A soaking sedge,
        A faded field, a leafless hill and hedge,

        Low clouds and rain,
        And loneliness and languor worse than pain.

        Mottled with moss,
        Each gravestone holds to heaven a patient Cross.

        Shrill streaks of light
        Two sycamores' clean-limbed, funereal white,

        And low between,
        The sombre cedar and the ivy green.

        Upon the stone
        Of each in turn who called this land his own

        The gray rain beats
        And wraps the wet world in its flying sheets,

        And at my eaves
        A slow wind, ghostlike, comes and grieves and grieves.

Mahadeva,* Lord of earth

For the sixth time comes below,

As a man of mortal birth,

Like him, feeling joy and woe.

Hither loves he to repair,

And his power behind to leave;

If to punish or to spare,

Men as man he'd fain perceive.
And when he the town as a trav'ller hath seen,
Observing the mighty, regarding the mean,
He quits it, to go on his journey, at eve.


He was leaving now the place,

When an outcast met his eyes,

Fair in form, with painted face,

Where some straggling dwellings rise.

"Maiden, hail!" "Thanks! welcome here!

Stay! I'll join thee in the road.'

"Who art thou?" "A Bayadere,

And this house is love's abode."
The cymbal she hastens to play ...

Say not, sad bell, another hour hath come,
Bare for the record of a world of crime;
Toll, rather, friend, the end of hideous Time,
Wherein we bloom, live, die, yet have no home!

Bell, laurels would we o'er thy pulsing twine,
And sing thee songs of triumph with glad tears,
If to the warring of our haggard years
Thy clang should herald peace along the line!

I.

The white-rose garland at her feet,
The crown of laurel at her head,
Her noble life on earth complete,
Lay her in the last low bed
For the slumber calm and deep:
“He giveth His belovèd sleep.”



II.

Soldiers find their fittest grave
In the field whereon they died;
So her spirit pure and brave
Leaves the clay it glorified
To the land for which she fought
With such grand impassioned thought.



III.

Keats and Shelley sleep at Rome,
She in well-loved Tuscan earth;
Finding all their death’s long home
Far from their old home of birth.
Italy, you hold in trust
Very sacred English dust.



IV.

Therefore this one prayer I breathe,
That you yet may worthy prove

Thee, whose refulgent staff and summons clear,
    Minerva's flock longtime was wont t'obey,
Although thyself an herald, famous here,
    The last of heralds, Death, has snatch'd away.
He calls on all alike, nor even deigns
To spare the office that himself sustains.

Thy locks were whiter than the plumes display'd
    By Leda's paramour[2] in ancient time,
But thou wast worthy ne'er to have decay'd,
    Or, Aeson-like,[3] to know a second prime,
Worthy for whom some Goddess should have won
New life, oft kneeling to Apollo's son.[4]

Commission'd to convene with hasty call
    The gowned tribes, how graceful wouldst thou stand!
So stood Cyllenius[5] erst in Priam's hall,
    Wing-footed messenger of Jove's comman...

    Take any life you choose and study it:
    It gladdens, troubles, changes many lives.
    The life goes out, how many things result?
    Fate drops a stone, and to the utmost shores
    The circles spread.

    Now, such a book were endless,
    If every circle, riffle should be traced
    Of any life - and so of Elenor Murray,
    Whose life was humble and whose death was tragic.
    And yet behold the riffles spread, the lives
    That are affected, and the secrets gained
    Of lives she never knew of, as for that.
    For even the world could not contain the books
    That should be written, if all deeds were traced,
    Effects, results, gains, losses, of her life,
    And of her death.

    Concretely said, in brief,
    A man and woma...

There's a sudden, fierce clang of the knocker, then the sound of a voice in the shaft,
Shrieking words that drum hard on the centres, and the braceman goes suddenly daft:
‘Set the whistle a-blowing like blazes! Billy, run, give old Mackie a call,
Run, you fool! Number Two’s gone to pieces, and Fred Baker is caught in the fall!
Say, hello! there below,any hope, boys, any chances of saving his life?
‘Heave away!’ says the knocker. ‘They’ve started. God be praised, he’s no youngsters or wife!’

