Death

(a brief fragment of an extensive projected poem.)


“I could be well content, allowed the use
Of past experience, and the wisdom glean’d
From worn-out follies, now acknowledged such,
To recommence life’s trial, in the hope
Of fewer errors, on a second proof!”
Thus, while grey evening lull’d the wind, and call’d
Fresh odours from the shrubbery at my side,
Taking my lonely winding walk, I mused,
And held accustom’d conference with my heart;
When from within it thus a voice replied:
“Could’st thou in truth? and art thou taught at length
This wisdom, and but this, from all the past?
Is not the pardon of thy long arrear,
Time wasted, violated laws, abuse
Of talents judgment, mercies, better far
Than opportunity vouchsafed to err
With less excuse, an...

What pain, to wake and miss you!
    To wake with a tightened heart,
And mouth reaching forward to kiss you!

This then at last is the dawn, and the bell
    Clanging at the farm! Such bewilderment
Comes with the sight of the room, I cannot tell.

It is raining. Down the half-obscure road
    Four labourers pass with their scythes
Dejectedly; - a huntsman goes by with his load:

A gun, and a bunched-up deer, its four little feet
    Clustered dead. - And this is the dawn
For which I wanted the night to retreat!

As imperceptibly as grief
The summer lapsed away, --
Too imperceptible, at last,
To seem like perfidy.

A quietness distilled,
As twilight long begun,
Or Nature, spending with herself
Sequestered afternoon.

The dusk drew earlier in,
The morning foreign shone, --
A courteous, yet harrowing grace,
As guest who would be gone.

And thus, without a wing,
Or service of a keel,
Our summer made her light escape
Into the beautiful.

In the outskirts of the village
On the river's winding shores
Stand the Occidental plane-trees,
Stand the ancient sycamores.

One long century hath been numbered,
And another half-way told
Since the rustic Irish gleeman
Broke for them the virgin mould.

Deftly set to Celtic music
At his violin's sound they grew,
Through the moonlit eves of summer,
Making Amphion's fable true.

Rise again, thou poor Hugh Tallant!
Pass in erkin green along
With thy eyes brim full of laughter,
And thy mouth as full of song.

Pioneer of Erin's outcasts
With his fiddle and his pack-
Little dreamed the village Saxons
Of the myriads at his back.

How he wrought with spade and fiddle,
Delved by day and sang by night,
With a hand t...

Robert of Sicily, brother of Pope Urbane
And Valmond, Emperor of Allemaine,
Apparelled in magnificent attire,
With retinue of many a knight and squire,
On St. John's eve, at vespers, proudly sat
And heard the priests chant the Magnificat,
And as he listened, o'er and o'er again
Repeated, like a burden or refrain,
He caught the words, "Deposuit potentes
De sede, et exaltavit humiles";
And slowly lifting up his kingly head
He to a learned clerk beside him said,
"What mean these words?"    The clerk made answer meet,
"He has put down the mighty from their seat,
And has exalted them of low degree."
Thereat King Robert muttered scornfully,
"'T is well that such seditious words are sung
Only by priests and in the Latin tongue;
For unto priests and people b...

I.

A King once said of a Prince struck down,
"Taller he seems in death."
And this speech holds truth, for now as then
'Tis after death that we measure men,
And as mists of the past are rolled away
Our heroes, who died in their tattered grey,
Grow "taller" and greater in all their parts
Till they fill our minds as they fill our hearts.
And for those who lament them there's this relief -
That Glory sits by the side of Grief,
Yes, they grow "taller" as the years pass by
And the World learns how they could do and die.


II.

A Nation respects them. The East and West,
The far-off slope of the Golden Coast,
The stricken South and the North agree
That the heroes who died for you and me -
Each valiant man, in his own degree,
Whether...

Dear wife, last midnight while I read
The tomes you so despise,
A specter rose beside the bed
And spoke in this true wise;
"From Canaan's beatific coast
I've come to visit thee,
For I'm Frognall Dibdin's ghost!"
Says Dibdin's ghost to me.

