Death

He sleeps where the billow
    Lifts high its white crest
O'er his lone, sea-weed pillow
    On Ocean's dark breast;
No shroud is around him,
    No flowers bloom above,
No mourners surround him
    With grief-drops of love.

But the limitless ocean
    His requiem sings,
As, with tireless motion,
    The green billow springs
Toward the infinite heaven,
    Blue, bending above,
Where angels are watching
    His slumbers in love.

Oh! boundless his tomb is,
    Far-reaching, sublime,
Stretching forth in immenseness
    To every clime;
Thus boundless his love was,
    On every side
Spreading freely wherever
    Man sorrowed or died.

Sleep, Judson! no grave-dust
    Shall rest on thy head,
In sunli...

    The low bay melts into a ring of silver,
    And slips it on the shore's reluctant finger,
    Though in an hour the tide will turn, will tremble,
    Forsaking her because the moon persuades him.
    But the black wood that leans and sighs above her
    No hour can change, no moon can slave nor summon.
    Then comes the dark; on sleepy, shell-strewn beaches,
    O'er long, pale leagues of sand, and cold, clear water
    She hears the tide go out towards the moonlight.
    The wood still leans ... weeping she turns to seek him,
    And his black hair all night is on her bosom.

        'T will not be long before they hear
            The bullbat on the hill,
        And in the valley through the dusk
            The pastoral whippoorwill.
        A few more friendly suns will call
            The bluets through the loam
        And star the lanes with buttercups
                Away down home.

        "Knee-deep!" from reedy places
            Will sing the river frogs.
        The terrapins will sun themselves
            On all the jutting logs.
        The angler's cautious oar will leave
            A trail of drifting foam
        Along the shady currents
                Away down home.

        The mocking-bird will feel again
            The glory of his wings,
        And wanton through the balmy air

We meet in joy, though we part in sorrow;
We part to-night, but we meet to-morrow.
Be it flood or blood the path that's trod,
All the same it leads home to God:
Be it furnace-fire voluminous,
One like God's Son will walk with us.

What are these that glow from afar,
These that lean over the golden bar,
Strong as the lion, pure as the dove,
With open arms and hearts of love?
They the blessed ones gone before,
They the blessed for evermore.
Out of great tribulation they went
Home to their home of Heaven-content;
Through flood, or blood, or furnace-fire,
To the rest that fulfils desire.

What are these that fly as a cloud,
With flashing heads and faces bowed,
In their mouths a victorious psalm,
In their hands a robe and palm?
Welcomi...

"Gather around me, children dear;
The wind is high and the night is cold;
Closer, little ones, snuggle near;
Let's seek a story of ages old;
A magic tale of a bygone day,
Of lovely ladies and dragons dread;
Come, for you're all so tired of play,
We'll read till it's time to go to bed."

So they all are glad, and they nestle in,
And squat on the rough old nursery rug,
And they nudge and hush as I begin,
And the fire leaps up and all's so snug;
And there I sit in the big arm-chair,
And how they are eager and sweet and wise,
And they cup their chins in their hands and stare
At the heart of the flame with thoughtful eyes.

And then, as I read by the ruddy glow
And the little ones sit entranced and still . . .
He's drawing near, ah! I kno...

Kindly and warm and tender,
He nestled each childish palm
So close in his own that his touch was a prayer
And his speech a blessed psalm.

He has turned from the marvelous pages
Of many an alien tome -
Haply come down from Olivet,
Or out from the gates of Rome -

Set sail o'er the seas between him
And each little beckoning hand
That fluttered about in the meadows
And groves of his native land, -

Fluttered and flashed on his vision
As, in the glimmering light
Of the orchard-lands of childhood,
The blossoms of pink and white.

And there have been sobs in his bosom,
As out on the shores he stept,
And many a little welcomer
Has wondered why he wept. -

That was because, O children,
Ye might not always be
The ...

All night I lay upon the rocks:
And now the dawn comes up this way,
One great star trembling in her locks
Of rosy ray.

I can not tell the things I've seen;
The things I've heard I dare not speak.
The dawn is breaking gold and green
O'er vale and peak.

My soul hath kept its tryst again
With her as once in ages past,
In that lost life, I know not when,
Which was my last.

When she was Dryad, I was Faun,
And lone we loved in Tempe's Vale,
Where once we saw Endymion
Pass passion-pale:

Where once we saw him clasp and meet
Among the pines, with kiss on kiss,
Moon-breasted and most heavenly sweet,
White Artemis.

Where often, Bacchus-borne, we heard
The Mænad shout, wild-revelling;
And filled with witchraft, p...

    There's not a soul on the square,
    And the snow blows up like a sail,
    Or dizzily drifts like a drunken man
    Falling, before the gale.

    And when the wind eddies it rifts
    The snow that lies in drifts;
    And it skims along the walk and sifts
    In stairways, doorways all about
    The steps of the church in an angry rout.
    And one would think that a hungry hound
    Was out in the cold for the sound.

    But I do not seem to mind
    The snow that makes one blind,
    Nor the crying voice of the wind,
    I hate to hear the creak of the sign
    Of Harmon Whitney, attorney at law:
    With its rhythmic monotone of awe.
    And neither a moan nor yet a whine,
    Nor a cry of pain, one can't define
    The soun...

A death-blow is a life-blow to some
Who, till they died, did not alive become;
Who, had they lived, had died, but when
They died, vitality begun.

(Macmillan's Magazine, May 1865.)


Where were you last night? I watched at the gate;
I went down early, I stayed down late.
    Were you snug at home, I should like to know,
Or were you in the coppice wheedling Kate?

