Death

Lasciato hai, Morte, senza sole il mondo.

HER TRUE WORTH WAS KNOWN ONLY TO HIM AND TO HEAVEN.


    Death, thou the world, since that dire arrow sped,
Sunless and cold hast left; Love weak and blind;
Beauty and grace their brilliance have resign'd,
And from my heavy heart all joy is fled;
Honour is sunk, and softness banishèd.
I weep alone the woes which all my kind
Should weep--for virtue's fairest flower has pined
Beneath thy touch: what second blooms instead?
Let earth, sea, air, with common wail bemoan
Man's hapless race; which now, since Laura died,
A flowerless mead, a gemless ring appears.
The world possess'd, nor knew her worth, till flown!
I knew it well, who here in grief abide;
And heaven too knows, which decks its forehead with my...

Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,
Tears from the depth of some divine despair
Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,
In looking on the happy Autumn-fields,
And thinking of the days that are no more.
Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail,
That brings our friends up from the underworld,
Sad as the last which reddens over one
That sinks with all we love below the verge;
So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more.

Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns
The earliest pipe of half-awaken'd birds
To dying ears, when unto dying eyes
The casement slowly grows a summering square;
So sad, so strange, the days that are no more.

Dear as remember'd kisses after death,
And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feign'd
On lips that are ...

It came with the threat of a waning moon
And the wail of an ebbing tide,
But many a woman has lived for less,
And many a man has died;
For life upon life took hold and passed,
Strong in a fate set free,
Out of the deep, into the dark,
On for the years to be.

Between the gleam of a waning moon
And the song of an ebbing tide,
Chance upon chance of love and death
Took wing for the world so wide.
Leaf out of leaf is the way of the land,
Wave out of wave of the sea;
And who shall reckon what lives may live
In the life that we bade to be?

Like music heard in mellow chime,
The charm of her transforming time
    Upon my senses steals
As softly as from sunny walls,
In day's decline, their shadow falls
    Across the sleeping fields.

A fair, illumined book
Is nature's page whereon I look
    While "autumn turns the leaves;"
And many a thought of her designs
Between those rare, resplendent lines
    My fancy interweaves.

I dream of aborigines,
Who must have copied from the trees
    The fashions of the day:
Those gorgeous topknots for the head,
Of yellow tufts and feathers red,
    With beads and sinews gay.

I wonder if the saints behold
Such pageantry of colors bold
    Beyond the radiant sky;
And if the tints of Paradise
Are heightened by the strange...

La vita fugge, e non s' arresta un' ora.

PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE ARE NOW ALIKE PAINFUL TO HIM.


    Life passes quick, nor will a moment stay,
And death with hasty journeys still draws near;
And all the present joins my soul to tear,
With every past and every future day:
And to look back or forward, so does prey
On this distracted breast, that sure I swear,
Did I not to myself some pity bear,
I were e'en now from all these thoughts away.
Much do I muse on what of pleasures past
This woe-worn heart has known; meanwhile, t' oppose
My passage, loud the winds around me roar.
I see my bliss in port, and torn my mast
And sails, my pilot faint with toil, and those
Fair lights, that wont to guide me, now no more.

ANON., OX., 1795.
...

I.

    A little mound of earth
    Is all the land I own:
    Death gave it me, - five feet by three,
    And mark'd it with a stone.


II.

    My home, my garden-grave,
    Where most I long to go!
    The ground is mine by right divine,
    And Heaven will have it so.


III.

    For here my darling sleeps,
    Unseen, - arrayed in white, -
    And o'er the grass the breezes pass,
    And stars look down at night.


IV.

    Here Beauty, Love, and Joy,
    With her in silence dwell,
    As Eastern slaves are thrown in graves
    Of kings remember'd well.


V.

    But here let no man come,
    My mourning rights to sever.
    Who lieth here is cold and dumb....

You must wake and call me early, call me early, mother dear;
To-morrow ’ill be the happiest time of all the glad New-year;
Of all the glad New-year, mother, the maddest merriest day,
For I’m to be Queen o’ the May, mother, I’m to be Queen o’ the May.

There’s many a black, black eye, they say, but none so bright as mine;
There’s Margaret and Mary, there’s Kate and Caroline;
But none so fair as little Alice in all the land they say,
So I’m to be Queen o’ the May, mother, I’m to be Queen o’ the May.

I sleep so sound all night, mother, that I shall never wake,
If you do not call me loud when the day begins to break;
But I must gather knots of flowers, and buds and garlands gay,
For I’m to be Queen o’ the May, mother, I’m to be Queen o’ the May.

As I came up the vall...

I have pointed out the yelling pack,
The hare leap to the wood,
And when I pass a compliment
Rejoice as lover should
At the drooping of an eye,
At the mantling of the blood.

Then suddenly my heart is wrung
By her distracted air
And I remember wildness lost
And after, swept from there,
Am set down standing in the wood
At the death of the hare.

        If I should die, how kind you all would grow!
        In that strange hour I would not have one foe.
    There are no words too beautiful to say
    Of one who goes forevermore away
        Across that ebbing tide which has no flow.

        With what new lustre my good deeds would glow!
        If faults were mine, no one would call them so,
    Or speak of me in aught but praise that day,
    If I should die.

        Ah, friends! before my listening ear lies low,
        While I can hear and understand, bestow
    That gentle treatment and fond love, I pray,
    The lustre of whose late though radiant way
        Would gild my grave with mocking light, I know,
    If I should die.

I cannot look upon thy grave,
    Though there the rose is sweet:
Better to hear the long wave wash
    These wastes about my feet!

Shall I take comfort? Dost thou live
    A spirit, though afar,
With a deep hush about thee, like
    The stillness round a star?

