King Eochaid came at sundown to a wood
Westward of Tara. Hurrying to his queen
He had out-ridden his war-wasted men
That with empounded cattle trod the mire;
And where beech trees had mixed a pale the green light
With the ground-ivy’s blue, he saw a stag
Whiter than curds, its eyes the tint of the sea.
Because it stood upon his path and seemed
More hands in height than any stag in the world
He sat with tightened rein and loosened mouth
Upon his trembling horse, then drove the spur;
But the stag stooped and ran at him, and passed,
Rending the horse’s flank. King Eochaid reeled
Then drew his sword to hold its levelled point
Against the stag. When horn and steel were met
The horn resounded as though it had been silver,
A sweet, miraculous, terrifying sound.
...

I.

I had a vision when the night was late:
A youth came riding toward a palace-gate.
He rode a horse with wings, that would have flown,
But that his heavy rider kept him down.
And from the palace came a child of sin,
And took him by the curls, and led him in,
Where sat a company with heated eyes,
Expecting when a fountain should arise:
A sleepy light upon their brows and lips–
As when the sun, a crescent of eclipse,
Dreams over lake and lawn, and isles and capes–
Suffused them, sitting, lying, languid shapes,
By heaps of gourds, and skins of wine, and piles of grapes.


II.

Then methought I heard a mellow sound,
Gathering up from all the lower ground;
Narrowing in to where they sat assembled
Low voluptuous music winding trembled...

Goa hooam, - tha little drabbled brat,
Tha'll get thi deeath o' cold;
Whear does ta live? Just tell me that,
Befooar aw start to scold.

Thart sypin weet, - dooant come near me!
Tha luks hawf pined to deeath;
An what a cough tha has! dear me!
It ommost taks thi breeath.

Them een's too big for thy wee face, -
Thi curls are sad neglected;
Poor child! thine seems a woeful case,
Noa wonder tha'rt dejected.

Nah, can't ta tell me who tha art?
Tha needn't think aw'll harm thi;
Here, tak this sixpence for a start,
An find some place to warm thi.

Tha connot spaik; - thi een poor thing,
Are filled wi' tears already;
Tha connot even start to sing,
Thi voice is soa unsteady.

It isn't long tha'll ha to rooam,
An sing th...

Is it so far from thee
Thou canst no longer see,
In the Chamber over the Gate,
That old man desolate,
Weeping and wailing sore
For his son, who is no more?
    O Absalom, my son!

Is it so long ago
That cry of human woe
From the walled city came,
Calling on his dear name,
That it has died away
In the distance of to-day?
    O Absalom, my son!

There is no far or near,
There is neither there nor here,
There is neither soon nor late,
In that Chamber over the Gate,
Nor any long ago
To that cry of human woe,
    O Absalom, my son!

From the ages that are past
The voice sounds like a blast,
Over seas that wreck and drown,
Over tumult of traffic and town;
And from ages yet to be
Come the echoes back to...

I dream that the dearest I ever knew
    Has died and been entombed.
I am sure it's a dream that cannot be true,
    But I am so overgloomed
By its persistence, that I would gladly
    Have quick death take me,
Rather than longer think thus sadly;
    So wake me, wake me!

It has lasted days, but minute and hour
    I expect to get aroused
And find him as usual in the bower
    Where we so happily housed.
Yet stays this nightmare too appalling,
    And like a web shakes me,
And piteously I keep on calling,
    And no one wakes me!

(Suggested by the book of Mr. Ed. C. Randall.)



'There is no death, there are no dead.'
    From zone to zone, from sphere to sphere,
    The souls of all who pass from here
By hosts of living thoughts are led;
And dark or bright, those souls must tread
    The paths they fashioned year on year.
    For hells are built of hate or fear,
And heavens of love our lives have shed.

Across unatlassed worlds of space,
    And through God's mighty universe,
    With thoughts that bless or thoughts that curse,
Each journeys to his rightful place.
    Oh, greater truth no man has said,
    'There is no death, there are no dead.'

