Heartbreak

The sun kept setting, setting still;
No hue of afternoon
Upon the village I perceived, --
From house to house 't was noon.

The dusk kept dropping, dropping still;
No dew upon the grass,
But only on my forehead stopped,
And wandered in my face.

My feet kept drowsing, drowsing still,
My fingers were awake;
Yet why so little sound myself
Unto my seeming make?

How well I knew the light before!
I could not see it now.
'T is dying, I am doing; but
I'm not afraid to know.

(Macmillan's Magazine, Dec. 1864.)


Two days ago with dancing glancing hair,
    With living lips and eyes:
    Now pale, dumb, blind, she lies;
So pale, yet still so fair.

We have not left her yet, not yet alone;
    But soon must leave her where
    She will not miss our care,
Bone of our bone.

Weep not; O friends, we should not weep:
    Our friend of friends lies full of rest;
    No sorrow rankles in her breast,
Fallen fast asleep.

She sleeps below,
    She wakes and laughs above:
    To-day, as she walked, let us walk in love;
To-morrow follow so.

I.

My Sister! my sweet Sister! if a name
Dearer and purer were, it should be thine.
Mountains and seas divide us, but I claim
No tears, but tenderness to answer mine:
Go where I will, to me thou art the same -
A loved regret which I would not resign.[z]
There yet are two things in my destiny, -
A world to roam through, and a home with thee.[84]

II.

The first were nothing - had I still the last,
It were the haven of my happiness;
But other claims and other ties thou hast,[aa]
And mine is not the wish to make them less.
A strange doom is thy father's son's, and past[ab]
Recalling, as it lies beyond redress;
Reversed for him our grandsire's[85] fate of yore, -
He had no rest at sea, nor...

The rain falls long, and the rain falls light,
    With a desolate drip -drop, sad to hear.
But never a star shines through the night
    As I sit afar, from the world anear.

Down in the parlour some one sings;
    The children laugh in the nursery hall;
But my heart like a bird has spread its wings,
    And leaves the music, and mirth, and all.

Out in the rain and the eerie night,
    Into the darkness it speeds away.
Ah me! ah me! 'tis a gruesome flight,
    Seeking for you till the dawn of day.

If it only knew which way to go;
    Where you wander, or where you lie.
To valleys of sunshine, or hills of snow,
    Thither at once my heart would fly.

Fly and follow wherever you led,
    Over the desert and over the wave;
Or if ...

The lights have faded from the little casement,
    As though her closing eyes had brought on night;
    And now she dreams--Ah! dreams supremely bright,
While silence reigns around from roof to basement.
    And slow the moon is mounting up the sky,
Drawing Heaven's myriads in her queenly train,
    Flinging rich largesse, as she passes by,
Of beauty freely over hill and plain.

Around the lattice creep the pure white roses,
    And one light bough rests gently on the pane,
    The diamond pane, through which the angel train
Gaze on the sister saint who there reposes;
    The moonlight silvers softly o'er it now;
And round the eaves the south wind whispers lowly,
    Waving the leaves like curls on maiden's brow;
The peace and stillness make the place seem ho...

When, as the garish day is done,
Heaven burns with the descended sun,
'Tis passing sweet to mark,
Amid that flush of crimson light,
The new moon's modest bow grow bright,
As earth and sky grow dark.

Few are the hearts too cold to feel
A thrill of gladness o'er them steal,
When first the wandering eye
Sees faintly, in the evening blaze,
That glimmering curve of tender rays
Just planted in the sky.

The sight of that young crescent brings
Thoughts of all fair and youthful things
The hopes of early years;
And childhood's purity and grace,
And joys that like a rainbow chase
The passing shower of tears.

The captive yields him to the dream
Of freedom, when that virgin beam
Comes out upon the air:
And painfully the sick man t...

Ah! days so dark with death's eclipse!
    Woe are we! woe are we!
And the nights are ages long!
From breaking hearts, thro' pallid lips
    O my God! woe are we!
Trembleth the mourner's song;
    A blight is falling on the fair,
    And hope is dying in despair,
    And terror walketh everywhere.

