Preserved By Macrobius.

What! no way left to shun th' inglorious stage,
And save from infamy my sinking age!
Scarce half alive, oppress'd with many a year,
What in the name of dotage drives me here?
A time there was, when glory was my guide,
Nor force nor fraud could turn my steps aside;
Unaw'd by pow'r, and unappall'd by fear,
With honest thrift I held my honour dear;
But this vile hour disperses all my store,
And all my hoard of honour is no more.
For ah! too partial to my life's decline,
Caesar persuades, submission must be mine;
Him I obey, whom heaven itself obeys,
Hopeless of pleasing, yet inclin'd to please.
Here then at once, I welcome every shame,
And cancel at threescore a life of fame;
No more my titles shall my children tell,
The ol...

    This wearisome and this distressing sleep
    That we call life, O how dost thou support,
    My Pepoli? With what hopes feedest thou
    Thy heart? Say in what thoughts, and in what deeds,
    Agreeable or sad, dost thou invest
    The idleness thy ancestors bequeathed
    To thee, a dull and heavy heritage?
    All life, indeed, in every walk of life,
    Is idleness, if we may give that name
    To every work achieved, or effort made,
    That has no worthy aim in view, or fails
    That aim to reach. And if you idle call
    The busy crew, that daily we behold,
    From tranquil morn unto the dewy eve,
    Behind the plough, or tending plants and flocks,
    Because they live simply to keep alive,
    And life is worthless for itself alone,
    Th...

A Sequel


I saw again the spirits on a day,
Where on the earth in mournful case they lay;
Five porches were there, and a pool, and round,
Huddling in blankets, strewn upon the ground,
Tied-up and bandaged, weary, sore and spent,
The maimed and halt, diseased and impotent.

For a great angel came, ’twas said, and stirred
The pool at certain seasons, and the word
Was, with this people of the sick, that they
Who in the waters here their limbs should lay
Before the motion on the surface ceased
Should of their torment straightway be released.
So with shrunk bodies and with heads down-dropt,
Stretched on the steps, and at the pillars propt,
Watching by day and listening through the night,
They filled the place, a miserable sight.

And I beh...

My footsteps press where, centuries ago,
The Red Men fought and conquered; lost and won.
Whole tribes and races, gone like last year's snow,
Have found the Eternal Hunting-Grounds, and run
The fiery gauntlet of their active days,
Till few are left to tell the mournful tale:
And these inspire us with such wild amaze
They seem like spectres passing down a vale
Steeped in uncertain moonlight, on their way
Towards some bourn where darkness blinds the day,
And night is wrapped in mystery profound.
We cannot lift the mantle of the past:
We seem to wander over hallowed ground:
We scan the trail of Thought, but all is overcast.

Creep into thy narrow bed,
Creep, and let no more be said!
Vain thy onset! all stands fast.
Thou thyself must break at last.

Let the long contention cease!
Geese are swans, and swans are geese.
Let them have it how they will!
Thou art tired: best be still.

They out-talked thee, hissed thee, tore thee?
Better men fared thus before thee;
Fired their ringing shot and passed,
Hotly charged, and sank at last.

Charge once more, then, and be dumb!
Let the victors, when they come,
When the forts of folly fall,
Find thy body by the wall!

Died at Hartford, April 30th, 1861, aged 22.


I saw a brilliant bridal.
                    All that cheers
And charms the leaping heart of youth was there;
And she, the central object of the group,
The cherished song-bird of her father's house,
Array'd in beauty, was the loved of all.
Would I could tell you what a world of flowers
Were concentrated there--how they o'erflow'd
In wreaths and clusters--how they climb'd and swept
From vase to ceiling, with their gay festoons
Whispering each other in their mystic lore
Of fragrance, and consulting how to swell,
As best they might, the tide of happiness.

A few brief moons departed and I sought
The same abode. There was a gather'd throng
Beyond the threshold stone. A few white flowers
Crept o'er...

(A play in one act.)

The Knight.
The Lady.

