And what is Life?--An hour-glass on the run,
A mist retreating from the morning sun,
A busy, bustling, still repeated dream;
Its length?--A minute's pause, a moment's thought;
And happiness?-A bubble on the stream,
That in the act of seizing shrinks to nought.

What are vain Hopes?--The puffing gale of morn,
That of its charms divests the dewy lawn,
And robs each floweret of its gem,--and dies;
A cobweb hiding disappointment's thorn,
Which stings more keenly through the thin disguise.

And thou, O Trouble?--Nothing can suppose,
(And sure the power of wisdom only knows,)
What need requireth thee:
So free and liberal as thy bounty flows,
Some necessary cause must surely be;
But disappointments, pains, and every woe
Devoted wretches feel,
The ...

An interval of thirty years.

SCENE I. In London. Dipsychus in his Study.

Dipsychus. O God! O God! and must I still go on
Doing this work I know not, hell’s or thine;
And these rewards receiving sure not thine;
The adulation of a foolish crowd,
Half foolish and half greedy; upright judge
Lawyer acute the Mansfield and the Hale
In one united to bless modern Courts.
O God! O God! According to the law,
With solemn face to solemn sentence fit,
Doing the justice that is but half just;
Punishing wrong that is not truly wrong!
Administering, alas, God! not Thy law.
(Knock at the door.)
What? Is the hour already for the Court?
Come in. Now, Lord Chief justice, to thy work.
(Enter a Servant.)

Serv. My lord, a woman...

SHE.

Yes, we have lived--one pang, and then we part!
May Heaven, dear father! now have all thy heart.
Yet ah! how once we loved, remember still,
Till you are dust like me.

HE.
        Dear shade! I will:
Then mix this dust with thine--O spotless ghost!
O more than fortune, friends, or country lost!
Is there on earth one care, one wish beside?
Yes--Save my country, Heaven!
        --He said, and died.

Here is the way I shall die:
It's dark.    And it has rained.
But you can no longer detect the imprint of the clouds
Which up there cover the sky in soft silk.
All streets are flowing, black mirrors,
Over the piled up houses, where streetlights,
Strings of pearls, hang shining.
And high above thousands of stars are flying,
Silver insects, around the world -
I am among them.    Somewhere.
And sunken, I watch very seriously, somewhat pale,
But rather thoughtful about the refined, heavenly blue legs of a
lady,
While an auto cuts me to pieces, so that my head rolls like a red
marble
At her feet...
She is surprised.    And swears like a lady.    And kicks it
Haughtily with the dainty heel
Of her little shoe
Into the gutter.

In Memory of Mrs. Thellusson.


Forth of our ways and woes,
Forth of the winds and snows,
A white soul soaring goes,
Winged like a dove:
So sweet, so pure, so clear,
So heavenly tempered here,
Love need not hope or fear her changed above:

Ere dawned her day to die,
So heavenly, that on high
Change could not glorify
Nor death refine her:
Pure gold of perfect love,
On earth like heaven’s own dove,
She cannot wear, above, a smile diviner.

Her voice in heaven’s own quire
Can sound no heavenlier lyre
Than here no purer fire
Her soul can soar:
No sweeter stars her eyes
In unimagined skies
Beyond our sight can rise than here before,

Hardly long years had shed
Their shadows on her head:
Hardly ...

"Cemetery View Inn" "A queer sign," said our traveller to himself; "but it raises a thirst! Certainly the keeper -o f this inn appreciates Horace and the poet pupils of Epicurus. Perhaps he even apprehends the profound philosophy of those old Egyptians who had no feast without its skeleton, or some emblem of life's brevity."
He entered: drank a glass of beer in presence of the tombs; and slowly smoked a cigar. Then, his phantasy driving him, he went down into the cemetery, where the grass was so tall and inviting; so brilliant in the sunshine.
The light and heat, indeed, were so furiously intense that one had said the drunken sun wallowed upon a carpet of flowers that had fattened upon the corruption beneath.
The air was heavy with vivid rumours of life the life of things infinitely small and broken at intervals by the crac...

