If I may have it when it's dead
I will contented be;
If just as soon as breath is out
It shall belong to me,

Until they lock it in the grave,
'T is bliss I cannot weigh,
For though they lock thee in the grave,
Myself can hold the key.

Think of it, lover! I and thee
Permitted face to face to be;
After a life, a death we'll say, --
For death was that, and this is thee.

    So soon he fell, the world will never know
    What possibilities within him lay,
What hopes irradiated his young life,
With high ambition and with ardor rife;
    But ah! the speedy summons came, and so
        He passed away.

    So soon he fell, there lie unfinished plans
    By others misapplied, misunderstood;
And doors are barred that wait the master-key -
That wait his magic Open Sesame! -
    To that assertive power that commands
        The multitude.

    Too soon he fell! Was he not born to prove
    What manhood and integrity might be -
How one from all base elements apart
Might walk serene, in purity of heart,
    His face the bright transparency of love
        And sympathy?

    The student ranks are closed, there i...

Ah! weary Priest! with pale hands pressed
On thy throbbing brow of pain,
Baffled in thy life-long quest,
Overworn with toiling vain,
How ill thy troubled musings fit
The holy quiet of a breast
With the Dove of Peace at rest,
Sweetly brooding over it.
Thoughts are thine which have no part
With the meek and pure of heart,
Undisturbed by outward things,
Resting in the heavenly shade,
By the overspreading wings
Of the Blessed Spirit made.
Thoughts of strife and hate and wrong
Sweep thy heated brain along,
Fading hopes for whose success
It were sin to breathe a prayer;
Schemes which Heaven may never bless,
Fears which darken to despair.
Hoary priest! thy dream is done
Of a hundred red tribes won
To the pale of Holy Church;
And the...

The Separated Women
Go lying through the land,
For they have plenty dresses,
And money, too, in hand;
They married brutes and drunkards
And blackguards “frightful low”,
But why are they so eager
For all the world to know?

The shamed and ill-used woman
Who really longs to die,
She slaves at home in silence
And hides her poor black eye!
She lives a life of terror
Eased off at times in woe,
But why is she so frightened
That any one might know?

The Separated Woman
She rushes to the court,
Sad, shabby and pathetic,
Or flaunting or distraught;
The real wronged wife would rather
Lose both eyes and her hair,
She swears a lie to save him
When he is taken there.

The Separated Woman
She mostly goes the same,<...

I.

The years have passed in ceaseless round
    Since first they laid her here to rest
In dreamless sleep beneath the silent mound,
    With folded hands upon her gentle breast.


II.

The ivy twines about the crumbling stone,
    And Springtime's scented blossoms fling
Their incense o'er the peaceful home
    That knows no more of suffering.


III.

Full many a Summer's sun has shed
    Its brightest smile upon the hallowed spot,
And sobered Autumn and wild Winter spread
    Their garments here--she heeds them not!


IV.

The feathered wildlings of the wood and field
    Their untaught melody around it make,
But she who sleeps with eyes so softly sealed
    Their gladsome songs can never more a...

Lay the corpse out on the altar; bid the elect
Slaves clear the ways of service spiritual,
Sweep clean the stalled soul's serviceable stall,
Ere the chief priest's dismantling hands detect
The ulcerous flesh of faith all scaled and specked
Beneath the bandages that hid it all,
And with sharp edgetools oecumenical
The leprous carcases of creeds dissect.
As on the night ere Brutus grew divine
The sick-souled augurs found their ox or swine
Heartless; so now too by their after art
In the same Rome, at an uncleaner shrine,
Limb from rank limb, and putrid part from part,
They carve the corpse--a beast without a heart.

Motto.

On peut trouver des femmes qui n'ont jamais eu de galanterie, mais il est rare d'en trouver qui n'en aient jamais eu qu'une. - [Réflexions ... du Duc de la Rochefoucauld, No. lxxiii.]

1.

Lady! in whose heroic port
And Beauty, Victor even of Time,
And haughty lineaments, appear
Much that is awful, more that's dear -
Wherever human hearts resort
There must have been for thee a Court,
And Thou by acclamation Queen,
Where never Sovereign yet had been.
That eye so soft, and yet severe,
Perchance might look on Love as Crime;
And yet - regarding thee more near -
The traces of an unshed tear
Compressed back to the heart,
And mellowed Sadness in thine air,
Which shows that Love hath once been there,
To those who w...

Welcome, old friend! These many years
Have we lived door by door;
The fates have laid aside their shears
Perhaps for some few more.

I was indocile at an age
When better boys were taught,
But thou at length hast made me sage,
If I am sage in aught.

Little I know from other men,
Too little they know from me,
But thou hast pointed well the pen
That writes these lines to thee.

Thanks for expelling Fear and Hope,
One vile, the other vain;
One's scourge, the other's telescope,
I shall not see again.

Rather what lies before my feet
My notice shall engage,
He who hath braved Youth's dizzy heat
Dreads not the frost of Age.

The day, all fierce with carmine, turns
An Indian face towards Earth and dies;
The west, like some gaunt vase, inurns
Its ashes under smouldering skies,
Athwart whose bowl one red cloud streams,
Strange as a shape some Aztec dreams.

Now shadows mass above the world,
And night comes on with wind and rain;
The mulberry-colored leaves are hurled
Like frantic hands against the pane.
And through the forests, bending low,
Night stalks like some gigantic woe.

In hollows where the thistle shakes
A hoar bloom like a witch's-light,
From weed and flower the rain-wind rakes
Dead sweetness as a wildman might,
From out the leaves, the woods among,
Dig some dead woman, fair and young.

Now let me walk the woodland ways,
Alone! except for thoug...

