Loss

Gone is he now.
One flower the less
Is left to make
For thee less lone
Earth's wilderness,
Where thou
Must still live on.

What hath been, ne'er
May be again.
Yet oft of old,
To cheat despair,
Tales false and fair
In vain
Of death were told.

O vain belief!
O'erweening dreams!
Trust not fond hope,
Nor think that bliss
Which neither seems,
Nor is,
Aught else than grief.

When Lilacs Last in the Door-yard Bloom'd

When lilacs last in the door-yard bloom'd,
And the great star early droop'd in the western sky in the night,
I mourn'd and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.

O ever-returning spring! trinity sure to me you bring;
Lilac blooming perennial, and drooping star in the west,
And thought of him I love.

O powerful, western, fallen star!
O shades of night! O moody, tearful night!
O great star disappear'd! O the black murk that hides the star!
O cruel hands that hold me powerless! O helpless soul of me!
O harsh surrounding cloud, that will not free my soul!

In the door-yard fronting an old farm-house, near the white-wash'd palings,
Stands the lilac bush, tall-growing, with heart-shaped leaves of rich green,

Dark is the morning with mist; in the narrow mouth of the harbor
    Motionless lies the sea, under its curtain of cloud;
Dreamily glimmer the sails of ships on the distant horizon,
    Like to the towers of a town, built on the verge of the sea.

Slowly and stately and still, they sail forth into the ocean;
    With them sail my thoughts over the limitless deep,
Farther and farther away, borne on by unsatisfied longings,
    Unto Hesperian isles, unto Ausonian shores.

Now they have vanished away, have disappeared in the ocean;
    Sunk are the towers of the town into the depths of the sea!
AU have vanished but those that, moored in the neighboring roadstead,
    Sailless at anchor ride, looming so large in the mist.

Vanished, too, are the thoughts, the dim, unsa...

A broken rainbow on the skies of May
Touching the sodden roses and low clouds,
And in wet clouds like scattered jewels lost:
Upon the heaven of a soul the ghost
Of a great love, perfect in its pure ray,
Touching the roses moist of memory
To die within the Present's grief of clouds -
A broken rainbow on the skies of May.

A flashing humming-bird amid strange flowers,
Or red or white; its darting length of tongue
Sucking and drinking all the cell-stored sweet,
And now the surfeit and the hurried fleet:
A love that put into expanding bowers
Of one's large heart a tongue's persuasive powers
To cream with joy, and riffled, so was gone -
A flashing humming-bird amid strange flowers.

A foamy moon which thro' a night of fleece
Moves amber girt into a b...

    I.

    I cannot rest o' the night, Mother,
        For my heart is cold and wan:
    I fear the return o' light, Mother,
        Since my own true love is gone.
    O winsome aye was his face, Mother,
        And tender his bright blue eye;
    But his beauty and manly grace, Mother,
        Beneath the dark earth do lie.


    II.

    They tell me that I am young, Mother,
        That joy will return once more;
    But sorrow my heart has wrung, Mother,
        And I feel the wound full sore.
    The tree at the root frost-bitten
        Will flourish never again,
    And the woe that my life hath smitten
        Hath frozen each inmost vein.


    III.

    Whene'er the moon's shining clear, Mother,

    Lament in rhyme, lament in prose,
    Wi' saut tears trickling down your nose;
    Our bardie's fate is at a close,
        Past a' remead;
    The last sad cape-stane of his woes;
        Poor Mailie's dead.

    It's no the loss o' warl's gear,
    That could sae bitter draw the tear,
    Or mak our bardie, dowie, wear
        The mourning weed;
    He's lost a friend and neebor dear,
        In Mailie dead.

    Thro' a' the toun she trotted by him;
    A long half-mile she could descry him;
    Wi' kindly bleat, when she did spy him,
        She run wi' speed:
    A friend mair faithfu' ne'er cam nigh him,
        Than Mailie dead.

