Death

There where the mighty mountains bare their fangs unto the moon;
There where the sullen sun-dogs glare in the snow-bright, bitter noon,
And the glacier-gutted streams sweep down at the clarion call of June:

There where the livid tundras keep their tryst with the tranquil snows;
There where the Silences are spawned, and the light of hell-fire flows
Into the bowl of the midnight sky, violet, amber, and rose:

There where the rapids churn and roar, and the ice-floes bellowing run;
Where the tortured, twisted rivers of blood rush to the setting sun -
I've packed my kit and I'm going, boys, ere another day is done.

*    *    *    *    *

I knew it would call, or soon or late, as it calls the whirring wings;
It's the olden lure, it's the golden lure, it's the lure of t...

    He sat in a wheeled chair, waiting for dark,
    And shivered in his ghastly suit of grey,
    Legless, sewn short at elbow. Through the park
    Voices of boys rang saddening like a hymn,
    Voices of play and pleasure after day,
    Till gathering sleep had mothered them from him.

    About this time Town used to swing so gay
    When glow-lamps budded in the light-blue trees
    And girls glanced lovelier as the air grew dim,
--In the old times, before he threw away his knees.
    Now he will never feel again how slim
    Girls' waists are, or how warm their subtle hands,
    All of them touch him like some queer disease.

    There was an artist silly for his face,
    For it was younger than his youth, last year.
    Now he is old; his back wil...

My life's long radiant Summer halts at last,
And lo! beside my path way I behold
Pursuing Autumn glide:    nor frost nor cold
Has heralded her presence; but a vast
Sweet calm that comes not till the year has passed
    Its fevered solstice, and a tinge of gold
    Subdues the vivid colouring of bold
And passion-hued emotions.    I will cast

My August days behind me with my May,
    Nor strive to drag them into Autumn's place,
    Nor swear I hope when I do but remember.
Now violet and rose have had their day,
    I'll pluck the soberer asters with good grace
    And call September nothing but September.

I

What is this I read in history,
Full of marvel, full of mystery,
Difficult to understand?
Is it fiction, is it truth?
Children in the flower of youth,
Heart in heart, and hand in hand,
Ignorant of what helps or harms,
Without armor, without arms,
Journeying to the Holy Land!

Who shall answer or divine?
Never since the world was made
Such a wonderful crusade
Started forth for Palestine.
Never while the world shall last
Will it reproduce the past;
Never will it see again
Such an army, such a band,
Over mountain, over main,
Journeying to the Holy Land.

Like a shower of blossoms blown
From the parent trees were they;
Like a flock of birds that fly
Through the unfrequented sky,
Holding nothing as their own...

I.

She comes, the dreamy daughter
Of day and night, a girl,
Who o'er the western water
Lifts up her moon of pearl:
Like some Rebecca at the well,
Who fills her jar of crystal shell,
Down ways of dew, o'er dale and dell,
Dusk comes with dreams of you,
Of you,
Dusk comes with dreams of you.

II.

She comes, the serious sister
Of all the stars that strew
The deeps of God, and glister
Bright on the darkling blue:
Like some loved Ruth, who heaps her arm
With golden gleanings of the farm,
Down fields of stars, where shadows swarm,
Dusk comes with thoughts of you,
Of you,
Dusk comes with thoughts of you.

III.

She comes, and soft winds greet her,
And whispering odors woo;
She is the words and met...

Winters know
Easily to shed the snow,
And the untaught Spring is wise
In cowslips and anemonies.
Nature, hating art and pains,
Baulks and baffles plotting brains;
Casualty and Surprise
Are the apples of her eyes;
But she dearly loves the poor,
And, by marvel of her own,
Strikes the loud pretender down.
For Nature listens in the rose
And hearkens in the berry's bell
To help her friends, to plague her foes,
And like wise God she judges well.
Yet doth much her love excel
To the souls that never fell,
To swains that live in happiness
And do well because they please,
Who walk in ways that are unfamed,
And feats achieve before they're named.

