Loneliness

So if Thou hadst been scorned in human eyes,
Too bright and near to be a glory then;
If as Truth's artist, Thou hadst been to men
A setter forth of strange divinities;
To after times, Thou, born in midday skies,
A sun, high up, out-blazing sudden, when
Its light had had its centuries eight and ten
To travel through the wretched void that lies
'Twixt souls and truth, hadst been a Love and Fear,
Worshipped on high from Magian's mountain-crest,
And all night long symbol'd by lamp-flames clear;
Thy sign, a star upon thy people's breast,
Where now a strange mysterious shape doth lie,
That once barred out the sun in noontide sky.

"Put up the sword!" The voice of Christ once more
Speaks, in the pauses of the cannon's roar,
O'er fields of corn by fiery sickles reaped
And left dry ashes; over trenches heaped
With nameless dead; o'er cities starving slow
Under a rain of fire; through wards of woe
Down which a groaning diapason runs
From tortured brothers, husbands, lovers, sons
Of desolate women in their far-off homes
Waiting to hear the step that never comes!
O men and brothers! let that voice be heard.
War fails, try peace; put up the useless sword!

Fear not the end. There is a story told
In Eastern tents, when autumn nights grow cold,
And round the fire the Mongol shepherds sit
With grave responses listening unto it:
Once, on the errands of his mercy bent,
Buddha, the holy an...

They saw it rise in the morning,
They saw it set at night,
And they longed to go and see it,
Ah! if they only might.

The little soft white clouds heard them,
And stepped from out of the blue;
And each laid a little child softly
Upon its bosom of dew.

And they carried them higher and higher,
And they nothing knew any more
Until they were standing waiting
In front of the round gold door.

And they knocked, and called, and entreated,
Whoever should be within;
But all to no purpose, for no one
Would hearken to let them in.

In my body lives a flame,
    Flame that burns me all the day;
When a fierce sun does the same,
    I am charred away.

Who could keep a smiling wit,
    Roasted so in heart and hide,
Turning on the sun's red spit,
    Scorched by love inside?

Caves I long for and cold rocks,
    Minnow-peopled country brooks,
Blundering gales of Equinox,
    Sunless valley-nooks,

Daily so I might restore
    Calcined heart and shrivelled skin,
A morning phoenix with proud roar
    Kindled new within.

Sing a song of sick gents,
Pockets full of rye,
Four and twenty highballs,
We wish that we might die.

The nodding oxeye bends before the wind,
The woodbine quakes lest boys their flowers should find,
And prickly dogrose spite of its array
Can't dare the blossom-seeking hand away,
While thistles wear their heavy knobs of bloom
Proud as a warhorse wears its haughty plume,
And by the roadside danger's self defy;
On commons where pined sheep and oxen lie
In ruddy pomp and ever thronging mood
It stands and spreads like danger in a wood,
And in the village street where meanest weeds
Can't stand untouched to fill their husks with seeds,
The haughty thistle oer all danger towers,
In every place the very wasp of flowers.

A bridle-path in the tangled mallee,
With blossoms unnamed and unknown bespread,
And two who ride through its leafy alley,
But never the sound of a horse’s tread.

And one by one whilst the foremost rider
Puts back the boughs which have grown apace,
And side by side where the track is wider,
Together they come to the olden place.

To the leaf-dyed pool whence the mallards flattered,
Or ever the horses had paused to drink;
Where the word was said and the vow was uttered
That brighten for ever its weedy brink.

And Memory closes her sad recital,
In Fate’s cold eyes there are kindly gleams,
While for one brief moment of blest requital,
The parted have met, in the Land of Dreams.


13th June, 1882

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow,
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand,
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep, while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

Blood-Coloured oaks, that stand against a sky of gold and brass;
Gaunt slopes, on which the bleak leaves glow of brier and sassafras,
And broom-sedge strips of smoky-pink and pearl gray clumps of grass
In which, beneath the ragged sky, the rain pools gleam like glass.

From West to East, from wood to wood, along the forest-side,
The winds, the sowers of the Lord, with thunderous footsteps stride;
Their stormy hands rain acorns down; and mad leaves, wildly dyed,
Like tatters of their rushing cloaks, stream round them far and wide.

The frail leaf-cricket in the weeds rings a faint fairy bell;
And like a torch of phantom ray the milkweed's windy shell
Glimmers; while, wrapped in withered dreams, the wet autumnal smell
Of loam and leaf, like some sad ghost, steals over field an...

They'd parted but a year before, she never thought he’d come,
She stammer’d, blushed, held out her hand, and called him ‘Mister Gum.’
How could he know that all the while she longed to murmur ‘John.’
He called her ‘Miss le Brook,’ and asked how she was getting on.

They’d parted but a year before; they’d loved each other well,
But he’d been to the city, and he came back such a swell.
They longed to meet in fond embrace, they hungered for a kiss,
But Mary called him ‘Mister,’ and the idiot called her ‘Miss.’

He stood and lean’d against the door, a stupid chap was he,
And, when she asked if he’d come in and have a cup of tea,
He looked to left, he looked to right, and then he glanced behind,
And slowly doffed his cabbage-tree, and said he ‘didn’t mind.’

She made a ...

O Cruel fair,
Whose flowing hair
The envy and the pride of all is,
As onward roll
The years, that poll
Will get as bald as a billiard ball is;
Then shall your skin, now pink and dimply,
Be tanned to parchment, sear and pimply!

