Death

"On a l'âge de son coeur."--A. d'Houdetot.


A little more toward the light;--
Me miserable! Here's one that's white;
And one that's turning;
Adieu to song and "salad days;"
My Muse, let's go at once to Jay's,
And order mourning.

We must reform our rhymes, my Dear,--
Renounce the gay for the severe,--
Be grave, not witty;
We have, no more, the right to find
That Pyrrha's hair is neatly twined,--
That Chloe's pretty.

Young Love's for us a farce that's played;
Light canzonet and serenade
No more may tempt us;
Gray hairs but ill accord with dreams;
From aught but sour didactic themes
Our years exempt us.

Indeed! you really fancy so?
You think for one white streak we grow
At once satiric?
A fiddlestick! Eac...

We were two daughters of one race;
She was the fairest in the face.
The wind is blowing in turret and tree.
They were together, and she fell;
Therefore revenge became me well.
O, the earl was fair to see!

She died; she went to burning flame;
She mix’d her ancient blood with shame.
The wind is howling in turret and tree.
Whole weeks and months, and early and late,
To win his love I lay in wait.
O, the earl was fair to see!

I made a feast; I bade him come;
I won his love, I brought him home,
The wind is roaring in turret and tree.
And after supper on a bed,
Upon my lap he laid his head.
O, the earl was fair to see!

I kiss’d his eyelids into rest,
His ruddy cheeks upon my breast.
The wind is raging in turret and tree.
I ...

    They have chiseled on my stone the words:
    "His life was gentle, and the elements so mixed in him
    That nature might stand up and say to all the world,
    This was a man."
    Those who knew me smile
    As they read this empty rhetoric.
    My epitaph should have been:
    "Life was not gentle to him,
    And the elements so mixed in him
    That he made warfare on life
    In the which he was slain."
    While I lived I could not cope with slanderous tongues,
    Now that I am dead I must submit to an epitaph
    Graven by a fool!

I

I would that folk forgot me quite,
Forgot me quite!
I would that I could shrink from sight,
And no more see the sun.
Would it were time to say farewell,
To claim my nook, to need my knell,
Time for them all to stand and tell
Of my day's work as done.

II

Ah! dairy where I lived so long,
I lived so long;
Where I would rise up stanch and strong,
And lie down hopefully.
'Twas there within the chimney-seat
He watched me to the clock's slow beat -
Loved me, and learnt to call me sweet,
And whispered words to me.

III

And now he's gone; and now he's gone; . . .
And now he's gone!
The flowers we potted p'rhaps are thrown
To rot upon the farm.
And where we had our supper-fire
May now grow nettle, do...

He's an old grey horse, with his head bowed sadly,
And with dim old eyes and a queer roll aft,
With the off-fore sprung and the hind screwed badly
And he bears all over the brands of graft;
And he lifts his head from the grass to wonder
Why by night and day now the whim is still,
Why the silence is, and the stampers' thunder
Sounds forth no more from the shattered mill.

In that whim he worked when the night winds bellowed
On the riven summit of Giant's Hand,
And by day when prodigal Spring had yellowed
All the wide, long sweep of enchanted land;
And he knew his shift, and the whistle's warning,
And he knew the calls of the boys below;
Through the years, unbidden, at night or morning,
He had taken his stand by the old whim bow.

But the whim stands s...

While Summer Roses all their glory yield
    To crown the Votary of Love and Joy,
    Misfortune's Victim hails, with many a sigh,
    Thee, scarlet POPPY of the pathless field,
Gaudy, yet wild and lone; no leaf to shield
    Thy flaccid vest, that, as the gale blows high,
    Flaps, and alternate folds around thy head. -
    So stands in the long grass a love-craz'd Maid,
Smiling aghast; while stream to every wind
    Her gairish ribbons, smear'd with dust and rain;
    But brain-sick visions cheat her tortur'd mind,
And bring false peace. Thus, lulling grief and pain,
    Kind dreams oblivious from thy juice proceed,
    THOU FLIMSY, SHEWY, MELANCHOLY WEED.

