Heartbreak

(Athenaeum, October 14, 1848)


Chide not; let me breathe a little,
    For I shall not mourn him long;
Though the life-cord was so brittle,
    The love-cord was very strong.
I would wake a little space
Till I find a sleeping-place.

You can go, - I shall not weep;
    You can go unto your rest.
My heart-ache is all too deep,
    And too sore my throbbing breast.
Can sobs be, or angry tears,
Where are neither hopes nor fears?

Though with you I am alone
    And must be so everywhere,
I will make no useless moan, -
    None shall say 'She could not bear:'
While life lasts I will be strong, -
But I shall not struggle long.

Listen, listen! Everywhere
    A low voice is calling me,
And a step is on the sta...

A Broken rainbow on the skies of May,
Touching the dripping roses and low clouds,
And in wet clouds its scattered glories lost:
So in the sorrow of her soul the ghost
Of one great love, of iridescent ray,
Spanning the roses dim of memory,
Against the tumult of life's rushing crowds
A broken rainbow on the skies of May.
A flashing humming-bird among the flowers,
Deep-coloured blooms; its slender tongue and bill
Sucking the syrups and the calyxed myrrhs,
Till, being full of sweets, away it whirrs:
Such was his love that won her heart's rich bowers
To give to him their all, their honied showers,
The bloom from which he drank his body's fill
A flashing humming-bird among the flowers.
A moon, moth-white, that through long mists of fleece
Moves amber-girt into ...

Is anyone sad in the world, I wonder?
    Does anyone weep on a day like this,
With the sun above and the green earth under?
    Why, what is life but a dream of bliss?

With the sun and the skies and the birds above me,
    Birds that sing as they wheel and fly -
With the winds to follow and say they loved me -
    Who could be lonely?    O ho, not I!

Somebody said in the street this morning,
    As I opened my window to let in the light,
That the darkest day of the world was dawning;
    But I looked, and the East was a gorgeous sight

One who claims that he knows about it
    Tells me the Earth is a vale of sin;
But I and the bees and the birds - we doubt it,
    And think it a world worth living in.

Someone says that hearts are fickle...

[Greek poem here--Euripides.]



Pleasant it was, when woods were green,
    And winds were soft and low,
To lie amid some sylvan scene.
Where, the long drooping boughs between,
Shadows dark and sunlight sheen
    Alternate come and go;

Or where the denser grove receives
    No sunlight from above,
But the dark foliage interweaves
In one unbroken roof of leaves,
Underneath whose sloping eaves
    The shadows hardly move.

Beneath some patriarchal tree
    I lay upon the ground;
His hoary arms uplifted he,
And all the broad leaves over me
Clapped their little hands in glee,
    With one continuous sound;--

A slumberous sound, a sound that brings
    The feelings of a dream,
As of innumerable wings,
A...

We all have hearts that shake alike
Beneath the arias of Fate's hand;
Although the cynics sneering stand,
These too the deathless powers strike.

A trembling lover's infinite trust,
To the last drop of doating blood,
Feels not alone the ocean flood
Of desperate grief, when dreams are dust.

The scornfullest souls, with mourning eyes,
Pant o'er again their ghostly ways; -
Dread night-paths, where were gleaming days
When life was lovelier than the skies!

I dreamt I was in love again
With the One Before the Last,
And smiled to greet the pleasant pain
Of that innocent young past.

But I jumped to feel how sharp had been
The pain when it did live,
How the faded dreams of Nineteen-ten
Were Hell in Nineteen-five.

The boy's woe was as keen and clear,
The boy's love just as true,
And the One Before the Last, my dear,
Hurt quite as much as you.

* * * * *

Sickly I pondered how the lover
Wrongs the unanswering tomb,
And sentimentalizes over
What earned a better doom.

Gently he tombs the poor dim last time,
Strews pinkish dust above,
And sighs, "The dear dead boyish pastime!
But THIS, ah, God! is Love!"

Better oblivion hide dead true loves,
Better the night...

