Heartbreak

It came with the threat of a waning moon
And the wail of an ebbing tide,
But many a woman has lived for less,
And many a man has died;
For life upon life took hold and passed,
Strong in a fate set free,
Out of the deep, into the dark,
On for the years to be.

Between the gleam of a waning moon
And the song of an ebbing tide,
Chance upon chance of love and death
Took wing for the world so wide.
Leaf out of leaf is the way of the land,
Wave out of wave of the sea;
And who shall reckon what lives may live
In the life that we bade to be?

    She took my strength by minutes,
    She took my life by hours,
    She drained me like a fevered moon
    That saps the spinning world.
    The days went by like shadows,
    The minutes wheeled like stars.
    She took the pity from my heart,
    And made it into smiles.
    She was a hunk of sculptor's clay,
    My secret thoughts were fingers:
    They flew behind her pensive brow
    And lined it deep with pain.
    They set the lips, and sagged the cheeks,
    And drooped the eye with sorrow.
    My soul had entered in the clay,
    Fighting like seven devils.
    It was not mine, it was not hers;
    She held it, but its struggles
    Modeled a face she hated,
    And a face I feared to see.
    I beat the windows, shook the bolt...

I held Love's head while it did ache;
But so it chanced to be,
The cruel pain did his forsake,
And forthwith came to me.

Ai me!    how shall my grief be still'd?
Or where else shall we find
One like to me, who must be kill'd
For being too-too-kind?

                Discrowned and desolate,
And wandering with dim eyes and faded hair,
Singing sad songs to comfort her despair,
                Grey Autumn meets her fate.

                Forsaken and alone
She haunts the ruins of her queenly state,
Like banished Eve at Eden's flaming gate,
                Making perpetual moan.

                Crazed with her grief she moves
Along the banks of the frost-charmed rills,
And all the hollows of the wooded hills,
                Searching for her lost loves.

                From verdurous base to cope,
The sunny hill-sides, and sweet pasture lands,
Where bubbling brooks reach ever-dimpled hands
                Along the amber slope,--

                And valleys drowsed between,
In the ...

My graveyard holds no once-loved human forms,
Grown hideous and forgotten, left alone,
But every agony my heart has known, -
The new-born trusts that died, the drift of storms.

I visit every day the shadowy grove;
I bury there my outraged tender thought;
I bring the insult for the love I sought,
And my contempt, where I had tried to love.

In the dull, dim dawn of day I heard
The twitter and thrill of a brown-backed bird,
As he sat and sang in the leafless tree,
A herald of beautiful days to be.

But the minor running under the strain
Went to my heart with a sudden pain,
For never so sad a sound I heard
As the troubled thrill of the brown-backed bird.

Not in the wearisome wash of waves,
With moaning murmur of wrecks and graves,
Not in the weird winds' wildest wail,
Not in the roar of the rushing gale.

Not in the sob of dying years
Are sounds so solemn and full of tears.
O herald of days that are green and glad,
Why was your morning song so sad?

Have you a secret hidden away,
Of sorrow to come with a coming day?
Folded under a folded leaf,
Lies there trouble ...

Like a beautiful face looking ever at me
A pure bright moon cometh over the sea;
And I stand on the crags, and hear the falls
Go tumbling down, through the black river-walls;
And the heart of the gorge is rent with the cry
Of the pent-up winds in their agony!
You are far from me, dear, where I watch and wait,
Like a weary bird for a long-lost mate,
And my life is as dull as the sluggish stream
Feeling its way through a world of dream;
For here is a waste of darkness and fear,
And I call and I call, but no one will hear!
O darling of mine, do you ever yearn
For a something lost, which will never return?

O darling of mine, on the grave of dead Hours,
Do you feel, like me, for a handful of flowers?
Through the glens of the Past, do you wander along,
Li...

    Ther's sunshine an storm as we travel along,
Throo life's journey whear ivver we be;
An its wiser to leeten yor heart wi' a song,
Nor to freeat at wbat fate may decree;
Yo'll find gooid an bad amang th' fowk 'at yo meet,
An' form friendships maybe yo'll regret;
But tho' some may deceive an lay snares for yor feet,
Pass 'em by, - an' Forgive an' Forget.

I give thee all--I can no more--
    Tho' poor the offering be;
My heart and lute are all the store
    That I can bring to thee.
A lute whose gentle song reveals
    The soul of love full well;
And, better far, a heart that feels
    Much more than lute could tell.

Tho' love and song may fail, alas!
    To keep life's clouds away,
At least 'twill make them lighter pass,
    Or gild them if they stay.
And even if Care at moments flings
    A discord o'er life's happy strain,
Let Love but gently touch the strings,
    'Twill all be sweet again!

1.

Tis done - and shivering in the gale
The bark unfurls her snowy sail;
And whistling o'er the bending mast,
Loud sings on high the fresh'ning blast;
And I must from this land be gone,
Because I cannot love but one.


2.

But could I be what I have been,
And could I see what I have seen -
Could I repose upon the breast
Which once my warmest wishes blest -
I should not seek another zone,
Because I cannot love but one.


3.

'Tis long since I beheld that eye
Which gave me bliss or misery;
And I have striven, but in vain,
Never to think of it again:
For though I fly from Albion,
I still can only love but one.


4.

As some lone bird, without a mate,
My weary heart is desolate;<...

