"Why sit'st thou by that ruin'd hall,
Thou aged carle so stern and grey?
Dost thou its former pride recall,
Or ponder how it pass'd away?"

"Know'st thou not me?" the Deep Voice cried;
"So long enjoy'd, so oft misused,
Alternate, in thy fickle pride,
Desired, neglected, and accused!

"Before my breath, like blazing flax,
Man and his marvels pass away!
And changing empires wane and wax,
Are founded, flourish, and decay,

"Redeem mine hours, the space is brief,
While in my glass the sand-grains shiver,
And measureless thy joy or grief,
When Time and thou shalt part for ever!"

"Now is the accepted time."


                    Now, sinner, now!
Not in the future, when thy longed-for measure
Thou hast attained, of fame, or power, or pleasure,
When thy full coffers swell with hoarded treasure,
                    Not then, but now.
God's time may not be thine. When thou art willing,
His Spirit may have taken flight forever,
No more thy soul with keen conviction filling,
Softening thy spirit to repentance never, -
                    Now, sinner, now!

                    Now, Christian, now!
Look round, and see what souls are daily dying;
List! - everywhere the voice of human crying
Smiteth the ear; - the moan, the plaint, the sighing,
                    Come even now.
Rise! gird thyself; - go forth where sorrow ...

Some time now past in the Autumnal Tide,
When Phoebus wanted but one hour to bed,
The trees all richly clad, yet void of pride,
Were gilded o'er by his rich golden head.
Their leaves and fruits seem'd painted, but was true
Of green, of red, of yellow, mixed hue,
Rapt were my senses at this delectable view.

I wist not what to wish, yet sure, thought I,
If so much excellence abide below,
How excellent is He that dwells on high!
Whose power and beauty by his works we know;
Sure he is goodness, wisdom, glory, light,
That hath this underworld so richly dight:
More Heaven than Earth was here, no winter and no night.

Then on a stately oak I cast mine eye,
Whose ruffling top the clouds seem'd to aspire;
How long since thou wast in thine infancy?
Thy s...

Here lyes,
A worthy Matron of unspotted life,
A loving Mother and obedient wife,
A friendly Neighbor, pitiful to poor,
Whom oft she fed, and clothed with her store;
To Servants wisely aweful, but yet kind,
And as they did, so they reward did find:
A true Instructer of her Family,
The which she ordered with dexterity.
The publick meetings ever did frequent,
And in her Closet constant hours she spent;
Religious in all her words and wayes,
Preparing still for death, till end of dayes:
Of all her Children, Children, liv'd to see,
Then dying, left a blessed memory.

Demeter? 'Tis a name! For in thy face
A myriad women find their mourning-place!
Thou, sitting lonely on the wayside stone,
O pagan mother, thou art not alone!

Though Hellas now, thy grief so calmly worn!
Yet art thou Egypt, reft of thy first-born;
And now lamenting Rama, that fair head
With ashes strewn, and all uncomforted!

And Mary thou, and many women more!
This very day I see thee at my door;
Thine was the voice, an hour ago, that cried
From the next house, wherein a child has died!

Over the darkened city, the city of towers,
The city of a thousand gates,
Over the gleaming terraced roofs, the huddled towers,
Over a somnolent whisper of loves and hates,
The slow wind flows, drearily streams and falls,
With a mournful sound down rain-dark walls.
On one side purples the lustrous dusk of the sea,
And dreams in white at the city’s feet;
On one side sleep the plains, with heaped-up hills.
Oaks and beeches whisper in rings about it.
Above the trees are towers where dread bells beat.

The fisherman draws his streaming net from the sea
And sails toward the far-off city, that seems
Like one vague tower.
The dark bow plunges to foam on blue-black waves,
And shrill rain seethes like a ghostly music about him
In a quiet shower.

Rain wi...

