Death

Now ought we to laugh or to weep -
    Was it comical, or was it grave?
When we who had waded breast deep
    In passion's most turbulent wave
Met out on an isle in Time's ocean,
With never one thrill of emotion.

We had parted in sorrow and tears;
    Our letters were frequent and wet;
We wrote about pitiless years,
    And we swore we could never forget.
An angel you called me alway,
And I thought you a god gone astray.

We met in an everyday style;
    Unmoved by a tremor or start;
Shook hands, smiled a commonplace smile;
    (With a happy new love in each heart),
And I thought you the homeliest man
As you awkwardly picked up my fan!

And I know (or I haven't a doubt)
    Though you did not say so to my face,
That you thou...

How changed is here each spot man makes or fills!
In the two Hinkseys nothing keeps the same;
The village street its haunted mansion lacks,
And from the sign is gone Sibylla's name,
And from the roofs the twisted chimney-stacks
Are ye too changed, ye hills?
See, 'tis no foot of unfamiliar men
To-night from Oxford up your pathway strays!
Here came I often, often, in old days
Thyrsis and I; we still had Thyrsis then.

Runs it not here, the track by Childsworth Farm,
Past the high wood, to where the elm-tree crowns
The hill behind whose ridge the sunset flames?
The signal-elm, that looks on Ilsley Downs,
The Vale, the three lone weirs, the youthful Thames?
This winter-eve is warm,
Humid the air! leafless, yet soft as spring,
The tender purple spray on c...

Vigil strange I kept on the field one night:
When you, my son and my comrade, dropt at my side that day,
One look I but gave, which your dear eyes return'd, with a look I shall never forget;
One touch of your hand to mine, O boy, reach'd up as you lay on the ground;
Then onward I sped in the battle, the even-contested battle;
Till late in the night reliev'd, to the place at last again I made my way;
Found you in death so cold, dear comrade, found your body, son of responding kisses, (never again on earth responding;)
Bared your face in the starlight, curious the scene, cool blew the moderate night-wind;
Long there and then in vigil I stood, dimly around me the battlefield spreading;
Vigil wondrous and vigil sweet, there in the fragrant silent night;
But not a tear fell, not even a long-dra...

There is a quiet spirit in these woods,
That dwells where'er the gentle south-wind blows;
Where, underneath the white-thorn, in the glade,
The wild flowers bloom, or, kissing the soft air,
The leaves above their sunny palms outspread.
With what a tender and impassioned voice
It fills the nice and delicate ear of thought,
When the fast ushering star of morning comes
O'er-riding the gray hills with golden scarf;
Or when the cowled and dusky-sandaled Eve,
In mourning weeds, from out the western gate,
Departs with silent pace!    That spirit moves
In the green valley, where the silver brook,
From its full laver, pours the white cascade;
And, babbling low amid the tangled woods,
Slips down through moss-grown stones with endless laughter.
And frequent, on the everla...

The full, clear moon uprose and spread
Her cold, pale splendor o'er the sea;
A light-strewn path that seemed to lead
Outward into eternity.
Between the darkness and the gleam
An old-world spell encompassed me:
Methought that in a godlike dream
I trod upon the sea.

And lo! upon that glimmering road,
In shining companies unfurled,
The trains of many a primal god,
The monsters of the elder world;
Strange creatures that, with silver wings,
Scarce touched the ocean's thronging floor,
The phantoms of old tales, and things
Whose shapes are known no more.

Giants and demi-gods who once
Were dwellers of the earth and sea,
And they who from Deucalion's stones,
Rose men without an infancy;
Beings on whose majestic lids
Time's solemn se...

. . . So I walked among the willows very quietly all night;
There was no moon at all, at all; no timid star alight;
There was no light at all, at all; I wint from tree to tree,
And I called him as his mother called, but he nivver answered me.

Oh I called him all the night-time, as I walked the wood alone;
And I listened and I listened, but I nivver heard a moan;
Then I found him at the dawnin', when the sorry sky was red:
I was lookin' for the livin', but I only found the dead.