She's a fine girl, with a fine clear skin;
Easy to woo, perhaps not hard to win.
    Speak up like a man and tell me the truth:
I'm not one to grow downhearted and thin.

If you love her best speak up like a man;
It's not I will stand in the light of your plan:
    Some girls might cry and scold you a bit,
And say they couldn't bear it; but I can.

Love was pleasant enough, and the days went fast;
Pleasant while it lasted, but it needn't last;
    Awhile on the wax and awhile on the wane,
Now dropped away into the...

Oh, I am grown so free from care
    Since my heart broke!
I set my throat against the air,
    I laugh at simple folk!

There's little kind and little fair
    Is worth its weight in smoke
To me, that's grown so free from care
    Since my heart broke!

Lass, if to sleep you would repair
    As peaceful as you woke,
Best not besiege your lover there
    For just the words he spoke
To me, that's grown so free from care
    Since my heart broke!

I ne'er was struck before that hour
With love so sudden and so sweet.
Her face it bloomed like a sweet flower
And stole my heart away complete.
My face turned pale as deadly pale,
My legs refused to walk away,
And when she looked "what could I ail?"
My life and all seemed turned to clay.

And then my blood rushed to my face
And took my sight away.
The trees and bushes round the place
Seemed midnight at noonday.
I could not see a single thing,
Words from my eyes did start;
They spoke as chords do from the string
And blood burnt round my heart.

Are flowers the winter's choice?
Is love's bed always snow?
She seemed to hear my silent voice
And love's appeal to know.
I never saw so sweet a face
As that I stood before:
My hea...

The sun goes down in a cold pale flare of light.
The trees grow dark: the shadows lean to the east:
And lights wink out through the windows, one by one.
A clamor of frosty sirens mourns at the night.
Pale slate-grey clouds whirl up from the sunken sun.

And the wandering one, the inquisitive dreamer of dreams,
The eternal asker of answers, stands in the street,
And lifts his palms for the first cold ghost of rain.
The purple lights leap down the hill before him.
The gorgeous night has begun again.

‘I will ask them all, I will ask them all their dreams,
I will hold my light above them and seek their faces.
I will hear them whisper, invisible in their veins . . .’
The eternal asker of answers becomes as the darkness,
Or as a wind blown over a myriad forest,

Delicate cluster! flag of teeming life!
Covering all my lands! all my sea-shores lining!
Flag of death! (how I watch'd you through the smoke of battle pressing!
How I heard you flap and rustle, cloth defiant!)
Flag cerulean! sunny flag! with the orbs of night dappled!
Ah my silvery beauty! ah my woolly white and crimson!
Ah to sing the song of you, my matron mighty!
My sacred one, my mother.

As I sat smoking, alone, yesterday,
And lazily leaning back in my chair,
Enjoying myself in a general way -
Allowing my thoughts a holiday
From weariness, toil and care, -
My fancies - doubtless, for ventilation -
Left ajar the gates of my mind, -
And Memory, seeing the situation,
Slipped out in street of "Auld Lang Syne."

Wandering ever with tireless feet
Through scenes of silence, and jubilee
Of long-hushed voices; and faces sweet
Were thronging the shadowy side of the street
As far as the eye could see;
Dreaming again, in anticipation,
The same old dreams of our boyhood's days
That never come true, from the vague sensation
Of walking asleep in the world's strange ways.

Away to the house where I was born!
And there was the selfsame...

Since all, that beat about in Nature's range,
Or veer or vanish; why should'st thou remain
The only constant in a world of change,
O yearning THOUGHT! that liv'st but in the brain?
Call to the HOURS, that in the distance play,
The faery people of the future day
Fond THOUGHT! not one of all that shining swarm
Will breathe on thee with life-enkindling breath,
Till when, like strangers shelt'ring from a storm,
Hope and Despair meet in the porch of Death!
Yet still thou haunt'st me; and though well I see,
She is not thou, and only thou art she,
Still, still as though some dear embodied Good,
Some living Love before my eyes there stood
With answering look a ready ear to lend,
I mourn to thee and say, `Ah! loveliest Friend!
That this the meed of all my toils might b...

Light your cigarette, then, in this shadow,
And talk to her, your arm engaged with hers.
Heavily over your heads the eaten maple
In the dead air of August strains and stirs.

Her stone-white face, in the lamp-light, turns toward you;
Darkly, with time-dark eyes, she questions you
Whether this universe is what she thinks it,
Simple and passionate and profound and true

Or whether, as with a sound of dim disaster,
A plaintive music brought to a huddled fall,
Some ancient treachery slides through the heart of things
The last star falling, seen from the utmost wall....

And you, what sinister, far, reserves of laughter,
What understandings, remote, perplexed, remain
Unguessed forever by her who is your victim,
Victim, of whom you too are victim again?

HONORA, shou'd that cruel time arrive
    When 'gainst my truth thou should'st my errors poize,
    Scorning remembrance of our vanish'd joys;
    When for the love-warm looks, in which I live,
But cold respect must greet me, that shall give
    No tender glance, no kind regretful sighs;
    When thou shalt pass me with averted eyes,
    Feigning thou see'st me not, to sting, and grieve,
And sicken my sad heart, I cou'd not bear
    Such dire eclipse of thy soul-cheering rays;
    I cou'd not learn my struggling heart to tear
From thy lov'd form, that thro' my memory strays;
    Nor in the pale horizon of Despair
    Endure the wintry and the darken'd days.

April 1773.