Spirit whose work is done! spirit of dreadful hours!
Ere, departing, fade from my eyes your forests of bayonets;
Spirit of gloomiest fears and doubts, (yet onward ever unfaltering pressing;)
Spirit of many a solemn day, and many a savage scene!
Electric spirit!
That with muttering voice, through the war now closed, like a tireless phantom flitted,
Rousing the land with breath of flame, while you beat and beat the drum;
Now, as the sound of the drum, hollow and harsh to the last, reverberates round me;
As your ranks, your immortal ranks, return, return from the battles;
While the muskets of the young men yet lean over their shoulders;
While I look on the bayonets bristling over their shoulders;
While those slanted bayonets, whole forests of them, appearing in the distance, approach and...

How beautiful the earth is still,
To thee, how full of happiness?
How little fraught with real ill,
Or unreal phantoms of distress!
How spring can bring thee glory, yet,
And summer win thee to forget
December's sullen time!
Why dost thou hold the treasure fast,
Of youth's delight, when youth is past,
And thou art near thy prime?

When those who were thy own compeers,
Equals in fortune and in years,
Have seen their morning melt in tears,
To clouded, smileless day;
Blest, had they died untried and young,
Before their hearts went wandering wrong,
Poor slaves, subdued by passions strong,
A weak and helpless prey!

'Because, I hoped while they enjoyed,
And by fulfilment, hope destroyed;
As children hope, with trustful breast,
I wa...

Her final summer was it,
And yet we guessed it not;
If tenderer industriousness
Pervaded her, we thought

A further force of life
Developed from within, --
When Death lit all the shortness up,
And made the hurry plain.

We wondered at our blindness, --
When nothing was to see
But her Carrara guide-post, --
At our stupidity,

When, duller than our dulness,
The busy darling lay,
So busy was she, finishing,
So leisurely were we!

Herr. Come and let's in solemn wise
        Both address to sacrifice:
        Old religion first commands
        That we wash our hearts, and hands.
        Is the beast exempt from stain,
        Altar clean, no fire profane?
        Are the garlands, is the nard
        Ready here?

Jul.    All well prepar'd,
        With the wine that must be shed,
        'Twixt the horns, upon the head
        Of the holy beast we bring
        For our trespass-offering.

Herr. All is well; now next to these
        Put we on pure surplices;
        And with chaplets crown'd, we'll roast
        With perfumes the holocaust:
        And, while we the gods invoke,
        Read acceptance by the smoke.

She had amid her ringlets bound
Green leaves to rival their dark hue;
How could such locks with beauty bound
    Dry up their dew,
Wither them through and through?

She had within her dark eyes lit
Sweet fires to burn all doubt away;
Yet did those fires, in darkness lit,
    Burn but a day,
Not even till twilight stay.

She had within a dusk of words
A vow in simple splendour set;
How, in the memory of such words,
    Could she forget
That vow - the soul of it?

AS a strong bird on pinions free,
Joyous, the amplest spaces heavenward cleaving,
Such be the thought I'd think to-day of thee, America,
Such be the recitative I'd bring to-day for thee.

The conceits of the poets of other lands I bring thee not,
Nor the compliments that have served their turn so long,
Nor rhyme--nor the classics--nor perfume of foreign court, or indoor library;
But an odor I'd bring to-day as from forests of pine in the north, in
Maine--or breath of an Illinois prairie,
With open airs of Virginia, or Georgia, or Tennessee--or from Texas uplands, or Florida's glades,
With presentment of Yellowstone's scenes, or Yosemite; 10
And murmuring under, pervading all, I'd bring the rustling sea-sound,
That endlessly sounds from the two great seas of the world.
<...

Set in this stormy Northern sea,
Queen of these restless fields of tide,
England! what shall men say of thee,
Before whose feet the worlds divide?

The earth, a brittle globe of glass,
Lies in the hollow of thy hand,
And through its heart of crystal pass,
Like shadows through a twilight land,

The spears of crimson-suited war,
The long white-crested waves of fight,
And all the deadly fires which are
The torches of the lords of Night.

The yellow leopards, strained and lean,
The treacherous Russian knows so well,
With gaping blackened jaws are seen
Leap through the hail of screaming shell.

The strong sea-lion of England's wars
Hath left his sapphire cave of sea,
To battle with the storm that mars
The stars of England's chival...

(Set To Music By Dr Blow.)


Mark how the lark and linnet sing;
With rival notes
They strain their warbling throats,
To welcome in the spring.
But in the close of night,
When Philomel begins her heavenly lay,
They cease their mutual spite,
Drink in her music with delight,
And, listening, silently obey.

So ceased the rival crew, when Purcell came;
They sung no more, or only sung his fame:
Struck dumb, they all admired the godlike man:
The godlike man,
Alas! too soon retired,
As he too late began.
We beg not hell our Orpheus to restore:
Had he been there,
Their sovereign's fear
Had sent him back before.
The power of harmony too well they knew:
He long ere this had tuned their jarring sphere,
And left no hell below.

At Market-Hill, as well appears
    By chronicle of ancient date,
There stood for many hundred years
    A spacious thorn before the gate.

Hither came every village maid,
    And on the boughs her garland hung,
And here, beneath the spreading shade,
    Secure from satyrs sat and sung.

Sir Archibald,[2] that valorous knight.
    The lord of all the fruitful plain,
Would come to listen with delight,
    For he was fond of rural strain.

(Sir Archibald, whose favourite name
    Shall stand for ages on record,
By Scottish bards of highest fame,
    Wise Hawthornden and Stirling's lord.[3])

But time with iron teeth, I ween,
    Has canker'd all its branches round;
No fruit or blossom to be seen,
    Its head reclining toward t...

