The World's Best Poetry, Volume 03: Sorrow and Consolation
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Title: The World's Best Poetry, Volume 03: Sorrow and Consolation
Editor: Bliss Carman
Commentator: Lyman Abbott
Release date: October 1, 2005 [eBook #16786]
Most recently updated: December 12, 2020
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WORLD'S BEST POETRY, VOLUME 03: SORROW AND CONSOLATION ***
Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Victoria Woosley and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
THE WORLD'S
BEST POETRY
I Home: Friendship VI Fancy: Sentiment
II Love VII Descriptive: Narrative
III Sorrow and Consolation VIII National Spirit
IV The Higher Life IX Tragedy: Humor
V Nature X Poetical Quotations
* * * * *
THE
WORLD'S
BEST POETRY
IN TEN VOLUMES, ILLUSTRATED
Editor-in-Chief
BLISS CARMAN
Associate Editors
John Vance Cheney
Charles G.D. Roberts
Charles F. Richardson
Francis H. Stoddard
Managing Editor
John R. Howard
J.D. Morris and Company
Philadelphia
COPYRIGHT, 1904, by
J.D. Morris & Company
The World's Best Poetry
Vol. III
SORROW AND
CONSOLATION
AN
INTERPRETER OF
LIFE
By
LYMAN ABBOTT
* * * * *
NOTICE OF COPYRIGHTS.
I.
American poems in this volume within the legal protection of copyright
are used by the courteous permission of the owners,--either the
publishers named in the following list or the authors or their
representatives in the subsequent one,--who reserve all their rights. So
far as practicable, permission has been secured also for poems out of
copyright.
PUBLISHERS OF THE WORLD'S BEST POETRY. 1904.
Messrs. D. APPLETON & Co., New York.--_W.C. Bryant_: "Blessed are They
that Mourn," "The Conqueror's Grave," "Thanatopsis."
Messrs. E.P. DUTTON & Co., New York.--_Mary W. Howland_: "Rest."
The FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY, New York.--_John W. Palmer_: "For Charlie's
Sake."
Messrs. HARPER & BROTHERS, New York.--_Will Carleton_: "Over the Hill to
the Poor House."
Messrs. HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & Co., Boston.--_Margaret Deland_: "Love and
Death;" _John Hay_: "A Woman's Love;" _O.W. Holmes_: "The Last Leaf,"
"The Voiceless;" _Mary Clemmer A. Hudson_: "Something Beyond;" _H.W.
Longfellow_: "Death of Minnehaha," "Footsteps of Angels," "God's Acre,"
"The Rainy Day," "The Reaper and the Flowers," "Resignation;" _J.R.
Lowell_: "Auf Wiedersehen," "First Snow Fall," "Palinode;" _Harriet W.
Preston_: "Fidelity in Doubt;" _Margaret E. Sangster_: "Are the Children
at Home?" _E.R. Sill_: "A Morning Thought;" _Harriet E. Spofford_: "The
Nun and Harp;" _Harriet B. Stowe_: "Lines to the Memory of Annie." "Only
a Year;" _J.T. Trowbridge_: "Dorothy in the Garret;" _J.G. Whittier_:
"To Her Absent Sailor," "Angel of Patience," "Maud Muller."
Mr. JOHN LANE, New York.--_R. Le Gallienne_: "Song," "What of the
Darkness?"
Messrs. LITTLE, BROWN & Co., Boston.--_J.W. Chadwick_: "The Two
Waitings;" _Helen Hunt Jackson_: "Habeas Corpus."
The LOTHROP PUBLISHING COMPANY, Boston.--_Paul H. Hayne_: "In Harbor."
Messrs. G.P. PUTNAM'S SONS, New York.--_Elaine Goodale Eastman_: "Ashes
of Roses;" _R.C. Rogers_: "The Shadow Rose."
Messrs. CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, New York.--_R. Bridges (Droch)_: "The
Unillumined Verge;" _Mary Mapes Dodge_: "The Two Mysteries;" _Julia C.R.
Dorr_: "Hush" (Afterglow).
II.
American poems in this volume by the authors whose names are given below
are the copyrighted property of the authors, or of their representatives
named in parenthesis, and may not be reprinted without their permission,
which for the present work has been courteously granted.
PUBLISHERS OF THE WORLD'S BEST POETRY. 1904.
_W.R. Alger; Mrs. Amelia E. Barr; Henry A. Blood_ (Mrs. R.E. Whitman);
_Robert J. Burdette; John Burroughs; Mary A. De Vere; Nathan H. Dole;
William C. Gannett; Dr. Silas W. Mitchell; Mrs. Sarah M. Piatt; Walt
Whitman_ (H. Traubel, Literary Executor).
* * * * *
AN INTERPRETER OF LIFE.
BY LYMAN ABBOTT.
Poetry, music, and painting are three correlated arts, connected not
merely by an accidental classification, but by their intrinsic nature.
For they all possess the same essential function, namely, to interpret
the uninterpretable, to reveal the undiscoverable, to express the
inexpressible. They all attempt, in different forms and through
different languages, to translate the invisible and eternal into
sensuous forms, and through sensuous forms to produce in other souls
experiences akin to those in the soul of the translator, be he poet,
musician, or painter. That they are three correlated arts, attempting,
each in its own way and by its own language, to express the same
essential life, is indicated by their co-operation in the musical drama.
This is the principle which Wagner saw so clearly, and has used to such
effective purpose in his so-called operas, whose resemblance to the
Italian operas which preceded them is more superficial than real. In the
drama Wagner wishes you to consider neither the music apart from the
scenery, nor the scenery apart from the acting, nor the three apart from
the poetry. Poetry, music, and art combine with the actor to interpret
truths of life which transcend philosophic definition. Thus in the first
act of "Parsifal," innocence born of ignorance, remorse born of the
experience of temptation and sin, and reverence bred in an atmosphere
not innocent yet free from the experience of great temptation, mingle in
a drama which elevates all hearts, because in some one of these three
phases it touches every heart. And yet certain of the clergy condemned
the presentation as irreverent, because it expresses reverence in a
symbolism to which they were unaccustomed.
But while it is true that these three arts are correlative and
co-operative, they do not duplicate one another. Each not only speaks in
a language of its own, but expresses in that language a life which the
others cannot express. As color and fragrance combine to make the
flower, but the color expresses what the fragrance cannot express, and
the fragrance expresses what the color cannot express, so in the musical
drama, music, poetry, and painting combine, not by duplicating but by
supplementing each other. One may describe in language a symphony; but
no description will produce the effect which the symphony produces. One
may describe a painting; but no description will produce the effect
which the painting will produce. So neither music, nor painting, nor
both combined, can produce the same effect on the soul as poetry. The
"Midsummer Night's Dream" enacted in pantomime, with Mendelssohn's
music, would no more produce the same effect on the auditors which would
be produced by the interpretation of the play in spoken words, than
would the reading of the play at home produce the same effect as the
enacting of the play with what are miscalled the accessories of music
and scenery. The music and scenery are no more accessories to the words
than the words are accessories to the music and scenery. The three
combine in a triple language to express and produce one life, and it can
be expressed and produced in no other way than by the combination of the
three arts in harmonious action. This is the reason why no parlor
readings can ever take the place of the theatre, and no concert
performance can ever take the place of the opera. This is the reason why
all attempts to suppress the theatre and opera are and always will be in
vain. They are attempts to suppress the expression and awakening of a
life which can neither be expressed nor awakened in any other way; and
suppression of life, however successfully it may be accomplished for a
time, is never permanently possible.
These arts do not truly create, they interpret. Man is not a creator, he
is only a discoverer. The imagination is not creative, it is only
reportorial. Ideals are realities; imagination is seeing. The musician,
the artist, the poet, discover life which others have not discovered,
and each with his own instrument interprets that life to those less
sensitive than himself. Observe a musician composing. He writes; stops;
hesitates; meditates; perhaps hums softly to himself; perhaps goes to
the piano and strikes a chord or two. What is he doing? He is trying to
express to himself a beauty which he has heard in the world of infinite
phenomena, and to reproduce it as well as sensuous sounds can reproduce
it, that those with duller hearing than himself may hear it also.
Observe a painter before his easel. He paints; looks to see the effect;
erases; adds; modifies; reexamines; and repeats this operation over and
over again. What is he doing? He is copying a beauty which he has seen
in the invisible world, and which he is attempting to bring out from its
hiding so that the men who have no eyes except for the sensuous may also
see it. In my library is an original sonnet by John G. Whittier. In
almost every line are erasures and interlineations. In some cases the
careful poet has written a new line and pasted it over the rejected one.
What does this mean? It means that he has discovered a truth of moral
beauty and is attempting to interpret his discovery to the world. His
first interpretation of his vision did not suit him, nor his second, nor
his third, and he has revised and re-revised in the attempt to make his
verse a true interpretation of the truth which he had seen. He did not
make the truth; it eternally was. Neither did the musician make the
truth of harmony, nor the painter the truth of form and color. They also
eternally were. Poet, musician, painter, have seen, heard, felt,
realized in their own souls some experience of life, some potent reality
which philosophy cannot formulate, nor creed contain, nor eloquence
define; and each in his own way endeavors to give it to the world of
men; each in his own way endeavors to lift the gauzy curtain,
impenetrable to most souls, which hides the invisible, the inaudible,
the eternal, the divine from men; and he gives them a glimpse of that of
which he himself had but a glimpse.
In one sense and in one only can art be called creative: the artist,
whether he be painter, musician, or poet, so interprets to other men the
experience which has been created in him by his vision of the
supersensible and eternal, that he evokes in them a similar experience.
He is a creator only as he conveys to others the life which has been
created in himself. As the electric wire creates light in the home; as
the band creates the movement in the machinery; thus and only thus does
the artist create life in those that wait upon him. He is in truth an
interpreter and transmitter, not a creator. Nor can he interpret what he
has not first received, nor transmit what he has not first experienced.
The music, the painting, the poem are merely the instruments which he
uses for that purpose. The life must first be in him or the so-called
music, painting, poem are but dead simulacra; imitations of art, not
real art. This is the reason why no mechanical device, be it never so
skillfully contrived, can ever take the place of the living artist. The
pianola can never rival the living performer; nor the orchestrion the
orchestra; nor the chromo the painting. No mechanical device has yet
been invented to produce poetry; even if some shrewd Yankee should
invent a printing machine which would pick out rhymes as some printing
machines seem to pick out letters, the result would not be a poem. This
is the reason too why mere perfection of execution never really
satisfies. "She sings like a bird." Yes! and that is exactly the
difficulty with her. We want one who sings like a woman. The popular
criticism of the mere musical expert that he has no soul, is profound
and true. It is soul we want; for the piano, the organ, the violin, the
orchestra, are only instruments for the transmission of soul. This is
also the reason why the most flawless conductor is not always the best.
He must have a soul capable of reading the soul of the composer; and the
orchestra must receive the life of the composer as that is interpreted
to them through the life of the conductor, or the performance will be a
soulless performance.
Into each of these arts, therefore--music, painting, poetry--enter two
elements: the inner and the outer, the truth and the language, the
reality and the symbol, the life and the expression. Without the
electric current the carbon is a mere blank thread; the electric current
is not luminous if there be no carbon. The life and the form are alike
essential. So the painter must have something to express, but he must
also have skill to express it; the musician must have music in his soul,
but he must also have a power of instrumentation; the poet must feel the
truth, or he is no poet, but he must also have power to express what he
feels in such forms as will create a similar feeling in his readers, or
he is still no poet. Multitudes of women send to the newspapers poetical
effusions which, are not poems. The feeling of the writer is excellent,
but the expression is bad. The writer has seen, but she cannot tell what
she has seen; she has felt, but she cannot express her experience so as
to enkindle a like experience in others. These poetical utterances of
inarticulate poets are sometimes whimsical but oftener pathetic;
sometimes they are like the prattle of little children who exercise
their vocal organs before they have anything to say; but oftener they
seem to me like the beseeching eyes of a dumb animal, full of affection
and entreaty for which he has no vocal expression. It is just as
essential that poetical feeling should have poetical expression in order
to constitute poetry as it is that musical feeling should have musical
expression in order to constitute music. And, on the other hand, as
splashes of color without artistic feeling which they interpret are not
art, as musical, sounds without musical feeling which they interpret are
not music, so poetical forms without poetical feeling are not poetry.
Poetical feeling in unpoetical forms may be poetical prose, but it is
still prose. And on the other hand, rhymes, however musical they may be
to the ear, are only rhymes, not poetry, unless they express a true
poetical life.
But these two elements are separable only in thought, not in reality.
Poetry is not common thought expressed in an uncommon manner; it is not
an artificial phrasing of even the higher emotions. The higher emotions
have a phrasing of their own; they fall naturally--whether as the result
of instinct or of habit need not here be considered--into fitting forms.
The form may be rhyme; it may be blank verse; it may be the old Hebrew
parallelism; it may even be the indescribable form which Walt Whitman
has adopted. What is noticeable is the fact that poetical thought, if it
is at its best, always takes on, by a kind of necessity, some poetical
form. To illustrate if not to demonstrate this, it is only necessary to
select from literature any fine piece of poetical expression of a higher
and nobler emotion, or of clear and inspiring vision, and attempt to put
it into prose form. The reader will find, if he be dealing with the
highest poetry, that translating it into prose impairs its power to
express the feeling, and makes the expression not less but more
artificial. If he doubt this statement, let him turn to any of the finer
specimens of verse in this volume and see whether he can express the
life in prose as truly, as naturally, as effectively, as it is there
expressed in rhythmical form.
These various considerations may help to explain why in all ages of the
world the arts have been the handmaidens of religion. Not to amplify
too much, I have confined these considerations to the three arts of
music, painting, and poetry; but they are also applicable to sculpture
and architecture. All are attempts by men of vision to interpret to the
men who are not equally endowed with vision, what the invisible world
about us and within us has for the enrichment of our lives. This is
exactly the function of religion: to enrich human lives by making them
acquainted with the infinite. It is true that at times the arts have
been sensualized, the emphasis has been put on the form of expression,
not on the life expressed; and then reformers, like the Puritans and the
Quakers, have endeavored to exclude the arts from religion, lest they
should contaminate it. But the exclusion has been accomplished with
difficulty, and to maintain it has been impossible. It is neither an
accident, nor a sign of decadence, that painting and sculpture are
creeping back into the Protestant churches, to combine with poetry and
music in expressing the religious life of man. For the intellect alone
is inadequate either to express that life as it exists, or to call it
into existence where it does not exist. The tendency to ritual in our
time is a tendency not to substitute æsthetic for spiritual life, though
there is probably always a danger that such a substitution may be
unconsciously made, but to express a religious life which cannot be
expressed without the aid of æsthetic symbols. The work of the intellect
is to analyze and define. But the infinite is in the nature of the case
indefinable, and it is with the infinite religion has to do. All that
theology can hope to accomplish is to define certain provinces in the
illimitable realm of truth; to analyze certain experiences in a life
which transcends all complete analysis. The Church must learn to regard
not with disfavor or suspicion, but with eager acceptance, the
co-operation of the arts in the interpretation of infinite truth and the
expression of infinite life. Certainly we are not to turn our churches
into concert rooms or picture and sculpture galleries, and imagine that
æsthetic enjoyment is synonymous with piety. But as surely we are not to
banish the arts from our churches, and think that we are religious
because we are barren. All language, whether of painting, sculpture,
architecture, music, poetry, or oratory, is legitimately used to express
the divine life, as all the faculties, whether of painter, sculptor,
architect, musician, poet, orator, and philosopher, are to be used in
reaching after a more perfect knowledge of Him who always transcends and
always will transcend our perfect knowing.
Thus the study of poetry is the study of life, because poetry is the
interpretation of life. Poetry is not a mere instrument for promoting
enjoyment; it does not merely dazzle the imagination and excite the
emotions. Through the emotions and the imagination it both interprets
life and ministers to life. When the critic attempts to express that
truth, that is, to interpret the interpreter, which he can do only by
translating the poetry into prose, and the language of imagination and
emotion into that of philosophy, he destroys the poem in the process,
much as the botanist destroys the flower in analyzing it, or the musical
critic the composition in disentangling its interwoven melodies and
explaining the mature of its harmonic structure. The analysis, whether
of music, art, or poetry, must be followed by a synthesis, which, in the
nature of the case, can be accomplished only by the hearer or reader for
himself. All that I can do here is to illustrate this revelatory
character of poetry by some references to the poems which this volume
contains. I do not attempt to explain the meaning of these poems; that
is a task quite impossible. I only attempt to show that they have a
meaning, that beneath their beauty of form is a depth of truth which
philosophical statement in prose cannot interpret, but the essence of
which such statement may serve to suggest. I do not wish to expound the
truth of life which is contained in the poet's verse; I only wish to
show that the poet by his verse reveals a truth of life which the critic
cannot express, and that it is for this reason pre-eminently that such a
collection of poetry as this is deserving of the reader's study.
If for example the student turns to such a volume as Newman Smyth's
"Christian Ethics," he will find there a careful though condensed
discussion of the right and wrong of suicide. It is cool, deliberate,
philosophical. But it gives no slightest hint of the real state of the
man who is deliberating within himself whether he will commit suicide
or no; no hint of the real arguments that pass in shadow through his
mind:--the weariness of life which summons him to end all; the nameless,
indefinable dread of the mystery and darkness and night into which death
carries us, which makes him hesitate. If we would really understand the
mind of the suicide, not merely the mind of the philosopher coolly
debating suicide, we must turn to the poet.
"To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 't is a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin! Who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered country from whose bourne
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action."
This first the poet does: he draws aside the veil which hides the
working of men's hearts, and lets us see their hidden life. But he does
more. Not merely does he afford us knowledge, he imparts life. For we
know feeling only by participating in the feeling; and the poet has the
art not merely to describe the experiences of men but so to describe
them that for the moment we share them, and so truly know them by the
only process by which they can be known. Who, for instance, can read
Thomas Hood's "The Bridge of Sighs" and not, as he reads, stand by the
despairing one as she waits a moment upon the bridge just ready to take
her last leap out of the cruelty of this world into, let us hope, the
mercy of a more merciful world beyond?
"Where the lamps quiver
So far in the river,
With many a light
From window and casement,
From garret to basement,
She stood, with amazement,
Homeless by night.
"The bleak wind of March
Made her tremble and shiver;
But not the dark arch,
Or the black flowing river:
Mad from life's history,
Glad to death's mystery
Swift to be hurled--
Anywhere, anywhere
Out of the world.
"In she plunged boldly--
No matter how coldly
The rough river ran,--
Over the brink of it!
Picture it--think of it,
Dissolute man!
Lave in it, drink of it,
Then, if you can.
"Take her up tenderly,
Lift her with care;
Fashioned so slenderly,
Young, and so fair!"
No analysis of philosophy can make us acquainted with the tragedy of
this life as the poet can; no exhortation of preacher can so effectively
arouse in us the spirit of a Christian charity for the despairing
wanderer as the poet.
Would you know the tragedy of a careless and supercilious coquetry which
plays with the heart as the fisherman plays with the salmon? Read "Clara
Vere de Vere." Would you know the dull heartache of a loveless married
life, growing at times into an intolerable anguish which no marital
fidelity can do much to medicate? Read "Auld Robin Gray." Who but a poet
can interpret the pain of a parting between loving hearts, with its
remorseful recollections of the wholly innocent love's joys that are
past?
"Had we never loved sae kindly,
Had we never loved sae blindly,
Never met--or never parted,
We had ne'er been broken hearted."
Who but a poet can depict the perils of an unconscious drifting apart,
such as has destroyed many a friendship and wrecked many a married life,
as Clough has depicted it in "Qua Cursum Ventus"? If you would know the
life-long sorrow of the blind man at your side, would enter into his
life and for a brief moment share his captivity, read Milton's
interpretation of that sorrow in Samson's Lament. If you would find some
message to cheer the blind man in his darkness and illumine his
captivity, read the same poet's ode on his own blindness:
"God doth not need
Either man's work, or his own gifts; who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best: his state
Is kingly; thousands at his bidding speed,
And post o'er land and ocean without rest;
They also serve who only stand and wait."
No prison statistics, no police reports, no reformer's documents, no
public discussions of the question, What to do with the tramp, will ever
so make the student of life participant of the innermost experience of
the tramp, his experience of dull despair, his loss of his grip on life,
as Béranger's "The Old Vagabond." No expert in nervous diseases, no
psychological student of mental states, normal and abnormal, can give
the reader so clear an understanding of that deep and seemingly
causeless dejection, which because it seems to be causeless seems also
to be well-nigh incurable, as Percy Bysshe Shelley has given in his
"Stanzas written near Naples." No critical expounder of the Stoical
philosophy can interpret the stoical temper which interposes a sullen
but dauntless pride to attacking sorrow as William Ernest Henley has
done:
"Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
"In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed."
Nor can any preacher put in so vital a contrast to this despairing
defiance with which pride challenges sorrow, the joyous victory which a
trusting love wins over it by submitting to it, as John Greenleaf
Whittier has done in "The Eternal Goodness":
"I know not what the future hath
Of marvel or surprise,
Assured alone that life and death
His mercy underlies.
"I know not where His islands lift
Their fronded palms in air:
I only know I cannot drift
Beyond His love and care."
No philosophical treatise can interpret bereavement as the great poets
have interpreted it. The mystery of sorrow, the bewilderment it causes,
the wonder whether there is any God or any good, the silence that is the
only answer to our call for help, the tumult of emotion, the strange
perplexity of mind, the dull despair, the inexplicable paralysis of
feeling, intermingling in one wholly inconsistent and incongruous
experience: where, in all the literature of Philosophy can we find such
an exposition and echo and interpretation of this experience as in that
great Hebrew epic--the Book of Job? And where in all the literature of
Philosophy can we find such interpreters of the two great comforters of
the soul, faith and hope, as one finds in the poets? They do not argue;
they simply sing. And, as a note struck upon one of a chime of bells
will set the neighboring bell vibrating, so the strong note of faith and
hope sounded by the poet, sets a like note vibrating in the mourner's
heart. The mystery is not solved, but the silence is broken. First we
listen to the poet, then we listen to the same song sung in our own
hearts,--the same, for it is God who has sung to him and who sings to
us. And when the bereaved has found God, he has found light in his
darkness, peace in his tempest, a ray in his night.
"As a child,
Whose song-bird seeks the wood forevermore,
Is sung to in its stead by mother's mouth;
Till, sinking on her breast, love-reconciled,
He sleep the faster that he wept before."
