Death

I saw him sensitive in frame,
I knew his spirits low;
And wish’d him health, success, and fame:
I do not wish it now.

For these are all their own reward,
And leave no good behind;
They try us, oftenest make us hard,
Less modest, pure, and kind.

Alas! Yet to the suffering man,
In this his mortal state,
Friends could not give what Fortune can
Health, case, a heart elate.

But he is now by Fortune foil’d
No more; and we retain
The memory of a man unspoil’d,
Sweet, generous, and humane;

With all the fortunate have not
With gentle voice and brow.
Alive, we would have chang’d his lot:
We would not change it now.

Questa umil fera, un cor di tigre o d' orsa.

HE PRAYS HER EITHER TO WELCOME OR DISMISS HIM AT ONCE.


    Fiercer than tiger, savager than bear,
In human guise an angel form appears,
Who between fear and hope, from smiles to tears
So tortures me that doubt becomes despair.
Ere long if she nor welcomes me, nor frees,
But, as her wont, between the two retains,
By the sweet poison circling through my veins,
My life, O Love! will soon be on its lees.
No longer can my virtue, worn and frail
With such severe vicissitudes, contend,
At once which burn and freeze, make red and pale:
By flight it hopes at length its grief to end,
As one who, hourly failing, feels death nigh:
Powerless he is indeed who cannot even die!

MACGREGOR.

I.

    While winds frae aff Ben-Lomond blaw,
    And bar the doors wi' driving snaw,
        And hing us owre the ingle,
    I set me down to pass the time,
    And spin a verse or twa o' rhyme,
        In hamely westlin jingle.
    While frosty winds blaw in the drift,
        Ben to the chimla lug,
    I grudge a wee the great folks' gift,
        That live sae bien an' snug:
            I tent less and want less
                Their roomy fire-side;
            But hanker and canker
                To see their cursed pride.

II.

    It's hardly in a body's power
    To keep, at times, frae being sour,
        To see how things are shar'd;
    How best o' chiels are whiles in want.
    While coofs on countless thousands...

On ear and ear two noises too old to end
Trench - right, the tide that ramps against the shore;
With a flood or a fall, low lull-off or all roar,
Frequenting there while moon shall wear and wend.

Left hand, off land, I hear the lark ascend,
His rash-fresh re-winded new-skeinèd score
In crisps of curl off wild winch whirl, and pour
And pelt music, till none's to spill nor spend.

How these two shame this shallow and frail town!
How ring right out our sordid turbid time,
Being pure! We, life's pride and cared-for crown,

Have lost that cheer and charm of earth's past prime:
Our make and making break, are breaking, down
To man's last dust, drain fast towards man's first slime.

'Enter' MRS. BULKLEY,
'who curtsies very low as beginning to speak.
Then enter' MISS CATLEY,
'who stands full before her, and curtsies to the audience'.

MRS. BULKELEY.
HOLD, Ma'am, your pardon. What's your business here?

MISS CATLEY.
The Epilogue.

MRS. BULKLEY.
The Epilogue?

MISS CATLEY.
Yes, the Epilogue, my dear.

MRS. BULKLEY.
Sure you mistake, Ma'am. The Epilogue, 'I' bring it.

MISS CATLEY.
Excuse me, Ma'am. The Author bid 'me' sing it.

'Recitative'.
Ye beaux and belles, that form this splendid ring,
Suspend your conversation while I sing.

MRS. BULKLEY.
Why, sure the girl's beside herself: an Epilogue of singing,
A hopeful end indeed to such a blest beginning.
Besides, a singer in...

The evening shines in May's luxuriant pride,
    And all the sunny hills at distance glow,
    And all the brooks, that thro' the valley flow,
    Seem liquid gold. - O! had my fate denied
Leisure, and power to taste the sweets that glide
    Thro' waken'd minds, as the soft seasons go
    On their still varying progress, for the woe
    My heart has felt, what balm had been supplied?
But where great NATURE smiles, as here she smiles,
    'Mid verdant vales, and gently swelling hills,
    And glassy lakes, and mazy, murmuring rills,
And narrow wood-wild lanes, her spell beguiles
    Th' impatient sighs of Grief, and reconciles
    Poetic Minds to Life, with all her ills.

