Death

The day that YOUTH had died,
There came to his grave-side,
In decent mourning, from the country's ends,
Those scatter'd friends
Who had lived the boon companions of his prime,
And laughed with him and sung with him and wasted,
In feast and wine and many-crown'd carouse,
The days and nights and dawnings of the time
When YOUTH kept open house,
Nor left untasted
Aught of his high emprise and ventures dear,
No quest of his unshar'd,
All these, with loitering feet and sad head bar'd,
Followed their old friend's bier.
FOLLY went first,
With muffled bells and coxcomb still revers'd;
And after trod the bearers, hat in hand,
LAUGHTER, most hoarse, and Captain PRIDE with tanned
And martial face all grim, and fussy JOY,
Who had to catch a train, and LUST, ...

    Death, I say, my heart is bowed
        Unto thine,--O mother!
    This red gown will make a shroud
        Good as any other!

    (I, that would not wait to wear
        My own bridal things,
    In a dress dark as my hair
        Made my answerings.

    I, to-night, that till he came
        Could not, could not wait,
    In a gown as bright as flame
        Held for them the gate.)

    Death, I say, my heart is bowed
        Unto thine,--O mother!
    This red gown will make a shroud
        Good as any other!

Why do not all fresh maids appear
To work love's sampler only here,
Where spring-time smiles throughout the year?
Are not here rosebuds, pinks, all flowers
Nature begets by th' sun and showers,
Met in one hearse-cloth to o'erspread
The body of the under-dead?
Phil, the late dead, the late dead dear,
O! may no eye distil a tear
For you once lost, who weep not here!
Had Lesbia, too-too kind, but known
This sparrow, she had scorn'd her own:
And for this dead which under lies
Wept out her heart, as well as eyes.
But, endless peace, sit here and keep
My Phil the time he has to sleep;
And thousand virgins come and weep
To make these flowery carpets show
Fresh as their blood, and ever grow,
Till passengers shall spend their doom:
Not Virgil's gnat...

Pardon the faults in me,
    For the love of years ago:
    Good-bye.
I must drift across the sea,
    I must sink into the snow,
    I must die.

You can bask in this sun,
    You can drink wine, and eat:
    Good-bye.
I must gird myself and run,
    Though with unready feet:
    I must die.

Blank sea to sail upon,
    Cold bed to sleep in:
    Good-bye.
While you clasp, I must be gone
    For all your weeping:
    I must die.

A kiss for one friend,
    And a word for two,--
    Good-bye:--
A lock that you must send,
    A kindness you must do:
    I must die.

Not a word for you,
    Not a lock or kiss,
    Good-bye.
We, one, must part in two;
    Verily death is this:
   ...

Time sets his footprints on our little Earth,
    And, walk he ne'er so softly, some sweet thing
Falls 'neath each foot-fall, crush'd amid its mirth,
    Tracking the course of Life's short wandering,
With fallen remnants of its mortal part,
    Freeing the soul, but weighing down the heart.

Thou flower of Love! thou little treasury
    Of gentleness, and purity, and grace!
What hidden virtue hath Death reft from thee--
    What unseen essence melted into space?
For now thou liest like a sinless child,
    Whom God hath homeward to his bosom smiled.

The dew-shower fell on thee, the sunbeam play'd,
    As Life is ever made of smiles and tears;
And ofttimes has the breeze of summer sway'd,
    And with its mellow music mock'd thy fears;
But now, O wo...

I touch but the things which are near;
    The heavens are too high for my reach:
        In shadow and symbol and creed,
        I discern not the soul from the deed,
    Nor the thought hidden under, from speech;
And the thing which I know not I fear.

I dare not despair nor despond,
    Though I grope in the dark for the dawn:
        Birth and laughter, and bubbles of breath,
        And tears, and the blank void of death,
    Round each its penumbra is drawn,--
I touch them,--I see not beyond.

What voice speaking solemn and slow,
    Before the beginning for me,
        From the mouth of the primal First Cause,
        Shall teach me the thing that I was,
    Shall point out the thing I shall be,
And show me the path that I go?

