Death

Indeed, my Phaedra, if to find
That wealth can female wishes gain
Had e'er disturb'd your thoughtful mind,
Or cost one serious moment's pain,
I should have said that all the rules,
You learn'd of moralists and schools,
Were very useless, very vain.

Yet I perhaps mistake the case,
Say, though with this heroic air,
Like one that holds a nobler chace,
You try the tender loss to bear,
Does not your heart renounce your tongue?
Seems not my censure strangely wrong
To count it such a slight affair?
When Hesper gilds the shaded sky,
Oft as you seek the well-known grove,
Methinks I see you cast your eye
Back to the morning scenes of love:
Each pleasing word you heard her say,
Her gentle look, her graceful way,
Again your struggling fancy move....

I have read, in some old, marvellous tale,
    Some legend strange and vague,
That a midnight host of spectres pale
    Beleaguered the walls of Prague.

Beside the Moldau's rushing stream,
    With the wan moon overhead,
There stood, as in an awful dream,
    The army of the dead.

White as a sea-fog, landward bound,
    The spectral camp was seen,
And, with a sorrowful, deep sound,
    The river flowed between.

No other voice nor sound was there,
    No drum, nor sentry's pace;
The mist-like banners clasped the air,
    As clouds with clouds embrace.

But when the old cathedral bell
    Proclaimed the morning prayer,
The white pavilions rose and fell
    On the alarmed air.

Down the broad valley fast and far

    "Dawn!" laughs the bow, and we straight see the sky,
        Crimson, and golden, and gray,
    See the rosy cloudlets go drifting by,
    And the sheen on the lark as, soaring high,
        He carols to greet the day.

    Fast moves the bow o'er the wonderful strings -
        We feel the joy in the air -
    'Tis alive with the glory of growing things,
    With wild honeysuckle that creeps and clings,
    Rose of the briar bush - queen of the springs -
        Anemones frail and fair!

    We listen, and whisper with laughter low,
    "It voices rare gladness, that ancient bow!"

    Then, sad as the plaint of a child at night -
        A child aweary with play -
    The falling of shadows, a lost delight,
    The moaning of watchers coun...

Fragment of a Dream.--The great Painters supposed to be Magicians.--The Beginnings of the Art.--Gildings on the Glories and Draperies.-- Improvements under Giotto, etc.--The first Dawn of the true Style in Masaccio.--Studied by all the great Artists who followed him.--Leonardo da Vinci, with whom commenced the Golden Age of Painting.--His Knowledge of Mathematics and of Music.--His female heads all like each other.-- Triangular Faces.--Portraits of Mona Lisa, etc.--Picture of Vanity and Modesty.--His chef-d'oeuvre, the Last Supper.--Faded and almost effaced.


Filled with the wonders I had seen
    In Rome's stupendous shrines and halls,
I felt the veil of sleep serene
Come o'er the memory of each scene,
    As twilight o'er the landscape falls.
Nor was it slumber, sound and deep,

Fair flower! that fall'n beneath the angry blast,
Which marks with wither'd sweets its fearful way,
I grieve to see thee on the low earth cast,
While beauty's trembling tints fade fast away.
But who is she, that from the mountain's head
Comes gaily on, cheering the child of earth?
The walks of woe bloom bright beneath her tread,
And Nature smiles with renovated mirth?
'Tis Health! She comes: and, hark! the vallies ring,
And, hark! the echoing hills repeat the sound:
She sheds the new-blown blossoms of the spring,
And all their fragrance floats her footsteps round.
And, hark! she whispers in the zephyr's voice,
Lift up thy head, fair floweret, and rejoice!

The pain of loving you
Is almost more than I can bear.

I walk in fear of you.
The darkness starts up where
You stand, and the night comes through
Your eyes when you look at me.

Ah never before did I see
The shadows that live in the sun!

Now every tall glad tree
Turns round its back to the sun
And looks down on the ground, to see
The shadow it used to shun.

At the foot of each glowing thing
A night lies looking up.

Oh, and I want to sing
And dance, but I can't lift up
My eyes from the shadows: dark
They lie spilt round the cup.

What is it? - Hark
The faint fine seethe in the air!