May 1774.

Houses stand stiffly next to their fences.
Let your eyes, last sparrows, flutter.
Bluebottles alight on your face.
Don't you, Kuno, feel the eternal mills -
The unfeeling one bores holes in your head.
Look once more at the moon, the mustard-pot murderer.

("La tombe dit à la rose.")

[XXXI., June 3, 1837]


The Grave said to the rose
"What of the dews of dawn,
Love's flower, what end is theirs?"
"And what of spirits flown,
The souls whereon doth close
The tomb's mouth unawares?"
The Rose said to the Grave.

The Rose said: "In the shade
From the dawn's tears is made
A perfume faint and strange,
Amber and honey sweet."
"And all the spirits fleet
Do suffer a sky-change,
More strangely than the dew,
To God's own angels new,"
The Grave said to the Rose.

A. LANG.

    The colouring of spacious flowers rove delicious to the eye.
    The road above the harbour fickle, carousing in its tendency to pull too gray by sky enamelled water.
    The tropical foliage, still and languorous, to my touch.
    Each particle of sunlight dangling as if hoisted from a perfumed ledge.
    Newly mown grass in streaks, browns serpent-like across the path.
    Low erogenous puffs of dust are swathed by passing feet.
    Near by, bushes wear the foliage of streaked mud as a mantle might cottonwool at Christmas.

    Life in such climes is built on connotations rather than pure innuendoes of purpose.
    The southern sky, the heat above the sea allude to this.
    This triumphant trilogy embossed upon volcanic slate, more crumpled paper than firm land.

    Grave...

        Give over now; forbear.    The moonlight steeps
        In silver silence towered castle-keeps
            And cottage crofts, where apples bend the bough.
        Peace guards us round, and many a tired heart sleeps.
            Let me brush back the shadow from your brow.
            Give over now.

        On such a night, how sweet, how sweet is life,
        Even to the insect piper with his fife!
            And must your troubled face still bear the blight
        Of strength that runs itself to waste in strife?
            For love's own heart should throb through all the light
            Of such a night.

The Spring of life is o'er with me,
And love and all gone by;
Like broken bough upon yon tree,
I'm left to fade and die.
Stern ruin seized my home and me,
And desolate's my cot:
Ruins of halls, the blasted tree,
Are emblems of my lot.

I lived and loved, I woo'd and won,
Her love was all to me,
But blight fell o'er that youthful one,
And like a blasted tree
I withered, till I all forgot
But Mary's smile on me;
She never lived where love was not,
And I from bonds was free.

The Spring it clothed the fields with pride,
When first we met together;
And then unknown to all beside
We loved in sunny weather;
We met where oaks grew overhead,
And whitethorns hung with may;
Wild thyme beneath her feet was spread,
And cows in ...

When night was lifting,
And dawn had crept under its shade,
Amid cold clouds drifting
Dead-white as a corpse outlaid,
With a sudden scare
I seemed to behold
My Love in bare
Hard lines unfold.

Yea, in a moment,
An insight that would not die
Killed her old endowment
Of charm that had capped all nigh,
Which vanished to none
Like the gilt of a cloud,
And showed her but one
Of the common crowd.

She seemed but a sample
Of earth's poor average kind,
Lit up by no ample
Enrichments of mien or mind.
I covered my eyes
As to cover the thought,
And unrecognize
What the morn had taught.

O vision appalling
When the one believed-in thing
Is seen falling, falling,
With all to which hope can cling.
Of...

“Did she care as much as I did
When our paths of Fate divided?
Was the love, then, all onesided,
Did she understand or care?”
Slowly fall the moments leaden,
And the silence seems to deaden,
And a voice from over yonder answers sadly: “I’ve been there.”