Voices of men and women on the ground at the foot of the tower.
The voice of the Knight’s Page.



    The top of a high battlemented tower of a castle.    A stone ledge,
    which serves as a seat, extends part way around the parapet.
    Small clouds float by in the blue sky, and occasionally a swallow passes.
    Entrance R. from an unseen stairway which is supposed to extend around
    the outside of the tower.

The Lady (unseen).
Oh do not climb so fast, for I am faint
With looking down the tower to where the earth
Lies dreaming in the sun.I fear to fall.

The Knight (unseen).
Lean on me, love, my love, and look not down.

L.
Call me not “love”, call me your conquere...

She sleeps; he sings to her. The day was long,
And, tired out with too much happiness,
She fain would have him sing of old Provence;
Quaint songs, that spoke of love in such soft tones,
Her restless soul was straight besieged of dreams,
And her wild heart beleagured of deep peace,
And heart and soul surrendered unto sleep.--
Like perfect sculpture in the moon she lies,
Its pallor on her through heraldic panes
Of one tall casement's gulèd quarterings.--
Beside her couch, an antique table, weighed
With gold and crystal; here, a carven chair,
Whereon her raiment,--that suggests sweet curves
Of shapely beauty,--bearing her limbs' impress,
Is richly laid: and, near the chair, a glass,
An oval mirror framed in ebony:
And, dim and deep,--investing all the room
W...

"In the fair land o'erwatched by Ischia's mountains,
Across the charmed bay
Whose blue waves keep with Capri's silver fountains
Perpetual holiday,

A king lies dead, his wafer duly eaten,
His gold-bought masses given;
And Rome's great altar smokes with gums to sweeten
Her foulest gift to Heaven.

And while all Naples thrills with mute thanksgiving,
The court of England's queen
For the dead monster so abhorred while living
In mourning garb is seen.

With a true sorrow God rebukes that feigning;
By lone Edgbaston's side
Stands a great city in the sky's sad raining,
Bareheaded and wet-eyed!

Silent for once the restless hive of labor,
Save the low funeral tread,
Or voice of craftsman whispering to his neighbor
The good deeds of ...

To Theodore Watts


Hills and valleys where April rallies his radiant squadron of flowers and birds,
Steep strange beaches and lustrous reaches of fluctuant sea that the land engirds,
Fields and downs that the sunrise crowns with life diviner than lives in words,
Day by day of resurgent May salute the sun with sublime acclaim,
Change and brighten with hours that lighten and darken, girdled with cloud or flame;
Earth's fair face in alternate grace beams, blooms, and lowers, and is yet the same.
Twice each day the divine sea's play makes glad with glory that comes and goes
Field and street that her waves keep sweet, when past the bounds of their old repose,
Fast and fierce in renewed reverse, the foam-flecked estuary ebbs and flows.
Broad and bold through the stays of old st...

(See Note 11)
(Harald Haardraade's saga, towards the end of Chapter 45, reads thus: When Einar Tambarskelve's wife Bergliot, who had remained behind in her lodgings in the town, learned of the death of her husband and of her sort, she went straight to the royal residence, where the armed force of peasants was, and eagerly urged them to fight. But in that very moment the King (Harald) rowed out along the river. Then said Bergliot: "Now miss we here my kinsman, Haakon Ivarson; never should Einar's murderer row out along the river, if Haakon stood here on the river-bank.")

    (In her lodgings)

    To-day King Harald
    Must hold his ting-peace;
    For Einar has here
    Five hundred peasants.

    Our son Eindride
    Safeguards his father,
    Who goes in fearless
    The...

When you had played with life a space
    And made it drink and lust and sing,
You flung it back into God's face
    And thought you did a noble thing.
"Lo, I have lived and loved," you said,
    "And sung to fools too dull to hear me.
Now for a cool and grassy bed
    With violets in blossom near me."

Well, rest is good for weary feet,
    Although they ran for no great prize;
And violets are very sweet,
    Although their roots are in your eyes.
But hark to what the earthworms say
    Who share with you your muddy haven:
"The fight was on -- you ran away.
    You are a coward and a craven.