I bade him welcome and we twain
Discussed with buoyant hearts
The various things that appertain
To bibliomaniac arts.
"Since you are fresh from t'other side,
Pray tell me of that host
That treasured books before they died,"
Says I to Dibdin's ghost.

"They've entered into perfect rest,
For in the life they've won
There are no auctions to molest,
No creditors to dun;
Their heavenly rapture has no bounds
Beside that jasper sea--
It is a joy unknown to Lowndes!"
Says Dibdin's ghost t...

I watched a rosebud very long
    Brought on by dew and sun and shower,
    Waiting to see the perfect flower:
Then, when I thought it should be strong,
    It opened at the matin hour
And fell at evensong.

I watched a nest from day to day,
    A green nest full of pleasant shade,
    Wherein three speckled eggs were laid:
But when they should have hatched in May,
    The two old birds had grown afraid
Or tired, and flew away.

Then in my wrath I broke the bough
    That I had tended so with care,
    Hoping its scent should fill the air;
I crushed the eggs, not heeding how
    Their ancient promise had been fair:
I would have vengeance now.

But the dead branch spoke from the sod,
    And the eggs answered me again:
    Bec...

On Christmas Day The Child was born,
On Christmas Day in the morning;--
    --To tread the long way, lone and lorn,
    --To wear the bitter crown of thorn,
    --To break the heart by man's sins torn,
    --To die at last the Death of Scorn.
For this The Child of The Maid was born,
On Christmas Day in the morning.

But that first day when He was born,
Among the cattle and the corn,
The sweet Maid-Mother wondering,
And sweetly, deeply, pondering
The words that in her heart did ring,
Unto her new-born king did sing,--

"My baby, my baby,
My own little son,
Whence come you,
Where go you,
My own little one?
Whence come you?

Ah now, unto me all alone
That wonder of wonders is properly known.
Where go you?
Ah, that...

In all we do, and hear, and see,
Is restless Toil and Vanity;
While yet the rolling earth abides,
Men come and go like Ocean tides;
And ere one generation dies,
Another in its place shall rise.
That sinking soon into the grave,
Others succeed, like wave on wave;
And as they rise, they pass away.
The sun arises every day,
And hastening onward to the west
He nightly sinks but not to rest;
Returning to the eastern skies,
Again to light us he must rise.
And still the restless wind comes forth
Now blowing keenly from the north,
Now from the South, the East, the West;
For ever changing, ne'er at rest.
The fountains, gushing from the hills,
Supply the ever-running rills;
The thirsty rivers drink their store,
And bear it rolling to the shore,<...

    1

    I won't envy the heat this August.
    The fall (English say autumn)
    burrowing like urinating dogs
    thru trees,
    carrying winter woolies
    with sniff of air
    crisscrossing the lion's tamer's
    path I must trod
    when snow hits.

    2
    No, I won't envy searing blasts
    be they inclement
    weather or lost souls
    bargaining with rain.
    Acceptance . . . they say
    is the key
    and the word clangs like chimes
    into my biology, a grandfather clock
    to my own chamber music, a
    little something to cheer and
    serenade the buffeted spirit.

    3
    Think still thoughts in gloomy houses
    when petals cry burst in springtime.
    This is done in prep...

On receiving a basket of sea-mosses.


Thanks for thy gift
Of ocean flowers,
Born where the golden drift
Of the slant sunshine falls
Down the green, tremulous walls
Of water, to the cool, still coral bowers,
Where, under rainbows of perpetual showers,
God's gardens of the deep
His patient angels keep;
Gladdening the dim, strange solitude
With fairest forms and hues, and thus
Forever teaching us
The lesson which the many-colored skies,
The flowers, and leaves, and painted butterflies,
The deer's branched antlers, the gay bird that flings
The tropic sunshine from its golden wings,
The brightness of the human countenance,
Its play of smiles, the magic of a glance,
Forevermore repeat,
In varied tones and sweet,
That beauty...

Deep in the moving depths
        Of yellow wine,
I swore I’d drown your face,
        O love of mine;
All clad in yellow hue,
        So fair to see,
You crouched within my cup
        And laughed at me.

