Death

        I pass a cobbler's shop along the street
            And pause a moment at the door-step, where,
        In nature's medley, piping cool and sweet,
            The songs that thrill the swamps when spring is near,
            Fly o'er the fields at fullness of the year,
        And twitter where the autumn hedges run,
        Join all the months of music into one.

        I shut my eyes:    the shy wood-thrush is there,
            And all the leaves hang still to catch his spell;
        Wrens cheep among the bushes; from somewhere
            A bluebird's tweedle passes o'er the fell;
            From rustling corn bob-white his name doth tell;
        And when the oriole sets his full heart free
        Barefooted boyhood comes again to me.

      ...

So that's Cleopathera's Needle, bedad,
    An' a quare lookin' needle it is, I'll be bound;
What a powerful muscle the queen must have had
    That could grasp such a weapon an' wind it around!

Imagine her sittin' there stitchin' like mad
    Wid a needle like that in her hand! I declare
It's as big as the Round Tower of Slane, an', bedad,
    It would pass for a round tower, only it's square!

The taste of her, ordherin' a needle of granite!
    Begorra, the sight of it sthrikes me quite dumb!
An' look at the quare sort of figures upon it;
    I wondher can these be the thracks of her thumb!

I once was astonished to hear of the faste
    Cleopathera made upon pearls; but now
I declare, I would not be surprised in the laste
    If ye told me the wo...

Her Mother's Epitaph

Here lies
A worthy matron of unspotted life,
A loving mother and obedient wife,
A friendly neighbor, pitiful to poor,
Whom oft she fed, and clothed with her store;
To servants wisely aweful, but yet kind,
And as they did, so they reward did find:
A true instructor of her family,
The which she ordered with dexterity,
The public meetings ever did frequent,
And in her closest constant hours she spent;
Religious in all her words and ways,
Preparing still for death, till end of days:
Of all her children, children lived to see,
Then dying, left a blessed memory.


Her Father's Epitaph

Within this tomb a patriot lies
That was both pious, just and wise,
To truth a shield, to right a wall,
To ...

She's gone, and twice the summer's sun
Has gilt Regina's towers,
And melted wild Angora's snows,
And warmed Exina's bowers.

The flowerets twice on hill and dale
Have bloomed and died away,
And twice the rustling forest leaves
Have fallen to decay,

And thrice stern winter's icy hand
Has checked the river's flow,
And three times o'er the mountains thrown
His spotless robe of snow.

Two summers springs and autumns sad
Three winters cold and grey,
And is it then so long ago
That wild November day!

They say such tears as children weep
Will soon be dried away,
That childish grief however strong
Is only for a day,

And parted friends how dear soe'er
Will soon forgotten be;
It may be so with other hearts,
...

    Parable as metaphor -
    profile in hard glint of light,
    buckskin garb
    merging from shadow &
    buckboards -
    sandwiching of memory
    being elbowed
    thru a Deadwood City
    saloon door.

    Noneother.
    Dead Man's Hand.
    Cards strewn,
    last tumbler ...
    chamber on empty.
    Yancy Derringer modelling the
    latest revolver of his namesake,
    in pit & the palm
    bullet in the back
    for Wild Bill, just for a keepsake.

    Treasure-trove for the funeral parlour:
    "they done him up well". Peccadillo as provocation.

The name the Gallic exile bore,
St. Malo! from thy ancient mart,
Became upon our Western shore
Greenleaf for Feuillevert.

A name to hear in soft accord
Of leaves by light winds overrun,
Or read, upon the greening sward
Of May, in shade and sun.

The name my infant ear first heard
Breathed softly with a mother’s kiss;
His mother’s own, no tenderer word
My father spake than this.

No child have I to bear it on;
Be thou its keeper; let it take
From gifts well used and duty done
New beauty for thy sake.

The fair ideals that outran
My halting footsteps seek and find
The flawless symmetry of man,
The poise of heart and mind.

Stand firmly where I felt the sway
Of every wing that fancy flew,
See clearly where I...

The uses of sorrow I comprehend
Better and better at each year's end.

