Loneliness

(For Osceola and Pocahontas)


Was it a hundred years ago,
Or was it but yesterday,
When we found the roads that grow
Blossom and song of May?
Maybe it was but yesterday,
Or a hundred years ago.

The roads from Bersabee to Dan
Are old and quickly tire,
But to the heart of child or man
Youth is a fairy fire:
Our youthful roads, they never tire
From Bersabee to Dan.

Ponce de Leon found no spring,
But legend's long, long ruth;
But the grace of God is a magic thing
Abides with chivalrous youth:
The grace of God that brings no ruth
For them who find the spring.

There is a land, there is a May
Beyond the graveyard tree;
Ten thousand years are like a day
Of a youth that we shall see:
Our young hearts pass ...

JANUARY 26, 1885.


    Gordon, the self-refusing,
    Gordon, the lover of God,
    Gordon, the good part choosing,
    Welcome along the road!

    Thou knowest the man, O Father!
    To do thy will he ran;
    Men's praises he did not gather:
    There is scarce such another man!

    Thy black sheep's faithful shepherd
    Who knew not how to flee,
    Is torn by the desert leopard,
    And comes wounded home to thee!

    Home he is coming the faster
    That the way he could not miss:
    In thy arms, oh take him, Master,
    And heal him with a kiss!

    Then give him a thousand cities
    To rule till their evils cease,
    And their wailing minor ditties
    Die in a psalm of peace.

1.

The Land stood still to listen all that day,
And 'mid the hush of many a wrangling tongue,
Forth from the cannon's mouth the signal rung,
That from the earth a man had pass'd away--
A mighty Man, that over many a field
Roll'd back the tide of Battle on the foe,--
Thus far, no further, shall thy billows go.
Who Freedom's falchion did right nobly wield,
Like potter's vessel smiting Tyrants down,
And from Earth's strongest snatching Victory's crown;
Upon the anvil of each Battle-plain,
Still beating swords to ploughshares. All is past,--
The glory, and the labour, and the pain--
The Conqueror is conquer'd here at last.


2.

Yet other men have wrought, and fought, and won,
Cutting with crimson sword Fame's Gordian knot,
And, dyin...

Great and omnipotent that Power must be,
That wings the whirlwind and directs the storm,
That, by a strong convulsion, severed thee,
And wrought this wondrous chasm in thy form.

Man is a dweller, where, in some past day,
Thy rock-ribbed frame majestically rose;
The river rushes on its new-made way,
And all is life where all was once repose.

Pleased, as I gazed upon thy lofty brow
Where Nature seems her loveliest robes to wear,
I felt that Pride at such a scene must bow,
And own its insignificancy there.

Oh Thou, to whom directing worlds is play,
Thy condescension without bounds must be,
If man, the frail ephemera of a day,
Be graciously regarded still by Thee.

Here, as I ponder on Thy mighty deeds,
And marvel at Thy bounteousness t...

        O Abyssinian tree,
        We pray, we pray to thee;
By the glow of thy golden fruit
    And the violet hue of the flower,
        And the greeting mute
        Of thy boughs' salute
    To the stranger who seeks thy bow.

        O Abyssinian tree!
        How the traveller blesses thee
When the light no moon allows,
    And the sunset hour is near,
        And thou bend'st thy boughs
        To kiss his brows.
    Saying, "Come, rest thee here."
        O Abyssinian tree!
        Thus bow thy head to me!

I don't know any greatest treat
    As sit him in a gay parterre,
And sniff one up the perfume sweet
    Of every roses buttoning there.

It only want my charming miss
    Who make to blush the self red rose;
Oh! I have envy of to kiss
    The end's tip of her splendid nose.

Oh! I have envy of to be
    What grass 'neath her pantoffle push,
And too much happy seemeth me
    The margaret which her vestige crush.

But I will meet her nose at nose,
    And take occasion for her hairs,
And indicate her all my woes,
    That she in fine agree my prayers.

                    The Envoy

I don't know any greatest treat
    As sit him in a gay parterre,
With Madame who is too more sweet
    Than every roses buttonin...

Veggio co' bei vostri occhi.


With your fair eyes a charming light I see,
        For which my own blind eyes would peer in vain;
        Stayed by your feet the burden I sustain
        Which my lame feet find all too strong for me;
Wingless upon your pinions forth I fly;
        Heavenward your spirit stirreth me to strain;
        E'en as you will, I blush and blanch again,
        Freeze in the sun, burn 'neath a frosty sky.
Your will includes and is the lord of mine;
        Life to my thoughts within your heart is given;
        My words begin to breathe upon your breath:
Like to the moon am I, that cannot shine
        Alone; for lo! our eyes see nought in heaven
        Save what the living sun illumineth.

The bells chime clear,
Soon will the sun behind the hills sink down;
Come, little Ann, your baby brother dear
Lies in his christening-gown.

His godparents
Are all across the fields stepped on before,
And wait beneath the crumbling monuments,
This side the old church door.

Your mammie dear
Leans frail and lovely on your daddie's arm;
Watching her chick, 'twixt happiness and fear,
Lest he should come to harm.

All to be blest
Full soon in the clear heavenly water, he
Sleeps on unwitting of't, his little breast
Heaving so tenderly.

