Sadness

If Death should claim me for her own to-day,
And softly I should falter from your side,
Oh, tell me, loved one, would my memory stay,
And would my image in your heart abide?
Or should I be as some forgotten dream,
That lives its little space, then fades entire?
Should Time send o'er you its relentless stream,
To cool your heart, and quench for aye love's fire?

I would not for the world, love, give you pain,
Or ever compass what would cause you grief;
And, oh, how well I know that tears are vain!
But love is sweet, my dear, and life is brief;
So if some day before you I should go
Beyond the sound and sight of song and sea,
'T would give my spirit stronger wings to know
That you remembered still and wept for me.

When night was lifting,
And dawn had crept under its shade,
Amid cold clouds drifting
Dead-white as a corpse outlaid,
With a sudden scare
I seemed to behold
My Love in bare
Hard lines unfold.

Yea, in a moment,
An insight that would not die
Killed her old endowment
Of charm that had capped all nigh,
Which vanished to none
Like the gilt of a cloud,
And showed her but one
Of the common crowd.

She seemed but a sample
Of earth's poor average kind,
Lit up by no ample
Enrichments of mien or mind.
I covered my eyes
As to cover the thought,
And unrecognize
What the morn had taught.

O vision appalling
When the one believed-in thing
Is seen falling, falling,
With all to which hope can cling.
Of...

Everything goes to its rest;
    The hills are asleep in the noon;
And life is as still in its nest
    As the moon when she looks on a moon
In the depth of a calm river's breast
    As it steals through a midnight in June.

The streams have forgotten the sea
    In the dream of their musical sound;
The sunlight is thick on the tree,
    And the shadows lie warm on the ground,--
So still, you may watch them and see
    Every breath that awakens around.

The churchyard lies still in the heat,
    With its handful of mouldering bone,
As still as the long stalk of wheat
    In the shadow that sits by the stone,
As still as the grass at my feet
    When I walk in the meadows alone.

The waves are asleep on the main,
    And the ships ...

I wandered o'er the vast green plains of youth,
And searched for Pleasure. On a distant height
Fame's silhouette stood sharp against the skies.
Beyond vast crowds that thronged a broad high-way
I caught the glimmer of a golden goal,
While from a blooming bower smiled siren Love.

Straight gazing in her eyes, I laughed at Love,
With all the haughty insolence of youth,
As past her bower I strode to seek my goal.
"Now will I climb to glory's dizzy height,"
I said, "for there above the common way
Doth pleasure dwell companioned by the skies."

But when I reached that summit near the skies,
So far from man I seemed, so far from Love -
"Not here," I cried, "doth Pleasure find her way,"
Seen from the distant borderland of youth.
Fame smiles upon us from her...

1.
I dreamed that, as I wandered by the way,
Bare Winter suddenly was changed to Spring,
And gentle odours led my steps astray,
Mixed with a sound of waters murmuring
Along a shelving bank of turf, which lay
Under a copse, and hardly dared to fling
Its green arms round the bosom of the stream,
But kissed it and then fled, as thou mightest in dream.

2.
There grew pied wind-flowers and violets,
Daisies, those pearled Arcturi of the earth,
The constellated flower that never sets;
Faint oxslips; tender bluebells, at whose birth
The sod scarce heaved; and that tall flower that wets -
Like a child, half in tenderness and mirth -
Its mother's face with Heaven's collected tears,
When the low wind, its playmate's voice, it hears.

3.
And in th...

        Oh, I am weary, weary, weary
            Of Pan and oaten quills
        And little songs that, from the dictionary,
            Learn lore of streams and hills,
        Of studied laughter, mocking what is merry,
            And calculated thrills!

        Are we grown old and past the time of singing?
            Is ardor quenched in art
        Till art is but a formal figure, bringing
            A money-measured heart,
        Procrustean cut, and, with old echoes, ringing
            Its bells about the mart?

        The race moves on, and leaves no wildernesses
            Where rugged voices cry;
        It reads its prayer, and with set phrase it blesses
            The souls of men who die,
        And step by even step its rank p...

The sun is dying; space and room.
Serenity, vast sense of rest,
Lie bosomed in the orange west
Of Orient waters. Hear the boom
Of long, strong billows; wave on wave,
Like funeral guns above a grave.

There was never a castle seen
    So fair as mine in Spain:
It stands embowered in green,
    Crowning the gentle slope
Of a hill by the Xenil's shore
And at eve its shade flaunts o'er
    The storied Vega plain,
And its towers are hid in the mists of Hope;
    And I toil through years of pain
    Its glimmering gates to gain.

In visions wild and sweet
Sometimes its courts I greet:
    Sometimes in joy its shining halls
I tread with favoured feet;
But never my eyes in the light of day
    Were blest with its ivied walls,
Where the marble white and the granite gray
Turn gold alike when the sunbeams play,
    When the soft day dimly falls.

I know in its dusky rooms
    Are treasures rich and rare;
The spoil of Eastern looms,<...

Men make them fires on the hearth
Each under his roof-tree,
And the Four Winds that rule the earth
They blow the smoke to me.

Across the high hills and the sea
And all the changeful skies,
The Four Winds blow the smoke to me
Till the tears are in my eyes.

Until the tears are in my eyes
And my heart is well nigh broke
For thinking on old memories
That gather in the smoke.

With every shift of every wind
The homesick memories come,
From every quarter of mankind
Where I have made me a home.

Four times a fire against the cold
And a roof against the rain,
Sorrow fourfold and joy fourfold
The Four Winds bring again!

How can I answer which is best
Of all the fires that burn?
I have been too often host or gues...

Just as those final words were penned, the sun broke out in power,
And gladdened all things; but, as chanced, within that very hour,
Air blackened, thunder growled, fire flashed from clouds that hid the sky,
And, for the Subject of my Verse, I heaved a pensive sigh.