Like the seething sound in a shell!
It is death still seething where
The wild-flower shakes its bell
And th...

Her hair was, oh, so dense a blur
Of darkness, midnight envied her;
And stars grew dimmer in the skies
To see the glory of her eyes;
And all the summer rain of light
That showered from the moon at night
Fell o'er her features as the gloom
Of twilight o'er a lily-bloom.

The crimson fruitage of her lips
Was ripe and lush with sweeter wine
Than burgundy or muscadine
Or vintage that the burgher sips
In some old garden on the Rhine:
And I to taste of it could well
Believe my heart a crucible
Of molten love - and I could feel
The drunken soul within me reel
And rock and stagger till it fell.

And do you wonder that I bowed
Before her splendor as a cloud
Of storm the golden-sandaled sun
Had set his conquering foot upon?
And di...

Show me the noblest Youth of present time,
Whose trembling fancy would to love give birth;
Some God or Hero, from the Olympian clime
Returned, to seek a Consort upon earth;
Or, in no doubtful prospect, let me see
The brightest star of ages yet to be,
And I will mate and match him blissfully.
I will not fetch a Naiad from a flood
Pure as herself, (song lacks not mightier power)
Nor leaf-crowned Dryad from a pathless wood,
Nor Sea-nymph glistening from her coral bower;
Mere Mortals bodied forth in vision still,
Shall with Mount Ida's triple lustre fill
The chaster coverts of a British hill.
"Appear! obey my lyre's command!
Come, like the Graces, hand in hand!
For ye, though not by birth allied,
Are Sisters in the bond of love;
Nor shall the tongue of e...

"O passenger, pray list and catch
Our sighs and piteous groans,
Half stifled in this jumbled patch
Of wrenched memorial stones!

"We late-lamented, resting here,
Are mixed to human jam,
And each to each exclaims in fear,
'I know not which I am!'

"The wicked people have annexed
The verses on the good;
A roaring drunkard sports the text
Teetotal Tommy should!

"Where we are huddled none can trace,
And if our names remain,
They pave some path or p-ing place
Where we have never lain!

"There's not a modest maiden elf
But dreads the final Trumpet,
Lest half of her should rise herself,
And half some local strumpet!

"From restorations of Thy fane,
From smoothings of Thy sward,
From zealous Churchmen's pick and ...

A little time agone, a few brief years,
And there was peace within our beauteous borders;
Peace, and a prosperous people, and no fears
Of war and its disorders.
Pleasure was ruling goddess of our land; with her attendant Mirth
She led a jubilant, joy-seeking band about the riant earth.

Do you recall those laughing days, my Brothers,
And those long nights that trespassed on the dawn?
Those throngs of idle dancing maids and mothers
Who lilted on and on -
Card mad, wine flushed, bejewelled and half stripped,
Yet women whose sweet mouth had never sipped
From sin's black chalice - women good at heart
Who, in the winding maze of pleasure's mart,
Had lost the sun-kissed way to wholesome pleasures of an earlier day.

Oh!    You remember them!    You filled their...

Who do you think stands watching
    The snow-tops shining rosy
In heaven, now that the darkness
    Takes all but the tallest posy?

Who then sees the two-winged
    Boat down there, all alone
And asleep on the snow's last shadow,
    Like a moth on a stone?

The olive-leaves, light as gad-flies,
    Have all gone dark, gone black.
And now in the dark my soul to you
    Turns back.

To you, my little darling,
    To you, out of Italy.
For what is loveliness, my love,
    Save you have it with me!

So, there's an oxen wagon
    Comes darkly into sight:
A man with a lantern, swinging
    A little light.

What does he see, my darling
    Here by the darkened lake?
Here, in the sloping shadow
    The mou...

    Elenor Murray, daughter of Henry Murray,
    The druggist at LeRoy, a village near
    The shadow of Starved Rock, this Elenor
    But recently returned from France, a heart
    Who gave her service in the world at war,
    Was found along the river's shore, a mile
    Above Starved Rock, on August 7th, the day
    Year 1679, LaSalle set sail
    For Michilmackinac to reach Green Bay
    In the Griffin, in the winter snow and sleet,
    Reaching "Lone Cliff," Starved Rock its later name,
    Also La Vantum, village of the tribe
    Called Illini.

