Between two common days this day was hung
    When Love went to the ending that was his;
    His seamless robe was rent, his brow was wrung,
    He took at last the sponge's bitter kiss.

    A simple day the dawn had watched unfold
    Before the night had borne the death of love;
    You took the bread I blessed, and love was sold
    Upon your lips, and paid the price thereof.

    I changed then, as when soul from body slips,
    And casts its passion and its pain aside;
    I pledged you with most spiritual lips,
    And gave you hands that you had crucified.
    You who betrayed, kissed, crucified, forgot,
    You walked with Christ, poor fool, and knew it not!

Leafless are the trees; their purple branches
Spread themselves abroad, like reefs of coral,
            Rising silent
In the Red Sea of the Winter sunset.

From the hundred chimneys of the village,
Like the Afreet in the Arabian story,
            Smoky columns
Tower aloft into the air of amber.

At the window winks the flickering fire-light;
Here and there the lamps of evening glimmer,
            Social watch-fires
Answering one another through the darkness.

On the hearth the lighted logs are glowing,
And like Ariel in the cloven pine-tree
            For its freedom
Groans and sighs the air imprisoned in them.

By the fireside there are old men seated,
Seeing ruined cities in the ashes,
            Asking sadly
Of the Pa...

    The rich, red blood
Doth stain the fair, green grass, and daisies white
    In generous flood ...
This sun-drowsed day for me is darkest night.
O! wreck of splintered wood and twisted wire,
What blind, unmeasured hatred you inspire
Because yours was the power that life to end ...
    Of him, who was my friend!

This morn we lay upon the grass,
And watched the languid hours pass;
A lark, deep in the sky's blue sea,
Sang ecstasies to him and me.

And with the daisies did he play,
As on the waving grass we lay,
And made a little daisy chain
To bring his childhood back again.

And while he watched the clouds above
He drifted into thoughts of love.
He said, "I know why skylarks sing -
Because they love, and it is Spring.

("Encore si ce banni n'eût rien aimé sur terre.")

[V, iv., August, 1832.]


Too hard Napoleon's fate! if, lone,
No being he had loved, no single one,
Less dark that doom had been.
But with the heart of might doth ever dwell
The heart of love! and in his island cell
Two things there were - I ween.

Two things - a portrait and a map there were -
Here hung the pictured world, an infant there:
That framed his genius, this enshrined his love.
And as at eve he glanced round th' alcove,
Where jailers watched his very thoughts to spy,
What mused he then - what dream of years gone by
Stirred 'neath that discrowned brow, and fired that glistening eye?

'Twas not the steps of that heroic tale
That from Arcola marched to Montmirail<...

Is it not sweet to think, hereafter,
    When the Spirit leaves this sphere.
Love, with deathless wing, shall waft her
    To those she long hath mourned for here?

Hearts from which 'twas death to sever.
    Eyes this world can ne'er restore,
There, as warm, as bright as ever,
    Shall meet us and be lost no more.

When wearily we wander, asking
    Of earth and heaven, where are they,
Beneath whose smile we once lay basking,
    Blest and thinking bliss would stay?

Hope still lifts her radiant finger
    Pointing to the eternal Home,
Upon whose portal yet they linger,
    Looking back for us to come.

Alas, alas--doth Hope deceive us?
    Shall friendship--love--shall all those ties
That bind a moment, and then leave us,
...

    Heaven and the sea attend the dying day,
    And in their sadness overflow and blend--
    Faint gold, and windy blue, and green and gray:
    Far out amid them my pale soul I send.

    For, as they mingle, so mix life and death;
    An hour draws near when my day too will die;
    Already I forecast unheaving breath,
    Eviction on the moorland of yon sky.

    Coldly and sadly lone, unhoused, alone,
    Twixt wind-broke wave and heaven's uncaring space!
    At board and hearth from this time forth unknown!
    Refuge no more in wife or daughter's face!

    Cold, cold and sad, lone as that desert sea!
    Sad, lonely, as that hopeless, patient sky!
    Forward I cannot go, nor backward flee!
    I am not dead; I live, and cannot die!

Black trees against an orange sky,
Trees that the wind shook terribly,
Like a harsh spume along the road,
Quavering up like withered arms,
Writhing like streams, like twisted charms
Of hot lead flung in snow. Below
The iron ice stung like a goad,
Slashing the torn shoes from my feet,
And all the air was bitter sleet.

And all the land was cramped with snow,
Steel-strong and fierce and glimmering wan,
Like pale plains of obsidian.
-- And yet I strove -- and I was fire
And ice -- and fire and ice were one
In one vast hunger of desire.
A dim desire, of pleasant places,
And lush fields in the summer sun,
And logs aflame, and walls, and faces,
-- And wine, and old ambrosial talk,
A golden ball in fountains dancing,
And unforgotten hands. (A...

    One, Nature! burns and makes thee bright,
        One gives thee weeds to mourn withal;
        And what to one is burial
    Is to the other life and light.

    The unknown Hermes who assists
        And alway fills my heart with fear
        Makes me the mighty Midas' peer
    The saddest of the alchemists.

    Through him I make gold changeable
    To dross, and paradise to hell;
    Clouds for its corpse-cloths I descry.

    A stark dead body I love well,
        And in the gleaming fields on high
        I build immense sarcophagi.

THE FIRST VOICE


He trilled a carol fresh and free,
He laughed aloud for very glee:
There came a breeze from off the sea:

It passed athwart the glooming flat,
It fanned his forehead as he sat,
It lightly bore away his hat,

All to the feet of one who stood
Like maid enchanted in a wood,
Frowning as darkly as she could.

