Death

Ah! sweet romantic spot, adieu!
Ere your green fields again I view,
These looks may change their youthful hue.

Dependence sternly bids me part
From all that ye, lov'd scenes! impart,
Far from my treasure and my heart.

Tho' winter shall your bloom invade,
Fancy may visit ev'ry shade,
Each bow'r shall kiss the wand'ring maid.

To busier scenes of life I fly,
Where many smile, where many sigh,
As Chance, not Worth, turns up the die.

        Ah, could I lay me down in this long grass
        And close my eyes, and let the quiet wind
        Blow over me--I am so tired, so tired
        Of passing pleasant places!    All my life,
        Following Care along the dusty road,
        Have I looked back at loveliness and sighed;
        Yet at my hand an unrelenting hand
        Tugged ever, and I passed.    All my life long
        Over my shoulder have I looked at peace;
        And now I fain would lie in this long grass
        And close my eyes.
            Yet onward!
                        Cat birds call
        Through the long afternoon, and creeks at dusk
        Are guttural.    Whip-poor-wills wake and cry,
        Drawing the twilight close about their throats.
        Only my he...

Before I lost my love, he said to me:
    'Sweetheart, I like deep azure tints on you.'
But I, perverse as any girl will be
    Who has too many lovers, wore not blue.

He said, 'I love to see my lady's hair
    Coiled low like Clytie's -with no wanton curl.'
But I, like any silly, wilful girl,
    Said, 'Donald likes it high,' and wore it there.

He said, 'I wish, love, when you sing to me,
    You would sing sweet, sad things -they suit your voice.'
I tossed my head, and sung light strains of glee -
    Saying, 'This song, or that, is Harold's choice.'

But now I wear no colour -none but blue.
    Low in my neck I coil my silken hair.
He does not know it, but I strive to do
    Whatever in his eyes would make me fair.

I sing no songs but...

When mid-autumn's moan shook the night-time,
And sedges were horny,
And summer's green wonderwork faltered
On leaze and in lane,

I fared Yell'ham-Firs way, where dimly
Came wheeling around me
Those phantoms obscure and insistent
That shadows unchain.

Till airs from the needle-thicks brought me
A low lamentation,
As 'twere of a tree-god disheartened,
Perplexed, or in pain.

And, heeding, it awed me to gather
That Nature herself there
Was breathing in aerie accents,
With dirgeful refrain,

Weary plaint that Mankind, in these late days,
Had grieved her by holding
Her ancient high fame of perfection
In doubt and disdain . . .

- "I had not proposed me a Creature
(She soughed) so excelling
All else of my king...

    Breathless is the deep blue sky;
    Breathless doth the blue sea lie;
    And scarcely can my heart believe,
    'Neath such a sky, on such a wave,
    That Heaven can frown and billows rave,
    Or Beauty so divine deceive.

    Softly sail we with the tide;
    Silently our bark doth glide;
    Above our heads no clouds appear:
    Only in the West afar
    A dark spot, like a baneful star,
    Doth herald tempests dark and drear.

    And now the wind is heard to sigh;
    The waters heave unquietly;
    The Heaven above is darkly scowling;
    Down with the sail!    They come, they come!
    Loos'd from the depths of their wintry home,
    The wild fiends of the storm are howling.

    Hold tight, and tug at the straining oar,...

    My mind a buzz saw,
    wood chips in decapitated thought
    soil chilblained hands

    II
    Cleansing wood,
    the keen smell of sawdust
    - good, raw earth drenching
    the nostril, clean odour
    of nature like my brain,
    a broomstick sweeping
    the coffee pot speaking ...
    bubbles massed in steam
    inchoate in their pensive rivulets.

The sky is ruddy in the east,
The earth is gray below,
And, spectral in the river-mist,
The ship’s white timbers show.
Then let the sounds of measured stroke
And grating saw begin;
The broad-axe to the gnarlèd oak,
The mallet to the pin!

Hark! roars the bellows, blast on blast,
The sooty smithy jars,
And fire-sparks, rising far and fast,
Are fading with the stars.
All day for us the smith shall stand
Beside that flashing forge;
All day for us his heavy hand
The groaning anvil scourge.

From far-off hills, the panting team
For us is toiling near;
For us the raftsmen down the stream
Their island barges steer.
Rings out for us the axe-man’s stroke
In forests old and still,
For us the century-circled oak
Falls crashing...

He knows the sweet vexation in the strife
Of Love with Time, this bard who fain would stray
To fairer place beyond the storms of life,
With astral faces near him day by day.
In deep-mossed dells the mellow waters flow
Which best he loves; for there the echoes, rife
With rich suggestions of his long ago,
Astarte, pass with thee! And, far away,
Dear southern seasons haunt the dreamy eye:
Spring, flower-zoned, and Summer, warbling low
In tasselled corn, alternate come and go,
While gypsy Autumn, splashed from heel to thigh
With vine-blood, treads the leaves; and, halting nigh,
Wild Winter bends across a beard of snow.

All the moon-shed nights are over,
And the days of gray and dun;
There is neither may nor clover,
And the day and night are one.

Not an hamlet, not a city
Meets our strained and tearless eyes;
In the plain without a pity,
Where the wan grass droops and dies.

We shall wander through the meaning
Of a day and see no light,
For our lichened arms are leaning
On the ends of endless night.

