Loss

A violet grew by the river-side,
And gladdened all hearts with its bloom;
While over the fields, on the scented air,
It breathed a rich perfume.
But the clouds grew dark in the angry sky,
And its portals were opened wide;
And the heavy rain beat down the flower
That grew by the river-side.

Not far away in a pleasant home,
There lived a little boy,
Whose cheerful face and childish grace
Filled every heart with joy.
He wandered one day to the river's verge,
With no one near to save;
And the heart that we loved with a boundless love
Was stilled in the restless wave.

The sky grew dark to our tearful eyes,
And we bade farewell to joy;
For our hearts were bound by a sorrowful tie
To the grave of the little boy.
The birds still sing in...

A little while to walk with thee, dear child;
To lean on thee my weak and weary head;
Then evening comes: the winter sky is wild,
The leafless trees are black, the leaves long dead.

A little while to hold thee and to stand,
By harvest-fields of bending golden corn;
Then the predestined silence, and thine hand,
Lost in the night, long and weary and forlorn.

A little while to love thee, scarcely time
To love thee well enough; then time to part,
To fare through wintry fields alone and climb
The frozen hills, not knowing where thou art.

Short summer-time and then, my heart's desire,
The winter and the darkness: one by one
The roses fall, the pale roses expire
Beneath the slow decadence of the sun.

Silence now reigns in the corridors wide,
The stately rooms of that mansion of pride;
The music is hushed, the revellers gone,
The glitt'ring ball-room deserted and lone, -
Silence and gloom, like a clinging pall,
O'ershadow the house - 'tis after the ball.

Yet a light still gleams in a distant room,
Where sits a girl in her "first season's bloom;"
Look at her closely, is she not fair,
With exquisite features, rich silken hair
And the beautiful, child-like, trusting eyes
Of one in the world's ways still unwise.

The wreath late carefully placed on her brow
She has flung on a distant foot-stool now;
The flowers, exhaling their fragrance sweet,
Lie crushed and withering at her feet;
Gloves and tablets she has suffered to fall -
She seems so weary...

I visited the place where we last met.
Nothing was changed, the gardens were well-tended,
The fountains sprayed their usual steady jet;
There was no sign that anything had ended
And nothing to instruct me to forget.

The thoughtless birds that shook out of the trees,
Singing an ecstasy I could not share,
Played cunning in my thoughts. Surely in these
Pleasures there could not be a pain to bear
Or any discord shake the level breeze.

It was because the place was just the same
That made your absence seem a savage force,
For under all the gentleness there came
An earthquake tremor: Fountain, birds and grass
Were shaken by my thinking of your name.

I

Has she forgotten? On this very May
We were to meet here, with the birds and bees,
As on that Sabbath, underneath the trees
We strayed among the tombs, and stripped away
The vines from these old granites, cold and gray -
And yet indeed not grim enough were they
To stay our kisses, smiles and ecstasies,
Or closer voice-lost vows and rhapsodies.
Has she forgotten - that the May has won
Its promise? - that the bird-songs from the tree
Are sprayed above the grasses as the sun
Might jar the dazzling dew down showeringly?
Has she forgotten life - love - everyone -
Has she forgotten me - forgotten me?


II

Low, low down in the violets I press
My lips and whisper to her. Does she hear,
And yet hold silence, though I call her dear,

    I, too, saw God through mud--
        The mud that cracked on cheeks when wretches smiled.
        War brought more glory to their eyes than blood,
        And gave their laughs more glee than shakes a child.

    Merry it was to laugh there--
        Where death becomes absurd and life absurder.
        For power was on us as we slashed bones bare
        Not to feel sickness or remorse of murder.

    I, too, have dropped off fear--
        Behind the barrage, dead as my platoon,
        And sailed my spirit surging, light and clear
        Past the entanglement where hopes lay strewn;

    And witnessed exultation--
        Faces that used to curse me, scowl for scowl,
        Shine and lift up with passion of oblation,
        Seraphic for an...

