Sadness

Forbear to ask Me, why I weep;
Vext Cloe to her Shepherd said:
'Tis for my Two poor stragling Sheep
Perhaps, or for my Squirrel dead.
For mind I what You late have writ?
Your subtle Questions, and Replies;
Emblems, to teach a Female Wit
The Ways, where changing Cupid flies.
Your Riddle, purpos'd to rehearse
The general Pow'r that Beauty has:
But why did no peculiar Verse
Describe one Charm of Cloe's Face?
The Glass, which was at Venus' Shrine,
With such Mysterious Sorrow laid:
The Garland (and You call it Mine)
Which show'd how Youth and Beauty fade.
Ten thousand Trifles light as These
Nor can my Rage, nor Anger move:
She shou'd be humble, who wou'd please:
And She must suffer, who can love.
When in My Glass I chanc'd to look;
Of Venus...

Oh, what a blessed interval
    A rainy day may be!
No lightning flash nor tempest roar,
But one incessant, steady pour
    Of dripping melody;
When from their sheltering retreat
Go not with voluntary feet
The storm-beleaguered family,
    Nor bird nor animal.

When business takes a little lull,
    And gives the merchantman
A chance to seek domestic scenes,
To interview the magazines,
    Convoke his growing clan,
The boys and girls almost unknown,
And get acquainted with his own;
As well the household budget scan,
    Or write a canticle.

When farmer John ransacks the barn,
    Hunts up the harness old -
Nigh twenty years since it was new -
Puts in an extra thong or two,
    And hopes the thing will hold
Without ...

It is moonlight. Alone in the silence
I ascend my stairs once more,
While waves, remote in a pale blue starlight,
Crash on a white sand shore.
It is moonlight. The garden is silent.
I stand in my room alone.
Across my wall, from the far-off moon,
A rain of fire is thrown . . .

There are houses hanging above the stars,
And stars hung under a sea:
And a wind from the long blue vault of time
Waves my curtain for me . . .

I wait in the dark once more,
Swung between space and space:
Before my mirror I lift my hands
And face my remembered face.

Is it I who stand in a question here,
Asking to know my name? . . .
It is I, yet I know not whither I go,
Nor why, nor whence I came.

It is I, who awoke at dawn
And arose and d...

Paler than the water's white
Stood the maiden in the shade,
And more silent than the night
Were her lips together laid;

Eyes she hid so long and still
By lids wet with unshed tears,
Hands she loosely clasped at will,
Though her heart was full of fears.

Never, never, never more
May her soul with joy be moved;
Silent, silent, silent, - for
He was silent whom she loved.

Melpomine put on thy mourning Gaberdine,
And set thy song vnto the dolefull Base,
And with thy sable vayle shadow thy face,
        with weeping verse,
        attend his hearse,
Whose blessed soule the heauens doe now enshrine.

Come Nymphs and with your Rebecks ring his knell,
Warble forth your wamenting harmony,
And at his drery fatall obsequie,
        with Cypres bowes,
        maske your fayre Browes,
And beat your breasts to chyme his burying peale.

Thy birth-day was to all our ioye, the euen,
And on thy death this dolefull song we sing,
Sweet Child of Pan, and the Castalian spring,
        vnto our endless mone,
        from vs why art thou gone,
To fill vp that sweete Angels quier in heauen.

O whylome thou thy lasses dearest...

How he sleepeth! having drunken
Weary childhood's mandragore,
From his pretty eyes have sunken
Pleasures, to make room for more
Sleeping near the withered nosegay, which he pulled the day before.

Nosegays! leave them for the waking:
Throw them earthward where they grew.
Dim are such, beside the breaking
Amaranths he looks unto
Folded eyes see brighter colours than the open ever do.

Heaven-flowers, rayed by shadows golden
From the paths they sprang beneath,
Now perhaps divinely holden,
Swing against him in a wreath
We may think so from the quickening of his bloom and of his breath.

Vision unto vision calleth,
While the young child dreameth on.
Fair, O dreamer, thee befalleth
With the glory thou hast won!
Darker wert thou in the ...

Oh, for the fire that used to glow
In those my days of old!
I never thought a man could grow
So callous and so cold.
Ah, for the heart that used to ache
For those in sorrow’s ways;
I often wish my heart could break
As it did in those dead days.

Along my track of storm and stress,
And it is plain to trace,
I look back from the loneliness
And the depth of my disgrace.
’Twas fate and only fate I know,
But all mistakes are plain,
’Tis sadder than the afterglow,
More dreary than the rain.

But still there lies a patch of sun
That ne’er will come again,
Those golden days when I was one
Of Nature’s gentlemen.
And if there is a memory
Could break me down at last,
It sure would be the thought of this,
The sunshine in the pa...

Some poets sing of sweethearts dead,
    Some sing of true loves far away;
Some sing of those that others wed,
    And some of idols turned to clay.
    I sing a pensive roundelay
To sweethearts of a doubtful lot,
    The passions vanished in a day,
The little loves that I've forgot.

For, as the happy years have sped,
    And golden dreams have changed to gray,
How oft the flame of love was fed
    By glance, or smile, from Maud or May,
    When wayward Cupid was at play;
Mere fancies, formed of who knows what,
    But still my debt I ne'er can pay,
The little loves that I've forgot.

O joyous hours forever fled!
    O sudden hopes that would not stay!
Held only by the slender thread
    Of memory that's all astray.
    Their ver...

Persephone, Persephone!
Still I fancy I can see
Thee amid the daffodils.
Golden wealth thy basket fills;
Golden blossoms at thy breast;
Golden hair that shames the West;
Golden sunlight round thy head!
Ah! the golden years have fled;
Thee have reft, and me have left
Here alone, thy loss to mourn.

