Quand' el ministro de' sospir.


When she who was the source of all my sighs,
        Fled from the world, herself, my straining sight,
        Nature who gave us that unique delight,
        Was sunk in shame, and we had weeping eyes.
Yet shall not vauntful Death enjoy this prize,
        This sun of suns which then he veiled in night;
        For Love hath triumphed, lifting up her light
        On earth and mid the saints in Paradise.
What though remorseless and impiteous doom
        Deemed that the music of her deeds would die,
        And that her splendour would be sunk in gloom,
The poet's page exalts her to the sky
        With life more living in the lifeless tomb,
        And death translates her soul to reign on high.

To Philip Bourke Marston


Love will not weep because the seal is broken
That sealed upon a life beloved and brief
Darkness, and let but song break through for token
How deep, too far for even thy song's relief,
Slept in thy soul the secret springs of grief.
Thy song may soothe full many a soul hereafter,
As tears, if tears will come, dissolve despair;
As here but late, with smile more bright than laughter,
Thy sweet strange yearning eyes would seem to bear
Witness that joy might cleave the clouds of care.
Two days agone, and love was one with pity
When love gave thought wings toward the glimmering goal
Where, as a shrine lit in some darkling city,
Shone soft the shrouded image of thy soul:
And now thou art healed of life; thou art healed, and whol...

DEAD! my wayward boy - my own -
Not the Law's! but mine - the good
God's free gift to me alone,
Sanctified by motherhood.

"Bad," you say: Well, who is not?
"Brutal" - "with a heart of stone" -
And "red-handed." - Ah! the hot
Blood upon your own!

I come not, with downward eyes,
To plead for him shamedly, -
God did not apologize
When He gave the boy to me.

Simply, I make ready now
For His verdict. - You prepare -
You have killed us both - and how
Will you face us There!

(A WARNING)

"Am I my brother's keeper?"
Yes, of a truth!
Thine asking is thine answer.
That self-condemning cry of Cain
Has been the plea of every selfish soul since then,
Which hath its brother slain.
God's word is plain,
And doth thy shrinking soul arraign.

Thy brother's keeper?
Yea, of a truth thou art!
For if not--who?
Are ye not both,--both thou and he
Of God's great family?
How rid thee of thy soul's responsibility?
For every ill in all the world
Each soul is sponsor and account must bear.
And He, and he thy brother of despair,
Claim, of thy overmuch, their share.

Thou hast had good, and he the strangled days;
But now,--the old things pass.
No longer of thy grace
Is he content to live in evil case
For ...

From Australia.

Oh, tell me, God of Battles! Oh, say what is to come!
The King is in his trenches, the millionaire at home;
The Kaiser with his toiling troops, the Czar is at the front.
Oh! Tell me, God of Battles! Who bears the battle’s brunt?
The Queen knits socks for soldiers, the Empress does the same,
And know no more than peasant girls which nation is to blame.
The wounded live to fight again, or live to slave for bread;
The Slain have graves above the Slain the Dead are with the Dead.
The widowed young shall wed or not, the widowed old remain
And all the nations of the world prepare for war again!
But ere that time shall be, O God, say what shall here befall!
Ten millions at the battle fronts, and we’re five millions all!
The world You made was wide, O God, the ...

I

I saw a dead man's finer part
Shining within each faithful heart
Of those bereft. Then said I: "This must be
His immortality."

II

I looked there as the seasons wore,
And still his soul continuously upbore
Its life in theirs. But less its shine excelled
Than when I first beheld.

III

His fellow-yearsmen passed, and then
In later hearts I looked for him again;
And found him - shrunk, alas! into a thin
And spectral mannikin.

IV

Lastly I ask - now old and chill -
If aught of him remain unperished still;
And find, in me alone, a feeble spark,
Dying amid the dark.

February 1899.

Se col cieco desir che 'l cor distrugge.

BLIGHTED HOPE.


