These walls were built by men who did a deed
Of blood: terrific conscience, day by day,
Followed, where'er their shadow seemed to stay,
And still in thought they saw their victim bleed,
Before God's altar shrieking: pangs succeed,
As dire upon their heart the deep sin lay,
No tears of agony could wash away:
Hence! to the land's remotest limit, speed!
These walls are raised in vain, as vainly flows
Contrition's tear: Earth, hide them, and thou, Sea,
Which round the lone isle, where their bones repose,
Dost sound for ever, their sad requiem be,
In fancy's ear, at pensive evening's close,
Still murmuring{b} MISERERE, DOMINE.

Into Thy hands let me fall, O Lord,
Not into the hands of men,
And she thinned the ranks of the savage horde
Till they shrank to the mangrove fen.

In a rudderless boat, with a scanty store
Of food for the fated three,
With her babe and her stricken servitor
She fled to the open sea.

Oh, days of dolor and nights of drouth,
While she watched for a sail in vain,
Or the tawny tinge of a river mouth,
Or the rush of the tropic rain.

The valiant woman! Her feeble oar
Sufficed, and her fervent prayer
Was heard, though she reached but a barren shore,
And died with her darling there.

For the demons of murder and foul disgrace
On her hearthstone dared not light;
But the Angel of Womanhood held the place,
And its site is a holy site.

We two are last in hell; what may we fear
To be tormented or kept pris'ners here
Alas!if kissing be of plagues the worst,
We'll wish in hell we had been last and first.

The smoke upon your Altar dies,
The flowers decay,
The Goddess of your sacrifice
Has flown away.
What profit then to sing or slay
The sacrifice from day to day?

"We know the Shrine is void," they said.
"The Goddess flown,
"Yet wreaths are on the altar laid,
"The Altar-Stone
"Is black withfumes of sacrifice,
"Albeit She has Bed our eyes.

"For, it may be, if still we sing
"And tend the Shrine,
"Some Deity on wandering wing
"May there incline,
"And, finding all in order meet,
"Stay while we Worship at Her feet."

"We've had a brush," the Captain said,
"And Rebel blood we've spilled;
We came off victors with the loss
Of only a private killed."
"Ah," said the orderly "it was hot,"
Then he breathed a heavy breath
"Poor fellow! he was badly shot,
Then bayoneted to death."

And now was hushed the martial din;
The saucy foe had fled;
They brought the private's body in;
I went to see the dead;
For I could not think our Rebel foes
So valiant in the van
So boastful of their chivalry
Could kill a wounded man.

A musket ball had pierced his thigh
A frightful, crushing wound
And then with savage bayonets
They pinned him to the ground.
One deadly thrust drove through the heart,
Another through the head;
Three times they stabbed his pul...

Here by the moorway you returned,
And saw the borough lights ahead
That lit your face all undiscerned
To be in a week the face of the dead,
And you told of the charm of that haloed view
That never again would beam on you.

And on your left you passed the spot
Where eight days later you were to lie,
And be spoken of as one who was not;
Beholding it with a cursory eye
As alien from you, though under its tree
You soon would halt everlastingly.

I drove not with you . . . Yet had I sat
At your side that eve I should not have seen
That the countenance I was glancing at
Had a last-time look in the flickering sheen,
Nor have read the writing upon your face,
"I go hence soon to my resting-place;

"You may miss me then. But I shall not know

Wild flight on flight against the fading dawn
The flames' red wings soar upward duskily.
This is the funeral pyre and Troy is dead
That sparkled so the day I saw it first,
And darkened slowly after. I am she
Who loves all beauty, yet I wither it.
Why have the high gods made me wreak their wrath,
Forever since my maidenhood to sow
Sorrow and blood about me? Lo, they keep
Their bitter care above me even now.
It was the gods who led me to this lair,
That tho' the burning winds should make me weak,
They should not snatch the life from out my lips.
Olympus let the other women die;
They shall be quiet when the day is done
And have no care to-morrow. Yet for me
There is no rest. The gods are not so kind
To her made half immortal like themselves.
It is to yo...

