Death

1.

Doubtless, sweet girl, the hissing lead,
Wafting destruction near thy charms,
And hurtling[1] o'er thy lovely head,
Has fill'd that breast with fond alarms.

2.

Surely some envious Demon's force,
Vex'd to behold such beauty here,
Impell'd the bullet's viewless course,
Diverted from its first career.

3.

Yes! in that nearly fatal hour,
The ball obey'd some hell-born guide,
But Heaven with interposing power,
In pity turn'd the death aside.

4.

Yet, as perchance one trembling tear,
Upon that thrilling bosom fell,
Which I, th' unconscious cause of fear,
Extracted from its glistening cell; -

5.

Say, what dire penance can atone?
For such an outrage done to thee,
Arrai...

Ant-like city, city full of dreams,
where the passer-by, at dawn, meets the spectre!
Mysteries everywhere are the sap that streams
through the narrow veins of this great ogre.


One morning, when, on the dreary street,
the buildings all seemed heightened, cold
a swollen river’s banks carved out to greet,
(their stage-set mirroring an actor’s soul),


the dirty yellow fog that flooded space,
arguing with my already weary soul,
steeling my nerves like a hero, I paced
suburbs shaken by the carts’ drum-roll.


Suddenly, an old man in rags, their yellow
mirroring the colour of the rain-filled sky,
whose looks alone prompted alms to flow,
except for the evil glittering of his eye,


appeared. You’d have thought his eyeballs

    When Death's dark stream I ferry o'er,
        A time that surely shall come;
    In Heaven itself I'll ask no more
        Than just a Highland welcome.

The search for beauty is the search for God
Who is All Beauty.    He who seeks shall find.
And all along the paths my feet have trod,
I have sought hungrily with heart and mind,
    And open eyes for beauty, everywhere.
    Lo! I have found the world is very fair.
The search for beauty is the search for God.

Beauty was first revealed to me by stars,
    Before I saw it in my mother's eyes,
Or, seeing, sensed it beauty, I was stirred
To awe and wonder by those orbs of light
    All palpitant against empurpled skies.
They spoke a language to my childish heart
Of mystery and splendour, and of space,
Friendly with gracious, unseen presences.
Beauty was first revealed to me by stars.

Sunsets enlarged the meaning of the word.
    There was a window ...

'T is spring! The boats bound to the sea;
The breezes, loitering kindly over
The fields, again bring herds and men
The grateful cheer of honeyed clover.

Now Venus hither leads her train;
The Nymphs and Graces join in orgies;
The moon is bright, and by her light
Old Vulcan kindles up his forges.

Bind myrtle now about your brow,
And weave fair flowers in maiden tresses;
Appease god Pan, who, kind to man,
Our fleeting life with affluence blesses;

But let the changing seasons mind us,
That Death's the certain doom of mortals,--
Grim Death, who waits at humble gates,
And likewise stalks through kingly portals.

Soon, Sestius, shall Plutonian shades
Enfold you with their hideous seemings;
Then love and mirth and joys of earth
Sh...

Some men were born for great things,
Some were born for small;
Some--it is not recorded
Why they were born at all;
But Uncle Sammy was certain he had a legitimate call.

Some were born with a talent,
Some with scrip and land;
Some with a spoon of silver,
And some with a different brand;
But Uncle Sammy came holding an argument in each hand.

Arguments sprouted within him,
And twinked in his little eye;
He lay and calmly debated
When average babies cry,
And seemed to be pondering gravely whether to live or to die.

But prejudiced on that question
He grew from day to day,
And finally he concluded
'Twas better for him to stay;
And so into life's discussion he reasoned and reasoned his way.

Through childhood, through youth,...

To a violet that faded on my coat at Natchez, Miss. March 8th, 1902.


Alas! thou lovely floweret wee,
    Fate blew a blighting breath
Upon the delicate form of thee, -
    Thou'st met untimely death!
Thou blowest, blushest nevermore,
    To drink the dews of night;
Thy sweet though short-lived life is o'er,
    Thou seest no more the light.

'Twas vain! aye, vain! the selfish strife
    That drooped thy purple crest;
Some swain or maiden took thy life,
    To deck a love-lorn breast.
Ah, floweret wee, the God who made
    All in the earth and sky,
Decreed that thou should blow and fade, -
    All else should live and die!

Now, he who wails the floweret's fate,
    And all the rest of man,
Must meet that fate, aye soon or l...

Beyond the pale of memory,
In some mysterious dusky grove;
A place of shadows utterly,
Where never coos the turtle-dove,
A world forgotten of the sun:
I dreamed we met when day was done,
And marvelled at our ancient love.

Met there by chance, long kept apart,
We wandered through the darkling glades;
And that old language of the heart
We sought to speak: alas! poor shades!
Over our pallid lips had run
The waters of oblivion,
Which crown all loves of men or maids.

In vain we stammered: from afar
Our old desire shone cold and dead:
That time was distant as a star,
When eyes were bright and lips were red.
And still we went with downcast eye
And no delight in being nigh,
Poor shadows most uncomforted.

Ah, Lalage! while lif...

Suddenly out of its stale and drowsy lair, the lair of slaves,
Like lightning it le'pt forth half startled at itself,
Its feet upon the ashes and the rags, its hand tight to the throats of kings.

O hope and faith!
O aching close of exiled patriots' lives!
O many a sicken'd heart!
Turn back unto this day and make yourselves afresh.

