Heartbreak

I love the old melodious lays
Which softly melt the ages through,
The songs of Spenser’s golden days,
Arcadian Sidney’s silvery phrase,
Sprinkling our noon of time with freshest morning dew.

Yet, vainly in my quiet hours
To breathe their marvellous notes I try;
I feel them, as the leaves and flowers
In silence feel the dewy showers,
And drink with glad, still lips the blessing of the sky.

The rigor of a frozen clime,
The harshness of an untaught ear,
The jarring words of one whose rhyme
Beat often Labor’s hurried time,
Or Duty’s rugged march through storm and strife, are here.

Of mystic beauty, dreamy grace,
No rounded art the lack supplies;
Unskilled the subtle lines to trace,
Or softer shades of Nature’s face,
I view her comm...

’Tis sunrise over Watson,
Where I sailed out to sea,
On that wild run to London
That wrecked and ruined me.

The beauty of the morning
On bluff and point and bay,
But the Lily of St Leonards
Was fairer than the day.

O Lily of St Leonards!
And I was mad to roam,
She died with loving words for me
Three days ere I came home.

As fair as lily whiteness,
As pure as lily gold,
And bright with childlike brightness
And wise as worlds of old.

Her heart for all was beating
And all hearts were her own,
Like sunshine through the Lily
Her purity was shown.

O Lily of St Leonards!
My night is on the track,
’Tis well you never lived to see
The wreck that I came back.

A leaden sky shuts over
A sobbi...

(AGED SIXTEEN)

Dear boy unborn: the son but of my dream,
    Promise of yet unrisen day,
Come, sit beside me; let us talk, and seem
    To take such cares and courage for your way,
    As some year yet we may.

As some year yet, when you, my son to be,
    Look out on life, and turn to go,
And I, grown grey, shall wish you well, and see
    Myself imprinted as but she could know
    To make amendment so.

I see you then, your sixteen years alight
    With limbs all true and golden hair,
And you, unborn, I will, this April night,
    Tell of the faith and honour you must wear
    For love, whose light you bear.

Beauty you have; as, mothered so, could face
    Or limbs or hair be otherwise?
Years gone, dear boy, there was a virgin...

Awake, my Muse! awake each slumb'ring string,
And (mighty subject!) of a Mushroom sing,
Fair to the eye, and pleasant to the taste;
Charm'd by the note, a pigmy group, in haste,
Lay down their grainy loads, as slow they move
Thro' lanes of reed and grass, to them a grove!
As if an Orpheus thou, they gather round,
Erect their tiny ears, and drink the sound.
Gray was the sky, save where the eastern ray
O'er fragrant hills proclaim'd th' approaching day;
Rurilla, loveliest virgin of the plain,
With spirits light, and mind without a stain,
Rose from her simple bed, refresh'd with rest;
Ah, Sleep! with marble finger had'st thou prest
Her lovely eyelids till a later hour,
And by a blissful vision's fairy pow'r
Hadst thou impress'd her mind with forms of love,
T...

Love, what ailed thee to leave life that was made lovely, we thought, with love?
What sweet visions of sleep lured thee away, down from the light above?

What strange faces of dreams, voices that called, hands that were raised to wave,
Lured or led thee, alas, out of the sun, down to the sunless grave?

Ah, thy luminous eyes! once was their light fed with the fire of day;
Now their shadowy lids cover them close, hush them and hide away.

Ah, thy snow-coloured hands! once were they chains, mighty to bind me fast;
Now no blood in them burns, mindless of love, senseless of passion past.

Ah, thy beautiful hair! so was it once braided for me, for me;
Now for death is it crowned, only for death, lover and lord of thee.

Sweet, the kisses of death set on thy lips, colder...

Two warriors have grappled, and their arms
Have flecked the air with blood and flashing steel.
These frolics, this mad clanking, these alarms
Proceed from childish love's frantic appeal.