He stands on the kerb
Watching the street.
He's always watching there,
Listening to the beat
Of time in the street,
Listening to the thronging feet,
Laughing at the world that goes
Scowling or laughing by.

He sees Time go by,
An old lonely man,
Crooked and furtive and slow.
He laughs as he sees
Time shambling by
While he stands at his ease,
Until Time smiles wanly back
At his laughing eye.

Greed's great paunch,
Lean Envy's ill looks,
Fond forgetful Love,
He reads them like books:
Whatever their tongue
He reads them like children's books,
Stands staring and laughing there
As all they go by.

O, he laughs as he sees
The fat and the thin,
The simple, the solemn and wise
Nod-nodding by.
H...

Ye Muses, pour the pitying tear
For Pollio snatch'd away;
O! had he liv'd another year!
'He had not died to-day'.

O! were he born to bless mankind,
In virtuous times of yore,
Heroes themselves had fallen behind!
'Whene'er he went before'.

How sad the groves and plains appear,
And sympathetic sheep;
Even pitying hills would drop a tear!
'If hills could learn to weep'.

His bounty in exalted strain
Each bard might well display;
Since none implor'd relief in vain!
'That went reliev'd away'.

And hark! I hear the tuneful throng
His obsequies forbid,
He still shall live, shall live as long!
'As ever dead man did'.

One broad, white sail in Spezzia's treacherous bay
On comes the blast; too daring bark, beware I
The cloud has clasped her; to! it melts away;
The wide, waste waters, but no sail is there.

Morning: a woman looking on the sea;
Midnight: with lamps the long veranda burns;
Come, wandering sail, they watch, they burn for thee!
Suns come and go, alas! no bark returns.

And feet are thronging on the pebbly sands,
And torches flaring in the weedy caves,
Where'er the waters lay with icy hands
The shapes uplifted from their coral graves.

Vainly they seek; the idle quest is o'er;
The coarse, dark women, with their hanging locks,
And lean, wild children gather from the shore
To the black hovels bedded in the rocks.

But Love still prayed, with agoni...

1.

Dear BECHER, you tell me to mix with mankind;
I cannot deny such a precept is wise;
But retirement accords with the tone of my mind:
I will not descend to a world I despise.


2.

Did the Senate or Camp my exertions require,
Ambition might prompt me, at once, to go forth;
When Infancy's years of probation expire,
Perchance, I may strive to distinguish my birth.


3.

The fire, in the cavern of Etna, conceal'd,
Still mantles unseen in its secret recess;
At length, in a volume terrific, reveal'd,
No torrent can quench it, no bounds can repress.


4.

Oh! thus, the desire, in my bosom, for fame
Bids me live, but to hope for Posterity's praise.
Could I soar with the Phoenix on pinions of flame,
W...

Sodden and shivering, in mud and rain,
Half in the light that serves but to reveal
The blackness of an alley and the reel
Homeward of wretchedness in tattered train,
A boy stands crouched; big drops of drizzle drain
Slow from a rag that was a hat: no steel
Is harder than his look, that seems to feel
More than his small life's share of woe and pain.
The pack of papers, huddled by his arm,
Is pulp; and still he hugs the worthless lot....
A door flares open to let out a curse
And drag him in out of the night and storm.
Out of the night, you say? You know not what!
To blacker night, God knows! and hell, or worse!

Dire were the horrors of that ruthless storm,
That for young Lycid form'd a wat'ry grave;
Oh! many wept to see his fainting form
Unaided sink beneath th' o'erwhelming wave.

