Heartbreak

The night is young yet; an enchanted night
In early summer: calm and darkly bright.

I love the Night, and every little breeze
She brings, to soothe the sleep of dreaming trees.

Hearst thou the Voices? Sough! Susurrus! Hark!
’Tis Mother Nature whispering in the dark!

Burden of cities, mad turmoil of men,
That vex the daylight, she forgets them then.

Her breasts are bare; Grief gains from them surcease:
She gives her restless sons the milk of Peace.

To sleep she lulls them, drawn from thoughts of pelf
By telling sweet old stories of herself.

.    .    .    .    .

All secrets deep, yea, all I hear and see
Of things mysterious, Night reveals to me.

I know what every flower, with drowsy head
Down-drooping, dreams of, ...

I have experienc'd
The worst, the World can wreak on me, the worst
That can make Life indifferent, yet disturb
With whisper'd Discontents the dying prayer,
I have beheld the whole of all, wherein
My Heart had any interest in this Life,
To be disrent and torn from off my Hopes
That nothing now is left. Why then live on?
That Hostage, which the world had in it's keeping
Given by me as a Pledge that I would live,
That Hope of Her, say rather, that pure Faith
In her fix'd Love, which held me to keep truce
With the Tyranny of Life, is gone ah! whither?
What boots it to reply? 'tis gone! and now
Well may I break this Pact, this League of Blood
That ties me to myself, and break I shall!

        Here now forevermore our lives must part.
    My path leads there, and yours another way.
        What shall we do with this fond love, dear heart?
    It grows a heavier burden day by day.

        Hide it? In all earth's caverns, void and vast,
    There is not room enough to hide it, dear;
        Not even the mighty storehouse of the past
    Could cover it from our own eyes, I fear.

        Drown it? Why, were the contents of each ocean
    Merged into one great sea, too shallow then
        Would be its waters to sink this emotion
    So deep it could not rise to life again.

        Burn it? In all the furnace flames below,
    It would not in a thousand years expire.
        Nay! it would thrive, exult, expand, and grow,
    For from...

(Student's Love-song)



Once more the cauldron of the sun
Smears the bookcase with winy red,
And here my page is, and there my bed,
And the apple-tree shadows travel along.
Soon their intangible track will be run,
    And dusk grow strong
    And they be fled.

Yes: now the boiling ball is gone,
And I have wasted another day . . .
But wasted WASTED, do I say?
Is it a waste to have imaged one
Beyond the hills there, who, anon,
    My great deeds done
    Will be mine alway?

    Young Chloe looks sweet as the rose,
    And her love might be reckoned no less,
    But her bosom so freely bestows
    That all may a portion possess.
    Her smiles would be cheering to see,
    But so freely they're lavished abroad
    That each silly swain, like to me,
    Can boast what the wanton bestowed.

    Her looks and her kisses so free
    Are for all, like the rain and the sky;
    As the blossom love is to the bee,
    Each swain is as welcome as I.
    And though I my folly can see,
    Yet still must I love and adore,
    Though I know the love whispered to me
    Has been told to so many before.

    'T is sad that a bosom so fair,
    And soft lips so seemingly sweet,
    Should study false ways, to ensnare,
  ...

i.

Glory to thee, my Queen! whom far away
    My thoughts aspire to,--as the birds of May
Aspire o' mornings,--as in lonely nooks
The gurgling murmurs of neglected brooks
Aspire to moonlight,--aye! as earth aspires
When through the East, alert with wild desires,
    The rapturous sun surveys the welkin's height,
And flecks the world with witcheries of his fires.


ii.

Oh, I should curb my grief. I should entone
    No plaint to thee; no loss should I bemoan!
I should be patient, I, though full of care,
And not attempt, by bias of a prayer,
To sway thy spirit, or to urge anew
A claim contested. For my days are few;
    My days, I think, are few upon the earth
Since I must shun the joys I would pursue.


iii.

...

The Autumn pines and fades
Upon the withered trees;
And over there, a choked despair,
You hear the moaning breeze.

The violets are dead;
Dead the tall hollyhocks,
That hang like rags on the wind-crushed flags,
And the lilies' livid stocks.

The wild gourd clambers free
Where the clematis was wont;
Where nenuphars waxed thick as stars
Rank weeds stagnate the font.

Yet in my dreams I hear
A tinkling mandolin;
In the dark blue light of a fragrant night
Float in and out and in.

And the dewy vine that climbs
To my lady's lattice sways,
And behind the vine there come to shine
Two pleasant eyes and gaze.

And now a perfume comes,
A swift Favonian gust;
And the shrinking grass where it doth pass
Bows slave...

Amid my treasures once I found
    A simple faded flower;
A flower with all its beauty fled,
    The darling of an hour.

With bitterness I gazed awhile,
    Then flung it from my sight;
For with it all came back to me
    the pain and heedless blight.

But, moved with pity and regret
    I took it up again;
For oh, so long and wearily
    In darkness it had lain.

Ah, purple pansy, once I kissed
    Your dewy petals fair;
For then, indeed, I had no thought
    Of earthly pain or care.

Your faded petals now I touch
    With sacred love and awe;
For never will my heart kneel down
    To earthly will or law.

Your velvet beauty still is dear,
    Though faded now you seem;
You drooped and died, yet still yo...

