The light has left the hill-side. Yesterday
These skies shewed blue against the dusky trees,
The leaves' soft murmur in the evening breeze
Was music, and the waves danced in the bay.
Then was my heart, as ever, far away
With you, - and I could see you as one sees
A mirrored face, - and happiness and ease
And hope were mine, in spite of long delay.

After these months of waiting, this is all!
Hope, dead, lies coffined, shrouded in despair,
With all the blessings of the outer air
Forgot, 'neath the black covering of a pall.
Only the darkening of the woodland ways,
A heart's low moaning over wasted days.

You ask why I am sad to-day,
I have no cares, no griefs, you say?
Ah, yes, 't is true, I have no grief--
But--is there not the falling leaf?

The bare tree there is mourning left
With all of autumn's gray bereft;
It is not what has happened me,
Think of the bare, dismantled tree.

The birds go South along the sky,
I hear their lingering, long good-bye.
Who goes reluctant from my breast?
And yet--the lone and wind-swept nest.

The mourning, pale-flowered hearse goes by,
Why does a tear come to my eye?
Is it the March rain blowing wild?
I have no dead, I know no child.

I am no widow by the bier
Of him I held supremely dear.
I have not seen the choicest one
Sink down as sinks the westering sun.

Faith unto faith have ...

The heart of me's an empty thing, that never stirs at all
For Moon-shine or Spring-time, or a far bird's call.
I only know 'tis living by a grief that shakes it so,--
Like an East wind in Autumn, when the old nests blow.

Grey Eyes and Black Hair, 'tis never you I blame.
'Tis long years and easy years since last I spoke your name.
And I'm long past the knife-thrust I got at wake or fair.
Or looking past the lighted door and fancying you there.

Grey Eyes and Black Hair--the grief is never this;
I've long forgot the soft arms--the first, wild kiss.
But, Oh, girl that tore my youth,--'tis this I have to bear,--
If you were kneeling at my feet I'd neither stay nor care.

Where is now my peace of mind?
    Gone, alas! for evermore:
Turn where'er I may, I find
    Thorns where roses bloomed before!
O'er the green-fields of my soul,
    Where the springs of joy were found,
Now the clouds of sorrow roll,
    Shading all the prospect round!

Do I merit pangs like these,
    That have cleft my heart in twain?
Must I, to the very lees,
    Drain thy bitter chalice, Pain?
Silent grief all grief excels;
    Life and it together part--
Like a restless worm it dwells
    Deep within the human heart!

        The saddest hour of anguish and of loss
    Is not that season of supreme despair
    When we can find no least light anywhere
        To gild the dread, black shadow of the Cross;
        Not in that luxury of sorrow when
    We sup on salt of tears, and drink the gall
    Of memories of days beyond recall -
        Of lost delights that cannot come again.

    But when, with eyes that are no longer wet,
        We look out on the great, wide world of men,
        And, smiling, lean toward a bright to-morrow,
    Then backward shrink, with sudden keen regret,
    To find that we are learning to forget:
        Ah! then we face the saddest hour of sorrow.

Let me not see your grief!
O, let not any see
That grief,
Nor how your heart still rocks
Like a temple with long earthquake shocks.
Let me not see
Your grief.

These eyes have seen such wrong,
Yet remained cold:
Ills grown strong,
Corruption's many-headed worm
Destroying feet that moved so firm--
Shall these eyes see
Your grief?

And that black worm has crawled
Into the brain
Where thought had walked
Nobly, and love and honour moved as one,
And brave things bravely were begun....
Now, can thought see
Unabashed your grief?

Into that brain your grief
Has run like cleansing fire:
Your grief
Through these unfaithful eyes has leapt
And touched honour where it lightly slept.
Now when I see
In mem...

Slow figures in some live remorseless frieze,
The approaching days escapeless and unguessed,
With mask and shroud impenetrably dressed;
Time, whose inexorable destinies
Bear down upon us like impending seas;
And the huge presence of this world, at best
A sightless giant wandering without rest,
Agèd and mad with many miseries.

The weight and measure of these things who knows?
Resting at times beside life's thought-swept stream,
Sobered and stunned with unexpected blows,
We scarcely hear the uproar; life doth seem,
Save for the certain nearness of its woes,
Vain and phantasmal as a sick man's dream.

Christ was not sad, i' th' garden, for His own
Passion, but for His sheep's dispersion.

Daughter of my nobler hope
    That dying gave thee birth,
    Sweet Melancholy!
    For memory of the dead,
    In her dear stead,
    'Bide thou with me,
    Sweet Melancholy!
As purple shadows to the tree,
When the last sun-rays sadly slope
Athwart the bare and darkening earth,
    Art thou to me,
    Sweet Melancholy!

When the sad word, "Adieu," from my lip is nigh falling,
    And with it, Hope passes away,
Ere the tongue hath half breathed it, my fond heart recalling
    That fatal farewell, bids me stay,
For oh! 'tis a penance so weary
    One hour from thy presence to be,
That death to this soul were less dreary,
    Less dark than long absence from thee.

Thy beauty, like Day, o'er the dull world breaking.
    Brings life to the heart it shines o'er,
And, in mine, a new feeling of happiness waking,
    Made light what was darkness before.
But mute is the Day's sunny glory,
While thine hath a voice, on whose breath,
    More sweet than the Syren's sweet story,
My hopes hang, through life and through death!

