Death

    Ye dear stars of the Bear, I did not think
    I should again be turning, as I used,
    To see you over father's garden shine,
    And from the windows talk with you again
    Of this old house, where as a child I dwelt,
    And where I saw the end of all my joys.
    What charming images, what fables, once,
    The sight of you created in my thought,
    And of the lights that bear you company!
    Silent upon the verdant clod I sat,
    My evening thus consuming, as I gazed
    Upon the heavens, and listened to the chant
    Of frogs that in the distant marshes croaked;
    While o'er the hedges, ditches, fire-flies roamed,
    And the green avenues and cypresses
    In yonder grove were murmuring to the wind;
    While in the house were heard, at inter...

Friends! do you see in yon sunset sky,
    That cloud of crimson bright?
Soon will its gorgeous colors die
    In coming dim twilight;
E'en now it fadeth ray by ray -
Like it I too shall pass away!

Look on yon fragile summer flower
    Yielding its sweet perfume;
Soon shall it have lived out its hour,
    Its beauty and its bloom:
Trampled, 'twill perish in the shade -
Alas! as quickly shall I fade.

Mark you yon planet gleaming clear
    With steadfast, gentle light,
See, heavy dark clouds hovering near,
    Have veiled its radiance bright -
As you vainly search that gloomy spot,
You'll look for me and find me not!

Turn now to yonder sparkling stream,
    Where silver ripples play;
Dancing within the moon's pale beam -

I.

A little soul scarce fledged for earth
Takes wing with heaven again for goal
Even while we hailed as fresh from birth
A little soul.

Our thoughts ring sad as bells that toll,
Not knowing beyond this blind world's girth
What things are writ in heaven's full scroll.

Our fruitfulness is there but dearth,
And all things held in time's control
Seem there, perchance, ill dreams, not worth
A little soul.

II.

The little feet that never trod
Earth, never strayed in field or street,
What hand leads upward back to God
The little feet?

A rose in June's most honied heat,
When life makes keen the kindling sod,
Was not so soft and warm and sweet.

Their pilgrimage's period
A few swift moons have seen comple...

Be still, my soul, be still; the arms you bear are brittle,
Earth and high heaven are fixt of old and founded strong.
Think rather,-call to thought, if now you grieve a little,
The days when we had rest, O soul, for they were long.

Men loved unkindness then, but lightless in the quarry
I slept and saw not; tears fell down, I did not mourn;
Sweat ran and blood sprang out and I was never sorry:
Then it was well with me, in days ere I was born.

Now, and I muse for why and never find the reason,
I pace the earth, and drink the air, and feel the sun.
Be still, be still, my soul; it is but for a season:
Let us endure an hour and see injustice done.

Ay, look: high heaven and earth ail from the prime foundation;
All thoughts to rive the heart are here, and all are ...

Life flows down to death; we cannot bind
That current that it should not flee:
Life flows down to death, as rivers find
The inevitable sea.

Men work and think, but women feel;
And so (for I'm a woman, I)
And so I should be glad to die
And cease from impotence of zeal,
And cease from hope, and cease from dread,
And cease from yearnings without gain,
And cease from all this world of pain,
And be at peace among the dead.

Hearts that die, by death renew their youth,
Lightened of this life that doubts and dies;
Silent and contented, while the Truth
Unveiled makes them wise.

Why should I seek and never find
That something which I have not had?
Fair and unutterably sad
The world hath sought time out of mind;
The world hath sought...

(ASLEEP IN THE DAYTIME.)

All rough winds are hushed and silent, golden light the meadow steepeth,
    And the last October roses daily wax more pale and fair;
They have laid a gathered blossom on the breast of one who sleepeth
    With a sunbeam on her hair.

Calm, and draped in snowy raiment she lies still, as one that dreameth,
    And a grave sweet smile hath parted dimpled lips that may not speak;
Slanting down that narrow sunbeam like a ray of glory gleameth
    On the sainted brow and cheek.

