What though his feet were shod with sharp, fierce flame,
And death and ruin were his daily squires,
The Scythian, helped by Heaven’s thunders, came:
The time was ripe for God’s avenging fires.
Lo! loose, lewd trulls, and lean, luxurious liars
Had brought the fair, fine face of Rome to shame,
And made her one with sins beyond a name
That queenly daughter of imperial sires!
The blood of elders like the blood of sheep,
Was dashed across the circus. Once while din
And dust and lightnings, and a draggled heap
Of beast-slain men made lords with laughter leap,
Night fell, with rain. The earth, so sick of sin,
Had turned her face into the dark to weep.

What part of the dread eternity
Are those strange minutes that I gain,
Mazed with the doubt of love and pain,
When I thy delicate face may see,
A little while before farewell?

What share of the world's yearning-tide
That flash, when new day bare and white
Blots out my half-dream's faint delight,
And there is nothing by my side,
And well remembered is farewell?

What drop in the grey flood of tears
That time, when the long day toiled through,
Worn out, shows nought for me to do,
And nothing worth my labour bears
The longing of that last farewell?

What pity from the heavens above,
What heed from out eternity,
What word from the swift world for me?
Speak, heed, and pity, O tender love,
Who knew'st the days before farewell!

To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.

A Robin Red breast in a Cage
Puts all Heaven in a Rage.
A dove house fill'd with doves & Pigeons
Shudders Hell thro' all its regions.
A dog starv'd at his Master's Gate
Predicts the ruin of the State.
A Horse misus'd upon the Road
Calls to Heaven for Human blood.
Each outcry of the hunted Hare
A fibre from the Brain does tear.
A Skylark wounded in the wing,
A Cherubim does cease to sing.
The Game Cock clipp'd and arm'd for fight
Does the Rising Sun affright.
Every Wolf's & Lion's howl
Raises from Hell a Human Soul.
The wild deer, wand'ring here & there,
Keeps the Human Soul from Care.
T...

What shall her silence keep
Under the sun?
Here, where the willows weep
And waters run;
Here, where she lies asleep,
And all is done.

Lights, when the tree-top swings;
Scents that are sown;
Sounds of the wood-bird's wings;
And the bee's drone:
These be her comfortings
Under the stone.

What shall watch o'er her here
When day is fled?
Here, when the night is near
And skies are red;
Here, where she lieth dear
And young and dead.

Shadows, and winds that spill
Dew; and the tune
Of the wild whippoorwill;
And the white moon;
These be the watchers still
Over her stone.

    Has the last farewell been spoken?
    Have I ta'en the parting token
        From thy lips so sweet?
    Has their last soft word been spoken
        Till again we meet?

    Why is not thy hand extended?
    Is my maiden queen offended?
        Or does she forget?
    No! my queen is not offended,
        She is kindly yet.

    For her eye is softly beaming,
    And with tenderness is teeming,
        Gentle as the dove's:
    With a holy light is beaming -
        Dare I call it love's?

    But the time is fast advancing;
    From the heaven of its glancing
        I must rend my heart:
    Treacherous Time is fast advancing,
        And I must depart.

    Ah! the pain the parting brings me!
    As a serpe...

WRITTEN IN OCTOBER, 1714

Soon after the author's coming to live in Ireland, upon the Queen's death.[1] - Swift.

'Tis true - then why should I repine
To see my life so fast decline?
But why obscurely here alone,
Where I am neither loved nor known?
My state of health none care to learn;
My life is here no soul's concern:
And those with whom I now converse
Without a tear will tend my hearse.
Removed from kind Arbuthnot's aid,
Who knows his art, but not his trade,
Preferring his regard for me
Before his credit, or his fee.
Some formal visits, looks, and words,
What mere humanity affords,
I meet perhaps from three or four,
From whom I once expected more;
Which those who tend the sick for pay,
Can act as decently as they:
But n...

