Death

Thou leaden braine, which censur'st what I write,
And say'st my lines be dull and doe not moue,
I meruaile not thou feelst not my delight,
Which neuer felt my fiery tuch of loue.
But thou whose pen hath like a Pack-horse seru'd,
Whose stomack vnto gaule hath turn'd thy foode,
Whose sences like poore prisoners hunger-staru'd,
Whose griefe hath parch'd thy body, dry'd thy blood.
Thou which hast scorned life, and hated death,
And in a moment mad, sober, glad, and sorry,
Thou which hast band thy thoughts and curst thy breath,
With thousand plagues more then in purgatory.
    Thou thus whose spirit Loue in his fire refines,
    Come thou and reade, admire, applaud my lines.

Far in the ways of the hyaline wastes in the face of the splendid
Six of the sisters the star-dowered sisters ineffably bright,
Merope sitteth, the shadow-like wife of a monarch unfriended
Of Ades of Orcus, the fierce, the implacable god of the night.
Merope fugitive Merope! lost to thyself and thy lover,
Cast, like a dream, out of thought, with the moons which have passed into sleep,
What shall avail thee? Alcyone’s tears, or the sight to discover
Of Sisyphus pallid for thee by the blue, bitter lights of the deep
Pallid, but patient for sorrow? Oh, thou of the fire and the water,
Half with the flame of the sunset, and kin to the streams of the sea,
Hast thou the songs of old times for desire of thy dark-featured daughter,
Sweet with the lips of thy yearning, O Aethra! with tokens of ...

All day, all day in a calm like death
The harp hung waiting the sea wind's breath.

When the western sky flushed red with shame
At the sun's bold kiss, the sea wind came.

Said the harp to the breeze, Oh, breathe as soft
As the ring-dove cooes from its nest aloft.

I am full of a song that mothers croon
When their wee ones tire of their play at noon.

Though a harp may feel 'tis a silent thing
Till the breeze arises and bids it sing.

Said the wind to the harp, Nay, sing for me
The wail of the dead that are lost at sea.

I caught their cry as I came along,
And I hurried to find you and teach you the song.

Oh, the heart is the harp, and love is the breeze,
And the song is ever what love may please.

    Elenor Murray landing in New York,
    After a weary voyage, none too well,
    Staid in the city for a week and then
    Upon a telegram from Irma Leese,
    Born Irma Fouche, her aunt who lived alone
    This summer in the Fouche house near LeRoy,
    Came west to visit Irma Leese and rest.

    For Elenor Murray had not been herself
    Since that hard spring when in the hospital,
    Caring for soldiers stricken with the flu,
    She took bronchitis, after weeks in bed
    Rose weak and shaky, crept to health again
    Through egg-nogs, easy strolls about Bordeaux.
    And later went to Nice upon a furlough
    To get her strength again.

    But while she saw
    Her vital flame burn brightly, as of old
    On favored days, yet for the ...

I don't know somehow it seems sufficient
to see and hear whatever coming and going is,
losing the self to the victory
of stones and trees,
of bending sandpit lakes, crescent
round groves of dwarf pine:

for it is not so much to know the self
as to know it as it is known
by galaxy and cedar cone,
as if birth had never found it
and death could never end it:

the swamp's slow water comes
down Gravelly Run fanning the long
stone-held algal
hair and narrowing roils between
the shoulders of the highway bridge:

holly grows on the banks in the woods there,
and the cedars' gothic-clustered
spires could make
green religion in winter bones:

so I look and reflect, but the air's glass
jail seals each thing in its entity:
...

From pent-up, aching rivers;
From that of myself, without which I were nothing;
From what I am determin'd to make illustrious, even if I stand sole among men;
From my own voice resonant--singing the phallus,
Singing the song of procreation,
Singing the need of superb children, and therein superb grown people,
Singing the muscular urge and the blending,
Singing the bedfellow's song, (O resistless yearning!
O for any and each, the body correlative attracting!
O for you, whoever you are, your correlative body! O it, more than all else, you delighting!)
From the hungry gnaw that eats me night and day;
From native moments--from bashful pains--singing them;
Singing something yet unfound, though I have diligently sought it, many a long year;
Singing the true song of the Soul, fitfu...

