[1]


Youth's endearing charms are fled;
Hoary locks deform my head;
Bloomy graces, dalliance gay,
All the flowers of life decay.[2]
Withering age begins to trace
Sad memorials o'er my face;
Time has shed its sweetest bloom
All the future must be gloom.
This it is that sets me sighing;
Dreary is the thought of dying![3]
Lone and dismal is the road,
Down to Pluto's dark abode;
And, when once the journey's o'er,
Ah! we can return no more!

Why be at pains that I should know
You sought not me?
Do breezes, then, make features glow
So rosily?
Come, the lit port is at our back,
And the tumbling sea;
Elsewhere the lampless uphill track
To uncertainty!

O should not we two waifs join hands?
I am alone,
You would enrich me more than lands
By being my own.
Yet, though this facile moment flies,
Close is your tone,
And ere to-morrow's dewfall dries
I plough the unknown.

The night has set her outposts there
Of wind and rain;
And to and fro, with ragged hair,
At intervals they search the pane.

The fir-trees, creepers redly climb,
That seem to bleed,
Like old conspirators in crime,
Drip, whispering of some desperate deed.

'Tis as if wild skirts, flying fast,
Besieged the house;
The wittol grass, bent to the blast,
Whines as if witches held carouse.

And now dark feet steal to the door
And tap and tip,
Shuffle, and then go on once more
The eaves keep a persistent drip.

And then a skurry, and a bound;
Wild feet again?
A wind-wrenched tree that to the ground
Sweeps instantly its weight of rain.

What is it, finger on its lip,
That up and down
Treads, with dark raiment all a-...

I

You will not love me, sweet.
When this fair year is past;
Or love now at my feet
At others' feet be cast.
You will not love me, sweet,
When this fair year is past.


II

Now 'tis the Springtide, dear,
The crocus cups hold flame
Brimmed to the pregnant year.
Who crimsons as with shame.
Now 'tis the Springtide, dear,
The crocus cups hold flame.


III

Ah, heart, the Summer's queen,
At her brown throat one rose;
The poppies now are seen
With seed-pods thrust in rows.
Dear heart, the Summer's queen,
At her brown throat one rose.


IV

Now Autumn reigns, a prince
Fierce, gipsy-dark; live gold
Weighs down the fruited quince,
The last chilled violet's told.
The Autu...

And Emer took the head of Cuchulain in her hands, and she washed it clean, and put a silk cloth about it, and she held it to her breast, and she began to cry heavily over it, and she made this complaint:

Och, head! Ochone, O head! you gave death to great heroes, to many hundreds; my head will lie in the same grave, the one stone will be made for both of us.

Och, hand! Ochone, hand, that was once gentle. It is often it was put under my head; it is dear that hand was to me.

Dear mouth! Ochone, kind mouth that was sweet-voiced telling stories; since the time love first came on your face, you never refused either weak or strong.

Dear the man, dear the man, that would kill the whole of a great army; dear his cold bright hair, and dear his bright cheeks!

Dear the king, dear the king, that n...

There was darkness under Heaven
For an hour's space,
Darkness that we knew was given
Us for special grace.
Sun and moon and stars were hid,
God had left His Throne,
When Helen came to me, she did,
Helen all alone!

Side by side (because our fate
Damned us ere our birth)
We stole out of Limbo Gate
Looking for the Earth.
Hand in pulling hand amid
Fear no dreams have known,
Helen ran with me, she did,
Helen all alone!

When the Horror passing speech
Hunted us along,
Each laid hold on each, and each
Found the other strong.
In the teeth of Things forbid
And Reason overthrown,
Helen stood by me, she did,
Helen all alone!

When, at last, we heard those Fires
Dull and die away,
When, at last, our linked ...

But all that year in Brittany forlorn,
More sick at heart with wrath than fear of scorn
And less in love with love than grief, and less
With grief than pride of spirit and bitterness,
Till all the sweet life of her blood was changed
And all her soul from all her past estranged
And all her will with all itself at strife
And all her mind at war with all her life,
Dwelt the white-handed Iseult, maid and wife,
A mourner that for mourning robes had on
Anger and doubt and hate of things foregone.
For that sweet spirit of old which made her sweet
Was parched with blasts of thought as flowers with heat
And withered as with wind of evil will;
Though slower than frosts or fires consume or kill
That bleak black wind vexed all her spirit still.
As ripples reddening in the...

Some may have blamed you that you took away
The verses that could move them on the day
When, the ears being deafened, the sight of the eyes blind
With lightning you went from me, and I could find
Nothing to make a song about but kings,
Helmets, and swords, and half-forgotten things
That were like memories of you, but now
We’ll out, for the world lives as long ago;
And while we’re in our laughing, weeping fit,
Hurl helmets, crowns, and swords into the pit.
But, dear, cling close to me; since you were gone,
My barren thoughts have chilled me to the bone.

Warm yellowy-green
In the blue serene,
How they skip and sway
On this autumn day!
They cannot know
What has happened below, -
That their boughs down there
Are already quite bare,
That their own will be
When a week has passed, -
For they jig as in glee
To this very last.

But no; there lies
At times in their tune
A note that cries
What at first I fear
I did not hear:
"O we remember
At each wind's hollo -
Though life holds yet -
We go hence soon,
For 'tis November;
- But that you follow
You may forget!"