Daughter to that good Earl, once President
Of Englands Counsel, and her Treasury,
Who liv'd in both, unstain'd with gold or fee,
And left them both, more in himself content,
Till the sad breaking of that Parlament
Broke him, as that dishonest victory
At Chaeronea, fatal to liberty
Kil'd with report that Old man eloquent,
Though later born, then to have known the dayes
Wherin your Father flourisht, yet by you
Madam, me thinks I see him living yet;
So well your words his noble vertues praise,
That all both judge you to relate them true,
And to possess them, Honour'd Margaret.

Non men gran grasia, donna.


Too much good luck no less than misery
        May kill a man condemned to mortal pain,
        If, lost to hope and chilled in every vein,
        A sudden pardon comes to set him free.
Thus thy unwonted kindness shown to me
        Amid the gloom where only sad thoughts reign,
        With too much rapture bringing light again,
        Threatens my life more than that agony.
Good news and bad may bear the self-same knife;
        And death may follow both upon their flight;
        For hearts that shrink or swell, alike will break.
Let then thy beauty, to preserve my life,
        Temper the source of this supreme delight,
        Lest joy so poignant slay a soul so weak.

Thou, oh, thou!
Thou of the chorded shell and golden plectrum! thou
Of the dark eyes and pale pacific brow!
Music, who by the plangent waves,
Or in the echoing night of labyrinthine caves,
Or on God's mountains, lonely as the stars,
Touchest reverberant bars
Of immemorial sorrow and amaze;--
Keeping regret and memory awake,
And all the immortal ache
Of love that leans upon the past's sweet days
In retrospection!--now, oh, now,
Interpreter and heart-physician, thou,
Who gazest on the heaven and the hell
Of life, and singest each as well,
Touch with thy all-mellifluous finger-tips,
Or thy melodious lips,
This sickness named my soul,
Making it whole,
As is an echo of a chord,
Or some symphonic word,
Or sweet vibrating sigh,
That deep...

I.

    What shall be done? I cannot pray;
    And none shall know the pangs I feel.
    If prayers could alter night to day, -
    Or black to white, - I might appeal;
    I might attempt to sway thy heart,
    And prove it mine, or claim a part.


II.

    I might attempt to urge on thee
    At least the chance of some redress: -
    An hour's revoke, - a moment's plea, -
    A smile to make my sorrows less.
    I might indeed be taught in time
    To blush for hope, as for a crime!


III.

    But thou art stone, though soft and fleet, -
    A statue, not a maiden, thou!
    A man may hear thy bosom beat
    When thou hast sworn some idle vow.
    But not for love, no! not for this;
    For thou wilt se...

Midsummer midnight skies,
Midsummer midnight influences and airs,
The shining sensitive silver of the sea
Touched with the strange-hued blazonings of dawn:
And all so solemnly still I seem to hear
The breathing of Life and Death,
The secular Accomplices,
Renewing the visible miracle of the world.

The wistful stars
Shine like good memories.    The young morning wind
Blows full of unforgotten hours
As over a region of roses.    Life and Death
Sound on, sound on. . . . And the night magical,
Troubled yet comforting, thrills
As if the Enchanted Castle at the heart
Of the wood's dark wonderment
Swung wide his valves and filled the dim sea-banks
With exquisite visitants:
Words fiery-hearted yet, dreams and desires
With living looks intolerable, ...

    Jaspar was poor, and want and vice
    Had made his heart like stone,
    And Jaspar look'd with envious eyes
    On riches not his own.

    On plunder bent abroad he went
    Towards the close of day,
    And loitered on the lonely road
    Impatient for his prey.

    No traveller came, he loiter'd long
    And often look'd around,
    And paus'd and listen'd eagerly
    To catch some coming sound.

