(A Retrospect.)


Convulsions came; and, where the field
Long slept in pastoral green,
A goblin-mountain was upheaved
(Sure the scared sense was all deceived),
Marl-glen and slag-ravine.

The unreserve of Ill was there,
The clinkers in her last retreat;
But, ere the eye could take it in,
Or mind could comprehension win,
It sunk! - and at our feet.

So, then, Solidity's a crust -
The core of fire below;
All may go well for many a year,
But who can think without a fear
Of horrors that happen so?

1.

Then the Inhabitants of those Cities:
Felt their Nerves change into Marrow
And hardening Bones began
In swift diseases and torments,
In throbbings & shootings & grindings
Thro' all the coasts; till weaken'd
The Senses inward rush'd shrinking,
Beneath the dark net of infection.

2.

Till the shrunken eyes clouded over
Discernd not the woven hipocrisy
But the streaky slime in their heavens
Brought together by narrowing perceptions
Appeard transparent air; for their eyes
Grew small like the eyes of a man
And in reptile forms shrinking together
Of seven feet stature they remaind

3.

Six days they shrunk up from existence
And on the seventh day they rested
And they bless'd the seventh day, in sick hope:...

Why should we weep or mourn, Angelic boy,
For such thou wert ere from our sight removed,
Holy, and ever dutiful beloved
From day to day with never-ceasing joy,
And hopes as dear as could the heart employ
In aught to earth pertaining? Death has proved
His might, nor less his mercy, as behoved,
Death conscious that he only could destroy
The bodily frame. That beauty is laid low
To moulder in a far-off field of Rome;
But Heaven is now, blest Child, thy Spirit's home:
When such divine communion, which we know,
Is felt, thy Roman-burial place will be
Surely a sweet remembrancer of Thee.

Full knee-deep lies the winter snow,
And the winter winds are wearily sighing:
Toll ye the church bell sad and slow,
And tread softly and speak low,
For the old year lies a-dying.
Old year you must not die;
You came to us so readily,
You lived with us so steadily,
Old year you shall not die.

He lieth still: he doth not move:
He will not see the dawn of day.
He hath no other life above.
He gave me a friend and a true truelove
And the New-year will take 'em away.
Old year you must not go;
So long you have been with us,
Such joy as you have seen with us,
Old year, you shall not go.

He froth'd his bumpers to the brim;
A jollier year we shall not see.
But tho' his eyes are waxing dim,
And tho' his foes speak ill of him,
He ...

A life more bright than the sun's face, bowed
Through stress of season and coil of cloud,
Sets: and the sorrow that casts out fear
Scarce deems him dead in his chill still shroud,
Dead on the breast of the dying year,
Poet and painter and friend, thrice dear
For love of the suns long set, for love
Of song that sets not with sunset here,
For love of the fervent heart, above
Their sense who saw not the swift light move
That filled with sense of the loud sun's lyre
The thoughts that passion was fain to prove
In fervent labour of high desire
And faith that leapt from its own quenched pyre
Alive and strong as the sun, and caught
From darkness light, and from twilight fire.
Passion, deep as the depths unsought
Whence faith's own hope may redeem us nought,
...

    Round them a fierce, wide, crazy noon
    Heaves with crushed lips and glowing sides
    Against the huge and drowsy sun.
    Beneath them turn the glittering tides
    Where dizzy waters reel with gold,
    And strange, rich trophies sink and rise
    From decks of sunken argosies.
    With shining arms they cleave the cold
    Far reaches of the sea, and beat
    The hissing foam with flash of feet
    Into bright fangs, while breathlessly
    Curls over them the amorous sea.

    Naked they laugh and revel there.
    One shakes the sea-drops from his hair,
    Then, singing, takes the bubbles: one
    Lies couched among the shells, the sands
    Telling gold hours between his hands:
    One floats like sea-wrack in the sun.
    The gods o...

Since there 's no helpe, Come let vs kisse and part,
Nay, I haue done: You get no more of Me,
And I am glad, yea glad withall my heart,
That thus so cleanly, I my Selfe can free,
Shake hands for euer, Cancell all our Vowes,
And when we meet at any time againe,
Be it not scene in either of our Browes,
That We one iot of former Loue reteyne;
Now at the last gaspe of Loues latest Breath,
When his Pulse fayling, Passion speechlesse lies,
When Faith is kneeling by his bed of Death,
And Innocence is closing vp his Eyes,
    Now if thou would'st, when all haue giuen him ouer,
    From Death to Life, thou might'st him yet recouer.

1.

Since now the hour is come at last,
When you must quit your anxious lover;
Since now, our dream of bliss is past,
One pang, my girl, and all is over.


2.

Alas! that pang will be severe,
Which bids us part to meet no more;
Which tears me far from one so dear,
Departing for a distant shore.


3.

Well! we have pass'd some happy hours,
And joy will mingle with our tears;
When thinking on these ancient towers,
The shelter of our infant years;


4.

Where from this Gothic casement's height,
We view'd the lake, the park, the dell,
And still, though tears obstruct our sight,
We lingering look a last farewell,


5.

O'er fields through which we us'd to run,

There was no sound in earth or air,
    And soft the moonbeams smiled
On stately tower and temple fair,
    Like mother o'er her child;
And all was hushed in the deep repose
That welcomes the summer evening's close.

Many an eye that day had wept,
    And many a cheek with joy grew bright,
Which now, alike unconscious, slept
    Beneath the wan moonlight;
And mandolin and gay guitar
Had ceased to woo the evening star.

The lover has sought his couch again,
    And the maiden's eyes no longer glisten,
As she comes to the lattice to catch his strain,
    And sighs while she bends to smile and listen.
She sleeps, but her rosy lips still move,
And in dreams she answers the voice of love.

