Loss

We build with strength the deep tower-wall
    That shall be shattered thus and thus.
And fair and great are court and hall,
    But how fair--this is not for us,
Who know the lack that lurks in all.

We know, we know how all too bright
    The hues are that our painting wears,
And how the marble gleams too white;--
    We speak in unknown tongues, the years
Interpret everything aright,

And crown with weeds our pride of towers,
    And warm our marble through with sun,
And break our pavements through with flowers,
    With an Amen when all is done,
Knowing these perfect things of ours.

O days, we ponder, left alone,
    Like children in their lonely hour,
And in our secrets keep your own,
    As seeds the colour of the flower....

1.

One morn before me were three figures seen,
I With bowed necks, and joined hands, side-faced;
And one behind the other stepp'd serene,
In placid sandals, and in white robes graced;
They pass'd, like figures on a marble urn,
When shifted round to see the other side;
They came again; as when the urn once more
Is shifted round, the first seen shades return;
And they were strange to me, as may betide
With vases, to one deep in Phidian lore.

2.

How is it, Shadows! that I knew ye not?
How came ye muffled in so hush a masque?
Was it a silent deep-disguised plot
To steal away, and leave without a task
My idle days? Ripe was the drowsy hour;
The blissful cloud of summer-indolence
Benumb'd my eyes; my pulse grew less and less;
Pain ha...

Cold, my dear, - cold and quiet.
    In their cups on yonder lea,
Cowslips fold the brown bee's diet;
    So the moss enfoldeth thee.
"Plant me, plant me, O love, a lily flower -
    Plant at my head, I pray you, a green tree;
And when our children sleep," she sighed, "at the dusk hour,
    And when the lily blossoms, O come out to me!"

        Lost, my dear? Lost! nay deepest
    Love is that which loseth least;
        Through the night-time while thou sleepest,
    Still I watch the shrouded east.
Near thee, near thee, my wife that aye liveth,
    "Lost" is no word for such a love as mine;
Love from her past to me a present giveth,
    And love itself doth comfort, making pain divine.
        Rest, my dear, rest. Fair showeth
    That which was, ...

In sad procession borne away
    To sound of funeral knell,
Affection's tribute thus we pay,
And in earth's shelt'ring bosom lay
The friend to whom but yesterday
    We gave the sad farewell.

But scarce the melancholy sound
    Has died upon the ear,
Before the mournful dirge is drowned
By wedding-anthems' glad rebound,
That stir the solemn air around
    With merry peals and clear.

Within our home doth gladness tread
    So closely upon grief
That, in the tears of sorrow shed
O'er our beloved, lamented dead,
We see reflected joy instead
    That gives a blest relief.

A father and a daughter gone
    Beyond our fireside -
For one we loved and leaned upon
The skillful archer Death had drawn
His bow; and one in lif...

When our bosoms were lightest,
And day-dreams were brightest,
The gay vision melted away;
By sorrow 'twas shaded,
Too quickly it faded;
How transient its halcyon sway!

From my heart would you sever,
(Harsh fate!) and forever,
The friends who to life gave a charm,
What oblivion effaces
Fond mem'ry retraces,
And pictures each well-beloved form.

Some accent well known,
Some melodious tone,
Through my bosom like witchery shed,
Shall awake the sad sigh,
To the hours gone by,
And the friends, like a fairy dream, fled.

Long remembrance shall treasure
Those moments of pleasure,
When time flew unheeded away;
Joy's light skiff was near us,
Hope ventured to steer us,
And brighten our path with her ray.

We sa...

        I.

Life has fled; she is dead,
Sleeping in the flow'ry vale
Where the fleeting shades are shed
Ghost-like o'er her features pale.
Lay her 'neath the violets wild,
Lay her like a dreaming child
'Neath the waving grass
Where the shadows pass.


        II.

Gone she has to happy rest
With white flowers for her pillow;
Moons look sadly on her breast
Thro' an ever-weeping willow.
Fold her hands, frail flakes of snow,
Waxen as white roses blow
Like herself so fair,
Free from world and care.


