Heartbreak

Wine-warm winds that sigh and sing,
Led me, wrapped in many moods,
Thro' the green sonorous woods
Of belated Spring;

Till I came where, glad with heat,
Waste and wild the fields were strewn,
Olden as the olden moon,
At my weary feet;

Wild and white with starry bloom,
One far milky-way that dashed,
When some mad wind o'er it flashed,
Into billowy foam.

I, bewildered, gazed around,
As one on whose heavy dreams
Comes a sudden burst of beams,
Like a mighty sound.

If the grander flowers I sought,
But these berry-blooms to you,
Evanescent as their dew,
Only these I brought.

                JULY 3, 1887.

Yes, thou mayst sigh,
And look once more at all around,
At stream and bank, and sky and ground.
Thy life its final course has found,
And thou must die.

Yes, lay thee down,
And while thy struggling pulses flutter,
Bid the grey monk his soul mass mutter,
And the deep bell its death tone utter,
Thy life is gone.

Be not afraid.
'Tis but a pang, and then a thrill,
A fever fit, and then a chill,
And then an end of human ill,
For thou art dead.

I.

In anatomical designs
That hang about these dusty quays
Where books' cadavers lie and sleep
Like mummies of the ancient times,

Drawings of which the gravity
And the engraver's knowing hand,
Although the theme be less than grand,
Communicate an artistry,

One sees, which renders more intense
The horror and the mystery,
Like field-hands working wearily
Some skeletons and skinless men.


II.

Out of the land you're digging there,
Obedient and woeful drones,
With all the effort of your bones,
Of all your muscles, stripped and bare,

Say, what strange harvest do you farm,
Convicts from the charnel house,
And what contractor hired you out
To fill what farmer's empty barn?

Do you (our dreadfu...

Sweep thy faint Strings, Musician,
    With thy long lean hand;
Downward the starry tapers burn,
    Sinks soft the waning sand;
The old hound whimpers couched in sleep,
    The embers smoulder low;
Across the walls the shadows
    Come, and go.

Sweep softly thy strings, Musician,
    The minutes mount to hours;
Frost on the windless casement weaves
    A labyrinth of flowers;
Ghosts linger in the darkening air,
    Hearken at the open door;
Music hath called them, dreaming,
    Home once more.

"Traveller, what lies over the hill?
    Traveller, tell to me:
Tip-toe-high on the window-sill
    Over I cannot see."

"My child, a valley green lies there,
    Lovely with trees, and shy;
And a tiny brook that says, 'Take care,
    Or I'll drown you by and by!'"

"And what comes next?"--"A little town,
    And a towering hill again;
More hills and valleys up and down,
    And a river now and then."

"And what comes next?"--"A lonely moor
    Without one beaten way,
And slow clouds drifting dull before
    A wind that will not stay."

"And then?"--"Dark rocks and yellow sand,
    Blue sea and a moaning tide."
"And then?"--"More sea, and then more land,
    With rivers deep and wide."

"And then?"--"Oh, rock and mo...

        Making his advances
        He does not look at her, nor sniff at her,
        No, not even sniff at her, his nose is blank.

        Only he senses the vulnerable folds of skin
        That work beneath her while she sprawls along
        In her ungainly pace,
        Her folds of skin that work and row
        Beneath    the    earth-soiled    hovel    in    which    she moves.

        And so he strains beneath her housey walls
        And catches her trouser-legs in his beak
        Suddenly, or her skinny limb,
        And strange and grimly drags at her
        Like a dog,
        Only agelessly silent, with a reptile's awful persistency.

        Grim, gruesome gallantry, to which he is doomed.
        Dragged out of an eternity of sil...

Like clouds that flit across the sky,
    So follow hopes and fears.
What in these clouds see you and me
    Dear Sweetheart, smiles or tears?

This little airy fleecy wing,
    That flits across the blue,
What message Sweetheart does it bring
    Of hope or fear to you?

Pray God it brings you sunny hours
    And haply some few tears
To bless like showers your summer flowers
    In the long coming years.

What dost thou here far from thy native place?
What piercing influences of heaven have stirred
Thy heart's last mansion all-corruptible to wake,
To move, and in the sweets of wine and fire
Sit tempting madness with unholy eyes?
Begone, thou shuddering, pale anomaly!
The dark presses without on yew and thorn;
Stoops now the owl upon her lonely quest;
The pomp runs high here, and our beauteous women
Seek no cold witness - O, let murder cry,
Too shrill for human ear, only to God.
Come not in power to wreak so wild a vengeance!
Thou knowest not now the limit of man's heart;
He is beyond thy knowledge. Gaze not then,
Horror enthroned lit with insanest light!

There is delight in singing, tho' none hear
Beside the singer; and there is delight
In praising, tho' the praiser sit alone
And see the prais'd far off him, far above.
Shakspeare is not our poet, but the world's,
Therefore on him no speech! and brief for thee,
Browning! Since Chaucer was alive and hale,
No man hath walkt along our roads with step
So active, so inquiring eye, or tongue
So varied in discourse. But warmer climes
Give brighter plumage, stronger wing: the breeze
Of Alpine highths thou playest with, borne on
Beyond Sorrento and Amalfi, where
The Siren waits thee, singing song for song.

The noontide sun streamed brightly down
    Moriah's mountain crest,
The golden blaze of his vivid rays
    Tinged sacred Jordan's breast;
While towering palms and flowerets sweet,
Drooped low 'neath Syria's burning heat.

