Death

There is an end of joy and sorrow;
Peace all day long, all night, all morrow,
But never a time to laugh or weep.
The end is come of pleasant places,
The end of tender words and faces,
The end of all, the poppied sleep.

No place for sound within their hearing,
No room to hope, no time for fearing,
No lips to laugh, no lids for tears.
The old years have run out all their measure;
No chance of pain, no chance of pleasure,
No fragment of the broken years.

Outside of all the worlds and ages,
There where the fool is as the sage is,
There where the slayer is clean of blood,
No end, no passage, no beginning,
There where the sinner leaves off sinning,
There where the good man is not good.

There is not one thing with another,
But Evil sa...

To that gaunt House of Art which lacks for naught
Of all the great things men have saved from Time,
The withered body of a girl was brought
Dead ere the world's glad youth had touched its prime,
And seen by lonely Arabs lying hid
In the dim womb of some black pyramid.

But when they had unloosed the linen band
Which swathed the Egyptian's body, lo! was found
Closed in the wasted hollow of her hand
A little seed, which sown in English ground
Did wondrous snow of starry blossoms bear
And spread rich odours through our spring-tide air.

With such strange arts this flower did allure
That all forgotten was the asphodel,
And the brown bee, the lily's paramour,
Forsook the cup where he was wont to dwell,
For not a thing of earth it seemed to be,
But st...

In crime and enmity they lie
Who sin and tell us love can die,
Who say to us in slander's breath
That love belongs to sin and death.
From heaven it came on angel's wing
To bloom on earth, eternal spring;
In falsehood's enmity they lie
Who sin and tell us love can die.

Twas born upon an angel's breast.
The softest dreams, the sweetest rest,
The brightest sun, the bluest sky,
Are love's own home and canopy.
The thought that cheers this heart of mine
Is that of love; love so divine
They sin who say in slander's breath
That love belongs to sin and death.

The sweetest voice that lips contain,
The sweetest thought that leaves the brain,
The sweetest feeling of the heart--
There's pleasure in its very smart.
The scent of rose and cinna...

Thy soul shall find itself alone
Alone of all on earth, unknown
The cause, but none are near to pry
Into thine hour of secrecy.
Be silent in that solitude,
Which is not loneliness, for then
The spirits of the dead, who stood
In life before thee, are again
In death around thee, and their will
Shall then o’ershadow thee, be still
For the night, tho’ clear, shall frown:
And the stars shall look not down
From their thrones, in the dark heav’n;
With light like Hope to mortals giv’n,
But their red orbs, without beam,
To thy withering heart shall seem
As a burning, and a ferver
Which would cling to thee forever.
But ’twill leave thee, as each star
In the morning light afar
Will fly thee, and vanish:
But its thought thou can’st not banish.

Part V

Winter

We, whom God sets a task,
    Striving, who ne'er attain,
We are the curst! - who ask
    Death, and still ask in vain.
We, whom God sets a task.


1

In the silence of his room. After many days.

All, all are shadows. All must pass
As writing in the sand or sea;
Reflections in a looking-glass
Are not less permanent than we.

The days that mould us - what are they?
That break us on their whirling wheel?
What but the potters! we the clay
They fashion and yet leave unreal.

Linked through the ages, one and all,
In long anthropomorphous chain,
The human and the animal
Inseparably must remain.

Within us still the monster shape
That shrieked in air and howled i...

I


The summer is over!
'Tis windy and chilly.
The flowers are dead in the dale.
All beauty has faded,
The rose and the lily
In death-sleep lie withered and pale.

Now hurries the stormwind
A mournful procession
Of leaves and dead flowers along,
Now murmurs the forest
Its dying confession,
And hushed is the holiest song.

Their "prayers of departure"
The wild birds are singing,
They fly to the wide stormy main.
Oh tell me, ye loved ones,
Whereto are ye winging?
Oh answer: when come ye again?

Oh hark to the wailing
For joys that have vanished!
The answer is heavy with pain:
Alas! We know only
That hence we are banished--
But God knows of coming again!


II


The Tkiy...