Ask not the pallid stranger's woe,
With beating heart and throbbing breast,
Whose step is faltering, weak, and slow,
As though the body needed rest. -

Whose 'wildered eye no object meets,
Nor cares to ken a friendly glance,
With silent grief his bosom beats, -
Now fixed, as in a deathlike trance.

Who looks around with fearful eye,
And shuns all converse with man kind,
As though some one his griefs might spy,
And soothe them with a kindred mind.

A friend or foe to him the same,
He looks on each with equal eye;
The difference lies but in the name,
To none for comfort can he fly. -

'Twas deep despair, and sorrow's trace,
To him too keenly given,
Whose memory, time could not efface -
His peace was lodged in Heaven. -

Come, let us set our careful breasts,
Like Philomel, against the thorn,
To aggravate the inward grief,
That makes her accents so forlorn;
The world has many cruel points,
Whereby our bosoms have been torn,
And there are dainty themes of grief,
In sadness to outlast the morn, -
True honor's dearth, affection's death,
Neglectful pride, and cankering scorn,
With all the piteous tales that tears
Have water'd since the world was born.

The world! - it is a wilderness,
Where tears are hung on every tree;
For thus my gloomy phantasy
Makes all things weep with me!
Come let us sit and watch the sky,
And fancy clouds, where no clouds be;
Grief is enough to blot the eye,
And make heaven black with misery.
Why should birds sing such merry notes,

Ah me! too soon the autumn comes
Among these purple-plaintive hills!
Too soon among the forest gums
Premonitory flame she spills,
Bleak, melancholy flame that kills.

Her white fogs veil the morn, that rims
With wet the moonflower's elfin moons;
And, like exhausted starlight, dims
The last slim lily-disk; and swoons
With scents of hazy afternoons.

Her gray mists haunt the sunset skies,
And build the west's cadaverous fires,
Where Sorrow sits with lonely eyes,
And hands that wake an ancient lyre,
Beside the ghost of dead Desire.

Ah me! too soon the autumn comes
Among these purple-plaintive hills!
Too soon among the forest gums
Premonitory flame she spills,
Bleak, melancholy flame that kills.

Her white fogs veil the morn, that rims
With wet the moonflower's elfin moons;
And, like exhausted starlight, dims
The last slim lily-disk; and swoons
With scents of hazy afternoons.

Her gray mists haunt the sunset skies,
And build the west's cadaverous fires,
Where Sorrow sits with lonely eyes,
And hands that wake an ancient lyre,
Beside the ghost of dead Desire.

What bitter sorrow courses down
Yon mourner’s faded cheek?
Those scalding drops betray a grief
Within, too full to speak.
Outspoken words cannot express
The pangs, the pains of years;
They’re ne’er so deep or eloquent
As are those silent tears.

Here is a wound that in the breast
Must canker, hid’n from sight;
Though all without seems sunny day,
Within ’Tis ever night.
Yet sometimes from this secret source
The gloomy truth appears;
The wind’s dark dungeon must have vent
If but in silent tears.

The world may deem from outward looks
That heart is hard and cold;
But oh! could they the mantle lift
What sorrows would be told!
Then, only then, the truth would show
Which most the bosom sears:
The pain portrayed by burning word...

'Tis not the loss of love's assurance,
It is not doubting what thou art,
But 'tis the too, too long endurance
Of absence, that afflicts my heart.

The fondest thoughts two hearts can cherish,
When each is lonely doom'd to weep,
Are fruits on desert isles that perish,
Or riches buried in the deep.

What though, untouch'd by jealous madness,
Our bosom's peace may fall to wreck;
Th' undoubting heart, that breaks with sadness,
Is but more slowly doom'd to break.

Absence! is not the soul torn by it
From more than light, or life, or breath?
'Tis Lethe's gloom, but not its quiet,
The pain without the peace of death.

I tell you, hopeless grief is passionless;
That only men incredulous of despair,
Half-taught in anguish, through the midnight air
Beat upward to God's throne in loud access
Of shrieking and reproach. Full desertness,
In souls as countries, lieth silent-bare
Under the blanching, vertical eye-glare
Of the absolute Heavens. Deep-hearted man, express
Grief for thy Dead in silence like to death
Most like a monumental statue set
In everlasting watch and moveless woe
Till itself crumble to the dust beneath.
Touch it; the marble eyelids are not wet:
If it could weep, it could arise and go.

Bowed hearts that hold the saddest memories
Are the most beautiful; and such make sweet
Light happy moods of alien natures which
Their sadness contacts, and so sanctifies.

And such to me is an old, gabled house,
Deserted and neglected and unknown
Within the dreamy hollow of its hills,
Dark, cedared hills and fruitless orchards sear;
With but its host of shrouded memories
Haunting its low and desolate rooms and halls,
Its roomy hearths and cob-webbed crevices.

Here in dim rainy noons I love to sit,
And hear the running rain along the roof,
The creak and crack of noises that are born
Of unseen and mysterious agencies;
The dripping footfalls of the wind adown
Lone winding stairways massy-banistered;
A clapping door and then a sudden hush
Tha...