Heartbreak

'Tis no discomfort in the world to fall,
When the great crack not crushes one, but all.

Pascal had his Void that went with him day and night.
Alas! It’s all Abyss, action, longing, dream,
the Word! And I feel Panic’s storm-wind stream
through my hair, and make it stand upright.

Above, below, around, the desert, the deep,
the silence, the fearful compelling spaces...
With his knowing hand, in my dark, God traces
a multi-formed nightmare without release.

I fear sleep as one fears a deep hole,
full of vague terror. Where to, who knows?
I see only infinity at every window,

and my spirit haunted by vertigo’s stress
envies the stillness of Nothingness.
Ah! Never to escape from Being and Number!

TO THE CHILDREN OF CAMBRIDGE

Who presented to me on my Seventy-second Birth-day, February 27, 1879, this Chair, made from the Wood of the Village Blacksmith's Chestnut Tree.

Am I a king, that I should call my own
    This splendid ebon throne?
Or by what reason, or what right divine,
    Can I proclaim it mine?

Only, perhaps, by right divine of song
    It may to me belong;
Only because the spreading chestnut tree
    Of old was sung by me.

Well I remember it in all its prime,
    When in the summer-time
The affluent foliage of its branches made
    A cavern of cool shade.

There, by the blacksmith's forge, beside the street,
    Its blossoms white and sweet
Enticed the bees, until it seemed alive,
    And murmured like a hive...

Prudence Mears hath an old blue plate
Hid away in an oaken chest,
And a Franklin platter of ancient date
Beareth Amandy Baker's crest;
What times soever I've been their guest,
Says I to myself in an undertone:
"Of womenfolk, it must be confessed,
These do I love, and these alone."

Well, again, in the Nutmeg State,
Dorothy Pratt is richly blest
With a relic of art and a land effete--
A pitcher of glass that's cut, not pressed.
And a Washington teapot is possessed
Down in Pelham by Marthy Stone--
Think ye now that I say in jest
"These do I love, and these alone?"

Were Hepsy Higgins inclined to mate,
Or Dorcas Eastman prone to invest
In Cupid's bonds, they could find their fate
In the bootless bard of Crockery Quest.
For they've he...

Now the Four-way Lodge is opened, now the Hunting Winds are loose,
Now the Smokes of Spring go up to clear the brain;
Now the Young Men's hearts are troubled for the whisper of the Trues,
Now the Red Gods make their medicine again!
Who hath seen the beaver busied?
Who hath watched the black-tail mating?
Who hath lain alone to hear the wild-goose cry?
Who hath worked the chosen water where the ouananiche is waiting,
Or the sea-trout's jumping-crazy for the fly?
He must go, go, go away from here!
On the other side the world he's overdue.
'Send your road is clear before you when the old
Spring-fret comes o'er you,
And the Red Gods call for you!
So for one the wet sail arching through the rainbow round the bow,
And for one the creak of snow-shoes on the crust;
And...

Hither, Flora, Queen of Flowers!
Haste thee from old Brompton's bowers--
Or, (if sweeter that abode)
From the King's well-odored Road,
Where each little nursery bud
Breathes the dust and quaffs the mud.
Hither come and gayly twine
Brightest herbs and flowers of thine
Into wreaths for those who rule us,
Those who rule and (some say) fool us--
Flora, sure, will love to please
England's Household Deities![1]

    First you must then, willy-nilly,
Fetch me many an orange lily--
Orange of the darkest dye
Irish Gifford can supply;--
Choose me out the longest sprig,
And stick it in old Eldon's wig.

    Find me next a Poppy posy,
Type of his harangues so dozy,
Garland gaudy, dull and cool,
To crown the head of Liverpool.<...

"O come, O come," the mother pray'd
And hush'd her babe: "let me behold
Once more thy stately form array'd
Like autumn woods in green and gold!

"I see thy brethren come and go;
Thy peers in stature, and in hue
Thy rivals. Same like monarchs glow
With richest purple: some are blue

"As skies that tempt the swallow back;
Or red as, seen o'er wintry seas,
The star of storm; or barr'd with black
And yellow, like the April bees.

"Come they and go! I heed not, I.
Yet others hail their advent, cling
All trustful to their side, and fly
Safe in their gentle piloting

"To happy homes on heath or hill,
By park or river. Still I wait
And peer into the darkness: still
Thou com'st not - I am desolate.

"Hush! hark! I see a towe...

Bells of the Past, whose long-forgotten music
Still fills the wide expanse,
Tingeing the sober twilight of the Present
With color of romance!

I hear your call, and see the sun descending
On rock and wave and sand,
As down the coast the Mission voices, blending,
Girdle the heathen land.

Within the circle of your incantation
No blight nor mildew falls;
Nor fierce unrest, nor lust, nor low ambition
Passes those airy walls.

Borne on the swell of your long waves receding,
I touch the farther Past;
I see the dying glow of Spanish glory,
The sunset dream and last!

Before me rise the dome-shaped Mission towers,
The white Presidio;
The swart commander in his leathern jerkin,
The priest in stole of snow.

Once more I see ...

My thoughts are like fire-flies, pulsing in moonlight;
    My heart like a silver cup, filled with red wine;
My soul a pale gleaming horizon, whence soon light
    Will flood the gold earth with a torrent divine.

