O daughter of pride, wasted with misery,
With all the glory that thy shame put on
Stripped off thy shame, O daughter of Babylon,
Yea, whoso be it, yea, happy shall he be
That as thou hast served us hath rewarded thee.
Blessed, who throweth against war's boundary stone
Thy warrior brood, and breaketh bone by bone
Misrule thy son, thy daughter Tyranny.
That landmark shalt thou not remove for shame,
But sitting down there in a widow's weed
Wail; for what fruit is now of thy red fame?
Have thy sons too and daughters learnt indeed
What thing it is to weep, what thing to bleed?
Is it not thou that now art but a name?1

Uplift the ponderous, golden mask of death,
    And let the sun shine on him as it did
How many thousand years agone!    Beneath
    This worm-defying, uncorrupted lid,
Behold the young, heroic face, round-eyed,
Of one who in his full-flowered manhood died;
    Of nobler frame than creatures of to-day,
Swathed in fine linen cerecloths fold on fold,
With carven weapons wrought of bronze and gold,
    Accoutred like a warrior for the fray.


We gaze in awe at these huge-modeled limbs,
    Shrunk in death's narrow house, but hinting yet
Their ancient majesty; these sightless rims
    Whose living eyes the eyes of Helen met;
The speechless lips that ah! what tales might tell
Of earth's morning-tide when gods did dwell
    Amidst a generous-fashioned, god...

DUCHOMMAR, MORNA.

DUCHOMMAR.

[Footnote: The signification of the names in this fragment are; Dubhchomar, a black well-shaped man. Muirne or Morna, a woman beloved by all. Cormac-cairbre, an unequalled and rough warriour. Cromleach, a crooked hill. Mugruch, a surly gloomy man. Tarman, thunder. Moinie, soft in temper and person.]

Morna, thou fairest of women,
daughter of Cormac-Carbre!
why in the circle of stones, in the cave
of the rock, alone? The stream murmureth
hoarsely. The blast groaneth
in the aged tree. The lake is troubled
before thee. Dark are the clouds of
the sky. But thou art like snow on
the heath. Thy hair like a thin cloud
of gold on the top of Cromleach. Thy
breasts like two smooth rocks on the hill
which is seen from the stream of Bran...

(J. H. 1813-1904)



There's no more to be done, or feared, or hoped;
None now need watch, speak low, and list, and tire;
No irksome crease outsmoothed, no pillow sloped
Does she require.

Blankly we gaze. We are free to go or stay;
Our morrow's anxious plans have missed their aim;
Whether we leave to-night or wait till day
Counts as the same.

The lettered vessels of medicaments
Seem asking wherefore we have set them here;
Each palliative its silly face presents
As useless gear.

And yet we feel that something savours well;
We note a numb relief withheld before;
Our well-beloved is prisoner in the cell
Of Time no more.

We see by littles now the deft achievement
Whereby she has escaped the Wrongers all,
In vie...

How steep the stairs within King's houses are
For exile-wearied feet as mine to tread,
And O how salt and bitter is the bread
Which falls from this Hound's table, - better far
That I had died in the red ways of war,
Or that the gate of Florence bare my head,
Than to live thus, by all things comraded
Which seek the essence of my soul to mar.

'Curse God and die:    what better hope than this?
He hath forgotten thee in all the bliss
Of his gold city, and eternal day' -
Nay peace:    behind my prison's blinded bars
I do possess what none can take away,
My love and all the glory of the stars.

If you have revisited the town, thin Shade,
Whether to look upon your monument
(I wonder if the builder has been paid)
Or happier thoughted when the day is spent
To drink of that salt breath out of the sea
When grey gulls flit about instead of men,
And the gaunt houses put on majesty:
Let these content you and be gone again;
For they are at their old tricks yet.
A man
Of your own passionate serving kind who had brought
In his full hands what, had they only known,
Had given their children’s children loftier thought,
Sweeter emotion, working in their veins
Like gentle blood, has been driven from the place,
And insult heaped upon him for his pains
And for his open-handedness, disgrace;
An old foul mouth that slandered you had set
The pack upon him.

