"Nought loves another as itself,
Nor venerates another so,
Nor is it possible to thought
A greater than itself to know.

"And, father, how can I love you
Or any of my brothers more?
I love you like the little bird
That picks up crumbs around the door."

The Priest sat by and heard the child;
In trembling zeal he seized his hair,
He led him by his little coat,
And all admired the priestly care.

And standing on the altar high,
"Lo, what a fiend is here!" said he:
"One who sets reason up for judge
Of our most holy mystery."

The weeping child could not be heard,
The weeping parents wept in vain:
They stripped him to his little shirt,
And bound him in an iron chain,

And burned him in a holy place
Where many had b...

And what is love? It is a doll dress'd up
For idleness to cosset, nurse, and dandle;
A thing of soft misnomers, so divine
That silly youth doth think to make itself
Divine by loving, nad so goes on
Yawning and doting a whole summer long,
Till Miss's comb is made a perfect tiara,
And common Wellingtons turn Romeo boots;
Then Cleopatra lives at number seven,
And Antony resides in Brunswick Square.
Fools! if some passions high have warm'd the world,
If Queens and Soldiers have play'd deep for hearts,
It is no reason why such agonies
Should be more common than the growth of weeds.
Fools! make me whole again that weighty pearl
The Queen of Egypt melted, and I'll say
That ye may love in spite of beaver hats.

Farewell has long been said; I have forgone thee;
    I never name thee even.
But how shall I learn virtues and yet shun thee?
    For thou art so near Heaven
That heavenward meditations pause upon thee.

Thou dost beset the path to every shrine;
    My trembling thoughts discern
Thy goodness in the good for which I pine;
    And if I turn from but one sin, I turn
Unto a smile of thine.

How shall I thrust thee apart
    Since all my growth tends to thee night and day--
To thee faith, hope, and art?
    Swift are the currents setting all one way;
They draw my life, my life, out of my heart.

I.

With the light just quenched in their eyes
They lie in their graves 'neath the skies,
And the fresh clod rests
Heavy upon their breasts.
The white rose dies
Upon the new-made mound, and underneath
The lily shrivels in the shriveling hand.
Pale guests of sovereign Death,
They sought their silent beds at his command,
And it seems
Strange that their life-long dreams
Shall find them no more,--never bid them arise
And go forth with a glory in their eyes.


II.

Still, voiceless, cold,
They lie in their shrouds and hold
The crumbling links that make
A chain for Memory's sake,
Broken, alas! too soon.
Blithe morn and brazen noon
And eve with garb of gray and gold,
Know them no more in the dark ways they take.
...

He was a failure, and one day he died.
    Across the border of the mapless land
He found himself among a sad-eyed band
Of disappointed souls; they, too, had tried
And missed their purpose.    With one voice they cried
    Unto the shining Angel in command:
    'Oh, lead us not before our Lord to stand,
For we are failures, failures!    Let us hide.'

Yet on the Angel fared, until they stood
    Before the Master.    (Even His holy place
The hideous noises of the earth assailed.)
Christ reached His arms out to the trembling brood,
    With God's vast sorrow in His listening face.
Come unto Me,' He said; 'I, too, have failed.'

I made a bitter song
When I was a boy,
About a girl
With hot earth-coloured hair,
Who lived with me
And left me.

I made a sour song
On her marriage-day,
That ever his kisses
Would be ghosts of mine,
And ever the measure
Of his halting love
Flow to my music.

It was a silly song,
Dear wife with cool black hair,
And yet when I recall
(At night with you asleep)
That once you gave yourself
Before we met,
I do not quite well know
What song to make.

From the Burmese (nineteenth century) (¿ by Asmapur).

If I could have put you in my heart,
If but I could have wrapped you in myself,
How glad I should have been!
And now the chart
Of memory unrolls again to me
The course of our journey here, before we had to part.

And oh, that you had never, never been
Some of your selves, my love, that some
Of your several faces I had never seen!
And still they come before me, and they go,
And I cry aloud in the moments that intervene.