There is silence! They who watch her, speak no word of grief or wailing,
    In a strange unwonted calmness they gaze on and cannot cease,
Though the pulse of life beat faintly, thought shrink back, and hope be failing,
    They, like Aaron, "hold their peace."

Four summers coined their golden light in leaves,
Four wasteful autumns flung them to the gale,
Four winters wore the shroud the tempest weaves,
The fourth wan April weeps o'er hill and vale;

And still the war-clouds scowl on sea and land,
With the red gleams of battle staining through,
When lo! as parted by an angel's hand,
They open, and the heavens again are blue!

Which is the dream, the present or the past?
The night of anguish or the joyous morn?
The long, long years with horrors overcast,
Or the sweet promise of the day new-born?

Tell us, O father, as thine arms infold
Thy belted first-born in their fast embrace,
Murmuring the prayer the patriarch breathed of old, -
"Now let me die, for I have seen thy face!"

Tell us, O mother, - ...

On sunny slope and beechen swell,
The shadowed light of evening fell;
And, where the maple's leaf was brown,
With soft and silent lapse came down,
The glory, that the wood receives,
At sunset, in its golden leaves.

Far upward in the mellow light
Rose the blue hills.    One cloud of white,
Around a far uplifted cone,
In the warm blush of evening shone;
An image of the silver lakes,
By which the Indian's soul awakes.

But soon a funeral hymn was heard
Where the soft breath of evening stirred
The tall, gray forest; and a band
Of stern in heart, and strong in hand,
Came winding down beside the wave,
To lay the red chief in his grave.

They sang, that by his native bowers
He stood, in the last moon of flowers,
And thirty snows ha...

Daughter of my nobler hope
    That dying gave thee birth,
    Sweet Melancholy!
    For memory of the dead,
    In her dear stead,
    'Bide thou with me,
    Sweet Melancholy!
As purple shadows to the tree,
When the last sun-rays sadly slope
Athwart the bare and darkening earth,
    Art thou to me,
    Sweet Melancholy!

Death and Famine on every side
    And never a sign of rain,
The bones of those who have starved and died
    Unburied upon the plain.
What care have I that the bones bleach white?
    To-morrow they may be mine,
But I shall sleep in your arms to-night
    And drink your lips like wine!

Cholera, Riot, and Sudden Death,
    And the brave red blood set free,
The glazing eye and the failing breath, -
    But what are these things to me?
Your breath is quick and your eyes are bright
    And your blood is red like wine,
And I shall sleep in your arms to-night
    And hold your lips with mine!

I hear the sound of a thousand tears,
    Like softly pattering rain,
I see the fever, folly, and fears
    Fulfilling man's tale of pain.
But ...

Flowers of France in the Spring,
Your growth is a beautiful thing;
But give us your fragrance and bloom -
Yea, give us your lives in truth,
Give us your sweetness and grace
To brighten the resting-place
Of the flower of manhood and youth,
Gone into the dust of the tomb.

This is the vast stupendous hour of Time,
When nothing counts but sacrifice and faith,
Service and self-forgetfulness.    Sublime
And awful are these moments charged with death
And red with slaughter.    Yet God's purpose thrives
In all this holocaust of human lives.

I say God's purpose thrives.    Just in the measure
That men have flung away their lust for gain,
Stopped in their mad pursuit of worldly pleasure,
And boldly faced unprecedented pain
And dangers, without thin...

Like burnt-out torches by a sick man's bed
Gaunt cypress-trees stand round the sun-bleached stone;
Here doth the little night-owl make her throne,
And the slight lizard show his jewelled head.
And, where the chaliced poppies flame to red,
In the still chamber of yon pyramid
Surely some Old-World Sphinx lurks darkly hid,
Grim warder of this pleasaunce of the dead.

Ah! sweet indeed to rest within the womb
Of Earth, great mother of eternal sleep,
But sweeter far for thee a restless tomb
In the blue cavern of an echoing deep,
Or where the tall ships founder in the gloom
Against the rocks of some wave-shattered steep.