Full many a sharp, sad, unexpected thorn
Finds room to wound Life's lacerated flower,
Which subtle fate, to every mortal born,
Guides unprevented in an early hour.
Ah, cruel thorns, too soon I felt your power;
Your throbbing shoots of never-ceasing pain
Hope's blossoms in their bud did long devour,
And left continued my sad eyes to strain
On wilder'd spots chok'd up with Sorrow's weeds,
Alas, that's shaken but too many seeds
To leave me room for Hopes to bud again.
But Fate may torture, while it is decreed,
Where all my hope's unblighted blooms remain,
That Heaven's recompense shall this succeed.

    The night is mild and clear, and without wind,
    And o'er the roofs, and o'er the gardens round
    The moon shines soft, and from afar reveals
    Each mountain-peak serene. O lady, mine,
    Hushed now is every path, and few and dim
    The lamps that glimmer through the balconies.
    Thou sleepest! in thy quiet rooms, how light
    And easy is thy sleep! No care thy heart
    Consumes; and little dost thou know or think,
    How deep a wound thou in my heart hast made.
    Thou sleepest; I to yonder heaven turn,
    That seems to greet me with a loving smile,
    And to that Nature old, omnipotent,
    That doomed me still to suffer. "I to thee
    All hope deny," she said, "e'en hope; nor may
    Those eyes of thine e'er shine, save through their tears."...

Afraid? Of whom am I afraid?
Not death; for who is he?
The porter of my father's lodge
As much abasheth me.

Of life? 'T were odd I fear a thing
That comprehendeth me
In one or more existences
At Deity's decree.

Of resurrection? Is the east
Afraid to trust the morn
With her fastidious forehead?
As soon impeach my crown!

B.C. 570

(Macmillan's Magazine, October 1866.)


Here where I dwell I waste to skin and bone;
    The curse is come upon me, and I waste
    In penal torment powerless to atone.
The curse is come on me, which makes no haste
    And doth not tarry, crushing both the proud
    Hard man and him the sinner double-faced.
Look not upon me, for my soul is bowed
    Within me, as my body in this mire;
    My soul crawls dumb-struck, sore-bested and cowed.
As Sodom and Gomorrah scourged by fire,
    As Jericho before God's trumpet-peal,
    So we the elect ones perish in His ire.
Vainly we gird on sackcloth, vainly kneel
    With famished faces toward Jerusalem:
    His heart is shut against us not to feel,
His ears against our cry He shutte...

[1]

(WRITTEN MAY, 1832.)


All, as he left it!--even the pen,
    So lately at that mind's command,
Carelessly lying, as if then
    Just fallen from his gifted hand.

Have we then lost him? scarce an hour,
    A little hour, seems to have past,
Since Life and Inspiration's power
    Around that relic breathed their last.

Ah, powerless now--like talisman
    Found in some vanished wizard's halls,
Whose mighty charm with him began,
    Whose charm with him extinguisht falls.

Yet, tho', alas! the gifts that shone
    Around that pen's exploring track,
Be now, with its great master, gone,
    Nor living hand can call them back;

Who does not feel, while thus his eyes
    Rest on the enchanter's broke...

A long, low waste of yellow sand
Lay shining northward far as eye could reach,
Southward a rocky bluff rose high
Broken in wild, fantastic shapes.
Near by, one jagged rock towered high,
And o'er the waters leaned, like giant grim,
Striving to peer into the mysteries
The ocean whispers of continually,
And covers with her soft, treacherous face.
For the rest, the sun was sinking low
Like a great golden globe, into the sea;
Above the rock a bird was flying
In dizzy circles, with shrill cries,
And on a plank floated from some wreck,
With shreds of musty seaweed
Clinging to it yet, a woman sat
Holding a child within her arms;
A sweet-faced woman - looking out to sea
With dark, patient eyes, and singing to the child,
And this the song she in the sunse...

