Death

Last night I saw Helena. She whose praise
    Of late all men have sounded. She for whom
    Young Angus rashly sought a silent tomb
Rather than live without her all his days.

Wise men go mad who look upon her long,
    She is so ripe with dangers. Yet meanwhile
    I find no fascination in her smile,
Although I make her theme of this poor song.

"Her golden tresses?" yes, they may be fair,
    And yet to me each shining silken tress
    Seems robbed of beauty and all lusterless -
Too many hands have stroked Helena's hair.

(I know a little maiden so demure
    She will not let her one true lover's hands
    In playful fondness touch her soft brown bands,
So dainty-minded is she, and so pure.)

"Her great dark eyes that flash like gems at ...

From the dawn of spring till the year grows hoary,
    Nothing is new that is done or said,
The leaves are telling the same old story -
    "Budding, bursting, dying, dead."
And ever and always the wild bird's chorus
    Is "coming, building, flying, fled."

Never the round earth roams or ranges
    Out of her circuit, so old, so old,
And the smile o' the sun knows but these changes -
    Beaming, burning, tender, cold,
As Spring time softens or Winter estranges
    The mighty heart of this orb of gold.

From our great sire's birth to the last morn's breaking
    There were tempest, sunshine, fruit and frost,
And the sea was calm or the sea was shaking
    His mighty main like a lion crossed,
And ever this cry the heart was making -
    Longing,...

Don told me that he loved me dear
Where down the range Whioola pours;
And when I laughed and would not hear
He flung away to fight the wars.
He flung away, how should he know
My foolish heart was dancin' so?
How should he know that at his word
My soul was trillin' like a bird?

He went out in the cannon smoke.
He did not seek to ask me why.
Again each day my poor heart broke
To see the careless post go by.
I cared not for their Emperors,
For me there was this in the wars;
My brown boy in the shell-clouds dim,
And savage devils killin' him!

They told me on the field he fell,
And far they bore him from the fight,
But he is whole, he will be well
Now in a ward by day and night
A fair, tall nurse with slim, neat hands
By his whi...

A happy vicar I might have been
Two hundred years ago
To preach upon eternal doom
And watch my walnuts grow;

But born, alas, in an evil time,
I missed that pleasant haven,
For the hair has grown on my upper lip
And the clergy are all clean-shaven.

And later still the times were good,
We were so easy to please,
We rocked our troubled thoughts to sleep
On the bosoms of the trees.

All ignorant we dared to own
The joys we now dissemble;
The greenfinch on the apple bough
Could make my enemies tremble.

But girl’s bellies and apricots,
Roach in a shaded stream,
Horses, ducks in flight at dawn,
All these are a dream.

It is forbidden to dream again;
We maim our joys or hide them:
Horses are made of chromium st...

    This is the valley where we sojourn now,
        Cut up by narrow brooks and rich and green
    And shaded sweetly by the waving bough
        About the trench where floats the soft serene
    Arun with waters running low and low
        Through banks where lately still the tide has been;
    Here is our resting-place, you walk with me
    And watch the light die out in Amberley.

    The light that dies is soft and flooding still,
        Shed from the broad expanse of all the skies
    And brimming up the space from hill to hill,
        Where yet the sheep in their sweet exercise,
    Roaming the meadows, crop and find their fill
        And to each other speak with moaning cries;
    We on the hill-side standing rest and see
    The light die out in br...

This girl gave her heart to me,
And this, and this.
This one looked at me as if she loved me,
And silently walked away.
This one I saw once and loved, and never saw her again.
Shall I count them for you upon my fingers?
Or like a priest solemnly sliding beads?
Or pretend they are roses, pale pink, yellow, and white,
And arrange them for you in a wide bowl
To be set in sunlight?
See how nicely it sounds as I count them for you
‘This girl gave her heart to me
And this, and this, . . . !
And nevertheless, my heart breaks when I think of them,
When I think their names,
And how, like leaves, they have changed and blown
And will lie, at last, forgotten,
Under the snow.

There was darkness under Heaven
For an hour's space,
Darkness that we knew was given
Us for special grace.
Sun and moon and stars were hid,
God had left His Throne,
When Helen came to me, she did,
Helen all alone!

Side by side (because our fate
Damned us ere our birth)
We stole out of Limbo Gate
Looking for the Earth.
Hand in pulling hand amid
Fear no dreams have known,
Helen ran with me, she did,
Helen all alone!

When the Horror passing speech
Hunted us along,
Each laid hold on each, and each
Found the other strong.
In the teeth of Things forbid
And Reason overthrown,
Helen stood by me, she did,
Helen all alone!

When, at last, we heard those Fires
Dull and die away,
When, at last, our linked ...

Far down the lane
A window pane
Gleams 'mid the trees through night and rain.
The weeds are dense
Through which a fence
Of pickets rambles, none sees whence,
Before a porch, all indistinct of line,
O'er-grown and matted with wistaria-vine.

No thing is heard,
No beast or bird,
Only the rain by which are stirred
The draining leaves,
And trickling eaves
Of crib and barn one scarce perceives;
And garden-beds where old-time flow'rs hang wet
The phlox, the candytuft, and mignonette.

The hour is late
At any rate
She has not heard him at the gate:
Upon the roof
The rain was proof
Against his horse's galloping hoof:
And when the old gate with its weight and chain
Creaked, she imagined 't was the wind and rain.

A...

How happy they are, in all seeming,
    How gay, or how smilingly proud,
How brightly their faces are beaming,
    These people who make up the crowd!
How they bow, how they bend, how they flutter,
    How they look at each other and smile,
How they glow, and what bon mots they utter!
    But a strange thought has found me the while!

