Heartbreak

    The pathos in your face is like a peace,
    It is like resignation or a grace
    Which smiles at the surcease
    Of hope. But there is in your face
    The shadow of pain, and there is a trace
    Of memory of pain.

    I look at you again and again,
    And hide my looks lest your quick eye perceives
    My search for your despair.
    I look at your pale hands, I look at your hair;
    And I watch you use your hands, I watch the flare
    Of thought in your eyes like light that interweaves
    A flutter of color running under leaves,
    Such anguished dreams in your eyes!
    And I listen to you speak
    Words like crystals breaking with a tinkle,
    Or a star's twinkle.
    Sometimes as we talk you rise
    And leave the room, and ...

Poets with whom I learned my trade,
Companions of the Cheshire Cheese,
Here’s an old story I’ve re-made,
Imagining ’twould better please
Your ears than stories now in fashion,
Though you may think I waste my breath
Pretending that there can be passion
That has more life in it than death,
And though at bottling of your wine
The bow-legged Goban had no say;
The moral’s yours because it’s mine.

When cups went round at close of day,
Is not that how good stories run?
Somewhere within some hollow hill,
If books speak truth in Slievenamon,
But let that be, the gods were still
And sleepy, having had their meal,
And smoky torches made a glare
On painted pillars, on a deal
Of fiddles and of flutes hung there
By the ancient holy hands that broug...

Ye love, and sonnets write! Fate's strange behest!

The heart, its hidden meaning to declare,

Must seek for rhymes, uniting pair with pair:
Learn, children, that the will is weak, at best.

Scarcely with freedom the o'erflowing breast

As yet can speak, and well may it beware;

Tempestuous passions sweep each chord that's there,
Then once more sink to night and gentle rest.

Why vex yourselves and us, the heavy stone

Up the steep path but step by step to roll?

It falls again, and ye ne'er cease to strive.

THE LOVERS.

But we are on the proper road alone!

If gladly is to thaw the frozen soul,

The fire of love must aye be kept alive.

"Ah, where can he linger?" said Doll, with a sigh,
As bearing her milk-burthen home:
"Since he's broken his vow, near an hour has gone by,
So fair as he promis'd to come."
-She'd fain had him notice the loudly-clapt gate,
And fain call'd him up to her song;
But while her stretch'd shade prov'd the omen too late,
Heavy-hearted she mutter'd along.

She look'd and she listen'd, and sigh follow'd sigh,
And jealous thoughts troubled her head;
The skirts of the pasture were losing the eye,
As eve her last finishing spread;
And hope, so endearing, was topmost to see,
As 'tween-light was cheating the view,
Every thing at a distance--a bush, or a tree,
Her love's pleasing picture it drew.

The pasture-gate creak'd, pit-a-pat her heart went,
Fond thrillin...

Cold, cold is the blast when December is howling,
Cold are the damps on a dying man's brow, -
Stern are the seas when the wild waves are rolling,
And sad is the grave where a loved one lies low;
But colder is scorn from the being who loved thee,
More stern is the sneer from the friend who has proved thee,
More sad are the tears when their sorrows have moved thee,
Which mixed with groans anguish and wild madness flow -

And ah! poor - has felt all this horror,
Full long the fallen victim contended with fate:
'Till a destitute outcast abandoned to sorrow,
She sought her babe's food at her ruiner's gate -
Another had charmed the remorseless betrayer,
He turned laughing aside from her moans and her prayer,
She said nothing, but wringing the wet from her hair,
Cros...

Sad is the Evening: all the level sand
    Lies left and lonely, while the restless sea,
Tired of the green caresses of the land,
    Withdraws into its own infinity.

But still more sad this white and chilly Dawn
    Filling the vacant spaces of the sky,
While little winds blow here and there forlorn
    And all the stars, weary of shining, die.

And more than desolate, to wake, to rise,
    Leaving the couch, where softly sleeping still,
What through the past night made my heaven, lies;
    And looking out across the window sill

See, from the upper window's vantage ground,
    Mankind slip into harness once again,
And wearily resume his daily round
    Of love and labour, toil and strife and pain.

How the sad thoughts slip back across t...

Heart not so heavy as mine,
Wending late home,
As it passed my window
Whistled itself a tune, --

A careless snatch, a ballad,
A ditty of the street;
Yet to my irritated ear
An anodyne so sweet,

It was as if a bobolink,
Sauntering this way,
Carolled and mused and carolled,
Then bubbled slow away.

It was as if a chirping brook
Upon a toilsome way
Set bleeding feet to minuets
Without the knowing why.

To-morrow, night will come again,
Weary, perhaps, and sore.
Ah, bugle, by my window,
I pray you stroll once more!

The wind, that beats the mountain, blows
More softly round the open wold,
And gently comes the world to those
That are cast in gentle mould.

And me this knowledge bolder made,
Or else I had not dared to flow
In these words toward you, and invade
Even with a verse your holy woe.

’Tis strange that those we lean on most,
Those in whose laps our limbs are nursed,
Fall into shadow, soonest lost:
Those we love first are taken first.

God gives us love. Something to love
He lends us; but, when love is grown
To ripeness, that on which it throve
Falls off, and love is left alone.

This is the curse of time. Alas!
In grief I am not all unlearn’d;
Once thro’ mine own doors Death did pass;
One went, who never hath return’d.

...

Poet of Nature, thou hast wept to know
That things depart which never may return:
Childhood and youth, friendship and love's first glow,
Have fled like sweet dreams, leaving thee to mourn.
These common woes I feel. One loss is mine
Which thou too feel'st, yet I alone deplore.
Thou wert as a lone star, whose light did shine
On some frail bark in winter's midnight roar:
Thou hast like to a rock-built refuge stood
Above the blind and battling multitude:
In honoured poverty thy voice did weave
Songs consecrate to truth and liberty, -
Deserting these, thou leavest me to grieve,
Thus having been, that thou shouldst cease to be.

