Loss

Misfortune hath constrained me
To leave the lute and poetry,
Nor can I from their easing borrow
        Sleep for my sorrow.

Do I see true, or hath a dream
Flown forth from ivory gates to gleam
In phantom gold, before forsaking
        Its poor cheat, waking?

Oh, mad, mistaken humankind,
'Tis easy triumph for the mind
While yet no ill adventure strikes us
        And naught mislikes us.

In plenty we praise poverty,
'Mid pleasures we hold grief to be
(And even death, ere it shall stifle
        Our breath) a trifle.

But when the grudging spinner scants
Her thread and fate no surcease grants
From grief most deep and need most wearing,
        Less calm our bearing.

Ah, Tully, thou didst flee from Rome
With w...

    When I compare
What I have lost with what I have gained,
What I have missed with what attained,
    Little room do I find for pride.

    I am aware
How many days have been idly spent;
How like an arrow the good intent
    Has fallen short or been turned aside.

    But who shall dare
To measure loss and gain in this wise?
Defeat may be victory in disguise;
    The lowest ebb is the turn of the tide.

With heavy groans did I approach my friends,
Heavy as though the mountains I would move.
The flagon they were murdering; they poured
Into the cup, wild-eyed, the grape's red blood.
No, they killed not, they breathed new life therein.
Then, too, in fiery rapture, burned my veins,
But soon the fumes had fled. In vain, in vain!
Ye cannot fill the breach of the rent heart.
Ye crave a sensuous joy; ye strive in vain
To cheat with flames of passion, my despair.
So when the sinking sun draws near to night,
The sky's bright cheeks fade 'neath those tresses black.
Ye laugh - but silently the soul weeps on;
Ye cannot stifle her sincere lament.

Solomon Ben Judah Gabirol (Died Between 1070-80.)

I cannot look upon thy grave,
Though there the rose is sweet:
Better to hear the long wave wash
These wastes about my feet!

Shall I take comfort? Dost thou live
A spirit, though afar,
With a deep hush about thee, like
The stillness round a star?

Oh, thou art cold! In that high sphere
Thou art a thing apart,
Losing in saner happiness
This madness of the heart.

And yet, at times, thou still shalt feel
A passing breath, a pain;
Disturb'd, as though a door in heaven
Had oped and closed again.

And thou shalt shiver, while the hymns,
The solemn hymns, shall cease;
A moment half remember me:
Then turn away to peace.

But oh, for evermore thy look,
Thy laugh, thy charm, thy tone,
Thy sweet and wayward earthlin...

Loss molds our lives in many ways,
And fills our souls with guesses;
Upon our hearts sad hands it lays
Like some grave priest that blesses.

Far better than the love we win,
That earthly passions leaven,
Is love we lose, that knows no sin,
That points the path to Heaven.

Love, whose soft shadow brightens Earth,
Through whom our dreams are nearest;
And loss, through whom we see the worth
Of all that we held dearest.

Not joy it is, but misery
That chastens us, and sorrow;
Perhaps to make us all that we
Expect beyond To-morrow.

Within that life where time and fate
Are not; that knows no seeming:
That world to which death keeps the gate
Where love and loss sit dreaming.

"Come, sit thee by my side once more,
    'Tis long since thus we' met;
And though our dream of love is o'er,
    Its sweetness lingers yet.
Its transient day has long been past,
    Its flame has ceased to burn, -
But Memory holds its spirit fast,
    Safe in her sacred urn.

"I will not chide thy wanderings,
    Nor ask why thou couldst flee
A heart whose deep affection's springs
    Poured forth such love for thee!
We may not curb the restless mind,
    Nor teach the wayward heart
To love against its will, nor bind
    It with the chains of art.

"I would but tell thee how, in tears
    And bitterness, my soul
Has yearned with dreams, through long, long, years,
    Which it could not control.
And how the thought that clingeth t...

You ask why I am sad to-day,
I have no cares, no griefs, you say?
Ah, yes, 't is true, I have no grief--
But--is there not the falling leaf?

The bare tree there is mourning left
With all of autumn's gray bereft;
It is not what has happened me,
Think of the bare, dismantled tree.

The birds go South along the sky,
I hear their lingering, long good-bye.
Who goes reluctant from my breast?
And yet--the lone and wind-swept nest.

The mourning, pale-flowered hearse goes by,
Why does a tear come to my eye?
Is it the March rain blowing wild?
I have no dead, I know no child.

I am no widow by the bier
Of him I held supremely dear.
I have not seen the choicest one
Sink down as sinks the westering sun.

Faith unto faith have ...

Vain is the chiming of forgotten bells
    That the wind sways above a ruined shrine.
Vainer his voice in whom no longer dwells
    Hunger that craves immortal Bread and Wine.

Light songs we breathe that perish with our breath
    Out of our lips that have not kissed the rod.
They shall not live who have not tasted death.
    They only sing who are struck dumb by God.

    The first rose on my rose-tree
        Budded, bloomed, and shattered,
    During sad days when to me
            Nothing mattered.

    Grief of grief has drained me clean;
        Still it seems a pity
    No one saw,--it must have been
            Very pretty.

