Se al principio risponde il fine e 'l mezzo.

IF HIS PASSION STILL INCREASE, HE MUST SOON DIE.


    If, of this fourteenth year wherein I sigh,
The end and middle with its opening vie,
Nor air nor shade can give me now release,
I feel mine ardent passion so increase:
For Love, with whom my thought no medium knows,
Beneath whose yoke I never find repose,
So rules me through these eyes, on mine own ill
Too often turn'd, but half remains to kill.
Thus, day by day, I feel me sink apace,
And yet so secretly none else may trace,
Save she whose glances my fond bosom tear.
Scarcely till now this load of life I bear
Nor know how long with me will be her stay,
For death draws near, and hastens life away.

MACGREGOR.

We must pass like smoke or live within the spirit's fire;
For we can no more than smoke unto the flame return
If our thought has changed to dream, our will unto desire,
As smoke we vanish though the fire may burn.

Lights of infinite pity star the grey dusk of our days:
Surely here is soul: with it we have eternal breath:
In the fire of love we live, or pass by many ways,
By unnumbered ways of dream to death.

[To the memory of Lieut. Wm. W. Wardell, of the First Massachusetts Cavalry, killed May 28, 1864.]


Above his head the cypress waves
    Its dark green drooping leaves;
The sunlight through its branches wide
Where bright birds linger side by side
    A golden net-work weaves.

Within the church-yard's silent gloom
    He lies in quiet rest;
And never more to cold, pale brow,
Or proud lips mute with silence now
    Will loving lips be pressed.

Perhaps even now in death's dark dream
    He sees the deadly strife;
Where brothers fought with blinded eyes,
Forgetting all the tender ties
    That bound them life to life.

Ah! nobly there he proudly rode
    With honest, warm, true heart;
And shrank not from the carnage red,
...

Now, while thy rounded cheek is fresh and fair,
    While beauty lingers, laughing, in thine eyes,
Ere thy young heart shall meet the stranger, "Care,"
    Or thy blithe soul become the home of sighs,
Were it not kindness should I give thee rest
By plunging this sharp dagger in thy breast?
Dying so young, with all thy wealth of youth,
What part of life wouldst thou not claim, in sooth?
        Only the woe,
    Sweetheart, that sad souls know.

Now, in this sacred hour of supreme trust,
    Of pure delight and palpitating joy,
Ere change can come, as come it surely must,
    With jarring doubts and discords, to destroy
Our far too perfect peace, I pray thee, Sweet,
Were it not best for both of us, and meet,
If I should bring swift death to seal our bliss?...

"A spirit passed before my face; the hair of my flesh stood up."

And the Spirit said,
"I can make the clock of the years go backward,
But am loth to stop it where you will."
And I cried, "Agreed
To that. Proceed:
It's better than dead!"

He answered, "Peace";
And called her up - as last before me;
Then younger, younger she freshed, to the year
I first had known
Her woman-grown,
And I cried, "Cease! -

"Thus far is good -
It is enough - let her stay thus always!"
But alas for me. He shook his head:
No stop was there;
And she waned child-fair,
And to babyhood.

Still less in mien
To my great sorrow became she slowly,
And smalled till she was nought at all
In his checkless griff;
And it was as if
She ha...

See wither'd WINTER, bending low his head;
    His ragged locks stiff with the hoary dew;
    His eyes, like frozen lakes, of livid hue;
    His train, a sable cloud, with murky red
Streak'd. - Ah! behold his nitrous breathings shed
    Petrific death! - Lean, wailful Birds pursue,
    On as he sweeps o'er the dun lonely moor,
    Amid the battling blast of all the Winds,
That, while their sleet the climbing Sailor blinds,
    Lash the white surges to the sounding shore.
    So com'st thou, WINTER, finally to doom
The sinking year; and with thy ice-dropt sprays,
    Cypress and yew, engarland her pale tomb,
    Her vanish'd hopes, and aye-departed days.

    They sit in silence. In camera, around the table. Terrifyingly stern, stares that grew antlers in my eyes.

    It was as if thunder or bolts with electricity were being decreed.
    The self-important, the pompous, well-fed and self-assured.
    Here to hazard a fling of the dice - to decide whether another should eat.

    Employment. The interview. One with yellow tusks protruding to his coffee cup. Eyes, some primordial forest cut for a firebreak back of his soul. And I think of the desperate, those lacking bus-fare to get to such a carnival. Valuable postage money, photocopying, scrimped dollars for a suit to entertain the pumpkins dicing for a worthless garment. A scavenger run, piles of white applications heaped as bones in a graveyard made careless after a violent storm.

    Or elephant...

1.
Dares the lama, most fleet of the sons of the wind,
The lion to rouse from his skull-covered lair?
When the tiger approaches can the fast-fleeting hind
Repose trust in his footsteps of air?
No! Abandoned he sinks in a trance of despair,
The monster transfixes his prey,
On the sand flows his life-blood away;
Whilst India's rocks to his death-yells reply,
Protracting the horrible harmony.

2.
Yet the fowl of the desert, when danger encroaches,
Dares fearless to perish defending her brood,
Though the fiercest of cloud-piercing tyrants approaches
Thirsting - ay, thirsting for blood;
And demands, like mankind, his brother for food;
Yet more lenient, more gentle than they;
For hunger, not glory, the prey
Must perish. Revenge does not howl in the de...

"With sacrifice before the rising morn
Vows have I made by fruitless hope inspired;
And from the infernal Gods, 'mid shades forlorn
Of night, my slaughtered Lord have I required:
Celestial pity I again implore;
Restore him to my sight great Jove, restore!"
So speaking, and by fervent love endowed
With faith, the Suppliant heavenward lifts her hands;
While, like the sun emerging from a cloud,
Her countenance brightens and her eye expands;
Her bosom heaves and spreads, her stature grows;
As she expects the issue in repose.

