Death

Ceas'd is the rain; but heavy drops yet fall
    From the drench'd roof; - yet murmurs the sunk wind
    Round the dim hills; can yet a passage find
    Whistling thro' yon cleft rock, and ruin'd wall.
The swoln and angry torrents heard, appal,
    Tho' distant. - A few stars, emerging kind,
    Shed their green, trembling beams. - With lustre small,
    The moon, her swiftly-passing clouds behind,
Glides o'er that shaded hill. - Now blasts remove
    The shadowing clouds, and on the mountain's brow,
    Full-orb'd, she shines. - Half sunk within its cove
Heaves the lone boat, with gulphing sound; - and lo!
    Bright rolls the settling lake, and brimming rove
    The vale's blue rills, and glitter as they flow.

Now eve's hours hot noon succeed;
And day's herald, wing'd with speed,
Flush'd with summer's ruddy face,
Hies to light some cooler place.
Now industry her hand has dropt,
And the din of labour's stopt:
All is silent, free from care,
The welcome boon of night to share.

Pleas'd I wander from the town,
Pester'd by the selfish clown,
Whose talk, though spun the night about,
Hogs, cows, and horses spin it out.
Far from these, so low, so vain,
Glad I wind me down the lane,
Where a deeper gloom pervades
'Tween the hedges' narrow shades;
Where a mimic night-hour spreads,
'Neath the ash-grove's meeting heads.
Onward then I glad proceed,
Where the insect and the weed
Court my eye, as I pursue
Something curious, worthy view:
Chiefly, t...

Quella fenestra, ove l' un sol si vede.

RECOLLECTIONS OF LOVE.


    That window where my sun is often seen
Refulgent, and the world's at morning's hours;
And that, where Boreas blows, when winter lowers,
And the short days reveal a clouded scene;
That bench of stone where, with a pensive mien,
My Laura sits, forgetting beauty's powers;
Haunts where her shadow strikes the walls or flowers,
And her feet press the paths or herbage green:
The place where Love assail'd me with success;
And spring, the fatal time that, first observed,
Revives the keen remembrance every year;
With looks and words, that o'er me have preserved
A power no length of time can render less,
Call to my eyes the sadly-soothing tear.

PENN.


    Tha...

        --"Throughout the day, I walk,
My path o'ershadowed by vain dreams of him."
                --Italian Girl's Hymn to the Virgin.


Mother, gazing on thy son,
He, thy precious only one,
Look into his azure eyes,
Clearer than the summer skies.
Mark his course; on scrolls of fame
Read his proud ancestral name;
Pause! a cloud that path will dim,
Thou hast dreamt vain dreams of him.

Young bride, for the altar crowned,
Now thy lot with one is bound,
Will he keep each solemn vow?
Will he ever love as now?
Ah! a dreamy shadow lies
In the depths of those bright eyes;
Time will this day's glory dim,
Thou hast dreamt vain dreams of him.

Sister, has thy brother gone,
To the fields where fights are won;
O...

Oh, unforgotten and only lover,
Many years have swept us apart,
But none of the long dividing seasons
Slay your memory in my heart.
In the clash and clamour of things unlovely
My thoughts drift back to the times that were,
When I, possessing thy pale perfection,
Kissed the eyes and caressed the hair.

Other passions and loves have drifted
Over this wandering, restless soul,
Rudderless, chartless, floating always
With some new current of chance control.
But thine image is clear in the whirling waters -
Ah, forgive - that I drag it there,
For it is so part of my very being
That where I wander it too must fare.

Ah, I have given thee strange companions,
To thee - so slender and chaste and cool -
But a white star loses no glimmer of beauty

At evening it rose in the hollow glade,
Where wild-flowers blushed 'mid silence and shade;
Where, hid from the gaze of the garish noon,
They were slily wooed by the trembling moon.
It rose for the guardian zephyrs had flown,
And left the valley that night alone.
No sigh was borne from the leafy hill,
No murmur came from the lapsing rill;
The boughs of the willow in silence wept,
And the aspen leaves in that sabbath slept.
The valley dreamed, and the fairy lute
Of the whispering reed by the brook was mute.
The slender rush o'er the glassy rill,
As a marble shaft, was erect and still,
And no airy sylph on the mirror wave,
A dimpling trace of its footstep gave.
The moon shone down, but the shadows deep
Of the pensile flowers, were hushed in sleep.
The p...

