Death

Two lean and hungry mastiffs once espied
A dead ass floating on a water wide.
The distance growing more and more,
Because the wind the carcass bore, -
"My friend," said one, "your eyes are best;
Pray let them on the water rest:
What thing is that I seem to see?
An ox, or horse? what can it be?"
"Hey!" cried his mate; "what matter which,
Provided we could get a flitch?
It doubtless is our lawful prey:
The puzzle is to find some way
To get the prize; for wide the space
To swim, with wind against your face.
Let's drink the flood; our thirsty throats
Will gain the end as well as boats.
The water swallow'd, by and by
We'll have the carcass, high and dry -
Enough to last a week, at least."
Both drank as some do at a feast;
Their breath was quench...

Sometimes, to solace my sad heart, I say,
Though late it be, though lily-time be past,
Though all the summer skies be overcast,
Haply I will go down to her, some day,
And cast my rests of life before her feet,
That she may have her will of me, being so sweet
And none gainsay!

So might she look on me with pitying eyes,
And lay calm hands of healing on my head:
"Because of thy long pains be comforted;
For I, even I, am Love: sad soul, arise!"
So, for her graciousness, I might at last
Gaze on the very face of Love, and hold Him fast
In no disguise.

Haply, I said, she will take pity on me,
Though late I come, long after lily-time,
With burden of waste days and drifted rhyme:
Her kind, calm eyes, down drooping maidenly,
Shall change, gr...

Weary went the old Witch,
Weary of her pack,
She sat her down by the churchyard wall,
And jerked it off her back.

The cord brake, yes, the cord brake,
Just where the dead did lie,
And Charms and Spells and Sorceries
Spilled out beneath the sky.

Weary was the old Witch;
She rested her old eyes
From the lantern-fruited yew trees,
And the scarlet of the skies;

And out the dead came stumbling,
From every rift and crack,
Silent as moss, and plundered
The gaping pack.

They wish them, three times over,
Away they skip full soon:
Bat and Mole and Leveret,
Under the rising moon;

Owl and Newt and Nightjar:
They take their shapes and creep,
Silent as churchyard lichen,
While she squats asleep.

All...

THE DAM BREAKS DOWN, THE ICE-PLAIN GROWLS,
THE FLOODS ARISE, THE WATER HOWLS.

"I'll bear thee, mother, across the swell,

'Tis not yet high, I can wade right well."

"Remember us too! in what danger are we!

Thy fellow-lodger, and children three!

The trembling woman! Thou'rt going away!"

She bears the mother across the spray.

"Quick! haste to the mound, and awhile there wait,

I'll soon return, and all will be straight.

The mound's close by, and safe from the wet;

But take my goat too, my darling pet!"

THE DAM DISSOLVES, THE ICE-PLAIN GROWLS,
THE FLOODS DASH ON, THE WATER HOWLS.

She places the mother safe on the shore;

Fair Susan then turns tow'rd the flood once more.

"Oh whither? ...

You have taken away my cloak,
My cloak of weariness;
Take my coat also,
My many-coloured coat of life....

On this great nursery floor
I had three toys,
A bright and varnished vow,
A Speckled Monster, best of boys,
True friend to me, and more
Beloved and a thing of cost,
My doll painted like life; and now
One is broken and two are lost.

From the Arabic of John Duncan.

You felons on trial in courts;
You convicts in prison-cells, you sentenced assassins, chain’d and hand-cuff’d with iron;
Who am I, too, that I am not on trial, or in prison?
Me, ruthless and devilish as any, that my wrists are not chain’d with iron, or my ankles with iron?

You prostitutes flaunting over the trottoirs, or obscene in your rooms,
Who am I, that I should call you more obscene than myself?

O culpable!
I acknowledge, I exposé!
(O admirers! praise not me! compliment not me! you make me wince,
I see what you do not, I know what you do not.)

Inside these breast-bones I lie smutch’d and choked;
Beneath this face that appears so impassive, hell’s tides continually run;
Lusts and wickedness are acceptable to me;
I walk with delinquents with passionate ...

To stab my youth with desperate knives, to wear
This paltry age's gaudy livery,
To let each base hand filch my treasury,
To mesh my soul within a woman's hair,
And be mere Fortune's lackeyed groom, I swear
I love it not! these things are less to me
Than the thin foam that frets upon the sea,
Less than the thistledown of summer air
Which hath no seed: better to stand aloof
Far from these slanderous fools who mock my life
Knowing me not, better the lowliest roof
Fit for the meanest hind to sojourn in,
Than to go back to that hoarse cave of strife
Where my white soul first kissed the mouth of sin.

With noise of battle and the dust of fray,
Half hid in fog, the gloomy mountain lay;
But Succoth’s watchers, from their outer fields,
Saw fits of flame and gleams of clashing shields;
For, where the yellow river draws its spring,
The hosts of Israel travelled, thundering!
There, beating like the storm that sweeps to sea
Across the reefs of chafing Galilee,
The car of Abner and the sword of Saul
Drave Gaza down Gilboa’s southern wall;
But swift and sure the spears of Ekron flew,
Till peak and slope were drenched with bloody dew.
“Shout, Timnath, shout!” the blazing leaders cried,
And hurled the stone and dashed the stave aside.
“Shout, Timnath, shout! Let Hazor hold the height,
Bend the long bow and break the lords of fight!”

From every hand the swarthy s...

Stretched on the dying Mother's lap, lies dead
Her new-born Babe; dire ending of bright hope!
But Sculpture here, with the divinest scope
Of luminous faith, heavenward hath raised that head
So patiently; and through one hand has spread
A touch so tender for the insensate Child
(Earth's lingering love to parting reconciled,
Brief parting, for the spirit is all but fled)
That we, who contemplate the turns of life
Through this still medium, are consoled and cheered;
Feel with the Mother, think the severed Wife
Is less to be lamented than revered;
And own that Art, triumphant over strife
And pain, hath powers to Eternity endeared.