The visitor to the island of Catalina, off the coast of California, is
invited to go out in a glass-bottomed boat upon the sea. If he accepts
the invitation and looks about him with careless curiosity, he will
enjoy the blue of the summer sky and ocean wave, and the architectural
beauty of the island hills; but if he turns his gaze downward and looks
through the glass bottom of the boat in which he is sailing, he will
discover manifold phases of beauty in the life beneath the sea waves: in
goldfish darting hither and thither, in umbrella-shaped jellyfish lazily
swimming by, in starfish and anemones of infinite variety, in
sea-urchins brilliant in color, and in an endless forest of water-weeds
exquisitely delicate in their structure. Perhaps he will try to
photograph them; but in vain: his camera will render him no report of
the wealth of life which he has seen. So he who takes up such a volume
of poetry as this will find ample repayment in the successive pictures
which it presents to his imagination, and the transient emotions which
it will excite in him. But besides this there is a secret life which the
careless reader will fail to see, and which the critic cannot report,
but which will be revealed to the thoughtful, patient, meditative
student. In this power to reveal an otherwise unknown world, lies the
true glory of poetry. He that hath ears to hear, let him hear what the
poet has to say to him.
[Signature: Lyman Abbot]
* * * * *
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTORY ESSAY:
"AN INTERPRETER OF LIFE." By _Lyman Abbot_
POEMS OF SORROW AND CONSOLATION:
DISAPPOINTMENT IN LOVE
PARTING AND ABSENCE
ADVERSITY
COMFORT AND CHEER
DEATH AND BEREAVEMENT
CONSOLATION
INDEX: AUTHORS AND TITLES
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW _Frontispiece_
_Photogravure from photograph by Hanfstaengl after portrait by Kramer_.
PENELOPE AWAITING ULYSSES
_The patient grief and endurance of Absence: while the tapestry
woven by day stands on the frame to be unravelled by night, as the
loyal wife puts off her suitors. Painting by Rudolph von Deutsch_.
ABSENCE
"What shall I do with all the days and hours
That must be counted ere I see thy face?"
_From a photograph by the Berlin Photographic Co., after a painting by
R. Pötzelberger_.
WAIL OF PROMETHEUS BOUND
"Behold me, a god, what I endure from gods!
Behold, with throe on throe,
How, wasted by this woe,
I wrestle down the myriad years of Time!"
_From photograph after a painting by G. Graeff_.
PIERRE-JEAN DE BÉRANGER
_From lithograph after a crayon-drawing by H. Alophe_.
THOMAS HOOD
_After an engraving from contemporary portrait_.
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
_After a photograph from life by Talfourd, London_.
THE COUNTRY CHURCHYARD
"Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade,
Where heaves the turf in many a moldering heap,
Each in his narrow cell forever laid,
The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep."
_After an original drawing by Harry Fenn_.
LOVE AND DEATH
"Death comes in,
Though Love, with outstretched arms and wings outspread,
Would bar the way."
_From photogravure after the painting by George Fredeick Watts_.
WALT WHITMAN
_After a life-photograph by Rockwood, New York_.
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE
_From an engraving after the drawing by George Richmond_.
SIR EDWIN ARNOLD
_After a life-photograph by Elliott and Fry, London_.
* * * * *
POEMS OF SORROW AND CONSOLATION.
* * * * *
I. DISAPPOINTMENT IN LOVE.
THE COURSE OF TRUE LOVE.
FROM "MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM," ACT I. SC. 1.
For aught that ever I could read,
Could ever hear by tale or history,
The course of true love never did run smooth:
But, either it was different in blood,
Or else misgraffèd in respect of years,
Or else it stood upon the choice of friends;
Or, if there were a sympathy in choice,
War, death, or sickness did lay siege to it,
Making it momentary as a sound,
Swift as a shadow, short as any dream;
Brief as the lightning in the collied night,
That, in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and earth,
And ere a man hath power to say,--Behold!
The jaws of darkness do devour it up:
So quick bright things come to confusion.
SHAKESPEARE.
LADY CLARA VERE DE VERE.
Lady Clara Vere de Vere,
Of me you shall not win renown;
You thought to break a country heart
For pastime, ere you went to town.
At me you smiled, but unbeguiled
I saw the snare, and I retired:
The daughter of a hundred Earls,
You are not one to be desired.
Lady Clara Vere de Vere,
I know you proud to bear your name;
Your pride is yet no mate for mine,
Too proud to care from whence I came.
Nor would I break for your sweet sake
A heart that dotes on truer charms.
A simple maiden in her flower
Is worth a hundred coats-of-arms.
Lady Clara Vere de Vere,
Some meeker pupil you must find,
For were you queen of all that is,
I could not stoop to such a mind.
You sought to prove how I could love,
And my disdain is my reply.
The lion on your old stone gates
Is not more cold to you than I.
Lady Clara Vere de Vere,
You put strange memories in my head.
Not thrice your branching lines have blown
Since I beheld young Laurence dead.
O your sweet eyes, your low replies:
A great enchantress you may be;
But there was that across his throat
Which you had hardly cared to see.
Lady Clara Vere de Vere,
When thus he met his mother's view,
She had the passions of her kind,
She spake some certain truths of you.
Indeed I heard one bitter word
That scarce is fit for you to hear;
Her manners had not that repose
Which stamps the caste of Vere de Vere.
Lady Clara Vere de Vere,
There stands a spectre in your hall:
The guilt of blood is at your door:
You changed a wholesome heart to gall.
You held your course without remorse,
To make him trust his modest worth,
And, last, you fixed a vacant stare,
And slew him with your noble birth.
Trust me, Clara Vere de Vere,
From yon blue heavens above us bent
The grand old gardener and his wife
Smile at the claims of long descent.
Howe'er it be, it seems to me,
'T is only noble to be good.
Kind hearts are more than coronets,
And simple faith than Norman blood.
I know you, Clara Vere de Vere:
You pine among your halls and towers:
The languid light of your proud eyes
Is wearied of the rolling hours.
In glowing health, with boundless wealth,
But sickening of a vague disease,
You know so ill to deal with time,
You needs must play such pranks as these.
Clara, Clara Vere de Vere,
If Time be heavy on your hands,
Are there no beggars at your gate.
Nor any poor about your lands?
Oh! teach the orphan-boy to read,
Or teach the orphan-girl to sew,
Pray Heaven for a human heart,
And let the foolish yeoman go.
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON.
LINDA TO HAFED.
FROM "THE FIRE-WORSHIPPERS."
"How sweetly," said the trembling maid,
Of her own gentle voice afraid,
So long had they in silence stood,
Looking upon that moonlight flood,--
"How sweetly does the moonbeam smile
To-night upon yon leafy isle!
Oft in my fancy's wanderings,
I've wished that little isle had wings,
And we, within its fairy bowers,
Were wafted off to seas unknown,
Where not a pulse should beat but ours,
And we might live, love, die alone!
Far from the cruel and the cold,--
Where the bright eyes of angels only
Should come around us, to behold
A paradise so pure and lonely!
Would this be world enough for thee?"--
Playful she turned, that he might see
The passing smile her cheek put on;
But when she marked how mournfully
His eyes met hers, that smile was gone;
And, bursting into heartfelt tears,
"Yes, yes," she cried, "my hourly fears,
My dreams, have boded all too right,--
We part--forever part--to-night!
I knew, I knew it _could_ not last,--
'T was bright, 't was heavenly, but 't is past!
O, ever thus, from childhood's hour,
I've seen my fondest hopes decay;
I never loved a tree or flower
But 't was the first to fade away.
I never nursed a dear gazelle,
To glad me with its soft black eye,
But when it came to know me well,
And love me, it was sure to die!
Now, too, the joy most like divine
Of all I ever dreamt or knew,
To see thee, hear thee, call thee mine,--
O misery! must I lose _that_ too?"
THOMAS MOORE.
LOVE NOT.
Love not, love not, ye hapless sons of clay!
Hope's gayest wreaths are made of earthly flowers,--
Things that are made to fade and fall away
Ere they have blossomed for a few short hours.
Love not!
Love not! the thing ye love may change;
The rosy lip may cease to smile on you,
The kindly-beaming eye grow cold and strange,
The heart still warmly beat, yet not be true.
Love not!
Love not! the thing you love may die,--
May perish from the gay and gladsome earth;
The silent stars, the blue and smiling sky,
Beam o'er its grave, as once upon its birth.
Love not!
Love not! O warning vainly said
In present hours as in years gone by!
Love flings a halo round the dear one's head,
Faultless, immortal, till they change or die.
Love not!
CAROLINE ELIZABETH SHERIDAN. (HON. MRS. NORTON.)
THE PRINCESS.
The Princess sat lone in her maiden bower,
The lad blew his horn at the foot of the tower.
"Why playest thou alway? Be silent, I pray,
It fetters my thoughts that would flee far away.
As the sun goes down."
In her maiden bower sat the Princess forlorn,
The lad had ceased to play on his horn.
"Oh, why art thou silent? I beg thee to play!
It gives wings to my thought that would flee far away,
As the sun goes down."
In her maiden bower sat the Princess forlorn,
Once more with delight played the lad on his horn.
She wept as the shadows grew long, and she sighed:
"Oh, tell me, my God, what my heart doth betide,
Now the sun has gone down."
From the Norwegian of BJÖRNSTJERNE BJÖRNSON.
Translation of NATHAN HASKELL DOLE.
UNREQUITED LOVE.
FROM "TWELFTH NIGHT," ACT I. SC. 4.
VIOLA.--Ay, but I know,--
DUKE. What dost thou know?
VIOLA.--Too well what love women to men may owe:
In faith, they are as true of heart as we.
My father had a daughter loved a man,
As it might be, perhaps, were I a woman,
I should your lordship.
DUKE.--And what's her history?
VIOLA.--A blank, my lord. She never told her love,
But let concealment, like a worm i' the bud,
Feed on her damask cheek; she pined in thought;
And, with a green and yellow melancholy,
She sat like Patience on a monument,
Smiling at grief. Was not this love, indeed?
We men may say more, swear more: but, indeed,
Our shows are more than will; for still we prove
Much in our vows, but little in our love.
SHAKESPEARE.
FAIR INES.
O saw ye not fair Ines? she's gone into the west,
To dazzle when the sun is down, and rob the world of rest;
She took our daylight with her, the smiles that we love best,
With morning blushes on her cheek, and pearls upon her breast.
O turn again, fair Ines, before the fall of night,
For fear the moon should shine alone, and stars unrivalled bright;
And blessèd will the lover be that walks beneath their light,
And breathes the love against thy cheek I dare not even write!
Would I had been, fair Ines, that gallant cavalier
Who rode so gayly by thy side and whispered thee so near!
Were there no bonny dames at home, or no true lovers here,
That he should cross the seas to win the dearest of the dear?
I saw thee, lovely Ines, descend along the shore,
With bands of noble gentlemen, and banners waved before;
And gentle youth and maidens gay, and snowy plumes they wore;--
It would have been a beauteous dream--if it had been no more!
Alas! alas! fair Ines! she went away with song,
With music waiting on her steps, and shoutings of the throng;
But some were sad, and felt no mirth, but only Music's wrong,
In sounds that sang Farewell, Farewell to her you've loved so long.
Farewell, farewell, fair Ines! that vessel never bore
So fair a lady on its deck, nor danced so light before--
Alas for pleasure on the sea, and sorrow on the shore!
The smile that blest one lover's heart has broken many more!
THOMAS HOOD.
THE BANKS O' DOON.
Ye banks and braes o' bonnie Doon,
How can ye bloom sae fresh and fair?
How can ye chant, ye little birds,
And I sae weary, fu' o' care?
Thou'lt break my heart, thou warbling bird,
That wantons through the flowering thorn;
Thou minds me o' departed joys,
Departed--never to return.
Thou'lt break my heart, thou bonnie bird,
That sings beside thy mate;
For sae I sat, and sae I sang,
And wistna o' my fate.
Aft hae I roved by bonnie Doon,
To see the rose and woodbine twine;
And ilka bird sang o' its luve,
And, fondly, sae did I o' mine.
Wi' lightsome heart I pou'd a rose,
Fu' sweet upon its thorny tree;
And my fause luver stole my rose,
But ah! he left the thorn wi' me.
ROBERT BURNS.
SONNET.
FROM "ASTROPHEL AND STELLA."
With how sad steps, O Moon! thou climb'st the skies,
How silently, and with how wan a face!
What may it be, that even in heavenly place
That busy Archer his sharp arrows tries?
Sure, if that long-with-love-acquainted eyes
Can judge of love, thou feel'st a lover's case;
I read it in thy looks; thy languished grace
To me, that feel the like, thy state descries.
Then, even of fellowship, O Moon, tell me,
Is constant love deemed there but want of wit?
Are beauties there as proud as here they be?
Do they above love to be loved, and yet
Those lovers scorn whom that love doth possess?
Do they call virtue there ungratefulness?
SIR PHILIP SIDNEY.
AGATHA.
She wanders in the April woods,
That glisten with the fallen shower;
She leans her face against the buds,
She stops, she stoops, she plucks a flower.
She feels the ferment of the hour:
She broodeth when the ringdove broods;
The sun and flying clouds have power
Upon her cheek and changing moods.
She cannot think she is alone,
As over her senses warmly steal
Floods of unrest she fears to own
And almost dreads to feel.
Among the summer woodlands wide
Anew she roams, no more alone;
The joy she feared is at her side,
Spring's blushing secret now is known.
The primrose and its mates have flown,
The thrush's ringing note hath died;
But glancing eye and glowing tone
Fall on her from her god, her guide.
She knows not, asks not, what the goal,
She only feels she moves towards bliss,
And yields her pure unquestioning soul
To touch and fondling kiss.
And still she haunts those woodland ways,
Though all fond fancy finds there now
To mind of spring or summer days,
Are sodden trunk and songless bough.
The past sits widowed on her brow,
Homeward she wends with wintry gaze,
To walls that house a hollow vow,
To hearth where love hath ceased to blaze;
Watches the clammy twilight wane,
With grief too fixed for woe or tear;
And, with her forehead 'gainst the pane,
Envies the dying year.
ALFRED AUSTIN.
THE SUN-DIAL.
'T is an old dial, dark with many a stain;
In summer crowned with drifting orchard bloom,
Tricked in the autumn with the yellow rain,
And white in winter like a marble tomb.
And round about its gray, time-eaten brow
Lean letters speak,--a worn and shattered row:
=I am a Shade; a Shadowe too art thou:
I marke the Time: saye, Gossip, dost thou soe?=
Here would the ring-doves linger, head to head;
And here the snail a silver course would run,
Beating old Time; and here the peacock spread
His gold-green glory, shutting out the sun.
The tardy shade moved forward to the noon;
Betwixt the paths a dainty Beauty stept,
That swung a flower, and, smiling hummed a tune,--
Before whose feet a barking spaniel leapt.
O'er her blue dress an endless blossom strayed;
About her tendril-curls the sunlight shone;
And round her train the tiger-lilies swayed,
Like courtiers bowing till the queen be gone.
She leaned upon the slab a little while,
Then drew a jewelled pencil from her zone,
Scribbled a something with a frolic smile,
Folded, inscribed, and niched it in the stone.
The shade slipped on, no swifter than the snail;
There came a second lady to the place,
Dove-eyed, dove-robed, and something wan and pale,--
An inner beauty shining from her face.
She, as if listless with a lonely love,
Straying among the alleys with a book,--
Herrick or Herbert,--watched the circling dove,
And spied the tiny letter in the nook.
Then, like to one who confirmation found
Of some dread secret half-accounted true,--
Who knew what hearts and hands the letter bound,
And argued loving commerce 'twixt the two,--
She bent her fair young forehead on the stone;
The dark shade gloomed an instant on her head;
And 'twixt her taper fingers pearled and shone
The single tear that tear-worn eyes will shed.
The shade slipped onward to the falling gloom;
Then came a soldier gallant in her stead,
Swinging a beaver with a swaling plume,
A ribboned love-lock rippling from his head.
Blue-eyed, frank-faced, with clear and open brow,
Scar-seamed a little, as the women love;
So kindly fronted that you marvelled how
The frequent sword-hilt had so frayed his glove;
Who switched at Psyche plunging in the sun;
Uncrowned three lilies with a backward swinge;
And standing somewhat widely, like to one
More used to "Boot and Saddle" than to cringe
As courtiers do, but gentleman withal,
Took out the note;--held it as one who feared
The fragile thing he held would slip and fall;
Read and re-read, pulling his tawny beard;
Kissed it, I think, and hid it in his breast;
Laughed softly in a flattered, happy way,
Arranged the broidered baldrick on his crest,
And sauntered past, singing a roundelay.
* * * * *
The shade crept forward through the dying glow;
There came no more nor dame nor cavalier;
But for a little time the brass will show
A small gray spot,--the record of a tear.
AUSTIN DOBSON.
LOCKSLEY HALL.
Comrades, leave me here a little, while as yet 'tis early morn,--
Leave me here, and when you want me, sound upon the bugle horn.
'Tis the place, and all around it, as of old, the curlews call,
Dreary gleams about the moorland, flying over Locksley Hall:
Locksley Hall, that in the distance overlooks the sandy tracts,
And the hollow ocean-ridges roaring into cataracts.
Many a night from yonder ivied casement, ere I went to rest,
Did I look on great Orion sloping slowly to the west.
Many a night I saw the Pleiads, rising through the mellow shade,
Glitter like a swarm of fire-flies tangled in a silver braid.
Here about the beach I wandered, nourishing a youth sublime
With the fairy tales of science, and the long result of time;
When the centuries behind me like a fruitful land reposed;
When I clung to all the present for the promise that it closed;
When I dipt into the future far as human eye could see,--
Saw the vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be.
In the spring a fuller crimson comes upon the robin's breast;
In the spring the wanton lapwing gets himself another crest;
In the spring a livelier iris changes on the burnished dove;
In the spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.
Then her cheek was pale and thinner than should be for one so young,
And her eyes on all my motions with a mute observance hung.
And I said, "My cousin Amy, speak, and speak the truth to me;
Trust me, cousin, all the current of my being sets to thee."
On her pallid cheek and forehead came a color and a light,
As I have seen the rosy red flushing in the northern night.
And she turned,--her bosom shaken with a sudden storm of sighs;
All the spirit deeply dawning in the dark of hazel eyes,--
Saying, "I have hid my feelings, fearing they should do me wrong;"
Saying, "Dost thou love me, cousin?" weeping, "I have loved thee long."
Love took up the glass of time, and turned it in his glowing hands;
Every moment, lightly shaken, ran itself in golden sands.
Love took up the harp of life, and smote on all the chords with might;
Smote the chord of self, that, trembling, passed in music out of sight.
Many a morning on the moorland did we hear the copses ring,
And her whisper thronged my pulses with the fulness of the spring.
Many an evening by the water did we watch the stately ships,
And our spirits rushed together at the touching of the lips.
O my cousin, shallow-hearted! O my Amy, mine no more!
O the dreary, dreary moorland! O the barren, barren shore!
Falser than all fancy fathoms, falser than all songs have sung,--
Puppet to a father's threat, and servile to a shrewish tongue!
Is it well to wish thee happy?--having known me; to decline
On a range of lower feelings and a narrower heart than mine!
Yet it shall be: thou shalt lower to his level day by day,
What is fine within thee growing coarse to sympathize with clay.
As the husband is, the wife is; thou art mated with a clown,
And the grossness of his nature will have weight to drag thee down.
He will hold thee, when his passion shall have spent its novel force,
Something better than his dog, a little dearer than his horse.
What is this? his eyes are heavy,--think not they are glazed with wine.
Go to him; it is thy duty,--kiss him; take his hand in thine.
It may be my lord is weary, that his brain is over wrought,--
Soothe him with thy finer fancies, touch him with thy lighter thought.
He will answer to the purpose, easy things to understand,--
Better thou wert dead before me, though I slew thee with my hand.
Better thou and I were lying, hidden from the heart's disgrace,
Rolled in one another's arms, and silent in a last embrace.
Cursed be the social wants that sin against the strength of youth!
Cursed be the social lies that warp us from the living truth!
Cursed be the sickly forms that err from honest nature's rule
Cursed be the gold that gilds the straitened forehead of the fool!
Well--'t is well that I should bluster!--Hadst thou less unworthy proved,
Would to God--for I had loved thee more than ever wife was loved.
Am I mad, that I should cherish that which bears but bitter fruit?
I will pluck it from my bosom, though my heart be at the root.
Never! though my mortal summers to such length of years should come
As the many-wintered crow that leads the clanging rookery home.
Where is comfort? in division of the records of the mind?
Can I part her from herself, and love her, as I knew her, kind?
I remember one that perished; sweetly did she speak and move;
Such a one do I remember, whom to look at was to love.
Can I think of her as dead, and love her for the love she bore?
No,--she never loved me truly; love is love forevermore.
Comfort? comfort scorned of devils; this is truth the poet sings,
That a sorrow's crown of sorrow is remembering happier things.
Drug thy memories, lest thou learn it, lest thy heart be put to proof,
In the dead, unhappy night, and when the rain is on the roof.
Like a dog, he hunts in dreams; and thou art staring at the wall,
Where the dying night-lamp flickers, and the shadows rise and fall.
Then a hand shall pass before thee, pointing to his drunken sleep,
To thy widowed marriage-pillows, to the tears that thou wilt weep.
Thou shalt hear the "Never, never," whispered by the phantom years,
And a song from out the distance in the ringing of thine ears;
And an eye shall vex thee, looking ancient kindness on thy pain.
Turn thee, turn thee on thy pillow; get thee to thy rest again.
Nay, but nature brings thee solace; for a tender voice will cry;
'Tis a purer life than thine, a lip to drain thy trouble dry.
Baby lips will laugh me down; my latest rival brings thee rest,--
Baby fingers, waxen touches, press me from the mother's breast.
O, the child too clothes the father with a dearness not his due.
Half is thine and half is his: it will be worthy of the two.
O, I see thee old and formal, fitted to thy petty part,
With a little hoard of maxims preaching down a daughter's heart.
"They were dangerous guides, the feelings--she herself was not exempt--
Truly, she herself had suffered"--Perish in thy self-contempt!
Overlive it--lower yet--be happy! wherefore should I care?
I myself must mix with action, lest I wither by despair.
What is that which I should turn to, lighting upon days like these?
