Death

    I dreamt (no "dream" awake-a dream indeed)
    A wrathful man was talking in the park:
    "Where are the Higher Powers, who know our need
                        And leave us in the dark?

    "There are no Higher Powers; there is no heart
    In God, no love"-his oratory here,
    Taking the paupers’ and the cripples’ part,
                        Was broken by a tear.

    And then it seemed that One who did create
    Compassion, who alone invented pity,
    Walked, as though called, in at that north-east gate,
                        Out from the muttering city;

    Threaded the little crowd, trod the brown grass,
    Bent o’er the speaker close, saw the tear rise,
    And saw Himself, as one looks in a glass,
                        In tho...

When Susan's work was done, she would sit,
With one fat guttering candle lit,
And window opened wide to win
The sweet night air to enter in.
There, with a thumb to keep her place,
She would read, with stern and wrinkled face,
Her mild eyes gliding very slow
Across the letters to and fro,
While wagged the guttering candle flame
In the wind that through the window came.
And sometimes in the silence she
Would mumble a sentence audibly,
Or shake her head as if to say,
"You silly souls, to act this way!"
And never a sound from night I would hear,
Unless some far-off cock crowed clear;
Or her old shuffling thumb should turn
Another page; and rapt and stern,
Through her great glasses bent on me,
She would glance into reality;
And shake her round o...

Free man, you'll love the ocean endlessly!
It is your mirror, you observe your soul
In how its billows endlessly unroll
Your spirit's bitter depths are there to see.

You plunge in joy to your reflection's core,
With eyes and heart seizing it all along;
Your heart sometimes neglects its proper song
Distracted by the ocean's savage roar.

The two of you are subtle, shadowy:
Man, none has sounded your profound recess;
O sea, none knows the richness of your depths
Since you protect your secrets jealously!

And yet, because you both love death and strife,
You've fought each other through the endless years
With no remorse, without a pitying tear
Relentless brothers, enemies for life!

As, when a storm hath ceased, the birds regain
Their cheerfulness, and busily retrim
Their nests, or chant a gratulating hymn
To the blue ether and bespangled plain;
Even so, in many a re-constructed fane,
Have the survivors of this Storm renewed
Their holy rites with vocal gratitude:
And solemn ceremonials they ordain
To celebrate their great deliverance;
Most feelingly instructed 'mid their fear
That persecution, blind with rage extreme,
May not the less, through Heaven's mild countenance,
Even in her own despite, both feed and cheer;
For all things are less dreadful than they seem.

So grieves th' adventurous merchant, when he throws
All the long toil'd-for treasure his ship stows
Into the angry main, to save from wrack
Himself and men, as I grieve to give back
These letters: yet so powerful is your sway
As if you bid me die, I must obey.
Go then, blest papers, you shall kiss those hands
That gave you freedom, but hold me in bands;
Which with a touch did give you life, but I,
Because I may not touch those hands, must die.
Methinks, as if they knew they should be sent
Home to their native soil from banishment;
I see them smile, like dying saints that know
They are to leave the earth and toward heaven go.
When you return, pray tell your sovereign
And mine, I gave you courteous entertain;
Each line received a tear, and then a kiss;
Firs...

This world has suns, but they are overcast;
This world has sweets, but they're of ling'ring bloom;
Life still expects, and empty falls at last;
Warm Hope on tiptoe drops into the tomb.
Life's journey's rough--Hope seeks a smoother way,
And dwells on fancies which to-morrow see,--
To-morrow comes, true copy of to-day,
And empty shadow of what is to be;
Yet cheated Hope on future still depends,
And ends but only when our being ends.
I long have hoped, and still shall hope the best
Till heedless weeds are scrambling over me,
And hopes and ashes both together rest
At journey's end, with them that cease to be.

To a Lady who wrote under my likeness as Juliet, "Lieti giorni e felice."