"What do I catch upon the night-wind, husband? -
What is it sounds in this house so eerily?
It seems to be a woman's voice: each little while I hear it,
And it much troubles me!"

"'Tis but the eaves dripping down upon the plinth-slopes:
Letting fancies worry thee! sure 'tis a foolish thing,
When we were on'y coupled half-an-hour before the noontide,
And now it's but evening."

"Yet seems it still a woman's voice outside the castle, husband,
And 'tis cold to-night, and rain beats, and this is a lonely place.
Didst thou fathom much of womankind in travel or adventure
Ere ever thou sawest my face?"

"It may be a tree, bride, that rubs his arms acrosswise,
If it is not the eaves-drip upon the lower slopes,
Or the river at the bend, where it whirls about the ...

Here, pent about by office walls
And barren eyes all day,
’Tis sweet to think of waterfalls
Two hundred miles away!

I would not ask you, friends, to brook
An old, old truth from me,
If I could shut a Poet’s book
Which haunts me like the Sea!

He saith to me, this Poet saith,
So many things of light,
That I have found a fourfold faith,
And gained a twofold sight.

He telleth me, this Poet tells,
How much of God is seen
Amongst the deep-mossed English dells,
And miles of gleaming green.

From many a black Gethsemane,
He leads my bleeding feet
To where I hear the Morning Sea
Round shining spaces beat!

To where I feel the wind, which brings
A sound of running creeks,
And blows those dark, unpleasant things,<...

THEN

He loved her, and through many years,
Had paid his fair devoted court,
Until she wearied, and with sneers
Turned all his ardent love to sport.

That night within his chamber lone,
He long sat writing by his bed
A note in which his heart made moan
For love; the morning found him dead.

NOW

Like him, a man of later day
Was jilted by the maid he sought,
And from her presence turned away,
Consumed by burning, bitter thought.

He sought his room to write--a curse
Like him before and die, I ween.
Ah no, he put his woes in verse,
And sold them to a magazine.

Hearken, O passers, what thing
Fortuned in Hellas. A maid,
Lissom and white as the roe,
Lived recess'd in a glade.
Clytié, Hamadryad,
She was called that I sing--
Flower so fair, so frail, that to bring her a woe,
Surely a pitiful thing!

A wild bright creature of trees,
Brooks, and the sun among leaves,
Clytié, grown to be maid:
Ah, she had eyes like the sea's
Iris of green and blue!
White as sea-foam her brows,
And her hair reedy and gold:
So she grew and waxt supple and fit to be spouse
In a king's palace of old.

All in a kirtle of green,
With her tangle of red-gold hair,
In the live heart of an oak,
Clytié, harbouring there,
Thronéd there as a queen,
Clytié wondering woke:
Ah, child, what set thee too high for ...

To roll the rock you fought
takes your courage, Sisyphus!
No matter what effort from us,
Art is long, and Time is short.

Far from the grave of celebrity,
my heart, like a muffled drum,
taps out its funereal thrum
towards some lonely cemetery.

Many a long-buried gem
sleeps in shadowy oblivion
far from pickaxes and drills:

in profound solitude set,
many a flower, with regret,
its sweet perfume spills.

Weary hearts! weary hearts! by the cares of life oppressed,
Ye are wand'ring in the shadows -- ye are sighing for a rest:
There is darkness in the heavens, and the earth is bleak below,
And the joys we taste to-day may to-morrow turn to woe.
            Weary hearts! God is Rest.

Lonely hearts! lonely hearts! this is but a land of grief;
Ye are pining for repose -- ye are longing for relief:
What the world hath never given, kneel and ask of God above,
And your grief shall turn to gladness, if you lean upon His love.
            Lonely hearts! God is Love.

Restless hearts! restless hearts! ye are toiling night and day,
And the flowers of life, all withered, leave but thorns along your way:
Ye are waiting, ye are waiting, till your toilings all shall cease,
And you...

This is the scene of a man’s despair, and a soul’s release
From the difficult traits of the flesh; so, it seeking peace,
A shot rang out in the night; death’s doors were wide;
And you stood alone, a stranger, and saw inside.

Coward flesh, brave soul, which was it?    One feared the world,
The pity of men, or their scorn; yet carelessly hurled
All on the balance of Chance for a state unknown;
Fled the laughter of men for the anger of God-alone.

Perhaps when the hot blood streamed on the daisied sod,
Poor soul, you were likened to Cain, and you fled from God;
Men say you fought hard for your life, when the deed was done;
But your body would rise no more ’neath this world’s sun.

I’d choose-should I do the act-such a night as this,
When the sea throws up white ...

It was an humble cottage,
Snug in a rustic lane,
Geraniums and fuschias peep'd
From every window-pane;

The dark-leaved ivy dressed its walls,
Houseleek adorned the thatch;
The door was standing open wide, -
They had no need of latch.

And close besides the corner
There stood an old stone well,
Which caught a mimic waterfall,
That warbled as it fell.

The cat, crouched on the well-worn steps,
Was blinking in the sun;
The birds sang out a welcome
To the morning just begun.

An air of peace and happiness
Pervaded all the scene;
The tall trees formed a back ground
Of rich and varied green;

And all was steeped in quietness,
Save nature's music wild,
When all at once, methought I heard
The sobbing of a ch...