Death

In a life where the clocks
Are slow or fast,
It is a pleasant thing
To die together
As we are dying.

From the Japanese of the Wife of Bes-syo Ko-saburo Naga-haru, (sixteenth century).

"Man dieth and wasteth away,
    And where is he?"--Hark! from the skies
I hear a voice answer and say,
    "The spirit of man never dies:
His body, which came from the earth,
    Must mingle again with the sod;
But his soul, which in heaven had birth,
    Returns to the bosom of God."

No terror has death, or the grave,
    To those who believe in the Lord--
We know the Redeemer can save,
    And lean on the faith of his word;
While ashes to ashes, and dust
    We give unto dust, in our gloom,
The light of salvation, we trust,
    Is hung like a lamp in the tomb.

The sky will be burnt as a scroll--
    The earth, wrapped in flames, will expire;
But, freed from all shackles, the soul
    Will rise in the midst of the fire.
Then, ...

It was Thomas O'Daly that roused up young people and scattered them, and since death played on him, may God give him grace. The country is all sorrowful, always talking, since their man of sport died that would win the goal in all parts with his music. The swans on the water are nine times blacker than a blackberry since the man died from us that had pleasantness on the top of his fingers. His two grey eyes were like the dew of the morning    that lies on the grass. And since he was laid in the grave, the cold is getting the upper hand.

If you travel the five provinces, you would not find his equal for countenance or behaviour, for his equal never walked on land or grass. High King of Nature, you who have all powers in yourself, he that wasn't narrow-hearted, give him shelter in heaven for it!

He was the beautiful br...

Came the dread Archer up yonder lawn -
    Night is the time for the old to die -
But woe for an arrow that smote the fawn,
    When the hind that was sick unscathed went by.

Father lay moaning, "Her fault was sore
    (Night is the time when the old must die),
Yet, ah to bless her, my child, once more,
    For heart is failing: the end is nigh."

"Daughter, my daughter, my girl," I cried
    (Night is the time for the old to die),
"Woe for the wish if till morn ye bide" -
    Dark was the welkin and wild the sky.

Heavily plunged from the roof the snow -
    (Night is the time when the old will die),
She answered, "My mother, 'tis well, I go."
    Sparkled the north star, the wrack flew high.

First at his head, and last at his feet
...

Pensive, on her dead gazing, I heard the Mother of All,
Desperate, on the torn bodies, on the forms covering the battle-fields gazing;
(As the last gun ceased but the scent of the powder-smoke linger'd;)
As she call'd to her earth with mournful voice while she stalk'd:
Absorb them well, O my earth, she cried I charge you, lose not my sons! lose not an atom;
And you streams, absorb them well, taking their dear blood;
And you local spots, and you airs that swim above lightly,
And all you essences of soil and growth and you, my rivers' depths;
And you, mountain sides and the woods where my dear children's blood, trickling, redden'd;
And you trees, down in your roots, to bequeath to all future trees,
My dead absorb my young men's beautiful bodies absorb and their precious, precious, precious b...

I.

O Dark-Eyed goddess of the marble brow,
Whose look is silence and whose touch is night,
Who walkest lonely through the world, O thou,
Who sittest lonely with Life's blown-out light;
Who in the hollow hours of night's noon
Criest like some lost child;
Whose anguish-fevered eyeballs seek the moon
To cool their pulses wild.
Thou who dost bend to kiss Joy's sister cheek,
Turning its rose to alabaster; yea,
Thou who art terrible and mad and meek,
Why in my heart art thou enshrined to-day?
O Sorrow say, O say!

II.

Now Spring is here and all the world is white,
I will go forth, and where the forest robes
Itself in green, and every hill and height
Crowns its fair head with blossoms, spirit globes
Of hyacinth and crocus dashed with d...

We stood by the window and hearkened
To the voice of the runnels sea-driven,
While, northward, the mountain-heads darkened,
Girt round with the clamours of heaven.
One peak with the storm at his portal
Loomed out to the left of his brothers:
Sustained, and sublime, and immortal,
A king, and the lord of the others!
Beneath him a cry from the surges
Rang shrill, like a clarion calling;
And about him, the wind of the gorges
Went falling, and rising, and falling.
But I, as the roofs of the thunder
Were cloven with manifold fires,
Turned back from the wail and the wonder,
And dreamed of old days and desires.
A song that was made, I remembered
A song that was made in the gloaming
Of suns which are sunken and numbered
With times that my heart hath no h...

I hear the Shadowy Horses, their long manes a-shake,
Their hoofs heavy with tumult, their eyes glimmering
white;
The North unfolds above them clinging, creeping
night,
The East her hidden joy before the morning break,
The West weeps in pale dew and sighs passing away,
The South is pouring down roses of crimson fire:
O vanity of Sleep, Hope, Dream, endless Desire,
The Horses of Disaster plunge in the heavy clay:
Beloved, let your eyes half close, and your heart beat
Over my heart, and your hair fall over my breast,
Drowning love's lonely hour in deep twilight of rest,
And hiding their tossing manes and their tumultuous
feet.

In the great ship Life we speed along,
    With sails and pennons spread.
And tethered, beside the great ship, glide
    The mystic boats for the dead.

Over the deck of the ship of Life
    Our loved and lost we lower.
And calm and steady, his small boat ready,
    Death silently sits at the oar.

He rows our dead away from our sight -
    Away from our hearing or ken.
We call and cry for a last good-bye,
    But they never come back again.

