I.

Many a hearth upon our dark globe sighs

after many a vanish’d face,

Many a planet by many a sun may roll

with the dust of a vanish’d race.



II.

Raving politics, never at rest–as this poor

earth’s pale history runs,–

What is it all but a trouble of ants in the

gleam of a million million of suns?



III.

Lies upon this side, lies upon that side,

truthless violence mourn’d by the Wise,

Thousands of voices drowning his own in a

popular torrent of lies upon lies;



IV.

Stately purposes, valour in battle, glorious

annals of army and fleet,

Death for the right cause, death for the wrong cause,

trumpets of vi...

Fare thee well--we part for ever!
    All regrets are now in vain!
Fate decrees that we must sever,
    Ne'er to meet on earth again.
Other skies may bend above thee,
    Other hearts may seek thy shrine,
But no other e'er will love thee
    With the constancy of mine.
Yet farewell--we part for ever!
    All regrets are now in vain!
Fate decrees that we must sever,
    Ne'er to meet on earth again.
                    Fare thee well!

Like the shadow on the dial
    Lingers still our parting kiss!
Life has no severer trial,
    Death no pang to equal this.
All the world is now before thee,
    Every clime to roam at will,
But within the land that bore thee,
    One fond heart will love thee still.
Yet farewell--we part for ever!

The heart that once was rich with light,
And happy in your grace,
Now lieth cold beneath the scorn
That gathers on your face;
And every joy it knew before,
And every templed dream,
Is paler than the dying flash
On yonder mountain stream.
The soul, regretting foundered bliss
Amid the wreck of years,
Hath mourned it with intensity
Too deep for human tears!

The forest fadeth underneath
The blast that rushes by
The dripping leaves are white with death,
But Love will never die!
We both have seen the starry moss
That clings where Ruin reigns,
And one must know his lonely breast
Affection still retains;
Through all the sweetest hopes of life,
That clustered round and round,
Are lying now, like withered things,
Forsaken on the ...

How strange it seems!    These Hebrews in their graves,
    Close by the street of this fair seaport town,
Silent beside the never-silent waves,
    At rest in all this moving up and down!

The trees are white with dust, that o'er their sleep
    Wave their broad curtains in the south-wind's breath,
While underneath such leafy tents they keep
    The long, mysterious Exodus of Death.

And these sepulchral stones, so old and brown,
    That pave with level flags their burial-place,
Seem like the tablets of the Law, thrown down
    And broken by Moses at the mountain's base.

The very names recorded here are strange,
    Of foreign accent, and of different climes;
Alvares and Rivera interchange
    With Abraham and Jacob of old times.

"Bless...

In this wise the Duke of Gloucester took upon himself the order and governance of the young King, whom, with much honour and humble reverence, he conveyed towards London. But the tidings of this matter came hastily to the Queen, a little before the midnight following; and that, in secret wise, her son was taken, her brother and other friends arrested, and sent no man wist whither, to be done with God wot what. With which tidings the Queen, with great heaviness, bewailed her child's reign, her friend's mischance, and her own misfortune, damning the time that ever she dissuaded the gathering of powers about the King; got herself, in all haste possible, with her young son and her daughter, out of the palace of Westminster, in which they then lay, into the Sanctuary; lodging herself and company there in the Abbott's place. - Speed's "History ...

While cruel Nero only drains
The moral Spaniard's ebbing veins,
By study worn, and slack with age,
How dull, how thoughtless is his rage!
Heighten'd revenge he should have took,
He should have burnt his tutor's book;
And long have reign's supreme in vice;
One noble wretch can only rise;
'Tis he whose fury shall deface
The Stoic's Image in this piece,
For, while unhurt, divine Jordain,
Thy work and Seneca's remain,
He still has body, still has soul,
And lives and speaks restored and whole.

Lord, save their souls alive!
And--for the rest,--
We leave it all to Thee;
Thou knowest best.

Whether they live or die,
Safely they'll rest,
Every true soul of them,
Thy Chosen Guest.

Whether they live or die,
They chose the best,
They sprang to Duty's call,
They stood the test.

If they come back to us--
How grateful we!
If not,--we may not grieve;
They are with Thee.

No soul of them shall fail,
Whate'er the past.
Who dies for Thee and Thine
Wins Thee at last.

Who, through the fiery gates,
Enter Thy rest,
Greet them as conquerors,--
Bravest and best!

Every white soul of them,
Ransomed and blest,--
Wear them as living gems,
Bear them as living flames,
High on Thy br...

We will have beds imbued with mildest scent,
And couches, deep as tombs, in which to lie,
Flowers around us, strange and opulent,
Blooming on shelves under the finest skies.

Approaching equally their final light,
Our twin hearts will be two great flaming brands
That will be double in each other's sight
Our souls the mirrors where the image stands.

One evening made of rose and mystic blue
We will flare out, in an epiphany
Like a long sob, charged with our last adieus.

And later, opening the doors, will be
An Angel, who will joyfully reglaze
The tarnished mirrors, and relight the blaze.

I dreamt last night; and in that dream
My boyhood's heart was mine again;
These latter years did nothing seem
With all their mingled joy and pain,
Their thousand deeds of good and ill,
Their hopes which time did not fulfil,
Their glorious moments of success,
Their love that closed in bitterness,
Their hate that grew with growing strength,
Their darling projects, dropped at length,
And higher aims that still prevail,
For I must perish ere they fail,
That crowning object of my life,
The end of all my toil and strife,
Source of my virtues and my crimes,
For which I've toiled and striven in vain,
But, if I fail a thousand times,
Still I will toil and strive again:
Yet even this was then forgot;
My present heart and soul were not:
All the rough ...

