Art thou a Statist in the van
Of public conflicts trained and bred?
First learn to love one living man;
'Then' may'st thou think upon the dead.

A Lawyer art thou? draw not nigh!
Go, carry to some fitter place
The keenness of that practised eye,
The hardness of that sallow face.

Art thou a Man of purple cheer?
A rosy Man, right plump to see?
Approach; yet, Doctor, not too near,
This grave no cushion is for thee.

Or art thou one of gallant pride,
A Soldier and no man of chaff?
Welcome! but lay thy sword aside,
And lean upon a peasant's staff.

Physician art thou? one, all eyes,
Philosopher! a fingering slave,
One that would peep and botanise
Upon his mother's grave?

Wrapt closely in thy sensual fleece,
O turn...

        Cometh the night.    The wind falls low,
        The trees swing slowly to and fro:
        Around the church the headstones grey
        Cluster, like children strayed away
        But found again, and folded so.

        No chiding look doth she bestow:
        If she is glad, they cannot know;
        If ill or well they spend their day,
            Cometh the night.

        Singing or sad, intent they go;
        They do not see the shadows grow;
        "There yet is time," they lightly say,
        "Before our work aside we lay";
        Their task is but half-done, and lo!
            Cometh the night.

Hopeless! Despairless! like that Indian wise
Free of desire, save no desire to know.
To gain that sweet Nirvana each one tries,
Thinks to assuage soul-wearing passion so.
From the white rest, the ante-natal bliss,
Not loth, the wondrous wondering soul awakes;
Now drawn to that illusion, now to this,
With gathering strength each devious pathway takes;
Till at the noon of life his aims decline;
Evermore earthward bend the tiring eyes,
Evermore earthward, till with no surprise
They see Nirvana from Earth's bosom shine.
The still kind mother holds her child again
In blank desirelessness without a stain.

Thou shalt not laugh, thou shalt not romp,
Let's grimly kiss with bated breath;
As quietly and solemnly
As Life when it is kissing Death.
Now in the silence of the grave,
My hand is squeezing that soft breast;
While thou dost in such passion lie,
It mocks me with its look of rest.

But when the morning comes at last,
And we must part, our passions cold,
You'll think of some new feather, scarf
To buy with my small piece of gold;
And I'll be dreaming of green lanes,
Where little things with beating hearts
Hold shining eyes between the leaves,
Till men with horses pass, and carts.

The trees rustle; the wind blows
Merrily out of the town;
The shadows creep, the sun goes
Steadily over and down.

In a brown gloom the moats gleam;
Slender the sweet wife stands;
Her lips are red; her eyes dream;
Kisses are warm on her hands.

The child moans; the hours slip
Bitterly over her head:
In a gray dusk, the tears drip;
Mother is up there dead.

The hermit hears the strange bright
Murmur of life at play;
In the waste day and the waste night
Times to rebel and to pray.

The laborer toils in gray wise,
Godlike and patient and calm;
The beggar moans; his bleared eyes
Measure the dust in his palm.

The wise man marks the flow and ebb
Hidden and held aloof:
In his deep mind is laid the web,
Shut...

By the walk of the willows I pour'd out my theme,
The breath of the evening scarce dimpled the stream;
By the waters I stood, like an image of Woe,
And my tears, like the tide, seem'd to tremble and flow.

Ye green scatter'd reeds, that half lean to the wave,
In your plaintive, your musical, sighs, could ye save
But one note of my charmer, to soften my doom,
I would stay till these willows should arch me a tomb!

For ye know, when I pour'd out my soul on the lute,
How she hung down her head, so expressively mute!
From my hand she would take it, still breathing my pain;
She would touch it - return it - and smile at the strain.

Ye wild blooming flow'rs, that enamel this brink,
Like me could ye feel, and like me could ye think,
How sadly would droop ev'ry b...

