Sadness

Dull soul, to whom the battle once was sweet,
Hope, who had spurred your ardour and your fame
Will no more ride you! Lie down without shame
Old horse, who makes his way on stumbling feet.

Give up, my heart, and sleep your stolid sleep.

For you old rover, spirit sadly spent,
Love is no longer fair, nor is dispute;
Farewell to brass alarms, sighs of the flute!
Pleasures, give up a heart grown impotent!

The Spring, once wonderful, has lost its scent!

And Time engulfs me in its steady tide,
As blizzards cover corpses with their snow;
And poised on high I watch the world below,
No longer looking for a place to hide.

Avalanche, sweep me off within your slide!

I found in dreams a place of wind and flowers,
Full of sweet trees and colour of glad grass,
In midst whereof there was
A lady clothed like summer with sweet hours.
Her beauty, fervent as a fiery moon,
Made my blood burn and swoon
Like a flame rained upon.
Sorrow had filled her shaken eyelids’ blue,
And her mouth’s sad red heavy rose all through
Seemed sad with glad things gone.

She held a little cithern by the strings,
Shaped heartwise, strung with subtle-coloured hair
Of some dead lute-player
That in dead years had done delicious things.
The seven strings were named accordingly;
The first string charity,
The second tenderness,
The rest were pleasure, sorrow, sleep, and sin,
And loving-kindness, that is pity’s kin
And is most pitiless.

How beautiful, how beautiful,
    Beneath the morning sky,
In bridal veil of snowy mist,
    These dreamy headlands lie!
How beautiful, in soft repose,
    Upon the water's breast,
Steeped in the sunlight's golden calm,
    These fairy islets rest!

A Sabbath hush enfolds the hills,
    And broods upon the deep
Whose music every hollow fills,
    And climbs each rocky steep,
Now low and soft like love's own sigh,
    Now faint and far away,
Now plaining to the answering pines,
    With melancholy lay.

Like white-winged birds, through azure depths,
    Above the restless tide,
With snowy plume and golden crest,
    The fleecy cloudlets glide;
Their dancing shadows fleck the deep,
    Or flit above the green
Of emerald is...

Noëra, when sad Fall
Has grayed the fallow;
Leaf-cramped the wood-brook's brawl
In pool and shallow;
When, by the woodside, tall
Stands sere the mallow.

Noëra, when gray gold
And golden gray
The crackling hollows fold
By every way,
Shall I thy face behold,
Dear bit of May?

When webs are cribs for dew,
And gossamers
Streak by you, silver-blue;
When silence stirs
One leaf, of rusty hue,
Among the burrs:

Noëra, through the wood,
Or through the grain,
Come, with the hoiden mood
Of wind and rain
Fresh in thy sunny blood,
Sweetheart, again.

Noëra, when the corn,
Reaped on the fields,
The asters' stars adorn;
And purple shields
Of ironweeds lie torn
Among the wealds:

N...

1. Through cycles of darkness the diamond sleeps in its coal-black prison.

2. Purely incrusted in its scaly casket, the breath-tarnished pearl slumbers in mud and ooze.

3. Buried in the bowels of earth, rugged and obscure, lies the ingot of gold.

4. Long hast thou been buried, O Israel, in the bowels of earth; long hast thou slumbered beneath the overwhelming waves; long hast thou slept in the rayless house of darkness.

5. Rejoice and sing, for only thus couldst thou rightly guard the golden knowledge, Truth, the delicate pearl and the adamantine jewel of the Law.

Only a spar from a broken ship
    Washed in by a careless wave;
But it brought back the smile of a vanished lip,
    And his past peered out of the grave.

Only a leaf that an idle breeze
    Tossed at her passing feet;
But she seemed to stand under the dear old trees,
    And life again was sweet.

Only the bar of a tender strain
    They sang in days gone by;
But the old love woke in her heart again,
    The love they had sworn should die.

Only the breath of a faint perfume
    That floated up from a rose;
But the bolts slid back from a marble tomb,
    And I looked on a dear dead face.

Who vaunts the might of a human will,
    When a perfume or a sound
Can wake a Past that we bade lie still,
    And open a long closed w...

'Tis but a box, of modest deal;
Directed to no matter where:
Yet down my cheek the teardrops steal -
Yes, I am blubbering like a seal;
For on it is this mute appeal,
"With care."

I am a stern cold man, and range
Apart: but those vague words "With care"
Wake yearnings in me sweet as strange:
Drawn from my moral Moated Grange,
I feel I rather like the change
Of air.

Hast thou ne'er seen rough pointsmen spy
Some simple English phrase - "With care"
Or "This side uppermost" - and cry
Like children? No? No more have I.
Yet deem not him whose eyes are dry
A bear.

But ah! what treasure hides beneath
That lid so much the worse for wear?
A ring perhaps - a rosy wreath -
A photograph by Vernon Heath -
Some matron's temporar...

Where are the Poets, unto whom belong
    The Olympian heights; whose singing shafts were sent
    Straight to the mark, and not from bows half bent,
    But with the utmost tension of the thong?
Where are the stately argosies of song,
    Whose rushing keels made music as they went
    Sailing in search of some new continent,
    With all sail set, and steady winds and strong?
Perhaps there lives some dreamy boy, untaught
    In schools, some graduate of the field or street,
    Who shall become a master of the art,
An admiral sailing the high seas of thought,
    Fearless and first and steering with his fleet
    For lands not yet laid down in any chart.

Cantai, or piango; e non men di dolcezza.

THOUGH IN THE MIDST OF PAIN, HE DEEMS HIMSELF THE HAPPIEST OF MEN.


