I am afraid to think about my death,
When it shall be, and whether in great pain
I shall rise up and fight the air for breath
Or calmly wait the bursting of my brain.

I am no coward who could seek in fear
A folklore solace or sweet Indian tales:
I know dead men are deaf and cannot hear
The singing of a thousand nightingales.

I know dead men are blind and cannot see
The friend that shuts in horror their big eyes,
And they are witless--O I'd rather be
A living mouse than dead as a man dies.

I saw a staring virgin stand
Where holy Dionysus died,
And tear the heart out of his side.
And lay the heart upon her hand
And bear that beating heart away;
Of Magnus Annus at the spring,
As though God's death were but a play.
Another Troy must rise and set,
Another lineage feed the crow,
Another Argo's painted prow
Drive to a flashier bauble yet.
The Roman Empire stood appalled:
It dropped the reins of peace and war
When that fierce virgin and her Star
Out of the fabulous darkness called.
In pity for man's darkening thought
He walked that room and issued thence
In Galilean turbulence;
The Babylonian starlight brought
A fabulous, formless darkness in;
Odour of blood when Christ was slain
Made all platonic tolerance vain
And vain a...

(From the French of Emile Verhaeren)



He who walks through the meadows of Champagne
At noon in Fall, when leaves like gold appear,
Sees it draw near
Like some great mountain set upon the plain,
From radiant dawn until the close of day,
Nearer it grows
To him who goes
Across the country.    When tall towers lay
Their shadowy pall
Upon his way,
He enters, where
The solid stone is hollowed deep by all
Its centuries of beauty and of prayer.

Ancient French temple! thou whose hundred kings
Watch over thee, emblazoned on thy walls,
Tell me, within thy memory-hallowed halls
What chant of triumph, or what war-song rings?
Thou hast known Clovis and his Frankish train,
Whose mighty hand Saint Remy's hand did keep
And in thy spac...

Methought I saw him but I knew him not;
He was so changed from what he used to be,
There was no redness on his woe-worn cheek,
No sunny smile upon his ashy lips,
His hollow wandering eyes looked wild and fierce,
And grief was printed on his marble brow,
And O I thought he clasped his wasted hands,
And raised his haggard eyes to Heaven, and prayed
That he might die, I had no power to speak,
I thought I was allowed to see him thus;
And yet I might not speak one single word;
I might not even tell him that I lived
And that it might be possible if search were made,
To find out where I was and set me free,
O how I longed to clasp him to my heart,
Or but to hold his trembling hand in mine,
And speak one word of comfort to his mind,
I struggled wildly but it was ...

This rich Marble doth enterr
The honour'd Wife of Winchester,
A Vicounts daughter, an Earls heir,
Besides what her vertues fair
Added to her noble birth,
More then she could own from Earth.
Summers three times eight save one
She had told, alas too soon,
After so short time of breath,
To house with darknes, and with death.
Yet had the number of her days
Bin as compleat as was her praise,
Nature and fate had had no strife
In giving limit to her life.
Her high birth, and her graces sweet,
Quickly found a lover meet;
The Virgin quire for her request
The God that sits at marriage feast;
He at their invoking came
But with a scarce-wel-lighted flame;
And in his Garland as he stood,
Ye might discern a Cipress bud.
Once had the early Matro...

Let's be jocund while we may,
All things have an ending day;
And when once the work is done,
Fates revolve no flax they've spun.

Eternal Spirit of the chainless Mind![1]
Brightest in dungeons, Liberty! thou art:
For there thy habitation is the heart -
The heart which love of thee alone can bind;
And when thy sons to fetters are consigned -
To fetters, and the damp vault's dayless gloom,
Their country conquers with their martyrdom,
And Freedom's fame finds wings on every wind.
Chillon! thy prison is a holy place,
And thy sad floor an altar - for 'twas trod,
Until his very steps have left a trace
Worn, as if thy cold pavement were a sod,
By Bonnivard! - May none those marks efface!
For they appeal from tyranny to God.[2]

Rose, like dim battlements, the hills and reared
Steep crags into the fading primrose sky;
But in the desolate valleys fell small rain,
Mingled with drifting cloud. I saw one come,
Like the fierce passion of that vacant place,
His face turned glittering to the evening sky;
His eyes, like grey despair, fixed satelessly
On the still, rainy turrets of the storm;
And all his armour in a haze of blue.
He held no sword, bare was his hand and clenched,
As if to hide the inextinguishable blood
Murder had painted there. And his wild mouth
Seemed spouting echoes of deluded thoughts.
Around his head, like vipers all distort,
His locks shook, heavy-laden, at each stride.
If fire may burn invisible to the eye;
O, if despair strive everlastingly;
Then haunted here the ...

    Look at that tract of land there - five good acres
    Held out of use these thirty years and more.
    They keep a cow there. See! the cow's there now.
    She can't eat up the grass, there is so much.
    And in these thirty years these houses here,
    Here, all around here have been built. This lot
    Is worth five times the worth it had before
    These houses were built round it.

    Well, by God,
    I am in part responsible for this.
    I started out to be a first rate lawyer.
    Was I first rate lawyer? Well, I won
    These acres for the Burtons in the day
    When I could tell you what is gavel kind,
    Advowsons, corodies, frank tenements,
    Scutage, escheats, feoffments, heriots,
    Remainders and reversions, and mortmain,
  ...

(CLARISSA HARLOW)


Seek not to calm my grief,
    To stay the falling tear;
Have pity on me, ye my friends,
    The hand of God is here.

She was my only one,
    Oh, then my love how great!
Now she is gone, my heart and home
    Are empty desolate

I thought not, in my love
    That we were doomed to part,
Now I am childless, and my fate
    Falls heavy on my heart

O Thou who gave the gift,
    Who took the gift away,
Who only can heal up the wound,
    Give answer while I pray!

