("Toutes les passions s'éloignent avec l'âge.")

[XXXIV. ii., October, 183-.]


As life wanes on, the passions slow depart,
One with his grinning mask, one with his steel;
Like to a strolling troupe of Thespian art,
Whose pace decreases, winding past the hill.
But naught can Love's all charming power efface,
That light, our misty tracks suspended o'er,
In joy thou'rt ours, more dear thy tearful grace,
The young may curse thee, but the old adore.

But when the weight of years bow down the head,
And man feels all his energies decline,
His projects gone, himself tomb'd with the dead,
Where virtues lie, nor more illusions shine,
When all our lofty thoughts dispersed and o'er,
We count within our hearts so near congealed,
Each grief that'...

Whose was that gentle voice, that, whispering sweet,
Promised methought long days of bliss sincere!
Soothing it stole on my deluded ear,
Most like soft music, that might sometimes cheat
Thoughts dark and drooping! 'Twas the voice of Hope.
Of love, and social scenes, it seemed to speak,
Of truth, of friendship, of affection meek;
That, oh! poor friend, might to life's downward slope
Lead us in peace, and bless our latest hours.
Ah me! the prospect saddened as she sung;
Loud on my startled ear the death-bell rung;
Chill darkness wrapt the pleasurable bowers,
Whilst Horror, pointing to yon breathless clay,
"No peace be thine," exclaimed, "away, away!"

I

That children in their loveliness should die
Before the dawning beauty, which we know
Cannot remain, has yet begun to go;
That when a certain period has passed by,
People of genius and of faculty,
Leaving behind them some result to show,
Having performed some function, should forego
The task which younger hands can better ply,
Appears entirely natural. But that one
Whose perfectness did not at all consist
In things towards forming which time can have done
Anything, whose sole office was to exist,
Should suddenly dissolve and cease to be
Is the extreme of all perplexity.

II

That there are better things within the womb
Of Nature than to our unworthy view
She grants for a possession, may be true:
The cycle of the birthplace and ...

My head is wild with weeping for a grief
Which is the shadow of a gentle mind.
I walk into the air (but no relief
To seek, - or haply, if I sought, to find;
It came unsought); - to wonder that a chief
Among men's spirits should be cold and blind.

"Oh, why are you always so bitterly crying?
You surely will make yourself blind.
What reason on earth for such sobbing and sighing,
I pray, can you possibly find?
There is no real sorrow, there's nothing distressing,
To make you thus grieve and lament.
Ah! no; you are just at this moment possessing
Whatever should make you content.


Now do, my dear daughter, give over this weeping,"
Such was a kind mother's advice.
But all was in vain; for you see she's still keeping
Her handkerchief up to her eyes.


But now she removes it, and oh! she discloses
A countenance full of dismay;
For she certainly feels, or at least she supposes
Her eyesight is going away.
She is not mistaken, her sight is departing;
She knows it and sorrows the more;

Your face has lost
The clearness it once wore,
And your brow smooth and white
Its look of light;
Your eyes that were
So careless, are how deep with care!

O, what has done
This cruelty to you?
Is it only Time makes strange
Your look with change,
Or something more
Than the worst pang Time ever bore?--

Regret, regret!
So bitter that it changes
Bright youth to madness,
Poisoning mere sadness ...
O, vain glass that shows
Less than the bitterness the heart knows.

I was thy neighbour once, thou rugged Pile!
Four summer weeks I dwelt in sight of thee:
I saw thee every day; and all the while
Thy Form was sleeping on a glassy sea.

So pure the sky, so quiet was the air!
So like, so very like, was day to day!
Whene’er I looked, thy Image still was there;
It trembled, but it never passed away.

How perfect was the calm! it seemed no sleep;
No mood, which season takes away, or brings:
I could have fancied that the mighty Deep
Was even the gentlest of all gentle things.

Ah! then , if mine had been the Painter’s hand,
To express what then I saw; and add the gleam,
The light that never was, on sea or land,
The consecration, and the Poet’s dream;

I would have planted thee, thou hoary Pile
Amid a world h...

Slow sinks the sun, a great carbuncle ball
Red in the cavern of a sombre cloud,
And in her garden, where the dense weeds crowd,
Among her dying asters stands the Fall,
Like some lone woman in a ruined hall,
Dreaming of desolation and the shroud;
Or through decaying woodlands goes, down-bowed,
Hugging the tatters of her gipsy shawl.
The gaunt wind rises, like an angry hand,
And sweeps the sprawling spider from its web,
Smites frantic music in the twilight's ear;
And all around, like melancholy sand,
Rains dead leaves down wild leaves, that mark the ebb,
In Earth's dark hour-glass, of another year.

I.

No more to feel the pressure warm
    Of dimpled arms around your neck--
No more to clasp the little form
    That Nature did with beauty deck.


II.

No more to hear the music sweet
    Of merry laugh and prattling talk--
No more to see the busy feet
    Come toddling down the shaded walk.


III.

No more the glint of flaxen hair
    That nestled 'round the lilied brow--
No more the rose's bloom will wear
    The cheek so cold and pallid now.


IV.

No more the light from loving eyes,
    Whose hue was like the violet blown
Where Summer's softest, bluest skies,
    Had lent it coloring from their own.


V.

No more to fondly bend above
    The little one when sl...