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
’Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thine happiness,
That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees,
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been
Cool’d a long age in the deep-delved earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country green,
Dance, and Provenial song, and sunburnt mirth!
O for a beaker full of the warm South,
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
And purple-stained mouth;
That I might drink, and leav...

Ah, I have changed, I do not know
Why lonely hours affect me so.
In days of yore, this were not wont,
No loneliness my soul could daunt.

For me too serious for my age,
The weighty tome of hoary sage,
Until with puzzled heart astir,
One God-giv'n night, I dreamed of her.

I loved no woman, hardly knew
More of the sex that strong men woo
Than cloistered monk within his cell;
But now the dream is lost, and hell

Holds me her captive tight and fast
Who prays and struggles for the past.
No living maid has charmed my eyes,
But now, my soul is wonder-wise.

For I have dreamed of her and seen
Her red-brown tresses' ruddy sheen,
Have known her sweetness, lip to lip,
The joy of her companionship.

When days were bleak and wi...

When have I last looked on
The round green eyes and the long wavering bodies
Of the dark leopards of the moon?
All the wild witches, those most noble ladies,
For all their broom-sticks and their tears,
Their angry tears, are gone.
The holy centaurs of the hills are banished;
I have nothing but the harsh sun;
Heroic mother moon has vanished,
And now that I have come to fifty years
I must endure the timid sun.

A clamour by day and a whisper by night,
And the Summer comes with the shining noons,
With the ripple of leaves, and the passionate light
Of the falling suns and the rising moons.

And the ripple of leaves and the purple and red
Die for the grapes and the gleam of the wheat,
And then you may pause with the splendours, or tread
On the yellow of Autumn with lingering feet.

You may halt with the face to a flying sea,
Or stand like a gloom in the gloom of things,
When the moon drops down and the desolate lea
Is troubled with thunder and desolate wings.

But alas for the grey of the wintering eves,
And the pondering storms and the ruin of rains;
And alas for the Spring like a flame in the leaves,
And the green of the woods and the gold of the lanes!

That kind heart you were jealous of, my nurse
Who sleeps her sleep beneath the humble turf,
I'd like to give her flowers, wouldn't you?
The dead, the poor dead, have their sorrows too,
And when October trims the branches down,
Blowing its sombre wind around their stones,
The living seem ungrateful to the dead,
For sleeping as they do, warm in their beds;
Meanwhile, devoured by black imaginings,
No bedmate, and without good gossiping,
Worked by the worm, cold skeletons below
Seem to be filtering the winter's snows,
And time flows by, no family who will
Tend to the scraps that hang from iron grills.

If in the dusk, while logs would smoke and sing,
I'd see her in the armchair, pondering,
Or find her in a night of wintry gloom
Abinding in a corner of my...

The leaves are many under my feet,
    And drift one way.
Their scent of death is weary and sweet.
    A flight of them is in the grey
Where sky and forest meet.

The low winds moan for dead sweet years;
    The birds sing all for pain,
Of a common thing, to weary ears,--
    Only a summer's fate of rain,
And a woman's fate of tears.

I walk to love and life alone
    Over these mournful places,
Across the summer overthrown,
    The dead joys of these silent faces,
To claim my own.

I know his heart has beat to bright
    Sweet loves gone by.
I know the leaves that die to-night
    Once budded to the sky,
And I shall die from his delight.

O leaves, so quietly ending now,
    You have heard cuckoos sing.
And I ...

Heart, you are restless as a paper scrap
That's tossed down dusty pavements by the wind;
Saying, "She is most wise, patient and kind.
Between the small hands folded in her lap
Surely a shamed head may bow down at length,
And find forgiveness where the shadows stir
About her lips, and wisdom in her strength,
Peace in her peace. Come to her, come to her!" . . .

She will not care. She'll smile to see me come,
So that I think all Heaven in flower to fold me.
She'll give me all I ask, kiss me and hold me,
And open wide upon that holy air
The gates of peace, and take my tiredness home,
Kinder than God. But, heart, she will not care.

    The morning rain, when, from her coop released,
    The hen, exulting, flaps her wings, when from
    The balcony the husbandman looks forth,
    And when the rising sun his trembling rays
    Darts through the falling drops, against my roof
    And windows gently beating, wakens me.
    I rise, and grateful, bless the flying clouds,
    The cheerful twitter of the early birds,
    The smiling fields, and the refreshing air.
    For I of you, unhappy city walls,
    Enough have seen and known; where hatred still
    Companion is to grief; and grieving still
    I live, and so shall die, and that, how soon!
    But here some pity Nature shows, though small,
    Once in this spot to me so courteous!
    Thou, too, O Nature, turn'st away thy gaze
    From mis...

"Coming events cast their shadow before."


I had a vision in the summer light -
Sorrow was in it, and my inward sight
Ached with sad images. The touch of tears
Gushed down my cheeks: - the figured woes of years
Casting their shadows across sunny hours.
Oh, there was nothing sorrowful in flowers
Wooing the glances of an April sun,
Or apple blossoms opening one by one
Their crimson bosoms - or the twittered words
And warbled sentences of merry birds; -
Or the small glitter and the humming wings
Of golden flies and many colored things -
Oh, these were nothing sad - nor to see Her,
Sitting beneath the comfortable stir
Of early leaves - casting the playful grace
Of moving shadows in so fair a face -
Nor in her brow serene - nor in the love