Death

I said I stood upon thy grave,
My Mother State, when last the moon
Of blossoms clomb the skies of June.
And, scattering ashes on my head,
I wore, undreaming of relief,
The sackcloth of thy shame and grief.
Again that moon of blossoms shines
On leaf and flower and folded wing,
And thou hast risen with the spring!
Once more thy strong maternal arms
Are round about thy children flung,
A lioness that guards her young!
No threat is on thy closëd lips,
But in thine eye a power to smite
The mad wolf backward from its light.
Southward the baffled robber's track
Henceforth runs only; hereaway,
The fell lycanthrope finds no prey.
Henceforth, within thy sacred gates,
His first low howl shall downward draw
The thunder of thy righteous law.
Not min...

With fifty years between you and your well-kept wedding vow,
The Golden Age, old friends of mine, is not a fable now.

And, sweet as has life's vintage been through all your pleasant past,
Still, as at Cana's marriage-feast, the best wine is the last!

Again before me, with your names, fair Chester's landscape comes,
Its meadows, woods, and ample barns, and quaint, stone-builded homes.

The smooth-shorn vales, the wheaten slopes, the boscage green and soft,
Of which their poet sings so well from towered Cedarcroft.

And lo! from all the country-side come neighbors, kith and kin;
From city, hamlet, farm-house old, the wedding guests come in.

And they who, without scrip or purse, mob-hunted, travel-worn,
In Freedom's age of martyrs came, as victors now return.<...

Survivor sole, and hardly such, of all
That once lived here, thy brethren, at my birth
(Since which I number threescore winters past),
A shatter’d veteran, hollow-trunk’d perhaps,
As now, and with excoriate forks deform,
Relics of ages! could a mind, imbued
With truth from heaven, created thing adore,
I might with reverence kneel, and worship thee.
It seems idolatry with some excuse,
When our forefather druids in their oaks
Imagined sanctity. The conscience, yet
Unpurified by an authentic act
Of amnesty, the meed of blood divine,
Loved not the light, but, gloomy, into gloom
Of thickest shades, like Adam after taste
Of fruit proscribed, as to a refuge, fled.
Thou wast a bauble once, a cup and ball
Which babes might play with; and the thievish jay,
See...

Helen, thy beauty is to me
Like those Nicean barks of yore,
That gently, o’er a perfumed sea,
The weary, wayworn wanderer bore
To his own native shore.

On desperate seas long wont to roam,
Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,
Thy Naiad airs have brought me home
To the glory that was Greece,
To the grandeur that was Rome.

Lo! in yon brilliant window niche,
How statue-like I see thee stand,
The agate lamp within thy hand!
Ah, Psyche, from the regions which
Are Holy Land!

It may be for the world of weeds and tares
And dearth in Nature of sweet Beauty's rose
That oft as Fortune from ten thousand shows
One from the train of Love's true courtiers
Straightway on him who gazes, unawares,
Deep wonder seizes and swift trembling grows,
Reft by that sight of purpose and repose,
Hardly its weight his fainting breast upbears.
Then on the soul from some ancestral place
Floods back remembrance of its heavenly birth,
When, in the light of that serener sphere,
It saw ideal beauty face to face
That through the forms of this our meaner Earth
Shines with a beam less steadfast and less clear.

    Jungle, the cave
    human reservoir & cistern ... .
    quagmire and bog, but no alpine meadow,
    fairest glance of goodness in
    soiled wildflower under winter snows.

    Pebbles into a cesspool,
    our sometime passions alive
    in the outback where honey-fuelled
    ants soothe enemy bones.

    My blood, tempest-whipped,
    ardour drawn to the surface
    fathom marks the depths
    sees a spectacle on the roads
    queues/Carnival & Lent,
    unbridled raw and raging.
    Jesus would have nails.

    Poison darts,
    liana and mangrove sounds
    with footsteps in the distance
    the blow-gun or bolo knife
    attache case / cellular phone ...
    "I'll kick your teeth down
    your throa...

