Heartbreak

Near Martinpuisch that night of hell
Two men were struck by the same shell,
Together tumbling in one heap
Senseless and limp like slaughtered sheep.

One was a pale eighteen-year-old,
Girlish and thin and not too bold,
Pressed for the war ten years too soon,
The shame and pity of his platoon.

The other came from far-off lands
With bristling chin and whiskered hands,
He had known death and hell before
In Mexico and Ecuador.

Yet in his death this cut-throat wild
Groaned "Mother!    Mother!" like a child,
While that poor innocent in man's clothes
Died cursing God with brutal oaths.

Old Sergeant Smith, kindest of men,
Wrote out two copies there and then
Of his accustomed funeral speech
To cheer the womenfolk of each.

Over that morn hung heaviness, until,
Near sunless noon, we heard the ship's bell beating
A melancholy staccato on dead metal;
Saw the bare-footed watch come running aft;
Felt, far below, the sudden telegraph jangle
Its harsh metallic challenge, thrice repeated:
'Stand to. Half-speed ahead. Slow. Stop her!'
                                                            They stopped.
The plunging pistons sank like a stopped heart:
She held, she swayed, a hulk, a hollow carcass
Of blistered iron that the grey-green, waveless,
Unruffled tropic waters slapped languidly.

And, in that pause, a sinister whisper ran:
Burial at Sea! a Portuguese official ...
Poor fever-broken devil from Mozambique:
Came on half tight: the doctor calls it heat-stroke.
Why do they tra...

"Where is thy crown, O tree of Love?
    Flowers only bears thy root!
Will never rain drop from above
    Divine enough for fruit?"

"I dwell in hope that gives good cheer,
    Twilight my darkest hour;
For seest thou not that every year
    I break in better flower?"

Since my words, though ne'er so tender,
With sincerest truth express'd,
Cannot make your heart surrender,
Nor so much as warm your breast;

What will move the springs of Nature
What will make you think me true?
Tell me, thou mysterious creature,
Tell poor Strephon what will do.

Do not, Charmion, rack your lover
Thus, by seeming not to know
What so plainly all discover,
What his eyes so plainly show.

Fair one, 'tis yourself deceiving,
'Tis against your reason's laws;
Atheist-like (th' effect perceiving)
Still to disbelieve the cause.

    "'Y' are the maiden posies,
    And so graced,
    To be placed
    Fore damask roses.
    Yet, though thus respected,
    By and by
    Ye do lie,
    Poor girls, neglected.'

The bound, almost, now of my book I see,
But yet no end of these therein, or me:
Here we begin new life, while thousands quite
Are lost, and theirs, in everlasting night.

    Angel Inn,
    come off a sign
    blown sideways
    in the sugar and ices
    night.

    Old St. Joseph's
    Cathedral, bottom
    of the hill, here
    Andrew Marvell
    of "coy mistress"
    fame sports a plaque
    remembering "time's
    winged chariot" and
    farther (further!) up
    a quaint pub gives accolades
    (Kudos, too) to the fact, 1666
    nefariously was the plague year
    in London - Parliament Hill,
    a brief arm stretch away,
    posited strangled chickens
    and other assorted heirlooms
    in vain attempt for poesy
    to thwart poxy.

    A stone's throw
    off in Hampstead Heath
    guns (Big Berthas) could
    be heard from the Somme,
    German derigibles...

I Thank Thee, boundless Giver,
    That the thoughts Thou givest flow
In sounds that like a river
    All through the darkness go.
And though few should swell the pleasure,
    By sharing this my wine,
My heart will clasp its treasure,
    This secret gift of Thine.

My heart the joy inherits,
    And will oft be sung to rest;
And some wandering hoping spirits
    May listen and be blest.
For the sound may break the hours
    In a dark and gloomy mood,
As the wind breaks up the bowers
    Of the brooding sunless wood.

For every sound of gladness
    Is a prophet-wind that tells
Of a summer without sadness,
    And a love without farewells;
And a heart that hath no ailing,
    And an eye that is not dim,
And a faith that...

In vain, alas! poor Strephon tries
To ease his tortured breast,
Since Amoret the cure denies,
And makes his pain a jest.

Ah! fair one, why to me so coy,
And why to him so true?
Who with more coldness slights the joy
Than I with love pursue.

Die, then, unhappy lover, die;
For since she gives thee death,
The world has nothing that can buy
A minute more of breath.

Yet though I could your scorn outlive,
'Twere folly, since to me
Not love itself a joy can give,
But, Amoret, in thee.

Reflections on reading Du Cerceau's Account of the Conspiracy of Rienzi, in 1347.--The Meeting of the Conspirators on the Night of the 19th of May.--Their Procession in the Morning to the Capitol.--Rienzi's Speech.


'Twas a proud moment--even to hear the words
    Of Truth and Freedom mid these temples breathed,
And see once more the Forum shine with swords
    In the Republic's sacred name unsheathed--
That glimpse, that vision of a brighter day
    For his dear ROME, must to a Roman be,
Short as it was, worth ages past away
    In the dull lapse of hopeless slavery.

