Death

Calling to mind since first my love begun,
Th'uncertain times, oft varying in their course,
How things still unexpectedly have run,
As't please the Fates by their resistless force;
    Lastly, mine eyes amazedly have seen
Essex's great fall, Tyrone his peace to gain,
The quiet end of that long living Queen,
This King's fair entrance, and our peace with Spain,
    We and the Dutch at length ourselves to sever;
Thus the world doth and evermore shall reel;
Yet to my goddess am I constant ever,
Howe'er blind Fortune turn her giddy wheel;
    Though heaven and earth prove both to me untrue,
    Yet am I still inviolate to you.

Strange is the song, and the soul that is singing
Falters because of the vision it sees;
Voice that is not of the living is ringing
Down in the depths where the darkness is clinging,
Even when Noon is the lord of the leas,
Fast, like a curse, to the ghosts of the trees!

Here in a mist that is parted in sunder,
Half with the darkness and half with the day;
Face of a woman, but face of a wonder,
Vivid and wild as a flame of the thunder,
Flashes and fades, and the wail of the grey
Water is loud on the straits of the bay!

Father, whose years have been many and weary
Elder, whose life is as lovely as light
Shining in ways that are sterile and dreary
Tell me the name of this beautiful peri,
Flashing on me like the wonderful white
Star, at the meetin...

I wandered through Scoglietto's far retreat,
The oranges on each o'erhanging spray
Burned as bright lamps of gold to shame the day;
Some startled bird with fluttering wings and fleet
Made snow of all the blossoms; at my feet
Like silver moons the pale narcissi lay:
And the curved waves that streaked the great green bay
Laughed i' the sun, and life seemed very sweet.
Outside the young boy-priest passed singing clear,
'Jesus the son of Mary has been slain,
O come and fill His sepulchre with flowers.'
Ah, God!    Ah, God! those dear Hellenic hours
Had drowned all memory of Thy bitter pain,
The Cross, the Crown, the Soldiers and the Spear.

Close by those meads, for ever crown'd with flow'rs,
Where Thames with pride surveys his rising tow'rs,
There stands a structure of majestic frame,
Which from the neighb'ring Hampton takes its name.
Here Britain's statesmen oft the fall foredoom
Of foreign tyrants and of nymphs at home;
Here thou, great Anna! whom three realms obey,
Dost sometimes counsel take—and sometimes tea.
Hither the heroes and the nymphs resort,
To taste awhile the pleasures of a court;
In various talk th' instructive hours they pass'd,
Who gave the ball, or paid the visit last;
One speaks the glory of the British queen,
And one describes a charming Indian screen;
A third interprets motions, looks, and eyes;
At ev'ry word a reputation dies.
Snuff, or the fan, supply each pause of chat,<...

She sleeps; he sings to her. The day was long,
And, tired out with too much happiness,
She fain would have him sing of old Provence;
Quaint songs, that spoke of love in such soft tones,
Her restless soul was straight besieged of dreams,
And her wild heart beleagured of deep peace,
And heart and soul surrendered unto sleep.--
Like perfect sculpture in the moon she lies,
Its pallor on her through heraldic panes
Of one tall casement's gulèd quarterings.--
Beside her couch, an antique table, weighed
With gold and crystal; here, a carven chair,
Whereon her raiment,--that suggests sweet curves
Of shapely beauty,--bearing her limbs' impress,
Is richly laid: and, near the chair, a glass,
An oval mirror framed in ebony:
And, dim and deep,--investing all the room
W...

Come take our boy, and we will go
Before our cabin door;
The winds shall bring us, as they blow,
The murmurs of the shore;
And we will kiss his young blue eyes,
And I will sing him, as he lies,
Songs that were made of yore:
I'll sing, in his delighted ear,
The island lays thou lov'st to hear.

And thou, while stammering I repeat,
Thy country's tongue shalt teach;
'Tis not so soft, but far more sweet
Than my own native speech:
For thou no other tongue didst know,
When, scarcely twenty moons ago,
Upon Tahete's beach,
Thou cam'st to woo me to be thine,
With many a speaking look and sign.

