Death

A brother's eye had seen the grief
That Duart's lady bore;
His boat with sail half-raised flies down
The sound by green Lismore.
Ahaladah, Ahaladah!
Why speeds your boat so fast?
No scene of joy shall light your track
Adown the spray-strewn blast.

The very trees upon the isle
Rock to and fro, and wail;
The very birds cry sad and shrill,
Storm driven, where you sail;
O when for yon dim mainland shore
You launched your keel to start
You knew not of the load 'twill bear,
The heavier load your heart.

See what is that, which yonder gleams,
Where skarts alone make home;
Is that but one oft-breaking sea,
Some frequent fount of foam?
The morn is dark and indistinct,
Is all through drift and cloud;
Around the rock white waters ...

        The thought of old, dear things is in thine eyes,
        O, month of memories!
        Musing on days thine heart hath sorrow of,
        Old joy, dead hope, dear love,

        I see thee stand where all thy sisters meet
        To cast down at thy feet
        The garnered largess of the fruitful year,
        And on thy cheek a tear.

        Thy glory flames in every blade and leaf
        To blind the eyes of grief;
        Thy vineyards and thine orchards bend with fruit
        That sorrow may be mute;

        A hectic splendor lights thy days to sleep,
        Ere the gray dusk may creep
        Sober and sad along thy dusty ways,
        Like a lone nun, who prays;

        High and faint-heard thy passing migrant calls;<...

O Heart, that beat the bird's blithe blood,
The blithe bird's strain, and understood
The song it sang to leaf and bud,
What dost thou in the wood?
O soul, that kept the brook's glad flow,
The glad brook's word to sun and moon,
What dost thou here where song lies low,
And dead the dreams of June?
Where once was heard a voice of song,
The hautboys of the mad winds sing;
Where once a music flowed along,
The rain's wild bugle's ring.
The weedy water frets and ails,
And moans in many a sunless fall;
And, o'er the melancholy, trails
The black crow's eldritch call.
Unhappy brook! O withered wood!
O days, whom Death makes comrades of!
Where are the birds that thrilled the blood
When Life struck hands with Love?
A song, one soared against the blue;<...

To the grave one day from a house they bore

A maiden;
To the window the citizens went to explore;
In splendour they lived, and with wealth as of yore

Their banquets were laden.
Then thought they: "The maid to the tomb is now borne;
We too from our dwellings ere long must be torn,
And he that is left our departure to mourn,

To our riches will be the successor,

For some one must be their possessor.

How the sumac banners bent, dripping as if with blood,
What a mournful presence brooded upon the slumbrous air;
A mocking-bird screamed noisily in the depth of the silent wood,
And in my heart was crying the raven of despair,
Thrilling my being through with its bitter, bitter cry -
"It were better to die, it were better to die."

For she, my love, my fate, she sat by my side
On a fallen oak, her cheek all flushed with a bashful shame,
Telling me what her innocent heart had hid -
"For was not I her brother, her dear brother, all but in name."
I listened to her low words, but turned my face away -
Away from her eyes' soft light, and the mocking light of the day.

"He was noble and proud," she said, "and had chosen her from all
The haughty ladies, and great; she didn'...

    The moon had climbed the eastern hill
    Which rises o'er the sands of Dee,
    And from its highest summit shed
    A silver light on tower and tree,
    When Mary laid her down to sleep
    (Her thoughts on Sandy far at sea);
    When soft and low a voice was heard,
    Saying, 'Mary, weep no more for me.'


    She from her pillow gently raised
    Her head, to see who there might be,
    And saw young Sandy, shivering stand
    With visage pale and hollow e'e.
    'Oh Mary dear, cold is my clay;
    It lies beneath the stormy sea;
    Far, far from thee, I sleep in death.
    Dear Mary, weep no more for me.


    'Three stormy nights and stormy days
    We tossed upon the raging main.
    And long we strove our bark to sa...

When the wind storms by with a shout, and the stern sea-caves
Rejoice in the tramp and the roar of onsetting waves,
Then, then, it comes home to the heart that the top of life
Is the passion that burns the blood in the act of strife -
Till you pity the dead down there in their quiet graves.