Whence should they come, lady! those happy days
That thy fair hand and gentle heart invoke
Upon my head?    Alas! such do not rise
On any, of the many, who with sighs
Bear through this journey-land of wo, life's yoke.
The light of such lives not in thine own lays;
Such were not hers, that girl, so fond, so fair,
Beneath whose image thou hast traced thy pray'r.
Evil, and few, upon this darksome earth,
Must be the days of all of mortal birth;
Then why not mine?    Sweet lady! wish again,
Not more of joy to me, but less of pain;
Calm slumber, when life's troubled hours are past,
And with thy friendship cheer them while they last.

It is time to be old,
To take in sail:--
The god of bounds,
Who sets to seas a shore,
Came to me in his fatal rounds,
And said: 'No more!
No farther shoot
Thy broad ambitious branches, and thy root.
Fancy departs: no more invent;
Contract thy firmament
To compass of a tent.
There's not enough for this and that,
Make thy option which of two;
Economize the failing river,
Not the less revere the Giver,
Leave the many and hold the few.
Timely wise accept the terms,
Soften the fall with wary foot;
A little while
Still plan and smile,
And,--fault of novel germs,--
Mature the unfallen fruit.
Curse, if thou wilt, thy sires,
Bad husbands of their fires,
Who, when they gave thee breath,
Failed to bequeath
The needful sin...

    No creature stirs in the wide fields.
    The rifted western heaven yields
    The dying sun's illumination.
    This is the hour of tribulation
    When, with clear sight of eve engendered,
    Day's homage to delusion rendered,
    Mute at her window sits the soul.

    Clouds and skies and lakes and seas,
    Valleys and hills and grass and trees,
    Sun, moon, and stars, all stand to her
    Limbs of one lordless challenger,
    Who, without deigning taunt or frown.
    Throws a perennial gauntlet down:
    "Come conquer me and take thy toll."

    No cowardice or fear she knows,
    But, as once more she girds, there grows
    An unresignèd hopelessness
    From memory of former stress.
    Head bent, she muses whilst he waits:

        I.

Oh, to see in the night in a May moon's light
A nymph from siren caves,
With a crown of pearl, sea-gems in each curl
Dance down white, star-stained waves!
Oh, to list in the gloam by the pearly foam
Of a sad, far-sounding shore
The strain of the shell of an ocean belle
From caves where the waters roar!
With a hollow shell drift up in the moon
To sigh in my ears this ocean tune: -


        II.

"Wilt follow, wilt follow to caverns hollow,
That echo the tumbling spry?
Wilt follow thy queen to islands green,
Vague islands of witchery?
O follow, follow to grottoes hollow,
And isles in a purple sea,
Where rich roses twine and the lush woodbine
Weaves a musky canopy!"


        III.

Oh, to flo...

True is it that Ambrosio Salinero
With an untoward fate was long involved
In odious litigation; and full long,
Fate harder still! had he to endure assaults
Of racking malady. And true it is
That not the less a frank courageous heart
And buoyant spirit triumphed over pain;
And he was strong to follow in the steps
Of the fair Muses. Not a covert path
Leads to the dear Parnassian forest's shade,
That might from him be hidden; not a track
Mounts to pellucid Hippocrene, but he
Had traced its windings. This Savona knows,
Yet no sepulchral honours to her Son
She paid, for in our age the heart is ruled
Only by gold. And now a simple stone
Inscribed with this memorial here is raised
By his bereft, his lonely, Chiabrera.
Think not, O Passenger! who read'st the...

1.
How, my dear Mary, are you critic-bitten
(For vipers kill, though dead) by some review,
That you condemn these verses I have written,
Because they tell no story, false or true?
What, though no mice are caught by a young kitten,
May it not leap and play as grown cats do,
Till its claws come? Prithee, for this one time,
Content thee with a visionary rhyme.

2.
What hand would crush the silken-winged fly,
The youngest of inconstant April's minions,
Because it cannot climb the purest sky,
Where the swan sings, amid the sun's dominions?
Not thine. Thou knowest 'tis its doom to die,
When Day shall hide within her twilight pinions
The lucent eyes, and the eternal smile,
Serene as thine, which lent it life awhile.

3.
To thy fair feet a win...

An age in her embraces passed
Would seem a winter's day;
When life and light, with envious haste,
Are torn and snatched away.

