Fear hath a hundred eyes that all agree
To plague her beating heart; and there is one
(Nor idlest that!) which holds communion
With things that were not, yet were 'meant' to be.
Aghast within its gloomy cavity
That eye (which sees as if fulfilled and done
Crimes that might stop the motion of the sun)
Beholds the horrible catastrophe
Of an assembled Senate unredeemed
From subterraneous Treason's darkling power:
Merciless act of sorrow infinite!
Worse than the product of that dismal night,
When gushing, copious as a thunder-shower,
The blood of Huguenots through Paris streamed.

Here lies Lord Coningsby--be civil!
The rest God knows--perhaps the Devil.

A new song here shall be begun--
The Lord God help our singing!--
Of what our God himself hath done,
Praise, honour to him bringing:
At Brussels in the Netherlands,
By two young boys, He gracious
Displays the wonders of his hands,
Giving them gifts right precious,
And richly them adorning.

The first right fitly John was named,
So rich he in God's favour;
His brother, Henry--one unblamed,
Whose salt had lost no savour.
From this world they are gone away,
The diadem they've gained!
Honest, like God's good children, they
For his word life disdained,
And have become his martyrs.

The ancient foe on them laid hold,
With terrors did enwrap them;
To lie against God's word them told,
With cunning would entrap them:
From Louvain...

". . . defeated, with great loss."



Not we the conquered! Not to us the blame
Of them that flee, of them that basely yield;
Nor ours the shout of victory, the fame
Of them that vanquish in a stricken field.

That day of battle in the dusty heat
We lay and heard the bullets swish and sing
Like scythes amid the over-ripened wheat,
And we the harvest of their garnering.

Some yielded, No, not we! Not we, we swear
By these our wounds; this trench upon the hill
Where all the shell-strewn earth is seamed and bare,
Was ours to keep; and lo! we have it still.

We might have yielded, even we, but death
Came for our helper; like a sudden flood
The crashing darkness fell; our painful breath
We drew with gasps amid the choking blood.
<...

I.
I WAS the chief of the race—he had stricken my father dead—
But I gather’d my fellows together, I swore I would strike off his head.
Each of them look’d like a king, and was noble in birth as in worth,
And each of them boasted he sprang from the oldest race upon earth.
Each was as brave in the light as the bravest hero of song,
And each of them liefer had died than have done one another a wrong.
He lived on an isle in the ocean—we sail’d on a Friday morn—
He that had slain my father the day before I was born.

II.
And we came to the isle in the ocean, and there on the shore was he.
But a sudden blast blew us out and away thro’ a boundless sea.

III.
And we came to the Silent Isle that we never had touch’d at before,
Where a silent ocean always broke on a si...

"It is the future generation that presses into being by means of
these exuberant feelings and supersensible soap bubbles of ours."
Schopenhauer

"The hot night makes us keep our bedroom windows open.
Our magnolia blossoms. Life begins to happen.
My hopped up husband drops his home disputes,
and hits the streets to cruise for prostitutes,
free-lancing out along the razor's edge.
This screwball might kill his wife, then take the pledge.
Oh the monotonous meanness of his lust...
It's the injustice... he is so unjust
whiskey-blind, swaggering home at five.
My only thought is how to keep alive.
What makes him tick? Each night now I tie
ten dollars and his car key to my thigh....
Gored by the climacteric of his want,
he stalls above me like an elephant."

I sleep and rest, my heart makes moan
Before I am well awake;
"Let me bleed! O let me alone,
Since I must not break!"

For children wake, though fathers sleep
With a stone at foot and at head:
O sleepless God, forever keep,
Keep both living and dead!

I lift mine eyes, and what to see
But a world happy and fair!
I have not wished it to mourn with me -
Comfort is not there.

O what anear but golden brooms,
And a waste of reedy rills!
O what afar but the fine glooms
On the rare blue hills!

I shall not die, but live forlore -
How bitter it is to part!
O to meet thee, my love, once more!
O my heart, my heart!

No more to hear, no more to see!
O that an echo might wake
And waft one note of thy psalm to me

The World hath set its heavy yoke
Upon the old white-bearded folk
Who strive to please the King.
God's mercy is upon the young,
God's wisdom in the baby tongue
That fears not anything.

UPON THE DEATH OF HENRY, LORD HASTINGS.

The musical part being set by Mr. Henry Lawes.

THE SPEAKERS,

CHARON AND EUCOSMIA.

Euc. Charon, O Charon, draw thy boat to th' shore,
    And to thy many take in one soul more.
Cha. Who calls? who calls? Euc. One overwhelm'd with ruth;
    Have pity either on my tears or youth,
    And take me in who am in deep distress;
    But first cast off thy wonted churlishness.
Cha. I will be gentle as that air which yields
    A breath of balm along the Elysian fields.
    Speak, what art thou? Euc. One once that had a lover,
    Than which thyself ne'er wafted sweeter over.
    He was---- Cha. Say what? Euc. Ah me, my woes are deep.
Cha. Prithee rel...

"A hunter of shadows, himself a shade."--HOMER.


Oh! weary sleeper by the lone sea-shore,
    Where billows toil for ever 'mid the rocks,
    Scourged on by winds in stormy equinox,
Rise! rise in haste, or slumber evermore!
    The stern Earth calls thee, and the Ocean mocks;
    Roll thy poor sightless orbs about the sky,
    Through tears of blind and powerless agony;
Rise! rise in haste, or slumber evermore!

