I live with him, I see his face;
I go no more away
For visitor, or sundown;
Death's single privacy,

The only one forestalling mine,
And that by right that he
Presents a claim invisible,
No wedlock granted me.

I live with him, I hear his voice,
I stand alive to-day
To witness to the certainty
Of immortality

Taught me by Time, -- the lower way,
Conviction every day, --
That life like this is endless,
Be judgment what it may.

Yet when I am alone my eyes say, Come.
My hands cannot be still.
In that first moment all my senses ache,
Cells, that were empty fill,
The clay walls shake,
And unimprisoned thought runs where it will.

Runs and is glad and listens and doubts, and glooms
Because you are not here.
Then once more rises and is clear again
As sense is never clear,
And happy, though in vain
These eyes wait and these arms to bring you near.

Yet spite of thought my arms and eyes say, Come,
Pained with such discontent.
For though thought have you all my senses ache--
O, it was not meant
My body should never wake
But on thought's tranquil bosom rest content.

O Donall og, if you go across the sea, bring myself with you and do not forget    it; and you will have a sweetheart for fair days and market days, and the daughter of the King of Greece beside you at night. It is late last night the dog was speaking of you; the snipe was speaking of you in her deep marsh. It is you are the lonely bird through the woods; and that you may be without a mate until you find me.

You promised me, and you said a lie to me, that you would be before me where the sheep are flocked; I gave a whistle and three hundred cries to you, and I found nothing there but a bleating lamb.

You promised me a thing that was hard for you, a ship of gold under a silver mast; twelve towns with a market in all of them, and a fine white court by the side of the sea.

You promised me a thing that is not p...

I
Here in the self is all that man can know
Of Beauty, all the wonder, all the power,
All the unearthly colour, all the glow,
Here in the self which withers like a flower;
Here in the self which fades as hours pass,
And droops and dies and rots and is forgotten
Sooner, by ages, than the mirroring glass
In which it sees its glory still unrotten.
Here in the flesh, within the flesh, behind,
Swift in the blood and throbbing on the bone,
Beauty herself, the universal mind,
Eternal April wandering alone;
The God, the holy Ghost, the atoning Lord,
Here in the flesh, the never yet explored.

II
What am I, Life? A thing of watery salt
Held in cohesion by unresting cells
Which work they know not why, which never halt,
Myself unwitting where their ma...

    Breaking up -
    as in the cloissoné jar you dropped. . .
    little regard,
    a few brittle pieces scattered about the floor.
    Let's call it "shedding feelings". Expensive?
    There's always another humidor tucked away in
    the cranny of another antique shop; after all,
    a woman is only a woman
    although a fine, Cuban import
    is a worthy smoke.

    "What this country needs is a good 5¢ cigar".
    Panatellas?
    He might have added tight-fitting, long lasting.

    Nooks & crannies.
    Little things, your ways. Fruit fly (perhaps damsel wing)
    as symbol of perishability. My emblematic coat of arms.
    No season of regrets, rather
    snatch of minutes, the oasis span of a single candle.

    Who knows?...

What can I do in poetry
Now the good spirit's gone from me?
Why, nothing now but lonely sit
And over-read what I have writ.

DYING THOUGHTS.


As Life's receding sunset fades
    And night descends,
I calmly watch the gathering shades,
As darkness stealthily invades
    And daylight ends.

Earth's span is drawing to its close,
    With every breath;
My pain-racked brain no respite knows,
Yet shrinks it, from the grim repose
    It feels in death.

The curtain falls on Life's last scene,
    The end is neared;
At last I face death's somber screen,
The fleeting joys which intervene
    Have disappeared.

And as a panoramic scroll
    The past unreels;
The mocking past, beyond control,
Though buried, as a parchment roll,
    Its tale reveals.

I stand before the dread, unknown,
    Yet solemn fact;
I see the seeds of foll...

And is it true indeed, and must you go,
Set out alone across that moorland track,
No love avail, though we have loved you so,
No voice have any power to call you back?
And losing hands stretch after you in vain,
And all our eyes grow empty for your lack,
Nor hands, nor eyes, know aught of you again.

Dear friend, I shed no tear while yet you stayed,
Nor vexed your soul with unavailing word,
But you are gone, and now can all be said,
And tear and sigh too surely fall unheard.
So long I kept for you an undimmed eye,
Surely for grief this hour may well be spared,
Though could you know I still must keep it dry.

For what can tears avail you? the spring rain
That softly pelts the lattice, as with flowers,
Will of its tears a daisied counterpane
Weave...

The night is old, and all the world
Is wearied out with strife;
A long gray mist lies heavy and wan
Above the house of life.

Four stars burn up and are unquelled
By the low, shrunken moon;
Her spirit draws her down and down -
She shall be buried soon.

There is a sound that is no sound,
Yet fine it falls and clear,
The whisper of the spinning earth
To the tranced atmosphere.

An odour lives where once was air,
A strange, unearthly scent,
From the burning of the four great stars
Within the firmament.

The universe, deathless and old,
Breathes, yet is void of breath:
As still as death that seems to move
And yet is still as death.

