Death

    (After Robert Schumann.)


    Prelude.


Blue storm-clouds in hot heavens of mid-July
    Hung heavy, brooding over land and sea:
    Our hearts, a-tremble, throbbed in harmony
With the wild, restless tone of air and sky.
Shall we not call him Prospero who held
    In his enchanted hands the fateful key
    Of that tempestuous hour's mystery,
And with him to wander by a sun-bright shore,
    To hear fine, fairy voices, and to fly
With disembodied Ariel once more
    Above earth's wrack and ruin?    Far and nigh
The laughter of the thunder echoed loud,
And harmless lightnings leapt from cloud to cloud.



    I.


Floating upon a swelling wave of sound,
    We seemed to overlook an endless sea:
    Poi...

("Ceux-ci partent.")

[Bk. III. v., February, 1843.]


We pass - these sleep
Beneath the shade where deep-leaved boughs
Bend o'er the furrows the Great Reaper ploughs,
And gentle summer winds in many sweep
Whirl in eddying waves
The dead leaves o'er the graves.

And the living sigh:
Forgotten ones, so soon your memories die.
Ye never more may list the wild bird's song,
Or mingle in the crowded city-throng.
Ye must ever dwell in gloom,
'Mid the silence of the tomb.

And the dead reply:
God giveth us His life. Ye die,
Your barren lives are tilled with tears,
For glory, ye are clad with fears.
Oh, living ones! oh, earthly shades!
We live; your beauty clouds and fades.

The sun kept setting, setting still;
No hue of afternoon
Upon the village I perceived, --
From house to house 't was noon.

The dusk kept dropping, dropping still;
No dew upon the grass,
But only on my forehead stopped,
And wandered in my face.

My feet kept drowsing, drowsing still,
My fingers were awake;
Yet why so little sound myself
Unto my seeming make?

How well I knew the light before!
I could not see it now.
'T is dying, I am doing; but
I'm not afraid to know.

Beeny did not quiver,
    Juliot grew not gray,
Thin Valency's river
    Held its wonted way.
Bos seemed not to utter
    Dimmest note of dirge,
Targan mouth a mutter
    To its creamy surge.

Yet though these, unheeding,
    Listless, passed the hour
Of her spirit's speeding,
    She had, in her flower,
Sought and loved the places -
    Much and often pined
For their lonely faces
    When in towns confined.

Why did not Valency
    In his purl deplore
One whose haunts were whence he
    Drew his limpid store?
Why did Bos not thunder,
    Targan apprehend
Body and breath were sunder
    Of their former friend?

Thou bidst me come away,
And I'll no longer stay,
Than for to shed some tears
For faults of former years;
And to repent some crimes
Done in the present times;
And next, to take a bit
Of bread, and wine with it;
To don my robes of love,
Fit for the place above;
To gird my loins about
With charity throughout;
And so to travel hence
With feet of innocence;
These done, I'll only cry,
'God, mercy!' and so die.

Why were you born when the snow was falling?
You should have come to the cuckoo's calling,
Or when grapes are green in the cluster,
Or, at least, when lithe swallows muster
For their far off flying
From summer dying.

Why did you die when the lambs were cropping?
You should have died at the apples' dropping,
When the grasshopper comes to trouble,
And the wheat-fields are sodden stubble,
And all winds go sighing
For sweet things dying.

I said, “I will take my life
And throw it away;
I who was fire and song
Will turn to clay.”

“I will lie no more in the night
With shaken breath,
I will toss my heart in the air
To be caught by Death.”

But out of the night I heard,
Like the inland sound of the sea,
The hushed and terrible sob
Of all humanity.

Then I said, “Oh who am I
To scorn God to his face?
I will bow my head and stay
And suffer with my race.”

Love and Death once ceased their strife
At the Tavern of Man's Life.
Called for wine, and threw, alas!
Each his quiver on the grass.
When the bout was o'er they found
Mingled arrows strewed the ground.
Hastily they gathered then
Each the loves and lives of men.
Ah, the fateful dawn deceived!
Mingled arrows each one sheaved;
Death's dread armoury was stored
With the shafts he most abhorred;
Love's light quiver groaned beneath
Venom-headed darts of Death.

Thus it was they wrought our woe
At the Tavern long ago.
Tell me, do our masters know,
Loosing blindly as they fly,
Old men love while young men die?

        Why do we grudge our sweets so to the living
    Who, God knows, find at best too much of gall,
        And then with generous, open hands kneel, giving
    Unto the dead our all?

        Why do we pierce the warm hearts, sin or sorrow,
    With idle jests, or scorn, or cruel sneers,
        And when it cannot know, on some to-morrow,
    Speak of its woe through tears?

        What do the dead care, for the tender token -
    The love, the praise, the floral offerings?
        But palpitating, living hearts are broken
    For want of just these things.

No, no! go not to Lethe, neither twist
Wolf’s-bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine;
Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kist
By nightshade, ruby grape of Proserpine;
Make not your rosary of yew-berries,
Nor let the beetle, nor the death-moth be
Your mournful Psyche, nor the downy owl
A partner in your sorrow’s mysteries;
For shade to shade will come too drowsily,
And drown the wakeful anguish of the soul.

But when the melancholy fit shall fall
Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud,
That fosters the droop-headed flowers all,
And hides the green hill in an April shroud;
Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose,
Or on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave,
Or on the wealth of globed peonies;
Or if thy mistress some rich anger shows,
Emprison her ...