It is odd, but I stand here and fancy
    These people who now play a part,
All forced by some strange necromancy
    To speak, and to act, from the heart.
What a hush would come over the laughter!
    What a silence would fall on the mirth!
And then what a wail would sweep after,
    As the night-wind sweeps over the earth!

If the secrets held under and hidden
    In the intricate hearts of the crowd
Were su...

    When the bright eyes of the day
        Open on the dusk, to see
    Mist and shadow fade away
        And the sun shine merrily,
    Then I leave my bed and run
    Out to frolic in the sun.

    Through the sunny hours I play
        Where the stream is wandering,
    Plucking daisies by the way;
        And I laugh and dance and sing,
    While the birds fly here and there
    Singing on the sunny air.

    When the night comes, cold and slow,
        And the sad moon walks the sky,
    When the whispering wind says "Boh,
        Little boy!" and makes me cry,
    By my mother I am led
    Home again and put to bed.

Dear are the days of youth! Age dwells on their remembrance through the mist of time. In the twilight he recalls the sunny hours of morn. He lifts his spear with trembling hand. "Not thus feebly did I raise the steel before my fathers!" Past is the race of heroes! But their fame rises on the harp; their souls ride on the wings of the wind; they hear the sound through the sighs of the storm, and rejoice in their hall of clouds. Such is Calmar. The grey stone marks his narrow house. He looks down from eddying tempests: he rolls his form in the whirlwind, and hovers on the blast of the mountain.

In Morven dwelt the Chief; a beam of war to Fingal. His steps in the field were marked in blood. Lochlin's sons had fled before his angry spear;    but mild was the eye of Calmar; soft was the flow of his yellow locks: they streamed like t...

Cities and Thrones and Powers
Stand in Time's eye,
Almost as long as flowers,
Which daily die:
But, as new buds put forth
To glad new men,
Out of the spent and unconsidered Earth
The Cities rise again.

This season's Daffodil,
She never hears
What change, what chance, what chill,
Cut down last year's;
But with bold countenance,
And knowledge small,
Esteems her seven days' continuance,
To be perpetual.

So Time that is o'er-kind
To all that be,
Ordains us e'en as blind,
As bold as she:
That in our very death,
And burial sure,
Shadow to shadow, well persuaded, saith,
"See how our works endure!"

The Year's twelve daughters had in turn gone by,
Of measured pace tho' varying mien all twelve,
Some froward, some sedater, some adorn'd
For festival, some reckless of attire.
The snow had left the mountain-top; fresh flowers
Had withered in the meadow; fig and prune
Hung wrinkling; the last apple glow'd amid
Its freckled leaves; and weary oxen blinkt
Between the trodden corn and twisted vine,
Under whose bunches stood the empty crate,
To creak ere long beneath them carried home.
This was the season when twelve months before,
O gentle Hamadryad, true to love!
Thy mansion, thy dim mansion in the wood
Was blasted and laid desolate: but none
Dared violate its precincts, none dared pluck
The moss beneath it, which alone remain'd
Of what was thine.

...

As I watch'd the ploughman ploughing,
Or the sower sowing in the fields--or the harvester harvesting,
I saw there too, O life and death, your analogies:
(Life, life is the tillage, and Death is the harvest according.)

O do not praise my beauty more,
In such word-wild degree,
And say I am one all eyes adore;
For these things harass me!

But do for ever softly say:
"From now unto the end
Come weal, come wanzing, come what may,
Dear, I will be your friend."

I hate my beauty in the glass:
My beauty is not I:
I wear it: none cares whether, alas,
Its wearer live or die!

The inner I O care for, then,
Yea, me and what I am,
And shall be at the gray hour when
My cheek begins to clam.

They sleep well here whom Allah loved and kept
        And treasured in his vineyard fair and fine,
Most lustrous of the Orient pearls that shine,
        Which youth found where the waves of passion swept.
Here, where in peace perpetual they have slept,
        A turban beckons where the roses twine,
A banner flutters out in silken line,
        And sometimes here a Giaour's name is kept.

Oh! roses of this paradise of old,
        The eyes that loved not Allah saw you not,
Nor arms that prayed not eastward could enfold!
        But now a Christian treads this hallowed spot;
Wise Allah, curse not him who bows his head
        Amid the marble shrines of Allah's dead!

De ol' time's gone, de new time's hyeah
Wid all hits fuss an' feddahs;
I done fu'got de joy an' cheah
We knowed all kin's o' weddahs,
I done fu'got each ol'-time hymn
We ust to sing in meetin';
I 's leahned de prah's, so neat an' trim,
De preachah keeps us 'peatin'.

Hang a vine by de chimney side,
An' one by de cabin do';
An' sing a song fu' de day dat died,
De day of long ergo.

My youf, hit's gone, yes, long ergo,
An' yit I ain't a-moanin';
Hit 's fu' somet'ings I ust to know
I set to-night a-honin'.
De pallet on de ol' plank flo',
De rain bar'l und' de eaves,
De live oak 'fo' de cabin do',
Whaih de night dove comes an' grieves.

Hang a vine by de chimney side,
An' one by de cabin do';
An' sing a song fu' de day ...

I

You will not love me, sweet.
When this fair year is past;
Or love now at my feet
At others' feet be cast.
You will not love me, sweet,
When this fair year is past.


II

Now 'tis the Springtide, dear,
The crocus cups hold flame
Brimmed to the pregnant year.
Who crimsons as with shame.
Now 'tis the Springtide, dear,
The crocus cups hold flame.


III

Ah, heart, the Summer's queen,
At her brown throat one rose;
The poppies now are seen
With seed-pods thrust in rows.
Dear heart, the Summer's queen,
At her brown throat one rose.


IV

Now Autumn reigns, a prince
Fierce, gipsy-dark; live gold
Weighs down the fruited quince,
The last chilled violet's told.
The Autu...