Heartbreak

Methinks 'twere no unprecedented feat
Should some benignant Minister of air
Lift, and encircle with a cloudy chair,
The One for whom my heart shall ever beat
With tenderest love; or, if a safer seat
Atween his downy wings be furnished, there
Would lodge her, and the cherished burden bear
O'er hill and valley to this dim retreat!
Rough ways my steps have trod; too rough and long
For her companionship; here dwells soft ease:
With sweets that she partakes not some distaste
Mingles, and lurking consciousness of wrong;
Languish the flowers; the waters seem to waste
Their vocal charm; their sparklings cease to please.

A cold, uninterrupted rain,
That washed each southern window-pane,
And made a river of the road;
A sea of mist that overflowed
The house, the barns, the gilded vane,
And drowned the upland and the plain,
Through which the oak-trees, broad and high,
Like phantom ships went drifting by;
And, hidden behind a watery screen,
The sun unseen, or only seen
As a faint pallor in the sky;--
Thus cold and colorless and gray,
The morn of that autumnal day,
As if reluctant to begin,
Dawned on the silent Sudbury Inn,
And all the guests that in it lay.

Full late they slept.    They did not hear
The challenge of Sir Chanticleer,
Who on the empty threshing-floor,
Disdainful of the rain outside,
Was strutting with a martial stride,
As if upon his t...

Among the fields the camomile
Seems blown steam in the lightning's glare.
Unusual odors drench the air.
Night speaks above; the angry smile
Of storm within her stare.

The way for me to-night? To-night,
Is through the wood whose branches fill
The road with dripping rain-drops. Till,
Between the boughs, a star-like light
Our home upon the hill.

The path for me to take? It goes
Around a trailer-tangled rock,
'Mid puckered pink and hollyhock,
Unto a latch-gate's unkempt rose,
And door whereat I knock.

Bright on the old-time flower-place
The lamp streams through the foggy pane.
The door is opened to the rain;
And in the door, her happy face,
And eager hands again.

The door is shut. She leaves the curtained office,
And down the grey-walled stairs comes trembling slowly
Towards the dazzling street.
Her withered hand clings tightly to the railing.
The long stairs rise and fall beneath her feet.

Here in the brilliant sun we jostle, waiting
To tear her secret out . . . We laugh, we hurry,
We go our way, revolving, sinister, slow.
She blinks in the sun, and then steps faintly downward.
We whirl her away, we shout, we spin, we flow.

Where have you been, old lady? We know your secret!
Voices jangle about her, jeers, and laughter. . . .
She trembles, tries to hurry, averts her eyes.
Tell us the truth, old lady! where have you been?
She turns and turns, her brain grows dark with cries.

Look at the old fool tremble! S...

    Since your limbs were laid out
        The stars do not shine,
    The fish leap not out
        In the waves.
    On our meadows the dew
        Does not fall in the morn,
    For O'Daly is dead:
        Not a flower can be born,
    Not a word can be said,
        Not a tree have a leaf;
    Anthony, after you
        There is nothing to do,
    There is nothing but grief.

Rocky shale, pale voile,
sun lighting the
clearness of the bay;
come Moccasin Flower or Grass Pink
unto Painted Cup    -
big with primula eye, these septs off wild
and inland seas.

The delights of success and heartbreaks
of failure among the people
in the land below Tobermory;
the rocks on the cold hill,
the lilacs by the doors...

And it was at their expense that this land
came to be supplied
with vitriol, camomile and liquorice,
yea some camphor and jallop,
oft'times basil, lemon or rhubarb
- - all sent from Glasgow
in wooden boxes
stout as pioneer hearts.

I

When I go forth to greet the glad-faced Spring,
Just at the time of opening apple-buds,
When brooks are laughing, winds are whispering,
On babbling hillsides or in warbling woods,
There is an unseen presence that eludes:
Perhaps a dryad, in whose tresses cling
The loamy odours of old solitudes,
Who, from her beechen doorway, calls, and leads
My soul to follow; now with dimpling words
Of leaves; and now with syllables of birds;
While here and there is it her limbs that swing?
Or restless sunlight on the moss and weeds?

II

Or, haply, 'tis a Naiad now who slips,
Like some white lily, from her fountain's glass,
While from her dripping hair and breasts and hips
The moisture rains cool music on the grass.
Her have I heard and followed, ...

A bending staff I would not break,
A feeble faith I would not shake,
Nor even rashly pluck away
The error which some truth may stay,
Whose loss might leave the soul without
A shield against the shafts of doubt.

And yet, at times, when over all
A darker mystery seems to fall,
(May God forgive the child of dust,
Who seeks to know, where Faith should trust!)
I raise the questions, old and dark,
Of Uzdom's tempted patriarch,
And, speech-confounded, build again
The baffled tower of Shinar's plain.

I am: how little more I know!
Whence came I? Whither do I go?
A centred self, which feels and is;
A cry between the silences;
A shadow-birth of clouds at strife
With sunshine on the hills of life;
A shaft from Nature's quiver cast
Into...

Out in the wastes of the West countrie,
Out where the white stars shine,
Grim and silent as such men be,
Rideth a man with history,
Anthony Considine.

For the ways of men are manifold
As their differing views in life;
Some sell themselves for the lust of gold,
And some for the lust of strife:
But this man counted the world well lost
For the love of his neighbour's wife.

They fled together, as those must flee
Whom all men hold in blame;
Each to the other must all things be
Who cross the gulf of iniquity
And live in the land of shame.

But a light-o'-love, if she sins with one,
She sinneth with ninety-nine:
The rule holds good since the world begun,
Since ever the streams began to run
And the stars began to shine.
The ru...

