Death

Plain-pathed experience, the unlearnèd's guide,
Her simple followers evidently shows
Sometimes what schoolmen scarcely can decide,
Nor yet wise reason absolutely knows;
    In making trial of a murder wrought,
If the vile actors of the heinous deed
Near the dead body happily be brought,
Oft 't hath been proved the breathless corse will bleed.
    She coming near, that my poor heart hath slain,
Long since departed, to the world no more,
The ancient wounds no longer can contain,
But fall to bleeding as they did before.
    But what of this? Should she to death be led,
    It furthers justice but helps not the dead.

Rais’d are the dripping oars
Silent the boat: the lake,
Lovely and soft as a dream,
Swims in the sheen of the moon.
The mountains stand at its head
Clear in the pure June night,
But the valleys are flooded with haze.
Rydal and Fairfield are there;
In the shadow Wordsworth lies dead.
So it is, so it will be for aye.
Nature is fresh as of old,
Is lovely: a mortal is dead.

The spots which recall him survive,
For he lent a new life to these hills.
The Pillar still broods o’er the fields
Which border Ennerdale Lake,
And Egremont sleeps by the sea.
The gleam of The Evening Star
Twinkles on Grasmere no more,
But ruin’d and solemn and grey
The sheepfold of Michael survives,
And far to the south, the heath
Still blows in the Quantock...

In a rich land, fertile, replete with snails
I'd like to dig myself a spacious pit
Where I might spread at leisure myoid bones
And sleep unnoticed, like a shark at sea.

I hate both testaments and epitaphs;
Sooner than beg remembrance from the world
I would, alive, invite the hungry crows
To bleed my tainted carcass inch by inch.

O worms! dark playmates minus ear or eye,
Prepare to meet a free and happy corpse;
Droll philosophies, children of rottenness,

Go then along my ruin guiltlessly,
And say if any torture still exists
For this old soulless corpse, dead with the dead!

Their eyes met; flashed an instant like swift swords
That leapt unparring to each other's heart,
Jarring convulsion through the inmost chords;
Then fell, for they had fully done their part.

She, in the manner of her folk unveiled,
Might have been veiled for all he saw of her;
Those sudden eyes, from which he reeled and quailed;
The old life dead, no new life yet astir.

His good steed bore him onward slow and proud:
And through the open lattice still she leant;
Pale, still, though whirled in a black rushing cloud,
As if on her fair flowers and dreams intent.

Days passed, and he passed timid, furtive, slow:
Nights came, and he came motionless and mute,
A steadfast sentinel till morning-glow,
Though blank her window, dumb her voice and lute.

(For Shaemas O Sheel)



One winter night a Devil came and sat upon my bed,
His eyes were full of laughter for his heart was full of crime.
"Why don't you take up fancy work, or embroidery?" he said,
"For a needle is as manly a tool as a pen that makes a rhyme!"
"You little ugly Devil," said I, "go back to Hell
For the idea you express I will not listen to:
I have trouble enough with poetry and poverty as well,
Without having to pay attention to orators like you.

"When you say of the making of ballads and songs that it is woman's work
You forget all the fighting poets that have been in every land.
There was Byron who left all his lady-loves to fight against the Turk,
And David, the Singing King of the Jews, who was born with a sword in his hand.
It was y...

I.

Mourning on earth, as when dark hours descend,
Wide-winged with plagues, from heaven; when hope and mirth
Wane, and no lips rebuke or reprehend
Mourning on earth.

The soul wherein her songs of death and birth,
Darkness and light, were wont to sound and blend,
Now silent, leaves the whole world less in worth.

Winds that make moan and triumph, skies that bend,
Thunders, and sound of tides in gulf and firth,
Spake through his spirit of speech, whose death should send
Mourning on earth.

II.

The world's great heart, whence all things strange and rare
Take form and sound, that each inseparate part
May bear its burden in all tuned thoughts that share
The world's great heart

The fountain forces, whence like steeds that start...

I.

Now will we plunge into the frigid dark,
The living light of summer gone too soon!
A1ready I can hear a dismal sound,
The thump of logs on courtyard paving stones.