    I sang, who now lament; nor less delight
Than in my song I found, in tears I find;
For on the cause and not effect inclined,
My senses still desire to scale that height:
Whence, mildly if she smile or hardly smite,
Cruel and cold her acts, or meek and kind,
All I endure, nor care what weights they bind,
E'en though her rage would break my armour quite.
Let Love and Laura, world and fortune join,
And still pursue their usual course for me,
I care not, if unblest, in life to be.
Let me or burn to death or living pine,
No gentler state than mine beneath the sun,
Since from a source so sweet my bitters run.

MACGREGOR.

When to sad Music silent you listen,
    And tears on those eyelids tremble like dew,
Oh, then there dwells in those eyes as they glisten
    A sweet holy charm that mirth never knew.
But when some lively strain resounding
    Lights up the sunshine of joy on that brow,
Then the young reindeer o'er the hills bounding
    Was ne'er in its mirth so graceful as thou.

When on the skies at midnight thou gazest.
    A lustre so pure thy features then wear,
That, when to some star that bright eye thou raisest,
    We feel 'tis thy home thou'rt looking for there.
But when the word for the gay dance is given,
    So buoyant thy spirit, so heartfelt thy mirth,
Oh then we exclaim, "Ne'er leave earth for heaven,
    "But linger still here, to make heaven of earth."

First Song:

So many years I sought you, Mary -
In gardens, rooms, cities and mountains,
In dumps, whores, in acting schools,
In sick beds and in the rooms of mad people,
In kitchen maids, screaming, celebrations of spring,
In every kind of weather and every kind of day,
In coffee houses, mothers, dancers -
I did not find you in bars, motion pictures,
Music-cafes, excursions into the summer mist...
Who knows the agony, when I, in the night on the streets,
Cried out for you to the dead sky -


Next Song:

He who looks for you in this way, Mary, becomes quite gray.
He who looks for you in this way, Mary, loses his face and legs.
The heart crumbles.    Blood and dream escape.
If I could rest... if I were in your hands...
Oh, if you would ...

It is autumn; not without,
    But within me is the cold.
Youth and spring are all about;
    It is I that have grown old.

Birds are darting through the air,
    Singing, building without rest;
Life is stirring everywhere,
    Save within my lonely breast.

There is silence: the dead leaves
    Fall and rustle and are still;
Beats no flail upon the sheaves
    Comes no murmur from the mill.

I'm sick of love, O let me lie
Under your shades to sleep or die!
Either is welcome, so I have
Or here my bed, or here my grave.
Why do you sigh, and sob, and keep
Time with the tears that I do weep?
Say, have ye sense, or do you prove
What crucifixions are in love?
I know ye do, and that's the why
You sigh for love as well as I.

Serene descent, as a red leaf's descending
When there is neither wind nor noise of rain,
But only autum air and the unending
Drawing of all things to the earth again.

So be it, let the snow fall deep and cover
All that was drunken once with light and air.
The earth will not regret her tireless lover,
Nor he awake to know she does not care.

When Youth's warm heart beats high, my friend,
    And Youth's blue sky is bright,
And shines in Youth's clear eye, my friend,
    Love's early dawning light,
Let the free soul spurn care's control,
    And while the glad days shine,
We'll use their beams for Youth's gay dreams
    Of Love and Song and Wine.

Let not the bigot's frown, my friend,
    O'ercast thy brow with gloom,
For Autumn's sober brown, my friend,
    Shall follow Summer's bloom.
Let smiles and sighs and loving eyes
    In changeful beauty shine,
And shed their beams on Youth's gay dreams
    Of Love and Song and Wine.

For in the weary years, my friend,
    That stretched before us lie,
There'll be enough of tears, my friend,
    To dim the brightest eye.
So le...

Sometimes even now I may
Steal a prisoner's holiday,
Slip, when all is worst, the bands,
Hurry back, and duck beneath
Time's old tyrannous groping hands,
Speed away with laughing breath
Back to all I'll never know,
Back to you, a year ago.

Truant there from Time and Pain,
What I had, I find again:
Sunlight in the boughs above,
Sunlight in your hair and dress,
The hands too proud for all but Love,
The Lips of utter kindliness,
The Heart of bravery swift and clean
Where the best was safe, I knew,
And laughter in the gold and green,
And song, and friends, and ever you
With smiling and familiar eyes,
You, but friendly: you, but true.

And Innocence accounted wise,
And Faith the fool, the pitiable.
Love so rare, one would sw...

Is it so far from thee
Thou canst no longer see,
In the Chamber over the Gate,
That old man desolate,
Weeping and wailing sore
For his son, who is no more?
    O Absalom, my son!

Is it so long ago
That cry of human woe
From the walled city came,
Calling on his dear name,
That it has died away
In the distance of to-day?
    O Absalom, my son!

There is no far or near,
There is neither there nor here,
There is neither soon nor late,
In that Chamber over the Gate,
Nor any long ago
To that cry of human woe,
    O Absalom, my son!

From the ages that are past
The voice sounds like a blast,
Over seas that wreck and drown,
Over tumult of traffic and town;
And from ages yet to be
Come the echoes back to...

The mist hangs round the College tower,
    The ghostly street
Is silent at this midnight hour,
    Save for my feet.

With none to see, with none to hear,
    Downward I go
To where, beside the rugged pier,
    The sea sings low.

It sings a tune well loved and known
    In days gone by,
When often here, and not alone,
    I watched the sky.

That was a barren time at best,
    Its fruits were few;
But fruits and flowers had keener zest
    And fresher hue.

Life has not since been wholly vain,
    And now I bear
Of wisdom plucked from joy and pain
    Some slender share.

But, howsoever rich the store,
    I'd lay it down,
To feel upon my back once more
    The old red gown.