A poor wood-chopper, with his fagot load,
Whom weight of years, as well as load, oppress'd,
Sore groaning in his smoky hut to rest,
Trudged wearily along his homeward road.
At last his wood upon the ground he throws,
And sits him down to think o'er all his woes.
To joy a stranger, since his hapless birth,
What poorer wretch upon this rolling earth?
No bread sometimes, and ne'er a moment's rest;
Wife, children, soldiers, landlords, public tax,
All wait the swinging of his old, worn axe,
And paint the veriest picture of a man unblest.
On Death he calls. Forthwith that monarch grim
Appears, and asks what he should do for him.
'Not much, indeed; a little help I lack -
To put these fagots on my back.'

Death ready stands all ills to cure;
But let us not h...

He, born of my girlhood, is dead, while my life is yet young in my heart
Ere the breasts where his baby lips fed have forgotten their softness, we part.
We part. He was mine, he was here, though he travelled by land and by sea,
My son who could trample on fear, my babe who was moulded in me.
As I sat in the darkness, it seemed I could still feel his touch on my head;
He came in the night as I dreamed, and he knelt at the side of my bed;
He murmured the words I had taught when his lips were the lips of a child,
Ere the strength of his arm had been bought and the love that upheld him defiled;
Then my faltering spirit grew bold, and my heart had forgotten its drouth,
And I crooned little songs as of old, till I woke at his kiss on my mouth.
Now waking and sleeping are pain. Nevermore will he ...

        Boys and girls that held her dear,
            Do your weeping now;
        All you loved of her lies here.

        Brought to earth the arrogant brow,
            And the withering tongue
        Chastened; do your weeping now.

        Sing whatever songs are sung,
            Wind whatever wreath,
        For a playmate perished young,

        For a spirit spent in death.
        Boys and girls that held her dear,
        All you loved of her lies here.

"O day! he cannot die
When thou so fair art shining!
O Sun, in such a glorious sky,
So tranquilly declining;

He cannot leave thee now,
While fresh west winds are blowing,
And all around his youthful brow
Thy cheerful light is glowing!

Edward, awake, awake,
The golden evening gleams
Warm and bright on Arden's lake,
Arouse thee from thy dreams!

Beside thee, on my knee,
My dearest friend, I pray
That thou, to cross the eternal sea,
Wouldst yet one hour delay:

I hear its billows roar,
I see them foaming high;
But no glimpse of a further shore
Has blest my straining eye.

Believe not what they urge
Of Eden isles beyond;
Turn back, from that tempestuous surge,
To thy own native land.

It is no...

I.
Is it you, that preach’d in the chapel there looking over the sand?
Follow’d us too that night, and dogg’d us, and drew me to land?

II.
What did I feel that night? You are curious. How should I tell?
Does it matter so much what I felt? You rescued me—yet—was it well
That you came unwish’d for, uncall’d, between me and the deep and my doom,
Three days since, three more dark days of the Godless gloom
Of a life without sun, without health, with out hope, without any delight
In anything here upon earth? but ah God, that night, that night
When the rolling eyes of the lighthouse there on the fatal neck
Of land running out into rock—they had saved many hundreds from wreck—
Glared on our way toward death, I remember I thought, as we past,
Does it matter how many they saved?...

Ave Faustina Imperatrix, morituri te salutant.


Lean back, and get some minutes’ peace;
Let your head lean
Back to the shoulder with its fleece
Of locks, Faustine.

The shapely silver shoulder stoops,
Weighed over clean
With state of splendid hair that droops
Each side, Faustine.

Let me go over your good gifts
That crown you queen;
A queen whose kingdom ebbs and shifts
Each week, Faustine.

Bright heavy brows well gathered up:
White gloss and sheen;
Carved lips that make my lips a cup
To drink, Faustine,

Wine and rank poison, milk and blood,
Being mixed therein
Since first the devil threw dice with God
For you, Faustine.

