Fear death? to feel the fog in my throat,
The mist in my face,
When the snows begin, and the blasts denote
I am nearing the place,
The power of the night, the press of the storm,
The post of the foe;
Where he stands, the Arch Fear in a visible form,
Yet the strong man must go:
For the journey is done and the summit attained,
And the barriers fall,
Though a battle ’s to fight ere the guerdon be gained,
The reward of it all.
I was ever a fighter, so one fight more,
The best and the last!
I would hate that death bandaged my eyes and forbore,
And bade me creep past.
No! let me taste the whole of it, fare like my peers
The heroes of old,
Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life’s arrears
Of pain, darkness and cold.
For sudden the worst turns th...

Hail and farewell to those who fought and died,
Not laughingly adventurous, nor pale
With idiot hatred, nor to fill the tale
Of racial selfishness and patriot pride,
But merely that their own souls rose and cried
Alarum when they heard the sudden wail
Of stricken freedom and along the gale
Saw her eternal banner quivering wide.

Farewell, high-hearted friends, for God is dead
If such as you can die and fare not well
If when you fall your gallant spirit fail.
You are with us still, and can we be adread
Though hell gape, bloody-fanged and horrible?
Glory and hope of us who love you, Hail!

Due gran nemiche insieme erano aggiunte.

THE UNION OF BEAUTY AND VIRTUE IS DISSOLVED BY HER DEATH.


    Two mortal foes in one fair breast combined,
Beauty and Virtue, in such peace allied
That ne'er rebellion ruffled that pure mind,
But in rare union dwelt they side by side;
By Death they now are shatter'd and disjoin'd;
One is in heaven, its glory and its pride,
One under earth, her brilliant eyes now blind,
Whence stings of love once issued far and wide.
That winning air, that rare discourse and meek,
Surely from heaven inspired, that gentle glance
Which wounded my poor heart, and wins it still,
Are gone; if I am slow her road to seek,
I hope her fair and graceful name perchance
To consecrate with this worn weary quill.

MACGREG...

Not only on cross and gibbet,
By sword, and fire, and flood,
Have perished the world’s sad martyrs
Whose names are writ in blood.

A woman lay in a hovel,
Mean, dismal, gasping for breath;
One friend alone was beside her,
The name of him was, Death.

For the sake of her orphan children,
For money to buy them food,
She had slaved in the dismal hovel
And wasted her womanhood.

Winter and Spring and Summer
Came each with a load of cares;
And Autumn to her brought only
A harvest of gray hairs.

Far out in the blessèd country,
Beyond the smoky town,
The winds of God were blowing
Evermore up and down;

The trees were waving signals
Of joy from the bush beyond;
The gum its blue-green banner,
The fern its dar...

There are no days for me any more, for the dawn is dark with tears,
There is no rest for me any more, for the night is thick with fears.
There are no flowers nor any fruit, for the sorrowful locusts came,
And the garden is but a memory, the vineyard only a name.

There is no light in the empty sky, no sail upon the sea,
Birds are yet on their nests perchance, but they sing no more to me.
Past - vanished - faded away - all the joys that were.
My youth died down in a swift decline when they married her to despair.

"My lord, the crowd in the Audience Hall; how long wilt thou have them wait?"
I have given my father's younger son the guidance of the State.
"The steeds are saddled, the Captains call for the orders of the day."
Tell them that I shall ride no more to the hunting or...

By chance my fingers, resting on my face,
Stayed suddenly where in its orbit shone
The lamp of all things beautiful; then on,
Following more heedfully, did softly trace
Each arch and prominence and hollow place
That shall revealed be when all else is gone -
Warmth, colour, roundness - to oblivion,
And nothing left but darkness and disgrace.

Life like a moment passed seemed then to be;
A transient dream this raiment that it wore;
While spelled my hand out its mortality
Made certain all that had seemed doubt before:
Proved - O how vaguely, yet how lucidly! -
How much death does; and yet can do no more.

Morte, stipendio della colpa.