Pure as an angel's dream shone Paradise.
Blue mountains hemmed it round; and airy sighs
Of rippling waters haunted it. Dim glades,
And wayward paths o'erflecked with shimmering shades,
And tangled dells, and wilding pleasances,
Hung moist with odors strange from scented trees.
Sweet sounds o'erbrimmed the place; and rare perfumes,
Faint as far sunshine, fell 'mong verdant glooms.
In that fair land, all hues, all leafage green
Wrapt flawless days in endless summer-sheen.
Bright eyes, the violet waking, lifted up
Where bent the lily her deep, fragrant cup;
And folded buds, 'gainst many a leafy spray--
The wild-woods' voiceless nuns--knelt down to pray.
There roses, deep in greenest mosses swathed,
Kept happy tryst with tropic blooms, sun-bathed.
No sounds of sad...

We are moving on in silence,
Save for rattling iron and steel,
And a skirmish echoing round us,
Showering faintly, peal on peal.

Like a lion roars the North wind
As a-horse we sternly clank,
While beside the guns our men drop,
Slyly shot from either flank.

You are musing, love, and smiling
By the hearth-fire of the Mill,
While the tangled oaks are cracking
Boughs upon the windy hill.

I can see the moonlight shining
Over fields of frozen calm;
I can hear the chapel organ,
And the singing of the psalm.

Fare you well, then, English village,
Which of all I loved the most,
Where my ghost alone can wander
Once again, when life is lost.

Fare you well, then, Sally Dorset;
You will never utter wail
For the sol...

A little more, a little less!--
O shadow-hunters pitiless,
Why then so eager, say!
What'er you leave the grave will take,
And all you gain and all you make,
It will not last a day!

Full soon will come the Reaper Black,
Cut thorns and flowers mark his track
Across Life's meadow blithe.
Oppose him, meet him as you will,
Old Time's behests he harkens still,
Unsparing wields his scythe.

A horrid mutiny by stealth
Breaks out,--of power, fame and wealth
Deserted you shall be!
The foam upon your lip is rife;
The last enigma now of Life
Shall Death resolve for thee.

You call for help--'tis all in vain!
What have you for your toil and pain,
What have you at the last?
Poor luckless hunter, are you dumb?
This way the cold p...

Within the dwindling glow of light from languid lamps,
Sunk in the softest cushions soaked with heady scent,
Hippolyta lay dreaming of the thrilling touch
That spread apart the veil of her young innocence.

She searched with troubled eye, afflicted by the storm,
For the once-distant sky of her naivety,
A voyager who turns and looks beyond the wake
To blue horizons which had once been overhead.

The heavy tears that fell from dull and weary eyes,
The broken look, the stupor, the voluptuousness,
Her conquered arms thrown down, surrendered in the field,
All strangely served her still, to show her fragile charm.

Stretched calmly at her feet, joyfully satisfied,
Delphine looked up at her with those compelling eyes
Like a strong animal that oversees her prey,<...

Misguided man, thy turbid life
This day in shameful death shall close,
And thou shalt ne'er behold the sun,
That in thy sight, this morn, arose.

The moon, which yestere'en so clear,
Shone thro' thy cell's small window pane -
No more shalt thou behold its light,
Or see its chasten'd rays, again.

No more thy voice, 'mong savage hordes,
Shall sound, with baneful, potent spell,
To make them rise with savage force,
And 'gainst their country's laws, rebel.

And thou art calm in trustful hope,
And conscience gives thee little pain,
'Tis strange, but man's a myst'ry deep,
Unsolv'd in finite thought's domain.

The scaffold's there, and thou art firm;
Thou walkest forth upon it now;
The thoughts within thy breast are hid,
But calm an...

To-night, God knows what thing shall tide,
The Earth is racked and fain,
Expectant, sleepless, open-eyed;
And we, who from the Earth were made,
Thrill with our Mother's pain.