Your naked new-born soul, their stake,
Stood blind between;
...

Why is this age worse than earlier ages?
In a stupor of grief and dread
have we not fingered the foulest wounds
and left them unhealed by our hands?

In the west the falling light still glows,
and the clustered housetops glitter in the sun,
but here Death is already chalking the doors with crosses,
and calling the ravens, and the ravens are flying in.

I

That children in their loveliness should die
Before the dawning beauty, which we know
Cannot remain, has yet begun to go;
That when a certain period has passed by,
People of genius and of faculty,
Leaving behind them some result to show,
Having performed some function, should forego
The task which younger hands can better ply,
Appears entirely natural. But that one
Whose perfectness did not at all consist
In things towards forming which time can have done
Anything, whose sole office was to exist,
Should suddenly dissolve and cease to be
Is the extreme of all perplexity.

II

That there are better things within the womb
Of Nature than to our unworthy view
She grants for a possession, may be true:
The cycle of the birthplace and ...

A burning glass of burnished brass,
The calm sea caught the noontide rays,
And sunny slopes of golden grass
And wastes of weed-flower seem to blaze.
Beyond the shining silver-greys,
Beyond the shades of denser bloom,
The sky-line girt with glowing haze
The farthest, faintest forest gloom,
And the everlasting hills that loom.

We heard the hound beneath the mound,
We scared the swamp hawk hovering nigh,
We had not sought for that we found,
He lay as dead men only lie,
With wan cheek whitening in the sky,
Through the wild heath flowers, white and red,
The dumb brute that had seen him die,
Close crouching, howl’d beside the head,
Brute burial service o’er the dead.

The brow was rife with seams of strife,
A lawless death made doubly plain...

1.
That time is dead for ever, child!
Drowned, frozen, dead for ever!
We look on the past
And stare aghast
At the spectres wailing, pale and ghast,
Of hopes which thou and I beguiled
To death on life's dark river.

2.
The stream we gazed on then rolled by;
Its waves are unreturning;
But we yet stand
In a lone land,
Like tombs to mark the memory
Of hopes and fears, which fade and flee
In the light of life's dim morning.

Hippolytus; Phædra; Chorus of Trœzenian Women

HIPPOLYTUS
Lay not thine hand upon me; let me go;
Take off thine eyes that put the gods to shame;
What, wilt thou turn my loathing to thy death?

PHÆDRA
Nay, I will never loosen hold nor breathe
Till thou have slain me; godlike for great brows
Thou art, and thewed as gods are, with clear hair:
Draw now thy sword and smite me as thou art god,
For verily I am smitten of other gods,
Why not of thee?

CHORUS
O queen, take heed of words;
Why wilt thou eat the husk of evil speech?
Wear wisdom for that veil about thy head
And goodness for the binding of thy brows.

PHÆDRA
Nay, but this god hath cause enow to smite:
If he will slay me, baring breast and throat,
I lean toward ...

1

Ha! help! - 'twas palpable!
A ghost that thronged
Up from the mind or hell
Of one I wronged!


2

'Tis past and - silence! - naught! -
A vision born
Of the scared mind o'erwrought
With dreams forlorn:


3

The bastard brood of Death
And Sleep that wakes
Grim fancies with its breath,
And reason shakes.


4

Would that the grave _could_ rot
Like flesh the soul,
Gnaw through with worms and not
Leave it thus whole,


5

More than it was in earth
Beyond the grave,
Much more in death than birth
To conscience slave!

The doors were wide, the story saith,
Out of the night came the patient wraith.
He might not speak, and he could not stir
A hair of the Baron’s minniver.
Speechless and strengthless, a shadow thin,
He roved the castle to find his kin.
And oh! ’twas a piteous sight to see
The dumb ghost follow his enemy!
The Return of Imray.



