1.

        WE are a shadow and a shining, we!
        One moment nothing seems but what we see,
        Nor aught to rule but common circumstance--
        Nought is to seek but praise, to shun but chance;
        A moment more, and God is all in all,
        And not a sparrow from its nest can fall
        But from the ground its chirp goes up into his hall.

        2.

        I know at least which is the better mood.
        When on a heap of cares I sit and brood,
        Like Job upon his ashes, sorely vext,
        I feel a lower thing than when I stood
        The world's true heir, fearless as, on its stalk,
        A lily meeting Jesus in his walk:
        I am not all mood--I can judge betwixt.

        3.

   ...

I. The Blackness

In vaults of fathomless obscurity
Where Destiny has sentenced me for life;
Where cheerful rosy beams may never shine;
Where, living with that sullen hostess, Night,

I am an artist that a mocking God
Condemns, alas! to paint the gloom itself;
Where like a cook with ghoulish appetite
I boil and devour my own heart,

Sometimes there sprawls, and stretches out, and glows
A splendid ghost, of a surpassing charm,
And when this vision growing in my sight

In oriental languor, like a dream,
Is fully formed, I know the phantom's name:
Yes, it is She! though black, yet full oflight.


II. The Perfume

During your lifetime, reader, have you breathed,
Slow-savouring to the point of dizziness,
That grain of in...

When, ere the tangled web is reft,
The kid-gloved villain scowls and sneers,
And hapless innocence is left
With no assets save sighs and tears,

'Tis then, just then, that in there stalks
The hero, watchful of her needs;
He talks, Great heavens how he talks!
But we forgive him, for his deeds.

Life is the drama here to-day
And Death the villain of the plot.
It is a realistic play.
Shall it end well or shall it not?

The hero? Oh, the hero's part
Is vacant to be played by you.
Then act it well! An orphan's heart
May beat the lighter if you do.

Burn, or drown me, choose ye whether,
So I may but die together;
Thus to slay me by degrees
Is the height of cruelties.
What needs twenty stabs, when one
Strikes me dead as any stone?
O show mercy then, and be
Kind at once to murder me.

Does death cleanse the stains of the spirit
When sundered at last from the clay,
Or keep we thereafter till judgment,
Desires that on earth had their way?
Bereft of the strength which was given
To use for our good or our bane,
Shall yearnings vain, impotent, endless,
Be ours with their burden of pain?

Though flesh does not clothe them, what anguish
Must be known in the world of the dead,
If the future lies open before them,
And fate has no secret unread.
And yet, oh how rarely our vision
May know the lost presence is nigh;
How seldom its purpose be gathered,
Be it comfort, or warning to die!

With mute or half breathed supplication
Permitted to utter their prayer,
Demanding earth's justice, but ever
Poor phantoms of mist and of air;

When Faith and Love, which parted from thee never,
Had ripened thy just soul to dwell with God,
Meekly thou didst resign this earthly load
Of death, called life, which us from life doth sever.
Thy works, and alms, and all thy good endeavour,
Stayed not behind, nor in the grave were trod;
But, as Faith pointed with her golden rod,
Followed thee up to joy and bliss for ever.
Love led them on; and Faith, who knew them best
Thy handmaids, clad them oer with purple beams
And azure wings, that up they flew so drest,
And speak the truth of thee on glorious themes
Before the Judge; who henceforth bid thee rest,
And drink thy fill of pure immortal streams.

The firmament breaks up. In black eclipse
Light after light goes out. One evil star,
Luridly glaring through the smoke of war,
As in the dream of the Apocalypse,
Drags others down. Let us not weakly weep
Nor rashly threaten. Give us grace to keep
Our faith and patience; wherefore should we leap
On one hand into fratricidal fight,
Or, on the other, yield eternal right,
Frame lies of law, and good and ill confound?
What fear we? Safe on freedom’s vantage-ground
Our feet are planted: let us there remain
In unrevengeful calm, no means untried
Which truth can sanction, no just claim denied,
The sad spectators of a suicide!
They break the links of Union: shall we light
The fires of hell to weld anew the chain
On that red anvil where each blow is pain?
Draw...

S' onesto amor può meritar mercede.

HE PRAYS THAT, IN REWARD FOR HIS LONG AND VIRTUOUS ATTACHMENT, SHE WILL VISIT HIM IN DEATH.


    If Mercy e'er rewardeth virtuous love,
If Pity still can do, as she has done,
I shall have rest, for clearer than the sun
My lady and the world my faith approve.
Who fear'd me once, now knows, yet scarce believes
I am the same who wont her love to seek,
Who seek it still; where she but heard me speak,
Or saw my face, she now my soul perceives.
Wherefore I hope that e'en in heaven she mourns
My heavy anguish, and on me the while
Her sweet face eloquent of pity turns,
And that when shuffled off this mortal coil,
Her way to me with that fair band she'll wend,
True follower of Christ and virtue's friend.

The Spring spreads one green lap of flowers
Which Autumn buries at the fall,
No chilling showers of Autumn hours
Can stay them or recall;
Winds sing a dirge, while earth lays out of sight
Her garment of delight.

The cloven East brings forth the sun,
The cloven West doth bury him
What time his gorgeous race is run
And all the world grows dim;
A funeral moon is lit in heaven's hollow,
And pale the star-lights follow.

I am an outcast, sinful and vile I know,
But what are you, my lady, so fair, and proud, and high?
The fringe of your robe just touched me, me so low -
Your feet defiled, I saw the scorn in your eye,
And the jeweled hand, that drew back your garments fine.
What should you say if I told you to your face
Your robes are dyed with as deep a stain as mine,
The only difference is you are better paid for disgrace.

