Death

Thy hill leave not, O Spring,
Nor longer leap down to the new-green'd Plain.
Thy western cliff-caves keep
O Wind, nor branch-borne Echo after thee complain
With grumbling wild and deep.
Let Blossom cling
Sudden and frozen round the eyes of trees,
Nor fall, nor fall.
Be still each Wing,
Hushed each call.

So was it ordered, so
Hung all things silent, still;
Only Time earless moved on, stepping slow
Up the scarped hill,
And even Time in a long twilight stayed
And, for a whim, that whispered whim obeyed.

There was no breath, no sigh,
No wind lost in the sky
Roamed the horizon round.
The harsh dead leaf slept noiseless on the ground,
By unseen mouse nor insect stirred
Nor beak of hungry bird.

Then were voices heard

Non men gran grasia, donna.


Too much good luck no less than misery
        May kill a man condemned to mortal pain,
        If, lost to hope and chilled in every vein,
        A sudden pardon comes to set him free.
Thus thy unwonted kindness shown to me
        Amid the gloom where only sad thoughts reign,
        With too much rapture bringing light again,
        Threatens my life more than that agony.
Good news and bad may bear the self-same knife;
        And death may follow both upon their flight;
        For hearts that shrink or swell, alike will break.
Let then thy beauty, to preserve my life,
        Temper the source of this supreme delight,
        Lest joy so poignant slay a soul so weak.

Long hosts of sunlight, and the bright wind blows
A tourney-trumpet on the listed hill;
Past is the splendour of the royal rose
And duchess daffodil.

Crowned queen of beauty, in the garden's space,
Strong daughter of a bitter race and bold,
A ragged beggar with a lovely face,
Reigns the sad marigold.

And I have sought June's butterfly for days,
To find it like a coreopsis bloom
Amber and seal, rain-murdered 'neath the blaze
Of this sunflower's plume.

Here drones the bee; and there sky-daring wings
Voyage blue gulfs of heaven; the last song
The red-bird flings me as adieu, still rings
Upon yon pear-tree's prong.

No angry sunset brims with rubier red
The bowl of heaven than the days, indeed,
Pour in each blossom of this salvia-b...

And you are the poet, and so you want
Something what is it? a theme, a fancy?
Something or other the Muse won’t grant
To your old poetical necromancy;
Why, one half you poets you can’t deny
Don’t know the Muse when you chance to meet her,
But sit in your attics and mope and sigh
For a faineant goddess to drop from the sky,
When flesh and blood may be standing by
Quite at your service, should you but greet her.

What if I told you my own romance?
Women are poets, if you so take them,
One third poet, the rest what chance
Of man and marriage may choose to make them.
Give me ten minutes before you go,
Here at the window we’ll sit together,
Watching the currents that ebb and flow;
Watching the world as it drifts below
Up the hot Avenue’s dusty glow:<...

Along the hot and endless road,
    Calm and erect, with haggard eyes,
The prisoner bore his fetters' load
    Beneath the scorching, azure skies.

Serene and tall, with brows unbent,
    Without a hope, without a friend,
He, under escort, onward went,
    With death to meet him at the end.

The Poppy fields were pink and gay
    On either side, and in the heat
Their drowsy scent exhaled all day
    A dream-like fragrance almost sweet.

And when the cool of evening fell
    And tender colours touched the sky,
He still felt youth within him dwell
    And half forgot he had to die.

Sometimes at night, the Camp-fires lit
    And casting fitful light around,
His guard would, friend-like, let him sit
    And talk awhile with them...

    Now Robin lies in his last lair,
    He'll gabble rhyme, nor sing nae mair,
    Cauld poverty, wi' hungry stare,
        Nae mair shall fear him;
    Nor anxious fear, nor cankert care,
        E'er mair come near him.

    To tell the truth, they seldom fash't him,
    Except the moment that they crush't him;
    For sune as chance or fate had hush't 'em,
        Tho' e'er sae short,
    Then wi' a rhyme or song he lash't 'em,
        And thought it sport.

