Death

That nose is out of drawing. With a gasp,
She pants upon the passionate lips that ache
With the red drain of her own mouth, and make
A monochord of colour. Like an asp,
One lithe lock wriggles in his rutilant grasp.
Her bosom is an oven of myrrh, to bake
Love's white warm shewbread to a browner cake.
The lock his fingers clench has burst its hasp.
The legs are absolutely abominable.
Ah! what keen overgust of wild-eyed woes
Flags in that bosom, flushes in that nose?
Nay! Death sets riddles for desire to spell,
Responsive. What red hem earth's passion sews,
But may be ravenously unripped in hell?

"Phoebe! Phoebe! Where is the chit?
When I want her most she's out of the way.
Child, you're running a long account
Up, to be squared on Judgment-day.

"Where have you been? and what have you there?"
"To the pasture for buttercups wet with dew."
"My patience! I think you are out of your wits;
I wonder what good will buttercups do?

"There's pennyroyal you might have got,-
It might have been useful to you or me,
But I never heard, in all my life,
Of buttercup cordial or buttercup tea.

"I want you to stay and mind the bread,
I've just put two loaves in the oven to bake;
When they are clone take them carefully out,
And put in their place this loaf of cake,

"While I run over to Widow Brown's;
Her son, from the mines, has just got back.

I think it better that in times like these
A poet keep his mouth shut, for in truth
We have no gift to set a statesman right;
He has had enough of meddling who can please
A young girl in the indolence of her youth,
Or an old man upon a winter’s night.

Four great gates has the city of Damascus,
    And four Grand Wardens, on their spears reclining,
All day long stand like tall stone men
    And sleep on the towers when the moon is shining.

    'This is the song of the East Gate Warden
    When he locks the great gate and smokes in his garden'.

Postern of Fate, the Desert Gate, Disaster's Cavern, Fort of Fear,
The Portal of Bagdad am I, the Doorway of Diarbekir.

The Persian dawn with new desires may net the flushing mountain spires,
But my gaunt buttress still rejects the suppliance of those mellow fires.

Pass not beneath, O Caravan, or pass not singing. Have you heard
That silence where the birds are dead yet something pipeth like a bird?

Pass not beneath! Men say there blows in stony deserts still...

Love-sick I am, and must endure
A desperate grief, that finds no cure.
Ah me! I try; and trying, prove
No herbs have power to cure love.
Only one sovereign salve I know,
And that is death, the end of woe.

Jan 7th

A dreadful darkness closes in
On my bewildered mind;
O let me suffer and not sin,
Be tortured yet resigned.

Through all this world of whelming mist
Still let me look to Thee,
And give me courage to resist
The Tempter till he flee.

Weary I am, O give me strength
And leave me not to faint;
Say Thou wilt comfort me at length
And pity my complaint.

I've begged to serve Thee heart and soul,
To sacrifice to Thee
No niggard portion, but the whole
Of my identity.

I hoped amid the brave and strong
My portioned task might lie,
To toil amid the labouring throng
With purpose pure and high.

But Thou hast fixed another part,
And Thou hast fixed it well;
I said so with my breaking heart
When ...

Sweet Phyllis, leave thy quiet home,
For lo! the ides of April come!
    Then hasten to my bower;
A cask of rich Albanian wine,
In nine years mellowness, is mine,
    To glad the festal hour.

My garden-herbs, in fragrance warm,
Our various chaplets wait to form;
    My tender ivies grow,
That, twining in thy amber hair,
Add jocund spirit to thine air,
    And whiteness to thy brow.

My walls with silver vessels shine;
Chaste vervain decks the modest shrine,
    That longs with crimson stains
To see its foliage sprinkled o'er,
When the devoted Lamb shall pour
    The treasure of his veins.

The household Girls, and menial Boy,
From room to room assiduous fly,
    And busy hands extend;
Our numerous fires are quivering br...

    The Moon's a snowball.    See the drifts
    Of white that cross the sphere.
    The Moon's a snowball, melted down
    A dozen times a year.

    Yet rolled again in hot July
    When all my days are done
    And cool to greet the weary eye
    After the scorching sun.

    The moon's a piece of winter fair
    Renewed the year around,
    Behold it, deathless and unstained,
    Above the grimy ground!

    It rolls on high so brave and white
    Where the clear air-rivers flow,
    Proclaiming Christmas all the time
    And the glory of the snow!

To appease the Gods; or public thanks to yield;
Or to solicit knowledge of events,
Which in her breast Futurity concealed;
And that the past might have its true intents
Feelingly told by living monuments
Mankind of yore were prompted to devise
Rites such as yet Persepolis presents
Graven on her cankered walls, solemnities
That moved in long array before admiring eyes.

The Hebrews thus, carrying in joyful state
Thick boughs of palm, and willows from the brook,
Marched round the altar to commemorate
How, when their course they through the desert took,
Guided by signs which ne'er the sky forsook,
They lodged in leafy tents and cabins low;
Green boughs were borne, while, for the blast that shook
Down to the earth the walls of Jericho,
Shouts rise, and s...

I

In days when men had joy of war,
A God of Battles sped each mortal jar;
The peoples pledged him heart and hand,
From Israel's land to isles afar.

II

His crimson form, with clang and chime,
Flashed on each murk and murderous meeting-time,
And kings invoked, for rape and raid,
His fearsome aid in rune and rhyme.

III

On bruise and blood-hole, scar and seam,
On blade and bolt, he flung his fulgid beam:
His haloes rayed the very gore,
And corpses wore his glory-gleam.

IV

Often an early King or Queen,
And storied hero onward, knew his sheen;
'Twas glimpsed by Wolfe, by Ney anon,
And Nelson on his blue demesne.

V

But new light spread. That god's gold nimb
And blazon have waned dimme...

