This is the room that thou wast ushered in.
    Wouldst thou, perchance, a larger freedom win?
    Wouldst thou escape for deeper or no breath?
    There is no door but death.

    Do shadows crouch within the mocking light?
    Stand thou! but if thy terrored heart takes flight
    Facing maimed Hope and wide-eyed Nevermore,
    There is no less one door.

    Dost thou bewail love's end and friendship's doom,
    The dying fire, drained cup, and gathering gloom?
    Explore the walls, if thy soul ventureth,
    There is no door but death.

    There is no window. Heaven hangs aloof
    Above the rents within the stairless roof.
    Hence, soul, be brave across the ruined floor,
    Who knocks? Unbolt the door!

See the Condemned alone within his cell
And prostrate at some moment when remorse
Stings to the quick, and, with resistless force,
Assaults the pride she strove in vain to quell.
Then mark him, him who could so long rebel,
The crime confessed, a kneeling Penitent
Before the Altar, where the Sacrament
Softens his heart, till from his eyes outwell
Tears of salvation. Welcome death! while Heaven
Does in this change exceedingly rejoice;
While yet the solemn heed the State hath given
Helps him to meet the last Tribunal's voice
In faith, which fresh offenses, were he cast
On old temptations, might for ever blast.

Blow out, you bugles, over the rich Dead!
There's none of these so lonely and poor of old,
But, dying, has made us rarer gifts than gold.
These laid the world away; poured out the red
Sweet wine of youth; gave up the years to be
Of work and joy, and that unhoped serene,
That men call age; and those who would have been,
Their sons, they gave, their immortality.

Blow, bugles, blow! They brought us, for our dearth,
Holiness, lacked so long, and Love, and Pain.
Honour has come back, as a king, to earth,
And paid his subjects with a royal wage;
And Nobleness walks in our ways again;
And we have come into our heritage.

Rough wind, that moanest loud
Grief too sad for song;
Wild wind, when sullen cloud
Knells all the night long;
Sad storm whose tears are vain,
Bare woods, whose branches strain,
Deep caves and dreary main, -
Wail, for the world's wrong!

So die, thou child of stormy dawn,
Thou winter flower, forlorn of nurse;
Chilled early by the bigot's curse,
The pedant's frown, the worldling's yawn.

Fair death, to fall in teeming June,
When every seed which drops to earth
Takes root, and wins a second birth
From steaming shower and gleaming moon.

Fall warm, fall fast, thou mellow rain;
Thou rain of God, make fat the land;
That roots which parch in burning sand
May bud to flower and fruit again.

To grace, perchance, a fairer morn
In mightier lands beyond the sea,
While honour falls to such as we
From hearts of heroes yet unborn,

Who in the light of fuller day,
Of purer science, holier laws,
Bless us, faint heralds of their cause,
Dim beacons of their glorious way.
...

IN MEMORY OF CHARLES BAUDELAIRE

Shall I strew on thee rose or rue or laurel,
Brother, on this that was the veil of thee?
Or quiet sea-flower moulded by the sea,
Or simplest growth of meadow-sweet or sorrel,
Such as the summer-sleepy Dryads weave,
Waked up by snow-soft sudden rains at eve?
Or wilt thou rather, as on earth before,
Half-faded fiery blossoms, pale with heat
And full of bitter summer, but more sweet
To thee than gleanings of a northern shore
Trod by no tropic feet?

For always thee the fervid languid glories
Allured of heavier suns in mightier skies;
Thine ears knew all the wandering watery sighs
Where the sea sobs round Lesbian promontories,
The barren kiss of piteous wave to wave
That knows not where is that Leucadian grave...

How death will steal, from life, to claim us all,
Happy to wrap us in barbary white,
By tapping ash tight fingers, the steel laws of fate,
Will deaden our faces, wrapping our feelings from earthly sight.

Old Fitz, who from your suburb grange,
Where once I tarried for a while,
Glance at the wheeling orb of change,
And greet it with a kindly smile;
Whom yet I see as there you sit
Beneath your sheltering garden-tree,
And watch your doves about you flit,
And plant on shoulder, hand, and knee,
Or on your head their rosy feet,
As if they knew your diet spares
Whatever moved in that full sheet
Let down to Peter at his prayers;
Who live on milk and meal and grass;
And once for ten long weeks I tried
Your table of Pythagoras,
- And seem'd at first "a thing enskied,"
As Shakespeare has it, airy-light
To float above the ways of men,
Then fell from that half-spiritual height
Chill'd, till I tasted flesh again
One night when earth was winter-b]ack,

Dreadest thou the aspect of death! Thou wishest to live on forever?
Live in the whole, and when long thou shalt have gone, 'twill remain!