As I near my lonely cottage,
    At the close of weary day,
There's a little bit of gladness
    Comes to meet me on the way:
Dimpled, tanned, and petticoated,
    Innocent as angels are,
Like a smiling, straying sunbeam
    Is my Stella - like a star.

Soon a hand of tissue-softness
    Slips confidingly in mine,
And with tender look appealing
    Eyes of beauty sweetly shine;
Like a gentle shepherd guiding
    Some lost lamb unto the fold,
So she leads me homeward, prattling
    Till her stories are all told.

"Papa, I'm so glad to see you -
    Cousin Mabel came today -
And the gas-man brought a letter
    That he said you'd better pay -
Yes, and awful things is happened:
    My poor kitty's drowned to death -
...

    Incumbent seemingly
    On the jagged points of peaks
    That end the visible west,
    The rounded moon yet floods
    The valleys hitherward
    With fall of torrential light,
    Ere from the overmost
    Aggressive mountain-cusp,
    She slip to the lower dark.
    But here, on an eastward slope
    Pointed and thick with its pine,
    The forest scarcely remembers
    Her light that is gone as a vision
    Or ecstasy too poignant
    And perilous for duration.
    Withdrawn in what darker web
    Or dimension of dream I know not,
    In silence pre-occupied
    And solemnest rectitude
    The pines uprear, and no sigh
    For the rapture of moonlight past,
    Comes from their bosom of boughs.
    Far in their secrecy

I have drunk ale from the Country of the Young
And weep because I know all things now:
I have been a hazel tree and they hung
The Pilot Star and the Crooked Plough
Among my leaves in times out of mind:
I became a rush that horses tread:
I became a man, a hater of the wind,
Knowing one, out of all things, alone, that his head
Would not lie on the breast or his lips on the hair
Of the woman that he loves, until he dies;
Although the rushes and the fowl of the air
Cry of his love with their pitiful cries.

And I behold once more
My old familiar haunts; here the blue river,
The same blue wonder that my infant eye
Admired, sage doubting whence the traveller came,--
Whence brought his sunny bubbles ere he washed
The fragrant flag-roots in my father's fields,
And where thereafter in the world he went.
Look, here he is, unaltered, save that now
He hath broke his banks and flooded all the vales
With his redundant waves.
Here is the rock where, yet a simple child,
I caught with bended pin my earliest fish,
Much triumphing,--and these the fields
Over whose flowers I chased the butterfly
A blooming hunter of a fairy fine.
And hark! where overhead the ancient crows
Hold their sour conversation in the sky:--
These are the same, but I am not the same,
But wiser th...

I Whispered, ‘I am too young,’
And then, ‘I am old enough’;
Wherefore I threw a penny
To find out if I might love.
‘Go and love, go and love, young man,
If the lady be young and fair,’
Ah, penny, brown penny, brown penny,
I am looped in the loops of her hair.

Oh, love is the crooked thing,
There is nobody wise enough
To find out all that is in it,
For he would be thinking of love
Till the stars had run away,
And the shadows eaten the moon.
Ah, penny, brown penny, brown penny,
One cannot begin it too soon.

        (Suggested by the "Clarimonde" OF Théophile Gautier.)

        Adieu, Romauld! But thou canst not forget me.
    Although no more I haunt thy dreams at night,
        Thy hungering heart forever must regret me,
    And starve for those lost moments of delight.

        Naught shall avail thy priestly rites and duties,
    Nor fears of Hell, nor hopes of Heaven beyond:
        Before the Cross shall rise my fair form's beauties - -
    The lips, the limbs, the eyes of Clarimonde.

        Like gall the wine sipped from the sacred chalice
    Shall taste to one who knew my red mouth's bliss,
        When Youth and Beauty dwelt in Love's own palace,
    And life flowed on in one eternal kiss.

        Through what strange ways I come, dear heart, to ...

I.

My Rosalind, my Rosalind,
My frolic falcon, with bright eyes,
Whose free delight, from any height of rapid flight,
Stoops at all game that wing the skies,
My Rosalind, my Rosalind,
My bright-eyed, wild-eyed falcon, whither,
Careless both of wind and weather,
Whither fly ye, what game spy ye,
Up or down the streaming wind?



II.

The quick lark’s closest-caroll’d strains,
The shadow rushing up the sea,
The lightning flash atween the rains,
The sunlight driving down the lea,
The leaping stream, the very wind,
That will not stay, upon his way,
To stoop the cowslip to the plains,
Is not so clear and bold and free
As you, my falcon Rosalind.
You care not for another’s pains,
Because you are the soul of joy,

"I die, I die!" the Mother said,
"My children die for lack of bread.
What more has the merciless Tyrant said?"
The Monk sat down on the stony bed.

The blood red ran from the Grey Monk's side,
His hands and feet were wounded wide,
His body bent, his arms and knees
Like to the roots of ancient trees.

His eye was dry; no tear could flow:
A hollow groan first spoke his woe.
He trembled and shudder'd upon the bed;
At length with a feeble cry he said:

"When God commanded this hand to write
In the studious hours of deep midnight,
He told me the writing I wrote should prove
The bane of all that on Earth I lov'd.

My Brother starv'd between two walls,
His Children's cry my soul appalls;
I mock'd at the rack and griding chain,
My be...

Under a lawn, than skies more clear,
Some ruffled Roses nestling were,
And snugging there, they seem'd to lie
As in a flowery nunnery;
They blush'd, and look'd more fresh than flowers
Quickened of late by pearly showers;
And all, because they were possest
But of the heat of Julia's breast,
Which, as a warm and moisten'd spring,
Gave them their ever-flourishing.