Heartbreak

So you’ve kem ’yer agen,
And one answer won’t do?
Well, of all the derned men
That I’ve struck, it is you.
O Sal! ’yer’s that derned fool from Simpson’s, cavortin’ round ’yer in the dew.

Kem in, ef you will.
Thar, quit! Take a cheer.
Not that; you can’t fill
Them theer cushings this year,
For that cheer was my old man’s, Joe Simpson, and they don’t make such men about ’yer.

He was tall, was my Jack,
And as strong as a tree.
Thar’s his gun on the rack,
Jest you heft it, and see.
And you come a courtin’ his widder! Lord! where can that critter, Sal, be!

You’d fill my Jack’s place?
And a man of your size,
With no baird to his face,
Nor a snap to his eyes,
And nary Sho! thar! I was foolin’, I was, Joe, for sartain, don’t rise.

Clear from the deep sky pours the moon
Her silver on the heavy dark;
The small stars blink.

Against the moon the maple bough
Flutters distinct her leafy spears;
All sound falls weak....

Weak the train's whistle, the dog's bark,
Slow steps; and rustling into her nest
At last, the thrush.

All's still; only earth turns and breathes.
Then that amazing trembling note
Cleaves the deep wave

Of silence. Shivers even that silvery one;
Sigh all the trees, even the cedar dark
----O joy, and I.

Drunk and senseless in his place,
Prone and sprawling on his face,
More like brute than any man
Alive or dead,
By his great pump out of gear,
Lay the peon engineer,
Waking only just to hear,
Overhead,
Angry tones that called his name,
Oaths and cries of bitter blame,
Woke to hear all this, and, waking, turned and fled!

“To the man who’ll bring to me,”
Cried Intendant Harry Lee,
Harry Lee, the English foreman of the mine,
“Bring the sot alive or dead,
I will give to him,” he said,
“Fifteen hundred pesos down,
Just to set the rascal’s crown
Underneath this heel of mine:
Since but death
Deserves the man whose deed,
Be it vice or want of heed,
Stops the pumps that give us breath,
Stops the pumps that suck the death
Fro...

Dwell, not with me,
For you’ll never see
More than a ’possum or a kangaroo,
And now and then a cockatoo.

Oh, would you wish,
Without a dish,
Your scanty meal from a piece of bark,
And a wood fire to illume the dark.

’Tis there you’d mourn,
’Tis there you’d mourn
The sweet woodbine
That round your lattice now doth twine.

Fond friends, don’t grieve
For scenes like these,
Or smart from bugs, mosquitoes, fleas.
Dwell not with me.

Indefinite space, which, by co-substance night,
In one black mystery two void mysteries blends;
The stray stars, whose innumerable light
Repeats one mystery till conjecture ends;
The stream of time, known by birth-bursting bubbles;
The gulf of silence, empty even of nought;
Thought's high-walled maze, which the outed owner troubles
Because the string's lost and the plan forgot:
When I think on this and that here I stand,
The thinker of these thoughts, emptily wise,
Holding up to my thinking my thing-hand
And looking at it with thought-alien eyes,
    The prayer of my wonder looketh past
    The universal darkness lone and vast.

Not from the stars do I my judgement pluck;
And yet methinks I have astronomy,
But not to tell of good or evil luck,
Of plagues, of dearths, or seasons’ quality;
Nor can I fortune to brief minutes tell,
Pointing to each his thunder, rain and wind,
Or say with princes if it shall go well
By oft predict that I in heaven find:
But from thine eyes my knowledge I derive,
And constant stars in them I read such art
As ‘Truth and beauty shall together thrive,
If from thyself, to store thou wouldst convert’;
Or else of thee this I prognosticate:
‘Thy end is truth’s and beauty’s doom and date.’

    I was the first fruits of the battle of Missionary Ridge.
    When I felt the bullet enter my heart
    I wished I had staid at home and gone to jail
    For stealing the hogs of Curl Trenary,
    Instead of running away and joining the army.
    Rather a thousand times the county jail
    Than to lie under this marble figure with wings,
    And this granite pedestal Bearing the words, "Pro Patria."
    What do they mean, anyway?

    O glad sun, creeping through the casement wide,
    A million blossoms have you kissed since morn,
    But none so fair as this one at my side -
    Touch soft the bit of love, the babe new born.

    Towards all the world my love and pity flow,
    With high resolves, with trust, with sympathy.
    This happy heart of mine is all aglow -
    This heart that was so cold - God's warmth is she.

    Today surprised me
    like a red fox blurting
    out of an October thicket -
    empty, dry, the burst of its
    energy camouflaged much as
    that fox, solemn and cold,
    biding his time
    till he thought I passed.

(ALEXANDRIA-MARSEILLES)

Out in the blustering darkness, on the deck
A gleam of stars looks down. Long blurs of black,
The lean Destroyers, level with our track,
Plunging and stealing, watch the perilous way
Through backward racing seas and caverns of chill spray.

One sentry by the davits, in the gloom
Stands mute; the boat heaves onward through the night.
Shrouded is every chink of cabined light:
And sluiced by floundering waves that hiss and boom
And crash like guns, the troop-ship shudders ... doom.

