Lay him down where the fern is thick and fair.
Fain was he for life, here lies he low:
With the blood washed clean from his brow and his beautiful hair,
Lay him here in the dell where the orchids grow.

Let the birch-bark torches roar in the gloom,
And the trees crowd up in a quiet startled ring
So lone is the land that in this lonely room
Never before has breathed a human thing.

Cover him well in his canvas shroud, and the moss
Part and heap again on his quiet breast,
What recks he now of gain, or love, or loss
Who for love gained rest?

While she who caused it all hides her insolent eyes
Or braids her hair with the ribbons of lust and of lies,
And he who did the deed fares out like a hunted beast
To lurk where the musk-ox tramples the barren groun...

Tune - "Bide ye yet."



I.

    O Mary, at thy window be,
        It is the wish'd, the trysted hour!
    Those smiles and glances let me see
        That make the miser's treasure poor:
    How blithely wad I bide the stoure,
        A weary slave frae sun to sun;
    Could I the rich reward secure,
        The lovely Mary Morison!

II.

    Yestreen, when to the trembling string
        The dance gaed thro' the lighted ha',
    To thee my fancy took its wing,
        I sat, but neither heard or saw:
    Tho' this was fair, and that was braw,
        And yon the toast of a' the town,
    I sigh'd, and said amang them a',
        "Ye are na Mary Morison."

III.

    O Mary, canst thou wreck hi...

Take a pair of sparkling eyes,
Hidden, ever and anon,
In a merciful eclipse
Do not heed their mild surprise
Having passed the Rubicon.
Take a pair of rosy lips;
Take a figure trimly planned
Such as admiration whets
(Be particular in this);
Take a tender little hand,
Fringed with dainty fingerettes,
Press it in parenthesis;
Take all these, you lucky man
Take and keep them, if you can.

Take a pretty little cot
Quite a miniature affair
Hung about with trellised vine,
Furnish it upon the spot
With the treasures rich and rare
I've endeavored to define.
Live to love and love to live
You will ripen at your ease,
Growing on the sunny side
Fate has nothing more to give.
You're a dainty man to please
If you are not sati...

To Jenny came a gentle youth
From inland leazes lone,
His love was fresh as apple-blooth
By Parrett, Yeo, or Tone.
And duly he entreated her
To be his tender minister,
And call him aye her own.

Fair Jenny's life had hardly been
A life of modesty;
At Casterbridge experience keen
Of many loves had she
From scarcely sixteen years above;
Among them sundry troopers of
The King's-Own Cavalry.

But each with charger, sword, and gun,
Had bluffed the Biscay wave;
And Jenny prized her gentle one
For all the love he gave.
She vowed to be, if they were wed,
His honest wife in heart and head
From bride-ale hour to grave.

Wedded they were. Her husband's trust
In Jenny knew no bound,
And Jenny kept her pure and just,
T...

With antecedents;
With my fathers and mothers, and the accumulations of past ages;
With all which, had it not been, I would not now be here, as I am:
With Egypt, India, Phenicia, Greece and Rome;
With the Kelt, the Scandinavian, the Alb, and the Saxon;
With antique maritime ventures,, with laws, artizanship, wars and journeys;
With the poet, the skald, the saga, the myth, and the oracle;
With the sale of slaves, with enthusiasts, with the troubadour, the crusader, and the monk;
With those old continents whence we have come to this new continent;
With the fading kingdoms and kings over there;
With the fading religions and priests;
With the small shores we look back to from our own large and present shores;
With countless years drawing themselves onward, and arrived at these years;...

To A Friend

No! those days are gone away,
And their hours are old and gray,
And their minutes buried all
Under the down-trodden pall
Of the leaves of many years:
Many times have winter’s shears,
Frozen North, and chilling East,
Sounded tempests to the feast
Of the forest’s whispering fleeces,
Since men knew nor rent nor leases.

No, the bugle sounds no more,
And the twanging bow no more;
Silent is the ivory shrill
Past the heath and up the hill;
There is no mid-forest laugh,
Where lone Echo gives the half
To some wight, amaz’d to hear
Jesting, deep in forest drear.

