Death

i.

Dearest and best of maidens, whom the Fates
    have dower'd with beauty, whom the glory-gates
Have shown so splendid in my waking sight,
Is't well, thou syren! thus to haunt the night
And grant no mercy, none from week to week
All through the year? Is't well my soul to seek
    And shun my body? Is't throughout ordain'd
That thou shouldst spurn a love so tender-meek?


ii.

It is my joy to serve thee, 'tis my pride
    To own my follies, though anew denied
The chance of wisdom, and for this, who knows?
I shall be counted, ere the season's close,
A time-perverter. Yes! I shall be shamed,
And frown'd upon, and day by day proclaim'd
    A foe to virtue, though, in seeking thee
I seek the goal that Virtue's self hath named.

Heart of my heart, the day is chill,
The mist hangs low o'er the wooded hill,
The soft white mist and the heavy cloud
The sun and the face of heaven shroud.
The birds are thick in the dripping trees,
That drop their pearls to the beggar breeze;
No songs are rife where songs are wont,
Each singer crouches in his haunt.

Heart of my heart, the day is chill,
Whene'er thy loving voice is still,
The cloud and mist hide the sky from me,
Whene'er thy face I cannot see.
My thoughts fly back from the chill without,
My mind in the storm drops doubt on doubt,
No songs arise. Without thee, love,
My soul sinks down like a frightened dove.

Far in the purple valleys of illusion
I see her waiting, like the soul of music,
With deep eyes, lovelier than cerulean pansies,
Shadow and fire, yet merciless as poison;
With red lips, sweeter than Arabian storax,
Yet bitterer than myrrh.--O tears and kisses!
O eyes and lips, that haunt my soul forever!

Again Spring walks transcendent on the mountains:
The woods are hushed: the vales are blue with shadows:
Above the heights, steeped in a thousand splendors,
Like some vast canvas of the gods, hangs burning
The sunset's wild sciography: and slowly
The moon treads heaven's proscenium,--night's stately
White queen of love and tragedy and madness.

Again I know forgotten dreams and longings;
Ideals lost; desires dead and buried
Beside the altar sacrific...

Mæcenas, I propose to fly
To realms beyond these human portals;
No common things shall be my wings,
But such as sprout upon immortals.

Of lowly birth, once shed of earth,
Your Horace, precious (so you've told him),
Shall soar away; no tomb of clay
Nor Stygian prison-house shall hold him.

Upon my skin feathers begin
To warn the songster of his fleeting;
But never mind, I leave behind
Songs all the world shall keep repeating.

Lo! Boston girls, with corkscrew curls,
And husky westerns, wild and woolly,
And southern climes shall vaunt my rhymes,
And all profess to know me fully.

Methinks the West shall know me best,
And therefore hold my memory dearer;
For by that lake a bard shall make
My subtle, hidden meanings clearer.

Good-bye, my song--I, who found words for sorrow,
Offer my joy to-day a useless lute.
In the deep night I sang me of the morrow;
The sun is on my face and I am mute.

Good-bye, my song, in you was all my yearning,
The prayer for this poor heart I wore so long.
Now love heaps roses where the wounds were burning;
What need have I for song?

Long since I sang of all one loves and misses;
How may I sing to-day who know no wrong?
My lips are all for laughter and for kisses.
Good-bye, my song.

I saw her first when she was old,
Her form devoid of grace;
Her locks that once were yellow gold
Were white, and on her face
Were furrows deep, which told of pain,
And toil, and worldly fret,
Which all, alas, had been in vain,
But nature claimed the debt.

Her eyes were gray and lacked in glow,
Her voice some thought was gruff,
And when excited was not slow
To use a sharp rebuff;
For she in speech was free from art;
Men feared her verbal stroke,
And yet they said, "She has a heart;
She never wears a cloak."

Her creed, perhaps, was heterodox,
If creed she ever had.
She knew far more of pans and crocks,
But this was not her fad;
Her light, I fear, did not shine out
In pious talk and airs,
In fact I entertain a doubt
...

FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME.

Memphis.


