True, we must tame our rebel will:
True, we must bow to Nature’s law:
Must bear in silence many an ill;
Must learn to wait, renounce, withdraw.

Yet now, when boldest wills give place,
When Fate and Circumstance are strong,
And in their rush the human race
Are swept, like huddling sheep, along;

Those sterner spirits let me prize,
Who, though the tendence of the whole
They less than us might recognize,
Kept, more than us, their strength of soul.

Yes, be the second Cato prais’d!
Not that he took the course to die
But that, when ’gainst himself he rais’d
His arm, he rais’d it dauntlessly.

And, Byron! let us dare admire,
If not thy fierce and turbid song,
Yet that, in anguish, doubt, desire,
Thy fiery courage still was strong....

I have been wanton, and too bold, I fear,
To chafe o'er-much the virgin's cheek or ear;
Beg for my pardon, Julia!he doth win
Grace with the gods who's sorry for his sin.
That done, my Julia, dearest Julia, come,
And go with me to choose my burial room:
My fates are ended; when thy Herrick dies,
Clasp thou his book, then close thou up his eyes.

1.
The odour from the flower is gone
Which like thy kisses breathed on me;
The colour from the flower is flown
Which glowed of thee and only thee!

2.
A shrivelled, lifeless, vacant form,
It lies on my abandoned breast,
And mocks the heart which yet is warm,
With cold and silent rest.

3.
I weep, - my tears revive it not!
I sigh, - it breathes no more on me;
Its mute and uncomplaining lot
Is such as mine should be.

NOTES:
_1 odour]colour 1839.
_2 kisses breathed]sweet eyes smiled 1839.
_3 colour]odour 1839.
_4 glowed]breathed 1839.
_5 shrivelled]withered 1839.
_8 cold and silent all editions; its cold, silent Stacey manuscript.

Above the circus of the world she sat,
Beautiful and base, a harlot crowned with pride:
Fierce nations, upon whom she sneered and spat,
Shrieked at her feet and for her pastime died.

Gods, what a black, fierce day! The clouds were iron,
Wrenched to strange, rugged shapes; the red sun winked
Over the rough crest of the hairy wood
In angry scorn; the grey road twisted, kinked,
Like a sick serpent, seeming to environ
The trees with magic. All the wood was still --

Cracked, crannied pines bent like malicious cripples
Before the gusty wind; they seemed to nose,
Nudge, poke each other, cackling with ill mirth --
Enchantment's days were over -- sh! -- Suppose
That crouching log there, where the white light stipples
Should -- break its quiet! WAS THAT CRIMSON -- EARTH?

It smirched the ground like a lewd whisper, "Danger!" --
I hunched my cloak about me -- then, appalled,
Turned ice and fire by turns -- for -- someone stirred
The brown, dry ...

        When the first sere leaves of the year were falling,
    I heard, with a heart that was strangely thrilled,
        Out of the grave of a dead Past calling,
    A voice I fancied forever stilled.

        All through winter and spring and summer,
        Silence hung over that grave like a pall,
        But, borne on the breath of the last sad comer,
    I listen again to the old-time call.

        It is only a love of a by-gone season,
    A senseless folly that mocked at me
        A reckless passion that lacked all reason,
    So I killed it, and hid it where none could see.

        I smothered it first to stop its crying,
    Then stabbed it through with a good sharp blade,
        And cold and pallid I saw it lying,
    And deep - ah' ...

Destruction of the Ram Albermarle by the Torpedo-Launch.
(October, 1864.)


Palely intent, he urged his keel
Full on the guns, and touched the spring;
Himself involved in the bolt he drove
Timed with the armed hull's shot that stove
His shallop - die or do!
Into the flood his life he threw,
Yet lives - unscathed - a breathing thing
To marvel at.

He has his fame;
But that mad dash at death, how name?

Had Earth no charm to stay the Boy
From the martyr-passion? Could he dare
Disdain the Paradise of opening joy
Which beckons the fresh heart every where?
Life has more lures than any girl
For youth and strength; puts forth a share
Of beauty, hinting of yet rarer store;
And ever with unfathomable eyes,
Which baffingly entice,...

This Little, Silent, Gloomy Monument,
Contains all that was sweet and innocent ;
The softest pratler that e'er found a Tongue,
His Voice was Musick and his Words a Song ;
Which now each List'ning Angel smiling hears,
Such pretty Harmonies compose the Spheres;
Wanton as unfledg'd Cupids, ere their Charms
Has learn'd the little arts of doing harms ;
Fair as young Cherubins, as soft and kind,
And tho translated could not be refin'd ;
The Seventh dear pledge the Nuptial Joys had given,
Toil'd here on Earth, retir'd to rest in Heaven ;
Where they the shining Host of Angels fill,
Spread their gay wings before the Throne, and smile.

Rome has fallen, ye see it lying
Heaped in undistinguished ruin:
Nature is alone undying.

’Tis said that the Passion Flower,
With its figures of spear and sword
And hammer and nails, is a symbol
Of the Woe of our Blessed Lord.

So still in the Heart of Beauty
Has been hidden, since Life drew breath,
The sword and the spear of Anguish,
And the hammer and nails of Death.

