Loneliness

    "All that I ask," says Love, "is just to stand
    And gaze, unchided, deep in thy dear eyes;
    For in their depths lies largest Paradise.
Yet, if perchance one pressure of thy hand
    Be granted me, then joy I thought complete
    Were still more sweet.

    "All that I ask," says Love, "all that I ask,
    Is just thy hand-clasp.    Could I brush thy cheek
    As zephyrs brush a rose leaf, words are weak
To tell the bliss in which my soul would bask.
    There is no language but would desecrate
    A joy so great.

    "All that I ask, is just one tender touch
    Of that soft cheek.    Thy pulsing palm in mine,
    Thy dark eyes lifted in a trust divine,
And those curled lips that tempt me overmuch
    Turned where I may not seize the supre...

Where first by Eden Tree
The Four Great Rivers ran,
To each was appointed a Man
Her Prince and Ruler to be.

But after this was ordained
(The ancient legends' tell),
There came dark Israel,
For whom no River remained.

Then He Whom the Rivers obey
Said to him: "Fling on the ground
A handful of yellow clay,
And a Fifth Great River shall run,
Mightier than these Four,
In secret the Earth around;
And Her secret evermore,
Shall be shown to thee and thy Race."

So it was said and done.
And, deep in the veins of Earth,
And, fed by a thousand springs
That comfort the market-place,
Or sap the power of King,
The Fifth Great River had birth,
Even as it was foretold,
The Secret River of Gold!

And Israel laid do...

        --in Metii decenaat Judicis aures.
        HORAT.


As snug in his bed Lord Henley lay,
    Revolving much his own renown,
And hoping to add thereto a ray
    By putting duets and anthems down,

Sudden a strain of choral sounds
    Mellifluous o'er his senses stole;
Whereat the Reformer muttered "Zounds!"
    For he loathed sweet music with all his soul.

Then starting up he saw a sight
    That well might shock so learned a snorer--
Saint Cecilia robed in light
    With a portable organ slung before her.

And round were Cherubs on rainbow wings,
    Who, his Lordship feared, might tire of flitting,
So begged they'd sit--but ah! poor things,
    They'd, none of them, got the means of sitting.

"Having hear...

A Picture by S.R. Gifford, and owned by E.B.
Included in the N.A. Exhibition, April, 1865.


All feeling hearts must feel for him
Who felt this picture. Presage dim -
Dim inklings from the shadowy sphere
Fixed him and fascinated here.

A demon-cloud like the mountain one
Burst on a spirit as mild
As this urned lake, the home of shades.
But Shakspeare's pensive child

Never the lines had lightly scanned,
Steeped in fable, steeped in fate;
The Hamlet in his heart was 'ware,
Such hearts can antedate.

No utter surprise can come to him
Who reaches Shakspeare's core;
That which we seek and shun is there -
Man's final lore.

Grief may have thought it was grief.
Care may have thought it was care.
They were welcome to their belief,
The over important pair.

No, it took all the snows that clung
To the low roof over his bed,
Beginning when he was young,
To induce the one snow on his head.

But whenever the roof came white
The head in the dark below
Was a shade less the color of night,
A shade more the color of snow.

Grief may have thought it was grief.
Care may have thought it was care.
But neither one was the thief
Of his raven color of hair.

When winter's cold and summer's heat
Shall come and go again,
A hundred years will be complete
Since Marion crossed the main,
And brought unto this wild retreat
His dark-eyed wife of Spain.

He was the founder of a free
And independent band,
Who lit the fires of liberty
The revolution fanned:--
His patent of nobility
Read in the ransomed land!

Around his deeds a lustre throngs,
A heritage designed
To teach the world to spurn the wrongs
Once threatened all mankind:--
To his posterity belongs
The peerage of the mind.

    Thou Poet, who, like any lark,
        Dost whet thy beak and trill
    From misty morn till murky dark,
        Nor ever pipe thy fill:
    Hast thou not, in thy cheery note,
        One poor chirp to confer -
    One verseful twitter to devote
        Unto the Shoe-ma-ker?

    At early dawn he doth peg in
        His noble work and brave;
    And eke from cark and wordly sin
        He seeketh soles to save;
    And all day long, with quip and song,
        Thus stitcheth he the way
    Our feet may know the right from wrong,
        Nor ever go a stray.

    Soak kip in mind the Shoe-ma-ker,
        Nor slight his lasting fame:
    Alway he waxeth tenderer
        In warmth of our acclaim; -
    Aye, more than any artisan<...

    The Rev. Percy Ferguson, patrician
    Vicar of Christ, companion of the strong,
    And member of the inner shrine, where men
    Observe the rituals of the golden calf;
    A dilettante, and writer for the press
    Upon such themes as optimism, order,
    Obedience, beauty, law, while Elenor Murray's
    Life was being weighed by Merival
    Preached in disparagement of Merival
    Upon a fatal Sunday, as it chanced,
    Too near to doom's day for the clergyman.
    For, as the word had gone about that waste
    In lives preoccupied this Merival,
    And many talked of waste, and spoke a life
    Where waste had been in whole or part - the pulpit
    Should take a hand, thought Ferguson. And so
    The Reverend Percy Ferguson preached thus
    To a...

Ye holy Towers that shade the wave-worn steep,
Long may ye rear your aged brows sublime,
Though, hurrying silent by, relentless Time
Assail you, and the winds of winter sweep
Round your dark battlements; for far from halls
Of Pride, here Charity hath fixed her seat,
Oft listening, tearful, when the tempests beat
With hollow bodings round your ancient walls;
And Pity, at the dark and stormy hour
Of midnight, when the moon is hid on high,
Keeps her lone watch upon the topmost tower,
And turns her ear to each expiring cry;
Blessed if her aid some fainting wretch may save,
And snatch him cold and speechless from the wave.

