Death

None ever knew his name,
Honoured, or one of shame,
Highborn or lowly;
Only upon that tree
Two letters, J and C,
Carved by him, mark where he
Lay dying slowly.

Why came he to the West?
Had then the parent nest
Grown so distasteful?
What cause had he to shun
Life, ere ’twas well begun?
Was he that youngest son,
Of substance wasteful?

Were Fate and he at War?
Was it a pennance, or
Renunciation?
Is it a glad release?
Has he at length found peace,
Now Death hath bid him cease
Peregrination?

Hands white, without a blot,
Told us that he was not
One of “the vulgar.”
What can those cyphers be?
Two only, J and C.
Carved in his agony
Deep in the mulga.

Was there no woman’s face
Whos...

The doors were wide, the story saith,
Out of the night came the patient wraith.
He might not speak, and he could not stir
A hair of the Baron’s minniver.
Speechless and strengthless, a shadow thin,
He roved the castle to find his kin.
And oh! ’twas a piteous sight to see
The dumb ghost follow his enemy!
The Return of Imray.



Before my Spring I garnered Autumn's gain,
Out of her time my field was white with grain,
The year gave up her secrets, to my woe.
Forced and deflowered each sick season lay
In mystery of increase and decay;
I saw the sunset ere men see the day,
Who am too wise in all I should not know.
Without Benefit of Clergy.



There’s a convict more in the Central Jail,
Behind the old mud wall;
There’s a...

I.

Many a hearth upon our dark globe sighs

after many a vanish’d face,

Many a planet by many a sun may roll

with the dust of a vanish’d race.



II.

Raving politics, never at rest–as this poor

earth’s pale history runs,–

What is it all but a trouble of ants in the

gleam of a million million of suns?



III.

Lies upon this side, lies upon that side,

truthless violence mourn’d by the Wise,

Thousands of voices drowning his own in a

popular torrent of lies upon lies;



IV.

Stately purposes, valour in battle, glorious

annals of army and fleet,

Death for the right cause, death for the wrong cause,

trumpets of vi...

O thou, the wonder of all days!
O paragon, and pearl of praise!
O Virgin-martyr, ever blest
Above the rest
Of all the maiden-train!We come,
And bring fresh strewings to thy tomb.

Thus, thus, and thus, we compass round
Thy harmless and unhaunted ground;
And as we sing thy dirge, we will
The daffodil,
And other flowers, lay upon
The altar of our love, thy stone.

Thou wonder of all maids, liest here,
Of daughters all, the dearest dear;
The eye of virgins; nay, the queen
Of this smooth green,
And all sweet meads, from whence we get
The primrose and the violet.

Too soon, too dear did Jephthah buy,
By thy sad loss, our liberty;
His was the bond and cov'nant, yet
Thou paid'st the debt;
Lamented Maid!he won the day:

        Listen, children:
        Your father is dead.
        From his old coats
        I'll make you little jackets;
        I'll make you little trousers
        From his old pants.
        There'll be in his pockets
        Things he used to put there,
        Keys and pennies
        Covered with tobacco;
        Dan shall have the pennies
        To save in his bank;
        Anne shall have the keys
        To make a pretty noise with.
        Life must go on,
        And the dead be forgotten;
        Life must go on,
        Though good men die;
        Anne, eat your breakfast;
        Dan, take your medicine;
        Life must go on;
        I forget just why.

Day goeth bold in cloth of gold,
A royal bridegroom he;
But Night in jewelled purple walks,
A Queen of Mystery.

Day filleth up his loving-cup
With vintage golden-clear;
But Night her ebon chalice crowns
With wine as pale as Fear.

Day drinks to Life, to ruddy Life,
And holds a kingly feast.
Night drinks to Death; and while she drinks,
Day rises in the East!

They may not meet; they may not greet;
Each keeps a separate way:
Day knoweth not the stars of Night,
Nor Night the Star of Day.

So runs the reign of Other Twain.
Behold! the Preacher saith
Death knoweth not the Light of Life,
Nor Life the Light of Death!