1.

Thy verse is "sad" enough, no doubt:
A devilish deal more sad than witty!
Why we should weep I can't find out,
Unless for thee we weep in pity.


2.

Yet there is one I pity more;
And much, alas! I think he needs it:
For he, I'm sure, will suffer sore,
Who, to his own misfortune, reads it.


3.

Thy rhymes, without the aid of magic,
May once be read - but never after:
Yet their effect's by no means tragic,
Although by far too dull for laughter.


4.

But would you make our bosoms bleed,
And of no common pang complain -
If you would make us weep indeed,
Tell us, you'll read them o'er again.

Yes, let Art go, if it must be
    That with it men must starve -
If Music, Painting, Poetry
    Spring from the wasted hearth.

Pluck out the flower, however fair,
    Whose beauty cannot bloom,
(However sweet it be, or rare)
    Save from a noisome tomb.

These social manners, charm and ease,
    Are hideous to who knows
The degradation, the disease
    From which their beauty flows.

So, Poet, must thy singing be;
    O Painter, so thy scene;
Musician, so thy melody,
    While misery is queen.

Nay, brothers, sing us battle-songs
    With clear and ringing rhyme;
Nay, show the world its hateful wrongs,
    And bring the better time!

AH! who'll e'er those days restore,

Those bright days of early love
Who'll one hour again concede,

Of that time so fondly cherish'd!
Silently my wounds I feed,
And with wailing evermore

Sorrow o'er each joy now perish'd.
Ah! who'll e'er the days restore

Of that time so fondly cherish'd.

WRITTEN IN HER ALBUM.


They say that Love had once a book
    (The urchin likes to copy you),
Where, all who came, the pencil took,
    And wrote, like us, a line or two.

'Twas Innocence, the maid divine,
    Who kept this volume bright and fair.
And saw that no unhallowed line
    Or thought profane should enter there;

And daily did the pages fill
    With fond device and loving lore,
And every leaf she turned was still
    More bright than that she turned before.

Beneath the touch of Hope, how soft,
    How light the magic pencil ran!
Till Fear would come, alas, as oft,
    And trembling close what Hope began.

A tear or two had dropt from Grief,
    And Jealousy would, now and then,
Ruffle in haste some snow-...

So all things come to our mind at last,
He is close by your side in the twilight gloom,
And you two are alone in the dim old room,
Yet he is mute, as you bade him be, time past.

You bade him to weary you, never again
With his idle love, in truth he was wise,
For he spake no more, although in his eyes
You read, you fancied, a language of pain.

But this is past, and vex you he never will,
With loving glance, or look of sad reproach;
His lips move not, smile not at your approach;
The flowers he clasps are not more calm and still.

Your favorite flowers he has heard you praise,
Purple pansies, and lilies creamy white;
But he offers them not to you to-night,
He troubles you not, he has learned "his place."

You wished to teach him that lesson,...

"Behold there is a woman that hath a familiar spirit at En-dor." I Samuel, xxviii. 7.


The road to En-dor is easy to tread
For Mother or yearning Wife.
There, it is sure, we shall meet our Dead
As they were even in life.
Earth has not dreamed of the blessing in store
For desolate hearts on the road to En-dor.

Whispers shall comfort us out of the dark
Hands ah God! that we knew!
Visions .and voices, look and hark!
Shall prove that the tale is true,
An that those who have passed to the further shore
May' be hailed at a price on the road to En-dor.

But they are so deep in their new eclipse
Nothing they say can reach,
Unless it be uttered by alien lips
And I framed in a stranger's speech.
The son must send word to the mother that bore,<...

Written In The Danville (KY.) Cemetery.


I.

Within thy hallowed precincts on this sweet autumnal day,
    We're wandering 'neath the cedar and the pine,
Where rests the sacred dust of loved ones passed away,
    And bleeding hearts a melancholy pleasure find.


II.

In memory's faithful mirror here once more we trace
    Familiar forms of those in life we knew,
And see again the shadowy outlines of some face
    That, living, beamed with kindness--ever true.


III.

Old age, and manhood's prime, and helpless infancy
    Have dotted o'er with many an emerald mound,
And marked each stone with mournful tracery
    Which stands within this consecrated ground.


IV.

And there the marble shaft its s...

Here is the ancient floor,
Footworn and hollowed and thin,
Here was the former door
Where the dead feet walked in.

She sat here in her chair,
Smiling into the fire;
He who played stood there,
Bowing it higher and higher.

Childlike, I danced in a dream;
Blessings emblazoned that day
Everything glowed with a gleam;
Yet we were looking away!

            If Love were king,
    That sacred Love which knows not selfish pleasure,
    But for its children spends its fondest treasure,
            Sad hearts would sing,
    And all the hosts of misery and wrong
    Forget their anguish in the happy song
            That joy would bring.

            If Love were king,
    Gaunt wickedness would hide his loathsome features,
    And virtue would to all the world's sad creatures
            Her treasures fling;
    Till drooping souls would rise above their fate,
    And find sweet flowers for all the desolate
            And sorrowing.

            If Love were king,
    Before the scepter of his might should vanish
    Toil's curse and care, and happiness should banish
            Want's aw...