All Things will Die

Clearly the blue river chimes in its flowing

Under my eye;
Warmly and broadly the south winds are blowing

Over the sky.
One after another the white clouds are fleeting;
Every heart this May morning in joyance is beating

Full merrily;
Yet all things must die.
The stream will cease to flow;
The wind will cease to blow;
The clouds will cease to fleet;
The heart will cease to beat;
For all things must die.
All things must die.
Spring will come never more.
O, vanity!
Death waits at the door.
See! our friends are all forsaking
The wine and the merrymaking.
We are call’d–we must go.
Laid low, very low,
In the dark we must lie.
The merry glees are still;
The voice of the bird
Shal...

Skurf by his nine-bones swears, and well he may:
All know a fellon eat the tenth away.

Here is the height of land:
The watershed on either hand
Goes down to Hudson Bay
Or Lake Superior;
The stars are up, and far away
The wind sounds in the wood, wearier
Than the long Ojibway cadence
In which Potàn the Wise
Declares the ills of life
And Chees-que-ne-ne makes a mournful sound
Of acquiescence. The fires burn low
With just sufficient glow
To light the flakes of ash that play
At being moths, and flutter away
To fall in the dark and die as ashes:
Here there is peace in the lofty air,
And Something comes by flashes
Deeper than peace; -
The spruces have retired a little space
And left a field of sky in violet shadow
With stars like marigolds in a water-meadow.

Now the Indian guides are dead asleep;
There is no sound u...

Inscribed to the Memory of John Keats.



Dear uplands, Chester's favorable fields,
My large unjealous Loves, many yet one -
A grave good-morrow to your Graces, all,
Fair tilth and fruitful seasons!
        Lo, how still!
The midmorn empties you of men, save me;
Speak to your lover, meadows! None can hear.
I lie as lies yon placid Brandywine,
Holding the hills and heavens in my heart
For contemplation.
        'Tis a perfect hour.
From founts of dawn the fluent autumn day
Has rippled as a brook right pleasantly
Half-way to noon; but now with widening turn
Makes pause, in lucent meditation locked,
And rounds into a silver pool of morn,
Bottom'd with clover-fields. My heart just hears
Eight lingering strokes of some far village-bell,

(See Note 23)

High memories with power
Shine through the wintry North
On every peak's white tower,
On Kattegat so swarth.
All is so still and spacious, `
The Northern Lights flow free,
Creating bright and gracious
A day of memory.

Each deed the North defending,
Each thought for greater might,
A star-like word is sending
Down through the frosty night!
To hope they call and boldness,
And call with double cheer
To him, defying coldness,
On guard the Eider near.

No anxious shadows clouding,
No languid, lukewarm mist
Our heaven of mem'ries shrouding,
This eve of battle-tryst!
May, as of yore, while ringing
The bells unseen loud swelled,
Come leaders vict'ry bringing,
Whom th' army ne'er beheld.

(See Note 23)

High memories with power
Shine through the wintry North
On every peak's white tower,
On Kattegat so swarth.
All is so still and spacious, `
The Northern Lights flow free,
Creating bright and gracious
A day of memory.

Each deed the North defending,
Each thought for greater might,
A star-like word is sending
Down through the frosty night!
To hope they call and boldness,
And call with double cheer
To him, defying coldness,
On guard the Eider near.

No anxious shadows clouding,
No languid, lukewarm mist
Our heaven of mem'ries shrouding,
This eve of battle-tryst!
May, as of yore, while ringing
The bells unseen loud swelled,
Come leaders vict'ry bringing,
Whom th' army ne'er beheld.

Last night, without a voice, that Vision spake
Fear to my Soul, and sadness which might seem
Wholly dissevered from our present theme;
Yet, my beloved Country! I partake
Of kindred agitations for thy sake;
Thou, too, dost visit oft my midnight dream;
Thy glory meets me with the earliest beam
Of light, which tells that Morning is awake.
If aught impair thy beauty or destroy,
Or but forebode destruction, I deplore
With filial love the sad vicissitude;
If thou hast fallen, and righteous Heaven restore
The prostrate, then my spring-time is renewed,
And sorrow bartered for exceeding joy.

He dreamed away his hours in school;
He sat with such an absent air,
The master reckoned him a fool,
And gave him up in dull despair.

When other lads were making hay
You'd find him loafing by the stream;
He'd take a book and slip away,
And just pretend to fish . . . and dream.

His brothers passed him in the race;
They climbed the hill and clutched the prize.
He did not seem to heed, his face
Was tranquil as the evening skies.

He lived apart, he spoke with few;
Abstractedly through life he went;
Oh, what he dreamed of no one knew,
And yet he seemed to be content.

I see him now, so old and gray,
His eyes with inward vision dim;
And though he faltered on the way,
Somehow I almost envied him.

At last beside his bed...

To bear a weight that cannot be borne,
Sisyphus, even you aren't that strong,
Although your heart cannot be torn
Time is short and Art is long.

Far from celebrated sepulchers
Toward a solitary graveyard
My heart, like a drum muffled hard
Beats a funeral march for the ill-starred.

Many jewels are buried or shrouded
In darkness and oblivion's clouds,
Far from any pick or drill bit,

Many a flower unburdens with regret
Its perfume sweet like a secret;
In profoundly empty solitude to sit.

'... O she,
To me myself, for some three careless moons,
The summer pilot of an empty heart
Unto the shores of Nothing.' - Tennyson.


'Tis the hour when golden slumbers
Through th' Hesperian portals creep,
And the youth who lisps in numbers
Dreams of novel rhymes to 'sleep';
I shall merely note, at starting,
That responsive Nature thrills
To the twilight hour of parting
From my Lady of the Hills.