"The rug is ruined where you bled;
    It was a dirty way to die!
To put a bullet through your head
    And make a silly woman cry!
You cou...

By a route obscure and lonely,
Haunted by ill angels only,
Where an Eidolon, named night,
On a black throne reigns upright,
I have reached these lands but newly
From an ultimate dim Thule,
From a wild clime that lieth, sublime,
Out of space, out of time.

Bottomless vales and boundless floods,
And chasms, and caves, and Titan woods,
With forms that no man can discover
For the tears that drip all over;
Mountains toppling evermore
Into seas without a shore;
Seas that restlessly aspire,
Surging, unto skies of fire;
Lakes that endlessly outspread
Their lone waters, lone and dead,
Their still waters, still and chilly
With the snows of the lolling lily.

By the lakes that thus outspread
Their lone waters, lone and dead,
Their ...

'Tis the midnight hour; I heard
The Abbey-bell give out the word.
Seldom is the lamp-ray shed
On some dwarfed foot-farer's head
In the deep and narrow street
Lying ditch-like at my feet
Where I stand at lattice high
Downward gazing listlessly
From my house upon the rock,
Peak of earth's foundation-block.

    There her windows, every story,
Shine with far-off nebulous glory!
Round her in that luminous cloud
Stars obedient press and crowd,
She the centre of all gazing,
She the sun her planets dazing!
In her eyes' victorious lightning
Some are paling, some are brightening:
Those on which they gracious turn,
Stars combust, all tenfold burn;
Those from which they look away
Listless roam in twilight gray!
When on her my looks I be...

Into a temple vast and dim,
Solemn and vast and dim,
Just when the last sweet Vesper Hymn
    Was floating far away,
With eyes that tabernacled tears --
Her heart the home of tears --
And cheeks wan with the woes of years,
    A woman went one day.

And, one by one, adown the aisles,
Adown the long, lone aisles,
Their faces bright with holy smiles
    That follow after prayer,
The worshipers in silence passed,
In silence slowly passed away;
The woman knelt until the last
    Had left her lonely there.

A holy hush came o'er the place,
O'er the holy place,
The shadows kissed her woe-worn face,
    Her forehead touched the floor;
The wreck that drifted thro' the years --
Sin-driven thro' the years --
Was floating o'er the ...

Life to her was a perfect flower,
And every petal a jeweled hour,
Till all at once--we know not why--
God sent a frost from His clear blue sky.

Life to her was a fairy rune;
Her light feet tripped to the lilting tune,
Till all at once--we know not why--
God stopped th' enchanting melody.

Life to her was a picture book
That her glad eyes searched with eager look
Till all at once--we know not why--
God put the wondrous volume by.

There is darkness still, gross darkness, Lord,
On this fair earth of Thine.
There are prisoners still in the prison-house,
Where never a light doth shine.
There are doors still bolted against Thee,
There are faces set like a wall;
And over them all the Shadow of Death
Hangs like a pall.
Do you hear the voices calling,
Out there in the black of the night?
Do you hear the sobs of the women,
Who are barred from the blessed light?
And the children,--the little children,--
Do you hear their pitiful cry?
O brothers, we must seek them,
Or there in the dark they die!

Spread the Light! Spread the Light!
Till earth's remotest bounds have heard
The glory of the Living Word;
Till those that see not have their sight;
Till all the fringes of...

Desponding Father! mark this altered bough,
So beautiful of late, with sunshine warmed,
Or moist with dews; what more unsightly now,
Its blossoms shriveled, and its fruit, if formed,
Invisible? yet Spring her genial brow
Knits not o'er that discolouring and decay
As false to expectation. Nor fret thou
At like unlovely process in the May
Of human life: a Stripling's graces blow,
Fade and are shed, that from their timely fall
(Misdeem it not a cankerous change) may grow
Rich mellow bearings, that for thanks shall call:
In all men, sinful is it to be slow
To hope in Parents, sinful above all.