Hail native Language, that by sinews weak
Didst move my first endeavouring tongue to speak,
And mad’st imperfect words with childish tripps,
Half unpronounc’t, slide through my infant-lipps,
Driving dum silence from the portal dore,
Where he had mutely sate two years before:
Here I salute thee and thy pardon ask,
That now I use thee in my latter task:
Small loss it is that thence can come unto thee,
I know my tongue but little Grace can do thee:
Thou needst not be ambitious to be first,
Believe me I have thither packt the worst:
And, if it happen as I did forecast,
The daintest dishes shall be serv’d up last.
I pray thee then deny me not thy aide
For this same small neglect that I have made:
But haste thee strait to do me once a Pleasure,
And from thy war...

O, tomb of the past
Where buried hopes lie,
In my visions I see
Thy phantoms pass by!
A form, long departed,
    Before me appears;
A sweet voice, long silent,
    Again greets my ears.

Fond memory dwells
    On the things that have been;
And my eyes calmly gaze
    On a long vanished scene;
A scene such as memory
    Stores deep in the breast,
Which only appears
    In a season of rest.

Once more we wander,
    Her fair hand in mine;
Once more her promise,
    "I'll ever be thine";
Once more the parting,
    The shroud, and the pall,
The sods' hollow thump
    As they coffinward fall.

The reverie ends--
    All the fancies have flown;
And my sad, lonely heart,
    Now seems doubly alone;...

O love, Love, Love! O withering might!
O sun, that from thy noonday height
Shudderest when I strain my sight,
Throbbing thro' all thy heat and light,
Lo, falling from my constant mind,
Lo, parch'd and wither'd, deaf and blind,
I whirl like leaves in roaring wind.

Last night I wasted hateful hours
Below the city's eastern towers:
I thirsted for the brooks, the showers:
I roll'd among the tender flowers:
I crush'd them on my breast, my mouth;
I look'd athwart the burning drouth
Of that long desert to the south.

Last night, when some one spoke his name,
From my swift blood that went and came
A thousand little shafts of flame
Were shiver'd in my narrow frame.
O Love, O fire! once he drew
With one long kiss my whole soul thro'
My lip...

“We shall soon lose a celebrated building.”
- Paris Newspaper.



I.

No, for I ’ll save it! Seven years since,
I passed through Paris, stopped a day
To see the baptism of your Prince;
Saw, made my bow, and went my way
Walking the heat and headache off,
I took the Seine-side, you surmise,
Thought of the Congress, Gortschakoff,
Cavour’s appeal and Buol’s replies,
So sauntered till what met my eyes?

II.

Only the Doric little Morgue!
The dead-house where you show your drowned
Petrarch’s Vaucluse makes proud the Sorgue,
Your Morgue has made the Seine renowned.
One pays one’s debt in such a case;
I plucked up heart and entered, stalked,
Keeping a tolerable face
Compared with some whose cheeks were chalked

Boys, are ye calling a toast to-night?
    (Hear what the sea-wind saith)
Fill for a bumper strong and bright,
    And here's to Admiral Death!
He's sailed in a hundred builds o' boat,
He's fought in a thousand kinds o' coat,
He's the senior flag of all that float,
    And his name's Admiral Death!

Which of you looks for a service free?
    (Hear what the sea-wind saith)
The rules o' the service are but three
    When ye sail with Admiral Death.
Steady your hand in time o' squalls,
Stand to the last by him that falls,
And answer clear to the voice that calls,
    "Ay, Ay! Admiral Death!"

How will ye know him among the rest?
    (Hear what the sea-wind saith)
By the glint o' the stars that cover his breast
    Ye may find Admiral Deat...

Ye storm-winds of Autumn
Who rush by, who shake
The window, and ruffle
The gleam-lighted lake;
Who cross to the hill-side
Thin-sprinkled with farms,
Where the high woods strip sadly
Their yellowing arms;
Ye are bound for the mountains,
Ah, with you let me go
Where your cold distant barrier,
The vast range of snow,
Through the loose clouds lifts dimly
Its white peaks in air,
How deep is their stillness!
Ah! would I were there!

