"You damn me with faint praise."

I.

Yes, faint was my applause and cold my praise,
Though soul was glowing in each polished line;
But nobler subjects claim the poet's lays,
A brighter glory waits a muse like thine.
Let amorous fools in love-sick measure pine;
Let Strangford whimper on, in fancied pain,
And leave to Moore his rose leaves and his vine;
Be thine the task a higher crown to gain,
The envied wreath that decks the patriot's holy strain.

II.

Yet not in proud triumphal song alone,
Or martial ode, or sad sepulchral dirge,
There needs no voice to make our glories known;
There needs no voice the warrior's soul to urge
To tread the bounds of nature's stormy verge;
Columbia still shall win the battle's prize;
But be it thin...

And what are you that, wanting you
    I should be kept awake
As many nights as there are days
    With weeping for your sake?

And what are you that, missing you,
    As many days as crawl
I should be listening to the wind
    And looking at the wall?

I know a man that's a braver man
    And twenty men as kind,
And what are you, that you should be
    The one man in my mind?

Yet women's ways are witless ways,
    As any sage will tell,--
And what am I, that I should love
    So wisely and so well?

And, cruel maid, because I see
You scornful of my love, and me,
I'll trouble you no more, but go
My way, where you shall never know
What is become of me; there I
Will find me out a path to die,
Or learn some way how to forget
You and your name for ever;yet
Ere I go hence, know this from me,
What will in time your fortune be;
This to your coyness I will tell;
And having spoke it once, Farewell.
The lily will not long endure,
Nor the snow continue pure;
The rose, the violet, one day
See both these lady-flowers decay;
And you must fade as well as they.
And it may chance that love may turn,
And, like to mine, make your heart burn
And weep to see't; yet this thing do,
That my last vow commends to you;
When you shall see that I am dead,

Ill-fated hour! oft as thy annual reign
Leads on th' autumnal tide, my pinion'd joys
Fade with the glories of the fading year;
"Remembrance wakes, with all her busy train,"
And bids affection heave the heart-drawn sigh
O'er the cold tomb, rich with the spoils of death,
And wet with many a tributary tear!

Eight times has each successive season sway'd
The fruitful sceptre of our milder clime
Since my loved----died! but why, ah! why
Should melancholy cloud my early years?
Religion spurns earth's visionary scene,
Philosophy revolts at misery's chain:
Just Heaven recall'd its own; the pilgrim call'd
From human woes: from sorrow's rankling worm--
Shall frailty then prevail?

Oh! be it mine
To curb the sigh which bursts o'er Heaven's decree;
To t...

Oh, sweet content, that turns the labourer's sweat
To tears of joy, and shines the roughest face;
How often have I sought you high and low,
And found you still in some lone quiet place;

Here, in my room, when full of happy dreams,
With no life heard beyond that merry sound
Of moths that on my lighted ceiling kiss
Their shadows as they dance and dance around;

Or in a garden, on a summer's night,
When I have seen the dark and solemn air
Blink with the blind bats' wings, and heaven's bright face
Twitch with the stars that shine in thousands there.

What was is... since 1930;
the boys in my old gang
are senior partners. They start up
bald like baby birds
to embrace retirement.

At the altar of surrender,
I met you
in the hour of credulity.
How your misfortune came out clearly
to us at twenty.

At the gingerbread casino,
how innocent the nights we made it
on our Vesuvio martinis
with no vermouth but vodka
to sweeten the dry gin,

the lash across my face
that night we adored...
soon every night and all,
when your sweet, amorous
repetition changed.

Fertility is not to the forward,
or beauty to the precipitous,
things gone wrong
clothe summer
with gold leaf.

Sometimes
I catch my mind
circling for you with glazed eye,
my los...

    O do not leave me, mother, lest I weep;
    Till I forget, be near me in that chair.
    The mother's presence leads her down to sleep--
    Leaves her contented there.

    O do not leave me, lover, brother, friends,
    Till I am dead, and resting in my place.
    Love-compassed thus, the girl in peace ascends,
    And leaves a raptured face.

    Leave me not, God, until--nay, until when?
    Not till I have with thee one heart, one mind;
    Not till the Life is Light in me, and then
    Leaving is left behind.

Yon soft Star, peering o'er the sable cloud,
    Sheds its [1]green lustre thro' the darksome air. -
    Haply in that mild Planet's crystal sphere
    Live the freed Spirits, o'er whose timeless shroud
Swell'd my lone sighs, my tearful sorrows flow'd.
    They, of these long regrets perhaps aware,
    View them with pitying smiles. - O! then, if e'er
    Your guardian cares may be on me bestow'd,
For the pure friendship of our youthful days,
    Ere yet ye soar'd from earth, illume my heart,
    That roves bewilder'd in Dejection's night,
And lead it back to peace! - as now ye dart,
    From your pellucid mansion, the kind rays,
    That thro' misleading darkness stream so bright.

1: The lustre of the brightest of the Stars always appeared to me of a green hue; a...

'Twas a tender little honeysuckle vine
That smiled and danced in the warm sunshine,
And spied a maid as fair as all maids be,
Who said, "Little honeysuckle, come up to me."
So it climbed and climbed in the sun and the shade,
And all summer long at her window stayed;
For that is the way that honeysuckles go,
And that is the way that true loves grow.

Then the loving little honeysuckle vine
Kissed the little maid in the warm sunshine;
But the winter came with an angry frown,
And the false little maid shut the window down;
And the sorrowing vine on the wintry side
Mourned and mourned for the love that died,
And faded away in the wind and snow, -
And that is the way that some loves go.

