Death

The patient Pan,
Drunken with nectar,
Sleeps or feigns slumber,
Drowsily humming
Music to the march of time.
This poor tooting, creaking cricket,
Pan, half asleep, rolling over
His great body in the grass,
Tooting, creaking,
Feigns to sleep, sleeping never;
'T is his manner,
Well he knows his own affair,
Piling mountain chains of phlegm
On the nervous brain of man,
As he holds down central fires
Under Alps and Andes cold;
Haply else we could not live,
Life would be too wild an ode.



Come search the wood for flowers,--
Wild tea and wild pea,
Grapevine and succory,
Coreopsis
And liatris,
Flaunting in their bowers;
Grass with green flag half-mast high,
Succory to match the sky,
Columbine with horn...

Far reaching down's a solid sea sunk everlastingly to rest,
And yet whose billows seem to be for ever heaving toward the west
The tiny fieldmice make their nests, the summer insects buzz and hum
Among the hollows and the crests of this wide ocean stricken dumb,
Whose rollers move for ever on, though sullenly, with fettered wills,
To break in voiceless wrath upon the crumbled bases of far hills,
Where rugged outposts meet the shock, stand fast, and hurl them back again,
An avalanche of earth and rock, in tumbled fragments on the plain;
But, never heeding the rebuff, to right and left they kiss the feet
Of hanging cliff and bouldered bluff till on the farther side they meet,
And once again resume their march to where the afternoon sun dips
Toward the west, and Heaven's arch salutes the ...

When warm'd with zeal, my rustic Muse
Feels fluttering fain to tell her news,
And paint her simple, lowly views
With all her art,
And, though in genius but obtuse,
May touch the heart.

Of palaces and courts of kings
She thinks but little, never sings,
But wildly strikes her uncouth strings
In some pool cot,
Spreads o'er the poor hen fostering wings,
And soothes their lot.

Well pleased is she to see them smile,
And uses every honest wile
To mend then hearts, their cares beguile,
With rhyming story,
And lend them to then God the while,
And endless glory.

Perchance, my poor neglected Muse
Unfit to harass or amuse,
Escaping praise and loud abuse,
Unheard, unknown,
May feed the moths and wasting dews,
As some hav...

Oh thou, that prattling on thy pebbled way
Through my paternal vale dost stray,
Working thy shallow passage to the sea!
Oh, stream, thou speedest on
The same as many seasons gone;
But not, alas, to me
Remain the feelings that beguiled
My early road, when, careless and content,
(Losing the hours in pastimes innocent)
Upon thy banks I strayed a playful child;
Whether the pebbles that thy margin strew,
Collecting, heedlessly I threw;
Or loved in thy translucent wave
My tender shrinking feet to lave;
Or else ensnared your little fry,
And thought how wondrous skilled was I!
So passed my boyish days, unknown to pain,
Days that will ne'er return again.
It seems but yesterday
I was a child, to-morrow to be gray!
So years succeeding years steal sile...

Among the happy wits this age hath shown
Great, dear, sweet Bartas thou art matchless known;
My ravished Eyes and heart with faltering tongue,
In humble wise have vow'd their service long,
But knowing th' task so great, & strength but small,
Gave o're the work before begun withal,
My dazled sight of late review'd thy lines,
Where Art, and more than Art, in nature shines,
Reflection from their beaming Altitude,
Did thaw my frozen hearts ingratitude;
Which Rayes darting upon some richer ground
Had caused flours and fruits soon to abound;
But barren I, my Dasey here do bring,
A homely flour in this my latter Spring,
If Summer, or my Autumm age do yield,
Flours, fruits in Garden, Orchard, or in Field,
They shall be consecrated in my Verse,
And prostrate o...

1.
Art thou pale for weariness
Of climbing heaven and gazing on the earth,
Wandering companionless
Among the stars that have a different birth, -
And ever changing, like a joyless eye
That finds no object worth its constancy?

2.
Thou chosen sister of the Spirit,
That grazes on thee till in thee it pities...

I

Slowly the hour-hand of the clock moves round;
    So slowly that no human eye hath power
    To see it move!    Slowly in shine or shower
    The painted ship above it, homeward bound,
Sails, but seems motionless, as if aground;
    Yet both arrive at last; and in his tower
    The slumberous watchman wakes and strikes the hour,
    A mellow, measured, melancholy sound.
Midnight! the outpost of advancing day!
    The frontier town and citadel of night!
    The watershed of Time, from which the streams
Of Yesterday and To-morrow take their way,
    One to the land of promise and of light,
    One to the land of darkness and of dreams!

II

O River of Yesterday, with current swift
    Through chasms descending, and soon lost to sight,

The black night showed its hungry teeth,
And gnawed with sleet at roof and pane;
Beneath the door I heard it breathe
A beast that growled in vain.

The hunter wind stalked up and down,
And crashed his ice-spears through each tree;
Before his rage, in tattered gown,
I saw the maid moon flee.

There stole a footstep to my door;
A voice cried in my room and there!
A shadow cowled and gaunt and hoar,
Death, leaned above my chair.

He beckoned me; he bade me rise,
And follow through the madman night;
Into my heart's core pierced his eyes,
And lifted me with might.

I rose; I made no more delay;
And followed where his eyes compelled;
And through the darkness, far away,
They lit me and enspelled.

Until we reached an ancie...

    A mossy footfall in this wood
        A peal of thunder were,
    Or autumn tempest-shriek, compared
        With the unwhispered stir
    Of massy fluids lift in air,
    To build these leafy pillars fair.