Twice o’er a learned page
        I turned and tossed,
For would I not forget
        The love I lost.
All stern and robed in gloom,
        You read it too,
I could not see the words-
        Saw only you.

Within the hungry chase
        I thought to kill
You, love, who haunted thus
        Without my will,
But in the gentle gaze
        Of fawn and deer,
Your eyes disarmed my hand,
        And shook my spear.

Beneath a maid’s dark lash
        I swore you’d drown,
Sink in the laughing blue-...

Come away with me, Tom,
Term and talk are done;
My poor lads are reaping,
Busy every one.
Curates mind the parish,
Sweepers mind the court;
We'll away to Snowdon
For our ten days' sport;
Fish the August evening
Till the eve is past,
Whoop like boys, at pounders
Fairly played and grassed.
When they cease to dimple,
Lunge, and swerve, and leap,
Then up over Siabod,
Choose our nest, and sleep.
Up a thousand feet, Tom,
Round the lion's head,
Find soft stones to leeward
And make up our bed.
Eat our bread and bacon,
Smoke the pipe of peace,
And, ere we be drowsy,
Give our boots a grease.
Homer's heroes did so,
Why not such as we?
What are sheets and servants?
Superfluity!
Pray for wives and children
Sa...

He is gone on the mountain,
He is lost to the forest,
Like a summer-dried fountain,
When our need was the sorest.
The font, reappearing,
From the rain-drops shall borrow,
But to us comes no cheering,
To Duncan no morrow!

The hand of the reaper
Takes the ears that are hoary,
But the voice of the weeper
Wails manhood in glory.
The autumn winds rushing
Waft the leaves that are searest,
But our flower was in flushing,
When blighting was nearest.

Fleet foot on the corrie,
Sage counsel in cumber,
Red hand in the foray,
How sound is thy slumber!
Like the dew on the mountain,
Like the foam on the river,
Like the bubble on the fountain,
Thou art gone, and for ever!

Days passed and Monte Calvo would not clear
His head from mist; and, as the wind sobbed through
Albano's dripping Ilex avenue,
My dull forebodings in a Peasant's ear
Found casual vent. She said, "Be of good cheer;
Our yesterday's procession did not sue
In vain; the sky will change to sunny blue,
Thanks to our Lady's grace." I smiled to hear,
But not in scorn: the Matron's Faith may lack
The heavenly sanction needed to ensure
Fulfillment; but, we trust, her upward track
Stops not at this low point, nor wants the lure
Of flowers the Virgin without fear may own,
For by her Son's blest hand the seed was sown.

    I was but a half-grown boy,
    You were a girl-child slight.
    Ah, how weary you were!
    You had led in the bullock-fight . . .
    We slew the bullock at length
    With knives and maces of stone.
    And so your feet were torn,
    Your lean arms bruised to the bone.

    Perhaps 'twas the slain beast's blood
    We drank, or a root we ate,
    Or our reveling evening bath
    In the fall by the garden gate,
    But you turned to a witching thing,
    Side-glancing, and frightened me;
    You purred like a panther's cub,
    You sighed like a shell from the sea.

    We knelt.    I caressed your hair
    By the light of the leaping fire:
    Your fierce eyes blinked with smoke,
    Pine-fumes, that enhanced desire.
    ...

    Unaware of its terror,
    And but half aware
    Of the world's beauty near her -
    Of sunlight on the stones,
    And trembling birds in the square,
    Lightly went Madala -
    A rose blown suddenly
    From Spring's gay mouth; part of the Spring was she.
    Warmed to her delicate bones,
    Cool in its linen her skin,
    Her hair up-combed and curled,
    Lightly she flowered on the sin
    And pain of the Spring-struck world.
    Down the street went crazy men,
    The winter misery of their blood
    Budding in new pain
    While beggars whined beside her,
    While the streets' daughters eyed her, -
    Poor flowers that kept midsummer
    With desperate bloom, and thrust
    Stale rose at each newcomer,
    And crime a...