So swift the hours are moving
Unto the time un-proved:
Farewell my love unloving,
Farewell my love beloved!

What! are we not glad-hearted?
Is there no deed to do?
Is not all fear departed
And Spring-tide blossomed new?

The sails swell out above us,
The sea-ridge lifts the keel;
For They have called who love us,
Who bear the gifts that heal:

A crown for him that winneth,
A bed for him that fails,
A glory that beginneth
In never-dying tales.

Yet now the pain is ended
And the glad hand grips the sword,
Look on thy life amended
And deal out due award.

Think of the thankless morning,
The gifts of noon unused;
Think of the eve of scorning,
The night of prayer refused.

And yet.    The life be...

    The Raven croak'd as she sate at her meal,
    And the Old Woman knew what he said,
    And she grew pale at the Raven's tale,
    And sicken'd and went to her bed.

    Now fetch me my children, and fetch them with speed,
    The Old Woman of Berkeley said,
    The monk my son, and my daughter the nun
    Bid them hasten or I shall be dead.

    The monk her son, and her daughter the nun,
    Their way to Berkeley went,
    And they have brought with pious thought
    The holy sacrament.

    The old Woman shriek'd as they entered her door,
    'Twas fearful her shrieks to hear,
    Now take the sacrament away
    For mercy, my children dear!

    Her lip it trembled with agony,
    The sweat ran down her brow,
    I have tor...

    He bent above our darling's bed
        When her life was ebbing low,
    And in his serious look we read
        The truth we feared to know.

    We knew a slender thread was all
        That held her now; we saw
    The dark, portentous shadow fall,
        And near and nearer draw.

    Our hopes were centred all in him;
        We stood with bated breath
    As, pitiful and calm and grim,
        He fought and fought with Death.

    We hung upon the desperate fight,
        And saw in him combined
    The tiger's stealth, the lion's might,
        The man's superior mind.

    We saw the fearful hate he bore
        His old, relentless foe,
    His beautiful compassion for
        The one we cherished so.

    My soul looked down from a vague height with Death,
    As unremembering how I rose or why,
    And saw a sad land, weak with sweats of dearth,
    Gray, cratered like the moon with hollow woe,
    And fitted with great pocks and scabs of plaques.

    Across its beard, that horror of harsh wire,
    There moved thin caterpillars, slowly uncoiled.
    It seemed they pushed themselves to be as plugs
    Of ditches, where they writhed and shrivelled, killed.

    By them had slimy paths been trailed and scraped
    Round myriad warts that might be little hills.

    From gloom's last dregs these long-strung creatures crept,
    And vanished out of dawn down hidden holes.

    (And smell came up from those foul openings
    As out of mouths, or deep...

Surely you've trodden straight
To the very door!
Surely you took your fate
Faultlessly. Now it's too late
To say more.

It is evident you were right,
That man has a course to go
A voyage to sail beyond the charted seas.
You have passed from out of sight
And my questions blow
Back from the straight horizon that ends all one sees.

Now like a vessel in port
You unlade your riches unto death,
And glad are the eager dead to receive you there.
Let the dead sort
Your cargo out, breath from breath
Let them disencumber your bounty, let them all share.

I imagine dead hands are brighter,
Their fingers in sunset shine
With jewels of passion once broken through you as a prism
Breaks light into jewels; and dead breasts whiter
For yo...

Subjoined To The Yearly Bill Of Mortality Of The Parish Of All Saints, Northampton, Anno Domini 1787.


(Composed for John Cox, parish clerk of Northampton.)


Pallida mors æquo pulsat pede pauperum tabernas,
Regumque turres.—Horace.


Pale death with equal foot strikes wide the door
Of royal halls and hovels of the poor.