To GARRYOWEN upon an organ ground
Two girls are jigging.    Riotously they trip,
With eyes aflame, quick bosoms, hand on hip,
As in the tumult of a witches' round.
Youngsters and youngsters round them prance and bound.
Two solemn babes twirl ponderously, and skip.
The artist's teeth gleam from his bearded lip.
High from the kennel howls a tortured hound.
The music reels and hurtles, and the night
Is full of stinks and cries; a naphtha-light
Flares from a barrow; battered and obtused
With vices, wrinkles, life and work and rags,
Each with her inch of clay, two loitering hags
Look on dispassionate - critical - something 'mused.


***


The gods are dead?    Perhaps they are!    Who knows?
Living at least in Lempriere undeleted,
The wise,...

I.

O Life! O Death! O God!
Have we not striven?
Have we not known Thee, God
As Thy stars know Heaven?
Have we not held Thee true,
True as thy deepest,
Sweet and immaculate blue
Heaven that feels Thy dew!
Have we not known Thee true,
O God who keepest.

II.

O God, our Father, God!
Who gav'st us fire,
To soar beyond the sod,
To rise, aspire
What though we strive and strive,
And all our soul says 'live'?
The empty scorn of men
Will sneer it down again.
And, O sun-centred high,
Who, too, art Poet,
Beneath Thy tender sky
Each day new Keatses die,
Calling all life a lie;
Can this be so and why?
And canst Thou know it?

III.

We know Thee beautiful,
We know Thee bitter!
H...

Despair takes heart, when there's no hope to speed:
The coward then takes arms and does the deed.

And many there were hurt by that strong boy,
His name, they said, was Pleasure,
And near him stood, glorious beyond measure
Four Ladies who possess all empery
In earth and air and sea,
Nothing that lives from their award is free.
Their names will I declare to thee,
Love, Hope, Desire, and Fear,
And they the regents are
Of the four elements that frame the heart,
And each diversely exercised her art
By force or circumstance or sleight
To prove her dreadful might
Upon that poor domain.
Desire presented her [false] glass, and then
The spirit dwelling there
Was spellbound to embrace what seemed so fair
Within that magic mirror,
And dazed by that bright error,
It would have scorned the [shafts] of the avenger
And death, and penitence, and danger,...

Under the walls of Monterey
At daybreak the bugles began to play,
            Victor Galbraith!
In the mist of the morning damp and gray,
These were the words they seemed to say:
            "Come forth to thy death,
            Victor Galbraith!"

Forth he came, with a martial tread;
Firm was his step, erect his head;
            Victor Galbraith,
He who so well the bugle played,
Could not mistake the words it said:
            "Come forth to thy death,
            Victor Galbraith!"

He looked at the earth, he looked at the sky,
He looked at the files of musketry,
            Victor Galbraith!
And he said, with a steady voice and eye,
"Take good aim; I am ready to die!"
            Thus challenges death
            Victor Galbra...

11.30 P.M., DEC. 31


Friend, when the year is on the wing,
'Tis held a fair and comely thing
To turn reflective glances
Over the days' forbidden Scroll,
See if we're better on the whole,
And average our chances.

Yet 'tis an awful thing to drag
Each separate deed from out the bag
That up till now has hidden 't,
And bring before the shuddering view
All that we swore we wouldn't do,
Or should have done, but didn't.

The broken code, the baffled laws
Our little private faults and flaws,
And every naughty habit,
Come whistling through the Waste of Life,
Until one longs to take a knife,
Feel for his heart, and stab it.

Unchanged, exultant, one and all
Rise up spontaneous to the call,
And bring their stings behind ...

I saw in dream the spirits unbegot,
Veiled, floating phantoms, lost in twilight space;
For one the hour had struck, he paused; the place
Rang with an awful Voice:
            "Soul, choose thy lot!
Two paths are offered; that, in velvet-flower,
Slopes easily to every earthly prize.
Follow the multitude and bind thine eyes,
Thou and thy sons' sons shall have peace with power.
This narrow track skirts the abysmal verge,
Here shalt thou stumble, totter, weep and bleed,
All men shall hate and hound thee and thy seed,
Thy portion be the wound, the stripe, the scourge.
But in thy hand I place my lamp for light,
Thy blood shall be the witness of my Law,
Choose now for all the ages!"
            Then I saw
The unveiled spirit, grown divinely bright,
Choose t...

She stood in the open door,
She blessed them faint and low:
"I must go," she said, "must go
Away from the light of the sun,
Away from you, every one;
Must see your eyes no more,--
Your eyes, that love me so.

"I should not shudder thus,
Nor weep, nor be afraid.
Nor cling to you so dismayed,
Could I only pierce with ray eyes
Where the dark, dark shadow lies;
Where something hideous
Is hiding, perhaps," she said.

Then slowly she went from them,
Went down the staircase grim,
With trembling heart and limb;
Her footfalls echoed
In the silence vast and dead,
Like the notes of a requiem,
Not sung, but uttered.

For a little way and a black
She groped as grope the blind,
Then a sudden radiance shined,
And a visio...

A fair young girl was to the altar led
By him she loved, the chosen of her heart;
And words of solemn import there were said,
And mutual vows were pledged till death should part.

But life was young, and death a great way off,
At least it seemed so then, on that bright morn;
And they no doubt, expected years of bliss,
And in their path the rose without a thorn.

Cherished from infancy with tenderest care,
A precious only daughter was the bride;
And when that young protector's arm she took,
She for the first time left her parents' side.

With all a woman's tender, trustful heart,
She gave herself away to him she loved;
Why should she not, was he not all her own,
A choice by friends and parents too approved?

How rapidly with him the days now...