O Death, the wage of our first father's blame,
        Daughter of envy and nonentity,
        Serf of the serpent, and his harlotry,
        Thou beast most arrogant and void of shame!
Thy last great conquest dost thou dare proclaim,
        Crying that all things are subdued to thee,
        Against the Almighty raised almightily?--
        The proofs that prop thy pride of state are lame.
Not to serve thee, but to make thee serve Him,
        He stoops to Hell. The choice of arms was thine;
        Yet art thou scoffed at by the crucified!
He lives--thy loss. He dies--from every limb,
        Mangled by thee, lightnings of godhead shine,
        From which thy darkness hath not where to hide.

I

Breathe not, hid Heart: cease silently,
And though thy birth-hour beckons thee,
Sleep the long sleep:
The Doomsters heap
Travails and teens around us here,
And Time-wraiths turn our songsingings to fear.

II

Hark, how the peoples surge and sigh,
And laughters fail, and greetings die:
Hopes dwindle; yea,
Faiths waste away,
Affections and enthusiasms numb;
Thou canst not mend these things if thou dost come.

III

Had I the ear of wombed souls
Ere their terrestrial chart unrolls,
And thou wert free
To cease, or be,
Then would I tell thee all I know,
And put it to thee: Wilt thou take Life so?

IV

Vain vow! No hint of mine may hence
To theeward fly: to thy locked sense
Explain none can...

Death in his palace holds his court,
His messengers move to and fro,
Each of his mission makes report,
And takes the royal orders,--Lo,
Some slow before his throne appear
And humbly in the Presence kneel:
"Why hath the Prince not been brought here?
The hour is past; nor is appeal
Allowed against foregone decree;
There is the mandate with the seal!
How comes it ye return to me
Without him? Shame upon your zeal!"

"O King, whom all men fear,--he lies
Deep in the dark Medhya wood,
We fled from thence in wild surprise,
And left him in that solitude.
We dared not touch him, for there sits,
Beside him, lighting all the place,
A woman fair, whose brow permits
In its austerity of grace
And purity,--no creatures foul
As we seemed, by her l...

        Death devours all lovely things;
            Lesbia with her sparrow
        Shares the darkness,--presently
            Every bed is narrow.

        Unremembered as old rain
            Dries the sheer libation,
        And the little petulant hand
            Is an annotation.

        After all, my erstwhile dear,
            My no longer cherished,
        Need we say it was not love,
            Now that love is perished?

(August 6, 1916., Officer previously reported died of wounds, now reported wounded: Graves, Captain R., Royal Welch Fusiliers.)


... But I was dead, an hour or more.
I woke when I'd already passed the door
That Cerberus guards, and half-way down the road
To Lethe, as an old Greek signpost showed.
Above me, on my stretcher swinging by,
I saw new stars in the subterrene sky:
A Cross, a Rose in bloom, a Cage with bars,
And a barbed Arrow feathered in fine stars.
I felt the vapours of forgetfulness
Float in my nostrils. Oh, may Heaven bless
Dear Lady Proserpine, who saw me wake,
And, stooping over me, for Henna's sake
Cleared my poor buzzing head and sent me back
Breathless, with leaping heart along the track.
After me roared and clattered angr...

Farewell: how should not such as thou fare well,
Though we fare ill that love thee, and that live,
And know, whate'er the days wherein we dwell
May give us, thee again they will not give?
Peace, rest, and sleep are all we know of death,
And all we dream of comfort: yet for thee,
Whose breath of life was bright and strenuous breath,
We think the change is other than we see.
The seal of sleep set on thine eyes to-day
Surely can seal not up the keen swift light
That lit them once for ever. Night can slay
None save the children of the womb of night.
The fire that burns up dawn to bring forth noon
Was father of thy spirit: how shouldst thou
Die as they die for whom the sun and moon
Are silent? Thee the darkness holds not now:
Them, while they looked upon the light,...

