Death

Oh! ye, enthroned in presidential awe,
To give the song-smit generation law;
Who wield Apollo's delegated rod,
And shake Parnassus with your sovereign nod;
A pensive Pilgrim, worn with base turmoils,
Plebeian cares, and mercenary toils,
Implores your pity, while with footsteps rude,
He dares within the mountain's pale intrude;
For, oh! enchantment through its empire dwells.
And rules the spirit with Lethëan spells;
By hands unseen aërial harps are hung,
And Spring, like Hebe, ever fair and young,
On her broad bosom rears the laughing Loves,
And breathes bland incense through the warbling groves;
Spontaneous, bids unfading blossoms blow,
And nectar'd streams mellifluously flow.

There, while the Muses wanton unconfined,
And wreaths resplendent round t...

    All day the guns belched fire and death
        And filled the hours with gloom;
    The fateful music smote the sky
        In tremulous bars of doom;
    But as the evening stars came forth
        A truce to death and strife,
    There rose from hearts of patriot love
        A tender song of life.

    A song of home and fireside
        Swelled on the evening air,
    And men forgot their battle line,
        Its carnage and dark care;
    The soldier dropp'd his rifle
        And joined the choral song,
    As high above the tide of war
        It swept and pulsed along.

    That night while sleeping where the stars
        Look down upon the Meuse,
    Where Teuton valor coped with Frank,
        Where rained most deadly de...

The house had gone to bring again
To the midnight sky a sunset glow.
Now the chimney was all of the house that stood,
Like a pistil after the petals go.

The barn opposed across the way,
That would have joined the house in flame
Had it been the will of the wind, was left
To bear forsaken the place’s name.

No more it opened with all one end
For teams that came by the stony road
To drum on the floor with scurrying hoofs
And brush the mow with the summer load.

The birds that came to it through the air
At broken windows flew out and in,
Their murmur more like the sigh we sigh
From too much dwelling on what has been.

Yet for them the lilac renewed its leaf,
And the aged elm, though touched with fire;
And the dry pump flung up an awk...

Dread hour! when, upheaved by war's sulphurous blast,
This sweet-visaged Cherub of Parian stone
So far from the holy enclosure was cast,
To couch in this thicket of brambles alone,

To rest where the lizard may bask in the palm
Of his half-open hand pure from blemish or speck;
And the green, gilded snake, without troubling the calm
Of the beautiful countenance, twine round his neck;

Where haply (kind service to Piety due!)
When winter the grove of its mantle bereaves,
Some bird (like our own honoured redbreast) may strew
The desolate Slumberer with moss and with leaves.

Fuentes once harboured the good and the brave,
Nor to her was the dance of soft pleasure unknown;
Her banners for festal enjoyment did wave
While the thrill of her fifes thro' the m...

“Would a man ’scape the rod?”
Rabbi Ben Karshook saith,
“See that he turn to God
The day before his death.”

“Ay could a man enquire
When it shall come!” I say,
The Rabbi’s eye shoots fire
“Then let him turn to-day! “

Quoth a young Sadducee:
“Reader of many rolls,
Is it so certain we
Have, as they tell us, souls?”

“Son, there is no reply!”
The Rabbi bit his beard:
“Certain, a soul have I
We may have none,” he sneer’d.

Thus Karshook, the Hiram’s-Hammer,
The Right-hand Temple-column,
Taught babes in grace their grammar,
And struck the simple, solemn.

Rome, April 27, 1854

Oh! but the bride was lovely,
    Oh! but the scene was bright,
And why was the bridegroom's face as pale
    As his lady's robe of white?

Did you not see beside him
    A guest unasked, unbid?
Who came up the aisle with silent feet
    And gazed at him? he did!

He saw her eyes upon him,
    He felt her icy breath;
And under the bride's warm clinging hand
    There crept the touch of death.

And above the low responses
    There fell upon his ear
A voice forbidding the nuptial banns;
    But no one else could hear.

