Death

Looking into the glasse of my youths miseries,
I see the ugly face of my deformed cares,
With withered browes, all wrinckled with dispaires,
That for my mis-spent youth the tears fel from my eyes.
Then, in these teares, the mirror of these eyes,
Thy fayrest youth and Beautie doe I see
Imprinted in my teares by looking still on thee:
Thus midst a thousand woes ten thousand joyes arise.
Yet in those joyes, the shadowes of my good,
In this fayre limned ground as white as snow,
Paynted the blackest Image of my woe,
With murthering hands imbru'd in mine own blood:
    And in this Image his darke clowdy eyes,
    My life, my youth, my loue, I heere Anotamize.

        We sang old love-songs on the way
            In sad and merry snatches,
        Your fingers o'er the strings astray
            Strumming the random catches.

        And ever, as the skiff plied on
            Among the trailing willows,
        Trekking the darker deeps to shun
            The gleaming sandy shallows,

        It seemed that we had, ages gone,
            In some far summer weather,
        When this same faery moonlight shone,
            Sung these same songs together.

        And every grassy cape we passed,
            And every reedy island,
        Even the bank'd cloud in the west
            That loomed a sombre highland;

        And you, with dewmist on your hair,
            Crowned with a wreat...

Rich in the waning light she sat
While the fierce rain on the window spat.
The yellow lamp-glow lit her face,
Shadows cloaked the narrow place
She sat adream in. Then she'd look
Idly upon an idle book;
Anon would rise and musing peer
Out at the misty street and drear;
Or with her loosened dark hair play,
Hiding her fingers' snow away;
And, singing softly, would sing on
When the desire of song had gone.
"O lingering day!" her bosom sighed,
"O laggard Time!" each motion cried.
Last she took the lamp and stood
Rich in its flood,
And looked and looked again at what
Her longing fingers' zeal had wrought;
And turning then did nothing say,
Hiding her thoughts away.

Strange was the doom of Heracles, whose shade
    Had dwelling in dim Hades the unblest,
    While yet his form and presence sat a guest
With the old immortals when the feast was made.
Thine like, thus differs; form and presence laid
    In this dim chamber of enforcèd rest,
    It is the unseen "shade" which, risen, hath pressed
Above all heights where feet Olympian strayed.
My soul admires to hear thee speak; thy thought
    Falls from a high place like an August star,
Or some great eagle from his air-hung rings -
    When swooping past a snow-cold mountain scar -
Down he steep slope of a long sunbeam brought,
    He stirs the wheat with the steerage of his wings.

On that gray night of mournful drone,
A part from aught to hear, to see,
I dreamt not that from shires unknown
In gloom, alone,
By Halworthy,
A man was drawing near to me.

I'd no concern at anything,
No sense of coming pull-heart play;
Yet, under the silent outspreading
Of even's wing
Where Otterham lay,
A man was riding up my way.

I thought of nobody not of one,
But only of trifles legends, ghosts
Though, on the moorland dim and dun
That travellers shun
About these coasts,
The man had passed Tresparret Posts.

There was no light at all inland,
Only the seaward pharos-fire,
Nothing to let me understand
That hard at hand
By Hennett Byre
The man was getting nigh and nigher.

There was a rumble at the ...

The red sun stared unwinking at the East
Then slept under a cloak of hodden gray;
The rimy fields held the last light of day,
A little tender yet. And I remember
How black against the pale and wintry west
Stood the confused great army of old trees,
Topping that lean, enormous-shouldered hill
With crossing lances shivering and then still.
I looked as one that sees
Queens passing by and lovelier than he dreamed,
With fringe of silver light following their feet,
And all those lances vail'd, and solemn Knights
Watching their Queens as with eyes grave and sweet
They left for the gray fields those airy heights.
Nothing had lovelier seemed--
Not April's noise nor the early dew of June,
Nor the calm languid cow-eyed Autumn Moon,
Nor ruffling woods the greenest I ...

In the dark, lonely night,
When sleep and silence keep their watch o'er men;
False love! in thy despite,
I will be with thee then.
When in the world of dreams thy spirit strays,
Seeking, in vain, the peace it finds not here,
Thou shalt be led back to thine early days
Of life and love, and I will meet thee there.
I'll come to thee, with the bright, sunny brow,
That was Hope's throne before I met with thee;
And then I'll show thee how 'tis furrowed now
By the untimely age of misery.
I'll speak to thee, in the fond, joyous tone,
That wooed thee still with love's impassioned spell;
And then I'll teach thee how I've learnt to moan,
Since last upon thine ear its accents fell.
I'll come to thee in all youth's brightest power,
As on the day thy faith to mine was ...

There in the past I see her as of old,
Blue-eyed and hazel-haired, within a room
Dim with a twilight of tenebrious gold;
Her white face sensuous as a delicate bloom
Night opens in the tropics. Fold on fold
Pale laces drape her; and a frail perfume,
As of a moonlit primrose brimmed with rain,
Breathes from her presence, drowsing heart and brain.

Her head is bent; some red carnations glow
Deep in her heavy hair; her large eyes gleam;--
Bright sister stars of those twin worlds of snow,
Her breasts, through which the veined violets stream;--
I hold her hand; her smile comes sweetly slow
As thoughts of love that haunt a poet's dream;
And at her feet once more I sit and hear
Wild words of passion--dead this many a year.

