Hush! She is dead! Tread gently as the light
Foots dim the weary room. Thou shalt behold.
Look: - In death's ermine pomp of awful white,
Pale passion of pulseless slumber virgin cold:
Bold, beautiful youth proud as heroic Might -
Death! and how death hath made it vastly old.

Old earth she is now: energy of birth
Glad wings hath fledged and tried them suddenly;
The eyes that held have freed their narrow mirth;
Their sparks of spirit, which made this to be,
Shine fixed in rarer jewels not of earth,
Far Fairylands beyond some silent sea.

A sod is this whence what were once those eyes
Will grow blue wild-flowers in what happy air;
Some weed with flossy blossoms will surprise,
Haply, what summer with her affluent hair;
Blush roses bask those cheeks; and...

I think if you had loved me when I wanted;
If I'd looked up one day, and seen your eyes,
And found my wild sick blasphemous prayer granted,
And your brown face, that's full of pity and wise,
Flushed suddenly; the white godhead in new fear
Intolerably so struggling, and so shamed;
Most holy and far, if you'd come all too near,
If earth had seen Earth's lordliest wild limbs tamed,
Shaken, and trapped, and shivering, for MY touch,
Myself should I have slain? or that foul you?
But this the strange gods, who had given so much,
To have seen and known you, this they might not do.
One last shame's spared me, one black word's unspoken;
And I'm alone; and you have not awoken.

La vita fugge, e non s' arresta un' ora.

PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE ARE NOW ALIKE PAINFUL TO HIM.


    Life passes quick, nor will a moment stay,
And death with hasty journeys still draws near;
And all the present joins my soul to tear,
With every past and every future day:
And to look back or forward, so does prey
On this distracted breast, that sure I swear,
Did I not to myself some pity bear,
I were e'en now from all these thoughts away.
Much do I muse on what of pleasures past
This woe-worn heart has known; meanwhile, t' oppose
My passage, loud the winds around me roar.
I see my bliss in port, and torn my mast
And sails, my pilot faint with toil, and those
Fair lights, that wont to guide me, now no more.

ANON., OX., 1795.
...

My times are in thy hand, my God!
And I rejoice that they are so;
My times are in thy hand, my God,
Whether it be for weal or woe.

My times are in thy hand, I know;
And if I'm washed in Jesus' blood,
Though dark my pathway here below,
It leads directly up to God.

Since all thy children chastening need,
And all so called must feel the rod,
Why for exemption should I plead,
For am I not thy child, my God?

Ah why go mourning all the day,
Or why should I from trials shrink?
Though much of sorrow's in my cup,
The cup that I am called to drink.

'Tis needful medicine I know,
By the most skilful hand prepared,
Strictly proportioned to my wants,
There's not a drop that can be spared.

Then why desponding, o...

First offer incense, then thy field and meads
Shall smile and smell the better by thy beads.
The spangling dew, dredg'd o'er the grass, shall be
Turn'd all to mell and manna there for thee.
Butter of amber, cream, and wine, and oil
Shall run, as rivers, all throughout thy soil.
Would'st thou to sincere silver turn thy mould?
Pray once, twice pray, and turn thy ground to gold.

(A Retrospect.)


Convulsions came; and, where the field
Long slept in pastoral green,
A goblin-mountain was upheaved
(Sure the scared sense was all deceived),
Marl-glen and slag-ravine.

The unreserve of Ill was there,
The clinkers in her last retreat;
But, ere the eye could take it in,
Or mind could comprehension win,
It sunk! - and at our feet.

So, then, Solidity's a crust -
The core of fire below;
All may go well for many a year,
But who can think without a fear
Of horrors that happen so?