And when the ring was given,
    And when the prayer was said,
He knew, as he led his bride away,
    That he was not truly wed.

And while they sat at the banquet,
    And mirth flowed like the w...

Is it well with the child? and she answered, it is well.


If earth's weariness for rest is changed,
    Rest on the far off shore,
If earth's sighing's changed for singing
    Psalms of praise for evermore.

And the bed of pain for roaming free,
    Beneath the living trees,
Whose leaves of healing wither not
    In any earthly breeze.

And to mix with those who, robed and crowned,
    Walk by the crystal sea;
To gather with the other lambs
    Beside the Saviour's knee.

We will keenly miss our absent child;
    Lonely tears our loss will tell,
But His voice says, "It is well with her,
    We answer, "It is well."

It is well to know that safely home
    Is this our dearest one;
To know she's with the children fai...

Beside the path, on either hand,
To keep the garden beds,
The rusted iron pickets stand
Thin shafts and pointed heads.

And straight my spirit swooping goes
Across the waves of time
Till I’m a little boy who knows
A fence is made to climb;

And bed and lawn and gloomy space
By thicket overgrown
Are wonderlands where I may trace
The beckoning Unknown.

But O the cruelty that strikes
My elder heart with dread
The writhing form upon the spikes,
The trickled pool of red!

So, every day I pass and see
The fence the urchin scales,
The little boy stands up in me
To curse the iron rails.

Standing alone by the highway side,
Stately, and stalwart, and tempest-tried,
Staunch of body and strong of bough,
Fronting the sky with an honest brow,
King of the forest and field is he -
Yon way side watcher - the old Elm tree.

When kindly Summer, with smile serene,
Drapes branch and bough in her robe of green,
Ever the joyous, wild birds come
And sing 'mid the clustering leaves at home;
Ever the soft winds, to and fro,
Steal through the branches with music low,
And golden sunbeams sparkle and play,
And dance with shadows the livelong day.

Up to his forehead undimmed by time,
The morning sun-ray is first to climb,
With the tender touch of its earliest beam
To break the spell of his dewy dream;
And there the longest, when daylight dies,...

You were a gipsy as you bent
Your dark hair over the black grate.
Hardly the west light above the hill
Showed your shadow, crooked and still.
The bellows hissed, and one bright spark
Deepened the hasty dark.

The bellows hissed, and the old smell
Crept on the air of smoking peat,
And round the spark a bubbling flame
Grew bright and loud. Sweeping the gloom
Lunatic shadows fled and came
Whirling about the room.

Then as you raised your head I saw
In the clear light of the bubbling fire
Your dark hair all lined with the gray
Sprinkled by years and sorrow and pain ...
Till as the bellows idle lay
Shadow swept back again.

Rome! what a scroll of History thine has been;
In the first days thy sword republican
Ruled the whole world for many an age's span:
Then of the peoples wert thou royal Queen,
Till in thy streets the bearded Goth was seen;
And now upon thy walls the breezes fan
(Ah, city crowned by God, discrowned by man!)
The hated flag of red and white and green.
When was thy glory! when in search for power
Thine eagles flew to greet the double sun,
And the wild nations shuddered at thy rod?
Nay, but thy glory tarried for this hour,
When pilgrims kneel before the Holy One,
The prisoned shepherd of the Church of God.

MONTRE MARIO.

    A voice came to me from the night, and said,
    What profit hast thou in thy dreaming
    Of the years that are set
    And the years yet unrisen?
    Hast thou found them tillable lands?
    Is there fruit that thou canst pluck therein,
    Or any harvest to be mown?
    Shalt thou dig aught of gold from the mines of the past,
    Or trade for merchandise
    In the years where all is rotten?
    Are they a sea that will bring thee to any shore,
    Or a desert that vergeth upon aught but the waste?
    Shalt thou drink from the springs that are emptied,
    Or find sustenance in shadows?
    What value hath the future given thee?
    Is there aught in the days yet dark
    That thou canst hold with thy hands?
    Are they a fortress
    That w...