Every door is barred with gold, and opens but to golden keys.
Every gate is thronged with suitors, all the markets overflow.
I have but an angry fancy: what is that which I should do?
I had been content to perish, falling on the foeman's ground,
When the ranks are rolled in vapor, and the winds are laid with sound.
But the jingling of the guinea helps the hurt that honor feels,
And the nations do but murmur, snarling at each other's heels.
Can I but relive in sadness? I will turn that earlier page.
Hide me from my deep emotion, O thou wondrous mother-age!
Make me feel the wild pulsation that I felt before the strife,
When I heard my days before me, and the tumult of my life;
Yearning for the large excitement that the coming years would yield,
Eager-hearted as a boy when first he leaves his father's field,
And at night along the dusky highway near and nearer drawn,
Sees in heaven the light of London flaring like a dreary dawn;
And his spirit leaps within him to be gone before him then,
Underneath the light he looks at, in among the throngs of men;
Men, my brothers, men the workers, ever reaping something new:
That which they have done but earnest of the things that they shall do:
For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see,
Saw the vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be;
Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails,
Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales;
Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rained a ghastly dew
From the nations' airy navies grappling in the central blue;
Far along the world-wide whisper of the south-wind rushing warm,
With the standards of the peoples plunging through the thunder-storm;
Till the war-drum throbbed no longer, and the battle flags were furled
In the parliament of man, the federation of the world.
There the common sense of most shall hold a fretful realm in awe,
And the kindly earth shall slumber, lapt in universal law.
So I triumphed ere my passion sweeping through me left me dry,
Left me with a palsied heart, and left me with the jaundiced eye;
Eye, to which all order festers, all things here are out of joint.
Science moves, but slowly, slowly, creeping on from point to point:
Slowly comes a hungry people, as a lion, creeping nigher,
Glares at one that nods and winks behind a slowly dying fire.
Yet I doubt not through the ages one increasing purpose runs,
And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns.
What is that to him that reaps not harvest of his youthful joys,
Though the deep heart of existence beat forever like a boy's?
Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers; and I linger on the shore
And the individual withers, and the world is more and more.
Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers, and he bears a laden breast,
Full of sad experience moving toward the stillness of his rest.
Hark! my merry comrades call me, sounding on the bugle horn,--
They to whom my foolish passion were a target for their scorn;
Shall it not be scorn to me to harp on such a mouldered string?
I am shamed through all my nature to have loved so slight a thing.
Weakness to be wroth with weakness! woman's pleasure, woman's pain--
Nature made them blinder motions bounded in a shallower brain;
Woman is the lesser man, and all thy passions, matched with mine,
Are as moonlight unto sunlight, and as water unto wine--
Here at least, where nature sickens, nothing. Ah for some retreat
Deep in yonder shining Orient, where my life began to beat!
Where in wild Mahratta-battle fell my father, evil-starred;
I was left a trampled orphan, and a selfish uncle's ward.
Or to burst all links of habit,--there to wander far away,
On from island unto island at the gateways of the day,
Larger constellations burning, mellow moons and happy skies,
Breadths of tropic shade and palms in cluster, knots of Paradise.
Never comes the trader, never floats an European flag,--
Slides the bird o'er lustrous woodland, swings the trailer from the crag,--
Droops the heavy-blossomed bower, hangs the heavy-fruited tree,--
Summer isles of Eden lying in dark-purple spheres of sea.
There, methinks, would be enjoyment more than in this march of mind--
In the steamship, in the railway, in the thoughts that shake mankind.
There the passions, cramped no longer, shall have scope and
breathing-space;
I will take some savage woman, she shall rear my dusky race.
Iron-jointed, supple-sinewed, they shall dive, and they shall run,
Catch the wild goat by the hair, and hurl their lances in the sun,
Whistle back the parrot's call, and leap the rainbows of the brooks,
Not with blinded eyesight poring over miserable books--
Fool, again the dream, the fancy! but I know my words are wild,
But I count the gray barbarian lower than the Christian child.
I, to herd with narrow foreheads vacant of our glorious gains,
Like a beast with lower pleasures, like a beast with lower pains!
Mated with a squalid savage,--what to me were sun or clime?
I, the heir of all the ages, in the foremost files of time,--
I, that rather held it better men should perish one by one,
Than that earth should stand at gaze like Joshua's moon in Ajalon!
Not in vain the distance beacons. Forward, forward let us range;
Let the great world spin forever down the ringing grooves of change.
Through the shadow of the globe we sweep into the younger day:
Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay.
Mother-age, (for mine I knew not,) help me as when life begun,--
Rift the hills and roll the waters, flash the lightnings, weigh the sun,
O, I see the crescent promise of my spirit hath not set;
Ancient founts of inspiration well through all my fancy yet.
Howsoever these things be, a long farewell to Locksley Hall!
Now for me the woods may wither, now for me the roof-tree fall.
Comes a vapor from the margin, blackening over heath and holt,
Cramming all the blast before it, in its breast a thunderbolt.
Let it fall on Locksley Hall, with rain or hail, or fire or snow;
For the mighty wind arises, roaring seaward, and I go.
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON.
SONG.
"A weary lot is thine, fair maid,
A weary lot is thine!
To pull the thorn thy brow to braid,
And press the rue for wine!
A lightsome eye, a soldier's mien,
A feather of the blue,
A doublet of the Lincoln green--
No more of me you knew,
My love!
No more of me you knew.
"The morn is merry June, I trow--
The rose is budding fain;
But she shall bloom in winter snow
Ere we two meet again."
He turned his charger as he spake,
Upon the river shore;
He gave his bridle-rein a shake,
Said, "Adieu for evermore,
My love!
And adieu for evermore."
SIR WALTER SCOTT.
AULD ROBIN GRAY.
When the sheep are in the fauld and the kye a' at hame,
When a' the weary world to sleep are gane,
The waes o' my heart fa' in showers frae my e'e,
While my gudeman lies sound by me.
Young Jamie lo'ed me weel, and sought me for his bride;
But saving a crown, he had naething else beside.
To mak' the crown a pound, my Jamie gaed to sea;
And the crown and the pound, they were baith for me!
He hadna been awa' a week but only twa,
When my mither she fell sick, and the cow was stown awa;
My father brak his arm--my Jamie at the sea--
And Auld Robin Gray came a-courtin' me.
My father couldna work,--my mither couldna spin;
I toiled day and night, but their bread I couldna win;
And Rob maintained them baith, and, wi' tears in his e'e,
Said, "Jennie for their sakes, will you marry me?"
My heart it said na, for I looked for Jamie back;
But hard blew the winds, and his ship was a wrack;
His ship was a wrack! Why didna Jamie dee?
Or why was I spared to cry, Wae is me!
My father argued sair--my mither didna speak,
But she looked in my face till my heart was like to break;
They gied him my hand, but my heart was in the sea;
And so Auld Robin Gray, he was gudeman to me.
I hadna been his wife, a week but only four,
When, mournfu' as I sat on the stane at the door,
I saw my Jamie's ghaist--I couldna think it he,
Till he said, "I'm come hame, love, for to marry thee!"
O sair, sair did we greet, and mickle did we say:
Ae kiss we took--nae mair--I bad him gang away.
I wish that I were dead, but I'm no like to dee,
And why do I live to say, Wae is me!
I gang like a ghaist, and I carena to spin;
I darena think o' Jamie, for that wad be a sin.
But I will do my best a gude wife aye to be,
For Auld Robin Gray, he is kind unto me.
LADY ANNE BARNARD.
TO A PORTRAIT.
A pensive photograph
Watches me from the shelf--
Ghost of old love, and half
Ghost of myself!
How the dear waiting eyes
Watch me and love me yet--
Sad home of memories,
Her waiting eyes!
Ghost of old love, wronged ghost,
Return: though all the pain
Of all once loved, long lost,
Come back again.
Forget not, but forgive!
Alas, too late I cry.
We are two ghosts that had their chance to live,
And lost it, she and I.
ARTHUR SYMONS.
MAUD MULLER.
Maud Muller, on a summer's day,
Raked the meadow sweet with hay.
Beneath her torn hat glowed the wealth
Of simple beauty and rustic health.
Singing, she wrought, and her merry glee
The mock-bird echoed from his tree.
But, when she glanced to the far-off town,
White from its hill-slope looking down,
The sweet song died, and a vague unrest
And a nameless longing filled her breast,--
A wish, that she hardly dared to own,
For something better than she had known.
The Judge rode slowly down the lane,
Smoothing his horse's chestnut mane.
He drew his bridle in the shade
Of the apple-trees, to greet the maid,
And ask a draught from the spring that flowed
Through the meadow, across the road.
She stooped where the cool spring bubbled up,
And filled for him her small tin cup,
And blushed as she gave it, looking down
On her feet so bare, and her tattered gown.
"Thanks!" said the Judge, "a sweeter draught
From a fairer hand was never quaffed."
He spoke of the grass and flowers and trees,
Of the singing birds and the humming bees;
Then talked of the haying, and wondered whether
The cloud in the west would bring foul weather.
And Maud forgot her brier-torn gown,
And her graceful ankles, bare and brown,
And listened, while a pleased surprise
Looked from her long-lashed hazel eyes.
At last, like one who for delay
Seeks a vain excuse, he rode away.
Maud Muller looked and sighed: "Ah me!
That I the Judge's bride might be!
"He would dress me up in silks so fine,
And praise and toast me at his wine.
"My father should wear a broadcloth coat,
My brother should sail a painted boat.
"I 'd dress my mother so grand and gay,
And the baby should have a new toy each day.
"And I'd feed the hungry and clothe the poor,
And all should bless me who left our door."
The Judge looked back as he climbed the hill,
And saw Maud Muller standing still:
"A form more fair, a face more sweet,
Ne'er hath it been my lot to meet.
"And her modest answer and graceful air
Show her wise and good as she is fair.
"Would she were mine, and I to-day,
Like her, a harvester of hay.
"No doubtful balance of rights and wrongs,
Nor weary lawyers with endless tongues,
"But low of cattle, and song of birds,
And health, and quiet, and loving words."
But he thought of his sister, proud and cold,
And his mother, vain of her rank and gold.
So, closing his heart, the Judge rode on,
And Maud was left in the field alone.
But the lawyers smiled that afternoon,
When he hummed in court an old love tune;
And the young girl mused beside the well,
Till the rain on the unraked clover fell.
He wedded a wife of richest dower,
Who lived for fashion, as he for power.
Yet oft, in his marble hearth's bright glow,
He watched a picture come and go;
And sweet Maud Muller's hazel eyes
Looked out in their innocent surprise.
Oft, when the wine in his glass was red,
He longed for the wayside well instead,
And closed his eyes on his garnished rooms,
To dream of meadows and clover blooms;
And the proud man sighed with a secret pain,
"Ah, that I were free again!
"Free as when I rode that day
Where the barefoot maiden raked the hay."
She wedded a man unlearned and poor,
And many children played round her door.
But care and sorrow, and child-birth pain,
Left their traces on heart and brain.
And oft, when the summer sun shone hot
On the new-mown hay in the meadow lot,
And she heard the little spring brook fall
Over the roadside, through the wall,
In the shade of the apple-tree again
She saw a rider draw his rein,
And, gazing down with a timid grace,
She felt his pleased eyes read her face.
Sometimes her narrow kitchen walls
Stretched away into stately halls;
The weary wheel to a spinnet turned,
The tallow candle an astral burned;
And for him who sat by the chimney lug,
Dozing and grumbling o'er pipe and mug,
A manly form at her side she saw,
And joy was duty and love was law.
Then she took up her burden of life again,
Saying only, "It might have been."
Alas for maiden, alas for judge,
For rich repiner and household drudge!
God pity them both! and pity us all,
Who vainly the dreams of youth recall;
For of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these: "It might have been!"
Ah, well! for us all some sweet hope lies
Deeply buried from human eyes;
And, in the hereafter, angels may
Roll the stone from its grave away!
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER.
THE PALM AND THE PINE.
Beneath an Indian palm a girl
Of other blood reposes;
Her cheek is clear and pale as pearl
Amid that wild of roses.
Beside a northern pine a boy
Is leaning fancy-bound.
Nor listens where with noisy joy
Awaits the impatient hound.
Cool grows the sick and feverish calm,
Relaxed the frosty twine.--
The pine-tree dreameth of the palm,
The palm-tree of the pine.
As soon shall nature interlace
Those dimly-visioned boughs,
As these young lovers face to face
Renew their early vows.
From the German of HEINRICH HEINE.
Translation of RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES, LORD HOUGHTON.
CUMNOR HALL.
[SAID TO HAVE BEEN THE SUGGESTIVE ORIGIN OF SCOTT'S
"KENILWORTH."]
The dews of summer night did fall;
The moon, sweet regent of the sky,
Silvered the walls of Cumnor Hall,
And many an oak that grew thereby.
Now naught was heard beneath the skies,
The sounds of busy life were still,
Save an unhappy lady's sighs,
That issued from that lonely pile.
"Leicester," she cried, "is this thy love
That thou so oft hast sworn to me,
To leave me in this lonely grove,
Immured in shameful privity?
"No more thou com'st with lover's speed,
Thy once belovèd bride to see;
But be she alive, or be she dead,
I fear, stern Earl, 's the same to thee.
"Not so the usage I received
When happy in my father's hall;
No faithless husband then me grieved,
No chilling fears did me appal.
"I rose up with the cheerful morn,
No lark more blithe, no flower more gay
And like the bird that haunts the thorn,
So merrily sung the livelong day.
"If that my beauty is but small,
Among court ladies all despised,
Why didst thou rend it from that hall,
Where, scornful Earl, it well was prized?
"And when you first to me made suit,
How fair I was, you oft would say!
And proud of conquest, plucked the fruit,
Then left the blossom to decay.
"Yes! now neglected and despised,
The rose is pale, the lily's dead;
But he, that once their charms so prized,
Is sure the cause those charms are fled.
"For know, when sick'ning grief doth prey,
And tender love's repaid with scorn,
The sweetest beauty will decay,--
What floweret can endure the storm?
"At court, I'm told, is beauty's throne,
Where every lady's passing rare,
That Eastern flowers, that shame the sun,
Are not so glowing, not so fair.
"Then, Earl, why didst thou leave the beds
Where roses and where lilies vie,
To seek a primrose, whose pale shades
Must sicken when those gauds are by?
"'Mong rural beauties I was one,
Among the fields wild flowers are fair;
Some country swain might me have won,
And thought my beauty passing rare.
"But, Leicester, (or I much am wrong,)
Or 't is not beauty lures thy vows;
Rather ambition's gilded crown
Makes thee forget thy humble spouse.
"Then, Leicester, why, again I plead,
(The injured surely may repine,)--
Why didst thou wed a country maid,
When some fair princess might be thine?
"Why didst thou praise my humble charms,
And, oh! then leave them to decay?
Why didst thou win me to thy arms,
Then leave to mourn the livelong day?
"The village maidens of the plain
Salute me lowly as they go;
Envious they mark my silken train,
Nor think a Countess can have woe.
"The simple nymphs! they little know
How far more happy 's their estate;
To smile for joy than sigh for woe
To be content--than to be great.
"How far less blest am I than them
Daily to pine and waste with care!
Like the poor plant, that, from its stem
Divided, feels the chilling air.
"Nor, cruel Earl! can I enjoy
The humble charms of solitude;
Your minions proud my peace destroy,
By sullen frowns or pratings rude.
"Last night, as sad I chanced to stray,
The village death-bell smote my ear;
They winked aside, and seemed to say,
'Countess, prepare, thy end is near.'
"And now, while happy peasants sleep,
Here I sit lonely and forlorn;
No one to soothe me as I weep,
Save Philomel on yonder thorn.
"My spirits flag--my hopes decay--
Still that dread death-bell smites my ear,
And many a boding seems to say,
'Countess, prepare, thy end is near!'"
Thus sore and sad that lady grieved,
In Cumnor Hall so lone and drear,
And many a heartfelt sigh she heaved,
And let fall many a bitter tear.
And ere the dawn of day appeared,
In Cumnor Hall, so lone and drear,
Full many a piercing scream was heard,
And many a cry of mortal fear.
The death-bell thrice was heard to ring,
An aerial voice was heard to call,
And thrice the raven flapped its wing
Around the towers of Cumnor Hall.
The mastiff bowled at village door,
The oaks were shattered on the green;
Woe was the hour, for nevermore
That hapless Countess e'er was seen.
And in that manor now no more
Is cheerful feast and sprightly ball;
For ever since that dreary hour
Have spirits haunted Cumnor Hall.
The village maids, with fearful glance,
Avoid the ancient moss-grown wall,
Nor ever lead the merry dance,
Among the groves of Cumnor Hall.
Full many a traveller oft hath sighed,
And pensive wept the Countess' fall,
As wandering onward they've espied
The haunted towers of Cumnor Hall.
WILLIAM JULIUS MICKLE.
WALY, WALY.
O waly, waly, up the bank,
O waly, waly, doun the brae,
And waly, waly, yon burn-side,
Where I and my love were wont to gae!
I leaned my back unto an aik,
I thocht it was a trustie tree,
But first it bowed and syne it brak',--
Sae my true love did lichtlie me.
O waly, waly, but love be bonnie
A little time while it is new!
But when it's auld it waxeth cauld,
And fadeth awa' like the morning dew.
O wherefore should I busk my heid.
Or wherefore should I kame my hair?
For my true love has me forsook,
And says he'll never lo'e me mair.
Noo Arthur's Seat sall be my bed,
The sheets sall ne'er be pressed by me;
Saint Anton's well sall be my drink;
Since my true love's forsaken me.
Martinmas wind, when wilt thou blaw,
And shake the green leaves off the tree?
O gentle death, when wilt thou come?
For of my life I am wearie.
'Tis not the frost that freezes fell,
Nor blawing snaw's inclemencie,
'Tis not sic cauld that makes me cry;
But my love's heart grown cauld to me.
When we cam' in by Glasgow toun,
We were a comely sicht to see;
My love was clad in the black velvet,
An' I mysel' in cramasie.
But had I wist before I kissed
That love had been so ill to win,
I 'd locked my heart in a case o' goud,
And pinn'd it wi' a siller pin.
Oh, oh! if my young babe were born,
And set upon the nurse's knee;
And I mysel' were dead and gane,
And the green grass growing over me!
ANONYMOUS.
LADY ANN BOTHWELL'S LAMENT.
A SCOTTISH SONG.
Balow, my babe, ly stil and sleipe!
It grieves me sair to see thee weipe;
If thoust be silent, Ise be glad,
Thy maining maks my heart ful sad.
Balow, my boy, thy mither's joy!
Thy father breides me great annoy.
_Balow, my 'babe, ly stil and sleipe!
It grieves me sair to see thee weipe._
When he began to court my luve,
And with his sugred words to muve,
His faynings fals and flattering cheire
To me that time did not appeire:
But now I see, most cruell hee,
Cares neither for my babe nor mee.
_Balow_, etc.
Ly stil, my darlinge, sleipe awhile,
And when thou wakest sweitly smile:
But smile not, as thy father did,
To cozen maids; nay, God forbid!
But yette I feire, thou wilt gae neire,
Thy fatheris hart and face to beire.
_Balow_, etc.
I cannae chuse, but ever will
Be luving to thy father stil:
Whaireir he gae, whaireir he ryde,
My luve with him maun stil abyde:
In weil or wae, whaireir he gae,
Mine hart can neir depart him frae.
_Balow_, etc.
But doe not, doe not, prettie mine,
To faynings fals thine hart incline;
Be loyal to thy luver trew,
And nevir change hir for a new;
If gude or faire, of hir have care,
For womens banning's wonderous sair.
_Balow_, etc.
Bairne, sin thy cruel father is gane,
Thy winsome smiles maun eise my paine;
My babe and I 'll together live,
He'll comfort me when cares doe grieve;
My babe and I right saft will ly,
And quite forgeit man's cruelty.
_Balow_, etc.
Fareweil, fareweil, thou falsest youth
That ever kist a woman's mouth!
I wish all maids be warned by mee,
Nevir to trust man's curtesy;
For if we doe but chance to bow,
They'll use us then they care not how.
_Balow, my 'babe, ly stil and sleipe!
It grieves me sair to see thee weipe._
ANONYMOUS.
MY HEID IS LIKE TO REND, WILLIE.
My heid is like to rend, Willie,
My heart is like to break;
I'm wearin' aff my feet, Willie,
I'm dyin' for your sake!
O, say ye'll think on me, Willie,
Your hand on my briest-bane,--
O, say ye'll think of me, Willie,
When I am deid and gane!
It's vain to comfort me, Willie,
Sair grief maun ha'e its will;
But let me rest upon your briest
To sab and greet my fill.
Let me sit on your knee, Willie,
Let me shed by your hair,
And look into the face, Willie,
I never sall see mair!
I'm sittin' on your knee, Willie,
For the last time in my life,--
A puir heart-broken thing, Willie,
A mither, yet nae wife.
Ay, press your hand upon my heart,
And press it mair and mair,
Or it will burst the silken twine,
Sae strang is its despair.
O, wae's me for the hour, Willie,
When we thegither met,--
O, wae's me for the time, Willie,
That our first tryst was set!
O, wae's me for the loanin' green
Where we were wont to gae,--
And wae's me for the destinie
That gart me luve thee sae!
O, dinna mind my words, Willie,
I downa seek to blame;
But O, it's hard to live, Willie,
And dree a warld's shame!
Het tears are hailin' ower our cheek,
And hailin' ower your chin:
Why weep ye sae for worthlessness,
For sorrow, and for sin?
I'm weary o' this warld, Willie,
And sick wi' a' I see,
I canna live as I ha'e lived,
Or be as I should be.
But fauld unto your heart, Willie,
The heart that still is thine,
And kiss ance mair the white, white cheek
Ye said was red langsyne.
A stoun' gaes through my heid, Willie,
A sair stoun' through my heart;
O, haud me up and let me kiss
Thy brow ere we twa pairt.
Anither, and anither yet!--
How fast my life-strings break!--
Fareweel! fareweel! through yon kirk-yard
Step lichtly for my sake!
The lav'rock in the lift, Willie,
That lifts far ower our heid,
Will sing the morn as merrilie
Abune the clay-cauld deid;
And this green turf we're sittin' on,
Wi' dew-draps shimmerin' sheen,
Will hap the heart that luvit thee
As warld has seldom seen.
