Identity

The moon and all her starry train
    Were fading from the morning sky,
When home the ball-room belle again
Returned, with throbbing pulse and brain,
    Flushed cheek and tearful eye.

The plume that danced above her brow,
    The gem that sparkled in her zone,
The scarf of spangled leaf and bough,
Were laid aside--they mocked her now,
    When desolate and lone.

That night how many hearts she won!
    The reigning belle, she could not stir,
But, like the planets round the sun,
Her suitors followed--all but one--
    One all the world to her!

And she had lost him!--Marvel not
    That lady's eyes with tears were wet!
Though love by man is soon forgot,
It never yet was woman's lot
    To love and to forget.

It is easy enough to be pleasant
    When life flows by like a song,
But the man worth while is the one who will smile
    When everything goes dead wrong.
For the test of the heart is trouble,
    And it always comes with the years,
And the smile that is worth the praises of earth
    Is the smile that shines through tears.

It is easy enough to be prudent
    When nothing tempts you to stray,
When without or within no voice of sin
    Is luring your soul away;
But it's only a negative virtue
    Until it is tried by fire,
And the life that is worth the honour on earth
    Is the one that resists desire.

By the cynic, the sad, the fallen,
    Who had no strength for the strife,
The world's highway is cumbered to-day -
    They make u...

    I made my bed beneath the pines
    Where the sea washed the sandy bars;
    I heard the music of the winds,
    And blest the aureate face of Mars.
    All night a lilac splendor throve
    Above the heaven's shadowy verge;
    And in my heart the voice of love
    Kept music with the dreaming surge.

    A little maid was at my side,
    She slept, I scarcely slept at all;
    Until toward the morning-tide
    A dream possessed me with its thrall.
    She sweetly breathed; around my breast
    I felt her warmth like drowsy bliss,
    Then came the vision of unrest,
    I saw your face and felt your kiss.

    I woke and knew with what dismay
    She read my secret and surprise;
    She only said, "Again 'tis day!
    How red your...

We was in a crump-'ole, 'im and me;
Fightin' wiv our bayonets was we;
Fightin' 'ard as 'ell we was,
Fightin' fierce as fire because
It was 'im or me as must be downed;
'E was twice as big as me;
I was 'arf the weight of 'e;
We was like a terryer and a 'ound.

'Struth! But 'e was sich a 'andsome bloke.
Me, I'm 'andsome as a chunk o' coke.
Did I give it 'im? Not 'arf!
Why, it fairly made me laugh,
'Cos 'is bloomin' bellows wasn't sound.
Couldn't fight for monkey nuts.
Soon I gets 'im in the guts,
There 'e lies a-floppin' on the ground.

In I goes to finish up the job.
Quick 'e throws 'is 'ands above 'is nob;
Speakin' English good as me:
"'Tain't no use to kill," says 'e;
"Can't yer tyke me prisoner instead?"
"Why, I'd like to, ...

    1
    Terrorism -
    left-wing nerd (twin
    grapefruits in his hand
    gives it away)
    winging a stiletto shoe,
    spitting on an ashcan
    to bring up a bruise or two.

    2
    Visions are steadier -
    I see in the shimmer
    blue veins to target,
    a silhouette of the rich,
    fur wraps in their Bentleys
    time to bring up tar,
    kick ass in Knightsbridge
    with my holiday bomb blast.

    3
    Bag snatching can be dangerous
    let go if you don't want to be
    dragged over cobbles behind a Vespa.

    4
    The Harrod's sign, "please keep
    moving" meant business.

    5
    Pretoria calls as does Manila.
    Later, perhaps, Jerusalem, Beirut,
    Rawa...

Oh, the brow that has never been shaded by care
The rosewreath of pleasure may smilingly wear,
And the heart that is wholly a stranger to gloom,
'Mid the din of existence may fearlessly bloom;
But the one that is blighted by sadness and pain,
And blighted too rudely to blossom again,
When its hold on a reed-like support is resigned.
Nor peace, nor composure, nor solace can find,
Nor strength to submit to the chastening rod,
Save only in stillness alone with its God!

And oh! if a blissful communion with Heaven
To earth-wearied spirits has ever been given,
If the loved and the distant, the lost and the dead,
Who smiled on our pathway a moment, and fled,
Who darkened our sunshine and saddened our mirth,
To prove that the soul has no home upon earth,
...

This stone can tell the story of my life,
What was my birth, to whom I was a wife:
In teeming years, how soon my sun was set.
Where now I rest, these may be known by jet.
For other things, my many children be
The best and truest chronicles of me.

When from the prison of its body free,
My soul shall soar, before it goes to Thee,
Thou great Creator, give it power to know
The language of all sad, dumb things below.
And let me dwell a season still on earth
Before I rise to some diviner birth:
Invisible to men, yet seen and heard,
And understood by sorrowing beast and bird -
Invisible to men, yet always near,
To whisper counsel in the human ear:
And with a spell to stay the hunter's hand
And stir his heart to know and understand;
To plant within the dull or thoughtless mind
The great religious impulse to be kind.

Before I prune my spirit wings and rise
To seek my loved ones in their paradise,
Yea! even before I hasten on to see
That lost child's face, so like a dream to me,
I would be given ...

The little letters dance across the page,
Flaunt and retire, and trick the tired eyes;
Sick of the strain, the glaring light, I rise
Yawning and stretching, full of empty rage
At the dull maunderings of a long dead sage,
Fling up the windows, fling aside his lies;
Choosing to breathe, not stifle and be wise,
And let the air pour in upon my cage.

