Heartbreak

In the long, sleepless watches of the night,
    A gentle face--the face of one long dead--
    Looks at me from the wall, where round its head
    The night-lamp casts a halo of pale light.
Here in this room she died; and soul more white
    Never through martyrdom of fire was led
    To its repose; nor can in books be read
    The legend of a life more benedight.
There is a mountain in the distant West
    That, sun-defying, in its deep ravines
    Displays a cross of snow upon its side.
Such is the cross I wear upon my breast
    These eighteen years, through all the changing scenes
    And seasons, changeless since the day she died.

The twentieth year is well nigh past
Since first our sky was overcast;
Ah! would that this might be the last!
My Mary!


Thy spirits have a fainter flow
I see thee daily weaker grow
‘Twas my distress that brought thee low,
My Mary!


Thy needles, once a shining store,
For my sake restless heretofore,
Now rust disused, and shine no more;
My Mary!


For, though thou gladly wouldst fulfil
The same kind office for me still,
Thy sight now seconds not thy will,
My Mary!


But well thou play’dst the housewife’s part,
And all thy threads with magic art
Have wound themselves about this heart,
My Mary!


Thy indistinct expressions seem
Like language utter’d in a dream:
Yet me they charm, wha...

There is no woman living who draws breath
So sad as I, though all things sadden her.
There is not one upon life's weariest way
Who is weary as I am weary of all but death.
Toward whom I look as looks the sunflower
All day with all his whole soul toward the sun;
While in the sun's sight I make moan all day,
And all night on my sleepless maiden bed.
Weep and call out on death, O Love, and thee,
That thou or he would take me to the dead.
And know not what thing evil I have done
That life should lay such heavy hand on me.

Alas! Love, what is this thou wouldst with me?
What honor shalt thou have to quench my breath,
Or what shall my heart broken profit thee?
O Love, O great god Love, what have I done,
That thou shouldst hunger so after my death?
My heart...

Escape me?
Never
Beloved!
While I am I, and you are you,
So long as the world contains us both,
Me the loving and you the loth
While the one eludes, must the other pursue.
My life is a fault at last, I fear
It seems too much like a fate, indeed!
Though I do my best I shall scarce succeed
But what if I fail of my purpose here?
It is but to keep the nerves at strain,
To dry one’s eyes and laugh at a fall,
And, baffled, get up and begin again,
So the chace takes up one’s life ‘that’s all.
While, look but once from your farthest bound
At me so deep in the dust and dark,
No sooner the old hope goes to ground
Than a new one, straight to the self-same mark,
I shape me
Ever
Removed!

In a quiet, pleasant meadow,
Beneath a summer sky,
Where green old trees their branches waved,
And winds went singing by;
Where a little brook went rippling
So musically low,
And passing clouds cast shadows
On the waving grass below;
Where low, sweet notes of brooding birds
Stole out on the fragrant air,
And golden sunlight shone undimmed
On all most fresh and fair;--
There bloomed a lovely sisterhood
Of happy little flowers,
Together in this pleasant home,
Through quiet summer hours.
No rude hand came to gather them,
No chilling winds to blight;
Warm sunbeams smiled on them by day,
And soft dews fell at night.
So here, along the brook-side,
Beneath the green old trees,
The flowers dwelt among their friends,
The sunbeams and ...

    O silly love! O cunning love!
    An old maid to trepan:
    I cannot go about my work
    For loving of a man.
    I cannot bake, I cannot brew,
    And, do the best I can,
    I burn the bread and chill the mash,
    Through loving of a man.

    Shrove Tuesday last I tried, and tried,
    To turn the cakes in pan,
    And dropt the batter on the floor,
    Through thinking of a man.
    My mistress screamed, my master swore,
    Boys cursed me in a troop;
    The cat was all the friends I had,
    Who helped to clean it up.

    Last Christmas eve, from off the spit
    I took the goose to table,
    Or should have done, but teasing Love
    Did make me quite unable;
    And down slipt dish, and goose, and all
    With...

For moveless limbs no pity I crave,
That never were swift! Still all I prize,
Laughter and thought and friends, I have;
No fool to heave luxurious sighs
For the woods and hills that I never knew.
The more excellent way's yet mine! And you

Flower-laden come to the clean white cell,
And we talk as ever, am I not the same?
With our hearts we love, immutable,
You without pity, I without shame.
We talk as of old; as of old you go
Out under the sky, and laughing, I know,

Flit through the streets, your heart all me;
Till you gain the world beyond the town.
Then, I fade from your heart, quietly;
And your fleet steps quicken. The strong down
Smiles you welcome there; the woods that love you
Close lovely and conquering arms above you.

O ever-...

Half god, half brute, within the self-same shell,
Changers with every hour from dawn till even,
Who dream with angels in the gate of heaven,
And skirt with curious eyes the brinks of hell,
Children of Pan, whom some, the few, love well,
But most draw back, and know not what to say,
Poor shining angels, whom the hoofs betray,
Whose pinions frighten with their goatish smell.