But O, remember me, Willie,
On land where'er ye be;
And O, think on the leal, leal heart,
That ne'er luvit ane but thee!
And O, think on the cauld, cauld mools
That file my yellow hair,
That kiss the cheek, and kiss the chin
Ye never sall kiss mair!
WILLIAM MOTHERWELL.
ASHES OF ROSES.
Soft on the sunset sky
Bright daylight closes,
Leaving, when light doth die,
Pale hues that mingling lie,--
Ashes of roses.
When love's warm sun is set,
Love's brightness closes;
Eyes with hot tears are wet,
In hearts there linger yet
Ashes of roses.
ELAINE GOODALE EASTMAN.
A WOMAN'S LOVE.
A sentinel angel, sitting high in glory,
Heard this shrill wail ring out from Purgatory:
"Have mercy, mighty angel, hear my story!
"I loved,--and, blind with passionate love, I fell.
Love brought me down to death, and death to Hell;
For God is just, and death for sin is well.
"I do not rage against his high decree,
Nor for myself do ask that grace shall be;
But for my love on earth who mourns for me.
"Great Spirit! Let me see my love again
And comfort him one hour, and I were fain
To pay a thousand years of fire and pain."
Then said the pitying angel, "Nay, repent
That wild vow! Look, the dial-finger's bent
Down to the last hour of thy punishment!"
But still she wailed, "I pray thee, let me go!
I cannot rise to peace and leave him so.
O, let me soothe him in his bitter woe!"
The brazen gates ground sullenly ajar,
And upwards, joyous, like a rising star,
She rose and vanished in the ether far.
But soon adown the dying sunset sailing,
And like a wounded bird her pinions trailing,
She fluttered back, with broken-hearted wailing.
She sobbed, "I found him by the summer sea
Reclined, his head upon a maiden's knee,--
She curled his hair and kissed him. Woe is me!"
She wept, "Now let my punishment begin!
I have been fond and foolish. Let me in
To expiate my sorrow and my sin."
The angel answered, "Nay, sad soul, go higher!
To be deceived in your true heart's desire
Was bitterer than a thousand years of fire!"
JOHN HAY.
THE SHADOW ROSE.
A noisette on my garden path
An ever-swaying shadow throws;
But if I pluck it strolling by,
I pluck the shadow with the rose.
Just near enough my heart you stood
To shadow it,--but was it fair
In him, who plucked and bore you off,
To leave your shadow lingering there?
ROBERT CAMERON ROGERS.
HAS SUMMER COME WITHOUT THE ROSE?
Has summer come without the rose,
Or left the bird behind?
Is the blue changed above thee,
O world! or am I blind?
Will you change every flower that grows,
Or only change this spot,
Where she who said, I love thee,
Now says, I love thee not?
The skies seemed true above thee,
The rose true on the tree;
The bird seemed true the summer through,
But all proved false to me.
World, is there one good thing in you,
Life, love, or death--or what?
Since lips that sang, I love thee,
Have said, I love thee not?
I think the sun's kiss will scarce fall
Into one flower's gold cup;
I think the bird will miss me,
And give the summer up.
O sweet place, desolate in tall
Wild grass, have you forgot
How her lips loved to kiss me,
Now that they kiss me not?
Be false or fair above me;
Come back with any face,
Summer!--do I care what you do?
You cannot change one place,--
The grass, the leaves, the earth, the dew,
The grave I make the spot,--
Here, where she used to love me,
Here, where she loves me not.
ARTHUR O'SHAUGHNESSY.
THE DIRTY OLD MAN.
A LAY OF LEADENHALL.
[A singular man, named Nathaniel Bentley, for many years kept a large
hardware-shop in Leadenhall Street, London. He was best know as Dirty
Dick (Dick, for alliteration's sake, probably), and his place of
business as the Dirty Warehouse. He died about the year 1809. These
verses accord with the accounts respecting himself and his house.]
In a dirty old house lived a Dirty Old Man;
Soap, towels, or brushes were not in his plan.
For forty long years, as the neighbors declared,
His house never once had been cleaned or repaired.
'T was a scandal and shame to the business-like street,
One terrible blot in a ledger so neat:
The shop full of hardware, but black as a hearse,
And the rest of the mansion a thousand times worse.
Outside, the old plaster, all spatter and stain,
Looked spotty in sunshine and streaky in rain;
The window-sills sprouted with mildewy grass,
And the panes from being broken were known to be glass.
On the rickety sign-board no learning could spell
The merchant who sold, or the goods he'd to sell;
But for house and for man a new title took growth,
Like a fungus,--the Dirt gave its name to them both.
Within, there were carpets and cushions of dust,
The wood was half rot, and the metal half rust.
Old curtains, half cobwebs, hung grimly aloof;
'T was a Spiders' Elysium from cellar to roof.
There, king of the spiders, the Dirty Old Man
Lives busy and dirty as ever he can;
With dirt on his fingers and dirt on his face,
For the Dirty Old Man thinks the dirt no disgrace.
From his wig to his shoes, from his coat to his shirt,
His clothes are a proverb, a marvel of dirt;
The dirt is pervading, unfading, exceeding,--
Yet the Dirty Old Man has both learning and breeding.
Fine dames from their carriages, noble and fair,
Have entered his shop, less to buy than to stare;
And have afterwards said, though the dirt was so frightful,
The Dirty Man's manners were truly delightful.
Upstairs might they venture, in dirt and in gloom,
To peep at the door of the wonderful room
Such stories are told about, none of them true!--
The keyhole itself has no mortal seen through.
That room,--forty years since, folk settled and decked it.
The luncheon's prepared, and the guests are expected,
The handsome young host he is gallant and gay,
For his love and her friends will be with him today.
With solid and dainty the table is drest,
The wine beams its brightest, the flowers bloom their best;
Yet the host need not smile, and no guests will appear,
For his sweetheart is dead, as he shortly shall hear.
Full forty years since turned the key in that door.
'T is a room deaf and dumb mid the city's uproar.
The guests, for whose joyance that table was spread,
May now enter as ghosts, for they're every one dead.
Through a chink in the shutter dim lights come and go;
The seats are in order, the dishes a-row:
But the luncheon was wealth to the rat and the mouse
Whose descendants have long left the Dirty Old House.
Cup and platter are masked in thick layers of dust;
The flowers fallen to powder, the wine swathed in crust;
A nosegay was laid before one special chair,
And the faded blue ribbon that bound it lies there.
The old man has played out his part in the scene.
Wherever he now is, I hope he's more clean.
Yet give we a thought free of scoffing or ban
To that Dirty Old House and that Dirty Old Man.
WILLIAM ALLINGHAM.
HOME, WOUNDED.
Wheel me into the sunshine,
Wheel me into the shadow.
There must be leaves on the woodbine,
Is the kingcup crowned in the meadow?
Wheel me down to the meadow,
Down to the little river,
In sun or in shadow
I shall not dazzle or shiver,
I shall be happy anywhere,
Every breath of the morning air
Makes me throb and quiver.
Stay wherever you will,
By the mount or under the hill,
Or down by the little river:
Stay as long as you please,
Give me only a bud from the trees,
Or a blade of grass in morning dew,
Or a cloudy violet clearing to blue,
I could look on it forever.
Wheel, wheel through the sunshine,
Wheel, wheel through the shadow;
There must be odors round the pine,
There must be balm of breathing kine,
Somewhere down in the meadow.
Must I choose? Then anchor me there
Beyond the beckoning poplars, where
The larch is snooding her flowery hair
With wreaths of morning shadow.
Among the thickest hazels of the brake
Perchance some nightingale doth shake
His feathers, and the air is full of song;
In those old days when I was young and strong,
He used to sing on yonder garden tree,
Beside the nursery.
Ah, I remember how I loved to wake,
And find him singing on the self-same bough
(I know it even now)
Where, since the flit of bat,
In ceaseless voice he sat,
Trying the spring night over, like a tune,
Beneath the vernal moon;
And while I listed long,
Day rose, and still he sang,
And all his stanchless song,
As something falling unaware,
Fell out of the tall trees he sang among,
Fell ringing down the ringing morn, and rang,--
Rang like a golden jewel down a golden stair.
* * * * *
My soul lies out like a basking hound,--
A hound that dreams and dozes;
Along my life my length I lay,
I fill to-morrow and yesterday,
I am warm with the suns that have long since set,
I am warm with the summers that are not yet,
And like one who dreams and dozes
Softly afloat on a sunny sea,
Two worlds are whispering over me,
And there blows a wind of roses
From the backward shore to the shore before,
From the shore before to the backward shore,
And like two clouds that meet and pour
Each through each, till core in core
A single self reposes,
The nevermore with the evermore
Above me mingles and closes;
As my soul lies out like the basking hound,
And wherever it lies seems happy ground,
And when, awakened by some sweet sound,
A dreamy eye uncloses,
I see a blooming world around,
And I lie amid primroses,--Years
of sweet primroses,
Springs of fresh primroses,
Springs to be, and springs for me
Of distant dim primroses.
O, to lie a-dream, a-dream,
To feel I may dream and to know you deem
My work is done forever,
And the palpitating fever,
That gains and loses, loses and gains,
And beats the hurrying blood on the brunt of a thousand pains,
Cooled at once by that blood-let
Upon the parapet;
And all the tedious taskèd toil of the difficult long endeavor
Solved and quit by no more fine
Than these limbs of mine,
Spanned and measured once for all
By that right-hand I lost,
Bought up at so light a cost
As one bloody fall
On the soldier's bed,
And three days on the ruined wall
Among the thirstless dead.
O, to think my name is crost
From duty's muster-roll;
That I may slumber though the clarion call,
And live the joy of an embodied soul
Free as a liberated ghost.
O, to feel a life of deed
Was emptied out to feed
That fire of pain that burned so brief awhile,--
That fire from which I come, as the dead come
Forth from the irreparable tomb,
Or as a martyr on his funeral pile
Heaps up the burdens other men do bear
Through years of segregated care,
And takes the total load
Upon his shoulders broad,
And steps from earth to God.
O, to think, through good or ill,
Whatever I am you'll love me still;
O, to think, though dull I be,
You that are so grand and free,
You that are so bright and gay,
Will pause to hear me when I will,
As though my head were gray;
A single self reposes,
The nevermore with the evermore
Above me mingles and closes;
As my soul lies out like the basking hound,
And wherever it lies seems happy ground,
And when, awakened by some sweet sound,
A dreamy eye uncloses,
I see a blooming world around,
And I lie amid primroses,--
Years of sweet primroses,
Springs of fresh primroses.
Springs to be, and springs for me
Of distant dim primroses.
O, to lie a-dream, a-dream,
To feel I may dream and to know you deem
My work is done forever,
And the palpitating fever,
That gains and loses, loses and gains,
And she,
Perhaps, O even she
May look as she looked when I knew her
In those old days of childish sooth,
Ere my boyhood dared to woo her.
I will not seek nor sue her,
For I'm neither fonder nor truer
Than when she slighted my lovelorn youth,
My giftless, graceless, guinealess truth,
And I only lived to rue her.
But I'll never love another,
And, in spite of her lovers and lands,
She shall love me yet, my brother!
As a child that holds by his mother,
While his mother speaks his praises,
Holds with eager hands,
And ruddy and silent stands
In the ruddy and silent daisies,
And hears her bless her boy,
And lifts a wondering joy,
So I'll not seek nor sue her,
But I'll leave my glory to woo her,
And I'll stand like a child beside,
And from behind the purple pride
I'll lift my eyes unto her,
And I shall not be denied.
And you will love her, brother dear,
And perhaps next year you'll bring me here
All through the balmy April tide,
And she will trip like spring by my side,
And be all the birds to my ear.
And here all three we'll sit in the sun,
And see the Aprils one by one,
Primrosed Aprils on and on,
Till the floating prospect closes
In golden glimmers that rise and rise,
And perhaps are gleams of Paradise,
And perhaps too far for mortal eyes,
New springs of fresh primroses,
Springs of earth's primroses,
Springs to be, and springs for me
Of distant dim primroses.
SYDNEY DOBELL.
DIVIDED.
I.
An empty sky, a world of heather,
Purple of foxglove, yellow of broom:
We two among them wading together,
Shaking out honey, treading perfume.
Crowds of bees are giddy with clover,
Crowds of grasshoppers skip at our feet:
Crowds of larks at their matins hang over,
Thanking the Lord for a life so sweet.
Flusheth the rise with her purple favor,
Gloweth the cleft with her golden ring,
'Twixt the two brown butterflies waver,
Lightly settle, and sleepily swing.
We two walk till the purple dieth,
And short dry grass under foot is brown,
But one little streak at a distance lieth
Green, like a ribbon, to prank the down.
II.
Over the grass we stepped unto it,
And God, He knoweth how blithe we were!
Never a voice to bid us eschew it;
Hey the green ribbon that showed so fair!
Hey the green ribbon! we kneeled beside it,
We parted the grasses dewy and sheen:
Drop over drop there filtered and slided
A tiny bright beck that trickled between.
Tinkle, tinkle, sweetly it sung to us,
Light was our talk as of faery bells--
Faery wedding-bells faintly rung to us,
Down in their fortunate parallels.
Hand in hand, while the sun peered over,
We lapped the grass on that youngling spring,
Swept back its rushes, smoothed its clover,
And said, "Let us follow it westering."
III.
A dappled sky, a world of meadows;
Circling above us the black rooks fly,
'Forward, backward: lo, their dark shadows
Flit on the blossoming tapestry--
Flit on the beck--for her long grass parteth,
As hair from a maid's bright eyes blown back;
And lo, the sun like a lover darteth
His flattering smile on her wayward track.
Sing on! we sing in the glorious weather,
Till one steps over the tiny strand,
So narrow, in sooth, that still together
On either brink we go hand in hand.
The beck grows wider, the hands must sever,
On either margin, our songs all done,
We move apart, while she singeth ever,
Taking the course of the stooping sun.
He prays, "Come over"--I may not follow;
I cry, "Return"--but he cannot come:
We speak, we laugh, but with voices hollow;
Our hands are hanging, our hearts are numb.
IV.
A breathing sigh--a sigh for answer;
A little talking of outward things:
The careless beck is a merry dancer,
Keeping sweet time to the air she sings.
A little pain when the beck grows wider--
"Cross to me now, for her wavelets swell:"
"I may not cross" and the voice beside her
Faintly reacheth, though heeded well.
No backward path; ah! no returning:
No second crossing that ripple's flow:
"Come to me now, for the west is burning:
Come ere it darkens."--"Ah, no! ah, no!"
Then cries of pain, and arms outreaching--
The beck grows wider and swift and deep;
Passionate words as of one beseeching--
The loud beck drowns them: we walk and weep.
V.
A yellow moon in splendor drooping,
A tired queen with her state oppressed,
Low by rushes and sword-grass stooping,
Lies she soft on the waves at rest.
The desert heavens have felt her sadness;
Her earth will weep her some dewy tears;
The wild beck ends her tune of gladness,
And goeth stilly as soul that fears.
We two walk on in our grassy places,
On either marge of the moonlit flood,
With the moon's own sadness in our faces,
Where joy is withered, blossom and bud.
VI.
A shady freshness, chafers whirring,
A little piping of leaf-hid birds;
A flutter of wings, a fitful stirring,
A cloud to the eastward snowy as curds.
Bare grassy slopes, where the kids are tethered,
Bound valleys like nests all ferny-lined;
Round hills, with fluttering tree-tops feathered,
Swell high in their freckled robes behind.
A rose-flush tender, a thrill, a quiver,
When golden gleams to the tree-tops glide;
A flashing edge for the milk-white river,
The beck, a river--with still sleek tide.
Broad and white, and polished as silver,
On she goes under fruit-laden trees;
Sunk in leafage cooeth the culver,
And 'plaineth of love's disloyalties.
Glitters the dew, and shines the river;
Up comes the lily and dries her bell;
But two are walking apart forever,
And wave their hands for a mute farewell.
VII.
A braver swell, a swifter sliding;
The river hasteth, her banks recede;
Wing-like sails on her bosom gliding
Bear down the lily, and drown the reed.
Stately prows are rising and bowing--
(Shouts of mariners winnow the air)--
And level sands for banks endowing
The tiny green ribbon that showed so fair.
While, O my heart! as white sails shiver,
And crowds are passing, and banks stretch wide,
How hard to follow, with lips that quiver,
That moving speck on the far-off side!
Farther, farther--I see it--know it--
My eyes brim over, it melts away:
Only my heart to my heart shall show it,
As I walk desolate day by day.
VIII.
And yet I know past all doubting, truly,--
A knowledge greater than grief can dim--
I know, as he loved, he will love me duly--
Yea, better--e'en better than I love him:
And as I walk by the vast calm river,
The awful river so dread to see,
I say, "Thy breadth and thy depth forever
Are bridged by his thoughts that cross to me."
JEAN INGELOW.
TO DIANE DE POITIERS.
Farewell! since vain is all my care,
Far, in some desert rude,
I'll hide my weakness, my despair:
And, 'midst my solitude,
I'll pray, that, should another move thee,
He may as fondly, truly love thee.
Adieu, bright eyes, that were my heaven!
Adieu, soft cheek, where summer blooms!
Adieu, fair form, earth's pattern given,
Which Love inhabits and illumes!
Your rays have fallen but coldly on me:
One far less fond, perchance, had won ye!
From the French of CLEMENT MAROT.
Translation of LOUISE STUART COSTELLO.
THE SPINNER.
The spinner twisted her slender thread
As she sat and spun:
"The earth and the heavens are mine," she said,
"And the moon and sun;
Into my web the sunlight goes,
And the breath of May,
And the crimson life of the new-blown rose
That was born to-day."
The spinner sang in the hush of noon
And her song was low:
"Ah, morning, you pass away too soon,
You are swift to go.
My heart o'erflows like a brimming cup
With its hopes and fears.
Love, come and drink the sweetness up
Ere it turn to tears."
The spinner looked at the falling sun:
"Is it time to rest?
My hands are weary,--my work is done,
I have wrought my best;
I have spun and woven with patient eyes
And with fingers fleet.
Lo! where the toil of a lifetime lies
In a winding-sheet!"
MARY AINGE DE VERE (_Madeline Bridges_).
TAKE, O, TAKE THOSE LIPS AWAY.[1]
Take, O, take those lips away,
That so sweetly were forsworn;
And those eyes, like break of day,
Lights that do mislead the morn;
But my kisses bring again,
Seals of love, but sealed in vain.
Hide, O, hide those hills of snow
Which thy frozen bosom bears,
On whose tops the pinks that grow
Are yet of those that April wears!
But first set my poor heart free,
Bound in those icy chains by thee.
SHAKESPEARE and JOHN FLETCHER.
[1] The first stanza of this song appears in Shakespeare's
"Measure for Measure," Activ. Sc. I.; the same, with the
second, stanza added, is found in Beaumont and Fletcher's
"Bloody Brother," Act v. Sc. 2.
WOMAN'S INCONSTANCY.
I loved thee once, I'll love no more,
Thine be the grief as is the blame;
Thou art not what thou wast before,
What reason I should be the same?
He that can love unloved again,
Hath better store of love than brain:
God sends me love my debts to pay,
While unthrifts fool their love away.
Nothing could have my love o'erthrown,
If thou hadst still continued mine;
Yea, if thou hadst remained thy own,
I might perchance have yet been thine.
But thou thy freedom didst recall,
That if thou might elsewhere inthrall;
And then how could I but disdain
A captive's captive to remain?
When new desires had conquered thee,
And changed the object of thy will,
It had been lethargy in me,
Not constancy, to love thee still.
Yea, it had been a sin to go
And prostitute affection so,
Since we are taught no prayers to say
To such as must to others pray.
Yet do thou glory in thy choice.
Thy choice of his good fortune boast;
I 'll neither grieve nor yet rejoice,
To see him gain what I have lost;
The height of my disdain shall be,
To laugh at him, to blush for thee;
To love thee still, but go no more
A begging to a beggar's door.
SIR ROBERT AYTON.
TIME'S REVENGE.
She, who but late in beauty's flower was seen,
Proud of her auburn curls and noble mien--
Who froze my hopes and triumphed in my fears,
Now sheds her graces in the waste of years.
Changed to unlovely is that breast of snow,
And dimmed her eye, and wrinkled is her brow;
And querulous the voice by time repressed,
Whose artless music stole me from my rest.
Age gives redress to love; and silvery hair
And earlier wrinkles brand the haughty fair.
From the Greek of AGATHIAS.
Translation of ROBERT BLAND.
THE DREAM.
Our life is twofold; sleep hath its own world,
A boundary between the things misnamed
Death and existence: sleep hath its own world,
And a wide realm of wild reality,
And dreams in their development have breath,
And tears, and tortures, and the touch of joy;
They leave a weight upon our waking thoughts,
They take a weight from off our waking toils,
They do divide our being; they become
A portion of ourselves as of our time,
And look like heralds of eternity;
They pass like spirits of the past,--they speak
Like sibyls of the future; they have power,--
The tyranny of pleasure and of pain;
They make us what we were not,--what they will,
And shake us with the vision that's gone by.
The dread of vanished shadows.--Are they so?
Is not the past all shadow? What are they?
Creations of the mind?--The mind can make
Substances, and people planets of its own
With beings brighter than have been, and give
A breath to forms which can outlive all flesh.
I would recall a vision which I dreamed
Perchance in sleep,--for in itself a thought,
A slumbering thought, is capable of years,
And curdles a long life into one hour.
I saw two beings in the hues of youth
Standing upon a hill, a gentle hill,
Green and of a mild declivity, the last
As 't were the cape of a long ridge of such,
Save that there was no sea to lave its base,
But a most living landscape, and the wave
Of woods and cornfields, and the abodes of men
Scattered at intervals, and wreathing smoke
Arising from such rustic roofs; the hill
Was crowned with a peculiar diadem
Of trees, in circular array, so fixed,
Not by the sport of nature, but of man:
These two, a maiden and a youth, were there
Gazing,--the one on all that was beneath
Fair as herself,--but the boy gazed on her;
And both were young, and one was beautiful;
And both were young,--yet not alike in youth.
