Death

Among the woods and tillage
    That fringe the topmost downs,
All lonely lies the village,
    Far off from seas and towns.
Yet when her own folk slumbered
    I heard within her street
Murmur of men unnumbered
    And march of myriad feet.

For all she lies so lonely,
    Far off from towns and seas,
The village holds not only
    The roofs beneath her trees:
While Life is sweet and tragic
    And Death is veiled and dumb,
Hither, by singer's magic,
    The pilgrim world must come.

My Lady clad herself in grey,
That caught and clung about her throat;
Then all the long grey winter day
On me a living splendour smote;
And why grey palmers holy are,
And why grey minsters great in story,
And grey skies ring the morning star,
And grey hairs are a crown of glory.

My Lady clad herself in green,
Like meadows where the wind-waves pass;
Then round my spirit spread, I ween,
A splendour of forgotten grass.
Then all that dropped of stem or sod,
Hoarded as emeralds might be,
I bowed to every bush, and trod
Amid the live grass fearfully.

My Lady clad herself in blue,
Then on me, like the seer long gone,
The likeness of a sapphire grew,
The throne of him that sat thereon.
Then knew I why the Fashioner
Splashed reckles...

The town of Pleurs, situated among the Alps and containing about two thousand five hundred inhabitants, was overwhelmed in 1618 by the falling of Mount Conto. The avalanche occurred in the night, and no trace of the village or any of its inhabitants could ever after be discovered.


'T was eve; and Mount Conto
Reflected in night
The sunbeams that fled
With the monarch of light;
As great souls and noble
Reflect evermore
The sunshine that gleams
From Eternity's shore.

A slight crimson veil
Robed the snow-wreath on high,
The shadow an angel
In passing threw by;
And city and valley,
In mantle of gray,
Seemed bowed like a mourner
In silence to pray.

And the sweet vesper bell,
With a clear, measured chime,
Like the falling of min...

I held Love's head while it did ache;
But so it chanced to be,
The cruel pain did his forsake,
And forthwith came to me.

Ai me!    how shall my grief be still'd?
Or where else shall we find
One like to me, who must be kill'd
For being too-too-kind?

When Jessie comes with her soft breast,
And yields the golden keys,
Then is it as if God caress'd
Twin babes upon His knees,
Twin babes that, each to other press'd,
Just feel the Father's arms, wherewith they both are bless'd.

But when I think if we must part,
And all this personal dream be fled,
O then my heart! O then my useless heart!
Would God that thou wert dead,
A clod insensible to joys and ills,
A stone remote in some bleak gully of the hills!

Night 'neath the northern skies, lone, black, and grim:
Naught but the starlight lies 'twixt heaven, and him.

Of man no need has he, of God, no prayer;
He and his Deity are brothers there.

Above his bivouac the firs fling down
Through branches gaunt and black, their needles brown.

Afar some mountain streams, rockbound and fleet,
Sing themselves through his dreams in cadence sweet,

The pine trees whispering, the heron's cry,
The plover's passing wing, his lullaby.

And blinking overhead the white stars keep
Watch o'er his hemlock bed - his sinless sleep.

To the tune of King John and the Abbot of Canterbury.

Who has e'er been at Paris must needs know the Greve,
The fatal retreat of th' unfortunate brave,
Where honour and justice most oddly contribute
To ease heroes' pains by a halter and gibbet.
Derry down, down, hey derry down.

There death breaks the shackles which force had put on,
And the hangman completes what the judge but begun;
There the Squire of the Pad and the Knight of the Post
Find their pains no more baulk'd and their hopes no more cross'd.
Derry down, down, hey derry down.

Great claims are there made, and great secrets are known,
And the king, and the law, and the thief, has his own;
But my hearers cry out, What a deuce dost thou ail?
Cut off thy reflections, and give us thy tale.
Der...

Upon the mossed rock by the spring
She sits, forgetful of her pail,
Lost in remote remembering
Of that which may no more avail.

Her thin, pale hair is dimly dressed
Above a brow lined deep with care,
The color of a leaf long pressed,
A faded leaf that once was fair.

You may not know her from the stone
So still she sits who does not stir,
Thinking of this one thing alone
The love that never came to her.

She dwells by Great Kenhawa's side,
    In valleys green and cool;
And all her hope and all her pride
    Are in the village school.

Her soul, like the transparent air
    That robes the hills above,
Though not of earth, encircles there
    All things with arms of love.

And thus she walks among her girls
    With praise and mild rebukes;
Subduing e'en rude village churls
    By her angelic looks.

She reads to them at eventide
    Of One who came to save;
To cast the captive's chains aside
    And liberate the slave.

And oft the blessed time foretells
    When all men shall be free;
And musical, as silver bells,
    Their falling chains shall be.

And following her beloved Lord,
    In decent poverty,
S...

Lyce, the gods have heard my prayers, as gods will hear the dutiful,
And brought old age upon you, though you still affect the beautiful.
You sport among the boys, and drink and chatter on quite aimlessly;
And in your cups with quavering voice you torment Cupid shamelessly.

For blooming Chia, Cupid has a feeling more than brotherly;
He knows a handsaw from a hawk whenever winds are southerly.
He pats her pretty cheeks, but looks on you as a monstrosity;
Your wrinkles and your yellow teeth excite his animosity.

For jewels bright and purple Coan robes you are not dressable;
Unhappily for you, the public records are accessible.
Where is your charm, and where your bloom and gait so firm and sensible,
That drew my love from Cinara,--a lapse most indefensible?

