I think I never passed so sad an hour,
    Dear friend, as that one at the church to-night.
The edifice from basement to the tower
    Was one resplendent blaze of colored light.
Up through broad aisles the stylish crowd was thronging,
    Each richly robed like some king's bidden guest.
"Here will I bring my sorrow and my longing,"
    I said, "and here find rest."

I heard the heavenly organ's voice of thunder,
    It seemed to give me infinite relief.
I wept. Strange eyes looked on in well-bred wonder.
    I dried my tears: their gaze profaned my grief.
Wrapt in the costly furs, and silks and laces
    Beat alien hearts, that had no part with me.
I could not read, in all those proud cold faces,
    One thought of sympathy.

I watched them bowing a...

A bending staff I would not break,
A feeble faith I would not shake,
Nor even rashly pluck away
The error which some truth may stay,
Whose loss might leave the soul without
A shield against the shafts of doubt.

And yet, at times, when over all
A darker mystery seems to fall,
(May God forgive the child of dust,
Who seeks to know, where Faith should trust!)
I raise the questions, old and dark,
Of Uzdom's tempted patriarch,
And, speech-confounded, build again
The baffled tower of Shinar's plain.

I am: how little more I know!
Whence came I? Whither do I go?
A centred self, which feels and is;
A cry between the silences;
A shadow-birth of clouds at strife
With sunshine on the hills of life;
A shaft from Nature's quiver cast
Into...

When I am dead a few poor souls shall grieve
As I grieved for my brother long ago.
Scarce did my eyes grow dim,
I had forgotten him;
I was far-off hearing the spring winds blow,
And many summers burned
When, though still reeling with my eyes aflame,
I heard that faded name
Whispered one Spring amid the hurrying world
From which, years gone, he turned.

I looked up at my windows and I saw
The trees, thin spectres sucked forth by the moon.
The air was very still
Above a distant hill;
It was the hour of night's full silver moon.
'O are thou there my brother?' my soul cried;
And all the pale stars down bright rivers wept,
As my heart sadly crept
About the empty hills, bathed in that light
That lapped him when he died.

Ah! it was cold...

    Well satisfied with all his own, he stands
    Holding a trembling balance in his hands;
    On one scale - wealth and ease, men's praises, too -
    Whatever charms the soul, and keeps it true.
    But on the other scale - lo - the foul street
    Where pallid children play, where poor folk greet,
    And crowded houses dirty, dimly lit,
    On whose dull walls all misery is writ,
    Houses wherein the herded cannot fight
    The ambushed evil lurking day and night.
    Has he - contented one - who counts his gain,
    Balanced the cost - the wretchedness and pain
    Of those who help him hoard his heap of gold?
    Ah, human life may be too dearly sold!
    For see, the one scale weighs the other down.
    His gold, his ease, his honors - by Heaven's frown<...

Long had she knelt at the Madonna's shrine,
With the empty chapel, cold and grey,
Telling her beads, while grief with marring line
And bitter tear stole all her youth away.

Outcast was she from what Life holdeth dear;
Banished from joy that other souls might win;
And from the dark beyond she turned with fear,
Being so branded by the mark of sin.

Yet when at last she raised her troubled face,
Haunted by sorrow, whitened by alarms,
Mary leaned down from out the pictured place,
And laid the little Christ within her arms.

Rosy and warm she held Him to her heart,
She - the abandoned one - the thing apart.

How will it be when one of us alone
    Goes on that strange last journey of the soul?
That certain search for an uncertain goal,
    That voyage on which no comradeship is known?
Will our dear sea sing with the old sweet tone,
    Though one sits stricken where its billows roll?
Will space be dumb, or from the mystic pole
    Will spirit-messages be backward blown?
When our united lives are wrenched apart,
    And day no more means fond companionship,
When fervent night, and lovely languorous dawn,
    Are only memories to one sad heart,
And but in dreams love-kisses burn the lip, -
    Dear God, how can this same fair world move on?

Once it smiled a silent dell
Where the people did not dwell;
They had gone unto the wars,
Trusting to the mild-eyed stars,
Nightly, from their azure towers,
To keep watch above the flowers,
In the midst of which all day
The red sun-light lazily lay,
Now each visitor shall confess
The sad valley’s restlessness.
Nothing there is motionless,
Nothing save the airs that brood
Over the magic solitude.
Ah, by no wind are stirred those trees
That palpitate like the chill seas
Around the misty Hebrides!
Ah, by no wind those clouds are driven
That rustle through the unquiet Heaven
Unceasingly, from morn till even,
Over the violets there that lie
In myriad types of the human eye,
Over the lilies that wave
And weep above a nameless grave!

It was a day of sombre heat:
The still, dense air was void of sound
And life; no wing of bird did beat
A little breeze through it, the ground
Was like live ashes to the feet.
From the black hills that loomed around
The valley many a sudden spire
Of flame shot up, and writhed, and curled,
And sank again for heaviness:
And heavy seemed to men that day
The burden of the weary world.
For evermore the sky did press
Closer upon the earth that lay
Fainting beneath, as one in dire
Dreams of the night, upon whose breast
Sits a black phantom of unrest
That holds him down. The earth and sky
Appeared unto the troubled eye
A roof of smoke, a floor of fire.