You loved a man, you promised to be his bride,
Strong vows you gave, you were in the sight of Heaven his wife,
And when you sold yourself for another's wealth, he died;
And what is that but murder?    To take a life
That is a little beyond my guilt, I ween,
To murder the one you love is a crime of deeper grade
Than mine, yet in purple you walk on the earth a que...

O soft embalmer of the still midnight!
Shutting, with careful fingers and benign,
Our gloom-pleas'd eyes, embower'd from the light,
Enshaded in forgetfulness divine;
O soothest Sleep! if so it please thee, close,
In midst of this thine hymn, my willing eyes.
Or wait the Amen, ere thy poppy throws
Around my bed its lulling charities;
Then save me, or the passed day will shine
Upon my pillow, breeding many woes;
Save me from curious conscience, that still hoards
Its strength for darkness, burrowing like a mole;
Turn the key deftly in the oiled wards,
And seal the hushed casket of my soul.

It was your way, my dear,
To be gone without a word
When callers, friends, or kin
Had left, and I hastened in
To rejoin you, as I inferred.

And when you'd a mind to career
Off anywhere say to town -
You were all on a sudden gone
Before I had thought thereon,
Or noticed your trunks were down.

So, now that you disappear
For ever in that swift style,
Your meaning seems to me
Just as it used to be:
"Good-bye is not worth while!"

Song
(Act V, scene i)

And this place our forefathers made for man!
This is the process of our Love and Wisdom,
To each poor brother who offends against us,
Most innocent, perhaps, and what if guilty?
Is this the only cure? Merciful God!
Each pore and natural outlet shrivell'd up
By Ignorance and parching Poverty,
His energies roll back upon his heart,
And stagnate and corrupt; till chang'd to poison,
They break out on him, like a loathsome plague-spot;
Then we call in our pamper'd mountebanks,
And this is their best cure! uncomforted
And friendless Solitude, Groaning and Tears,
And savage Faces, at the clanking hour,
Seen through the steams and vapour of his dungeon,
By the lamp's dismal twilight! So he lies
Circled with evil, till his very sou...

Harsh thoughts, blind angers, and fierce hands,
That keep this restless world at strife,
Mean passions that, like choking sands,
Perplex the stream of life,

Pride and hot envy and cold greed,
The cankers of the loftier will,
What if ye triumph, and yet bleed?
Ah, can ye not be still?

Oh, shall there be no space, no time,
No century of weal in store,
No freehold in a nobler clime,
Where men shall strive no more?

Where every motion of the heart
Shall serve the spirit's master-call,
Where self shall be the unseen part,
And human kindness all?

Or shall we but by fits and gleams
Sink satisfied, and cease to rave,
Find love but in the rest of dreams,
And peace but in the grave?

Love thou thy land, with love far-brought
From out the storied past, and used
Within the present, but transfused
Thro’ future time by power of thought;

True love turn’d round on fixed poles,
Love, that endures not sordid ends,
For English natures, freemen, friends,
Thy brothers and immortal souls.

But pamper not a hasty time,
Nor feed with crude imaginings
The herd, wild hearts and feeble wings
That every sophister can lime.

Deliver not the tasks of might
To weakness, neither hide the ray
From those, not blind, who wait for day,
Tho’ sitting girt with doubtful light.

Make knowledge circle with the winds;
But let her herald, Reverence, fly
Before her to whatever sky
Bear seed of men and growth of minds.

Watch wh...

Out through the fields and the woods
And over the walls I have wended;
I have climbed the hills of view
And looked at the world, and descended;
I have come by the highway home,
And lo, it is ended.

The leaves are all dead on the ground,
Save those that the oak is keeping
To ravel them one by one
And let them go scraping and creeping
Out over the crusted snow,
When others are sleeping.

And the dead leaves lie huddled and still,
No longer blown hither and thither;
The last long aster is gone;
The flowers of the witch-hazel wither;
The heart is still aching to seek,
But the feet question 'Whither?'

Ah, when to the heart of man
Was it ever less than a treason
To go with the drift of things,
To yield with a grace to reason...

In the tents of Akbar
Are dole and grief to-day,
For the flower of all the Indies
Has gone the silent way.

In the tents of Akbar
Are emptiness and gloom,
And where the dancers gather,
The silence of the tomb.

Across the yellow desert,
Across the burning sands,
Old Akbar wanders madly,
And wrings his fevered hands.

And ever makes his moaning
To the unanswering sky,
For Sutna, lovely Sutna,
Who was so fair to die.

For Sutna danced at morning,
And Sutna danced at eve;
Her dusky eyes half hidden
Behind her silken sleeve.

Her pearly teeth out-glancing
Between her coral lips,
The tremulous rhythm of passion
Marked by her quivering hips.

As lovely as a jewel
Of fire and dewdrop blent,

In Hester Street, hard by a telegraph post,
There sits a poor woman as wan as a ghost.
Her pale face is shrunk, like the face of the dead,
And yet you can tell that her cheeks once were red.
But love, ease and friendship and glory, I ween,
May hardly the cause of their fading have been.
Poor soul, she has wept so, she scarcely can see.
A skeleton infant she holds on her knee.
It tugs at her breast, and it whimpers and sleeps,
But soon at her cry it awakens and weeps--
"Two cents, my good woman, three candles will buy,
As bright as their flame be my star in the sky!"

Tho' few are her wares, and her basket is small,
She earns her own living by these, when at all.
She's there with her baby in wind and in rain,
In frost and in snow-fall, in weakness and pain.