Before my drift-wood fire I sit,
And see, with every waif I burn,
Old dreams and fancies coloring it,
And folly's unlaid ghosts return.
O ships of mine, whose swift keels cleft
The enchanted sea on which they sailed,
Are these poor fragments only left
Of vain desires and hopes that failed?
Did I not watch from them the light
Of sunset on my towers in Spain,
And see, far off, uploom in sight
The Fortunate Isles I might not gain?

Did sudden lift of fog reveal
Arcadia's vales of song and spring,
And did I pass, with grazing keel,
The rocks whereon the sirens sing?

Have I not drifted hard upon
The unmapped regions lost to man,
The cloud-pitched tents of Prester John,
The palace domes of Kubla Khan?

Did land winds blow from jas...

I saw a cherry weep, and why?
Why wept it? but for shame
Because my Julia's lip was by,
And did out-red the same.
But, pretty fondling, let not fall
A tear at all for that:
Which rubies, corals, scarlets, all
For tincture wonder at.

I listened to the hunger-hearted clown,
Sadder than he: I heard a woman sing, -
A tall dark woman in a scarlet gown -
And saw those golden toys the jugglers fling.
I found a tawdry room and there sat I,
There angled for each murmur soft and strange,
The pavement-cries from darkness and below:
I watched the drinkers laugh, the lovers sigh,
And thought how little all the world would change
If clowns were audience, and we the Show.

What starry music are they playing now?
What dancing in this dreary theatre?
Who is she with the moon upon her brow,
And who the fire-foot god that follows her? -
Follows among those unbelieved-in trees
Back-shadowing in their parody of light
Across the little cardboard balustrade;
And we, like that poor Faun who pipes and f...

    BRIDE

O love, love, hold me fast,
He draws me away from thee;
I cannot stem the blast,
Nor the cold strong sea:
Far away a light shines
Beyond the hills and pines;
It is lit for me.

    BRIDEGROOM

I have thee close, my dear,
No terror can come near;
Only far off the northern light shines clear.

    GHOST

Come with me, fair and false,
To our home, come home.
It is my voice that calls:
Once thou wast not afraid
When I woo'd, and said,
'Come, our nest is newly made'--
Now cross the tossing foam.

    BRIDE

Hold me one moment longer,
He taunts me with the past,
His clutch is waxing stronger,
Hold me fast, hold me fast.
He draws me from thy heart,
And I cannot withhold:

Two savings of the Holy Scriptures beat
Like pulses in the Church's brow and breast;
And by them we find rest in our unrest
And, heart deep in salt-tears, do yet entreat
God's fellowship as if on heavenly seat.
The first is Jesus wept, whereon is prest
Full many a sobbing face that drops its best
And sweetest waters on the record sweet:
And one is where the Christ, denied and scorned
Looked upon Peter. Oh, to render plain
By help of having loved a little and mourned,
That look of sovran love and sovran pain
Which He, who could not sin yet suffered, turned
On him who could reject but not sustain!

        One sits in soft light, where the hearth is warm,
            A halo, like an angel's, on her hair.
        She clasps a sleeping infant in her arm.
            A holy presence hovers round her there,
            And she, for all her mother-pains more fair,
        Is happy, seeing that all sweet thoughts that stir
        The hearts of men bear worship unto her.

        Another wanders where the cold wind blows,
            Wet-haired, with eyes that sting one like a knife.
        Homeless forever, at her bosom close
            She holds the purchase of her love and life,
            Of motherhood, unglorified as wife;
        And bitterer than the world's relentless scorn
        The knowing her child were happier never born.

        Whence are t...

When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain,
Before high piled books, in charactry,
Hold like rich garners the full-ripen'd grain;
When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love; then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.

To me, like hauntings of a vagrant breath
From some far forest which I once have known,
The perfume of this flower of verse is blown.
Tho' seemingly soul-blossoms faint to death,
Naught that with joy she bears e'er withereth.
So, tho' the pregnant years have come and flown,
Lives come and gone and altered like mine own,
This poem comes to me a shibboleth:
Brings sound of past communings to my ear,
Turns round the tide of time and bears me back
Along an old and long untraversed way;
Makes me forget this is a later year,
Makes me tread o'er a reminiscent track,
Half sad, half glad, to one forgotten day!

I.

Tuscara! thou art lovely now,
Thy woods, that frown'd in sullen strength
Like plumage on a giant's brow,
Have bowed their massy pride at length.
The rustling maize is green around,
The sheep is in the Congar's bed;
And clear the ploughman's whistlings sound
Where war-whoop's pealed o'er mangled dead.
Fair cots around thy breast are set,
Like pearls upon a coronet;
And in Aluga's vale below
The gilded grain is moving slow
Like yellow moonlight on the sea,
Where waves are swelling peacefully;
As beauty's breast, when quiet dreams
Come tranquilly and gently by;
When all she loves and hopes for seems
To float in smiles before her eye.

II.

And hast thou lost the grandeur rude
That made me breathless, when at first
...

Thus they, with freaks of proud delight,
Beguile the remnant of the night;
And many a snatch of jovial song
Regales them as they wind along;
While to the music, from on high,
The echoes make a glad reply.
But the sage Muse the revel heeds
No farther than her story needs;
Nor will she servilely attend
The loitering journey to its end.
Blithe spirits of her own impel
The Muse, who scents the morning air,
To take of this transported pair
A brief and unreproved farewell;
To quit the slow-paced waggon's side,
And wander down yon hawthorn dell,
With murmuring Greta for her guide.
There doth she ken the awful form
Of Raven-crag black as a storm
Glimmering through the twilight pale;
And Ghimmer-crag, his tall twin brother,
Each peering forth t...