Death

When Want, with wasted mien and haggard eye,
Retires in silence to her cell to die;
When o'er her child she hangs with speechless dread,
Faint and despairing of to-morrow's bread;
Who shall approach to bid the conflict cease,
And to her parting spirit whisper peace!
Who thee, poor infant, that with aspect bland
Dost stretch forth innocent thy helpless hand,
Shall pitying then protect, when thou art thrown
On the world's waste, unfriended and alone!
O hapless Infancy! if aught could move
The hardest heart to pity and to love
'Twere surely found in thee: dim passions mark
Stern manhood's brow, where age impresses dark
The stealing line of sorrow; but thine eye
Wears not distrust, or grief, or perfidy.
Though fortune's storms with dismal shadow lower,
Thy he...

For a season there must be pain
For a little, little space
I shall lose the sight of her face,
Take back the old life again
While She is at rest in her place.

For a season this pain must endure,
For a little, little while
I shall sigh more often than smile
Till time shall work me a cure,
And the pitiful days beguile.

For that season we must be apart,
For a little length of years,
Till my life's last hour nears,
And, above the beat of my heart,
I hear Her voice in my ears.

But I shall not understand
Being set on some later love,
Shall not know her for whom I strove,
Till she reach me forth her hand,
Saying, "Who but I have the right?"
And out of a troubled night
Shall draw me safe to the land.

Howe'er, 'tis well that, while mankind
Through fate's perverse meander errs,
He can imagined pleasures find
To combat against real cares.

Fancies and notions he pursues,
Which ne'er had being but in thought;
Each, like the Grecian artist, wooes,
The image he himself has wrought.

Against experience he believes;
He argues against demonstration:
Pleased when his reason he deceives,
And sets his judgement by his passion.

The hoary fool, who many days
Has struggled with continued sorrow,
Renew's his hope, and blindly lays
The desperate bet upon to-morrow.

To-morrow comes: 'tis noon, 'tis night:
This day like all the former flies;
Yet on he runs to seek delight
To-morrow, till to-night he dies.

Our hopes like towerin...

    They turned him loose; he bowed his head,
    A felon, bent and grey.
    His face was even as the Dead,
    He had no word to say.

    He sought the home of his old love,
    To look on her once more;
    And where her roses breathed above,
    He cowered beside the door.

    She sat there in the shining room;
    Her hair was silver grey.
    He stared and stared from out the gloom;
    He turned to go away.

    Her roses rustled overhead.
    She saw, with sudden start.
    "I knew that you would come," she said,
    And held him to her heart.

    Her face was rapt and angel-sweet;
    She touched his hair of grey;
    . . . . .
    BUT HE, SOB-SHAKEN, AT HER FEET,
    COULD ONLY PRAY AND PRAY.

    There were three hills that stood alone
    With woods about their feet.
    They dreamed quiet when the sun shone
    And whispered when the rain beat.

    They wore all three their coronals
    Till men with houses came
    And scored their heads with pits and walls
    And thought the hills were tame.

    Red and white when day shines bright
    They hide the green for miles,
    Where are the old hills gone?    At night
    The moon looks down and smiles.

    She sees the captors small and weak,
    She knows the prisoners strong,
    She hears the patient hills that speak:
    "Brothers, it is not long;

    "Brothers, we stood when they were not
    Ten thousand summers past.
    Brothers, when they are clean forgot

"O breathe not his name!" - Moore.



I.

    Thou Great Unknown!
I do not mean Eternity, nor Death,
    That vast incog!
For I suppose thou hast a living breath,
Howbeit we know not from whose lungs 'tis blown,
    Thou man of fog!
Parent of many children - child of none!
    Nobody's son!
Nobody's daughter - but a parent still!
Still but an ostrich parent of a batch
Of orphan eggs, - left to the world to hatch
    Superlative Nil!
A vox and nothing more, - yet not Vauxhall;
A head in papers, yet without a curl!
    Not the Invisible Girl!
No hand - but a handwriting on a wall -
    A popular nonentity,
Still call'd the same, - without identity!
    A lark, heard out of sight, -
A nothing shin'd upon, - invi...