Sleep on, ye thoughtless and giddy train,
    ...

Said the hearse-horse to the coffin,
"What the devil have you there?
I may trot from court to square,
Yet it neither swears nor groans,
When I jolt it over stones."
Said the coffin to the hearse-horse,
"Bones!"

Said the hearse-horse to the coffin,
"What the devil have you there,
With that purple frozen stare?
Where the devil has it been
To get that shadow grin?"
Said the coffin to the hearse-horse,
"Skin!"

Said the hearse-horse to the coffin,
"What the devil have you there?
It has fingers, it has hair;
Yet it neither kicks nor squirms
At the undertaker's terms."
Said the coffin to the hearse-horse,
"Worms!"

I saw him steal the light away
That haunted in her eye:
It went so gently none could say
More than that it was there one day
And missing by-and-by.

I watched her longer, and he stole
Her lily tincts and rose;
All her young sprightliness of soul
Next fell beneath his cold control,
And disappeared like those.

I asked: "Why do you serve her so?
Do you, for some glad day,
Hoard these her sweets - ?" He said, "O no,
They charm not me; I bid Time throw
Them carelessly away."

Said I: "We call that cruelty -
We, your poor mortal kind."
He mused. "The thought is new to me.
Forsooth, though I men's master be,
Theirs is the teaching mind!"

Gli occhi di ch' io parlai sì caldamente.

HIS LYRE IS NOW ATTUNED ONLY TO WOE.


    The eyes, the face, the limbs of heavenly mould,
So long the theme of my impassion'd lay,
Charms which so stole me from myself away,
That strange to other men the course I hold;
The crispèd locks of pure and lucid gold,
The lightning of the angelic smile, whose ray
To earth could all of paradise convey,
A little dust are now!--to feeling cold!
And yet I live!--but that I live bewail,
Sunk the loved light that through the tempest led
My shatter'd bark, bereft of mast and sail:
Hush'd be for aye the song that breathed love's fire!
Lost is the theme on which my fancy fed,
And turn'd to mourning my once tuneful lyre.

DACRE.


    The eye...

Like an old battle, youth is wild
With bugle and spear, and counter cry,
Fanfare and drummery, yet a child
Dreaming of that sweet chivalry,
The piercing terror cannot see.

He, with a mild and serious eye
Along the azure of the years,
Sees the sweet pomp sweep hurtling by;
But he sees not death's blood and tears,
Sees not the plunging of the spears.

And all the strident horror of
Horse and rider, in red defeat,
Is only music fine enough
To lull him into slumber sweet
In fields where ewe and lambkin bleat.

O, if with such simplicity
Himself take arms and suffer war;
With beams his targe shall gilded be,
Though in the thickening gloom be far
The steadfast light of any star!

Though hoarse War's eagle on him perch,
Q...

Word over all, beautiful as the sky!
Beautiful that war, and all its deeds of carnage, must in time be utterly lost;
That the hands of the sisters Death and Night, incessantly softly wash again, and ever again, this soil'd world:
For my enemy is dead a man divine as myself is dead;
I look where he lies, white-faced and still, in the coffin I draw near;
I bend down, and touch lightly with my lips the white face in the coffin.

I

O fairest flower no sooner blown but blasted,
Soft silken Primrose fading timelesslie,
Summers chief honour if thou hadst outlasted
Bleak winters force that made thy blossome drie;
For he being amorous on that lovely die
That did thy cheek envermeil, thought to kiss
But kill’d alas, and then bewayl’d his fatal bliss.

II

For since grim Aquilo his charioter
By boistrous rape th’ Athenian damsel got,
He thought it toucht his Deitie full neer,
If likewise he some fair one wedded not,
Thereby to wipe away th’ infamous blot,
Of long-uncoupled bed, and childless eld,
Which ‘mongst the wanton gods a foul reproach was held.

III

So mounting up in ycie-pearled carr,
Through middle empire of the freezing aire
He wanderd long,...

Volo con l' ali de' pensieri al cielo.

HE SEEMS TO BE WITH HER IN HEAVEN.


    So often on the wings of thought I fly
Up to heaven's blissful seats, that I appear
As one of those whose treasure is lodged there,
The rent veil of mortality thrown by.
A pleasing chillness thrills my heart, while I
Listen to her voice, who bids me paleness wear--
"Ah! now, my friend, I love thee, now revere,
For changed thy face, thy manners," doth she cry.
She leads me to her Lord: and then I bow,
Preferring humble prayer, He would allow
That I his glorious face, and hers might see.
Thus He replies: "Thy destiny's secure;
To stay some twenty, or some ten years more,
Is but a little space, though long it seems to thee."

NOTT.

This mortal dies,--
But, in the moment when the light fails here,
The darkness opens, and the vision clear
Breaks on his eyes.
The vail is rent,--
On his enraptured gaze heaven's glory breaks,
He was asleep, and in that moment wakes.

    The Rev. Percy Ferguson, patrician
    Vicar of Christ, companion of the strong,
    And member of the inner shrine, where men
    Observe the rituals of the golden calf;
    A dilettante, and writer for the press
    Upon such themes as optimism, order,
    Obedience, beauty, law, while Elenor Murray's
    Life was being weighed by Merival
    Preached in disparagement of Merival
    Upon a fatal Sunday, as it chanced,
    Too near to doom's day for the clergyman.
    For, as the word had gone about that waste
    In lives preoccupied this Merival,
    And many talked of waste, and spoke a life
    Where waste had been in whole or part - the pulpit
    Should take a hand, thought Ferguson. And so
    The Reverend Percy Ferguson preached thus
    To a...