Do Thou send comfort down,
    All goodness as Thou art,
Even in Thy last passion, Thou
    Didst soothe a mother's heart.

I would not take her back,
    From Thee, from Heaven and bliss,
Though yearning for her...

It is dark... so dark, I remember the sun on Chios...
It is still... so still, I hear the beat of our paddles on the Aegean...

Ten times we had watched the moon
Rise like a thin white virgin out of the waters
And round into a full maternity...
For thrice ten moons we had touched no flesh
Save the man flesh on either hand
That was black and bitter and salt and scaled by the sea.

The Athenian boy sat on my left...
His hair was yellow as corn steeped in wine...
And on my right was Phildar the Carthaginian,
Grinning Phildar
With his mouth pulled taut as by reins from his black gapped teeth.
Many a whip had coiled about him
And his shoulders were rutted deep as wet ground under chariot wheels,
And his skin was red and tough as a bull's hide cured in the sun....

To roll the rock you fought
takes your courage, Sisyphus!
No matter what effort from us,
Art is long, and Time is short.

Far from the grave of celebrity,
my heart, like a muffled drum,
taps out its funereal thrum
towards some lonely cemetery.

Many a long-buried gem
sleeps in shadowy oblivion
far from pickaxes and drills:

in profound solitude set,
many a flower, with regret,
its sweet perfume spills.

Put off Thy robe of purple, then go on
To the sad place of execution:
Thine hour is come, and the tormentor stands
Ready to pierce Thy tender feet and hands.
Long before this, the base, the dull, the rude,
Th' inconstant and unpurged multitude
Yawn for Thy coming; some ere this time cry,
How He defers, how loath He is to die!
Amongst this scum, the soldier with his spear
And that sour fellow with his vinegar,
His sponge, and stick, do ask why Thou dost stay;
So do the scurf and bran too. Go Thy way,
Thy way, Thou guiltless man, and satisfy
By Thine approach each their beholding eye.
Not as a thief shalt Thou ascend the mount,
But like a person of some high account;
The Cross shall be Thy stage, and Thou shalt there
The spacious field have for Thy theatre....

    We stand about this place - we, the memories;
    And shade our eyes because we dread to read:
    "June 17th, 1884, aged 21 years and 3 days."
    And all things are changed.
    And we - we, the memories, stand here for ourselves alone,
    For no eye marks us, or would know why we are here.
    Your husband is dead, your sister lives far away,
    Your father is bent with age;
    He has forgotten you, he scarcely leaves the house
    Any more. No one remembers your exquisite face,
    Your lyric voice!
    How you sang, even on the morning you were stricken,
    With piercing sweetness, with thrilling sorrow,
    Before the advent of the child which died with you.
    It is all forgotten, save by us, the memories,
    Who are forgotten by the world.
  ...

[From Farmer Harrington's Calendar.]

FEBRUARY 5, 18 - .

        Want - want - want - want! O God! forgive the crime,
        If I, asleep, awake, at any time,
        Upon my bended knees, my back, my feet,
        In church, on bed, on treasure-lighted street,
        Have ever hinted, or, much less, have pleaded
        That I hadn't ten times over all I needed!
        Lord save my soul! I never knew the way
        That people starve along from day to day;
        May gracious Heaven forgive me, o'er and o'er,
        That I have never found these folks before!

        Of course some news of it has come my way,
        Like a faint echo on a drowsy day;
        At home I "gave," whene'er by suffering grieved,
        And called i...

Come girl, and embrace
And ask no more I wed thee;
Know then you are sweet of face,
Soft-limbed and fashioned lovingly;
Must you go marketing your charms
In cunning woman-like,
And filled with old wives' tales' alarms?

I tell you, girl, come embrace;
What reck we of churchling and priest
With hands on paunch, and chubby face?
Behold, we are life's pitiful least,
And we perish at the first smell
Of death, whither heaves earth
To spurn us cringing into hell.

Come girl, and embrace;
Nay, cry not, poor wretch, nor plead,
But haste, for life strikes a swift pace,
And I burn with envious greed:
Know you not, fool, we are the mock
Of gods, time, clothes, and priests?
But come, there is no time for talk.

Serene was morning with clear, winnowed air,
    But threatening soon the low, blue mass of cloud
Rose in the west, with mutterings faint and rare
    At first, but waxing frequent and more loud.
    Thick sultry mists the distant hill-tops shroud;
The sunshine dies; athwart black skies of lead
Flash noiselessly thin threads of lightning red.


Breathless the earth seems waiting some wild blow,
    Dreaded, but far too close to ward or shun.
Scared birds aloft fly aimless, and below
    Naught stirs in fields whence light and life are gone,
    Save floating leaves, with wisps of straw and down,
Upon the heavy air; 'neath blue-black skies,
Livid and yellow the green landscape lies.


And all the while the dreadful thunder breaks,
    Within the ...

    We paused to say good-by,
    As we thought for a little while,
    Alone in the car, in the corner
    Around the turn of the aisle.

    A quiver came in your voice,
    Your eyes were sorrowful too;
    'Twas over - I strode to the doorway,
    Then turned to wave an adieu.

    But you had not come from the corner,
    And though I had gone so far,
    I retraced, and faced you coming
    Into the aisle of the car.

    You stopped as one who was caught
    In an evil mood by surprise. -
    I want to forget, I am trying
    To forget the look in your eyes.

    Your face was blank and cold,
    Like Lot's wife turned to salt.
    I suddenly trapped and discovered
    Your soul in a hidden fault.

    Your e...