    He sat him down beside the stream
    That crossed the lonely way,
    So fair a scene might well have charm'd
    All evil thoughts away;

    He sat beneath a willow tree
    That cast a trembling shade,
    The gentle river full in front
    A little island made,

    Where pleasantly the moon-beam shone

Here's never a bough to be tossed in the breeze,
For it’s long since the forest was green;
And round all the trunks of the naked white trees
The marks of the death-ring are seen.
The solemn-faced bear, who had looked on the blacks
From his home with the ’possum and cat,
Blinked anxiously down when the death-dealing axe
Was ring-barking Skeleton Flat.

And, strange to be seen in the evergreen south,
The gums for ten summers have stood,
And dried in the terrible furnace of drouth,
Till harder than flint is the wood.
Now tall grows the grass at the roots of the trees,
But a beautiful forest it cost;
And the heart of the splitter is sad when he sees
And thinks of the timber that’s lost.

Here flies, through a sky that is glazed, the black crow,
And ...

North and south with the fickle tides,
    With the wind from east to west,
The death-ship follows her track of doom,
    But finds no port or rest.

Day after day the far white sails
    Come up and glimmer and die,
And night by night the twinkling lights
    Crawl down the distant sky.

Day after day her black hull lifts
    And sinks with the swell's long roll,
And the white birds cling to her rotting shrouds
    Like prayers of a stricken soul,

But ever the death-ship keeps her track
    While the ships of men sail on,
For God is her skipper and helmsman, too,
    And knoweth her port alone.

Who falsely called thee destroyer, still white Angel of Death?
Oh not a destroyer here, but a kind restorer, thou,
For the guilty look is gone, died out with her failing breath,
And the sinless peace of a babe has come to lip and brow.

Drowned in the heaving tide with her life, is her burden of woe,
The dreary weight of sin, the woeful, troublesome years,
The cold pure touch of the water has washed the shame from her brow
Leaving a calm immortal, that looks like the chrism of peace.

I fancy her smile was like this, as she pulled at her mother's gown
Drawing her out with childish fingers to watch the red of the skies
On the old brown doorstep of home, while the peaceful sun went down,
With her mother's hand on her brow, and the glow of the west in her eyes.

"An o...

I halted at the margin of the wood,
For tortuous was the path, and overhead
Low branches hung, and roots and fragments rude
Of rock hindered the tardy foot. I led
My timid horse, that started at our tread
And looked about on every side in fear,
Until, arising from the jocund shed,
The voice of laughter broke upon our ear,
And through the chinks the light shone out as we drew near.

I tied the bridle rain about a tree,
And on the ample flatness of a stone
Awhile I lay. 'Tis very sweet to be
In social mirth's domain, unseen, alone,
Sweet to make others' happiness one's own:
And he who views the dance from still recess,
Or reads a love tale in a meadow, prone,
Secures the joy without the weariness.
And fills with love's delight, nor feels its sore distr...

Flow down, cold rivulet, to the sea,
Thy tribute wave deliver:
No more by thee my steps shall be,
For ever and for ever.

Flow, softly flow, by lawn and lea,
A rivulet then a river:
Nowhere by thee my steps shall be
For ever and for ever.

But here will sigh thine alder tree
And here thine aspen shiver;
And here by thee will hum the bee,
For ever and for ever.

A thousand suns will stream on thee,
A thousand moons will quiver;
But not by thee my steps shall be,
For ever and for ever.

Some say the spot is banned; that the pillar Cross-and-Hand
Attests to a deed of hell;
But of else than of bale is the mystic tale
That ancient Vale-folk tell.

Ere Cernel's Abbey ceased hereabout there dwelt a priest,
(In later life sub-prior
Of the brotherhood there, whose bones are now bare
In the field that was Cernel choir).

One night in his cell at the foot of yon dell
The priest heard a frequent cry:
"Go, father, in haste to the cot on the waste,
And shrive a man waiting to die."

Said the priest in a shout to the caller without,
"The night howls, the tree-trunks bow;
One may barely by day track so rugged a way,
And can I then do so now?"

No further word from the dark was heard,
And the priest moved never a limb;
And he s...