Death

"Ah, did you once see Shelley plain?" -- Browning.



"Shelley? Oh, yes, I saw him often then,"
The old man said. A dry smile creased his face
With many wrinkles. "That's a great poem, now!
That one of Browning's! Shelley? Shelley plain?
The time that I remember best is this --

A thin mire crept along the rutted ways,
And all the trees were harried by cold rain
That drove a moment fiercely and then ceased,
Falling so slow it hung like a grey mist
Over the school. The walks were like blurred glass.
The buildings reeked with vapor, black and harsh
Against the deepening darkness of the sky;
And each lamp was a hazy yellow moon,
Filling the space about with golden motes,
And making all things larger than they were.
One yellow halo hung above a...

Only a little scrap of blue
    Preserved with loving care,
But earth has not a brilliant hue
    To me more bright and fair.

Strong drink, like a raging demon,
    Laid on my heart his hand,
When my darling joined with others
    The Loyal Legion * band.

But mystic angels called away
    My loved and precious child,
And o'er life's dark and stormy way
    Swept waves of anguish wild.


This badge of the Loyal Legion
    We placed upon her breast,
As she lay in her little coffin
    Taking her last sweet rest.

To wear that badge as a token
    She earnestly did crave,
So we laid it on her bosom
    To wear it in the grave.

Where sorrow would never reach her
    Nor harsh words smite her ear;...

Then, fare thee well, my own dear love,
    This world has now for us
No greater grief, no pain above
    The pain of parting thus,
            Dear love!
    The pain of parting thus.

Had we but known, since first we met,
    Some few short hours of bliss,
We might, in numbering them, forget
    The deep, deep pain of this,
            Dear love!
    The deep, deep pain of this.

But no, alas, we've never seen
    One glimpse of pleasure's ray,
But still there came some cloud between,
    And chased it all away,
            Dear love!
    And chased it all away.

Yet, even could those sad moments last,
    Far dearer to my heart
Were hours of grief, together past,
    Than years of mirth apart,
            Dear lo...

Dear face - bright, glinting hair;
Dear life, whose heart is mine -
The thought of you is prayer,
The love of you divine.

In starlight, or in rain;
In the sunset's shrouded glow;
Ever, with joy or pain,
To you my quick thoughts go

Like winds or clouds, that fleet
Across the hungry space
Between, and find you, sweet,
Where life again wins grace.

Now, as in that once young
Year that so softly drew
My heart to where it clung,
I long for, gladden in you.

And when in the silent hours
I whisper your sacred name,
Like an altar-fire it showers
My blood with fragrant flame!

Perished is all that grieves;
And lo, our old-new joys
Are gathered as in sheaves,
Held in love's equipoise.

Ours is the l...

Unto the portal of the House of Song,
Symbols of wrong and emblems of unrest,
And mottoes of despair and envious jest,
And stony masks of scorn and hate belong.

Who enters here shall feel his soul denied
All welcome: lo! the chiselled form of Love,
That stares in marble on the shrine above
The tomb of Beauty, where he dreamed and died!

Who enters here shall know no poppyflowers
Of Rest, or harp-tones of serene Content;
Only sad ghosts of music and of scent
Shall mock the mind with their remembered powers.

Here must he wait till striving patience carves
His name upon the century-storied floor;
His heart's blood staining one dim pane the more
In Fame's high casement while he sings and starves.

"Say who is he around our mountain winds,
Or ever death has prun'd his wing for flight,
That opes his eyes and covers them at will?"

"I know not who he is, but know thus much
He comes not singly. Do thou ask of him,
For thou art nearer to him, and take heed
Accost him gently, so that he may speak."

Thus on the right two Spirits bending each
Toward the other, talk'd of me, then both
Addressing me, their faces backward lean'd,
And thus the one began: "O soul, who yet
Pent in the body, tendest towards the sky!
For charity, we pray thee' comfort us,
Recounting whence thou com'st, and who thou art:
For thou dost make us at the favour shown thee
Marvel, as at a thing that ne'er hath been."

"There stretches through the midst of Tuscany,"
I stra...

