Death

The skies are strown with stars,
The streets are fresh with dew
A thin moon drifts to westward,
The night is hushed and cheerful.
My thought is quick with you.

Near windows gleam and laugh,
And far away a train
Clanks glowing through the stillness:
A great content's in all things,
And life is not in vain.

1877

On the isle of Penikese,
Ringed about by sapphire seas,
Fanned by breezes salt and cool,
Stood the Master with his school.
Over sails that not in vain
Wooed the west-wind's steady strain,
Line of coast that low and far
Stretched its undulating bar,
Wings aslant along the rim
Of the waves they stooped to skim,
Rock and isle and glistening bay,
Fell the beautiful white day.

Said the Master to the youth
"We have come in search of truth,
Trying with uncertain key
Door by door of mystery;
We are reaching, through His laws,
To the garment-hem of Cause,
Him, the endless, unbegun,
The Unnamable, the One
Light of all our light the Source,
Life of life, and Force of force.
As with fingers of the blind,
We are groping here to find...

Who looked for thee, thou little song of mine?
    This winter of a silent poet's heart
    Is suddenly sweet with thee, but what thou art,
Mid-winter flower, I would I could divine.

Art thou a last one, orphan of thy line?
    Did the dead summer's last warmth foster thee?
    Or is Spring folded up unguessed in me,
And stirring out of sight,-and thou the sign?

Where shall I look-backwards or to the morrow
    For others of thy fragrance, secret child?
    Who knows if last things or if first things claim thee?

-Whether thou be the last smile of my sorrow,
    Or else a joy too sweet, a joy too wild?
    How, my December violet, shall I name thee?

Scheherazade immediately began the following story.


I.

Ali Ben Ali (did you never read
His wond'rous acts that chronicles relate, -
How there was one in pity might exceed
The Sack of Troy?) Magnificent he sate
Upon the throne of greatness - great indeed!
For those that he had under him were great -
The horse he rode on, shod with silver nails,
Was a Bashaw - Bashaws have horses' tails.


II.

Ali was cruel - a most cruel one!
'Tis rumored he had strangled his own mother -
Howbeit such deeds of darkness he had done,
'Tis thought he would have slain his elder brother
And sister too - but happily that none
Did live within harm's length of one another,
Else he had sent the Sun in all its blaze
To endless night, and shorte...

Why sleeps the future, as a snake enrolled,
Coil within coil, at noon-tide? For the WORD
Yields, if with unpresumptuous faith explored,
Power at whose touch the sluggard shall unfold
His drowsy rings. Look forth! that Stream behold,
That stream upon whose bosom we have passed
Floating at ease while nations have effaced
Nations, and Death has gathered to his fold
Long lines of mighty Kings look forth, my Soul!
(Nor in this vision be thou slow to trust)
The living Waters, less and less by guilt
Stained and polluted, brighten as they roll,
Till they have reached the eternal City built
For the perfected Spirit of the just!

My sons, and ye the children of my sons,
Jacob your father goes upon his way,
His pilgrimage is being accomplished.
Come near and hear him ere his words are o’er.
Not as my father’s or his father’s days,
As Isaac’s days or Abraham’s, have been mine;
Not as the days of those that in the field
Walked at the eventide to meditate,
And haply, to the tent returning, found
Angels at nightfall waiting at their door.
They communed, Israel wrestled with the Lord.
No, not as Abraham’s or as Isaac’s days,
My sons, have been Jacob your father’s days,
Evil and few, attaining not to theirs
In number, and in worth inferior much.
As a man with his friend, walked they with God,
In His abiding presence they abode,
And all their acts were open to His face.
But I have ha...

The twentieth year is well nigh past
Since first our sky was overcast;
Ah! would that this might be the last!
My Mary!


Thy spirits have a fainter flow
I see thee daily weaker grow
‘Twas my distress that brought thee low,
My Mary!


Thy needles, once a shining store,
For my sake restless heretofore,
Now rust disused, and shine no more;
My Mary!