All winter comes into my being: wrath,
Hate, chills and horror, forced and plodding work,
And like the sun in polar underground
My heart will be a red and frozen block.

I Shudder as I hear each log that drops;
A gallows being built makes no worse sound.
My mind is like the tower that succumbs,
Under a heavy engine battered down.

It seems to me, dull with this constant thud,
That someone nails a coffin, but for whom?
Yesterday summer, now the fall! something
With all this eerie pounding will be gone.


II.

I love the greenish light in your long eye...

Written In The Danville (KY.) Cemetery.


I.

Within thy hallowed precincts on this sweet autumnal day,
    We're wandering 'neath the cedar and the pine,
Where rests the sacred dust of loved ones passed away,
    And bleeding hearts a melancholy pleasure find.


II.

In memory's faithful mirror here once more we trace
    Familiar forms of those in life we knew,
And see again the shadowy outlines of some face
    That, living, beamed with kindness--ever true.


III.

Old age, and manhood's prime, and helpless infancy
    Have dotted o'er with many an emerald mound,
And marked each stone with mournful tracery
    Which stands within this consecrated ground.


IV.

And there the marble shaft its s...

Said a people to a poet "Go out from among us straightway!
While we are thinking earthly things, thou singest of divine.
There's a little fair brown nightingale, who, sitting in the gateways
Makes fitter music to our ears than any song of thine!"

The poet went out weeping the nightingale ceased chanting;
"Now, wherefore, O thou nightingale, is all thy sweetness done?"
I cannot sing my earthly things, the heavenly poet wanting,
Whose highest harmony includes the lowest under sun."

The poet went out weeping, and died abroad, bereft there
The bird flew to his grave and died, amid a thousand wails:
And, when I last came by the place, I swear the music left there
Was only of the poet's song, and not the nightingale's.

Sweet spirit! if thy airy sleep
    Nor sees my tears not hears my sighs,
Then will I weep, in anguish weep,
    Till the last heart's drop fills mine eyes.

But if thy sainted soul can feel,
    And mingles in our misery;
Then, then my breaking heart I'll seal--
    Thou shalt not hear one sigh from me.

The beam of morn was on the stream,
    But sullen clouds the day deform;
Like thee was that young, orient beam,
    Like death, alas, that sullen storm!

Thou wert not formed for living here,
    So linked thy soul was with the sky;
Yet, ah, we held thee all so dear,
    We thought thou wert not formed to die.

written on the first of January, 1794

Come melancholy Moralizer--come!
Gather with me the dark and wintry wreath;
        With me engarland now
        The SEPULCHRE OF TIME!

Come Moralizer to the funeral song!
I pour the dirge of the Departed Days,
        For well the funeral song
        Befits this solemn hour.

But hark! even now the merry bells ring round
With clamorous joy to welcome in this day,
        This consecrated day,
        To Mirth and Indolence.

Mortal! whilst Fortune with benignant hand
Fills to the brim thy cup of happiness,
        Whilst her unclouded sun
        Illumes thy summer day,

Canst thou rejoice--rejoice that Time flies fast?
That Night shall shadow soon thy summer sun?
        That s...

A shell surprised our post one day
And killed a comrade at my side.
My heart was sick to see the way
    He suffered as he died.

I dug about the place he fell,
And found, no bigger than my thumb,
A fragment of the splintered shell
    In warm aluminum.

I melted it, and made a mould,
And poured it in the opening,
And worked it, when the cast was cold,
    Into a shapely ring.

And when my ring was smooth and bright,
Holding it on a rounded stick,
For seal, I bade a Turco write
    'Maktoob' in Arabic.

'Maktoob!' "'Tis written!" . . . So they think,
These children of the desert, who
From its immense expanses drink
    Some of its grandeur too.

Within the book of Destiny,
Whose leaves are time, whose cover, sp...

To P. A. G.