Persephone, Persephone!
Still I fancy I can see
Her, as white and still she lies:
Death has woo'd and won his prize.
White the blossoms at her breast;
White and still her face at rest;
White the moonbeams round her head.
Ah! the wintry years have fled;
Comfort lent and patience sent,
And my grief is easier borne.

Persephone, Persephone!
Still in dreams thou com'st to me;
Every night art at my side,
Half my bride, and half...

Why were you born when the snow was falling?
You should have come to the cuckoo's calling,
Or when grapes are green in the cluster,
Or, at least, when lithe swallows muster
For their far off flying
From summer dying.

Why did you die when the lambs were cropping?
You should have died at the apples' dropping,
When the grasshopper comes to trouble,
And the wheat-fields are sodden stubble,
And all winds go sighing
For sweet things dying.

Queen of the stars! so gentle, so benign,
That ancient Fable did to thee assign,
When darkness creeping o'er thy silver brow
Warned thee these upper regions to forego,
Alternate empire in the shades below
A Bard, who, lately near the wide-spread sea
Traversed by gleaming ships, looked up to thee
With grateful thoughts, doth now thy rising hail
From the close confines of a shadowy vale.
Glory of night, conspicuous yet serene,
Nor less attractive when by glimpses seen
Through cloudy umbrage, well might that fair face,
And all those attributes of modest grace,
In days when Fancy wrought unchecked by fear,
Down to the green earth fetch thee from thy sphere,
To sit in leafy woods by fountains clear!

O still beloved (for thine, meek Power, are charms
That...

Ye sad musicians of the wood,
Whose dirges fill the solitude,
Whose minor strains and melodies
Are wafted on the whispering breeze,
Whose plaintive chants and listless sighs,
Ascend as incense to the skies;
Do solemn tones afford relief,
With you, as men, a vent for grief?

This passion is but an ember
    Of a Sun, of a Fire, long set;
I could not live and remember,
    And so I love and forget.

You say, and the tone is fretful,
    That my mourning days were few,
You call me over forgetful -
    My God, if you only knew!

(Algernon Charles Swinburne, 1837-1909)



I

In this fair niche above the unslumbering sea,
That sentrys up and down all night, all day,
From cove to promontory, from ness to bay,
    The Fates have fitly bidden that he should be Pillowed eternally.

II

- It was as though a garland of red roses
Had fallen about the hood of some smug nun
When irresponsibly dropped as from the sun,
In fulth of numbers freaked with musical closes,
Upon Victoria's formal middle time
    His leaves of rhythm and rhyme.

III

O that far morning of a summer day
When, down a terraced street whose pavements lay
Glassing the sunshine into my bent eyes,
I walked and read with a quick glad surprise
    New words, in classic guise, -

("Charle! ô mon fils!")

[March, 1871.]


Charles, Charles, my son! hast thou, then, quitted me?
Must all fade, naught endure?
Hast vanished in that radiance, clear for thee,
But still for us obscure?

My sunset lingers, boy, thy morn declines!
Sweet mutual love we've known;
For man, alas! plans, dreams, and smiling twines
With others' souls his own.

He cries, "This has no end!" pursues his way:
He soon is downward bound:
He lives, he suffers; in his grasp one day
Mere dust and ashes found.

I've wandered twenty years, in distant lands,
With sore heart forced to stay:
Why fell the blow Fate only understands!
God took my home away.

To-day one daughter and one son remain
Of all my goodly show:
Welln...

If dead, we cease to be; if total gloom
Swallow up life's brief flash for aye, we fare
As summer-gusts, of sudden birth and doom,
Whose sound and motion not alone declare,
But are their whole of being! If the breath
Be Life itself, and not its task and tent,
If even a soul like Milton's can know death;
O Man! thou vessel purposeless, unmeant,
Yet drone-hive strange of phantom purposes!
Surplus of Nature's dread activity,
Which, as she gazed on some nigh-finished vase,
Retreating slow, with meditative pause,
She formed with restless hands unconsciously.
Blank accident! nothing's anomaly!
If rootless thus, thus substanceless thy state,
Go, weigh thy dreams, and be thy hopes, thy fears,
The counter-weights! Thy laughter and thy tears
Mean but themselves, eac...

The long and tedious months move slowly by
And February's chill has fled away
Before the gales of March, and now e'en they
Have died upon the peaceful April sky:
And still I sadly wander, still I sigh,
And all the splendour of each Springtime day
Is dyed, for me, one melancholy grey,
And all its beauty can but make me cry.

For thou art silent, Oh! far distant friend,
And not one word has come to cheer my heart
Through these sad months, which seem to have no end,
So distant seems the day which bade us part!
Oh speak! dear fair-haired angel! Spring has smiled,
And I despair - a broken-hearted child.

FRANCE, 1917.

Lo! steadfast and serene,
In patient pause between
The seen and the unseen,
    What gentle zephyrs fan
Your silken silver hair, -
And what diviner air
Breathes round you like a prayer,
    Old Man?

Can you, in nearer view
Of Glory, pierce the blue
Of happy Heaven through;
    And, listening mutely, can
Your senses, dull to us,
Hear Angel-voices thus,
In chorus glorious -
    Old Man?

In your reposeful gaze
The dusk of Autumn days
Is blent with April haze,
    As when of old began
The bursting of the bud
Of rosy babyhood -
When all the world was good,
    Old Man.

And yet I find a sly
Little twinkle in your eye;
And your whisperingly shy
    Little laugh is simply an
Internal shout o...