When you behold
Yourself grown old,
These words shall speak your spirits moody:
"Unhappy one!
What heaps of fun
I've missed by being goody-goody!
Oh, that I might have felt the hunger
Of loveless age when I was younger!"

O for the strength to paint my joy once more!
That joy I feel when Winter's reign is o'er;
When the dark despot lifts his hoary brow,
And seeks his polar-realm's eternal snow.
Though black November's fogs oppress my brain,
Shake every nerve, and struggling fancy chain;
Though time creeps o'er me with his palsied hand,
And frost-like bids the stream of passion stand,
And through his dry teeth sends a shivering blast,
And points to more than fifty winters past,
Why should I droop with heartless, aimless eye?
Friends start around, and all my phantoms fly,
And Hope, upsoaring with expanded wing,
Unfolds a scroll, inscribed "Remember Spring."
Stay, sweet enchantress, charmer of my days,
And glance thy rainbow colours o'er my lays;
Be to poor Giles what thou hast ev...

O you chorus of indolent reviewers,
Irresponsible, indolent reviewers,
Look, I come to the test, a tiny poem
All composed in a metre of Catullus,
All in quantity, careful of my motion,
Like the skater on ice that hardly bears him,
Lest I fall unawares before the people,
Waking laughter in indolent reviewers.
Should I flounder awhile without a tumble
Thro' this metrification of Catullus,
They should speak to me not without a welcome,
All that chorus of indolent reviewers.
Hard, hard, hard it is, only not to tumble,
So fantastical is the dainty meter.
Wherefore slight me not wholly, nor believe me
Too presumptuous, indolent reviewers.
O blatant Magazines, regard me rather -
Since I blush to belaud myself a moment -
As some rare little rose, a piece of ...

A poor wood-chopper, with his fagot load,
Whom weight of years, as well as load, oppress'd,
Sore groaning in his smoky hut to rest,
Trudged wearily along his homeward road.
At last his wood upon the ground he throws,
And sits him down to think o'er all his woes.
To joy a stranger, since his hapless birth,
What poorer wretch upon this rolling earth?
No bread sometimes, and ne'er a moment's rest;
Wife, children, soldiers, landlords, public tax,
All wait the swinging of his old, worn axe,
And paint the veriest picture of a man unblest.
On Death he calls. Forthwith that monarch grim
Appears, and asks what he should do for him.
'Not much, indeed; a little help I lack -
To put these fagots on my back.'

Death ready stands all ills to cure;
But let us not h...

I laid my inventory at the hand
Of Death, who in his gloomy arbour sate;
And while he conned it, sweet and desolate
I heard Love singing in that quiet land.
He read the record even to the end -
The heedless, livelong injuries of Fate,
The burden of foe, the burden of love and hate;
The wounds of foe, the bitter wounds of friend:

All, all, he read, ay, even the indifference,
The vain talk, vainer silence, hope and dream.
He questioned me: "What seek'st thou then instead?"
I bowed my face in the pale evening gleam.
Then gazed he on me with strange innocence:
"Even in the grave thou wilt have thyself," he said.

Thou who hast slept all night upon the storm,
Waking renew'd on thy prodigious pinions,
(Burst the wild storm? above it thou ascended'st,
And rested on the sky, thy slave that cradled thee,)
Now a blue point, far, far in heaven floating,
As to the light emerging here on deck I watch thee,
(Myself a speck, a point on the world's floating vast.)

Far, far at sea,
After the night's fierce drifts have strewn the shores with wrecks,
With re-appearing day as now so happy and serene,
The rosy and elastic dawn, the flashing sun,
The limpid spread of air cerulean,
Thou also re-appearest.

Thou born to match the gale, (thou art all wings,)
To cope with heaven and earth and sea and hurricane,
Thou ship of air that never furl'st thy sails,
Days, even weeks untir...

Sì breve è 'l tempo e 'l pensier sì veloce.

THE REMEMBRANCE OF HER CHASES SADNESS FROM HIS HEART.


    So brief the time, so fugitive the thought
Which Laura yields to me, though dead, again,
Small medicine give they to my giant pain;
Still, as I look on her, afflicts me nought.
Love, on the rack who holds me as he brought,
Fears when he sees her thus my soul retain,
Where still the seraph face and sweet voice reign,
Which first his tyranny and triumph wrought.
As rules a mistress in her home of right,
From my dark heavy heart her placid brow
Dispels each anxious thought and omen drear.
My soul, which bears but ill such dazzling light,
Says with a sigh: "O blessed day! when thou
Didst ope with those dear eyes thy passage here!"

MA...

Argument.

The City of Conception, The City of Penco, Castle, Lautaro, Wild Indian Maid, Zarinel, Missionary.

The second moon had now begun to wane,
Since bold Valdivia left the southern plain;
Goal of his labours, Penco's port and bay,
Far gleaming to the summer sunset lay.
The wayworn veteran, who had slowly passed
Through trackless woods, or o'er savannahs vast,
With hope impatient sees the city spires
Gild the horizon, like ascending fires.
Now well-known sounds salute him, as more near
The citadel and battlements appear;
The approaching trumpets ring at intervals;
The trumpet answers from the rampart walls,
Where many a maiden casts an anxious eye,
Some long-lost object of her love to espy,
Or watches, as the evening light illumes
The poin...