...

There's been a death in the opposite house
As lately as to-day.
I know it by the numb look
Such houses have alway.

The neighbors rustle in and out,
The doctor drives away.
A window opens like a pod,
Abrupt, mechanically;

Somebody flings a mattress out, --
The children hurry by;
They wonder if It died on that, --
I used to when a boy.

The minister goes stiffly in
As if the house were his,
And he owned all the mourners now,
And little boys besides;

And then the milliner, and the man
Of the appalling trade,
To take the measure of the house.
There'll be that dark parade

Of tassels and of coaches soon;
It's easy as a sign, --
The intuition of the news
In just a country town.

L. M. C.

We sat together, last May-day, and talked
Of the dear friends who walked
Beside us, sharers of the hopes and fears
Of five and forty years,

Since first we met in Freedom's hope forlorn,
And heard her battle-horn
Sound through the valleys of the sleeping North,
Calling her children forth,

And youth pressed forward with hope-lighted eyes,
And age, with forecast wise
Of the long strife before the triumph won,
Girded his armor on.

Sadly, ass name by name we called the roll,
We heard the dead-bells toll
For the unanswering many, and we knew
The living were the few.

And we, who waited our own call before
The inevitable door,
Listened and looked, as all have done, to win
Some token from within.

Frail, shrunken face, so pinched and worn,
That life has carved with care and doubt!
So weary waiting, night and morn,
For that which never came about!
Pale lamp, so utterly forlorn,
In which God's light at last is out.

Gray hair, that lies so thin and prim
On either side the sunken brows!
And soldered eyes, so deep and dim,
No word of man could now arouse!
And hollow hands, so virgin slim,
Forever clasped in silent vows!

Poor breasts! that God designed for love,
For baby lips to kiss and press;
That never felt, yet dreamed thereof,
The human touch, the child caress -
That lie like shriveled blooms above
The heart's long-perished happiness.

O withered body, Nature gave
For purposes of death and birth,
That never knew, and ...

Memorial day for the war dead.Add now
the grief of all your losses to their grief,
even of a woman that has left you.Mix
sorrow with sorrow, like time-saving history,
which stacks holiday and sacrifice and mourning
on one day for easy, convenient memory.

Oh, sweet world soaked, like bread,
in sweet milk for the terrible toothless God.
"Behind all this some great happiness is hiding."
No use to weep inside and to scream outside.
Behind all this perhaps some great happiness is hiding.

Memorial day.Bitter salt is dressed up
as a little girl with flowers.
The streets are cordoned off with ropes,
for the marching together of the living and the dead.
Children with a grief not their own march slowly,
like stepping over broken glass.

The flautis...

We walked along, while bright and red
Uprose the morning sun;
And Matthew stopped, he looked, and said
`The will of God be done!'

A village schoolmaster was he,
With hair of glittering grey;
As blithe a man as you could see
On a spring holiday.

And on that morning, through the grass
And by the steaming rills
We travelled merrily, to pass
A day among the hills.

`Our work,' said I, `was well begun;
Then, from thy breast what thought,
Beneath so beautiful a sun,
So sad a sigh has brought?'

A second time did Matthew stop;
And fixing still his eye
Upon the eastern mountain-top,
To me he made reply:

`Yon cloud with that long purple cleft
Brings fresh into my mind
A day like this, which I have left
Full...

Morte, stipendio della colpa.


O Death, the wage of our first father's blame,
        Daughter of envy and nonentity,
        Serf of the serpent, and his harlotry,
        Thou beast most arrogant and void of shame!
Thy last great conquest dost thou dare proclaim,
        Crying that all things are subdued to thee,
        Against the Almighty raised almightily?--
        The proofs that prop thy pride of state are lame.
Not to serve thee, but to make thee serve Him,
        He stoops to Hell. The choice of arms was thine;
        Yet art thou scoffed at by the crucified!
He lives--thy loss. He dies--from every limb,
        Mangled by thee, lightnings of godhead shine,
        From which thy darkness hath not where to hide.

