Death

Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness,
Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
What leaf-fring’d legend haunts about thy shape
Of deities or mortals, or of both,
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear’d,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the g...

Cold in the earth, and the deep snow piled above thee,
Far, far, removed, cold in the dreary grave!
Have I forgot, my only Love, to love thee,
Severed at last by Time's all-severing wave?

Now, when alone, do my thoughts no longer hover
Over the mountains, on that northern shore,
Resting their wings where heath and fern-leaves cover
Thy noble heart for ever, ever more?

Cold in the earth, and fifteen wild Decembers,
From those brown hills, have melted into spring:
Faithful, indeed, is the spirit that remembers
After such years of change and suffering!

Sweet Love of youth, forgive, if I forget thee,
While the world's tide is bearing me along;
Other desires and other hopes beset me,
Hopes which obscure, but cannot do thee wrong!

No later li...

I. NOONDAY.

Two angry men - in heat they sever,
    And one goes home by a harvest field: -
"Hope's nought," quoth he, "and vain endeavor;
    I said and say it, I will not yield!

"As for this wrong, no art can mend it,
    The bond is shiver'd that held us twain;
Old friends we be, but law must end it,
    Whether for loss or whether for gain.

"Yon stream is small - full slow its wending;
    But winning is sweet, but right is fine;
And shoal of trout, or willowy bending -
    Though Law be costly - I'll prove them mine.

"His strawberry cow slipped loose her tether,
    And trod the best of my barley down;
His little lasses at play together
    Pluck'd the poppies my boys had grown.

"What then? - Why naught! She lack'...

I

Sleep, little eyes
That brim with childish tears amid thy play,
Be comforted!No grief of night can weigh
Against the joys that throng thy coming day.

Sleep, little heart!
There is no place in Slumberland for tears:
Life soon enough will bring its chilling fears
And sorrows that will dim the after years.
Sleep, little heart!


II

Ah, little eyes
Dead blossoms of a springtime long ago,
That life's storm crushed and left to lie below
The benediction of the falling snow!

Sleep, little heart
That ceased so long ago its frantic beat!
The years that come and go with silent feet
Have naught to tell save this, that rest is sweet.
Dear little heart.

    Four little chests all in a row,
    Dim with dust, and worn by time,
    All fashioned and filled, long ago,
    By children now in their prime.
    Four little keys hung side by side,
    With faded ribbons, brave and gay
    When fastened there, with childish pride,
    Long ago, on a rainy day.
    Four little names, one on each lid,
    Carved out by a boyish hand,
    And underneath there lieth hid
    Histories of the happy band
    Once playing here, and pausing oft
    To hear the sweet refrain,
    That came and went on the roof aloft,
    In the falling summer rain.


    "Meg" on the first lid, smooth and fair.
    I look in with loving eyes,
    For folded here, with well-known care,
    A goodly gathering lies,
 ...

Beneath the waning moon I walk at night,
And muse on human life, for all around
Are dim uncertain shapes that cheat the sight,
And pitfalls lurk in shade along the ground,
And broken gleams of brightness, here and there,
Glance through, and leave unwarmed the death-like air.

The trampled earth returns a sound of fear,
A hollow sound, as if I walked on tombs!
And lights, that tell of cheerful homes, appear
Far off, and die like hope amid the glooms.
A mournful wind across the landscape flies,
And the wide atmosphere is full of sighs.

And I, with faltering footsteps, journey on,
Watching the stars that roll the hours away,
Till the faint light that guides me now is gone,
And, like another life, the glorious day
Shall open o'er me from the empyreal he...

Take the cloak from his face, and at first
Let the corpse do its worst!
How he lies in his rights of a man!
Death has done all death can.
And, absorbed in the new life he leads,
He recks not, he heeds
Nor his wrong nor my vengeance, both strike
On his senses alike,
And are lost in the solemn and strange
Surprise of the change.
Ha, what avails death to erase
His offence, my disgrace?
I would we were boys as of old
In the field, by the fold
His outrage, God’s patience, man’s scorn
Were so easily borne!

