matter if the dust of ages drift
Five fathoms deep above my grave unknown,
For I have sung and loved the songs I sung.
Who sings for fame the Muses may disown;
Who sings for gold will sing an idle song;
But he who sings because sweet music springs
Unbidden from his heart and warbles long,
May haply touch another heart unknown.
There is sweeter poetry in the hearts of men
Than ever poet wrote or minstrel sung;
For words are clumsy wings for burning thought.
The ful...

How many paltry, foolish, painted things,
That now in coaches trouble every street,
Shall be forgotten, whom no poet sings,
Ere they be well wrapped in their winding sheet!
    Where I to thee eternity shall give,
When nothing else remaineth of these days,
And queens hereafter shall be glad to live
Upon the alms of thy superfluous praise;
    Virgins and matrons reading these my rhymes,
Shall be so much delighted with thy story,
That they shall grieve they lived not in these times,
To have seen thee, their sex's only glory.
    So shalt thou fly above the vulgar throng,
    Still to survive in my immortal song.

A violet grew by the river-side,
And gladdened all hearts with its bloom;
While over the fields, on the scented air,
It breathed a rich perfume.
But the clouds grew dark in the angry sky,
And its portals were opened wide;
And the heavy rain beat down the flower
That grew by the river-side.

Not far away in a pleasant home,
There lived a little boy,
Whose cheerful face and childish grace
Filled every heart with joy.
He wandered one day to the river's verge,
With no one near to save;
And the heart that we loved with a boundless love
Was stilled in the restless wave.

The sky grew dark to our tearful eyes,
And we bade farewell to joy;
For our hearts were bound by a sorrowful tie
To the grave of the little boy.
The birds still sing in...

Musicians wrestle everywhere:
All day, among the crowded air,
I hear the silver strife;
And -- waking long before the dawn --
Such transport breaks upon the town
I think it that "new life!"

It is not bird, it has no nest;
Nor band, in brass and scarlet dressed,
Nor tambourine, nor man;
It is not hymn from pulpit read, --
The morning stars the treble led
On time's first afternoon!

Some say it is the spheres at play!
Some say that bright majority
Of vanished dames and men!
Some think it service in the place
Where we, with late, celestial face,
Please God, shall ascertain!

Glee! The great storm is over!
Four have recovered the land;
Forty gone down together
Into the boiling sand.

Ring, for the scant salvation!
Toll, for the bonnie souls, --
Neighbor and friend and bridegroom,
Spinning upon the shoals!

How they will tell the shipwreck
When winter shakes the door,
Till the children ask, "But the forty?
Did they come back no more?"

Then a silence suffuses the story,
And a softness the teller's eye;
And the children no further question,
And only the waves reply.

The Two Greetings.

I.

Out of the deep, my child, out of the deep,
Where all that was to be, in all that was,
Whirl’d for a million æons thro’ the vast
Waste dawn of multitudinous-eddying light—
Out of the deep, my child, out of the deep,
Thro’ all this changing world of changeless law,
And every phase of ever-heightening life,
And nine long months of antenatal gloom,
With this last moon, this crescent—her dark orb
Touch’d with earth’s light—thou comest, darling boy;
Our own; a babe in lineament and limb
Perfect, and prophet of the perfect man;
Whose face and form are hers and mine in one,
Indissolubly married like our love;
Live, and be happy in thyself, and serve
This mortal race thy kin so well, that men
May bless thee as we bless thee,...

When Age comes on! -
"The deepening dusk is where the dawn
    Once glittered splendid, and the dew
In honey-drips, from red rose-lips
    Was kissed away by me and you. -
And now across the frosty lawn
Black foot-prints trail, and Age comes on -
        And Age comes on!
    And biting wild-winds whistle through
Our tattered hopes - and Age comes on!

When Age comes on! -
O tide of raptures, long withdrawn,
    Flow back in summer-floods, and fling
Here at our feet our childhood sweet,
    And all the songs we used to sing! . . .
Old loves, old friends - all dead and gone -
Our old faith lost - and Age comes on -
        And Age comes on!
    Poor hearts! have we not anything
But longings left when Age comes on?

The sun is lying on the garden-wall,
The full red rose is sweetening all the air,
The day is happier than a dream most fair;
The evening weaves afar a wide-spread pall,
And lo! sun, day, and rose, no longer there!

I have a lover now my life is young,
I have a love to keep this many a day;
My heart will hold it when my life is gray,
My love will last although my heart be wrung.
My life, my heart, my love shall fade away!

O lover loved, the day has only gone!
In death or life, our love can only go;
Never forgotten is the joy we know,
We follow memory when life is done:
No wave is lost in all the tides that flow.

    What my name is, or where I live, or if
    I am that Alma Bell whose name is broached
    With Elenor Murray's who shall know from this?
    My hand-writing I hide in type, I send
    This letter through a friend who will not tell.
    But first, since no chance ever yet was mine
    To speak my heart out, since if I had tried
    These fifteen years ago to tell my heart,
    I must have failed for lack of words and mind,
    I speak my heart out now. I knew the soul
    Of Elenor Murray, knew it at the time,
    Have verified my knowledge in these years,
    Who have not lost her, have kept touch with her
    In letters, know the splendid sacrifice
    She made in the war. She was a human soul
    Earth is not blest with often.

    First I say