Fill a glass with golden wine,
And the while your lips are wet
Set their perfume unto mine,
And forget,
Every kiss we take and give
Leaves us less of life to live.

Yet again! Your whim and mine
In a happy while have met.
All your sweets to me resign,
Nor regret
That we press with every breath,
Sighed or singing, nearer death.

1875

At Francis Allen’s on the Christmas-eve,—
The game of forfeits done—the girls all kiss’d
Beneath the sacred bush and past away—
The parson Holmes, the poet Everard Hall,
The host, and I sat round the wassail-bowl,
Then half-way ebb’d: and there we held a talk,
How all the old honour had from Christmas gone,
Or gone, or dwindled down to some odd games
In some odd nooks like this; till I, tired out
With cutting eights that day upon the pond,
Where, three times slipping from the outer edge,
I bump’d the ice into three several stars,
Fell in a doze; and half-awake I heard
The parson taking wide and wider sweeps,
Now harping on the church-commissionners,
Now hawking at Geology and schism;
Until I woke, and found him settled down
Upon the general decay of faith...

I never hear the sound of thy glad bells,
Oxford, and chime harmonious, but I say,
Sighing to think how time has worn away,
Some spirit speaks in the sweet tone that swells,
Heard after years of absence, from the vale
Where Cherwell winds. Most true it speaks the tale
Of days departed, and its voice recalls
Hours of delight and hope in the gay tide
Of life, and many friends now scattered wide
By many fates. Peace be within thy walls!
I have scarce heart to visit thee; but yet,
Denied the joys sought in thy shades, denied
Each better hope, since my poor Harriet died,
What I have owed to thee, my heart can ne'er forget!

The gathering of dead wood - driven,
pinched in faces between
the strain of Van Gogh's setting -
had all the more realism
hastening down that leaden street.

Churning sockets, burdened with the duress of suffering,
the street in vigorous winter
raced like a bootblack
up from the river. Hedged by
black stems called trees, rows
of withered houses and dim bread shops
propositioned rough headlights
along a promenade of ice stalks
and careening streetlamps.

Fast in the cold,
faces were juggernauts
skating treacherously
over the pond of that closed city.

No fiction was it of the antique age:
A sky-blue stone, within this sunless cleft,
Is of the very footmarks unbereft
Which tiny Elves impressed; on that smooth stage
Dancing with all their brilliant equipage
In secret revels, haply after theft
Of some sweet Babe, Flower stolen, and coarse Weed left
For the distracted Mother to assuage
Her grief with, as she might! But, where, oh! where
Is traceable a vestige of the notes
That ruled those dances wild in character?
Deep underground? Or in the upper air,
On the shrill wind of midnight? or where floats
O'er twilight fields the autumnal gossamer?

    These eyes of dolls seem leaden stones
    not canisters of the Faith
    but cannon-balls engraved
    in tome-like stares so much
    waxen shapes, these dust cloths
    & spidery webs.

    Dolls with eyes stare
    lidless & forlorn
    such eyes are cracks
    minden shapes or basement eves
    hogans of the human form.
    I'm interested in the priapic
    silence of such dolls - their
    indolent aura in time
    one long amber twilight
    & the results are in
    the shadows have produced twins
    ...hazy silhouettes rough-housing
    in the dark, come passing headlights
    although the stampede of noises
    affects nought.

    Ticker-tape & collage
    in quick thick barrage
    th...

Underneath a tree at noontide
Abu Midjan sits distressed,
Fetters on his wrists and ancles,
And his chin upon his breast;

For the Emir's guard had taken,
As they passed from line to line,
Reeling in the camp at midnight,
Abu Midjan drunk with wine.

Now he sits and rolls uneasy,
Very fretful, for he hears,
Near at hand, the shout of battle,
And the din of driving spears.