Ah! hapless youth! yet, tho' the billowy waste
Has thus, with ruthless fury, snatch'd away
Thy various charms, thy genius, wit, and taste,
From those who fondly watch'd their rich display, -

Their cherish'd, lov'd, impression still shall last;
Mem'ry shall ride triumphant o'er the storm,
Shall shield thy gen'rous virtues from the blast,
And Fancy animate again thy form.

Yes, gentle youth! to her, tho' little known,
Save by the rich effusions of thy lyre,
Th' admiring Muse shall breathe a mournful tone,
And sounds of grief shall o'er the floods expire.

But, far more g...

"There, at the moated grange, resides this dejected Mariana."

Shakespeare.



The sunset-crimson poppies are departed,
Mariana!
The dusky-centred, sultry-smelling poppies,
The drowsy-hearted,
That burnt like flames along the garden coppice:
All heavy-headed,
The ruby-cupped and opium-brimming poppies,
That slumber wedded,
Mariana!
The sunset-crimson poppies are departed.
Oh, heavy, heavy are the hours that fall,
The lonesome hours of the lonely days!
No poppy strews oblivion by the wall,
Where lone the last pod sways,
Oblivion that was hers of old that happier made her days.
Oh, weary, weary is the sky o'er all,
The days that creep, the hours that crawl,
And weary all the ways
She leans her face against the old stone wa...

He stood before the sons of Heth,
    And bowed his sorrowing head;
"I've come," he said, "to buy a place
    Where I may lay my dead.

"I am a stranger in your land,
    My home has lost its light;
Grant me a place where I may lay
    My dead away from sight."

Then tenderly the sons of Heth
    Gazed on the mourner's face,
And said, "Oh, Prince, amid our dead,
    Choose thou her resting-place.

"The sepulchres of those we love,
    We place at thy command;
Against the plea thy grief hath made
    We close not heart nor hand."

The patriarch rose and bowed his head,
    And said, "One place I crave;
'Tis at the end of Ephron's field,
    And called Machpelah's cave.

"Entreat him that he sell to me
    For he...

Wine can clothe the most sordid hole
in miraculous luxury,
and let many a fabulous portico float free
in the gold of its red glow,
like a setting sun in the sky’s cloudy sea.

Opium expands things without boundaries,
extends the limitless,
makes time profounder, deepens voluptuousness,
fills the soul beyond its capacities,
with the pleasures of gloom and of darkness.

None of that equals the poison that flows
from your eyes, your eyes of green,
lakes where, mirrored, my trembling soul is seen…
my dreams come flocking, a host,
to quench their thirst in the bitter stream.

None of that equals the dreadful marvel though
of your saliva’s venom,
that plunges my soul, remorseless, into oblivion,
and causing vertigo,
rolls it swooning to...

    His greatness hath not left him; till the years
        Have won the nation from her children dead,
    And robbed her of remembrance where she rears
        Her monuments above the blood they shed,
    Will his name want for homage; with sad fears
        The Union winds her garlands o'er his head,
    And fondly wreathes her love, bedewed with tears,
        To bless the hero on his dying bed.

    His luster lives untarnished; as he lies
        Where Malady has bound him in wild pain,
    And only Death can loose the heavy chain
        That galls her captive while his nature dies,
    He seems far greater in his country's eyes,
        Than if an Appomattox spake again.

"A Victory! --a victory!"
Is flashed across the wires;
Speed, speed the news from State to State,
Light up the signal fires!
Let all the bells from all the towers
A joyous peal ring out;
We've gained a glorious victory,
And put the foe to rout!

A mother heard the chiming bells;
Her joy was mixed with pain.
"Pray God," she said, "my gallant boy
Be not among the slain!"
Alas for her! that very hour
Outstretched in death he lay,
The color from his fair, young face
Had scarcely passed away.

His nerveless hand still grasped the sword.
He never more might wield,
His eyes were sealed in dreamless sleep
Upon that bloody field.
The chestnut curls his mother oft
Had stroked in fondest pride,
Neglected hung ia clotted locks,