There is a legend of an old Hartz tower
That tells of one, a noble, who had sold
His soul unto the Fiend; who grew not old
On this condition: That the demon's power
Cease every midnight for a single hour,
And in that hour his body should be cold,
His limbs grow shriveled, and his face, behold!
Become a death's-head in the taper's glower.
So unto Sin Life gives his best. Her arts
Make all his outward seeming beautiful
Before the world; but in his heart of hearts
Abides an hour when her strength is null;
When he shall feel the death through all his parts
Strike, and his countenance become a skull.

To learn the transport by the pain,
As blind men learn the sun;
To die of thirst, suspecting
That brooks in meadows run;

To stay the homesick, homesick feet
Upon a foreign shore
Haunted by native lands, the while,
And blue, beloved air --

This is the sovereign anguish,
This, the signal woe!
These are the patient laureates
Whose voices, trained below,

Ascend in ceaseless carol,
Inaudible, indeed,
To us, the duller scholars
Of the mysterious bard!

I

Ah, stern, cold man,
How can you lie so relentless hard
While I wash you with weeping water!
Do you set your face against the daughter
Of life? Can you never discard
Your curt pride's ban?

You masquerader!
How can you shame to act this part
Of unswerving indifference to me?
You want at last, ah me!
To break my heart
Evader!

You know your mouth
Was always sooner to soften
Even than your eyes.
Now shut it lies
Relentless, however often
I kiss it in drouth.

It has no breath
Nor any relaxing. Where,
Where are you, what have you done?
What is this mouth of stone?
How did you dare
Take cover in death!

II

Once you could see,
The white moon show like a breast revealed
By ...

I saw old Idleness, fat, with great cheeks
Puffed to the huge circumference of a sigh,
But past all tinge of apples long ago.
His boyish fingers twiddled up and down
The filthy remnant of a cup of physic
That thicked in odour all the while he stayed.
His eyes were sad as fishes that swim up
And stare upon an element not theirs
Through a thin skin of shrewish water, then
Turn on a languid fin, and dip down, down,
Into unplumbed, vast, oozy deeps of dream.
His stomach was his master, and proclaimed it;
And never were such meagre puppets made
The slaves of such a tyrant, as his thoughts
Of that obese epitome of ills.
Trussed up he sat, the mockery of himself;
And when upon the wan green of his eye
I marked the gathering lustre of a tear,
Thought I mysel...

        I

    Our brains ache, in the merciless iced east winds that knife us . . .
    Wearied we keep awake because the night is silent . . .
    Low drooping flares confuse our memory of the salient . . .
    Worried by silence, sentries whisper, curious, nervous,
            But nothing happens.

    Watching, we hear the mad gusts tugging on the wire.
    Like twitching agonies of men among its brambles.
    Northward incessantly, the flickering gunnery rumbles,
    Far off, like a dull rumour of some other war.
            What are we doing here?

    The poignant misery of dawn begins to grow . . .
    We only know war lasts, rain soaks, and clouds sag stormy.
    Dawn massing in the east her melancholy army
    Attacks once more in ranks on shive...

Come list, while I tell of the heart-wounded Stranger
    Who sleeps her last slumber in this haunted ground;
Where often, at midnight, the lonely wood-ranger
    Hears soft fairy music re-echo around.

None e'er knew the name of that heart-stricken lady,
    Her language, tho' sweet, none could e'er understand;
But her features so sunned, and her eyelash so shady,
    Bespoke her a child of some far Eastern land.

'Twas one summer night, when the village lay sleeping,
    A soft strain of melody came o'er our ears;
So sweet, but so mournful, half song and half weeping,
    Like music that Sorrow had steeped in her tears.

We thought 'twas an anthem some angel had sung us;--
    But, soon as the day-beams had gushed from on high,
With wonder we saw this b...

Solace of mine hours of anguish,
Peace-imparting View, when I,
Sick of Hindo-Sturm-und-Drang, wish
I could lay me down and die,

Very present help in trouble,
Never-failing anodyne
For the blows that knock us double,
Here's towards thee, Hathi mine!

As, 'tis said, the dolorous Jack Tar
Turns to view the watery Vast,
When he mourns his frail charàc-tar,
Or deplores his jagged Past,

Climbs a cliff, and breathes his sighs on
That appalling breast until,
Borne from off the far horizon,
Voices whisper, 'Cheer up, Bill!'

So when evil chance or dark as-
persions crush the bosom's lord,
When discomfort rends the car-cass,
When we're sorry, sick, or bored,

When the year is at its hottest,
And our life with sorrow cr...

Let us go hence: the night is now at hand;
The day is overworn, the birds all flown;
And we have reaped the crops the gods have sown
Despair and death; deep darkness o'er the land,
Broods like an owl; we cannot understand
Laughter or tears, for we have only known
Surpassing vanity: vain things alone
Have driven our perverse and aimless band.

Let us go hence, somewhither strange and cold,
To Hollow Lands where just men and unjust
Find end of labour, where's rest for the old,
Freedom to all from love and fear and lust.
Twine our torn hands!    O pray the earth enfold
Our life-sick hearts and turn them into dust.

Far from our home by Grasmere's quiet Lake,
From the Vale's peace which all her fields partake,
Here on the bleakest point of Cumbria's shore
We sojourn stunned by Ocean's ceaseless roar;
While, day by day, grim neighbour! huge Black Comb
Frowns deepening visibly his native gloom,
Unless, perchance rejecting in despite
What on the Plain 'we' have of warmth and light,
In his own storms he hides himself from sight.
Rough is the time; and thoughts, that would be free
From heaviness, oft fly, dear Friend, to thee;
Turn from a spot where neither sheltered road
Nor hedge-row screen invites my steps abroad;
Where one poor Plane-tree, having as it might
Attained a stature twice a tall man's height,
Hopeless of further growth, and brown and sere
Through half the summer...

