Death

The woods waved welcome in the breeze,
    When, many years ago,
Lured by the songs of birds and bees,
    I sought the dell below;
And there, in that secluded spot,
    Where silver streamlets roved,
Twined the green ivy round the cot
    Of her I fondly loved.

In dreams still near that porch I stand
    To listen to her vow!
Still feel the pressure of her hand
    Upon my burning brow!
And here, as in the days gone by,
    With joy I meet her yet,
And mark the love-light of her eyes,
    Fringed with its lash of jet.

O fleeting vision of the past!
    From memory glide away!
Ye were too beautiful to last,
    Too good to longer stay!
But why, attesting evening star,
    This sermon sad recall:
"THAN LOVE AND LOSE 'TI...

I had remarked--how sharply one observes
When life is disappearing round the curves
Of yet another corner, out of sight!--
I had remarked when it was "good luck" and "good night"
And "a good journey to you," on her face
Certain enigmas penned in the hieroglyphs
Of that half frown and queer fixed smile and trace
Of clouded thought in those brown eyes,
Always so happily clear of hows and ifs--
My poor bleared mind!--and haunting whys.

There I stood, holding her farewell hand,
(Pressing my life and soul and all
The world to one good-bye, till, small
And smaller pressed, why there I'd stand
Dead when they vanished with the sight of her).
And I saw that she had grown aware,
Queer puzzled face! of other things
Beyond the present and her own young speed,

I.

First I asked the honeybee,
Busy in the balmy bowers;
Saying, "Sweetheart, tell it me:
Have you seen her, honeybee?
She is cousin to the flowers
All the sweetness of the south
In her wild-rose face and mouth."
But the bee passed silently.

II.

Then I asked the forest bird,
Warbling by the woodland waters;
Saying, "Dearest, have you heard?
Have you heard her, forest bird?
She is one of music's daughters
Never song so sweet by half
As the music of her laugh."
But the bird said not a word.

III.

Next I asked the evening sky,
Hanging out its lamps of fire;
Saying, "Loved one, passed she by?
Tell me, tell me, evening sky!
She, the star of my desire
Sister whom the Pleiads lost,
And my soul'...

Near Hastings, on the shingle-beach,
We loitered at the time
When ripens on the wall the peach,
The autumn's lovely prime.
Far off,--the sea and sky seemed blent,
The day was wholly done,
The distant town its murmurs sent,
Strangers,--we were alone.

We wandered slow; sick, weary, faint,
Then one of us sat down,
No nature hers, to make complaint;--
The shadows deepened brown.
A lady past,--she was not young,
But oh! her gentle face
No painter-poet ever sung,
Or saw such saintlike grace.

She past us,--then she came again,
Observing at a glance
That we were strangers; one, in pain,--
Then asked,--Were we from France?
We talked awhile,--some roses red
That seemed as wet with tears,
She gave my sister, and she said,
"G...

There is a town in Ireland,
A little town I know;
Its girls have tender Irish eyes
Beneath their brows of snow;
And in the field around it
The Fairy Hawthorns grow.

O, the Hawthorn is a Queen
And the daughter of a King,
And amidst her branches green
The sweet brown thrushes sing.

And from that little city
Three roads forever run
And on those roads the people,
The father and the son,
The mother and the daughter,
Walk till the day is done.

O, the Hawthorn is a Queen
And the daughter of a King,
And amidst her branches green
The thrushes sadly sing.

One road runs to the seaport
Where stately vessels lie
American, Australian
The weeping exiles cry,
Farewell to Grave and Hearthstone!
...

Sonnet composed in the name of a father, whose daughter had recently died shortly after her marriage; and addressed to the father of her who had lately taken the veil.

Of two fair virgins, modest, though admired,
Heaven made us happy; and now, wretched sires,
Heaven for a nobler doom their worth desires,
And gazing upon either, both required.

Mine, while the torch of Hymen newly fired
Becomes extinguished, - soon - too soon expires;
But thine, within the closing grate retired,
Eternal captive, to her God aspires.