Resolve Me, Cloe, what is This:
Or forfeit me One precious Kiss.
'Tis the first Off-spring of the Graces;
Bears diff'rent Forms in diff'rent Places;
Acknowledg'd fine, where-e'er beheld;
Yet fancy'd finer, when conceal'd.
'Twas Flora's Wealth, and Circe's Charm;
Pandora's Box of Good and Harm:
'Twas Mars's Wish, Endymion's Dream;
Apelles' Draught, and Ovid's Theme.
This guided Theseus thro' the Maze;
And sent Him home with Life and Praise.
But This undid the Phrygian Boy;
And blew the Flames that ruin'd Troy.
This shew'd great Kindness to old Greece,
And help'd rich Jason to the Fleece.
This thro' the East just Vengeance hurl'd,
And lost poor Anthony the World.
Injur'd, tho' Lucrece found her Doom;
This banish'd Tyranny from Rome.
Appeas'd,...

"She was a phantom," &c.

In lone Glenartney's thickets lies couched the lordly stag,
The dreaming terrier's tail forgets its customary wag;
And plodding ploughmen's weary steps insensibly grow quicker,
As broadening casements light them on towards home, or home-brewed liquor.

It is (in fact) the evening - that pure and pleasant time,
When stars break into splendour, and poets into rhyme;
When in the glass of Memory the forms of loved ones shine -
And when, of course, Miss Goodchild's is prominent in mine.

Miss Goodchild! - Julia Goodchild! - how graciously you smiled
Upon my childish passion once, yourself a fair-haired child:
When I was (no doubt) profiting by Dr. Crabb's instruction,
And sent those streaky lollipops home for your fairy suction!

...

Lost Youth, come back again!
Laugh at weariness and pain.
Come not in dreams, but come in truth,
            Lost Youth.

Sweetheart of long ago,
Why do you haunt me so?
Were you not glad to part,
            Sweetheart?

Still Death, that draws so near,
Is it hope you bring, or fear?
Is it only ease of breath,
            Still Death?

A wanderer is man from his birth.
He was born in a ship
On the breast of the river of Time;
Brimming with wonder and joy
He spreads out his arms to the light,
Rivets his gaze on the banks of the stream.

As what he sees is, so have his thoughts been.
Whether he wakes,
Where the snowy mountainous pass,
Echoing the screams of the eagles,
Hems in its gorges the bed
Of the new-born clear-flowing stream;
Whether he first sees light
Where the river in gleaming rings
Sluggishly winds through the plain;
Whether in sound of the swallowing sea
As is the world on the banks,
So is the mind of the man.

Vainly does each, as he glides,
Fable and dream
Of the lands which the river of Time
Had left ere he woke on its breast,
Or shall re...

O sister, God is very good--
    Thou art a woman now:
O sister, be thy womanhood
    A baptism on thy brow!

For what?--Do ancient stories lie
    Of Titans long ago,
The children of the lofty sky
    And mother earth below?

Nay, walk not now upon the ground
    Some sons of heavenly mould?
Some daughters of the Holy, found
    In earthly garments' fold?

He said, who did and spoke the truth:
    "Gods are the sons of God."
And so the world's Titanic youth
    Strives homeward by one road.

Then live thou, sister, day and night,
    An earth-child of the sky,
For ever climbing up the height
    Of thy divinity.

Still in thy mother's heart-embrace,
    Waiting thy hour of birth,
Thou growest by the genia...

Like morning, when her early breeze
Breaks up the surface of the seas,
That, in those furrows, dark with night,
Her hand may sow the seeds of light--

Thy Grace can send its breathings o'er
The Spirit, dark and lost before,
And, freshening all its depths, prepare
For Truth divine to enter there.

Till David touched his sacred lyre.
In silence lay the unbreathing wire;
But when he swept its chords along,
Even Angels stooped to hear that song.

So sleeps the soul, till Thou, oh LORD,
Shalt deign to touch its lifeless chord--
Till, waked by Thee, its breath shall rise
In music, worthy of the skies!

A beam of tranquillity smiled in the west,
The storms of the morning pursued us no more;
And the wave, while it welcomed the moment of rest.
Still heaved, as remembering ills that were o'er.

