I saw the Christ down from His cross,
A tragic man lean-limbed and tall,
But weighed with suffering and loss.
His back was to a broken wall,
And out upon the tameless world
Was fixed His gaze His piercing eye
Beheld the towns to ruin hurled,
And saw the storm of death pass by.

Two thousand years it was since first
He offered to the race of men
His sovran boon, As one accurst
They nailed Him to the jibbet then,
And while they mocked Him for their mirth
He smiled, and from the hill of pain
To all the hating tribes of earth
Held forth His wondrous gift again.

To-day the thorns were on His brow,
His grief was deeper than before.
From ravaged field and city now
Arose the screams and reek of war.
The black smoke parted. Through the ri...

I loved him not; and yet, now he is gone,
I feel I am alone.
I check'd him while he spoke; yet, could he speak,
Alas! I would not check.
For reasons not to love him once I sought,
And wearied all my thought
To vex myself and him: I now would give
My love could he but live
Who lately lived for me, and, when he found
'Twas vain, in holy ground
He hid his face amid the shades of death!
I waste for him my breath
Who wasted his for me! but mine returns,
And this torn bosom burns
With stifling heat, heaving it up in sleep,
And waking me to weep
Tears that had melted his soft heart: for years
Wept he as bitter tears!
Merciful God! such was his latest prayer,
These may she never share.
Quieter is his breath, his breast more cold,
Than daisies ...

In the endless nights, from my bed, where sleepless in anguish I lie,
I startle the stillness and gloom with a bitter and strong cry:
0 Love! 0 Beloved long lost! come down from thy Heaven above,
For my heart is wasting and dying in uttermost famine for love!

Come down for a moment! oh, come! Come serious and mild
And pale, as thou wert on this earth, thou adorable Child!
Or come as thou art, with thy sanctitude, triumph and bliss,
For a garment of glory about thee; and give me one kiss,
One tender and pitying look of thy tenderest eyes,
One word of solemn assurance and truth that
the soul with its love never dies!

In the endless nights, from my bed, where sleepless in frenzy I lie,
I cleave through the crushing gloom with a bitter and deadly cry:
Oh! where have ...

I

Your love was like moonlight
turning harsh things to beauty,
so that little wry souls
reflecting each other obliquely
as in cracked mirrors...
beheld in your luminous spirit
their own reflection,
transfigured as in a shining stream,
and loved you for what they are not.

You are less an image in my mind
than a luster
I see you in gleams
pale as star-light on a gray wall...
evanescent as the reflection of a white swan
shimmering in broken water.

II

(To E. S.)

You inevitable,
Unwieldy with enormous births,
Lying on your back, eyes open, sucking down stars,
Or you kissing and picking over fresh deaths...
Filth... worms... flowers...
Green and succulent pods...
Tremulous gestation
Of dark w...

    September 26, 1881.


Weep for the martyr!    Strew his bier
With the last roses of the year;
Shadow the land with sables; knell
The harsh-tongued, melancholy bell;
Beat the dull muffled drum, and flaunt
The drooping banner; let the chant
Of the deep-throated organ sob -
One voice, one sorrow, one heart-throb,
From land to land, from sea to sea -
The huge world quires his elegy.
Tears, love, and honor he shall have,
Through ages keeping green his grave.
Too late approved, too early lost,
His story is the people's boast.
Tough-sinewed offspring of the soil,
Of peasant lineage, reared to toil,
In Europe he had been a thing
To the glebe tethered - here a king!
Crowned not for some transcendent gift,
Genius of power that may lift<...

    "I would not have," he said,
"Tears, nor the black pall, nor the wormy grave,
Grief's hideous panoply I would not have
    Round me when I am dead.


    "Music and flowers and light,
And choric dances to guitar and flute,
Be these around me when my lips are mute,
    Mine eyes are sealed from sight.


    "So let me lie one day,
One long, eternal day, in sunshine bathed,
In cerements of silken tissue swathed,
    Smothered 'neath flowers of May.

    "One perfect day of peace,
Or ere clean flame consume my fleshly veil,
My life - a gilded vapor - shall exhale,
    Brief as a sigh - and cease.


    "But ere the torch be laid
To my unshrinking limbs by some true hand,
Athwart the orange-fragrant laughing land,

The harp that once thro' Tara's halls
    The soul of music shed,
Now hangs as mute on Tara's walls.
    As if that soul were fled.--
So sleeps the pride of former days,
    So glory's thrill is o'er,
And hearts, that once beat high for praise,
    Now feel that pulse no more.

No more to chiefs and ladies bright
    The harp of Tara swells;
The chord alone, that breaks at night,
    Its tale of ruin tells.
Thus Freedom now so seldom wakes,
    The only throbs she gives,
Is when some heart indignant breaks.
    To show that still she lives.

    They faced each other: Topaz-brown
    And lambent burnt her eyes and shot
    Sharp flame at his of amethyst. -
    "I hate you!    Go, and be forgot
    As death forgets!" their glitter hissed
    (So seemed it) in their hatred.    Ho!
    Dared any mortal front her so? -
    Tempestuous eyebrows knitted down -
    Tense nostril, mouth - no muscle slack, -
    And black - the suffocating black -
    The stifling blackness of her frown!

    Ah! but the lifted face of her!
    And the twitched lip and tilted head!
    Yet he did neither wince nor stir, -
    Only - his hands clenched; and, instead
    Of words, he answered with a stare
    That stammered not in aught it said,
    As might his voice if trusted there.

    ...

See yon opening flower
Spreads its fragrance to the blast;
It fades within an hour,
Its decay is pale - is fast.
Paler is yon maiden;
Faster is her heart's decay;
Deep with sorrow laden,
She sinks in death away.

