A woman's figure, on a ground of night
        Inlaid with sallow stars that dimly stare
        Down in the lonesome eyes, uplifted there
    As in vague hope some alien lance of light
    Might pierce their woe.    The tears that blind her sight -
        The salt and bitter blood of her despair -
        Her hands toss back through torrents of her hair
    And grip toward God with anguish infinite.
        And O the carven mouth, with all its great
    Intensity of longing frozen fast
        In such a smile as well may designate
    The slowly-murdered heart, that, to the last,
        Conceals each newer wound, and back at Fate
    Throbs Love's eternal lie - "Lo, I can wait!"

Why should such gloomy silence reign,
And why is all the house so drear,
When neither danger, sickness, pain,
Nor death, nor want, have entered here?

We are as many as we were
That other night, when all were gay
And full of hope, and free from care;
Yet is there something gone away.

The moon without, as pure and calm,
Is shining as that night she shone;
But now, to us, she brings no balm,
For something from our hearts is gone.

Something whose absence leaves a void--
A cheerless want in every heart;
Each feels the bliss of all destroyed,
And mourns the change--but each apart.

The fire is burning in the grate
As redly as it used to burn;
But still the hearth is desolate,
Till mirth, and love, and PEACE return.

'T...

I

Over the broken world, the dark gone by,
Horror of outcast darkness torn with wars;
And timeless agony
Of the white fire, heaped high by blinded Stars,
Unfaltering, unaghast;--
Out of the midmost Fire
At last,--at last,--
Cry! ...
O darkness' one desire,--
O darkness, have you heard?--
Black Chaos, blindly striving towards the Word?
--The Cry!

Behold thy conqueror, Death!
Behold, behold from whom
It flutters forth, that triumph of First-Breath,
Victorious one that can but breathe and cling,--
This pulsing flower,--this weaker than a wing,
Halcyon thing!--
Cradled above unfathomable doom.


II

Under my feet, O Death,
Under my trembling feet!
Back, through the gates of hell, now give me way.
I...

Weep not too much, my darling;
Sigh not too oft for me;
Say not the face of Nature
Has lost its charm for thee.
I have enough of anguish
In my own breast alone;
Thou canst not ease the burden, Love,
By adding still thine own.

I know the faith and fervour
Of that true heart of thine;
But I would have it hopeful
As thou wouldst render mine.
At night, when I lie waking,
More soothing it will be
To say 'She slumbers calmly now,'
Than say 'She weeps for me.'

When through the prison grating
The holy moonbeams shine,
And I am wildly longing
To see the orb divine
Not crossed, deformed, and sullied
By those relentless bars
That will not show the crescent moon,
And scarce the twinkling stars,

It is my only comfor...

Pale, at its ghastly noon,
Pauses above the death-still wood the moon;
The night-sprite, sighing, through the dim air stirs;
The clouds descend in rain;
Mourning, the wan stars wane,
Flickering like dying lamps in sepulchres!
Haggard as spectres vision-like and dumb,
Dark with the pomp of death, and moving slow,
Towards that sad lair the pale procession come
Where the grave closes on the night below.

With dim, deep-sunken eye,
Crutched on his staff, who trembles tottering by?
As wrung from out the shattered heart, one groan
Breaks the deep hush alone!
Crushed by the iron fate, he seems to gather
All life's last strength to stagger to the bier,
And hearken Do these cold lips murmur "Father?"
The sharp rain, drizzling through that place of fear,
...

I made a truce last night with Sorrow,
    The queen of tears, the foe of sleep,
To keep her tents until the morrow,
    Nor send such dreams to make me weep.

Before the lusty day was springing,
    Before the tired moon was set,
I dreamed I heard my dead love singing,
    And when I woke my eyes were wet.

Upon time's surging, billowy sea
A ship now slowly disappears,
With freight no human eye can see,
But weighing just one hundred years.

Their sighs, their tears, their weary moans,
Their joy and pleasure, pomp and pride,
Their angry and their gentle tones,
Beneath its waves forever hide.

Yes, sunk within oblivion's waves,
They'll partly live in memory;
To youth, who will their secrets crave,
Mostly exist in history.

Ah, what a truth steps in this strain
They are not lost within time's sea;
Their words and actions live again,
And blight or light eternity!

A new ship comes within our view,
Laden with dreams both sad and blest;
To youth they're tinged with roseate hue;
To weary ones bring longed-for rest.

And still...

Pity the child who never feels
    A mother's fond caress;
That childish smile a void conceals
    Of aching loneliness.

Pity the heart which loves in vain,
    What balm or mystic spell
Can soothe that bosom's secret pain,
    The pain it may not tell?

Pity those missed by Cupid's darts,
    For 'twas ordained for such,
Who love at random, but whose hearts
    Feel no responsive touch.

And I have thought of youth which strains
Nearer its God to rise, -
What were ambition and its pains
Were life a cowardice!

The grander souls that rose above
Thought's noblest heights to tread,
Found their endeavor in their love,
And truth behind the dead.

A secret glory in the tomb,
A night that dawns in light,
An intense presence veiled with gloom,
And not an endless night....

Nepenthe of this struggling world,
Thou who dost stay mad Care
When her fury's scourge above is curled
And we see her writhing hair!