Serenely my heart took the hue of the hour,
    Its passions were sleeping, were mute as the dead;
And the spirit becalmed but remembered their power,
    As the billow the force of the gale that was fled.

I thought of those days, when to pleasure alone
    My heart ever granted a wish or a sigh;
When the saddest emotion my bosom had known,
    Was pity for those who were wiser than I.

I reflected, how soon in the cup of Desire
    The pearl of the soul may be melted away;
How quickly, alas, the pure sparkle of fire
    We inherit from heaven, may be quenched ...

Great and omnipotent that Power must be,
That wings the whirlwind and directs the storm,
That, by a strong convulsion, severed thee,
And wrought this wondrous chasm in thy form.

Man is a dweller, where, in some past day,
Thy rock-ribbed frame majestically rose;
The river rushes on its new-made way,
And all is life where all was once repose.

Pleased, as I gazed upon thy lofty brow
Where Nature seems her loveliest robes to wear,
I felt that Pride at such a scene must bow,
And own its insignificancy there.

Oh Thou, to whom directing worlds is play,
Thy condescension without bounds must be,
If man, the frail ephemera of a day,
Be graciously regarded still by Thee.

Here, as I ponder on Thy mighty deeds,
And marvel at Thy bounteousness t...

                I

And so I cross into another world
shyly and in homage linger for an invitation
from this unknown that I would trespass on.

I am very glad, and all alone in the world,
all alone, and very glad, in a new world
where I am disembarked at last.

I could cry with joy, because I am in the new world, just ventured in.
I could cry with joy, and quite freely, there is nobody to know.

And whosoever the unknown people of this un- known world may be
they will never understand my weeping for joy to be adventuring among them
because it will still be a gesture of the old world I am making
which they will not understand, because it is quite, quite foreign to them.

                II

I WAS so weary of the world
I was so sick of it...

Fare thee well, O Love of Woman!
Lip of Beauty, fare thee well!
Thy soft heart, divinely human,
Holds me by a magic spell.
All that grieves me now to perish
Is the loss of one bright eye,
And I still the vision cherish
While I lay me down to die.

At my headstone, kindly kneeling,
May I beg a votive tear?
Woman, with her pure appealing,
Is my angel at the bier.
Let me have but one such linger,
Praying Christ to help and save,
Let me have but one dear finger
Place a chaplet on my grave.

Though the soldier dies in dying,
The true lover never dies;
Upward, from his embers flying,
He transfigures in the skies.
Heaven is rare, but Love is rarer,
Whether it be blest or crost;
Heaven blooms fair, but Love blooms fairer,
B...

A dewy flower, bathed in crimson light,
May touch the soul--a pure and beauteous sight;
A golden river flashing 'neath the sun,
May reach the spot where life's dark waters run;
Yet, when the sun is gone, the splendor dies,
With drooping head the tender flower lies.
And such is life; a golden mist of light,
A tangled web that glitters in the sun;
When shadows come, the glory takes its flight,
The treads are dark and worn, and life is done.
Oh! tears, that chill us like the dews of eve,
Why come unbid--why should we ever grieve?
Why is it, though life hath its leaves of gold,
The book each day some sorrow must unfold!
What human heart with truth can dare to say
No grief is mine--this is a perfect day?
Oh! poet, take your harp of gold and sing,
And all the e...

I

Fit for perpetual worship is the power
That holds our bodies safely to the earth.

When people talk of their domestic gods,
Then privately I think of You.

We ride through space upon your shoulders
Conveniently and lightly set,
And, so accustomed, we relax our hold,
Forget the gentle motion of your body -
But You do not forget.

Sometimes you breathe a little faster,
Or move a muscle:
Then we remember you, O Master.


II

When people meet in reverent groups
And sing to their domestic God,
You, all the time, dear tyrant, (How I laugh!)
Could, without effort, place your hand among them,
And sprinkle them about the desert.

But all your ways are carefully ordered,
For you have never questioned duty.