Sadness

Be not dismayed, be not dismayed when death
Sets its white seal upon some worshipped face.
Poor human nature for a little space
Must suffer anguish, when that last drawn breath
Leaves such long silence; but let not thy faith
    Fail for a moment in God's boundless grace.
    But know, oh know, He has prepared a place
Fairer for our dear dead than worlds beneath,
Yet not beneath; for those entrancing spheres
    Surround our earth as seas a barren isle.
Ours is the region of eternal fears;
    Theirs is the region where God's radiant smile
Shines outward from the centre, and gives hope
Even to those who in the shadows grope.
They are not far from us.    At first though long
    And lone may seem the paths that intervene,
    If ever on the staff of prayer we l...

Again the warm bare earth, the noon
That hangs upon her healing scars,
The midnight round, the great red moon,
The mother with her brood of stars,

The mist-rack and the wakening rain
Blown soft in many a forest way,
The yellowing elm-trees, and again
The blood-root in its sheath of gray.

The vesper-sparrow's song, the stress
Of yearning notes that gush and stream,
The lyric joy, the tenderness,
And once again the dream! the dream!

A touch of far-off joy and power,
A something it is life to learn,
Comes back to earth, and one short hour
The glamours of the gods return.

This life's old mood and cult of care
Falls smitten by an older truth,
And the gray world wins back to her
The rapture of her vanished youth.

Dea...

Erewhile, on England's pleasant shores, our sires
Left not their churchyards unadorned with shades
Or blossoms; and indulgent to the strong
And natural dread of man's last home, the grave,
Its frost and silence, they disposed around,
To soothe the melancholy spirit that dwelt
Too sadly on life's close, the forms and hues
Of vegetable beauty. There the yew,
Green even amid the snows of winter, told
Of immortality, and gracefully
The willow, a perpetual mourner, drooped;
And there the gadding woodbine crept about,
And there the ancient ivy. From the spot
Where the sweet maiden, in her blossoming years
Cut off, was laid with streaming eyes, and hands
That trembled as they placed her there, the rose
Sprung modest, on bowed stalk, and better spoke
Her graces, ...

I am tired of cursing the Bishop,
(Said Crazy Jane)
Nine books or nine hats
Would not make him a man.
I have found something worse
To meditate on.
A King had some beautiful cousins.
But where are they gone?
Battered to death in a cellar,
And he stuck to his throne.
Last night I lay on the mountain.
(Said Crazy Jane)
There in a two-horsed carriage
That on two wheels ran
Great-bladdered Emer sat.
Her violent man
Cuchulain sat at her side;
Thereupon'
Propped upon my two knees,
I kissed a stone
I lay stretched out in the dirt
And I cried tears down.

The highest marble Sorrow vanishes
Before a weeping child.[2] The one doth seem,
The other is. And wherefore do we dream,
But that we live? So I rejoice in this,
That Thou didst cast Thyself, in all the bliss
Of conscious strength, into Life's torrent stream,
(Thy deeds fresh life-springs that with blessings teem)
Acting, not painting rainbows o'er its hiss.
Forgive me, Lord, if in these verses lie
Mean thoughts, and stains of my infirmity;
Full well I know that if they were as high
In holy song as prophet's ecstasy,
'Tis more to Thee than this, if I, ah me!
Speak gently to a child for love of Thee.

Behold her, single in the field,
Yon solitary Highland Lass!
Reaping and singing by herself;
Stop here, or gently pass!
Alone she cuts and binds the grain,
And sings a melancholy strain;
O listen! for the Vale profound
Is overflowing with the sound.

No Nightingale did ever chaunt
More welcome notes to weary bands
Of travellers in some shady haunt,
Among Arabian sands:
A voice so thrilling ne'er was heard
In spring-time from the Cuckoo-bird,
Breaking the silence of the seas
Among the farthest Hebrides.