Half brutish, half divine, but all of earth,
Half-way 'twixt hell and heaven, near to man,
The whole world's tangle gathered in one span,
Full of this human torture and this mirth:
Life with its hope and error, toil and bliss,
Earth-born, earth-reared, ye know it as it is.

O Saw ye not fair Ines?
She's gone into the West,
To dazzle when the sun is down,
And rob the world of rest:
She took our daylight with her,
The smiles that we love best,
With morning blushes on her cheek,
And pearls upon her breast.

O turn again, fair Ines,
Before the fall of night,
For fear the moon should shine alone,
And stars unrivall'd bright;
And blessed will the lover be
That walks beneath their light,
And breathes the love against thy cheek
I dare not even write!

Would I had been, fair Ines,
That gallant cavalier,
Who rode so gaily by thy side,
And whisper'd thee so near!
Were there no bonny dames at home,
Or no true lovers here,
That he should cross the seas to win
The dearest of the dear?

I s...

Where we made the fire,
In the summer time,
Of branch and briar
On the hill to the sea
I slowly climb
Through winter mire,
And scan and trace
The forsaken place
Quite readily.

Now a cold wind blows,
And the grass is gray,
But the spot still shows
As a burnt circle aye,
And stick-ends, charred,
Still strew the sward
Whereon I stand,
Last relic of the band
Who came that day!

Yes, I am here
Just as last year,
And the sea breathes brine
From its strange straight line
Up hither, the same
As when we four came.
- But two have wandered far
From this grassy rise
Into urban roar
Where no picnics are,
And one has shut her eyes
For evermore.

    I.

    The sky has turned its heart away,
    The earth its sorrow found;
    The daisies turn from childhood's play,
    And creep into the ground.

    The earth is black and cold and hard;
    Thin films of dry white ice,
    Across the rugged wheel-tracks barred,
    The children's feet entice.

    Dark flows the stream, as if it mourned
    The winter in the land;
    With idle icicles adorned,
    That mill-wheel soon will stand.

    But, friends, to say 'tis cold, and part,
    Is to let in the cold;
    We'll make a summer of the heart,
    And laugh at winter old.


    II.

    With vague dead gleam the morning white
    Comes through the window-panes;
    The clouds have fallen all the ni...

(A. S.) 1845.


We met--he was a stranger,
    His foot was free to roam;
I was a simple maiden,
    Who had never left my home.

He was a noble scion
    Of the green Highland pine,
To a strange soil transplanted,
    Far from his native clime

And well his bearing pleased me,
    For I had never seen
Keener eye, or smile more sunlit,
    Or more dignity of mien.

His brow was fair and lofty,
    Bright was his clustering hair;
I marvelled that to other eyes
    He seemed not half so fair

His it was to plead with men,
    With "Thus my Lord hath said;"
He stood God's messenger between
    The living and the dead

When I heard how earnestly
    His pleading message ran,
I said, "Here God ha...

"Le notte e madre dipensien."

I tumble and toss on my pillow,
As a ship without rudder or spars
Is tumbled and tossed on the billow,
'Neath the glint and the glory of stars.
'Tis midnight and moonlight, and slumber
Has hushed every heart but my own;
O why are these thoughts without number
Sent to me by the man in the moon?

Thoughts of the Here and Hereafter,
Thoughts all unbidden to come,
Thoughts that are echoes of laughter
Thoughts that are ghosts from the tomb,
Thoughts that are sweet as wild honey,
Thoughts that are bitter as gall,
Thoughts to be coined into money,
Thoughts of no value at all.

Dreams that are tangled like wild-wood,
A hint creeping in like a hare;
Visions of innocent childhood,
Glimpses of pleas...

After the May time, and after the June time
    Rare with blossoms and perfumes sweet,
Cometh the round world's royal noon time,
    The red midsummer of blazing heat.
When the sun, like an eye that never closes,
    Bends on the earth its fervid gaze,
And the winds are still, and the crimson roses
    Droop and wither and die in its rays.

Unto my heart has come that season,
    O my lady, my worshiped one,
When over the stars of Pride and Reason
    Sails Love's cloudless, noonday sun.
Like a great red ball in my bosom burning
    With fires that nothing can quench or tame.
It glows till my heart itself seems turning
    Into a liquid lake of flame.

The hopes half shy, and the sighs all tender,
    The dreams and fears of an earlier day,

"You must give back," her mother said,
To a poor sobbing little maid,
"All the young man has given you,
Hard as it now may seem to do."
"'Tis done already, mother dear!"
Said the sweet girl, "So never fear."
        Mother. Are you quite certain? Come, recount
(There was not much) the whole amount.
    Girl. The locket; the kid gloves.
    Mother. Go on.
    Girl. Of the kid gloves I found but one.
    Mother. Never mind that. What else? Proceed.
You gave back all his trash?
    Girl. Indeed.
    Mother. And was there nothing you would save?
    Girl. Everything I could give I gave.
    Mother. To the last tittle?
    Girl. Even to that.
    Mother. Freely?
    Girl<...