Death

The flags of war like storm-birds fly,
The charging trumpets blow;
Yet rolls no thunder in the sky,
No earthquake strives below.

And, calm and patient, Nature keeps
Her ancient promise well,
Though o’er her bloom and greenness sweeps
The battle’s breath of hell.

And still she walks in golden hours
Through harvest-happy farms,
And still she wears her fruits and flowers
Like jewels on her arms.

What mean the gladness of the plain,
This joy of eve and morn,
The mirth that shakes the beard of grain
And yellow locks of corn?

Ah! eyes may well be full of tears,
And hearts with hate are hot;
But even-paced come round the years,
And Nature changes not.

She meets with smiles our bitter grief,
With songs our groans ...

From out the hills where twilight stands,
Above the shadowy pasture lands,
With strained and strident cry,
Beneath pale skies that sunset bands,
The bull-bats fly.

A cloud hangs over, strange of shape,
And, colored like the half-ripe grape,
Seems some uneven stain
On heaven's azure; thin as crape,
And blue as rain.

By ways, that sunset's sardonyx
O'erflares, and gates the farm-boy clicks,
Through which the cattle came,
The mullein-stalks seem giant wicks
Of downy flame.

From woods no glimmer enters in,
Above the streams that, wandering, win
To where the wood pool bids,
Those haunters of the dusk begin, -
The katydids.

Adown the dark the firefly marks
Its flight in gold and emerald sparks;
And, loosened from...

A shadow glided down the way
Where sunset groped among the trees,
And all the woodland bower, asway
With trouble of the evening breeze.

A shape, it moved with head held down;
I knew it not, yet seemed to know
Its form, its carriage of a clown,
Its raiment of the long-ago.

It never turned or spoke a word,
But fixed its gaze on something far,
As if within its heart it heard
The summons of the evening star.

I turned to it and tried to speak;
To ask it of the thing it saw,
Or heard, beyond Earth's outmost peak
The dream, the splendor, and the awe.

What beauty or what terror there
Still bade its purpose to ascend
Above the sunset's sombre glare,
The twilight and the long day's end.

It looked at me but said no word:<...

At last, dear love, the day is gone,
    The doors are barred--the lamps are lit,
The couch beside the fire is drawn,
    The nook whore thou wert wont to sit;

The book is open at the place,
    And half its leaves are still uncut,
And yet without thy listening face,
    I cannot read, the book I shut,

And muse, and dream:--it is the day
    When lovers, silent all the year,
Find tongues in floral tokens gay,
    To whisper all they long to hear.

Ah, many a time, and many a time
    I saw the question in thine eyes,
Where is the silver-sounding rhyme,
    The simple household melodies,

The harp that trembled to thy touch;
    Hast thou forgot thine early lore?
And know'st not that I love so much,
    That song contents my...

Where forlorn sunsets flare and fade
On desolate sea and lonely sand,
Out of the silence and the shade
What is the voice of strange command
Calling you still, as friend calls friend
With love that cannot brook delay,
To rise and follow the ways that wend
Over the hills and far away?

Hark in the city, street on street
A roaring reach of death and life,
Of vortices that clash and fleet
And ruin in appointed strife,
Hark to it calling, calling clear,
Calling until you cannot stay
From dearer things than your own most dear
Over the hills and far away.

Out of the sound of the ebb-and-flow,
Out of the sight of lamp and star,
It calls you where the good winds blow,
And the unchanging meadows are:
From faded hopes and hopes agleam,

Inscribed to S.F.S.

They say that lonely sorrows do not chance.
I think it true, and that the cause I know:
A sorrow glideth in a funeral show
Easier than if it broke into a dance.
But I think too, that joy doth joy enhance
As often as an added grief brings low;
And if keen-eyed to see the flowers that grow,
As keen of nerve to feel the thorns that lance
The foot that must walk naked in one way--
Blest by the lily, white from toils and fears,
Oftener than wounded by the thistle-spears,
We should walk upright, bold, and earnest-gay.
I'll tell you how it fared with me one day
After noon in a world, so-called, of tears.

