Heartbreak

Alone by the Schuylkill a wanderer roved,
    And bright were its flowery banks to his eye;
But far, very far were the friends that he loved,
    And he gazed on its flowery banks with a sigh.

Oh Nature, though blessed and bright are thy rays,
    O'er the brow of creation enchantingly thrown,
Yet faint are they all to the lustre that plays
    In a smile from the heart that is fondly our own.

Nor long did the soul of the stranger remain
Unblest by the smile he had languished to meet;
Though scarce did he hope it would soothe him again,
    Till the threshold of home had been pressed by his feet.

But the lays of his boyhood had stolen to their ear,
And they loved what they knew of so humble a name;
And they told him, with flattery welcome and dear,

"Succinctæ sacra Dianæ."

Ovid


I.

There the ragged sunlight lay
Tawny on thick ferns and gray
On dark waters: dimmer,
Lone and deep, the cypress grove
Bowered mystery and wove
Braided lights, like those that love
On the pearl plumes of a dove
Faint to gleam and glimmer.

II.

There centennial pine and oak
Into stormy cadence broke:
Hollow rocks gloomed, slanting,
Echoing in dim arcade,
Looming with long moss, that made
Twilight streaks in tatters laid:
Where the wild hart, hunt-affrayed,
Plunged the water, panting.

III.

Poppies of a sleepy gold
Mooned the gray-green darkness rolled
DOWN its vistas, making
Wisp-like blurs of flame. And pale
Stole the dim deer down the vale...

I' pur ascolto, e non odo novella.

HEARING NO TIDINGS OF HER, HE BEGINS TO DESPAIR.


    Still do I wait to hear, in vain still wait,
Of that sweet enemy I love so well:
What now to think or say I cannot tell,
'Twixt hope and fear my feelings fluctuate:
The beautiful are still the marks of fate;
And sure her worth and beauty most excel:
What if her God have call'd her hence, to dwell
Where virtue finds a more congenial state?
If so, she will illuminate that sphere
Even as a sun: but I--'tis done with me!
I then am nothing, have no business here!
O cruel absence! why not let me see
The worst? my little tale is told, I fear,
My scene is closed ere it accomplish'd be.

MOREHEAD.


    No tidings yet--I listen, but in va...

And what are you that, wanting you
    I should be kept awake
As many nights as there are days
    With weeping for your sake?

And what are you that, missing you,
    As many days as crawl
I should be listening to the wind
    And looking at the wall?

I know a man that's a braver man
    And twenty men as kind,
And what are you, that you should be
    The one man in my mind?

Yet women's ways are witless ways,
    As any sage will tell,--
And what am I, that I should love
    So wisely and so well?

[1]

Two parrots lived, a sire and son,
On roastings from a royal fire.
Two demigods, a son and sire,
These parrots pension'd for their fun.
Time tied the knot of love sincere:
The sires grew to each other dear;
The sons, in spite of their frivolity,
Grew comrades boon, in joke and jollity;
At mess they mated, hot or cool;
Were fellow-scholars at a school.
Which did the bird no little honour, since
The boy, by king begotten, was a prince.
By nature fond of birds, the prince, too, petted
A sparrow, which delightfully coquetted.
These rivals, both of unripe feather,
One day were frolicking together:
As oft befalls such little folks,
A quarrel follow'd from their jokes.
The sparrow, quite uncircumspect,
Was by the parrot sadly ...

The sun is banished,
The daylight vanished,
No rosy traces
    Are left behind.
Here in the meadow
I watch the shadow
Of forms and faces
    Upon your blind.

Through swift transitions,
In new positions,
My eyes still follow
    One shape most fair.
My heart delaying
Awhile, is playing
With pleasures hollow,
    Which mock despair.

I feel so lonely,
I long once only
To pass an hour
    With you, O sweet!
To touch your fingers,
Where fragrance lingers
From some rare flower,
    And kiss your feet.

But not this even
To me is given.
Of all sad mortals
    Most sad am I,
Never to meet you,
Never to greet you,
Nor pass your portals
    Before I die.

All men scorn ...

