My hart was slaine, and none but you and I,
Who should I thinke the murder should commit?
Since but your selfe, there was no creature by
But onely I, guiltlesse of murth'ring it.
It slew it selfe; the verdict on the view
Doe quit the dead and me not accessarie;
Well, well, I feare it will be prou'd by you,
The euidence so great a proofe doth carry.
But O, see, see, we need enquire no further,
Vpon your lips the scarlet drops are found,
And in your eye, the boy that did the murther,
Your cheekes yet pale since first they gaue the wound.
    By this, I see, how euer things be past,
    Yet heauen will still haue murther out at last.

1716
There's nae mair lands to tyne, my dear,
And nae mair lives to gie:
Though a man think sair to live nae mair,
There's but one day to die.
For a' things come and a' days gane,
What needs ye rend your hair?
But kiss me till the morn's morrow,
Then I'll kiss ye nae mair.
O lands are lost and life's losing,
And what were they to gie?
Fu' mony a man gives all he can,
But nae man else gives ye.
Our king wons ower the sea's water,
And I in prison sair:
But I'll win out the morn's morrow,
And ye'll see me nae mair.

Why, Disease, dost thou molest
Ladies? and of them the best?
Do not men, ynow of rites
To thy altars, by their nights
Spent in surfets: and their dayes,
And nights too, in worser wayes?
Take heed, Sicknesse, what you do,
I shall feare, you'll surfet too.
Live not we, as, all thy stals,
Spittles, pest-house, hospitals,
Scarce will take our present store?
And this age will build no more:
'Pray thee, feed contented, then,
Sicknesse; only on us men.
Or if needs thy lust will taste
Woman-kind; devoure the waste
Livers, round about the town.
But forgive me, with thy crown
They maintaine the truest trade,
And have more diseases made.
What should, yet, thy pallat please?
Daintinesse, and softer ease,
Sleeked lims, and finest blood?
I...

"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,

ELIZABETH TO WALTER


He has come and he has gone,
    Meeting, parting, both are o'er;
And I feel the same dull pain,
Aching heart and throbbing brain
    Coming o'er me once again
That I often felt before.


For he is my father's son,
    And, in childhood's loving time
He and I so lone, so young,
No twin blossoms ever sprung,
No twin cherries ever clung,
    Closer than his heart and mine.

He is changed, ah me! ah me!
    Have we then a different aim?
Shall earth's glory or its gold
Make his heart to mine grow cold?
Or can new love kill the old?
    Leaving me for love and fame

Oh, my brother fair to see!
    Idol of my lonely heart,
Parting is a time of test,
Father, give him what is best,
...

"Then what is life?" I cried. And with that cry
I woke from deeper slumber - was it sleep? -
And saw a hooded figure standing by
The bed whereon I lay.

    "Why do you keep,
O spirit beautiful and swift, this guard
About my slumber? Shelley, from the deep
Why do you come with veiled face, mighty bard,
As that unearthly shape was veiled to you
At Casa Magni?"

        Then the room was starred
With light as I was speaking, and I knew
The god, my brother, from whose face the veil
Melted as mist.

        "What mission fair and true,
While I am sleeping, brings you? For I pale
Amid this solemn stillness, for your face
Unutterably majestic."

    As when the dale
At midnight echoes for a little space,
The night-bird's cry, ...

If I could bid thee, pleasant shade, farewell
Without a sigh, amidst whose circling bowers
My stripling prime was passed, and happiest hours,
Dead were I to the sympathies that swell
The human breast! These woods, that whispering wave,
My father reared and nursed, now to the grave
Gone down; he loved their peaceful shades, and said,
Perhaps, as here he mused: Live, laurels green;
Ye pines that shade the solitary scene,
Live blooming and rejoice! When I am dead
My son shall guard you, and amid your bowers,
Like me, find shelter from life's beating showers.
These thoughts, my father, every spot endear;
And whilst I think, with self-accusing pain,
A stranger shall possess the loved domain,
In each low wind I seem thy voice to hear.
But these are shadows of the sh...

Time sets his footprints on our little Earth,
    And, walk he ne'er so softly, some sweet thing
Falls 'neath each foot-fall, crush'd amid its mirth,
    Tracking the course of Life's short wandering,
With fallen remnants of its mortal part,
    Freeing the soul, but weighing down the heart.

Thou flower of Love! thou little treasury
    Of gentleness, and purity, and grace!
What hidden virtue hath Death reft from thee--
    What unseen essence melted into space?
For now thou liest like a sinless child,
    Whom God hath homeward to his bosom smiled.

The dew-shower fell on thee, the sunbeam play'd,
    As Life is ever made of smiles and tears;
And ofttimes has the breeze of summer sway'd,
    And with its mellow music mock'd thy fears;
But now, O wo...

Just this one day in all the year
Let all be one, let all be dear;
Wife, husband, child in fond embrace,
And thrust the phantom from its place.
No bitter words, no frowning brow,
Disturb the Christmas festal, now
The skeleton’s behind the door.

Nor let the child, with looks askance,
Find out its sad inheritance
From souls that held no happiness,
Of home, where love is seldom guest;
But in his coming years retain
This one sweet night that had no pain;
The skeleton’s behind the door.

In vain you raise the wassail bowl,
And pledge your passion, soul to soul.
You hear the sweet bells ring in rhyme,
You wreath the room for Christmas time
In vain.    The solemn silence falls,
The death watch ticks within the walls;
The skeleton taps o...