IN MEMORY OF EVA GORE-BOOTH AND CON MARKIEWICZ

The light of evening, Lissadell,
Great windows open to the south,
Two girls in silk kimonos, both
Beautiful, one a gazelle.
But a raving autumn shears
Blossom from the summer's wreath;
The older is condemned to death,
Pardoned, drags out lonely years
Conspiring among the ignorant.
I know not what the younger dreams --
Some vague Utopia -- and she seems,
When withered old and skeleton-gaunt,
An image of such politics.
Many a time I think to seek
One or the other out and speak
Of that old Georgian mansion, mix
pictures of the mind, recall
That table and the talk of youth,
Two girls in silk kimonos, both
Beautiful, one a gazelle.
Dear shadows, now you know it all,
All the folly of ...

Maelanfaid saw a tiny bird
A-grieving on the ground,
And O, the sad lament he heard,
That sorrow's self might sound:
He could not read a note or word
The song of grief inwound.

Maelanfaid went within his cell
To keep a fast and pray,
To listen to a voice would tell
The mystery away:
What was the red long pain befell
The bird of grief all day?

"Maelanfaid," airy voices call,
"MacOcha Molv is dead,
Who killed no creature great or small,
Who helped all life instead:
Now griefs of bird and blossom fall
Around his funeral bed."

Not a line of her writing have I,
Not a thread of her hair,
No mark of her late time as dame in her dwelling, whereby
I may picture her there;
And in vain do I urge my unsight
To conceive my lost prize
At her close, whom I knew when her dreams were upbrimming with light,
And with laughter her eyes.

What scenes spread around her last days,
Sad, shining, or dim?
Did her gifts and compassions enray and enarch her sweet ways
With an aureate nimb?
Or did life-light decline from her years,
And mischances control
Her full day-star; unease, or regret, or forebodings, or fears
Disennoble her soul?

Thus I do but the phantom retain
Of the maiden of yore
As my relic; yet haply the best of her fined in my brain
It maybe the more
That no line...

Oh, I am hurt to death, my Love;
The shafts of Fate have pierced my striving heart,
And I am sick and weary of
The endless pain and smart.
My soul is weary of the strife,
And chafes at life, and chafes at life.

Time mocks me with fair promises;
A blooming future grows a barren past,
Like rain my fair full-blossomed trees
Unburden in the blast.
The harvest fails on grain and tree,
Nor comes to me, nor comes to me.

The stream that bears my hopes abreast
Turns ever from my way its pregnant tide.
My laden boat, torn from its rest,
Drifts to the other side.
So all my hopes are set astray,
And drift away, and drift away.

The lark sings to me at the morn,
And near me wings her skyward-soaring flight;
But pleasure dies as soon as ...

I am sorry in the gladness
    Of the joys that crown my days,
For the souls that sit in sadness
    Or walk uninviting ways.

On the radiance of my labour
    That a loving fate bestowed,
Falls the shadow of my neighbour,
    Crushed beneath a thankless load.

As the canticle of pleasure
    From my lovelit altar rolls,
There is one discordant measure,
    As I think of homeless souls.

And I know that grim old story,
    Preached from pulpits, is not so,
For no God could sit in glory
    And see sinners writhe below.

In that great eternal Centre
    Where all human life has birth,
Boundless love and pity enter
    And flow downward to the earth.

And all souls in sin or sorrow
    Are but passing through the...

That hour when thou and Grief were first acquainted
Thou wrotest, "Come, for I have lookt on death."
Piteous I held my indeterminate breath
And sought thee out, and saw how he had painted
Thine eyes with rings of black; yet never fainted
Thy radiant immortality underneath
Such stress of dark; but then, as one that saith,
"I know Love liveth," sat on by death untainted.

O to whom Grief too poignant was and dry
To sow in thee a fountain crop of tears!
O youth, O pride, set too remote and high
For touch of solace that gives grace to men!
Thy life must be our death, thy hopes our fears:
We weep, thou lookest strangely--we know thee then!