Once more the windless days are here,
Quiet of autumn, when the year
Halts and looks backward and draws breath
Before it plunges into death.
Silver of mist and gossamers,
Through-shine of noonday's glassy gold,
Pale blue of skies, where nothing stirs
Save one blanched leaf, weary and old,
That over and over slowly falls
From the mute elm-trees, hanging on air
Like tattered flags along the walls
Of chapels deep in sunlit prayer.
Once more ... Within its flawless glass
To-day reflects that other day,
When, under the bracken, on the grass,
We who were lovers happily lay
And hardly spoke, or framed a thought
That was not one with the calm hills
And crystal sky. Ourselves were nought,
Our gusty passions, our burning wills
Dissolved in boundlessn...

I

With nodding plumes, and lightly drest
Like foresters in leaf-green vest,
The Helvetian Mountaineers, on ground
For Tell's dread archery renowned,
Before the target stood, to claim
The guerdon of the steadiest aim.
Loud was the rifle-gun's report
A startling thunder quick and short!
But, flying through the heights around,
Echo prolonged a tell-tale sound
Of hearts and hands alike "prepared
The treasures they enjoy to guard!"
And, if there be a favoured hour
When Heroes are allowed to quit
The tomb, and on the clouds to sit
With tutelary power,
On their Descendants shedding grace
This was the hour, and that the place.

II

But Truth inspired the Bards of old
When of an iron age they told,
Which to unequal laws gav...

I write my name as one,
On sands by waves o’errun
Or winter’s frosted pane,
Traces a record vain.

Oblivion’s blankness claims
Wiser and better names,
And well my own may pass
As from the strand or glass.

Wash on, O waves of time!
Melt, noons, the frosty rime!
Welcome the shadow vast,
The silence that shall last.

When I and all who know
And love me vanish so,
What harm to them or me
Will the lost memory be?

If any words of mine,
Through right of life divine,
Remain, what matters it
Whose hand the message writ?

Why should the “crowner’s quest”
Sit on my worst or best?
Why should the showman claim
The poor ghost of my name?

Yet, as when dies a sound
Its spectre lingers round,
Ha...

What wisdom, learning, wit or worth
Youth or sweet nature could bring forth
Rests here with him who was the fame,
The volume of himself and name.
If, reader, then, thou wilt draw near
And do an honour to thy tear,
Weep then for him for whom laments
Not one, but many monuments.

Dear Chloe, how blubber'd is that pretty face;
Thy cheek all on fire, and thy hair all uncurl'd:
Prythee quit this caprice; and (as old Falstaff says)
Let us e'en talk a little like folks of this world.

How canst thou presume, thou hast leave to destroy
The beauties, which Venus but lent to thy keeping?
Those looks were design'd to inspire love and joy:
More ord'nary eyes may serve people for weeping.

To be vext at a trifle or two that I writ,
Your judgment at once, and my passion you wrong:
You take that for fact, which will scarce be found wit:
Odds life! must one swear to the truth of a song?

What I speak, my fair Chloe, and what I write, shows
The diff'rence there is betwixt nature and art:
I court others in verse; but I love thee in prose:
An...

I will not mourn thee, lovely one,
Though thou art torn away.
'Tis said that if the morning sun
Arise with dazzling ray

And shed a bright and burning beam
Athwart the glittering main,
'Ere noon shall fade that laughing gleam
Engulfed in clouds and rain.

And if thy life as transient proved,
It hath been full as bright,
For thou wert hopeful and beloved;
Thy spirit knew no blight.

If few and short the joys of life
That thou on earth couldst know,
Little thou knew'st of sin and strife
Nor much of pain and woe.

If vain thy earthly hopes did prove,
Thou canst not mourn their flight;
Thy brightest hopes were fixed above
And they shall know no blight.

And yet I cannot check my sighs,
Thou wert so young and fair,<...

[Clare's note:--"Scraps from my father and mother, completed."]

    Here's a sad good bye for thee, my love,
    To friends and foes a smile:
    I leave but one regret behind,
    That's left with thee the while,
    But hopes that fortune is our friend
    Already pays the toil.