But on the stairs what voice is this I hear,
Buoyant as morning, and as morning clear?
Say, has some wet bird-haunted English lawn
Lent it the music of its trees at dawn?
Or was it from some sun-fleck’d mountain-brook
That the sweet voice its upland clearness took?
Ah! it comes nearer,
Sweet notes,...

The earth again like a ship steams out of the dark sea over
The edge of the blue, and the sun stands up to see us glide
Slowly into another day; slowly the rover
Vessel of darkness takes the rising tide.

I, on the deck, am startled by this dawn confronting
Me who am issued amazed from the darkness, stripped
And quailing here in the sunshine, delivered from haunting
The night unsounded whereon our days are shipped.

Feeling myself undawning, the day's light playing upon me,
I who am substance of shadow, I all compact
Of the stuff of the night, finding myself all wrongly
Among the crowds of things in the sunshine jostled and racked.

I with the night on my lips, I sigh with the silence of death;
And what do I care though the very stones should cry me unreal, th...

As watchers couched beneath a Bantine oak,
Hearing the dawn-wind stir,
Know that the present strength of night is broke
Though no dawn threaten her
Till dawn's appointed hour, so Virgil died,
Aware of change at hand, and prophesied

Change upon all the Eternal Gods had made
And on the Gods alike,
Fated as dawn but, as the dawn, delayed
Till the just hour should strike.

A Star new-risen above the living and dead;
And the lost shades that were our loves restored
As lovers, and for ever. So he said;
Having received the word...

Maecenas waits me on the Esquiline:
Thither to-night go I....
And shall this dawn restore us, Virgil mine
To dawn? Beneath what sky?

A King is dead!    Another master mind
    Is summoned from the world-wide council hall.
Ah, for some seer, to say what links behind -
    To read the mystic writing on the wall!

Be still, fond man:    nor ask thy fate to know.
    Face bravely what each God-sent moment brings.
Above thee rules in love, through weal and woe,
    Guiding thy kings and thee, the King of kings.

Windsor Castle,
    November 10, 1865.

I've watched too late; the morn is near;
One look at God's broad silent sky!
Oh, hopes and wishes vainly dear,
How in your very strength ye die!

Even while your glow is on the cheek,
And scarce the high pursuit begun,
The heart grows faint, the hand grows weak,
The task of life is left undone.

See where upon the horizon's brim,
Lies the still cloud in gloomy bars;
The waning moon, all pale and dim,
Goes up amid the eternal stars.

Late, in a flood of tender light,
She floated through the ethereal blue,
A softer sun, that shone all night
Upon the gathering beads of dew.

And still thou wanest, pallid moon!
The encroaching shadow grows apace;
Heaven's everlasting watchers soon
Shall see thee blotted from thy place.

Well, you are free;
The longed for, lied for, waited for decree
Is yours to-day.
I made no protest; and you had your say,
And left me with no vestige of repute.
Neglect, abuse, and cruelty you charge
With broken marriage vows.    The list is large
But not to be denied.    So I was mute.

Now you shall listen to a few plain facts
Before you go out wholly from my life
As some man's wife.
Read carefully this statement of your acts
Which changed the lustre of my honeymoon
To sombre gloom,
And wrenched the cover from Pandora's box.

In those first talks
'Twixt bride and groom I showed you my whole heart,
Showed you how deep my love was and how true;
With all a strong man's feeling I loved YOU:
(God, how I loved you, my one chosen mate.)

Cometh the night. The wind falls low,
The trees swing slowly to and fro:
Around the church the headstones grey
Cluster, like children strayed away
But found again, and folded so.

No chiding look doth she bestow:
If she is glad, they cannot know;
If ill or well they spend their day,
Cometh the night.

Singing or sad, intent they go;
They do not see the shadows grow;
"There yet is time," they lightly say,
"Before our work aside we lay";
Their task is but half-done, and lo!
Cometh the night.