The poet in his cell, unkempt and sick,
who crushes underfoot a manuscript,
measures, with a gaze that horror has inflamed,
the stair of madness where his soul was maimed.

The intoxicating laughter that fills his prison
with the absurd and the strange, swamps his reason.
Doubt surrounds him, and ridiculous fear,
hideous and multiform, circles near.

That genius pent up in a foul sty,
those spectres, those grimaces, the cries,
whirling, in a swarm, about his hair,

that dreamer, whom his lodging’s terrors bare,
such are your emblems, Soul, singer of songs obscure,
whom Reality suffocates behind four walls!

1851-1870

I

Now there was one who came in later days
To play at Emperor: in the dead of night
Stole crown and sceptre, and stood forth to light
In sudden purple.    The dawn's straggling rays
Showed Paris fettered, murmuring in amaze,
With red hands at her throat--a piteous sight.
Then the new Caesar, stricken with affright
At his own daring, shrunk from public gaze

In the Elysee, and had lost the day
But that around him flocked his birds of prey,
Sharp-beaked, voracious, hungry for the deed.
'Twixt hope and fear behold great Caesar hang!
Meanwhile, methinks, a ghostly laughter rang
Through the rotunda of the Invalides.

II

What if the boulevards, at set of sun,
Reddened, but not with sunset's kindly glow?
What if fr...

She is far from the land where her young hero sleeps,
    And lovers are round her, sighing:
But coldly she turns from their gaze, and weeps,
    For her heart in his grave is lying.

She sings the wild song of her dear native plains,
    Every note which he loved awaking;--
Ah! little they think who delight in her strains,
    How the heart of the Minstrel is breaking.

He had lived for his love, for his country he died,
    They were all that to life had entwined him;
Nor soon shall the tears of his country be dried,
    Nor long will his love stay behind him.

Oh! make her a grave where the sunbeams rest,
    When they promise a glorious morrow;
They'll shine o'er her sleep, like a smile from the West,
    From her own loved island of sorrow.

O blackbird! sing me something well:
While all the neighbors shoot thee round,
I keep smooth plats of fruitful ground,
Where thou mayst warble, eat, and dwell.
The espaliers and the standards all
Are thine; the range of lawn and park;
The unnetted black-hearts ripen dark,
All thine, against the garden wall.

Yet, tho’ I spared thee all the spring,
Thy sole delight is, sitting still,
With that gold dagger of thy bill
To fret the summer jenneting.

A golden bill! ths silver tongue,
Cold February loved, is dry;
Plenty corrupts the melody
That made thee famous once when young;

And in the sultry garden-squares,
Now thy flute-notes are changed to coarse,
I hear thee not at all, or hoarse
As when a hawker hawks his wares.

Tak...

Tune - "There'll never be peace."


I.

    Now in her green mantle blythe nature arrays,
    And listens the lambkins that bleat o'er the braes,
    While birds warble welcome in ilka green shaw;
    But to me it's delightless - my Nannie's awa!

II.

    The snaw-drap and primrose our woodlands adorn,
    And violets bathe in the weet o' the morn;
    They pain my sad bosom, sae sweetly they blaw,
    They mind me o' Nannie - and Nanny's awa!

III.

    Thou lav'rock that springs frae the dews of the lawn,
    The shepherd to warn o' the gray-breaking dawn,
    And thou mellow mavis that hails the night fa',
    Give over for pity - my Nannie's awa!

IV.

    Come autumn sae pensive, in yellow and gray...

    If you in the village think that my work was a good one,
    Who closed the saloons and stopped all playing at cards,
    And haled old Daisy Fraser before Justice Arnett,
    In many a crusade to purge the people of sin;
    Why do you let the milliner's daughter Dora,
    And the worthless son of Benjamin Pantier
    Nightly make my grave their unholy pillow?