Death

I.

Through leafy windows of the trees
The full moon shows a wrinkled face,
And, trailing dim her draperies
Of mist from place to place,
The Twilight leads the breeze.

And now, far-off, beside a pool,
Dusk blows a reed, a guttural note;
Then sows the air around her full
Of twinkling disc and mote,
And moth-shapes soft as wool.

And from a glen, where lights glow by,
Through hollowed hands she sends a call,
And Solitude, with owlet cry,
Answers: and Evenfall
Steps swiftly from the sky.

And Mystery, in hodden gray,
Steals forth to meet her: and the Dark
Before him slowly makes to sway
A jack-o'-lantern spark
To light him on his way.

The grasshopper its violin
Tunes up, the katydid its fife;
The beetl...

I

How blest the Maid whose heart, yet free
From Love's uneasy sovereignty
Beats with a fancy running high,
Her simple cares to magnify;
Whom Labour, never urged to toil,
Hath cherished on a healthful soil;
Who knows not pomp, who heeds not pelf;
Whose heaviest sin it is to look
Askance upon her pretty Self
Reflected in some crystal brook;
Whom grief hath spared, who sheds no tear
But in sweet pity; and can hear
Another's praise from envy clear.

II

Such (but O lavish Nature! why
That dark unfathomable eye,
Where lurks a Spirit that replies
To stillest mood of softest skies,
Yet hints at peace to be o'erthrown,
Another's first, and then her own?)
Such, haply, yon Italian Maid,
Our Lady's laggard Votaress,
Halt...

    The wind of evening cried along the darkening trees,
    Along the darkening trees, heavy with ancient pain,
    Heavy with ancient pain from faded centuries,
    From faded centuries....    O foolish thought and vain!

    O foolish thought and vain to think the wind could know,
    To think the wind could know the griefs of men who died,
    The griefs of men who died and mouldered long ago:
    "And mouldered long ago," the wind of evening cried.

Perchè la vita è breve.

IN PRAISE OF LAURA'S EYES: THE DIFFICULTY OF HIS THEME.


    Since human life is frail,
And genius trembles at the lofty theme,
I little confidence in either place;
But let my tender wail
There, where it ought, deserved attention claim,
That wail which e'en in silence we may trace.
O beauteous eyes, where Love doth nestling stay!
To you I turn my insufficient lay,
Unapt to flow; but passion's goad I feel:
And he of you who sings
Such courteous habit by the strain is taught,
That, borne on amorous wings,
He soars above the reach of vulgar thought:
Exalted thus, I venture to reveal
What long my cautious heart has labour'd to conceal.

Yes, well do I perceive
To you how wrongful is my scanty praise;

So much one thought about the life beyond
He did not drain the waters of his pond;
And when death laid his children 'neath the sod
He called it - 'the mysterious will of God.'
He would not strive for worldly gain, not he.
His wealth, he said, was stored in God's To Be.
He kept his mortal body poorly drest,
And talked about the garments of the blest.
And when to his last sleep he laid him down,
His only mourner begged her widow's gown.

One was not sure there was a life to come,
So made an Eden of his earthly home.
He strove for wealth, and with an open hand
He comforted the needy in his land.
He wore new garments often, and the old
Helped many a brother to keep out the cold.
He said this life was such a little span
Man ought to make the most of it, -...

Half close your eyelids, loosen your hair,
And dream about the great and their pride;
They have spoken against you everywhere,
But weigh this song with the great and their pride;
I made it out of a mouthful of air,
Their children’s children shall say they have lied.

One night in my room, still and beamless,
With will and with thought in eclipse,
I rested in sleep that was dreamless;
When softly there fell on my lips

A touch, as of lips that were pressing
Mine own with the message of bliss--
A sudden, soft, fleeting caressing,
A breath like a maiden's first kiss.

I woke-and the scoffer may doubt me--
I peered in surprise through the gloom;
But nothing and none were about me,
And I was alone in my room.

Perhaps 't was the wind that caressed me
And touched me with dew-laden breath;
Or, maybe, close-sweeping, there passed me
The low-winging Angel of Death.

Some sceptic may choose to disdain it,
Or one feign to read it aright;
Or wisdom may seek to explain it--
This mystical kiss in the n...

The Poet is the loneliest man that lives;
Ah me! God makes him so --
The sea hath its ebb and flow,
He sings his songs -- but yet he only gives
In the waves of the words of his art
Only the ~foam~ of his heart.

Its sea rolls on forever, evermore,
Beautiful, vast, and deep;
Only his ~shallowest~ thoughts touch the shore
Of Speech; his ~deepest~ sleep.

The foam that crests the wave is pure and white;
The ~foam~ is not the ~wave~;
The wave is not the sea -- ~it rolls~ forever on;
The winding shores will crave
A kiss from ev'ry wavelet on the deep;
~Some come~; some always ~sleep~.

    When under the icy eaves
        The swallow heralds the sun,
    And the dove for its lost mate grieves
        And the young lambs play and run;
    When the sea is a plane of glass,
        And the blustering winds are still,
    And the strength of the thin snows pass
        In mists o'er the tawny hill -
    The spirit of life awakes
    In the fresh flags by the lakes.

    When the sick man seeks the air,
        And the graves of the dead grow green,
    Where the children play unaware
        Of the faces no longer seen;
    When all we have felt or can feel,
        And all we are or have been,
    And all the heart can hide or reveal,
        Knocks gently, and enters in: -
    The spirit of life awakes,
    In the fresh fla...