Come, Heraclitus and Simonides,
Come with your weeping and sad elegies:
Ye griefs and sorrows, come from all the lands
Wherein ye sigh and wail and wring your hands:
Gather ye here within my house today
And help me mourn my sweet, whom in her May
Ungodly Death hath ta'en to his estate,
Leaving me on a sudden desolate.
'Tis so a serpent glides on some shy nest
And, of the tiny nightingales possessed,
Doth glut its throat, though, frenzied with her fear,
The mother bird doth beat and twitter near
And strike the monster, till it turns and gapes
To swallow her, and she but just escapes.
"'Tis vain to weep," my friends perchance will say.
Dear God, is aught in life not vain, then? Nay,
Seek to lie soft, yet thorns will prickly be:
The life of man is naught but...

Still the sovereign trees
Make the sundawn's breeze
More bright, more sweet, more heavenly than it rose,
As wind and sun fulfil
Their living rapture: still
Noon, dawn, and evening thrill
With radiant change the immeasurable repose
Wherewith the woodland wilds lie blest
And feel how storms and centuries rock them still to rest.
Still the love-lit place
Given of God such grace
That here was born on earth a birth divine
Gives thanks with all its flowers
Through all their lustrous hours,
From all its birds and bowers
Gives thanks that here they felt her sunset shine
Where once her sunrise laughed, and bade
The life of all the living things it lit be glad.
Soft as light and strong
Rises yet their song
And thrills with pride the cedar-crested law...

Between the green bud and the red
Youth sat and sang by Time, and shed
From eyes and tresses flowers and tears,
From heart and spirit hopes and fears,
Upon the hollow stream whose bed
Is channelled by the foamless years;
And with the white the gold-haired head
Mixed running locks, and in Time’s ears
Youth’s dreams hung singing, and Time’s truth
Was half not harsh in the ears of Youth.

Between the bud and the blown flower
Youth talked with joy and grief an hour,
With footless joy and wingless grief
And twin-born faith and disbelief
Who share the seasons to devour;
And long ere these made up their sheaf
Felt the winds round him shake and shower
The rose-red and the blood-red leaf,
Delight whose germ grew never grain,
And passion dyed in its ...

It is not well
For me to dwell
On what upon that day befell,
On that dark day of fall befell;
When through the landscape, bowed and bent,
With Love and Death I slowly went,
And wild rain swept the firmament.

Ah, Love that sighed!
Ah, Joy that died!
And Heart that humbled all its pride;
In vain that humbled all its pride!
The roses ruin and rot away
Upon your grave where grasses sway,
And all is dim, and all is gray.

As in some Countries far remote from hence,
The wretched creature destined to die,
Hauing the iudgement due to his offence,
By Surgeons begg'd, their Art on him to trie:
Which on the liuing worke without remorce,
First make incision on each maistring vaine,
Then stanch the bleeding, then transperce the coarse,
And with their balmes recure the wounds againe,
Then poison and with Phisicke him restore,
Not that they feare the hopelesse man to kill,
But their experience to encrease the more;
Euen so my Mistresse works vpon my ill,
    By curing me, and killing me each howre,
    Onely to shew her beauties soueraigne powre.

Tutto 'l di piango; e poi la notte, quando.

HER CRUELTY RENDERS LIFE WORSE THAN DEATH TO HIM.


    Through the long lingering day, estranged from rest,
My sorrows flow unceasing; doubly flow,
Painful prerogative of lover's woe!
In that still hour, when slumber soothes th' unblest.
With such deep anguish is my heart opprest,
So stream mine eyes with tears! Of things below
Most miserable I; for Cupid's bow
Has banish'd quiet from this heaving breast.
Ah me! while thus in suffering, morn to morn
And eve to eve succeeds, of death I view
(So should this life be named) one-half gone by--
Yet this I weep not, but another's scorn;
That she, my friend, so tender and so true,
Should see me hopeless burn, and yet her aid deny.

WRANGHAM.