'Twas on a night of May, beneath that moon
Which had thro' many an age seen Time untune
The strings of this Great Empire, till it fell
From his rude hands, a broken, silent shell--
The s...

Oh, call it by some better name,
    For Friendship sounds too cold,
While Love is now a worldly flame,
    Whose shrine must be of gold:
And Passion, like the sun at noon,
    That burns o'er all he sees,
Awhile as warm will set as soon--
    Then call it none of these.

Imagine something purer far,
    More free from stain of clay
Than Friendship, Love, or Passion are,
    Yet human, still as they:
And if thy lip, for love like this,
    No mortal word can frame,
Go, ask of angels what it is,
    And call it by that name!

PAINTER in Paphos and Cythera famed
Depict, I pray, the absent Iris' face.
Thou hast not seen the lovely nymph I've named;
The better for thy peace. - Then will I trace
For thy instruction her transcendent grace.
Begin with lily white and blushing rose,
Take then the Loves and Graces... But what good
Words, idle words? for Beauty's Goddess could
By Iris be replaced, nor one suppose
The secret fraud - their grace so equal shows.
Thou at Cythera couldst, at Paphos too,
Of the same Iris Venus form anew.

    Our author, by experience, finds it true,
    'Tis much more hard to please himself than you;
    And out of no feign'd modesty, this day
    Damns his laborious trifle of a play;
    Not that it's worse than what before he writ,
    But he has now another taste of wit;
    And, to confess a truth, though out of time,
    Grows weary of his long-loved mistress, Rhyme.
    Passion's too fierce to be in fetters bound,
    And nature flies him like enchanted ground:
    What verse can do, he has perform'd in this,
    Which he presumes the most correct of his;
    But spite of all his pride, a secret shame
    Invades his breast at Shakspeare's sacred name:
    Awed when he hears his godlike Romans rage,
    He, in a just despair, would quit the stage;
    An...

Why rings the knell of the funeral bell from a hundred village shrines?
Through broad Fingall, where hasten all those long and ordered lines?
With tear and sigh they're passing by--the matron and the maid--
Has a hero died--is a nation's pride in that cold coffin laid?
With frown and curse, behind the hearse, dark men go tramping on--
Has a tyrant died, that they cannot hide their wrath till the rites
are done?


THE CHANT.

"Ululu! ululu! high on the wind,
There's a home for the slave where no fetters can bind.
Woe, woe to his slayers!"--comes wildly along,
With the trampling of feet and the funeral song.

And now more clear
It swells on the ear;
Breathe low, and listen, 'tis solemn to hear.

"Ululu! ululu! wail for the dead....

Oh, the scene is wide an’ dreary an’ the sun is settin’ red,
An’ the grey-black sky of winter’s comin’ closer overhead.
Oh, the sun is settin’ bloody with a blood-line on the snow,
An’ across it to the westward you can see old Bruin go;
You can see old Shaggy go,
You can see the brown Bear go,
An’ he’s draggin’ one leg arter, an’ he’s travellin’ pretty slow.

We can send a long shot arter, but he doesn’t seem to know,
There’s a thin red line behind him where it’s dripped across the snow;
He is weary an’ he’s wounded, with his own blood he’s half-blind,
He is licked an’ he’s defeated, an’ he’s left some cubs behind;
Yes, he’s left some cubs behind;
Oh, he’s left some cubs behind;
To the tune of sixty thousand he has left some cubs behind.

Oh, they’ve pulled hi...

If you're going to drop the gauntlet
at least put on the dress
of a full warrior    -
paint, rouge, lipstick,
sheer stockings and
enough powder to smother
a savage;
then form a straight line
and chant the litany
(wise aboriginals never forgive, you know)
and a good poundmaker is so adept
at keeping score.

Sweete secrecie, what tongue can tell thy worth?
What mortall pen sufficiently can prayse thee?
What curious Pensill serues to lim thee forth?
What Muse hath power aboue thy height to raise thee?
Strong locke of kindnesse, Closet of loues store,
Harts Methridate, the soules preseruatiue;
O vertue! which all vertues doe adore,
Cheefe good, from whom all good things wee deriue.
O rare effect! true bond of friendships measure,
Conceite of Angels, which all wisdom teachest;
O, richest Casket of all heauenly treasure,
In secret silence which such wonders preachest.
    O purest mirror! wherein men may see
    The liuely Image of Diuinitie.

        When first I stood before you,
                Isabel,
        I stood there to adore you,
                In your spell;
        For all that grace composes,
        And all that beauty knows is
        Your face above the roses,
                Isabel.

        You knew the charm of flowers,
                Isabel,
        Which, like incarnate hours,
                Rose and fell
        At your bosom, glowed and gloried,
        White and pale and pink and florid,
        And you touched them with your forehead,
                Isabel.

        Amid the jest and laughter,
                Isabel,
        I saw you, and thereafter,
                Ill or well,
        There was nothing else worth seeing,
        Wor...