The formal World relaxes her cold chain
For One who speaks in numbers; ampler scope
His utterance finds; and, conscious of the gain,
Imagination works with bolder hope
The cause of grateful reason to sustain;
And, serving Truth, the heart more strongly beats
Against all barriers which his labour meets
In lofty place, or humble Life's domain.
Enough; before us lay a painful road,
And guidance have I sought in duteous love
From Wisdom's heavenly Father. Hence hath flowed
Patience, with trust that, whatsoe'er the way
Each takes in this high matter, all may move
Cheered with the prospect of a brighter day.

        Now the last wreath of snow
        That melts, in mist exhales
White aspiration, and our deep-voiced gales
In chorus chant the measured march of spring,
        Whom griefs of life and death
        Are burdening!
        Slow, slow -
        With half-held breath -
Tread slow, O mourners, that all men may know
        What hero here lies low!

        O music, sweep
        From some deep cave, and bear
To us that gasp in this so meagre air
        Sweet ministerings
And consolations of contorted sound,
        With agonies profound
Of nobly warring and enduring chords
        That lie, close-bound,
Unstirred as yet 'neath thy wide, wakening wings;
So that our hearts break not in broken words.
        O music, that hast power...

The Fiend is at my side without a rest;
He swirls around me like a subtle breeze;
I swallow him, and burning fills my breast,
And calls me to desire's shameful needs.

Knowing my love of Art, he may select
A woman's form - most perfect, most corrupt
And under sanctimonious pretext
Bring to my lips the potion of her lust.

Thus does he lead me, far from sight of God,
Broken and gasping, out into the broad
And wasted plains of Ennui, deep and still,

Then throws before my staring eyes some gowns
And bloody garments stained by open wounds,
And dripping engines of Destruction's will!

Oh! did you observe the Black Canon pass,
And did you observe his frown?
He goeth to say the midnight mass,
In holy St. Edmond's town.

He goeth to sing the burial chaunt,
And to lay the wandering sprite,
Whose shadowy, restless form doth haunt,
The Abbey's drear aisle this night.

It saith it will not its wailing cease,
'Till that holy man come near,
'Till he pour o'er its grave the prayer of peace,
And sprinkle the hallowed tear.

The Canon's horse is stout and strong
The road is plain and fair,
But the Canon slowly wends along,
And his brow is gloomed with care.

Who is it thus late at the Abbey-gate?
Sullen echoes the portal bell,
It sounds like the whispering voice of fate,
It sounds like a funeral knell.

The ...

The day is turning ghost,
And scuttles from the kalendar in fits and furtively,
To join the anonymous host
Of those that throng oblivion; ceding his place, maybe,
To one of like degree.

I part the fire-gnawed logs,
Rake forth the embers, spoil the busy flames, and lay the ends
Upon the shining dogs;
Further and further from the nooks the twilight's stride extends,
And beamless black impends.

Nothing of tiniest worth
Have I wrought, pondered, planned; no one thing asking blame or praise,
Since the pale corpse-like birth
Of this diurnal unit, bearing blanks in all its rays -
Dullest of dull-hued Days!

Wanly upon the panes
The rain slides as have slid since morn my colourless thoughts; and yet
Here, while Day's presence wanes,
And over...

1.
Dar'st thou amid the varied multitude
To live alone, an isolated thing?
To see the busy beings round thee spring,
And care for none; in thy calm solitude,
A flower that scarce breathes in the desert rude
To Zephyr's passing wing?

2.
Not the swart Pariah in some Indian grove,
Lone, lean, and hunted by his brother's hate,
Hath drunk so deep the cup of bitter fate
As that poor wretch who cannot, cannot love:
He bears a load which nothing can remove,
A killing, withering weight.

3.
He smiles - 'tis sorrow's deadliest mockery;
He speaks - the cold words flow not from his soul;
He acts like others, drains the genial bowl, -
Yet, yet he longs - although he fears - to die;
He pants to reach what yet he seems to fly,
Dull life's extre...

Slow figures in some live remorseless frieze,
The approaching days escapeless and unguessed,
With mask and shroud impenetrably dressed;
Time, whose inexorable destinies
Bear down upon us like impending seas;
And the huge presence of this world, at best
A sightless giant wandering without rest,
Agèd and mad with many miseries.

The weight and measure of these things who knows?
Resting at times beside life's thought-swept stream,
Sobered and stunned with unexpected blows,
We scarcely hear the uproar; life doth seem,
Save for the certain nearness of its woes,
Vain and phantasmal as a sick man's dream.

When the dark comes,
“Is this the end?” I pray,
No answer from the night,
And then once more the day.
I take the world again
Upon my neck and go
Pace with the serious hours.
Since fate will have it so,
Begone dead man, unclasp
Your hands from round my heart,
I and my burden pass,
You and your peace depart.

Adieu to kindred hearts and home,
To pleasure, joy, and mirth,
A fitter foot than mine to roam
Could scarcely tread the earth;
For they are now so few indeed
(Not more than three in all),
Who e’er will think of me or heed
What fate may me befall.

For I through pleasure’s paths have run
My headlong goal to win,
Nor pleasure’s snares have cared to shun
When pleasure sweetened sin.
Let those who will their failings mask,
To mine I frankly own;
But for them pardon will I ask
Of none, save Heaven alone.

From carping friends I turn aside;
At foes defiance frown;
Yet time may tame my stubborn pride,
And break my spirit down.
Still, if to error I incline,
Truth whispers comfort strong,
That never reckless act of mine
E’er...