Life

I took a year out of my life and story -
A dead year, and said, "I will hew thee a tomb!
'All the kings of the nations lie in glory;'
Cased in cedar, and shut in a sacred gloom;
Swathed in linen, and precious unguents old;
Painted with cinnabar, and rich with gold.

"Silent they rest, in solemn salvatory,
Sealed from the moth and the owl and the flitter-mouse -
    Each with his name on his brow.
'All the kings of the nations lie in glory,
Every one in his own house:'
    Then why not thou?

"Year," I said, "thou shalt not lack
Bribes to bar thy coming back;
Doth old Egypt wear her best
In the chambers of her rest?
Doth she take to her last bed
Beaten gold, and glorious red?
Envy not! for thou wilt wear
In the dark a shroud as fair;

written on the first of January, 1794

Come melancholy Moralizer--come!
Gather with me the dark and wintry wreath;
        With me engarland now
        The SEPULCHRE OF TIME!

Come Moralizer to the funeral song!
I pour the dirge of the Departed Days,
        For well the funeral song
        Befits this solemn hour.

But hark! even now the merry bells ring round
With clamorous joy to welcome in this day,
        This consecrated day,
        To Mirth and Indolence.

Mortal! whilst Fortune with benignant hand
Fills to the brim thy cup of happiness,
        Whilst her unclouded sun
        Illumes thy summer day,

Canst thou rejoice--rejoice that Time flies fast?
That Night shall shadow soon thy summer sun?
        That s...

Yes, now the longing is o’erpast,
Which, dogg’d by fear and fought by shame,
Shook her weak bosom day and night,
Consum’d her beauty like a flame,
And dimm’d it like the desert blast.
And though the curtains hide her face,
Yet were it lifted to the light
The sweet expression of her brow
Would charm the gazer, till his thought
Eras’d the ravages of time,
Fill’d up the hollow cheek, and brought
A freshness back as of her prime,
So healing is her quiet now.
So perfectly the lines express
A placid, settled loveliness;
Her youngest rival’s freshest grace.

But ah, though peace indeed is here,
And ease from shame, and rest from fear;
Though nothing can dismarble now
The smoothness of that limpid brow;
Yet is a calm like this, in truth,
...

You are no longer young,
Nor are you very old.
There are homes where those belong.
You know you do not fit
When you observe the cold
Stares of those who sit

In bath-chairs or the park
(A stick, then, at their side)
Or find yourself in the dark
And see the lovers who,
In love and in their stride,
Don't even notice you.

This is a time to begin
Your life. It could be new.
The sheer not fitting in
With the old who envy you
And the young who want to win,
Not knowing false from true,

Means you have liberty
Denied to their extremes.
At last now you can be
What the old cannot recall
And the young long for in dreams,
Yet still include them all.

Thou hadst no home, and thou couldst see
In every street the windows' light:
Dragging thy limbs about all night,
No window kept a light for thee.

However much thou wert distressed,
Or tired of moving, and felt sick,
Thy life was on the open deck,
Thou hadst no cabin for thy rest.

Thy barque was helpless 'neath the sky,
No pilot thought thee worth his pains
To guide for love or money gains,
Like phantom ships the rich sailed by.

Thy shadow mocked thee night and day,
Thy life's companion, it alone;
It did not sigh, it did not moan,
But mocked thy moves in every way.

In spite of all, the mind had force,
And, like a stream whose surface flows
The wrong way when a strong wind blows,
It underneath maintained its course.

Bountiful Givers,
I look along the years
And see the flowers you threw...
Anemones
And sprigs of gray
Sparse heather of the rocks,
Or a wild violet
Or daisy of a daisied field...
But each your best.

I might have worn them on my breast
To wilt in the long day...
I might have stemmed them in a narrow vase
And watched each petal sallowing...
I might have held them so - mechanically -
Till the wind winnowed all the leaves
And left upon my hands
A little smear of dust.

Instead
I hid them in the soft warm loam
Of a dim shadowed place...
Deep
In a still cool grotto,
Lit only by the memories of stars
And the wide and luminous eyes
Of dead poets
That love me and that I love...
Deep... deep...
Where none...

I have experienc'd
The worst, the World can wreak on me, the worst
That can make Life indifferent, yet disturb
With whisper'd Discontents the dying prayer,
I have beheld the whole of all, wherein
My Heart had any interest in this Life,
To be disrent and torn from off my Hopes
That nothing now is left. Why then live on?
That Hostage, which the world had in it's keeping
Given by me as a Pledge that I would live,
That Hope of Her, say rather, that pure Faith
In her fix'd Love, which held me to keep truce
With the Tyranny of Life, is gone ah! whither?
What boots it to reply? 'tis gone! and now
Well may I break this Pact, this League of Blood
That ties me to myself, and break I shall!

When all my days are ending
And I have no song to sing,
I think I shall not be too old
To stare at everything;
As I stared once at a nursery door
Or a tall tree and a swing.

Wherein God's ponderous mercy hangs
On all my sins and me,
Because He does not take away
The terror from the tree
And stones still shine along the road
That are and cannot be.

Men grow too old for love, my love,
Men grow too old for wine,
But I shall not grow too old to see
Unearthly daylight shine,
Changing my chamber's dust to snow
Till I doubt if it be mine.

Behold, the crowning mercies melt,
The first surprises stay;
And in my dross is dropped a gift
For which I dare not pray:
That a man grow used to grief and joy
But not to night an...

The camp of high-class spielers,
Who sneered in summer dress,
And doo-dah dilettante,
And scornful “venuses”,
House agents, and storekeepers,
All eager they to “bleed”,
The bards who tackled Manly,
Were plucky bards indeed!