Sure I know that it was Shamus by the silver cross he wore;
But the bugles they were callin', and I heard the cannon roar.
Oh I had no time to tarry, so I said a little prayer,
And I clasped his hands together, and I left him lyin' there.

Now the birds are singin', singin', and I'm home i...

The sun was streaming in: I woke, and said,
"Where is my wife, - that has been made my wife
Only this year?" The casement stood ajar:
I did but lift my head: The pear-tree dropped,
The great white pear-tree dropped with dew from leaves
And blossom, under heavens of happy blue.

My wife had wakened first, and had gone down
Into the orchard. All the air was calm;
Audible humming filled it. At the roots
Of peony bushes lay in rose-red heaps,
Or snowy, fallen bloom. The crag-like hills
Were tossing down their silver messengers,
And two brown foreigners, called cuckoo-birds,
Gave them good answer; all things else were mute;
An idle world lay listening to their talk,
They had it to themselves.
    What ails my wife?
I know not if aught ails her; though her...

Hail, sober Autumn! thee I love,
Thy healthful breeze and clear blue sky;
And more than flowers of Spring admire
Thy falling leaves of richer dye.

'Twas even thus when life was young,
I welcomed Autumn with delight;
Although I knew that with it came
The shorter day and lengthened night.

Let others pass October by,
Or dreary call its hours, or chill;
Let poets always sing of Spring,
My praise shall be of Autumn still.

And I have loved the setting sun,
E'en than his rising beams more dear;
'Tis fitting time for serious thought,
It is an hour for solemn prayer.

Before the evening closes in,
Or night's dark curtains round us fall,
See how o'er tree, and spire, and hill,
That setting sun illumines all.

So whe...

Se quell' aura soave de' sospiri.

SHE RETURNS IN PITY TO COMFORT HIM WITH HER ADVICE.


    If that soft breath of sighs, which, from above,
I hear of her so long my lady here,
Who, now in heaven, yet seems, as of our sphere,
To breathe, and move, to feel, and live, and love,
I could but paint, my passionate verse should move
Warmest desires; so jealous, yet so dear
O'er me she bends and breathes, without a fear,
That on the way I tire, or turn, or rove.
She points the path on high: and I who know
Her chaste anxiety and earnest prayer,
In whispers sweet, affectionate, and low,
Train, at her will, my acts and wishes there:
And find such sweetness in her words alone
As with their power should melt the hardest stone.

MACGREGOR.

I would not sin, in this half-playful strain,
Too light perhaps for serious years, though born
Of the enforced leisure of slow pain,
Against the pure ideal which has drawn
My feet to follow its far-shining gleam.
A simple plot is mine: legends and runes
Of credulous days, old fancies that have lain
Silent, from boyhood taking voice again,
Warmed into life once more, even as the tunes
That, frozen in the fabled hunting-horn,
Thawed into sound: a winter fireside dream
Of dawns and-sunsets by the summer sea,
Whose sands are traversed by a silent throng
Of voyagers from that vaster mystery
Of which it is an emblem; and the dear
Memory of one who might have tuned my song
To sweeter music by her delicate ear.


When heats as of a tropic clime
Bur...

    Breaking up -
    as in the cloissoné jar you dropped. . .
    little regard,
    a few brittle pieces scattered about the floor.
    Let's call it "shedding feelings". Expensive?
    There's always another humidor tucked away in
    the cranny of another antique shop; after all,
    a woman is only a woman
    although a fine, Cuban import
    is a worthy smoke.

    "What this country needs is a good 5¢ cigar".
    Panatellas?
    He might have added tight-fitting, long lasting.

    Nooks & crannies.
    Little things, your ways. Fruit fly (perhaps damsel wing)
    as symbol of perishability. My emblematic coat of arms.
    No season of regrets, rather
    snatch of minutes, the oasis span of a single candle.

    Who knows?...

Naples, 1849


Through the great sinful streets of Naples as I past,
With fiercer heat than flamed above my head
My heart was hot within me; till at last
My brain was lightened, when my tongue had said
Christ is not risen!

