Death

December 17, 1891.


Blossom and greenness, making all
The winter birthday tropical,
And the plain Quaker parlors gay,
Have gone from bracket, stand, and wall;
We saw them fade, and droop, and fall,
And laid them tenderly away.

White virgin lilies, mignonette,
Blown rose, and pink, and violet,
A breath of fragrance passing by;
Visions of beauty and decay,
Colors and shapes that could not stay,
The fairest, sweetest, first to die.

But still this rustic wreath of mine,
Of acorned oak and needled pine,
And lighter growths of forest lands,
Woven and wound with careful pains,
And tender thoughts, and prayers, remains,
As when it dropped from love's dear hands.

And not unfitly garlanded,
Is he, who, country-born...

The larks are loud above our leagues of whin
Now the sun’s perfume fills their glorious gold
With odour like the colour: all the wold
Is only light and song and wind wherein
These twain are blent in one with shining din.
And now your gift, a giver’s kingly-souled,
Dear old fast friend whose honours grow not old,
Bids memory’s note as loud and sweet begin.
Though all but we from life be now gone forth
Of that bright household in our joyous north
Where I, scarce clear of boyhood just at end,
First met your hand; yet under life’s clear dome,
Now seventy strenuous years have crowned my friend,
Shines no less bright his full-sheaved harvest-home.

Anzi tre di creata era alma in parte.

THE HISTORY OF HIS LOVE; AND PRAYER FOR HELP.


    Life's three first stages train'd my soul in part
To place its care on objects high and new,
And to disparage what men often prize,
But, left alone, and of her fatal course
As yet uncertain, frolicsome, and free,
She enter'd at spring-time a lovely wood.

A tender flower there was, born in that wood
The day before, whose root was in a part
High and impervious e'en to spirit free;
For many snares were there of forms so new,
And such desire impell'd my sanguine course,
That to lose freedom were to gain a prize.

Dear, sweet, yet perilous and painful prize!
Which quickly drew me to that verdant wood,
Doom'd to mislead me midway in life's cour...

    Bowing adorers of the gale,
    Ye cowslips delicately pale,
    Upraise your loaded stems;
    Unfold your cups in splendour; speak!
    Who decked you with that ruddy streak
    And gilt your golden gems?

    Violets, sweet tenants of the shade,
    In purple's richest pride arrayed,
    Your errand here fulfil;
    Go, bid the artist's simple stain
    Your lustre imitate--in vain--
    And match your Maker's skill.

    Daisies, ye flowers of lowly birth,
    Embroiderers of the carpet earth,
    That stud the velvet sod,
    Open to Spring's refreshing air,
    In sweetest smiling bloom declare
    Your Maker and your God.

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert...Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

That is the earliest thing that I remember--
The narrow house in the long narrow street,
Dark rooms within and darkness out of doors
Where grasses in the garden lift in the wind,
Long grasses clinging round unsteady feet.
The sunlight through one narrow passage pours,
As through the keyhole into a dusty room,
Striking with a golden rod the greening gloom.
The tall, tall timber-stacks have yet been kind,
Letting the sun fling his rod clear between,
Lest there should be no gold upon the green,
And no light then for a child to dream upon,
And day be of day's brightness all forlorn.
I saw those timber piles first dark and tall,
And then men clambered up, and stumbled down,
Each with a heavy and long timber borne
Upon broad shoulders, leather-covered, bent.
Ho...

        We were driving home from the "Patriarchs'"
            Molly Lefévre and I, you know;
        The white flakes fluttered about our lamps;
            Our wheels were hushed in the sleeping snow.

        Her white arms nestled amid her furs;
            Her hands half-held, with languid grace,
        Her fading roses; fair to see
            Was the dreamy look in her sweet, young face.

        I watched her, saying never a word,
            For I would not waken those dreaming eyes.
        The breath of the roses filled the air,
            And my thoughts were many, and far from wise.

        At last I said to her, bending near,
            "Ah, Molly Lefévre, how sweet 'twould be,
        To ride on dreaming, all our lives,
          ...

The Fascination of what’s difficult
Has dried the sap out of my veins, and rent
Spontaneous joy and natural content
Out of my heart. There’s something ails our colt
That must, as if it had not holy blood,
Nor on an Olympus leaped from cloud to cloud,
Shiver under the lash, strain, sweat and jolt
As though it dragged road metal. My curse on plays
That have to be set up in fifty ways,
On the day’s war with every knave and dolt,
Theatre business, management of men.
I swear before the dawn comes round again
I’ll find the stable and pull out the bolt.

O'er the Campagna it is dim warm weather;
    The Spring comes with a full heart silently,
    And many thoughts; a faint flash of the sea
Divides two mists; straight falls the falling feather.

With wild Spring meanings hill and plain together
    Grow pale, or just flush with a dust of flowers.
    Rome in the ages, dimmed with all her towers,
Floats in the midst, a little cloud at tether.

I fain would put my hands about thy face,
    Thou with thy thoughts, who art another Spring,
            And draw thee to me like a mournful child.

Thou lookest on me from another place;
    I touch not this day's secret, nor the thing
            That in the silence makes thy sweet eyes wild.

A railway conductor who lost his life in an accident on a Connecticut railway, May 9, 1873.


Conductor Bradley, (always may his name
Be said with reverence!) as the swift doom came,
Smitten to death, a crushed and mangled frame,

Sank, with the brake he grasped just where he stood
To do the utmost that a brave man could,
And die, if needful, as a true man should.