    Either that blind desire, which life destroys
Counting the hours, deceives my misery,
Or, even while yet I speak, the moment flies,
Promised at once to pity and to me.
Alas! what baneful shade o'erhangs and dries
The seed so near its full maturity?
'Twixt me and hope what brazen walls arise?
From murderous wolves not even my fold is free.
Ah, woe is me! Too clearly now I find
That felon Love, to aggravate my pain,
Mine easy heart hath thus to hope inclined;
And now the maxim sage I call to mind,
That mortal bliss must doubtful still remain
Till death from earthly bonds the soul unbind.

CHARLEMONT.


    Counting the hours, lest I myself mislead
By bli...

        As to some lovely temple, tenantless
        Long since, that once was sweet with shivering brass,
        Knowing well its altars ruined and the grass
        Grown up between the stones, yet from excess
        Of grief hard driven, or great loneliness,
        The worshiper returns, and those who pass
        Marvel him crying on a name that was,--
        So is it now with me in my distress.
        Your body was a temple to Delight;
        Cold are its ashes whence the breath is fled,
        Yet here one time your spirit was wont to move;
        Here might I hope to find you day or night,
        And here I come to look for you, my love,
        Even now, foolishly, knowing you are dead.

Stephen, who died while I stood by consenting,
Wrought in his death the making of a life,
Bruised one hard heart to thought of swift repenting,
Fitted one fighter for a nobler strife.

Stephen, the Saint, triumphant and forgiving,
Prayed while the hot blows beat him to the earth.
Was that a dying? Rather was it living!--
Through his soul's travail my soul came to birth.

Stephen, the Martyr, full of faith and fearless,
Smiled when his bruised lips could no longer pray,--
Smiled with a courage undismayed and peerless,--
Smiled!--and that smile is with me, night and day.

O, was it I that stood there, all consenting?
I--at whose feet the young men's clothes were laid?
Was it my will that wrought that hot tormenting?
My heart that b...

This was the tale Sher Afzul told to me,
While the spent camels bubbled on their knees,
And ruddy camp-fires twinkled through the gloom
Sweet with the fragrance from the Sinjib trees.

I had a friend who lay, condemned to death
In gaol for murder, wholly innocent,
Yet caught in webs of luckless circumstance; -
Thou know'st how lies, of good and ill intent,

Cluster like flies around a justice-court,
Wheel within wheel, revolving screw on screw; -
But from his prison he escaped and fled,
Keeping his liberty a night or two

Among the lonely hills, where, shackled still,
He braved a village, seeking for a file
To loose his irons; alas! he lost his life
Through the base sweetness of a woman's smile.

Lovely she was, and young, who gave the yout...

I

They whisper at my very gate,
These clacking gossips every one,
"We saw them in the wood of late,
Her and the widow's son;
The horses at the forge may wait,
The wool may go unspun."

I spread the food he loves the best,
I light the lamp when day is done,
Yet still he stays another's guest--
Oh, my one son, my son.
I would it burned in mine own breast
The spell he may not shun.

She hath bewitched him with her eyes.
(No goodly maid hath eyes as bright.)
Pale in the morn I watch him rise,
As one who wanders far by night.
The gossips whisper and surmise--
I hide me from the light.


II

Her hair is yellow as the corn,
Her eyes are bluer than the sky;
Behind the casement yester-morn,
I watched her...

I hate this City, seated on the Plain,
    The clang and clamour of the hot Bazar,
Knowing, amid the pauses of my pain,
    This month the Almonds bloom in Kandahar.

The Almond-trees, that sheltered my Delight,
    Screening my happiness as evening fell.
It was well worth - that most Enchanted Night -
    This life in torment, and the next in Hell!

People are kind to me; one More than Kind,
    Her lashes lie like fans upon her cheek,
But kindness is a burden on my mind,
    And it is weariness to hear her speak.

For though that Kaffir's bullet holds me here,
    My thoughts are ever free, and wander far,
To where the Lilac Hills rise, soft and clear,
    Beyond the Almond Groves of Kandahar.

He followed me to Sibi, to the Fair,
  ...