Will no one tell me what she sings?
Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow
For old, unhappy, far-off things,
And battles long ago:
Or is it some more humble lay,
Familiar matter of to-day?
Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain,<...

Lone Flower, hemmed in with snows and white as they
But hardier far, once more I see thee bend
Thy forehead, as if fearful to offend,
Like an unbidden guest. Though day by day,
Storms, sallying from the mountain-tops, waylay
The rising sun, and on the plains descend;
Yet art thou welcome, welcome as a friend
Whose zeal outruns his promise! Blue-eyed May
Shall soon behold this border thickly set
With bright jonquils, their odours lavishing
On the soft west-wind and his frolic peers;
Nor will I then thy modest grace forget,
Chaste Snowdrop, venturous harbinger of Spring,
And pensive monitor of fleeting years!

Good-night, my love, for I have dreamed of thee
In waking dreams, until my soul is lost--
Is lost in passion's wide and shoreless sea,
Where, like a ship, unruddered, it is tost
Hither and thither at the wild waves' will.
There is no potent Master's voice to still
This newer, more tempestuous Galilee!

The stormy petrels of my fancy fly
In warning course across the darkening green,
And, like a frightened bird, my heart doth cry
And seek to find some rock of rest between
The threatening sky and the relentless wave.
It is not length of life that grief doth crave,
But only calm and peace in which to die.

Here let me rest upon this single hope,
For oh, my wings are weary of the wind,
And with its stress no more may strive or cope.
One cry has dulle...

At the shiver of morning, a little before the false dawn,
The moon was at the window-square,
Deedily brooding in deformed decay -
The curve hewn off her cheek as by an adze;
At the shiver of morning a little before the false dawn
So the moon looked in there.

Her speechless eyeing reached across the chamber,
Where lay two souls opprest,
One a white lady sighing, "Why am I sad!"
To him who sighed back, "Sad, my Love, am I!"
And speechlessly the old moon conned the chamber,
And these two reft of rest.

While their large-pupilled vision swept the scene there,
Nought seeming imminent,
Something fell sheer, and crashed, and from the floor
Lay glittering at the pair with a shattered gaze,
While their large-pupilled vision swept the scene there,
And th...

People that I meet and pass
In the city's broken roar,
Faces that I lose so soon
And have never found before,

Do you know how much you tell
In the meeting of our eyes,
How ashamed I am, and sad
To have pierced your poor disguise?

Secrets rushing without sound
Crying from your hiding places
Let me go, I cannot bear
The sorrow of the passing faces.

People in the restless street,
Can it be, oh can it be
In the meeting of our eyes
That you know as much of me?

    A poet of my native land has said -
    The life the good and virtuous lead on earth
    Is like the black-eyed maiden of the East,
    Who paints the lids to look more bright and fair.
    The eyes may smart and water, but withal
    She loves to please them that behold her face.
    E'en so, my Master, thine own life has been.
    Thy songs have pleased the world, thy thoughts divine
    Have purified, likewise ennobled man.
    And what are they, those songs and thoughts divine,
    But sad experience of thy life, dipt deep
    In thine own tears, and traced on nature's page?
    To please and teach the world for two dear ones
    You mourned - a friend in youth, a son in age
    'Tis said the life that gives one moment's joy
    To one lone mortal is not li...

That day we wandered 'mid the hills, so lone
Clouds are not lonelier, the forest lay
In emerald darkness round us. Many a stone
And gnarly root, gray-mossed, made wild our way:
And many a bird the glimmering light along
Showered the golden bubbles of its song.

Then in the valley, where the brook went by,
Silvering the ledges that it rippled from,
An isolated slip of fallen sky,
Epitomizing heaven in its sum,
An iris bloomed blue, as if, flower-disguised,
The gaze of Spring had there materialized.

I have forgotten many things since then
Much beauty and much happiness and grief;
And toiled and dreamed among my fellow-men,
Rejoicing in the knowledge life is brief.
"'Tis winter now, " so says each barren bough;
And face and hair proclaim 'tis wint...