For, though thou gladly wouldst fulfil
The same kind office for me still,
Thy sight now seconds not thy will,
My Mary!


But well thou play’dst the housewife’s part,
And all thy threads with magic art
Have wound themselves about this heart,
My Mary!


Thy indistinct expressions seem
Like language utter’d in a dream:
Yet me they charm, wha...

Sence fair Jessica hez left us
Seems ez ef she hed bereft us,
When she went, o’ half o’ livin’;
Fer we never knowed she’d driven
Into us so much content,
Till fair Jessica hed went.
    (Knowed a feller once thet cried
    When his yaller dog hed died.)

We hain’t near ez bright an’ chirky,
An’ the sun shines blue an’ murky,
Kind o’ sadly an’ dishearted,
Like ets sperret bed departed;
Just ez ef ets joy bed ceased
Sence fair Jessica ’s gone East.
    (Not but what ets always sober
    Sort o’ weather in October.)

Then the posies, too, seems human,
An’ hez all quit o’ their bloomin’;
An’ the trees they show a pallor
An’ hey turned a heart-sick yaller,
Sayin’, “No use livin’ on
Ef fair Jessica hez gone.”
    (Folks thet k...

I.

If souls could sing to heaven's high King
    As blackbirds pipe on earth,
How those delicious courts would ring
    With gusts of lovely mirth!
What white-robed throng could lift a song
    So mellow with righteous glee
As this brown bird that all day long
    Delights my hawthorn tree.
        Hark! That's the thrush
            With speckled breast
        From yon white bush
            Chaunting his best,
    Te Deum! Te Deum laudamus!


II.

If earthly dreams be touched with gleams
    Of Paradisal air,
Some wings, perchance, of earth may glance
    Around our slumbers there;
Some breaths of may might drift our way
    With scents of leaf and loam,
Some whistling bird at dawn be heard
    From ...

Come when the nights are bright with stars
Or when the moon is mellow;
Come when the sun his golden bars
Drops on the hay-field yellow.
Come in the twilight soft and gray,
Come in the night or come in the day,
Come, O love, whene'er you may,
And you are welcome, welcome.

You are sweet, O Love, dear Love,
You are soft as the nesting dove.
Come to my heart and bring it rest
As the bird flies home to its welcome nest.

Come when my heart is full of grief
Or when my heart is merry;
Come with the falling of the leaf
Or with the redd'ning cherry.
Come when the year's first blossom blows,
Come when the summer gleams and glows,
Come with the winter's drifting snows,
And you are welcome, welcome.

Fair Ellen Irwin, when she sate
Upon the braes of Kirtle,
Was lovely as a Grecian maid
Adorned with wreaths of myrtle;
Young Adam Bruce beside her lay,
And there did they beguile the day
With love and gentle speeches,
Beneath the budding beeches.

From many knights and many squires
The Bruce had been selected;
And Gordon, fairest of them all,
By Ellen was rejected.
Sad tidings to that noble Youth!
For it may be proclaimed with truth,
If Bruce hath loved sincerely,
That Gordon loves as dearly.

But what are Gordon's form and face,
His shattered hopes and crosses,
To them, 'mid Kirtle's pleasant braes,
Reclined on flowers and mosses?
Alas that ever he was born!
The Gordon, couched behind a thorn,
Sees them and their caress...

    The lithe wind races and sings
        Over the grasses and wheat -
    See the emerald floor as it springs
        To the touch of invisible feet!

    Ah, later, the fir and the pine
        Shall stoop to its weightier tread,
    As it tramps the thundering brine
        Till it shudders and whitens in dread!

    Breath of man! a glass of thine own
        Is the wind on the land, on the sea -
    Joy of life at thy touch! - full grown,
        Destruction and death maybe!