    I

    I took the clock down from the shelf;
    "At eight," said I, "I shoot myself."
    It lacked a MINUTE of the hour,
    And as I waited all a-cower,
    A skinful of black, boding pain,
    Bits of my life came back again. . . .

    "Mother, there's nothing more to eat -
    Why don't you go out on the street?
    Always you sit and cry and cry;
    Here at my play I wonder why.
    Mother, when you dress up at night,
    Red are your cheeks, your eyes are bright;
    Twining a ribband in your hair,
    Kissing good-bye you go down-stair.
    Then I'm as lonely as can be.
    Oh, how I wish you were with me!
    Yet when you go out on the street,
    Mother, there's always lots to eat. . . ."


    I...

An intimation of some previous life,
Or dark dream, in the present dim-divined,
Of some uncertain sleep - or lived or dreamed
In some dead life - between a dusk and dawn;

From heathen battles to Toledo's gates,
Far off defined, his corselet and camail,
Damascened armet, shattered; in an eve's
Anger of brass a galloping glitter, one
Rode arrow-wounded. And the city caught
A cry before him and a wail behind,
Of walls beleaguered; battles; conquered kings;
Triumphant Taric; broken Spain and slaves.

And I, a Moslem slave, a miser Jew's,
Housed near the Tagus - squalid and alone
Save for his slave, held dear - to beat and starve -
Leaner than my lank shadow when the moon,
A burning beacon, westerns; and my bones
A visible hunger; famished with the ...

Last night, as my dear babe lay dead,
In agony I knelt and said:
"0 God! what have I done,
Or in what wise offended Thee,
That Thou should'st take away from me
My little son?

"Upon the thousand useless lives,
Upon the guilt that vaunting thrives,
Thy wrath were better spent!
Why should'st Thou take my little son -
Why should'st Thou vent Thy wrath upon
This innocent?"

Last night, as my dear babe lay dead,
Before mine eyes the vision spread
Of things that might have been:
Licentious riot, cruel strife,
Forgotten prayers, a wasted life
Dark red with sin!

Then, with sweet music in the air,
I saw another vision there:
A Shepherd in whose keep
A little lamb - my little child!
Of worldly wisdom undefiled,
Lay fast...

When I meet the morning beam,
Or lay me down at night to dream,
I hear my bones within me say,
"Another night, another day."

"When shall this slough of sense be cast,
This dust of thoughts be laid at last,
The man of flesh and soul be slain
And the man of bone remain?"

"This tongue that talks, these lungs that shout,
These thews that hustle us about,
This brain that fills the skull with schemes,
And its humming hive of dreams,-"

"These to-day are proud in power
And lord it in their little hour:
The immortal bones obey control
Of dying flesh and dying soul."

" 'Tis long till eve and morn are gone:
Slow the endless night comes on,
And late to fulness grows the birth
That shall last as long as earth."

"Wanderers e...

As a guest who may not stay
Long and sad farewells to say
Glides with smiling face away,

Of the sweetness and the zest
Of thy happy life possessed
Thou hast left us at thy best.

Warm of heart and clear of brain,
Of thy sun-bright spirit's wane
Thou hast spared us all the pain.

Now that thou hast gone away,
What is left of one to say
Who was open as the day?

What is there to gloss or shun?
Save with kindly voices none
Speak thy name beneath the sun.

Safe thou art on every side,
Friendship nothing finds to hide,
Love's demand is satisfied.

Over manly strength and worth,
At thy desk of toil, or hearth,
Played the lambent light of mirth,

Mirth that lit, but never burned;
All thy blame to pity ...

The South-wind brings
Life, sunshine and desire,
And on every mount and meadow
Breathes aromatic fire;
But over the dead he has no power,
The lost, the lost, he cannot restore;
And, looking over the hills, I mourn
The darling who shall not return.