I stand here now, he lies in his place:
Cover the face!

Is there a secret Joy, that may not weep,
For every flower that ends its little span,
For every child that groweth up to man,
For every captive bird a cage doth keep,
For every aching eye that went to sleep
Long ages back, when other eyes began
To see and know and love as now they can,
Unravelling God's wonders heap by heap?
Or doth the Past lie 'mid Eternity
In charnel dens that rot and reek alway,
A dismal light for those that go astray,
A pit of foul deformity--to be,
Beauty, a dreadful source of growth for thee
When thou wouldst lift thine eyes to greet the day?

Twas a night of dreadful horror, -
    Death was sweeping through the land;
And the wings of dark destruction
    Were outstretched from strand to strand

Strong men's hearts grew faint with terror,
    As the tempest and the waves
Wrecked their homes and swept them downward,
    Suddenly to yawning graves.

'Mid the wastes of ruined households,
    And the tempest's wild alarms,
Stood a terror-stricken mother
    With a child within her arms.

Other children huddled 'round her,
    Each one nestling in her heart;
Swift in thought and swift in action,
    She at least from one must part.

Then she said unto her daughter,
    "Strive to save one child from death."
"Which one?" said the anxious daughter,
    As she stood with b...

'Twas in the middle of the night,
To sleep young William tried,
When Mary's ghost came stealing in,
And stood at his bedside.

O William dear! O William dear!
My rest eternal ceases;
Alas! my everlasting peace
Is broken into pieces.

I thought the last of all my cares
Would end with my last minute;
But though I went to my long home,
I didn't stay long in it.

The body-snatchers they have come,
And made a snatch at me;
It's very hard them kind of men
Won't let a body be!

You thought that I was buried deep,
Quite decent-like and chary,
But from her grave in Mary-bone,
They've come and boned your Mary.

The arm that used to take your arm
Is took to Dr. Vyse;
And both my legs are gone to walk
The hospita...

“Artemidora! Gods invisible,
While thou art lying faint along the couch,
Have tied the sandal to thy veined feet,
And stand beside thee, ready to convey
Thy weary steps where other rivers flow.
Refreshing shades will waft thy weariness
Away, and voices like thine own come nigh,
Soliciting, nor vainly, thy embrace.”
Artemidora sigh’d, and would have press’d
The hand now pressing hers, but was too weak.
Fate’s shears were over her dark hair unseen
While thus Elpenor spake: he look’d into
Eyes that had given light and life erewhile
To those above them, those now dim with tears
And watchfulness. Again he spake of joy,
Eternal. At that word, that sad word, joy,
Faithful and fond her bosom heav’d once more,
Her head fell back: one sob, one loud deep sob
Sw...

I will not mourn thee, lovely one,
Though thou art torn away.
'Tis said that if the morning sun
Arise with dazzling ray

And shed a bright and burning beam
Athwart the glittering main,
'Ere noon shall fade that laughing gleam
Engulfed in clouds and rain.

And if thy life as transient proved,
It hath been full as bright,
For thou wert hopeful and beloved;
Thy spirit knew no blight.

If few and short the joys of life
That thou on earth couldst know,
Little thou knew'st of sin and strife
Nor much of pain and woe.

If vain thy earthly hopes did prove,
Thou canst not mourn their flight;
Thy brightest hopes were fixed above
And they shall know no blight.

And yet I cannot check my sighs,
Thou wert so young and fair,<...

The wider world of men that is not ours
Receives a soul whose life on earth was light.
Though darkness close the date of human hours,
Love holds the spirit and sense of life in sight,
That may not, even though death bid fly, take flight.
Faith, love, and hope fulfilled with memory, see
As clear and dear as life could bid it be
The present soul that is and is not he.
He, who held up the shield and sword of Rome
Against the ravening brood of recreant France,
Beside the man of men whom heaven took home
When earth beheld the spring's first eyebeams glance
And life and winter seemed alike a trance
Eighteen years since, in sight of heaven and spring
That saw the soul above all souls take wing,
He too now hears the heaven we hear not sing.
He too now dwells where dea...

