Loneliness

Stephen, wake up! There's some one at the gate.
Quick, to the window ... Oh, you'll be too late!
I hear the front door opening quietly.
Did you forget, last night, to turn the key?
A foot is on the stairs, nay, just outside
The very room, the door is opening wide...
Stephen, wake up, wake up! Who's there? Who's there?
I only feel a cold wind in my hair...
Have I been dreaming, Stephen? Husband, wake
And comfort me: I think my heart will break.
I never knew you sleep so sound and still....
O my heart's love, why is your hand so chill?

The soonest mended, nothing said;
And help may rise from east or west;
But my two hands are lumps of lead,
My heart sits leaden in my breast.

O north wind swoop not from the north,
O south wind linger in the south,
Oh come not raving raging forth,
To bring my heart into my mouth;

For I've a husband out at sea,
Afloat on feeble planks of wood;
He does not know what fear may be;
I would have told him if I could.

I would have locked him in my arms,
I would have hid him in my heart;
For oh! the waves are fraught with harms,
And he and I so far apart.

Our Peter, who's famed as an eater of things,
Is a miniature dragon without any wings.
He can gallop or trot, he can amble or jog,
But he flies like a flash when he's after his prog;
And the slaves who adore him, whatever his mood,
    Say that nothing is fleeter
    Than Peter the eater,
Than Peter pursuing his food.

He considers the garden his absolute own:
It's the place where a digger can bury a bone.
Then he tests his pin-teeth on a pansy or rose,
Spreading ruin and petals wherever he goes;
And his mistress declares, when he's nibbled for hours,
    That nothing is sweeter
    Than Peter the eater,
The resolute eater of flowers.

Having finished his dinner he wheedles the cook,
Picks a coal from the scuttle or tackles a book,
Or devot...

    '"Healfast, healfast, ye hero wounds;
    O knight, be quickly strong!
    Beloved strife
    For fame and life,
    Oh, tarry not too long!"'

DUCHOMMAR, MORNA.

DUCHOMMAR.

[Footnote: The signification of the names in this fragment are; Dubhchomar, a black well-shaped man. Muirne or Morna, a woman beloved by all. Cormac-cairbre, an unequalled and rough warriour. Cromleach, a crooked hill. Mugruch, a surly gloomy man. Tarman, thunder. Moinie, soft in temper and person.]

Morna, thou fairest of women,
daughter of Cormac-Carbre!
why in the circle of stones, in the cave
of the rock, alone? The stream murmureth
hoarsely. The blast groaneth
in the aged tree. The lake is troubled
before thee. Dark are the clouds of
the sky. But thou art like snow on
the heath. Thy hair like a thin cloud
of gold on the top of Cromleach. Thy
breasts like two smooth rocks on the hill
which is seen from the stream of Bran...

Oh, have you heard what hapt of late?
    If not, come lend an ear,
While sad I state the piteous fate
    Of the Reverend Pamphleteer.

All praised his skilful jockeyship,
    Loud rung the Tory cheer,
While away, away, with spur and whip,
    Went the Reverend Pamphleteer.

The nag he rode--how could it err?
    'Twas the same that took, last year,
That wonderful jump to Exeter
    With the Reverend Pamphleteer.

Set a beggar on horseback, wise men say,
    The course he will take is clear:
And in that direction lay the way
    Of the Reverend Pamphleteer,

"Stop, stop," said Truth, but vain her cry--
    Left far away in the rear,
She heard but the usual gay "Good-by"
    From her faithless Pamphleteer.
...

When first my way to fair I took
Few pence in purse had I,
And long I used to stand and look
At things I could not buy.

Now times are altered:    if I care
To buy a thing, I can;
The pence are here and here’s the fair,
But where’s the lost young man?

- To think that two and two are four
And neither five nor three
The heart of man has long been sore
And long ‘tis like to be.

"Art Thou He that should come?"

Jesus, the Lamb of God, gone forth to heal and bless.
Calm lie the desert pools in a fair wilderness;
Wind-shaken moves the reed, so moves His voice the soul,
Sick folk surprised of joy, wax when they hear it, whole.

Calm all His mastering might, calm smiles the desert waste;
Peace, peace, He shall not cry, nay, He shall not make haste;
Heaven gazes, hell beneath moved for Him, moans and stirs -
Lo, John lies fast in prison, sick for his messengers.

John, the forerunner, John, the desert's tameless son,
Cast into loathèd thrall, his use and mission done;
John from his darkness sends a cry, but not a plea;
Not, "Hast Thou felt my need?" but only, "Art Thou He?"

Unspoken pines his hope, grown weak in lingering dole...

A sudden blow: the great wings beating still
Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed
By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,
He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.
How can those terrified vague fingers push
The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?
And how can body, laid in that white rush,
But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?
A shudder in the loins engenders there
The broken wall, the burning roof and tower
And Agamemnon dead.
Being so caught up,
So mastered by the brute blood of the air,
Did she put on his knowledge with his power
Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?

Died at Hartford, May 19th, 1862.


Frail stranger at the gate of life,
    Too weak to grasp its key,
O'er whom the Sun on car of gold
Hath but a few times risen and roll'd,
    Unnoticed still by thee,--

To whom the toil of breath is new,
    In this our vale of time
Whose feet are yet unskill'd to tread
The grassy carpet round thee spread
    At the soft, vernal prime,--

Deep sympathy and pitying care
    Regard thy helpless moan,
And 'neath thy forehead arching high
Methinks, the brightly opening eye
    Doth search for something gone.

Yon slumberer 'mid the snowy flowers,
    With young, unfrosted hair,
Awakes not at the mournful sound
Of bird-like voices murmuring round
    "Why sleeps our Mother there?<...