We strolled down by the river side,
My sister Nell and I,
To watch the waters onward glide,
And vessels passing by.

On Nature's floor of lovely green,
Bedecked with flowers of gold,
The purple sassafras as sheen,
Which trumpet vines enfold.

We played our youthful games for hours,
And told our childish tales;
Adorned each brow with fragrant flowers,
And slept 'neath cooling gales.

For I was then but nine years old,
And she was only seven;
Yet joys like ours can ne'er be told--
They savored much of heaven.

Close by the bank, in shady nooks,
The waxen lilies grew;
We called them fish, and with our hooks
To shore full many drew.

With these I made a wreath for Nell.
She was so good and pure,
They seemed to...

I walk down the Valley of Silence --
Down the dim, voiceless valley -- alone!
And I hear not the fall of a footstep
Around me, save God's and my own;
And the hush of my heart is as holy
As hovers where angels have flown!

Long ago was I weary of voices
Whose music my heart could not win;
Long ago was I weary of noises
That fretted my soul with their din;
Long ago was I weary of places
Where I met but the human -- and sin.

I walked in the world with the worldly;
I craved what the world never gave;
And I said:    "In the world each Ideal,
That shines like a star on life's wave,
Is wrecked on the shores of the Real,
And sleeps like a dream in a grave."

And still did I pine for the Perfect,
And still found the False with the True;

I must do as you do? Your way I own
    Is a very good way. And still,
There are sometimes two straight roads to a town,
    One over, one under the hill.

You are treading the safe and the well-worn way,
    That the prudent choose each time;
And you think me reckless and rash to-day,
    Because I prefer to climb.

Your path is the right one, and so is mine.
    We are not like peas in a pod,
Compelled to lie in a certain line,
    Or else be scattered abroad.

'Twere a dull old world, methinks, my friend,
    If we all went just one way;
Yet our paths will meet no doubt at the end,
    Though they lead apart to-day.

You like the shade, and I like the sun;
    You like an even pace,
I like to mix with the crowd and run,
  ...

A picture memory brings to me
I look across the years and see
Myself beside my mother’s knee.

I feel her gentle hand restrain
My selfish moods, and know again
A child’s blind sense of wrong and pain.

But wiser now, a man gray grown,
My childhood’s needs are better known,
My mother’s chastening love I own.

Gray grown, but in our Father’s sight
A child still groping for the light
To read His works and ways aright.

I wait, in His good time to see
That as my mother dealt with me
So with His children dealeth He.

I bow myself beneath His hand
That pain itself was wisely planned
I feel, and partly understand.

The joy that comes in sorrow’s guise,
The sweet pains of self-sacrifice,
I would not have them otherwise...

STANZAS ENCLOSED.


TO MY SHADOW; OR, WHY?--WHAT?--HOW?

Dark comrade of my path! while earth and sky
    Thus wed their charms, in bridal light arrayed,
Why in this bright hour, walkst thou ever nigh;
    Blackening my footsteps, with thy length of shade--
                                Dark comrade, WHY?

Thou mimic Shape that, mid these flowery scenes,
    Glidest beside me o'er each sunny spot,
Saddening them as thou goest--say, what means
    So dark an adjunct to so bright a lot--
                                Grim goblin, WHAT?

Still, as to pluck sweet flowers I bend my brow,
    Thou bendest, too--then risest when I rise;--
Say, mute, mysterious Thing! how is't that thou
    Thus comest between me and those blessed skies--
...

("Murs, ville et port.")

[XXVIII., Aug. 28, 1828.]


    Town, tower,
        Shore, deep,
    Where lower
        Cliff's steep;
    Waves gray,
    Where play
    Winds gay,
        All sleep.

Hark! a sound,
    Far and slight,
Breathes around
    On the night
High and higher,
Nigh and nigher,
Like a fire,
    Roaring, bright.

Now, on 'tis sweeping
    With rattling beat,
Like dwarf imp leaping
    In gallop fleet
He flies, he prances,
In frolic fancies,
On wave-crest dances
    With pattering feet.