No Muse will I invoke; for she is fled!
Lo! where she sits, breathing, yet all but dead.
She loved the heavens of old, she thought them fair;
And dream'd of Gods in Tempe's golden air.
For her the wind had voice, the sea its cry;
She deem'd heroic Greece could never die.
Breathless was she, to think what nymphs might play
In clear green depths, deep-shaded from the day;
She thought the dim and inarticulate god
Was beautiful, nor knew she man a sod;
But hoped what seem'd might not be all untrue,
And feared to look beyond the eternal blue.
But now the heavens are bared of dreams divine.
Still murmurs she, like Autumn, _This was mine!_
How should she face the ghastly, jarring Truth,
That questions all, and tramples without ruth?
And still she clings to Ida of her...

1.
How stern are the woes of the desolate mourner,
As he bends in still grief o'er the hallowed bier,
As enanguished he turns from the laugh of the scorner,
And drops, to Perfection's remembrance, a tear;
When floods of despair down his pale cheek are streaming,
When no blissful hope on his bosom is beaming,
Or, if lulled for awhile, soon he starts from his dreaming,
And finds torn the soft ties to affection so dear.

2.
Ah! when shall day dawn on the night of the grave,
Or summer succeed to the winter of death?
Rest awhile, hapless victim, and Heaven will save
The spirit, that faded away with the breath.
Eternity points in its amaranth bower,
Where no clouds of fate o'er the sweet prospect lower,
Unspeakable pleasure, of goodness the dower,
When woe...

I.

Sweetly to sleep beneath the fresh green turf
    They laid the loved and lost away;
A chair is vacant by the household hearth,
    And shadow-vested Sorrow's there to-day.


II.

The tender hands that guided us in youth
    Are folded now upon the gentle breast,
And those dear eyes whose depths were love and truth
    Are closed to open in eternal rest.


III.

Through simple faith and duty well performed,
    A crown of light forever shall be hers;
And though with bitter grief and anguish mourned,
    A consolation gleams through blinding tears!

I sing what was lost and dread what was won,
I walk in a battle fought over again,
My king a lost king, and lost soldiers my men;
Feet to the Rising and Setting may run,
They always beat on the same small stone.

No Muse will I invoke; for she is fled!
Lo! where she sits, breathing, yet all but dead.
She loved the heavens of old, she thought them fair;
And dream'd of Gods in Tempe's golden air.
For her the wind had voice, the sea its cry;
She deem'd heroic Greece could never die.
Breathless was she, to think what nymphs might play
In clear green depths, deep-shaded from the day;
She thought the dim and inarticulate god
Was beautiful, nor knew she man a sod;
But hoped what seem'd might not be all untrue,
And feared to look beyond the eternal blue.
But now the heavens are bared of dreams divine.
Still murmurs she, like Autumn, This was mine!
How should she face the ghastly, jarring Truth,
That questions all, and tramples without ruth?
And still she clings to Ida o...

The heart of me's an empty thing, that never stirs at all
For Moon-shine or Spring-time, or a far bird's call.
I only know 'tis living by a grief that shakes it so,--
Like an East wind in Autumn, when the old nests blow.

Grey Eyes and Black Hair, 'tis never you I blame.
'Tis long years and easy years since last I spoke your name.
And I'm long past the knife-thrust I got at wake or fair.
Or looking past the lighted door and fancying you there.

Grey Eyes and Black Hair--the grief is never this;
I've long forgot the soft arms--the first, wild kiss.
But, Oh, girl that tore my youth,--'tis this I have to bear,--
If you were kneeling at my feet I'd neither stay nor care.

There is a hungry longing in the soul,
    A craving sense of emptiness and pain,
She may not satisfy nor yet control,
    For all the teeming world looks void and vain.
No compensation in eternal spheres,
She knows the loneliness of all her years.


There is no comfort looking forth nor back,
    The present gives the lie to all her past.
Will cruel time restore what she doth lack?
    Why was no shadow of this doom forecast?
Ah! she hath played with many a keen-edged thing;
Naught is too small and soft to turn and sting.


In the unnatural glory of the hour,
    Exalted over time, and death, and fate,
No earthly task appears beyond her power,
    No possible endurance seemeth great.
She knows her misery and her majesty,
And recks not...

'Tis not when we look on the dreamless dead,
And feel that the spirit forever has fled;
'Tis not when we're called to the voiceless tomb
By the loved who were culled in their brightest bloom;
'Tis not when the grave's last rite is o'er,
And we know they are gone to return no more;
But, oh! 'tis when Time with oblivious wing
A balm to all other hearts may bring;
When the dark, dark hours of grief are o'er,
And we join the world we can love no more,
That world whose grief for the absent one
Passed like a cloud from an April sun;
When, amid the mirth that salutes the ear,
One tone is gone we had used to hear,
One form is missed in that happy train,
That will never exult in its sports again;
We feel that death has indeed passed o'er,
And a blank...

    Sorrow:

A garland for a grave! Fair flowers that bloom,
And only bloom to fade as fast away,
We twine your leaflets 'round our Claudia's tomb,
And with your dying beauty crown her clay.

Ye are the tender types of life's decay;
Your beauty, and your love-enfragranced breath,
From out the hand of June, or heart of May,
Fair flowers! tell less of life and more of death.

My name is Sorrow. I have knelt at graves,
All o'er the weary world for weary years;
I kneel there still, and still my anguish laves
The sleeping dust with moaning streams of tears.

And yet, the while I garland graves as now,
I bring fair wreaths to deck the place of woe;
Whilst joy is crowning many a living brow,
I crown the poor, frail dust that sleeps below.