Jack Denver died on Talbragar when Christmas Eve began,
And there was sorrow round the place, for Denver was a man;
Jack Denver's wife bowed down her head, her daughter's grief was wild,
And big Ben Duggan by the bed stood sobbing like a child.
But big Ben Duggan saddled up, and galloped fast and far,
To raise the longest funeral ever seen on Talbragar.

By station home
And shearing shed
Ben Duggan cried, `Jack Denver's dead!
Roll up at Talbragar!'

He borrowed horses here and there, and rode all Christmas Eve,
And scarcely paused a moment's time the mournful news to leave;
He rode by lonely huts and farms, and when the day was done
He turned his panting horse's head and rode to Ross's Run.
No bushman in a single day had ridden half so far
Since Johnson b...

After The Manner Of Horace.



Friend, there be they on whom mishap
Or never or so rarely comes,
That, when they think thereof, they snap
Derisive thumbs:

And there be they who lightly lose
Their all, yet feel no aching void;
Should aught annoy them, they refuse
To be annoy'd:

And fain would I be e'en as these!
Life is with such all beer and skittles;
They are not difficult to please
About their victuals:

The trout, the grouse, the early pea,
By such, if there, are freely taken;
If not, they munch with equal glee
Their bit of bacon:

And when they wax a little gay
And chaff the public after luncheon,
If they're confronted with a stray
Policeman's truncheon,

They gaze thereat with outstretch'd...

    Time that has lifted you over them all,
    O'er John and o'er Paul;
    Writ you in capitals, made you the chief
    Word on the leaf,
    How did you, Peter, when ne'er on His breast
    You leaned and were blest,
    And none except Judas and you broke the faith
    To the day of His death,
    You, Peter, the fisherman, worthy of blame,
    Arise to this fame?

    'Twas you in the garden who fell into sleep
    And the watch failed to keep,
    When Jesus was praying and pressed with the weight
    Of the oncoming fate.
    'Twas you in the court of the palace who warmed
    Your hands as you stormed
    At the damsel, denying Him thrice, when she cried:
    "He walked at his side!"
    You, Peter, a wave, a star among clouds, a reed in...

(St. Barbara is the patron saint of artillery and of those in danger of sudden death.)


When the long grey lines came flooding upon Paris in the plain,
We stood and drank of the last free air we never could taste again:
They had led us back from the lost battle, to halt we knew not where
And stilled us; and our gaping guns were dumb with our despair.
The grey tribes flowed for ever from the infinite lifeless lands
And a Norman to a Breton spoke, his chin upon his hands.

"There was an end to Ilium; and an end came to Rome;
And a man plays on a painted stage in the land that he calls home;
Arch after arch of triumph, but floor beyond falling floor,
That lead to a low door at last; and beyond there is no door."

And the Breton to the Norman spoke, like a smal...

We flash across the level.
We thunder thro' the bridges.
We bicker down the cuttings.
We sway along the ridges.

A rush of streaming hedges,
Of jostling lights and shadows,
Of hurtling, hurrying stations,
Of racing woods and meadows.

We charge the tunnels headlong -
The blackness roars and shatters.
We crash between embankments -
The open spins and scatters.

We shake off the miles like water,
We might carry a royal ransom;
And I think of her waiting, waiting,
And long for a common hansom.

1876

To the Children of Mary of the Cathedral of Mobile



In the mystical dim of the temple,
In the dream-haunted dim of the day,
The sunlight spoke soft to the shadows,
And said: "With my gold and your gray,
Let us meet at the shrine of the Virgin,
And ere her fair feast pass away,
Let us weave there a mantle of glory,
To deck the last evening of May."

The tapers were lit on the altar,
With garlands of lilies between;
And the steps leading up to the statue
Flashed bright with the roses' red sheen;
The sun-gleams came down from the heavens
Like angels, to hallow the scene,
And they seemed to kneel down with the shadows
That crept to the shrine of the Queen.

The singers, their hearts in their voices,
Had chanted the anthems of o...

Ovarus mine,
Plant thou the vine
Within this kindly soil of Tibur;
Nor temporal woes,
Nor spiritual, knows
The man who's a discreet imbiber.
For who doth croak
Of being broke,
Or who of warfare, after drinking?
With bowl atween us,
Of smiling Venus
And Bacchus shall we sing, I'm thinking.

Of symptoms fell
Which brawls impel,
Historic data give us warning;
The wretch who fights
When full, of nights,
Is bound to have a head next morning.
I do not scorn
A friendly horn,
But noisy toots, I can't abide 'em!
Your howling bat
Is stale and flat
To one who knows, because he's tried 'em!

The secrets of
The life I love
(Companionship with girls and toddy)
I would not drag
With drunken brag
Into ...

The sea took pity: it interposed with doom:
'I have tall daughters dear that heed my hand:
Let Winter wed one, sow them in her womb,
And she shall child them on the New-world strand.'

Ah, how the Human Mind wearies herself
With her own wand'rings, and, involved in gloom
Impenetrable, speculates amiss!
Measuring, in her folly, things divine
By human, laws inscrib'd on adamant
By laws of Man's device, and counsels fix'd
For ever, by the hours, that pass, and die.
How? shall the face of Nature then be plow'd
Into deep wrinkles, and shall years at last
On the great Parent fix a sterile curse?
Shall even she confess old age, and halt
And, palsy-smitten, shake her starry brows?
Shall foul Antiquity with rust and drought
And famine vex the radiant worlds above?
Shall Time's unsated maw crave and engulf
The very heav'ns that regulate his flight?
And was the Sire of all able to fence
His works, and to uphold the circling worlds,
But throug...