Deeper and deeper I seem to see
Why and wherefore it has to be.

Only after the dark, wet days
Do we fully rejoice in the sun's bright rays.

Sweeter the crust tastes after the fast
Than the sated gourmand's finest repast.

The faintest cheer sounds never amiss
To the actor who once has heard a hiss.

To one who the sadness of freedom knows,
Light seem the fetters love may impose.

And he who has dwelt with his heart alone,
Hears all the music in friendship's tone.

So better and better I comprehend
How sorrow ever would be our friend.

Avenge O lord thy slaughter'd Saints, whose bones
Lie scatter'd on the Alpine mountains cold,
Ev'n them who kept thy truth so pure of old
When all our Fathers worship't Stocks and Stones,
Forget not: in thy book record their groanes
Who were thy Sheep and in their antient Fold
Slayn by the bloody Piemontese that roll'd
Mother with Infant down the Rocks.    Their moans
The Vales redoubl'd to the Hills, and they
To Heav'n.    Their martyr'd blood and ashes sow
O're all th'Italian fields where still doth sway
The triple Tyrant: that from these may grow
A hunder'd-fold, who having learnt thy way
Early may fly the Babylonian wo.

As gilliflowers do but stay
To blow, and seed, and so away;
So you, sweet lady, sweet as May,
The garden's glory, lived a while
To lend the world your scent and smile.
But when your own fair print was set
Once in a virgin flosculet,
Sweet as yourself, and newly blown,
To give that life, resigned your own:
But so as still the mother's power
Lives in the pretty lady-flower.

My thoughts go back to last July,
Sweet happy thoughts and tender;
“The bridal of the earth and sky,”
A day of noble splendour;
A day to make the saddest heart
In joy a true believer;
When two good friends we roamed apart
The shady walks of Belvoir.

A maiden like a budding rose,
Unconscious of the golden
And fragrant bliss of love that glows
Deep in her heart infolden;
A Poet old in years and thought,
Yet not too old for pleasance,
Made young again and fancy-fraught
By such a sweet friend's presence.

The other two beyond our ken
Most shamefully deserted,
And far from all the ways of men
Their stealthy steps averted:
Of course our Jack would go astray,
Erotic and erratic;
But Mary! well, I own the day
Was really to...

Scene I
“Discontent”

LAURENCE RABY.

Laurence:
I said to young Allan M’Ilveray,
Beside the swift swirls of the North,
When, in lilac shot through with a silver ray,
We haul’d the strong salmon fish forth,
Said only, “He gave us some trouble
To land him, and what does he weigh?
Our friend has caught one that weighs double,
The game for the candle won’t pay
Us to-day,
We may tie up our rods and away.”

I said to old Norman M’Gregor,
Three leagues to the west of Glen Dhu,
I had drawn, with a touch of the trigger,
The best bead that ever I drew,
Said merely, “For birds in the stubble
I once had an eye, I could swear
He’s down, but he’s not worth the trouble
Of seeking. You once shot a bear
In his l...

?

I am any man’s suitor,
If any will be my tutor:
Some say this life is pleasant,
Some think it speedeth fast,
In time there is no present,
In eternity no future,
In eternity no past.
We laugh, we cry, we are born, we die,
Who will riddle me the how and the why?

The bulrush nods unto its brother,
The wheatears whisper to each other:
What is it they say? what do they there?
Why two and two make four? why round is not square?
Why the rock stands still, and the light clouds fly?
Why the heavy oak groans, and the white willows sigh?
Why deep is not high, and high is not deep?
Whether we wake, or whether we sleep?
Whether we sleep, or whether we die?
How you are you? why I am I?
Who will riddle me the how and the why?

The ...

Blithe dreams arise to greet us,
And life feels clean and new,
For the old love comes to meet us
In the dawning and the dew.
O'erblown with sunny shadows,
O'ersped with winds at play,
The woodlands and the meadows
Are keeping holiday.
Wild foals are scampering, neighing,
Brave merles their hautboys blow:
Come! let us go a-maying
As in the Long-Ago.

