Death

What can I give you, my lord, my lover,
You who have given the world to me,
Showed me the light and the joy that cover
The wild sweet earth and the restless sea?
All that I have are gifts of your giving,
If I gave them again, you would find them old,
And your soul would weary of always living
Before the mirror my life would hold.
What shall I give you, my lord, my lover?
The gift that breaks the heart in me:
I bid you awake at dawn and discover
I have gone my way and left you free.

From the well-springs of Hudson, the sea-cliffs of Maine,
Grave men, sober matrons, you gather again;
And, with hearts warmer grown as your heads grow more cool,
Play over the old game of going to school.

All your strifes and vexations, your whims and complaints,
(You were not saints yourselves, if the children of saints!)
All your petty self-seekings and rivalries done,
Round the dear Alma Mater your hearts beat as one!

How widely soe'er you have strayed from the fold,
Though your "thee" has grown "you," and your drab blue and gold,
To the old friendly speech and the garb's sober form,
Like the heart of Argyle to the tartan, you warm.

But, the first greetings over, you glance round the hall;
Your hearts call the roll, but they answer not all
Through t...

Hence they have borne my Lord; behold! the stone
Is rolled away and my sweet Saviour's gone.
Tell me, white angel, what is now become
Of Him we lately sealed up in this tomb?
Is He, from hence, gone to the shades beneath,
To vanquish hell as here He conquered death?
If so, I'll thither follow without fear,
And live in hell if that my Christ stays there.

Of all the good things whatsoe'er we do,
God is the {ARCHÊ}, and the {TELOS} too.

Hang out our banners on the stately tower
It dawns at last - the long-expected hour I
The steep is climbed, the star-lit summit won,
The builder's task, the artist's labor done;
Before the finished work the herald stands,
And asks the verdict of your lips and hands!

Shall rosy daybreak make us all forget
The golden sun that yester-evening set?
Fair was the fabric doomed to pass away
Ere the last headaches born of New Year's Day;
With blasting breath the fierce destroyer came
And wrapped the victim in his robes of flame;
The pictured sky with redder morning blushed,
With scorching streams the naiad's fountain gushed,
With kindling mountains glowed the funeral pyre,
Forests ablaze and rivers all on fire, -
The scenes dissolved, the shrivelling curtain fell...

A child sits in a sunny place,
Too happy for a smile,
And plays through one long holiday
With balls to roll and pile;
A painted wind-mill by his side
Runs like a merry tune,
But the sails are the four great winds of heaven,
And the balls are the sun and moon.

A staring doll's-house shows to him
Green floors and starry rafter,
And many-coloured graven dolls
Live for his lonely laughter.
The dolls have crowns and aureoles,
Helmets and horns and wings.
For they are the saints and seraphim,
The prophets and the kings.

As indignation mastered grief, my tongue
Spake bitter words; words that did ill agree
With those rich stores of Nature's imagery,
And divine Art, that fast to memory clung
Thy gifts, magnificent Region, ever young
In the sun's eye, and in his sister's sight
How beautiful! how worthy to be sung
In strains of rapture, or subdued delight!
I feign not; witness that unwelcome shock
That followed the first sound of German speech,
Caught the far-winding barrier Alps among.
In that announcement, greeting seemed to mock
Parting; the casual word had power to reach
My heart, and filled that heart with conflict strong.

That day we wandered 'mid the hills, so lone
Clouds are not lonelier, the forest lay
In emerald darkness round us. Many a stone
And gnarly root, gray-mossed, made wild our way:
And many a bird the glimmering light along
Showered the golden bubbles of its song.

Then in the valley, where the brook went by,
Silvering the ledges that it rippled from,
An isolated slip of fallen sky,
Epitomizing heaven in its sum,
An iris bloomed blue, as if, flower-disguised,
The gaze of Spring had there materialized.

I have forgotten many things since then
Much beauty and much happiness and grief;
And toiled and dreamed among my fellow-men,
Rejoicing in the knowledge life is brief.
"'Tis winter now, " so says each barren bough;
And face and hair proclaim 'tis wint...

There was nought in the Valley
But a Tower of Ivory,
Its base enwreathed with red
Flowers that at evening
Caught the sun's crimson
As to Ocean low he sped.

Lucent and lovely
It stood in the morning
Under a trackless hill;
With snows eternal
Muffling its summit,
And silence ineffable.

Sighing of solitude
Winds from the cold heights
Haunted its yellowing stone;
At noon its shadow
Stretched athwart cedars
Whence every bird was flown.

Its stair was broken,
Its starlit walls were
Fretted; its flowers shone
Wide at the portal,
Full-blown and fading,
Their last faint fragrance gone.

And on high in its lantern
A shape of the living
Watched o'er a shoreless sea,
From a Tower rotting
Wit...

"Teach me the wisdom of thy beauty, pray,
That, being thus wise, I may aspire to see
What beauty is, whence, why, and in what way
Immortal, yet how mortal utterly:
For, shrinking loveliness, thy brow of day
Pleads plaintive as a prayer, anemone.

"Teach me wood-wisdom, I am petulant:
Thou hast the wildness of a Dryad's eyes,
The shyness of an Oread's, wild plant: -
Behold the bashful goddess where she lies
Distinctly delicate! - inhabitant
Ambrosial-earthed, star-cousin of the skies.

"Teach me thy wisdom, for, thro' knowing, yet,
When I have drunk dull Lethe till each vein
Thuds full oblivion, I shall not forget; -
For beauty known is beauty; to sustain
Glad memories with life, while mad regret
And sorrow perish, being Lethe slain."

...