‘BEAT, little heart—I give you this and this’
Who are you? What! the Lady Hamilton?
Good, I am never weary painting you.
To sit once more? Cassandra, Hebe, Joan,
Or spinning at your wheel beside the vine—
Bacchante, what you will; and if I fail
To conjure and concentrate into form
And colour all you are, the fault is less
In me than Art. What Artist ever yet
Could make pure light live on the canvas? Art!
Why should I so disrelish that short word?
Where am I? snow on all the hills! so hot,
So fever’d! never colt would more delight
To roll himself in meadow grass than I
To wallow in that winter of the hills.
Nurse, were you hired? or came of your own will
To wait on one so broken, so forlorn?
Have I not met you somewhere long ago?
I am all but sure I h...

The young Endymion sleeps Endymion's sleep;
    The shepherd-boy whose tale was left half told!
    The solemn grove uplifts its shield of gold
    To the red rising moon, and loud and deep
The nightingale is singing from the steep;
    It is midsummer, but the air is cold;
    Can it be death?    Alas, beside the fold
    A shepherd's pipe lies shattered near his sheep.
Lo! in the moonlight gleams a marble white,
    On which I read: "Here lieth one whose name
    Was writ in water."    And was this the meed
Of his sweet singing?    Rather let me write:
    "The smoking flax before it burst to flame
    Was quenched by death, and broken the bruised reed."

Out of the shadows of sadness,
Into the sunshine of gladness,
Into the light of the blest;
Out of a land very dreary,
Out of a world very weary,
Into the rapture of rest.

Out of to-day's sin and sorrow,
Into a blissful to-morrow,
Into a day without gloom;
Out of a land filled with sighing,
Land of the dead and the dying,
Into a land without tomb.

Out of a life of commotion,
Tempest-swept oft as the ocean,
Dark with the wrecks drifting o'er;
Into a land calm and quiet,
Never a storm cometh nigh it,
Never a wreck on its shore.

Out of a land in whose bowers
Perish and fade all the flowers:
Out of the land of decay,
Into the Eden where fairest
Of flowerets, and sweetest and rarest,
Never shall wither away.
...

Lake Winnipesaukee


I. NOON.

White clouds, whose shadows haunt the deep,
Light mists, whose soft embraces keep
The sunshine on the hills asleep!

O isles of calm! O dark, still wood!
And stiller skies that overbrood
Your rest with deeper quietude!

O shapes and hues, dim beckoning, through
Yon mountain gaps, my longing view
Beyond the purple and the blue,

To stiller sea and greener land,
And softer lights and airs more bland,
And skies, the hollow of God’s hand!

Transfused through you, O mountain friends!
With mine your solemn spirit blends,
And life no more hath separate ends.

I read each misty mountain sign,
I know the voice of wave and pine,
And I am yours, and ye are mine.

A grievous day of wrathful winds,
Of low-hung clouds, which scud and fly,
And drop cold rains, then lift and show
A sullen realm of upper sky.

The sea is black as night; it roars
From lips afoam with cruel spray,
Like some fierce, many-throated pack
Of wolves, which scents and chases prey.

Crouched in my little wind-swept nook,
I hear the menacing voices call,
And shudder, as above the deck
Topples and swings the weltering wall.

It seems a vast and restless grave,
Insatiate, hungry, beckoning
With dreadful gesture of command
To every free and living thing.

"O Lord," I cry, "Thou makest life
And hope and all sweet things to be;
Rebuke this hovering, following Death,--
This horror never born of Thee."

A sudden gl...

When Death has crossed my name from out the roll
Of dreaming children serving in this War;
And with these earthly eyes I gaze no more
Upon sweet England's grace - perhaps my soul
Will visit streets down which I used to stroll
At sunset-charmèd dusks, when London's roar
Like ebbing surf on some Atlantic shore
Would trance the ear. Then may I hear no toll

Of heavy bells to burden all the air
With tuneless grief: for happy will I be! -
What place on earth could ever be more fair
Than God's own presence? - Mourn not then for me,
Nor write, I pray, "He gave" - upon my clod -
"His life to England," but "his soul to God."

