Still goes the strife; the anguish does not die.
Stronger the flesh is grown from earthy years,
In siege about my soul that upward peers
To see and hold its Good. The spirit's eye
Approves the better things; but senses spy
The passing sweets, spurning the present fears,
And take their moment's prize. Ah, then hot tears
Deluge my soul, and contrite moans my cry!

Courage, my heart: bright patience to the end!
Few years remain; then goes the warring wall
Of sensely flesh, that men will throw to earth.
So be it; so the contrite soul shall wend
A homeward way unto the Captain's call,
Eternally to know contrition's worth.

1


Such prayers last year were put up for thy sake;
What shall this year do that hath lived to see
The piteous and unpitied end of thee?
What moan, what cry, what clamour shall it make,
Seeing as a reed breaks all thine empire break,
And all thy great strength as a rotten tree,
Whose branches made broad night from sea to sea,
And the world shuddered when a leaf would shake?
From the unknown deep wherein those prayers were heard,
From the dark height of time there sounds a word,
Crying, Comfort; though death ride on this red hour,
Hope waits with eyes that make the morning dim,
Till liberty, reclothed with love and power,
Shall pass and know not if she tread on him.


2

The hour for which men hungered and had thirst,
And dying we...

(See Note 55)

With death's dark eye acquainted she had been made ere this,
When to her son, her first-born, she gave the farewell kiss,
And when afar she hastened beside her mother's bed,
It followed all her faring with warning fraught and dread;
It filled her with foreboding when standing by the bier:
More sheaves to gather hopeth the harvester austere.
So soon she saw her husband, that man of strength, succumb,
She said with sorrow stricken: « I knew that it would come!"
She thought that he was chosen by God from earth to go,
Would check, her hands upthrusting, the harsh behest of woe;
And with her slender body, too weak for such a strife,
Would ward her gallant consort, - and gave for him her life.

She smiled, serene and blissful, as death's dark eye she brave...

FEBRUARY 6, 1881


Come not again! I dwell with you
Above the realm of frost and dew,
Of pain and fire, and growth to death.
I dwell with you where never breath
Is drawn, but fragrance vital flows
From life to life, even as a rose
Unseen pours sweetness through each vein
And from the air distills again.
You are my rose unseen; we live
Where each to other joy may give
In ways untold, by means unknown
And secret as the magnet-stone.

For which of us, indeed, is dead?
No more I lean to kiss your head -
The gold-red hair so thick upon it;
Joy feels no more the touch that won it
When o'er my brow your pearl-cool palm
In tenderness so childish, calm,
Crept softly, once. Yet, see, my arm
Is strong, and still my blood runs warm.

"Would that I'd not drawn breath here!" some one said,
"To stalk upon this stage of evil deeds,
Where purposelessly month by month proceeds
A play so sorely shaped and blood-bespread."

Yet had his spark not quickened, but lain dead
To the gross spectacles of this our day,
And never put on the proffered cloak of clay,
He had but known not things now manifested;

Life would have swirled the same. Morns would have dawned
On the uprooting by the night-gun's stroke
Of what the yester noonshine brought to flower;

Brown martial brows in dying throes have wanned
Despite his absence; hearts no fewer been broke
By Empery's insatiate lust of power.

1915.

BOOK II.


Sweet, when the great sea's water is stirred to his depths by the storm- winds,
Standing ashore to descry one afar-off mightily struggling:
Not that a neighbour's sorrow to you yields blissful enjoyment;
But that the sight hath a sweetness, of ills ourselves are exempt from.
Sweet 'tis too to behold, on a broad plain mustering, war-hosts
Arm them for some great battle, one's self unscathed by the danger:-
Yet still happier this:- To possess, impregnably guarded,
Those calm heights of the sages, which have for an origin Wisdom;
Thence to survey our fellows, observe them this way and that way
Wander amidst Life's paths, poor stragglers seeking a highway:
Watch mind battle with mind, and escutcheon rival escutcheon;
Gaze on that untold strife, which is waged 'ne...

Not they who know the awful gibbet's anguish,
    Not they who, while sad years go by them, in
The sunless cells of lonely prisons languish,
    Do suffer fullest penalty for sin.

'Tis they who walk the highways unsuspected
    Yet with grim fear forever at their side,
Who hug the corpse of some sin undetected,
    A corpse no grave or coffin-lid can hide -

'Tis they who are in their own chambers haunted
    By thoughts that like unbidden guests intrude,
And sit down, uninvited and unwanted,
    And make a nightmare of the solitude.

Two are the roads that before thee lie open from life to conduct thee;
To the ideal one leads thee, the other to death.
See that while yet thou art free, on the first thou commencest thy journey,
Ere by the merciless fates on to the other thou'rt led!

Away! the moor is dark beneath the moon,
Rapid clouds have drank the last pale beam of even:
Away! the gathering winds will call the darkness soon,
And profoundest midnight shroud the serene lights of heaven.

Pause not! The time is past! Every voice cries, Away!
Tempt not with one last tear thy friend's ungentle mood:
Thy lover's eye, so glazed and cold, dares not entreat thy stay:
Duty and dereliction guide thee back to solitude.

Away, away! to thy sad and silent home;
Pour bitter tears on its desolated hearth;
Watch the dim shades as like ghosts they go and come,
And complicate strange webs of melancholy mirth.

The leaves of wasted autumn woods shall float around thine head:
The blooms of dewy spring shall gleam beneath thy feet:
But thy soul or this...

"Open the coffin and shroud until
    I look on the dead again
Ere we place her in Grenada's vaults,
    Where sleep the Monarchs of Spain;
For unto King Charles must I swear
    That I myself have seen
The regal brow of the royal corpse,
    Our loved, lamented Queen."