As the sweet moon on the horizon's verge,
The maid was on the eve of womanhood;
The boy had fewer summers, but his heart
Had far outgrown his years, and to his eye
There was but one beloved face on earth,
And that was shining on him; he had looked
Upon it till it could not pass away;
He had no breath, no being, but in hers;
She was his voice; he did not speak to her,
But trembled on her words; she was his sight,
For his eye followed hers, and saw with hers,
Which colored all his objects;--he had ceased
To live with himself: she was his life,
The ocean to the river of his thoughts,
Which terminated all; upon a tone,
A touch of hers, his blood would ebb and flow,
And his cheek change tempestuously;--his heart
Unknowing of its cause of agony.
But she in these fond feelings had no share:
Her sighs were not for him; to her he was
Even as a brother,--but no more; 'twas much,
For brotherless she was, save in the name
Her infant friendship had bestowed on him;
Herself the solitary scion left
Of a time-honored race. It was a name
Which pleased him, and yet pleased him not,--and why?
Time taught him a deep answer--when she loved
Another; even _now_ she loved another,
And on the summit of the hill she stood,
Looking afar if yet her lover's steed
Kept pace with her expectancy, and flew.
A change came o'er the spirit of my dream.
There was an ancient mansion, and before
Its walls there was a steed caparisoned;
Within an antique oratory stood
The boy of whom I spake;--he was alone,
And pale, and pacing to and fro: anon
He sate him down, and seized a pen and traced
Words which I could not guess of; then he leaned
His bowed head on his hands and shook, as 'twere
With a convulsion,--then arose again,
And with his teeth and quivering hands did tear
What he had written, but he shed no tears,
And he did calm himself, and fix his brow
Into a kind of quiet; as he paused,
The lady of his love re-entered there;
She was serene and smiling then, and yet
She knew she was by him beloved; she knew--
For quickly comes such knowledge--that his heart
Was darkened with her shadow, and she saw
That he was wretched, but she saw not all.
He rose, and with a cold and gentle grasp
He took her hand; a moment o'er his face
A tablet of unutterable thoughts
Was traced, and then it faded, as it came;
He dropped the hand he held, and with slow steps
Retired, but not as bidding her adieu,
For they did part with mutual smiles; he passed
From out the massy gate of that old Hall,
And mounting on his steed he went his way;
And ne'er repassed that hoary threshold more.
A change came o'er the spirit of my dream.
The boy was sprung to manhood; in the wilds
Of fiery climes he made himself a home,
And his soul drank their sunbeams; he was girt
With strange and dusky aspects; he was not
Himself like what he had been; on the sea
And on the shore he was a wanderer;
There was a mass of many images
Crowded like waves upon me, but he was
A part of all; and in the last he lay
Reposing from the noontide sultriness,
Couched among fallen columns, in the shade
Of ruined walls that had survived the names
Of those who reared them; by his sleeping side
Stood camels grazing, and some goodly steeds
Were fastened near a fountain; and a man,
Clad in a flowing garb, did watch the while,
While many of his tribe slumbered around:
And they were canopied by the blue sky,
So cloudless, clear, and purely beautiful,
That God alone was to be seen in heaven.
A change came o'er the spirit of my dream.
The lady of his love was wed with one
Who did not love her better: in her home,
A thousand leagues from his,--her native home,
She dwelt, begirt with growing infancy,
Daughters and sons of beauty,--but behold!
Upon her face there was the tint of grief,
The settled shadow of an inward strife,
And an unquiet drooping of the eye,
As if its lids were charged with unshed tears.
What could her grief be?--she had all she loved,
And he who had so loved her was not there
To trouble with bad hopes, or evil wish,
Or ill-repressed affliction, her pure thoughts.
What could her grief be?--she had loved him not,
Nor given him cause to deem himself beloved,
Nor could he be a part of that which preyed
Upon her mind--a spectre of the past.
A change came o'er the spirit of my dream.
The wanderer was returned.--I saw him stand
Before an altar--with a gentle bride;
Her face was fair, but was not that which made
The starlight of his boyhood;--as he stood
Even at the altar, o'er his brow there came
The selfsame aspect and the quivering shock
That in the antique oratory shook
His bosom in its solitude; and then--
As in that hour--a moment o'er his face
The tablet of unutterable thoughts
Was traced,--and then it faded as it came,
And he stood calm and quiet, and he spoke
The fitting vows, but heard not his own words,
And all things reeled around him; he could see
Not that which was, nor that which should have been,--
But the old mansion, and the accustomed hall,
And the remembered chambers, and the place,
The day, the hour, the sunshine, and the shade,
All things pertaining to that place and hour,
And her who was his destiny, came back
And thrust themselves between him and the light;
What business had they there at such a time?
A change came o'er the spirit of my dream.
The lady of his love;--O, she was changed,
As by the sickness of the soul! her mind
Had wandered from its dwelling, and her eyes,
They had not their own lustre, but the look
Which is not of the earth; she was become
The queen of a fantastic realm; her thoughts
Were combinations of disjointed things,
And forms impalpable and unperceived
Of others' sight familiar were to hers.
And this the world calls frenzy; but the wise
Have a far deeper madness, and the glance
Of melancholy is a fearful gift;
What is it but the telescope of truth,
Which strips the distance of its fantasies,
And brings life near in utter nakedness,
Making the cold reality too real!
A change came o'er the spirit of my dream.
The wanderer was alone as heretofore,
The beings which surrounded him were gone,
Or were at war with him; he was a mark
For blight and desolation, compassed round
With hatred and contention; pain was mixed
In all which was served up to him, until,
Like to the Pontic monarch of old days,
He fed on poisons, and they had no power,
But were a kind of nutriment; he lived
Through that which had been death to many men,
And made him friends of mountains: with the stars
And the quick Spirit of the universe
He held his dialogues; and they did teach
To him the magic of their mysteries;
To him the book of Night was opened wide,
And voices from the deep abyss revealed
A marvel and a secret.--Be it so.
My dream was past; it had no further change.
It was of a strange order, that the doom
Of these two creatures should be thus traced out
Almost like a reality,--the one
To end in madness--both in misery.
LORD BYRON.
ALAS! HOW LIGHT A CAUSE MAY MOVE.
FROM "THE LIGHT OF THE HAREM."
Alas! how light a cause may move
Dissension between hearts that love!
Hearts that the world in vain has tried,
And sorrow but more closely tied;
That stood the storm when waves were rough,
Yet in a sunny hour fall off,
Like ships that have gone down at sea,
When heaven was all tranquillity!
A something light as air,--a look,
A word unkind or wrongly taken,--
O, love that tempests never shook,
A breath, a touch like this has shaken!
And ruder words will soon rush in
To spread the breach that words begin;
And eyes forget the gentle ray
They wore in courtship's smiling day;
And voices lose the tone that shed
A tenderness round all they said;
Till fast declining, one by one,
The sweetnesses of love are gone,
And hearts, so lately mingled, seem
Like broken clouds,--or like the stream,
That smiling left the mountain's brow,
As though its waters ne'er could sever,
Yet, ere it reach the plain below,
Breaks into floods that part forever.
O you, that have the charge of Love,
Keep him in rosy bondage bound,
As in the Fields of Bliss above
He sits, with flowerets fettered round;--
Loose not a tie that round him clings,
Nor ever let him use his wings;
For even an hour, a minute's flight
Will rob the plumes of half their light.
Like that celestial bird,--whose nest
Is found beneath far Eastern skies,--
Whose wings, though radiant when at rest,
Lose all their glory when he flies!
THOMAS MOORE.
BLIGHTED LOVE.
Flowers are fresh, and bushes green,
Cheerily the linnets sing;
Winds are soft, and skies serene;
Time, however, soon shall throw
Winter's snow
O'er the buxom breast of Spring!
Hope, that buds in lover's heart,
Lives not through the scorn of years;
Time makes love itself depart;
Time and scorn congeal the mind,--
Looks unkind
Freeze affection's warmest tears.
Time shall make the bushes green;
Time dissolve the winter snow;
Winds be soft, and skies serene;
Linnets sing their wonted strain:
But again
Blighted love shall never blow!
From the Portuguese of LUIS DE CAMOENS.
Translation of LORD STRANGFORD.
THE NEVERMORE.
Look in my face; my name is Might-have-been;
I am also called No-more, Too-late, Farewell;
Unto thine ear I hold the dead-sea shell
Cast up thy Life's foam-fretted feet between;
Unto thine eyes the glass where that is seen
Which had Life's form and Love's, but by my spell
Is now a shaken shadow intolerable,
Of ultimate things unuttered the frail screen.
Mark me, how still I am! But should there dart
One moment through my soul the soft surprise
Of that winged Peace which lulls the breath of sighs,--
Then shalt thou see me smile, and turn apart
Thy visage to mine ambush at thy heart
Sleepless with cold commemorative eyes.
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI.
THE PORTRAIT.
Midnight past! Not a sound of aught
Through the silent house, but the wind at his prayers.
I sat by the dying fire, and thought
Of the dear dead woman upstairs.
A night of tears! for the gusty rain
Had ceased, but the eaves were dripping yet;
And the moon looked forth, as though in pain,
With her face all white and wet:
Nobody with me, my watch to keep,
But the friend of my bosom, the man I love:
And grief had sent him fast to sleep
In the chamber up above.
Nobody else, in the country place
All round, that knew of my loss beside,
But the good young Priest with the Raphael-face,
Who confessed her when she died.
That good young Priest is of gentle nerve,
And my grief had moved him beyond control;
For his lips grew white, as I could observe,
When he speeded her parting soul.
I sat by the dreary hearth alone:
I thought of the pleasant days of yore:
I said, "The staff of my life is gone:
The woman I loved is no more.
"On her cold dead bosom my portrait lies,
Which next to her heart she used to wear--
Haunting it o'er with her tender eyes
When my own face was not there.
"It is set all round with rubies red,
And pearls which a Peri, might have kept.
For each ruby there my heart hath bled:
For each pearl my eyes have wept."
And I said--"The thing is precious to me:
They will bury her soon in the churchyard clay;
It lies on her heart, and lost must be
If I do not take it away."
I lighted my lamp at the dying flame,
And crept up the stairs that creaked for fright,
Till into the chamber of death I came,
Where she lay all in white.
The moon shone over her winding-sheet,
There stark she lay on her carven bed:
Seven burning tapers about her feet,
And seven about her head.
As I stretched my hand, I held my breath;
I turned as I drew the curtains apart:
I dared not look on the face of death:
I knew where to find her heart.
I thought at first, as my touch fell there,
It had warmed that heart to life, with love;
For the thing I touched was warm, I swear,
And I could feel it move.
'Twas the hand of a man, that was moving slow
O'er the heart of the dead,--from the other side:
And at once the sweat broke over my brow.
"Who is robbing the corpse?" I cried.
Opposite me by the tapers' light,
The friend of my bosom, the man I loved,
Stood over the corpse, and all as white,
And neither of us moved.
"What do you here, my friend?" ... The man
Looked first at me, and then at the dead.
"There is a portrait here," he began;
"There is. It is mine," I said.
Said the friend of my bosom, "Yours, no doubt,
The portrait was, till a month ago,
When this suffering angel took that out,
And placed mine there, I know."
"This woman, she loved me well," said I.
"A month ago," said my friend to me:
"And in your throat," I groaned, "you lie!"
He answered, ... "Let us see."
"Enough!" I returned, "let the dead decide:
And whosesoever the portrait prove,
His shall it be, when the cause is tried,
Where Death is arraigned by Love."
We found the portrait there, in its place:
We opened it by the tapers' shine:
The gems were all unchanged: the face
Was--neither his nor mine.
"One nail drives out another, at least!
The face of the portrait there," I cried,
"Is our friend's, the Raphael-faced young Priest,
Who confessed her when she died."
The setting is all of rubies red,
And pearls which a Peri might have kept.
For each ruby there my heart hath bled:
For each pearl my eyes have wept.
ROBERT BULWER-LYTTON (_Owen Meredith_).
ONLY A WOMAN.
"She loves with love that cannot tire:
And if, ah, woe! she loves alone,
Through passionate duty love flames higher,
As grass grows taller round a stone."
--COVENTRY PATMORE.
So, the truth's out. I'll grasp it like a snake,--
It will not slay me. My heart shall not break
Awhile, if only for the children's sake.
For his, too, somewhat. Let him stand unblamed;
None say, he gave me less than honor claimed,
Except--one trifle scarcely worth being named--
The heart. That's gone. The corrupt dead might be
As easily raised up, breathing,--fair to see,
As he could bring his whole heart back to me.
I never sought him in coquettish sport,
Or courted him as silly maidens court,
And wonder when the longed-for prize falls short.
I only loved him,--any woman would:
But shut my love up till he came and sued,
Then poured it o'er his dry life like a flood.
I was so happy I could make him blest!--
So happy that I was his first and best,
As he mine,--when he took me to his breast.
Ah me! if only then he had been true!
If for one little year, a month or two,
He had given me love for love, as was my due!
Or had he told me, ere the deed was done,
He only raised me to his heart's dear throne--
Poor substitute--because the queen was gone!
O, had he whispered, when his sweetest kiss
Was warm upon my mouth in fancied bliss,
He had kissed another woman even as this,--
It were less bitter! Sometimes I could weep
To be thus cheated, like a child asleep;--
Were not my anguish far too dry and deep.
So I built my house upon another's ground;
Mocked with a heart just caught at the rebound,--
A cankered thing that looked so firm and sound.
And when that heart grew colder,--colder still,
I, ignorant, tried all duties to fulfil,
Blaming my foolish pain, exacting will,
All,--anything but him. It was to be
The full draught others drink up carelessly
Was made this bitter Tantalus-cup for me.
I say again,--he gives me all I claimed,
I and my children never shall be shamed:
He is a just man,--he will live unblamed.
Only--O God, O God, to cry for bread.
And get a stone! Daily to lay my head
Upon a bosom where the old love's dead!
Dead?--Fool! It never lived. It only stirred
Galvanic, like an hour-cold corpse. None heard:
So let me bury it without a word.
He'll keep that other woman from my sight.
I know not if her face be foul or bright;
I only know that it was his delight--
As his was mine; I only know he stands
Pale, at the touch of their long-severed hands,
Then to a flickering smile his lips commands,
Lest I should grieve, or jealous anger show.
He need not. When the ship's gone down, I trow,
We little reck whatever wind may blow.
And so my silent moan begins and ends,
No world's laugh or world's taunt, no pity of friends
Or sneer of foes, with this my torment blends.
None knows,--none heeds. I have a little pride;
Enough to stand up, wifelike, by his side,
With the same smile as when I was his bride.
And I shall take his children to my arms;
They will not miss these fading, worthless charms;
Their kiss--ah! unlike his--all pain disarms.
And haply as the solemn years go by,
He will think sometimes, with regretful sigh,
The other woman was less true than I.
DINAH MARIA MULOCK CRAIK.
DOROTHY IN THE GARRET.
In the low-raftered garret, stooping
Carefully over the creaking boards,
Old Maid Dorothy goes a-groping
Among its dusty and cobwebbed hoards;
Seeking some bundle of patches, hid
Far under the eaves, or bunch of sage,
Or satchel hung on its nail, amid
The heirlooms of a bygone age.
There is the ancient family chest,
There the ancestral cards and hatchel;
Dorothy, sighing, sinks down to rest,
Forgetful of patches, sage, and satchel.
Ghosts of faces peer from the gloom
Of the chimney, where with swifts and reel,
And the long-disused, dismantled loom,
Stands the old-fashioned spinning-wheel.
She sees it back in the clean-swept kitchen,
A part of her girlhood's little world;
Her mother is there by the window, stitching;
Spindle buzzes, and reel is whirled
With many a click: on her little stool
She sits, a child, by the open door,
Watching, and dabbling her feet in the pool
Of sunshine spilled on the gilded floor
Her sisters are spinning all day long;
To her wakening sense the first sweet warning
Of daylight come is the cheerful song
To the hum of the wheel in the early morning.
Benjie, the gentle, red-cheeked boy.
On his way to school, peeps in at the gate;
In neat white pinafore, pleased and coy,
She reaches a hand to her bashful mate;
And under the elms, a prattling pair.
Together they go, through glimmer and gloom:--
It all comes back to her, dreaming there
In the low-raftered garret room;
The hum of the wheel, and the summer weather.
The heart's first trouble, and love's beginning,
Are all in her memory linked together;
And now it is she herself that is spinning.
With the bloom of youth on cheek and lip.
Turning the spokes with the flashing pin,
Twisting the thread from the spindle-tip,
Stretching it out and winding it in.
To and fro, with a blithesome tread,
Singing she goes, and her heart is full,
And many a long-drawn golden thread
Of fancy is spun with the shining wool.
Her father sits in his favorite place,
Puffing his pipe by the chimney-side;
Through curling clouds his kindly face
Glows upon her with love and pride.
Lulled by the wheel, in the old arm-chair
Her mother is musing, cat in lap,
With beautiful drooping head, and hair
Whitening under her snow-white cap.
One by one, to the grave, to the bridal,
They have followed her sisters from the door;
Now they are old, and she is their idol:--
It all comes back on her heart once more.
In the autumn dusk the hearth gleams brightly,
The wheel is set by the shadowy wall,--
A hand at the latch,--'tis lifted lightly,
And in walks Benjie, manly and tall.
His chair is placed; the old man tips
The pitcher, and brings his choicest fruit;
Benjie basks in the blaze, and sips,
And tells his story, and joints his flute:
O, sweet the tunes, the talk, the laughter!
They fill the hour with a glowing tide;
But sweeter the still, deep moments after,
When she is alone by Benjie's side.
But once with angry words they part:
O, then the weary, weary days!
Ever with restless, wretched heart,
Plying her task, she turns to gaze
Far up the road; and early and late
She harks for a footstep at the door,
And starts at the gust that swings the gate,
And prays for Benjie, who comes no more.
Her fault? O Benjie, and could you steel
Your thoughts towards one who loved you so?--
Solace she seeks in the whirling wheel,
In duty and love that lighten woe;
Striving with labor, not in vain,
To drive away the dull day's dreariness,--
Blessing the toil that blunts the pain
Of a deeper grief in the body's weariness.
Proud and petted and spoiled was she:
A word, and all her life is changed!
His wavering love too easily
In the great, gay city grows estranged:
One year: she sits in the old church pew;
A rustle, a murmur,--O Dorothy! hide
Your face and shut from your soul the view--
'Tis Benjie leading a white-veiled bride!
Now father and mother have long been dead,
And the bride sleeps under a churchyard stone,
And a bent old man with a grizzled head
Walks up the long dim aisle alone.
Years blur to a mist; and Dorothy
Sits doubting betwixt the ghost she seems,
And the phantom of youth, more real than she,
That meets her there in that haunt of dreams.
Bright young Dorothy, idolized daughter,
Sought by many a youthful adorer,
Life, like a new-risen dawn on the water,
Shining an endless vista before her!
Old Maid Dorothy, wrinkled and gray,
Groping under the farm-house eaves,--
And life was a brief November day
That sets on a world of withered leaves!
Yet faithfulness in the humblest part
Is better at last than proud success,
And patience and love in a chastened heart
Are pearls more precious than happiness;
And in that morning when she shall wake
To the spring-time freshness of youth again,
All trouble will seem but a flying flake,
And lifelong sorrow a breath on the pane.
JOHN TOWNSEND TROWBRIDGE.
THE NUN AND HARP.
What memory fired her pallid face,
What passion stirred her blood,
What tide of sorrow and desire
Poured its forgotten flood
Upon a heart that ceased to beat,
Long since, with thought that life was sweet,
When nights were rich with vernal dusk,
And the rose burst its bud?
Had not the western glory then
Stolen through the latticed room,
Her funeral raiment would have shed
A more heart-breaking gloom;
Had not a dimpled convent-maid
Hung in the doorway, half afraid,
And left the melancholy place
Bright with her blush and bloom!
Beside the gilded harp she stood,
And through the singing strings
Wound those wan hands of folded prayer
In murmurous preludings.
Then, like a voice, the harp rang high
Its melody, as climb the sky,
Melting against the melting blue,
Some bird's vibrating wings.
Ah, why, of all the songs that grow
Forever tenderer,
Chose she that passionate refrain
Where lovers 'mid the stir
Of wassailers that round them pass
Hide their sweet secret? Now, alas,
In her nun's habit, coifed and veiled,
What meant that song to her!
Slowly the western ray forsook
The statue in its shrine;
A sense of tears thrilled all the air
Along the purpling line.
Earth seemed a place of graves that rang
To hollow footsteps, while she sang,
"Drink to me only with thine eyes.
And I will pledge with mine!"
HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD.
FIDELITY IN DOUBT.
Come, lady, to my song incline,
The last that shall assail thine ear.
None other cares my strains to hear,
And scarce thou feign'st thyself therewith delighted!
Nor know I well if I am loved or slighted;
But this I know, thou radiant one and sweet,
That, loved or spurned, I die before thy feet!
Yea, I will yield this life of mine
In every deed, if cause appear,
Without another boon to cheer.
Honor it is to be by thee incited
To any deed; and I, when most benighted
By doubt, remind me that times change and fleet,
And brave men still do their occasion meet.
From the French of GUIRAUD LEROUX.
Translation of HARRIET WATERS PRESTON.
FAITH.
Better trust all and be deceived,
And weep that trust and that deceiving,
Than doubt one heart that, if believed,
Had blessed one's life with true believing.
O, in this mocking world too fast
The doubting fiend o'ertakes our youth;
Better be cheated to the last
Than lose the blessed hope of truth.
FRANCES ANNE KEMBLE-BUTLER.
* * * * *
II. PARTING AND ABSENCE
PARTING.
If thou dost bid thy friend farewell,
But for one night though that farewell may be,
Press thou his hand in thine.
How canst thou tell how far from thee
Fate or caprice may lead his steps ere that to-morrow comes?
Men have been known to lightly turn the corner of a street,
And days have grown to months, and months to lagging years,
Ere they have looked in loving eyes again.
Parting, at best, is underlaid
With tears and pain.
Therefore, lest sudden death should come between.
Or time, or distance, clasp with pressure firm
The hand of him who goeth forth;
Unseen, Fate goeth too.
Yes, find thou always time to say some earnest word
Between the idle talk,
Lest with thee henceforth,
Night and day, regret should walk.
COVENTRY PATMORE.
TO LUCASTA.
ON GOING TO THE WARS.
Tell me not, sweet, I am unkinde,
That from the nunnerie
Of thy chaste breast and quiet minde,
To warre and armes I flee.
True, a new mistresse now I chase.--
The first foe in the field;
And with a stronger faith imbrace
A sword, a horse, a shield.
Yet this inconstancy is such
As you, too, shall adore;
I could not love thee, deare, so much,
Loved I not honour more.