Burn, O evening hearth, and waken
    Pleasant visions, as of old!
Though the house by winds be shaken,
    Safe I keep this room of gold!

Ah, no longer wizard Fancy
    Builds her castles in the air,
Luring me by necromancy
    Up the never-ending stair!

But, instead, she builds me bridges
    Over many a dark ravine,
Where beneath the gusty ridges
    Cataracts dash and roar unseen.

And I cross them, little heeding
    Blast of wind or torrent's roar,
As I follow the receding
    Footsteps that have gone before.

Naught avails the imploring gesture,
    Naught avails the cry of pain!
When I touch the flying vesture,
    'T is the gray robe of the rain.

Baffled I return, and, leaning
    O'er the parapets ...

The Separated Women
Go lying through the land,
For they have plenty dresses,
And money, too, in hand;
They married brutes and drunkards
And blackguards “frightful low”,
But why are they so eager
For all the world to know?

The shamed and ill-used woman
Who really longs to die,
She slaves at home in silence
And hides her poor black eye!
She lives a life of terror
Eased off at times in woe,
But why is she so frightened
That any one might know?

The Separated Woman
She rushes to the court,
Sad, shabby and pathetic,
Or flaunting or distraught;
The real wronged wife would rather
Lose both eyes and her hair,
She swears a lie to save him
When he is taken there.

The Separated Woman
She mostly goes the same,<...

Just at the corner of the wall
    We met yes, he and I -
Who had not faced in camp or hall
    Since we bade home good-bye,
And what once happened came back all -
    Out of those years gone by.

And that strange woman whom we knew
    And loved long dead and gone,
Whose poor half-perished residue,
    Tombless and trod, lay yon!
But at this moment to our view
    Rose like a phantom wan.

And in his fixed face I could see,
    Lit by a lurid shine,
The drama re-enact which she
    Had dyed incarnadine
For us, and more. And doubtless he
    Beheld it too in mine.

A start, as at one slightly known,
    And with an indifferent air
We passed, without a sign being shown
    That, as it real were,
A memory-acted scene ...

Gentlest of critics, does your memory hold
    (I know it does) a record of the days
    When I, a schoolboy, earned your generous praise
For halting verse and stories crudely told?
Over these childish scrawls the years have rolled,
    They might not know the world's unfriendly gaze;
    But still your smile shines down familiar ways,
Touches my words and turns their dross to gold.

More dear to-day than in that vanished time
    Comes your nigh praise to make me proud and strong.
In my poor notes you hear Love's splendid chime,
    So unto you does this, my work belong.
Take, then, a little gift of fragile rhyme:
    Your heart will change it to authentic song.

When through the heat of some long afternoon
In blazing August, on the grass I lie,
And watch the white clouds move across the sky,
On whose azure is faintly etched the moon,
That, when the evening deepens, will be soon
The brightest figure of those hosts on high,
My heart is discontented, and I sigh,
For Autumn and its vapours; till I swoon

Upon the vision of October days
In dreaming London, when each mighty tree
Sheds daily more brown showers through the haze,
Which lends each street Romance and Mystery -
When pallid silver Sunshine only gleams
On that grey Lovers' City of Sweet Dreams.

Isle of Grain, 1916.

Gray mist on the sea,
And the night coming down,
She stays with sorrow
In a far town.

He goes the sea-ways
By channel lights dim,
Her love, a true light,
Watches for him.

They would be wedded
On a fair yesterday,
But the quick regiment
Saw him away.

Gray mist in her eyes
And the night coming down:
He feels a prayer
From a far town.

He goes the sea-ways,
The land lights are dim;
She and an altar light
Keep watch for him.