Dear, I am lonely, for the bay is still
    As any hill-girt lake; the long brown beach
    Lies bare and wet. As far as eye can reach
There is no motion. Even on the hill
    Where the breeze loves to wander I can see
    No stir of leaves, nor any waving tree.

There is a great red cliff that fronts my view
    A bare, unsightly thing; it angers me
    With its unswerving-grim monotony.
The mackerel weir, with branching boughs askew
    Stands like a fire-swept forest, while the sea
    Laps it, with soothing sighs, continually.

There are no tempests in this sheltered bay,
    The stillness frets me, and I long to be
    Where winds sweep strong and blow tempestuously,
To stand upon some hill-top far away
    And face a gathering gale, and let the...

The mightiest choir of song that memory hears
Gave England voice for fifty lustrous years.
Sunrise and thunder fired and shook the skies
That saw the sun-god Marlowe's opening eyes.
The morn's own music, answered of the sea,
Spake, when his living lips bade Shakespeare be,
And England, made by Shakespeare's quickening breath
Divine and deathless even till life be death,
Brought forth to time such godlike sons of men
That shamefaced love grows pride, and now seems then.
Shame that their day so shone, so sang, so died,
Remembering, finds remembrance one with pride.
That day was clouding toward a stormlit close
When Ford's red sphere upon the twilight rose.
Sublime with stars and sunset fire, the sky
Glowed as though day, nigh dead, should never die.
Sorrow supre...

The Sky Line.

Like black fangs in a cruel ogre's jaw
    The grim piles lift against the sunset sky;
Down drops the night, and shuts the horrid maw--
    I listen, breathless, but there comes no cry.


Defeat.

He sits and looks into the west
    Where twilight gathers, wan and gray,
A knight who quit the Golden Quest,
    And flung Excalibur away.


To an Amazon.

O! twain in spirit, we shall know
    Thy like no more, so fierce, so mild,
One breast shorn clean to rest the bow,
    One milk-full for thy warrior child.


The Old Mother.

Life is like an old mother whom trouble and toil
Have sufficed the best part of her nature to spoil,
Whom her children, the Passions, so ...

Chill'd by unkind Honora's alter'd eye,
    "Why droops my heart with fruitless woes forlorn,"
    Thankless for much of good? - what thousands, born
    To ceaseless toil beneath this wintry sky,
Or to brave deathful Oceans surging high,
    Or fell Disease's fever'd rage to mourn,
    How blest to them wou'd seem my destiny!
    How dear the comforts my rash sorrows scorn! -
Affection is repaid by causeless hate!
    A plighted love is chang'd to cold disdain!
    Yet suffer not thy wrongs to shroud thy fate,
But turn, my Soul, to blessings which remain;
    And let this truth the wise resolve create,
    THE HEART ESTRANGED NO ANGUISH CAN REGAIN.

July 1773.

Before I lost my love, he said to me:
    'Sweetheart, I like deep azure tints on you.'
But I, perverse as any girl will be
    Who has too many lovers, wore not blue.

He said, 'I love to see my lady's hair
    Coiled low like Clytie's -with no wanton curl.'
But I, like any silly, wilful girl,
    Said, 'Donald likes it high,' and wore it there.

He said, 'I wish, love, when you sing to me,
    You would sing sweet, sad things -they suit your voice.'
I tossed my head, and sung light strains of glee -
    Saying, 'This song, or that, is Harold's choice.'

But now I wear no colour -none but blue.
    Low in my neck I coil my silken hair.
He does not know it, but I strive to do
    Whatever in his eyes would make me fair.

I sing no songs but...

Letter VI. Despair.


I.

    I am undone. My hopes have beggar'd me,
    For I have lov'd where loving was denied.
    To-day is dark, and Yesterday has died,
    And when To-morrow comes, erect and free,
    Like some great king, whose tyrant will he be,
    And whose defender in the days of pride?


II.