RICHARD LOVELACE.
GOOD-BYE.
"Farewell! farewell!" is often heard
From the lips of those who part:
'Tis a whispered tone,--'tis a gentle word,
But it springs not from the heart.
It may serve for the lover's closing lay,
To be sung 'neath a summer sky;
But give to me the lips that say
The honest words, "Good-bye!"
"Adieu! adieu!" may greet the ear,
In the guise of courtly speech:
But when we leave the kind and dear,
'Tis not what the soul would teach.
Whene'er we grasp the hands of those
We would have forever nigh,
The flame of Friendship bursts and glows
In the warm, frank words, "Good-bye."
The mother, sending forth her child
To meet with cares and strife,
Breathes through her tears her doubts and fears
For the loved one's future life.
No cold "adieu," no "farewell," lives
Within her choking sigh,
But the deepest sob of anguish gives,
"God bless thee, boy! Good-bye!"
Go, watch the pale and dying one,
When the glance hast lost its beam;
When the brow is cold as the marble stone,
And the world a passing dream;
And the latest pressure of the hand,
The look of the closing eye,
Yield what the heart _must_ understand,
A long, a last Good-bye.
ANONYMOUS.
AE FOND KISS BEFORE WE PART.
Ae fond kiss, and then we sever;
Ae fareweel, alas, forever!
Deep in heart-wrung tears I'll pledge thee;
Warring sighs and groans I'll wage thee.
Who shall say that fortune grieves him,
While the star of hope she leaves him?
Me, nae cheerfu' twinkle lights me;
Dark despair around benights me.
I'll ne'er blame my partial fancy--
Naething could resist my Nancy:
But to see her was to love her,
Love but her, and love forever.
Had we never loved sae kindly,
Had we never loved sae blindly,
Never met--or never parted,
We had ne'er been broken-hearted.
Fare thee weel, thou first and fairest!
Fare thee weel, thou best and dearest!
Thine be ilka joy and treasure,
Peace, enjoyment, love, and pleasure!
Ae fond kiss, and then we sever;
Ae fareweel, alas, forever!
Deep in heart-wrung tears I'll pledge thee,
Warring sighs and groans I'll wage thee!
ROBERT BURNS.
O, MY LUVE'S LIKE A RED, RED ROSE.
O, my Luve's like a red, red rose
That's newly sprung in June:
O, my Luve's like the melodie
That's sweetly played in tune.
As fair art thou, my bonnie lass,
So deep in luve am I:
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
Till a' the seas gang dry:
Till a' the seas gang dry, my dear.
And the rocks melt wi' the sun:
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
While the sands o' life shall run.
And fare thee weel, my only Luve!
And fare thee weel awhile!
And I will come again, my Luve,
Tho' it were ten thousand mile.
ROBERT BURNS.
MAID OF ATHENS, ERE WE PART.
Maid of Athens, ere we part,
Give, O, give me back my heart!
Or, since that has left my breast,
Keep it now, and take the rest!
Hear my vow before I go,
[Greek: Zôê moy sas hagapô.][2]
By those tresses unconfined,
Wooed by each Ægean wind;
By those lids whose jetty fringe
Kiss thy soft cheeks' blooming tinge;
By those wild eyes like the roe,
[Greek: Zôê moy sas hagapô.]
By that lip I long to taste;
By that zone-encircled waist;
By all the token-flowers that tell
What words can never speak so well;
By love's alternate joy and woe,
[Greek: Zôê moy sas hagapô.]
Maid of Athens! I am gone.
Think of me, sweet! when alone.
Though I fly to Istambol,
Athens holds my heart and soul:
Can I cease to love thee? No!
[Greek: Zôê moy sas hagapô.]
LORD BYRON.
[2] _Zóë mou, sas ágap[-o]_; My life. I love thee.
SONG.
OF THE YOUNG HIGHLANDER SUMMONED FROM HIS BRIDE
BY THE "FIERY CROSS OF RODERICK DHU."
FROM "THE LADY OF THE LAKE."
The heath this night must be my bed,
The bracken curtain for my head,
My lullaby the warder's tread,
Far, far from love and thee, Mary;
To-morrow eve, more stilly laid
My couch may be my bloody plaid,
My vesper song, thy wail, sweet maid!
It will not waken me, Mary!
I may not, dare not, fancy now
The grief that clouds thy lovely brow,
I dare not think upon thy vow,
And all it promised me, Mary.
No fond regret must Norman know;
When bursts Clan-Alpine on the foe,
His heart must be like bended bow,
His foot like arrow free, Mary!
A time will come with feeling fraught!
For, if I fall in battle fought,
Thy hapless lover's dying thought
Shall be a thought on thee. Mary.
And if returned from conquered foes,
How blithely will the evening close,
How sweet the linnet sing repose,
To my young bride and me, Mary!
SIR WALTER SCOTT.
BLACK-EYED SUSAN.
All in the Downs the fleet was moored,
The streamers waving in the wind,
When black-eyed Susan came aboard;
"O, where shall I my true-love find?
Tell me, ye jovial sailors, tell me true
If my sweet William sails among the crew."
William, who high upon the yard
Rocked with the billow to and fro,
Soon as her well-known voice he heard
He sighed, and cast his eyes below:
The cord slides swiftly through his glowing hands,
And quick as lightning on the deck he stands.
So the sweet lark, high poised in air,
Shuts close his pinions to his breast
If chance his mate's shrill call he hear,
And drops at once into her nest:--
The noblest captain in the British fleet
Might envy William's lips those kisses sweet.
"O Susan, Susan, lovely dear,
My vows shall ever true remain;
Let me kiss off that falling tear;
We only part to meet again.
Change as ye list, ye winds; my heart shall be
The faithful compass that still points to thee.
"Believe not what the landmen say
Who tempt with doubts thy constant mind;
They'll tell thee, sailors, when away,
In every port a mistress find;
Yes, yes, believe them when they tell thee so,
For thou art present wheresoe'er I go.
"If to fair India's coast we sail,
Thy eyes are seen in diamonds bright,
Thy breath is Afric's spicy gale,
Thy skin is ivory so white.
Thus every beauteous object that I view
Wakes in my soul some charm of lovely Sue.
"Though battle call me from thy arms,
Let not my pretty Susan mourn;
Though cannons roar, yet safe from harms
William shall to his dear return.
Love turns aside the balls that round me fly,
Lest precious tears should drop from Susan's eye."
The boatswain gave the dreadful word,
The sails their swelling bosom spread;
No longer must she stay aboard:
They kissed, she sighed, he hung his head.
Her lessening boat unwilling rows to land;
"Adieu!" she cried; and waved her lily hand.
JOHN GAY.
THE PARTING LOVERS.
She says, "The cock crows,--hark!"
He says, "No! still 'tis dark."
She says, "The dawn grows bright,"
He says, "O no, my Light."
She says, "Stand up and say,
Gets not the heaven gray?"
He says, "The morning star
Climbs the horizon's bar."
She says, "Then quick depart:
Alas! you now must start;
But give the cock a blow
Who did begin our woe!"
ANONYMOUS. From the Chinese.
Translation of WILLIAM. R. ALGER.
LOCHABER NO MORE.
Farewell to Lochaber! and farewell, my Jean,
Where heartsome with thee I hae mony day been;
For Lochaber no more, Lochaber no more,
We'll maybe return to Lochaber no more!
These tears that I shed they are a' for my dear,
And no for the dangers attending on wear,
Though borne on rough seas to a far bloody shore,
Maybe to return to Lochaber no more.
Though hurricanes rise, and rise every wind,
They'll ne'er make a tempest like that in my mind;
Though loudest of thunder on louder waves roar,
That's naething like leaving my love on the shore.
To leave thee behind me my heart is sair pained;
By ease that's inglorious no fame can be gained;
And beauty and love's the reward of the brave,
And I must deserve it before I can crave.
Then glory, my Jeany, maun plead my excuse;
Since honor commands me, how can I refuse?
Without it I ne'er can have merit for thee,
And without thy favor I'd better not be.
I gae then, my lass, to win honor and fame,
And if I should luck to come gloriously hame,
I'll bring a heart to thee with love running o'er,
And then I'll leave thee and Lochaber no more.
ALLAN RAMSAY.
AS SLOW OUR SHIP.
As slow our ship her foamy track
Against the wind was cleaving.
Her trembling pennant still looked back
To that dear isle 'twas leaving.
So loath we part from all we love,
From all the links that bind us;
So turn our hearts, as on we rove,
To those we've left behind us!
When, round the bowl, of vanished years
We talk with joyous seeming,--
With smiles that might as well be tears,
So faint, so sad their beaming;
While memory brings us back again
Each early tie that twined us,
O, sweet's the cup that circles then
To those we've left behind us!
And when, in other climes, we meet
Some isle or vale enchanting,
Where all looks flowery, wild, and sweet,
And naught but love is wanting;
We think how great had been our bliss
If Heaven had but assigned us
To live and die in scenes like this,
With some we've left behind us!
As travellers oft look back at eve
When eastward darkly going,
To gaze upon that light they leave
Still faint behind, them glowing,--
So, when the close of pleasure's day
To gloom hath near consigned us,
We turn to catch one fading ray
Of joy that's left behind us.
THOMAS MOORE.
QUA CURSUM VENTUS.
As ships, becalmed at eve, that lay
With canvas drooping, side by side,
Two towers of sail at dawn of day
Are scarce long leagues apart descried.
When fell the night, up sprang the breeze,
And all the darkling hours they plied,
Nor dreamt but each the selfsame seas
By each was cleaving, side by side:
E'en so,--but why the tale reveal
Of those whom, year by year unchanged,
Brief absence joined anew to feel,
Astounded, soul from soul estranged?
At dead of night their sails were filled,
And onward each rejoicing steered;--
Ah! neither blame, for neither willed
Or wist what first with dawn appeared.
To veer, how vain! On, onward strain,
Brave barks! In light, in darkness too,
Through winds and tides one compass guides;
To that and your own selves be true.
But O blithe breeze! and O great seas!
Though ne'er, that earliest parting past,
On your wide plain they join again,--
Together lead them home at last.
One port, methought, alike they sought,--
One purpose hold where'er they fare;
O bounding breeze, O rushing seas,
At last, at last, unite them there!
ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH.
ADIEU, ADIEU! MY NATIVE SHORE.
Adieu, adieu! my native shore
Fades o'er the waters blue;
The night-winds sigh, the breakers roar,
And shrieks the wild sea-mew.
Yon sun that sets upon the sea
We follow in his flight;
Farewell awhile to him and thee,
My native Land--Good Night!
A few short hours, and he will rise
To give the morrow birth;
And I shall hail the main and skies,
But not my mother earth.
Deserted is my own good hall,
Its hearth is desolate;
Wild weeds are gathering on the wall;
My dog howls at the gate.
LORD BYRON.
FAREWELL TO HIS WIFE.
Fare thee well! and if forever,
Still forever, fare thee well;
Even though unforgiving, never
'Gainst thee shall my heart rebel.
Would that breast were bared before thee
Where thy head so oft hath lain,
While that placid sleep came o'er thee
Which thou ne'er canst know again:
Would that breast, by thee glanced over,
Every inmost thought could show!
Then thou wouldst at last discover
'Twas not well to spurn it so.
Though the world for this commend thee,--
Though it smile upon the blow,
Even its praises must offend thee,
Founded on another's woe:
Though my many faults defaced me,
Could no other arm be found
Than the one which once embraced me,
To inflict a cureless wound?
Yet, O, yet thyself deceived not:
Love may sink by slow decay;
But by sudden wrench, believe not
Hearts can thus be torn away:
Still thy own its life retaineth,--
Still must mine, though bleeding, beat;
And the undying thought which paineth
Is--that we no more may meet.
These are words of deeper sorrow
Than the wail above the dead;
Both shall live, but every morrow
Wake us from a widowed bed.
And when thou wouldst solace gather,
When our child's first accents flow,
Wilt thou teach her to say "Father!"
Though his care she must forego?
When her little hands shall press thee,
When her lip to thine is pressed,
Think of him whose prayer shall bless thee,
Think of him thy love had blessed!
Should her lineaments resemble
Those thou nevermore mayst see,
Then thy heart will softly tremble
With a pulse yet true to me.
All my faults perchance thou knowest,
All my madness none can know;
All my hopes, where'er thou goest,
Wither, yet with _thee_ they go.
Every feeling hath been shaken;
Pride, which not a world could bow,
Bows to thee,--by thee forsaken,
Even my soul forsakes me now;
But 't is done; all words are idle,--
Words from me are vainer still;
But the thoughts we cannot bridle
Force their way without the will.
Fare thee well!--thus disunited,
Torn from every nearer tie,
Seared in heart, and lone, and blighted,
More than this I scarce can die.
LORD BYRON.
COME, LET US KISSE AND PARTE.
Since there's no helpe,--come, let us kisse and parte,
Nay, I have done,--you get no more of me;
And I am glad,--yea, glad with all my hearte,
That thus so cleanly I myselfe can free.
Shake hands forever!--cancel all our vows;
And when we meet at any time againe,
Be it not seene in either of our brows,
That we one jot of former love retaine.
Now--at the last gaspe of Love's latest breath--
When, his pulse failing, Passion speechless lies;
When Faith is kneeling by his bed of death,
And Innocence is closing up his eyes,
Now! if thou wouldst--when all have given him over--
From death to life thou mightst him yet recover.
MICHAEL DRAYTON.
FAREWELL! THOU ART TOO DEAR.
SONNET LXXXVII.
Farewell! thou art too dear for my possessing,
And like enough thou know'st thy estimate:
The charter of thy worth gives thee releasing;
My bonds in thee are all determinate.
For how do I hold thee but by thy granting?
And for that riches where is my deserving?
The cause of this fair gift in me is wanting,
And so my patent back again is swerving.
Thyself thou gav'st, thy own worth then not knowing?
Or me, to whom thou gav'st it, else mistaking;
So thy great gift, upon misprision growing,
Comes home again, on better judgment making.
Thus have I had thee, as a dream doth flatter;
In sleep a king, but, waking, no such matter.
SHAKESPEARE.
KATHLEEN MAVOURNEEN.
Kathleen Mavourneen! the gray dawn is breaking,
The horn of the hunter is heard on the hill;
The lark from her light wing the bright dew is shaking,--
Kathleen Mavourneen! what, slumbering still?
Oh, hast thou forgotten how soon we must sever?
Oh! hast thou forgotten this day we must part?
It may be for years, and it may be forever!
Oh, why art thou silent, thou voice of my heart?
Oh! why art thou silent, Kathleen Mavourneen?
Kathleen Mavourneen, awake from thy slumbers!
The blue mountains glow in the sun's golden light;
Ah, where is the spell that once hung on my numbers?
Arise in thy beauty, thou star of my night!
Mavourneen, Mavourneen, my sad tears are falling,
To think that from Erin and thee I must part!
It may be for years, and it may be forever!
Then why art thou silent, thou voice of my heart?
Then why art thou silent, Kathleen Mavourneen?
JULIA (OR LOUISA MACARTNEY) CRAWFORD.
WE PARTED IN SILENCE.
We parted in silence, we parted by night,
On the banks of that lonely river;
Where the fragrant limes their boughs unite,
We met--and we parted forever!
The night-bird sung, and the stars above
Told many a touching story,
Of friends long passed to the kingdom of love,
Where the soul wears its mantle of glory.
We parted in silence,--our cheeks were wet
With the tears that were past controlling;
We vowed we would never, no, never forget,
And those vows at the time were consoling;
But those lips that echoed the sounds of mine
Are as cold as that lonely river;
And that eye, that beautiful spirit's shrine,
Has shrouded its fires forever.
And now on the midnight sky I look,
And my heart grows full of weeping;
Each star is to me a sealèd book,
Some tale of that loved one keeping.
We parted in silence,--we parted in tears,
On the banks of that lonely river:
But the odor and bloom of those bygone years
Shall hang o'er its waters forever.
JULIA (OR LOUISA MACARTNEY) CRAWFORD.
AUF WIEDERSEHEN.
SUMMER.
The little gate was reached at last,
Half hid in lilacs down the lane;
She pushed it wide, and, as she past,
A wistful look she backward cast,
And said,--"_Auf wiedersehen_!"
With hand on latch, a vision white
Lingered reluctant, and again
Half doubting if she did aright,
Soft as the dews that fell that night,
She said,--"_Auf wiedersehen_!"
The lamp's clear gleam flits up the stair;
I linger in delicious pain;
Ah, in that chamber, whose rich air
To breathe in thought I scarcely dare,
Thinks she,--"_Auf wiedersehen_!"
'Tis thirteen years; once more I press
The turf that silences the lane;
I hear the rustle of her dress,
I smell the lilacs, and--ah, yes,
I hear,--"_Auf wiedersehen_!"
Sweet piece of bashful maiden art!
The English words had seemed too fain,
But these--they drew us heart to heart,
Yet held us tenderly apart;
She said,--"_Auf wiedersehen_!"
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.
PALINODE.
AUTUMN.
Still thirteen years: 't is autumn now
On field and hill, in heart and brain;
The naked trees at evening sough;
The leaf to the forsaken bough
Sighs not,--"_Auf wiedersehen_!"
Two watched yon oriole's pendent dome,
That now is void, and dank with rain,
And one,--oh, hope more frail than foam!
The bird to his deserted home
Sings not,--"_Auf wiedersehen_!"
The loath gate swings with rusty creak;
Once, parting there, we played at pain;
There came a parting, when the weak
And fading lips essayed to speak
Vainly,--"_Auf wiedersehen_!"
Somewhere is comfort, somewhere faith,
Though thou in outer dark remain;
One sweet sad voice ennobles death,
And still, for eighteen centuries saith
Softly,--"_Auf wiedersehen_!"
If earth another grave must bear,
Yet heaven hath won a sweeter strain,
And something whispers my despair,
That, from an orient chamber there,
Floats down,--"_Auf wiedersehen_!"
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.
FAREWELL!--BUT WHENEVER.
Farewell!--but whenever you welcome the hour
That awakens the night-song of mirth in your bower.
Then think of the friend that once welcomed it too.
And forgot his own griefs, to be happy with you.
His griefs may return--not a hope may remain
Of the few that have brightened his pathway of pain--
But he ne'er can forget the short vision that threw
Its enchantment around him while lingering with you!
And still on that evening when Pleasure fills up
To the highest top sparkle each heart and each cup,
Where'er my path lies, be it gloomy or bright,
My soul, happy friends! will be with you that night;
Shall join in your revels, your sports, and your wiles,
And return to me, beaming all o'er with your smiles--
Too blest if it tell me that, 'mid the gay cheer,
Some kind voice has murmured, "I wish he were here!"
Let Fate do her worst, there are relics of joy,
Bright dreams of the past, which she cannot destroy;
Which come in the night-time of sorrow and care,
And bring back the features which joy used to wear.
Long, long be my heart with such memories filled!
Like the vase in which roses have once been distilled--
You may break, you may shatter the vase, if you will,
But the scent of the roses will hang round it still.
THOMAS MOORE.
PARTING OF HECTOR AND ANDROMACHE.
FROM "THE ILIAD," BOOK VI.
"Too daring prince! ah whither dost thou run?
Ah too forgetful of thy wife and son!
And think'st thou not how wretched we shall be,
A widow I, a helpless orphan he!
For sure such courage length of life denies,
And thou must fall, thy virtue's sacrifice.
Greece in her single heroes strove in vain;
Now hosts oppose thee, and thou must be slain!
Oh grant me, gods! ere Hector meets his doom,
All I can ask of heaven, an early tomb!
So shall my days in one sad tenor run,
And end with sorrows as they first begun.
No parent now remains, my griefs to share,
No father's aid, no mother's tender care.
The fierce Achilles wrapt our walls in fire,
Laid Thebè waste, and slew my warlike sire!
His fate compassion in the victor bred;
Stern as he was, he yet revered the dead,
His radiant arms preserved from hostile spoil,
And laid him decent on the funeral pile;
Then raised a mountain where his bones were burned;
The mountain nymphs the rural tomb adorned;
Jove's sylvan daughters bade their elms bestow
A barren shade, and in his honor grow.
"Yet while my Hector still survives, I see
My father, mother, brethren, all, in thee.
Alas! my parents, brothers, kindred, all,
Once more will perish if my Hector fall.
Thy wife, thy infant, in thy danger share;
Oh prove a husband's and a father's care!
That quarter most the skillful Greeks annoy,
Where yon wild fig-trees join the wall of Troy:
Thou, from this tower defend th'important post;
There Agamemnon points his dreadful host,
That pass Tydides, Ajax, strive to gain,
And there the vengeful Spartan fires his train.
Thrice our bold foes the fierce attack have given,
Or led by hopes, or dictated from heaven.
Let others in the field their arms employ,
But stay my Hector here, and guard his Troy."
The chief replied: "That post shall be my care,
Nor that alone, but all the works of war.
[How would the sons of Troy, in arms renowned,
And Troy's proud dames, whose garments sweep the ground,
Attaint the lustre of my former name,
Should Hector basely quit the field of fame?
My early youth was bred to martial pains,
My soul impels me to th'embattled plains:
Let me be foremost to defend the throne,
And guard my father's glories, and my own.
Yet come it will, the day decreed by fates;
(How my heart trembles while my tongue relates)
The day when thou, imperial Troy! must bend,
And see thy warriors fall, thy glories end.
And yet no dire presage so wounds my mind,
My mother's death, the ruin of my kind,
Not Priam's hoary hairs denied with gore,
Not all my brothers gasping on the shore;
As thine, Andromachè! thy griefs I dread;
I see thee trembling, weeping, captive led!]
In Argive looms our battles to design,
And woes of which so large a part was thine!
To bear the victor's hard commands or bring
The weight of waters from Hyperia's spring.
There, while you groan beneath the load of life,
They cry, Behold the mighty Hector's wife!
Some haughty Greek, who lives thy tears to see,
Embitters all thy woes by naming me.
The thoughts of glory past, and present shame,
A thousand griefs, shall waken at the name!
May I lie cold before that dreadful day,
Pressed with a load of monumental clay!
Thy Hector, wrapped in everlasting sleep,
Shall neither hear thee sigh, nor see thee weep."
Thus having spoke, th' illustrious chief of Troy
Stretched his fond arms to clasp the lovely boy.
The babe clung crying to his nurse's breast,
Scared at the dazzling helm, and nodding crest.