All the hours are full of tears --
    O my God! woe are we!
Grief keeps watch in brightest eyes --
Every heart is strung with fears,
    Woe are we! woe are we!
All the light hath left the skies,
    And the living awe struck crowds
    See above them only clouds,
    And around them only shrouds.

Ah! the terrible farewells!
    Woe are they! woe are they!
When last words sink into moans,
While life's trembling vesper bells --

Amid the desolation of a city,
Which was the cradle, and is now the grave
Of an extinguished people, - so that Pity

Weeps o'er the shipwrecks of Oblivion's wave,
There stands the Tower of Famine. It is built
Upon some prison-homes, whose dwellers rave

For bread, and gold, and blood: Pain, linked to Guilt,
Agitates the light flame of their hours,
Until its vital oil is spent or spilt.

There stands the pile, a tower amid the towers
And sacred domes; each marble-ribbed roof,
The brazen-gated temples, and the bowers

Of solitary wealth, - the tempest-proof
Pavilions of the dark Italian air, -
Are by its presence dimmed - they stand aloof,

And are withdrawn - so that the world is bare;
As if a spectre wrapped in shapeless terror
Am...

Ten-hundred deep the drifted daisies break
Here at the hill's foot; on its top, the wheat
Hangs meagre-bearded; and, in vague retreat,
The wisp-like blooms of the moth-mulleins shake.
And where the wild-pink drops a crimson flake,
And morning-glories, like young lips, make sweet
The shaded hush, low in the honeyed heat,
The wild-bees hum; as if afraid to wake
One sleeping there; with no white stone to tell
The story of existence; but the stem
Of one wild-rose, towering o'er brier and weed,
Where all the day the wild-birds requiem;
Within whose shade the timid violets spell
An epitaph, only the stars can read.

            I.    The Voice of the Man Impatient with Visions and Utopias

    We find your soft Utopias as white
    As new-cut bread, and dull as life in cells,
    O, scribes who dare forget how wild we are
    How human breasts adore alarum bells.
    You house us in a hive of prigs and saints
    Communal, frugal, clean and chaste by law.
    I'd rather brood in bloody Elsinore
    Or be Lear's fool, straw-crowned amid the straw.
    Promise us all our share in Agincourt
    Say that our clerks shall venture scorns and death,
    That future ant-hills will not be too good
    For Henry Fifth, or Hotspur, or Macbeth.
    Promise that through to-morrow's spirit-war
    Man's deathless soul will hack and hew its way,
    Each flaunting Caesar climbing to his...

To a Highland Air.


I.

                The tither morn,
                When I forlorn,
    Aneath an oak sat moaning,
                I did na trow
                I'd see my Jo,
    Beside me, gain the gloaming.
                But he sae trig,
                Lap o'er the rig.
    And dawtingly did cheer me,
                When I, what reck,
                Did least expec',
    To see my lad so near me.

II.

                His bonnet he,
                A thought ajee,
    Cock'd sprush when first he clasp'd me;
                And I, I wat,
                Wi' fainness grat,
    While in his grips be press'd me.
                Deil tak' the war!
                I late and air
    Hae...

I.

When late I watched the arrows of the sleet
Against the windows of the Tavern beat,
    I heard a Rose that murmured from her Pot:
"Why trudge thy fellows yonder in the Street?

II.

"Before the phantom of False Morning dies,
Choked in the bitter Net that binds the skies,
    Their feet, bemired with Yesterday, set out
For the dark alleys where To-morrow lies.

III.

"Think you, when all their petals they have bruised,
And all the fragrances of Life confused,
    That Night with sweeter rest will comfort these
Than us, who still within the Garden mused?

IV.

"Think you the Gold they fight for all day long
Is worth the frugal Peace their clamours wrong?
    Their Titles, and the Name they toil to build---
W...

O beautiful hills in the purple light,
    That shadow the western sky,
I dream of you oft in the silent night,
    As the golden days go by.