'Tis true, alas--the mysteries and the lore
I came to study on this, wondrous shore.
Are all forgotten in the new delights.
The strange, wild joys that fill my days and nights.
Instead of dark, dull oracles that speak
From subterranean temples, those I seek
Come from the breathing shrines where Beauty lives,
And Love, her priest, the soft responses gives.
Instead of honoring Isis in those rites
At Coptos held, I hail her when she lights
Her first young crescent on the holy stream--
When wandering youths and maidens watch her beam
And number o'er the nights she hath to run,
Ere she again embrace her bridegroom sun.
While o'er some mystic leaf that dimly lends
A clew into past times the stu...

Helen, in her silent room,
Weaves upon the upright loom;
Weaves a mantle rich and dark,
Purpled over, deep. But mark
How she scatters o'er the wool
Woven shapes, till it is full
Of men that struggle close, complex;
Short-clipp'd steeds with wrinkled necks
Arching high; spear, shield, and all
The panoply that doth recall
Mighty war; such war as e'en
For Helen's sake is waged, I ween.
Purple is the groundwork: good!
All the field is stained with blood -
Blood poured out for Helen's sake;
(Thread, run on; and shuttle, shake!)
But the shapes of men that pass
Are as ghosts within a glass,
Woven with whiteness of the swan,
Pale, sad memories, gleaming wan
From the garment's purple fold
Where Troy's tale is twined and told.
Well may Hele...

An artist toiled over his pictures;
    He labored by night and by day.
He struggled for glory and honor,
    But the world, it had nothing to say.
His walls were ablaze with the splendors
    We see in the beautiful skies;
But the world beheld only the colors
    That were made out of chemical dyes.

Time sped. And he lived, loved, and suffered;
    He passed through the valley of grief.
Again he toiled over his canvas,
    Since in labor alone was relief.
It showed not the splendor of colors
    Of those of his earlier years,
But the world? the world bowed down before it,
    Because it was painted with tears.

A poet was gifted with genius,
    And he sang, and he sang all the days.
He wrote for the praise of the people,
    But the...

I walked beside a dark gray sea.
And said, "O world, how cold thou art!
Thou poor white world, I pity thee,
For joy and warmth from thee depart.

"Yon rising wave licks off the snow,
Winds on the crag each other chase,
In little powdery whirls they blow
The misty fragments down its face.

"The sea is cold, and dark its rim,
Winter sits cowering on the wold,
And I beside this watery brim,
Am also lonely, also cold."

I spoke, and drew toward a rock,
Where many mews made twittering sweet;
Their wings upreared, the clustering flock
Did pat the sea-grass with their feet.

A rock but half submerged, the sea
Ran up and washed it while they fed;
Their fond and foolish ecstasy
A wondering in my fancy bred.

Joy companied wi...

O for that sweet, untroubled rest
That poets oft have sung!--
The babe upon its mother's breast,
The bird upon its young,
The heart asleep without a pain--
When shall I know that sleep again?

When shall I be as I have been
Upon my mother's breast--
Sweet Nature's garb of verdant green
To woo to perfect rest--
Love in the meadow, field, and glen,
And in my native wilds again?

The sheep within the fallow field,
The herd upon the green,
The larks that in the thistle shield,
And pipe from morn to e'en--
O for the pasture, fields, and fen!
When shall I see such rest again?

I love the weeds along the fen,
More sweet than garden flowers,
For freedom haunts the humble glen
That blest my happiest hours.
Here prison injure...

The Old Year groaned as he trudged away,
His guilty shadow black on the snow,
And the heart of the glad New Year turned grey
At the road Time bade him go.

"O Gaffer Time, is it blood-road still?
Is the noontide dark as the stormy morn?
Is man's will yet as a wild beast's will?
When shall the Christ be born?"

He laughed as he answered, grim Gaffer Time,
Whose laugh is sadder than all men's moan.
"That name rides high on our wrath and crime,
For the Light in darkness shone.

"And thou, fair youngling, wilt mend the tale?"
The New Year stared on the misty word,
Where at foot of a cross all lustrous pale
Men raged for their gods of gold.