In this fair stranger’s eyes of grey
Thine eyes, my love, I see.
I shudder: for the passing day
Had borne me far from thee.

This is the curse of life: that not
A nobler calmer train
Of wiser thoughts and feelings blot
Our passions from our brain;

But each day brings its petty dust
Our soon-chok’d souls to fill,
And we forget because we must,
And not because we will.

I struggle towards the light; and ye,
Once-long’d-for storms of love!
If with the light ye cannot be,
I bear that ye remove.

I struggle towards the light; but oh,
While yet the night is chill,
Upon Time’s barren, stormy flow,
Stay with me, Marguerite, still!

They hail me as one living,
But don't they know
That I have died of late years,
Untombed although?

I am but a shape that stands here,
A pulseless mould,
A pale past picture, screening
Ashes gone cold.

Not at a minute's warning,
Not in a loud hour,
For me ceased Time's enchantments
In hall and bower.

There was no tragic transit,
No catch of breath,
When silent seasons inched me
On to this death . . .

- A Troubadour-youth I rambled
With Life for lyre,
The beats of being raging
In me like fire.

But when I practised eyeing
The goal of men,
It iced me, and I perished
A little then.

When passed my friend, my kinsfolk
Through the Last Door,
And left me standing bleakly,
I died ...

    Approaching now the end of his abode
    On earth, Consalvo lay; complaining once,
    Of his hard fate, but now quite reconciled,
    When, in the midst of his fifth lustre, o'er
    His head oblivion, so longed-for, hung.
    As for some time, so, on his dying day,
    He lay, abandoned by his dearest friends:
    For in the world, few friends to him will cling,
    Who shows that he is weary of the world.
    Yet she was at his side, by pity led,
    In his lone wretchedness to comfort him,
    Who was alone and ever in his thought;
    Elvira, for her loveliness renowned;
    And knowing well her power; that a look,
    A single sweet and gracious word from her,
    A thousand-fold repeated in the heart,
    Devoted, of her hapless...

Scene I
“Discontent”

LAURENCE RABY.

Laurence:
I said to young Allan M’Ilveray,
Beside the swift swirls of the North,
When, in lilac shot through with a silver ray,
We haul’d the strong salmon fish forth,
Said only, “He gave us some trouble
To land him, and what does he weigh?
Our friend has caught one that weighs double,
The game for the candle won’t pay
Us to-day,
We may tie up our rods and away.”

I said to old Norman M’Gregor,
Three leagues to the west of Glen Dhu,
I had drawn, with a touch of the trigger,
The best bead that ever I drew,
Said merely, “For birds in the stubble
I once had an eye, I could swear
He’s down, but he’s not worth the trouble
Of seeking. You once shot a bear
In his l...

Birth and death, twin-sister and twin-brother,
Night and day, on all things that draw breath,
Reign, while time keeps friends with one another
Birth and death.

Each brow-bound with flowers diverse of wreath,
Heaven they hail as father, earth as mother,
Faithful found above them and beneath.

Smiles may lighten tears, and tears may smother
Smiles, for all that joy or sorrow saith:
Joy nor sorrow knows not from each other
Birth and death.

There stood an unsold captive in the mart,
A gray-haired and majestical old man,
Chained to a pillar. It was almost night,
And the last seller from the place had gone,
And not a sound was heard but of a dog
Crunching beneath the stall a refuse bone,
Or the dull echo from the pavement rung.
As the faint captive changed his weary feet.
He had stood there since morning, and had borne
From every eye in Athens the cold gaze
Of curious scorn. The Jew had taunted him
For an Olynthian slave. The buyer came
And roughly struck his palm upon his breast,
And touched his unhealed wounds, and with a sneer
Passed on; and when, with weariness o’er-spent,
He bowed his head in a forgetful sleep,
The inhuman soldier smote him, and, with threats
Of torture to his children, s...

Wouldst thou hear what man can say
In a little? Reader, stay.
Underneath this stone doth lie
As much beauty as could die;
Which in life did harbor give
To more virture than doth live.

If at all she had a fault,
Leave it buried in this vault.
One name was Elizabeth,
Th’ other let it sleep with death;
Fitter, where it died to tell,
Than that it lived at all. Farewell.

[To E. C.]


Oh, drop your eyelids down, my lady;
    Oh, drop your eyelids down.
'Twere well to keep your bright eyes shady
    For pity of the town!
But should there any glances be,
I pray you give them all to me;
For though my life be lost thereby,
It were the sweetest death to die!

This sentence have I left behind:
An aching body, and a mind
Not wholly clear, nor wholly blind,
Too keen to rest, too weak to find,
That travails sore, and brings forth wind,
Are God’s worst portion to mankind.

Another
Ask not my name, O friend!
That Being only, which hath known each man
From the beginning, can
Remember each unto the end