When evening shadows fall,
    She hangs her cares away
Like empty garments on the wall
    That hides her from the day;
And while old memories throng,
    And vanished voices call,
She lifts her grateful heart in song
    When evening shadows fall.

Her weary hands forget
    The burdens of the day.
The weight of sorrow and regret
    In music rolls away;
And from the day's dull tomb,
    That holds her in its thrall,
Her soul springs up in lily bloom
    When evening shadows fall.

O weary heart and hand,
    Go bravely to the strife -
No victory is half so grand
    As that which conquers life!
One day shall yet be thine -
    The day that waits for all
Whose prayerful eyes are things divine
    When evening shad...

Let us quit the leafy arbor,
And the torrent murmuring by;
For the sun is in his harbor,
Weary of the open sky.

Evening now unbinds the fetters
Fashioned by the glowing light;
All that breathe are thankful debtors
To the harbinger of night.

Yet by some grave thoughts attended
Eve renews her calm career;
For the day that now is ended,
Is the longest of the year.

Dora! sport, as now thou sportest,
On this platform, light and free;
Take thy bliss, while longest, shortest,
Are indifferent to thee!

Who would check the happy feeling
That inspires the linnet's song?
Who would stop the swallow, wheeling
On her pinions swift and strong?

Yet at this impressive season,
Words which tenderness can speak
From the t...

"Is she still beautiful?" I asked of one
    Who of the unforgotten faces told
That for long years I had not looked upon -
    "Beautiful still - but she is growing old";
And for a space I sorrowed, thinking on
    That face of April gold.

Then up the summer night the moon arose,
    Glassing her sacred beauty in the sea,
That ever at her feet in silver flows;
    And with her rising came a thought to me -
How ever old and ever young she grows,
    And still more lovely she.

Thereat I smiled, thinking on lovely things
    That dateless and immortal beauty wear,
Whereof the song immortal tireless sings,
    And Time but touches to make lovelier;
On Beauty sempiternal as the Spring's -
    So old are all things fair.

Then for that fac...

...    And all the streets lie smooth and shining there.
Only occasionally does a solid citizen hurry along them.
A swell girl argues violently with Papa.
A baker happens to be looking at the lovely sky.
The dead sun, wide and thick, hangs on the houses.
Four fat wives screech in front of a bar.
A carriage driver falls and breaks his neck.
And everything is boringly bright, healthy and clear.
A gentleman with wise eyes hovers, confused, in the dark,
A failing god... in this picture, that he forgot,
Perhaps did not notice - he mutters this and that.    Dies.    And laughs.
Dreams of a stroke, paralysis, osteoporosis.

The warm sun dreams in the dust, the warm sun falls
On bright red roofs and walls;
The trees in the park exhale a ghost of rain;
We go from door to door in the streets again,
Talking, laughing, dreaming, turning our faces,
Recalling other times and places . . .
We crowd, not knowing why, around a gate,
We crowd together and wait,
A stretcher is carried out, voices are stilled,
The ambulance drives away.
We watch its roof flash by, hear someone say
‘A man fell off the building and was killed,
Fell right into a barrel . . .’ We turn again
Among the frightened eyes of white-faced men,
And go our separate ways, each bearing with him
A thing he tries, but vainly, to forget,
A sickened crowd, a stretcher red and wet.

A hurdy-gurdy sings in the crowded str...

Lyric night of the lingering Indian Summer,
Shadowy fields that are scentless but full of singing,
Never a bird, but the passionless chant of insects,
Ceaseless, insistent.

The grasshopper's horn, and far-off, high in the maples,
The wheel of a locust leisurely grinding the silence
Under a moon waning and worn, broken,
Tired with summer.

Let me remember you, voices of little insects,
Weeds in the moonlight, fields that are tangled with asters,
Let me remember, soon will the winter be on us,
Snow-hushed and heavy.

Over my soul murmur your mute benediction,
While I gaze, O fields that rest after harvest,
As those who part look long in the eyes they lean to,
Lest they forget them.

The earth was flooded in the amber haze
That renders so lovely our autumn days,
The dying leaves softly fluttered down,
Bright crimson and orange and golden brown,
And the hush of autumn, solemn and still,
Brooded o'er valley, plain and hill.

