Death

Take them, O Death! and bear away
    Whatever thou canst call thine own!
Thine image, stamped upon this clay,
    Doth give thee that, but that alone!

Take them, O Grave! and let them lie
    Folded upon thy narrow shelves,
As garments by the soul laid by,
    And precious only to ourselves!

Take them, O great Eternity!
    Our little life is but a gust
That bends the branches of thy tree,
    And trails its blossoms in the dust!

Ask not why hearts turn Magazines of passions,
And why that grief is clad in sev'ral fashions;
Why She on progress goes, and doth not borrow
The smallest respite from th'extreams of sorrow,
Her misery is got to such an height,
As makes the earth groan to support its weight,
Such storms of woe, so strongly have beset her,
She hath no place for worse, nor hope for better;
Her comfort is, if any for her be,
That none can shew more cause of grief then she.
Ask not why some in mournfull black are clad;
The Sun is set, there needs must be a shade.
Ask not why every face a sadness shrowdes;
The setting Sun ore-cast us hath with Clouds.
Ask not why the great glory of the Skye
That gilds the stars with heavenly Alchamy,
Which all the world doth lighten with his rayes,<...

To him who in the love of Nature holds
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks
A various language; for his gayer hours
She has a voice of gladness, and a smile
And eloquence of beauty, and she glides
Into his darker musings, with a mild
And healing sympathy, that steals away
Their sharpness, e're he is aware. When thoughts
Of the last bitter hour come like a blight
Over thy spirit, and sad images
Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall,
And breathless darkness, and the narrow house,
Make thee to shudder, and grow sick at heart;
Go forth, under the open sky, and list
To Nature's teachings, while from all around,
Earth and her waters, and the depths of air,
Comes a still voice, Yet a few days, and thee
The all-beholding sun shall see no more
In a...

    The loose earth falls in the grave like a peaceful regular breathing;
    Too like, for I was deceived a moment by the sound:
    It has covered the heap of bracken that the gardener laid above him;
    Quiet the spade swings: there we have now his mound.

    A patch of fresh earth on the floor of the wood's renewing chamber:
    All around is grass and moss and the hyacinth's dark green sprouts:
    And oaks are above that were old when his fiftieth sire was a puppy:
    And far away in the garden I hear the children's shouts.

    Their joy is remote as a dream.    It is strange how we buy our sorrow
    For the touch of perishing things, idly, with open eyes;
    How we give our hearts to brutes that will die in a few seasons,
    Nor trouble what we do when we do it...

(Athenaeum, October 14, 1848)


Chide not; let me breathe a little,
    For I shall not mourn him long;
Though the life-cord was so brittle,
    The love-cord was very strong.
I would wake a little space
Till I find a sleeping-place.

You can go, - I shall not weep;
    You can go unto your rest.
My heart-ache is all too deep,
    And too sore my throbbing breast.
Can sobs be, or angry tears,
Where are neither hopes nor fears?

Though with you I am alone
    And must be so everywhere,
I will make no useless moan, -
    None shall say 'She could not bear:'
While life lasts I will be strong, -
But I shall not struggle long.

Listen, listen! Everywhere
    A low voice is calling me,
And a step is on the sta...

Fade off the ridges, rosy light,
Fade slowly from the last gray height,
And leave no gloomy cloud to grieve
The heart of this enchanted eve!

All things beneath the still sky seem
Bound by the spell of a sweet dream;
In the dusk forest, dreamingly,
Droops slowly down each plumèd head;
The river flowing softly by
Dreams of the sea; the quiet sea
Dreams of the unseen stars; and I
Am dreaming of the dreamless dead.

The river has a silken sheen,
But red rays of the sunset stain
Its pictures, from the steep shore caught,
Till shades of rock, and fern, and tree
Glow like the figures on a pane
Of some old church by twilight seen,
Or like the rich devices wrought
In mediaeval tapestry.

All lonely in a drifting boat
Through shi...

Something is dead . . .
The grace of sunset solitudes, the march
Of the solitary moon, the pomp and power
Of round on round of shining soldier-stars
Patrolling space, the bounties of the sun -
Sovran, tremendous, unimaginable -
The multitudinous friendliness of the sea,
Possess no more - no more.

Something is dead . . .
The Autumn rain-rot deeper and wider soaks
And spreads, the burden of Winter heavier weighs,
His melancholy close and closer yet
Cleaves, and those incantations of the Spring
That made the heart a centre of miracles
Grow formal, and the wonder-working bours
Arise no more - no more.

Something is dead . . .
'Tis time to creep in close about the fire
And tell grey tales of what we were, and dream
Old dreams and faded, an...

Some day in Spring,
When earth is fair and glad,
And sweet birds sing,
And fewest hearts are sad --
    Shall I die then?
    Ah! me, no matter when;
I know it will be sweet
    To leave the homes of men
And rest beneath the sod,
To kneel and kiss Thy feet
In Thy home, O my God!

Some Summer morn
Of splendors and of songs,
When roses hide the thorn
And smile -- the spirit's wrongs --
    Shall I die then?
    Ah! me, no matter when;
I know I will rejoice
    To leave the haunts of men
And lie beneath the sod,
To hear Thy tender voice
In Thy home, O my God!

Some Autumn eve,
When chill clouds drape the sky,
When bright things grieve
Because all fair things die --
    Shall I die then?
    Ah! me, ...