I see my empty house,
I see my trees repair their boughs;
And he, the wondrous child,
Whose silver warble wild
Outvalued every pulsing sound
Within the air's cerulean round,--
The hyacinthine boy, for whom
Morn well might break and April bloom,
The gracious boy, who did adorn
The world whereinto he was born,
And by his countenance repay
The favor of the loving Day,--
Has disappeared from the Day's eye;
Far and wide she cannot find him;
My hopes pursue, they cannot bind him.
Re...

Ah! days so dark with death's eclipse!
    Woe are we! woe are we!
And the nights are ages long!
From breaking hearts, thro' pallid lips
    O my God! woe are we!
Trembleth the mourner's song;
    A blight is falling on the fair,
    And hope is dying in despair,
    And terror walketh everywhere.

All the hours are full of tears --
    O my God! woe are we!
Grief keeps watch in brightest eyes --
Every heart is strung with fears,
    Woe are we! woe are we!
All the light hath left the skies,
    And the living awe struck crowds
    See above them only clouds,
    And around them only shrouds.

Ah! the terrible farewells!
    Woe are they! woe are they!
When last words sink into moans,
While life's trembling vesper bells --

When the clock hath ceased to tick
    Soul-like in the gloomy hall;
When the latch no more doth click
    Tongue-like in the red peach-wall;
When no more come sounds of play,
    Mice nor children romping roam,
Then looks down the eye of day
    On a dead house, not a home!

But when, like an old sun's ghost,
    Haunts her vault the spectral moon;
When earth's margins all are lost,
    Melting shapes nigh merged in swoon,
Then a sound--hark! there again!--
    No, 'tis not a nibbling mouse!
'Tis a ghost, unseen of men,
    Walking through the bare-floored house!

And with lightning on the stair
    To that silent upper room,
With the thunder-shaken air
    Sudden gleaming into gloom,
With a frost-wind whistling round,
    F...

There's a face that beclouds like a shadow my pathway at morn and eve,
There's a form that glides before me which my eyes can never leave,
When I pore above the hearth and heavy thoughts my bosom fill,
I start like a sleeper from dreaming, for it's standing beside me still.

When I stroll in the gloom of the evening is that figure before me cast
With its strange and measured footfall, like the shadow of something past,
All through my summer wandering does it darken the light of the sun,
And it sits like a phantom to mock me when the work of the day is done.

It is ever present with me like an overhanging blight,
Thro' the heaviness of morning and the wakefulness of night,
When I bend within my chamber in the attitude of prayer--
With a look of wrapt devotion is it kneeling--...

Yea, whom He loves the Lord God chasteneth
With disappointments, so that this side death,
Through suffering and failure, they know Hell
To make them worthy in that Heaven to dwell
Of Love's attainment, where they come to be
Parts of its beauty and divinity.

Wirastrua, wirastrua, woe to me that you are dead!
The corpse has spoken from out his bed,
“Yesternight my burning brain
Throbbed and beat on the strings of pain:
Now I rest, all my dreaming’s done,
In the world behind the sun.
Yesterday I toiled full sore,
To-day I ride in a coach and four.
Yesternight in the streets I lay,
To-night with kings, and as good as they.”
Wirastrua! wirastrua! would I were lying as cold as you.

    I have seen many faces changed by the Sculptor Death,
    But never a face like Harold's who passed in a throe of pain.
    There were maidens and youths in the bud, and men in the lust of life;
    And women whom child-birth racked till the crying soul slipped through;
    Patriarchs withered with age and nuns ascetical white;
    And one who wasted her virgin wealth in a riot of joy.
    Brothers and sisters at last in a quiet and purple pall,
    Fellow voyagers bound to a port on an ash-blue sea,
    Locked in an utterless grief, in a mystery fearful to dream.
    All of these I have seen, but the face of Harold the bold
    Looked with a penitent pallor and stared with a sad surprise.

    For now at last he was still who never knew rest in life.
    And the ardent ...