Screams the whistle in fearful entreaty, and the wild echo raves on the spur,
And the night, that was still as a sleeper in soft, charmed sleep, is astir
With the fluttering of wings in the wattles, and the vague frightened murmur of birds,
With far cooeys that carry the warning, running feet, inarticu...

He had offices in Sydney, not so many years ago,
And his shingle bore the legend `Peter Anderson and Co.'
But his real name was Careless, as the fellows understood,
And his relatives decided that he wasn't any good.
'Twas their gentle tongues that blasted any `character' he had,
He was fond of beer and leisure, and the Co. was just as bad.
It was limited in number to a unit, was the Co.
'Twas a bosom chum of Peter and his Christian name was Joe.

'Tis a class of men belonging to these soul-forsaken years:
Third-rate canvassers, collectors, journalists and auctioneers.
They are never very shabby, they are never very spruce,
Going cheerfully and carelessly and smoothly to the deuce.
Some are wanderers by profession, `turning up' and gone as soon,
Travelling second-class, ...

Late came the God, having sent his forerunners who were not regarded,
Late, but in wrath;
Saying: "The wrong shall be paid, the contempt be rewarded
On all that she hath."
He poisoned the blade and struck home, the full bosom receiving
The wound and the venom in one, past cure or relieving.
He made treaty with Time to stand still that the grief might be fresh,
Daily renewed and nightly pursued through her soul to her flesh,
Mornings of memory, noontides of agony, midnights unslaked for her,
Till the stones of the streets of her Hells and her Paradise ached for her.

So she lived while her body corrupted upon her.
And she called on the Night for a sign, and a Sign was allowed,
And she builded an Altar and served by the light of her Vision,
Alone, without hope of regard o...

In silence and in darkness memory wakes
Her million sheathèd buds, and breaks
That day-long winter when the light and noise
And hard bleak breath of the outward-looking will
Made barren her tender soil, when every voice
Of her million airy birds was muffled or still.

One bud-sheath breaks:
One sudden voice awakes.

What change grew in our hearts, seeing one night
That moth-winged ship drifting across the bay,
    Her broad sail dimly white
On cloudy waters and hills as vague as they?
Some new thing touched our spirits with distant delight,
Half-seen, half-noticed, as we loitered down,
Talking in whispers, to the little town,
    Down from the narrow hill
    Talking in whispers, for the air so still
Imposed its stillness on our lips, and made

Ye fates! who sternly point on sorrow's chart
The line of pain a wretch must still pursue,
To end the struggles of a bleeding heart,
And grace the triumph misery owes to you
How poor your pow'r! where fortitude, serene,
But smiling views the glimmering taper shine;
Time soon shall dim, and close the wearied scene,
Bestowing solace e'en on woes like mine.
Ah! stop your course too long I've felt your chain,
Too long the feeble influence of its pow'r;
The heir of grief may fall in love with pain,
And worst-misfortune feel the tranquil hour.
Hail, fortitude! blest friend life's ills to brave,
All misery boasts, shall wither in the grave!

Like a wail in the back of an inflammed throat came that protracted noise once again. Interminably, the rhythmic pitch of pounding grew louder as if several loose stones had swished themselves against the larger cylinder of his room. Already, the steady rap of a hammer's edge oozed from night's blackness disparate as a voice muffled in protest against an exhausting load.

Again, the unyielding barricade of sound renewed itself much as a headlight might fall against the path of a dazed woodland animal. The same enervating crust of unreality accompanied this sound as must, he imagined, light that focused itself upon a stunned rabbit at a roadside clearing.

Steady now, it peaked again after a small hiatus interrupted only by the staccato bumping of his own heart within thin visceral walls. Catching the bed-sheets in his ...

