Old courtesans in washed-out armchairs,
pale, eyebrows blacked, eyes ‘tender’, ‘fatal’,
simpering still, and from their skinny ears
loosing their waterfalls of stone and metal:


Round the green baize, faces without lips,
lips without blood, jaws without the rest,
clawed fingers that the hellish fever grips,
fumbling an empty pocket, heaving breast:


below soiled ceilings, rows of pallid lights,
and huge candelabras shed their glimmer,
across the brooding brows of famous poets:
here it’s their blood and sweat they squander:


this the dark tableau of nocturnal dream
my clairvoyant eye once watched unfold.
In an angle of that silent lair, I leaned
hard on my elbows, envious, mute, and cold,


yes, envying that crew’s ten...

    REVISED


    I.

    On the cold and dark Atlantic,
        The night was growing late
    Steamed the maiden ship Titanic
        Crowded with human freight
    She was valued at Ten Million,
        The grandest ever roamed the seas,
    Fitted complete to swim the ocean
        When the rolling billows freeze.


    II.


    She bade farewell to England
        All dressed in robes of white
    Going out to plow the briny deep,
        And was on her western flight;
    She was now so swiftly gliding
        In L Fifty and Fourteen
    When the watchman viewed the monster
        Just a mile from it, ’Twas seen.


    III.

    Warned by a German vessel
        Of an enemy just...

The mothers wish for no more daughters;
There is no future before them.
They bow their heads and their pride
At the end of the many tribes' journey.

The mothers weep over their children,
Loved and unwelcome together,
Who should have been dreamed, not born,
Since there is no road for the Indian.

The mothers see into the future,
Beyond the end of that Chieftain
Who shall be the last of the race
Which allowed only death to a coward.

The square, cold cheeks, lips firm-set,
The hot, straight glance, and the throat-line,
Held like a stag's on the cliff,
Shall be swept by the night-winds, and vanish!

(The Australian Press speaks).


"Kill them! Yes, hang them all!
    They are fiends, just that!
And we're all agreed fiends should be sent
    To a place that's hot.

"They were fiends, too, of themselves;
    They delighted in it!
It's all their fault, their own fault!
    Don't listen a minute!

"Don't let anyone talk
    About 'fatality,' 'lot,'
That sort of talk (excuse us!)
    Is just damned rot.

"You and I, p'raps, are what we're made.
    If I'm dying of phthisis,
It's because my father passed on
    To me what the price is

"Of his excesses, and I,
    Overworked, come off worse.
Just so; but, with these young fiends,
    It's quite the reverse.

"Their homes were happy and bright,

Now, gentle reader, is our journey ended,

Mute is our minstrel, silent is our song;
Sweet the bard's voice whose strains our course attended,

Pleasant the paths he guided us along.
Now must we part, Oh word all full of sadness,
Changing to pensive retrospect our gladness!

Reader, farewell! we part perchance for ever,

Scarce may I hope to meet with thee again;
But e'en though fate our fellowship may sever,

Reader, will aught to mark that tie remain?
Yes! there is left one sad sweet bond of union,
Sorrow at parting links us in communion.

But of the twain, the greater is my sorrow,

Reader, and why? Bethink thee of the sun,
How, when he sets, he waiteth for the morrow,

Proudly once more his giant-race to run,
Yet, e'...

1.
The waters are flashing,
The white hail is dashing,
The lightnings are glancing,
The hoar-spray is dancing -
Away!

The whirlwind is rolling,
The thunder is tolling,
The forest is swinging,
The minster bells ringing -
Come away!

The Earth is like Ocean,
Wreck-strewn and in motion:
Bird, beast, man and worm
Have crept out of the storm -
Come away!

2.
'Our boat has one sail
And the helmsman is pale; -
A bold pilot I trow,
Who should follow us now,' -
Shouted he -

And she cried: 'Ply the oar!
Put off gaily from shore!' -
As she spoke, bolts of death
Mixed with hail, specked their path
O'er the sea.