"What traveller soever wander here
In quest of peace and what is best of pleasure,
Let not his hope be overcast and drear
Because I, Death, am here to fix the measure
Of life, even in blameless Arcady.
Bay, laurel, myrtle, ivy never sere,
And fields flower-decorated all the year,
And streams that carry secrets to the sea,
And hills that hold back something evermore
Though wild their speech with clouds in thunder-roar, -
Yea, every sylvan sight and peaceful tone
Are thine to give thy days their purer zest.
Let not the legend grieve thee on this stone.
I Death am here. What then? My name is Rest."

    1

    "Death is but a sleep"
    quaint rationalization
    even to Revolutionaries.
    Think of Robespierre
    holding his bleeding jaw
    or Marat outside -
    eyeing the inscription,
    scofula no longer distracting while
    tepidly emptying bath water.

    2
    Dreams, poetry of painting,
    deathly pastel shades alongside
    granite canyons
    entwined with rosebuds and leaves -
    bone horseshoes clanking in the dark.

    3
    Catch basin, drainage ditch
    upon which the raspberry
    parts its tendrils and
    human remains, the loathing
    of the living ("not dead yet...."
    ...appropriate obscenity:)
    scrawled on one Victorian
    mortuary, windows knocked out,
    ...

There late was One within whose subtle being,
As light and wind within some delicate cloud
That fades amid the blue noon's burning sky,
Genius and death contended. None may know
The sweetness of the joy which made his breath
Fail, like the trances of the summer air,
When, with the Lady of his love, who then
First knew the unreserve of mingled being,
He walked along the pathway of a field
Which to the east a hoar wood shadowed o'er,
But to the west was open to the sky.
There now the sun had sunk, but lines of gold
Hung on the ashen clouds, and on the points
Of the far level grass and nodding flowers
And the old dandelion's hoary beard,
And, mingled with the shades of twilight, lay
On the brown massy woods - and in the east
The broad and burning moon linger...

AFTER READING A LIFE AND LETTERS


‘Cursed be he that moves my bones.’

Shakespeare’s Epitaph.



You might have won the Poet’s name,
If such be worth the winning now,
And gain’d a laurel for your brow
Of sounder leaf than I can claim;

But you have made the wiser choice,
A life that moves to gracious ends
Thro’ troops of unrecording friends,
A deedful life, a silent voice.

And you have miss’d the irreverent doom
Of those that wear the Poet’s crown;
Hereafter, neither knave nor clown
Shall hold their orgies at your tomb.

For now the Poet cannot die,
Nor leave his music as of old,
But round him ere he scarce be cold
Begins the scandal and the cry:

‘Proclaim the faults he would not show;
Br...

SEVEN YEARS AFTER HIS DEATH

I shiver, Spirit fierce and bold,
At thought of what I now behold:
As vapours breathed from dungeons cold,
Strike pleasure dead,
So sadness comes from out the mould
Where Burns is laid.

And have I then thy bones so near,
And thou forbidden to appear?
As if it were thyself that's here
I shrink with pain;
And both my wishes and my fear
Alike are vain.

Off weight, nor press on weight! away
Dark thoughts! they came, but not to stay;
With chastened feelings would I pay
The tribute due
To him, and aught that hides his clay
From mortal view.

Fresh as the flower, whose modest worth
He sang, his genius "glinted" forth,
Rose like a star that touching earth,
For so it seems,
Doth glori...

    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.

Our ancient church! its lowly tower,
Beneath the loftier spire,
Is shadowed when the sunset hour
Clothes the tall shaft in fire;
It sinks beyond the distant eye
Long ere the glittering vane,
High wheeling in the western sky,
Has faded o'er the plain.

Like Sentinel and Nun, they keep
Their vigil on the green;
One seems to guard, and one to weep,
The dead that lie between;
And both roll out, so full and near,
Their music's mingling waves,
They shake the grass, whose pennoned spear
Leans on the narrow graves.

The stranger parts the flaunting weeds,
Whose seeds the winds have strown
So thick, beneath the line he reads,
They shade the sculptured stone;
The child unveils his clustered brow,
And ponders for a while
The graven...

His eyes in eclipse,
Pale-cold his lips,
The light of his hopes unfed,
Mute his tongue,
His bow unstrung
With the tears he hath shed,
Backward drooping his graceful head,
Love is dead:
His last arrow is sped;
He hath not another dart;
Go–carry him to his dark deathbed;
Bury him in the cold, cold heart–
Love is dead.
O truest love! art thou forlorn,
And unrevenged? thy pleasant wiles
Forgotten, and thine innocent joy?
Shall hollow-hearted apathy,
The cruellest form of perfect scorn,
With languor of most hateful smiles,
For ever write,
In the withered light
Of the tearless eye,
And epitaph that all may spy?
No! sooner she herself shall die.

For her the showers shall not fall,
Nor the round sun shine that shineth...

Death takes her hand and leads her through the waste
Of her own soul, wherein she hears the voice
Of lost Love's tears, and, famishing, can but taste
The dead-sea fruit of Life's remembered joys.

The song of Kilvani:    fairest she
In all the land of Savatthi.
She had one child, as sweet and gay
And dear to her as the light of day.
She was so young, and he so fair,
The same bright eyes and the same dark hair;
To see them by the blossomy way,
They seemed two children at their play.

There came a death-dart from the sky,
Kilvani saw her darling die.
The glimmering shade his eyes invades,
Out of his cheek the red bloom fades;
His warm heart feels the icy chill,
The round limbs shudder, and are still.
And yet Kilvani held him fast
Long after life's last pulse was past,
As if her kisses could restore
The smile gone out for evermore.

But when she saw her child was dead,
She scattered ashes on her head,
And seized the small corp...