She looked like a bird from a cloud
On the clammy lawn,
Moving alone, bare-browed
In the dim of dawn.
The candles alight in the room
For my parting meal
Made all things withoutdoors loom
Strange, ghostly, unreal.

The hour itself was a ghost,
And it seemed to me then
As of chances the chance furthermost
I should see her again.
I beheld not where all was so fleet
That a Plan of the past
Which had ruled us from birthtime to meet
Was in working at last:

No prelude did I there perceive
To a drama at all,
Or foreshadow what fortune might weave
From beginnings so small;
But I rose as if quicked by a spur
I was bound to obey,
And stepped through the casement to her
Still alone in the gray.

"I am leaving you . ....

Thy words are torture to me, that scarce grieve thee--
That entire death shall null my entire thought;
And I feel torture, not that I believe thee,
But that I cannot disbelieve thee not.
Shall that of me that now contains the stars
Be by the very contained stars survived?
Thus were Fate all unjust. Yet what truth bars
An all unjust Fate's truth from being believed?
Conjecture cannot fit to the seen world
A garment of its thought untorn or covering,
Or with its stuffed garb forge an otherworld
Without itself its dead deceit discovering;
    So, all being possible, an idle thought may
    Less idle thoughts, self-known no truer, dismay.

I would not always reason. The straight path
Wearies us with its never-varying lines,
And we grow melancholy. I would make
Reason my guide, but she should sometimes sit
Patiently by the way-side, while I traced
The mazes of the pleasant wilderness
Around me. She should be my counsellor,
But not my tyrant. For the spirit needs
Impulses from a deeper source than hers,
And there are motions, in the mind of man,
That she must look upon with awe. I bow
Reverently to her dictates, but not less
Hold to the fair illusions of old time,
Illusions that shed brightness over life,
And glory over nature. Look, even now,
Where two bright planets in the twilight meet,
Upon the saffron heaven, the imperial star
Of Jove, and she that from her radiant urn
Pours forth t...

When spring-time flushes the desert grass,
Our kafilas wind through the Khyber Pass.
Lean are the camels but fat the frails,
Light are the purses but heavy the bales,
As the snowbound trade of the North comes down
To the market-square of Peshawur town.

In a turquoise twilight, crisp and chill,
A kafila camped at the foot of the hill.
Then blue smoke-haze of the cooking rose,
And tent-peg answered to hammer-nose;
And the picketed ponies, shag and wild,
Strained at their ropes as the feed was piled;
And the bubbling camels beside the load
Sprawled for a furlong adown the road;
And the Persian pussy-cats, brought for sale,
Spat at the dogs from the camel-bale;
And the tribesmen bellowed to hasten the food;
And the camp-fires twinkled by Fort Jumrood;

Febrile perfumes as of faded roses
In the old house speak of love to-day,
Love long past; and where the soft day closes,
Down the west gleams, golden-red, a ray.

Pointing where departed splendor perished,
And the path that night shall walk, and hang,
On blue boughs of heaven, gold, long cherished
Fruit Hesperian, that the ancients sang.

And to him, who sits there dreaming, musing,
At the window in the twilight wan,
Like old scent of roses interfusing,
Comes a vision of a day that's gone.

And he sees Youth, walking brave but dimly
'Mid the roses, in the afterglow;
And beside him, like a star seen slimly,
Love, who used to meet him long-ago.

And again he seems to hear the flowers
Whispering faintly of what no one knows
Of the dr...

