Life

"Tha wodn't goa an leave me, Jim,
All lonely by mysel?
My een at th' varry thowts grow dim -
Aw connot say farewell.

Tha vow'd tha couldn't live unless
Tha saw me every day,
An' said tha knew noa happiness
When aw wor foorced away.

An th' tales tha towld, I know full weel,
Wor true as gospel then;
What is it, lad, 'at ma's thee feel
Soa strange - unlike thisen?

Ther's raam enuff, aw think tha'll find,
I'th taan whear tha wor born,
To mak a livin, if tha'll mind
To ha' faith i' to-morn.

Aw've mony a time goan to mi wark
Throo claads o' rain and sleet;
All's seem'd soa dull, soa drear, an' dark,
It ommust mud be neet.

But then, when braikfast time's come raand,
Aw've seen th' sun's cheerin ray,
An' th' ...

Ah, thankless! canst thou envy him who gains
    The Stoic's cold and indurate repose?
    Thou! with thy lively sense of bliss and woes! -
    From a false balance of life's joys and pains
Thou deem'st him happy. - Plac'd 'mid fair domains,
    Where full the river down the valley flows,
    As wisely might'st thou wish thy home had rose
    On the parch'd surface of unwater'd plains,
For that, when long the heavy rain descends,
    Bursts over guardian banks their whelming tide! -
    Seldom the wild and wasteful Flood extends,
But, spreading plenty, verdure, beauty wide,
    The cool translucent Stream perpetual bends,
    And laughs the Vale as the bright waters glide.

Thou wast that all to me, love,
For which my soul did pine,
A green isle in the sea, love,
A fountain and a shrine,
All wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers,
And all the flowers were mine.

Ah, dream too bright to last!
Ah, starry Hope! that didst arise
But to be overcast!
A voice from out the Future cries,
"On! on!", but o'er the Past
(Dim gulf!) my spirit hovering lies
Mute, motionless, aghast!

For, alas! alas! with me
The light of Life is o'er!
"No more, no more, no more",
(Such language holds the solemn sea
To the sands upon the shore)
Shall bloom the thunder-blasted tree,
Or the stricken eagle soar!

And all my days are trances,
And all my nightly dreams
Are where thy dark eye glances,
And where thy foo...

He wakes, who never thought to wake again,
Who held the end was Death. He opens eyes
Slowly, to one long livid oozing plain
Closed down by the strange eyeless heavens. He lies;
And waits; and once in timeless sick surmise
Through the dead air heaves up an unknown hand,
Like a dry branch. No life is in that land,
Himself not lives, but is a thing that cries;
An unmeaning point upon the mud; a speck
Of moveless horror; an Immortal One
Cleansed of the world, sentient and dead; a fly
Fast-stuck in grey sweat on a corpse's neck.

I thought when love for you died, I should die.
It's dead. Alone, most strangely, I live on.

Oh nature! though the blast is yelling,
    Loud roaring through the bending tree,
There's sorrow in man's darksome dwelling,
    There's rapture still with thee!

I gaze upon the clouds wind-driven,
    The white storm-crested deep;
My heart with human cares is riven--
    O'er these--I cannot weep.

'Tis not the rush of wave or wind
    That wakes my anxious fears,
That presses on my troubled mind,
    And fills my eyes with tears;

I feel the icy breath of sorrow
    My ardent spirit chill,
The dark--dark presage of the morrow,
    The sense of coming ill.

I hear the mighty billows rave;
    There's music in their roar,
When strong in wrath the wind-lashed wave
    Springs on the groaning shore;

A solemn pleasu...

If some day this body of mine were burned
(It found no favour alas! with you)
And the ashes scattered abroad, unurned,
Would Love die also, would Thought die too?
    But who can answer, or who can trust,
    No dreams would harry the windblown dust?

Were I laid away in the furrows deep
Secure from jackal and passing plough,
Would your eyes not follow me still through sleep
Torment me then as they torture now?
    Would you ever have loved me, Golden Eyes,
    Had I done aught better or otherwise?