'Twixt a smile and a tear,
'Twixt a song and a sigh,
'Twixt the day and the dark,
When the night draweth nigh.

Ah, sunshine may fade
From the heavens above,
No twilight have we
To the day of our love.

Heap Cassia, sandal-buds and stripes
Of labdanum, and aloe-balls,
Smeared with dull nard an Indian wipes
From out her hair: such balsam falls
Down sea-side mountain pedestals,
From tree-tops where tired winds are fain,
Spent with the vast and howling main,
To treasure half their island-gain.

And strew faint sweetness from some old
Egyptian's fine worm-eaten shroud
Which breaks to dust when once unrolled;
Or shredded perfume, like a cloud
From closet long to quiet vowed,
With mothed and dropping arras hung,
Mouldering her lute and books among,
As when a queen, long dead, was young.

O cameretta che già fosti un porto.

HE NO LONGER FINDS RELIEF IN SOLITUDE.


    Thou little chamber'd haven to the woes
Whose daily tempest overwhelms my soul!
From shame, I in Heaven's light my grief control;
Thou art its fountain, which each night o'erflows.
My couch! that oft hath woo'd me to repose,
'Mid sorrows vast--Love's iv'ried hand hath stole
Griefs turgid stream, which o'er thee it doth roll,
That hand which good on all but me bestows.
Not only quiet and sweet rest I fly,
But from myself and thought, whose vain pursuit
On pinion'd fancy doth my soul transport:
The multitude I did so long defy,
Now as my hope and refuge I salute,
So much I tremble solitude to court.

WOLLASTON.


    Room! which to me hast ...

Yes, my friends! that happier times have been
Than the present, none can contravene;
That a race once lived of nobler worth;
And if ancient chronicles were dumb,
Countless stones in witness forth would come
From the deepest entrails of the earth.
But this highly-favored race has gone,
Gone forever to the realms of night.
We, we live! The moments are our own,
And the living judge the right.

Brighter zones, my friends, no doubt excel
This, the land wherein we're doomed to dwell,
As the hardy travellers proclaim;
But if Nature has denied us much,
Art is yet responsive to our touch,
And our hearts can kindle at her flame.
If the laurel will not flourish here
If the myrtle is cold winter's prey,
Yet the vine, to crown us, year by year,
Still pu...

John Brown of Ossawatomie spake on his dying day:
"I will not have to shrive my soul a priest in Slavery's pay.
But let some poor slave-mother whom I have striven to free,
With her children, from the gallows-stair put up a prayer for me!"

John Brown of Ossawatomie, they led him out to die;
And lo! a poor slave-mother with her little child pressed nigh.
Then the bold, blue eye grew tender, and the old harsh face grew mild,
As he stooped between the jeering ranks and kissed the negro's child.

The shadows of his stormy life that moment fell apart;
And they who blamed the bloody hand forgave the loving heart.
That kiss from all its guilty means redeemed the good intent,
And round the grisly fighter's hair the martyr's aureole bent!

Perish with him the folly that see...

No one talks more than a Poet;
Fain he'd have the people know it.

Praise or blame he ever loves;
None in prose confess an error,
Yet we do so, void of terror,

In the Muses' silent groves.

What I err'd in, what corrected,
What I suffer'd, what effected,

To this wreath as flow'rs belong;
For the aged, and the youthful,
And the vicious, and the truthful,

All are fair when viewed in song.

The daisy follows soft the sun,
And when his golden walk is done,
    Sits shyly at his feet.
He, waking, finds the flower near.
"Wherefore, marauder, art thou here?"
    "Because, sir, love is sweet!"

We are the flower, Thou the sun!
Forgive us, if as days decline,
    We nearer steal to Thee, --
Enamoured of the parting west,
The peace, the flight, the amethyst,
    Night's possibility!

    "Sweet are the flowers of life,
    Swept o'er my happy days at home;
    Sweet are the flowers of life
    When I was a little child.


    "Sweet are the flowers of life
    That I spent with my father at home;
    Sweet are the flowers of life
    When children played about the house.


    "Sweet are the flowers of life
    When the lamps are lighted at night;
    Sweet are the flowers of life
    When the flowers of summer bloomed.


    "Sweet are the flowers of life
    Dead with the snows of winter;
    Sweet are the flowers of life
    When the days of spring come on.

    (1) These lines were actually composed by a six-year old child.

Yet at the last, ere our spearmen had found him,
Yet at the last, ere a sword-thrust could save,
Yet at the last, with his masters around him,
He spoke of the Faith as a master to slave.
Yet at the last, though the Kafirs had maimed him,
Broken by bondage and wrecked by the river,
Yet at the last, tho' the darkness had claimed him,
He called on Allah, and died a Believer!

The skies they were ashen and sober,
The streets they were dirty and drear;
It was night in the month of October,
Of my most immemorial year.
Like the skies, I was perfectly sober,
As I stopped at the mansion of Shear,
At the Nightingale, perfectly sober,
And the willowy woodland down here.

Here, once in an alley Titanic
Of Ten-pins, I roamed with my soul,
Of Ten-pins, with Mary, my soul;
They were days when my heart was volcanic,
And impelled me to frequently roll,
And made me resistlessly roll,
Till my ten-strikes created a panic
In the realms of the Boreal pole,
Till my ten-strikes created a panic
With the monkey atop of his pole.

I repeat, I was perfectly sober,
But my thoughts they were palsied and sear,
My thoughts were de...