Death

William.


The day is now dawning, love,
Fled is the night--
I go like the morning, love,
Cheerful and bright.
Then adieu, dearest Ellen:
When evening is near,
I'll visit thy dwelling,
For true love is here.


Ellen.


Oh, come where the fountain, love,
Tranquilly flows;
Beneath the green mountain, love,
Seek for repose;
There the days of our childhood,
In love's golden beam,
'Mong the blue-bells and wildwood,
Passed on like a dream.


William.


Oh, linger awhile, love!


Ellen.


            I must away.


William.


Oh, grant me thy smile, love,
'Tis Hope's cheering ray--
With evening expect me.


Ellen.
...

Strange Sea! why is it that you never rest?
And tell me why you never go to sleep?
Thou art like one so sad and sin-oppressed --
(And the waves are the tears you weep) --
And thou didst never sin -- what ails the sinless deep?

To-night I hear you crying on the beach,
Like a weary child on its mother's breast --
A cry with an infinite and lonesome reach
Of unutterably deep unrest;
And thou didst never sin -- why art thou so distressed?

But, ah, sad Sea! the mother's breast is warm,
Where crieth the lone and the wearied child;
And soft the arms that shield her own from harm;
And her look is unutterably mild --
But to-night, O Sea! thy cry is wild, so wild!

What ails thee, Sea? The midnight stars are bright --
How safe they lean on heaven's sinl...

I have remembered beauty in the night,
Against black silences I waked to see
A shower of sunlight over Italy
And green Ravello dreaming on her height;
I have remembered music in the dark,
The clean swift brightness of a fugue of Bach's,
And running water singing on the rocks
When once in English woods I heard a lark.

But all remembered beauty is no more
Than a vague prelude to the thought of you,
You are the rarest soul I ever knew,
Lover of beauty, knightliest and best;
My thoughts seek you as waves that seek the shore,
And when I think of you, I am at rest.

Another day let slip!    Its hours have run,
    Its golden hours, with prodigal excess,
    All run to waste.    A day of life the less;
Of many wasted days, alas, but one!

Through my west window streams the setting sun.
    I kneel within my chamber, and confess
    My sin and sorrow, filled with vain distress,
In place of honest joy for work well done.

At noon I passed some labourers in a field.
    The sweat ran down upon each sunburnt face,
            Which shone like copper in the ardent glow.
And one looked up, with envy unconcealed,
    Beholding my cool cheeks and listless pace,
            Yet he was happier, though he did not know.

I named him Claude, 'twas a strange conceit,
'Twas a name that no relatives ever bore;
Yet there lingered around it a mem'ry sweet,
Of a face and a voice I miss evermore.

I was pacing the deck of a captive ship,
That was straining its cables to get away,
From the parched up town, and its crowded slip,
To its home on the wave and its life in the spray.

When I saw the beautiful, sorrowful dame, -
And never, oh, never, shall I forget
The sweet chord struck as she spoke the name,
That thrilled through my being and lingers yet.

'Twas a winsome woman with raven hair,
And a lovely face, and a beaming eye,
With a smile that of joy and sorrow had share,
And her form had the charms for which sculptors vie.

I never had seen such a lovely hand,

Who Slammed Doors For Fun And Perished Miserably

A trick that everyone abhors
In little girls is slamming doors.
A wealthy banker's little daughter
Who lived in Palace Green, Bayswater
(By name Rebecca Offendort),
Was given to this furious sport.

She would deliberately go
And slam the door like billy-o!
To make her uncle Jacob start.
She was not really bad at heart,
But only rather rude and wild;
She was an aggravating child...

It happened that a marble bust
Of Abraham was standing just
Above the door this little lamb
Had carefully prepared to slam,
And down it came! It knocked her flat!
It laid her out! She looked like that.

Her funeral sermon (which was long
And followed by a sacred song)
Mentioned her virtues...

Lo! where the four mimosas blend their shade
In calm repose at last is Landor laid;
For ere he slept he saw them planted here
By her his soul had ever held most dear,
And he had liv’d enough when he had dried her tear.

Lene Levi went out in the evening,
Mincing, her skirt bunched up,
Through the long, empty streets
Of a suburb.

And she spoke weeping, aching, crazy,
Strange words,
Which the wind tossed, so that they popped,
Like pods.

They made bloody scratches on trees,
And, shredded, hung on houses
And in these deaf streets
died all alone.

Lene Levi went out, until all
The roofs made their crooked mouths grimace,
And the windows and the shadows
Made faces

They had a completely drunken good time -
Until the houses became helpless
And the mute city passed
Into the broad fields,
Which the moon smeared...

Little Lene took out of her pocket
A box of cigarettes,
Weeping took one
Out and smoked.

'... O she,
To me myself, for some three careless moons,
The summer pilot of an empty heart
Unto the shores of Nothing.' - Tennyson.


'Tis the hour when golden slumbers
Through th' Hesperian portals creep,
And the youth who lisps in numbers
Dreams of novel rhymes to 'sleep';
I shall merely note, at starting,
That responsive Nature thrills
To the twilight hour of parting
From my Lady of the Hills.