Meseemed that while she played, while lightly yet
Her fingers fell, as roses bloom by bloom,
I listened dead within a mighty room
Of some old palace where great casements let
Gaunt moonlight in, that glimpsed a parapet
Of statued marble: in the arrased gloom
Majestic pictures towered, dim as doom,
The dreams of Titian and of Tintoret.
And then, it seemed, along a corridor,
A mile of oak, a stricken footstep came,
Hurrying, yet slow … I thought long centuries
Passed ere she entered she, I loved of yore,
For whom I died, who wildly wailed my name
And bent and kissed me on the mouth and eyes.

[From Farmer Harrington's Calendar.]


APRIL 25, 18 - .

        RAIN - rain - rain - for three good solid fluid weeks -
        Till the air swims, and all creation leaks!
        And street-cars furnish still less room to spare,
        And hackmen several times have earned their fare.
        The omnibuses lumber through the din,
        And carry clay outside as well as in;
        The elevated trains, with jerky care,
        Haul half-way comfort through the dripping air;
        The gutters gallop past the liquid scene,
        As brisk as meadow brooks, though not so clean;
        What trees the city keeps for comfort's sake,
        Are shedding tears as if their hearts would break;
        And water tries to get, by storming steady,

The dying need but little, dear, --
A glass of water's all,
A flower's unobtrusive face
To punctuate the wall,

A fan, perhaps, a friend's regret,
And certainly that one
No color in the rainbow
Perceives when you are gone.

There was a lord that hight Maltete,
Among great lords he was right great,
On poor folk trod he like the dirt,
None but God might do him hurt.
Deus est Deus pauperum.

With a grace of prayers sung loud and late
Many a widow's house he ate;
Many a poor knight at his hands
Lost his house and narrow lands.
Deus est Deus pauperum.

He burnt the harvests many a time,
He made fair houses heaps of lime;
Whatso man loved wife or maid
Of Evil-head was sore afraid.
Deus est Deus pauperum.

He slew good men and spared the bad;
Too long a day the foul dog had,
E'en as all dogs will have their day;
But God is as strong as man, I say.
Deus est Deus pauperum.

For a valiant knight, men called Boncoeur,
...

See! the milk-white doe is wounded.
He will follow as it bounds
Through the woods. His horn has sounded.
Echoing, for his men and hounds.
But no answering bugle blew.
He has lost his retinue
For the shapely deer that bounded
Past him when his bow he drew.

Not one hound or huntsman follows.
Through the underbrush and moss
Goes the slot; and in the hollows
Of the hills, that he must cross,
He has lost it. He must fare
Over rocks where she-wolves lair;
Wood-pools where the wild-boar wallows;
So he leaves his good steed there.

Through his mind then flashed an olden
Legend told him by the monks: -
Of a girl, whose hair is golden,
Haunting fountains and the trunks
Of the woodland; who, they say,
Is a white doe all the day;
B...

Who Slammed Doors For Fun And Perished Miserably

A trick that everyone abhors
In little girls is slamming doors.
A wealthy banker's little daughter
Who lived in Palace Green, Bayswater
(By name Rebecca Offendort),
Was given to this furious sport.

She would deliberately go
And slam the door like billy-o!
To make her uncle Jacob start.
She was not really bad at heart,
But only rather rude and wild;
She was an aggravating child...

It happened that a marble bust
Of Abraham was standing just
Above the door this little lamb
Had carefully prepared to slam,
And down it came! It knocked her flat!
It laid her out! She looked like that.

Her funeral sermon (which was long
And followed by a sacred song)
Mentioned her virtues...

That sun, which erst with love my bosom warm'd
Had of fair truth unveil'd the sweet aspect,
By proof of right, and of the false reproof;
And I, to own myself convinc'd and free
Of doubt, as much as needed, rais'd my head
Erect for speech. But soon a sight appear'd,
Which, so intent to mark it, held me fix'd,
That of confession I no longer thought.

As through translucent and smooth glass, or wave
Clear and unmov'd, and flowing not so deep
As that its bed is dark, the shape returns
So faint of our impictur'd lineaments,
That on white forehead set a pearl as strong
Comes to the eye: such saw I many a face,
All stretch'd to speak, from whence I straight conceiv'd
Delusion opposite to that, which rais'd
Between the man and fountain, amorous flame.

...

I stood in Pere-la-Chaise. The putrid city,
    Paris, the harlot of the nations, lay,
The bug-bright thing that knows not love nor pity,
    Flashing her bare shame to the summer's day.

Here where I stand, they slew you, brothers, whom
    Hell's wrongs unutterable had made as mad.
The rifle-shots re-echoed in his tomb,
    The gilded scoundrel's who had been so glad.

O Morny, O blood-sucker of thy race!
    O brain, O hand that wrought out empire that
The lust in one for power, for tinsel place,
    Might rest; one lecher's hungry heart grow fat, -

Is it for nothing, now and evermore,
    O you whose sin in life had death in ease,
The murder of your victims beats the door
    Wherein your careless carrion lies at peace?
    
    
...

What made my heart, at Newstead, fullest swell?
’Twas not the thought of Byron, of his cry
Stormily sweet, his Titan agony;
It was the sight of that Lord Arundel

Who struck, in heat, the child he loved so well,
And the child’s reason flickered, and did die.
Painted (he will’d it) in the gallery
They hang; the picture doth the story tell.

Behold the stern, mail’d father, staff in hand!
The little fair-hair’d son, with vacant gaze,
Where no more lights of sense or knowledge are!

Methinks the woe which made that father stand
Baring his dumb remorse to future days,
Was woe than Byron’s woe more tragic far.