Before my Spring I garnered Autumn's gain,
Out of her time my field was white with grain,
The year gave up her secrets, to my woe.
Forced and deflowered each sick season lay
In mystery of increase and decay;
I saw the sunset ere men see the day,
Who am too wise in all I should not know.
Without Benefit of Clergy.



There’s a convict more in the Central Jail,
Behind the old mud wall;
There’s a...

Out of the poisonous East,
Over a continent of blight,
Like a maleficent Influence released
From the most squalid cellarage of hell,
The Wind-Fiend, the abominable -
The Hangman Wind that tortures temper and light -
Comes slouching, sullen and obscene,
Hard on the skirts of the embittered night;
And in a cloud unclean
Of excremental humours, roused to strife
By the operation of some ruinous change,
Wherever his evil mandate run and range,
Into a dire intensity of life,
A craftsman at his bench, he settles down
To the grim job of throttling London Town.

So, by a jealous lightlessness beset
That might have oppressed the dragons of old time
Crunching and groping in the abysmal slime,
A cave of cut-throat thoughts and villainous dreams,
Hag-ri...

        What are the mortal facts
    With which we deal? The man is thirty years,
    Most vital, in a richness physical,
    Of musical heart and feeling; and the woman
    Is twenty-eight, a cradle warm and rich
    For life to grow in.

    And the time is this:
    This Henry Murray has a mood of peace,
    A splendor as of June, has for the time
    Quelled anarchy within him, come to law,
    Sees life a thing of beauty, happiness,
    And fortune glow before him. And the mother,
    Sunning her feathers in his genial light,
    Takes longing and has hope. For body's season
    The blood of youth leaps in them like a fountain,
    And splashes musically in the crystal pool
    Of quiet days and hours. They rise refreshed,
    Feel all the sun'...

All things within this fading world hath end,
Adversity doth still our joys attend;
No ties so strong, no friends so dear and sweet,
But with death's parting blow is sure to meet.
The sentence past is most irrevocable,
A common thing, yet oh, inevitable.
How soon, my Dear, death may my steps attend.
How soon't may be thy lot to lose thy friend,
We both are ignorant, yet love bids me
These farewell lines to recommend to thee,
That when that knot's untied that made us one,
I may seem thine, who in effect am none.
And if I see not half my days that's due,
What nature would, God grant to yours and you;
The many faults that well you know
I have Let be interred in my oblivious grave;
If any worth or virtue were in me,
Let that live freshly in thy memory
An...

Fu forse un tempo dolce cosa amore.

HE COMPLAINS OF HIS SUFFERINGS, WHICH ADMIT OF NO RELIEF.


    Love, haply, was erewhile a sweet relief;
I scarce know when; but now it bitter grows
Beyond all else. Who learns from life well knows,
As I have learnt to know from heavy grief;
She, of our age, who was its honour chief,
Who now in heaven with brighter lustre glows,
Has robb'd my being of the sole repose
It knew in life, though that was rare and brief.
Pitiless Death my every good has ta'en!
Not the great bliss of her fair spirit freed
Can aught console the adverse life I lead.
I wept and sang; who now can wake no strain,
But day and night the pent griefs of my soul
From eyes and tongue in tears and verses roll.

MACGREGOR.

Physician and Naturalist to Lord Amherst, Governor General of India, who died at Cawnpoor, 24th of November, 1826.


Another awful warning voice of death
To human dignity, and human pride;
'Tis sad, to mark how short the longest life--
How brief was thine! Thy day is done,
And all its complicated hopes and fears
Lie buried, ABEL! in an early grave.
The unavailing tear for thee shall flow,
And love and friendship faithful record keep
Of all thy varied worth, thy anxious strife
For fame and years, now gone for ever!
Yet o'er thy tomb science and learning
Bend in mute regret, and truth proclaims
Thy just inheritance an honour'd name!

Lamented most by those who knew thee best,
Accept this humble, tributary lay,
From one, who in thy boyhood and thy ...