While thirteen moons saw smoothly run
The Nen’s barge-laden wave,
All these, life’s rambling journey done,
Have found their home, the grave.


Was man (frail always) made more frail
Than in foregoing years?
Did famine or did plague prevail,
That so much death appears?


No; these were vigorous as their sires,
Nor plague nor famine came;
This annual tribute Death requires,
And ...

TO THE MEMORY OF PATRICK KELLEY, WHO BY HIS MANY GOOD QUALITIES DURING SOME YEARS' RESIDENCE IN MY FAMILY, GREATLY ENDEARED HIMSELF TO ME AND MINE.


From Erin's fair Isle to this country he came,
And found brothers and sisters to welcome him here;
Though then but a youth, yet robust seemed his frame,
And life promised fair for many a long year.

A place was soon found where around the same board,
He with two of his sisters did constantly meet;
And when his day's work had all been performed,
At the same fireside he found a third seat.

His faithfulness such, so true-hearted was he,
That love in return could not be denied;
As one of the family - he soon ceased to be
The stranger, who lately for work had applied.

Youth passed into manhoo...

"Percussus sum sicut foenum, et aruit cor meum."
- Ps. ci

Wintertime nighs;
But my bereavement-pain
It cannot bring again:
Twice no one dies.

Flower-petals flee;
But, since it once hath been,
No more that severing scene
Can harrow me.

Birds faint in dread:
I shall not lose old strength
In the lone frost's black length:
Strength long since fled!

Leaves freeze to dun;
But friends can not turn cold
This season as of old
For him with none.

Tempests may scath;
But love can not make smart
Again this year his heart
Who no heart hath.

Black is night's cope;
But death will not appal
One who, past doubtings all,
Waits in unhope.

Age, thou the loss of health and friends shalt mourn!
But thou art passing to that night-still bourne,
Where labour sleeps. The linnet, chattering loud
To the May morn, shall sing; thou, in thy shroud,
Forgetful and forgotten, sink to rest;
And grass-green be the sod upon thy breast!

"Come, sit thee by my side once more,
    'Tis long since thus we' met;
And though our dream of love is o'er,
    Its sweetness lingers yet.
Its transient day has long been past,
    Its flame has ceased to burn, -
But Memory holds its spirit fast,
    Safe in her sacred urn.

"I will not chide thy wanderings,
    Nor ask why thou couldst flee
A heart whose deep affection's springs
    Poured forth such love for thee!
We may not curb the restless mind,
    Nor teach the wayward heart
To love against its will, nor bind
    It with the chains of art.

"I would but tell thee how, in tears
    And bitterness, my soul
Has yearned with dreams, through long, long, years,
    Which it could not control.
And how the thought that clingeth t...

Ere the birth of my life, if I wished it or no
No question was asked me, it could not be so!
If the life was the question, a thing sent to try
And to live on be YES; what can NO be? to die.

    NATURE'S ANSWER

Is't returned, as 'twas sent? Is't no worse for the wear?
Think first, what you ARE! Call to mind what you WERE!
I gave you innocence, I gave you hope,
Gave health, and genius, and an ample scope,
Return you me guilt, lethargy, despair?
Make out the invent'ry; inspect, compare!
Then die, if die you dare!

I have no fancy for that ancient cant
That makes us masters of our destinies,
And not our lives, to hold or give them up
As will directs; I cannot, will not think
That men, the subtle worms, who plot and plan
And scheme and calculate with such shrewd wit,
Are such great blund'ring fools as not to know
When they have lived enough.
Men court not death
When there are sweets still left in life to taste.
Nor will a brave man choose to live when he,
Full deeply drunk of life, has reached the dregs,
And knows that now but bitterness remains.
He is the coward who, outfaced in this,
Fears the false goblins of another life.
I honor him who being much harassed
Drinks of sweet courage until drunk of it,--
Then seizing Death, reluctant, by the hand,
Leaps with hi...