    This may be taken to speak
    The symbol of her life and fate. For first
    This Elenor Murray comes into this life,
    And lives her youth where the Rock's shadow falls,
    As if to say ...

It will not hurt me when I am old,
A running tide where moonlight burned
Will not sting me like silver snakes;
The years will make me sad and cold,
It is the happy heart that breaks.

The heart asks more than life can give,
When that is learned, then all is learned;
The waves break fold on jewelled fold,
But beauty itself is fugitive,
It will not hurt me when I am old.

    On London fell a clearer light;
            Caressing pencils of the sun
    Defined the distances, the white
            Houses transfigured one by one,
    The "long, unlovely street" impearled.
    O what a sky has walked the world!

    Most happy year!    And out of town
            The hay was prosperous, and the wheat;
    The silken harvest climbed the down;
            Moon after moon was heavenly-sweet
    Stroking the bread within the sheaves,
    Looking twixt apples and their leaves.

    And while this rose made round her cup,
            The armies died convulsed.    And when
    This chaste young silver sun went up
            Softly, a thousand shattered men,
    One wet corruption, heaped the plain,
    After a league-long ...

"Succinctæ sacra Dianæ."

Ovid


I.

There the ragged sunlight lay
Tawny on thick ferns and gray
On dark waters: dimmer,
Lone and deep, the cypress grove
Bowered mystery and wove
Braided lights, like those that love
On the pearl plumes of a dove
Faint to gleam and glimmer.

II.

There centennial pine and oak
Into stormy cadence broke:
Hollow rocks gloomed, slanting,
Echoing in dim arcade,
Looming with long moss, that made
Twilight streaks in tatters laid:
Where the wild hart, hunt-affrayed,
Plunged the water, panting.

III.

Poppies of a sleepy gold
Mooned the gray-green darkness rolled
DOWN its vistas, making
Wisp-like blurs of flame. And pale
Stole the dim deer down the vale...

I.

Haydon! forgive me that I cannot speak
Definitively of these mighty things;
Forgive me, that I have not eagle's wings,
That what I want I know not where to seek,
And think that I would not be over-meek,
In rolling out upfollowed thunderings,
Even to the steep of Heliconian springs,
Were I of ample strength for such a freak.
Think, too, that all these numbers should be thine;
Whose else? In this who touch thy vesture's hem?
For, when men stared at what was most divine
With brainless idiotism and o'erwise phlegm,
Thou hadst beheld the full Hesperian shine
Of their star in the east, and gone to worship them.

II.
On Seeing The Elgin Marbles.


My spirit is too weak, mortality
Weighs heavily upon me like unwilling sleep,

Sleep, comrades, sleep and rest
    On this Field of the Grounded Arms,
Where foes no more molest,
    Nor sentry's shot alarms!

Ye have slept on the ground before,
    And started to your feet
At the cannon's sudden roar,
    Or the drum's redoubling beat.

But in this camp of Death
    No sound your slumber breaks;
Here is no fevered breath,
    No wound that bleeds and aches.

All is repose and peace,
    Untrampled lies the sod;
The shouts of battle cease,
    It is the Truce of God!

Rest, comrades, rest and sleep!
    The thoughts of men shall be
As sentinels to keep
    Your rest from danger free.

Your silent tents of green
    We deck with fragrant flowers;
Yours has the suffering been,
    ...

In the downhill of life, when I find I’m declining,
May my lot no less fortunate be
Than a snug elbow-chair can afford for reclining,
And a cot that o’erlooks the wide sea;
With an ambling pad-pony to pace o’er the lawn,
While I carol away idle sorrow,
And blithe as the lark that each day hails the dawn
Look forward with hope for tomorrow.

With a porch at my door, both for shelter and shade too,
As the sunshine or rain may prevail;
And a small spot of ground for the use of the spade too,
With a barn for the use of the flail;
A cow for my dairy, a dog for my game,
And a purse when a friend wants to borrow;
I’ll envy no Nabob his riches or fame,
Nor what honours may wait him tomorrow.

From the bleak northern blast may my cot be completely
Secure...