Here we but peak and dwindle:
The clank of chain and crane,
The whir of crank and spindle
Bewilder heart and brain;
The ends of our endeavour
Are merely wealth and fame,
Yet in the still Forever
We're one and all the same;
Delaying, still delaying,
We watch the fading west:
Come! let us go a-maying,
Nor fear to take the best.

Yet beautiful and spacious
The wis...

Restless and hot two children lay
    Plagued with uneasy dreams,
Each wandered lonely through false day
    A twilight torn with screams.

True to the bed-time story, Ben
    Pursued his wounded bear,
Ann dreamed of chattering monkey men,
    Of snakes twined in her hair...

Now high aloft above the town
    The thick clouds gather and break,
A flash, a roar, and rain drives down:
    Aghast the young things wake.

Trembling for what their terror was,
    Surprised by instant doom,
With lightning in the looking glass,
    Thunder that rocks the room.

The monkeys' paws patter again,
    Snakes hiss and flash their eyes:
The bear roars out in hideous pain:
    Ann prays:    her brother cries.

They cannot guess, cou...

O aye! they had woone child bezide,
An' a finer your eyes never met,
Twer a dear little fellow that died
In the summer that come wi' such het;
By the mowers, too thoughtless in fun,
He wer then a-zent off vrom our eyes,
Vrom the light ov the dew-dryen zun,
Aye! vrom days under the blue-hollow'd skies.

He went out to the mowers in meade,
When the zun wer a-rose to his height,
An' the men wer a-swingen the snead,
Wi' their earms in white sleeves, left an' right;
An' out there, as they rested at noon,
O! they drench'd en vrom eale-horns too deep,
Till his thoughts wer a-drown'd in a swoon;
Aye! his life wer a-smother'd in sleep.

Then they laid en there-right on the ground,
On a grass-heap, a-zweltren wi'het,
Wi' his heair all a-wetted around...

Their strength had fed on this when Death's white arms
Came sleeved in vapors and miasmal dew,
Curling across the jungle's ferny floor,
Becking each fevered brain. On bleak divides,
Where Sleep grew niggardly for nipping cold
That twinged blue lips into a mouthed curse,
Not back to Seville and its sunny plains
Winged their brief-biding dreams, but once again,
Lords of a palace in Tenochtitlan,
They guarded Montezuma's treasure-hoard.
Gold, like some finny harvest of the sea,
Poured out knee deep around the rifted floors,
Shiny and sparkling, - arms and crowns and rings:
Gold, sweet to toy with as beloved hair, -
To plunge the lustful, crawling fingers down,
Arms elbow deep, and draw them out again,
And watch the glinting metal trickle off,
Even as at nigh...

i.

O Love! O Lustre of the sunlit earth
    That knows thy step and revels in the worth
Of thy much beauty! Is't thy will anew,
Famed as thou art, to marvel that I sue
With such persistence, and in such unrest
Amid the frenzies of my passion-quest?
    Wilt look ungently, and without a tear,
On all the pangs I bear at thy behest?


ii.

Morning and eve I cease not, when I kneel
    To my Redeemer for my spirit's weal
And for my body's,--as becomes a man,--
Morning and eve I cease not in the span
Of all my days, O thou Unconquer'd One!
To pray for thee, and do what may be done
    To re-acquire the friendship I have lost,
Which is the holiest thing beneath the sun.


iii.

For what is fame that with so loud a v...

1.
From the forests and highlands
We come, we come;
From the river-girt islands,
Where loud waves are dumb
Listening to my sweet pipings.
The wind in the reeds and the rushes,
The bees on the bells of thyme,
The birds on the myrtle bushes,
The cicale above in the lime,
And the lizards below in the grass,
Were as silent as ever old Tmolus was,
Listening to my sweet pipings.

2.
Liquid Peneus was flowing,
And all dark Tempe lay
In Pelion's shadow, outgrowing
The light of the dying day,
Speeded by my sweet pipings.
The Sileni, and Sylvans, and Fauns,
And the Nymphs of the woods and the waves,
To the edge of the moist river-lawns,
And the brink of the dewy caves,
And all that did then attend and follow,
Were silent with...