    Tho' he was bred to kintra wark,
    And counted was baith wight and stark.
    Yet that was never Robin's mark
        To mak a man;
    But tell him he was learned and clark,
        Ye roos'd him than!

Where are the Poets, unto whom belong
    The Olympian heights; whose singing shafts were sent
    Straight to the mark, and not from bows half bent,
    But with the utmost tension of the thong?
Where are the stately argosies of song,
    Whose rushing keels made music as they went
    Sailing in search of some new continent,
    With all sail set, and steady winds and strong?
Perhaps there lives some dreamy boy, untaught
    In schools, some graduate of the field or street,
    Who shall become a master of the art,
An admiral sailing the high seas of thought,
    Fearless and first and steering with his fleet
    For lands not yet laid down in any chart.

Felpham.

Hail Felpham! Hail! in youth my favorite scene!
First in my heart of villages marine!
To me thy waves confirm'd my truest wealth,
My only parent's renovated health,
Whose love maternal, and whose sweet discourse
Gave to my feelings all their cordial force:
Hence mindful, how her tender spirit blest
Thy salutary air, and balmy rest;
Thee, as profuse of recollections sweet,
Fit for a pensive veteran's calm retreat,
I chose, as provident for sure decay,
A nest for age in life's declining day!
Reserving Eartham for a darling son,
Confiding in our threads of life unspun:
Blind to futurity!--O blindness, given
As mercy's boon to man from pitying Heaven!
Man could not live, if his prophetic eyes
View'd all afflictions, ere they will arise.

You don't love me...    I have never appealed to you...
Was never your type...
And my hard eyes annoy you, my darling...
I'm too dark for you.    And too coarse -
And my white teeth have such a brutal shine
And my bloody lips are so terribly like sickles.
Ah, what you say -
Yes you are really right.    I set you... free.
...    And early in the morning I am going to an ocean
That is blue and eternal...
And lie on the beach...
And play with a smile on my face, until a death grabs me,
With sand and sun and with a white
Slender bitch.

Up, up, into the vast extended space,
Thou art ascending in thy majesty,
Beautiful moon, the queen of the pale sky!
But what is that which gathers on thy face,
A dark mysterious shade, eclipsing, slow,
The splendour of thy calm and steadfast light?
It is the shadow of this world of woe,
Of this vast moving world; portentous sight!
As if we almost stood and saw more near
Its very action - almost heard it roll
On, in the swiftness of its dread career,
As it hath rolled for ages! Hush, my soul!
Listen! there is no sound; but we could hear
The murmur of its multitudes, who toil
Through their brief hour. The heart might well recoil;
But this is ever sounding in His ear
Who made it, and who said, "Let there be light!"
And we, the creatures of a mortal hour,

I love the thought of ancient, naked days
When Phoebus gilded statues with his rays.
Then women, men in their agility
Played without guile, without anxiety,
And, while the sky stroked lovingly their skin,
They tuned to health their excellent machine.
Cybele, in offering her bounty there,
Found mortals not a heavy weight to bear,
But, she-wolf full of common tenderness,
From her brown nipples fed the universe.
Man had the right, robust and flourishing,
Of pride in beauties who proclaimed him king;
Pure fruit unsullied, lovely to the sight,
Whose smooth, firm flesh went asking for the bite!

Today, the Poet, when he would conceive
These native grandeurs, where can now be seen
Women and men in all their nakedness,
Feels in his soul a chill of hopelessne...

Little elfin maid,
    Old, though scarce two years,
With your big dark hazel eyes
    Tenderer than tears,

And your rosebud mouth
    Lisping jocund things,
Breaking brooding silence with
    Wistful questionings!

Like a flower you grew
    While life's bright sun shone.
Does the greedy spendthrift earth
    Heed a flower is gone?

No; but Love's fond ken,
    That gropes through Death's strange ways,
Almost seems to hear your Voice,
    Seems to see your Face!

"Nil ego contulerim jucundo sanus amico." - HORACE.