On Christmas Day The Child was born,
On Christmas Day in the morning;--
    --To tread the long way, lone and lorn,
    --To wear the bitter crown of thorn,
    --To break the heart by man's sins torn,
    --To die at last the Death of Scorn.
For this The Child of The Maid was born,
On Christmas Day in the morning.

But that first day when He was born,
Among the cattle and the corn,
The sweet Maid-Mother wondering,
And sweetly, deeply, pondering
The words that in her heart did ring,
Unto her new-born king did sing,--

"My baby, my baby,
My own little son,
Whence come you,
Where go you,
My own little one?
Whence come you?

Ah now, unto me all alone
That wonder of wonders is properly known.
Where go you?
Ah, that...

Here lies to each her parents’ Ruth,
Mary, the daughter of their youth:
Yet, all heaven’s gifts, being heaven’s due,
It makes the father, less, to rue.
At six months’ end, she parted hence
With safety of her innocence;
Whose soul heaven’s queen, (whose name she bears)
In comfort of her mother’s tears,
Hath placed amongst her virgin train:
Where, while that severed doth remain,
This grave partakes the fleshly birth.
Which cover lightly, gentle earth.

"O George! how large your bubble is!
    Its colors, too, how bright!
Just like the rainbow that we saw
    On high, the other night.

"Now throw it off, and let it float
    Like fairies in the air!
It's broken, Georgie; never mind,
    But blow another there."

Their mother, just within the door,
    Smiled at their childish play,--
A smile, but yet a thoughtful one,
    That seemed these words to say:

"My little Georgie, bubbles burst,
    And are but empty air;
I would that you might love the things
    That last forever fair.

"And ever may my darling Kate
    A trusting spirit bear,
And, when one cherished hope has fled,
    Yet find another there."

'Love, while you were away there came to me -
    From whence I cannot tell -
A plaintive lady pale and passionless,
Who bent her eyes upon me critically,
And weighed me with a wearing wistfulness,
    As if she knew me well."

"I saw no lady of that wistful sort
    As I came riding home.
Perhaps she was some dame the Fates constrain
By memories sadder than she can support,
Or by unhappy vacancy of brain,
    To leave her roof and roam?"

"Ah, but she knew me. And before this time
    I have seen her, lending ear
To my light outdoor words, and pondering each,
Her frail white finger swayed in pantomime,
As if she fain would close with me in speech,
    And yet would not come near.

"And once I saw her beckoning with her hand
    A...

I

"There is a Thorn, it looks so old,
In truth, you'd find it hard to say
How it could ever have been young,
It looks so old and grey.
Not higher than a two years' child
It stands erect, this aged Thorn;
No leaves it has, no prickly points;
It is a mass of knotted joints,
A wretched thing forlorn.
It stands erect, and like a stone
With lichens is it overgrown.

II

"Like rock or stone, it is o'ergrown,
With lichens to the very top,
And hung with heavy tufts of moss,
A melancholy crop:
Up from the earth these mosses creep,
And this poor Thorn they clasp it round
So close, you'd say that they are bent
With plain and manifest intent
To drag it to the ground;
And all have joined in one endeavour
To bury this poor ...

"Drown'd! drown'd!" - Hamlet.


One more Unfortunate,
Weary of breath,
Rashly importunate,
Gone to her death!

Take her up tenderly,
Lift her with care;
Fashion'd so slenderly,
Young, and so fair!

Look at her garments
Clinging like cerements;
Whilst the wave constantly
Drips from her clothing;
Take her up instantly,
Loving, not loathing. -

Touch her not scornfully;
Think of her mournfully,
Gently and humanly;
Not of the stains of her,
All that remains of her
Now is pure womanly.

Make no deep scrutiny
Into her mutiny
Bash and undutiful:
Past all dishonor,
Death has left on her
Only the beautiful.

Still, for all slips of hers,
One of Eve's family -
Wipe...

For oh, when the war will be over
We'll go and we'll look for our dead;
We'll go when the bee's on the clover,
And the plume of the poppy is red:
We'll go when the year's at its gayest,
When meadows are laughing with flow'rs;
And there where the crosses are greyest,
We'll seek for the cross that is ours.

For they cry to us: 'Friends, we are lonely,
A-weary the night and the day;
But come in the blossom-time only,
Come when our graves will be gay:
When daffodils all are a-blowing,
And larks are a-thrilling the skies,
Oh, come with the hearts of you glowing,
And the joy of the Spring in your eyes.

'But never, oh, never come sighing,
For ours was the Splendid Release;
And oh, but 'twas joy in the dying
To know we were winning you Peace!...

To turn my volumes o’er nor find
(Sweet unsuspicious friend!)
Some vestige of an erring mind
To chide or discommend,

Believe that all were lov’d like you
With love from blame exempt,
Believe that all my griefs were true
And all my joys but dreamt.

Life of my life, take not so soon thy flight,
But stay the time till we have bade good-night.
Thou hast both wind and tide with thee; thy way
As soon dispatch'd is by the night as day.
Let us not then so rudely henceforth go
Till we have wept, kiss'd, sigh'd, shook hands, or so.
There's pain in parting, and a kind of hell
When once true lovers take their last farewell.
What? shall we two our endless leaves take here
Without a sad look, or a solemn tear?
He knows not love that hath not this truth proved,
Love is most loth to leave the thing beloved.
Pay we our vows and go; yet when we part,
Then, even then, I will bequeath my heart
Into thy loving hands; for I'll keep none
To warm my breast, when thou, my pulse, art gone,
No, here I'll last, and walk, a harmles...