In the sunny glare of the sultry air
    Toiled up the mountain side
The Patriarch sage in stately age,
    And a youth in health's gay pride,
Bearing in eyes and in features fair
The stamp of his mother's beauty rare.

She had not known when one rosy dawn,
    Ere they started on their way,
She had smoothed with care his clustering hair,
    And knelt with him to pray,
That his father's hand and will alike
Were nerved at his young heart to strike.

The Heavenly Power that with such dower
    Of love fills a mot...

The Thames nocturne of blue and gold
Changed to a Harmony in grey:
A barge with ochre-coloured hay
Dropt from the wharf: and chill and cold

The yellow fog came creeping down
The bridges, till the houses' walls
Seemed changed to shadows and St. Paul's
Loomed like a bubble o'er the town.

Then suddenly arose the clang
Of waking life; the streets were stirred
With country waggons: and a bird
Flew to the glistening roofs and sang.

But one pale woman all alone,
The daylight kissing her wan hair,
Loitered beneath the gas lamps' flare,
With lips of flame and heart of stone.

He works in the glen where the waratah grows,
And the gums and the ashes are tall,
’Neath cliffs that re-echo the sound of his blows
When the wedges leap in from the mawl.

He comes of a hardy old immigrant race,
And he feels not the rain nor the drouth.
His sinews are tougher than wire; and his face
Has been tanned by the sun of the south.

Now doomed to be shorn of its glory at last
Is the stately old tree he attacks;
Its moments of life he is numbering fast
With the keen steady strokes of his axe.

Loud cracks at the butt; and the strong wood is burst;
And the splitter steps backward, and turns
His eyes to the boughs that move slowly at first
Ere they rush to their grave in the ferns.

He strips off the bark with slight effort of strengt...

"Will you love me, sweet, when my hair is grey
And my cheeks shall have lost their hue?
When the charms of youth shall have passed away
Will your love as of old prove true?

"For the looks may change, and the heart may range
And the love be no longer fond;
Will you love with truth in the years of youth
And away to the years beyond?"

Oh, I love you, sweet, for your locks of brown
And the blush on your cheek that lies,
But I love you most for the kindly heart
That I see in your sweet blue eyes.

For the eyes are the signs of the soul within,
Of the heart that is leal and true,
And, my own sweetheart, I shall love you still,
Just as long as your eyes are blue.

For the locks may bleach, and the cheeks of peach
May be reft of their golden...

Flaked, drifting clouds hide not the full moon's rays
More than her beautiful bright limbs were hid
By the light veils they burned and blushed amid,
Skilled to provoke in soft, lascivious ways,
And there was invitation in her voice
And laughing lips and wonderful dark eyes,
As though above the gates of Paradise
Fair verses bade, Be welcome and rejoice!

O'er rugs where mottled blue and green and red
Blent in the patterns of the Orient loom,
Like a bright butterfly from bloom to bloom,
She floated with delicious arms outspread.
There was no pose she took, no move she made,
But all the feverous, love-envenomed flesh
Wrapped round as in the gladiator's mesh
And smote as with his triple-forked blade.

I thought that round her sinuous beauty curled
F...

The spring-wind pass’d through the forest, and whispered low in the leaves,
And the cedar toss’d her head, and the oak stood firm in his pride;
The spring-wind pass’d through the town, through the housetops, casements, and eaves,
And whisper’d low in the hearts of the men, and the men replied,
Singing, “Let us rejoice in the light
Of our glory, and beauty, and might;
Let us follow our own devices, and foster our own desires.
As firm as our oaks in our pride, as our cedars fair in our sight,
We stand like the trees of the forest that brave the frosts and the fires.”

The storm went forth to the forest, the plague went forth to the town,
And the men fell down to the plague, as the trees fell down to the gale;
And their bloom was a ghastly pallor, and their smile was a ghastly frown...

A light exists in spring
Not present on the year
At any other period.
When March is scarcely here

A color stands abroad
On solitary hills
That science cannot overtake,
But human nature feels.

It waits upon the lawn;
It shows the furthest tree
Upon the furthest slope we know;
It almost speaks to me.

Then, as horizons step,
Or noons report away,
Without the formula of sound,
It passes, and we stay:

A quality of loss
Affecting our content,
As trade had suddenly encroached
Upon a sacrament.

[From Arthur Selwyn's Note-book.]

[Only A Box.]


        Only a box, secure and strong,
        Rough, and wooden, and six feet long,
        Lying here in the drizzling rain,
        Waiting to take the up-bound train.



        Only its owner, just inside,
        Cold, and livid, and glassy-eyed;
        Little to him if the train be late!
        Nothing has he to do but wait.

        Only an open grave, somewhere,
        Heady to close when he gets there;
        Turfs and grasses and flowerets sweet,
        Ready to press him 'neath their feet.

     ...

How calm, how beauteous and how cool--
How like a sister to the skies,
Appears the broad, transparent pool
That in this quiet forest lies.
The sunshine ripples on its face,
And from the world around, above,
It hath caught down the nameless grace
Of such reflections as we love.

But deep below its surface crawl
The reptile horrors of the night--
The dragons, lizards, serpents--all
The hideous brood that hate the light;
Through poison fern and slimy weed
And under ragged, jagged stones
They scuttle, or, in ghoulish greed,
They lap a dead man's bleaching bones.

And as, O pool, thou dost cajole
With seemings that beguile us well,
So doeth many a human soul
That teemeth with the lusts of hell.