Heartbreak

1.

When I hear you express an affection so warm,
Ne'er think, my belov'd, that I do not believe,
For your lip, would the soul of suspicion disarm,
And your eye beams a ray, which can never deceive.

2.

Yet still, this fond bosom regrets whilst adoring,
That love like the leaf, must fall into the sear,
That age will come on, when remembrance deploring,
Contemplates the scenes of her youth, with a tear.

3.

That the time must arrive, when no longer retaining
Their auburn, these locks must wave thin to the breeze.
When a few silver hairs of those tresses remaining,
Prove nature a prey to decay, and disease.

4.

'Tis this, my belov'd, which spreads gloom o'er my features
Tho' I ne'er shall presume to arraign the decree;<...

I.

Death's Eloquence.


When I shall go
Into the narrow home that leaves
No room for wringing of the hands and hair,
And feel the pressing of the walls which bear
The heavy sod upon my heart that grieves,
(As the weird earth rolls on),
Then I shall know
What is the power of destiny. But still,
Still while my life, however sad, be mine,
I war with memory, striving to divine
Phantom to-morrows, to outrun the past;
For yet the tears of final, absolute ill
And ruinous knowledge of my fate I shun.
Even as the frail, instinctive weed
Tries, through unending shade, to reach at last
A shining, mellowing, rapture-giving sun;
So in the deed of breathing joy's warm breath,
Fain to succeed,
I, too, in colorless longings, hope til...

Hear I the creaking gate unclose?
The gleaming latch uplifted?
No - 'twas the wind that, whirring, rose,
Amidst the poplars drifted!
Adorn thyself, thou green leaf-bowering roof,
Destined the bright one's presence to receive,
For her, a shadowy palace-hall aloof
With holy night, thy boughs familiar weave.
And ye sweet flatteries of the delicate air,
Awake and sport her rosy cheek around,
When their light weight the tender feet shall bear,
When beauty comes to passion's trysting-ground.

Hush! what amidst the copses crept -
So swiftly by me now?
No-'twas the startled bird that swept
The light leaves of the bough!
Day, quench thy torch! come, ghostlike, from on high,
With thy loved silence, come, thou haunting Eve,
Broaden below thy web of purple ...

I shut my eyes to rest 'em, just a bit ago it seems,
An' back among the Cotswolds I were wanderin' in me dreams.
I saw the old grey homestead, with the rickyard set around,
An' catched the lowin' of the herd, a pleasant, homelike sound.
Then on I went a-singin', through the pastures where the sheep
Was lyin' underneath the elms, a-tryin' for to sleep.

An' where the stream was tricklin' by, half stifled by the grass,
Heaped over thick with buttercups, I saw the corncrake pass.
For 'twas Summer, Summer, SUMMER! An' the blue forget-me-nots
Wiped out this dusty city and the smoky chimbley pots.
I clean forgot My Lady's gown, the dazzlin' sights I've seen;
I was back among the Cotswolds, where me heart has always been.

Then through the sixteen-acre on I went, a stiffish cl...

When colour goes home into the eyes,
And lights that shine are shut again
With dancing girls and sweet birds' cries
Behind the gateways of the brain;
And that no-place which gave them birth, shall close
The rainbow and the rose:

Still may Time hold some golden space
Where I'll unpack that scented store
Of song and flower and sky and face,
And count, and touch, and turn them o'er,
Musing upon them; as a mother, who
Has watched her children all the rich day through
Sits, quiet-handed, in the fading light,
When children sleep, ere night.

The season of parting has come up with the wind;
My girl has hollowed my heart with the hot iron of separation.

Keep away, doctor, your roots and your knives are useless.
None ever cured the ills of the ill of separation.

There is no one near me noble enough to be told;
I tear my collar in the "Alas! Alas!" of separation.

She was a branch of santal; she closed her eyes and left me.
Autumn has come and she has gone, broken to pieces in the wind of separation.

I am Pir Muhammad and I am stumbling away to die;
She stamped on my eyes with the foot of separation.

From the Pus'hto (Afghans, nineteenth century).

"I shall not soon forget that sight
The glow of Autumn's westering day,
A hazy warmth, a dreamy light,
On Raphael's picture lay.

It was a simple print I saw,
The fair face of a musing boy;
Yet, while I gazed, a sense of awe
Seemed blending with my joy.

A simple print, the graceful flow
Of boyhood's soft and wavy hair,
And fresh young lip and cheek, and brow
Unmarked and clear, were there.

Yet through its sweet and calm repose
I saw the inward spirit shine;
It was as if before me rose
The white veil of a shrine.

As if, as Gothland's sage has told,
The hidden life, the man within,
Dissevered from its frame and mould,
By mortal eye were seen.

Was it the lifting of that eye,
The waving of that pictured hand?

I am a shell. From me you shall not hear
The splendid tramplings of insistent drums,
The orbed gold of the viol's voice that comes,
Heavy with radiance, languorous and clear.
Yet, if you hold me close against the ear,
A dim, far whisper rises clamorously,
The thunderous beat and passion of the sea,
The slow surge of the tides that drown the mere.

Others with subtle hands may pluck the strings,
Making even Love in music audible,
And earth one glory. I am but a shell
That moves, not of itself, and moving sings;
Leaving a fragrance, faint as wine new-shed,
A tremulous murmur from great days long dead.

In the hills' embraces holden,
    In a valley filled with glooms,
Lies a cemetery olden,
    Strewn with countless mould'ring tombs.

Ancient graves o'erhung with mosses,
    Crumbling stones, effaced and green,--
Venturesome is he who crosses,
    Night or day, the lonely scene.

Blasted trees and willow streamers,
    'Midst the terror round them spread,
Seem like awe-bound, silent dreamers
    In this garden of the dead.

