Sadness

Mournful groans, as when a tempest lowers,
Echo from the dreary house of woe;
Death-notes rise from yonder minster's towers!
Bearing out a youth, they slowly go;
Yes! a youth unripe yet for the bier,
Gathered in the spring-time of his days,
Thrilling yet with pulses strong and clear,
With the flame that in his bright eye plays
Yes, a son the idol of his mother,
(Oh, her mournful sigh shows that too well!)
Yes! my bosom-friend, alas my brother!
Up! each man the sad procession swell!

Do ye boast, ye pines, so gray and old,
Storms to brave, with thunderbolts to sport?
And, ye hills, that ye the heavens uphold?
And, ye heavens, that ye the suns support!
Boasts the graybeard, who on haughty deeds
As on billows, seeks perfection's height?
Boasts the ...

Low laughed the Columbine,
Trembled her petals fine
    As the breeze blew;
In her dove-heart there stirred
Murmurs the dull bee heard,
And Love, Life's wild white bird,
    Straightway she knew.

Resting her lilac cheek
Gently, in aspect meek,
    On the gray stone,
The morning-glory, free,
Welcomed the yellow bee,

Heard the near-rolling sea
    Murmur and moan.

Calm lay the tawny sand
Stretching a long wet hand
    To the far wave.
Swift to her warm waiting breast
Longing to be possessed
Leaps 'neath his billowy crest
    Her Lover brave.

A Faint, sickening scent of irises
Persists all morning. Here in a jar on the table
A fine proud spike of purple irises
Rising above the class-room litter, makes me unable
To see the class's lifted and bended faces
Save in a broken pattern, amid purple and gold and sable.

I can smell the gorgeous bog-end, in its breathless
Dazzle of may-blobs, when the marigold glare overcast you
With fire on your cheeks and your brow and your chin as you dipped
Your face in the marigold bunch, to touch and contrast you,
Your own dark mouth with the bridal faint lady-smocks,
Dissolved on the golden sorcery you should not outlast.

You amid the bog-end's yellow incantation,
You sitting in the cowslips of the meadow above,
Me, your shadow on the bog-flame, flowery may-blobs,

One of a hundred little rills--
Born in the hills,
Nourished with dews by the earth, and with tears by the sky,
Sang--"Who so mighty as I?
The farther I flow
The bigger I grow.
I, who was born but a little rill,
Now turn the big wheel of the mill,
Though the surly slave would rather stand still.
Old, and weed-hung, and grim,
I am not afraid of him;
For when I come running and dance on his toes,
With a creak and a groan the monster goes.
And turns faster and faster,
As he learns who is master,
Round and round,
Till the corn is ground,
And the miller smiles as he stands on the bank,
And knows he has me to thank.
Then when he swings the fine sacks of flour,
I feel my power;
But when the children enjoy their food,
I know I'm not only ...

Come down, O Christ, and help me! reach Thy hand,
For I am drowning in a stormier sea
Than Simon on Thy lake of Galilee:
The wine of life is spilt upon the sand,
My heart is as some famine-murdered land
Whence all good things have perished utterly,
And well I know my soul in Hell must lie
If I this night before God's throne should stand.
'He sleeps perchance, or rideth to the chase,
Like Baal, when his prophets howled that name
From morn to noon on Carmel's smitten height.'
Nay, peace, I shall behold, before the night,
The feet of brass, the robe more white than flame,
The wounded hands, the weary human face.

This cap, that so stately appears,
With ribbon-bound tassel on high,
Which seems by the crest that it rears
Ambitious of brushing the sky:
This cap to my cousin I owe,
She gave it, and gave me beside,
Wreath’d into an elegant bow,
The ribbon with which it is tied.


This wheel-footed studying chair,
Contrived both for toil and repose,
Wide-elbow’d, and wadded with hair,
In which I both scribble and dose,
Bright-studded to dazzle the eyes,
And rival in lustre of that
In which, or astronomy lies,
Fair Cassiopeia sat:


These carpets so soft to the foot,
Caledonia’s traffic and pride!
Oh spare them, ye knights of the boot,
Escaped from a cross-country ride!
This table, and mirror within,
Secure from collision and dust,...