    I am not cold, and yet November bands
    Compress my heart. I know the month is May,
    And that the sun will warm me if I stay.
    But who is this? Oh, who is this that stands
    Straight in my path, and with his bony ha...

Oh the tear is in my eye, and my heart it is breaking,
Thou hast fled from me, Connor, and left me forsaken;
Bright and warm was our morning, but soon has it faded,
For I gave thee a true heart, and thou hast betrayed it.

Thy footsteps I followed in darkness and danger,
From the home of my love to the land of the stranger;
Thou wert mine through the tempest, the blight, and the burning;
Could I think thou wouldst change when the morn was returning.

Yet peace to thy heart, though from mine it must sever,
May she love thee as I loved, alone and for ever;
I may weep for thy loss, but my faith is unshaken,
And the heart thou hast widowed will bless thee in breaking.

I cried when the moon was murmuring to the birds:
"Let peewit call and curlew cry where they will,
I long for your merry and tender and pitiful words,
For the roads are unending, and there is no place to my mind."
The honey-pale moon lay low on the sleepy hill,
And I fell asleep upon lonely Edge of streams.
i(No boughs have withered because of the wintry wind;)
i(The boughs have withered because I have told them my, dreams.)
I know of the leafy paths that the witches take
Who come with their crowns of pearl and their spindles of wool,
And their secret smile, out of the depths of the lake;
I know where a dim moon drifts, where the Danaan kind
Wind and unwind their dances when the light grows cool
On the island lawns, their feet where the pale foam gleams.
i(No boughs hav...

A woodman whose rough heart was out of tune
(I think such hearts yet never came to good)
Hated to hear, under the stars or moon,

One nightingale in an interfluous wood
Satiate the hungry dark with melody; -
And as a vale is watered by a flood,

Or as the moonlight fills the open sky
Struggling with darkness - as a tuberose
Peoples some Indian dell with scents which lie

Like clouds above the flower from which they rose,
The singing of that happy nightingale
In this sweet forest, from the golden close

Of evening till the star of dawn may fail,
Was interfused upon the silentness;
The folded roses and the violets pale

Heard her within their slumbers, the abyss
Of heaven with all its planets; the dull ear
Of the night-cradled earth...

Why, my heart, do we love her so?
(Geraldine, Geraldine!)
Why does the great sea ebb and flow?
Why does the round world spin?
Geraldine, Geraldine,
Bid me my life renew,
What is it worth unless I win,
Love, love and you?

Why, my heart, when we speak her name
(Geraldine, Geraldine!),
Throbs the word like a flinging flame?
Why does the spring begin?
Geraldine, Geraldine,
Bid me indeed to be,
Open your heart and take us in,
Love, love and me.

Where the Great Lake's sunny smiles
Dimple round its hundred isles,
And the mountain's granite ledge
Cleaves the water like a wedge,
Ringed about with smooth, gray stones,
Rest the giant's mighty bones.

Close beside, in shade and gleam,
Laughs and ripples Melvin stream;
Melvin water, mountain-born,
All fair flowers its banks adorn;
All the woodland's voices meet,
Mingling with its murmurs sweet.

Over lowlands forest-grown,
Over waters island-strown,
Over silver-sanded beach,
Leaf-locked bay and misty reach,
Melvin stream and burial-heap,
Watch and ward the mountains keep.

Who that Titan cromlech fills?
Forest-kaiser, lord o' the hills?
Knight who on the birchen tree
Carved his savage heraldry?
Priest o' the pine-...

Dear Heart, this is my book of boyish song,
The changing story of the wandering quest
That found at last its ending in thy breast -
The love it sought and sang astray so long
With wild young heart and happy eager tongue.
Much meant it all to me to seek and sing,
Ah, Love, but how much more to-day to bring
This 'rhyme that first of all he made when young.'

Take it and love it, 'tis the prophecy
For whose poor silver thou hast given me gold;
Yea! those old faces for an hour seemed fair
Only because some hints of Thee they were:
Judge then, if I so loved weak types of old,
How good, dear Heart, the perfect gift of Thee.