Death

FROM 'REJECTED ADDRESSES.'



Balmy Zephyrs, lightly flitting,
Shade me with your azure wing;
On Parnassus' summit sitting,
Aid me, Clio, while I sing.

Softly slept the dome of Drury
O'er the empyreal crest,
When Alecto's sister-fury
Softly slumb'ring sunk to rest.

Lo! from Lemnos limping lamely,
Lags the lowly Lord of Fire,
Cytherea yielding tamely
To the Cyclops dark and dire.

Clouds of amber, dreams of gladness,
Dulcet joys and sports of youth,
Soon must yield to haughty sadness;
Mercy holds the veil to Truth.

See Erostratas the second
Fires again Diana's fane;
By the Fates from Orcus beckon'd,
Clouds envelop Drury Lane.

Where is Cupid's crimson motion?
Billowy ecstasy of woe,
B...

    Dream not of love, to think it like
    What waking love may prove to be,
    For I dreamed so and broke my heart,
    When my false lover slighted me.

    Love, like to flowers, is sweet when green;
    The rose in bud aye best appears;
    And she that loves a handsome man
    Should have more wit than she has years.

    I put my finger in a bush,
    Thinking the sweeter rose to find;
    I pricked my finger to the bone,
    And left the sweetest rose behind.

    I threw a stone into the sea,
    And deep it sunk into the sand,
    And so did my poor heart in me
    When my false lover left the land.

    I watched the sun an hour too soon
    Set into clouds behind the town;
    So my false lover left, and said
   ...

Often, to amuse themselves, the crew of the ship
Would fell an albatross, the largest of sea birds,
Indolent companions of their trip
As they slide across the deep sea's bitters.

Scarcely had they dropped to the plank
Than these blue kings, maladroit and ashamed
Let their great white wings sink
Like an oar dragging under the water's plane.

The winged visitor, so awkward and weak!
So recently beautiful, now comic and ugly!
One sailor grinds a pipe into his beak,
Another, limping, mimics the infirm bird that once could fly.

The poet is like the prince of the clouds
Who haunts the storm and laughs at lightning.
He's exiled to the ground and its hooting crowds;
His giant wings prevent him from walking.

From the french of the Vidame de Chartres.
12--?


When the fields catch flower
And the underwood is green,
And from bower unto bower
The songs of the birds begin,
I sing with sighing between.
When I laugh and sing,
I am heavy at heart for my sin;
I am sad in the spring
For my love that I shall not win,
For a foolish thing.

This profit I have of my woe,
That I know, as I sing,
I know he will needs have it so
Who is master and king,
Who is lord of the spirit of spring.
I will serve her and will not spare
Till her pity awake
Who is good, who is pure, who is fair,
Even her for whose sake
Love hath ta’en me and slain unaware.

O my lord, O Love,
I have laid my life at thy feet;
Have thy will there...

    In the last spring I ever knew,
    In those last days, I sat in the forsaken orchard
    Where beyond fields of greenery shimmered
    The hills at Miller's Ford;
    Just to muse on the apple tree
    With its ruined trunk and blasted branches,
    And shoots of green whose delicate blossoms
    Were sprinkled over the skeleton tangle,
    Never to grow in fruit.
    And there was I with my spirit girded
    By the flesh half dead, the senses numb
    Yet thinking of youth and the earth in youth, -
    Such phantom blossoms palely shining
    Over the lifeless boughs of Time.
    O earth that leaves us ere heaven takes us!
    Had I been only a tree to shiver
    With dreams of spring and a leafy youth,
    Then I had fallen in the cyclone
    ...

I’ve a kiss from a warmer lover
Than maiden earth can be:
She blew it up to the skies above her,
And now it has come to me;
From the far-away it has come today
With a breath of the old salt sea.

She lay and laughed on a lazy billow,
Far away on the deep,
Who had gathered the froth for my lady’s pillow
Gathered a sparkling heap;
And the ocean’s cry was the lullaby
That cradled my love to sleep.

