Heartbreak

The days are past, the days are past,
    When we did meet, my love and I;
And youthful joys are fading fast,
    Like radiant angels up the sky;
But still with every dawning day
    Come back the blessed thoughts of old,
Like sunshine in a morn of May,
    To keep the heart from growing cold.

The flowers are gone, the leaves are shed,
    That waved about us as we stray'd;
And many a bird for aye has fled,
    That chaunted to us from the glade;
Yet every leaf and flower that springs
    In beauty round the ripening year,
And every summer carol brings
    New sweetness from the old time dear.

I.

The plain was grassy, wild and bare,
Wide, wild, and open to the air,
Which had built up everywhere
An under-roof of doleful gray.
With an inner voice the river ran,
Adown it floated a dying swan,
And loudly did lament.
It was the middle of the day.
Ever the weary wind went on,
And took the reed-tops as it went.



II.

Some blue peaks in the distance rose,
And white against the cold-white sky,
Shone out their crowning snows.
One willow over the river wept,
And shook the wave as the wind did sigh;
Above in the wind was the swallow,
Chasing itself at its own wild will,
And far thro’ the marish green and still
The tangled water-courses slept,
Shot over with purple, and green, and yellow.

By the hearth-stone
She sits alone,
    The long night bearing:
With eyes that gleam
Into the dream
    Of the firelight staring.

Low and more low
The dying glow
    Burns in the embers;
She nothing heeds
And nothing needs---
    Only remembers.

Oft taking pen in hand, with words to cast my woes,
Beginning to account the sum of all my cares,
I well perceiue my griefe innumerable growes,
And still in reckonings rise more millions of dispayres.
And thus, deuiding of my fatall howres,
The payments of my loue I read, and reading crosse,
And in substracting set my sweets vnto my sowres;
Th' average of my ioyes directs me to my losse.
And thus mine eyes, a debtor to thine eye,
Who by extortion gaineth all theyr lookes,
My hart hath payd such grieuous vsury,
That all her wealth lyes in thy Beauties bookes;
    And all is thine which hath been due to mee,
    And I a Banckrupt, quite vndone by thee.

Mary Magdalen.--Her Story.--Numerous Pictures of her.--Correggio--Guido --Raphael, etc.--Canova's two exquisite Statues.--The Somariva Magdalen. --Chantrey's Admiration of Canova's Works.


No wonder, MARY, that thy story
    Touches all hearts--for there we see thee.
The soul's corruption and its glory,
    Its death and life combine in thee.

From the first moment when we find
    Thy spirit haunted by a swarm
Of dark desires,--like demons shrined
    Unholily in that fair form,--
Till when by touch of Heaven set free,
    Thou camest, with those bright locks of gold
(So oft the gaze of BETHANY),
    And covering in their precious fold
Thy Saviour's feet didst shed such tears
As paid, each drop, the sins of years!--
Thence on thro' all thy c...

The cuckoo-sorrel paints with pink
The green page of the meadow-land
Around a pool where thrushes drink
As from a hollowed hand.
A hill, long-haired with leathered grass
Combed by the strong incessant wind,
Looks down upon the pool's pale glass
Like some old hag gone blind,
And on a forest grey of beech,
Reserved, mysterious, deep and wild,
That whispers to itself; its speech
Like some old man's turned child.

A forest, through which something speaks
Authoritative things to man,
A something that o'erawed the Greeks,
The universal Pan.
And through the forest falls a stream
Babbling of immemorial things
The myth, that haunts it like a dream,
The god, that in it sings.

And here it was, when I was young,
Across this meadow, sorr...

That day we wandered 'mid the hills, - so lone
Clouds are not lonelier, the forest lay
In emerald darkness round us. Many a stone
And gnarly root, gray-mossed, made wild our way:
And many a bird the glimmering light along
Showered the golden bubbles of its song.

Then in the valley, where the brook went by,
Silvering the ledges that it rippled from, -
An isolated slip of fallen sky,
Epitomizing heaven in its sum, -
An iris bloomed - blue, as if, flower-disguised,
The gaze of Spring had there materialized.