Both his heels in wrath are digging
Trenches in the grassy soil,
And his fingers clutch and loosen,
Dreaming of the Persian spoil.

To the garden, over-weary
Of the sound of hoof and sword,
Came the Emir's gentle lady,
Anxious for her fighting lord.

Very sadly, Abu Midjan,
Hanging down his head for shame,
Spake in words of soft appealin...

They stood at the garden gate.
    By the lifting of a lid
She might have read her fate
    In a little thing he did.

He plucked a beautiful flower;
    Tore it away from its place
On the side of the blooming bower;
    And held it against his face.

Drank in its beauty and bloom,
    In the midst of his idle talk;
Then cast it down to the gloom
    And dust of the garden walk.

Ay, trod it under his foot,
    As it lay in his pathway there;
Then spurned it away with his boot,
    Because it bad ceased to be fair.

Ah! the maiden might have read
    The doom of her young life then;
But she looked in his eyes instead,
    And thought him the king of men.

She looked in his eyes and blushed,
    She hid in his s...

Through the black, rushing smoke-bursts,
Thick breaks the red flame.
All Etna heaves fiercely
Her forest-clothed frame.

Not here, O Apollo!
Are haunts meet for thee.
But, where Helicon breaks down
In cliff to the sea.

Where the moon-silver'd inlets
Send far their light voice
Up the still vale of Thisbe,
O speed, and rejoice!

On the sward at the cliff-top,
Lie strewn the white flocks;
On the cliff-side, the pigeons
Roost deep in the rocks.

In the moonlight the shepherds,
Soft lull'd by the rills,
Lie wrapt in their blankets,
Asleep on the hills.

What forms are these coming
So white through the gloom?
What garments out-glistening
The gold-flower'd broom?

What sweet-breathing Presence

Non Licida, nè Driope.


Lycoris, Lycidas, and Dryope
        Cannot, dear Niblo, save thy name from death;
        Shadows that fleet, and flowers that yield their breath,
        Match not the Love that craves infinity.
The beauty thou dost worship dwells in thee:
        Within thy soul divine it harboureth:
        This also bids my spirit soar, and saith
        Words that unsphere for me heaven's harmony.
Make then thine inborn lustre beam and shine
        With love of goodness; goodness cannot fail:
        From God alone let praise immense be thine.
My soul is tired of telling o'er the tale
        With men: she calls on thine: she bids thee go
        Into God's school with tablets white as snow.

As I went walking up and down to take the evening air,
    (Sweet to meet upon the street, why must I be so shy?)
I saw him lay his hand upon her torn black hair;
    ("Little dirty Latin child, let the lady by!")

The women squatting on the stoops were slovenly and fat,
    (Lay me out in organdie, lay me out in lawn!)
And everywhere I stepped there was a baby or a cat;
    (Lord God in Heaven, will it never be dawn?)

The fruit-carts and clam-carts were ribald as a fair,
    (Pink nets and wet shells trodden under heel)
She had haggled from the fruit-man of his rotting ware;
    (I shall never get to sleep, the way I feel!)

He walked like a king through the filth and the clutter,
    (Sweet to meet upon the street, why did you glance me by?)
But he cau...

I Leave thee, beauteous Italy! no more
From the high terraces, at even-tide,
To look supine into thy depths of sky,
Thy golden moon between the cliff and me,
Or thy dark spires of fretted cypresses            
Bordering the channel of the milky way.
Fiesole and Valdarno must be dreams
Hereafter, and my own lost Affrico
Murmur to me but in the poet’s song.
I did believe (what have I not believ’d?),            
Weary with age, but unoppress’d by pain,
To close in thy soft clime my quiet day
And rest my bones in the mimosa’s shade.
Hope! Hope! few ever cherish’d thee so little;
Few are the heads thou hast so rarely rais’d;            
But thou didst promise this, and all was well.
For we are fond of thinking where to lie
When every pulse hath ceas’d, when th...