So we, who 've supped the self-same cup,
To-night must lay our friendship by;
Your wrath has burned your judgment up,
Hot breath has blown the ashes high.
You say that you are wronged--ah, well,
I count that friendship poor, at best
A bauble, a mere bagatelle,
That cannot stand so slight a test.

I fain would still have been your friend,
And talked and laughed and loved with you;
But since it must, why, let it end;
The false but dies, 't is not the true.
So we are favored, you and I,
Who only want the living truth.
It was not good to nurse the lie;
'T is well it died in harmless youth.

I go from you to-night to sleep.
Why, what's the odds? why should I grieve?
I have no fund of tears to weep
For happenings that undeceive.
The day...

A thousand times I would have hoped,
    A thousand times protested;
But still, as through the night I groped,
    My torch from me was wrested,
        and wrested.

How often with a succoring cup
    Unto the hurt I hasted!
The wounded died ere I came up;
    My cup was still untasted, -
        Untasted.

Of darkness, wounds, and harsh disdain
    Endured, I ne'er repented.
'T is not of these I would complain:
    With these I were contented, -
        Contented.

Here lies the misery, to feel
    No work of love completed;
In prayerless passion still to kneel,
    And mourn, and cry: "Defeated
        Defeated!"

An Indian girl was sitting where
Her lover, slain in battle, slept;
Her maiden veil, her own black hair,
Came down o'er eyes that wept;
And wildly, in her woodland tongue,
This sad and simple lay she sung:

"I've pulled away the shrubs that grew
Too close above thy sleeping head,
And broke the forest boughs that threw
Their shadows o'er thy bed,
That, shining from the sweet south-west,
The sunbeams might rejoice thy rest.

"It was a weary, weary road
That led thee to the pleasant coast,
Where thou, in his serene abode,
Hast met thy father's ghost:
Where everlasting autumn lies
On yellow woods and sunny skies.

"Twas I the broidered mocsen made,
That shod thee for that distant land;
'Twas I thy bow and arrows laid
Beside ...

In de dead of night I sometimes,
Git to t'inkin' of de pas'
An' de days w'en slavery helt me
In my mis'ry--ha'd an' fas'.
Dough de time was mighty tryin',
In dese houahs somehow hit seem
Dat a brightah light come slippin'
Thoo de kivahs of my dream.

An' my min' fu'gits de whuppins
Draps de feah o' block an' lash
An' flies straight to somep'n' joyful
In a secon's lightnin' flash.
Den hit seems I see a vision
Of a dearah long ago
Of de childern tumblin' roun' me
By my rough ol' cabin do'.

Talk about yo' go'geous mansions
An' yo' big house great an' gran',
Des bring up de fines' palace
Dat you know in all de lan'.
But dey's somep'n' dearah to me,
Somep'n' faihah to my eyes
In dat cabin, less you bring me
To yo' mansi...

The rage for writing has spread far and wide,
Letters on letters now are multiplied,
And every mortal, who can hold a pen,
Aspires in haste to teach his fellow men.
Paper in wasted reams, and seas of ink.
Prove how they write who never learned to think;
Some who have talents--some who have not sense;
Some who to decency make no pretence;
But, skilled in arts which better men deceive,
They spread the slander which they don't believe.
A township turned to scribblers is a sight!
Venting their malice all in black and white,
And with, apparently, no other aim
Than merely to be foaming out their shame.
--My own, my beautiful, my pride,
I must lament where strangers will deride,
O'er thy degenerate sons whose strife and hate
Will make thee as a desert desolate

Yet in the darksome crypt I left so late,
Whose only altar is its rusted grate, -
Sepulchral, rayless, joyless as it seems,
Shamed by the glare of May's refulgent beams, -
While the dim seasons dragged their shrouded train,
Its paler splendors were not quite in vain.
From these dull bars the cheerful firelight's glow
Streamed through the casement o'er the spectral snow;
Here, while the night-wind wreaked its frantic will
On the loose ocean and the rock-bound hill,
Rent the cracked topsail from its quivering yard,
And rived the oak a thousand storms had scarred,
Fenced by these walls the peaceful taper shone,
Nor felt a breath to slant its trembling cone.