Was Time not harsh to you, or was he kind,
O pale Erinna of the perfect lyre,
That he has left no word of singing fire
Whereby you waked the dreaming Lesbian wind,
And kindled night along the lyric shore?
O girl whose lips Erato stooped to kiss,
Do you go sorrowing because of this
In fields where poets sing forevermore?
Or are you glad and is it best to be
A silent music men have never heard,
A dream in all our souls that we may say:
"Her voice had all the rapture of the sea,
And all the clear cool quiver of a bird
Deep in a forest at the break of day"?

Bowed as an elm under the weight of its beauty,
So earth is bowed, under her weight of splendor,
Molten sea, richness of leaves and the burnished
Bronze of sea-grasses.
Clefts in the cliff shelter the purple sand-peas
And chicory flowers bluer than the ocean
Flinging its foam high, white fire in sunshine,
Jewels of water.
Joyous thunder of blown waves on the ledges,
Make me forget war and the dark war-sorrow
Against the sky a sentry paces the sea-cliff
Slim in his khaki.

Agatha, tell me, could your heart take flight
From this black city, from this filthy sea
Off to some other sea, where splendour might
Burst blue and clear-a new virginity?
Agatha, tell me, could your heart take flight?

The vast sea offers comfort in our pain!
What demon lets the ocean's raucous cry
Above the great wind-organ's grumbling strain
Perform the holy rite of lullaby?
The vast sea offers comfort in our pain!

Frigate or wagon, carry me away!
Away from where the mud is made of tears!
Agatha, can your sad heart sometimes say:
Far from the crimes, remorse, the grief of years,
Frigate or wagon, carry me away!

How distant are you, perfumed paradise,
Where lovers play beneath the blue above,
Where hearts may drown themselves in pure de...

That painter has not with a careless smutch
Accomplished his despair?--one touch revealing
All he had put of life, thought, vigor, feeling,
Into the canvas that without that touch
Showed of his love and labor just so much
Raw pigment, scarce a scrap of soul concealing!
What poet has not found his spirit kneeling
A sudden at the sound of such or such
Strange verses staring from his manuscript,
Written he knows not how, but which will sound
Like trumpets down the years? So Accident
Itself unmasks the likeness of Intent,
And ever in blind Chance's darkest crypt
The shrine-lamp of God's purposing is found.

    I.

    The flush of green that dyed the day
    Hath vanished in the moon;
    Flower-scents float stronger out, and play
    An unborn, coming tune.

    One southern eve like this, the dew
    Had cooled and left the ground;
    The moon hung half-way from the blue,
    No disc, but conglobed round;

    Light-leaved acacias, by the door,
    Bathed in the balmy air,
    Clusters of blossomed moonlight bore,
    And breathed a perfume rare;

    Great gold-flakes from the starry sky
    Fell flashing on the deep:
    One scent of moist earth floating by,
    Almost it made me weep.


    II.

    Those gorgeous stars were not my own,
    They made me alien go!
    The mother o'er her head had thrown...

    Silence comes upon the night,
        Gone is all the cheerful day,
    The moon has disappeared from sight,
        Every star has gone away.

    Sinking through the void, and thence
        Disappearing, star and sky,
    In the stern and black immense
        That has blinded every eye.

    Silence crouches on the land,
        In the street a shadow lies
    Cloaked in velvet wrappings, and
        With a mask upon her eyes.

    Anonymous and terrible
        Mother of the primal ray,
    Only night because thou art
        In thyself excess of day.

    Sorrow came with downcast eyes,
    And stole the lyre of love away.
    - VAN DYK.

[From ACKERMANN'S "Juvenile Forget-me-not"]

    Some two or three weeks before Valentine's day,
    Sir Winter grew kind, and, minded to play,
    Shook hands with Miss Flora, and woo'd her to spare
    A few pretty snowdrops to stick in his hair,
    Intending for truth, as he said, to resign
    His throne to Miss Spring and her priest Valentine;
    Which trifle he asked for before he set forth,
    To remind him of all when he got in the North;
    And this is the reason that snowdrops appear
    'Mid the cold of the Winter, so soon in the year.

    Flora complied, and, the instant she heard,
    Flew away with the news to each bachelor bird,
    Who i...