It lifts the mourner from the sod,
    And bids him cast away the reed
    Of some uncomforting poor creed,

    March 13, 1881.

As one who feels the breathless nightmare grip
His heart-strings, and through visioned horrors fares,
Now on a thin-ledged chasm's rock-crumbling lip,
Now on a tottering pinnacle that dare
The front of heaven, while always unawares
Weird monsters start above, around, beneath,
Each glaring from some uglier mask of death,


So the White Czar imperial progress made
Through terror-haunted days.    A shock, a cry
Whose echoes ring the globe - the spectre's laid.
Hurled o'er the abyss, see the crowned martyr lie
Resting in peace - fear, change, and death gone by.
Fit end for nightmare - mist of blood and tears,
Red climax to the slow, abortive years.


The world draws breath - one long, deep-shuddering sigh,
At that whic...

Look, Christian, on thy Bible, and that glass
That sheds its sand through minutes, hours, and days,
And years; it speaks not, yet, methinks, it says,
To every human heart: so mortals pass
On to their dark and silent grave! Alas
For man! an exile upon earth he strays,
Weary, and wandering through benighted ways;
To-day in strength, to-morrow like the grass
That withers at his feet! Lift up thy head,
Poor pilgrim, toiling in this vale of tears;
That book declares whose blood for thee was shed,
Who died to give thee life; and though thy years
Pass like a shade, pointing to thy death-bed,
Out of the deep thy cry an angel hears,
And by his guiding hand thy steps to heaven are led!

I'll gaze no more on her bewitching face,
Since ruin harbours there in every place;
For my enchanted soul alike she drowns
With calms and tempests of her smiles and frowns.
I’ll love no more those cruel eyes of hers,
Which, pleased or anger’d, still are murderers:
For if she dart, like lightning, through the air
Her beams of wrath, she kills me with despair:
If she behold me with a pleasing eye,
I surfeit with excess of joy, and die.

    Looking like Raphael's Perugino, eyes
    So slightly, subtly aquiline, as brown
    As a buck-eye, amorous, flamed, but lightly dimmed
    Through thought of self while sitting for the artist;
    A nose well bridged with bone for will, the nostrils
    Distended as if sniffing diaphanous fire;
    A very bow for lips, the under lip
    Rich, kissable like a woman's; heavy cheeks
    Propped with a rounded tower of flesh for neck:
    Thus Perugino looked, says Raphael,
    And thus looked Father Whimsett at his desk,
    With vertical creases, where the nose and brow
    Together come, between the eye-brows slanting
    Unequally, half clown-wise, half Mephisto,
    With just a touch of that abandoned humor,
    And laughter at the world, the race of men,

Still as a mountain with dark pines and sun
He stood between the armies, and his shout
Rolled from the empyrean above the host:
"Bid any little flea ye have come forth,
And wince at death upon my finger-nail!"
He turned his large-boned face; and all his steel
Tossed into beams the lustre of the noon;
And all the shaggy horror of his locks
Rustled like locusts in a field of corn.
The meagre pupil of his shameless eye
Moved like a cormorant over a glassy sea.
He stretched his limbs, and laughed into the air,
To feel the groaning sinews of his breast,
And the long gush of his swollen arteries pause:
And, nodding, wheeled, towering in all his height.
Then, like a wind that hushes, gazed and saw
Down, down, far down upon the untroubled green
A shepherd-boy tha...

The sanctity that is about the dead
To make us love them more than late, when here,
Is not it well to find the living dear
With sanctity like this, ere they have fled?

The tender thoughts we nurture for a loss
Of mother, friend, or child, oh! it were wise
To spend this glory on the earnest eyes,
The longing heart, that feel life's present cross.

Give also mercy to the living here
Whose keen-strung souls will quiver at your touch;
The utmost reverence is not too much
For eyes that weep, although the lips may sneer.