Yet still from that scene with rare beauty rife
And the touching sweetness of fading life,
From glowing foliage and sun bright ray,
My gaze soon mournfully turned away
To rest, instead, on a new made grave,
Enshrouding a heart true, loyal and brave.

At rest for aye! Cold and pulseless now
That high throbbing breast and calm, earnest brow;
Laid down forever the quick, gifted pen
That toiled but for God and his fellow men;
Silent that voice, free from hatred or ruth,
Yet e'er boldly raised in the cause of t...

They leave us - artists, singers, all
When London calls aloud,
Commanding to her Festival
The gifted crowd.

She sits beside the ship-choked Thames,
Sad, weary, cruel, grand;
Her crown imperial gleams with gems
From many a land.

From overseas, and far away,
Come crowded ships and ships
Grim-faced she gazes on them; yea,
With scornful lips.

The garden of the earth is wide;
Its rarest blooms she picks
To deck her board, this haggard-eyed
Imperatrix.

Sad, sad is she, and yearns for mirth;
With voice of golden guile
She lures men from the ends of earth
To make her smile.

The student of wild human ways
In wild new lands; the sage
With new great thoughts; the bard whose lays
Bring youth to age;

The acrid scents of autumn,
Reminiscent of slinking beasts, make me fear
Everything, tear-trembling stars of autumn
And the snore of the night in my ear.

For suddenly, flush-fallen,
All my life, in a rush
Of shedding away, has left me
Naked, exposed on the bush.

I, on the bush of the globe,
Like a newly-naked berry, shrink
Disclosed: but I also am prowling
As well in the scents that slink

Abroad: I in this naked berry
Of flesh that stands dismayed on the bush;
And I in the stealthy, brindled odours
Prowling about the lush

And acrid night of autumn;
My soul, along with the rout,
Rank and treacherous, prowling,
Disseminated out.

For the night, with a great breath intaken,
Has taken my spirit outside
Me,...

"It is the voice of years, that are gone! they roll before me, with all their deeds."

Ossian.



1.

NEWSTEAD! fast-falling, once-resplendent dome!
Religion's shrine! repentant HENRY'S [2] pride!
Of Warriors, Monks, and Dames the cloister'd tomb,
Whose pensive shades around thy ruins glide,


2.

Hail to thy pile! more honour'd in thy fall,
Than modern mansions, in their pillar'd state;
Proudly majestic frowns thy vaulted hall,
Scowling defiance on the blasts of fate.


3.

No mail-clad Serfs, [3] obedient to their Lord,
In grim array, the crimson cross [4] demand;
Or gay assemble round the festive board,
Their chief's retainers, an immortal band.


4.
...

'Tis death! and peace, indeed, is here,
And ease from shame, and rest from fear.
There's nothing can dismarble now
The smoothness of that limpid brow.
But is a calm like this, in truth,
The crowning end of life and youth,
And when this boon rewards the dead,
Are all debts paid, has all been said?
And is the heart of youth so light,
Its step so firm, its eye so bright,
Because on its hot brow there blows
A wind of promise and repose
From the far grave, to which it goes;
Because it hath the hope to come,
One day, to harbour in the tomb?
Ah no, the bliss youth dreams is one
For daylight, for the cheerful sun,
For feeling nerves and living breath,
Youth dreams a bliss on this side death.
It dreams a rest, if not more deep,
More grateful than th...

There is a voice that calls to me; a voice that cries deep down;
That calls within my heart of hearts when Summer doffs her crown:
When Summer doffs her crown, my dear, and by the hills and streams
The spirit of September walks through gold and purple gleams:
It calls my heart beyond the mart, beyond the street and town,
To take again, in sun or rain, the oldtime trail of dreams.

Oh, it is long ago, my dear, a weary time since we
Trod back the way we used to know by wildwood rock and tree:
By mossy rock and tree, dear Heart, and sat below the hill,
And watched the wheel, the old mill-wheel, turn round on Babbit's mill:
Or in the brook, with line and hook, to dronings of the bee,
Waded or swam, above the dam, and drank of joy our fill

The ironweed is purple now; the bl...