I knew thy meaning, thou didst praise
My eyes, my locks of jet;
Ah! well for me they won thy gaze,
But thine were fairer yet!
I'm glad to...

Under a spreading chestnut-tree
    The village smithy stands;
The smith, a mighty man is he,
    With large and sinewy hands;
And the muscles of his brawny arms
    Are strong as iron bands.

His hair is crisp, and black, and long,
    His face is like the tan;
His brow is wet with honest sweat,
    He earns whate'er he can,
And looks the whole world in the face,
    For he owes not any man.

Week in, week out, from morn till night,
    You can hear his bellows blow;
You can hear him swing his heavy sledge,
    With measured beat and slow,
Like a sexton ringing the village bell,
    When the evening sun is low.

And children coming home from school
    Look in at the open door;
They love to see the flaming forge,
    An...

Though your eyebrows surprise,
and give you an air of strangeness,
which isn’t that of the angels,
witch with seductive eyes,

I adore my frivolous girl,
my terrible passion,
with the devotion
of a priest for his idol!

The forest and the desert
perfume your wild hair:
your head has an air
of the enigma, the secret.

Round your flesh, perfume sweet
swirls like a censer’s cloud:
you bewitch like the twilight’s shroud,
nymph of shadows and heat.

Ah! The strongest potions made
can’t match your idleness,
and you know the caress
that resurrects the dead.

Your hips are enamoured
of your back and your breasts,
and the cushions are ravished
with your poses, so languid.

Sometimes to appease
y...

    He dropped,--more sullenly than wearily,
    Lay stupid like a cod, heavy like meat,
    And none of us could kick him to his feet;
    Just blinked at my revolver, blearily;
--Didn't appear to know a war was on,
    Or see the blasted trench at which he stared.
    "I'll do 'em in," he whined, "If this hand's spared,
    I'll murder them, I will."

                                A low voice said,
    "It's Blighty, p'raps, he sees; his pluck's all gone,
    Dreaming of all the valiant, that AREN'T dead:
    Bold uncles, smiling ministerially;
    Maybe his brave young wife, getting her fun
    In some new home, improved materially.
    It's not these stiffs have crazed him; nor the Hun."

    We sent him down at last, out of the way.
    Unwoun...

Out of her darkened fishing-ports they go,
    A fleet of little ships, whose every name--
Daffodil, Sea-lark, Rose and Surf and Snow,
    Burns in this blackness like an altar-flame;

Out of her past they sail, three thousand strong,
    The people's fleet that never knew its worth,
And every name is a broken phrase of song
    To some remembered loveliness on earth.

There's Barbara Cowie, Comely Bank and May,
    Christened, at home, in worlds of dawn and dew:
There's Ruth and Kindly Light and Robin Gray
    With Mizpah. (May that simple prayer come true!)

Out of old England's inmost heart they sail,
    A fleet of memories that can never fail.

"There's nothing new"--Not that I go so far
As he who also said "There's nothing true,"
Since, on the contrary, I hold there are
Surviving still a verity or two;
But, as to novelty, in my conviction,
There's nothing new,--especially in fiction.

Hence, at the outset, I make no apology,
If this my story is as old as Time,
Being, indeed, that idyll of mythology,--
The Cyclops' love,--which, somewhat varied, I'm
To tell once more, the adverse Muse permitting,
In easy rhyme, and phrases neatly fitting.

"Once on a time"--there's nothing new, I said--
It may be fifty years ago or more,
Beside a lonely posting-road that led
Seaward from Town, there used to stand of yore,
With low-built bar and old bow-window shady,
An ancient Inn, the "Dragon and the ...

Let me sleep.    The day is past,
    And the folded shadows keep
Weary mortals safe and fast.
            Let me sleep.

I am all too tired to weep
    For the sunlight of the Past
Sunk within the drowning deep.