    You give no portent of impermanence
    Though before sun goes you are long gone hence,
    Your bright, inherited crown
    Withered and fallen down.

    It seems that your blue immobility
    Has been for ever, and must for ever be.
    Man seems the unstable thing,
    Fevered and hurrying.

    So free of joy, so prodigal of tears,
    Yet he can hold his fevers seventy years,
    Out-wear sun, rain and frost,
    By which you are soon lost.

Ah! know ye not in Israel
A prince is fallen to-day,
A just man, from the ills to come,
In mercy called away!

The Church is clothed in mourning,
Who shall supply her loss?
A standard bearer's quit the field,
A soldier of the cross.

On mission high and holy
He braved the watery main,
And many a faithful heart rejoiced
To welcome him again.

Thrice had the veteran warrior
Nobly forsaken all,
And trod our western wilderness
Obedient to His call,

Whose voice he knew from childhood,
And followed where it led,
For perfect love reigned over him,
And banished fear and dread.

Meekly he journeyed onward,
Unmoved by praise or blame;
The mark was always kept in view,
And steady was his aim.

Unfalte...

There is a shame of nobleness
Confronting sudden pelf, --
A finer shame of ecstasy
Convicted of itself.

A best disgrace a brave man feels,
Acknowledged of the brave, --
One more "Ye Blessed" to be told;
But this involves the grave.

Help for a patriot distressed, a spotless spirit hurt,
Help for an honourable clan sore trampled in the dirt!
From Queenstown Bay to Donegal, oh, listen to my song,
The honourable gentlemen have suffered grievous wrong.

Their noble names were mentioned, oh, the burning black disgrace!,
By a brutal Saxon paper in an Irish shooting-case;
They sat upon it for a year, then steeled their heart to brave it,
And "coruscating innocence" the learned Judges gave it.

Bear witness, Heaven, of that grim crime beneath the surgeon's knife,
The "honourable gentlemen" deplored the loss of life!
Bear witness of those chanting choirs that burke and shirk and snigger,
No man laid hand upon the knife or finger to the trigger!

Cleared in the face of all mankind beneath the winking sk...

IRELAND


When shall we find the spring come in,
And the fragrant air it blows?
And when shall the bounty of summer win
Fairer than fields of Camolin
For the dark little Rose?

Long was the winter, the storms how long!
What flower may live i' the snows!
No bloom shall last under heels of wrong,
If the heart-blood be not deathless strong,
As the dark little Rose.

Sing hers the culture sweeter than rain
That healed old Europe's woes;
Older than bowers of Lille and Louvain
Grew by the Rhine and the towns of Spain
From the dark little Rose.

Leagues in the sunlight never shall fail
While the broad, round ocean flows;
Though never a fleet goes up Kinsale,
See, all the world is within the pale
Of the dark little Rose.

What poets sang in Atlantis? Who can tell
The epics of Atlantis or their names?
The sea hath its own murmurs, and sounds not
The secrets of its silences beneath,
And knows not any cadences enfolded
When the last bubbles of Atlantis broke
Among the quieting of its heaving floor.

O, years and tides and leagues and all their billows
Can alter not man's knowledge of men's hearts -
While trees and rocks and clouds include our being
We know the epics of Atlantis still:
A hero gave himself to lesser men,
Who first misunderstood and murdered him,
And then misunderstood and worshipped him;
A woman was lovely and men fought for her,
Towns burnt for her, and men put men in bondage,
But she put lengthier bondage on them all;
A wanderer toiled among all the isle...

"Mitte sectari ROSA quo locorum
Sera moretur."
--Hor. i. 38.


I had a vacant dwelling--
Where situated, I,
As naught can serve the telling,
Decline to specify;--
Enough 'twas neither haunted,
Entailed, nor out of date;
I put up "Tenant Wanted,"
And left the rest to Fate.

Then, Rose, you passed the window,--
I see you passing yet,--
Ah, what could I within do,
When, Rose, our glances met!
You snared me, Rose, with ribbons,
Your rose-mouth made me thrall,
Brief--briefer far than Gibbon's,
Was my "Decline and Fall."

I heard the summons spoken
That all hear--king and clown:
You smiled--the ice was broken;
You stopped--the bill was down.
How blind we are! It never
Occurred to me to seek
If you had ...

    With kindly thought I'd give, Oh Censorinus,
        Bowls and bronze vases pleasing to each friend;
    Tripods I'd offer, prizes of brave Grecians,
        And not the worst of gifts to you I'd send
    Were I, forsooth, rich in such artist's treasure
        As Scopas and Parrhasius could convey,
    This one in stone, and that in liquid color,
        Skilled here a man, - a god there to portray.
    But mine no power like this, nor does your spirit
        Or your affairs need luxuries so choice.
    Songs we can give, and on the gift set value,
        Songs we can give, and you in songs rejoice.
    Not marble carved with popular inscriptions
        Whereby the spirit and the life return
    After their death unto our upright leaders,
        Nor Hannib...

I.

In the far off sea there is many a sprite,
Who rests by day, but awakes at night.
In hidden caves where monsters creep,
When the sun is high, these spectres sleep:
From the glance of noon, they shrink with dread,
And hide 'mid the bones of the ghastly dead.
Where the surf is hushed, and the light is dull,
In the hollow tube and the whitened skull,
They crouch in fear or in whispers wail,
For the lingering night, and the coming gale.
But at even-tide, when the shore is dim,
And bubbling wreaths with the billows swim,
They rise on the wing of the freshened breeze,
And flit with the wind o'er the rolling seas.


II.

At summer eve, as I sat on the cliff,
I marked a shape like a dusky skiff,
That skimmed the brine, toward the rock...