Death

"The plaint of the wailing Whip-poor-will,
    Who mourns unseen and ceaseless sings
Ever a note of wail and wo,
    Till Morning spreads her rosy wings,
And earth and sky in her glances glow."

                                J. R. Drake.


Why dost thou come at set of sun,
Those pensive words to say?
Why whip poor Will?--What has he done?
And who is Will, I pray?

Why come from yon leaf-shaded hill,
A suppliant at my door?--
Why ask of me to whip poor Will?
And is Will really poor?

If poverty's his crime, let mirth
From his heart be driven:
That is the deadliest sin on earth,
And never is forgiven!

Art Will himself?--It must be so--
I learn it from thy moan,
For none can feel another's wo
As deeply as ...

In the fair days when God
By man as godlike trod,
And each alike was Greek, alike was free,
God’s lightning spared, they said,
Alone the happier head
Whose laurels screened it; fruitless grace for thee,
To whom the high gods gave of right
Their thunders and their laurels and their light.

Sunbeams and bays before
Our master’s servants wore,
For these Apollo left in all men’s lands;
But far from these ere now
And watched with jealous brow
Lay the blind lightnings shut between God’s hands,
And only loosed on slaves and kings
The terror of the tempest of their wings.

Born in those younger years
That shone with storms of spears
And shook in the wind blown from a dead world’s pyre,
When by her back-blown hair
Napoleon caught the fair<...

One leaned on velvet cushions like a queen -
    To see him pass, the hero of an hour,
Whom men called great.    She bowed with languid mien,
    And smiled, and blushed, and knew her beauty's power.

One trailed her tinselled garments through the street,
    And thrust aside the crowd, and found a place
So near, the blooded courser's prancing feet
    Cast sparks of fire upon her painted face.

One took the hot-house blossoms from her breast,
    And tossed them down, as he went riding by,
And blushed rose-red to see them fondly pressed
    To bearded lips, while eye spoke unto eye.

One, bold and hardened with her sinful life,
    Yet shrank and shivered painfully, because
His cruel glance cut keener than a knife,
    The glance of him who made her...

A PICTURE AT FANO.

I.
Dear and great Angel, wouldst thou only leave
That child, when thou hast done with him, for me!
Let me sit all the day here, that when eve
Shall find performed thy special ministry,
And time come for departure, thou, suspending
Thy flight, mayst see another child for tending,
Another still, to quiet and retrieve.

II.
Then I shall feel thee step one step, no more,
From where thou standest now, to where I gaze,
And suddenly my head is covered o’er
With those wings, white above the child who prays
Now on that tomb, and I shall feel thee guarding
Me, out of all the world; for me, discarding
Yon heaven thy home, that waits and opes its door.

III.
I would not look up thither past thy head
Because the door...

Although this land is not my own,
I will remember its inland sea
and the waters that are so cold
the sand as white
as old bones, the pine trees
strangely red where the sun comes down.

I cannot say if it is our love,
or the day, that is ending.

Oh thou token loved of joys now perish'd

That I still wear from my neck suspended,
Art thou stronger than our spirit-bond so cherish'd?

Or canst thou prolong love's days untimely ended?

Lily, I fly from thee! I still am doom'd to range
Thro' countries strange,

Thro' distant vales and woods, link'd on to thee!
Ah, Lily's heart could surely never fall

So soon away from me!

As when a bird bath broken from his thrall,

And seeks the forest green,
Proof of imprisonment he bears behind him,
A morsel of the thread once used to bind him;

The free-born bird of old no more is seen,

For he another's prey bath been.

                GRANDFATHER
T' watter is blue i' t' offin',
    An' blue is t' sky aboon;
Swallows are settin' sou'ard,
    An' wanin' is t' harvist moon.
Ower lang I've bin cowerin' idle
    I' my neuk by t' fire-side;
I'll away yance mair i' my coble,
    I'll away wi' t' ebbin' tide.

                    MALLY
Nay, Gransir, thoo moant gan sailin',
    Thoo mun bide at yam to-neet;
At eighty-two thoo sudn't think
    O' t' Whitby fishin' fleet.
North cone's up on t' flagstaff,
    There's a cap-full o' wind i' t' bay;
T' waves wap loud on t' harbour bar,
    Thoo can hardlins fish to-day.

                GRANDFATHER
It's leansome here i' t' hoose, lass,
    When t' fisher-folk's at sea,
Watchin' yon eldin(1) set i' t' fire...

Late came the God, having sent his forerunners who were not regarded,
Late, but in wrath;
Saying: "The wrong shall be paid, the contempt be rewarded
On all that she hath."
He poisoned the blade and struck home, the full bosom receiving
The wound and the venom in one, past cure or relieving.
He made treaty with Time to stand still that the grief might be fresh,
Daily renewed and nightly pursued through her soul to her flesh,
Mornings of memory, noontides of agony, midnights unslaked for her,
Till the stones of the streets of her Hells and her Paradise ached for her.

So she lived while her body corrupted upon her.
And she called on the Night for a sign, and a Sign was allowed,
And she builded an Altar and served by the light of her Vision,
Alone, without hope of regard o...

