Sadness

    Quieter than any twilight
    Shed over earth's last deserts,
    Quiet and vast and shadowless
    Is that unfounded keep,
    Higher than the roof of the night's high chamber
    Deep as the shaft of sleep.

    And solitude will not cry there,
    Melancholy will not brood there,
    Hatred, with its sharp corroding pain,
    And fear will not come there at all:
    Never will a tear or a heart-ache enter
    Over that enchanted wall.

        But, O, if you find that castle,
        Draw back your foot from the gateway,
        Let not its peace invite you,
        Let not its offerings tempt you.
    For faded and decayed like a garment,
    Love to a dust will have fallen,
    And song and laughter will have gone with sorrow,

No cloud, no relique of the sunken day
Distinguishes the West, no long thin slip
Of sullen light, no obscure trembling hues.
Come, we will rest on this old mossy bridge!
You see the glimmer of the stream beneath,
But hear no murmuring: it flows silently.
O'er its soft bed of verdure. All is still.
A balmy night! and though the stars be dim,
Yet let us think upon the vernal showers
That gladden the green earth, and we shall find
A pleasure in the dimness of the stars.
And hark! the Nightingale begins its song,
'Most musical, most melancholy' bird!
A melancholy bird? Oh! idle thought!
In Nature there is nothing melancholy.
But some night-wandering man whose heart was pierced
With the remembrance of a grievous wrong,
Or slow distemper, or neglected love,

The Autumn day now fades away,
The fields are wet and dreary;
The rude storm takes the flowers of May,
And Nature seemeth weary;
The partridge coveys, shunning fate,
Hide in the bleaching stubble,
And many a bird, without its mate,
Mourns o'er its lonely trouble.

On hawthorns shine the crimson haw,
Where Spring brought may-day blossoms:
Decay is Nature's cheerless law--
Life's Winter in our bosoms.
The fields are brown and naked all,
The hedges still are green,
But storms shall come at Autumn's fall,
And not a leaf be seen.

Yet happy love, that warms the heart
Through darkest storms severe,
Keeps many a tender flower to start
When Spring shall re-appear.
Affection's hope shall roses meet,
Like those of Summer bloom,
An...

The sinking sun is taking leave,
And sweetly gilds the edge of Eve,
While huddling clouds of purple dye
Gloomy hang the western sky.
Crows crowd croaking over head,
Hastening to the woods to bed.
Cooing sits the lonely dove,
Calling home her absent love.
With "Kirchup! Kirchup!" mong the wheats
Partridge distant partridge greets;
Beckoning hints to those that roam,
That guide the squandered covey home.
Swallows check their winding flight,
And twittering on the chimney light.
Round the pond the martins flirt,
Their snowy breasts bedaubed with dirt,
While the mason, neath the slates,
Each mortar-bearing bird awaits:
By art untaught, each labouring spouse
Curious daubs his hanging house.

Bats flit by in hood and cowl;
Through the ba...

I

Her violin! - Again begin
The dream-notes of her violin;
And dim and fair, with gold-brown hair,
I seem to see her standing there,
Soft-eyed and sweetly slender:
The room again, with strain on strain,
Vibrates to LOVE's melodious pain,
As, sloping slow, is poised her bow,
While round her form the golden glow
Of sunset spills its splendour.


II

Her violin! - now deep, now thin,
Again I hear her violin;
And, dream by dream, again I seem
To see the love-light's tender gleam
Beneath her eyes' long lashes:
While to my heart she seems a part
Of her pure song's inspirèd art;
And, as she plays, the rosy grays
Of twilight halo hair and face,
While sunset burns to ashes.


III

O violin! - Cease,...

I

Over the broken world, the dark gone by,
Horror of outcast darkness torn with wars;
And timeless agony
Of the white fire, heaped high by blinded Stars,
Unfaltering, unaghast;--
Out of the midmost Fire
At last,--at last,--
Cry! ...
O darkness' one desire,--
O darkness, have you heard?--
Black Chaos, blindly striving towards the Word?
--The Cry!

Behold thy conqueror, Death!
Behold, behold from whom
It flutters forth, that triumph of First-Breath,
Victorious one that can but breathe and cling,--
This pulsing flower,--this weaker than a wing,
Halcyon thing!--
Cradled above unfathomable doom.


II

Under my feet, O Death,
Under my trembling feet!
Back, through the gates of hell, now give me way.
I...

There's a habit I have nurtured,
    From the sentimental time
When my life was like a story,
    And my heart a happy rhyme, -
Of clipping from the paper,
    Or magazine, perhaps,
The idle songs of dreamers,
    Which I treasure as my scraps.

