Death

I.

I have heard the wind on a winter's night,
When the snow-cold moon looked icily through
My window's flickering firelight,
Where the frost his witchery drew:
I have heard the wind on a winter's night,
Wandering ways that were frozen white,
Wail in my chimney-flue:
And its voice was the voice, so it seemed to me,
The voice of the world's vast misery.

II.

I have heard the wind on a night of spring,
When the leaves unclasped their girdles of gold,
And the bird on the bough sang slumbering,
In the lilac's fragrant fold:
I have heard the wind on a night of spring,
Shaking the musk from its dewy wing,
Sigh in my garden old:
And it seemed that it said, as it sighed above,
"I am the voice of the Earth's great love."

III.

It was faur-ye-weel, my dear, that the gulls were cryin'
    At the kirk beside the sands,
Whaur the saumon-nets lay oot on the bents for dryin',
    Wi' the tar upon their strands;

A roofless kirk i' the bield o' the cliff-fit bidin',
    And the deid laid near the wa';
A wheen auld coupit stanes i' the sea-grass hidin',
    Wi' the sea-sound ower them a'.

But it's mair nor daith that's here on the hauchs o' Flanders,
    And the deid lie closer in;
It's no the gull, but the hoodit craw that wanders
    When the lang, lang nichts begin.

It's ill to dee, but there's waur things yet nor deein';
    And the warst o' a's disgrace;
For there's nae grave deep eneuch 'mang the graves in bein'
    To cover a coward's face.

Syne, a' is weel, th...

Avid of life and love, insatiate vagabond,
With quest too furious for the graal he would have won,
He flung himself at the eternal sky, as one
Wrenching his chains but impotent to burst the bond.

Yet under the revolt, the revel, the despond,
What pools of innocence, what crystal benison!
As through a riven mist that glowers in the sun,
A stretch of God's blue calm glassed in a virgin pond.

Prowler of obscene streets that riot reek along,
And aisles with incense numb and gardens mad with rose,
Monastic cells and dreams of dim brocaded lawns,

Death, which has set the calm of Time upon his song,
Surely upon his soul has kissed the same repose
In some fair heaven the Christ has set apart for Fauns.

Our hearts are set on pleasure and on gain.
Fine clothes, fair houses, more and daintier bread;
We have no strivings, and no hunger-pain
For spiritual food; our souls are dead.
So judged I till the day when news was rife
Of fire besieging scholars and their dames,
And bravely one gave up her own fair life
In saving the most helpless from the flames.

Then when I heard the instantaneous cheer
That broke with sobbing undertones from all
The multitude, and watched them drawing near,
Stricken and mute, around her funeral pall
In grief and exultation, I confest
My judgment erred, - we know and love the best.

Vnhappie sight, and hath shee vanisht by
So nere, in so good time, so free a place!
Dead Glasse, dost thou thy obiect so imbrace,
As what my hart still sees thou canst not spie!
I sweare by her I loue and lacke, that I
Was not in fault, who bent thy dazling race
Onely vnto the heau'n of Stellas face,
Counting but dust what in the way did lie.
But cease, mine eyes, your teares do witnesse well
That you, guiltlesse thereof, your nectar mist:
Curst be the page from whome the bad torch fell:
Curst be the night which did your strife resist:
Curst be the coachman that did driue so fast,
With no lesse curse then absence makes me tast.

    A case at chambers left for my opinion
        Had taxed my brain until the noon of night,
    I read old law, and loathed the long dominion
                                    Of fiction over right.

    I had consulted Coke and Cruise and Chitty,
        The works where ancient learning reigns supreme,
    Until exhausted nature, moved with pity,
                                    Sent me a bookman's dream.

    Six figures, all gigantic as Gargantua,
        Floated before my eyes, and all the six
    Were shades like those that once the bard of Mantua
                                    Saw by the shore of Styx.

    The first was one with countenance imperious,
        His toga dim with centuries of dust;
    "My name," quoth he, "is Aulus and A...

Is not to-day enough? Why do I peer
Into the darkness of the day to come?
Is not to-morrow even as yesterday?
And will the day that follows change thy doom?
Few flowers grow upon thy wintry way;
And who waits for thee in that cheerless home
Whence thou hast fled, whither thou must return
Charged with the load that makes thee faint and mourn?

If Thou hadst been a painter, what fresh looks,
What shining of pent glories, what new grace
Had burst upon us from the great Earth's face!
How had we read, as in new-languaged books,
Clear love of God in lone retreating nooks!
A lily, as thy hand its form would trace,
Were plainly seen God's child, of lower race;
And, O my heart, blue hills! and grassy brooks!
Thy soul lay to all undulations bare,
Answering in waves. Each morn the sun did rise,
And God's world woke beneath life-giving skies,
Thou sawest clear thy Father's meanings there;
'Mid Earth's Ideal, and expressions rare,
The ideal Man, with the eternal eyes.

Hereto I come to interview a ghost;
    Whither, O whither will its whim now draw me?
Up the cliff, down, till I'm lonely, lost,
    And the unseen waters' ejaculations awe me.
Where you will next be there's no knowing,
    Facing round about me everywhere,
    With your nut-coloured hair,
And gray eyes, and rose-flush coming and going.

Yes: I have re-entered your olden haunts at last;
    Through the years, through the dead scenes I have tracked you;
What have you now found to say of our past -
    Viewed across the dark space wherein I have lacked you?
Summer gave us sweets, but autumn wrought division?
    Things were not lastly as firstly well
    With us twain, you tell?
But all's closed now, despite Time's derision.

I see what you are doing: ...

