Deep is the lamentation! Not alone
From Sages justly honoured by mankind;
But from the ghostly tenants of the wind,
Demons and Spirits, many a dolorous groan
Issues for that dominion overthrown:
Proud Tiber grieves, and far-off Ganges, blind
As his own worshipers: and Nile, reclined
Upon his monstrous urn, the farewell moan
Renews. Through every forest, cave, and den,
Where frauds were hatched of old, hath sorrow past
Hangs o'er the Arabian Prophet's native Waste,
Where once his airy helpers schemed and planned
'Mid spectral lakes bemocking thirsty men,
And stalking pillars built of fiery sand.

The kiss had been given and taken,
And gathered to many past:
It never could reawaken;
But you heard none say: "It's the last!"

The clock showed the hour and the minute,
But you did not turn and look:
You read no finis in it,
As at closing of a book.

But you read it all too rightly
When, at a time anon,
A figure lay stretched out whitely,
And you stood looking thereon.

        Here now forevermore our lives must part.
    My path leads there, and yours another way.
        What shall we do with this fond love, dear heart?
    It grows a heavier burden day by day.

        Hide it? In all earth's caverns, void and vast,
    There is not room enough to hide it, dear;
        Not even the mighty storehouse of the past
    Could cover it from our own eyes, I fear.

        Drown it? Why, were the contents of each ocean
    Merged into one great sea, too shallow then
        Would be its waters to sink this emotion
    So deep it could not rise to life again.

        Burn it? In all the furnace flames below,
    It would not in a thousand years expire.
        Nay! it would thrive, exult, expand, and grow,
    For from...

Farewell, old playmate! on thy sandy shore
My lingering feet will leave their print no more;
To thy loved side I never may return.
I pray thee, old companion, make due mourn
For the wild spirit who so oft has stood
Gazing in love and wonder on thy flood.
The form is now departing far away,
That half in anger oft, and half in play,
Thou hast pursued with thy white showers of foam.
Thy waters daily will besiege the home
I loved among the rocks; but there will be
No laughing cry, to hail thy victory,
Such as was wont to greet thee, when I fled,
With hurried footsteps, and averted head,
Like fallen monarch, from my venturous stand,
Chased by thy billows far along the sand.
And when at eventide thy warm waves drink
The amber clouds that in their bosom sink;

He had bowed down to drunkenness,
An abject worshipper:
The pride of manhood's pulse had grown
Too faint and cold to stir;
And he had given his spirit up
To the unblessëd thrall,
And bowing to the poison cup,
He gloried in his fall!
There came a change the cloud rolled off,
And light fell on his brain
And like the passing of a dream
That cometh not again,
The shadow of the spirit fled.
He saw the gulf before,
He shuddered at the waste behind,
And was a man once more.
He shook the serpent folds away,
That gathered round his heart,
As shakes the swaying forest-oak
Its poison vine apart;
He stood erect; returning pride
Grew terrible within,
And conscience sat in judgment, on
His most familiar sin.
The light of Intellect aga...

Oft have I stood within the carven door
Of some cathedral at the close of the day,
And seen its softened splendors fade away
From lucent pane and tessellated floor,
As if a parting guest who comes no more,
Till over all silence and blackness lay,
Then rose sweet murmurings of them that pray,
And shone the altar lamps unseen before,
So, Dear, as here I stand with thee alone,
The voices of the world sound faint and far,
The glare and glory of the moon grow dim,
And in the stillness, what I had not known,
I know, a light, pure shining as a star,
A song, uprising like a holy hymn.

What does time whisper, youth gay and light,
While thinning thy locks, silken and bright,
While paling thy soft cheek's roseate dye,
Dimming the light of thy flashing eye,
Stealing thy bloom and freshness away -
Is he not hinting at death - decay?

Man, in the wane of thy stately prime,
Hear'st thou the silent warnings of Time?
Look at thy brow ploughed by anxious care,
The silver hue of thy once dark hair; -
What boot thine honors, thy treasures bright,
When Time tells of coming gloom and night?

Sad age, dost thou note thy strength nigh, spent,
How slow thy footstep - thy form how bent?
Yet on looking back how short doth seem
The checkered coarse of thy life's brief dream.
Time, daily weakening each link and tie,
Doth whisper how soon thou art...

Now came I where the water's din was heard,
As down it fell into the other round,
Resounding like the hum of swarming bees:
When forth together issu'd from a troop,
That pass'd beneath the fierce tormenting storm,
Three spirits, running swift. They towards us came,
And each one cried aloud, "Oh do thou stay!
Whom by the fashion of thy garb we deem
To be some inmate of our evil land."

Ah me! what wounds I mark'd upon their limbs,
Recent and old, inflicted by the flames!
E'en the remembrance of them grieves me yet.

Attentive to their cry my teacher paus'd,
And turn'd to me his visage, and then spake;
"Wait now! our courtesy these merit well:
And were 't not for the nature of the place,
Whence glide the fiery darts, I should have said,
That haste...

I strove with none, for none was worth my strife.
Nature I loved and, next to Nature, Art:
I warm’d both hands before the fire of life;
It sinks, and I am ready to depart.

    "Alas! how oft does goodness wound itself!
    And sweet affection prove the spring of woe."

Home.


I.