The breeze blows cool and there are stars and stars
Beyond the dark, soft masses of the elms
That whisper things in windy tones and light.
They seem to wheel for dim, celestial wars;
And I -- I hear the clash of silver helms
Ring icy-clear from the far deeps of night.

    This is the land!
It lies outstretched a vision of delight,
Bent like a shield between the silver seas
It flashes back the hauteur of the sun;
Yet teems with humblest beauties, still a part
Of its Titanic and ebullient heart.

Land of the glacial, lonely mountain ranges,
Where nothing haps save vast Æonian changes,
The slow moraine, the avalanche's wings,
Summer and Sun, - the elemental things,
Pulses of Awe, - Winter and Night and the lightnings.
Land of the pines that rear their dusky spars
A ready midnight for the earliest stars.
The land of rivers, rivulets, and rills,
Straining incessant everyway to the sea
With their white thunder harnessed in the mills,
Turning one wealth to another wealth perpetually;
Spinning the lightning with dynamic s...

When along the pavement,
Palpitating flames of life,
People flicker round me,
I forget my bereavement,
The gap in the great constellation,
The place where a star used to be.

Nay, though the pole-star
Is blown out like a candle,
And all the heavens are wandering in disarray,
Yet when pleiads of people are
Deployed around me, and I see
The street's long outstretched Milky Way,

When people flicker down the pavement,
I forget my bereavement.

'Twixt a smile and a tear,
'Twixt a song and a sigh,
'Twixt the day and the dark,
When the night draweth nigh.

Ah, sunshine may fade
From the heavens above,
No twilight have we
To the day of our love.

I

Beyond the years the answer lies,
Beyond where brood the grieving skies
And Night drops tears.
Where Faith rod-chastened smiles to rise
And doff its fears,
And carping Sorrow pines and dies--
Beyond the years.


II

Beyond the years the prayer for rest
Shall beat no more within the breast;
The darkness clears,
And Morn perched on the mountain's crest
Her form uprears--
The day that is to come is best,
Beyond the years.


III

Beyond the years the soul shall find
That endless peace for which it pined,
For light appears,
And to the eyes that still were blind
With blood and tears,
Their sight shall come all unconfined
Beyond the years.

I.

Let me forget her face!
So fresh, so lovely! the abiding place
Of tears and smiles that won my heart to her;
Of dreams and moods that moved my soul's dim deeps,
As strong winds stir
Dark waters where the starlight glimmering sleeps.
In every lineament the mind can trace,
Let me forget her face!

II.

Let me forget her form!
Soft and seductive, that contained each charm,
Each grace the sweet word maidenhood implies;
And all the sensuous youth of line and curve,
That makes men's eyes
Bondsmen of beauty eager still to serve.
In every part that memory can warm,
Let me forget her form!

III.

Let me forget her, God!
Her who made honeyed love a bitter rod
To scourge my heart with, barren with despair;
To tea...

I.

January

Shaggy with skins of frost-furred gray and drab,
Harsh, hoary hair framing a bitter face,
He bends above the dead Year's fireplace
Nursing the last few embers of its slab
To sullen glow: from pinched lips, cold and crab,
The starved flame shrinks; his breath, like a menáce,
Shrieks in the flue, fluttering its sooty lace,
Piercing the silence like an icy stab.
From rheum-gnarled knees he rises, slow with cold,
And to the frost-bound window, muttering, goes,
With iron knuckles knocking on the pane;
And, lo! outside, his minions manifold
Answer the summons: wolf-like shapes of woes,
Hunger and suffering, trooping to his train.

II.

February

Gray-muffled to his eyes in rags of cloud,
His whip of winds forever ...

I need no assurances--I am a man who is preoccupied, of his own Soul;
I do not doubt that from under the feet, and beside the hands and face I am cognizant of, are now looking faces I am not cognizant of--calm and actual faces;
I do not doubt but the majesty and beauty of the world are latent in any iota of the world;
I do not doubt I am limitless, and that the universes are limitless-- in vain I try to think how limitless;
I do not doubt that the orbs, and the systems of orbs, play their swift sports through the air on purpose--and that I shall one day be eligible to do as much as they, and more than they;
I do not doubt that temporary affairs keep on and on, millions of years;
I do not doubt interiors have their interiors, and exteriors have their exteriors--and that the eye-sight has another eye-sight, and...

Persian, you rise
Aflame from climes of sacrifice
Where adulators sue,
And prostrate man, with brow abased,
Adheres to rites whose tenor traced
All worship hitherto.

Arch type of sway,
Meetly your over-ruling ray
You fling from Asia's plain,
Whence flashed the javelins abroad
Of many a wild incursive horde
Led by some shepherd Cain.

Mid terrors dinned
Gods too came conquerors from your Ind,
The book of Brahma throve;
They came like to the scythed car,
Westward they rolled their empire far,
Of night their purple wove.

Chemist, you breed
In orient climes each sorcerous weed
That energizes dream--
Transmitted, spread in myths and creeds,
Houris and hells, delirious screeds
And Calvin's last extreme.

...

With what a glory comes and goes the year!
The buds of spring, those beautiful harbingers
Of sunny skies and cloudless times, enjoy
Life's newness, and earth's garnitude spread out
And when the silver habit of the clouds
Comes down upon the autumn sun, and with
A sober gladness the old year takes up
His bright inheritance of golden fruits,
A pomp and pageant fill the splendid scene.

    There is a beautiful spirit breathing now
Its mellow richness on the clustered trees,
And, from a beaker full of richest dyes,
Pouring new glory on the autumn woods,
And dipping in warm light the pillared clouds.
Morn on the mountain, like a summer bird,
Lifts up her purple wing; and in the vales
The gentle wind, a sweet and passionate wooer,
Kisses the blushing leap...