I sit upon the old sea wall,
And watch the shimmering sea,
Where soft and white the moonbeams fall,
Till, in a fantasy,
Some pure white maiden's funeral pall
The strange light seems to me.

The waters break upon the shore
And shiver at my feet,
While I dream old dreams o'er and o'er,
And dim old scenes repeat;
Tho' all have dreamed the same before,
They still seem new and sweet.

The waves still sing the same old song
That knew an elder time;
The breakers' beat is not more strong,
Their music more sublime;
And poets thro' the ages long
Have set these notes to rhyme.

But this shall not deter my lyre,
Nor check my simple strain;
If I have not the old-time fire,
I know the ancient pain:
The hurt of unfulfilled desire,...

Mother, mother! my heart is wild,
    Hold me upon your bosom dear,
Do not frown on your own poor child,
    Death is darkly drawing near.

Mother, mother! the bitter shame
    Eats into my very soul;
And longing love, like a wrapping flame,
    Burns me away without control.

Mother, mother! upon my brow
    The clammy death-sweats coldly rise;
How dim and strange your features grow
    Through the hot mist that veils my eyes!

Mother, mother! sing me the song
    They sing on sunny August eves,
The rustling barley-fields along,
    Binding up the ripe, red sheaves.

Mother, mother!    I do not hear
    Your voice - but his, - oh, guard me well!
His breathing makes me faint with fear,
    His clasping arms are round me still...

They put wild olive and acanthus up
With tufts of yellow wool above the door
When a man died in Greece and in Greek Islands,
        Grey stone by the blue sea,
Or sage-green trees down to the water's edge.
        How many clanging years ago
    I, also withering into death, sat with him,
        Old man of so white hair who only,
    Only looked past me into the red fire.
At last his words were all a jumble of plum-trees
And white boys smelling of the sea's green wine
And practice of his lyre. Suddenly
        The bleak resurgent mind
Called wonderfully clear: "What mark have I left?"
    Crying girls with wine and linen
Washed the straight old body and wrapped up,
        And set the doorward feet.
Later for me also under Greek sun
The pendant lea...

Somebody's baby was buried to-day -
    The empty white hearse from the grave rumbled back,
And the morning somehow seemed less smiling and gay
As I paused on the walk while it crossed on its way,
    And a shadow seemed drawn o'er the sun's golden tract.

Somebody's baby was laid out to rest,
    White as a snowdrop, and fair to behold,
And the soft little hands were crossed over the breast,
And those hands and the lips and the eyelids were pressed
    With kisses as hot as the eyelids were cold.

Somebody saw it go out of her sight,
    Under the coffin lid -out through the door;
Somebody finds only darkness and blight
All through the glory of summer-sun light;
    Somebody's baby will waken no more.

Somebody's sorrow is making me weep:
    I...

Not only on cross and gibbet,
By sword, and fire, and flood,
Have perished the world’s sad martyrs
Whose names are writ in blood.

A woman lay in a hovel,
Mean, dismal, gasping for breath;
One friend alone was beside her,
The name of him was, Death.

For the sake of her orphan children,
For money to buy them food,
She had slaved in the dismal hovel
And wasted her womanhood.

Winter and Spring and Summer
Came each with a load of cares;
And Autumn to her brought only
A harvest of gray hairs.

Far out in the blessèd country,
Beyond the smoky town,
The winds of God were blowing
Evermore up and down;

The trees were waving signals
Of joy from the bush beyond;
The gum its blue-green banner,
The fern its dar...

    As Tam the Chapman on a day,
    Wi' Death forgather'd by the way,
    Weel pleas'd he greets a wight so famous,
    And Death was nae less pleas'd wi' Thomas,
    Wha cheerfully lays down the pack,
    And there blaws up a hearty crack;
    His social, friendly, honest heart,
    Sae tickled Death they could na part:
    Sac after viewing knives and garters,
    Death takes him hame to gie him quarters.

Darkly October; Where the wild fowl fly,
Utters a harsh and melancholy cry;
And slowly closing, far a sunset door,
Day wildly glares upon.the world once more,
Where Twilight, with one star to lamp her by,
Walks with the Wind that haunts the hills and shore.