The swords are broken! like our youthful life
My dear! But tooth and nail, avid and sharp,
Soon fill the place of rapier and knife.
0 bitter heat of love, o cankered hearts!

In a ravine haunted by catlike forms
These two have tumbled, struggling to the end;
Shreds of their skin will bloom on arid thorns.

This pit is Hell, its denizens our friends!
Amazon, let us roll there guiltlessly
In spiteful fervour, for eternity!

Earth raised up her head
From the darkness dread and drear,
Her light fled,
Stony, dread,
And her locks covered with grey despair.

"Prisoned on watery shore,
Starry jealousy does keep my den
Cold and hoar;
Weeping o'er,
I hear the father of the ancient men.

"Selfish father of men!
Cruel, jealous, selfish fear!
Can delight,
Chained in night,
The virgins of youth and morning bear?

"Does spring hide its joy,
When buds and blossoms grow?
Does the sower
Sow by night,
Or the plowman in darkness plough?

"Break this heavy chain,
That does freeze my bones around!
Selfish, vain,
Eternal bane,
That free love with bondage bound."

THE FIRST VOICE


He trilled a carol fresh and free,
He laughed aloud for very glee:
There came a breeze from off the sea:

It passed athwart the glooming flat,
It fanned his forehead as he sat,
It lightly bore away his hat,

All to the feet of one who stood
Like maid enchanted in a wood,
Frowning as darkly as she could.

With huge umbrella, lank and brown,
Unerringly she pinned it down,
Right through the centre of the crown.

Then, with an aspect cold and grim,
Regardless of its battered rim,
She took it up and gave it him.

A while like one in dreams he stood,
Then faltered forth his gratitude
In words just short of being rude:

For it had lost its shape and shine,
And it had cost him four-and-nine,...

The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree

Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.

Her hair was, oh, so dense a blur
Of darkness, midnight envied her;
And stars grew dimmer in the skies
To see the glory of her eyes;
And all the summer rain of light
That showered from the moon at night
Fell o'er her features as the gloom
Of twilight o'er a lily-bloom.

The crimson fruitage of her lips
Was ripe and lush with sweeter wine
Than burgundy or muscadine
Or vintage that the burgher sips
In some old garden on the Rhine:
And I to taste of it could well
Believe my heart a crucible
Of molten love - and I could feel
The drunken soul within me reel
And rock and stagger till it fell.

And do you wonder that I bowed
Before her splendor as a cloud
Of storm the golden-sandaled sun
Had set his conquering foot upon?
And di...

Space and dread and the dark,
Over a livid stretch of sky
Cloud-monsters crawling like a funeral train
Of huge primeval presences
Stooping beneath the weight
Of some enormous, rudimentary grief;
While in the haunting loneliness
The far sea waits and wanders, with a sound
As of the trailing skirts of Destiny
Passing unseen
To some immitigable end
With her grey henchman, Death.

What larve, what spectre is this
Thrilling the wilderness to life
As with the bodily shape of Fear?
What but a desperate sense,
A strong foreboding of those dim,
Interminable continents, forlorn
And many-silenced in a dusk
Inviolable utterly, and dead
As the poor dead it huddles and swarms and styes
In hugger-mugger through eternity?

Life, life, l...

I

O fairest flower no sooner blown but blasted,
Soft silken Primrose fading timelesslie,
Summers chief honour if thou hadst outlasted
Bleak winters force that made thy blossome drie;
For he being amorous on that lovely die
That did thy cheek envermeil, thought to kiss
But kill'd alas, and then bewayl'd his fatal bliss.

II

For since grim Aquilo his charioter
By boistrous rape th' Athenian damsel got,
He thought it toucht his Deitie full neer,
If likewise he some fair one wedded not,
Thereby to wipe away th' infamous blot,
Of long-uncoupled bed, and childless eld,
Which 'mongst the wanton gods a foul reproach was held.