Lady, 'neath the deepening umbrage
We have wandered near and far,
To the ludicrously dumb rage
Of your truculent Mamma;
We have urged the long-tailed gallop;
Lightly danced the still night through;
Smacked the ball, and oared the shallop
(In a vis-à-vis canoe);

We have walked this fair Oasis,
Keeping...

Long since, I lived beneath vast porticoes,
By many ocean-sunsets tinged and fired,
Where mighty pillars, in majestic rows,
Seemed like basaltic caves when day expired.

The rolling surge that mirrored all the skies
Mingled its music, turbulent and rich,
Solemn and mystic, with the colours which
The setting sun reflected in my eyes.

And there I lived amid voluptuous calms,
In splendours of blue sky and wandering wave,
Tended by many a naked, perfumed slave,

Who fanned my languid brow with waving palms.
They were my slaves - the only care they had
To know what secret grief had made me sad.

His thundering car
Is heard from afar,
And his trumpet notes sound
All the country around;
Stop your ears as you will,
That loud blast and shrill
Is heard by you still.
Borne along by the gale,
In his frost coat of mail,
Midst snow, sleet, and hail,
He comes without fail,
And drives all before him,
Though men beg and implore him
Just to let them take breath,
Or he'll drive them to death.
But he comes in great state,
And for none will he wait,
Though he sees their distress
Yet he spares them no less,
For the cold stiff limb
Is nothing to him;
And o'er countless blue noses,
His hard heart he closes.
His own children fear him
And dare not come near him;
E'en his favorite child[4]
Has been known to run wild
At...

A slumber did my spirit seal;
I had no human fears:
She seemed a thing that could not feel
The touch of earthly years.
No motion has she now, no force;
She neither hears nor sees;
Rolled round in earth's diurnal course,
With rocks, and stones, and trees.

    This door you might not open, and you did;
        So enter now, and see for what slight thing
    You are betrayed. . . .    Here is no treasure hid,
        No cauldron, no clear crystal mirroring
    The sought-for truth, no heads of women slain
        For greed like yours, no writhings of distress,
    But only what you see. . . .    Look yet again--
        An empty room, cobwebbed and comfortless.
    Yet this alone out of my life I kept
        Unto myself, lest any know me quite;
    And you did so profane me when you crept
        Unto the threshold of this room to-night
    That I must never more behold your face.
        This now is yours.    I seek another place.

He's the man from Eldorado, and he's just arrived in town,
In moccasins and oily buckskin shirt.
He's gaunt as any Indian, and pretty nigh as brown;
He's greasy, and he smells of sweat and dirt.
He sports a crop of whiskers that would shame a healthy hog;
Hard work has racked his joints and stooped his back;
He slops along the sidewalk followed by his yellow dog,
But he's got a bunch of gold-dust in his sack.

He seems a little wistful as he blinks at all the lights,
And maybe he is thinking of his claim
And the dark and dwarfish cabin where he lay and dreamed at nights,
(Thank God, he'll never see the place again!)
Where he lived on tinned tomatoes, beef embalmed and sourdough bread,
On rusty beans and bacon furred with mould;
His stomach's out of kilter and his s...

Alas! upon some starry height,
The Gods of Excellence to please,
This hand of mine will never smite
The Harp of High Serenities.
Mere minstrel of the street am I,
To whom a careless coin you fling;
But who, beneath the bitter sky,
Blue-lipped, yet insolent of eye,
Can shrill a song of Spring;
A song of merry mansard days,
The cheery chimney-tops among;
Of rolics and of roundelays
When we were young . . . when we were young;
A song of love and lilac nights,
Of wit, of wisdom and of wine;
Of Folly whirling on the Heights,
Of hunger and of hope divine;
Of Blanche, Suzette and Celestine,
And all that gay and tender band
Who shared with us the fat, the lean,
The hazard of Illusion-land;
When scores of Philistines we slew
As mightily wi...

    As the days lengthen,
    So the storms strengthen.

I love thee, Nature, with a boundless love!
The calm of earth, the storm of roaring woods!
The winds breathe happiness where'er I rove!
There's life's own music in the swelling floods!
My heart is in the thunder-melting clouds,
The snow-cap't mountain, and the rolling sea!
And hear ye not the voice where darkness shrouds
The heavens? There lives happiness for me!

My pulse beats calmer while His lightnings play!
My eye, with earth's delusions waxing dim,
Clears with the brightness of eternal day!
The elements crash round me! It is He!
Calmly I hear His voice and never start.
From Eve's posterity I stand quite free,
Nor feel her curses rankle round my heart.

Love is not here. Hope is, and at His voice--
The rolling thunder and the roaring sea--
...

So long as memory, valour, and faith endure,
Let these stones witness, through the years to come,
How once there was a people fenced secure
Behind great waters girdling a far home.

Their own and their land’s youth ran side by side
Heedless and headlong as their unyoked seas,
Lavish o’er all, and set in stubborn pride
Of judgment, nurtured by accepted peace.

Thus, suddenly, war took them, seas and skies
Joined with the earth for slaughter. In a breath
They, scoffing at all talk of sacrifice,
Gave themselves without idle words to death.

Thronging as cities throng to watch a game
Or their own herds move southward with the year,
Secretly, swiftly, from their ports they came,
So that before half earth had heard their name
Half earth had learned to...