Death

Shun not this Rite, neglected, yea abhorred,
By some of unreflecting mind, as calling
Man to curse man, (thought monstrous and appalling.)
Go thou and hear the threatenings of the Lord;
Listening within his Temple see his sword
Unsheathed in wrath to strike the offender's head,
Thy own, if sorrow for thy sin be dead,
Guilt unrepented, pardon unimplored.
Two aspects bears Truth needful for salvation;
Who knows not 'that?' yet would this delicate age
Look only on the Gospel's brighter page:
Let light and dark duly our thoughts employ;
So shall the fearful words of Commination
Yield timely fruit of peace and love and joy.

Now the last, long rays of sunset
To the tree-tops are ascending,
And the ash-gray evening shadows
Weave themselves around the earth.

On the crest of yonder mountain,
Now are seen from out the distance
Slowly fading crimson traces;
Footprints of the dying day.

Blood-stained banners, torn and tattered,
Hanging in the western corner,
Dip their parched and burning edges
In the cooling ocean wave.

Smoothly roll the crystal wavelets
Through the dusky veils of twilight,
That are trembling down from heaven
O'er the bosom of the sea.

Soft a little wind is blowing
O'er the gently rippling waters--
What they whisper, what they murmur,
Who is wise enough to say?

Broad her snow-white sails outspreading
'Gainst the qui...

Up! up! my Friend, and quit your books;
Or surely you'll grow double:
Up! up! my Friend, and clear your looks;
Why all this toil and trouble?
The sun above the mountain's head,
A freshening lustre mellow
Through all the long green fields has spread,
His first sweet evening yellow.
Books! 'tis a dull and endless strife:
Come, hear the woodland linnet,
How sweet his music! on my life,
There's more of wisdom in it.

And hark! how blithe the throstle sings!
He, too, is no mean preacher:
Come forth into the light of things,
Let Nature be your teacher.

She has a world of ready wealth,
Our minds and hearts to bless
Spontaneous wisdom breathed by health,
Truth breathed by cheerfulness.

One impulse from a vernal wood
May teach ...

Sad! I am sad indeed: nor small my
cause of woe!--Kirmor, thou hast
lost no son; thou hast lost no daughter
of beauty. Connar the valiant lives;
and Annir the fairest of maids. The
boughs of thy family flourish, O Kirmor!
but Armyn is the last of his
race.

Rise, winds of autumn, rise; blow
upon the dark heath! streams of the
mountains, roar! howl, ye tempests,
in the trees! walk through broken
clouds, O moon! show by intervals thy
pale face! bring to my mind that sad
night, when all my children fell; when
Arindel the mighty fell; when Daura
the lovely died.

Daura, my daughter! thou wert
fair; fair as the moon on the hills of
Jura; white as the driven snow; sweet as
the breathing gale. Armor renowned in
war came, and fought ...

Glide gently, thus for ever glide,
O Thames! that other bards may see
As lovely visions by thy side
As now, fair river! come to me.
O glide, fair stream! for ever so,
Thy quiet soul on all bestowing,
Till all our minds for ever flow
As thy deep waters now are flowing.

Vain thought! Yet be as now thou art,
That in thy waters may be seen
The image of a poet's heart,
How bright, how solemn, how serene!
Such as did once the Poet bless,
Who murmuring here a later ditty,
Could find no refuge from distress
But in the milder grief of pity.

Now let us, as we float along,
For 'him' suspend the dashing oar;
And pray that never child of song
May know that Poet's sorrows more.
How calm! how still! the only sound,
The dripping of the oar...

My first thought was, he lied in every word,
That hoary cripple, with malicious eye
Askance to watch the working of his lie
On mine, and mouth scarce able to afford
Suppression of the glee that pursed and scored
Its edge, at one more victim gained thereby.

What else should he be set for, with his staff?
What, save to waylay with his lies, ensnare
All travellers who might find him posted there,
And ask the road? I guessed what skull-like laugh
Would break, what crutch ’gin write my epitaph
For pastime in the dusty thoroughfare,

If at his counsel I should turn aside
Into that ominous tract which, all agree,
Hides the Dark Tower. Yet acquiescingly
I did turn as he pointed: neither pride
Nor hope rekindling at the end descried,
So much as gladness...

