"Arise, depart, for this is not your rest."
Oh, burden of all burdens, - still to arise
And still depart, nor rest in any wise!
Rolling, still rolling thus to east from west,
Earth journeys on her immemorial quest,
Whom a moon chases in no different guise.
Thus stars pursue their courses, and thus flies
The sun, and thus all creatures manifest
Unrest, the common heritage, the ban
Flung broadcast on all humankind, - on all
Who live; for living, all are bound to die.
That which is old, we know that it is man.
These have no rest who sit and dream and sigh,
Nor have those rest who wrestle and who fall.

"Turn me a rhyme," said Fate,
"Turn me a rhyme:
A swift and deadly hate
Blows headlong towards thee in the teeth of Time.
Write! or thy words will fall too late."

"Write me a fold," said Fate,
"Write me a fold,
Life to conciliate,
Of words red with thine heart's blood, hotly told.
Then, kings may envy thine estate!"

"Make thee a fame," said Fate,
"Make thee a fame
To storm the heaven-hung gate,
Unbarred alone to the victorious name
Which has Art's conquerors to mate."

"Die in thy shame," said Fate,
"Die in thy shame!
Naught here can compensate
But the proud radiance of that glorious flame,
Genius: fade, thou, unconsecrate!"

I

Into the shadow-white chamber silts the white
Flux of another dawn. The wind that all night
Long has waited restless, suddenly wafts
A whirl like snow from the plum-trees and the pear,
Till petals heaped between the window-shafts
    In a drift die there.

A nurse in white, at the dawning, flower-foamed pane
Draws down the blinds, whose shadows scarcely stain
The white rugs on the floor, nor the silent bed
That rides the room like a frozen berg, its crest
Finally ridged with the austere line of the dead
    Stretched out at rest.

Less than a year the fourfold feet had pressed
The peaceful floor, when fell the sword on their rest.
Yet soon, too soon, she had him home again
With wounds between them, and suffering like a guest
That will no...

        For to save life one great solver
        Would be to prohibit the revolver,
        Weapon of coward and of bully,
        Who slaughter friends in their folly.

        Let now no man or any boy,
        With loaded arms ever toy,
        Showing off their manly vigor,
        Pointing to friend and pulling trigger.

        And sending bullet through their brain,
        And then exclaim in mournful strain,
        When friends with grief they are goaded,
        I did not know that it was loaded.

        Fire arms oft' times do bring woes,
        And they kill more friends than foes,
        Hunting now o'er fertile fields,
        'Tis seldom that it profit yields.

Bless'd be thy slumbers, little love!
Unconscious of the ills so near;
May no rude noise thy dreams remote,
Or prompt the artless early tear; -

For she who gave thee life is gone,
Whose trust it was thy life to rear,
Now in the cold and mould'ring stone
Calls for that artless early tear.

Sleep on, thou little dreamer! sleep;
For, long as I shall tarry here,
I'll soothe thee; thou shalt never weep,
Tho' flows for thee the tend'rest tear.

Then be thy gentle visions blest,
Nor e'er thy bosom know that fear,
Which thro' the night disturbs my rest,
And prompts Affection's trembling tear.

I

Upon your hearse this flower I lay.
Brief be your sleep!    You shall be known
When lesser men have had their day:
Fame blossoms where true seed is sown,
Or soon or late, let Time wrong what it may.


II

Unvext by any dream of fame,
You smiled, and bade the world pass by:
But I--I turned, and saw a name
Shaping itself against the sky--
White star that rose amid the battle's flame!


III

Brief be your sleep, for I would see
Your laurels--ah, how trivial now
To him must earthly laurel be
Who wears the amaranth on his brow!
How vain the voices of mortality!

Since Man first lifted up his eyes to hers
And saw her vampire beauty, which is lust,
All else is dust
Within the compass of the universe.
With heart of Jael and with face of Ruth
She sits upon the tomb of Time and quaffs
Heart's blood and laughs
At all Life calls most noble and the truth.
The fire of conquest and the wine of dreams
Are in her veins; and in her eyes the lure
Of things unsure,
Urging the world forever to extremes.
Without her, Life would stagnate in a while.
Her touch it is puts pleasure even in pain.
So Life attain
Her end, she cares not if the means be vile.
She knows no pity, mercy, or remorse.
Hers is to build and then exterminate:
To slay, create,
And twixt the two maintain an equal course.

Silver key of the fountain of tears,
Where the spirit drinks till the brain is wild;
Softest grave of a thousand fears,
Where their mother, Care, like a drowsy child,
Is laid asleep in flowers.

God gives his child upon his slate a sum--
    To find eternity in hours and years;
With both sides covered, back the child doth come,
    His dim eyes swollen with shed and unshed tears;
God smiles, wipes clean the upper side and nether,
And says, "Now, dear, we'll do the sum together!"

A Pastoral Elegy.