The sea is awake, and the sound of the song of the joy of her waking is rolled
From afar to the star that recedes, from anear to the wastes of the wild wide shore.
Her call is a trumpet compelling us homeward: if dawn in her east be acold,
From the sea shall we crave not her grace to rekindle the life that it kindled before,
Her breath to requicken, her bosom to rock us, her kisses to bless as of yore?
For the wind, with his wings half open, at pause in the sky, neither fettered nor free,
Leans waveward and flutters the ripple to laughter and fain would the twain of us be
Where lightly the wave yearns forward from under the curve of the deep dawn’s dome,
And, full of the morning and fired with the pride of the glory thereof and the glee,
Strike out from the shore as the heart in us bids and bes...

To write as your sweet mother does
Is all you wish to do.
Play, sing, and smile for others, Rose!
Let others write for you.

Or mount again your Dartmoor grey,
And I will walk beside,
Until we reach that quiet bay
Which only hears the tide.

Then wave at me your pencil, then
At distance bid me stand,
Before the cavern’d cliff, again
The creature of your hand.

And bid me then go past the nook
To sketch me less in size;
There are but few content to look
So little in your eyes.

Delight us with the gifts you have,
And wish for none beyond:
To some be gay, to some be grave,
To one (blest youth!) be fond.

Pleasures there are how close to Pain,
And better unpossest!
Let poetry’s too throbbing vein
Lie qui...

Lament, lament, Sir Isaac Heard,
    Put mourning round thy page, Debrett,
For here lies one who ne'er preferred
    A Viscount to a Marquis yet.

Beside him place the God of Wit,
    Before him Beauty's rosiest girls,
Apollo for a star he'd quit,
    And Love's own sister for an Earl's.

Did niggard fate no peers afford,
    He took of course to peers' relations;
And rather than not sport a Lord
    Put up with even the last creations;

Even Irish names could he but tag 'em
    With "Lord" and "Duke," were sweet to call;
And at a pinch Lord Ballyraggum
    Was better than no Lord at all.

Heaven grant him now some noble nook,
    For rest his soul! he'd rather be
Genteelly damned beside a Duke,
    Than saved in vulga...

Upon a Sabbath-day it fell;
Twice holy was the Sabbath-bell
That call'd the folk to evening prayer;
The city streets were clean and fair
From wholesome drench of April rains;
And, on the western window panes,
The chilly sunset faintly told
Of unmatur'd green vallies cold,
Of the green thorny bloomless hedge,
Of rivers new with spring-tide sedge,
Of primroses by shelter'd rills,
And daisies on the aguish hills.
Twice holy was the Sabbath-bell:
The silent streets were crowded well
With staid and pious companies,
Warm from their fire-side orat'ries,
And moving with demurest air
To even-song and vesper prayer.
Each arched porch and entry low
Was fill'd with patient folk and slow,
With whispers hush, and shuffling feet,
While play'd the org...

O Tell Na Me O' Wind And Rain.



I.

    O tell na me o' wind and rain,
    Upbraid na me wi' cauld disdain!
    Gae back the gate ye cam again,
        I winna let you in, jo.
            I tell you now this ae night,
                This ae, ae, ae night,
            And ance for a' this ae night,
                I winna let you in, jo!

II.

    The snellest blast, at mirkest hours,
    That round the pathless wand'rer pours,
    Is nocht to what poor she endures,
        That's trusted faithless man, jo.

III.

    The sweetest flower that deck'd the mead,
    Now trodden like the vilest weed:
    Let simple maid the lesson read,
        The weird may be her ain, jo.

IV.

    The ...

Peace is declared, and I return
To 'Ackneystadt, but not the same;
Things 'ave transpired which made me learn
The size and meanin' of the game.
I did no more than others did,
I don't know where the change began;
I started as a average kid,
I finished as a thinkin' man.

If England was what England seems
An' not the England of our dreams,
But only putty, brass, an' paint,
'Ow quick we'd drop 'er! But she ain't!

Before my gappin' mouth could speak
I 'eard it in my comrade's tone;
I saw it on my neighbour's cheek
Before I felt it flush my own.
An' last it come to me, not pride,
Nor yet conceit, but on the 'ole
(If such a term may be applied),
The makin's of a bloomin' soul.

Rivers at night that cluck an' jeer,
Plains whic...