Farewell awhile, beautiful Italy!
My lonely bark is launched upon the sea
That clasps thy shore, and the soft evening gale
Breathes from thy coast, and fills my parting sail.
Ere morning dawn, a colder breeze will come,
And bear me onward to my northern home;
That home, where the pale sun is not so bright,
So glorious, at his noonday's fiercest height,
As when he throws his last glance o'er the sea,
And fires the heavens, that glow farewell on thee.
Fair Italy! perchance some future day
Upon thy coast again will see me stray;
Meantime, farewell!    I sorrow, as I leave
Thy lovely shore behind me, as men grieve
When bending o'er a form, around whose charms,
Unconquered yet, Death winds his icy arms:
While leaving the last kiss on some dear cheek,
Where bea...

How fast the Marian death-list is unrolled!
See Latimer and Ridley in the might
Of Faith stand coupled for a common flight!
One (like those prophets whom God sent of old)
Transfigured, from this kindling hath foretold
A torch of inextinguishable light;
The Other gains a confidence as bold;
And thus they foil their enemy's despite.
The penal instruments, the shows of crime,
Are glorified while this once-mitred pair
Of saintly Friends the "murtherer's chain partake,
Corded, and burning at the social stake:"
Earth never witnessed object more sublime
In constancy, in fellowship more fair!

Down the steep west unrolled,
    I watch the river of the sunset flow,
With all its crimson lights, and gleaming gold,
    Into the dusk below.

And even as I gaze,
    The soft lights fade,-the pageant gay is o'er,
And all is grey and dark, like those lost days,
    The days that are no more.

No more through whispering pines,
    I shall behold, in the else silent even,
The first faint star-watch set along the lines
    Of the white tents of heaven.

Before the earliest buds
    Have softly opened, heralding the May
With tender light illuming the gray woods,
    I shall be gone away.

Ah! wood-walks winding sweet
    Through all the valleys sloping to the west,
Where glad brooks wander with melodious feet,
    In musical u...

The room is quiet, thoughts alone
People its mute tranquillity;
The yoke put off, the long task done,
I am, as it is bliss to be,
Still and untroubled. Now, I see,
For the first time, how soft the day
O'er waveless water, stirless tree,
Silent and sunny, wings its way.
Now, as I watch that distant hill,
So faint, so blue, so far removed,
Sweet dreams of home my heart may fill,
That home where I am known and loved:
It lies beyond; yon azure brow
Parts me from all Earth holds for me;
And, morn and eve, my yearnings flow
Thitherward tending, changelessly.
My happiest hours, aye! all the time,
I love to keep in memory,
Lapsed among moors, ere life's first prime
Decayed to dark anxiety.

Sometimes, I think a narrow heart
Makes me thus ...

She is a lady fair and wise,
    Her heart her counsel keeps,
And well she knows of time that flies
    And tide that onward sweeps;
But still she sits with restless eyes
    Where Memory sleeps---
    Where Memory sleeps.

Ye that have heard the whispering dead
    In every wind that creeps,
Or felt the stir that strains the lead
    Beneath the mounded heaps,
Tread softly, ah! more softly tread
    Where Memory sleeps---
    Where Memory sleeps.

    Dead, why defend thee, who in life
    For thy worst foe hadst died;
    Who, thy own name a word of strife,
    Didst silent stand aside?

    Grand in forgiveness, what to thee
    The big world's puny prate!
    Or thy great heart hath ceased to be
    Or loveth still its mate!

..."Una selva oscura." - Dante.


Awake or sleeping (for I know not which)
I was or was not mazed within a wood
Where every mother-bird brought up her brood
Safe in some leafy niche
Of oak or ash, of cypress or of beech,

Of silvery aspen trembling delicately,
Of plane or warmer-tinted sycamore,
Of elm that dies in secret from the core,
Of ivy weak and free,
Of pines, of all green lofty things that be.

Such birds they seemed as challenged each desire;
Like spots of azure heaven upon the wing,
Like downy emeralds that alight and sing,
Like actual coals on fire,
Like anything they seemed, and everything.

Such mirth they made, such warblings and such chat
With tongue of music in a well-tuned beak,
They seemed to speak more wis...

An age in her embraces passed
Would seem a winter's day;
When life and light, with envious haste,
Are torn and snatched away.

But, oh! how slowly minutes roll.
When absent from her eyes
That feed my love, which is my soul,
It languishes and dies.

For then no more a soul but shade
It mournfully does move
And haunts my breast, by absence made
The living tomb of love.

You wiser men despise me not,
Whose love-sick fancy raves
On shades of souls and Heaven knows what;
Short ages live in graves.

Whene'er those wounding eyes, so full
Of sweetness, you did see,
Had you not been profoundly dull,
You had gone mad like me.

Nor censure us, you who perceive
My best beloved and me
Sign and lament, complain and grie...

He heard it first upon the lips of love,
        And loved it for love’s sake;
A faithful word, that knows nor time nor change,
        Nor lone heart-break.

It sung across his heart-strings like a breath
        Of Heaven’s faithfulness, that whispered “Never
To part, to lose, to linger from your gaze.”
        She said, “I love for ever.”

He heard it then upon the lips of death,
        Of things that fade and die;
A word of sorrow never to be stilled,
        An ever echoing sigh.

And loneliness within his soul did dwell,
        And struck upon his heart-strings, crying “Never
To meet, to have, to hold, to see again.”
        She said, “Good-bye for ever.”