But, oh! how slowly minutes roll.
When absent from her eyes
That feed my love, which is my soul,
It languishes and dies.

For then no more a soul but shade
It mournfully does move
And haunts my breast, by absence made
The living tomb of love.

You wiser men despise me not,
Whose love-sick fancy raves
On shades of souls and Heaven knows what;
Short ages live in graves.

Whene'er those wounding eyes, so full
Of sweetness, you did see,
Had you not been profoundly dull,
You had gone mad like me.

Nor censure us, you who perceive
My best beloved and me
Sign and lament, complain and grie...

"Why sit'st thou by that ruin'd hall,
Thou aged carle so stern and grey?
Dost thou its former pride recall,
Or ponder how it pass'd away?"

"Know'st thou not me?" the Deep Voice cried;
"So long enjoy'd, so oft misused,
Alternate, in thy fickle pride,
Desired, neglected, and accused!

"Before my breath, like blazing flax,
Man and his marvels pass away!
And changing empires wane and wax,
Are founded, flourish, and decay,

"Redeem mine hours, the space is brief,
While in my glass the sand-grains shiver,
And measureless thy joy or grief,
When Time and thou shalt part for ever!"

"Child of my love, why wearest thou
That pensive look and thoughtful brow?
Can'st gaze abroad on this world so fair
And yet thy glance be fraught with care?
Roses still bloom in glowing dyes,
Sunshine still fills our summer skies,
Earth is still lovely, nature glad -
Why dost thou look so lone and sad?"

"Ah! mother it once sufficed thy child
To cherish a bird or flow'ret wild;
To see the moonbeams the waters kiss,
Was enough to fill her heart with bliss;
Or o'er the bright woodland stream to bow,
But these things may not suffice her now."

"Perhaps 'tis music thou seekest, child?
Then list the notes of the song birds wild,
The gentle voice of the mountain breeze,
Whispering among the dark pine trees,
The surge sublime of the sounding main,...

("Dors-tu? mère de notre mère.")

[III., 1823.]

"To die - to sleep." - SHAKESPEARE.


Still asleep! We have been since the noon thus alone.
Oh, the hours we have ceased to number!
Wake, grandmother! - speechless say why thou art grown.
Then, thy lips are so cold! - the Madonna of stone
Is like thee in thy holy slumber.
We have watched thee in sleep, we have watched thee at prayer,
But what can now betide thee?
Like thy hours of repose all thy orisons were,
And thy lips would still murmur a blessing whene'er
Thy children stood beside thee.

Now thine eye is unclosed, and thy forehead is bent
O'er the hearth, where ashes smoulder;
And behold, the watch-lamp will be speedily spent.
Art thou vexed? have we done aught amiss? Oh, rel...

    Put not trust nor tenderness to sleep,
        In sorrow sad;
    The heart, in which a little love may creep,
        Is not all bad.

    The darkest hours that wear a wondrous gloom,
        Are somewhat light,
    If but one ray of brilliancy illume
        The brooding night.

    The field in which the weed and bramble thrive
        Has some of good,
    If but a single blossom struggling live
        Amid the rude.

    The ocean vast is not all desolate,
        The worlds between,
    If on its waters bearing human freight
        One sail is seen.

    All is not harsh and cold amid the wood,
        If warbled song
    Resound, how feebly, through the solitude
        Of tangled wrong.

    The deser...

Sweep up the flure, Janet;
    Put on anither peat.
It's a lown and a starry nicht, Janet,
    And nowther cauld nor weet.

It's the nicht atween the Sancts and Souls
    Whan the bodiless gang aboot;
And it's open hoose we keep the nicht
    For ony that may be oot.

Set the cheirs back to the wa', Janet;
    Mak ready for quaiet fowk.
Hae a'thing as clean as a windin-sheet:
    They comena ilka ook.

There's a spale upo' the flure, Janet,
    And there's a rowan-berry!
Sweep them intil the fire, Janet,
    Or they'll neither come nor tarry.

Syne set open the outer dure--
    Wide open for wha kens wha?
As ye come ben to your bed, Janet,
    Set baith dures to the wa'.

She set the cheirs back to the wa',
   ...