Death

    Well for youth to seek the strong,
        Beautiful, and brave!
    We, the old, who walk along
        Gently to the grave,
    Only pay our court to thee,
    Child of all Eternity!

    We are old who once were young,
        And we grow more old;
    Songs we are that have been sung,
        Tales that have been told;
    Yellow leaves, wind-blown to thee,
    Childhood of Eternity!

    If we come too sudden near,
        Lo, Earth's infant cries,
    For our faces wan and drear
        Have such withered eyes!
    Thou, Heaven's child, turn'st not away
    From the wrinkled ones who pray!

    Smile upon us with thy mouth
        And thine eyes of grace;
    On our cold north breathe thy south.
        Thaw th...

When you shall see me in the toils of Time,
My lauded beauties carried off from me,
My eyes no longer stars as in their prime,
My name forgot of Maiden Fair and Free;

When in your being heart concedes to mind,
And judgment, though you scarce its process know,
Recalls the excellencies I once enshrined,
And you are irked that they have withered so:

Remembering that with me lies not the blame,
That Sportsman Time but rears his brood to kill,
Knowing me in my soul the very same -
One who would die to spare you touch of ill! -
Will you not grant to old affection's claim
The hand of friendship down Life's sunless hill?

1866.

1.

Those flaxen locks, those eyes of blue
Bright as thy mother's in their hue;
Those rosy lips, whose dimples play
And smile to steal the heart away,
Recall a scene of former joy,
And touch thy father's heart, my Boy!


2.

And thou canst lisp a father's name -
Ah, William, were thine own the same, -
No self-reproach - but, let me cease -
My care for thee shall purchase peace;
Thy mother's shade shall smile in joy,
And pardon all the past, my Boy!


3.

Her lowly grave the turf has prest,
And thou hast known a stranger's breast;
Derision sneers upon thy birth,
And yields thee scarce a name on earth;
Yet shall not these one hope destroy, -
A Father's heart is thine, my Boy!


4.

W...

Or ever the knightly years were gone
With the old world to the grave,
I was a King in Babylon
And you were a Christian Slave.

I saw, I took, I cast you by,
I bent and broke your pride.
You loved me well, or I heard them lie,
But your longing was denied.
Surely I knew that by and by
You cursed your gods and died.

And a myriad suns have set and shone
Since then upon the grave
Decreed by the King in Babylon
To her that had been his Slave.

The pride I trampled is now my scathe,
For it tramples me again.
The old resentment lasts like death,
For you love, yet you refrain.
I break my heart on your hard unfaith,
And I break my heart in vain.

Yet not for an hour do I wish undone
The deed beyond the grave,
When I was...

I am the word that lovers leave unsaid,
    The eloquence of ardent lips grown mute,
The mourning mother's heart-cry for her dead,
    The flower of faith that grows to unseen fruit.

I am the speech of prophets when their eyes
    Behold some splendid vision of the soul;
The song of morning stars, the hills' replies,
    The far call of the immaterial pole.

And, since I must be mateless, I shall win
    One boon beyond the meed of common clay:
My life shall end where other lives begin,
    And live when other lives have passed away.

Others, I am not the first,
Have willed more mischief than they durst:
If in the breathless night I too
Shiver now, 'tis nothing new.

More than I, if truth were told,
Have stood and sweated hot and cold,
And through their reins in ice and fire
Fear contended with desire.

Agued once like me were they,
But I like them shall win my way
Lastly to the bed of mould
Where there's neither heat nor cold.

But from my grave across my brow
Plays no wind of healing now,
And fire and ice within me fight
Beneath the suffocating night.

One neet aw went hooam, what time aw can't tell,
But it must ha been lat, for awd th' street to mysel.
Furst one clock, then t'other, kept ringin aght chimes,
Aw wor gaumless, a chap will get gaumless sometimes.
Thinks aw - tha'll drop in for't to-neet lad, tha will!
But aw oppen'd th' haase door an aw heeard all wor still;
Soa aw ventured o' tip toe to creep up to bed,
Thinkin th' less aw disturbed her an th' less wod be sed.
When awd just getten ready to bob under th' clooas,
Aw bethowt me aw hadn't barred th' gate an lockt th' doors;
Soa daan stairs aw crept ommost holdin mi breeath,
An ivverything raand mi wor silent as deeath.
When aw stept aght oth door summat must ha been wrang,
For it shut ov itsen wi a terrible bang;
It wor lucky aw cleared it withaat gettin hu...

The night was dark and dreary,
    And the autumn-wind went by
With a sound like Sorrow's wailing
    In its sadly mournful cry; -
The yew trees, old and drooping,
    Shook in the angry blast,
And the moon looked, pale and tearful,
    Through the clouds that hurried past.

In a dreary room and fireless,
    With mouldy walls and damp,
A grey, old man was seated
    Beside a flickering lamp; -
An old man, worn and wasted,
    With bent and shivering form,
And haggard looks, sat trembling
    At the moaning of the storm.

The casements, old and creaking,
    Shook in the angry blast;
And the pale, thin face grew paler,
    As the shrieking winds went past;
For hovering fiends seemed clutching
    His treasures from his grasp,...

Hast thou from the caves of Golconda, a gem
Pure as the ice-drop that froze on the mountain?
Bright as the humming-bird's green diadem,
When it flutters in sun-beams that shine through a fountain?