His eyes are quickened so with grief,
He can watch a grass or leaf
Every instant grow; he can
Clearly through a flint wall see,
Or watch the startled spirit flee
From the throat of a dead man.
    Across two counties he can hear,
And catch your words before you speak.
The woodlouse or the maggot's weak
Clamour rings in his sad ear;
And noise so slight it would surpass
Credence: drinking sound of grass,
Worm-talk, clashing jaws of moth
Chumbling holes in cloth:
The groan of ants who undertake
Gigantic loads for honour's sake,
Their sinews creak, their breath comes thin:
Whir of spiders when they spin,
And minute whispering, mumbling, sighs
Of idle grubs and flies.
    This man is quickened so with grief,
He wanders god-like or like thie...

I mind me in the days departed,
How often underneath the sun
With childish bounds I used to run
To a garden long deserted.

The beds and walks were vanished quite;
And wheresoe'er had struck the spade,
The greenest grasses Nature laid
To sanctify her right.

I called the place my wilderness,
For no one entered there but I;
The sheep looked in, the grass to espy,
And passed it ne'ertheless.

The trees were interwoven wild,
And spread their boughs enough about
To keep both sheep and shepherd out,
But not a happy child.

Adventurous joy it was for me!
I crept beneath the boughs, and found
A circle smooth of mossy ground
Beneath a poplar tree.

Old garden rose-trees hedged it in,
Bedropt with roses waxen-white

I' piansi, or canto; che 'l celeste lume.

AT HER RETURN, HIS SORROWS VANISH.


    I wept, but now I sing; its heavenly light
That living sun conceals not from my view,
But virtuous love therein revealeth true
His holy purposes and precious might;
Whence, as his wont, such flood of sorrow springs
To shorten of my life the friendless course,
Nor bridge, nor ford, nor oar, nor sails have force
To forward mine escape, nor even wings.
But so profound and of so full a vein
My suff'ring is, so far its shore appears,
Scarcely to reach it can e'en thought contrive:
Nor palm, nor laurel pity prompts to gain,
But tranquil olive, and the dark sky clears,
And checks my grief and wills me to survive.

MACGREGOR.

My heart is sick with longing, tho' I feed
On hope; Time goes with such a heavy pace
That neither brings nor takes from thy embrace,
As if he slept - forgetting his old speed:
For, as in sunshine only we can read
The march of minutes on the dial's face,
So in the shadows of this lonely place
There is no love, and Time is dead indeed.
But when, dear lady, I am near thy heart,
Thy smile is time, and then so swift it flies,
It seems we only meet to tear apart,
With aching hands and lingering of eyes.
Alas, alas! that we must learn hours' flight
By the same light of love that makes them bright!

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

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

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

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

My thoughts, my grief! are without strength
My spirit is journeying towards death
My eyes are as a frozen sea
My tears my daily food;
There is nothing in life but only misery.
My poor heart is torn
And my thoughts are sharp wounds within me,
Mourning the miserable state of Ireland.

Misfortune has come upon us all together
The poor, the rich, the weak and the strong
The great lord by whom hundreds were maintained
The powerful strong man, and the man that holds the plough;
And the cross laid on the bare shoulder of every man.

Our feasts are without any voice of priests
And none at them but women lamenting
Tearing their hair with troubled minds
Keening miserably after the Fenians.

The pipes of our organs are broken
Our harps have lost ...

He, in the room above, grown old and tired,
She, in the room below, his floor her ceiling,
Pursue their separate dreams. He turns his light,
And throws himself on the bed, face down, in laughter. . . .
She, by the window, smiles at a starlight night,

His watch, the same he has heard these cycles of ages,
Wearily chimes at seconds beneath his pillow.
The clock, upon her mantelpiece, strikes nine.
The night wears on. She hears dull steps above her.
The world whirs on. . . .New stars come up to shine.

His youth, far off, he sees it brightly walking
In a golden cloud. . . .Wings flashing about it. . . . Darkness
Walls it around with dripping enormous walls.
Old age, far off, her death, what do they matter?
Down the smooth purple night a streaked star falls.

I asked of my Muse, had she any objection
    To laughing with me,--not a word for reply!
You see, it is Sfere, our time for dejection,--
    And can a Jew laugh when the rule is to cry?

You laughed then, you say? 'tis a sound to affright one!
    In Jewish delight, what is worthy the name?
The laugh of a Jew! It is never a right one,
    For laughing and groaning with him are the same.

You thought there was zest in a Jewish existence?
    You deemd that the star of a Jew could be kind?
The Spring calls and beckons with gracious insistence,--
    Jew,--sit down in sackcloth and weep yourself blind!

The garden is green and the woodland rejoices:
    How cool are the breezes, with fragrance how blent!
But Spring calls not you with her thousand swe...

    I

    The stream goes fast.
    When this that is the present is the past,
    'Twill be as all the other pasts have been,
    A failing hill, a daily dimming scene,
    A far strange port with foreign life astir
    The ship has left behind, the voyager
    Will never return to; no, nor see again,
    Though with a heart full of longing he may strain
    Back to project himself, and once more count
    The boats, the whitened walls that climbed the mount,
    Mark the cathedral's roof, the gathered spires,
    The vanes, the windows red with sunset's fires,
    The gap of the market-place, and watch again
    The coloured groups of women, and the men
    Lounging at ease along the low stone wall
    That fringed the harbour; and there beyond it all<...