Isle of Sheppey, 1917.

Oh, Mary, when distress and anguish came,
And slow disease preyed on thy wasted frame;
When every friend, ev'n like thy bloom, was fled,
And Want bowed low thy unsupported head;
Sure sad Humanity a tear might give,
And Virtue say, Live, beauteous sufferer, live!
But should there one be found, (amidst the few
Who with compassion thy last pangs might view),
One who beheld thy errors with a tear,
To whom the ruins of thy heart were dear,
Who fondly hoped, the ruthful season past,
Thy faded virtues might revive at last;
Should such be found, oh! when he saw thee lie,
Closing on every earthly hope thine eye;
When he beheld despair, with rueful trace,
Mark the strange features of thy altered face;
When he beheld, as painful death drew nigh,
Thy pale, pale cheek...

I.
‘He is fled—I wish him dead—
He that wrought my ruin—
O the flattery and the craft
Which were my undoing . . .
In the night, in the night,
When the storms are blowing.

II.
Who was witness of the crime?
Who shall now reveal it?
He is fled, or he is dead,
Marriage will conceal it . . .
In the night, in the night,
While the gloom is growing.’

III.
Catherine, Catherine, in the night,
What is this you’re dreaming?
There is laughter down in Hell
At your simple scheming . . .
In the night, in the night,
When the ghosts are fleeting.

IV.
You to place a hand in his
Like an honest woman’s,
You that lie with wasted lungs
Waiting for your summons . . .
In the night, O the night!
O the deathwatch b...

    I. Edwin Booth

An old actor at the Player's Club told me that Edwin Booth first impersonated Hamlet when a barnstormer in California. There were few theatres, but the hotels were provided with crude assembly rooms for strolling players.


The youth played in the blear hotel.
The rafters gleamed with glories strange.
And winds of mourning Elsinore
Howling at chance and fate and change;
Voices of old Europe's dead
Disturbed the new-built cattle-shed,
The street, the high and solemn range.

The while the coyote barked afar
All shadowy was the battlement.
The ranch-boys huddled and grew pale,
Youths who had come on riot bent.
Forgot were pranks well-planned to sting.
Behold there rose a ghostly king,
And veils of smoking Hell were rent.

There was no sound in earth or air,
    And soft the moonbeams smiled
On stately tower and temple fair,
    Like mother o'er her child;
And all was hushed in the deep repose
That welcomes the summer evening's close.

Many an eye that day had wept,
    And many a cheek with joy grew bright,
Which now, alike unconscious, slept
    Beneath the wan moonlight;
And mandolin and gay guitar
Had ceased to woo the evening star.

The lover has sought his couch again,
    And the maiden's eyes no longer glisten,
As she comes to the lattice to catch his strain,
    And sighs while she bends to smile and listen.
She sleeps, but her rosy lips still move,
And in dreams she answers the voice of love.

Sleep on, ye thoughtless and giddy train,
    ...

The years are many, the changes more,
Since wind and sun on the wild sweet shore
Where Joyous Gard stands stark by the sea
With face as bright as in years of yore
Shone, swept, and sounded, and laughed for glee
More deep than a man's or a child's may be,
On a day when summer was wild and glad,
And the guests of the wind and the sun were we.
The light that lightens from seasons clad
With darkness now, is it glad or sad?
Not sad but glad should it shine, meseems,
On eyes yet fain of the joy they had.
For joy was there with us; joy that gleams
And murmurs yet in the world of dreams
Where thought holds fast, as a constant warder,
The days when I rode by moors and streams,
Reining my rhymes into buoyant order
Through honied leagues of the northland border.

Life is bitter. All the faces of the years,
Young and old, are grey with travail and with tears.
Must we only wake to toil, to tire, to weep?
In the sun, among the leaves, upon the flowers,
Slumber stills to dreamy death the heavy hours . . .
Let me sleep.

Riches won but mock the old, unable years;
Fame's a pearl that hides beneath a sea of tears;
Love must wither, or must live alone and weep.
In the sunshine, through the leaves, across the flowers,
While we slumber, death approaches though the hours! . . .
Let me sleep.

1872