And from isle, tower and rock,
The blue beacon-cloud broke,
And though...

A pistol-shot rings round and round the world:
In pitiful defeat a warrior lies.
A last defiance to dark Death is hurled,
A last wild challenge shocks the sunlit skies.
Alone he falls with wide, wan, woeful eyes:
Eyes that could smile at death - could not face shame.

Alone, alone he paced his narrow room,
In the bright sunshine of that Paris day;
Saw in his thought the awful hand of doom;
Saw in his dream his glory pass away;
Tried in his heart, his weary heart, to pray:
"O God! who made me, give me strength to face
The spectre of this bitter, black disgrace."

*    *    *    *    *

The burn brawls darkly down the shaggy glen,
The bee-kissed heather blooms around the door;
He sees himself a barefoot boy again,
Bending o'er page of legenda...

O Beauty! do you visit from the sky
Or the abyss? infernal and divine,
Your gaze bestows both kindnesses and crimes,
So it is said you act on us like wine.

Your eye contains the evening and the dawn;
You pour out odours like an evening storm;
Your kiss is potion from an ancient jar,
That can make heroes cold and children warm.

Are you of heaven or the nether world?
Charmed Destiny, your pet, attends your walk;
You scatter joys and sorrows at your whim,
And govern all, and answer no man's call.

Beauty, you walk on corpses, mocking them;
Horror is charming as your other gems,
And Murder is a trinket dancing there
Lovingly on your naked belly's skin.

You are a candle where the mayfly dies
In flames, blessing this fire's deadly bloom.<...

If I must go to heaven's end
Climbing the ages like a stair,
Be near me and forever bend
With the same eyes above me there;
Time will fly past us like leaves flying,
We shall not heed, for we shall be
Beyond living, beyond dying,
Knowing and known unchangeably.

When you shall see me in the toils of Time,
My lauded beauties carried off from me,
My eyes no longer stars as in their prime,
My name forgot of Maiden Fair and Free;

When in your being heart concedes to mind,
And judgment, though you scarce its process know,
Recalls the excellencies I once enshrined,
And you are irked that they have withered so:

Remembering that with me lies not the blame,
That Sportsman Time but rears his brood to kill,
Knowing me in my soul the very same -
One who would die to spare you touch of ill! -
Will you not grant to old affection's claim
The hand of friendship down Life's sunless hill?

1866.

Under the cross in the Southern skies,
Where the beautiful night like a shadow lies,
A fair young life went out in the light
To wake no more in the star-crowned night.

Beautiful visions of life were his,
    Visions of triumph and fame;
Longing for glory that he might be
    Worthy to wear his name.

Brave was his heart as he sailed away
    Under the Northern sky;
Leaving behind him all that he loved--
    Stilling his heart's wild cry.

Proudly his mother, with royal pride,
    Stifled her last regret;
Steeling her heart--but her dream was in vain
    For the star of his race was set.

Surely the moon as he slept at night
    Whispered his doom on high;
Surely the waves in their rocky beds
    Mourned as he passed them by....

Mark thou! a shadow crowned with fire of hell.
Man holds her in his heart as night doth hold
The moonlight memories of day's dead gold;
Or as a winter-withered asphodel
In its dead loveliness holds scents of old.
And looking on her, lo, he thinks 'tis well.

Who would not follow her whose glory sits,
Imperishably lovely on the air?
Who, from the arms of Earth's desire, flits
With eyes defiant and rebellions hair? -
Hers is the beauty that no man shall share.

He who hath seen, what shall it profit him?
He who doth love, what shall his passion gain?
When disappointment at her cup's bright brim
Poisons the pleasure with the hemlock pain?
Hers is the passion that no man shall drain.

How long, how long since Life hath touched her eyes,
Making ...