O terror! what hath she perceived? O joy!
What doth she look on? whom doth she behold?
Her Hero slain upon the beach of Troy?
His vital presence? his corporeal mould?
It is if sense deceive her not 'tis He!
And a God leads him, wing...

Since there is no escape, since at the end
My body will be utterly destroyed,
This hand I love as I have loved a friend,
This body I tended, wept with and enjoyed;
Since there is no escape even for me
Who love life with a love too sharp to bear:
The scent of orchards in the rain, the sea
And hours alone too still and sure for prayer,
Since darkness waits for me, then all the more
Let me go down as waves sweep to the shore
In pride; and let me sing with my last breath;
In these few hours of light I lift my head;
Life is my lover, I shall leave the dead
If there is any way to baffle death.

Autumn, thy rushing blast
    Sweeps in wild eddies by,
Whirling the sear leaves past,
    Beneath my feet, to die.
Nature her requiem sings
    In many a plaintive tone,
As to the wind she flings
    Sad music, all her own.

The murmur of the rill
    Is hoarse and sullen now,
And the voice of joy is still
    In grove and leafy bough.
There's not a single wreath,
    Of all Spring's thousand flowers,
To strew her bier in death,
    Or deck her faded bowers.

I hear a spirit sigh
    Where the meeting pines resound,
Which tells me all must die,
    As the leaf dies on the ground.
The brightest hopes we cherish,
    Which own a mortal trust,
But bloom awhile to perish
    And moulder in the dust.

Sweep on...

Lo! the YEAR's FINAL DAY! - Nature performs
    Its obsequies with darkness, wind, and rain;
    But Man is jocund. - Hark! th' exultant strain
    From towers and steeples drowns the wintry storms!
No village spire but to the cots and farms,
    Right merrily, its scant and tuneless peal
    Rings round! - Ah! joy ungrateful! - mirth insane!
    Wherefore the senseless triumph, ye, who feel
This annual portion of brief Life the while
    Depart for ever? - Brought it no dear hours
    Of health and night-rest? - none that saw the smile
On lips belov'd? - O! with as gentle powers
    Will the next pass? - Ye pause! - yet careless hear
    Strike these last Clocks, that knell th' EXPIRING YEAR!

Dec. 31st, 1782.

Qui reposan quei caste e felice ossa.


    Here peaceful sleeps the chaste, the happy shade
Of that pure spirit, which adorn'd this earth:
Pure fame, true beauty, and transcendent worth,
Rude stone! beneath thy rugged breast are laid.
Death sudden snatch'd the dear lamented maid!
Who first to all my tender woes gave birth,
Woes! that estranged my sorrowing soul to mirth,
While full four lustres time completely made.
Sweet plant! that nursed on Avignon's sweet soil,
There bloom'd, there died; when soon the weeping Muse
Threw by the lute, forsook her wonted toil.
Bright spark of beauty, that still fires my breast!
What pitying mortal shall a prayer refuse,
That Heaven may number thee amid the blest?

ANON. 1777.


    Here rest t...

[1]


I heard as I lay, a wailing sound,
    "He is dead--he is dead," the rumor flew;
And I raised my chain and turned me round,
    And askt, thro' the dungeon-window, "Who?"

I saw my livid tormentors pass;
    Their grief 'twas bliss to hear and see!
For never came joy to them alas!
    That didn't bring deadly bane to me.

Eager I lookt thro' the mist of night,
    And askt, "What foe of my race hath died?
"Is it he--that Doubter of law and right,
    "Whom nothing but wrong could e'er decide--

"Who, long as he sees but wealth to win,
    "Hath never yet felt a qualm or doubt
"What suitors for justice he'd keep in,
    "Or what suitors for freedom he'd shut out--

"Who, a clog for ever on Truth's advance,

Yes, dear departed, cherished days,
Could Memory's hand restore
Your morning light, your evening rays,
From Time's gray urn once more,
Then might this restless heart be still,
This straining eye might close,
And Hope her fainting pinions fold,
While the fair phantoms rose.

But, like a child in ocean's arms,
We strive against the stream,
Each moment farther from the shore
Where life's young fountains gleam;
Each moment fainter wave the fields,
And wider rolls the sea;
The mist grows dark, - the sun goes down, -
Day breaks, - and where are we?

It seems a little word to say--
    _Farewell_--but may it not, when said,
    Be like the kiss we give the dead,
Before they pass the doors for aye?

Who knows if, on some after day,
    Your lips shall utter in its stead
    A welcome, and the broken thread
Be joined again, the selfsame way?

The word is said, I turn to go,
    But on the threshold seem to hear
            A sound as of a passing bell,
Tolling monotonous and slow,
    Which strikes despair upon my ear,
            And says it is a last farewell.

                I

And so I cross into another world
shyly and in homage linger for an invitation
from this unknown that I would trespass on.

I am very glad, and all alone in the world,
all alone, and very glad, in a new world
where I am disembarked at last.

I could cry with joy, because I am in the new world, just ventured in.
I could cry with joy, and quite freely, there is nobody to know.

And whosoever the unknown people of this un- known world may be
they will never understand my weeping for joy to be adventuring among them
because it will still be a gesture of the old world I am making
which they will not understand, because it is quite, quite foreign to them.

                II

I WAS so weary of the world
I was so sick of it...

Stand close around, ye Stygian set,
With Dirce in one boat conveyed,
Or Charon, seeing, may forget
That he is old and she a shade.