The Spirit of Autumn, with averted gaze,
Comes slowly down the ragged garden ways;
And where she walks she lays a finger cold
On rose and aster, lily and marigold,
And at her touch they turn, in mute amaze,
And bow their heads, assenting to the cold.

And all around rise phantoms of the flowers,
Scents, ghost-like, gliding from the dripping bowers;
And evermore vague, spectral voices ring
Of Something gone, or Something perishing:
Joy's requiem; hope's tolling of the Hours;
Love's dirge of d...

Be with me, Beauty, for the fire is dying;
My dog and I are old, too old for roving.
Man, whose young passion sets the spindrift flying,
Is soon too lame to march, too cold for loving.
I take the book and gather to the fire,
Turning old yellow leaves; minute by minute
The clock ticks to my heart. A withered wire,
Moves a thiun ghost of music in the spinet.
I cannot sail your seas, I cannot wander
Your cornland, nor your hill-land, nor your valleys
Ever again, nore share the battle yonder
Where the young knight the broken squadron rallies.
Only stay quiet while my mind remembers
The beauty of fire from the beauty of embers.

Beauty, have pity! for the strong have power,
The rich their wealth, the beautiful their grace,
Summer of man its sunlight and its fl...

I’ve sung of Honor’s golden hair
And Hero’s auburn tresses,
Of Bella’s back abundance, where
The sun throws his caresses;
I’ve sung of curl, and coil, and braid;
On meshes I’ve dilated,
Until at last I’m sore afraid
There’s nothing re the hair of maid
That I have left unstated.

‘Twill much relieve the constant strain
Of rhyming to extol her
When on the roof of Sophie’s brain
Appears a bright cupola.
The poet’s verse will freshly run,
Effects will come much faster,
If he may tell the darling one
Her skull is glowing like the sun
And smooth as alabaster.

New stimulus the singer nerves,
When beauty, scorning switches,
Adds to her many swelling curves
A baldness that bewitches.
We’ve sung too many wigs, I swear,
And n...

Quod adest, memento
Componere æquus. Cætera fluminis
Ritu feruntur.—Horace.


Improve the present hour, for all beside
Is a mere feather on a torrent’s tide.


Could I, from heaven inspired, as sure presage
To whom the rising year shall prove his last,
As I can number in my punctual page,
And item down the victims of the past;


How each would trembling wait the mournful sheet,
On which the press might stamp him next to die;
And, reading here his sentence, how replete
With anxious meaning, heavenward turn his eye!


Time then would seem more precious than the joys
In which he sports away the treasure now;
And prayer more seasonable than the noise
Of drunkards, or the music-drawing bow.


Then doubtless man...

    If I should learn, in some quite casual way,
        That you were gone, not to return again--
    Read from the back-page of a paper, say,
        Held by a neighbor in a subway train,
    How at the corner of this avenue
        And such a street (so are the papers filled)
    A hurrying man--who happened to be you--
        At noon to-day had happened to be killed,
    I should not cry aloud--I could not cry
        Aloud, or wring my hands in such a place--
    I should but watch the station lights rush by
        With a more careful interest on my face,
    Or raise my eyes and read with greater care
    Where to store furs and how to treat the hair.

She stood by my side with a queenly air,
Her face it was young and proud and fair;
She held my rose in her hands of snow;
It crimsoned her face with a deeper glow;
The sunlight drooped in her eyes of fire
And quickened my heart to a wild desire;
I envied the rose in her hands so fair,
I envied the flowers that gleamed in her hair.

Ah! many a suitor I knew before
Had knelt at her feet in the days of yore;
And many a lover as foolish as I,
Had proudly boasted to win or die.
She had scorned them all with a careless grace
And a woman's scorn on her beautiful face.
Yet now in the summer I knelt at her feet,
And dreamed a dream that was fair and sweet.

The roses drooped in her gold-brown hair,
And quivered and glowed in the sun-lit air;
The jew...