Now something at my feet stirs with a sigh;
And slowly growing used to groping dark,
I know that the hurricane-deck, down all its length,
Is heaped and spread with lads in sprawling strength, -
Blanketed soldiers sleeping. In the stark
Danger of...

If that apparent part of life's delight
Our tingled flesh-sense circumscribes were seen
By aught save reflex and co-carnal sight,
Joy, flesh and life might prove but a gross screen.
Haply Truth's body is no eyable being,
Appearance even as appearance lies,
Haply our close, dark, vague, warm sense of seeing
Is the choked vision of blindfolded eyes.
Wherefrom what comes to thought's sense of life? Nought.
All is either the irrational world we see
Or some aught-else whose being-unknown doth rot
Its use for our thought's use. Whence taketh me
    A qualm-like ache of life, a body-deep
    Soul-hate of what we seek and what we weep.

They's nothin' in the name to strike
A feller more'n common like!
'Taint liable to git no praise
Ner nothin' like it nowadays;
An' yit that name o' her'n is jest
As purty as the purtiest -
And more 'n that, I'm here to say
I'll live a-thinkin' thataway
    And die far Marthy Ellen!

It may be I was prejudust
In favor of it from the fust -
'Cause I kin ricollect jest how
We met, and hear her mother now
A-callin' of her down the road -
And, aggervatin' little toad! -
I see her now, jes' sort o' half-
Way disapp'inted, turn and laugh
    And mock her - "Marthy Ellen!"

Our people never had no fuss,
And yit they never tuck to us;
We neighbered back and foreds some;
Until they see she liked to come
To our house - and me and h...

Joyful lady, sing!
And I will lurk here listening,
Though nought be done, and nought begun,
And work-hours swift are scurrying.

Sing, O lady, still!
Aye, I will wait each note you trill,
Though duties due that press to do
This whole day long I unfulfil.

" It is an evening tune;
One not designed to waste the noon,"
You say. I know: time bids me go
For daytide passes too, too soon!

But let indulgence be,
This once, to my rash ecstasy:
When sounds nowhere that carolled air
My idled morn may comfort me!

She walks - the lady of my delight -
    A shepherdess of sheep.
Her flocks are thoughts. She keeps them white;
    She guards them from the steep.
She feeds them on the fragrant height,
    And folds them in for sleep.

She roams maternal hills and bright,
    Dark valleys safe and deep.
Into that tender breast at night
    The chastest stars may peep.
She walks - the lady of my delight -
    A shepherdess of sheep.

She holds her little thoughts in sight,
    Though gay they run and leap.
She is so circumspect and right;
    She has her soul to keep.
She walks - the lady of my delight -
    A shepherdess of sheep.

Gli affetti di Pluton.


Deep in their hearts they hide the lusts of Hell:
        Christ's name is written on their brow, that those
        Who only view the husk, may not suppose
        What guile and malice harbour in the shell.
O God! O Wisdom! Holy Fervour! Well
        Of strength invincible to strike Thy foes!
        Give me the force--my spirit burns and glows--
        To strip those idols and to break their spell!
The zeal I bear unto Thy name benign,
        The love I feel for truth sincere and pure,
        When such men triumph, make me rend my hair.
How long shall folk this infamy endure--
        That he should be held sacred, he divine,
        Who strips e'en corpses in the graveyard bare?

Died at Hartford, May 12th, 1860.


Gone, pure in heart! unto thy fitting home,
Where nought of ill can follow. O'er thy life
There swept no stain, and o'er its placid close
No shadow.
                    As for us, who saw thee move
From childhood onward, loving and serene,
To every duty faithful, we who feel
The bias toward self too often make
Our course unequal, or beset with thorns,
Give thanks to Him, the Giver of all good,
For what thou wert, but most for what thou art.

                *    *    *    *    *

Thy meek and reverent nature cheer'd the heart
Of hoary Age even in thine early bloom,
And with sweet tenderness of filial care,
And perfect sympathy, thy shielding arm
Pillow'd a Mother's head, till life went out.
We y...

So I said I am Ezra
and the wind whipped my throat
gaming for the sounds of my voice
I listened to the wind
go over my head and up into the night
Turning to the sea I said
I am Ezra
but there were no echoes from the waves
The words were swallowed up
in the voice of the surf
or leaping over the swells
lost themselves oceanward
Over the bleached and broken fields
I moved my feet and turning from the wind
that ripped sheets of sand
from the beach and threw them
like seamists across the dunes
swayed as if the wind were taking me away
and said
I am Ezra
As a word too much repeated
falls out of being
so I Ezra went out into the night
like a drift of sand
and splashed among the windy oats
that clutch the dunes
of unre...

Until the day break, and the shadows flee away. Song of Solomon 4:6.


Gleaming softly, silvery-faint,
Heralded by chanticleer,
Merging from night's shadowy taint,
New day of the passing year!

Born to bless or born to blight,
Born for you and born for me,
Leaving, ere it take its flight,
Impress on eternity!

'Tis a gift from God's own hand.
On its pure unsullied page
Let us write at his command
What will bless our pilgrimage.

True repentance giveth joy
To the angels in the sky.
What could be more blest employ
Than to cheer the choirs on high?

Deeds of patience, deeds of love,
Banishing all hate and guile
These will steer toward heaven above,
These will make the angels smile.

May this child...