With secret pleasure each fond parent smiled,
And Hector hastèd to relieve his child;
The glittering terrors from his brows unbound,
And placed the beaming helmet on the ground.
Then kissed the child, and, lifting high in air,
Thus to the gods preferred a father's prayer:
"O thou whose glory fills th' ethereal throne,
And all ye deathless powers! protect my son!
Grant him, like me, to purchase just renown,
To guard the Trojans, to defend the crown,
Against his country's foes the war to wage,
And rise the Hector of the future age!
So when, triumphant from successful toils,
Of heroes slain he bears the reeking spoils,
Whole hosts may hail him with deserved acclaim,
And say, This chief transcends his father's fame:
While pleased, amidst the general shouts of Troy,
His mother's conscious heart o'erflows with joy."
He spoke, and fondly gazing on her charms
Restored the pleasing burden to her arms;
Soft on her fragrant breast the babe she laid,
Hushed to repose, and with a smile surveyed.
The troubled pleasure soon chastised by fear,
She mingled with the smile a tender tear.
The softened chief with kind compassion viewed,
And dried the falling drops, and thus pursued:
"Andromachè! my soul's far better part,
Why with untimely sorrows heaves thy heart?
No hostile hand can antedate my doom,
Till fate condemns me to the silent tomb.
Fixed is the term to all the race of earth,
And such the hard condition of our birth.
No force can then resist, no flight can save;
All sink alike, the fearful and the brave.
No more--but hasten to thy tasks at home,
There guide the spindle, and direct the loom:
Me glory summons to the martial scene,
The field of combat is the sphere for men.
Where heroes war, the foremost place I claim,
The first in danger as the first in fame."
Thus having said, the glorious chief resumes
His towery helmet, black with shading plumes.
His princess parts with a prophetic sigh,
Unwilling parts, and oft reverts her eye,
That streamed at every look: then, moving slow,
Sought her own palace, and indulged her woe.
There, while her tears deplored the godlike man,
Through all her train the soft infection ran;
The pious maids their mingled sorrows shed,
And mourn the living Hector as the dead.
From the Greek of HOMER.
Translation of ALEXANDER POPE.
HECTOR TO HIS WIFE.
FROM THE ILIAD, BOOK VI.
[The following extract is given as showing a more modern style of
translation. It embraces the bracketed portion of the foregoing from
Pope's version.]
I too have thought of all this, dear wife, but I fear the reproaches
Both of the Trojan youths and the long-robed maidens of Troja,
If like a cowardly churl I should keep me aloof from the combat:
Nor would my spirit permit; for well I have learnt to be valiant,
Fighting aye 'mong the first of the Trojans marshalled in battle,
Striving to keep the renown of my sire and my own unattainted.
Well, too well, do I know,--both my mind and my spirit agreeing,
That there will be a day when sacred Troja shall perish.
Priam will perish too, and the people of Priam, the spear-armed.
Still, I have not such care for the Trojans doomed to destruction,
No, nor for Hecuba's self, nor for Priam, the monarch, my father,
Nor for my brothers' fate, who, though they be many and valiant,
All in the dust may lie low by the hostile spears of Achaia,
As for thee, when some youth of the brazen-mailed Achæans
Weeping shall bear thee away, and bereave thee forever of freedom.
Translation of E.C. HAWTREY.
TO LUCASTA.
If to be absent were to be
Away from thee;
Or that, when I am gone,
You or I were alone;
Then, my Lucasta, might I crave
Pity from blustering wind or swallowing wave.
But I'll not sigh one blast or gale
To swell my sail,
Or pay a tear to 'suage
The foaming blue-god's rage;
For, whether he will let me pass
Or no, I'm still as happy as I was.
Though seas and lands be 'twixt us both,
Our faith and troth,
Like separated souls,
All time and space controls:
Above the highest sphere we meet,
Unseen, unknown; and greet as angels greet.
So, then, we do anticipate
Our after-fate,
And are alive i' the skies,
If thus our lips and eyes
Can speak like spirits unconfined
In heaven,--their earthly bodies left behind.
RICHARD LOVELACE.
TO HER ABSENT SAILOR.
FROM "THE TENT ON THE BEACH."
Her window opens to the bay,
On glistening light or misty gray,
And there at dawn and set of day
In prayer she kneels:
"Dear Lord!" she saith, "to many a home
From wind and wave the wanderers come;
I only see the tossing foam
Of stranger keels.
"Blown out and in by summer gales,
The stately ships, with crowded sails,
And sailors leaning o'er their rails,
Before me glide;
They come, they go, but nevermore,
Spice-laden from the Indian shore,
I see his swift-winged Isidore
The waves divide.
"O Thou! with whom the night is day
And one the near and far away,
Look out on yon gray waste, and say
Where lingers he.
Alive, perchance, on some lone beach
Or thirsty isle beyond the reach
Of man, he hears the mocking speech
Of wind and sea.
"O dread and cruel deep, reveal
The secret which thy waves conceal,
And, ye wild sea-birds, hither wheel
And tell your tale.
Let winds that tossed his raven hair
A message from my lost one bear,--
Some thought of me, a last fond prayer
Or dying wail!
"Come, with your dreariest truth shut out
The fears that haunt me round about;
O God! I cannot bear this doubt
That stifles breath.
The worst is better than the dread;
Give me but leave to mourn my dead
Asleep in trust and hope, instead
Of life in death!"
It might have been the evening breeze
That whispered in the garden trees,
It might have been the sound of seas
That rose and fell;
But, with her heart, if not her ear,
The old loved voice she seemed to hear:
"I wait to meet thee: be of cheer,
For all is well!"
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER.
I LOVE MY JEAN.
Of a' the airts[3] the wind can blaw,
I dearly like the west;
For there the bonnie lassie lives,
The lassie I lo'e best.
There wild woods grow, and rivers row,
And monie a hill's between;
But day and night my fancy's flight
Is ever wi' my Jean.
I see her in the dewy flowers,
I see her sweet and fair;
I hear her in the tunefu' birds,
I hear her charm the air;
There's not a bonnie flower that springs
By fountain, shaw, or green;
There's not a bonnie bird that sings,
But minds me of my Jean.
ROBERT BURNS.
[3] The points of the compass.
JEANIE MORRISON.
I've wandered east, I've wandered west,
Through mony a weary way;
But never, never can forget
The luve o' life's young day!
The fire that's blawn on Beltane e'en
May weel be black gin Yule;
But blacker fa' awaits the heart
Where first fond luve grows cule.
O dear, dear Jeanie Morrison,
The thochts o' bygane years
Still fling their shadows ower my path,
And blind my een wi' tears:
They blind my een wi' saut, saut tears,
And sair and sick I pine,
As memory idly summons up
The blithe blinks o' langsyne.
'Twas then we luvit ilk ither weel,
'Twas then we twa did part;
Sweet time--sad time! twa bairns at scule,
Twa bairns, and but ae heart!
'Twas then we sat on ae laigh bink,
To leir ilk ither lear;
And tones and looks and smiles were shed,
Remembered evermair.
I wonder, Jeanie, aften yet,
When sitting on that bink,
Cheek touchin' cheek, loof locked in loof,
What our wee heads could think.
When baith bent doun ower ae braid page,
Wi' ae buik on our knee,
Thy lips were on thy lesson, but
My lesson was in thee.
O, mind ye how we hung our heads,
How cheeks brent red wi' shame,
Whene'er the scule-weans, laughin', said
We cleeked thegither hame?
And mind ye o' the Saturdays,
(The scule then skail't at noon,)
When we ran off to speel the braes,--
The broomy braes o' June?
My head rins round and round about,--
My heart flows like a sea,
As ane by ane the thochts rush back
O' scule-time, and o' thee.
O mornin' life! O mornin' luve!
O lichtsome days and lang,
When hinnied hopes around our hearts
Like simmer blossoms sprang!
O, mind ye, luve, how aft we left
The deavin', dinsome toun,
To wander by the green burnside,
And hear its waters croon?
The simmer leaves hung ower our heads,
The flowers burst round our feet,
And in the gloamin' o' the wood
The throssil whusslit sweet;
The throssil whusslit in the woods,
The burn sang to the trees,--
And we, with nature's heart in tune,
Concerted harmonies;
And on the knowe abune the burn,
For hours thegither sat
In the silentness o' joy, till baith
Wi' very gladness grat.
Ay, ay, dear Jeanie Morrison,
Tears trickled doun your cheek
Like dew-beads on a rose, yet nane
Had ony power to speak!
That was a time, a blessed time,
When hearts were fresh and young,
When freely gushed all feelings forth,
Unsyllabled--unsung!
I marvel, Jeanie Morrison,
Gin I hae been to thee
As closely twined wi' earliest thochts
As ye hae been to me?
O, tell me gin their music fills
Thine ear as it does mine!
O, say gin e'er your heart grows grit
Wi' dreamings o' langsyne?
I've wandered east, I've wandered west,
I've borne a weary lot;
But in my wanderings, far or near,
Ye never were forgot.
The fount that first burst frae this heart
Still travels on its way;
And channels deeper, as it rins,
The luve o' life's young day.
O dear, dear Jeanie Morrison,
Since we were sindered young
I've never seen your face nor heard
The music o' your tongue;
But I could hug all wretchedness,
And happy could I dee,
Did I but ken your heart still dreamed
O' bygane days and me!
WILLIAM MOTHERWELL.
O, SAW YE BONNIE LESLIE?
O, saw ye bonnie Leslie
As she gaed o'er the border?
She's gane, like Alexander,
To spread her conquests farther.
To see her is to love her,
And love but her forever;
For nature made her what she is,
And ne'er made sic anither!
Thou art a queen, fair Leslie,
Thy subjects we, before thee;
Thou art divine, fair Leslie,
The hearts o' men adore thee.
The deil he could na scaith thee,
Or aught that wad belang thee;
He'd look into thy bonnie face,
And say, "I canna wrang thee!"
The Powers aboon will tent thee;
Misfortune sha' na steer[4] thee;
Thou'rt like themselves sae lovely
That ill they 'll ne'er let near thee.
Return again, fair Leslie,
Return to Caledonie!
That we may brag we hae a lass
There's nane again sae bonnie.
ROBERT BURNS.
[4] Harm.
THE RUSTIC LAD'S LAMENT IN THE TOWN.
O, wad that my time were owre but,
Wi' this wintry sleet and snaw,
That I might see our house again,
I' the bonnie birken shaw!
For this is no my ain life,
And I peak and pine away
Wi' the thochts o' hame and the young flowers,
In the glad green month of May.
I used to wauk in the morning
Wi' the loud sang o' the lark,
And the whistling o' the ploughman lads,
As they gaed to their wark;
I used to wear the bit young lambs
Frae the tod and the roaring stream;
But the warld is changed, and a' thing now
To me seems like a dream.
There are busy crowds around me,
On ilka lang dull street;
Yet, though sae mony surround me,
I ken na are I meet:
And I think o' kind kent faces,
And o' blithe an' cheery days,
When I wandered out wi' our ain folk,
Out owre the simmer braes.
Waes me, for my heart is breaking!
I think o' my brither sma',
And on my sister greeting,
When I cam frae hame awa.
And O, how my mither sobbit,
As she shook me by the hand,
When I left the door o' our auld house,
To come to this stranger land.
There's nae hame like our ain hame--
O, I wush that I were there!
There's nae hame like our ain hame
To be met wi' onywhere;
And O that I were back again,
To our farm and fields sae green;
And heard the tongues o' my ain folk,
And were what I hae been!
DAVID MACBETH MOIR.
ABSENCE.
What shall I do with all the days and hours
That must be counted ere I see thy face?
How shall I charm the interval that lowers
Between this time and that sweet time of grace?
Shall I in slumber steep each weary sense,
Weary with longing?--shall I flee away
Into past days, and with some fond pretence
Cheat myself to forget the present day?
Shall love for thee lay on my soul the sin
Of casting from me God's great gift of time?
Shall I, these mists of memory locked within,
Leave and forget life's purposes sublime?
O, how or by what means may I contrive
To bring the hour that brings thee back more near?
How may I teach my drooping hope to live
Until that blessèd time, and thou art here?
I'll tell thee; for thy sake I will lay hold
Of all good aims, and consecrate to thee,
In worthy deeds, each moment that is told
While thou, belovèd one! art far from me.
For thee I will arouse my thoughts to try
All heavenward flights, all high and holy strains;
For thy dear sake I will walk patiently
Through these long hours, nor call their minutes pains.
I will this dreary blank of absence make
A noble task-time; and will therein strive
To follow excellence, and to o'ertake
More good than I have won since yet I live.
So may this doomèd time build up in me
A thousand graces, which shall thus be thine;
So may my love and longing hallowed be,
And thy dear thought an influence divine.
FRANCES ANNE KEMBLE.
ROBIN ADAIR.
What's this dull town to me?
Robin's not near,--
He whom I wished to see,
Wished for to hear;
Where's all the joy and mirth
Made life a heaven on earth,
O, they're all fled with thee,
Robin Adair!
What made the assembly shine?
Robin Adair:
What made the ball so fine?
Robin was there:
What, when the play was o'er,
What made my heart so sore?
O, it was parting with
Robin Adair!
But now thou art far from me,
Robin Adair;
But now I never see
Robin Adair;
Yet him I loved so well
Still in my heart shall dwell;
O, I can ne'er forget
Robin Adair!
Welcome on shore again,
Robin Adair!
Welcome once more again,
Robin Adair!
I feel thy trembling hand;
Tears in thy eyelids stand,
To greet thy native land,
Robin Adair!
Long I ne'er saw thee, love,
Robin Adair;
Still I prayed for thee, love,
Robin Adair;
When thou wert far at sea,
Many made love to me,
But still I thought on thee,
Robin Adair.
Come to my heart again,
Robin Adair;
Never to part again,
Robin Adair;
And if thou still art true,
I will be constant too,
And will wed none but you,
Robin Adair!
LADY CAROLINE KEPPEL.
DAISY.
Where the thistle lifts a purple crown
Six foot out of the turf,
And the harebell shakes on the windy hill--
O the breath of the distant surf!--
The hills look over on the South,
And southward dreams the sea;
And, with the sea-breeze hand in hand,
Came innocence and she.
Where 'mid the gorse the raspberry
Red for the gatherer springs,
Two children did we stray and talk
Wise, idle, childish things.
She listened with big-lipped surprise,
Breast-deep mid flower and spine:
Her skin was like a grape, whose veins
Run snow instead of wine.
She knew not those sweet words she spake.
Nor knew her own sweet way;
But there's never a bird, so sweet a song
Thronged in whose throat that day!
Oh, there were flowers in Storrington
On the turf and on the sprays;
But the sweetest flower on Sussex hills
Was the Daisy-flower that day!
Her beauty smoothed earth's furrowed face!
She gave me tokens three:--
A look, a word of her winsome mouth,
And a wild raspberry.
A berry red, a guileless look,
A still word,--strings of sand!
And yet they made my wild, wild heart
Fly down to her little hand.
For standing artless as the air,
And candid as the skies,
She took the berries with her hand,
And the love with her sweet eyes.
The fairest things have fleetest end:
Their scent survives their close,
But the rose's scent is bitterness
To him that loved the rose!
She looked a little wistfully,
Then went her sunshine way:--
The sea's eye had a mist on it,
And the leaves fell from the day.
She went her unremembering way,
She went and left in me
The pang of all the partings gone,
And partings yet to be.
She left me marvelling why my soul
Was sad that she was glad;
At all the sadness in the sweet,
The sweetness in the sad.
Still, still I seemed to see her, still
Look up with soft replies,
And take the berries with her hand,
And the love with her lovely eyes.
Nothing begins, and nothing ends,
That is not paid with moan;
For we are born in others' pain,
And perish in our own.
FRANCIS THOMPSON.
SONG OF EGLA.
Day, in melting purple dying;
Blossoms, all around me sighing;
Fragrance, from the lilies straying;
Zephyr, with my ringlets playing;
Ye but waken my distress;
I am sick of loneliness!
Thou, to whom I love to hearken,
Come, ere night around me darken;
Though thy softness but deceive me,
Say thou'rt true, and I'll believe thee;
Veil, if ill, thy soul's intent,
Let me think it innocent!
Save thy toiling, spare thy treasure;
All I ask is friendship's pleasure;
Let the shining ore lie darkling,--
Bring no gem in lustre sparkling;
Gifts and gold are naught to me,
I would only look on thee!
Tell to thee the high-wrought feeling,
Ecstasy but in revealing;
Paint to thee the deep sensation,
Rapture in participation;
Yet but torture, if comprest
In a lone, unfriended breast.
Absent still! Ah! come and bless me!
Let these eyes again caress thee.
Once in caution, I could fly thee;
Now, I nothing could deny thee.
In a look if death there be,
Come, and I will gaze on thee!
MARIA GOWEN BROOKS (_Maria del Occidente_).
WHAT AILS THIS HEART O' MINE?
What ails this heart o' mine?
What ails this watery ee?
What gars me a' turn pale as death
When I take leave o' thee?
Whea thou art far awa',
Thou'lt dearer grow to me;
But change o' place and change o' folk
May gar thy fancy jee.
When I gae out at e'en,
Or walk at morning air,
Ilk rustling bush will seem to say
I used to meet thee there:
Then I'll sit down and cry,
And live aneath the tree,
And when a leaf fa's i' my lap,
I'll ca't a word frae thee.
I'll hie me to the bower
That thou wi' roses tied,
And where wi' mony a blushing bud
I strove myself to hide.
I'll doat on ilka spot
Where I ha'e been wi' thee;
And ca' to mind some kindly word
By ilka burn and tree.
SUSANNA BLAMIRE.
LOVE'S MEMORY.
FROM "ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL," ACT I. SC. I.
I am undone: there is no living, none,
If Bertram be away. It were all one,
That I should love a bright particular star,
And think to wed it, he is so above me:
In his bright radiance and collateral light
Must I be comforted, not in his sphere.
The ambition in my love thus plagues itself:
The hind that would be mated by the lion
Must die for love. 'Twas pretty, though a plague,
To see him every hour; to sit and draw
His archèd brows, his hawking eye, his curls,
In our heart's table,--heart too capable
Of every line and trick of his sweet favor:
But now he's gone, and my idolatrous fancy
Must sanctify his relics.
SHAKESPEARE.
ABSENCE.
When I think on the happy days
I spent wi' you, my dearie;
And now what lands between us lie,
How can I be but eerie!
How slow ye move, ye heavy hours,
As ye were wae and weary!
It was na sae ye glinted by
When I was wi' my dearie.
ANONYMOUS.
THINKIN' LONG.
Oh thinkin' long's the weary work!
It breaks my heart from dawn
Till all the wee, wee, friendly stars
Come out at dayli'gone.
An' thinkin' long's the weary work,
When I must spin and spin,
To drive the fearsome fancies out,
An' hold the hopeful in!
Ah, sure my lad is far away!
My lad who left our glen
When from the soul of Ireland came
A call for fightin' men;
I miss his gray eyes glancin' bright,
I miss his liltin' song,
And that is why, the lonesome day,
I'm always thinkin' long.
May God's kind angels guard him
When the fray is fierce and grim,
And blunt the point of every sword
That turns its hate on him.
Where round the torn yet dear green flag
The brave and lovin' throng--
But the lasses of Glenwherry smile
At me for thinkin' long.
ANNA MAC MANUS (_Ethna Carbery_).
"TEARS, IDLE TEARS."
FROM "THE PRINCESS."
Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,
Tears from the depth of some divine despair
Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,
In looking on the happy autumn fields,
And thinking of the days that are no more.
Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail,
That brings our friends up from the under world;
Sad as the last which reddens over one
That sinks with all we love below the verge,--
So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more.
Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns
The earliest pipe of half-awakened birds
To dying ears, when unto dying eyes
The casement slowly grows a glimmering square;
So sad, so strange, the days that are no more.
Dear as remembered kisses after death,
And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feigned
On lips that are for others; deep as love,
Deep as first love and wild with all regret,--
O Death in Life, the days that are no more.
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON.
THE OLD FAMILIAR FACES.
I have had playmates, I have had companions,
In my days of childhood, in my joyful school-days;
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.
I have been laughing, I have been carousing,
Drinking late, sitting late, with my bosom cronies;
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.
I loved a Love once, fairest among women:
Closed are her doors on me, I must not see her,--
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.
I have a friend, a kinder friend has no man:
Like an ingrate, I left my friend abruptly;
Left him, to muse on the old familiar faces.
Ghost-like I paced round the haunts of my childhood,
Earth seemed a desert I was bound to traverse,
Seeking to find the old familiar faces.
Friend of my bosom, thou more than a brother,
Why wert not thou born in my father's dwelling?
So might we talk of the old familiar faces.
How some they have died, and some they have left me,
And some are taken from me; all are departed;
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.
CHARLES LAMB.
COME TO ME, DEAREST.
Come to me, dearest, I'm lonely without thee,
Daytime and night-time, I'm thinking about thee;
Night-time and daytime, in dreams I behold thee;
Unwelcome the waking which ceases to fold thee.
Come to me, darling, my sorrows to lighten,
Come in thy beauty to bless and to brighten;
Come in thy womanhood, meekly and lowly,
Come in thy lovingness, queenly and holy.
Swallows will flit round the desolate ruin,
Telling of spring and its joyous renewing;
And thoughts of thy love, and its manifold treasure,
Are circling my heart with a promise of pleasure.
O Spring of my spirit, O May of my bosom,
Shine out on my soul, till it bourgeon and blossom;
The waste of my life has a rose-root within it,
And thy fondness alone to the sunshine can win it.
Figure that moves like a song through the even;
Features lit up by a reflex of heaven;
Eyes like the skies of poor Erin, our mother,
Where shadow and sunshine are chasing each other;
Smiles coming seldom, but childlike and simple,
Planting in each rosy cheek a sweet dimple;--
thanks to the Saviour, that even thy seeming
Is left to the exile to brighten his dreaming.
You have been glad when you knew I was gladdened;
Dear, are you sad now to hear I am saddened?
Our hearts ever answer in tune and in time, love,
As octave to octave, and rhyme unto rhyme, love:
I cannot weep but your tears will be flowing,
You cannot smile but my cheek will be glowing;
I would not die without you at my side, love,
You will not linger when I shall have died, love.
Come to me, dear, ere I die of my sorrow,
Rise on my gloom like the sun of to-morrow;
Strong, swift, and fond as the words which I speak, love,
With a song on your lip and a smile on your cheek, love.