“Have you tramped the streets of cities
Poor? And do you know what it is,
While no mortal cares or pities,
To have drifted past ambition;
To have sunk below despair?
Doomed to slave and stint and borrow;
Ever haunted in your sorrow
By the spectre of To-morrow?”
And the voice from over yonder answers sadly: “I’ve been there.”

“Surely in the wide Hereafter
There’s a land of love and laughter?
Say: Is this life all we live for,
Say it! think it, if you dare!
Have you ever thou...

    You cannot take from out my heart the growing,
    The green, sweet growing, and the vivid thrill.
    "O Earth," you cry, "you should be old, not glowing
    With youth and all youth's strength and beauty still!"

    Old, and the new hopes stirring in my bosom!
    Old, and my children drawing life from me!
    Old, in my womb the tender bud and blossom!
    Old, steeped in richness and fertility!

    Old, while the growing things call to each other,
    In language I alone can understand:
    "How she doth nourish us, this wondrous mother
    Who is so beautiful and strong and grand!"

    Old, while the wild things of the forest hide them
    In my gray coverts, which no eye can trace!
    Hunted or hurt, 'tis my task to provide them
    Hea...

I

The curtains now are drawn,
And the spindrift strikes the glass,
Blown up the jagged pass
By the surly salt sou'-west,
And the sneering glare is gone
Behind the yonder crest,
While she sings to me:
"O the dream that thou art my Love, be it thine,
And the dream that I am thy Love, be it mine,
And death may come, but loving is divine."

II

I stand here in the rain,
With its smite upon her stone,
And the grasses that have grown
Over women, children, men,
And their texts that "Life is vain";
But I hear the notes as when
Once she sang to me:
"O the dream that thou art my Love, be it thine,
And the dream that I am thy Love, be it mine,
And death may come, but loving is divine."

Dust to dust:
Fall and perish love and lust:
Life is one brief autumn day;
Sin and sorrow haunt the way
To the narrow house of clay,
Clutching at the good and just:
Dust to dust.

Dust to dust:
Still we strive and toil and trust,
From the cradle to the grave:
Vainly crying, "Jesus, save!"
Fall the coward and the brave,
Fall the felon and the just:
Dust to dust.

Dust to dust:
Hark, I hear the wintry gust;
Yet the roses bloom to-day,
Blushing to the kiss of May,
While the north winds sigh and say:
"Lo we bring the cruel frost
Dust to dust."

Dust to dust:
Yet we live and love and trust,
Lifting burning brow and eye
To the mountain peaks on high:
From the peaks the ages cry,
Strewing ashes, rime an...

    Italian bold, why wilt thou never cease
    The fathers from their tombs to summon forth?
    Why bring them, with this dead age to converse,
    That stifled is by enemies and by sloth?
    And why dost thou, voice of our ancestors,
    That hast so long been mute,
    Resound so loud and frequent in our ears?
    Why all these grand discoveries?
    As in a flash the fruitful pages come,
    What hath this wretched age deserved,
    That dusty cloisters have for it reserved
    These hidden treasures of the wise and brave?
    Illustrious man, with what strange power
    Does Fate thy ardent zeal befriend?
    Or does Fate vainly with man's will contend?

    Without the lofty counsel of the gods,
    It surely could not be, that now,
    When ...

        FIRST PART

Upon her plodding palfrey
With a heavy child at her breast
And Joseph holding the bridle
They mount to the last hill-crest.

Dissatisfied and weary
She sees the blade of the sea
Dividing earth and heaven
In a glitter of ecstasy.

Sudden a dark-faced stranger
With his back to the sun, holds out
His arms; so she lights from her palfrey
And turns her round about.

She has given the child to Joseph,
Gone down to the flashing shore;
And Joseph, shading his eyes with his hand,
Stands watching evermore.

        SECOND PART

THE sea in the stones is singing,
A woman binds her hair
With yellow, frail sea-poppies,
That shine as her fingers stir.

While a naked man comes swiftly
Li...