(After he has been extemporizing upon the musical instrument of his invention)


I.
Would that the structure brave, the manifold music I build,
Bidding my organ obey, calling its keys to their work,
Claiming each slave of the sound, at a touch, as when Solomon willed
Armies of angels that soar, legions of demons that lurk,
Man, brute, reptile, fly, alien of end and of aim,
Adverse, each from the other heaven-high, hell-deep removed,
Should rush into sight at once as he named the ineffable Name,
And pile him a palace straight, to pleasure the princess he loved!

II.
Would it might tarry like his, the beautiful building of mine,
This which my keys in a crowd pressed and importuned to raise!
Ah, one and all, how they helped, would dispart now and now combi...

I'll tell thee why this weary world meseemeth
But as the visions light of one who dreameth,
Which pass like clouds, leaving no trace behind;
Why this strange life, so full of sin and folly,
In me awakeneth no melancholy,
Nor leaveth shade, or sadness, on my mind.
'Tis not that with an undiscerning eye
I see the pageant wild go dancing by,
Mistaking that which falsest is, for true;
'Tis not that pleasure hath entwined me,
'Tis not that sorrow hath enshrined me;
I bear no badge of roses or of rue,
But in the inmost chambers of my soul
There is another world, a blessed home,
O'er which no living power holdeth control,
Anigh to which ill things do never come.
There shineth the glad sunlight of clear thought,
With hope, and faith, holding communion high,
...

(To Marcel Schwob in friendship and in admiration)

In a dim corner of my room for longer than my fancy thinks
A beautiful and silent Sphinx has watched me through the shifting gloom.

Inviolate and immobile she does not rise she does not stir
For silver moons are naught to her and naught to her the suns that reel.

Red follows grey across the air, the waves of moonlight ebb and flow
But with the Dawn she does not go and in the night-time she is there.

Dawn follows Dawn and Nights grow old and all the while this curious cat
Lies couching on the Chinese mat with eyes of satin rimmed with gold.

Upon the mat she lies and leers and on the tawny throat of her
Flutters the soft and silky fur or ripples to her pointed ears.

Come forth, my lovely seneschal! so...

Along the graceless grass of town
They rake the rows of red and brown,
Dead leaves, unlike the rows of hay,
Delicate, neither gold nor grey,
Raked long ago and far away.

A narrow silence in the park;
Between the lights a narrow dark.
One street rolls on the north, and one,
Muffled, upon the south doth run.
Amid the mist the work is done.

A futile crop; for it the fire
Smoulders, and, for a stack, a pyre.
So go the town's lives on the breeze,
Even as the sheddings of the trees;
Bosom nor barn is filled with these.

Though young no more, we still would dream
Of beauty's dear deluding wiles;
The leagues of life to graybeards seem
Shorter than boyhood's lingering miles.

Who knows a woman's wild caprice?
'It played with Goethe's silvered hair,
And many a Holy Father's "niece"
Has softly smoothed the papal chair.

When sixty bids us sigh in vain
To melt the heart of sweet sixteen,
We think upon those ladies twain
Who loved so well the tough old Dean.

We see the Patriarch's wintry face,
The maid of Egypt's dusky glow,
And dream that Youth and Age embrace,
As April violets fill with snow.

Tranced in her lord's Olympian smile
His lotus-loving Memphian lies, -
The musky daughter of the Nile,
With plaited hair and almond eyes.

Might...

Ah poverties, wincings, and sulky retreats!
Ah you foes that in conflict have overcome me!
(For what is my life, or any man's life, but a conflict with foes--the old, the incessant war?)
You degradations--you tussle with passions and appetites;
You smarts from dissatisfied friendships, (ah wounds, the sharpest of all;)
You toil of painful and choked articulations--you meannesses;
You shallow tongue-talks at tables, (my tongue the shallowest of any;)
You broken resolutions, you racking angers, you smother'd ennuis;
Ah, think not you finally triumph--My real self has yet to come forth;
It shall yet march forth o'ermastering, till all lies beneath me;
It shall yet stand up the soldier of unquestion'd victory.

'Come, Goody, stop your humdrum wheel,
Sweep up your orts, and get your Hat;
Old joys reviv'd once more I feel,
'Tis Fair-day; - ay, and more than that.

The Deliberation.

'Have you forgot, Kate, prithee say,
'How many Seasons here we've tarry'd?
'Tis Forty years, this very day,
'Since you and I, old Girl, were married

'Look out; - the Sun shines warm and bright,
'The Stiles are low, the paths all dry;
'I know you cut your corns last night:
'Come; be as free from care as I.

'For I'm resolv'd once more to see
'That place where we so often met;
'Though few have had more cares than we,
'We've none just now to make us fret.'

Kate scorn'd to damp the generous flame
That warm'd her aged Partner's bre...

Ph. Charon! O gentle Charon! let me woo thee
    By tears and pity now to come unto me.
Ch. What voice so sweet and charming do I hear?
    Say what thou art. Ph. I prithee first draw near.
Ch. A sound I hear, but nothing yet can see;
    Speak, where thou art. Ph. O Charon pity me!
    I am a bird, and though no name I tell,
    My warbling note will say I'm Philomel.
Ch. What's that to me? I waft nor fish or fowls,
    Nor beasts, fond thing, but only human souls.
Ph. Alas for me! Ch. Shame on thy witching note
    That made me thus hoist sail and bring my boat:
    But I'll return; what mischief brought thee hither?
Ph. A deal of love and much, much grief together.
Ch. What's thy request? Ph.