I ever love where never hope appears,
    Yet hope draws on my never-hoping care,
    And my life's hope would die but for despair;
My never certain joy breeds ever certain fears.
Uncertain dread gives wings unto my hope;
    Yet my hope's wings are laden so with fear
    As they cannot ascend to my hope's sphere,
Though fear gives them more than a heavenly scope.
Yet this large room is bounded with despair,
    So my love is still fettered with vain hope,
    And liberty deprives him of his scope,
And thus am I imprisoned in the air.
    Then, sweet despair, awhile hold up thy head,
    Or all my hope for sorrow will be dead.

My sun has set, I dwell
In darkness as a dead man out of sight;
And none remains, not one, that I should tell
To him mine evil plight
This bitter night.
I will make fast my door
That hollow friends may trouble me no more.

'Friend, open to Me.' - Who is this that calls?
Nay, I am deaf as are my walls:
Cease crying, for I will not hear
Thy cry of hope or fear.
Others were dear,
Others forsook me: what art thou indeed
That I should heed
Thy lamentable need?
Hungry should feed,
Or stranger lodge thee here?

'Friend, My Feet bleed.
Open thy door to Me and comfort Me.'
I will not open, trouble me no more.
Go on thy way footsore,
I will not rise and open unto thee.

'Then is it nothing to thee? Open, see
Who stands t...

    A deep calm sea; on the blue waters toiled,
    From morn till eve, the simple fishermen;
    And, on the beach, there stood a group of huts
    Before whose gates old men sat mending nets
    And eyed with secret joy the little boys
    That gaily gambolled on the sandy beach
    Regardless of their parents' daily toils.
    And all the busy women left their homes
    And their young ones with baskets on their heads
    Filled with the finny treasures of the deep.

    A thousand yards to landward rose a town
    With its broad streets, high roofs, and busy marts.
    An ancient temple in the centre stood,
    Where to his servant Nandi once appeared
    Great Siva, it is said, in human frame.
    E'en learned saints sang of the holy shrine;
    And ...

Weep not for those whom the veil of the tomb,
    In life's happy morning, hath hid from our eyes,
Ere sin threw a blight o'er the spirit's young bloom,
    Or earth had profaned what was born for the skies.
Death chilled the fair fountain, ere sorrow had stained it;
    'Twas frozen in all the pure light of its course,
And but sleeps till the sunshine of Heaven has unchained it,
    To water that Eden where first was its source.
Weep not for those whom the veil of the tomb,
    In life's happy morning, hath hid from our eyes,
Ere sin threw a blight o'er the spirit's young bloom,
    Or earth had profaned what was born for the skies.

Mourn not for her, the young Bride of the Vale,[1]
    Our gayest and loveliest, lost to us now,
Ere life's early lustre ...

What cometh here from west to east awending?
And who are these, the marchers stern and slow?
We bear the message that the rich are sending
Aback to those who bade them wake and know.
Not one, not one, nor thousands must they slay,
But one and all if they would dusk the day.

We asked them for a life of toilsome earning,
They bade us bide their leisure for our bread;
We craved to speak to tell our woeful learning:
We come back speechless, bearing back our dead.
Not one, not one, nor thousands must they slay,
But one and all if they would dusk the day.

They will not learn; they have no ears to hearken.
They turn their faces from the eyes of fate;
Their gay-lit halls shut out the skies that darken.
But, lo! this dead man knocking at the gate.
Not one, ...

Ah, yes, the chapter ends to-day;
We even lay the book away;
But oh, how sweet the moments sped
Before the final page was read!

We tried to read between the lines
The Author's deep-concealed designs;
But scant reward such search secures;
You saw my heart and I saw yours.

The Master,--He who penned the page
And bade us read it,--He is sage:
And what he orders, you and I
Can but obey, nor question why.

We read together and forgot
The world about us. Time was not.
Unheeded and unfelt, it fled.
We read and hardly knew we read.

Until beneath a sadder sun,
We came to know the book was done.
Then, as our minds were but new lit,
It dawned upon us what was writ;

And we were startled. In our eyes,
Looked forth the l...