Here they trysted, here they strayed,
In the leafage dewy and boon,
Many a man and many a maid,
And the morn was merry June.
'Death is fleet, Life is sweet,'
Sang the blackbird in the may;
And the hour with flying feet,
While they dreamed, was yesterday.

Many a maid and many a man
Found the leafage close and boon;
Many a destiny began -
O, the morn was merry June!
Dead and gone, dead and gone,
(Hark the blackbird in the may!),
Life and Death went hurrying on,
Cheek on cheek - and where were they?

Dust on dust engendering dust
In the leafage fresh and boon,
Man and maid fulfil their trust -
Still the morn turns merry June.
Mother Life, Father Death
(O, the blackbird in the may!),
Each ...

We look up to the stars tonight,
    Idolatrous of them,
And dream that Heaven is in sight,
And each a ray of purest light
    From some celestial gem
    In her bright diadem.

Before that lonely home we wait,
    Ah! nevermore to see
Her lovely form within the gate
Where heart and hearthstone desolate
    And vine and shrub and tree
    Seem asking: "Where is she?"

There is the cottage Love had planned -
    Where hope in ashes lies -
A tower beautiful to stand,
Her monument whose gentle hand
    And presence in the skies
    Make home of Paradise.

In wintry bleakness nature glows
    Beneath the stellar ray;
We see the mold, but not the rose,
And meditate if knowledge goes
    Into yon mound of clay,
    W...

Cold, cold is the blast when December is howling,
Cold are the damps on a dying man's brow, -
Stern are the seas when the wild waves are rolling,
And sad is the grave where a loved one lies low;
But colder is scorn from the being who loved thee,
More stern is the sneer from the friend who has proved thee,
More sad are the tears when their sorrows have moved thee,
Which mixed with groans anguish and wild madness flow -

And ah! poor - has felt all this horror,
Full long the fallen victim contended with fate:
'Till a destitute outcast abandoned to sorrow,
She sought her babe's food at her ruiner's gate -
Another had charmed the remorseless betrayer,
He turned laughing aside from her moans and her prayer,
She said nothing, but wringing the wet from her hair,
Cros...

I.

Far from his close and noisome cell,
By grassy lane and sunny stream,
Blown clover field and strawberry dell,
And green and meadow freshness, fell
The footsteps of his dream.
Again from careless feet the dew
Of summer's misty morn he shook;
Again with merry heart he threw
His light line in the rippling brook.
Back crowded all his school-day joys;
He urged the ball and quoit again,
And heard the shout of laughing boys
Come ringing down the walnut glen.
Again he felt the western breeze,
With scent of flowers and crisping hay;
And down again through wind-stirred trees
He saw the quivering sunlight play.
An angel in home's vine-hung door,
He saw his sister smile once more;
Once more the truant's brown-locked head
Upon his mother's...

There's such a lot of work to do, for such a troubled head!
I’m scribbling this against a book, with foolscap round, in bed.
It strikes me that I’ll scribble much in this way by and by,
And write my last lines so perchance the day before I die.

There’s lots of things to come and go, and I, in careless rhyme,
And drink and love (it wastes the most) have wasted lots of time.
There’s so much good work to be done it makes me sure that I
Will be the sorriest for my death, the day before I die.

But, lift me dear, for I am tired, and let me taste the wine,
And lay your cheek a little while on this lined cheek of mine.
I want to say I love you so, your patient love is why
I’ll have such little time, you know, the day before I die.

    Autumn clouds are flying, flying
    O'er the waste of blue;
    Summer flowers are dying, dying,
    Late so lovely new.
    Labouring wains are slowly rolling
    Home with winter grain;
    Holy bells are slowly tolling
    Over buried men.

    Goldener light sets noon a sleeping
    Like an afternoon;
    Colder airs come stealing, creeping
    From the misty moon;
    And the leaves, of old age dying,
    Earthy hues put on;
    Out on every lone wind sighing
    That their day is gone.

    Autumn's sun is sinking, sinking
    Down to winter low;
    And our hearts are thinking, thinking
    Of the sleet and snow;
    For our sun is slowly sliding
    Down the hill of might;
    And no moon is softly gliding