Treasured vanities I cast
    In an unregarded heap.
Time has given rest at last.
            Let me sleep.

Not utterly unworthy to endure
Was the supremacy of crafty Rome;
Age after age to the arch of Christendom
Aerial keystone haughtily secure;
Supremacy from Heaven transmitted pure,
As many hold; and, therefore, to the tomb
Pass, some through fire and by the scaffold some
Like saintly Fisher, and unbending More.
"Lightly for both the bosom's lord did sit
"Upon his throne;" unsoftened, undismayed
By aught that mingled with the tragic scene
Of pity or fear: and More's gay genius played
With the inoffensive sword of native wit,
Than the bare axe more luminous and keen.

Salve magna parens frugum Saturnia tellus,
Magna virûm! tibi res antiquæ laudis et artis
Aggredior, sanctos ausus recludere fontes.
Virg. Geor. 2.

1 While you, my Lord, the rural shades admire,
2 And from Britannia's public posts retire,
3 Nor longer, her ungrateful sons to please,
4 For their advantage sacrifice your ease;

5 Me into foreign realms my fate conveys,
6 Through nations fruitful of immortal lays,
7 Where the soft season and inviting clime
8 Conspire to trouble your repose with rhyme.

9 For wheresoe'er I turn my ravish'd eyes,
10 Gay gilded scenes and shining prospects rise,
11 Poetic fields encompass me around,
12 And still I seem to tread on classic ground;
13 For here the Muse so oft her harp has strung
14 That not a mount...

Mamua, when our laughter ends,
And hearts and bodies, brown as white,
Are dust about the doors of friends,
Or scent ablowing down the night,
Then, oh! then, the wise agree,
Comes our immortality.
Mamua, there waits a land
Hard for us to understand.
Out of time, beyond the sun,
All are one in Paradise,
You and Pupure are one,
And Tau, and the ungainly wise.
There the Eternals are, and there
The Good, the Lovely, and the True,
And Types, whose earthly copies were
The foolish broken things we knew;
There is the Face, whose ghosts we are;
The real, the never-setting Star;
And the Flower, of which we love
Faint and fading shadows here;
Never a tear, but only Grief;
Dance, but not the limbs that move;
Songs in Song shall disappear;

    The songs that mother used to sing!
        How tenderly those ditties roll,
        And to the dirges in my soul
    The happy notes of gladness bring!
    Where'er my vagrant feet may roam
    From pleasures of my childhood's home,
    This life of mine with rapture throngs,
    When thinking of my mother's songs.

    They were not made of magic lays;
        No perfect melodies were found,
        That with the strains of fairy sound
    Would charm the stranger's ear to praise;
    But I can never hope to meet
    Another music half so sweet,
    And all my longing love will cling
    To songs that mother used to sing.

    With gentleness of crooning cries,
        She freed the aching limbs from pain,
        And lulled the eyes ...

Gaunt in gloom,
The pale stars their torches,
Enshrouded, wave.
Ghostfires from heaven's far verges faint illume,
Arches on soaring arches,
Night's sindark nave.

Seraphim,
The lost hosts awaken
To service till
In moonless gloom each lapses muted, dim,
Raised when she has and shaken
Her thurible.

And long and loud,
To night's nave upsoaring,
A starknell tolls
As the bleak incense surges, cloud on cloud,
Voidward from the adoring
Waste of souls.

Ye love, and sonnets write! Fate's strange behest!

The heart, its hidden meaning to declare,

Must seek for rhymes, uniting pair with pair:
Learn, children, that the will is weak, at best.

Scarcely with freedom the o'erflowing breast

As yet can speak, and well may it beware;

Tempestuous passions sweep each chord that's there,
Then once more sink to night and gentle rest.

Why vex yourselves and us, the heavy stone

Up the steep path but step by step to roll?

It falls again, and ye ne'er cease to strive.

THE LOVERS.

But we are on the proper road alone!

If gladly is to thaw the frozen soul,

The fire of love must aye be kept alive.