But to drowse with the fen behind and the fog before,
When the rain-rot spreads and a tame sea mumbles the shore,
Not to adventure, none to fight, no right and no wrong,
Sons of the Sword heart-sick for a stave of your sire's old song -
O, you envy the blessed death that can live no more!

Beside the open window she is lying,
    Through which comes softly in the balmy air,
And fans her wasted cheek; but slowly dying,
    She seeth not that autumn's finger fair
    Tinges the golden landscape everywhere.

She seeth not the glory of the maples,
    That in their crimson robes surround her home;
Nor the rich red of the ripe clustering apples
    In the old orchard, where can never come
    Her flying feet to stoop and gather some.

That is her home where in life's young May morning,
    She careless sung the joyful hours away;
A happy-hearted child, to whom no warning
    Came of the future shipwreck by the way,
    Or of the worshipped idol turned to clay.

The place has passed to strangers; unregretting,
    She looks upon the hom...

        I.

With bloodshot eyes the morning rose
Upon a world of gloom and tears;
A kindred glance queen Isoud shows -
Come night, come morn, cease not her fears.
The fog-clouds whiten all the vale,
The sunlight draws them to its love;
The diamond dews wash ev'ry dale,
Where bays the hunt within the grove.
Her lute - the one her touch he taught
To wake beneath the stars a song
Of swan-caught music - is as naught
And on yon damask lounge is flung.
Down o'er her cheeks her hair she draws
In golden rays 'twixt lily tips,
And gazes sad on gloomy shaws
'Neath which had often touched their lips.


        II.

With irised eyes, from morn to noon.
And noon to middle night she stoops
From her high lattice 'neath the moon,
H...

The spirit of beautiful faces,
The light on the forehead of Love,
And the spell of past visited places,
And the songs and the sweetness thereof;
These, touched by a hand that is hoary;
These, vext with a tune of decay,
Are spoiled of their glow and their glory;
And the burden is, “Passing away!
Passing away!”

Old years and their changes come trooping
At nightfall to you and to me,
When Autumn sits faded and drooping
By the sorrowful waves of the sea.
Faint phantoms that float in the gloaming,
Return with the whispers that say,
“The end which is quiet is coming;
Ye are weary, and passing away!
Passing away!”

It is hard to awake and discover
The swiftness that waits upon Time;
But youth and its beauty are over,
And Love has a...

There met three knights on the woodland way,
And the first was clad in silk array:
The second was dight in iron and steel,
But the third was rags from head to heel.
"Lo, now is the year and the day come round
When we must tell what we have found."
The first said: "I have found a king
Who grudgeth no gift of anything."
The second said: "I have found a knight
Who hath never turned his back in fight."
But the third said: "I have found a love
That Time and the World shall never move."

Whither away to win good cheer?
"With me," said the first, "for my king is near."
So to the King they went their ways;
But there was a change of times and days.
"What men are ye," the great King said,
"That ye should eat my children's bread?
My waste has fed full many...

Thee, whose refulgent staff and summons clear,
    Minerva's flock longtime was wont t'obey,
Although thyself an herald, famous here,
    The last of heralds, Death, has snatch'd away.
He calls on all alike, nor even deigns
To spare the office that himself sustains.

Thy locks were whiter than the plumes display'd
    By Leda's paramour[2] in ancient time,
But thou wast worthy ne'er to have decay'd,
    Or, Aeson-like,[3] to know a second prime,
Worthy for whom some Goddess should have won
New life, oft kneeling to Apollo's son.[4]

Commission'd to convene with hasty call
    The gowned tribes, how graceful wouldst thou stand!
So stood Cyllenius[5] erst in Priam's hall,
    Wing-footed messenger of Jove's comman...