And oh, my love, as I rock for you to-night,
And have not any longer any hope
To heal the suffering, or make requite
For all your life of asking and despair,
I own that some of me is dead to-night.

Land of the gentle and brave!
Our love is as wide as thy woe;
It deepens beside every grave
Where the heart of a hero lies low.

Land of the sunniest skies!
Our love glows the more for thy gloom;
Our hearts, by the saddest of ties,
Cling closest to thee in thy doom.

Land where the desolate weep
In a sorrow no voice may console!
Our tears are but streams, making deep
The ocean of love in our soul.

Land where the victor's flag waves,
Where only the dead are free!
Each link of the chain that enslaves
But binds us to them and to thee.

Land where the Sign of the Cross
Its shadow hath everywhere shed!
We measure our love by thy loss,
Thy loss by the graves of our dead!

Like a beautiful face looking ever at me
A pure bright moon cometh over the sea;
And I stand on the crags, and hear the falls
Go tumbling down, through the black river-walls;
And the heart of the gorge is rent with the cry
Of the pent-up winds in their agony!
You are far from me, dear, where I watch and wait,
Like a weary bird for a long-lost mate,
And my life is as dull as the sluggish stream
Feeling its way through a world of dream;
For here is a waste of darkness and fear,
And I call and I call, but no one will hear!
O darling of mine, do you ever yearn
For a something lost, which will never return?

O darling of mine, on the grave of dead Hours,
Do you feel, like me, for a handful of flowers?
Through the glens of the Past, do you wander along,
Li...

Not only men of stormy minds,
    The storms of trouble know,
All creatures of this earth must find
    A share of earthly woe!

Ye whose pure hearts with pity swell,
    For pain by all incurr'd;
Hear how affliction once befell,
    Serenity's sweet bird.

Ye fair, who in your carols praise
    The Halcyon's happy state;
Hear in compassionate amaze,
    One Halcyon's hapless fate.

A nymph, Selina is her name,
    Lovely in mind and mien,
When spring, however early, came,
    Was fond of walks marine.

Between a woman and a child,
    In tender charms she grew,
And lov'd with fancy sweetly wild,
    The lonely shore to view.

Nature she studied, every spring,
    To all her offspring kind,
And taught the ...

You have shut me out from your tears and grief
Over the man laid low and hoary.
Listen to me now: I am no thief!
You have shut me out from your tears and grief,
Listen to me, I will tell my story.

The love of a man is transitory.
What do you know of his past? the years
He gave to another his manhood's glory?
The love of a man is transitory.
Listen to me now: open your ears.

Over the dead have done with tears!
Over the man who loved to madness
Me the woman you met with sneers,
Over the dead have done with tears!
Me the woman so sunk in badness.

He loved me ever, and that is gladness!
There by the dead now tell her so;
There by the dead where she bows in sadness.
He loved me ever, and that is gladness!
Mine the gladness and hers ...

{Greek: Astaer prin men elampes eni tsuoisin hepsos.}

{Plato's Epitaph (Epig. Græc., Jacobs, 1826, p. 309), quoted by Diog. Laertins.}


Oh, Friend! for ever lov'd, for ever dear!
What fruitless tears have bathed thy honour'd bier!
What sighs re-echo'd to thy parting breath,
Whilst thou wast struggling in the pangs of death!
Could tears retard the tyrant in his course;
Could sighs avert his dart's relentless force;
Could youth and virtue claim a short delay,
Or beauty charm the spectre from his prey;
Thou still hadst liv'd to bless my aching sight,
Thy comrade's honour and thy friend's delight.
If yet thy gentle spirit hover nigh
The spot where now thy mouldering ashes lie,
Here wilt thou read, recorded on my heart,
A grief too deep to trust the scu...

Shall the Harp then be silent, when he who first gave
    To our country a name, is withdrawn from all eyes?
Shall a Minstrel of Erin stand mute by the grave,
    Where the first--where the last of her Patriots lies?