Warm and still is the summer night,
    As here by the river's brink I wander;
White overhead are the stars, and white
    The glimmering lamps on the hillside yonder.

Silent are all the sounds of day;
    Nothing I hear but the chirp of crickets,
And the cry of the herons winging their way
    O'er the poet's house in the Elmwood thickets.

Call to him, herons, as slowly you pass
    To your roosts in the haunts of the exiled thrushes,
Sing him the song of the green morass;
    And the tides that water the reeds and rushes.

Sing him the mystical Song of the Hern,
    And the secret that baffles our utmost seeking;
For only a sound of lament we discern,
    And cannot interpret the words you are speaking.

Sing of the air, and the wild de...

If, dear Anthea, my hard fate it be
To live some few sad hours after thee,
Thy sacred corse with odours I will burn,
And with my laurel crown thy golden urn.
Then holding up there such religious things
As were, time past, thy holy filletings,
Near to thy reverend pitcher I will fall
Down dead for grief, and end my woes withal:
So three in one small plat of ground shall lie -
Anthea, Herrick, and his poetry.

NORTH

We come from the gloom of the shadowy trail
Out away on the fringe of the Night,
Where no man could tell, when the darkness fell,
If his eyes would behold the light.
        To--the--Night,--
        To--the--Night,--
To the darkness and the sorrow of the Night,--
        Came--the--Light,
        Came--the--Light,
Came the Wonder and the Glory of the Light.

There are wanderers still, without ever a guide,
Out there on the fringe of the Night,
They are bond and blind,--to their darkness resigned,
With never a wish for the Light.
        To--their--Night,--
        To--their--Night,--
To the darkness and the sorrow of their Night,
        Take--the--Light!
        Take--the--Light!
Take the Wonder and the Glory of the Light...

The white moth-mullein brushed its slim
Cool, faery flowers against his knee;
In places where the way lay dim
The branches, arching suddenly,
Made tomblike mystery for him.

The wild-rose and the elder, drenched
With rain, made pale a misty place, -
From which, as from a ghost, he blenched;
He walking with averted face,
And lips in desolation clenched.

For far within the forest, - where
Weird shadows stood like phantom men,
And where the ground-hog dug its lair,
The she-fox whelped and had her den, -
The thing kept calling, buried there.

One dead trunk, like a ruined tower,
Dark-green with toppling trailers, shoved
Its wild wreck o'er the bush; one bower
Looked like a dead man, capped and gloved,
The one who haunted him each hou...

It is not blasphemy to hope that Heaven
More perfectly will give those nameless joys
Which throb within the pulses of the blood
And sweeten all that bitterness which Earth
Infuses in the heaven-born soul. O thou
Whose dear love gleamed upon the gloomy path
Which this lone spirit travelled, drear and cold,
Yet swiftly leading to those awful limits
Which mark the bounds of Time and of the space
When Time shall be no more; wilt thou not turn
Those spirit-beaming eyes and look on me,
Until I be assured that Earth is Heaven,
And Heaven is Earth? - will not thy glowing cheek,
Glowing with soft suffusion, rest on mine,
And breathe magnetic sweetness through the frame
Of my corporeal nature, through the soul
Now knit with these fine fibres? I would give
The longe...

Who gave thee, O Beauty,
The keys of this breast,--
Too credulous lover
Of blest and unblest?
Say, when in lapsed ages
Thee knew I of old?
Or what was the service
For which I was sold?
When first my eyes saw thee,
I found me thy thrall,
By magical drawings,
Sweet tyrant of all!
I drank at thy fountain
False waters of thirst;
Thou intimate stranger,
Thou latest and first!
Thy dangerous glances
Make women of men;
New-born, we are melting
Into nature again.

Lavish, lavish promiser,
Nigh persuading gods to err!
Guest of million painted forms,
Which in turn thy glory warms!
The frailest leaf, the mossy bark,
The acorn's cup, the raindrop's arc,
The swinging spider's silver line,
The ruby of the drop of wi...