To sit and dream in a shady nook
While the phantom clouds roll by;
To con some long-remembered book
When the pulse of youth beats high.

To thrill when the dying sunset glows
Through the heart of a mystic wood,
To drink the sweetness of some wild rose,
And to find the whole world good.

To bring unto others joy and mirth,
And keep what friends you can;
To learn that the rarest gift on earth
Is the love of your fellow man.

To hold the respect of those you know,
To scorn dishonest pelf;
To sympathize with another's woe,
And just be true to yourself.

To find that a woman's honest love
In this great world of strife
Gleams steadfast like a star, above
The dark morass of life.

To feel a baby's clinging hand,
To wa...

Nothing remains of unrecorded ages
    That lie in the silent cemetery of time;
Their wisdom may have shamed our wisest sages,
    Their glory may have been indeed sublime.
How weak do seem our strivings after power,
    How poor the grandest efforts of our brains,
If out of all we are, in one short hour
        Nothing remains.

Nothing remains but the Eternal Spaces,
    Time and decay uproot the forest trees.
Even the mighty mountains leave their places,
    And sink their haughty heads beneath strange seas;
The great earth writhes in some convulsive spasm
    And turns the proudest cities into plains.
The level sea becomes a yawning chasm -
        Nothing remains.

Nothing remains but the Eternal Forces,
    The sad seas cease complaining a...

The flame crept up the portrait line by line
As it lay on the coals in the silence of night's profound,
And over the arm's incline,
And along the marge of the silkwork superfine,
And gnawed at the delicate bosom's defenceless round.

Then I vented a cry of hurt, and averted my eyes;
The spectacle was one that I could not bear,
To my deep and sad surprise;
But, compelled to heed, I again looked furtive-wise
Till the flame had eaten her breasts, and mouth, and hair.

"Thank God, she is out of it now!" I said at last,
In a great relief of heart when the thing was done
That had set my soul aghast,
And nothing was left of the picture unsheathed from the past
But the ashen ghost of the card it had figured on.

She was a woman long hid amid packs of years,<...

Gift from the cold and silent Past!
A relic to the present cast,
Left on the ever-changing strand
Of shifting and unstable sand,
Which wastes beneath the steady chime
And beating of the waves of Time!
Who from its bed of primal rock
First wrenched thy dark, unshapely block?
Whose hand, of curious skill untaught,
Thy rude and savage outline wrought?
The waters of my native stream
Are glancing in the sun's warm beam;
From sail-urged keel and flashing oar
The circles widen to its shore;
And cultured field and peopled town
Slope to its willowed margin down.
Yet, while this morning breeze is bringing
The home-life sound of school-bells ringing,
And rolling wheel, and rapid jar
Of the fire-winged and steedless car,
And voices from the wayside nea...

Lo! the YEAR's FINAL DAY! - Nature performs
    Its obsequies with darkness, wind, and rain;
    But Man is jocund. - Hark! th' exultant strain
    From towers and steeples drowns the wintry storms!
No village spire but to the cots and farms,
    Right merrily, its scant and tuneless peal
    Rings round! - Ah! joy ungrateful! - mirth insane!
    Wherefore the senseless triumph, ye, who feel
This annual portion of brief Life the while
    Depart for ever? - Brought it no dear hours
    Of health and night-rest? - none that saw the smile
On lips belov'd? - O! with as gentle powers
    Will the next pass? - Ye pause! - yet careless hear
    Strike these last Clocks, that knell th' EXPIRING YEAR!

Dec. 31st, 1782.

He faints with hope and fear. It is the hour.
Distant, across the thundering organ-swell,
In sweet discord from the cathedral-tower,
Fall the faint chimes and the thrice-sequent bell.
Over the crowd his eye uneasy roves.
He sees a plume, a fur; his heart dilates -
Soars . . . and then sinks again. It is not hers he loves.
She will not come, the woman that he waits.

Braided with streams of silver incense rise
The antique prayers and ponderous antiphones.
'Gloria Patri' echoes to the skies;
'Nunc et in saecula' the choir intones.
He marks not the monotonous refrain,
The priest that serves nor him that celebrates,
But ever scans the aisle for his blonde head. . . . In vain!
She will not come, the woman that he waits.

How like a flower seemed the perfu...