Sadness

I hear the Shadowy Horses, their long manes a-shake,
Their hoofs heavy with tumult, their eyes glimmering white;
The North unfolds above them clinging, creeping night,
The East her hidden joy before the morning break,
The West weeps in pale dew and sighs passing away,
The South is pouring down roses of crimson fire:
O vanity of Sleep, Hope, Dream, endless Desire,
The Horses of Disaster plunge in the heavy clay:
Beloved, let your eyes half close, and your heart beat
Over my heart, and your hair fall over my breast,
Drowning love’s lonely hour in deep twilight of rest,
And hiding their tossing manes and their tumultuous feet.

Golden-locked Erato, and thou, sweet lute,
The comfort of the sad and destitute,
Calm thou my sorrow, lest I too become
A marble pillar shedding through the dumb
But living stone my almost bloody tears,
A monument of grief for coming years.
For when we think of mankind's evil chance
Does not our private grief gain temperance?
Unhappy mother (if 'tis evil hap
We blame when caught in our own folly's trap)
Where are thy sons and daughters, seven each,
The joyful cause of thy too boastful speech?
I see their fourteen stones, and thou, alas,
Who from thy misery wouldst gladly pass
To death, dost kiss the tombs, O wretched one,
Where lies thy fruit so cruelly undone.
Thus blossoms fall where some keen sickle passes
And so, when rain doth level them, green grass...

I.

The last rose falls, wrecked of the wind and rain;
Where once it bloomed the thorns alone remain:
Dead in the wet the slow rain strews the rose.
The day was dim; now eve comes on again,
Grave as a life weighed down by many woes, -
So is the joy dead, and alive the pain.

The brown leaf flutters where the green leaf died;
Bare are the boughs, and bleak the forest side:
The wind is whirling with the last wild leaf.
The eve was strange; now dusk comes weird and wide,
Gaunt as a life that lives alone with grief, -
So doth the hope go and despair abide.

An empty nest hangs where the wood-bird pled;
Along the west the dusk dies, stormy red:
The frost is subtle as a serpent's breath.
The dusk was sad; now night is overhead,
Grim as a soul bro...

The wind, that beats the mountain, blows
More softly round the open wold,
And gently comes the world to those
That are cast in gentle mould.

And me this knowledge bolder made,
Or else I had not dared to flow
In these words toward you, and invade
Even with a verse your holy woe.

’Tis strange that those we lean on most,
Those in whose laps our limbs are nursed,
Fall into shadow, soonest lost:
Those we love first are taken first.

God gives us love. Something to love
He lends us; but, when love is grown
To ripeness, that on which it throve
Falls off, and love is left alone.

This is the curse of time. Alas!
In grief I am not all unlearn’d;
Once thro’ mine own doors Death did pass;
One went, who never hath return’d.

...

    As, in the lonely night,
    Above the silvered fields and streams
    Where zephyr gently blows,
    And myriad objects vague,
    Illusions, that deceive,
    Their distant shadows weave
    Amid the silent rills,
    The trees, the hedges, villages, and hills;
    Arrived at heaven's boundary,
    Behind the Apennine or Alp,
    Or into the deep bosom of the sea,
    The moon descends, the world grows dim;
    The shadows disappear, darkness profound
    Falls on each hill and vale around,
    And night is desolate,
    And singing, with his plaintive lay,
    The parting gleam of friendly light
    The traveller greets, whose radiance bright,
    Till now, hath guided him upon his way;

    So vanishes, so desolate
    Youth le...

Christ was not sad, i' th' garden, for His own
Passion, but for His sheep's dispersion.

Ask not why hearts turn Magazines of passions,
And why that grief is clad in sev'ral fashions;
Why She on progress goes, and doth not borrow
The smallest respite from th'extreams of sorrow,
Her misery is got to such an height,
As makes the earth groan to support its weight,
Such storms of woe, so strongly have beset her,
She hath no place for worse, nor hope for better;
Her comfort is, if any for her be,
That none can shew more cause of grief then she.
Ask not why some in mournfull black are clad;
The Sun is set, there needs must be a shade.
Ask not why every face a sadness shrowdes;
The setting Sun ore-cast us hath with Clouds.
Ask not why the great glory of the Skye
That gilds the stars with heavenly Alchamy,
Which all the world doth lighten with his rayes,<...

