Identity

Before I see another day,
Oh let my body die away!
In sleep I heard the northern gleams;
The stars, they were among my dreams;
In rustling conflict through the skies,
I heard, I saw the flashes drive,
And yet they are upon my eyes,
And yet I am alive;
Before I see another day,
Oh let my body die away!

My fire is dead: it knew no pain;
Yet is it dead, and I remain:
All stiff with ice the ashes lie;
And they are dead, and I will die.
When I was well, I wished to live,
For clothes, for warmth, for food, and fire;
But they to me no joy can give,
No pleasure now, and no desire.
Then here contented will I lie
Alone, I cannot fear to die.

Alas! ye might have dragged me on
Another day, a single one!
Too soon I yielded to despa...

In my garden, O Beloved!
Many pleasant trees are growing,
Peach, and apricot, and apple,
Myrtle, lilac, and laburnum.

Fair are they, but midst them lonely,
Like an exiled Eastern Princess
In a strange land far from kindred,
Stands a lonely fair Pomegranate.

Dreaming of its native Orient
Always is the fair Pomegranate,
And beneath it I lie dreaming
Of thine eyes and thee, Beloved!

Overhead its red globes, gleaming
Like red moons, old tales recall of
Eastern moons and songs of Hafiz,
Nightingales, and wine, and roses.

And at times it seems a mystic
Tree Circéan, whose red fruit is
Broken hearts of old-time lovers,
Thus their secrets sad revealing.

And within each red sun-cloven
Glossy globe, like little rosy...

I


Eve goes slowly
Dancing lightly
Clad with shadow up the hills;
Birds their singing
Cease at last, and silence
Falling like fine rain the valley fills.

Not a bat's cry
Stirs the stillness
Perfect as broad water sleeping,
Not a moth's wings
Flit in the gathering darkness,
Not a mouselike moonray ev'n comes creeping.

Then a light shines
From the casement,
Wreathed with jasmine boughs and stars,
Palely golden
As the late eve's primrose,
Glimmers through green leafy prison bars.



II


Only joy now
Come in silence,
Come before your look's forgot;
Come and hearken
While the lonely shadow
Broadens on the hill and then is not.

Now the hour is,
Here the plac...

Unfading Hope! when life's last embers burn
When soul to soul, and dust to dust return,
Heaven to thy charge resigns the awful hour!
Oh! then thy kingdom comes, Immortal Power!
What though each spark of earth-born rapture fly
The quivering lip, pale cheek, and closing eye!
Bright to the soul thy seraph hands convey
The morning dream of life's eternal day
Then, then, the triumph and the trance begin,
And all the phoenix-spirit burns within!

Oh, deep enchanting prelude to repose,
The dawn of bliss, the twilight of our woes!
Yet half I hear the parting spirit sigh,
It is a dread and awful thing to die!
Mysterious worlds, untravell'd by the sun!
Where Time's far-wandering tide has never run,
From your unfathom'd shades, and viewless spheres,
A warning c...

Ere Nessus yet had reach'd the other bank,
We enter'd on a forest, where no track
Of steps had worn a way. Not verdant there
The foliage, but of dusky hue; not light
The boughs and tapering, but with knares deform'd
And matted thick: fruits there were none, but thorns
Instead, with venom fill'd. Less sharp than these,
Less intricate the brakes, wherein abide
Those animals, that hate the cultur'd fields,
Betwixt Corneto and Cecina's stream.

Here the brute Harpies make their nest, the same
Who from the Strophades the Trojan band
Drove with dire boding of their future woe.
Broad are their pennons, of the human form
Their neck and count'nance, arm'd with talons keen
The feet, and the huge belly fledge with wings
These sit and wail on the drear mystic wood.

One thing that's yours, my little child
Your poor old dad is simply wild
To own. It's not a book or toy;
It's your imagination, boy.
If I possessed it, what a time
I'd have, nor need to spend a dime!