If I forget thee, Jerusalem,
Then let my right be forgotten.
Let my right be forgotten, and my left remember.
Let my left remember, and your right close
And your mouth open near the gate.

I shall remember Jerusalem
And forget the forest,my love will remember,
Will open her hair, will close my window,
will forget my right,
Will forget my left.

If the west wind does not come
I'll never forgive the walls,
Or the sea, or myself.
Should my right forget
My left shall forgive,
I shall forget all water,
I shall forget my mother.

If I forget thee, Jerusalem,
Let my blood be forgotten.
I shall touch your forehead,
Forget my own,
My voice change
For the second and last time
To the most terrible of voices,
Or silen...

Thy petals yet are closely curled,
Rose of the world,
Around their scented, golden core;
Nor yet has Summer purpled o'er
Thy tender clusters that begin
To swell within
The dewy vine-leaves' early screen
Of sheltering green.

O hearts that are Love's helpless prey,
While yet you may,
Fly, ere the shaft is on the string!
The fire that now is smouldering
Shall be the conflagration soon
Whose paths are strewn
With torment of blanched lips and eyes
That agonize.

Trudging by Corbie Ridge one winter's night,
(Unless old, hearsay memories tricked his sight),
Along the pallid edge of the quiet sky
He watched a nosing lorry grinding on,
And straggling files of men; when these were gone,
A double limber and six mules went by,
Hauling the rations up through ruts and mud
To trench-lines digged two hundred years ago.
Then darkness hid them with a rainy scud,
And soon he saw the village lights below.

But when he'd told his tale, an old man said
That he'd seen soldiers pass along that hill;
"Poor, silent things, they were the English dead
Who came to fight in France and got their fill."

What would you do wi' a doughter--
    Pray wi' her, bensil(1) her, flout her?--
Say, what would you do wi' a daughter
    That's marra to Bonney(2) hissen?

I prayed wi' her first, of a Sunday,
    When chapil was lowsin' for t' neet;
An' I laid all her cockaloft marlocks(3)
    'Fore th' Almighty's mercy-seat.
When I looked for her tears o' repentance,
    I jaloused(4) that I saw her laugh;
An' she said that t' Powers o' Justice
    Would scatter my words like chaff.

Then I bensilled her hard in her cham'er,
    As I bensils owd Neddy i' t' cart.
If prayers willent teach thee, my dolly,
    Happen whip-stock will mak thy tears start.
But she stood there as chuff as a mawmet,(5)
    Not one chunt'rin(6) word did she say:
But she hoped th...

The heart asks pleasure first,
And then, excuse from pain;
And then, those little anodynes
That deaden suffering;

And then, to go to sleep;
And then, if it should be
The will of its Inquisitor,
The liberty to die.

The Maiden caught me in the wild,
Where I was dancing merrily;
She put me into her Cabinet,
And lock'd me up with a golden key.

This cabinet is form'd of gold
And pearl and crystal shining bright,
And within it opens into a world
And a little lovely moony night.

Another England there I saw
Another London with its Tower,
Another Thames and other hills,
And another pleasant Surrey bower.

Another Maiden like herself,
Translucent, lovely, shining clear,
Threefold each in the other clos'd
O, what a pleasant trembling fear!

O, what a smile! a threefold smile
Fill'd me, that like a flame I burn'd;
I bent to kiss the lovely Maid,
And found a threefold kiss return'd.

I strove to seize the inmost form
With ardor fie...

Simple you were, and good. No kindlier heart
    Beat than the heart within your gentle breast.
    Labour you had, and happiness, and rest,
And were the maid of nations. Now you start
To feverish life, feeling the poisonous smart
    Upon your lips of harlot lips close-pressed,
    The lips of her who stands among the rest
With greasy righteous soul and rotten heart.
O sunrise land, O land of gentleness,
    What madness drives you to lust's dreadful bed?
O thrice accursed England, wretchedness
    For ever be on you, of whom 'tis said,
Prostitute plague-struck, that you catch and kiss
    Innocent lives to make them foully dead!

Where the short-legged Esquimaux
Waddle in the ice and snow,
And the playful Polar bear
Nips the hunter unaware;
Where by day they track the ermine,
And by night another vermin,
Segment of the frigid zone,
Where the temperature alone
Warms on St. Elias’ cone;
Polar dock, where Nature slips
From the ways her icy ships;
Land of fox and deer and sable,
Shore end of our western cable,
Let the news that flying goes
Thrill through all your Arctic floes,
And reverberate the boast
From the cliffs off Beechey’s coast,
Till the tidings, circling round
Every bay of Norton Sound,
Throw the vocal tide-wave back
To the isles of Kodiac.
Let the stately Polar bears
Waltz around the pole in pairs,
And the walrus, in his glee,
Bare his tu...

My Angel Sister, tho' thy lovely form
    Perish'd in Youth's gay morning, yet is mine
    This precious Ringlet! - still the soft hairs shine,
    Still glow the nut-brown tints, all bright and warm
With sunny gleam! - Alas! each kindred charm
    Vanish'd long since; deep in the silent shrine
    Wither'd to shapeless Dust! - and of their grace
    Memory alone retains the faithful trace. -
Dear Lock, had thy sweet Owner liv'd, ere now
    Time on her brow had faded thee! - My care
    Screen'd from the sun and dew thy golden glow;
And thus her early beauty dost thou wear,
    Thou all of that fair Frame my love cou'd save
    From the resistless ravage of the GRAVE!