And you, paid to defile the People -- you liars, mark!
Not for numberless agonies, murders, lusts,
For court thieving in its manifold mean forms, worming from his simplicity the poor man's wages,
For many a promise sworn by royal lips and broken and laugh'd at in the breaking,
Then in their power not for all these did the blows strike revenge, or the heads of the nobles fall;
The People scorn'd the ferocity of kings.

But the sweet...

My Fair, no beauty of thine will last
    Save in my love's eternity.
    Thy smiles, that light thee fitfully,
Are lost for ever--their moment past--
    Except the few thou givest to me.

Thy sweet words vanish day by day,
    As all breath of mortality;
    Thy laughter, done, must cease to be,
And all thy dear tones pass away,
    Except the few that sing to me.

Hide then within my heart, oh, hide
    All thou art loth should go from thee.
    Be kinder to thyself and me.
My cupful from this river's tide
    Shall never reach the long sad sea.

Amid earth's vagrant noises, he caught the note sublime:
To-day around him surges from the silences of Time
A flood of nobler music, like a river deep and broad,
Fit song for heroes gathered in the banquet-hall of God.

If any man, with sleepless care oppressed,
On many a night had risen, and addressed
His hand to make him out of joy and moan
An image of sweet sleep in carven stone,
Light touch by touch, in weary moments planned,
He would have wrought her with a patient hand,
Not like her brother death, with massive limb
And dreamless brow, unstartled, changeless, dim,
But very fair, though fitful and afraid,
More sweet and slight than any mortal maid.
Her hair he would have carved a mantle smooth
Down to her tender feet to wrap and soothe
All fevers in, yet barbèd here and there
With many a hidden sting of restless care;
Her brow most quiet, thick with opiate rest,
Yet watchfully lined, as if some hovering guest
Of noiseless doubt were there; so too her eyes
His light h...

March is slain; the keen winds fly;
Nothing more is thine to do;
April kisses thee good-bye;
Thou must haste and follow too;
Silent friend that guarded well
Withered things to make us glad,
Shyest friend that could not tell
Half the kindly thought he had.
Haste thee, speed thee, O kind snow;
Down the dripping valleys go,
From the fields and gleaming meadows,
Where the slaying hours behold thee,
From the forests whose slim shadows,
Brown and leafless cannot fold thee,
Through the cedar lands aflame
With gold light that cleaves and quivers,
Songs that winter may not tame,
Drone of pines and laugh of rivers.
May thy passing joyous be
To thy father, the great sea,
For the sun is getting stronger;
Earth hath need of thee no longer;
Go,...

OH the green glimmer of apples in the orchard,
Lamps in a wash of rain!
Oh the wet walk of my brown hen through the stack-yard,
Oh tears on the window pane!

Nothing now will ripen the bright green apples,
Full of disappointment and of rain,
Brackish they will taste, of tears, when the yellow dapples
Of autumn tell the withered tale again.

All round the yard it is cluck, my brown hen,
Cluck, and the rain-wet wings,
Cluck, my marigold bird, and again
Cluck for your yellow darlings.

For the grey rat found the gold thirteen
Huddled away in the dark,
Flutter for a moment, oh the beast is quick and keen,
Extinct one yellow-fluffy spark.

Once I had a lover bright like running water,
Once his face was laughing like the sky;
Open like ...

Falling upon the frozen world last
I heard the slow beat of the Winter rain -
Poor foolish drops, down-dripping all in vain;
The ice-bound Earth but mocked their puny might,
Far better had the fixedness of white
And uncomplaining snows - which make no sign,
But coldly smile, when pitying moonbeams shine -
Concealed its sorrow from all human sight.
Long, long ago, in blurred and burdened years,
I learned the uselessness of uttered woe.
Though sinewy Fate deals her most skilful blow,
    I do not waste the gall now of my tears,
    But feed my pride upon its bitter, while
I look straight in the world's bold eyes, and smile.

It is a circumstance connected with the history of Nero, that every spring and summer, for many years after his death, fresh and beautiful flowers were nightly scattered upon his grave by some unknown hand.

Tradition relates that it was done by a young maiden of Corinth, named Acle, whom Nero had brought to Rome from her native city, whither he had gone in the disguise of an artist, to contend in the Nemean, Isthinian, and Floral games, celebrated there; and whence he returned conqueror in the Palaestra, the chariot race, and the song; bearing with him, like Jason of old, a second Medea, divine in form and feature as the first, and who like her had left father, friends, and country, to follow a stranger.

Even the worse than savage barbarity of this sanguinary tyrant, had not cut him off from all human affection; and ...

I know that he exists
Somewhere, in silence.
He has hid his rare life
From our gross eyes.

'T is an instant's play,
'T is a fond ambush,
Just to make bliss
Earn her own surprise!

But should the play
Prove piercing earnest,
Should the glee glaze
In death's stiff stare,

Would not the fun
Look too expensive?
Would not the jest
Have crawled too far?

    Oh, be not led away.
Lured by the colour of the sun-rich day.
    The gay romances of song
Unto the spirit-life doth not belong.
    Though far-between the hours
In which the Master of Angelic Powers
    Lightens the dusk within
The Holy of Holies;    be it thine to win
    Rare vistas of white light,
Half-parted lips, through which the Infinite
    Murmurs her ancient story;
Hearkening to whom the wandering planets hoary
    Waken primeval fires,
With deeper rapture in celestial choirs
    Breathe, and with fleeter motion
Wheel in their orbits through the surgeless ocean.
    So, hearken thou like these,
Intent on her, mounting by slow degrees,
    Until thy song's elation
Echoes her multitudinous meditation.

--November 15, 1893