Hark, the rising swell,
    With each new burst!
Like the tolling bell
    Of a convent curst;
Like the billowy roar
On a storm-lashed shore, -

It can't be summer, -- that got through;
It 's early yet for spring;
There 's that long town of white to cross
Before the blackbirds sing.

It can't be dying, -- it's too rouge, --
The dead shall go in white.
So sunset shuts my question down
With clasps of chrysolite.

[In spite of Mr. Carlyle's assertion of Schiller's "total deficiency in humor," [12] we think that the following poem suffices to show that he possessed the gift in no ordinary degree, and that if the aims of a genius so essentially earnest had allowed him to indulge it he would have justified the opinion of the experienced Iffland as to his capacities for original comedy.]

Can I, my friend, with thee condole?
Can I conceive the woes that try men,
When late repentance racks the soul
Ensnared into the toils of hymen?
Can I take part in such distress?
Poor martyr, most devoutly, "Yes!"
Thou weep'st because thy spouse has flown
To arms preferred before thine own;
A faithless wife, I grant the curse,
And yet, my friend, it might be worse!
Just hear another's tale of sorro...

A happy day at Whitsuntide,
As soon ’s the zun begun to vall,
We all stroll’d up the steep hill-zide
To Meldon, gret an’ small;
Out where the Castle wall stood high
A-mwoldren to the zunny sky.

An’ there wi’ Jenny took a stroll
Her youngest sister, Poll, so gay,
Bezide John Hind, ah! merry soul,
An’ mid her wedlock fay;
An’ at our zides did play an’ run
My little maid an’ smaller son.

Above the baten mwold upsprung
The driven doust, a-spreaden light,
An’ on the new-leav’d thorn, a-hung,
Wer wool a-quiv’ren white;
An’ corn, a-sheenen bright, did bow,
On slopen Meldon’s zunny brow.

There, down the roofless wall did glow
The zun upon the grassy vloor,
An’ weakly-wandren winds did blow,
Unhinder’d by a door;
An’ smok...

    There lives a goddess in the West,
        An island in death-lonesome seas;
    No towered towns are hers confessed,
        No castled forts and palaces.
    Hers, simple worshipers at best,
        The buds, the birds, the bees.

    And she hath wonder-worlds of song
        So heavenly beautiful, and shed
    So sweetly from her honeyed tongue,
        The savage creatures, it is said,
    Hark marble-still their wilds among,
        And nightingales fall dead.

    I know her not, nor have I known;
        I only feel that she is there;
    For when my heart is most alone
        There broods communion on the air,
    Concedes an influence not its own,
        Miraculously fair.

    Then fain is it to sing and sing,
   ...

    In bloom and bud the bees are busily
        Storing against the winter their sweet hoard
    That shall be rifled ere the autumn be
        Past, or the winter comes with silver sword
    To fright the bees, until the merry round
    Tells them that sweets again are to be found.

    The lusty tide is flowing by in ease,
        Telling of joy along its brimming way;
    Far in its waters is an isle of trees
        Whereto the sun will go at end of day,
    As who in secret place and dear is hid,
    And scarce can rouse him thence tho' he be chid.

    Now justice comes all trouble to repair,
        And cheeks that had been wan are coloured well,
    The untilled moor is comely, and the air
        Hath a great round of song from bird in dell,

'Tis the hour when white-horsed Day
Chases Night her mares away;
When the Gates of Dawn (they say)
Phobus opes:
And I gather that the Queen
May be uniformly seen,
Should the weather be serene,
On the slopes.

When the ploughman, as he goes
Leathern-gaitered o'er the snows,
From his hat and from his nose
Knocks the ice;
And the panes are frosted o'er,
And the lawn is crisp and hoar,
As has been observed before
Once or twice.

When arrayed in breastplate red
Sings the robin, for his bread,
On the elmtree that hath shed
Every leaf;
While, within, the frost benumbs
The still sleepy schoolboy's thumbs,
And in consequence his sums
Come to grief.

But when breakfast-time hath come,
And he's crunching crust a...