Come, for my heart in your absence is weary,--
Haste, for my spirit is sickened and dreary,--
Come to the arms which alone should caress thee.
Come to the heart that is throbbing to press thee!
JOSEPH BRENAN.
THE WIFE TO HER HUSBAND.
Linger not long. Home is not home without thee:
Its dearest tokens do but make me mourn.
O, let its memory, like a chain about thee,
Gently compel and hasten thy return!
Linger not long. Though crowds should woo thy staying,
Bethink thee, can the mirth of thy friends, though dear,
Compensate for the grief thy long delaying
Costs the fond heart that sighs to have thee here?
Linger not long. How shall I watch thy coming,
As evening shadows stretch o'er moor and dell;
When the wild bee hath ceased her busy humming,
And silence hangs on all things like a spell!
How shall I watch for thee, when fears grow stronger,
As night grows dark and darker on the hill!
How shall I weep, when I can watch no longer!
Ah! art thou absent, art thou absent still?
Yet I shall grieve not, though the eye that seeth me
Gazeth through tears that makes its splendor dull;
For oh! I sometimes fear when thou art with me,
My cup of happiness is all too full.
Haste, haste thee home unto thy mountain dwelling,
Haste, as a bird unto its peaceful nest!
Haste, as a skiff, through tempests wide and swelling,
Flies to its haven of securest rest!
ANONYMOUS.
MY OLD KENTUCKY HOME.
NEGRO SONG.
The sun shines bright on our old Kentucky home;
'Tis summer, the darkeys are gay;
The corn top's ripe and the meadow's in the bloom,
While the birds make music all the day;
The young folks roll on the little cabin floor,
All merry, all happy, all bright;
By'm by hard times comes a knockin' at the door,--
Then, my old Kentucky home, good night!
CHORUS.
_Weep no more, my lady; O, weep no more to-day!
We'll sing one song for the old Kentucky home,
For our old Kentucky home far away._
They hunt no more for the possum and the coon,
On the meadow, the hill, and the shore;
They sing no more by the glimmer of the moon,
On the bench by the old cabin door;
The day goes by, like the shadow o'er the heart,
With sorrow where all was delight;
The time has come, when the darkeys have to part,
Then, my old Kentucky home, good night!
_Weep no more, my lady_, etc.
The head must bow, and the back will have to bend,
Wherever the darkey may go;
A few more days, and the troubles all will end,
In the field where the sugar-canes grow;
A few more days to tote the weary load,
No matter, it will never be light;
A few more days till we totter on the road,
Then, my old Kentucky home, good night!
_Weep no more, my lady; O, weep no more to-day!
We'll sing one song for the old Kentucky home,
For our old Kentucky home far away._
STEPHEN COLLINS FOSTER.
OLD FOLKS AT HOME.
Way down upon de Swanee Ribber,
Far, far away,
Dere's wha my heart is turning ebber,
Dere's wha de old folks stay.
All up and down de whole creation
Sadly I roam,
Still longing for de old plantation,
And for de old folks at home.
_All de world am sad and dreary,
Ebery where I roam;
Oh, darkeys, how my heart grows weary,
Far from de old folks at home!_
All round de little farm I wandered
When I was young,
Den many happy days I squandered,
Many de songs I sung.
When I was playing wid my brudder
Happy was I;
Oh, take me to my kind old mudder!
Dere let me live and die.
One little hut among de bushes,
One dat I love,
Still sadly to my memory rushes,
No matter where I rove.
When will I see de bees a-humming
All round de comb?
When will I hear de banjo tumming,
Down in my good old home?
_All de world am sad and dreary,
Ebery where I roam;
Oh, darkeys, how my heart grows weary,
Far from de old folks at home!_
STEPHEN COLLINS FOSTER.
THE PRESENT GOOD.
FROM "THE TASK," BOOK VI.
Not to understand a treasure's worth
Till time has stol'n away the slighted good,
Is cause of half the poverty we feel,
And makes the world the wilderness it is.
WILLIAM COWPER.
* * * * *
III. ADVERSITY.
MAN.
In his own image the Creator made,
His own pure sunbeam quickened thee, O man!
Thou breathing dial! since the day began
The present hour was ever marked with shade!
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.
THE WORLD.
The World's a bubble, and the Life of Man
Less than a span:
In his conception wretched, from the womb,
So to the tomb;
Curst from his cradle, and brought up to years
With cares and fears.
Who then to frail mortality shall trust,
But limns on water, or but writes in dust.
Yet whilst with sorrow here we live opprest,
What life is best?
Courts are but only superficial schools
To dandle fools:
The rural parts are turned into a den
Of savage men:
And where's a city from foul vice so free,
But may be termed the worst of all the three?
Domestic cares afflict the husband's bed,
Or pains his head:
Those that live single, take it for a curse,
Or do things worse:
Some would have children: those that have them, moan
Or wish them gone:
What is it, then, to have or have no wife,
But single thraldom, or a double strife?
Our own affection still at home to please
Is a disease:
To cross the seas to any foreign soil,
Peril and toil:
Wars with their noise affright us; when they cease,
We are worse in peace;--
What then remains, but that we still should cry
For being born, or, being born, to die?
FRANCIS, LORD BACON.
MOAN, MOAN, YE DYING GALES.
Moan, moan, ye dying gales!
The saddest of your tales
Is not so sad as life;
Nor have you e'er began
A theme so wild as man,
Or with such sorrow rife.
Fall, fall, thou withered leaf!
Autumn sears not like grief,
Nor kills such lovely flowers;
More terrible the storm,
More mournful the deform,
When dark misfortune lowers.
Hush! hush! thou trembling lyre,
Silence, ye vocal choir,
And thou, mellifluous lute,
For man soon breathes his last,
And all his hope is past,
And all his music mute.
Then, when the gale is sighing,
And when the leaves are dying,
And when the song is o'er,
O, let us think of those
Whose lives are lost in woes,
Whose cup of grief runs o'er.
HENRY NEELE.
THE VANITY OF THE WORLD.
False world, thou ly'st: thou canst not lend
The least delight:
Thy favors cannot gain a friend,
They are so slight:
Thy morning pleasures make an end
To please at night:
Poor are the wants that thou supply'st,
And yet thou vaunt'st, and yet thou vy'st
With heaven: fond earth, thou boasts; false world, thou ly'st.
Thy babbling tongue tells golden tales
Of endless treasure;
Thy bounty offers easy sales
Of lasting pleasure;
Thou ask'st the conscience what she ails,
And swear'st to ease her;
There's none can want where thou supply'st;
There's none can give where thou deny'st.
Alas! fond world, thou boasts; false world, thou ly'st.
What well-advisèd ear regards
What earth can say?
Thy words are gold, but thy regards
Are painted clay:
Thy cunning can but pack the cards,
Thou canst not play:
Thy game at weakest, still thou vy'st;
If seen, and then revy'd, deny'st:
Thou art not what thou seem'st; false world, thou ly'st.
Thy tinsel bosom seems a mint
Of new-coined treasure;
A paradise, that has no stint,
No change, no measure;
A painted cask, but nothing in 't,
Nor wealth, nor pleasure:
Vain earth! that falsely thus comply'st
With man; vain man! that thou rely'st
On earth; vain man, thou dot'st; vain earth, thou ly'st.
What mean dull souls, in this high measure,
To haberdash
In earth's base wares, whose greatest treasure
Is dross and trash?
The height of whose enchanting pleasure
Is but a flash?
Are these the goods that thou supply'st
Us mortals with? Are these the high'st?
Can these bring cordial peace? false world, thou ly'st.
FRANCIS QUARLES.
BLOW, BLOW, THOU WINTER WIND.
FROM "AS YOU LIKE IT," ACT II. SC. 7.
Blow, blow, thou winter wind,
Thou art not so unkind
As man's ingratitude;
Thy tooth is not so keen,
Because thou art not seen,
Although thy breath be rude.
Heigh-ho! sing heigh-ho! unto the green holly;
Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly:
Then, heigh-ho, the holly!
This life is most jolly!
Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky,
Thou dost not bite so nigh
As benefits forgot:
Though thou the waters warp,
Thy sting is not so sharp
As friend remembered not.
Heigh-ho! sing heigh-ho! unto the green holly:
Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly:
Then, heigh-ho, the holly!
This life is most jolly!
SHAKESPEARE.
THE WAIL OF PROMETHEUS BOUND.
FROM "PROMETHEUS."
O holy Æther, and swift-winged Winds,
And River-wells, and laughter innumerous
Of yon Sea-waves! Earth, mother of us all,
And all-viewing cyclic Sun, I cry on you,--
Behold me a god, what I endure from gods!
Behold, with throe on throe,
How, wasted by this woe,
I wrestle down the myriad years of Time!
Behold, how fast around me
The new King of the happy ones sublime
Has flung the chain he forged, has shamed and bound me!
Woe, woe! to-day's woe and the coming morrow's
I cover with one groan. And where is found me
A limit to these sorrows?
And yet what word do I say? I have fore-known
Clearly all things that should be; nothing done
Comes sudden to my soul--and I must bear
What is ordained with patience, being aware
Necessity doth front the universe
With an invincible gesture. Yet this curse
Which strikes me now, I find it hard to brave
In silence or in speech. Because I gave
Honor to mortals, I have yoked my soul
To this compelling fate. Because I stole
The secret fount of fire, whose bubbles went
Over the ferrule's brim, and manward sent
Art's mighty means and perfect rudiment,
That sin I expiate in this agony,
Hung here in fetters, 'neath the blanching sky.
Ah, ah me! what a sound,
What a fragrance sweeps up from a pinion unseen
Of a god, or a mortal, or nature between,
Sweeping up to this rock where the earth has her bound,
To have sight of my pangs, or some guerdon obtain--
Lo, a god in the anguish, a god in the chain!
The god Zeus hateth sore,
And his gods hate again,
As many as tread on his glorified floor,
Because I loved mortals too much evermore.
Alas me! what a murmur and motion I hear,
As of birds flying near!
And the air undersings
The light stroke of their wings--
And all life that approaches I wait for in fear.
From the Greek of ÆSCHYLUS.
Translation of ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.
SAMSON ON HIS BLINDNESS.
FROM "SAMSON AGONISTES."
O loss of sight, of thee I must complain!
Blind among enemies, O, worse than chains,
Dungeon, or beggary, or decrepit age!
Light, the prime work of God, to me is extinct,
And all her various objects of delight
Annulled, which might in part my grief have eased.
Inferior to the vilest now become
Of man or worm; the vilest here excel me:
They creep, yet see; I, dark in light, exposed
To daily fraud, contempt, abuse, and wrong,
Within doors or without, still as a fool,
In power of others, never in my own;
Scarce half I seem to live, dead more than half.
O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of moon,
Irrecoverably dark, total eclipse,
Without all hope of day!
MILTON.
LINES.
[Written in the Tower, the night before his probably unjust execution
for treason.]
My prime of youth is but a frost of cares,
My feast of joy is but a dish of pain,
My crop of corn is but a field of tares,
And all my goodes is but vain hope of gain.
The day is fled, and yet I saw no sun;
And now I live, and now my life is done!
My spring is past, and yet it hath not sprung,
The fruit is dead, and yet the leaves are green,
My youth is past, and yet I am but young,
I saw the world, and yet I was not seen.
My thread is cut, and yet it is not spun;
And now I live, and now my life is done!
I sought for death and found it in the wombe,
I lookt for life, and yet it was a shade,
I trade the ground, and knew it was my tombe,
And now I die, and now I am but made.
The glass is full, and yet my glass is run;
And now I live, and now my life is done!
CHEDIOCK TICHEBORNE.
HENCE, ALL YE VAIN DELIGHTS.
FROM "THE NICE VALOUR," ACT III. SC. 3.
Hence, all ye vain delights,
As short as are the nights
Wherein you spend your folly!
There's naught in this life sweet,
If man were wise to see't
But only melancholy,
O, sweetest melancholy!
Welcome, folded arms, and fixèd eyes,
A sigh that piercing mortifies,
A look that's fastened to the ground,
A tongue chained up without a sound!
Fountain-heads and pathless groves,
Places which pale passion loves!
Moonlight walks, when all the fowls
Are warmly housed save bats and owls!
A midnight bell, a parting groan!
These are the sounds we feed upon;
Then stretch our bones in a still gloomy valley:
Nothing's so dainty sweet as lovely melancholy.
JOHN FLETCHER.
THE FALL OF CARDINAL WOLSEY.
FROM "KING HENRY VIII.," ACT III. SC. 2.
Cromwell, I did not think to shed a tear
In all my miseries; but thou hast forced me,
Out of thy honest truth, to play the woman.
Let's dry our eyes: and thus far hear me, Cromwell;
And--when I am forgotten, as I shall be,
And sleep in dull, cold marble, where no mention
Of me more must be heard of--say, I taught thee,
Say, Wolsey--that once trod the ways of glory,
And sounded all the depths and shoals of honor--
Found thee a way, out of his wreck, to rise in;
A sure and safe one, though thy master missed it.
Mark but my fall, and that that ruined me.
Cromwell, I charge thee, fling away ambition:
By that sin fell the angels; how can man, then,
The image of his Maker, hope to win by 't?
Love thyself last: cherish those hearts that hate thee:
Corruption wins not more than honesty.
Still in thy right hand carry gentle peace,
To silence envious tongues. Be just, and fear not:
Let all the ends thou aim'st at be thy country's,
Thy God's, and truth's; then if thou fall'st, O Cromwell!
Thou fall'st a blessed martyr.
Serve the king; and--pr'ythee, lead me in:
There take an inventory of all I have,
To the last penny; 'tis the king's: my robe,
And my integrity to heaven, is all
I dare now call mine own. O Cromwell, Cromwell!
Had I but served my God with half the zeal
I served my king, he would not in mine age
Have left me naked to mine enemies!
* * * * *
Farewell, a long farewell, to all my greatness!
This is the state of man: to-day he puts forth
The tender leaves of hope; to-morrow blossoms,
And bears his blushing honors thick upon him:
The third day comes a frost, a killing frost;
And--when he thinks, good easy man, full surely
His greatness is a ripening--nips his root,
And then he falls, as I do. I have ventured,
Like little wanton boys that swim on bladders,
This many summers in a sea of glory;
But far beyond my depth: my high-blown pride
At length broke under me; and now has left me,
Weary and old with service, to the mercy
Of a rude stream, that must forever hide me.
Vain pomp and glory of this world, I hate ye:
I feel my heart new opened. O, how wretched
Is that poor man that hangs on princes' favors!
There is, betwixt that smile we would aspire to,
That sweet aspect of princes, and their ruin,
More pangs and fears than wars or women have:
And when he falls, he falls like Lucifer,
Never to hope again.
SHAKESPEARE.
THE APPROACH OF AGE.
FROM "TALES OF THE HALL."
Six years had passed, and forty ere the six,
When Time began to play his usual tricks:
The locks once comely in a virgin's sight,
Locks of pure brown, displayed the encroaching white;
The blood, once fervid, now to cool began,
And Time's strong pressure to subdue the man.
I rode or walked as I was wont before,
But now the bounding spirit was no more;
A moderate pace would now my body heat,
A walk of moderate length distress my feet.
I showed my stranger guest those hills sublime,
But said, "The view is poor, we need not climb."
At a friend's mansion I began to dread
The cold neat parlor and the gay glazed bed;
At home I felt a more decided taste,
And must have all things in my order placed.
I ceased to hunt; my horses pleased me less,--
My dinner more; I learned to play at chess.
I took my dog and gun, but saw the brute
Was disappointed that I did not shoot.
My morning walks I now could bear to lose,
And blessed the shower that gave me not to choose.
In fact, I felt a languor stealing on;
The active arm, the agile hand, were gone;
Small daily actions into habits grew,
And new dislike to forms and fashions new.
I loved my trees in order to dispose;
I numbered peaches, looked how stocks arose;
Told the same story oft,--in short, began to prose.
GEORGE CRABBE.
STANZAS
WRITTEN IN DEJECTION NEAR NAPLES.
The sun is warm, the sky is clear,
The waves are dancing fast and bright,
Blue isles and snowy mountains wear
The purple noon's transparent light:
The breath of the moist air is light
Around its unexpanded buds;
Like many a voice of one delight,--
The winds', the birds', the ocean-floods',--
The City's voice itself is soft like Solitude's.
I see the Deep's untrampled floor
With green and purple sea-weeds strown;
I see the waves upon the shore
Like light dissolved in star-showers thrown:
I sit upon the sands alone;
The lightning of the noontide ocean
Is flashing round me, and a tone
Arises from its measured motion,--
How sweet, did any heart now share in my emotion!
Alas! I have nor hope nor health,
Nor peace within nor calm around,
Nor that Content surpassing wealth
The sage in meditation found,
And walked with inward glory crowned,--
Nor fame, nor power, nor love, nor leisure.
Others I see whom these surround;
Smiling they live, and call life pleasure;
To me that cup has been dealt in another measure.
Yet now despair itself is mild
Even as the winds and waters are;
I could lie down like a tired child,
And weep away the life of care
Which I have borne, and yet must bear,
Till death like sleep might steal on me,
And I might feel in the warm air
My cheek grow cold, and hear the sea
Breathe o'er my dying brain its last monotony.
Some might lament that I were cold,
As I, when this sweet day is gone,
Which my lost heart, too soon grown old,
Insults with this untimely moan;
They might lament,--for I am one
Whom men love not,--and yet regret,
Unlike this day, which, when the sun
Shall on its stainless glory set,
Will linger, though enjoyed, like joy in memory yet.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE.
[Written in the spring of 1819, when suffering from physical depression,
the precursor of his death, which happened soon after.]
My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thy happiness,--
That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees,
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of Summer in full-throated ease.
O for a draught of vintage, that hath been
Cooled a long age in the deep delved earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country-green,
Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth!
O for a beaker full of the warm South,
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
And purple-stainèd mouth,--
That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
And with thee fade away into the forest dim:
Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
What thou among the leaves hast never known,
The weariness, the fever, and the fret
Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs,
Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;
Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
And leaden-eyed despairs,
Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,
Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.
Away! away! for I will fly to thee,
Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,
But on the viewless wings of Poesy,
Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:
Already with thee! tender is the night,
And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,
Clustered around by all her starry Fays;
But here there is no light,
Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown
Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.
I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
But in embalmèd darkness, guess each sweet
Wherewith the seasonable month endows
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;
White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;
Fast-fading violets covered up in leaves;
And mid-May's eldest child,
The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.
Darkling I listen; and for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death.
Called him soft names in many a musèd rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now, more than ever, seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight, with no pain.
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad,
In such an ecstasy!--
Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain--
To thy high requiem become a sod.
Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown:
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
The same that oft-times hath
Charmed magic casements opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.
Forlorn! the very word is like a bell,
To toll me back from thee to my sole self!
Adieu! the Fancy cannot cheat so well
As she is famed to do, deceiving elf.
Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades
Past the near meadows, over the still stream,
Up the hillside; and now 'tis buried deep
In the next valley-glades:
Was it a vision or a waking dream?
Fled is that music:--do I wake or sleep?
JOHN KEATS.
PERISHED.
CATSKILL MOUNTAIN HOUSE.
Wave after wave of greenness rolling down
From mountain top to base, a whispering sea
Of affluent leaves through which the viewless breeze
Murmurs mysteriously.
And towering up amid the lesser throng,
A giant oak, so desolately grand,
Stretches its gray imploring arms to heaven
In agonized demand.
Smitten by lightning from a summer sky,
Or bearing in its heart a slow decay,
What matter, since inexorable fate
Is pitiless to slay.
Ah, wayward soul, hedged in and clothed about,
Doth not thy life's lost hope lift up its head,
And, dwarfing present joys, proclaim aloud,--
"Look on me, I am dead!"
MARY LOUISE RITTER.
BYRON'S LATEST VERSES.
"_On this day I completed my thirty-sixth year._"
--MISSOLONGHI, JANUARY 23, 1824.
'Tis time this heart should be unmoved,
Since others it has ceased to move:
Yet, though I cannot be beloved,
Still let me love!
My days are in the yellow leaf,
The flowers and fruits of love are gone:
The worm, the canker, and the grief,
Are mine alone.
The fire that in my bosom preys
Is like to some volcanic isle;
No torch is kindled at its blaze,--
A funeral pile.
The hope, the fear, the jealous care,
The exalted portion of the pain
And power of love, I cannot share,
But wear the chain.
But 'tis not _thus_,--and 'tis not _here_,
Such thoughts should shake my soul, nor _now_,
Where glory decks the hero's bier,
Or binds his brow.
The sword, the banner, and the field,
Glory and Greece about us see;
The Spartan borne upon his shield
Was not more free.
Awake!--not Greece,--she is awake!
Awake my spirit! think through whom
Thy life-blood tastes its parent lake,
And then strike home!
Tread those reviving passions down,
Unworthy manhood! unto thee
Indifferent should the smile or frown
Of beauty be.
If thou regrett'st thy youth,--why live?
The land of honorable death
Is here:--up to the field, and give
Away thy breath!
Seek out--less often sought than found--
A soldier's grave, for thee the best;
Then look around, and choose thy ground,
And take thy rest!
LORD BYRON.
A DOUBTING HEART.
Where are the swallows fled?
Frozen and dead
Perchance upon some bleak and stormy shore.
O doubting heart!
Far over purple seas
They wait, in sunny ease,
The balmy southern breeze
To bring them to their northern homes once more.
Why must the flowers die?
Prisoned they lie
In the cold tomb, heedless of tears or rain.
O doubting heart!
They only sleep below
The soft white ermine snow
While winter winds shall blow,
To breathe and smile upon you soon again.
The sun has hid its rays
These many days;
Will dreary hours never leave the earth?
O doubting heart!
The stormy clouds on high
Veil the same sunny sky
That soon, for spring is nigh,
Shall wake the summer into golden mirth.
Fair hope is dead, and light
Is quenched in night;
What sound can break the silence of despair?
O doubting heart!
The sky is overcast,
Yet stars shall rise at last,
Brighter for darkness past;
And angels' silver voices stir the air.
ADELAIDE ANNE PROCTER.
THE VOICELESS.
We count the broken lyres that rest
Where the sweet wailing singers slumber,
But o'er their silent sister's breast
The wild-flowers who will stoop to number?
A few can touch the magic string,
And noisy Fame is proud to win them:
Alas for those that never sing,
But die with all their music in them!
Nay grieve no
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