Haunted? Ay, in a social way
By a body of ghosts in dread array;
But no conventional spectres they -
Appalling, grim, and tricky:
I quail at mine as I'd never quail
At a fine traditional spectre pale,
With a turnip head and a ghostly wail,
And a splash of blood on the dickey!

Mine are horrible, social ghosts, -
Speeches and women and guests and hosts,
Weddings and morning calls and toasts,
In every bad variety:
Ghosts who hover about the grave
Of all that's manly, free, and brave:
You'll find their names on the architrave
Of that charnel-house, Society.

Black Monday black as its school-room ink -
With its dismal boys that snivel and think
Of its nauseous messes to eat and drink,
And its frozen tank to wash in.
That was the first...

PRAEFATIO


        Per quinquennia iam decem,
    ni fallor, fuimus: septimus insuper
    annum cardo rotat, dum fruimur sole volubili.
        Instat terminus et diem
    vicinum senio iam Deus adplicat.
    Quid nos utile tanti spatio temporis egimus?
        Aetas prima crepantibus
    flevit sub ferulis: mox docuit toga
    infectum vitiis falsa loqui, non sine crimine.
        Tum lasciva protervitas,
    et luxus petulans (heu pudet ac piget)
    foedavit iuvenem nequitiae sordibus ac luto.
        Exin iurgia turbidos
    armarunt animos et male pertinax
    vincendi studium subiacuit casibus asperis.
        Bis legum moderamine
    frenos nobilium reximus urbium,
    ius civile bonis reddidimus, terruimus reos.
        Tandem...

The ordeal's fatal trumpet sounded,
And sad pale Adelgitha came,
When forth a valiant champion bounded,
And slew the slanderer of her fame.

She wept, delivered from her danger;
But when he knelt to claim her glove
"Seek not!" she cried, "oh, gallant stranger,
For hapless Adelgitha's love.

For he is dead and in a foreign land
Whose arm should now have set me free;
And I must wear the willow garland
For him that's dead, or false to me."

"Nay! say not that his faith is tainted!"
He raised his visor. At the sight
She fell into his arms and fainted;
It was indeed her one true knight!

I

When I remember them, those friends of mine,
    Who are no longer here, the noble three,
    Who half my life were more than friends to me,
    And whose discourse was like a generous wine,
I most of all remember the divine
    Something, that shone in them, and made us see
    The archetypal man, and what might be
    The amplitude of Nature's first design.
In vain I stretch my hands to clasp their hands;
    I cannot find them.    Nothing now is left
    But a majestic memory.    They meanwhile
Wander together in Elysian lands,
    Perchance remembering me, who am bereft
    Of their dear presence, and, remembering, smile.


II

In Attica thy birthplace should have been,
    Or the Ionian Isles, or where the seas
    Encircl...

Widow of the late CALEB POND, Esq., died at Hartford, February 19th 1861, aged 73.


Would any think who marked the smile
    On yon untroubled face,
That threescore years and ten had fled
    Without a wrinkling trace?

Yet age doth sometimes skill to guard
    The beauty of its prime,
And hold a quenchless lamp above
    The water-floods of time.

And she, for whom we mourn, maintained
    Through every change and care,
Those hallowed virtues of the soul
    That keep the features fair.

They raised a little child to look
    Into the coffin deep,
Who dream'd the lovely lady lay
    But in a transient sleep,

And gazed upon the face of death
    With eye of tranquil ray,
Well pleased, as with the snowy flowers,

The night my father got me
His mind was not on me;
He did not plague his fancy
To muse if I should be
The son you see.

The day my mother bore me
She was a fool and glad,
For all the pain I cost her,
That she had borne the lad
That borne she had.

My mother and my father
Out of the light they lie;
The warrant would not find them,
And here ‘tis only I
Shall hang so high.

Oh let not man remember
The soul that God forgot,
But fetch the county kerchief
And noose me in the knot,
And I will rot.

For so the game is ended
That should not have begun.
My father and my mother
They had a likely son,
And I have none.