Let me move slowly through the street,
Filled with an ever-shifting train,
Amid the sound of steps that beat
The murmuring walks like autumn rain.

How fast the flitting figures come!
The mild, the fierce, the stony face;
Some bright with thoughtless smiles, and some
Where secret tears have left their trace.

They pass, to toil, to strife, to rest;
To halls in which the feast is spread;
To chambers where the funeral guest
In silence sits beside the dead.

And some to happy homes repair,
Where children, pressing cheek to cheek,
With mute caresses shall declare
The tenderness they cannot speak.

And some, who walk in calmness here,
Shall shudder as they reach the door
Where one who made their dwelling dear,
Its flower, its ligh...

Dark lies the earth, and bright with worlds the sky:
That soft, large, lustrous star, that first outshone,
Still holds us spelled with potent sorcery.


Dilating, shrinking, lightening, it hath won
Our spirit with its strange strong influence,
And sways it as the tides beneath the moon.


What impulse this, o'ermastering heart and sense?
Exalted, thrilled, the freed soul fain would soar
Unto that point of shining prominence,


Craving new fields and some unheard-of shore,
Yea, all the heavens, for her activity,
To mount with daring flight, to hover o'er


Low hills of earth, flat meadows, level sea,
And earthly joy and trouble.    In this hour
Of waning light and sound, of mystery,


Of shadowed love and beauty-veil...

Endure what life God gives and ask no longer span;
Cease to remember the delights of youth, travel-wearied aged man;
Delight becomes death-longing if all longing else be vain.

Even from that delight memory treasures so,
Death, despair, division of families, all entanglements of mankind grow,
As that old wandering beggar and these God-hated children know.

In the long echoing street the laughing dancers throng,
The bride is catried to the bridegroom’s chamber through torchlight and tumultuous song;
I celebrate the silent kiss that ends short life or long.

Never to have lived is best, ancient writers say;
Never to have drawn the breath of life, never to have looked into the eye of day;
The second best’s a gay goodnight and quickly turn away.

Is anyone sad in the world, I wonder?
    Does anyone weep on a day like this,
With the sun above and the green earth under?
    Why, what is life but a dream of bliss?

With the sun and the skies and the birds above me,
    Birds that sing as they wheel and fly -
With the winds to follow and say they loved me -
    Who could be lonely?    O ho, not I!

Somebody said in the street this morning,
    As I opened my window to let in the light,
That the darkest day of the world was dawning;
    But I looked, and the East was a gorgeous sight

One who claims that he knows about it
    Tells me the Earth is a vale of sin;
But I and the bees and the birds - we doubt it,
    And think it a world worth living in.

Someone says that hearts are fickle...

The hope I dreamed of was a dream,
    Was but a dream; and now I wake,
Exceeding comfortless, and worn, and old,
    For a dream's sake.

I hang my harp upon a tree,
    A weeping willow in a lake;
I hang my silent harp there, wrung and snapt
    For a dream's sake.

Lie still, lie still, my breaking heart;
    My silent heart, lie still and break:
Life, and the world, and mine own self, are changed
    For a dream's sake.

        Butterflies are white and blue
        In this field we wander through.
        Suffer me to take your hand.
        Death comes in a day or two.

        All the things we ever knew
        Will be ashes in that hour,
        Mark the transient butterfly,
        How he hangs upon the flower.

        Suffer me to take your hand.
        Suffer me to cherish you
        Till the dawn is in the sky.
        Whether I be false or true,
        Death comes in a day or two.

    I.

    Fair spirit of the plaining sea,
        Thou heard'st Apollo's lyre! -
    Now folded are thy silver wings
                Thee sunward bore,
        A dream and a desire.

    Ranging the upper azure deeps,
        The sunlight on thy wings,
    How blanched thy purpose as there fell
                The lightning's stroke,
        And darkness on all things!


    In agony of rain and hail,
        And phantom dance of snow,
    The chastening angels of the air
                To mountain bleak
        Consigned thee far below.

    There in the arms of heartless frost,
        And burdened with thy train,
    The keen stars watched thy ageful way,
                Till breast of earth
        Warmed th...

[1]


By the Feal's wave benighted,
    No star in the skies,
To thy door by Love lighted,
    I first saw those eyes.
Some voice whispered o'er me,
    As the threshold I crost,
There was ruin before me,
    If I loved, I was lost.

Love came, and brought sorrow
    Too soon in his train;
Yet so sweet, that to-morrow
    'Twere welcome again.
Though misery's full measure
    My portion should be,
I would drain it with pleasure,
    If poured out by thee.

You, who call it dishonor
    To bow to this flame,
If you've eyes, look but on her,
    And blush while you blame.
Hath the pearl less whiteness
    Because of its birth?
Hath the violet less brightness
    For growing near earth?
<...

'Tis a bleak wild hill, but green and bright
In the summer warmth and the mid-day light;
There's the hum of the bee and the chirp of the wren,
And the dash of the brook from the alder glen;
There's the sound of a bell from the scattered flock,
And the shade of the beech lies cool on the rock,
And fresh from the west is the free wind's breath,
There is nothing here that speaks of death.

Far yonder, where orchards and gardens lie,
And dwellings cluster, 'tis there men die.
They are born, they die, and are buried near,
Where the populous grave-yard lightens the bier;
For strict and close are the ties that bind
In death the children of human-kind;
Yea, stricter and closer than those of life,
'Tis a neighbourhood that knows no strife.
They are noiselessly gat...