    O thou pale orb, that silent shines,
        While care-untroubled mortals sleep!
    Thou seest a wretch who inly pines,
        And wanders here to wail and weep!
    With woe I nightly vigils keep,
        Beneath thy wan, unwarming beam,
    And mourn, in lamentation deep,
        How life and love are all a dream.

II.

    A joyless view thy rays adorn
        The faintly marked distant hill:
    I joyless view thy trembling horn,
        Reflected in the gurgling rill:
    My fondly-fluttering heart, be still:
        Thou busy pow'r, Remembrance, cease!
    Ah! must the agonizing thrill
    ...

Now to my lips lift then some opiate
Of black forgetfulness! while in thy gaze
Still lures the loveless beauty that betrays,
And in thy mouth the music that is hate.
No promise more hast thou to make me wait;
No smile to cozen my sick heart with praise!
Far, far behind thee stretch laborious days,
And far before thee, labors soon and late.
Thine is the fen-fire that we deem a star,
Flying before us, ever fugitive,
Thy mocking policy still holds afar:
And thine the voice, to which our longings give
Hope's siren face, that speaks us sweet and fair,
Only to lead us captives to Despair.

To Man in haste, flushed with impatient dreams
Of some great thing to do, so slowly done,
The long delay of Time all idle seems,
Idle the lordly leisure of the sun;
So splendid his design, so brief his span,
For all the faith with which his heart is burning,
He marvels, as he builds each shining plan,
That heaven's wheel should be so long in turning,
And God more slow in righteousness than Man.

Evil on evil mock him all about,
And all the forces of embattled wrong,
There are so many devils to cast out -
Save God be with him, how shall Man be strong?
With his own heart at war, to weakness prone,
And all the honeyed ways of joyous sinning,
How in this welter shall he hold his own,
And, single-handed, e'er have hopes of winning?
How shall he fight God'...

I dug a grave, one smiling April day,
    A grave whose small proportions testified
To empty arms, and playthings put away,
    To ears which heard, when only fancy cried;
        I wondered, as I shaped that little mound,
        If in my home such grief should e'er be found.

I dug a grave, 'twas in the month of June;
    A grave for one who at his zenith died;
When, on that mound with floral tributes strewn,
    The tear-drops fell of one but late his bride,
        I wondered if upon my silent bier
        Should rest the moist impression of a tear.

I dug a grave by Autumn's sober light,
    A grave of full dimensions; 'twas for one
Whose hair had changed its raven hue to white,
    Whose course had finished with the setting sun;
        I wonde...

Through foulest fogs of my own sluggish soul,
Through midnight glooms of all the wide world's guilt,
Through sulphurous cannon-clouds that surge and roll
Above the steam of blood in anger spilt;
Through all the sombre earth-oppressing piles
Of old cathedral temples which expand
Sepulchral vaults and monumental aisles,
Hopeless and freezing in the lifeful land;
I gaze and seek with ever-longing eyes
For God, the Love-Supreme, all-wise, all-good:
Alas! in vain; for over all the skies
A dark and awful shadow seems to brood,
A numbing, infinite, eternal gloom:
I tremble in the consciousness of Doom.

        A horror of great darkness over them,
        No cloud of fire to guide and cover them,
        Beasts for the shambles, tremulous with dread,
        They crouch on alien soil among their dead.

        "Thy shield and thy exceeding great reward,"
        This was thine ancient covenant, O Lord,
        Which, sealed with mirth, these many thousand years
        Is black with blood and blotted out with tears.

        Have these not toiled through Egypt's burning sun,
        And wept beside the streams of Babylon,
        Led from thy wilderness of hill and glen
        Into a wider wilderness of men?

        Life bore them ever less of gain than loss,
        Before and since Golgotha's piteous Cross,
        And surely, now, their sorrow hath...

I.

Pessimist

There is never a thing we dream or do
But was dreamed and done in the ages gone;
Everything's old; there is nothing that's new,
And so it will be while the world goes on.

The thoughts we think have been thought before;
The deeds we do have long been done;
We pride ourselves on our love and lore
And both are as old as the moon and sun.

We strive and struggle and swink and sweat,
And the end for each is one and the same;
Time and the sun and the frost and wet
Will wear from its pillar the greatest name.

No answer comes for our prayer or curse,
No word replies though we shriek in air;
Ever the taciturn universe
Stretches unchanged for our curse or prayer.

With our mind's small light in the dark we crawl,<...

With one black shadow at its feet,
The house thro' all the level shines,
Close-latticed to the brooding heat,
And silent in its dusty vines:
A faint-blue ridge upon the right,
An empty river-bed before,
And shallows on a distant shore,
In glaring sand and inlets bright.
But "Aye Mary," made she moan,
And "Aye Mary," night and morn,
And "Ah," she sang, "to be all alone,
To live forgotten, and love forlorn."

She, as her carol sadder grew,
From brow and bosom slowly down
Thro' rosy taper fingers drew
Her streaming curls of deepest brown
To left and right, and made appear,
Still-lighted in a secret shrine,
Her melancholy eyes divine,
The home of woe without a tear.
And "Aye Mary," was her moan,
"Madonna, sad is night and morn;"
...

Never dry, never dry,

Tears that eternal love sheddeth!
How dreary, how dead doth the world still appear,
When only half-dried on the eye is the tear!

Never dry, never dry,

Tears that unhappy love sheddeth!