Far away on the blue Pacific
There doth my lady roam,
That is oft-times gay, but as oft terrific:
Her jewels are beads of foam:
In a coral cave, where a blue-green wave
Keeps guard, is my lady’s home.

She claps her hands, and her henchman hurries
West of the sunset sheen:
’Tis he who comes when a mist-wrack scurries,
Skirting th...

Amid this dance of objects sadness steals
O'er the defrauded heart while sweeping by,
As in a fit of Thespian jollity,
Beneath her vine-leaf crown the green Earth reels:
Backward, in rapid evanescence, wheels
The venerable pageantry of Time,
Each beetling rampart, and each tower sublime,
And what the Dell unwillingly reveals
Of lurking cloistral arch, through trees espied
Near the bright River's edge. Yet why repine?
To muse, to creep, to halt at will, to gaze
Such sweet wayfaring of life's spring the pride,
Her summer's faithful joy, 'that' still is mine,
And in fit measure cheers autumnal days.

I a dirge will pen to thee;
Thou a trentall make for me:
That the monks and friars together,
Here may sing the rest of either:
Next, I'm sure, the nuns will have
Candlemas to grace the grave.

I

Its roots are bristling in the air
Like some mad Earth-god's spiny hair;
The loud south-wester's swell and yell
Smote it at midnight, and it fell.
Thus ends the tree
Where Some One sat with me.

II

Its boughs, which none but darers trod,
A child may step on from the sod,
And twigs that earliest met the dawn
Are lit the last upon the lawn.
Cart off the tree
Beneath whose trunk sat we!

III

Yes, there we sat: she cooed content,
And bats ringed round, and daylight went;
The gnarl, our seat, is wrenched and sunk,
Prone that queer pocket in the trunk
Where lay the key
To her pale mystery.

IV

"Years back, within this pocket-hole
I found, my Love, a hurried scrawl
Meant not for me," at ...

    O Peter, wherefore didst thou doubt?
    Indeed the spray flew fast about,
    But he was there whose walking foot
    Could make the wandering hills take root;
    And he had said, "Come down to me,"
    Else hadst thou not set foot on sea!
    Christ did not call thee to thy grave!
    Was it the boat that made thee brave?

    "Easy for thee who wast not there
    To think thou more than I couldst dare!
    It hardly fits thee though to mock
    Scared as thou wast that railway shock!
    Who saidst this morn, 'Wife, we must go--
    The plague will soon be here, I know!'
    Who, when thy child slept--not to death--
    Saidst, 'Life is now not worth a breath!'"

    Saint Peter, thou rebukest well!
    It needs no tempest me to quell,

Tune - "Captain O'Kean."

I.

    The small birds rejoice in the green leaves returning,
        The murmuring streamlet winds clear thro' the vale;
    The hawthorn trees blow in the dew of the morning,
        And wild scatter'd cowslips bedeck the green dale:
    But what can give pleasure, or what can seem fair,
        While the lingering moments are number'd by care?
    No flow'rs gaily springing, nor birds sweetly singing,
        Can soothe the sad bosom of joyless despair.

II.

    The deed that I dared, could it merit their malice,
        A king and a father to place on his throne?
    His right are these hills, and his right are these valleys,
        Where the wild beasts find shelter, but I can find none;
    But 'tis not ...

Hurrah! the seaward breezes
Sweep down the bay amain;
Heave up, my lads, the anchor!
Run up the sail again!
Leave to the lubber landsmen
The rail-car and the steed;
The stars of heaven shall guide us,
The breath of heaven shall speed.
From the hill-top looks the steeple,
And the lighthouse from the sand;
And the scattered pines are waving
Their farewell from the land.
One glance, my lads, behind us,
For the homes we leave one sigh,
Ere we take the change and chances
Of the ocean and the sky.
Now, brothers, for the icebergs
Of frozen Labrador,
Floating spectral in the moonshine,
Along the low, black shore!
Where like snow the gannet's feathers
On Brador's rocks are shed,
And the noisy murr are flying,
Like black scuds, overhea...