My life closed twice before its close;
It yet remains to see
If Immortality unveil
A third event to me,

So huge, so hopeless to conceive,
As these that twice befell.
Parting is all we know of heaven,
And all we need of hell.

False world, good night! since thou hast brought
That hour upon my morn of age;
Henceforth I quit thee from my thought,
My part is ended on thy stage.

Yes, threaten, do. Alas! I fear
As little as I hope from thee:
I know thou canst not show nor bear
More hatred than thou hast to me.

My tender, first, and simple years
Thou didst abuse and then betray;
Since stir’d’st up jealousies and fears,
When all the causes were away.

Then in a soil hast planted me
Where breathe the basest of thy fools;
Where envious arts professèd be,
And pride and ignorance the schools;

Where nothing is examined, weigh’d,
But as ’tis rumour’d, so believed;
Where every freedom is betray’d,
And every goodness tax’d or grieved.

But what we’re...

Labor with what zeal we will,
    Something still remains undone,
Something uncompleted still
    Waits the rising of the sun.

By the bedside, on the stair,
    At the threshold, near the gates,
With its menace or its prayer,
    Like a mendicant it waits;

Waits, and will not go away;
    Waits, and will not be gainsaid;
By the cares of yesterday
    Each to-day is heavier made;

Till at length the burden seems
    Greater than our strength can bear,
Heavy as the weight of dreams,
    Pressing on us everywhere.

And we stand from day to day,
    Like the dwarfs of times gone by,
Who, as Northern legends say,
    On their shoulders held the sky.

Oh! we are a lone, lost nation,
    We, who sing your songs.
With his moods, and his desolation
    The poet nowhere belongs.

We are not of the people
    Who labour, believe, and doubt.
Like the bell that rings in the steeple,
    We are in the world, yet out.

In the rustic town, or the city
    We seek our place in vain;
And our hearts are starved for pity,
    And our souls are sick with pain.

Yes, the people are buying, selling,
    And the world is one great mart.
And woe for the thoughts that are dwelling
    Up in the poet's heart.

We know what the waves are saying
    As they roll up from the sea,
And the weird old wind is playing
    Our own sad melody.

We send forth a song to wander
    Like a sp...

For the last time,
The last, last time,
The last ...
All those last times have I lived through again,
And every "last" renews itself in pain--
Yes, each returns, and each returns in vain:
You return not, the last remains the last,
And I remain to cast
Weak anchors of my love in shifting sands
Of faith:--
The anchors drag, nothing I see save death.

Together we
Talked and were glad. I could not see
That one black gesture menaced you and me!
We kissed, and parted;
I left you, and was even merry-hearted....
And now my love is thwarted
That reaches back to you and searches round,
And dares not look on that harsh turfless mound.

And that last time
We walked together and the air acold
Hummed shrill around; the time that you
W...

I.

The last rose falls, wrecked of the wind and rain;
Where once it bloomed the thorns alone remain:
Dead in the wet the slow rain strews the rose.
The day was dim; now eve comes on again,
Grave as a life weighed down by many woes, -
So is the joy dead, and alive the pain.

The brown leaf flutters where the green leaf died;
Bare are the boughs, and bleak the forest side:
The wind is whirling with the last wild leaf.
The eve was strange; now dusk comes weird and wide,
Gaunt as a life that lives alone with grief, -
So doth the hope go and despair abide.

An empty nest hangs where the wood-bird pled;
Along the west the dusk dies, stormy red:
The frost is subtle as a serpent's breath.
The dusk was sad; now night is overhead,
Grim as a soul bro...

I listen to the stillness of you,
My dear, among it all;
I feel your silence touch my words as I talk,
And take them in thrall.

My words fly off a forge
The length of a spark;
I see the night-sky easily sip them
Up in the dark.

The lark sings loud and glad,
Yet I am not loth
That silence should take the song and the bird
And lose them both.

A train goes roaring south,
The steam-flag flying;
I see the stealthy shadow of silence
Alongside going.

And off the forge of the world,
Whirling in the draught of life,
Go sparks of myriad people, filling
The night with strife.

Yet they never change the darkness
Or blench it with noise;
Alone on the perfect silence
The stars are buoys.

Let mine not be that saddest fate of all
    To live beyond my greater self; to see
    My faculties decaying, as the tree
Stands stark and helpless while its green leaves fall.
Let me hear rather the imperious call,
    Which all men dread, in my glad morning time,
    And follow death ere I have reached my prime,
Or drunk the strengthening cordial of life's gall.
The lightning's stroke or the fierce tempest blast
    Which fells the green tree to the earth to-day
Is kinder than the calm that lets it last,
    Unhappy witness of its own decay.
    May no man ever look on me and say,
"She lives, but all her usefulness is past."

Tired with all these, for restful death I cry,
As to behold desert a beggar born,
And needy nothing trimm’d in jollity,
And purest faith unhappily forsworn,
And gilded honour shamefully misplac’d,
And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted,
And right perfection wrongfully disgrac’d,
And strength by limping sway disabled
And art made tongue-tied by authority,
And folly, doctor-like, controlling skill,
And simple truth miscall’d simplicity,
And captive good attending captain ill:
Tir’d with all these, from these would I be gone,
Save that, to die, I leave my love alone.