When the twilight shadows deepen and the far-off lands are dim,
And the vesper dirge is stealing like the chant of cherubim,
There's a prayer within my bosom that's responsive to the sound,
There's a thought that springs within me--but 'tis sad and silence-bound.

There's a sorrow in those shadows as they lengthen on the lawn,
For the joy of life has vanished and its sweetness--all is gone,
And the purple mists of even as they hover o'er the glade
Seem to hush in voiceless gloom the deep recesses of the shade.

Oh thou beyond those heathery hills, beyond those woodlands blue,
Which, as they meet the eastern sky, receive its azure hue,
Ah, must I lonely linger here, where nought but griefs await,
Where life is but one long, long sigh, and all disconsolate?

I'm weep...

List, the winds of March are blowing;
Her ground-flowers shrink, afraid of showing
Their meek heads to the nipping air,
Which ye feel not, happy pair!
Sunk into a kindly sleep.
We, meanwhile, our hope will keep;
And if Time leagued with adverse Change
(Too busy fear!) shall cross its range,
Whatsoever check they bring,
Anxious duty hindering,
To like hope our prayers will cling.

Thus, while the ruminating spirit feeds
Upon the events of home as life proceeds,
Affections pure and holy in their source
Gain a fresh impulse, run a livelier course;
Hopes that within the Father's heart prevail,
Are in the experienced Grandsire's slow to fail;
And if the harp pleased his gay youth, it rings
To his grave touch with no unready strings,
While though...

    When I am dead.
    Then lay my head
In some lone, distant dell,
    Where voices ne'er
    Shall stir the air,
Or break its silent spell.

    If any sound
    Be heard around,
Let the sweet bird alone,
    That weeps in song,
    Sing all night long,
"Peace, peace, to him that's gone!"

    Yet, oh, were mine
    One sigh of thine,
One pitying word from thee,
    Like gleams of heaven,
    To sinners given,
Would be that word to me.

    Howe'er unblest,
    My shade would rest
While listening to that tone;--
    Enough 'twould be
    To hear from thee,
"Peace, peace, to him that gone."

They crowded weeping from the teacher’s house,
Crying aloud their fear at what he taught,
Old men and young men, wives and maids unwed,
And children screaming in the crowds unsought:
Some to their temples with accustomed feet
Bent-as the oxen go beneath the rod,
To fling themselves before some pictured saint,
“Alas!    God help us if there is no God.”

Some to the bed-side of their dying kind
To clasp with arms afraid to loose their hold;
Some to a church-yard falling on a grave
To kiss the carven name with lips as cold.
Some watched from break of day into the night.
The flash of birds, the bloom of flower and tree,
The whirling worlds that glimmer in the dark,
All said: “God help us if no God there be.”

Some hid in caves and chattered mad with fear...

'Tis not when I am here,
    In these homeless homes,
Where sin and shame and disease
    And foul death comes;

'Tis not when heart and brain
    Would be still and forget
Men and women and children
    Dragged down to the pit:

But when I hear them declaiming
    Of "liberty," "order," and "law,"
The husk-hearted gentleman
    And the mud-hearted bourgeois,

That a sombre hateful desire
    Burns up slow in my breast
To wreck the great guilty temple,
    And give us rest!

The blue sky arches wide
From hill to hill;
The little grasses stand
Upright and still.

Only these stones to tell
The deadly strife,
The all-important schemes,
The greed for life.

For they are gone, who fought;
But still the skies
Stretch blue, aloof, unchanged,
From rise to rise.

Such as the youth, who came to Clymene
To certify himself of that reproach,
Which had been fasten'd on him, (he whose end
Still makes the fathers chary to their sons),
E'en such was I; nor unobserv'd was such
Of Beatrice, and that saintly lamp,
Who had erewhile for me his station mov'd;
When thus by lady: "Give thy wish free vent,
That it may issue, bearing true report
Of the mind's impress; not that aught thy words
May to our knowledge add, but to the end,
That thou mayst use thyself to own thy thirst
And men may mingle for thee when they hear."

"O plant! from whence I spring! rever'd and lov'd!
Who soar'st so high a pitch, thou seest as clear,
As earthly thought determines two obtuse
In one triangle not contain'd, so clear
Dost see contingencies, ...

(For Alden March)



With drooping sail and pennant
That never a wind may reach,
They float in sunless waters
Beside a sunless beach.
Their mighty masts and funnels
Are white as driven snow,
And with a pallid radiance
Their ghostly bulwarks glow.

Here is a Spanish galleon
That once with gold was gay,
Here is a Roman trireme
Whose hues outshone the day.
But Tyrian dyes have faded,
And prows that once were bright
With rainbow stains wear only
Death's livid, dreadful white.

White as the ice that clove her
That unforgotten day,
Among her pallid sisters
The grim Titanic lay.
And through the leagues above her
She looked aghast, and said:
"What is this living ship that comes
Where every ship is dead?"...

I.
All I believed is true!
I am able yet
All I want, to get
By a method as strange as new:
Dare I trust the same to you?

II.
If at night, when doors are shut,
And the wood-worm picks,
And the death-watch ticks,
And the bar has a flag of smut,
And a cat’s in the water-butt,

III.
And the socket floats and flares,
And the house-beams groan,
And a foot unknown
Is surmised on the garret-stairs,
And the locks slip unawares,

IV.
And the spider, to serve his ends,
By a sudden thread,
Arms and legs outspread,
On the table’s midst descends,
Comes to find, God knows what friends!