Hast thou a goblet for dark sparkling wine?
That goblet right heavy, and massy, and gold?
And splendidly mark'd with the story divine
Of Armida the fair, and Rinaldo the bold?

Hast thou a steed with a mane richly flowing?
Hast thou a sword that thine enemy's smart is?
Hast thou a trumpet rich melodies blowing?
And wear'st thou the shield of the fam’d Britomartis?

What is it that hangs from thy shoulder, so brave,
Embroidered with many a spring peering flower?
Is it a scarf that thy fair lady gave?
And hastest thou now to that fair lady's bower?

Here down this very way,
Here only yesterday
King Faun went leaping.
He sang, with careless shout
Hurling his name about;
He sang, with oaken stock
His steps from rock to rock
In safety keeping,
    "Here Faun is free,
    Here Faun is free!"

Today against yon pine,
Forlorn yet still divine,
King Faun leant weeping.
"They drank my holy brook,
My strawberries they took,
My private path they trod."
Loud wept the desolate God,
Scorn on scorn heaping,
"Faun, what is he,
Faun, what is he?"

Streams ever limpid, fresh, and clear,
Where Delia's charms renew'd appear,
Ye flow'rs that touch'd her snowy breast,
Ye trees whereon she lov'd to rest,
Ye scenes adorn'd where'er she flies,
If grief shall close these woe-worn eyes,
May some kind form, with hand benign,
My body with this earth enshrine,
That, when the fairest nymph shall deign
To visit this delightful plain,
That, when she views my silent shade,
And marks the change her love has made,
The tear may tremble down her face,
As show'rs the lily's leaves embrace;
Then, like the infant at the breast,
That feels a sorrow unexprest,
That pang shall gentle Delia know,
And silent treasure up her woe.

Alone they walked - their fingers knit together,
And swaying listlessly as might a swing
Wherein Dan Cupid dangled in the weather
Of some sun-flooded afternoon of Spring.

Within the clover-fields the tickled cricket
Laughed lightly as they loitered down the lane,
And from the covert of the hazel-thicket
The squirrel peeped and laughed at them again.

The bumble-bee that tipped the lily-vases
Along the road-side in the shadows dim,
Went following the blossoms of their faces
As though their sweets must needs be shared with him.

Between the pasture bars the wondering cattle
Stared wistfully, and from their mellow bells
Shook out a welcoming whose dreamy rattle
Fell swooningly away in faint farewells.

And though at last the gloom of night fe...

It is moonlight. Alone in the silence
I ascend my stairs once more,
While waves, remote in a pale blue starlight,
Crash on a white sand shore.
It is moonlight. The garden is silent.
I stand in my room alone.
Across my wall, from the far-off moon,
A rain of fire is thrown . . .
There are houses hanging above the stars,
And stars hung under a sea:
And a wind from the long blue vault of time
Waves my curtain for me . . .
I wait in the dark once more,
Swung between space and space:
Before my mirror I lift my hands
And face my remembered face.
Is it I who stand in a question here,
Asking to know my name? . . .
It is I, yet I know not whither I go,
Nor why, nor whence I came.
It is I, who awoke at dawn
And arose and descended the stair,

LEUCONOE, cease presumptuous to inquire
    Of grave Diviner, if successive years
Onward shall roll, ere yet the funeral pyre,
    For thee and me, the hand of Friendship rears!
Ah rather meet, with gay and vacant brow,
Whatever youth, and time, health, love, and fate allow;

If many winters on the naked trees
    Drop in our sight the paly wreaths of frost,
Or this for us the last, that from the seas
    Hurls the loud flood on the resounding coast. -
Short since thou know'st the longest vital line,
Nurse the near hope, and pour the rosy wine.

E'en while we speak our swiftly-passing Youth
    Stretches its wing to cold Oblivion's shore;
Then shall the Future terrify, or sooth,
    Whose secrets no vain foresight can explore?
Th...

What do they matter, our headlong hates, when we take the toll of our Dead?
Think ye our glory and gain will pay for the torrent of blood we have shed?
By the cheers of our Victory will the heart of the mother be comforted?

If by the Victory all we mean is a broken and brooding foe;
Is the pomp and power of a glitt'ring hour, and a truce for an age or so:
By the clay-cold hand on the broken blade we have smitten a bootless blow!

If by the Triumph we only prove that the sword we sheathe is bright;
That justice and truth and love endure; that freedom's throned on the height;
That the feebler folks shall be unafraid; that Might shall never be Right;

If this be all: by the blood-drenched plains, by the havoc of fire and fear,
By the rending roar of the War of Wars, by the Dea...

Some things are good on Autumn nights,
When with the storm the forest fights,
And in the room the heaped hearth lights
    Old-fashioned press and rafter:
Plump chestnuts hissing in the heat,
A mug of cider, sharp and sweet,
And at your side a face petite,
    With lips of laughter.

Upon the roof the rolling rain,
And tapping at the window-pane,
The wind that seems a witch's cane
    That summons spells together:
A hand within your own awhile;
A mouth reflecting back your smile;
And eyes, two stars, whose beams exile
    All thoughts of weather.

And, while the wind lulls, still to sit
And watch her fire-lit needles flit
A-knitting, and to feel her knit
    Your very heartstrings in it:
Then, when the old clock ticks 't...