On the fairest time of June
You may go, with sun or moon,
Or the seven stars to light you,
Or the polar ray to right you;
But you never may...

Though all great deeds were proved but fables fine,
    Though earth's old story could be told anew,
    Though the sweet fashions loved of them that sue
Were empty as the ruined Delphian shrine -
Though God did never man, in words benign,
    With sense of His great Fatherhood endue,
    Though life immortal were a dream untrue,
And He that promised it were not divine -
Though soul, though spirit were not, and all hope
    Reaching beyond the bourne, melted away;
Though virtue had no goal and good no scope,
    But both were doomed to end with this our clay -
Though all these were not, - to the ungraced heir
Would this remain, - to live, as though they were.

At A Bookstore

Anno Domini 1972

A crazy bookcase, placed before
A low-price dealer's open door;
Therein arrayed in broken rows
A ragged crew of rhyme and prose,
The homeless vagrants, waifs, and strays
Whose low estate this line betrays
(Set forth the lesser birds to lime)
YOUR CHOICE AMONG THESE BOORS 1 DIME!

Ho! dealer; for its motto's sake
This scarecrow from the shelf I take;
Three starveling volumes bound in one,
Its covers warping in the sun.
Methinks it hath a musty smell,
I like its flavor none too well,
But Yorick's brain was far from dull,
Though Hamlet pah!'d, and dropped his skull.

Why, here comes rain! The sky grows dark, -
Was that the roll of thunder? Hark!
The shop affords a safe retreat,
A chair...

Within the iron cities
    One walked unknown for years,
In his heart the pity of pities
    That grew for human tears

When love and grief were ended
    The flower of pity grew;
By unseen hands 'twas tended
    And fed with holy dew.

Though in his heart were barred in
    The blooms of beauty blown;
Yet he who grew the garden
    Could call no flower his own.

For by the hands that watered,
    The blooms that opened fair
Through frost and pain were scattered
    To sweeten the dull air.

--February 15, 1895

Posthumous Fragments Of Margaret Mcholson.

Being Poems found amongst the Papers of that noted Female who attempted the life of the King in 1786. Edited by John Fitzvictor.

[The "Posthumous Fragments", published at Oxford by Shelley, appeared in November, 1810.]



Fragment: Supposed To Be An Epithalamium Of Francis Ravaillac And Charlotte Corday.

'Tis midnight now - athwart the murky air,
Dank lurid meteors shoot a livid gleam;
From the dark storm-clouds flashes a fearful glare,
It shows the bending oak, the roaring stream.

I pondered on the woes of lost mankind,
I pondered on the ceaseless rage of Kings;
My rapt soul dwelt upon the ties that bind
The mazy volume of commingling things,
When fell and wild misrule to man stern sorrow brings.

They heard the South wind sighing
    A murmur of the rain;
And they knew that Earth was longing
    To see them all again.

While the snow-drops still were sleeping
    Beneath the silent sod;
They felt their new life pulsing
    Within the dark, cold clod.

Not a daffodil nor daisy
    Had dared to raise its head;
Not a fairhaired dandelion
    Peeped timid from its bed;


Though a tremor of the winter
    Did shivering through them run;
Yet they lifted up their foreheads
    To greet the vernal sun.

And the sunbeams gave them welcome.
    As did the morning air
And scattered o'er their simple robes
    Rich tints of beauty rare.

Soon a host of lovely flowers
    From vales and woodland burst;
But...

Forth rushed from Envy sprung and Self-conceit,
A Power misnamed the spirit of reform,
And through the astonished Island swept in storm,
Threatening to lay all orders at her feet
That crossed her way. Now stoops she to entreat
License to hide at intervals her head
Where she may work, safe, undisquieted,
In a close Box, covert for Justice meet.
St, George of England! keep a watchful eye
Fixed on the Suitor; frustrate her request
Stifle her hope; for, if the State comply,
From such Pandorian gift may come a Pest
Worse than the Dragon that bowed low his crest,
Pierced by thy spear in glorious victory.