To my p...

Shall we wake one morn of spring,
Glad at heart of everything,
Yet pensive with the thought of eve?
Then the white house shall we leave,
Pass the wind-flowers and the bays,
Through the garth, and go our ways,
Wandering down among the meads
Till our very joyance needs
Rest at last; till we shall come
To that Sun-god's lonely home,
Lonely on the hill-side grey,
Whence the sheep have gone away;
Lonely till the feast-time is,
When with prayer and praise of bliss,
Thither comes the country side.
There awhile shall we abide,
Sitting low down in the porch
By that image with the torch:
Thy one white hand laid upon
The black pillar that was won
From the far-off Indian mine;
And my hand nigh touching thine,
But not touching; and thy gown

Wild clouds roll up, slag-dark and slaty gray,
And in the oaks the sere wind sobs and sighs,
Weird as a word a man before he dies
Mutters beneath his breath yet fears to say:
The rain drives down; and by each forest way
Each dead leaf drips, and murmurings arise
As of fantastic footsteps, one who flies,
Whispering, the dim eidolon of the day.

Now is the wood a place where phantoms house:
Around each tree wan ghosts of flowers crowd,
And spectres of sweet weeds that once were fair,
Rustling; and through the bleakness of bare boughs
A voice is heard, now low, now stormy loud,
As if the ghosts of all the leaves were there.

Although I can see him still,
The freckled man who goes
To a grey place on a hill
In grey Connemara clothes
At dawn to cast his flies,
It’s long since I began
To call up to the eyes
This wise and simple man.
All day I’d looked in the face
What I had hoped ’twould be
To write for my own race
And the reality;
The living men that I hate,
The dead man that I loved,
The craven man in his seat,
The insolent unreproved,
And no knave brought to book
Who has won a drunken cheer,
The witty man and his joke
Aimed at the commonest ear,
The clever man who cries
The catch-cries of the clown,
The beating down of the wise
And great Art beaten down.

Maybe a twelvemonth since
Suddenly I began,
In scorn of this audience,

Between two pillared clouds of gold
The beautiful gates of evening swung --
And far and wide from flashing fold
The half-furled banners of light, that hung
O'er green of wood and gray of wold
And over the blue where the river rolled,
The fading gleams of their glory flung.

The sky wore not a frown all day
To mar the smile of the morning tide;
The soft-voiced winds sang joyous lay --
You never would think they had ever sighed;
The stream went on its sunlit way
In ripples of laughter; happy they
As the hearts that met at Riverside.

No cloudlet in the sky serene!
Not a silver speck in the golden hue!
But where the woods waved low and green,
And seldom would let the sunlight through,
Sweet shadows fell, and in their screen,
The faces of ...

    Born with the sun, the fair daughters of time,
We silently lead to a lovelier clime,
Where the day is undimmed by the shadows of night,
But eternally beams from the fountain of light;
Where the sorrows of time and its cares are unknown
To the beautiful forms that encircle the throne
Of the mighty Creator! the First and the Last!
Who the wonderful frame of the universe cast,
And composed every link of the mystical chain
Of minutes, and hours, which are numbered in vain
By the children of dust, in their frantic career,
When their moments are wasted unthinkingly here,
Lavished on earth which in mercy were given
That men might prepare for the joys of heaven!--

Here is the freedom men die for,--die for but never know;
Here is the peace they pray for shrined in eternal snow;
Down on the plain the city moans with a human cry,
But here there is naught but silence,--peace, and the wide, wide sky.

Here are the dawn's first footfalls, and the twilight's last farewell,
The benediction of starlight, and the moon's sweet canticle;
Here is one spot as God made it, far from the plainsman's range,
Or the march of the cycling seasons with their everlasting change.

Down on the plain the city moans with a human cry,
And the man-gnomes delve and burrow for gold till they drop and die;
But here there is naught for conquest and the spoiler stands at bay,
For God still keeps one playground where He and His whirlwinds play.

When the evening came my love said to me:
Let us go into the garden now that the sky is cool;
The garden of black hellebore and rosemary,
Where wild woodruff spills in a milky pool.

Low we passed in the twilight, for the wavering heat
Of day had waned; and round that shaded plot
Of secret beauty the thickets clustered sweet:
Here is heaven, our hearts whispered, but our lips spake not.

Between that old garden and seas of lazy foam
Gloomy and beautiful alleys of trees arise
With spire of cypress and dreamy beechen dome,
So dark that our enchanted sight knew nothing but the skies:

Veiled with a soft air, drench'd in the roses' musk
Or the dusky, dark carnation's breath of clove:
No stars burned in their deeps, but through the dusk
I saw my love's ey...

When Music, heavenly maid, was young,
While yet in early Greece she sung,
The Passions oft, to hear her shell,
Thronged around her magic cell,
Exulting, trembling, raging, fainting,
Possest beyond the Muse's painting:
By turns they felt the glowing mind
Disturbed, delighted, raised, refined;
Till once, 'tis said, when all were fired,
Filled with fury, rapt, inspired,
From the supporting myrtles round
They snatched her instruments of sound,
And, as they oft had heard apart
Sweet lessons of her forceful art,
Each (for Madness ruled the hour)
Would prove his own expressive power.

First Fear his hand, its skill to try,
Amid the chords bewildered laid,
And back recoiled, he knew not why,
E'en at the sound himself had made.

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