Phyllis, ah, Phyllis, my life is a gray day,
Few are my years, but my griefs are not few,
Ever to youth should each day be a May-day,
Warm wind and rose-breath and diamonded dew--
Phyllis, ah, Phyllis, my life is a gray day.

Oh for the sunlight that shines on a May-day!
Only the cloud hangeth over my life.
Love that should bring me youth's happiest heyday
Brings me but seasons of sorrow and strife;
Phyllis, ah, Phyllis, my life is a gray day.

Sunshine or shadow, or gold day or gray day,
Life must be lived as our destinies rule;
Leisure or labor or work day or play day--
Feasts for the famous and fun for the fool;
Phyllis, ah, Phyllis, my life is a gray day.

Posthumous Fragments Of Margaret Mcholson.

Being Poems found amongst the Papers of that noted Female who attempted the life of the King in 1786. Edited by John Fitzvictor.

[The "Posthumous Fragments", published at Oxford by Shelley, appeared in November, 1810.]



Despair.

And canst thou mock mine agony, thus calm
In cloudless radiance, Queen of silver night?
Can you, ye flow'rets, spread your perfumed balm
Mid pearly gems of dew that shine so bright?
And you wild winds, thus can you sleep so still
Whilst throbs the tempest of my breast so high?
Can the fierce night-fiends rest on yonder hill,
And, in the eternal mansions of the sky,
Can the directors of the storm in powerless silence lie?

Hark! I hear music on the zephyr's wing,
L...

And Credhe came to where her man was, and she keened him and cried over him, and she made this complaint: The Harbour roars, O the harbour roars over the rushing race of the Headland of the Two Storms, the drowning of the hero of the Lake of the Two Dogs, that is what the waves are keening on the strand.

Sweet-voiced is the crane, O sweet-voiced is the crane in the marshes of the Ridge of the Two Strong Men; it is she cannot save her nestlings, the wild dog of two colours is taking her little ones.

Pitiful the cry, pitiful the cry the thrush is making in the Pleasant Ridge; sorrowful is the cry of the blackbird in Leiter Laeig.

Sorrowful the call, O sorrowful the call of the deer in the Ridge of Two Lights; the doe is lying dead in Druim Silenn, the mighty stag cries after her.

Sorrowful to me, ...

I

Who has not felt his heart leap up, and glow
What time the Tulips first begin to blow,
Has one sweet joy still left for him to know.

It is like early love's imagining,
That fragile pleasure which the Tulips bring,
When suddenly we see them, in the Spring.

Not all the garden's later royal train,
Not great triumphant Roses, when they reign,
Can bring that delicate delight again.

II

One of the sweetest hours is this;
(Of all I think we like it best);
A little restful oasis,
Between the breakfast and the post.
Just south of coffee and of toast,
Just north of daily task and duty;
Just west of dreams, this island gleams,
A fertile spot of peace and beauty.

We wander out across the lawn;
We idle by a bush in b...

My soul, do you remember the object we saw
on what was a fine summer’s day:
at the path’s far corner, a shameful corpse
on the gravel-bed, darkly lay,

legs in the air, like a lecherous woman,
burning and oozing with poisons,
revealing, with nonchalance, cynicism,
the belly ripe with its exhalations.

The sun shone down on that rot and mould,
as if to grill it completely,
and render to Nature a hundredfold
what she’d once joined so sweetly:

and the sky gazed at that noble carcass,
like a flower, now blossoming.
The stench was so great, that there, on the grass,
you almost considered fainting.

The flies buzzed away on its putrid belly,
from which black battalions slid,
larvae, that flowed in thickening liquid
the length of t...