They hide among my letters,
    And they find a cozy nest
In the bosom of my wrapper,
    And the pockets of my vest;
They clamber in my fingers
    Till my dreams of wealth relapse
In fairer dreams than Fortune's
    Though I find them only scraps.

Sometimes I find, in tatters
    Like a beggar, form as fair
As ever gave to Heaven
    The treasure of a prayer;
And words all dim and faded,
    And obliterate in part,
Grow into fadeless meanings
    That are printed on the h...

All beauty calls you to me, and you seem,
Past twice a thousand miles of shifting sea,
To reach me. You are as the wind I breathe
Here on the ship’s sun-smitten topmost deck,
With only light between the heavens and me.
I feel your spirit and I close my eyes,
Knowing the bright hair blowing in the sun,
The eager whisper and the searching eyes.

Listen, I love you. Do not turn your face
Nor touch me. Only stand and watch awhile
The blue unbroken circle of the sea.
Look far away and let me ease my heart
Of words that beat in it with broken wing.
Look far away, and if I say too much,
Forget that I am speaking. Only watch,
How like a gull that sparkling sinks to rest,
The foam-crest drifts along a happy wave
Toward the bright verge, the boundary of the wo...

The mother of the Muses, we are taught,
Is Memory: she has left me; they remain,
And shake my shoulder, urging me to sing
About the summer days, my loves of old.
Alas! alas! is all I can reply.
Memory has left with me that name alone,
Harmonious name, which other bards may sing,
But her bright image in my darkest hour
Comes back, in vain comes back, call’d or uncall’d.
Forgotten are the names of visitors
Ready to press my hand but yesterday;
Forgotten are the names of earlier friends
Whose genial converse and glad countenance
Are fresh as ever to mine ear and eye;
To these, when I have written and besought
Remembrance of me, the word Dear alone
Hangs on the upper verge, and waits in vain.
A blessing wert thou, O oblivion,
If thy stream carried only w...

My thoughts arise and fade in solitude,
The verse that would invest them melts away
Like moonlight in the heaven of spreading day:
How beautiful they were, how firm they stood,
Flecking the starry sky like woven pearl!

The hillside smokes
With trailing mist around the rosy oaks;
While sunset builds
A gorgeous Asia in the west she gilds.
Auroral streaks
Sword through the heavens' Himalayan peaks:
In which, behold,
Burn mines of Indian ruby and of gold.
A moment and
A shadow stalks between it and the land.
A mist, a breath,
A premonition, with the face of death,
Turning to frost
The air it breathes, like some invisible ghost.
Then, wild of hair,
Demons seem streaming to their fiery lair:
A chasm, the same
That splits the clouds' face with a leer of flame.
The wind comes up
And fills the hollow land as wine a cup.
Around and round
It skips the dead leaves o'er the forest's ground.
A myriad fays
And imps seem dancing down the withered ways.

A bending staff I would not break,
A feeble faith I would not shake,
Nor even rashly pluck away
The error which some truth may stay,
Whose loss might leave the soul without
A shield against the shafts of doubt.

And yet, at times, when over all
A darker mystery seems to fall,
(May God forgive the child of dust,
Who seeks to know, where Faith should trust!)
I raise the questions, old and dark,
Of Uzdom's tempted patriarch,
And, speech-confounded, build again
The baffled tower of Shinar's plain.

I am: how little more I know!
Whence came I? Whither do I go?
A centred self, which feels and is;
A cry between the silences;
A shadow-birth of clouds at strife
With sunshine on the hills of life;
A shaft from Nature's quiver cast
Into...

He gloomily sat by the wall,
As gaily she danced with them all.
Her laughter's light spell
On every one fell;
His heartstrings were near unto rending,
But this there was none comprehending.

She fled from the house, when at eve
He came there to take his last leave.
To hide her she crept,
She wept and she wept;
Her life-hope was shattered past mending,
But this there was none comprehending.

Long years dragged but heavily o'er,
And then he came back there once more.
    - Her lot was the best,
    In peace and at rest;
Her thought was of him at life's ending,
But this there was none comprehending.

He gloomily sat by the wall,
As gaily she danced with them all.
Her laughter's light spell
On every one fell;
His heartstrings were near unto rending,
But this there was none comprehending.

She fled from the house, when at eve
He came there to take his last leave.
To hide her she crept,
She wept and she wept;
Her life-hope was shattered past mending,
But this there was none comprehending.

Long years dragged but heavily o'er,
And then he came back there once more.
    - Her lot was the best,
    In peace and at rest;
Her thought was of him at life's ending,
But this there was none comprehending.