Around me roared the nearly deafening street.
Tall, slim, in mourning, in majestic grief,
A woman passed me, with a splendid hand
Lifting and swinging her festoon and hem;

Nimble and stately, statuesque ofleg.
I, shaking like an addict, from her eye,
Black sky, spawner of hurricanes, drank in
Sweetness that fascinates, pleasure that kills.

One lightning flash... then night! Sweet fugitive
Whose glance has made me suddenly reborn,
Will we not meet again this side of death?

Far from this place! too late! never perhaps!
Neither one knowing where the other goes,
O you I might have loved, as well you know!

("Sentiers où l'herbe se balance.")

[Bk. III. xi., July, 1853.]


O paths whereon wild grasses wave!
O valleys! hillsides! forests hoar!
Why are ye silent as the grave?
For One, who came, and comes no more!

Why is thy window closed of late?
And why thy garden in its sear?
O house! where doth thy master wait?
I only know he is not here.

Good dog! thou watchest; yet no hand
Will feed thee. In the house is none.
Whom weepest thou? child! My father. And
O wife! whom weepest thou? The Gone.

Where is he gone? Into the dark. -
O sad, and ever-plaining surge!
Whence art thou? From the convict-bark.
And why thy mournful voice? A dirge.

EDWIN ARNOLD, C.S.I.

When Sorrow (vsing mine owne fiers might)
Melts downe his lead into my boyling brest
Through that darke furnace to my hart opprest,
There shines a ioy from thee my only light:
But soone as thought of thee breeds my delight,
And my yong soule flutters to thee his nest,
Most rude Despaire, my daily vnbidden guest,
Clips streight my wings, streight wraps me in his night,
And makes me then bow downe my heade, and say,
Ah, what doth Phoebus gold that wretch auaile
Whom Iron doores doe keepe from vse of day?
So strangely (alas) thy works on me preuaile,
That in my woes for thee thou art my ioy,
And in my ioyes for thee my onely annoy.

The rain falls long, and the rain falls light,
    With a desolate drip -drop, sad to hear.
But never a star shines through the night
    As I sit afar, from the world anear.

Down in the parlour some one sings;
    The children laugh in the nursery hall;
But my heart like a bird has spread its wings,
    And leaves the music, and mirth, and all.

Out in the rain and the eerie night,
    Into the darkness it speeds away.
Ah me! ah me! 'tis a gruesome flight,
    Seeking for you till the dawn of day.

If it only knew which way to go;
    Where you wander, or where you lie.
To valleys of sunshine, or hills of snow,
    Thither at once my heart would fly.

Fly and follow wherever you led,
    Over the desert and over the wave;
Or if ...

We who are left, how shall we look again
Happily on the sun or feel the rain
Without remembering how they who went
Ungrudgingly and spent
Their lives for us loved, too, the sun and rain?

A bird among the rain-wet lilac sings -
But we, how shall we turn to little things
And listen to the birds and winds and streams
Made holy by their dreams,
Nor feel the heart-break in the heart of things?

Call on the present day and night for nought,
Save what by yesterday was brought.
-
THE sea is flowing ever,
The land retains it never.
-
BE stirring, man, while yet the day is clear;
The night when none can work fast Draweth near.
-
WHEN the heavy-laden sigh,
Deeming help and hope gone by,
Oft, with healing power is heard,
Comfort-fraught, a kindly word.
-
How vast is mine inheritance, how glorious and sublime!
For time mine own possession is, the land I till is time!
-
UNWARY saith, ne'er lived a man more true;
The deepest heart, the highest head he knew,
"In ev'ry place and time thou'lt find availing
Uprightness, judgment, kindliness unfailing."
-
THOUGH the bards whom the Orient sun bath bless'd
Are greater than we who dw...