Christ is not risen, no,
He lies and moulders low;
Christ is not risen.

What though the stone were rolled away, and though
The grave found empty there?
If not there, then elsewhere;
If not where Joseph laid Him first, why then
Where other men
Translaid Him after; in some humbler clay
Long ere to-day
Corruption that sad perfect work hath done,
Which here she scarcely, lightly had begun.
The foul engendered worm
Feeds on the flesh of the life-giving form
Of our most Holy and Anointed One.
<...

O strange, dim other-world revealed to us,
Beginning there where ends reality,
Lying 'twixt life and death, and populous


With souls from either sphere! now enter we
Thy twisted paths.    Barred is the silver gate,
But the wild-carven doors of ivory


Spring noiselessly apart: between them straight
Flies forth a cloud of nameless shadowy things,
With harpies, imps, and monsters, small and great,


Blurring the thick air with darkening wings.
All humors of the blood and brain take shape,
And fright us with our own imaginings.


A trouble weighs upon us: no escape
From this unnatural region can there be.
Fixed eyes stare on us, wide mouths grin and gape,


Familiar faces out of reach we see.
Fain would we scream...

Lived on one's back,
In the long hours of repose,
Life is a practical nightmare -
Hideous asleep or awake.

Shoulders and loins
Ache - - -!
Ache, and the mattress,
Run into boulders and hummocks,
Glows like a kiln, while the bedclothes -
Tumbling, importunate, daft -
Ramble and roll, and the gas,
Screwed to its lowermost,
An inevitable atom of light,
Haunts, and a stertorous sleeper
Snores me to hate and despair.

All the old time
Surges malignant before me;
Old voices, old kisses, old songs
Blossom derisive about me;
While the new days
Pass me in endless procession:
A pageant of shadows
Silently, leeringly wending
On . . . and still on . . . still on!

Far in the stillness a cat
Languishes loudly.   ...

Broad-based, broad-fronted, bounteous, multiform,
With many a valley impleached with ivy and vine,
Wherein the springs of all the streams run wine,
And many a crag full-faced against the storm,
The mountain where thy Muse’s feet made warm
Those lawns that revelled with her dance divine
Shines yet with fire as it was wont to shine
From tossing torches round the dance aswarm.

Nor less, high-stationed on the grey grave heights,
High-thoughted seers with heaven’s heart-kindling lights
Hold converse: and the herd of meaner things
Knows or by fiery scourge or fiery shaft
When wrath on thy broad brows has risen, and laughed,
Darkening thy soul with shadow of thunderous wings.

Ternissa! you are fled!
I say not to the dead,
But to the happy ones who rest below:
For, surely, surely, where
Your voice and graces are,
Nothing of death can any feel or know.
Girls who delight to dwell
Where grows most asphodel,
Gather to their calm breasts each word you speak:
The mild Persephone
Places you on her knee,
And your cool palm smooths down stern Pluto's cheek.

(Dedicated to a clown)

Many days tread upon human animals,
In gentle oceans hunger-sharks fly.
Heads, beers glisten in coffee-houses.
Girls' screams shred on a man.
Thunderstorms come crashing down.    Forest winds darken.
Women knead prayers in skinny hands:
May the Lord God send an angel.
A shred of moonlight shimmers in the sewers.
Readers of books crouch quietly on their bodies.
An evening dips the world in lilac lye.
The trunk of a body floats in a windshield.
From deep in the brain its eyes sink.

    I went up and down the streets
    Here and there by day and night,
    Through all hours of the night caring for the poor who were sick.
    Do you know why?
    My wife hated me, my son went to the dogs.
    And I turned to the people and poured out my love to them.
    Sweet it was to see the crowds about the lawns on the day of my funeral,
    And hear them murmur their love and sorrow.
    But oh, dear God, my soul trembled, scarcely able
    To hold to the railing of the new life
    When I saw Em Stanton behind the oak tree
    At the grave,
    Hiding herself, and her grief!