Our present tears here, not our present laughter,
Are but the handsels of our joys hereafter.

Day, you have bruised and beaten me,
As rain beats down the bright, proud sea,
Beaten my body, bruised my soul,
Left me nothing lovely or whole,

Yet I have wrested a gift from you,
Day that dies in dusky blue:
For suddenly over the factories
I saw a moon in the cloudy seas,

A wisp of beauty all alone
In a world as hard and gray as stone,
Oh who could be bitter and want to die
When a maiden moon wakes up in the sky?

Demeter sad! the wells of sorrow lay
Eternal gushing in thy lonely path.

Methinks I see her now - an awful shape
Tall o'er a dragon team in frenzied search
From Argive plains unto the jeweled shores
Of the remotest Ind, where Usha's hand
Tinged her grief-cloven brow with kindly touch,
And Savitar wheeled genial thro' the skies
O'er palmy regions of the faneless Brahm.

In melancholy search I see her roam
O'er the steep peaks of Himalayas keen
With the unmellowed frosts of Boreal storms,
Then back again with that wild mother woe
Writ in the anguished fire of her eyes, -
Back where old Atlas groans 'neath weight of worlds,
And the Cimmerian twilight glooms the soul.
Deep was her sleep in Persia's haunted vales,
Where many a languid Philomela moan...

Before I see another day,
Oh let my body die away!
In sleep I heard the northern gleams;
The stars, they were among my dreams;
In rustling conflict through the skies,
I heard, I saw the flashes drive,
And yet they are upon my eyes,
And yet I am alive;
Before I see another day,
Oh let my body die away!

My fire is dead: it knew no pain;
Yet is it dead, and I remain:
All stiff with ice the ashes lie;
And they are dead, and I will die.
When I was well, I wished to live,
For clothes, for warmth, for food, and fire;
But they to me no joy can give,
No pleasure now, and no desire.
Then here contented will I lie
Alone, I cannot fear to die.

Alas! ye might have dragged me on
Another day, a single one!
Too soon I yielded to despa...

Oh, for some cup of consummating might,
Filled with life's kind conclusion, lost in night!
A wine of darkness, that with death shall cure
This sickness called existence! Oh to find
Surcease of sorrow! quiet for the mind,
An end of thought in something dark and sure!
Mandrake and hellebore, or poison pure!
Some drug of death, wherein there are no dreams!
No more, no more, with patience, to endure
The wrongs of life, the hate of men, it seems;
Or wealth's authority, tyranny of time,
And lamentations and the boasts of man!
To hear no more the wild complaints of toil,
And struggling merit, that, unknown, must starve:
To see no more life's disregard for Art!
Oh God! to know no longer anything!
Nor good, nor evil, or what either means!
Nor hear the changing tid...

Weep on, weep on, your hour is past;
    Your dreams of pride are o'er;
The fatal chain is round you cast,
    And you are men no more.
In vain the hero's heart hath bled;
    The sage's tongue hath warned in vain;--
Oh, Freedom! once thy flame hath fled,
    It never lights again.

Weep on--perhaps in after days,
    They'll learn to love your name;
When many a deed may wake in praise
    That long hath slept in blame.
And when they tread the ruined isle,
    Where rest, at length, the lord and slave,
They'll wondering ask, how hands so vile
    Could conquer hearts so brave?

"'Twas fate," they'll say, "a wayward fate
    "Your web of discord wove;
"And while your tyrants joined in hate,
    "You never joined in love.
"But heart...

My love he built me a bonny bower,
And clad it a' wi' a lilye flower,
A brawer bower ye ne'er did see,
Than my true love he built for me.

There came a man, by middle day,
He spied his sport and went away,
And brought the king that very night,
Who brake my bower, and slew my knight.

He slew my knight, to me so dear;
He slew my knight, and poined his gear;
My servants all for life did flee,
And left me in extremitie.

I sewed his sheet, making my mane;
I watched the corpse, myself alane;
I watched his body, night and day;
No living creature came that way.

I took his body on my back,
And whiles I gaed, and whiles I sat,
I digged a grave, and laid him in,
And happed him with the sod so green.

But think na ye my hear...

        At last the bird that sang so long
        In twilight circles, hushed his song:
        Above the ancient square
        The stars came here and there.

        Good Friday night! Some hearts were bowed,
        But some amid the waiting crowd
        Because of too much youth
        Felt not that mystic ruth;

        And of these hearts my heart was one:
        Nor when beneath the arch of stone
        With dirge and candle flame
        The cross of passion came,

        Did my glad spirit feel reproof,
        Though on the awful tree aloof,
        Unspiritual, dead,
        Drooped the ensanguined Head.

        To one who stood where myrtles made
        A little space of deeper shade
        (As I could half d...

I touched the heart that loved me as a player
    Touches a lyre; content with my poor skill
    No touch save mine knew my beloved (and still
I thought at times: Is there no sweet lost air
Old loves could wake in him, I cannot share?).
    Oh, he alone, alone could so fulfil
    My thoughts in sound to the measure of my will.
He is gone, and silence takes me unaware.

The songs I knew not he resumes, set free
From my constraining love, alas for me!
    His part in our tune goes with him; my part
Is locked in me for ever; I stand as mute
    As one with full strong music in his heart
Whose fingers stray upon a shattered lute.