One bird, anguish stricken, lingers
    In the shadow of the vale,
First and best of feathered singers,--
    'Tis the churchyard nightingale.

As from bough to bough he flutters,
    Sweetest songs of woe and wail
Through his gift divine he utters
    For the dreamers in the vale.

Listen how ...

Now sleeps the land of houses,
and dead night holds the street,
And there thou liest, my baby,
and sleepest soft and sweet;
My man is away for awhile,
but safe and alone we lie,
And none heareth thy breath but thy mother,
and the moon looking down from the sky
On the weary waste of the town,
as it looked on the grass-edged road
Still warm with yesterday's sun,
when I left my old abode;
Hand in hand with my love,
that night of all nights in the year;
When the river of love o'erflowed
and drowned all doubt and fear,
And we two were alone in the world,
and once if never again,
We knew of the secret of earth
and the tale of its labour and pain.

Lo amidst London I lift thee,
and how little and light thou art,
And thou without hop...

I dreamed that I stood in a valley, and amid sighs,
For happy lovers passed two by two where I stood;
And I dreamed my lost love came stealthily out of the wood
With her cloud-pale eyelids falling on dream-dimmed eyes:
I cried in my dream ‘O women bid the young men lay
‘Their heads on your knees, and drown their eyes with your hair,
‘Or remembering hers they will find no other face fair
‘Till all the valleys of the world have been withered away.’

A love-lorn Maid, at some far-distant time,
Came to this hidden pool, whose depths surpass
In crystal clearness Dian's looking-glass;
And, gazing, saw that Rose, which from the prime
Derives its name, reflected, as the chime
Of echo doth reverberate some sweet sound:
The starry treasure from the blue profound
She longed to ravish; shall she plunge, or climb
The humid precipice, and seize the guest
Of April, smiling high in upper air?
Desperate alternative! what fiend could dare
To prompt the thought? Upon the steep rock's breast
The lonely Primrose yet renews its bloom,
Untouched memento of her hapless doom!

I

My ardours for emprize nigh lost
Since Life has bared its bones to me,
I shrink to seek a modern coast
Whose riper times have yet to be;
Where the new regions claim them free
From that long drip of human tears
Which peoples old in tragedy
Have left upon the centuried years.

II

For, wonning in these ancient lands,
Enchased and lettered as a tomb,
And scored with prints of perished hands,
And chronicled with dates of doom,
Though my own Being bear no bloom
I trace the lives such scenes enshrine,
Give past exemplars present room,
And their experience count as mine.

Lady, light in the east hangs low,
Draw your veils of dream apart,
Under the casement stands Pierrot
Making a song to ease his heart.
(Yet do not break the song too soon
I love to sing in the paling moon.)
The petals are falling, heavy with dew,
The stars have fainted out of the sky,
Come to me, come, or else I too,
Faint with the weight of love will die.
(She comes—alas, I hoped to make
Another stanza for her sake!)

See "THE WOODLANDERS"



Pale beech and pine-tree blue,
Set in one clay,
Bough to bough cannot you
Bide out your day?
When the rains skim and skip,
Why mar sweet comradeship,
Blighting with poison-drip
Neighbourly spray?

Heart-halt and spirit-lame,
City-opprest,
Unto this wood I came
As to a nest;
Dreaming that sylvan peace
Offered the harrowed ease
Nature a soft release
From men's unrest.

But, having entered in,
Great growths and small
Show them to men akin -
Combatants all!
Sycamore shoulders oak,
Bines the slim sapling yoke,
Ivy-spun halters choke
Elms stout and tall.

Touches from ash, O wych,
Sting you like scorn!
You, too, brave hollies, twitch
Sidelong from thorn...

Because her eyes were far too deep
And holy for a laugh to leap
Across the brink where sorrow tried
To drown within the amber tide;
Because the looks, whose ripples kissed
The trembling lids through tender mist,
Were dazzled with a radiant gleam -
Because of this I called her "Dream."

Because the roses growing wild
About her features when she smiled
Were ever dewed with tears that fell
With tenderness ineffable;
Because her lips might spill a kiss
That, dripping in a world like this,
Would tincture death's myrrh-bitter stream
To sweetness - so I called her "Dream."

Because I could not understand
The magic touches of a hand
That seemed, beneath her strange control,
To smooth the plumage of the soul
And calm it, till, with folded ...

    I knew her, why of course. And you want me?
    What can I say? I don't know how she died.
    I know what people say. But if you want
    To hear about her, as I knew the girl,
    Sit down a minute. Wait, a customer!...
    It was a fellow with a bill, these fellows
    Who come for money make me smile. Good God!
    Where shall I get the money, when pianos,
    Such as I make, are devilish hard to sell?
    Now listen to this tune! Dumm, dumm, dumm, dumm,
    How's that for quality, sweet clear and pure?
    Now listen to these chords I take from Bach!
    Oh no, I never played much, just for self.
    Well, you might say my passion for this work
    Is due to this: I pick the wire strings,
    The spruce boards and all that for instruments
    That sui...

Here’s my case. Of old I used to love him,
This same unseen friend, before I knew:
Dream there was none like him, none above him,
Wake to hope and trust my dream was true.

Loved I not his letters full of beauty?
Not his actions famous far and wide?
Absent, he would know I vowed him duty;
Present, he would find me at his side.

Pleasant fancy! for I had but letters,
Only knew of actions by hearsay:
He himself was busied with my betters;
What of that? My turn must come some day.

“Some day” proving, no day! Here’s the puzzle.
Passed and passed my turn is. Why complain?
He’s so busied! If I could but muzzle
People’s foolish mouths that give me pain!

“Letters?” (hear them!) “You a judge of writing?
Ask the experts! How they shake the hea...