Upon a day, a merry day,
When summer in her best,
Like Sunday belles, prepares for play,
And joins each merry guest,
A maid, as wild as is a bird
That never knew a cage,
Went out her parents' kine to herd,
And Jocky, as her page,

Must needs go join her merry toils;

A silly shepherd he,
And little thought the aching broils
That in his heart would be;
For he as yet knew nought of love,
And nought of love knew she;
Yet without learning love can move
The wildest to agree.

The wind, enamoured of the maid,
Around her drapery swims,
And moulds in luscious masquerade
Her lovely shape and limbs.
Smith's "Venus stealing Cupid's bow"
In marble hides as fine;
But hers were life and soul, whose glow
Makes meaner things d...

Now, dear, it isn't the bold things,
Great deeds of valour and might,
That count the most in the summing up of life at the end of the day.
But it is the doing of old things,
Small acts that are just and right;
And doing them over and over again, no matter what others say;
In smiling at fate, when you want to cry, and in keeping at work when you want to play -
Dear, those are the things that count.

And, dear, it isn't the new ways
Where the wonder-seekers crowd
That lead us into the land of content, or help us to find our own.
But it is keeping to true ways,
Though the music is not so loud,
And there may be many a shadowed spot where we journey along alone;
In flinging a prayer at the face of fear, and in changing into a song a groan -
Dear, these are the thin...

Behold the blossom-bosomed Day again,
With all the star-white Hours in her train,
Laughs out of pearl-lights through a golden ray,
That, leaning on the woodland wildness, blends
A sprinkled amber with the showers that lay
Their oblong emeralds on the leafy ends.
Behold her bend with maiden-braided brows
Above the wildflower, sidewise with its strain
Of dewy happiness, to kiss again
Each drop to death; or, under rainy boughs,
With fingers, fragrant as the woodland rain,
Gather the sparkles from the sycamore,
To set within each core
Of crimson roses girdling her hips,
Where each bud dreams and drips.
Smoothing her blue-black hair, where many a tusk
Of iris flashes, like the falchions' sheen
Of Faery 'round blue banners of its Queen,
Is it a Naiad singi...

Spirit girl to whom 'twas given
To revisit scenes of pain,
From the hell I thought was Heaven
You have lifted me again;
Through the world that I inherit,
Where I loved her ere she died,
I am walking with the spirit
Of a dead girl by my side.

Through my old possessions only
For a very little while,
And they say that I am lonely,
And they pity, but I smile:
For the brighter side has won me
By the calmness that it brings,
And the peace that is upon me
Does not come of earthly things.

Spirit girl, the good is in me,
But the flesh you know is weak,
And with no pure soul to win me
I might miss the path I seek;
Lead me by the love you bore me
When you trod the earth with me,
Till the light is clear before me
And my spiri...

In lonely gardens deserted - unseen -
Oh! lovely lilacs of purple and white,
You are dipping down through a mist of green;
For the morning sun's delight.
And the velvet bee, all belted with black,
Drinks deep of the wine which your flagons hold,
Clings close to your plumes while he fills his pack
With a load of burnished gold.

You hide the fences with blossoms of snow,
And sweeten the shade of castle towers;
Over low, grey gables you brightly blow,
Like amethysts turned to flowers.
The tramp on the highway - ragged and bold -
Wears you close to his heart with jaunty air;
You rest in my lady's girdle of gold,
And are held against her hair.

In God's own acre your tender flowers,
Bend down to the grasses and seem to sigh
For those who count ...

As children gather daisies down green ways
Mid butterflies and bees,
To-day across the meadows of past days
I gathered memories.

I stored my heart with harvest of lost hours -
With blossoms of spent years;
Leaves that had known the sun of joy, and hours
Drenched with the rain of tears.

And perfumes that were long ago distilled
From April's pink and white,
Again with all their old enchantment, filled
My spirit with delight.

From out the limbo where lost roses go
The place we may not see,
With all its petals sweet and half-ablow,
One rose returned to me.