I wish that I could get astride
A broom, and have a horse to ride;
Or climb into the swing, and be
A sailor on the deep blue sea,
Or b'lieve a chair a choo-choo train,
Bound anywhere and back again.

If I could ride as fast and far
On ship or horse, in train or car,
As you, at small expense or none,
If I could have one-half your fun
And do the things that you do, free,
I'd give them back my salary.

No, I have no capacity for life.
I could be considered foolish -
Today I am not going to the restaurant.
I am after all this time weary of the waiters,
Who scornfully bring us, with their smug grimaces,
Dark beer and make us so confused
That we cannot find our home
And we must
Use the foolish street lights
To prop ourselves up
with weak hands.
Today I have bigger things in mind -
Ah, I shall find out the meaning of existence.
And in the evening I shall do some roller skating
Or go at some point to Temple.

He was a boy, sun-burned and brown,
And she a girl from a neighboring town:
Dark were her eyes and dark her hair,
And her cheeks as red as the ripe peach there:
Dainty and sweet, with a far-away
Look in her eyes like the skies of May.
And it came to pass one afternoon
She walked in the fields; and the month was June:
In the hay-heaped fields and the meadowland
With trees and hills on either hand.
And the lad, who worked on her father's farm,
Had laid him down all tired and warm.
He had been toiling day after day
Mowing and raking and hilling the hay.
And now at last, with his work well done,
He slept by a stack away from the sun.
And she, who came with her young head full
Of thoughts that never are learned in school,
Young dreams and fancies no girl ...

Deep embowered beside the forest river,
    Where the flame of sunset only falls,
Lapped in silence lies the House of Dying,
    House of them to whom the twilight calls.

There within when day was near to ending,
    By her lord a woman young and strong,
By his chief a songman old and stricken
    Watched together till the hour of song.

"O my songman, now the bow is broken,
    Now the arrows one by one are sped,
Sing to me the song of Sráhmandázi,
    Sráhmandázi, home of all the dead."

Then the songman, flinging wide his songnet,
    On the last token laid his master's hand,
While he sang the song of Sráhmandázi,
    None but dying men can understand.

"Yonder sun that fierce and fiery-hearted
    Marches down the sky to vanish so...

There is a chillness in the air -
A coldness in the smile of day;
And e'en the sunbeam's crimson glare
Seems shaded with a tinge of gray.

Weary of journeys to and fro,
The sun low creeps adown the sky;
And on the shivering earth below,
The long, cold shadows grimly lie.

But there will fall a deeper shade,
More chilling than the Autumn's breath:
There is a flower that yet must fade,
And yield its sweetness up to death.

She sits upon the window-seat,
Musing in mournful silence there,
While on her brow the sunbeams meet,
And dally with her golden hair.

She gazes on the sea of light
That overflows the western skies,
Till her great soul seems plumed for flight
From out the window of her eyes.

Hopes unfulfilled have ...

I'm dead.
Officially I'm dead. Their hope is past.
How long I stood as missing! Now, at last
        I'm dead.
Look in my face - no likeness can you see,
No tiny trace of him they knew as "me".
How terrible the change!
Even my eyes are strange.
So keyed are they to pain,
That if I chanced to meet
My mother in the street
She'd look at me in vain.

When she got home I think she'd say:
"I saw the saddest sight to-day -
A poilu with no face at all.
Far better in the fight to fall
Than go through life like that, I think.
Poor fellow! how he made me shrink.
No face. Just eyes that seemed to stare
At me with anguish and despair.
This ghastly war! I'm almost cheered
To think my son who disappeared,
My boy so handsome an...

Scorn not the Old; 'twas sacred in its day,
A truth overpowering error with its might,
A light dispelling darkness with its ray,
A victory won, an intermediate height,
Which seers untrammel'd by their creeds of yore,
Heroes and saints, triumphantly attained
With hard assail and tribulation sore,
That we might use the vantage-ground they gain'd.