"Come back, Old Year, with thy burden bent.
Come back and settle thine own dark debt."
"Nay, le...

There are three fine devils eating my heart--
They left me, my grief! without a thing;
Sickness wrought, and Love wrought,
And an empty pocket, my ruin and my woe.
Poverty left me without a shirt,
Barefooted, barelegged, without any covering;
Sickness left me with my head weak
And my body miserable, an ugly thing.
Love left me like a coal upon the floor,
Like a half-burned sod that is never put out.
Worse than the cough, worse than the fever itself,
Worse than any curse at all under the sun,
Worse than the great poverty
Is the devil that is called "Love" by the people.
And if I were in my young youth again
I would not take, or give, or ask for a kiss!

Forth to his study the sculptor goes
    In a mood of lofty mirth:
"Now shall the tongues of my carping foes
    Confess what my art is worth!
In my brain last night the vision arose,
    To-morrow shall see its birth!"

He stood like a god; with creating hand
    He struck the formless clay:
"Psyche, arise," he said, "and stand;
    In beauty confront the day.
I have sought nor found thee in any land;
    I call thee: arise; obey!"

The sun was low in the eastern skies
    When spoke the confident youth;
Sweet Psyche, all day, his hands and eyes
    Wiled from the clay uncouth,
Nor ceased when the shadows came up like spies
    That dog the steps of Truth.

He said, "I will do my will in spite
    Of the rising dark; for, see,

I. THE PERSONIFIED SENTIMENTAL

Affection’s charm no longer gilds
The idol of the shrine;
But cold Oblivion seeks to fill
Regret’s ambrosial wine.
Though Friendship’s offering buried lies
’Neath cold Aversion’s snow,
Regard and Faith will ever bloom
Perpetually below.

I see thee whirl in marble halls,
In Pleasure’s giddy train;
Remorse is never on that brow,
Nor Sorrow’s mark of pain.
Deceit has marked thee for her own;
Inconstancy the same;
And Ruin wildly sheds its gleam
Athwart thy path of shame.



II. THE HOMELY PATHETIC

The dews are heavy on my brow;
My breath comes hard and low;
Yet, mother dear, grant one request,
Before your boy must go.
Oh! lift me ere my spirit sinks,
And ere my sens...

No one lives in Golden Gully, for its golden days are o’er,
And its clay shall never sully blucher-boots of diggers more,
For the diggers long have vanished, nought but broken shafts remain,
And the bush, by diggers banished, fast reclaims its own again.
Now, when dying Daylight slowly draws her fingers from the “Peak”,
The Weird Empress Melancholy rises from the reedy creek,
In the gap above the gully, while the dismal curlews scream
Loud to welcome her as ruler of the dreary night supreme,
Takes her throne, and by her presence fills the strange, uncertain air
With a ghostly phosphorescence of the horrors hidden there.
None would think, by camp-fire blazy, lighting fitfully the scene,
In the seasons that are hazy, how in seasons gone between,
Diggers yarned or joined in jolly ba...

When Art goes bounding, lean,
Up hill-tops fired green
To pluck a rose for life.

Life like a broody hen
Cluck-clucks him back again.

But when Art, imbecile,
Sits old and chill
On sidings shaven clean,
And counts his clustering
Dead daisies on a string
With witless laughter....

Then like a new Jill
Toiling up a hill
Life scrambles after.

An Experience Of The Mellstock Quire



I

We Christmas-carolled down the Vale, and up the Vale, and round the Vale,
We played and sang that night as we were yearly wont to do -
A carol in a minor key, a carol in the major D,
Then at each house: "Good wishes: many Christmas joys to you!"

II

Next, to the widow's John and I and all the rest drew on. And I
Discerned that John could hardly hold the tongue of him for joy.
The widow was a sweet young thing whom John was bent on marrying,
And quiring at her casement seemed romantic to the boy.

III

"She'll make reply, I trust," said he, "to our salute? She must!" said he,
"And then I will accost her gently - much to her surprise! -
For knowing not I am with you here, when I speak up a...