Your own fair youth, you care so little for it,
    Smiling towards Heaven, you would not stay the advances
    Of time and change upon your happiest fancies.
I keep your golden hour, and will restore it.

If ever, in time to come, you would explore it--
    Your old self whose thoughts went like last year's pansies,
    Look unto me; no mirror keeps its glances;
In my unfailing praises now I store it.

To keep all joys of yours from Time's estranging,
    I shall be then a treasury where your gay,
            Happy, and pensive past for ever is.

I shall be then a garden charmed from changing,
    In which your June has never passed away.
            Walk there awhile among my memories.

And is this, Yarrow? 'This' the Stream
Of which my fancy cherished,
So faithfully, a waking dream?
An image that hath perished!
O that some Minstrel's harp were near,
To utter notes of gladness,
And chase this silence from the air,
That fills my heart with sadness!

Yet why? a silvery current flows
With uncontrolled meanderings;
Nor have these eyes by greener hills
Been soothed, in all my wanderings.
And, through her depths, Saint Mary's Lake
Is visibly delighted;
For not a feature of those hills
Is in the mirror slighted.

A blue sky bends o'er Yarrow vale,
Save where that pearly whiteness
Is round the rising sun diffused,
A tender hazy brightness;
Mild dawn of promise! that excludes
All profitless dejection;
Though not...

By Mystic's banks I held my dream.
(I held my fishing rod as well,)
The vision was of dace and bream,
A fruitless vision, sooth to tell.
But round about the sylvan dell
Were other sweet Arcadian shrines,
Gone now, is all the rural spell,
Arcadia has trolley lines.

Oh, once loved, sluggish, darkling stream,
For me no more, thy waters swell,
Thy music now the engines' scream,
Thy fragrance now the factory's smell;
Too near for me the clanging bell;
A false light in the water shines
While Solitude lists to her knell,--
Arcadia has trolley lines.

Thy wooded lanes with shade and gleam
Where bloomed the fragrant asphodel,
Now bleak commercially teem
With signs "To Let," "To Buy," "To Sell."
And Commerce holds them fierce and fell;

'Jessie, Jessie Cameron,
    Hear me but this once,' quoth he.
'Good luck go with you, neighbor's son,
    But I'm no mate for you,' quoth she.
Day was verging toward the night
    There beside the moaning sea,
Dimness overtook the light
    There where the breakers be.
'O Jessie, Jessie Cameron,
    I have loved you long and true.' -
'Good luck go with you, neighbor's son,
    But I'm no mate for you.'

She was a careless, fearless girl,
    And made her answer plain,
Outspoken she to earl or churl,
    Kindhearted in the main,
But somewhat heedless with her tongue,
    And apt at causing pain;
A mirthful maiden she and young,
    Most fair for bliss or bane.
'Oh, long ago I told you so,
    I tell you so to-day:
Go you your...

Down in the vale the lazy sheep
    Are roaming at their will,
But I would be away to weep
    Upon the windy hill,

For Summer's song is in my heart,
    Her kiss is on my brow,
As here I kneel alone, apart,
    To consecrate our vow.

Ah, doubly poor the gift shall be
    That links my soul with hers,
For she has given her all to me
    While I can give but tears!

    Here in a quiet and dusty room they lie,
    Faded as crumbled stone or shifting sand,
    Forlorn as ashes, shrivelled, scentless, dry -
    Meadows and gardens running through my hand.

    Dead that shall quicken at the call of Spring,
    Sleepers to stir beneath June's magic kiss,
    Though birds pass over, unremembering,
    And no bee seek here roses that were his.

    In this brown husk a dale of hawthorn dreams
    A cedar in this narrow cell is thrust
    That will drink deeply of a century's streams,
    These lilies shall make summer on my dust.

    Here in their safe and simple house of death,
    Sealed in their shells a million roses leap;
    Here I can blow a garden with my breath,
    And in my hand a forest lies asleep.