We, the children of Astarte,
Dear abortions of the moon,
In a gay and silent party,
We are riding to you soon.

Burning ramparts, ever burning!
To the flame which never dies
We are yearning, yearning, yearning,
With our gay and tearless eyes.

In the plain without a pity,
(Not an hamlet, not a city)
Where the wan grass droop...

When they see my songs
They will sigh and say,
"Poor soul, wistful soul,
Lonely night and day."

They will never know
All your love for me
Surer than the spring,
Stronger than the sea;

Hidden out of sight
Like a miser's gold
In forsaken fields
Where the wind is cold.

Then let not winter’s ragged hand deface,
In thee thy summer, ere thou be distill’d:
Make sweet some vial; treasure thou some place
With beauty’s treasure ere it be self-kill’d.
That use is not forbidden usury,
Which happies those that pay the willing loan;
That’s for thy self to breed another thee,
Or ten times happier, be it ten for one;
Ten times thy self were happier than thou art,
If ten of thine ten times refigur’d thee:
Then what could death do if thou shouldst depart,
Leaving thee living in posterity?
Be not self-will’d, for thou art much too fair
To be death’s conquest and make worms thine heir.

Past seven o'clock: time to be gone;
Twelfth-night's over and dawn shivering up:
A hasty cut of the loaf, a steaming cup,
Down to the door, and there is Coachman John.

Ruddy of cheek is John and bright of eye;
But John it appears has none of your grins and winks;
Civil enough, but short: perhaps he thinks:
Words come once in a mile, and always dry.

Has he a mind or not? I wonder; but soon
We turn through a leafless wood, and there to the right,
Like a sun bewitched in alien realms of night,
Mellow and yellow and rounded hangs the moon.

Strangely near she seems, and terribly great:
The world is dead: why are we travelling still?
Nightmare silence grips my struggling will;
We are driving for ever and ever to find a gate.

"When you come to...

If blood throbs yet in this that was thy face,
O thou whose soul was full of devil's faith,
If in thy flesh the worm's bite slackeneth
In some acute red pause of iron days,
Arise now, gird thee, get thee on thy ways,
Breathe off the worm that crawls and fears not breath;
King, it may be thou shalt prevail on death;
King, it may be thy soul shall find out grace.
O spirit that hast eased the place of Cain,
Weep now and howl, yea weep now sore; for this
That was thy kingdom hath spat out its king.
Wilt thou plead now with God? behold again,
Thy prayer for thy son's sake is turned to a hiss,
Thy mouth to a snake's whose slime outlives the sting,

O treacherous scent, O thorny sight,
O tangle of world's wrong and right,
What art thou 'gainst my armour's gleam
But dusky cobwebs of a dream?

Beat down, deep sunk from every gleam
Of hope, they lie and dully dream;
Men once, but men no more, that Love
Their waste defeated hearts should move.

Here sleeps the world that would not love!
Let it sleep on, but if He move
Their hearts in humble wise to wait
On his new-wakened fair estate.

O won at last is never late!
Thy silence was the voice of fate;
Thy still hands conquered in the strife;
Thine eyes were light; thy lips were life.

Through the dark wood
    There came to me a friend,
Bringing in his cold hands
    Two words - 'The End.'

His face was fair
    As fading autumn flowers,
And the lost joy
    Of unforgotten hours.

His voice was sweet
    As rain upon a grave;
'Be brave,' he smiled.
    And yet again - 'be brave.'

Come home! come home! O loved and lost, we sigh
Thus, ever, while the weary days go by,
And bring thee not. We miss thy bright, young face,
Thy bounding step, thy form of girlish grace,
            Thy pleasant, tuneful voice, -
We miss thee when the dewy evening hours
Come with their coolness to our garden, bowers, -
We miss thee when the warbler's tuneful lay
Welcomes the rising glories of the day
            And all glad things rejoice!

Come home! - the vine that climbs our cottage eaves,
Hath a low murmur 'mid its glossy leaves
When the south wind sweeps by, that seems to be
Too deeply laden with sad thoughts of thee -
            Of thee, our absent one! -
The roses blossom, and their beauties die,
And the sweet violet opes its pensive eye
By t...

Small gnats that fly
In hot July
And lodge in sleeping ears,
Can rouse therein
A trumpet's din
With Day-of-Judgement fears.

Small mice at night
Can wake more fright
Than lions at midday.
An urchin small
Torments us all
Who tread his prickly way.

A straw will crack
The camel's back,
To die we need but sip,
So little sand
As fills the hand
Can stop a steaming ship.

One smile relieves
A heart that grieves
Though deadly sad it be,
And one hard look
Can close the book
That lovers love to see,

Dorset! whose early steps with mine have stray'd,
Exploring every path of Ida's glade;
Whom, still, affection taught me to defend,
And made me less a tyrant than a friend,
Though the harsh custom of our youthful band
Bade thee obey, and gave me to command; [2]
Thee, on whose head a few short years will shower
The gift of riches, and the pride of power;
E'en now a name illustrious is thine own,
Renown'd in rank, not far beneath the throne.
Yet, Dorset, let not this seduce thy soul
To shun fair science, or evade controul;
Though passive tutors, [3] fearful to dispraise
The titled child, whose future breath may raise,
View ducal errors with indulgent eyes,
And wink at faults they tremble to chastise.
When youthful parasites, who bend the kne...