I carried you,
My little Ann, long since on this same quest,
And from the painted windows a pale hue
Lit golden on your breast;

And then you woke,
Chill as the holy water trickled d...

    After the blast of lightning from the east,
    The flourish of loud clouds, the Chariot throne,
    After the drums of time have rolled and ceased
    And from the bronze west long retreat is blown,

    Shall Life renew these bodies? Of a truth
    All death will he annul, all tears assuage?
    Or fill these void veins full again with youth
    And wash with an immortal water age?

    When I do ask white Age, he saith not so,--
    "My head hangs weighed with snow."
    And when I hearken to the Earth she saith
    My fiery heart sinks aching. It is death.
    Mine ancient scars shall not be glorified
    Nor my titanic tears the seas be dried."

I lived on dread; to those who know
The stimulus there is
In danger, other impetus
Is numb and vital-less.

As 't were a spur upon the soul,
A fear will urge it where
To go without the spectre's aid
Were challenging despair.

There was an old man at a Station,
Who made a promiscuous oration;
But they said, "Take some snuff! -
You have talk'd quite enough,
You afflicting old man at a Station!"

We flash across the level.
We thunder thro' the bridges.
We bicker down the cuttings.
We sway along the ridges.

A rush of streaming hedges,
Of jostling lights and shadows,
Of hurtling, hurrying stations,
Of racing woods and meadows.

We charge the tunnels headlong -
The blackness roars and shatters.
We crash between embankments -
The open spins and scatters.

We shake off the miles like water,
We might carry a royal ransom;
And I think of her waiting, waiting,
And long for a common hansom.

1876

Drawn at Eartham in the 61st year of my age, and in the months of August and September 1792.


Romney, expert infallibly to trace
On chart or canvas, not the form alone
And semblance, but however faintly shown,
The mind’s impression too on every face—
With strokes that time ought never to erase,
Thou hast so pencill’d mine, that though I own
The subject worthless, I have never known
The artist shining with superior grace.


But this I mark—that symptoms none of woe
In thy incomparable work appear.
Well—I am satisfied it should be so,
Since, on maturer thought, the cause is clear;


For in my looks what sorrow couldst thou see
When I was Hayley’s guest, and sat to thee?

    The little hands returning wistfully
    From birdlike wand'rings, ever come to rest,
    On fostering hand on tender cheek or breast;
    The upturned eyes, with loving certainty
    Seek ever the grave face where broodingly,
    The mother-soul by yearning love opprest,
    With wings down-drooped, seems folded o'er the nest
    Where lies the Hope of all humanity.
    And she His World, and He her Calvary,--
    He wraps her round with all the mystery
    Of love predestined for earth's needy ones;
    "Be comforted," it seems He fain would say,
    "O mother mine, there dawns an Easter day,
    And thou in me hast mothered many sons."

Ethel Allen Murphy

We've got the cholerer in camp, it's worse than forty fights;
We're dyin' in the wilderness the same as Isrulites.
It's before us, an' be'ind us, an' we cannot get away,
An' the doctor's just reported we've ten more to-day!

Oh, strike your camp an' go, the Bugle's callin',
The Rains are fallin',
The dead are bushed an' stoned to keep 'em safe below.
The Band's a-doin' all she knows to cheer us;
The Chaplain's gone and prayed to Gawd to 'ear us,
To 'ear us,
O Lord, for it's a-killin' of us so!

Since August, when it started, it's been stickin' to our tail,
Though they've 'ad us out by marches an' they've 'ad us back by rail;
But it runs as fast as troop trains, and we cannot get away;
An' the sick-list to the Colonel makes ten more to-day.

There ain...

O King who art in Heaven, I scream to Thee again and aloud, for it is Thy grace I am hoping for.

I am in age and my shape is withered; many a day I have been going astray. When I was young my deeds were evil; I delighted greatly in quarrels and rows. I liked much better to be playing or drinking on a Sunday morning than to be going to Mass. I was given to great oaths, and I did not let lust or drunkenness pass me by.

The day has stolen away and I have not raised the hedge, until the crop in which Thou didst take delight is destroyed. I am a worthless stake in the corner of a hedge, or I am like a boat that has lost its rudder, that would be broken against a rock in the sea, and that would be drowned in the cold waves.

Written for John Lockwood Kipling's

They killed a Child to please the Gods
In Earth's young penitence,
And I have bled in that Babe's stead
Because of innocence.

I bear the sins of sinful men
That have no sin of my own,
They drive me forth to Heaven's wrath
Unpastured and alone.

I am the meat of sacrifice,
The ransom of man's guilt,
For they give my life to the altar-knife
Wherever shrine is built.

The Goat.

Between the waving tufts of jungle-grass,
Up from the river as the twilight falls,
Across the dust-beclouded plain they pass
On to the village walls.

Great is the sword and mighty is the pen,
But over all the labouring ploughman's blade,
For on its oxen and its husbandmen
An Empire's strength is ...

'Twould ring the bells of Heaven
The wildest peal for years,
If Parson lost his senses
And people came to theirs,
And he and they together
Knelt down with angry prayers
For tamed and shabby tigers
And dancing dogs and bears,
And wretched, blind pit ponies,
And little hunted hares.