Without the slightest basis
For hypochondriasis
A widow had forebodings which a cloud around her flung,
And with expression cynical
For half the day a clinical
Thermometer she held beneath her tongue.

Whene'er she read the papers
She suffered from the vapors,
At every tale of malady or accident she'd groan;
In every new and smart disease,
From housemaid's knee to heart disease,
She recognized the symptoms as her own!

She had a yearning chronic
To try each novel tonic,
Elixir, panacea, lotion, opiate, and balm;
And from a homoeopathist
Would change to an hydropathist,
And back again, with stupefying calm!

The closets of her villa
Were full of sarsaparilla,
Ammonia, digitalis, bronchial troches, soda mint.
Restoratives ...

Tune - "Wandering Willie."



I.

    Ance mair I hail thee, thou gloomy December!
        Ance mair I hail thee wi' sorrow and care:
    Sad was the parting thou makes me remember,
        Parting wi' Nancy, oh! ne'er to meet mair.
    Fond lovers' parting is sweet painful pleasure,
        Hope beaming mild on the soft parting hour;
    But the dire feeling, O farewell for ever!
        Is anguish unmingled, and agony pure.

II.

    Wild as the winter now tearing the forest,
        'Till the last leaf o' the summer is flown,
    Such is the tempest has shaken my bosom,
        Since my last hope and last comfort is gone!
    Still as I hail thee, thou gloomy December,
        Still shall I hail thee wi' sorrow and care;...

Mountains of sorrow, I have heard your moans,
    And the moving of your pines; but we sit high
    On your green shoulders, nearer stoops the sky,
And pure airs visit us from all the zones.
    Sweet world beneath, too happy far to sigh,
Dost thou look thus beheld from heavenly thrones?
No; not for all the love that counts thy stones,
    While sleepy with great light the valleys lie.
Strange, rapturous peace! its sunshine doth enfold
    My heart; I have escaped to the days divine,
It seemeth as bygone ages back had rolled,
    And all the eldest past was now, was mine;
Nay, even as if Melchizedec of old
    Might here come forth to us with bread and wine.

Ye Lime-trees, ranged before this hallowed Urn,
Shoot forth with lively power at Spring's return;
And be not slow a stately growth to rear
Of pillars, branching off from year to year,
Till they have learned to frame a darksome aisle;
That may recall to mind that awful Pile
Where Reynolds, 'mid our country's noblest dead,
In the last sanctity of fame is laid.
There, though by right the excelling Painter sleep
Where Death and Glory a joint sabbath keep,
Yet not the less his Spirit would hold dear
Self-hidden praise, and Friendship's private tear:
Hence, on my patrimonial grounds, have I
Raised this frail tribute to his memory;
From youth a zealous follower of the Art
That he professed; attached to him in heart;
Admiring, loving, and with grief and pride
Fee...

This is "The old Home by the Mill" - far we still call it so,
Although the old mill, roof and sill, is all gone long ago.
The old home, though, and old folks, and the old spring, and a few
Old cat-tails, weeds and hartychokes, is left to welcome you!

Here, Marg'et, fetch the man a tin to drink out of' Our spring
Keeps kindo-sorto cavin' in, but don't "taste" anything!
She's kindo agein', Marg'et is - "the old process," like me,
All ham-stringed up with rheumatiz, and on in seventy-three.

Jes' me and Marg'et lives alone here - like in long ago;
The childern all put off and gone, and married, don't you know?
One's millin' way out West somewhere; two other miller-boys
In Minnyopolis they air; and one's in Illinoise.

The oldest gyrl - the first that went - married a...

Newly Translated Into English Verse By R. Martin Pope is below this original.

Epilogus


    Inmolat Deo Patri
        pius, fidelis, innocens, pudicus
    dona conscientiae,
        quibus beata mens abundat intus:
    alter et pecuniam
        recidit, unde victitent egeni.
    Nos citos iambicos
        sacramus et rotatiles trochaeos,
    sanctitatis indigi
        nec ad levamen pauperum potentes;
    adprobat tamen Deus
        pedestre carmen, et benignus audit.
    Multa divitis domo
        sita est per omnes angulos supellex.
    Fulget aureus scyphus,
        nec aere defit expolita pelvis:
    est et olla fictilis,
        gravisque et ampla argentea est parabsis.
    Sunt eburna quaepiam,
        nonnulla q...

Noon's fervid hour perchance six thousand miles
From hence is distant; and the shadowy cone
Almost to level on our earth declines;
When from the midmost of this blue abyss
By turns some star is to our vision lost.
And straightway as the handmaid of the sun
Puts forth her radiant brow, all, light by light,
Fade, and the spangled firmament shuts in,
E'en to the loveliest of the glittering throng.
Thus vanish'd gradually from my sight
The triumph, which plays ever round the point,
That overcame me, seeming (for it did)
Engirt by that it girdeth. Wherefore love,
With loss of other object, forc'd me bend
Mine eyes on Beatrice once again.

If all, that hitherto is told of her,
Were in one praise concluded, 't were too weak
To furnish out this turn. Mine ey...

Nature teaches us our tongue again
And the swift sentences came pat. I came
Into cool night rescued from rainy dawn.
And I seethed with language, Henry at
Harfleur and Agincourt came apt for war
In Ireland and the Middle East. Here was
The riddling and right tongue, the feeling words
Solid and dutiful. Aspiring hope
Met purpose in "advantages" and "He
That fights with me today shall be my brother."
Say this is patriotic, out of date.
But you are wrong. It never is too late

For nights of stars and feet that move to an
Iambic measure; all who clapped were linked,
The theatre is our treasury and too,
Our study, school-room, house where mercy is

Dispensed with justice. Shakespeare has the mood
And draws the music from the dullest heart.
This ...