But thou at least from out the jealous door,
Which shuts between your never-meeting eyes,
May'st hear her sweet and pious voice once more:

I to the marble, where my daughter lies,
Rush, - the swoln flood of bitterness I p...

    "Deny your God!" they ringed me with their spears;
    Blood-crazed were they, and reeking from the strife;
    Hell-hot their hate, and venom-fanged their sneers,
    And one man spat on me and nursed a knife.
    And there was I, sore wounded and alone,
    I, the last living of my slaughtered band.
    Oh sinister the sky, and cold as stone!
    In one red laugh of horror reeled the land.
    And dazed and desperate I faced their spears,
    And like a flame out-leaped that naked knife,
    And like a serpent stung their bitter jeers:
    "Deny your God, and we will give you life."

    Deny my God! Oh life was very sweet!
    And it is hard in youth and hope to die;
    And there my comrades dear lay at my feet,
    And in that blear of blood soon must...

King's daughter sitting in tower so high,
Fair summer is on many a shield.
Why weepest thou as the clouds go by?
Fair sing the swans 'twixt firth and field.
Why weepest thou in the window-seat
Till the tears run through thy fingers sweet?

The King's Daughter.

I weep because I sit alone
Betwixt these walls of lime and stone.
Fair folk are in my father's hall,
But for me he built this guarded wall.
And here the gold on the green I sew
Nor tidings of my true-love know.

The Raven.

King's daughter, sitting above the sea,
I shall tell thee a tale shall gladden thee.
Yestreen I saw a ship go forth
When the wind blew merry from the north.
And by the tiller Steingrim sat,
And O, but my heart was glad th...

FORMERLY TRANSLATED.
[Footnote: The first six of these sonnets are translated (not directly, but through the French of Clement Marot) from Petrarch's third Canzone in Morte di Laura. The seventh is by the translator. The circumstance that the version is made from Marot renders it probable that these sonnets are really by Spenser. C.]


I.

Being one day at my window all alone,
So manie strange things happened me to see,
As much it grieveth me to thinke thereon.
At my right hand a hynde appear'd to mee.
So faire as mote the greatest god delite;
Two eager dogs did her pursue in chace,
Of which the one was blacke, the other white.
With deadly force so in their cruell race
They pincht the haunches of that gentle beast,
That at the last, and in short time, I spide,

Were you a Greek when all the world was young,
Before the weary years that pass and pass,
Had scattered all the temples on the grass,
Before the moss to marble columns clung?
I think your snowy tunic must have hung
As now your gown does, wave on wave a mass
Of woven water. As within a glass
I see your face when Homer's tales were sung.
Alcaeus kissed your mouth and found it sweet,
And Sappho's hand has lingered in your hand.
You half remember Lesbos as you stand
Where all the times and countries mix and meet,
And lay your weight of beauty at our feet,
A garland gathered in a distant land.

Hence, my epistle--skim the Deep--fly o'er
Yon smooth expanse to the Teutonic shore!
Haste--lest a friend should grieve for thy delay--
And the Gods grant that nothing thwart thy way!
I will myself invoke the King[2] who binds
In his Sicanian ecchoing vault the winds,
With Doris[3] and her Nymphs, and all the throng
Of azure Gods, to speed thee safe along.
But rather, to insure thy happier haste,
Ascend Medea's chariot,[4] if thou may'st,    
Or that whence young Triptolemus[5] of yore
Descended welcome on the Scythian shore.
The sands that line the German coast descried,
To opulent Hamburg turn aside,
So call'd, if legendary fame be true,
From Hama,[6] whom a club-arm'd Cimbrian slew.
There lives, deep-le...

Emperors and Kings, how oft have temples rung
With impious thanksgiving, the Almighty's scorn!
How oft above their altars have been hung
Trophies that led the good and wise to mourn
Triumphant wrong, battle of battle born,
And sorrow that to fruitless sorrow clung!
Now, from Heaven-sanctioned victory, Peace is sprung;
In this firm hour Salvation lifts her horn.
Glory to arms! But, conscious that the nerve
Of popular reason, long mistrusted, freed
Your thrones, ye Powers, from duty fear to swerve!
Be just, be grateful; nor, the oppressor's creed
Reviving, heavier chastisement deserve
Than ever forced unpitied hearts to bleed.