I wanted the gold, and I sought it;
I scrabbled and mucked like a slave.
Was it famine or scurvy - I fought it,
I hurled my youth into the grave.
I wanted the gold and I got it -
Came out with a fortune last fall, -
Yet somehow life's not what I thought it,
And somehow the gold isn't all.

No! There's the land. (Have you seen it?)
It's the cussedest land that I know,
From the big, dizzy mountains that screen it,
To the deep, deathlike valleys below.
Some say God was tired when He made it;
Some say it's a fine land to shun;
Maybe: but there's some as would trade it
For no land on earth - and I'm one.

You come to get rich (damned good reason),
You feel like an exile at first;
You hate it like hell for a season,
And then you are worse th...

We rovers bold,
To the land of Gold,
Over the bowling billows are gliding:
Eager to toil,
For the golden spoil,
And every hardship biding.
See! See!
Before our prows' resistless dashes
The gold-fish fly in golden flashes!
'Neath a sun of gold,
We rovers bold,
On the golden land are gaining;
And every night,
We steer aright,
By golden stars unwaning!
All fires burn a golden glare:
No locks so bright as golden hair!
All orange groves have golden gushings;
All mornings dawn with golden flushings!
In a shower of gold, say fables old,
A maiden was won by the god of gold!
In golden goblets wine is beaming:
On golden couches kings are dreaming!
The Golden Rule dries many tears!
The Golden Number rules the spheres!
Gold, go...

King's Daughter!
Wouldst thou be all fair,
Without--within--
Peerless and beautiful,
A very Queen?

Know then:--
Not as men build unto the Silent One,--
With clang and clamour,
Traffic of rude voices,
Clink of steel on stone,
And din of hammer;--
Not so the temple of thy grace is reared.
But,--in the inmost shrine
Must thou begin,
And build with care
A Holy Place,
A place unseen,
Each stone a prayer.
Then, having built,
Thy shrine sweep bare
Of self and sin,
And all that might demean;
And, with endeavour,
Watching ever, praying ever,
Keep it fragrant-sweet, and clean:
So, by God's grace, it be fit place,--
His Christ shall enter and shall dwell therein.
Not as in earthly fane--where chase
Of stee...

Lo, as a careful housewife runs to catch
One of her feather’d creatures broke away,
Sets down her babe, and makes all swift dispatch
In pursuit of the thing she would have stay;
Whilst her neglected child holds her in chase,
Cries to catch her whose busy care is bent
To follow that which flies before her face,
Not prizing her poor infant’s discontent;
So runn’st thou after that which flies from thee,
Whilst I thy babe chase thee afar behind;
But if thou catch thy hope, turn back to me,
And play the mother’s part, kiss me, be kind;
So will I pray that thou mayst have thy ‘Will,’
If thou turn back and my loud crying still.

Still rests the heavy share on the dark soil:
Upon the black mould thick the dew-damp lies:
The horse waits patient: from his lowly toil
The ploughboy to the morning lifts his eyes.

The unbudding hedgerows dark against day's fires
Glitter with gold-lit crystals: on the rim
Over the unregarding city's spires
The lonely beauty shines alone for him.

And day by day the dawn or dark enfolds
And feeds with beauty eyes that cannot see
How in her womb the mighty mother moulds
The infant spirit for eternity.

Southey! high placed on the contested throne
Of modern verse, a Muse, herself unknown,
Sues that her tears may consecrate the strains
Pour'd o'er the urn enrich'd with WHITE'S Remains!
While touch'd to transport, Taste's responding tone
Makes the rapt poet's ecstasies thine own;
Ah! think that he, whose hand supremely skill'd,
The heart's fine chords with deep vibration thrill'd,
In stagnant silence and petrific gloom,
Unconscious sleeps, the tenant of the tomb!
Extinct that spirit, whose strong-bidding drew
From Fancy's confines Wonder's wild-eyed crew,
Which bade Despair's terrific phantoms pass
Like Macbeth's monarchs in the mystic glass.
Before the youthful bard's impassion'd eye,
Like him, led on, to triumph and to die;
Like him, by mighty magic compass'd...