Dear LONG, in this sequester'd scene,
While all around in slumber lie,
The joyous days, which ours have been
Come rolling fresh on Fancy's eye;
Thus, if, amidst the gathering storm,
While clouds the darken'd noon deform,
Yon heaven assumes a varied glow,
I hail the sky's celestial bow,
Which spreads the sign of future peace,
And bids the war of tempests cease.
Ah! though the present brings but pain,
I think those days may come again;
Or if, in melancholy mood,
Some lurking envious fear intrude,
To check my bosom's fondest thought,
And interrupt the golden dream,
I crush the fiend with malice fraught,
And, still, indulge my wonted theme.
Although we ne'er again can trace,
In Gra...

Adieu to Belashanny!
where I was bred and born;
Go where I may, I'll think of you,
as sure as night and morn.
The kindly spot, the friendly town,
where every one is known,
And not a face in all the place
but partly seems my own;
There's not a house or window,
there's not a field or hill,
But, east or west, in foreign lands,
I'll recollect them still.
I leave my warm heart with you,
tho' my back I'm forced to turn,
Adieu to Belashanny,
and the winding banks of Erne!

No more on pleasant evenings
we'll saunter down the Mall,
When the trout is rising to the fly,
the salmon to the fall.
The boat comes straining on her net,
and heavily she creeps,
Cast off, cast off,she feels the oars,
and to her berth she sweeps;
Now fo...

I walk through the long schoolroom questioning;
A kind old nun in a white hood replies;
The children learn to cipher and to sing,
To study reading-books and histories,
To cut and sew, be neat in everything
In the best modern way -- the children's eyes
In momentary wonder stare upon
A sixty-year-old smiling public man.
I dream of a Ledaean body, bent
Above a sinking fire. a tale that she
Told of a harsh reproof, or trivial event
That changed some childish day to tragedy --
Told, and it seemed that our two natures blent
Into a sphere from youthful sympathy,
Or else, to alter Plato's parable,
Into the yolk and white of the one shell.

III
And thinking of that fit of grief or rage
I look upon one child or t'other there
And wonder if she stood s...

    Oh, pleasant eventide!
    Clouds on the western side
Grow grey and greyer hiding the warm sun:
The bees and birds, their happy labours done,
    Seek their close nests and bide.

    Screened in the leafy wood
    The stock-doves sit and brood:
The very squirrel leaps from bough to bough
But lazily; pauses; and settles now
    Where once he stored his food.

    One by one the flowers close,
    Lily and dewy rose
Shutting their tender petals from the moon:
The grasshoppers are still; but not so soon
    Are still the noisy crows.

    The dormouse squats and eats
    Choice little dainty bits
Beneath the spreading roots of a broad lime;
Nibbling his fill he stops from time to time
    And listens where he sits.

  ...

I


Eve goes slowly
Dancing lightly
Clad with shadow up the hills;
Birds their singing
Cease at last, and silence
Falling like fine rain the valley fills.

Not a bat's cry
Stirs the stillness
Perfect as broad water sleeping,
Not a moth's wings
Flit in the gathering darkness,
Not a mouselike moonray ev'n comes creeping.

Then a light shines
From the casement,
Wreathed with jasmine boughs and stars,
Palely golden
As the late eve's primrose,
Glimmers through green leafy prison bars.



II


Only joy now
Come in silence,
Come before your look's forgot;
Come and hearken
While the lonely shadow
Broadens on the hill and then is not.

Now the hour is,
Here the plac...

Where Humber pours his rich commercial stream
There dwelt a wretch, who breathed but to blaspheme;
In subterraneous caves his life he led,
Black as the mine in which he wrought for bread.
When on a day, emerging from the deep,
A Sabbath-day (such Sabbaths thousands keep!),
The wages of his weekly toil he bore
To buy a cock—whose blood might win him more;
As if the noblest of the feather’d kind
Were but for battle and for death design’d;
As if the consecrated hours were meant
For sport, to minds on cruelty intent;
It chanced (such chances Providence obey)
He met a fellow-labourer on the way,
Whose heart the same desires had once inflamed;
But now the savage temper was reclaim’d,
Persuasion on his lips had taken place;
For all plead well who plead the cause...