With shops that feared to trust them,
And pubs that looked askance;
And prigs who read their verses,
But gave them not a glance;,
When all were vain and selfish,
And editors were hard,
The bard that stuck to Manly
Was sure a mighty bard.

What mattered floors were barren,
And windows curtainless,
And our life seemed to others
But blackguard recklessness?
We wore our clothes for comfort,
We earned our bread alway,
And beer and good tobacco
Came somehow every day.

Came kindred souls to ...

When Ruth was left half desolate,
Her Father took another Mate;
And Ruth, not seven years old,
A slighted child, at her own will
Went wandering over dale and hill,
In thoughtless freedom, bold.

And she had made a pipe of straw,
And music from that pipe could draw
Like sounds of winds and floods;
Had built a bower upon the green,
As if she from her birth had been
An infant of the woods.

Beneath her father's roof, alone
She seemed to live; her thoughts her own;
Herself her own delight;
Pleased with herself, nor sad, nor gay;
And, passing thus the live-long day,
She grew to woman's height.

There came a Youth from Georgia's shore
A military casque he wore,
With splendid feathers drest;
He brought them from the Cherokees;<...

THE POET SINGS TO HIS POET

From dawn to dusk, and from dusk to dawn,
    We two are sundered always, sweet.
A few stars shake o'er the rocky lawn
    And the cold sea-shore when we meet.
    The twilight comes with thy shadowy feet.

We are not day and night, my Fair,
    But one. It is an hour of hours.
And thoughts that are not otherwhere
    Are thought here 'mid the blown sea-flowers,
    This meeting and this dusk of ours.

Delight has taken Pain to her heart,
    And there is dusk and stars for these.
Oh, linger, linger! They would not part;
    And the wild wind comes from over-seas
    With a new song to the olive trees.

And when we meet by the sounding pine
    Sleep draws near to his dreamless brother.
And when thy swe...

N.B. - This sequence of poems has appeared in former editions under the title of 'Love Platonic.'


I

1
Surely at last, O Lady, the sweet moon
That bringeth in the happy singing weather
Groweth to pearly queendom, and full soon
Shall Love and Song go hand in hand together;
For all the pain that all too long hath waited
In deep dumb darkness shall have speech at last,
And the bright babe Death gave the Love he mated
Shall leap to light and kiss the weeping past.

For all the silver morning is a-glimmer
With gleaming spears of great Apollo's host,
And the night fadeth like a spent out swimmer
Hurled from the headlands of some shining coast.
O, happy soul, thy mouth at last is singing,
Drunken with wine of morning's azure deep,
Si...

    Children of Fate, in the same breath
    Created were they, Love and Death.
    Such fair creations ne'er were seen,
    Or here below, or in the heaven serene.
    The first, the source of happiness,
    The fount whence flows the greatest bliss
    That in the sea of being e'er is found;
    The last each sorrow gently lulls,
    Each harsh decree of Fate annuls.
    Fair child with beauty crowned,
    Sweet to behold, not such
    As cowards paint her in their fright,
    She in young Love's companionship
    Doth often take delight,
    As they o'er mortal paths together fly,
    Chief comforters of every loyal heart.
    Nor ever is the heart more wise
    Than when Love smites it, nor defies
    More scornfully life's misery,
    And f...

Oh dread uncertainty!
Life-wasting agony!
How dost thou pain the heart,
Causing such tears to start,
As sorrow never shed
O'er hopes for ever fled.
For memory hoards up joy
Beyond Time's dull alloy;
Pleasures that once have been
Shed light upon the scene,
As setting suns fling back
A bright and glowing track,
To show they once have cast
A glory o'er the past;
But thou, tormenting fiend,
Beneath Hope's pinions screened,
Leagued with distrust and pain,
Makest her promise vain;
Weaving in life's fair crown
Thistles instead of down.

Who would not rather know
Present than coming woe?
For certain sorrow brings
A healing in its wings.
The softening touch of years
Still dries the mourner's tears;
For human minds ...

            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...

I.

Oh for a field, my friend; oh for a field!
    I ask no more
    Than one plain field, shut in by hedgerows four,
Contentment sweet to yield.
For I am not fastidious,
    And, with a proud demeanour, I
Will not affect invidious
    Distinctions about scenery.
I sigh not for the fir trees where they rise
Against Italian skies,
    Swiss lakes, or Scottish heather,
    Set off with glorious weather;
            Such sights as these
            The most exacting please;
But I, lone wanderer in London streets,
Where every face one meets
            Is full of care,
            And seems to wear
            A troubled air,
            Of being late for some affair
    Of life or death:--thus I, ev'n I,
Long for a field of gras...

1852

Where, oh where are the visions of morning,
Fresh as the dews of our prime?
Gone, like tenants that quit without warning,
Down the back entry of time.

Where, oh where are life's lilies and roses,
Nursed in the golden dawn's smile?
Dead as the bulrushes round little Moses,
On the old banks of the Nile.

Where are the Marys, and Anns, and Elizas,
Loving and lovely of yore?
Look in the columns of old Advertisers, -
Married and dead by the score.

Where the gray colts and the ten-year-old fillies,
Saturday's triumph and joy?
Gone, like our friend ( - Greek - ) Achilles,
Homer's ferocious old boy.

Die-away dreams of ecstatic emotion,
Hopes like young eagles at play,
Vows of unheard-of and endless devotion,
How ye...

Coomb-Firtrees say that Life is a moan,
And Clyffe-hill Clump says "Yea!"
But Yell'ham says a thing of its own:
It's not "Gray, gray
Is Life alway!"
That Yell'ham says,
Nor that Life is for ends unknown.

It says that Life would signify
A thwarted purposing:
That we come to live, and are called to die,
Yes, that's the thing
In fall, in spring,
That Yell'ham says:-
"Life offers - to deny!"

1902.