    The coffin [1] as I past across the lane
    Came sudden on my view. It was not here,
    A sight of every day, as in the streets
    Of the great city, and we paus'd and ask'd
    Who to the grave was going. It was one,
    A village girl, they told us, who had borne
    An eighteen months strange illness, and had pined
    With such slow wasting that the hour of death
    Came welcome to her. We pursued our way
    To the house of mirth, and with that idle talk
    That passes o'er the mind and is forgot,
    We wore away the time. But it was eve
    When homewardly I went, and in the air
    Was that cool freshness, that discolouring shade
    That makes the eye turn inward. Then I heard
    Over the vale the heavy toll of death
    Sound slow; it made ...

Written on the news of the death of Lord Leighton
A light has passed that never shall pass away,
A sun has set whose rays are unquelled of night.
The loyal grace, the courtesy bright as day,
The strong sweet radiant spirit of life and light
That shone and smiled and lightened on all men's sight,
The kindly life whose tune was the tune of May,
For us now dark, for love and for fame is bright.
Nay, not for us that live as the fen-fires live,
As stars that shoot and shudder with life and die,
Can death make dark that lustre of life, or give
The grievous gift of trust in oblivion's lie.
Days dear and far death touches, and draws them nigh,
And bids the grief that broods on their graves forgive
The day that seems to mock them as clouds that fly.
If life be life more fai...

Vast was the wealth I carried in life's pack -
    Youth, health, ambition, hope and trust; but Time
    And Fate, those robbers fit for any crime,
Stole all, and left me but the empty sack.
Before me lay a long and lonely track
    Of darkling hills and barren steeps to climb;
    Behind me lay in shadows the sublime
Lost lands of Love's delight.    Alack!    Alack!

Unwearied, and with springing steps elate,
    I had conveyed my wealth along the road.
    The empty sack proved now a heavier load:
I was borne down beneath its worthless weight.
I stumbled on, and knocked at Death's dark gate.
    There was no answer.    Stung by sorrow's goad
    I forced my way into that grim abode,
And laughed, and flung Life's empty sack to Fate.

Unknown ...

Debauch and Death are a fine, healthy pair
Of girls, whose love is prodigal and free.
Their virgin wombs, beneath the rags they wear,
Are barren, though they labour constantly.

To the arch poet, foe of families,
Hell's favourite, a cut-rate whore at court,
Brothels and tombs show in dark galleries
A bed never frequented by remorse.

And coffin, alcove, rich in blasphemy,
As two good sisters would, offer as treats
Terrible pleasures, horrifying sweets.

Debauch, when will your clutches bury me? a rival
Death, will you be coming now
To graft black cypress to her myrtle bough?

I
Out of hell a word comes hissing, dark as doom,
Fierce as fire, and foul as plague-polluted gloom;
Out of hell wherein the sinless damned endure
More than ever sin conceived of pains impure;
More than ever ground men's living souls to dust;
Worse than madness ever dreamed of murderous lust.
Since the world's wail first went up from lands and seas
Ears have heard not, tongues have told not things like these.
Dante, led by love's and hate's accordant spell
Down the deepest and the loathliest ways of hell,
Where beyond the brook of blood the rain was fire,
Where the scalps were masked with dung more deep than mire,
Saw not, where the filth was foulest, and the night
Darkest, depths whose fiends could match the Muscovite.
Set beside this truth, his deadliest vision s...

Always suddenly they are gone -
    The friends we trusted and held secure -
Suddenly we are gazing on,
    Not a smiling face, but the marble-pure
Dead mask of a face that nevermore
    To a smile of ours will make reply -
    The lips close-locked as the eyelids are -
Gone - swift as the flash of the molten ore
    A meteor pours through a midnight sky,
    Leaving it blind of a single star.

Tell us, O Death, Remorseless Might!
    What is this old, unescapable ire
You wreak on us? - from the birth of light
    Till the world be charred to a core of fire!
We do no evil thing to you -
    We seek to evade you - that is all -
    That is your will - you will not be known
Of men. What, then, would you have us do? -
    Cringe, and wait ti...