The moon, a circle of gold,
O'er the crowded housetops rolled,
And peeped in an attic, where,
'Mid sordid things and bare,
A sick child lay and gazed
At a road to the far-away,
A road he followed, mazed,
That grew from a moonbeam-ray,
A road of light that led
From the foot of his garret-bed
Out of that room of hate,
Where Poverty slept by his mate,
Sickness out of the street,
Into a wonderland,
Where a voice called, far and sweet,
"Come, follow our Fairy band!"
A purple shadow, sprinkled
With golden star-dust, twinkled
Suddenly into the room
Out of the winter gloom:
And it wore a face to him
Of a dream he'd dreamed: a form
Of Joy, whose face was dim,
Yet bright with a magic charm.
And the shadow seemed to trail,
Sou...

There was once a town, the inhabitants of which were so passionately fond of poetry, that if some weeks passed by without the appearance of any good new poems, they regarded such a poetic dearth as a public misfortune.

They used at such times to put on their worst clothes, to sprinkle ashes on their heads; and, assembling in crowds in the public squares, to shed tears and bitterly to upbraid the muse who had deserted them.

On one such inauspicious day, the young poet Junius came into a square, thronged with the grieving populace.

With rapid steps he ascended a forum constructed for this purpose, and made signs that he wished to recite a poem.

The lictors at once brandished their fasces. 'Silence! attention!' they shouted loudly, and the crowd was hushed in expectation.

'Friends! Comra...

In the early summer morning
    I stand and watch them come,
The children to the school-house;
    They chatter and laugh and hum.

The little boys with satchels
    Slung round them, and the girls
Each with hers swinging in her hand;
    I love their sunny curls.

I love to see them playing,
    Romping and shouting with glee,
The boys and girls together,
    Simple, fearless, free.

I love to see them marching
    In squads, in file, in line,
Advancing and retreating,
    Tramping, keeping time.

Sometimes a little lad
    With a bright brave face I'll see,
And a wistful yearning wonder
    Comes stealing over me.

For once I too had a darling;
    I dreamed what he should do,
And surely he'd have had, I...

I saw the wild honey-bee kissing a rose
    A wee one, that grows
Down low on the bush, where her sisters above
    Cannot see all that's done
    As the moments roll on.
Nor hear all the whispers and murmurs of love.

They flaunt out their beautiful leaves in the sun,
    And they flirt, every one,
With the wild bees who pass, and the gay butterflies.
    And that wee thing in pink -
    Why, they never once think
That she's won a lover right under their eyes.

It reminded me, Kate, of a time - you know when!
    You were so petite then,
Your dresses were short, and your feet were so small.
    Your sisters, Maud-Belle
    And Madeline - well,
They BOTH set their caps for me, after that ball.

How the blue eyes and black eyes smiled u...

How passing sad!    Listen, it sings again!
    Art thou a spirit, that amongst the boughs,
The livelong day dost chaunt that wond'rous strain
    Making wan Dian stoop her silver brows
Out of the clouds to hear thee?    Who shall say,
Thou lone one! that thy melody is gay,
Let him come listen now to that one note,
    That thou art pouring o'er and o'er again
Through the sweet echoes of thy mellow throat,
    With such a sobbing sound of deep, deep pain,
I prithee cease thy song! for from my heart
Thou hast made memory's bitter waters start,
    And filled my weary eyes with the soul's rain.

I'd a dream last night of my boyhood's days,
And the scenes where my youth was spent;
And I roamed the old woods where the squirrel plays,
Full of frolicsome merriment.
And I walked by the brook, and its silvery tone,
Seemed to soothe me again as of yore;
And I stood by the cottage with moss overgrown
And the woodbine that trailed round the door.

No change could I see in the garden plot,
The flowers bloomed brightly around,
And one little bed of forget-me-not
In its own little corner I found.
The sky had a home-look, the breeze seemed to sigh,
In the strain I remembered so well,
And the little brown sparrows looked cunning and shy,
As though anxious some story to tell.

But as quietness reigned and a loneliness fell,
O'er the place that had onc...