Letters and lynes, we see, are soone defaced,
Mettles doe waste and fret with cankers rust;
The Diamond shall once consume to dust,
And freshest colours with foule staines disgraced.
Paper and yncke can paynt but naked words,
To write with blood of force offends the sight,
And if with teares, I find them all too light;
And sighes and signes a silly hope affoords.
O, sweetest shadow! how thou seru'st my turne,
Which still shalt be as long as there is Sunne,
Nor whilst the world is neuer shall be done,
Whilst Moone shall shyne by night, or any fire shall burne:
    That euery thing whence shadow doth proceede,
    May in his shadow my Loues story reade.

A Rose, in tatters on the garden path,
Cried out to God and murmured 'gainst His Wrath,
Because a sudden wind at twilight's hush
Had snapped her stem alone of all the bush.
And God, Who hears both sun-dried dust and sun,
Had pity, whispering to that luckless one,
"Sister, in that thou sayest We did not well,
What voices heardst thou when thy petals fell?"
And the Rose answered, "In that evil hour
A voice said, `Father, wherefore falls the flower?
For lo, the very gossamers are still.'
And a voice answered, `Son, by Allah's will!'"

Then softly as a rain-mist on the sward,
Came to the Rose the Answer of the Lord:
"Sister, before We smote the Dark in twain,
Ere yet the stars saw one another plain,
Time, Tide, and Space, We bound unto the task
That thou...

Joy's is the magic sweet,
That makes Youth's pulses beat,
Puts music in young feet,
The old heart hears, the sad heart hears, that 's near it:

And Joy's the pleasant pain,
That holds us, heart and brain,
When Old Age, sound and sane,
With memories nears, long memories nears the spirit.

Joy's is the witchery rare,
That on the face of Care
Puts smiles; and rapture where
Love holds her breath, her heart's wild breath, to still her:

And Joy it is that plays
On Time's old lute of days
As Life goes on her ways
With thoughts of Death, gray thoughts of Death, that chill her.

    Mostly in a dull rotation
    We bear our loads and eat and drink and sleep.
    Feeling no tears, knowing no meditation,
    Too tired to think, too clogged with earth to weep.

    Dimly convinced, poor groping wretches,
    Like eyeless insects in a murky pond
    That out and out this city stretches,
    Away, away, and there is no beyond.

    No larger earth, no loftier heaven,
    No cleaner, gentler airs to breathe.    And yet,
    Even to us sometimes is given
    Visions of things we other times forget.

    Some day is done, its labour ended,
    And as we sit and brood at windows high,
    A steady wind from far descended,
    Blows off the filth that hid the deeper sky;

    There are the empty waiting spaces,
    We w...

I hear no footfall beating through the dark,
A lonely gust is loitering at the pane;
There is no sound within these forests stark
Beyond a splash or two of sullen rain;

But you are with us! and our patient land
Is filled with long-expected change at last,
Though we have scarce the heart to lift a hand
Of welcome, after all the yearning past!

Ah! marvel not; the days and nights were long
And cold and dull and dashed with many tears;
And lately there hath been a doleful song,
Of “Mene, Mene,” in our restless ears!

Indeed, we’ve said, “The royal son of Time,
Whose feet will shortly cross our threshold floor,
May lead us to those outer heights sublime
Our Sires have sold their lives to see before!

We’ll follow him! Beyond the waves and wrec...

O word and thing most beautiful!
Our yesterday was cold and dull,
Gray mists obscured the setting sun,
Its evening wept with sobbing rain;
But to and fro, mid shrouding night,
Some healing angel swift has run,
And all is fresh and fair again.

O, word and thing most beautiful!
The hearts, which were of cares so full,
The tired hands, the tired feet,
So glad of night, are glad of morn,--
Where are the clouds of yesterday?
The world is good, the world is sweet,
And life is new and hope re-born.

O, word and thing most beautiful!
O coward soul and sorrowful,
Which sighs to note the ebbing light
Give place to evening's shadowy gray!
What are these things but parables,--
That darkness heals the wrongs of day,
And dawning clears all mis...