Men stooped above him; women dropped their tears
On that poor wreck beyond all hopes or fears,
Lost in the strength and glory of his years.

What heard they? Lo! the ghastly lips of pain,
Dead to all thought save duty's, moved again
"Put out the signals for the other train!"

No nobler utterance since the world began
From lips of saint or martyr ever ran,
Electric, th...

The sea is flecked with bars of grey,
The dull dead wind is out of tune,
And like a withered leaf the moon
Is blown across the stormy bay.

Etched clear upon the pallid sand
Lies the black boat: a sailor boy
Clambers aboard in careless joy
With laughing face and gleaming hand.

And overhead the curlews cry,
Where through the dusky upland grass
The young brown-throated reapers pass,
Like silhouettes against the sky.

Tremble, Kings despised of man!
Ye traitors to your Country,
Tremble! Your parricidal plan
At length shall meet its destiny...
We all are soldiers fit to fight,
But if we sink in glory's night
Our mother Earth will give ye new
The brilliant pathway to pursue
Which leads to Death or Victory...

I

Victors, living, with laureled brow,
And you that sleep beneath the sward!
Your song was poured from cannon throats:
It rang in deep-tongued bugle-notes:
Your triumph came; you won your crown,
The grandeur of a world's renown.
        But, in our later lays,
        Full freighted with your praise,
Fair memory harbors those whose lives, laid down
    In gallant faith and generous heat,
        Gained only sharp defeat.
All are at peace, who once so fiercely warred:
Brother and brother, now, we chant a common chord.


II

    For, if we say God wills,
    Shall we then idly deny Him
    Care of each host in the fight?
    His thunder was here in the hills
    When the guns were loud in July;
    And the flash of the mu...

SATIRES AND EPISTLES OF HORACE IMITATED. -


ADVERTISEMENT.

The occasion of publishing these 'Imitations' was the clamour raised on some of my 'Epistles.' An answer from Horace was both more full, and of more dignity, than any I could have made in my own person; and the example of much greater freedom in so eminent a divine as Dr Donne, seemed a proof with what indignation and contempt a Christian may treat vice or folly, in ever so low or ever so high a station. Both these authors were acceptable to the princes and ministers under whom they lived. The satires of Dr Donne I versified, at the desire of the Earl of Oxford while he was Lord Treasurer, and of the Duke of Shrewsbury who had been Secretary of State; neither of whom looked upon a satire on vicious courts as any reflection on those they served in. And, i...

Last Sunday night I read the saddening story
    Of the unanswered love of fair Elaine,
The 'faith unfaithful' and the joyless glory
    Of Lancelot, 'groaning in remorseful pain.'

I thought of all those nights in wintry weather,
    Those Sunday nights that seem not long ago,
When we two read our Poet's words together,
    Till summer warmth within our hearts did glow.

Ah, when shall we renew that bygone pleasure,
    Sit down together at our Merlin's feet,
Drink from one cup the overflowing measure,
    And find, in sharing it, the draught more sweet?

That time perchance is far, beyond divining.
    Till then we drain the 'magic cup' apart;
Yet not apart, for hope and memory twining
    Smile upon each, uniting heart to heart.

January

The first fair month! In singing Summer’s sphere
She glows, the eldest daughter of the year.
All light, all warmth, all passion, breaths of myrrh,
And subtle hints of rose-lands, come with her.
She is the warm, live month of lustre she
Makes glad the land and lulls the strong, sad sea.
The highest hope comes with her. In her face
Of pure, clear colour lives exalted grace;
Her speech is beauty, and her radiant eyes
Are eloquent with splendid prophecies.



February

The bright-haired, blue-eyed last of Summer. Lo,
Her clear song lives in all the winds that blow;
The upland torrent and the lowland rill,
The stream of valley and the spring of hill,
The pools that slumber and the brooks that run
Where dense the leaves are, gr...

Captive! Is there a hell to him like this?
A taunt more galling than the Huron's hiss?
He - proud and scornful, he - who laughed at law,
He - scion of the deadly Iroquois,
He - the bloodthirsty, he - the Mohawk chief,
He - who despises pain and sneers at grief,
Here in the hated Huron's vicious clutch,
That even captive he disdains to touch!

Captive! But never conquered; Mohawk brave
Stoops not to be to any man a slave;
Least, to the puny tribe his soul abhors,
The tribe whose wigwams sprinkle Simcoe's shores.
With scowling brow he stands and courage high,
Watching with haughty and defiant eye
His captors, as they council o'er his fate,
Or strive his boldness to intimidate.
Then fling they unto him the choice;

            "Wilt t...

I remember, when a child,
How within the April wild
Once I walked with Mystery
In the groves of Arcady....
Through the boughs, before, behind,
Swept the mantle of the wind,
Thunderous and unconfined.

Overhead the curving moon
Pierced the twilight: a cocoon,
Golden, big with unborn wings -
Beauty, shaping spiritual things,
Vague, impatient of the night,
Eager for its heavenward flight
Out of darkness into light.

Here and there the oaks assumed
Satyr aspects; shadows gloomed,
Hiding, of a dryad look;
And the naiad-frantic brook,
Crying, fled the solitude,
Filled with terror of the wood,
Or some faun-thing that pursued.

In the dead leaves on the ground
Crept a movement; rose a sound:
Everywhere the silence tick...