ROME.

Autumn is gone: through the blue woodlands bare
    Shatters the windy rain. A thousand leaves,
Like birds that fly the mournful Northern air,
    Flutter away from the old forest's eaves.

Autumn is gone: as yonder silent rill,
    Slow eddying o'er thick leaf-heaps lately shed,
My spirit, as I walk, moves awed and still,
    By thronging fancies wild and wistful led.

Autumn is gone: alas, how long ago
    The grapes were plucked, and garnered was the grain!
How soon death settles on us, and the snow
    Wraps with its white alike our graves, our gain!

Yea, autumn's gone! Yet it robs not my mood
    Of that which makes moods dear, - some shoot of spring
Still sweet within me; or thoughts of yonder wood
    We walked in, - memory's rare environing....

    What dost thou here, O soul,
Beyond thy own control,
Under the strange wild sky?
0 stars, reach down your hands,
And clasp me in your silver bands,
I tremble with this mystery!--
Flung hither by a chance
Of restless circumstance,
Thou art but here, and wast not sent;
Yet once more mayest thou draw
By thy own mystic law
To the centre of thy wonderment.

    Why wilt thou stop and start?
Draw nearer, oh my heart,
And I will question thee most wistfully;
Gather thy last clear resolution
To look upon thy dissolution.

    The great God's life throbs far and free,
And thou art but a spark
Known only in thy dark,
Or a foam-fleck upon the awful ocean,
Thyself thy slender dignity,
Thy own thy vexing mystery,
In the vast...

    'T is pleasant to bear recollections in mind
    Of joys that time hurries away--
    To look back on smiles that have passed like the wind,
    And compare them with frowns of to-day.
    'T was the constant delight of Old Robin, forsooth,
    On the past with clear vision to dwell--
    To recount the fond loves and the raptures of youth,
    And tales of lost pleasures to tell.

    "'T is now many years," like a child, he would say,
    "Since I joined in the sports of the green--
    Since I tied up the flowers for the garland of May,
    And danced with the holiday queen.
    My memory looks backward in sorrowful pride,
    And I think, till my eyes dim with tears,
    Of the past, where my happiness withered and died,
    And the present dull, desol...

'T was just this time last year I died.
I know I heard the corn,
When I was carried by the farms, --
It had the tassels on.

I thought how yellow it would look
When Richard went to mill;
And then I wanted to get out,
But something held my will.

I thought just how red apples wedged
The stubble's joints between;
And carts went stooping round the fields
To take the pumpkins in.

I wondered which would miss me least,
And when Thanksgiving came,
If father'd multiply the plates
To make an even sum.

And if my stocking hung too high,
Would it blur the Christmas glee,
That not a Santa Claus could reach
The altitude of me?

But this sort grieved myself, and so
I thought how it would be
When just this time, some pe...

        Go tell Amynta, gentle swain,
        I would not die, nor dare complain:
        Thy tuneful voice with numbers join,
        Thy words will more prevail than mine.
        To souls oppress'd and dumb with grief,
        The gods ordain this kind relief;
        That music should in sounds convey,
        What dying lovers dare not say.

        A sigh or tear perhaps she'll give,
        But love on pity cannot live.
        Tell her that hearts for hearts were made,
        And love with love is only paid.
        Tell her my pains so fast increase,
        That soon they will be past redress;
        But ah! the wretch that speechless lies,
        Attends but death to close his eyes.

There's little joy in life for me,
And little terror in the grave;
I 've lived the parting hour to see
Of one I would have died to save.

Calmly to watch the failing breath,
Wishing each sigh might be the last;
Longing to see the shade of death
O'er those belovèd features cast.

The cloud, the stillness that must part
The darling of my life from me;
And then to thank God from my heart,
To thank Him well and fervently;

Although I knew that we had lost
The hope and glory of our life;
And now, benighted, tempest-tossed,
Must bear alone the weary strife.