Now as even's warning bell
Rings the day's departing knell,
Leaving me from labour free,
Solitude, I'll walk with thee:
Whether 'side the woods we rove,
Or sweep beneath the willow grove;
Whether sauntering we proceed
Cross the green, or down the mead;
Whether, sitting down, we look
On the bubbles of the brook;
Whether, curious, waste an hour,
Pausing o'er each tasty flower;
Or, expounding nature's spells,
From the sand pick out the shells;
Or, while lingering by the streams,
Where more sweet the music seems,
Listen to the soft'ning swells
Of some distant chiming bells
Mellowing sweetly on the breeze,
Rising, falling by degrees,
Dying now, then wak'd again
In full many a 'witching strain,
Sounding, as the gale flits by,
Flats...

Here in the dark, O heart;
Alone with the enduring Earth, and Night,
And Silence, and the warm strange smell of clover;
Clear-visioned, though it break you; far apart
From the dead best, the dear and old delight;
Throw down your dreams of immortality,
O faithful, O foolish lover!
Here's peace for you, and surety; here the one
Wisdom, the truth! "All day the good glad sun
Showers love and labour on you, wine and song;
The greenwood laughs, the wind blows, all day long
Till night."    And night ends all things.
    Then shall be
No lamp relumed in heaven, no voices crying,
Or changing lights, or dreams and forms that hover!
(And, heart, for all your sighing,
That gladness and those tears are over, over. . . .)

And has the truth brought no new hope at ...

'Twas near the close of the dying year,
And December's winds blew cold and drear,
Driving the snow and sharp blinding sleet
In gusty whirls through square and street,
Shrieking more wildly and fiercely still
In the dreary grave-yard that crowns the hill.

No mourners there to sorrow or pray,
But soon a traveller passed that way:
He paused and leant against the low stone wall,
While sighs breathed forth from the pine-trees tall
That darkly look down on the silent crowd
Of graves, all wrapped in a snowy shroud.

Solemn and weird was the spectral scene -
The tombstones white, with low mounds between,
The awful stillness, eerie and dread,
Brooding above that home of the dead,
While Christmas fires lit up each hearth
And shed their glow upon scenes o...

Be his rest the rest he sought:
Calm and deep.
Let no wayward word or thought
Vex his sleep.

Peace the peace that no man knows
Now remains
Where the wasted woodwind blows,
Wakes and wanes.

Latter leaves, in Autumn’s breath,
White and sere,
Sanctify the scholar’s death,
Lying here.

Soft surprises of the sun
Swift, serene
O’er the mute grave-grasses run,
Cold and green.

Wet and cold the hillwinds moan;
Let them rave!
Love that takes a tender tone
Lights his grave.

He who knew the friendless face
Sorrows shew,
Often sought this quiet place
Years ago.

One, too apt to faint and fail,
Loved to stray
Here where water-shallows wail
Day by day.

Care that lays her heavy...

1.

Oh! when shall the grave hide for ever my sorrow?
Oh! when shall my soul wing her flight from this clay?
The present is hell! and the coming to-morrow
But brings, with new torture, the curse of to-day.


2.

From my eye flows no tear, from my lips flow no curses,
I blast not the fiends who have hurl'd me from bliss;
For poor is the soul which, bewailing, rehearses
Its querulous grief, when in anguish like this -


3.

Was my eye, 'stead of tears, with red fury flakes bright'ning,
Would my lips breathe a flame which no stream could assuage,
On our foes should my glance launch in vengeance its lightning,
With transport my tongue give a loose to its rage.


4.

But now tears and curses, alike unavailing,
...

Faint-gazing on the burning orb of day,
When Afric's injured son expiring lay,
His forehead cold, his labouring bosom bare,
His dewy temples, and his sable hair,
His poor companions kissed, and cried aloud,
Rejoicing, whilst his head in peace he bowed:
Now thy long, long task is done,
Swiftly, brother, wilt thou run,
Ere to-morrow's golden beam
Glitter on thy parent stream,
Swiftly the delights to share,
The feast of joy that waits thee there.
Swiftly, brother, wilt thou ride
O'er the long and stormy tide,
Fleeter than the hurricane,
Till thou see'st those scenes again,
Where thy father's hut was reared,
Where thy mother's voice was heard;
Where thy infant brothers played
Beneath the fragrant citron shade;
Where through green savannahs wide...