Low mourned the Oread round the Arcadian hills;
The Naiad murmured and the Dryad moaned;
The meadow-maiden left her daffodils
To join the Hamadryades who groaned
Over a sister newly fallen dead.
That Life might perish out of Arcady
From immemorial times was never said;
Yet here one lay dead by her dead oak-tree.
"Who made our Hamadryad cold and mute?"
The others cried in sorrow and in wonder.
"I," answered Death, close by in ashen suit;
"Yet fear not me for this, nor start asunder;
Arcadian life shall keep its ancient zest
Though I be here. My name? - is it not Rest?"

I miss thee from my side, beloved,
    I miss thee from my side;
And wearily and drearily
    Flows Time's resistless tide.
The world, and all its fleeting joys,
    To me are worse than vain,
Until I clasp thee to my heart,
    Beloved one, again.

The wildwood and the forest-path,
    We used to thread of yore,
With bird and bee have flown with thee,
    And gone for ever more!
There is no music in the grove,
    No echo on the hill;
But melancholy boughs are there--
    And hushed the whip-poor-will.

I miss thee in the town, beloved,
    I miss thee in the town;
From morn I grieve till dewy eve
    Spreads wide its mantle brown.
My spirit's wings, that once could soar
    In Fancy's world of air,
Are crushed and beat...

Methought last night I saw thee lowly laid,
    Thy pallid cheek yet paler, on the bier;
And scattered round thee many a lovely braid
    Of flowers, the brightest of the closing year;
Whilst on thy lips the placid smile that played,
    Proved thy soul's exit to a happier sphere,
In silent eloquence reproaching those
Who watched in agony thy last repose.

A pensive, wandering, melancholy light
    The moon's pale radiance on thy features cast,
Which, through the awful stillness of the night,
    Gleamed like some lovely vision of the past,
Recalling hopes once beautiful and bright,
    Now, like that struggling beam, receding fast,
Which o'er the scene a softening glory shed,
And kissed the brow of the unconscious dead.

Yes--it was thou!--and we we...

Hopes what are they? Beads of morning
Strung on slender blades of grass;
Or a spider's web adorning
In a strait and treacherous pass.

What are fears but voices airy?
Whispering harm where harm is not;
And deluding the unwary
Till the fatal bolt is shot!

What is glory? in the socket
See how dying tapers fare!
What is pride? a whizzing rocket
That would emulate a star.

What is friendship? do not trust her,
Nor the vows which she has made;
Diamonds dart their brightest lustre
From a palsy-shaken head.

What is truth? a staff rejected;
Duty? an unwelcome clog;
Joy? a moon by fits reflected
In a swamp or watery bog;

Bright, as if through ether steering,
To the Traveller's eye it shone:
He hath hailed it re-...

Through the sunshine, and through the rain
    Of these changing days of mist and splendour,
I see the face of a year-old pain
    Looking at me with a smile half tender.

With a smile half tender, and yet all sad,
    Into each hour of the mild September
It comes, and finding my life grown glad
    Looks down in my eyes, and says 'Remember.'

Says 'Remember,' and points behind
    To days of sorrow, and tear-wet lashes;
When joy lay dead and hope was blind,
    And nothing was left but dust and ashes.

Dust and ashes and vain regret,
    Flames fanned out, and the embers falling.
But the sun of the saddest day must set,
    And hope wakes ever with Springtime's calling.

With Springtime's calling the pulses thrill;
    And the heart i...

How much I loved that way you had
Of smiling most, when very sad,
A smile which carried tender hints
    Of delicate tints
    And warbling birds,
    Of sun and spring,
And yet, more than all other thing,
Of Weariness beyond all Words!