St. Margaret's bells,
Quiring their innocent, old-world canticles,
Sing in the storied air,
All rosy-and-golden, as with memories
Of woods at evensong, and sands and seas
Disconsolate for that the night is nigh.
O, the low, lingering lights!    The large last gleam
(Hark! how those brazen choristers cry and call!)
Touching these solemn ancientries, and there,
The silent River ranging tide-mark high
And the callow, grey-faced Hospital,
With the strange glimmer and glamour of a dream!
The Sabbath peace is in the slumbrous trees,
And from the wistful, the fast-widowing sky
(Hark! how those plangent comforters call and cry!)
Falls as in August plots late roseleaves fall.
The sober Sabbath stir -
Leisurely voices, desultory feet! -
Comes from the dry, dus...

‘Hello! that’s the whistle, be moving.
Wake up! don’t lie muttering there.
What language! your style is improving,
It’s pleasant to hear you at prayer.
Turn out, man, and spare us the blessing.
Crib’s cut, and the tea’s on the brew.
You’ll have to look slippy in dressing
For that was the half-hour that blew.’

‘Half-past! and the night’s simply awful,
The hut fairly shakes in the storm.
Hang night-shifts! They shouldn’t be lawful;
I’ve only had time to get warm.
I notice the hut’s rarely bright, and
The bunk’s always cold as a stone,
Except when I go on at night, and
The half-after whistles have blown.

‘Bob built up that fire just to spite me,
The conscienceless son of a swab!
By Jove! it would fairly delight me
To let Hogan be hanged...

You in the flesh and here,
Your very self! Now, wait!
One word! May I hope or fear?
Must I speak in love or hate?
Stay while I ruminate!

The fact and each circumstance
Dare you disown? Not you!
That vast dome, that huge dance,
And the gloom which overgrew
A possibly festive crew!

For why should men dance at all
Why women a crowd of both
Unless they are gay? Strange ball
Hands and feet plighting troth,
Yet partners enforced and loth!

Of who danced there, no shape
Did I recognize: thwart, perverse,
Each grasped each, past escape
In a whirl or weary or worse:
Man’s sneer met woman’s curse,

While he and she toiled as if
Their guardian set galley-slaves
To supple chained limbs grown stiff:
Unmanacled trulls...

(1860-1.)


I

O the clammy cold November,
And the winter white and dead,
And the terror dumb with stupor,
And the sky a sheet of lead;
And events that came resounding
With the cry that All was lost,
Like the thunder-cracks of massy ice
In intensity of frost -
Bursting one upon another
Through the horror of the calm.
The paralysis of arm
In the anguish of the heart;
And the hollowness and dearth.
The appealings of the mother
To brother and to brother
Not in hatred so to part -
And the fissure in the hearth
Growing momently more wide.
Then the glances 'tween the Fates,
And the doubt on every side,
And the patience under gloom
In the stoniness that waits
The finality of doom.


II
...

'Twas the dusky Hallowe'en --
Hour of fairy and of wraith,
When in many a dim-lit green,
'Neath the stars' prophetic sheen,
As the olden legend saith,
All the future may be seen,
And when -- an older story hath --
Whate'er in life hath ever been
Loveful, hopeful, or of wrath,
Cometh back upon our path.
I was dreaming in my room,
'Mid the shadows, still as they;
Night, in veil of woven gloom,
Wept and trailed her tresses gray
O'er her fair, dead sister -- Day.
To me from some far-away
Crept a voice -- or seemed to creep --
As a wave-child of the deep,
Frightened by the wild storm's roar
Creeps low-sighing to the shore
Very low and very lone
Came the voice with song of moan,
This, weak-sung in weaker word,
Is the song that nigh...

The landscape sleeps in mist from morn till noon;
And, if the sun looks through, tis with a face
Beamless and pale and round, as if the moon,
When done the journey of her nightly race,
Had found him sleeping, and supplied his place.
For days the shepherds in the fields may be,
Nor mark a patch of sky--blindfold they trace,
The plains, that seem without a bush or tree,
Whistling aloud by guess, to flocks they cannot see.

The timid hare seems half its fears to lose,
Crouching and sleeping neath its grassy lair,
And scarcely startles, though the shepherd goes
Close by its home, and dogs are barking there;
The wild colt only turns around to stare
At passer by, then knaps his hide again;
And moody crows beside the road forbear
To fly, though pelted by the pas...