Hew hard the marble from the mountain’s heart
Where hardest night holds fast in iron gloom
Gems brighter than an April dawn in bloom,
That his Memnoniah likeness thence may start
Revealed, whose hand with high funereal art
Carved night, and chiselled shadow: be the tomb
That speaks him famous graven with signs of doom
Intrenched inevitably in lines athwart,
As on some thunder-blasted Titan’s brow
His record of rebellion. Not the day
Shall strike forth music from so stern a chord,
Touching this marble: darkness, none knows how,
And stars impenetrable of midnight, may.
So locms the likeness of thy soul, John Ford.

Say, lovely youth, that dost my heart command,
Can Phaon's eyes forget his Sappho's hand?
Must then her name the wretched writer prove,
To thy remembrance lost, as to thy love?
Ask not the cause that I new numbers choose,
The Lute neglected, and the Lyric muse;
Love taught my tears in adder notes to flow,
And tun'd my heart to Elegies of woe,
I burn, I burn, as when thro' ripen'd corn
By driving winds the spreading flames are borne!
Phaon to Aetna's scorching fields retires,
While I consume with more than Aetna's fires!
No more my soul a charm in music finds,
Music has charms alone for peaceful minds.
Soft scenes of solitude no more can please,
Love enters there, and I'm my own disease.
No more the Lesbian dames my passion move,
Once the dear objects of m...

I saw a ship sail forth at evening time;
Her prow was gilded by the western fire,
And all her rigging one vast golden lyre,
For winds to play on to the ocean's rhyme
Of wave on wave forever singing low.
She floated on a web of burnished gold,
And in such light as praying men behold
Cling round a vision, were her sails aglow.
I saw her come again when dawn was grey,
Her wonder faded and her splendor dead, "
She whom I loved once had upon her way
A light most like the sunset. Now 'tis sped.
And this is saddest, what seemed wondrous fair
Are now but straight pale lips, and dull gold hair.

Pour wine and dance if Manhood still have pride,
Bring roses if the rose be yet in bloom;
The cataract smokes upon the mountain side,
Our Father Rosicross is in his tomb.

Pull down the blinds, bring fiddle and clarionet
That there be no foot silent in the room
Nor mouth from kissing, nor from wine unwet;
Our Father Rosicross is in his tomb.

In vain, in vain; the cataract still cries
The everlasting taper lights the gloom;
All wisdom shut into his onyx eyes
Our Father Rosicross sleeps in his tomb.

After the May time, and after the June time
    Rare with blossoms and perfumes sweet,
Cometh the round world's royal noon time,
    The red midsummer of blazing heat.
When the sun, like an eye that never closes,
    Bends on the earth its fervid gaze,
And the winds are still, and the crimson roses
    Droop and wither and die in its rays.

Unto my heart has come that season,
    O my lady, my worshiped one,
When over the stars of Pride and Reason
    Sails Love's cloudless, noonday sun.
Like a great red ball in my bosom burning
    With fires that nothing can quench or tame.
It glows till my heart itself seems turning
    Into a liquid lake of flame.

The hopes half shy, and the sighs all tender,
    The dreams and fears of an earlier day,

It was a hundred years ago,
When, by the woodland ways,
The traveller saw the wild deer drink,
Or crop the birchen sprays.

Beneath a hill, whose rocky side
O'erbrowed a grassy mead,
And fenced a cottage from the wind,
A deer was wont to feed.

She only came when on the cliffs
The evening moonlight lay,
And no man knew the secret haunts
In which she walked by day.

White were her feet, her forehead showed
A spot of silvery white,
That seemed to glimmer like a star
In autumn's hazy night.

And here, when sang the whippoorwill,
She cropped the sprouting leaves,
And here her rustling steps were heard
On still October eves.

But when the broad midsummer moon
Rose o'er that grassy lawn,
Beside the silver-footed...