    I wat she was a sheep o' sense,
    An' could behave hersel wi' mense:
    I'll sa...

On these green banks, where falls too soon
The shade of Autumn's afternoon,
The south wind blowing soft and sweet,
The water gliding at nay feet,
The distant northern range uplit
By the slant sunshine over it,
With changes of the mountain mist
From tender blush to amethyst,
The valley's stretch of shade and gleam
Fair as in Mirza's Bagdad dream,
With glad young faces smiling near
And merry voices in my ear,
I sit, methinks, as Hafiz might
In Iran's Garden of Delight.
For Persian roses blushing red,
Aster and gentian bloom instead;
For Shiraz wine, this mountain air;
For feast, the blueberries which I share
With one who proffers with stained hands
Her gleanings from yon pasture lands,
Wild fruit that art and culture spoil,
The harvest o...

The rising moon on the peaks was blending
Her silver light with the sunset glow,
When a swagman came as the day was ending
Along a path that he seemed to know.
But all the fences were gone or going,
The hand of ruin was everywhere;
The creek unchecked in its course was flowing,
For none of the old clay dam was there.

Here Time had been with his swiftest changes,
And husbandry had westward flown;
The cattle tracks in the rugged ranges
Were long ago with the scrub o’ergrown.
It must have needed long years to soften
The road, that as hard as rock had been;
The mountain path he had trod so often
Lay hidden now with a carpet green.

He thought at times from the mountain courses
He heard the sound of a bullock bell,
The distant gallop of stockme...

I.

The plain was grassy, wild and bare,
Wide, wild, and open to the air,
Which had built up everywhere
An under-roof of doleful gray.
With an inner voice the river ran,
Adown it floated a dying swan,
And loudly did lament.
It was the middle of the day.
Ever the weary wind went on,
And took the reed-tops as it went.



II.

Some blue peaks in the distance rose,
And white against the cold-white sky,
Shone out their crowning snows.
One willow over the river wept,
And shook the wave as the wind did sigh;
Above in the wind was the swallow,
Chasing itself at its own wild will,
And far thro’ the marish green and still
The tangled water-courses slept,
Shot over with purple, and green, and yellow.

The rosy day was sweet and young,
The clod-brown lark that hail'd the morn
Had just her summer anthem sung,
And trembling dropped in the corn;
The dew-rais'd flower was perk and proud,
The butterfly around it play'd;
The sky's blue clear, save woolly cloud
That pass'd the sun without a shade.

On the pismire's castle hill,
While the burnet-buttons quak'd,
While beside the stone-pav'd rill
Cowslip bunches nodding shak'd,
Bees in every peep did try,
Great had been the honey shower,
Soon their load was on their thigh,
Yellow dust as fine as flour.

Brazen magpies, fond of clack,
Full of insolence and pride,
Chattering on the donkey's back
Perch'd, and pull'd his shaggy hide;
Odd crows settled on the path,
Dames from milking trot...

I know how well Love shoots, how swift his flight,
How now by force and now by stealth he steals,
How he will threaten now, anon will smite,
And how unstable are his chariot wheels.
How doubtful are his hopes, how sure his pain,
And how his faithful promise he repeals.
How in one's marrow, in one's vital vein,
His smouldering fire quickens a hidden wound,
Where death is manifest, destruction plain.
In sum, how erring, fickle and unsound,
How timid and how bold are lovers' days,
Where with scant sweetness bitter draughts abound.
I know their songs, their sighs, their usual ways,
Their broken speech, their sudden silences.
Their passing laughter and their grief that stays,
I know how mixed with gall their honey is.

O'er the tears that we shed, dear
    The bitter vines twist,
And the hawk and the red deer
    They keep where we kiss'd:
All broken lies the shieling
    That sheltered from rain,
With a star to pierce the ceiling,
    And the dawn an empty pane.