Where falls the sunlight chequered by the shade
On meadows of the past,
I gathered blossoms that no sun can fade
No winter wind can blast.

A woodman whose rough heart was out of tune
(I think such hearts yet never came to good)
Hated to hear, under the stars or moon,

One nightingale in an interfluous wood
Satiate the hungry dark with melody; -
And as a vale is watered by a flood,

Or as the moonlight fills the open sky
Struggling with darkness - as a tuberose
Peoples some Indian dell with scents which lie

Like clouds above the flower from which they rose,
The singing of that happy nightingale
In this sweet forest, from the golden close

Of evening till the star of dawn may fail,
Was interfused upon the silentness;
The folded roses and the violets pale

Heard her within their slumbers, the abyss
Of heaven with all its planets; the dull ear
Of the night-cradled earth...

Hot blows the wild simoom across the waste,
    The desert waste, amid the dreary sand,
    With fiery breath swift burning up the land,
O'er the scared pilgrim, speeding on in haste,
    Hurling fierce death-drifts with broad-scorching hand.

O weary Wilderness! No shady tree
    To spread its arms around the fainting soul;
    No spring to sparkle in the parchèd bowl;
No refuge in the drear immensity,
Where lies the Past, wreck'd 'neath a sandy sea,
    Where o'er its glories blighting billows roll.

Ho! Sea, yield up thy buried dead again;
    Heave back thy waves, and let the Past arise;
    Restore Time's relics to the startled skies,
Till giant shadows tremble on the plain,
    And awe the heart with old-world mysteries!

Old Menmon! Once ...

I.

Greene, garlanded with February’s few flowers,
Ere March came in with Marlowe’s rapturous rage:
Peele, from whose hand the sweet white locks of age
Took the mild chaplet woven of honoured hours:
Nash, laughing hard: Lodge, flushed from lyric bowers:
And Lilly, a goldfinch in a twisted cage
Fed by some gay great lady’s pettish page
Till short sweet songs gush clear like short spring showers
Kid, whose grim sport still gambolled over graves:
And Chettle, in whose fresh funereal verse
Weeps Marian yet on Robin’s wildwood hearse:
Cooke, whose light boat of song one soft breath saves,
Sighed from a maiden’s amorous mouth averse:
Live likewise ye: Time takes not you for slaves.



II.

Haughton, whose mirth gave woman all her will:
...

Sing us a song in this cynical age,
Sing us a song, my friend,
While the Flesh and the Devil are all the rage
And Death seems the only end.
Give it the clatter of hoof-clipped bones
And a note like a dingo’s yell,
And the long, low sigh when the big mob moans
Out on the roofs of hell.

For Wool, Tallow, and Hides and Co.,
For Wool, Tallow, and Hides,
Over the roofs of hell we go
For Wool, Tallow, and Hides.

We take the route or we take the track,
Hell-doomed by the greed of man,
And we leave our wives in the scrubs out back
To struggle as best they can.
For the credit is short and the flour is low,
And this is the tale we tell,
A check must be made and the stock must go
Over the roofs of hell.

Wake ere the burst of the grea...

There was grief within our household
    Because of a vacant chair.
Our mother, so loved and precious,
    No longer was sitting there.

Our hearts grew heavy with sorrow,
    Our eyes with tears were blind,
And little Jamie was wondering,
    Why we were left behind.

We had told our little darling,
    Of the land of love and light,
Of the saints all crowned with glory,
    And enrobed in spotless white.

We said that our precious mother,
    Had gone to that land so fair,
To dwell with beautiful angels,
    And to be forever there.

But the child was sorely puzzled,
    Why dear grandmamma should go
To dwell in a stranger city,
    When her children loved her so.

But again the mystic angel
    Came with swi...

God guard me from those thoughts men think
In the mind alone;
He that sings a lasting song
Thinks in a marrow-bone;

From all that makes a wise old man
That can be praised of all;
O what am I that I should not seem
For the song's sake a fool?

I pray, for word is out
And prayer comes round again,
That I may seem, though I die old,
A foolish, passionate man.