I have forgotten many things since then -
Much beauty and much happiness and grief;
And toiled and dreamed among my fellow-men,
Rejoicing in the knowledge life is brief.
"'Tis winter now," so says each barren bough;
And face and hair proclaim ...

In the waste hour
Between to-day and yesterday
We watched, while on my arm -
Living flesh of her flesh, bone of her bone -
Dabbled in sweat the sacred head
Lay uncomplaining, still, contemptuous, strange:
Till the dear face turned dead,
And to a sound of lamentation
The good, heroic soul with all its wealth -
Its sixty years of love and sacrifice,
Suffering and passionate faith - was reabsorbed
In the inexorable Peace,
And life was changed to us for evermore.

Was nothing left of her but tears
Like blood-drops from the heart?
Nought save remorse
For duty unfulfilled, justice undone,
And charity ignored?    Nothing but love,
Forgiveness, reconcilement, where in truth,
But for this passing
Into the unimaginable abyss
These things ha...

Our ancient church! its lowly tower,
Beneath the loftier spire,
Is shadowed when the sunset hour
Clothes the tall shaft in fire;
It sinks beyond the distant eye
Long ere the glittering vane,
High wheeling in the western sky,
Has faded o'er the plain.

Like Sentinel and Nun, they keep
Their vigil on the green;
One seems to guard, and one to weep,
The dead that lie between;
And both roll out, so full and near,
Their music's mingling waves,
They shake the grass, whose pennoned spear
Leans on the narrow graves.

The stranger parts the flaunting weeds,
Whose seeds the winds have strown
So thick, beneath the line he reads,
They shade the sculptured stone;
The child unveils his clustered brow,
And ponders for a while
The graven...

Somewhere the long mellow note of the blackbird
Quickens the unclasping hands of hazel,
Somewhere the wind-flowers fling their heads back,
Stirred by an impetuous wind. Some ways'll
All be sweet with white and blue violet.
(Hush now, hush. Where am I? - Biuret - )

On the green wood's edge a shy girl hovers
From out of the hazel-screen on to the grass,
Where wheeling and screaming the petulant plovers
Wave frighted. Who comes? A labourer, alas!
Oh the sunset swims in her eyes' swift pool.
(Work, work, you fool - !)

Somewhere the lamp hanging low from the ceiling
Lights the soft hair of a girl as she reads,
And the red firelight steadily wheeling
Weaves the hard hands of my friend in sleep.
And the white dog snuffs the warmth, appealing...

Where Time the measure of his hours
By changeful bud and blossom keeps,
And, like a young bride crowned with flowers,
Fair Shiraz in her garden sleeps;

Where, to her poet's turban stone,
The Spring her gift of flowers imparts,
Less sweet than those his thoughts have sown
In the warm soil of Persian hearts:

There sat the stranger, where the shade
Of scattered date-trees thinly lay,
While in the hot clear heaven delayed
The long and still and weary day.

Strange trees and fruits above him hung,
Strange odors filled the sultry air,
Strange birds upon the branches swung,
Strange insect voices murmured there.

And strange bright blossoms shone around,
Turned sunward from the shadowy bowers,
As if the Gheber's soul had found
A fi...

Some things are good on Autumn nights,
When with the storm the forest fights,
And in the room the heaped hearth lights
    Old-fashioned press and rafter:
Plump chestnuts hissing in the heat,
A mug of cider, sharp and sweet,
And at your side a face petite,
    With lips of laughter.

Upon the roof the rolling rain,
And tapping at the window-pane,
The wind that seems a witch's cane
    That summons spells together:
A hand within your own awhile;
A mouth reflecting back your smile;
And eyes, two stars, whose beams exile
    All thoughts of weather.

And, while the wind lulls, still to sit
And watch her fire-lit needles flit
A-knitting, and to feel her knit
    Your very heartstrings in it:
Then, when the old clock ticks 't...