With huge umbrella, lank and brown,
Unerringly she pinned it down,
Right through the centre of the crown.

Then, with an aspect cold and grim,
Regardless of its battered rim,
She took it up and gave it him.

A while like one in dreams he stood,
Then faltered forth his gratitude
In words just short of being rude:

For it had lost its shape and shine,
And it had cost him four-and-nine,...

My life closed twice before its close;
It yet remains to see
If Immortality unveil
A third event to me,

So huge, so hopeless to conceive,
As these that twice befell.
Parting is all we know of heaven,
And all we need of hell.

Vast are its halls, as vast the halls and lone
Where DEATH stalks listening to the wind and rain;
And dark that house, where I shall meet again
My long-dead Sin in some dread way unknown;
For I have dreamed of stairs of haunted stone,
And spectre footsteps I have fled in vain;
And windows glaring with a blood-red stain,
And horrible eyes, that burn me to the bone,
Within a face that looks as that black night
It looked when deep I dug for it a grave, -
The dagger wound above the brow, the thin
Blood trickling down slantwise the ghastly white; -
And I have dreamed not even GOD can save
Me and my soul from that risen Sin.

    Incumbent seemingly
    On the jagged points of peaks
    That end the visible west,
    The rounded moon yet floods
    The valleys hitherward
    With fall of torrential light,
    Ere from the overmost
    Aggressive mountain-cusp,
    She slip to the lower dark.
    But here, on an eastward slope
    Pointed and thick with its pine,
    The forest scarcely remembers
    Her light that is gone as a vision
    Or ecstasy too poignant
    And perilous for duration.
    Withdrawn in what darker web
    Or dimension of dream I know not,
    In silence pre-occupied
    And solemnest rectitude
    The pines uprear, and no sigh
    For the rapture of moonlight past,
    Comes from their bosom of boughs.
    Far in their secrecy

Years since (but names to me before),
Two sisters sought at eve my door;
Two song-birds wandering from their nest,
A gray old farm-house in the West.

How fresh of life the younger one,
Half smiles, half tears, like rain in sun!
Her gravest mood could scarce displace
The dimples of her nut-brown face.

Wit sparkled on her lips not less
For quick and tremulous tenderness;
And, following close her merriest glance,
Dreamed through her eyes the heart's romance.

Timid and still, the elder had
Even then a smile too sweetly sad;
The crown of pain that all must wear
Too early pressed her midnight hair.

Yet ere the summer eve grew long,
Her modest lips were sweet with song;
A memory haunted all her words
Of clover-fields and singing...

    I am not true, but you would pardon this
    If you could see the tortured spirit take
    Its place beside you in the dark, and break
    Your daily food of love and kindliness.
    You'd guess the bitter thing that treachery is,
    Furtive and on its guard, asleep, awake,
    Fearing to sin, yet fearing to forsake,
    And daily giving Christ the Judas kiss.

    But piteous amends I make each day
    To recompense the evil with the good;
    With double pang I play the double part
    Of all you trust and all that I betray.
    What long atonement makes my penitent blood,
    To what sad tryst goes my unfaithful heart!

Pale hands I love beside the Shalimar,
    Where are you now?    Who lies beneath your spell?
Whom do you lead on Rapture's roadway, far,
    Before you agonise them in farewell?

Oh, pale dispensers of my Joys and Pains,
    Holding the doors of Heaven and of Hell,
How the hot blood rushed wildly through the veins
    Beneath your touch, until you waved farewell.

Pale hands, pink tipped, like Lotus buds that float
    On those cool waters where we used to dwell,
I would have rather felt you round my throat,
    Crushing out life, than waving me farewell!

Ye hasten to the grave! What seek ye there,
Ye restless thoughts and busy purposes
Of the idle brain, which the world's livery wear?
O thou quick heart, which pantest to possess
All that pale Expectation feigneth fair!
Thou vainly curious mind which wouldest guess
Whence thou didst come, and whither thou must go,
And all that never yet was known would know -
Oh, whither hasten ye, that thus ye press,
With such swift feet life's green and pleasant path,
Seeking, alike from happiness and woe,
A refuge in the cavern of gray death?
O heart, and mind, and thoughts! what thing do you
Hope to inherit in the grave below?

We two kept house, the Past and I,
    The Past and I;
I tended while it hovered nigh,
    Leaving me never alone.
It was a spectral housekeeping
    Where fell no jarring tone,
As strange, as still a housekeeping
    As ever has been known.

As daily I went up the stair
    And down the stair,
I did not mind the Bygone there -
    The Present once to me;
Its moving meek companionship
    I wished might ever be,
There was in that companionship
    Something of ecstasy.

It dwelt with me just as it was,
    Just as it was
When first its prospects gave me pause
    In wayward wanderings,
Before the years had torn old troths
    As they tear all sweet things,
Before gaunt griefs had torn old troths
    And dulled old r...

Who'll dive for the dead men now,
Since Colin is gone?
Who'll feel for the anguished brow,
Since Colin is gone?
True Feeling is not confined
To the learned or lordly mind;
Nor can it be bought and sold
In exchange for an Alp of gold;
For Nature, that never lies,
Flings back with indignant scorn
The counterfeit deed, still-born,
In the face of the seeming wise,
In the Janus face of the huckster race
Who barter her truths for lies.

Who'll wrestle with dangers dire,
Since Colin is gone?
Who'll fearlessly brave the maniac wave,
Thoughtless of self, human life to save,
Unmoved by the storm-fiend's ire?
Who, Shadrach-like, will walk through fire,
Since Colin is gone?
Or hang his life on so frail a breath
That there's but a step 't...