And yet I fear lest men who read these lines,
Should judge of them as if they wholly spake
The love I bear Thee and thy holy sake;
Saying: "He doth the high name wrong who twines
Earth's highest aim with Him, and thus combines
Jesus and Art." But I my refuge make
In what the Word said: "Man his life shall take
From every word:" in Art God first designs,--
He spoke the word. And let me humbly speak
My faith, that Art is nothing to the act,
Lowliest, that to the Truth bears witness meek,
Renownless, even unknown, but yet a fact:
The glory of thy childhood and thy youth,
Was not that Thou didst show, but didst the Truth.

Thee have I seen in some waste Arden old,
A white-browed maiden by a foaming stream,
With eyes profound and looks like threaded gold,
And features like a dream.

Upon thy wrist the jessied falcon fleet,
A silver poniard chased with imageries
Hung at a buckled belt, while at thy feet
The gasping heron dies.

Have fancied thee in some quaint ruined keep
A maiden in chaste samite, and her mien
Like that of loved ones visiting our sleep,
Or of a fairy queen.

She, where the cushioned ivy dangling hoar
Disturbs the quiet of her sable hair,
Pores o'er a volume of romantic lore,
Or hums an olden air.

Or a fair Bradamant both brave and just,
Intense with steel, her proud face lit with scorn,
At heathen castles, demons' dens of lust,

(Ob. October 30, 1897)

He looked half-parson and half-skipper: a quaint,
Beautiful blend, with blue eyes good to see,
And old-world whiskers.    You found him cynic, saint,
Salt, humourist, Christian, poet; with a free,
Far-glancing, luminous utterance; and a heart
Large as ST. FRANCIS'S: withal a brain
Stored with experience, letters, fancy, art,
And scored with runes of human joy and pain.
Till six-and-sixty years he used his gift,
His gift unparalleled, of laughter and tears,
And left the world a high-piled, golden drift
Of verse: to grow more golden with the years,
Till the Great Silence fallen upon his ways
Break into song, and he that had Love have Praise.

        Wherefore in dreams are sorrows borne anew,
    A healed wound opened, or the past revived?
        Last night in my deep sleep I dreamed of you;
    Again the old love woke in me, and thrived
        On looks of fire, and kisses, and sweet words
    Like silver waters purling in a stream,
        Or like the amorous melodies of birds:
    A dream - a dream!

        Again upon the glory of the scene
    There settled that dread shadow of the cross
        That, when hearts love too well, falls in between;
    That warns them of impending woe and loss.
        Again I saw you drifting from my life,
    As barques are rudely parted in a stream;
        Again my heart was torn with awful strife:
    A dream - a dream!

        Again the deep ni...

Under the rose-tree's dancing shade
There stands a little ivory girl,
Pulling the leaves of pink and pearl
With pale green nails of polished jade.

The red leaves fall upon the mould,
The white leaves flutter, one by one,
Down to a blue bowl where the sun,
Like a great dragon, writhes in gold.

The white leaves float upon the air,
The red leaves flutter idly down,
Some fall upon her yellow gown,
And some upon her raven hair.

She takes an amber lute and sings,
And as she sings a silver crane
Begins his scarlet neck to strain,
And flap his burnished metal wings.

She takes a lute of amber bright,
And from the thicket where he lies
Her lover, with his almond eyes,
Watches her movements in delight.

And now she gives a...

That song again! - its sounds my bosom thrill,
    Breathe of past years, to all their joys allied;
    And, as the notes thro' my sooth'd spirits glide,
    Dear Recollection's choicest sweets distill,
Soft as the Morn's calm dew on yonder hill,
    When slants the Sun upon its grassy side,
    Tinging the brooks that many a mead divide
    With lines of gilded light; and blue, and still,
The distant lake stands gleaming in the vale.
    Sing, yet once more, that well-remember'd strain,
    Which oft made vocal every passing gale
In days long fled, in Pleasure's golden reign,
    The youth of chang'd HONORA! - now it wears
    Her air - her smile - spells of the vanish'd years!