I shall be satisfied
With the seeing of thy face.
When I awake, wide-eyed,
I shall be satisfied
With what this life did hide,
The one supernal grace!
I shall be satisfied
With the seeing of thy face.



DECEMBER 27, 1879

Every time would have its song
    If the heart were right,
Seeing Love all tender-strong
    Fills the day and night.


Weary drop the hands of Prayer
    Calling out for peace;
Love always and everywhere
    Sings and does not cease.

Fear, the caitiff, through the night
    Silent peers about;
Love comes singing with a light
    And doth cast him out.

Hate and Guile and Wrath and Doubt
    Never try to sing;
If they did, oh, what a rout
    Anguished ea...

        I.

I dreamed last night once more I stood
Knee-deep in purple clover leas;
Your old home glimmered thro' its wood
Of dark and melancholy trees,
Where ev'ry sudden summer breeze
That wantoned o'er the solitude
The water's melody pursued,
And sleepy hummings of the bees.


        II.

And ankle-deep in violet blooms
Methought I saw you standing there,
A lawny light among the glooms,
A crown of sunlight on your hair;
Wild songsters singing every where
Made lightning with their glossy plumes;
About you clung the wild perfumes
And swooned along the shining air.


        III.

And then you called me, and my ears
Grew flattered with the music, led
In fancy back to sweeter years,
Far sweeter y...

(MARCH 31ST, 1909)

    'Tis a sad fate
        To watch the world fighting,
    All that is most fair
        Ruthlessly blighting,
            Blighting, ah! blighting.

    When such a thought cometh
        Let us not pine,
    But gather old friends
        Round the red wine--
            Oh! pour the red wine!

    And there we'll talk
        And warm our wits
    With Eastern fallacies
        Out of old Fitz!
            British old Fitz!

    See him, half statesman--
        Philosopher too--
    Half ancient mariner
        In baggy blue--
            Such baggy blue!

    Whimsical, wistful,
        Haughty, forsooth:
    Indolent always, yet
        Ardent in truth,
          ...

From the depths of the green garden-closes
Where the summer in darkness dozes
Till autumn pluck from his hand
An hour-glass that holds not a sand;
From the maze that a flower-belt encloses
To the stones and sea-grass on the strand
How red was the reign of the roses
Over the rose-crowned land!

The year of the rose is brief;
From the first blade blown to the sheaf,
From the thin green leaf to the gold,
It has time to be sweet and grow old,
To triumph and leave not a leaf
For witness in winter’s sight
How lovers once in the light
Would mix their breath with its breath,
And its spirit was quenched not of night,
As love is subdued not of death.

In the red-rose land not a mile
Of the meadows from stile to stile,
Of the valleys from st...

Decline already -
But that was quick...
Hardly a trace of rising -
I have grown above the whole world.
I have become the complete God
And horribly awake.
And now I must cast away death.
My death is mute
And without images...
Without redemption -

    September 1914, April 1915




    The Winter Soldier.

    I.    TO BE SUNG TO THE TUNE OF HIGH GERMANY

    No more the English girls may go
        To follow with the drum
    But still they flock together
        To see the soldiers come;
    For horse and foot are marching by
        And the bold artillery:
    They're going to the cruel wars
        In Low Germany.

    They're marching down by lane and town
        And they are hot and dry
    But as they marched together
        I heard the soldiers cry:
    "O all of us, both horse and foot
        And the proud artillery,
    We're going to the merry wars
        In Low Germany."

    August, 1914



<...

Through the half-curtained window stole
An Autumn sunset's glow,
As languid on my couch I lay
With pulses weak and low.

And then methought a presence stood,
With shining feet and fair,
Amid the waves of golden light
That rippled through the air,

And laid upon my heaving breast,
With earnest glance and true,
A babe, whose fair and gentle brow
No shade of sorrow knew.

A solemn joy was in my heart,--
Immortal life was given
To Earth, upon her battle-field
To discipline for Heaven.

Soft music thrilled the quiet room,--
An unseen host were nigh,
Who left the infant pilgrim at
The threshold of our sky.

A new, strange love woke in my heart,
Defying all control,
As on the soft air rose and fell
That birt...

In days, my Kate, when life was new,
When, lulled with innocence and you,
I heard, in home's beloved shade,
The din the world at distance made;
When, every night my weary head
Sunk on its own unthorned bed,
And, mild as evening's matron hour,
Looks on the faintly shutting flower,
A mother saw our eyelids close,
And blest them into pure repose;
Then, haply if a week, a day,
I lingered from that home away,
How long the little absence seemed!
How bright the look of welcome beamed,
As mute you heard, with eager smile,
My tales of all that past the while!

Yet now, my Kate, a gloomy sea
Bolls wide between that home and me;
The moon may thrice be born and die,
Ere even that seal can reach mine eye.
Which used so oft, so quick to come,
S...

Young as the youngest who donned the Gray,
    True as the truest that wore it,
Brave as the bravest he marched away,
(Hot tears on the cheeks of his mother lay)
Triumphant waved our flag one day --
    He fell in the front before it.

Firm as the firmest, where duty led,
    He hurried without a falter;
Bold as the boldest he fought and bled,
And the day was won -- but the field was red --
And the blood of his fresh young heart was shed
    On his country's hallowed altar.

On the trampled breast of the battle plain
    Where the foremost ranks had wrestled,
On his pale, pure face not a mark of pain,
(His mother dreams they will meet again)
The fairest form amid all the slain,
    Like a child asleep he nestled.

In the solemn shades ...