We said farewell, my youth and I,
When all fair dreams were gone or going,
And Love’s red lips were cold and dry.

When white blooms fell from tree-tops high,
Our Austral winter’s way of snowing,
We said farewell, my youth and I.

We did not sigh, what use to sigh
When Death passed as a mower mowing,
And Love’s red lips were cold and dry?

But hearing Life’s stream thunder by,
That sang of old through flowers flowing,
We said farewell, my youth and I.

There was no hope in the blue sky,
No music in the low winds blowing,
And Love’s red lips were cold and dry.

My hair is black as yet, then why
So sad! I know not, only knowing
We said farewell, my youth and I.

All are not buried when they die;
Dead souls there are t...

S. M. A.



Gone! and there's not a gleam of you,
Faces that float into far away;
Gone! and we can only dream of you
Each as you fade like a star away.
Fade as a star in the sky from us,
Vainly we look for your light again;
Hear ye the sound of a sigh from us?
"Come!" and our hearts will be bright again.

Come! and gaze on our face once more,
Bring us the smiles of the olden days;
Come! and shine in your place once more,
And change the dark into golden days.
Gone! gone! gone! Joy is fled for us;
Gone into the night of the nevermore,
And darkness rests where you shed for us
A light we will miss ~forevermore~.

Faces! ye come in the night to us;
Shadows! ye float in the sky of sleep;
Shadows! ye bring nothing bright to us;...

There was grief within our household
    Because of a vacant chair.
Our mother, so loved and precious,
    No longer was sitting there.

Our hearts grew heavy with sorrow,
    Our eyes with tears were blind,
And little Jamie was wondering,
    Why we were left behind.

We had told our little darling,
    Of the land of love and light,
Of the saints all crowned with glory,
    And enrobed in spotless white.

We said that our precious mother,
    Had gone to that land so fair,
To dwell with beautiful angels,
    And to be forever there.

But the child was sorely puzzled,
    Why dear grandmamma should go
To dwell in a stranger city,
    When her children loved her so.

But again the mystic angel
    Came with swi...

Quel sempre acerbo ed onorato giorno.

HE RECALLS HER AS HE SAW HER WHEN IN TEARS.


    That ever-painful, ever-honour'd day
So left her living image on my heart
Beyond or lover's wit or poet's art,
That oft to it will doting memory stray.
A gentle pity softening her bright mien,
Her sorrow there so sweet and sad was heard,
Doubt in the gazer's bosom almost stirr'd
Goddess or mortal, which made heaven serene.
Fine gold her hair, her face as sunlit snow,
Her brows and lashes jet, twin stars her eyne,
Whence the young archer oft took fatal aim;
Each loving lip--whence, utterance sweet and low
Her pent grief found--a rose which rare pearls line,
Her tears of crystal and her sighs of flame.

MACGREGOR.


    That ever-hon...

Adown the valley dripped a stream,
White lilies drooped on either side;
Our hearts, in spite of us, will dream
In such a place at eventide.

Bright wavelets wove the scarf of blue
That well became the valley fair,
And grassy fringe of greenest hue
Hung round its borders everywhere.

And where the stream, in wayward whirls,
Went winding in and winding out,
Lay shells, that wore the look of pearls
Without their pride, all strewn about.

And here and there along the strand,
Where some ambitious wave had strayed,
Rose little monuments of sand
As frail as those by mortals made.

And many a flower was blooming there
In beauty, yet without a name,
Like humble hearts that often bear
The gifts, but not the palm of fame.

The...

Bury him without a word!
    No appeal to death;
Only the call of the bird
    And the blind spring's breath.

Nature slays ten, yet the one
    Reaches but to a part
Of what's to be done, to be sung.
    Keep we a proud heart!

Let us not glose her waste
    With lies and dreams;
Fawn on her wanton haste,
    Say it but seems.