Was I overspeechful, or did you yearn
When I sat silent, for songs or speech?
Ah, Beloved, I had been so apt to learn,
So apt, had you only cared to teach.
    But time for silence and song is done,
    You wanted nothing, my Golden Sun!

W...

The autumn afternoon is dying o'er
    The quiet western valley where I lie
Beneath the maples on the river shore,
    Where tinted leaves, blue waters and fair sky
    Environ all; and far above some birds are flying by

To seek their evening haven in the breast
    And calm embrace of silence, while they sing
Te Deums to the night, invoking rest
    For busy chirping voice and tired wing -
    And in the hush of sleeping trees their sleeping cradles swing.

In forest arms the night will soonest creep,
    Where sombre pines a lullaby intone,
Where Nature's children curl themselves to sleep,
    And all is still at last, save where alone
    A band of black, belated crows arrive from lands unknown.

Strange sojourn has been theirs since waking day,<...

In this lone, open glade I lie,
Screen'd by deep boughs on either hand;
And at its end, to stay the eye,
Those black-crown'd, red-boled pine-trees stand!

Birds here make song, each bird has his,
Across the girdling city's hum.
How green under the boughs it is!
How thick the tremulous sheep-cries come!

Sometimes a child will cross the glade
To take his nurse his broken toy;
Sometimes a thrush flit overhead
Deep in her unknown day's employ.

Here at my feet what wonders pass,
What endless, active life is here!
What blowing daisies, fragrant grass!
An air-stirr'd forest, fresh and clear.

Scarce fresher is the mountain-sod
Where the tired angler lies, stretch'd out,
And, eased of basket and of rod,
Counts his day's spoil, the ...

Face in the tomb, that lies so still,
    May I draw near,
And watch your sleep and love you,
    Without word or tear.

You smile, your eyelids flicker;
    Shall I tell
How the world goes that lost you?
    Shall I tell?

Ah! love, lift not your eyelids;
    'Tis the same
Old story that we laughed at, -
    Still the same.

We knew it, you and I,
    We knew it all:
Still is the small the great,
    The great the small;

Still the cold lie quenches
    The flaming truth,
And still embattled age
    Wars against youth.

Yet I believe still in the ever-living God
    That fills your grave with perfume,
Writing your name in violets across the sod,
    Shielding your holy face from hail and snow;
 ...

Age yellows my leaf with a daily decline,
And nature turns sick with decay;
Short is the thread on life's spool that is mine,
And few are my wishes to stay:
The bud, that has seen but the sun of an hour,
When storms overtake it may sigh;
But fruit, that has weather'd life's sunshine and shower,
Drops easy and gladly to die.

The prop of my age, and the balm of my pain,
With the length of life's years has declin'd;
And, like the last sheep of the flock on the plain,
She leaves me uneasy behind:
I think of the days when our hearts they were one,
And she of my youth was the pride;
I look for the prop of my age, but it's gone,
And I long to drop down by her side.

I.

Morning

Her rain-kissed face is fresh as rain,
Is cool and fresh as a rain-wet leaf;
She glimmers at my window-pane,
And all my grief
Becomes a feeble rushlight, seen no more
When the gold of her gown sweeps in my door.

II.

Forenoon

Great blurs of woodland waved with wind;
Gray paths, down which October came,
That now November's blasts have thinned
And flecked with fiercer flame,
Are her delight. She loves to lie
Regarding with a gray-blue eye
The far-off hills that hold the sky:
And I I lie and gaze with her
Beyond the autumn woods and ways
Into the hope of coming days,
The spring that nothing shall deter,
That puts my soul in unison
With what's to do and what is done.

III.

N...

Rich meanings of the prophet-Spring adorn,
    Unseen, this colourless sky of folded showers,
    And folded winds; no blossom in the bowers.
A poet's face asleep is this grey morn.

Now in the midst of the old world forlorn
    A mystic child is set in these still hours.
    I keep this time, even before the flowers,
Sacred to all the young and the unborn;

To all the miles and miles of unsprung wheat,
    And to the Spring waiting beyond the portal,
    And to the future of my own young art,

And, among all these things, to you, my sweet,
    My friend, to your calm face and the immortal
    Child tarrying all your life-time in your heart.