Lady, 'neath the deepening umbrage
We have wandered near and far,
To the ludicrously dumb rage
Of your truculent Mamma;
We have urged the long-tailed gallop;
Lightly danced the still night through;
Smacked the ball, and oared the shallop
(In a vis-à-vis canoe);

We have walked this fair Oasis,
Keeping...

Come through the gloom of clouded skies,
    The slow dim rain and fog athwart;
Through east winds keen with wrong and lies
    Come and lift up my hopeless heart.

Come through the sickness and the pain,
    The sore unrest that tosses still;
Through aching dark that hides the gain
    Come and arouse my fainting will.

Come through the prate of foolish words,
    The science with no God behind;
Through all the pangs of untuned chords
    Speak wisdom to my shaken mind.

Through all the fears that spirits bow
    Of what hath been, or may befall,
Come down and talk with me, for thou
    Canst tell me all about them all.

Hear, hear my sad lone heart entreat,
    Heart of all joy, below, above!
Come near and let me kiss thy feet,<...

High is our calling, Friend! Creative Art
(Whether the instrument of words she use,
Or pencil pregnant with ethereal hues,)
Demands the service of a mind and heart,
Though sensitive, yet, in their weakest part,
Heroically fashioned, to infuse
Faith in the whispers of the lonely Muse,
While the whole world seems adverse to desert.
And, oh! when Nature sinks, as oft she may,
Through long-lived pressure of obscure distress,
Still to be strenuous for the bright reward,
And in the soul admit of no decay,
Brook no continuance of weak-mindedness
Great is the glory, for the strife is hard!

Time sets his footprints on our little Earth,
    And, walk he ne'er so softly, some sweet thing
Falls 'neath each foot-fall, crush'd amid its mirth,
    Tracking the course of Life's short wandering,
With fallen remnants of its mortal part,
    Freeing the soul, but weighing down the heart.

Thou flower of Love! thou little treasury
    Of gentleness, and purity, and grace!
What hidden virtue hath Death reft from thee--
    What unseen essence melted into space?
For now thou liest like a sinless child,
    Whom God hath homeward to his bosom smiled.

The dew-shower fell on thee, the sunbeam play'd,
    As Life is ever made of smiles and tears;
And ofttimes has the breeze of summer sway'd,
    And with its mellow music mock'd thy fears;
But now, O wo...

    As there is music uninform'd by art
    In those wild notes, which, with a merry heart,
    The birds in unfrequented shades express,
    Who, better taught at home, yet please us less:
    So in your verse a native sweetness dwells,
    Which shames composure, and its art excels.
    Singing no more can your soft numbers grace,
    Than paint adds charms unto a beauteous face.
    Yet as, when mighty rivers gently creep,
    Their even calmness does suppose them deep;
    Such is your muse: no metaphor swell'd high
    With dangerous boldness lifts her to the sky:
    Those mounting fancies, when they fall again,
    Show sand and dirt at bottom do remain.
    So firm a strength, and yet withal so sweet,
    Did never but in Samson's riddle meet.
    'Tis...

Laugh, my Friends, and without blame
Lightly quit what lightly came:
Rich to-morrow as to-day
Spend as madly as you may.
I, with little land to stir,
Am the exacter labourer.
Ere the parting hour go by,
Quick, thy tablets, Memory!

But my Youth reminds me ‘Thou
Hast liv’d light as these live now:
As these are, thou too wert such:
Much hast had, hast squander’d much.’
Fortune’s now less frequent heir,
Ah! I husband what’s grown rare.
Ere the parting hour go by,
Quick, thy tablets, Memory!

Young, I said: ‘A face is gone
If too hotly mus’d upon:
And our best impressions are
Those that do themselves repair.’
Many a face I then let by,
Ah! is faded utterly.
Ere the parting hour go by,
Quick, thy tablets, Memory!

Go—thou art all unfit to share
The pleasures of this place
With such as its old tenants are,
Creatures of gentler race.


The squirrel here his hoard provides,
Aware of wintry storms,
And woodpeckers explore the sides
Of rugged oaks for worms.


The sheep here smooths the knotted thorn
With frictions of her fleece;
And here I wander eve and morn,
Like her, a friend to peace.


Ah!—I could pity thee exiled
From this secure retreat—
I would not lose it to be styled
The happiest of the great.


But thou canst taste no calm delight;
Thy pleasure is to show
Thy magnanimity in fight,
Thy prowess—therefore, go—


I care not whether east or north,
So I no more may find thee;
The angry muse...

What a pretty tale you told me
Once upon a time
Said you found it somewhere (scold me!)
Was it prose or was it rhyme,
Greek or Latin? Greek, you said,
While your shoulder propped my head.

Anyhow there's no forgetting
This much if no more,
That a poet (pray, no petting!)
Yes, a bard, sir, famed of yore,
Went where suchlike used to go,
Singing for a prize, you know.

Well, he had to sing, nor merely
Sing but play the lyre;
Playing was important clearly
Quite as singing: I desire,
Sir, you keep the fact in mind
For a purpose that's behind.

There stood he, while deep attention
Held the judges round,
Judges able, I should mention,
To detect the slightest sound
Sung or played amiss: such ears
Had old judges, it app...

Immured in Bothwell's Towers, at times the Brave
(So beautiful is the Clyde) forgot to mourn
The liberty they lost at Bannockburn.
Once on those steeps I roamed at large, and have
In mind the landscape, as if still in sight;
The river glides, the woods before me wave;
But, by occasion tempted, now I crave
Needless renewal of an old delight.
Better to thank a dear and long-past day
For joy its sunny hours were free to give
Than blame the present, that our wish hath crost.
Memory, like Sleep, hath powers which dreams obey,
Dreams, vivid dreams, that are not fugitive;
How little that she cherishes is lost!