    Force bids me go, your friends to please.
    Would they were not so high!
    But be my lot on land or seas,
    It matters not where by,
    For I shall keep a thought for thee,
    In my heart's core to lie.

    Winter shall lose its frost and snow,
    The spring its blossomed thorn,
    The summer all its bloom forego,
    The autumn hound and horn
    Ere I will lose that thought of thee,
    Or ever prove forsworn.

    The dove shall ...

Two lights on a lowly altar;
Two snowy cloths for a Feast;
Two vases of dying roses;
The morning comes from the east,
With a gleam for the folds of the vestments
And a grace for the face of the priest.

The sound of a low, sweet whisper
Floats over a little bread,
And trembles around a chalice,
And the priest bows down his head!
O'er a sign of white on the altar --
In the cup -- o'er a sign of red.

As red as the red of roses,
As white as the white of snows!
But the red is a red of a surface
Beneath which a God's blood flows;
And the white is the white of a sunlight
Within which a God's flesh glows.

Ah! words of the olden Thursday!
Ye come from the far-away!
Ye bring us the Friday's victim
In His own love's olden way;

Mirando 'l sol de' begli occhi sereno.

THE SWEETS AND BITTERS OF LOVE.


    Marking of those bright eyes the sun serene
Where reigneth Love, who mine obscures and grieves,
My hopeless heart the weary spirit leaves
Once more to gain its paradise terrene;
Then, finding full of bitter-sweet the scene,
And in the world how vast the web it weaves.
A secret sigh for baffled love it heaves,
Whose spurs so sharp, whose curb so hard have been.
By these two contrary and mix'd extremes,
With frozen or with fiery wishes fraught,
To stand 'tween misery and bliss she seems:
Seldom in glad and oft in gloomy thought,
But mostly contrite for its bold emprize,
For of like seed like fruit must ever rise!

MACGREGOR.

Here’s the criminal’s friend, delightful evening:
come like an accomplice, with a wolf’s loping:
slowly the sky’s vast vault hides each feature,
and restless man becomes a savage creature.

Evening, sweet evening, desired by him who can say
without his arms proving him a liar: ‘Today
we’ve worked!’ – It refreshes, this evening hour,
those spirits that savage miseries devour,
the dedicated scholar with heavy head,
the bowed workman stumbling home to bed.
Yet now unhealthy demons rise again
clumsily, in the air, like busy men,
beat against sheds and arches in their flight.
And among the wind-tormented gas-lights
Prostitution switches on through the streets
opening her passageways like an ant-heap:
weaving her secret tunnels everywhere,
like an enemy pl...

I sang that song on Sunday,
To witch an idle while,
I sang that song on Monday,
As fittest to beguile;
I sang it as the year outwore,
And the new slid in;
I thought not what might shape before
Another would begin.

I sang that song in summer,
All unforeknowingly,
To him as a new-comer
From regions strange to me:
I sang it when in afteryears
The shades stretched out,
And paths were faint; and flocking fears
Brought cup-eyed care and doubt.

Sings he that song on Sundays
In some dim land afar,
On Saturdays, or Mondays,
As when the evening star
Glimpsed in upon his bending face
And my hanging hair,
And time untouched me with a trace
Of soul-smart or despair?

As aw passed Wit'orth chapel 'twor just five o'clock,
Aw'd mi can full o' teah, an a bundle o' jock;
An aw thowt th' bit o' bacca aw puffed on mi way
Wor sweeter nor ivver aw'd known it that day.
An th' burds sang soa sweetly,
An th' sun shone soa breetly,
An th' trees lukt soa green; - it wor th' furst day i' May.

Aw wor lazy that mornin, an could'nt help thinkin,
As aw'd getten booath braikfast, an dinner, an drinkin,
An bacca, an matches, - 'at just a odd day
For a stroll, could'nt braik monny squares onnyway,
But it tuk me noa little,
To screw up mi mettle,
For if th' wife gate to know aw'd a guess what shoo'd say.

Soa aw thowt aw'll let wark goa to pot for a bit,
Its net once i'th' year 'at aw get sich a treeat;
But aw'll have a day aght just ...