How great my grief, my joys how few,
Since first it was my fate to know thee!
- Have the slow years not brought to view
How great my grief, my joys how few,
Nor memory shaped old times anew,
Nor loving-kindness helped to show thee
How great my grief, my joys how few,
Since first it was my fate to know thee?

Its rotting fence one scarcely sees
Through sumac and wild blackberries,
Thick elder and the bramble-rose,
Big ox-eyed daisies where the bees
Hang droning in repose.

The little lizards lie all day
Gray on its rocks of lichen-gray;
And, insect-Ariels of the sun,
The butterflies make bright its way,
Its path where chipmunks run.

A lyric there the redbird lifts,
While, twittering, the swallow drifts
'Neath wandering clouds of sleepy cream, -
In which the wind makes azure rifts, -
O'er dells where wood-doves dream.

The brown grasshoppers rasp and bound
Mid weeds and briers that hedge it round;
And in its grass-grown ruts, - where stirs
The harmless snake, - mole-crickets sound
Their faery dulcimers.

At evening, when the ...

‘What have I earned for all that work,’ I said,
‘For all that I have done at my own charge?
The daily spite of this unmannerly town,
Where who has served the most is most defamed,
The reputation of his lifetime lost
Between the night and morning. I might have lived,
And you know well how great the longing has been,
Where every day my footfall should have lit
In the green shadow of Ferrara wall;
Or climbed among the images of the past—
The unperturbed and courtly images—
Evening and morning, the steep street of Urbino
To where the duchess and her people talked
The stately midnight through until they stood
In their great window looking at the dawn;
I might have had no friend that could not mix
Courtesy and passion into one like those
That saw the wicks grow...

Lord of all Life! When my hours are done,
Take me and make me anew -
And give me back to the earth and the sun,
And the sky's unlimited blue.

The nightingale sings in an ecstasy
To the moonlit April night,
But my songs are locked in the heart of me,
Like birds that may not take flight.

The little purple-winged swallows that fly
Through waves of the upper air,
Have a sweeter liberty, Lord, than I,
Who may not follow them there.

Pavilions of sunshine - tents of the rain,
For these, the wild and the free;
And for us walled garden and window-pane,
And bolt and staple and key.

We are worn with wisdom that never brings
Peace to the world and its woe -
For a space with Thy joyous lesser things,
Teach me the faith I would know.

High on a broad unfertile tract of forest-skirted Down,
Nor kept by Nature for herself, nor made by man his own,
From home and company remote and every playful joy,
Served, tending a few sheep and goats, a ragged Norman Boy.

Him never saw I, nor the spot; but from an English Dame,
Stranger to me and yet my friend, a simple notice came,
With suit that I would speak in verse of that sequestered child
Whom, one bleak winter's day, she met upon the dreary Wild.

His flock, along the woodland's edge with relics sprinkled o'er
Of last night's snow, beneath a sky threatening the fall of more,
Where tufts of herbage tempted each, were busy at their feed,
And the poor Boy was busier still, with work of anxious heed.

There 'was' he, where of branches rent and withered and ...

    No eye beheld when William plunged
    Young Edmund in the stream,
    No human ear but William's heard
    Young Edmund's drowning scream.

    Submissive all the vassals own'd
    The murderer for their Lord,
    And he, the rightful heir, possessed
    The house of Erlingford.

    The ancient house of Erlingford
    Stood midst a fair domain,
    And Severn's ample waters near
    Roll'd through the fertile plain.

    And often the way-faring man
    Would love to linger there,
    Forgetful of his onward road
    To gaze on scenes so fair.

    But never could Lord William dare
    To gaze on Severn's stream;
    In every wind that swept its waves
    He heard young Edmund scream.

    In vain at midnight'...

A stream, to mingle with your favourite Dee,
Along the vale of meditation flows;
So styled by those fierce Britons, pleased to see
In Nature's face the expression of repose;
Or haply there some pious hermit chose
To live and die, the peace of heaven his aim;
To whom the wild sequestered region owes
At this late day, its sanctifying name.
Glyn Cafaillgaroch, in the Cambrian tongue,
In ours, the vale OF friendship, let 'this' spot
Be named; where, faithful to a low-roofed Cot,
On Deva's banks, ye have abode so long;
Sisters in love, a love allowed to climb,
Even on this earth, above the reach of Time!

JANUARY


Now Time the harvester surveys
His sorry crops of yesterdays;
Of trampled hopes and reaped regrets,
And for another harvest whets
His ancient scythe, eying the while
The budding year with cynic smile.
Well, let him smile; in snug retreat
I fill my pipe with honeyed sweet,
Whose incense wafted from the bowl
Shall make warm sunshine in my soul,
And conjure mid the fragrant haze
Fair memories of other days.



FEBRUARY


Bend you now before the shrine
Of the good Saint Valentine.
Show to him your broken heart--
Pray the Saint to take your part.
Should he intercede in vain
And the maid your heart disdain,
Call upon Saint Nicotine;
He will surely intervene.
Bring burnt off'ring to his feet,<...

Pan came out of the woods one day,
His skin and his hair and his eyes were gray,
The gray of the moss of walls were they,
And stood in the sun and looked his fill
At wooded valley and wooded hill.

He stood in the zephyr, pipes in hand,
On a height of naked pasture land;
In all the country he did command
He saw no smoke and he saw no roof.
That was well! and he stamped a hoof.

His heart knew peace, for none came here
To this lean feeding save once a year
Someone to salt the half-wild steer,
Or homespun children with clicking pails
Who see so little they tell no tales.

He tossed his pipes, too hard to teach
A new-world song, far out of reach,
For sylvan sign that the blue jay's screech
And the whimper of hawks beside the sun
Were...