Scorn not the Old; but hail and seize the New
With thrill'd intelligences, hearts that burn,
And such truth-seeking spirits that it, too,
May soon be superseded in its turn,
And men may ever, as the ages roll,
March onward toward the still receding goal.

Angel-fair, Walhalla's charms displaying,
Fairer than all mortal youths was he;
Mild his look, as May-day sunbeams straying
Gently o'er the blue and glassy sea.

And his kisses! what ecstatic feeling!
Like two flames that lovingly entwine,
Like the harp's soft tones together stealing
Into one sweet harmony divine,

Soul and soul embraced, commingled, blended,
Lips and cheeks with trembling passion burned,
Heaven and earth, in pristine chaos ended,
Round the blissful lovers madly turn'd.

He is gone and, ah! with bitter anguish
Vainly now I breathe my mournful sighs;
He is gone in hopeless grief I languish
Earthly joys I ne'er again can prize!

He had his dream, and all through life,
Worked up to it through toil and strife.
Afloat fore'er before his eyes,
It colored for him all his skies:
The storm-cloud dark
Above his bark,
The calm and listless vault of blue
Took on its hopeful hue,
It tinctured every passing beam--
He had his dream.

He labored hard and failed at last,
His sails too weak to bear the blast,
The raging tempests tore away
And sent his beating bark astray.
But what cared he
For wind or sea!
He said, "The tempest will be short,
My bark will come to port."
He saw through every cloud a gleam--
He had his dream.

Ah me! too soon the autumn comes
Among these purple-plaintive hills!
Too soon among the forest gums
Premonitory flame she spills,
Bleak, melancholy flame that kills.

Her white fogs veil the morn, that rims
With wet the moonflower's elfin moons;
And, like exhausted starlight, dims
The last slim lily-disk; and swoons
With scents of hazy afternoons.

Her gray mists haunt the sunset skies,
And build the west's cadaverous fires,
Where Sorrow sits with lonely eyes,
And hands that wake an ancient lyre,
Beside the ghost of dead Desire.

Ah me! too soon the autumn comes
Among these purple-plaintive hills!
Too soon among the forest gums
Premonitory flame she spills,
Bleak, melancholy flame that kills.

Her white fogs veil the morn, that rims
With wet the moonflower's elfin moons;
And, like exhausted starlight, dims
The last slim lily-disk; and swoons
With scents of hazy afternoons.

Her gray mists haunt the sunset skies,
And build the west's cadaverous fires,
Where Sorrow sits with lonely eyes,
And hands that wake an ancient lyre,
Beside the ghost of dead Desire.

There were two youths of equal age,
Wit, station, strength, and parentage;
They studied at the selfsame schools,
And shaped their thoughts by common rules.

One pondered on the life of man,
His hopes, his ending, and began
To rate the Market's sordid war
As something scarce worth living for.

"I'll brace to higher aims," said he,
"I'll further Truth and Purity;
Thereby to mend the mortal lot
And sweeten sorrow. Thrive I not,

"Winning their hearts, my kind will give
Enough that I may lowly live,
And house my Love in some dim dell,
For pleasing them and theirs so well."

Idly attired, with features wan,
In secret swift he laboured on:
Such press of power had brought much gold
Applied to things of meaner mould.

Somet...

Pasco la mente d' un sì nobil cibo.

TO SEE AND HEAR HER IS HIS GREATEST BLISS.


    I feed my fancy on such noble food,
That Jove I envy not his godlike meal;
I see her--joy invades me like a flood,
And lethe of all other bliss I feel;
I hear her--instantly that music rare
Bids from my captive heart the fond sigh flow;
Borne by the hand of Love I know not where,
A double pleasure in one draught I know.
Even in heaven that dear voice pleaseth well,
So winning are its words, its sound so sweet,
None can conceive, save who had heard, their spell;
Thus, in the same small space, visibly, meet
All charms of eye and ear wherewith our race
Art, Genius, Nature, Heaven have join'd to grace.

MACGREGOR.


    Such noble aliment...