A dark, shadow grey moth
rests along the grim hue of brick,
its spattered orange cream underwings scream a Halloween defiance
to the bleariness of stone and city.

And before each fold of its wings,
there rests beyond all the pale fire
and din of a thousand slow eyed
empires, feeling the seethe
of their existence spent
in a fidgeting cauldron
where mediocrity camps
with her dangerous throne.

    She was taught desire in the street,
    Not at the angels' feet.
    By the good no word was said
    Of the worth of the bridal bed.
    The secret was learned from the vile,
    Not from her mother's smile.
    Home spoke not.    And the girl
    Was caught in the public whirl.
    Do you say "She gave consent:
    Life drunk, she was content
    With beasts that her fire could please?"
    But she did not choose disease
    Of mind and nerves and breath.
    She was trapped to a slow, foul death.
    The door was watched so well,
    That the steep dark stair to hell
    Was the only escaping way . . .
    "She gave consent," you say?

    Some think she was meek and good,
    Only lost in the wood
    Of youth, and deceived in...

I hate the very noise of troublous man
Who did and does me all the harm he can.
Free from the world I would a prisoner be
And my own shadow all my company;
And lonely see the shooting stars appear,
Worlds rushing into judgment all the year.
O lead me onward to the loneliest shade,
The darkest place that quiet ever made,
Where kingcups grow most beauteous to behold
And shut up green and open into gold.
Farewell to poesy--and leave the will;
Take all the world away--and leave me still
The mirth and music of a woman's voice,
That bids the heart be happy and rejoice.

Margaret. Faust.

MARGARET.

DOST thou believe in God?

FAUST.


            Doth mortal live

Who dares to say that he believes in God?
Go, bid the priest a truthful answer give,

Go, ask the wisest who on earth e'er trod,
Their answer will appear to be
Given alone in mockery.

MARGARET.

Then thou dost not believe? This sayest thou?

FAUST.

Sweet love, mistake not what I utter now!
Who knows His name?
Who dares proclaim:
Him I believe?
Who so can feel
His heart to steel
To sari believe Him not?
The All-Embracer,
The All-Sustained,
Holds and sustains He not
Thee, me, Himself?

Hang not the heavens their arch overhead?
Lies not the earth beneath us, firm?<...

Beloved, thou art like a tune that idle fingers
    Play on a window-pane.
The time is there, the form of music lingers;
    But O thou sweetest strain,
Where is thy soul? Thou liest i' the wind and rain.

Even as to him who plays that idle air,
    It seems a melody,
For his own soul is full of it, so, my Fair,
    Dead, thou dost live in me,
And all this lonely soul is full of thee.

Thou song of songs!-not music as before
    Unto the outward ear;
My spirit sings thee inly evermore,
    Thy falls with tear on tear.
I fail for thee, thou art too sweet, too dear.

Thou silent song, thou ever voiceless rhyme,
    Is there no pulse to move thee,
At windy dawn, with a wild heart beating time,
    And falling tears above thee,
O musi...

There’s a wind up that licks like a flame,
And the sun is a porthole of hell.
Now evanish prim notions of shame,
And the craving to look rather well,
In pyjamas you’re never a swell,
And you’ve chosen some roomily made.
Oh! for ices these pangs to dispel,
It’s one hundred and nine in the shade!

We have limped in from tennis.That game !,
I’d as soon with the damned where they dwell
Stoke a furnace and bathe in the same!
There’s no drink human craving to quell,
Not thin chablis nor sweet muscatel.
Never more shall we see, I’m afraid,
The cool shallows, the pale asphodel.
It’s one hundred and nine in the shade.

You recline an invertebrate frame
In the moisture your atoms expel,
‘Gainst the fates very feebly declaim,
All too limp to rise...

Watchman!    What of the night?
No light we see,--
Our souls are bruised and sickened with the sight
Of this foul crime against humanity.
The Ways are dark----
            "I SEE THE MORNING LIGHT!"

--The Ways are dark;
Faith folds her wings; and Hope, in piteous plight,
Has dimmed her radiant lamp to feeblest spark.
Love bleeding lies----
            "I SEE THE MORNING LIGHT!"

--Love bleeding lies,
Struck down by this grim fury of despight,
Which once again her Master crucifies.
He dies again----
            "I SEE THE MORNING LIGHT!"

--He dies again,
By evil slain!    Who died for man's respite
By man's insensate rage again is slain.
O woful sight!----
            "I SEE THE MORNING LIGHT!

--Beyond the war-clo...

When mid-autumn's moan shook the night-time,
And sedges were horny,
And summer's green wonderwork faltered
On leaze and in lane,

I fared Yell'ham-Firs way, where dimly
Came wheeling around me
Those phantoms obscure and insistent
That shadows unchain.

Till airs from the needle-thicks brought me
A low lamentation,
As 'twere of a tree-god disheartened,
Perplexed, or in pain.

And, heeding, it awed me to gather
That Nature herself there
Was breathing in aerie accents,
With dirgeful refrain,

Weary plaint that Mankind, in these late days,
Had grieved her by holding
Her ancient high fame of perfection
In doubt and disdain . . .

- "I had not proposed me a Creature
(She soughed) so excelling
All else of my king...