    Lavished at wordless wish or mute
        Command, the chemic wealth
    Upsprings to meet the builders' hands,
        All hushed as dusky stealth.
    Noiseless as love, as silent prayer
    Mysterious, the builders are.


    Ah, sure, these silences are works
        Of God's sabbatic rest,
    A music perfect as the calm
        Of wave's unbroken crest!
    These woven leaves that stilly nod,
    These violets, ope their eyes on God.

    The deep serene that worketh here
        Works, too, 'mid human tears...

The gray dawn on the mountain top
Is slow to pass away.
Still lays him by in sluggish dreams,
The golden God of day.

And then a light along the hills,
Your laughter silvery gay;
The Sun God wakes, a bluebird trills,
You come and it is day.

A White Rose said, "How fair am I.
Behold a flower that cannot die!"

A lover brushed the dew aside,
And fondly plucked it for his bride.
"A fitting choice!" the White Rose cried.

The maiden wore it in her hair;
The Rose, contented to be there,
Still proudly boasted, "None so fair!"

Then close she pressed it to her lips,
But, weary of companionships,
The flower within her bosom slips.

O'ercome by all the beauty there,
It straight confessed, "Dear maid, I swear
'Tis you, and you alone, are fair!"

Turning its humbled head aside,
The envious Rose, lamenting, died.

When men of gentle lives depart,
They leave behind no brilliant story
Of fam'd exploits, to make men start
In wonder at their dazzling glory.

The scholar's light, religion's beams,
Tho' fill'd with great, commanding pow'r,
In modest greatness throw their gleams,
In quiet rays, from hour to hour.

The greatest battles oft are fought,
Unseen by any earthly eye;
The victors all alone have wrought,
And, unapplauded, live or die.

'Twas thus with thee, thou rev'rend man;
In peaceful, holy work thy life
Was spent, until th' allotted span
Was cut by Time's relentless knife.

Far from the keen and heartless train,
Who daily feel Ambition's sting,
Thy life, remov'd, felt not the pain,
Which goads each one beneath her wing.

TO LADY CARTERET

Of all inhabitants on earth,
To man alone I owe my birth,
And yet the cow, the sheep, the bee,
Are all my parents more than he:
I, a virtue, strange and rare,
Make the fairest look more fair,
And myself, which yet is rarer,
Growing old, grow still the fairer.
Like sots, alone I'm dull enough,
When dosed with smoke, and smear'd with snuff;
But, in the midst of mirth and wine,
I with double lustre shine.
Emblem of the Fair am I,
Polish'd neck, and radiant eye;
In my eye my greatest grace,
Emblem of the Cyclops' race;
Metals I like them subdue,
Slave like them to Vulcan too;
Emblem of a monarch old,
Wise, and glorious to behold;
Wasted he appears, and pale,
Watching for the public weal:
Emblem of the bashf...

Sounds of the seas grow fainter,
    Sounds of the sands have sped;
The sweep of gales,
The far white sails,
    Are silent, spent and dead.

Sounds of the days of summer
    Murmur and die away,
And distance hides
The long, low tides,
    As night shuts out the day.

'Tis He whose yester-evening's high disdain
Beat back the roaring storm, but how subdued
His day-break note, a sad vicissitude!
Does the hour's drowsy weight his glee restrain?
Or, like the nightingale, her joyous vein
Pleased to renounce, does this dear Thrush attune
His voice to suit the temper of yon Moon
Doubly depressed, setting, and in her wane?
Rise, tardy Sun! and let the Songster prove
(The balance trembling between night and morn
No longer) with what ecstasy upborne
He can pour forth his spirit. In heaven above,
And earth below, they best can serve true gladness
Who meet most feelingly the calls of sadness.

Light flows our war of mocking words, and yet,
Behold, with tears mine eyes are wet!
I feel a nameless sadness o'er me roll.
Yes, yes, we know that we can jest,
We know, we know that we can smile!
But there's a something in this breast,
To which thy light words bring no rest,
And thy gay smiles no anodyne.
Give me thy hand, and hush awhile,
And turn those limpid eyes on mine,
And let me read there, love! thy inmost soul.

Alas! is even love too weak
To unlock the heart, and let it speak?
Are even lovers powerless to reveal
To one another what indeed they feel?
I knew the mass of men conceal'd
Their thoughts, for fear that if reveal'd
They would by other men be met
With blank indifference, or with blame reproved;
I knew they lived and moved<...

    A poem is perishable and,
    like it,
    so much of life is spent
    in intervals -
    the jarring second
    regaining consciousness,
    a post-mortem flick
    of the lank equestrian eyelid
    that signals morning's first crepuscular move.

    ... a little salad consciousness
    about the tumescent room
    with the sentient purr of a cat;
    her musky oils
    a green verdure
    lapping primordial scent
    to engross a little readiness
    as the day progresses
    to its Oedipal stage
    and arrested development.

Reveille sang its call among the barracks' paths,
And moving air disturbed the tall, commanding lamps.

It was the time when dreams of lust and swarming heat
Set brown young adolescents twisting in their sheets;
When, like a bloody eye that pulses as it stares,
The lamp will cast a stain of red throughout the air;
When spirits, in the burden of the body's sway,
Mimic the struggles of the lamplight and the day.
The air, a face in tears that breeezes will wipe dry,
Is full of tremors of escaping things that fly,
And he is tired of writing, she of making love.

This house and that began to send their smoke above.
With ghastly painted eyes, the women of the streets,
Mouths gaping open, lay within their stupid sleep.
Poor women, slack breasts dangling, cold and lea...