None other ever smiled that way,
    None that I know, -
The essence of all Gaiety lay,
Of all mad mirth that men may know,
In that sad smile, serene and slow,
That on your lips was wont to play.

It needed many delicate lines
And subtle curves and roseate tints
To make that weary radiant smile;
It flickered, as beneath the vines
The sunshine through green shadow glints
On the pale path that lies below,
Flickered and flashed, and died away,
But the strange thoughts it woke meanwhile
    ...

I saw a young heart in the grasp of pain;
    With bruised breast, and broken, bleeding wing
Shipwrecked on hopeless love's tempestuous main,
    Lay the poor tortured thing.

It pulsed with all the anguish of despair;
    It ached with all a fond heart's awful power;
Yet I, who stood unhurt above it there,
    Envied its lot that hour.

I, who have wasted all the sacred, deep
    Emotions of my soul in spendthrift fashion,
Until no sorrow now can make me weep -
    No joy stir me with passion.

I, who have scattered here and there the gold
    Of my heart's store, until I spent the whole;
Yet unto each so little gave to hold,
    That I enriched no soul.

I, who have sold the birthright of sweet tears,
    And no more feel a thrill in...

Vast was the wealth I carried in life's pack -
    Youth, health, ambition, hope and trust; but Time
    And Fate, those robbers fit for any crime,
Stole all, and left me but the empty sack.
Before me lay a long and lonely track
    Of darkling hills and barren steeps to climb;
    Behind me lay in shadows the sublime
Lost lands of Love's delight.    Alack!    Alack!

Unwearied, and with springing steps elate,
    I had conveyed my wealth along the road.
    The empty sack proved now a heavier load:
I was borne down beneath its worthless weight.
I stumbled on, and knocked at Death's dark gate.
    There was no answer.    Stung by sorrow's goad
    I forced my way into that grim abode,
And laughed, and flung Life's empty sack to Fate.

Unknown ...

A Beautiful Little Girl.

Fair as some sea-child, in her coral bower,
    Decked with the rare, rich treasures of the deep;
Mild as the spirit of the dream whose power
    Bears back the infant's soul to heaven, in sleep
Brightens the hues of summer's first-born flower
    Pure as the tears repentant mourners weep
O'er deeds to which the siren, Sin, beguiled, -
Art thou, sweet, smiling, bright-eyed cherub child.

Thy presence is a spell of holiness,
    From which unhallowed thoughts shrink blushing back, -
Thy smile is a warm light that shines to bless,
    As beams the beacon o'er the wanderer's track, -
Thy voice is music, at whose sounds Distress
    Unbinds her writhing victim from the rack
Of misery, and charmed by what she hears,
Forgets her w...

A scene, which 'wildered fancy viewed
In the soul's coldest solitude,
With that same scene when peaceful love
Flings rapture's colour o'er the grove,
When mountain, meadow, wood and stream
With unalloying glory gleam,
And to the spirit's ear and eye
Are unison and harmony.
The moonlight was my dearer day;
Then would I wander far away,
And, lingering on the wild brook's shore
To hear its unremitting roar,
Would lose in the ideal flow
All sense of overwhelming woe;
Or at the noiseless noon of night
Would climb some heathy mountain's height,
And listen to the mystic sound
That stole in fitful gasps around.
I joyed to see the streaks of day
Above the purple peaks decay,
And watch the latest line of light
Just mingling with the shades of ni...

The uses of sorrow I comprehend
Better and better at each year's end.

Deeper and deeper I seem to see
Why and wherefore it has to be.

Only after the dark, wet days
Do we fully rejoice in the sun's bright rays.

Sweeter the crust tastes after the fast
Than the sated gourmand's finest repast.

The faintest cheer sounds never amiss
To the actor who once has heard a hiss.

To one who the sadness of freedom knows,
Light seem the fetters love may impose.

And he who has dwelt with his heart alone,
Hears all the music in friendship's tone.

So better and better I comprehend
How sorrow ever would be our friend.