"Heu mihi, quia incolatus meus prolongatus est! Habitavi cum
habitantibus Cedar; multum incola fuit aninia mea." - Ps. cxix.

There have been times when I well might have passed and the ending have come -
Points in my path when the dark might have stolen on me, artless, unrueing -
Ere I had learnt that the world was a welter of futile doing:
Such had been times when I well might have passed, and the ending have come!

Say, on the noon when the half-sunny hours told that April was nigh,
And I upgathered and cast forth the snow from the crocus-border,
Fashioned and furbished the soil into a summer-seeming order,
Glowing in gladsome faith that I quickened the year thereby.

Or on that loneliest of eves when afar and benighted we stood,
She who upheld me and I, in th...

GEORG. IV.


Lo! smoking in the stubborn plough, the ox
Falls, from his lip foam gushing crimson-stained,
And sobs his life out. Sad of face the ploughman
Moves, disentangling from his comrade's corpse
The lone survivor: and its work half-done,
Abandoned in the furrow stands the plough.
Not shadiest forest-depths, not softest lawns,
May move him now: not river amber-pure,
That volumes o'er the cragstones to the plain.
Powerless the broad sides, glazed the rayless eye,
And low and lower sinks the ponderous neck.
What thank hath he for all the toil he toiled,
The heavy-clodded land in man's behoof
Upturning? Yet the grape of Italy,
The stored-up feast hath wrought no harm to him:
Green leaf and taintless grass are all their fare;
The clear rill or...

1852

I.

Bury the Great Duke
With an empire’s lamentation;
Let us bury the Great Duke
To the noise of the mourning of a mighty nation;
Mourning when their leaders fall,
Warriors carry the warrior’s pall,
And sorrow darkens hamlet and hall.


II.

Where shall we lay the man whom we deplore?
Here, in streaming London’s central roar.
Let the sound of those he wrought for,
And the feet of those he fought for,
Echo round his bones for evermore.


III.

Lead out the pageant: sad and slow,
As fits an universal woe,
Let the long, long procession go,
And let the sorrowing crowd about it grow,
And let the mournful martial music blow;
The last great Englishman is low.


IV.

Mourn,...

Lift not the painted veil which those who live
Call Life: though unreal shapes be pictured there,
And it but mimic all we would believe
With colours idly spread, - behind, lurk Fear
And Hope, twin Destinies; who ever weave
Their shadows, o'er the chasm, sightless and drear.
I knew one who had lifted it - he sought,
For his lost heart was tender, things to love
But found them not, alas! nor was there aught
The world contains, the which he could approve.
Through the unheeding many he did move,
A splendour among shadows, a bright blot
Upon this gloomy scene, a Spirit that strove
For truth, and like the Preacher found it not.

Once a poet, long ago,
Wrote a song as void of art
As the songs that children know,
And as pure as a child’s heart.

With a sigh he threw it down,
Saying, “This will never shed
Any glory or renown
On my name when I am dead.

“I will sing a lordly song
Men shall hear, when I am gone,
Through the years sound clear and strong
As a golden clarion.”

So this lordly song he sang
That would gain him deathless fame,
When the death-knell o’er him rang
No man even knew its name.

Ay, and when his way he found
To the place of singing souls,
And beheld their bright heads crowned
With song-woven aureoles,

He stood shame-faced in the throng,
For his brow of wreath was bare,
And, alas! his lordly song
Sere had grow...

Ognor che l' idol mio.


Whene'er the idol of these eyes appears
        Unto my musing heart so weak and strong,
        Death comes between her and my soul ere long
        Chasing her thence with troops of gathering fears.
Nathless this violence my spirit cheers
        With better hope than if she had no wrong;
        While Love invincible arrays the throng
        Of dauntless thoughts, and thus harangues his peers:
But once, he argues, can a mortal die;
        But once be born: and he who dies afire,
        What shall he gain if erst he dwelt with me?
That burning love whereby the soul flies free,
        Doth lure each fervent spirit to aspire
        Like gold refined in flame to God on high.