Stupidity and error, avarice and vice,
possess our spirits, batten on our flesh,
we feed that fond remorse, our guest,
like ragged beggars nourishing their lice.


Our sins are mulish, our repentance vain:
we make certain our confessions pay,
we’ll happily retrace the muddied way,
thinking vile tears will wash away the stain.


Satan Trismegistes rocks the bewitched
Mind, endlessly, on evil’s pillow, till,
all the precious metal of our will’s
vaporised by that knowing alchemist.


The Devil pulls the strings that make us move!
We take delight in such disgusting things:
one step nearer Hell each new day brings
us, void of horror, to the stinking gloom.


We clutch at furtive pleasure as we pass,
like the debauchee wh...

TORQUEMADA

In the heroic days when Ferdinand
And Isabella ruled the Spanish land,
And Torquemada, with his subtle brain,
Ruled them, as Grand Inquisitor of Spain,
In a great castle near Valladolid,
Moated and high and by fair woodlands hid,
There dwelt as from the chronicles we learn,
An old Hidalgo proud and taciturn,
Whose name has perished, with his towers of stone,
And all his actions save this one alone;
This one, so terrible, perhaps 't were best
If it, too, were forgotten with the rest;
Unless, perchance, our eyes can see therein
The martyrdom triumphant o'er the sin;
A double picture, with its gloom and glow,
The splendor overhead, the death below.

This sombre man counted each day as lost
On which his feet no sacred threshold cros...

"What hast thou seen in the olden time,
    Dark ruin, lone and gray?"
"Full many a race from thy native clime,
    And the bright earth, pass away.
The organ has pealed in these roofless aisles,
    And priests have knelt to pray
At the altar, where now the daisy smiles
    O'er their silent beds of clay.

"I've seen the strong man a wailing child,
    By his mother offered here;
I've seen him a warrior fierce and wild;
    I've seen him on his bier,
His warlike harness beside him laid
    In the silent earth to rust;
His plumed helm and trusty blade
    To moulder into dust!

"I've seen the stern reformer scorn
    The things once deemed divine,
And the bigot's zeal with gems adorn
    The altar's sacred shrine.
I've seen the si...

    I dreamed my toenails
    were ivory
    and elephants came to trade for tusks
    ... Then went conveniently off to die
    ("shed this mortal coil") in a
    cutter-shed stacked high
    like firewood.

    II
    I dreamed Landover, Maryland
    was the site near the
    Pentagon. People got wind of
    the scheme and grew intrigued.
    Twigs shattered in the moonlight
    as curious onlookers tried
    to peek-a-boo into the shed.

    III
    Raisins were left out
    to dry as
    token offerings.

    IV
    Mafioso members and other hardcases
    wanted to elbow in
    but stiff military types
    eminently incorruptible, said
    "no dice" made, naturally,
    of ivory turned a
    ...

The road is drowned in dust; the winds vibrate
With heat and noise of insect wings that sting
The stridulous noon with sound; no waters sing;
Weeds crowd the path and barricade the gate.
Within the garden Summer seems to wait:
Among her flowers, dead or withering;
About her skirts the teasel's bristles cling,
And to her hair the hot burr holds like hate.
The day burns downward, and with fiery crest
Flames like a furnace; then the fierce night falls
Dewless and dead, crowned with its thirsty stars:
A dry breeze sweeps the firmament and west
The lightning leaps at flickering intervals,
Like some caged beast that thunders at its bars.

Blest in death and life beyond man's guessing
Little children live and die, possest
Still of grace that keeps them past expressing
Blest.

Each least chirp that rings from every nest,
Each least touch of flower-soft fingers pressing
Aught that yearns and trembles to be prest,

Each least glance, gives gifts of grace, redressing
Grief's worst wrongs:    each mother's nurturing breast
Feeds a flower of bliss, beyond all blessing
Blest.