An Oyster, cast upon the shore,
Was heard, though never heard before,
Complaining in a speech well worded,
And worthy thus to be recorded:—
Ah, hapless wretch! condemn’d to dwell
For ever in my native shell;
Ordain’d to move when others please,
Not for my own content or ease;
But toss’d and buffeted about,
Now in the water and now out.
‘Twere better to be born a stone,
Of ruder shape, and feeling none,
Than with a tenderness like mine,
And sensibilities so fine!
I envy that unfeeling shrub,
Fast rooted against every rub.
The plant he meant grew not far off,
And felt the sneer with scorn enough:
Was hurt, disgusted, mortified,
And with asperity replied
(When, cry the botanists, and stare,
Did plants call’d sensitive grow there?
No ...

It may have been a fragment of that higher
Truth dreams, at times, disclose;
It may have been to Fond Illusion nigher,
But thus the story goes:

A fierce sun glared upon a gaunt land, stricken
With barrenness and thirst,
Where Nature’s pulse with joy of Spring would quicken
No more; a land accurst.

Gray salt-bush grimmer made the desolation,
Like mocking immortelles
Strewn on the graveyard of a perished nation
Whose name no record tells.

No faintest sign of distant water glimmered
The aching eye to bless;
The far horizon like a sword’s edge shimmered,
Keen, gleaming, pitiless.

And all the long day through the hot air quivered
Beneath a burning sky,
In dazzling dance of heat that flashed and shivered:
It seemed as if...

I

We are old,
Old as song.
Before Rome was
Or Cyrene.
Mad nights knew us
And old men's wives.
We knew who spilled the sacred oil
For young-gold harlots of the town....
We knew where the peacocks went
And the white doe for sacrifice.

II

We were the Sons of Belial.
One black night
Centuries ago
We beat at a door
In Gilead....
We took the Levite's concubine
We plucked her hands from off the door....
We choked the cry into her throat
And stuck the stars among her hair....
We glimpsed the madly swaying stars
Between the rhythms of her hair
And all our mute and separate strings
Swelled in a raging symphony....
Our blood sang paeans
All that night
Till dawn fell like a wounded swan
Upon the...

    Looking like Raphael's Perugino, eyes
    So slightly, subtly aquiline, as brown
    As a buck-eye, amorous, flamed, but lightly dimmed
    Through thought of self while sitting for the artist;
    A nose well bridged with bone for will, the nostrils
    Distended as if sniffing diaphanous fire;
    A very bow for lips, the under lip
    Rich, kissable like a woman's; heavy cheeks
    Propped with a rounded tower of flesh for neck:
    Thus Perugino looked, says Raphael,
    And thus looked Father Whimsett at his desk,
    With vertical creases, where the nose and brow
    Together come, between the eye-brows slanting
    Unequally, half clown-wise, half Mephisto,
    With just a touch of that abandoned humor,
    And laughter at the world, the race of men,

A lady red upon the hill
Her annual secret keeps;
A lady white within the field
In placid lily sleeps!

The tidy breezes with their brooms
Sweep vale, and hill, and tree!
Prithee, my pretty housewives!
Who may expected be?

The neighbors do not yet suspect!
The woods exchange a smile --
Orchard, and buttercup, and bird --
In such a little while!

And yet how still the landscape stands,
How nonchalant the wood,
As if the resurrection
Were nothing very odd!

Twenty bold mariners went to the wave,
Twenty sweet breezes blew over the main;
All were so hearty, so free, and so brave, -
But they never came back again!

Half the wild ocean rose up to the clouds,
Half the broad sky scowled in thunder and rain;
Twenty white crests rose around them like shrouds,
And they stayed in the dancing main!

This is easy to sing, and often to mourn,
And the breaking of dawn is no newer to-day;
But those who die young, or are left forlorn,
Think grief is no older than they!

Nè mai pietosa madre al caro figlio.

HER COUNSEL ALONE AFFORDS HIM RELIEF.


    Ne'er did fond mother to her darling son,
Or zealous spouse to her belovèd mate,
Sage counsel give, in perilous estate,
With such kind caution, in such tender tone,
As gives that fair one, who, oft looking down
On my hard exile from her heavenly seat,
With wonted kindness bends upon my fate
Her brow, as friend or parent would have done:
Now chaste affection prompts her speech, now fear,
Instructive speech, that points what several ways
To seek or shun, while journeying here below;
Then all the ills of life she counts, and prays
My soul ere long may quit this terrene sphere:
And by her words alone I'm soothed and freed from woe.

NOTT.


 ...

'Tis easier far a wreath to bind,
Than a good owner fort to find.
-
I kill'd a thousand flies overnight,
Yet was waken'd by one, as soon as twas light.
-
To the mother I give;
For the daughter I live.
-
A breach is every day,

By many a mortal storm'd;
Let them fall in the gaps as they may,

Yet a heap of dead is ne'er form'd.
-
What harm has thy poor mirror done, alas?
Look not so ugly, prythee, in the glass!

Look not thou on beauty's charming;
Sit thou still when kings are arming;
Taste not when the wine-cup glistens;
Speak not when the people listens;
Stop thine ear against the singer;
From the red gold keep thy finger;
Vacant heart and hand and eye,
Easy live and quiet die.

Reading in my book this cold night,
I have forgotten to go to sleep.
The perfumes have died on the gilded bed-cover;
The last smoke must have left the hearth
When I was not looking.
My beautiful friend snatches away the lamp.
Do you know what the time is?

From the Chinese of Yuan Mei (1715-1797).