        III.

Twine this wreath of lilies wan
'Round her sculptured brow so white;
Let her rest here, white as dawn,
Like a lily quenched in night.
Wreath this rosebud wild and pale,
Wreath it ...

In these rapid, restless shadows,
Once I walked at eventide,
When a gentle, silent maiden,
Walked in beauty at my side.
She alone there walked beside me
All in beauty, like a bride.

Pallidly the moon was shining
On the dewy meadows nigh;
On the silvery, silent rivers,
On the mountains far and high,,
On the ocean’s star-lit waters,
Where the winds a-weary die.

Slowly, silently we wandered
From the open cottage door,
Underneath the elm’s long branches
To the pavement bending o’er;
Underneath the mossy willow
And the dying sycamore.

With the myriad stars in beauty
All bedight, the heavens were seen,
Radiant hopes were bright around me,
Like the light of stars serene;
Like the mellow midnight splendor
Of the Nig...

    Everyone is a poet, or so the philosopher said. The world teems
    with poetry in much the sense the universe teems with life.
    A poet or two is squirrelled away in every major office.
    Boiler rooms hum with the tooth and nail, robust imagery of
    working class poets. The neurological desire to express oneself
    transcends even social barriers. Be creative, like a brain surgeon.
    My scalpel runneth over amongst all those cerebral ganglia.

    The mind washed clean, scrubbed down. Words burn holes on the
    paper. Firemen disguised as poets douse the heroic flames.
    Sherpas tightly drawn amidst depths of a Himalayan winter
    weather a torrent of words. Groggy, I search for breath, am given
    oxygen but see writing materials.

    In the future,...

The years go by, but they little seem
Like those within our dream;
The years that stood in such luring guise,
Beckoning us into Paradise,
To jailers turn as time goes by
Guarding that fair land, By-and-By,
Where we thought to blissfully rest,
The sound of whose forests' balmy leaves
Swaying to dream winds strangely sweet,
We heard in our bed 'neath the cottage eaves,
Whose towers we saw in the western skies
When with eager eyes and tremulous lip,
We watched the silent, silver ship
Of the crescent moon, sailing out and away
O'er the land we would reach some day, some day.

But years have flown, and our weary feet
Have never reached that Isle of the Blest;
But care we have felt, and an aching breast,
A lifelong struggle, grief, unrest,
That h...

    If I should learn, in some quite casual way,
        That you were gone, not to return again--
    Read from the back-page of a paper, say,
        Held by a neighbor in a subway train,
    How at the corner of this avenue
        And such a street (so are the papers filled)
    A hurrying man--who happened to be you--
        At noon to-day had happened to be killed,
    I should not cry aloud--I could not cry
        Aloud, or wring my hands in such a place--
    I should but watch the station lights rush by
        With a more careful interest on my face,
    Or raise my eyes and read with greater care
    Where to store furs and how to treat the hair.

They sent you in to say farewell to me,
No, do not shake your head; I see your eyes
That shine with tears. Sappho, you saw the sun
Just now when you came hither, and again,
When you have left me, all the shimmering
Great meadows will laugh lightly, and the sun
Put round about you warm invisible arms
As might a lover, decking you with light.
I go toward darkness tho’ I lie so still.
If I could see the sun, I should look up
And drink the light until my eyes were blind;
I should kneel down and kiss the blades of grass,
And I should call the birds with such a voice,
With such a longing, tremulous and keen,
That they would fly to me and on the breast
Bear evermore to tree-tops and to fields
The kiss I gave them. Sappho, tell me this,
Was I not sometimes fair? ...

When first, descending from the moorlands,
I saw the Stream of Yarrow glide
Along a bare and open valley,
The Ettrick Shepherd was my guide.

When last along its banks I wandered,
Through groves that had begun to shed
Their golden leaves upon the pathways,
My steps the Border-minstrel led.