Ay! blind I stand beside the lone sea-shore;
    Hearing the mighty murmur of the waves,
    Shaking with giant arms earth's architraves,
Scaling the riven cloud-crags bald and boar,
    Surging hoarse secrets through the central caves;
    God! shall thine ocean undiscernèd roll,
    Night on mine eyes, and darkness on my soul,
Groping...

Summer's last sun nigh unto setting shines
Through yon columnar pines,
And on the deepening shadows of the lawn
Its golden lines are drawn.

Dreaming of long gone summer days like this,
Feeling the wind's soft kiss,
Grateful and glad that failing ear and sight
Have still their old delight,

I sit alone, and watch the warm, sweet day
Lapse tenderly away;
And, wistful, with a feeling of forecast,
I ask, "Is this the last?

"Will nevermore for me the seasons run
Their round, and will the sun
Of ardent summers yet to come forget
For me to rise and set?"

Thou shouldst be here, or I should be with thee
Wherever thou mayst be,
Lips mute, hands clasped, in silences of speech
Each answering unto each.

For this still hour, ...

HONORA, shou'd that cruel time arrive
    When 'gainst my truth thou should'st my errors poize,
    Scorning remembrance of our vanish'd joys;
    When for the love-warm looks, in which I live,
But cold respect must greet me, that shall give
    No tender glance, no kind regretful sighs;
    When thou shalt pass me with averted eyes,
    Feigning thou see'st me not, to sting, and grieve,
And sicken my sad heart, I cou'd not bear
    Such dire eclipse of thy soul-cheering rays;
    I cou'd not learn my struggling heart to tear
From thy lov'd form, that thro' my memory strays;
    Nor in the pale horizon of Despair
    Endure the wintry and the darken'd days.

April 1773.

A little while to walk with thee, dear child;
To lean on thee my weak and weary head;
Then evening comes: the winter sky is wild,
The leafless trees are black, the leaves long dead.

A little while to hold thee and to stand,
By harvest-fields of bending golden corn;
Then the predestined silence, and thine hand,
Lost in the night, long and weary and forlorn.

A little while to love thee, scarcely time
To love thee well enough; then time to part,
To fare through wintry fields alone and climb
The frozen hills, not knowing where thou art.

Short summer-time and then, my heart's desire,
The winter and the darkness: one by one
The roses fall, the pale roses expire
Beneath the slow decadence of the sun.

It is mine--the little chamber,
Mine alone.
I had it from my forbears
Years agone.
Yet within its walls I see
A most motley company,
And they one and all claim me
As their own.

There's one who is a soldier
Bluff and keen;
Single-minded, heavy-fisted,
Rude of mien.
He would gain a purse or stake it,
He would win a heart or break it,
He would give a life or take it,
Conscience-clean.

And near him is a priest
Still schism-whole;
He loves the censer-reek
And organ-roll.
He has leanings to the mystic,
Sacramental, eucharistic;
And dim yearnings altruistic
Thrill his soul.

There's another who with doubts
Is overcast;
I think him younger brother
To the last.
Walking wary stride by stride,

Sound the deep waters: -
    Who shall sound that deep? -
Too short the plummet,
    And the watchmen sleep.
Some dream of effort
    Up a toilsome steep;
Some dream of pasture grounds
    For harmless sheep.

White shapes flit to and fro
    From mast to mast;
They feel the distant tempest
    That nears them fast:
Great rocks are straight ahead,
    Great shoals not past;
They shout to one another
    Upon the blast.

Oh, soft the streams drop music
    Between the hills,
And musical the birds' nests
    Beside those rills:
The nests are types of home
    Love-hidden from ills,
The nests are types of spirits
    Love-music fills.

So dream the sleepers,
    Each man in his place;
The lightning ...

Ye who have come o'er the sea
to behold this grey minster of lands,
Whose floor is the tomb of time past,
and whose walls by the toil of dead hands
Show pictures amidst of the ruin
of deeds that have overpast death,
Stay by this tomb in a tomb
to ask of who lieth beneath.
Ah! the world changeth too soon,
that ye stand there with unbated breath,
As I name him that Gunnar of old,
who erst in the haymaking tide
Felt all the land fragrant and fresh,
as amidst of the edges he died.
Too swiftly fame fadeth away,
if ye tremble not lest once again
The grey mound should open and show him
glad-eyed without grudging or pain.
Little labour methinks to behold him
but the tale-teller laboured in vain.

Little labour for ears that may hearken
to...

When fires have burnt your forest bare and black,
And you are parched and dizzy, and search in vain
For pools in dust unvisited of rain,
And shamble, lost, along a shimmering track,
This is the comfort of the world: “Alack!
So youth’s illusions die, that we may gain
Wisdom and strength to face our lifelong pain,
The truth, from which no man shall turn him back.”
Falter for no such melancholy lies,
For by one holy touch the spirit is healed
To know its treasure of sight and sound and scent;
Veil after veil the earthborn fogs arise,
Star beyond star the heavens are then revealed,
And truth is fair in love’s enlightenment.

I

Who was it held that Love was soothing or sweet?
Mine is a painful fire, at its whitest heat.

Who said that Beauty was ever a gentle joy?
Thine is a sword that flashes but to destroy.

Though mine eyes rose up from thy Beauty's banquet, calm and refreshed,
My lips, that were granted naught, can find no rest.

My soul was linked with thine, through speech and silent hours,
As the sound of two soft flutes combined, or the scent of sister flowers.

But the body, that wretched slave of the Sultan, Mind,
Who follows his master ever, but far behind,

Nothing was granted him, and every rebellious cell
Rises up with angry protest, "It is not well!

Night is falling; thou hast departed; I am alone;
And the Last Sweetness of Love thou hast n...