I watch you, gazing at me from the wall,
And wonder how you'd match your dreams with mine,
If, mastering time's illusion, I could call
You back to share this quiet candle-shine.

For you were young, three hundred years ago;
And by your looks I guess that you were wise ...
Come, whisper soft, and Death will never know
You've slipped away from those calm, painted eyes.

Strange is your voice ... Poor ninny, dead so long,
And all your pride forgotten like your name.
'One April morn I heard a blackbird's song.
And joy was in my heart like leaves aflame.'

And so you died before your songs took wing;
While Andrew Marvell followed in your wake.
'Love thrilled me into music. I could sing
But for a moment, - but for beauty's sake.'

W...

'Tis said, when Schiller's death drew nigh,
The wish possessed his mighty mind,
To wander forth wherever lie
The homes and haunts of human-kind.

Then strayed the poet, in his dreams,
By Rome and Egypt's ancient graves;
Went up the New World's forest streams,
Stood in the Hindoo's temple-caves;

Walked with the Pawnee, fierce and stark,
The sallow Tartar, midst his herds,
The peering Chinese, and the dark
False Malay uttering gentle words.

How could he rest? even then he trod
The threshold of the world unknown;
Already, from the seat of God,
A ray upon his garments shone;

Shone and awoke the strong desire
For love and knowledge reached not here,
Till, freed by death, his soul of fire
Sprang to a fairer, ampler sphere.
...

Oh, I have dreams.    I sometimes dream of Life
    In the full meaning of that splendid word.
    Its subtle music which few men have heard,
Though all may hear it, sounding through earth's strife.
Its mountain heights by mystic breezes kissed
    Lifting their lovely peaks above the dust;
    Its treasures which no touch of time can rust,
Its emerald seas, its dawns of amethyst,
    Its certain purpose, its serene repose,
    Its usefulness, that finds no hour for woes,
    This is my dream of Life.

Yes, I have dreams.    I ofttimes dream of Love
    As radiant and brilliant as a star.
    As changeless, too, as that fixed light afar
Which glorifies vast worlds of space above.
Strong as the tempest when it holds its breath,
    Before it bursts in fury...

Measures of oil for others,
    Oil and red wine,
Lips laugh and drink, but never
    Are the lips mine.

Worlds at the feet of others,
    Power gods have known,
Hearts for the favoured round me
    Mine beats, alone.

Fame offering to others
    Chaplets of bays,
I with no crown of laurels,
    Only grey days.

Sweet human love for others,
    Deep as the sea,
God-sent unto my neighbour -
    But not to me.

Sometime I'll wrest from others
    More than all this,
I shall demand from Heaven
    Far sweeter bliss.

What profit then to others,
    Laughter and wine?
I'll have what most they covet -
    Death, will be mine.

O! Sun, resplendent in the smiling morn,
    As thou dost view the wastes of earth and sky,
Canst thou behold the realms of the Unborn,
    Canst thou behold the realms of those who die?
Where dwells the spirit e'er its mortal birth,
        E'er yet it suffereth
The pain and sorrow incident to earth?
        Where after death?
The Sun gave answer, with refulgent glow:
Child of a fleeting hour, thou too must die to know.

Canst tell, thou jeweled canopy of space,
    Bewildering, and boundless to the eyes,
Knowest thou the unborn spirits' dwelling place?
    Knowest thou the distant regions of the skies
Where rest the spirits freed from mundane strife,
        From mortal grief and care?
Knowest thou the secret of the future life?
        Canst thou ...

When Time a mellowing tint has thrown
O'er many a scene to mem'ry dear.
It scatters round a charm, unknown
When first th' impression rested there.

But, oh! should distance intervene,
Should Ocean's wave, should changeful clime.
Divide - how sweeter far the scene!
How richer ev'ry tint of time!

E'en thus with those (a treasur'd few)
Who gladden'd life with many a smile,
Tho' long has pass'd the sad adieu,
In thought we love to dwell awhile.

Then with keen eye, and beating heart,
The anxious mind still seeks relief
From those who can the tale impart,
How pass their day, in joy or grief.

If haply health and fortune bless,
We feel as if on us they shone;
If sickness and if sorrow press,
Then feeling makes their woes our own.<...

When I am buried, all my thoughts and acts
Will be reduced to lists of dates and facts,
And long before this wandering flesh is rotten
The dates which made me will be all forgotten;
And none will know the gleam there used to be
About the feast days freshly kept by me,
But men will call the golden hour of bliss
'About this time,' or 'shortly after this.'

Men do not heed the rungs by which men climb
Those glittering steps, those milestones upon time,
Those tombstones of dead selves, those hours of birth,
Those moments of the soul in years of earth.
They mark the height achieved, the main result,
The power of freedom in the perished cult,
The power of boredom in the dead man's deeds
Not the bright moments of the sprinkled seeds.

By many waters and on ...

Sweet mother, in a minute’s span
Death parts thee and my love of thee;
Sweet love, that yet art living man,
Come back, true love, to comfort me.
Back, ah, come back! ah wellaway!
But my love comes not any day.

As roses, when the warm West blows,
Break to full flower and sweeten spring,
My soul would break to a glorious rose
In such wise at his whispering.
In vain I listen; wellaway!
My love says nothing any day.

You that will weep for pity of love
On the low place where I am lain,
I pray you, having wept enough,
Tell him for whom I bore such pain
That he was yet, ah! wellaway!
My true love to my dying day.