Thro' the mist, up the moorway,
    Fade hunters and pack;
From the ridge to thy doorway
    Happy voices float back ...
O, between the threads o' mist, love,
    Reach your hands from the house.
Only mind that we kiss'd, love,
    And forget the broken vows!

"Sister, you've sat there all the day,
Come to the hearth awhile;
The wind so wildly sweeps away,
The clouds so darkly pile.
That open book has lain, unread,
For hours upon your knee;
You've never smiled nor turned your head;
What can you, sister, see?"

"Come hither, Jane, look down the field;
How dense a mist creeps on!
The path, the hedge, are both concealed,
Ev'n the white gate is gone
No landscape through the fog I trace,
No hill with pastures green;
All featureless is Nature's face.
All masked in clouds her mien.

"Scarce is the rustle of a leaf
Heard in our garden now;
The year grows old, its days wax brief,
The tresses leave its brow.
The rain drives fast before the wind,
The sky is blank and grey;
O Jane, what s...

We who are left, how shall we look again
Happily on the sun or feel the rain
Without remembering how they who went
Ungrudgingly and spent
Their lives for us loved, too, the sun and rain?

A bird among the rain-wet lilac sings -
But we, how shall we turn to little things
And listen to the birds and winds and streams
Made holy by their dreams,
Nor feel the heart-break in the heart of things?

How happens it that thou art sad,

While happy all appear?
Thine eye proclaims too well that thou

Hast wept full many a tear.

"If I have wept in solitude,

None other shares my grief,
And tears to me sweet balsam are,

And give my heart relief."

Thy happy friends invite thee now,

Oh come, then, to our breast!
And let the loss thou hast sustain'd

Be there to us confess'd!

"Ye shout, torment me, knowing not

What 'tis afflicteth me;
Ah no! I have sustained no loss,

Whate'er may wanting be."

If so it is, arise in haste!

Thou'rt young and full of life.
At years like thine, man's blest with strength.

And courage for the strife.

"Ah no! in vain 'twould be to str...

Though o'er the darksome northern hill
Old ambush'd winter frowning flies,
And faintly drifts his threatenings still
In snowy sweet and blackening skies;
Yet here the willow leaning lies
And shields beneath the budding flower,
Where banks to break the wind arise,
'Tis sweet to sit and spend an hour.

Though floods of winter bustling fall
Adown the arches bleak and blea,
Though snow-storms clothe the mossy wall,
And hourly whiten o'er the lea;
Yet when from clouds the sun is free
And warms the learning bird to sing,
'Neath sloping bank and sheltering tree
'Tis sweet to watch the creeping spring.

Though still so early, one may spy
And track her footsteps every hour;
The daisy with its golden eye,
And primrose bursting into flower;
...

When I shall go
Into the narrow home that leaves
No room for wringing of the hands and hair,
And feel the pressing of the walls which bear
The heavy sod upon my heart that grieves,
(As the weird earth rolls on),
Then I shall know
What is the power of destiny. But still,
Still while my life, however sad, be mine,
I war with memory, striving to divine
Phantom to-morrows, to outrun the past;
For yet the tears of final, absolute ill
And ruinous knowledge of my fate I shun.
Even as the frail, instinctive weed
Tries, through unending shade, to reach at last
A shining, mellowing, rapture-giving sun;
So in the deed of breathing joy's warm breath,
Fain to succeed,
I, too, in colorless longings, hope till death.

L. M. C.

We sat together, last May-day, and talked
Of the dear friends who walked
Beside us, sharers of the hopes and fears
Of five and forty years,

Since first we met in Freedom's hope forlorn,
And heard her battle-horn
Sound through the valleys of the sleeping North,
Calling her children forth,

And youth pressed forward with hope-lighted eyes,
And age, with forecast wise
Of the long strife before the triumph won,
Girded his armor on.

Sadly, ass name by name we called the roll,
We heard the dead-bells toll
For the unanswering many, and we knew
The living were the few.

And we, who waited our own call before
The inevitable door,
Listened and looked, as all have done, to win
Some token from within.