III

So mounting up in ycie-pearled carr,
Through middle empire of the freezing aire
He wanderd long,...

I thought this heart enkindled lay
    On Cupid's burning shrine:
I thought he stole thy heart away,
    And placed it near to mine.

I saw thy heart begin to melt,
    Like ice before the sun;
Till both a glow congenial felt,
    And mingled into one!

The moth and beetle wing about
The garden ways of other days;
Above the hills, a fiery shout
Of gold, the day dies slowly out,
Like some wild blast a huntsman blows:
And o'er the hills my Fancy goes,
Following the sunset's golden call
Unto a vine-hung garden wall,
Where she awaits me in the gloom,
Between the lily and the rose,
With arms and lips of warm perfume,
The Dream of Love my Fancy knows.

The glow-worm and the firefly glow
Among the ways of bygone days;
A golden shaft shot from a bow
Of silver, star and moon swing low
Above the hills where twilight lies:
And o'er the hills my Longing flies,
Following the star's far, arrowed gold,
Unto a gate where, as of old,
She waits amid the rose and rue,
With star-bright hair and nigh...

Mother 's gone a-visitin' to spend a month er two,
An', oh, the house is lonesome ez a nest whose birds has flew
To other trees to build ag'in; the rooms seem jest so bare
That the echoes run like sperrits from the kitchen to the stair.
The shetters flap more lazy-like 'n what they used to do,
Sence mother 's gone a-visitin' to spend a month er two.

We 've killed the fattest chicken an' we've cooked her to a turn;
We 've made the richest gravy, but I jest don't give a durn
Fur nothin' 'at I drink er eat, er nothin' 'at I see.
The food ain't got the pleasant taste it used to have to me.
They 's somep'n' stickin' in my throat ez tight ez hardened glue,
Sence mother's gone a-visitin' to spend a month er two.

The hollyhocks air jest ez pink, they 're double ones at that,<...

The year lies fallen and faded
On cliffs by clouds invaded,
With tongues of storms upbraided,
With wrath of waves bedinned;
And inland, wild with warning,
As in deaf ears or scorning,
The clarion even and morning
Rings of the south-west wind.

The wild bents wane and wither
In blasts whose breath bows hither
Their grey-grown heads and thither,
Unblest of rain or sun;
The pale fierce heavens are crowded
With shapes like dreams beclouded,
As though the old year enshrouded
Lay, long ere life were done.

Full-charged with oldworld wonders,
From dusk Tintagel thunders
A note that smites and sunders
The hard frore fields of air;
A trumpet stormier-sounded
Than once from lists rebounded
When strong men sense-confounded
Fel...

1

Hold up thy head and crush
    Thy heart's despair;
From thy wan temples brush
    The tear-wet hair.


2

Look on me thus as I
    Gaze upon thee;
Nor question how nor why
    Such things can be.


3

Thou thought'st it love! - poor fool!
    That which was lust!
Which made thee, beautiful,
    Vile as the dust!


4

Thy flesh I craved, thy face! -
    Love shrinks at this -
Now on thy lips to place
    One farewell kiss! -


5

Weep not, but die! - 'tis given -
    And so - farewell! -
Die! - that which makes death heaven,
    Makes life a hell.

He lay awake, with a harassed air,
And she, in her cloud of loose lank hair,
    Seemed trouble-tried
As the dawn drew in on their faces there.

The chamber looked far over the sea
From a white hotel on a white-stoned quay,
    And stepping a stride
He parted the window-drapery.

Above the level horizon spread
The sunrise, firing them foot to head
    From its smouldering lair,
And painting their pillows with dyes of red.

"What strange disquiets have stirred you, dear,
This dragging night, with starts in fear
    Of me, as it were,
Or of something evil hovering near?"

"My husband, can I have fear of you?
What should one fear from a man whom few,
    Or none, had matched
In that late long spell of delays undue!"

H...