    'Twas on a joyless and a gloomy morn,
    Wet was the grass, and hung with pearls the thorn;
    When Damon, who design'd to pass the day
    With hounds and horns, and chase the flying prey,
    Rose early from his bed; but soon he found
    The welkin pitch'd with sullen clouds around,
    An eastern wind, and dew upon the ground.
    Thus while he stood, and, sighing, did survey
    The fields, and cursed the ill omens of the day,
    He saw Menalcas come with heavy pace;
    Wet were his eyes, and cheerless was his face:
    He wrung his hands, distracted with his care,
    And sent his voice before him from afar.
    Return, he cried, return, unhappy swain!
    The spungy clouds are fill'd with gathering rain:
    The pro...

I

In days when men had joy of war,
A God of Battles sped each mortal jar;
The peoples pledged him heart and hand,
From Israel's land to isles afar.

II

His crimson form, with clang and chime,
Flashed on each murk and murderous meeting-time,
And kings invoked, for rape and raid,
His fearsome aid in rune and rhyme.

III

On bruise and blood-hole, scar and seam,
On blade and bolt, he flung his fulgid beam:
His haloes rayed the very gore,
And corpses wore his glory-gleam.

IV

Often an early King or Queen,
And storied hero onward, knew his sheen;
'Twas glimpsed by Wolfe, by Ney anon,
And Nelson on his blue demesne.

V

But new light spread. That god's gold nimb
And blazon have waned dimme...

"Get ye up from the wrath of God's terrible day!
Ungirded, unsandalled, arise and away!
'T is the vintage of blood, 't is the fulness of time,
And vengeance shall gather the harvest of crime!"

The warning was spoken, the righteous had gone,
And the proud ones of Sodom were feasting alone;
All gay was the banquet, the revel was long,
With the pouring of wine and the breathing of song.

'T was an evening of beauty; the air was perfume,
The earth was all greenness, the trees were all bloom;
And softly the delicate viol was heard,
Like the murmur of love or the notes of a bird.

And beautiful maidens moved down in the dance,
With the magic of motion and sunshine of glance
And white arms wreathed lightly, and tresses fell free
As the plumage of birds in ...

Nobody thought of consequences. There was a lighted paraffin lamp on the table and nothing else handy. Mrs Brown's head presented a tempting mark, and of course Mr Brown's lengthy stay at 'The Three Fingers' had something to do with it; but nobody thought of Miss Brown, aged four, who was playing happily on the floor, unruffled by the storm to which she was so well accustomed.

Mrs Brown ducked; there was a smash, a scream, and poor little Miss Brown was in a blaze. The shock sobered the father and silenced the mother. Miss Brown was extinguished with the aid of a table- cover, much water, and many neighbours; but she was horribly burnt all over, except her face.

* * * * *

I made Miss Brown's acquaintance a few days later. She was lying on a bed made up on two chairs, and was covered with cotton wool. She h...

    A voice missed by the dear home-hearth -
A voice of music and gentle mirth -
A voice whose lingering sweetness long
Will float through many a Sabbath song,
And many a hallowed, evening hymn,
Tenderly breathed in the twilight dim!
- But that missing voice, with a richer tone,
Is heard in the anthems before the throne;
And another voice and another lyre,
Are added now to the angel-choir!

    There's a missing face when the board is spread -
There's a vacant seat at the table's head, -
A watchful eye and a helpful hand
That will come no more to that broken band.
- But she sits to-day at the board above,
In the tender light of a holier love;
And the kindling eye and the beaming face
At the feast on high hold a nobler place!

    A form is ...

    In the old air
    by his rocker,
    a silent trapeze of thought
    suspends an aging man.

    Each movement as of the katydid
    droning -
    a monologue with the past;
    a buzz escaping across
    still, warm air.
    Elsewhere, cicadas whittle about the octogenarian heat.

    Nestled quietly, a supine stare erodes both time & place
    unto bearded grey -
    nuances clasped
    in a breathless chat with death.

A linnet who had lost her way
Sang on a blackened bough in Hell,
Till all the ghosts remembered well
The trees, the wind, the golden day.

At last they knew that they had died
When they heard music in that land,
And someone there stole forth a hand
To draw a brother to his side.

The sun is bleeding its fires upon the mist
That huddles in grey heaps coiling and holding back.
Like cliffs abutting in shadow a drear grey sea
Some street-ends thrust forward their stack.

On the misty waste-lands, away from the flushing grey
Of the morning the elms are loftily dimmed, and tall
As if moving in air towards us, tall angels
Of darkness advancing steadily over us all.

Forgive the muse who, in unhallow'd strains,
The saint one moment from his God detains;
For sure whate'er you do, where'er you are,
'Tis all but one good work, one constant prayer.
Forgive her; and entreat that God to whom
Thy favour'd vows with kind acceptance come,
To raise her notes to that sublime degree
Which suits a song of piety and thee.
Wondrous good man! whose labours may repel
The force of sin, may stop the rage of hell;
Thou, like the Baptist, from thy God was sent,
The crying voice to bid the world repent.
Thee youth shall study, and no more engage
Their flattering wishes for uncertain age,
No more with fruitless care and cheated strife
Chase fleeting pleasure through this maze of life;
Finding the wretched all they there can have
But present...