With an incident in which he was concerned
In the sweet shire of Cardigan,
Not far from pleasant Ivor-hall,
An old Man dwells, a little man,
'Tis said he once was tall.
For five-and-thirty years he lived
A running huntsman merry;
And still the centre of his cheek
Is red as a ripe cherry.
No man like him the horn could sound,
And hill and valley rang with glee
When Echo bandied, round and round
The halloo of Simon Lee.
In those proud days, he little cared
For husbandry or tillage;
To blither tasks did Simon rouse
The sleepers of the village.

He all the country could outrun,
Could leave both man and horse behind;
And often, ere the chase was done,
He reeled, and was stone-blind.
And still there's something in the world
At whic...

A goddess, with a siren's grace, -
A sun-haired girl on a craggy place
Above a bay where fish-boats lay
Drifting about like birds of prey.

Wrought was she of a painter's dream, -
Wise only as are artists wise,
My artist-friend, Rolf Herschkelhiem,
With deep sad eyes of oversize,
And face of melancholy guise.

I pressed him that he tell to me
This masterpiece's history.
He turned - REturned - and thus beguiled
Me with the tale of Orlie Wilde: -

"We artists live ideally:
We breed our firmest facts of air;
We make our own reality -
We dream a thing and it is so.
The fairest scenes we ever see
Are mirages of memory;
The sweetest thoughts we ever know
We plagiarize from Long Ago:
And as the girl on canvas there
Is marv...

Said Abner, “At last thou art come!
“Ere I tell, ere thou speak,
“Kiss my cheek, wish me well!” Then I wished it,
And did kiss his cheek.
And he, “Since the King, O my friend,
“For thy countenance sent,
Nor drunken nor eaten have we;
Nor until from his tent
Thou return with the joyful assurance
The King liveth yet,
Shall our lip with the honey be brightened,
The water be wet.

“For out of the black mid-tent’s silence,
A space of three days,
No sound hath escaped to thy servants,
Of prayer nor of praise,
To betoken that Saul and the Spirit
Have ended their strife,
And that, faint in his triumph, the monarch
Sinks back upon life.

“Yet now my heart leaps, O beloved!
God’s child with his dew
On thy gracious gold hair, and t...

    The hardy youth, my friends, in bitter warfare
        To narrow poverty must learn to bend,
    And, for his spear a horseman to be dreaded,
        Courageous Parthians into flight must send.
    And he must try all dangerous adventures,
        His life out in the open he must pass;
    The warring tyrant's wife and growing daughter
        Him spying from their hostile walls, "Alas,"
    They sigh - for fear the royal husband,
        Unskilled in warlike arts, should dare attack
    This lion, fierce to touch, whom bloody anger
        Into the midst of slaughter has dragged back.
    'Tis sweet and fit to perish for one's country,
        Death follows fast upon the man who flees,
    Nor spares the coward backs of youth retreating,
        Nor saves them...

In the youth of the year, when the birds were building,
    When the green was showing on tree and hedge,
And the tenderest light of all lights was gilding
    The world from zenith to outermost edge,
My soul grew sad and longingly lonely!
    I sighed for the season of sun and rose,
And I said, "In the Summer and that time only
    Lies sweet contentment and blest repose."

With bee and bird for her maids of honour
    Came Princess Summer in robes of green.
And the King of day smiled down upon her
    And wooed her, and won her, and made her queen.
Fruit of their union and true love's pledges,
    Beautiful roses bloomed day by day,
And rambled in gardens and hid in hedges
    Like royal children in sportive play.

My restless soul for a little sea...

La ragion meco si lamenta.


Reason laments and grieves full sore with me,
        The while I hope by loving to be blest;
        With precepts sound and true philosophy
        My shame she quickens thus within my breast:
'What else but death will that sun deal to thee--
        Nor like the phoenix in her flaming nest?'
        Yet nought avails this wise morality;
        No hand can save a suicide confessed.
I know my doom; the truth I apprehend:
        But on the other side my traitorous heart
        Slays me whene'er to wisdom's words I bend.
Between two deaths my lady stands apart:
        This death I dread; that none can comprehend.
        In this suspense body and soul must part.