You call it, "Love lies bleeding," so you may,
Though the red Flower, not prostrate, only droops,
As we have seen it here from day to day,
From month to month, life passing not away:
A flower how rich in sadness! Even thus stoops,
(Sentient by Grecian sculpture's marvelous power)
Thus leans, with hanging brow and body bent
Earthward in uncomplaining languishment
The dying Gladiator. So, sad Flower!
('Tis Fancy guides me willing to be led,
Though by a slender thread,)
So drooped Adonis bathed in sanguine dew
Of his death-wound, when he from innocent air
The gentlest breath of resignation drew;
While Venus in a passion of despair
Rent, weeping over him, her golden hair
Spangled with drops of that celestial shower.
She suffered, as Immortals sometimes do;

(Athenaeum, October 14, 1848)


Chide not; let me breathe a little,
    For I shall not mourn him long;
Though the life-cord was so brittle,
    The love-cord was very strong.
I would wake a little space
Till I find a sleeping-place.

You can go, - I shall not weep;
    You can go unto your rest.
My heart-ache is all too deep,
    And too sore my throbbing breast.
Can sobs be, or angry tears,
Where are neither hopes nor fears?

Though with you I am alone
    And must be so everywhere,
I will make no useless moan, -
    None shall say 'She could not bear:'
While life lasts I will be strong, -
But I shall not struggle long.

Listen, listen! Everywhere
    A low voice is calling me,
And a step is on the sta...

They do not know the awful tears we shed,
The tender treasures that we keep and kiss;
They could not be so still--our quiet dead
In knowing this.

They do not know what time we turn to fill
Love's empty chalice with a cheaper bliss;
They could not be so still--so very still
In knowing this.

The winds have grown articulate in thee,
And voiced again the wail of ancient woe
That smote upon the winds of long ago:
The cries of Trojan women as they flee,
The quivering moan of pale Andromache,
Now lifted loud with pain and now brought low.
It is the soul of sorrow that we know,
As in a shell the soul of all the sea.
So sometimes in the compass of a song,
Unknown to him who sings, thro' lips that live,
The voiceless dead of long-forgotten lands
Proclaim to us their heaviness and wrong
In sweeping sadness of the winds that give
Thy strings no rest from weariless wild hands.

I sit by the fire in the gloaming,
    In the depths of my easy chair,
And I ponder, as old men ponder,
    Over times and things that were.

And outside is the gusty rushing,
    Of the fierce November blast,
With the snow drift waltzing and whirling,
    And eddying swiftly past,

It's a wild night to be abroad in,
    When the ice blast and snow drift meet
To wreath round all the world of winter
    A shroud and a winding sheet.

There's a dash of hail at the window,
    Thick with driving snow is the air;
But I sit here in ease and comfort
    In the depths of my easy chair.

I have fought my way in life's battle,
    And won Fortune's fickle caress;
Won from fame just a passing notice,
    And enjoy what is called succes...

My hour is not yet come! - these burning eyes
    Have not yet look'd their last! - else, 'mid the roar
    Of this wild STORM, what gloomy joy to pour
    My freed, exhaling Soul! - sublime to rise,
Rend the conflicting clouds, inflame the skies,
    And lash the torrents! - Bending to explore
    Our evening seat, my straining eye once more
    Roves the wide watry Waste; - but nought descries
Save the pale Flood, o'erwhelming as it strays.
    Yet Oh! lest my remorseless Fate decree
    That all I love, with life's extinguish'd rays
Sink from my soul, to soothe this agony,
    To balm that life, whose loss may forfeit thee,
    COME DEAR REMEMBRANCE OF DEPARTED DAYS!

I heard their young hearts crying
Loveward above the glancing oar
And heard the prairie grasses sighing:
No more, return no more!

O hearts, O sighing grasses,
Vainly your loveblown bannerets mourn!
No more will the wild wind that passes
Return, no more return.

Or che 'l ciel e la terra e 'l vento tace.

NIGHT BRINGS PEACE TO ALL SAVE HIM.


    O'er earth and sky her lone watch silence keeps,
And bird and beast in stirless slumber lie,
Her starry chariot Night conducts on high,
And in its bed the waveless ocean sleeps.
I wake, muse, burn, and weep; of all my pain
The one sweet cause appears before me still;
War is my lot, which grief and anger fill,
And thinking but of her some rest I gain.
Thus from one bright and living fountain flows
The bitter and the sweet on which I feed;
One hand alone can harm me or can heal:
And thus my martyrdom no limit knows,
A thousand deaths and lives each day I feel,
So distant are the paths to peace which lead.

MACGREGOR.


    'Tis now the ...

I had a little Sorrow,
    Born of a little Sin,
I found a room all damp with gloom
    And shut us all within;
And, "Little Sorrow, weep," said I,
    "And, Little Sin, pray God to die,
And I upon the floor will lie
    And think how bad I've been!"

Alas for pious planning--
    It mattered not a whit!
As far as gloom went in that room,
    The lamp might have been lit!
My little Sorrow would not weep,
    My little Sin would go to sleep--
To save my soul I could not keep
    My graceless mind on it!

So up I got in anger,
    And took a book I had,
And put a ribbon on my hair
    To please a passing lad,
And, "One thing there's no getting by--
I've been a wicked girl," said I;
"But if I can't be sorry, why,
    I...