The ship of Life bounds on and on;
    The river of Time runs fast;
And yet more swift our dear dead drift
    For ever back into the Past.

We do not forget those loved and lost,
    But they fade away like a dream:
As we hurry along on the current strong
    Of Time's great turbulent s...

Cloudy argosies are drifting down into the purple dark,
And the long low amber reaches, lying on the horizon's mark,
Shape themselves into the gateways, dim and wonderful unfurled,
Gateways leading through' the sunset, out into the underworld.

How my spirit vainly flutters, like a bird that beats the bars,
To be launched upon that ocean, with its tides of throbbing stars,
To be gone beyond the sunset, and the day's revolving zone,
Out into the primal darkness, and the world of the unknown!

Hints and guesses of its grandeur, broken shadows, sudden gleams,
Like a falling star shoot past me, quenched within a sea of dreams,--
But the unimagined glory lying in the dark beyond,
Is to these as morn to midnight, or as silence is to sound.

Sweeter than the trees of Eden...

Say, dearest Villiers, poor departed friend,
(Since fleeting life thus suddenly must end)
Say, what did all thy busy hopes avail,
That anxious thou from pole to pole didst sail,
Ere on thy chin the springing beard began
To spread a doubtful down and promise man?
What profited thy thoughts, and toils, and cares
In vigour more confirmed and riper years,
To wake ere morning-dawn to loud alarms,
And march till close of night in heavy arms,
To scorn the summer's suns and winter's snows,
And search through every clime thy country's foes?
That thou might'st Fortune to thy side engage,
That gentle Peace might quell Bellona's rage,
And Anna's bounty crown her soldier's hoary age?

In vain we think that free-will'd man has power
To hasten or protract th' appointed ...

Serene descent, as a red leaf's descending
When there is neither wind nor noise of rain,
But only autum air and the unending
Drawing of all things to the earth again.

So be it, let the snow fall deep and cover
All that was drunken once with light and air.
The earth will not regret her tireless lover,
Nor he awake to know she does not care.

I know, although when looks meet
I tremble to the bone,
The more I leave the door unlatched
The sooner love is gone,
For love is but a skein unwound
Between the dark and dawn.

A lonely ghost the ghost is
That to God shall come;
I - love's skein upon the ground,
My body in the tomb -
Shall leap into the light lost
In my mother's womb.

But were I left to lie alone
In an empty bed,
The skein so bound us ghost to ghost
When he turned his head
passing on the road that night,
Mine must walk when dead.

    It is no winter night comes down
        Upon our hearts, dear friends of old;
    But a May evening, softly brown,
        Whose wind is rather cold.

    We are not, like yon sad-eyed West,
        Phantoms that brood o'er Time's dust-hoard,
    We are like yon Moon--in mourning drest,
        But gazing on her lord.

    Come nearer to the hearth, sweet friends,
        Draw nigher, closer, hand and chair;
    Ours is a love that never ends,
        For God is dearest there!

    We will not talk about the past,
        We will not ponder ancient pain;
    Those are but deep foundations cast
        For peaks of soaring gain!

    We, waiting Dead, will warm our bones
        At our poor smouldering earthly fire;
    And ta...

How many of my selves are dead?
    The ghosts of many haunt me: Lo,
The baby in the tiny bed
With rockers on, is blanketed
    And sleeping in the long ago;
And so I ask, with shaking head,
How many of my selves are dead?

A little face with drowsy eyes
    And lisping lips comes mistily
From out the faded past, and tries
The prayers a mother breathed with sighs
    Of anxious care in teaching me;
But face and form and prayers have fled -
How many of my selves are dead?

The little naked feet that slipped
    In truant paths, and led the way
Through dead'ning pasture-lands, and tripped
O'er tangled poison-vines, and dipped
    In streams forbidden - where are they?
In vain I listen for their tread -
How many of my selves are dead...

There never was a valley without a faded flower,
There never was a heaven without some little cloud;
The face of day may flash with light in any morning hour,
But evening soon shall come with her shadow-woven shroud.

There never was a river without its mists of gray,
There never was a forest without its fallen leaf;
And joy may walk beside us down the windings of our way,
When, lo! there sounds a footstep, and we meet the face of grief.

There never was a seashore without its drifting wreck,
There never was an ocean without its moaning wave;
And the golden gleams of glory the summer sky that fleck,
Shine where dead stars are sleeping in their azure-mantled grave.

There never was a streamlet, however crystal clear,
Without a shadow resting in the ripples of i...

    The day is dead,
And evening trails her purple robes
    In fading fires of red.

    The day is dead.
And yonder lily welcomes sleep
    And nods her weary head.

    The day is dead,
And night droops low her sable plumes
    To mourn the glory fled.

So passes silent o'er the dead thy shade,
Brief Time; and hour by hour, and day by day,
The pleasing pictures of the present fade,
And like a summer vapour steal away!

And have not they, who here forgotten lie
(Say, hoary chronicler of ages past!)
Once marked thy shadow with delighted eye,
Nor thought it fled, how certain, and how fast!

Since thou hast stood, and thus thy vigil kept,
Noting each hour, o'er mouldering stones beneath;
The pastor and his flock alike have slept,
And dust to dust proclaimed the stride of death.

Another race succeeds, and counts the hour,
Careless alike; the hour still seems to smile,
As hope, and youth, and life, were in our power;
So smiling and so perishing the while.

I heard the village bells, with gladso...