V.
If since eve drew in, I say,
I have sat and brought
(So to speak) my thought
To bear on the woman away,

There's such a lot of work to do, for such a troubled head!
I’m scribbling this against a book, with foolscap round, in bed.
It strikes me that I’ll scribble much in this way by and by,
And write my last lines so perchance the day before I die.

There’s lots of things to come and go, and I, in careless rhyme,
And drink and love (it wastes the most) have wasted lots of time.
There’s so much good work to be done it makes me sure that I
Will be the sorriest for my death, the day before I die.

But, lift me dear, for I am tired, and let me taste the wine,
And lay your cheek a little while on this lined cheek of mine.
I want to say I love you so, your patient love is why
I’ll have such little time, you know, the day before I die.

Bright baffling Soul, least capturable of themes,
Thou, who display'dst a life of common-place,
Leaving no intimate word or personal trace
Of high design outside the artistry
Of thy penned dreams,
Still shalt remain at heart unread eternally.

Through human orbits thy discourse to-day,
Despite thy formal pilgrimage, throbs on
In harmonies that cow Oblivion,
And, like the wind, with all-uncared effect
Maintain a sway
Not fore-desired, in tracks unchosen and unchecked.

And yet, at thy last breath, with mindless note
The borough clocks but samely tongued the hour,
The Avon just as always glassed the tower,
Thy age was published on thy passing-bell
But in due rote
With other dwellers' deaths accorded a like knell.

And at the strokes some...

Despairless! Hopeless! Quietly I wait
On these unpeopled tracks the happy close
Of Day, whose advent rang with noise elate,
Whose later stage was quick with mirthful shows
And clasping loves, with hate and hearty blows,
And dreams of coming gifts withheld by Fate
From morrow unto morrow, till her great
Dread eyes 'gan tell of other gifts than those,
And her advancing wings gloomed like a pall;
Her speech foretelling joy became a dirge
As piteous as pitiless; and all
My company had passed beyond the verge
And lost me ere Fate raised her blinding wings....
Hark! through the dusk a bird "at heaven's gate sings."

That for seven lusters I did never come
To do the rites to thy religious tomb;
That neither hair was cut, or true tears shed
By me, o'er thee, as justments to the dead,
Forgive, forgive me; since I did not know
Whether thy bones had here their rest or no,
But now 'tis known, behold! behold, I bring
Unto thy ghost th' effused offering:
And look what smallage, night-shade, cypress, yew,
Unto the shades have been, or now are due,
Here I devote; and something more than so;
I come to pay a debt of birth I owe.
Thou gav'st me life, but mortal; for that one
Favour I'll make full satisfaction;
For my life mortal rise from out thy hearse.
And take a life immortal from my verse.

Place this bunch of mignonette
In her cold, dead hand;
When the golden sun is set,
Where the poplars stand,
Bury her from sun and day,
Lay my little love away
From my sight.

She was like a modest flower
Blown in sunny June,
Warm as sun at noon's high hour,
Chaster than the moon.
Ah, her day was brief and bright,
Earth has lost a star of light;
She is dead.

Softly breathe her name to me,--
Ah, I loved her so.
Gentle let your tribute be;
None may better know
Her true worth than I who weep
O'er her as she lies asleep--
Soft asleep.

Lay these lilies on her breast,
They are not more white
Than the soul of her, at rest
'Neath their petals bright.
Chant your aves soft and low,
Solemn be your tread an...

Let me cradle myself back
Into the darkness
Of the half shapes...
Of the cauled beginnings...
Let me stir the attar of unused air,
Elusive... ironically fragrant
As a dead queen's kerchief...
Let me blow the dust from off you...
Resurrect your breath
Lying limp as a fan
In a dead queen's hand.

The sandy spits, the shore-lock’d lakes,
Melt into open, moonlit sea;
The soft Mediterranean breaks
At my feet, free.

Dotting the fields of corn and vine
Like ghosts, the huge, gnarl’d olives stand;
Behind, that lovely mountain-line!
While by the strand

Cette, with its glistening houses white,
Curves with the curving beach away
To where the lighthouse beacons bright
Far in the bay.

Ah, such a night, so soft, so lone,
So moonlit, saw me once of yore
Wander unquiet, and my own
Vext heart deplore!

But now that trouble is forgot;
Thy memory, thy pain, to-night,
My brother! and thine early lot,
Possess me quite.

The murmur of this Midland deep
Is heard to-night around thy grave
There where Gibraltar’s cann...

Be tranquil, Dellius, I pray;
For though you pine your life away
With dull complaining breath,
Or speed with song and wine each day,
Still, still your doom is death.

Where the white poplar and the pine
In glorious arching shade combine,
And the brook singing goes,
Bid them bring store of nard and wine
And garlands of the rose.

Let's live while chance and youth obtain;
Soon shall you quit this fair domain
Kissed by the Tiber's gold,
And all your earthly pride and gain
Some heedless heir shall hold.

One ghostly boat shall some time bear
From scenes of mirthfulness or care
Each fated human soul,--
Shall waft and leave its burden where
The waves of Lethe roll.

So come, I prithee, Dellius mine;
Let's sing our song...