!Severed and gone, so many years!
And art thou still so dear to me,
That throbbing heart and burning tears
Can witness how I cling to thee?

I know that in the narrow tomb
The form I loved was buried deep,
And left, in silence and in gloom,
To slumber out its dreamless sleep.

I know the corner where it lies,
Is but a dreary place of rest:
The charnel moisture never dries
From the dark flagstones o'er its breast,

For there the sunbeams never shine,
Nor ever breathes the freshening air,
But not for this do I repine;
For my beloved is not there.

O, no! I do not think of thee
As festering there in slow decay:
'Tis this sole thought oppresses me,
That thou art gone so far away.

For ever gone; for I, by night,
Ha...

I pray thee by the soul of her that bore thee,
By thine own sister's spirit I implore thee,
Deal gently with the leaves that lie before thee!

For Iris had no mother to infold her,
Nor ever leaned upon a sister's shoulder,
Telling the twilight thoughts that Nature told her.

She had not learned the mystery of awaking
Those chorded keys that soothe a sorrow's aching,
Giving the dumb heart voice, that else were breaking.

Yet lived, wrought, suffered. Lo, the pictured token
Why should her fleeting day-dreams fade unspoken,
Like daffodils that die with sheaths unbroken?

She knew not love, yet lived in maiden fancies, -
Walked simply clad, a queen of high romances,
And talked strange tongues with angels in her trances.

Twin-souled she seemed,...

I gave my life to another lover,
I gave my love, and all, and all
But over a dream the past will hover,
Out of a dream the past will call.

I tear myself from sleep with a shiver
But on my breast a kiss is hot,
And by my bed the ghostly giver
Is waiting tho' I see him not.

There came to the beach a poor Exile of Erin,
The dew on his thin robe was heavy and chill:
For his country he sign'd, when at twilight repairing
To wander alone by the wind-beaten hill.

But the day-star attracted his eye's sad devotion,
For it rose o'er his own native isle fo the ocean,
Where once, in the fire of his youthful emotion.
He sang the bold anthem of Erin go bragh.

Sad is my fate! said the heart-broken stranger;
The wild deer and wolf to a covert can flee,
But I have no refuge from famine and danger,
A home and a country remain not to me.

Never again, in my green sunny bowers,
Where my forefathers lived, shall I spend the sweet hours,
Or cover my harp with the wild-woven flowers,
And strike to the numbers of Erin go bragh!

E...

Soulless is all humanity to me
To-night. My keenest longing is to be
Alone, alone with God's grey earth that seems
Pulse of my pulse and consort of my dreams.

To-night my soul desires no fellowship,
Or fellow-being; crave I but to slip
Thro' space on space, till flesh no more can bind,
And I may quit for aye my fellow kind.

Let me but feel athwart my cheek the lash
Of whipping wind, but hear the torrent dash
Adown the mountain steep, 'twere more my choice
Than touch of human hand, than human voice.

Let me but wander on the shore night-stilled,
Drinking its darkness till my soul is filled;
The breathing of the salt sea on my hair,
My outstretched hands but grasping empty air.

Let me but feel the pulse of Nature's soul
Athrob on mine...

The song of the water
Doomed ever to roam,
A beautiful exile,
Afar from its home.

The cliffs on the mountain,
The grand and the gray,
They took the bright creature
And hurled it away!

I heard the wild downfall,
And knew it must spill
A passionate heart out
All over the hill.

Oh! was it a daughter
Of sorrow and sin,
That they threw it so madly
Down into the lynn?

.    .    .    .    .

And listen, my Sister,
For this is the song
The Waterfall taught me
The ridges among:

“Oh where are the shadows
So cool and so sweet
And the rocks,” saith the water,
“With the moss on their feet?

“Oh, where are my playmates
The wind and the flowers
The golden and purple
Of honey-s...

Absent from thee, I languish still;
Then ask me not, When I return?
The straying fool ’twill plainly kill
To wish all day, all night to mourn.

Dear, from thine arms then let me fly,
That my fantastic mind may prove
The torments it deserves to try,
That tears my fix’d heart from my love.

When, wearied with a world of woe,
To thy safe bosom I retire,
Where love, and peace, and truth does flow,
May I contented there expire!

Lest, once more wandering from that heaven,
I fall on some base heart unblest;
Faithless to thee, false, unforgiven,
And lose my everlasting rest.

    You miss the touch of her dear hand,
    Her laughter gay and sweet,
    The dimpled cheek, the sunny smile,
    The patter of her feet.

    The loving glances she bestowed,
    The tender tales she told -
    The world, since she has gone away,
    Seems empty, drear and cold.

    Dear, oft you prayed that God would give
    Your darling joy and grace,
    That pain or loss might never dim
    The brightness of her face.

    That her young heart might keep its trust,
    Its purity so white,
    Its wealth of sweet unselfishness,
    Her eyes their radiant light,

    Her fair, soft face its innocence
    Of every guile and wrong,
    And nothing touch to mar the joy
    And gladness of her song.

    God he...

Why do we lie

’Why do we lie,’ she questioned, her warm eyes
on the grey Autumn wind and its coursing,
’all afternoon wasted in bed like this?’
’Because we cannot lie all night together.’
’Yes,’ she said, satisfied at my reasoning,
but going on to search her cruel mind
for better excuses to leave my narrow bed.

Too many flesh suppers

Abstracted in art,
in architecture,
in scholars’ detail;

absorbed by music,
by minutiae,
by sad trivia;

all to efface her,
whom I can forget
no more than breathing.

Theatregoer

Somewhere some nights she sees
curtains rise on those rites
we also knew and felt

I sit here desolate
in spite of company

Love is between people

And sho...