Oh many a duel the world has seen
    That was bitter with hate, that was red with gore,
But I sing of a duel by far more cruel
    Than ever by poet was sung before.
It was waged by night, yea by day and by night,
    With never a pause or halt or rest,
And the curious spot where this battle was fought
    Was the throbbing heart in a woman's breast.

There met two rivals in deadly strife,
    And they fought for this woman so pale and proud.
One was a man in the prime of life,
    And one was a corpse in a moldy shroud;
One wrapped in a sheet from his head to his feet,
    The other one clothed in worldly fashion;
But a rival to dread is a man who is dead,
    If he has been loved in life with passion.

The living lover he battled with sighs,
...

Still when daylight o'er the wave
Bright and soft its farewell gave,
I used to hear, while light was falling,
O'er the wave a sweet voice calling,
    Mournfully at distance calling.

Ah! once how blest that maid would come,
To meet her sea-boy hastening home;
And thro' the night those sounds repeating,
Hail his bark with joyous greeting,
    Joyously his light bark greeting.

But, one sad night, when winds were high,
Nor earth, nor heaven could hear her cry.
She saw his boat come tossing over
Midnight's wave,--but not her lover!
    No, never more her lover.

And still that sad dream loath to leave,
She comes with wandering mind at eve,
And oft we hear, when night is falling,
Faint her voice thro' twilight calling,
    Mournfully...

That crazed girl improvising her music.
Her poetry, dancing upon the shore,

Her soul in division from itself
Climbing, falling She knew not where,
Hiding amid the cargo of a steamship,
Her knee-cap broken, that girl I declare
A beautiful lofty thing, or a thing
Heroically lost, heroically found.

No matter what disaster occurred
She stood in desperate music wound,
Wound, wound, and she made in her triumph
Where the bales and the baskets lay
No common intelligible sound
But sang, "O sea-starved, hungry sea.'

I

    I shall rot here, with those whom in their day
    You never knew,
    And alien ones who, ere they chilled to clay,
    Met not my view,
Will in your distant grave-place ever neighbour you.

II

    No shade of pinnacle or tree or tower,
    While earth endures,
    Will fall on my mound and within the hour
    Steal on to yours;
One robin never haunt our two green covertures.

III

    Some organ may resound on Sunday noons
    By where you lie,
    Some other thrill the panes with other tunes
    Where moulder I;
No selfsame chords compose our common lullaby.

IV

    The simply-cut memorial at my head
    Perhaps may take
    A Gothic form, and that above your bed
    Be Greek in make;...

1.

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thy happiness,
That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees,
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

2.

O for a draught of vintage, that hath been
Cooled a long age in the deep-delved earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country green,
Dance, and Provencal song, and sun-burnt mirth!
O for a beaker full of the warm South,
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
And purple-stained mouth;
T...

When tossed on time's tempestuous tide,
    By angry storms resistless driven,
One hope can bid our fears subside -
    It is the hope of rest in Heaven.

With trusting heart we lift our eyes
    Above the dark clouds, tempest-driven,
And view, beyond those troubled skies,
    The peaceful, stormless rest of Heaven.

No more to shed the exile's tears, -
    No more the heart by anguish riven, -
No longer bent 'neath toilful years, -
    How sweet will be the rest of Heaven

O happy rose-bud blooming
    Upon thy parent tree,
Nay, thou art too presuming;
For soon the earth entombing
    Thy faded charms shall be,
And the chill damp consuming.

O happy skylark springing
    Up to the broad blue sky,
Too fearless in thy winging,
Too gladsome in thy singing,
    Thou also soon shalt lie
Where no sweet notes are ringing.

And through life's shine and shower
    We shall have joy and pain;
But in the summer bower,
And at the morning hour,
    We still shall look in vain
For the same bird and flower.

        When the first sere leaves of the year were falling,
    I heard, with a heart that was strangely thrilled,
        Out of the grave of a dead Past calling,
    A voice I fancied forever stilled.

        All through winter and spring and summer,
        Silence hung over that grave like a pall,
        But, borne on the breath of the last sad comer,
    I listen again to the old-time call.

        It is only a love of a by-gone season,
    A senseless folly that mocked at me
        A reckless passion that lacked all reason,
    So I killed it, and hid it where none could see.

        I smothered it first to stop its crying,
    Then stabbed it through with a good sharp blade,
        And cold and pallid I saw it lying,
    And deep - ah' ...

O that those lips had language! Life has pass’d
With me but roughly since I heard thee last.
Those lips are thine—thy own sweet smile I see,
The same that oft in childhood solaced me;
Voice only fails, else how distinct they say,
“Grieve not, my child, chase all thy fears away!”
The meek intelligence of those dear eyes
(Blest be the art that can immortalize,
The art that baffles Time’s tyrannic claim
To quench it) here shines on me still the same.
Faithful remembrancer of one so dear,
O welcome guest, though unexpected here:
Who bidst me honour with an artless song,
Affectionate, a mother lost so long.
I will obey, not willingly alone,
But gladly, as the precept were her own:
And, while that face renews my filial grief,
Fancy shall weave a charm for my re...