Drifting, drifting down the River,
Tawny current and foam-flecked tide,
Sorrowful songs of lonely boatmen,
Mournful forests on either side.

Thine are the outcrops' glittering blocks,
The quartz where the rich pyrites gleam,
The golden treasure of unhewn rocks
And the loose gold in the stream.

But, - the dim vast forests along the shore,
That whisper wonderful things o' nights, -
These are things that I value more,
My beautiful "surface rights."

Drifting, drifting down the River, -
Stars a-tremble about the sky -
Ah, my lover, my heart is breaking,
Breaking, breaking, I know not why.

Why is Love such a sorrowful thing?
This I never could understand;
Pain and passion are linked together,
Ever I find them hand in hand.
...

“Tired with all these, for restful death I cry.”
- SHAKESPEARE: Sonnet 66



Weary of erring in this desert Life,
Weary of hoping hopes for ever vain,
Weary of struggling in all-sterile strife,
Weary of thought which maketh nothing plain,
I close my eyes and calm my panting breath,
And pray to Thee, O ever-quiet Death!
To come and soothe away my bitter pain.

The strong shall strive, may they be victors crowned;
The wise still seek, may they at length find Truth;
The young still hope, may purest love be found
To make their age more glorious than their youth.
For me; my brain is weak, my heart is cold,
My hope and faith long dead; my life but bold
In jest and laugh to parry hateful ruth.

Over me pass the days and months and year...

        Dedication Poem on the reception of the annex to the home for aged colored people, from the bequest of Mr. Edward T. Parker.

Outcast from her home in Syria
    In the lonely, dreary wild;
Heavy hearted, sorrow stricken,
    Sat a mother and her child.

There was not a voice to cheer her
    Not a soul to share her fate;
She was weary, he was fainting,
    And life seemed so desolate.

Far away in sunny Egypt
    Was lone Hagar's native land;
Where the Nile in kingly bounty
    Scatters bread with gracious hand.

In the tents of princely Abram
    She for years had found a home;
Till the stern decree of Sarah
    Sent her forth the wild to roam.

Hour by hour she journeyed onward
    From the shelter of their tent,

Letter IX. To-Morrow.


I.

    O Love! O Love! O Gateway of Delight!
    Thou porch of peace, thou pageant of the prime
    Of all God's creatures! I am here to climb
    Thine upward steps, and daily and by night
    To gaze beyond them, and to search aright
    The far-off splendour of thy track sublime.


II.

    For, in thy precincts, on the further side,
    Beyond the turret where the bells are rung,
    Beyond the chapel where the rites are sung,
    There is a garden fit for any bride.
    O Love! by thee, by thee are sa...

    'Tis noon, the meadow stretches in the sun,
    And every little spear of grass uplifts its slimness to the glow
    To let the heavy-laden bees pass out.

    A stream comes at a snail's pace through the gloom
    Of shrub and fern and brake,
    Leaps o'er a wall, goes singing on to find
    The coolness of the lake.

    A wild rose spreads her greenness on a hedge,
    And flings her tinted blossoms in the air;
    The sweetbriar neighbors with that porcupine
    Of shrubs, the gooseberry; with parasol
    Of white the elderberry shades her head
    And dreams of purple fruit and wine-press chill.

    From off her four warm eggs of mottled shade,
    A bird flies with a call of love and joy
    That wins an answer straight
    From that...

Love lives beyond
The tomb, the earth, which fades like dew!
I love the fond,
The faithful, and the true.

Love lives in sleep,
The happiness of healthy dreams:
Eve's dews may weep,
But love delightful seems.

Tis seen in flowers,
And in the morning's pearly dew;
In earth's green hours,
And in the heaven's eternal blue.

Tis heard in Spring
When light and sunbeams, warm and kind,
On angel's wing
Bring love and music to the mind.

And where is voice,
So young, so beautiful, and sweet
As Nature's choice,
Where Spring and lovers meet?

Love lives beyond
The tomb, the earth, the flowers, and dew.
I love the fond,
The faithful, young and true.