Coomb-Firtrees say that Life is a moan,
And Clyffe-hill Clump says "Yea!"
But Yell'ham says a thing of its own:
It's not "Gray, gray
Is Life alway!"
That Yell'ham says,
Nor that Life is for ends unknown.

It says that Life would signify
A thwarted purposing:
That we come to live, and are called to die,
Yes, that's the thing
In fall, in spring,
That Yell'ham says:-
"Life offers - to deny!"

1902.

The holiest of all holidays are those
    Kept by ourselves in silence and apart;
    The secret anniversaries of the heart,
    When the full river of feeling overflows;--
The happy days unclouded to their close;
    The sudden joys that out of darkness start
    As flames from ashes; swift desires that dart
    Like swallows singing down each wind that blows!
White as the gleam of a receding sail,
    White as a cloud that floats and fades in air,
    White as the whitest lily on a stream,
These tender memories are;--a Fairy Tale
    Of some enchanted land we know not where,
    But lovely as a landscape in a dream.

Whither was it that my spirit wended
When from thee my fleeting shadow moved?
Is not now each earthly conflict ended?
Say, have I not lived, have I not loved?

Art thou for the nightingales inquiring
Who entranced thee in the early year
With their melody so joy-inspiring?
Only whilst they loved they lingered here.

Is the lost one lost to me forever?
Trust me, with him joyfully I stray
There, where naught united souls can sever,
And where every tear is wiped away.

And thou, too, wilt find us in yon heaven,
When thy love with our love can compare;
There my father dwells, his sins forgiven,
Murder foul can never reach him there.

And he feels that him no vision cheated
When he gazed upon the stars on high;
For as each one metes, to...

There is nothing so sweet as our life in our dreams,
    When we soar far on fancy's swift wing;
For a thing in our dreams is all that it seems,
    And the songs are so sweet that we sing.
Ah! the sun shines the brightest, and stars twinkle lightest
    At the moon in her silvery beams!

There is nothing so gay as the life in our dreams,
    With its joy and its laughter and mirth;
For the pleasure that teems is far greater, one deems,
    Than any he finds in the earth.
There are homes are our natal, and nothing is fatal
    In the beautiful land of our dreams!

There is nothing so bright as the life in our dreams,
    Far away from earth's trickery chance;
There the music's wild screams and the wine in its streams
    Are both lost in the song and the ...

Be far-fam'd [2]RHODES the theme of loftier strains,
Or [3]MITYLENE, as their Bard decrees;
Or EPHESUS, where great DIANA reigns,
Or CORINTH, towering 'twixt the rival seas;
Or THEBES, illustrious in thy birth divine,
Purpureal BACCHUS; - or of PHOEBUS' shrine
DELPHOS oracular; or warbling hail
Thessalian TEMPE's flower-embroider'd vale.

The Art-crown'd City, chaste MINERVA's pride,
There are, whose endless numbers have pourtray'd;
They, to each tree that spreads its branches wide,
Prefer the [4]tawny Olive's scanty shade.
Many, in JUNO's honor, sing thy meads,
Green ARGOS, glorying in thy agile steeds;
Or opulent MYCENE, whose proud fanes
The blood of murder'd AGAMEMNON stains.

Nor patient LACEDÆMON wakes my lyre,
Who trains her Sons to all t...

All day upon the garden bright
The sun shines strong,
But in my heart there is no light,
Or any song.

Voices of merry life go by,
Adown the street;
But I am weary of the cry
And drift of feet.

With all dear things that ought to please
The hours are blessed,
And yet my soul is ill at ease,
And cannot rest.

Strange spirit, leave me not too long,
Nor stint to give,
For if my soul have no sweet song,
It cannot live.