Nor could my heart by second thoughts from heaviness be cleared,
For bodied forth before my eyes the cross-crowned hut appeared;
And, while around it storm as fierce seemed troubling earth and air,
I saw, within, the Norman Boy kneeling alone in prayer.

The Child, as if the thunder's voice spake with articulate call,
Bowed meekly in submissive fear, before the Lord of All;
His lips were moving; and his eyes, up-raised to sue for grace,
With soft illumination cheered the dimness of that place.

How bea...

You and I and Burd so blithe--
    Burd so blithe, and you, and I--
The Mower he would whet his scythe
    Before the dew was dry.

And he woke soon, but we woke soon
    And drew the nursery blind,
All wondering at the waning moon
    With the small June roses twined:
Low in her cradle swung the moon
    With an elfin dawn behind.

In whispers, while our elders slept,
    We knelt and said our prayers,
And dress'd us and on tiptoe crept
    Adown the creaking stairs.

The world's possessors lay abed,
    And all the world was ours--
"Nay, nay, but hark! the Mower's tread!
    And we must save the flowers!"

The Mower knew not rest nor haste--
    That old unweary man:
But we were young. We paused and raced
    And ...

Cesare, poi che 'l traditor d' Egitto.

THE COUNTENANCE DOES NOT ALWAYS TRULY INDICATE THE HEART.


    When Egypt's traitor Pompey's honour'd head
To Cæsar sent; then, records so relate,
To shroud a gladness manifestly great,
Some feigned tears the specious monarch shed:
And, when misfortune her dark mantle spread
O'er Hannibal, and his afflicted state,
He laugh'd 'midst those who wept their adverse fate,
That rank despite to wreak defeat had bred.
Thus doth the mind oft variously conceal
Its several passions by a different veil;
Now with a countenance that's sad, now gay:
So mirth and song if sometimes I employ,
'Tis but to hide those sorrows that annoy,
'Tis but to chase my amorous cares away.

NOTT.


    Cæsar, wh...

My thoughts impelled me to the resting-place
Where sleep my parents, many a friend and brother.
I asked them (no one heard and none replied):
"Do ye forsake me, too, oh father, mother?"
Then from the grave, without a tongue, these cried,
And showed my own place waiting by their side.

Moses Ben Esra (About 1100).

The flag is listless, limp. It dances not.
        As deep the sea breathes from a gentle breast
As any bride who dreams at love's behest,
        And wakes and sighs, then casts with dreams her lot.
Sails hang upon the masts--useless-forgot--
        Like folded standards which the warriors wrest
And bring home broken from the battle's crest.
        The sailors rest them in some sheltered spot.

O Sea! within your unknown deeps concealed,
        When storms are wild, your monsters dream and sleep,
And all their cruelty for the sunlight keep.
        Thus, Soul of Mine, in your sad deeps concealed
The monsters sleep--when wild are storms. They start
        From out some blue sky's peace to seize my heart.

Not while I live may I forget
That garden which my spirit trod!
Where dreams were flowers, wild and wet,
And beautiful as God.

Not while I breathe, awake, adream,
Shall live again for me those hours,
When, in its mystery and gleam,
I met her 'mid the flowers.

Eyes, talismanic heliotrope,
Beneath mesmeric lashes, where
The sorceries of love and hope
Had made a shining lair.

And daydawn brows, whereover hung
The twilight of dark locks: wild birds,
Her lips, that spoke the rose's tongue
Of fragrance-voweled words.

I will not tell of cheeks and chin,
That held me as sweet language holds;
Nor of the eloquence within
Her breasts' twin-moonéd molds.

Nor of her body's languorous
Wind-grace, that glanced like starl...

1

As by the fix'd decrees of Heaven,
'Tis vain to hope that Joy can last;
The dearest boon that Life has given,
To me is - visions of the past.


2.

For these this toy of blushing hue
I prize with zeal before unknown,
It tells me of a Friend I knew,
Who loved me for myself alone.


3.

It tells me what how few can say
Though all the social tie commend;
Recorded in my heart 'twill lay, [2]
It tells me mine was once a Friend.


4.

Through many a weary day gone by,
With time the gift is dearer grown;
And still I view in Memory's eye
That teardrop sparkle through my own.


5.

And heartless Age perhaps will smile,
Or wonder whence those feelings sprung;

Oft I had heard of Lucy Gray,
And when I cross'd the Wild,
I chanc'd to see at break of day
The solitary Child.

No Mate, no comrade Lucy knew;
She dwelt on a wild Moor,
The sweetest Thing that ever grew
Beside a human door!

You yet may spy the Fawn at play,
The Hare upon the Green;
But the sweet face of Lucy Gray
Will never more be seen.

"To-night will be a stormy night,
You to the Town must go,
And take a lantern, Child, to light
Your Mother thro' the snow."

"That, Father! will I gladly do;
'Tis scarcely afternoon,
The Minster-clock has just struck two,
And yonder is the Moon."

At this the Father rais'd his hook
And snapp'd a faggot-band;
He plied his work, and Lucy took
The lantern in her hand....

What trifles touch our feelings, when we view
The simple scenes of Childhood's early day,
Pausing on spots where gather'd blossoms grew,
Or favour'd seats of many a childish play;
Bush, dyke, or wood, where painted pooties lay,
Where oft we've crept and crept the shades among,
Where ivy hung old roots bemoss'd with grey,
Where nettles oft our infant fingers stung,
And tears would weep the gentle wounds away:--
Ah, gentle wounds indeed, I well may say,
To those sad Manhood's tortur'd passage found,
Where naked Fate each day new pangs doth feel,
Clearing away the brambles that surround,
Inflicting tortures death can only heal.