The mighty Minstrel breathes no longer,
'Mid mouldering ruins low he lies;
And death upon the braes of Yarrow,
Has closed the Shepherd-poet's eyes:

Nor has the rolling year twice measured,
From sign to sign, its steadfast course,
Since every mortal power of Coleridge
Was frozen at its marvelous source;

The rapt One, of the godlike forehead,
The heaven-eyed creature sleeps in earth:
And Lamb, the frolic and the gentle,
Has vanished from h...

Bring your beauty, bring your laughter, bring even your fears,
Bring the grief that is, the joy that was in other years,
Bring again the happiness, bring love, bring tears.

There was laughter once, there were grave, happy eyes,
Talk of firm earth, old earth-sweeping mysteries:
There were great silences under clear dark skies.

Now is silence, now is loneliness complete; all is done.
The thrush sings at dawn, too sweet, up creeps the sun:
But all is silent, silent, for all that was is done.

Yet bring beauty and bring laughter, and bring even tears,
And cast them down; strew your happiness and fears,
Then leave them to the darkness of thought and years.

Fears in that darkness die; they have no spring.
Grief in that darkness is a bird that wants wing....<...

I

But yesterday
I looked away
O'er happy lands, where sunshine lay
In golden blots
Inlaid with spots
Of shade and wild forget-me-nots.

My head was fair
With flaxen hair,
And fragrant breezes, faint and rare,
And warm with drouth
From out the south,
Blew all my curls across my mouth.

And, cool and sweet,
My naked feet
Found dewy pathways through the wheat;
And out again
Where, down the lane,
The dust was dimpled with the rain.


II

But yesterday: -
Adream, astray,
From morning's red to evening's gray,
O'er dales and hills
Of daffodils
And lorn sweet-fluting whippoorwills.

I knew nor cares
Nor tears nor prayers -
A mortal god, crowned unawares
With sunset - a...

        I.

White moons may come, white moons may go,
She sleeps where wild wood blossoms blow,
Nor knows she of the rosy June,
Star-silver flowers o'er her strewn,
The pearly paleness of the moon, -
    Alas! how should she know!


        II.

The downy moth at evening comes
To suck thin honey from wet blooms;
Long, lazy clouds that swimming high
Brood white about the western sky,
Grow red as molten iron and lie
    Above the fragrant glooms.


        III.

Rare odors of the weed and fern,
Dry whisp'rings of dim leaves that turn,
A sound of hidden waters lone
Frothed bubbling down the streaming stone,
And now a wood-dove's plaintive moan
    Drift from the bushy burne.


        IV.
...

1.
The serpent is shut out from Paradise.
The wounded deer must seek the herb no more
In which its heart-cure lies:
The widowed dove must cease to haunt a bower
Like that from which its mate with feigned sighs
Fled in the April hour.
I too must seldom seek again
Near happy friends a mitigated pain.

2.
Of hatred I am proud, - with scorn content;
Indifference, that once hurt me, now is grown
Itself indifferent;
But, not to speak of love, pity alone
Can break a spirit already more than bent.
The miserable one
Turns the mind's poison into food, -
Its medicine is tears, - its evil good.

3.
Therefore, if now I see you seldomer,
Dear friends, dear FRIEND! know that I only fly
Your looks, because they stir
Griefs that should s...

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.

Beneath the moonlight and the snow
Lies dead my latest year;
The winter winds are wailing low
Its dirges in my ear.

I grieve not with the moaning wind
As if a loss befell;
Before me, even as behind,
God is, and all is well!

His light shines on me from above,
His low voice speaks within,
The patience of immortal love
Outwearying mortal sin.

Not mindless of the growing years
Of care and loss and pain,
My eyes are wet with thankful tears
For blessings which remain.

If dim the gold of life has grown,
I will not count it dross,
Nor turn from treasures still my own
To sigh for lack and loss.

The years no charm from Nature take;
As sweet her voices call,
As beautiful her mornings break,
As fair her even...