There was no water in the land.
Deep in the night of each ravine
Men, vainly searching ...

It is not a word spoken,
Few words are said;
Nor even a look of the eyes
Nor a bend of the head,

But only a hush of the heart
That has too much to keep,
Only memories waking
That sleep so light a sleep.

Out in de night a sad bird moans,
An', oh, but hit 's moughty lonely;
Times I kin sing, but mos' I groans,
Fu' oh, but hit 's moughty lonely!
Is you sleepin' well dis evenin', Marfy, deah?
W'en I calls you fom de cabin, kin you hyeah?
'T ain't de same ol' place to me,
Nuffin' 's lak hit used to be,
W'en I knowed dat you was allus some'ers near.

Down by de road de shadders grows,
An', oh, but hit's moughty lonely;
Seem lak de ve'y moonlight knows,
An', oh, but hit's moughty lonely!
Does you know, I's cryin' fu' you, oh, my wife?
Does you know dey ain't no joy no mo' in life?
An' my only t'ought is dis,
Dat I's honin' fu' de bliss
Fu' to quit dis groun' o' worriment an' strife.

Dah on de baid my banjo lays,
An', oh, but hit's moughty l...

The eyes of the portraits on the wall
Look at me, follow me,
Stare incessantly:
I take it their glance means nothing at all?
- Clearly, oh clearly! Nothing at all ...

Out in the gardens by the lake
The sleeping peacocks suddenly wake;
Out in the gardens, moonlit and forlorn,
Each of them sounds his mournful horn:
Shrill peals that waver and crack and break.
What can have made the peacocks wake?

It comes not in such wise as she had deemed,
    Else might she still have clung to her despair.
More tender, grateful than she could have dreamed,
    Fond hands passed pitying over brows and hair,
    And gentle words borne softly through the air,
Calming her weary sense and wildered mind,
By welcome, dear communion with her kind.


Ah! she forswore all words as empty lies;
    What speech could help, encourage, or repair?
Yet when she meets these grave, indulgent eyes,
    Fulfilled with pity, simplest words are fair,
    Caressing, meaningless, that do not dare
To compensate or mend, but merely soothe
With hopeful visions after bitter Truth.


One who through conquered trouble had grown wise,
    To read the grief unspoken, unexpressed,

Why did you go away without one word,
    Wave of the hand, or token of good-bye,
Nor leave some message for me with flower or bird,
    Some sign to find you by;

Some stray of blossom on the winter road,
    To know your feet had gone that very way,
Told me the star that points to your abode,
    And tossed me one faint ray

To climb from out the night where now I dwell -
    Or, seemed it best for you to go alone
To heaven, as alone I go to hell
    Upon the four winds blown.

    I come, like Oblivion, to sweep away
The scattered beams from the car of day:
The gems which the evening has lavishly strown
Light up the lamps round my ebon throne.
Slowly I float through the realms of space,
Casting my mantle o'er Nature's face,
Weaving the stars in my raven hair,
As I sail through the shadowy fields of air.
All the wild fancies that thought can bring
Lie hid in the folds of my sable wing:
Terror is mine with his phrensied crew,
Fear with her cheek of marble hue,
And sorrow, that shuns the eye of day,
Pours out to me her plaintive lay.
I am the type of that awful gloom
Which involves the cradle and wraps the tomb;
Chilling the soul with its mystical sway;
Chasing the day-dreams of beauty away;
Till man views the banner by me un...

A fog drifts in, the heavy laden
Cold white ghost of the sea
One by one the hills go out,
The road and the pepper-tree.
I watch the fog float in at the window
With the whole world gone blind,
Everything, even my longing, drowses,
Even the thoughts in my mind.
I put my head on my hands before me,
There is nothing left to be done or said,
There is nothing to hope for, I am tired,
And heavy as the dead.

Under an arch of glorious leaves I passed
Out of the wood and saw the sickle moon
Floating in daylight o'er the pale green sea.

It was the quiet hour before the sun
Gathers the clouds to prayer and silently
Utters his benediction on the waves
That whisper round the death-bed of the day.
The labourers were returning from the farms
And children danced to meet them. From the doors
Of cottages there came a pleasant clink
Where busy hands laid out the evening meal.
From smouldering elms around the village spire
There soared and sank the caw of gathering rooks.
The faint-flushed clouds were listening to the tale
The sea tells to the sunset with one sigh.
The last white wistful sea-bird sought for peace,
And the last fishing-boat stole o'er the bar,
And fr...

Down the blue night the unending columns press
In noiseless tumult, break and wave and flow,
Now tread the far South, or lift rounds of snow
Up to the white moon's hidden loveliness.
Some pause in their grave wandering comradeless,
And turn with profound gesture vague and slow,
As who would pray good for the world, but know
Their benediction empty as they bless.

They say that the Dead die not, but remain
Near to the rich heirs of their grief and mirth.
I think they ride the calm mid-heaven, as these,
In wise majestic melancholy train,
And watch the moon, and the still-raging seas,
And men, coming and going on the earth.

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!