The speaker was Borgia, Gaudia's Duke,
    A noble and gallant knight,
Whose step was welcome in courtly halls,
    As his sword was keen in fight.
To him had his Monarch given the task
    Of conveying to the tomb.
The Princess ravished from his arms
    In the pride of youthful bloom.

While they slowly raised the coffin lid,
    Borgia stood silent by,
Recalling the beauty of the dead
    With low, half-uttered sigh -
Longing to look on that statue fair
  ...

Before the April night was late
A rider came to the castle gate;
A rider breathing human breath,
But the words he spoke were the words of Death.

"Greet you well from the King our lord,
He marches hot for the eastward ford;
Living or dying, all or one,
Ye must keep the ford till the race be run.

Sir Alain rose with lips that smiled,
He kissed his wife, he kissed his child:
Before the April night was late
Sir Alain rode from the castle gate.

He called his men-at-arms by name,
But one there was uncalled that came:
He bade his troop behind him ride,
But there was one that rode beside.

        "Why will you spur so fast to die?
        Be wiser ere the night go by.
        A message late is a message lost;
        For all your...

(J. M. D.)


I thank Thee Father that I feel Thee near,
    That it is hand of Thine that s raised to smite,
Oh, make Thy loving kindness to appear,
    Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right!

Poor woe-worn watchers! he is going home;
    No skill can save him, and no love can keep;
He served his generation--he is gone,
    And gathered to his fathers, falls asleep.

We've bitter cups to drain--but his is dry;
    Burdens of care--but care has left his breast;
Tears--but they never more shall dim his eye;
    Labour,--but he has entered into rest.

Oh, to be with him, toil and care all past,
    Sleeping, dear mother earth, within thy breast,
I, too, could lay my hand in thine, O death,
    And gladly enter where the weary rest...

Già desiai con sì giusta querela.

HE LIVES DESTITUTE OF ALL HOPE SAVE THAT OF RENDERING HER IMMORTAL.


    Erewhile I labour'd with complaint so true,
And in such fervid rhymes to make me heard,
Seem'd as at last some spark of pity stirr'd
In the hard heart which frost in summer knew.
Th' unfriendly cloud, whose cold veil o'er it grew,
Broke at the first breath of mine ardent word
Or low'ring still she others' blame incurr'd
Her bright and killing eyes who thus withdrew
No ruth for self I crave, for her no hate;
I wish not this--that passes power of mine:
Such was mine evil star and cruel fate.
But I shall ever sing her charms divine,
That, when I have resign'd this mortal breath,
The world may know how sweet to me was death.

Sin is the cause of death; and sin's alone
The cause of God's predestination:
And from God's prescience of man's sin doth flow
Our destination to eternal woe.

    Dawn has flashed up the startled skies,
    Night has gone out beneath the hill
    Many sweet times; before our eyes
    Dawn makes and unmakes about us still
    The magic that we call the rose.
    The gentle history of the rain
    Has been unfolded, traced and lost
    By the sharp finger-tips of frost;
    Birds in the hawthorn build again;
    The hare makes soft her secret house;
    The wind at tourney comes and goes,
    Spurring the green, unharnessed boughs;
    The moon has waxed fierce and waned dim:
    He knew the beauty of all those
    Last year, and who remembers him?

    Love sometimes walks the waters still,
    Laughter throws back her radiant head;
    Utterly beauty is not gone,
    And wonder is not wholly dead.

Vanity, saith the preacher, vanity!
Draw round my bed: is Anselm keeping back?
Nephews, sons mine . . . ah God, I know not! Well,
She, men would have to be your mother once,
Old Gandolf envied me, so fair she was!
What’s done is done, and she is dead beside,
Dead long ago, and I am Bishop since,
And as she died so must we die ourselves,
And thence ye may perceive the world’s a dream.
Life, how and what is it? As here I lie
In this state-chamber, dying by degrees,
Hours and long hours in the dead night, I ask
“Do I live, am I dead?” Peace, peace seems all.
Saint Praxed’s ever was the church for peace;
And so, about this tomb of mine. I fought
With tooth and nail to save my niche, ye know:
Old Gandolf cozened me, despite my care;
Shrewd was that snatch from...

For G. H.



Say, does that stupid earth
Where they have laid her,
Bind still her sullen mirth,
Mirth which betrayed her?
Do the lush grasses hold,
Greenly and glad,
That brittle-perfect gold
She alone had?

Smugly the common crew,
Over their knitting,
Mourn her -- as butchers do
Sheep-throats they're slitting!
She was my enemy,
One of the best of them.
Would she come back to me,
God damn the rest of them!

Damn them, the flabby, fat,
Sleek little darlings!
We gave them tit for tat,
Snarlings for snarlings!
Squashy pomposities,
Shocked at our violence,
Let not one tactful hiss
Break her new silence!

Maids of antiquity,
Look well upon her;
Ice was her chastity,
Spotless h...

O frivolous mind of man,
Light ignorance, and hurrying, unsure thoughts,
Though man bewails you not,
How I bewail you!

Little in your prosperity
Do you seek counsel of the Gods.
Proud, ignorant, self-adored, you live alone.
In profound silence stern
Among their savage gorges and cold springs
Unvisited remain
The great oracular shrines.

Thither in your adversity
Do you betake yourselves for light,
But strangely misinterpret all you hear.
For you will not put on
New hearts with the inquirer’s holy robe,
And purged, considerate minds.

And him on whom, at the end
Of toil and dolour untold,
The Gods have said that repose
At last shall descend undisturb’d,
Him you expect to behold
In an easy old age, in a happy home;