Comrades, with faces unstirred,
    Scorning grief's dole,
Though with him, with him lies interred
    Our heart and soul,

Bury him without a word!
    No appeal to death;
Only the call of the bird
    And the blind spring's breath.

I Had this thought awhile ago,
‘My darling cannot understand
What I have done, or what would do
In this blind bitter land.’

And I grew weary of the sun
Until my thoughts cleared up again,
Remembering that the best I have done
Was done to make it plain;

That every year I have cried, ‘At length
My darling understands it all,
Because I have come into my strength,
And words obey my call.’

That had she done so who can say
What would have shaken from the sieve?
I might have thrown poor words away
And been content to live.

We all have hearts that shake alike
Beneath the arias of Fate's hand;
Although the cynics sneering stand,
These too the deathless powers strike.

A trembling lover's infinite trust,
To the last drop of doating blood,
Feels not alone the ocean flood
Of desperate grief, when dreams are dust.

The scornfullest souls, with mourning eyes,
Pant o'er again their ghostly ways; -
Dread night-paths, where were gleaming days
When life was lovelier than the skies!

    Look! look there!
Send your eyes across the gray
By my finger-point away
Through the vaporous, fumy air.
Beyond the air, you see the dark?
Beyond the dark, the dawning day?
On its horizon, pray you, mark
Something like a ruined heap
Of worlds half-uncreated, that go back:
Down all the grades through which they rose
Up to harmonious life and law's repose,
Back, slow, to the awful deep
Of nothingness, mere being's lack:
On its surface, lone and bare,
Shapeless as a dumb despair,
Formless, nameless, something lies:
Can the vision in your eyes
Its idea recognize?

    'Tis a poor lost soul, alack!--
Half he lived some ages back;
But, with hardly opened eyes,
Thinking him already wise,
Down he sat and wrote a book;
Drew h...

(Mary Maud.)


O friends, I cannot comfort, but will share with you your grieving,
    In the valley of the shadow where you sit in helpless tears;
Greater is the parting anguish, than the joy of first receiving
    The sweet gift that was your treasure through five happy, golden years

When I laid within your arms the dear babe that God had given,
    There was hidden in the future all the tears that you must weep,
Ah! the little ones so tangled in our heart-strings, they are riven
    In the parting, are but treasures lent not given us to keep

There's silence in the places her voice filled with happy laughter,
    Stillness waiting for the echo of the patter of her feet,
You are gazing on her picture, and your heart is longing after
    The tender touch of ...

Heart, my heart, thou hast found thy home!
From gloom and sorrow thou hast come forth,
Thou who wast foolish, and sought to roam
'Neath the cruel stars of the frozen North.

Thou hast returned to thy dear delights;
The golden glow of the quivering days,
The silver silence of tropical nights,
No more to wander in alien ways.

Here, each star is a well-loved friend;
To me and my heart at the journey's end.

These are my people, and this my land,
I hear the pulse of her secret soul.
This is the life that I understand,
Savage and simple and sane and whole.

Washed in the light of a clear fierce sun, -
Heart, my heart, the journey is done.

See! the painted piece of the skies,
Where the rose-hued opal of sunset lies.
Hear the pass...

Come to me in the silence of the night;
    Come in the speaking silence of a dream;
Come with soft rounded cheeks and eyes as bright
    As sunlight on a stream;
        Come back in tears,
O memory, hope, love of finished years.

Oh dream how sweet, too sweet, too bitter sweet,
    Whose wakening should have been in Paradise,
Where souls brimfull of love abide and meet;
    Where thirsting longing eyes
        Watch the slow door
That opening, letting in, lets out no more.

Yet come to me in dreams, that I may live
    My very life again though cold in death:
Come back to me in dreams, that I may give
    Pulse for pulse, breath for breath:
        Speak low, lean low,
As long ago, my love, how long ago!