Different Attitudes in which Authors compose.--Bayes, Henry Stevens, Herodotus, etc.--Writing in Bed--in the Fields.--Plato and Sir Richard Blackmore.--Fiddling with Gloves and Twigs.--Madame de Staël.--Rhyming on the Road, in an old Calêche.


What various attitudes and ways
    And tricks we authors have in writing!
While some write sitting, some like BAYES
    Usually stand while they're inditing,
Poets there are who wear the floor out,
    Measuring a line at every stride;
While some like HENRY STEPHENS pour out
    Rhymes by the dozen while they ride.
HERODOTUS wrote most in bed;
    And RICHERAND, a French physician,
Declares the clock-work of the head
    Goes best in that reclined position.
If you consult MONTAIGNE and PLINY on
The subject, 'tis...

Ill strives the will, 'gainst will more wise that strives
His pleasure therefore to mine own preferr'd,
I drew the sponge yet thirsty from the wave.

Onward I mov'd: he also onward mov'd,
Who led me, coasting still, wherever place
Along the rock was vacant, as a man
Walks near the battlements on narrow wall.
For those on th' other part, who drop by drop
Wring out their all-infecting malady,
Too closely press the verge. Accurst be thou!
Inveterate wolf! whose gorge ingluts more prey,
Than every beast beside, yet is not fill'd!
So bottomless thy maw!--Ye spheres of heaven!
To whom there are, as seems, who attribute
All change in mortal state, when is the day
Of his appearing, for whom fate reserves
To chase her hence?--With wary steps and slow
We pass'...

She mutters and stoops by the lone bayou
The little green leaves are hushed on the trees
An owl in an oak cries"Who-oh-who,"
And a fox barks back where the moon slants through
The moss that sways to a sudden breeze…
Or That she sees,
Whose eyes are coals in the light o' the moon.
"Soon, oh, soon," hear her croon,
" Woe, oh, woe to the octoroon!"

She mutters and kneels and her bosom is bare
The little green leaves are stirred on the trees
A black bat brushes her unkempt hair,
And the hiss of a snake glides 'round her there…
Or is it the voice of the ghostly breeze,
Or That she sees,
Whose mouth is flame in the light o' the moon?
"Soon, oh, soon," hear her croon,
"Woe, oh, woe to the octoroon!"

She mutters and digs and buries it deep
T...

I am the still rain falling,
Too tired for singing mirth,
Oh, be the green fields calling,
Oh, be for me the earth!

I am the brown bird pining
To leave the nest and fly,
Oh, be the fresh cloud shining,
Oh, be for me the sky!

I left my dreary page and sallied forth,
Received the fair inscriptions of the night;
The moon was making amber of the world,
Glittered with silver every cottage pane,
The trees were rich, yet ominous with gloom.
The meadows broad
From ferns and grapes and from the folded flowers
Sent a nocturnal fragrance; harlot flies
Flashed their small fires in air, or held their court
In fairy groves of herds-grass.



He lives not who can refuse me;
All my force saith, Come and use me:
A gleam of sun, a summer rain,
And all the zone is green again.



Seems, though the soft sheen all enchants,
Cheers the rough crag and mournful dell,
As if on such stern forms and haunts
A wintry storm more fitly fell.



Put in, driv...

No doubt they'll soon get well; the shock and strain
Have caused their stammering, disconnected talk.
Of course they're "longing to go out again," -
These boys with old, scared faces, learning to walk,
They'll soon forget their haunted nights; their cowed
Subjection to the ghosts of friends who died, -
Their dreams that drip with murder; and they'll be proud
Of glorious war that shatter'd all their pride ...
Men who went out to battle, grim and glad;
Children, with eyes that hate you, broken and mad.

CRAIGLOCKART,
    Oct. 1917.