No--faint tho' the death-song may fall from his lips,
    Tho' his Harp, like his soul, may with shadows be crost,
Yet, yet shall it sound, mid a nation's eclipse,
    And proclaim to the world what a star hath been lost;--[1]

What a union of all the affections and powers
    By which life is exalted, embellished, refined,
Was embraced in that spirit--whose centre was ours,
    While its mighty circumference circled mankind.

Oh, who that loves Erin, or who that can see,
    Thro' the waste of her annals, that epoch sublime--
Lik...

I go beyond the commandment.' So be it. Then mine be the blame,
The loss, the lack, the yearning, till life's last sand be run, -
I go beyond the commandment, yet honour stands fast with her claim,
And what I have rued I shall rue; for what I have done - I have done.

Hush, hush! for what of the future; you cannot the base exalt,
There is no bridging a chasm over, that yawns with so sheer incline;
I will not any sweet daughter's cheek should pale for this mother's fault,
Nor son take leave to lower his life a-thinking on mine.

' Will I tell you all?' So! this, e'en this, will I do for your great love's sake;
Think what it costs. 'Then let there be silence - silence you'll count consent.'
No, and no, and for ever no: rather to cross and to break,
And to ...

I come, ye little noisy Crew,
Not long your pastime to prevent;
I heard the blessing which to you
Our common Friend and Father sent.
I kissed his cheek before he died;
And when his breath was fled,
I raised, while kneeling by his side,
His hand:, it dropped like lead.
Your hands, dear Little-ones, do all
That can be done, will never fall
Like his till they are dead.
By night or day blow foul or fair,
Ne'er will the best of all your train
Play with the locks of his white hair,
Or stand between his knees again.
Here did he sit confined for hours;
But he could see the woods and plains,
Could hear the wind and mark the showers
Come streaming down the streaming panes.
Now stretched beneath his grass-green mound
He rests a prisoner of the ground....

Alone alone!
With a heart like a stone,
She maketh her moan
At the feet of the trees,
With her face on her knees,
And her hair streaming over;
Wildly, and wildly, and wildly;
For she misses the tracks of her lover!
Do you hear her, Ulmarra?
Oh, where are the tracks of her lover?

Go by go by!
They have told her a lie,
Who said he was nigh,
In the white-cedar glen
In the camps of his men:
And she sitteth there weeping
Weeping, and weeping, and weeping,
For the face of a warrior sleeping!
Do you hear her, Ulmarra?
Oh! where is her warrior sleeping?

A dream! a dream!
That they saw a bright gleam
Through the dusk boughs stream,
Where wild bees dwell,
And a tomahawk fell,
In moons which have faded;
Faded,...

Farewell! and know, where'er I roam,
    My heart still turns to thee,
From spacious halls, or trackless woods,
    Or on the foaming sea.

Farewell, my friend! oh, could I say,
    My love, my own, to you,
My outlook on this dreary world
    Would have a brighter hue.

But duty calls, and I must go,
    E'en now, with outstretch'd hand,
I take a sad, sad leave of thee,
    To dwell in distant land.

For thy sweet sake I'll onward toil,
In earnest, patient strife.
Content, if thou shalt know I live
An earnest, useful life.

And if, in future years thou'rt free,
And none has gain'd thy heart,
Oh, darling, wilt thou come to me,
And we shall never part.

My shatter'd life will then be sweet,
My spirit shall rejoic...

My lover died a century ago,
Her dear heart stricken by my sland'rous breath,
Wherefore the Gods forbade that I should know
The peace of death.

Men pass my grave, and say, "'Twere well to sleep,
Like such an one, amid the uncaring dead!"
How should they know the vigils that I keep,
The tears I shed?

Upon the grave, I count with lifeless breath,
Each night, each year, the flowers that bloom and die,
Deeming the leaves, that fall to dreamless death,
More blest than I.

'Twas just last year, I heard two lovers pass
So near, I caught the tender words he said:
To-night the rain-drenched breezes sway the grass
Above his head.

That night full envious of his life was I,
That youth and love should stand at his behest;
To-night, I envy h...