Not all unblest the mild interior scene
When the red curtain spread its falling screen;
O'er some lig...

How sweet to rove, from summer sun-beams veil'd,
    In gloomy dingles; or to trace the tide
    Of wandering brooks, their pebbly beds that chide;
    To feel the west-wind cool refreshment yield,
That comes soft creeping o'er the flowery field,
    And shadow'd waters; in whose bushy side
    The Mountain-Bees their fragrant treasure hide
    Murmuring; and sings the lonely Thrush conceal'd! -
Then, Ceremony, in thy gilded halls,
    Where forc'd and frivolous the themes arise,
    With bow and smile unmeaning, O! how palls
At thee, and thine, my sense! - how oft it sighs
    For leisure, wood-lanes, dells, and water-falls;
    And feels th' untemper'd heat of sultry skies!

"Black Sheep, Black Sheep,
Have you any wool?"
"That I have, my Master,
Three bags full."

One is for the mother who prays for me at night--
A gift of broken promises to count by candle-light.

One is for the tried friend who raised me when I fell--
A gift of weakling's tinsel oaths that strew the path to hell.

And one is for the true love--the heaviest of all--
That holds the pieces of a faith a careless hand let fall.

Black Sheep, Black Sheep,
Have you ought to say?
A word to each, my Master,
Ere I go my way.

A word unto my mother to bid her think o' me
Only as a little lad playing at her knee.

A word unto my tried friend to bid him see again
Two laughing lads in S...

I had not found the road too short,
As once I had in days of youth,
In that old forest of long ruth,
Where my young knighthood broke its heart,
Ere love and it had come to part,
And lies made mockery of truth.
I had not found the road too short.

A blind man, by the nightmare way,
Had set me right when I was wrong. -
I had been blind my whole life long -
What wonder then that on this day
The blind should show me how astray
My strength had gone, my heart once strong.
A blind man pointed me the way.

The road had been a heartbreak one,
Of roots and rocks and tortured trees,
And pools, above my horse's knees,
And wandering paths, where spiders spun
'Twixt boughs that never saw the sun,
And silence of lost centuries.
The road had been...

There are legends of Lost Haven,
Come, I know not whence, to me,
When the wind is in the clover,
When the sun is on the sea.

There are rumors in the pine-tops,
There are whispers in the grass;
And the flocking crows at nightfall
Bring home hints of things that pass

Out upon the broad dike yonder,
All day long beneath the sun,
Where the tall ships cloud and settle
Down the sea-curve, one by one.

And the crickets in fine chorus--
Every slim and tiny reed--
Strive to chord the broken rhythmus
Of the world, and half succeed.

There are myriad traditions
Treasured by the talking rain;
And with memories the moonlight
Walks the cold and silent plain.

Where the river tells his hill-tales
To the lone complaining bar...

If I ever be worthy or famous,
Which I’m sadly beginning to doubt,
When the angel whose place ’tis to name us
Shall say to my spirit, ‘Pass out!’
I wish for no sniv’lling about me
(My work was the work of the land),
But I hope that my country will shout me
The price of a decent brass band.

Thump! thump! of the drum and ‘Ta-ra-rit,’
Thump! thump! and the music, it’s grand,
If only in dreams, or in spirit,
To ride or march after the band!
And myself and my mourners go straying,
And strolling and drifting along
With a band in the front of us playing
The tune of an old battle song!

I ask for no ‘turn-out’ to bear me;
I ask not for railings or slabs,
And spare me! my country, oh, spare me!
The hearse and the long string of cabs!
I as...

Sing, bird of grief! still eve descending,
And soothe a mind with sorrow rending;
Ne'er may I see the blush of morrow,
But close this night the sigh of sorrow;

Then, if some wand'rer here directed
Shall find my mossy grave neglected,
May he replace the weed that's growing
With the nearest flow'r that's blowing!