The river that flows at my longing feet
    Is tinged with a deeper glow;
But the song that it sings is as sad to-day
    As it was in the long ago.

The far-off clouds in the far-off sky
    Are tinted with gold and red;
But the lesson they tell to the hearts of men
    Is a lesson that never is said.

The star-crowned night in her sable plumes
    Is veiling the eastern sky,
And she trails her robes in the dying fires
    That far in the west do lie.

A single gem from her circlet old
    Is lost as she wanders by,
And the beautiful star with its golden light
    Shines out in the lo...

I cannot forget with what fervid devotion
I worshipped the vision of verse and of fame.
Each gaze at the glories of earth, sky, and ocean,
To my kindled emotions, was wind over flame.

And deep were my musings in life's early blossom,
Mid the twilight of mountain groves wandering long;
How thrilled my young veins, and how throbbed my full bosom,
When o'er me descended the spirit of song.

'Mong the deep-cloven fells that for ages had listened
To the rush of the pebble-paved river between,
Where the kingfisher screamed and gray precipice glistened,
All breathless with awe have I gazed on the scene;

Till I felt the dark power o'er my reveries stealing,
From his throne in the depth of that stern solitude,
And he breathed through my lips, in that tempest of ...

Here's a valentine nosegay for Mary,
Some of Spring's earliest flowers;
The ivy is green by the dairy,
And so are these laurels of ours.
Though the snow fell so deep and the winter was dreary,
The laurels are green and the sparrows are cheery.

The snowdrops in bunches grow under the rose,
And aconites under the lilac, like fairies;
The best in the bunches for Mary I chose,
Their looks are as sweet and as simple as Mary's.
The one will make Spring in my verses so bare,
The other set off as a braid thy dark hair.

Pale primroses, too, at the old parlour end,
Have bloomed all the winter 'midst snows cold and dreary,
Where the lavender-cotton kept off the cold wind,
Now to shine in my valentine nosegay for Mary;
And appear in my verses all Summer, and b...

Weeds and dead leaves, and leaves the Autumn stains
With hues of rust and rose whence moisture weeps;
Gnarl'd thorns, from which the knotted haw-fruit rains
On paths the gray moss heaps.

One golden flower, like a dreamy thought
In the sad mind of Age, makes bright the wood;
And near it, like a fancy Childhood-fraught,
The toadstool's jaunty hood.

Webs, in whose snares the nimble spiders crouch,
Waiting the prey that comes, moon-winged, with night:
Slugs and the snail which trails the mushroom's pouch,
That marks the wood with white.

An old gaunt house, round which the trees decay,
Its porches fallen and its windows gone,
Starts out at you as if to bar the way,
Or bid you hurry on.

A picket fence, grim as a skeleton arm,
Is flung ar...

’Tis evening; the black snail has got on his track,
And gone to its nest is the wren,
And the packman snail, too, with his home on his back,
Clings to the bowed bents like a wen.

The shepherd has made a rude mark with his foot
Where his shadow reached when he first came,
And it just touched the tree where his secret love cut
Two letters that stand for love’s name.

The evening comes in with the wishes of love,
And the shepherd he looks on the flowers,
And thinks who would praise the soft song of the dove,
And meet joy in these dew-falling hours.

For Nature is love, and finds haunts for true love,
Where nothing can hear or intrude;
It hides from the eagle and joins with the dove,
In beautiful green solitude.

The church bells toll a melancholy round,
Calling the people to some other prayers,
Some other gloominess, more dreadful cares,
More hearkening to the sermon's horrid sound.
Surely the mind of man is closely bound
In some black spell; seeing that each one tears
Himself from fireside joys, and Lydian airs,
And converse high of those with glory crown'd.
Still, still they toll, and I should feel a damp,
A chill as from a tomb, did I not know
That they are dying like an outburnt lamp;
That 'tis their sighing, wailing ere they go
Into oblivion; that fresh flowers will grow,
And many glories of immortal stamp.