Oh, thou art cold! In that high sphere
    Thou art a thing apart,
Losing in saner happiness
    This madness of the heart.

And yet, at times, thou still shalt feel
    A passing breath, a pain;
Disturb'd, as though a door in heaven
    Had oped and closed again.

And thou shalt shiver, while the hymns,
    The solemn hymns, shall cease;
A moment half remember me:
    Then turn away to peace.

But oh, for evermore thy look,
    Thy laugh, thy charm, t...

Thou silent Door of our eternal sleep,
    Sickness, and pain, debility, and woes,
    All the dire train of ills Existence knows,
    Thou shuttest out FOR EVER! - Why then weep
This fix'd tranquillity, - so long! - so deep!
    In a dear FATHER's clay-cold Form? - where rose
    No energy, enlivening Health bestows,
    Thro' many a tedious year, that us'd to creep
In languid deprivation; while the flame
    Of intellect, resplendent once confess'd,
    Dark, and more dark, each passing day became.
Now that angelic lights the SOUL invest,
    Calm let me yield to thee a joyless Frame,
    THOU SILENT DOOR OF EVERLASTING REST.

Lichfield, March 1790.

The knell of WHITEHEAD tolls! - his cares are past,
    The hapless tribute of his purchas'd lays,
    His servile, his Egyptian tasks of praise! -
    If not sublime his strains, Fame justly plac'd
Their power above their work. - Now, with wide gaze
Of much indignant wonder, she surveys
    To the life-labouring oar assiduous haste
    A glowing Bard, by every Muse embrac'd. -
O, WARTON! chosen Priest of Phoebus' choir!
    Shall thy rapt song be venal? hymn the THRONE,
    Whether its edicts just applause inspire,
Or PATRIOT VIRTUE view them with a frown?
    What needs for this the golden-stringed Lyre,
    The snowy Tunic, and the Sun-bright Zone[1]!

1: Ensigns of Apollo's Priesthood.

Air - "Oran an Aoig."


Scene - A field of battle. Time of the day, evening. The wounded and dying of the victorious army are supposed to join in the following song:


I.

    Farewell, thou fair day, thou green earth, and ye skies,
        Now gay with the bright setting sun;
    Farewell loves and friendships, ye dear tender ties
        Our race of existence is run!

II.

    Thou grim king of terrors, thou life's gloomy foe!
        Go frighten the coward and slave;
    Go, teach them to tremble, fell tyrant! but know,
        No terrors hast thou to the brave!

III.

    Thou strik'st the dull peasant, he sinks in the dark,
        Nor saves e'en the wreck of a name;
    Thou strik'st the young hero, a...

O Chatterton! how very sad thy fate!
Dear child of sorrow son of misery!
How soon the film of death obscur'd that eye,
Whence Genius mildly falsh'd, and high debate.
How soon that voice, majestic and elate,
Melted in dying numbers! Oh! how nigh
Was night to thy fair morning. Thou didst die
A half-blown flow'ret which cold blasts amate.
But this is past: thou art among the stars
Of highest heaven: to the rolling spheres
Thou sweetly singest: nought thy hymning mars,
Above the ingrate world and human fears.
On earth the good man base detraction bars
From thy fair name, and waters it with tears.

    Death and I,
    On a hill so high,
Stood side by side:
    And we saw below,
    Running to and fro,
All things that be in the world so wide.

    Ten thousand cries
    From the gulf did rise,
With a wild discordant sound;
    Laughter and wailing,
    Prayer and railing,
As the ball spun round and round.

    And over all
    Hung a floating pall
Of dark and gory veils:
    'Tis the blood of years,
    And the sighs and tears,
Which this noisome marsh exhales.

    All this did seem
    Like a fearful dream,
Till Death cried with a joyful cry:
    "Look down! look down!
    It is all mine own,
Here comes life's pageant by!"

Like to a masque in ancient revelries,
With mingling sound of tho...

Well sang the Bard who called the grave, in strains
Thoughtful and sad, the "narrow house." No style
Of fond sepulchral flattery can beguile
Grief of her sting; nor cheat, where he detains
The sleeping dust, stern Death. How reconcile
With truth, or with each other, decked remains
Of a once warm Abode, and that 'new' Pile,
For the departed, built with curious pains
And mausolean pomp? Yet here they stand
Together, 'mid trim walks and artful bowers,
To be looked down upon by ancient hills,
That, for the living and the dead, demand
And prompt a harmony of genuine powers;
Concord that elevates the mind, and stills.

The living come with grassy tread
To read the gravestones on the hill;
The graveyard draws the living still,
But never anymore the dead.
The verses in it say and say:
"The ones who living come today
To read the stones and go away
Tomorrow dead will come to stay."
So sure of death the marbles rhyme,
Yet can't help marking all the time
How no one dead will seem to come.
What is it men are shrinking from?
It would be easy to be clever
And tell the stones: Men hate to die
And have stopped dying now forever.
I think they would believe the lie.

I have been where the roses blow,
    Where the orange ripens its gold,
And the mountains stand with their peaks of snow,
    To fence away the cold,
Where the lime and the myrtle lent
    Their fragrance to the air,
To make the land of my banishment
    More exquisitely fair.

And I heard the ring dove call
    To his mate in the blossoming trees,
And I saw the white waves heave and fall.
    Far away over southern seas.
I listened along the beach,
    By the shore of the shifting sea,
To the waves, till I knew their murmured speech,
    And the message they bore to me.

And I watched the great sails furled.
    Like the wings of some ocean bird,
That brought me, out of another world,
    A warning, and a word;
For still beside m...