And here the precious dust is laid;
Whose purely-temper’d clay was made
So fine that it the guest betray’d.

Else the soul grew so fast within,
It broke the outward shell of sin,
And so was hatch’d a cherubin.

In height, it soar’d to God above;
In depth, it did to knowledge move,
And spread in breadth to general love.

Before, a pious duty shin’d
To parents, courtesy behind;
On either side an equal mind.

Good to the poor, to kindred dear,
To servants kind, to friendship clear,
To nothing but herself severe.

So, though a virgin, yet a bride
To ev’ry grace, she justified
A chaste polygamy, and died.

Learn from hence, reader, what small trust
We owe this world, where virtue must,
Frail as our flesh, crumble to...

Shall our memories live, when the sod rolls above us
    And marks our last home with a mouldering heap?
Shall the voices of those who profess that they love us
    E'er mention our names, as we dreamlessly sleep?

Will their eyes ever dim at some fond recollection,
    Or their hands ever plant a small flower o'er the breast,
Or will they gaze with a sad circumspection
    At the tablets, which tell of our last solemn rest?

Ah! soon shall the hearts which our memories cherish
    Forget, as they strive with the cares of their own;
And even the last dim remembrance shall perish
    As we peacefully slumber, unwept and unknown.

But if our lives, though of transient duration,
    Are filled with some work in humanity's name,
Some uplifting effort, or self...

Between the death of day and birth of night,
By War's red light,
I met with one in trailing sorrows clad,
Whose features had
The look of Him who died to set men right.
Around him many horrors, like great worms,
Terrific forms,
Crawled, helmed like hippogriff and rosmarine,
Gaunt and obscene,
Urged on to battle with a thousand arms.
Columns of steel, and iron belching flame,
Before them came:
And cities crumbled; and amid them trod
Havoc, their god,
With Desolation that no tongue may name.
And out of Heaven came a burning breath,
And on it Death,
Riding: before him, huge and bellowing herds
Of beasts, like birds,
Bat-winged and demon, nothing conquereth.
Hag-lights went by, and Fear that shrieks and dies;
And mouths, with cries
Of ...

Look here, Jack:
You don't act natural. You have lost your laugh.
You haven't told me any stories. You
Just lie there half asleep. What's on your mind?

JACK

What time is it? Where is my watch?

FLORENCE

    Your watch
Under your pillow! You don't think I'd take it.
Why, Jack, what talk for you.

JACK

    Well, never mind,
Let's pack no ice.

FLORENCE

    What's that?

JACK

    No quarreling -
What is the time?

FLORENCE

    Look over towards my dresser -
My clock says half-past eleven.

JACK

    Listen to that -
That hurdy-gurdy's playing Holy Night,
And on this street.

FLORENCE

    And why not on this street?

J...

i(Epilogue to "A Vision')

Midnight has come, and the great Christ Church Bell
And may a lesser bell sound through the room;
And it is All Souls' Night,
And two long glasses brimmed with muscatel
Bubble upon the table. A ghost may come;
For it is a ghost's right,
His element is so fine
Being sharpened by his death,
To drink from the wine-breath
While our gross palates drink from the whole wine.
I need some mind that, if the cannon sound
From every quarter of the world, can stay
Wound in mind's pondering
As mummies in the mummy-cloth are wound;
Because I have a marvellous thing to say,
A certain marvellous thing
None but the living mock,
Though not for sober ear;
It may be all that hear
Should laugh and weep an hour upon the clock.

L' aura serena che fra verdi fronde.

THE GENTLE BREEZE (L' AURA) RECALLS TO HIM THE TIME WHEN HE FIRST SAW HER.


    The gentle gale, that plays my face around,
Murmuring sweet mischief through the verdant grove,
To fond remembrance brings the time, when Love
First gave his deep, although delightful wound;
Gave me to view that beauteous face, ne'er found
Veil'd, as disdain or jealousy might move;
To view her locks that shone bright gold above,
Then loose, but now with pearls and jewels bound:
Those locks she sweetly scatter'd to the wind,
And then coil'd up again so gracefully,
That but to think on it still thrills the sense.
These Time has in more sober braids confined;
And bound my heart with such a powerful tie,
That death alone can disen...

Over a slow-dying fire,
Dreaming old dreams, I am sitting;
The flames leap up and expire;
A woman sits opposite knitting.

I’ve taken a Fate to wife;
She knits with a half-smile mocking
Me, and my dreams, and my life,
All into a worsted stocking.

A breath                         A breath
   And a sigh, -                     And a sigh, - 
    How we fly                       How we fly
From Death!                      From Death! - 
                        
A palm                           Sing on
    Warm pressed,                    O our bird!
    As we guessed                    Thou art heard
Love's psalm.                    Alone.
                        
A word                           We know
    Breathed close,                  No life,
    And then rose                    Neither strife,
The bird                         Nor woe,
                        
That cowers                      Nor aught
    In the wood                      But this hour, - 
    'Mid a flood                     L...

Do you know, as I do, delicious sadness
and make others say of you: ‘Strange man!’
I was dying. In my soul, singular illness,
desire and horror were mingled as one:

anguish and living hope, no factious bile.
The more the fatal sand ran out, the more
acute, delicious my torment: my heart entire
was tearing itself away from the world I saw.

I was like a child eager for the spectacle,
hating the curtain as one hates an obstacle…
at last the truth was chillingly revealed:

I’d died without surprise, dreadful morning
enveloped me. Was this all there was to see?
The curtain had risen, and I was still waiting.

‘Oh could thy grave at home, at Carthage, be!’
Care not for that, and lay me where I fall.
Everywhere heard will be the judgment-call.
But at God’s altar, oh! remember me.

Thus Monica, and died in Italy.
Yet fervent had her longing been, through all
Her course, for home at last, and burial
With her own husband, by the Libyan sea.

Had been; but at the end, to her pure soul
All tie with all beside seem’d vain and cheap,
And union before God the only care.

Creeds pass, rites change, no altar standeth whole;
Yet we her memory, as she pray’d, will keep,
Keep by this: Life in God, and union there!

Sweet Memory! thou faculty divine--
Triumphant o'er the cruel hand of Time!
On thy tablets we may trace
The lines his fingers ne'er efface,
And take with us till latest day
The images that light our way,
And picture thus in a shadowy form
The loved and lost he's from us torn--
Their lids by Death so early sealed--
Life's crimson tide by him congealed--
The tyrant has not all concealed--
They in thy mirror still revealed!

Before the morning sunbeams kissed
The face of Nature--veiled in mist--
And heralded with golden ray
The opening of the perfect day--
Ere yet the sable shades of night
At dawn's approach had winged their flight--
We've listed to the whispering breeze
That's wafted o'er the trembling trees,
And seemed to hear the voice...

All Afric, winged with death and fire,
Pants in our pleasant English air.
Each blade of grass is tense as wire,
And all the wood’s loose trembling hair
Stark in the broad and breathless glare
Of hours whose touch wastes herb and tree.
This bright sharp death shines everywhere;
Life yearns for solace toward the sea.
Earth seems a corpse upon the pyre;
The sun, a scourge for slaves to bear.
All power to fear, all keen desire,
Lies dead as dreams of days that were
Before the new-born world lay bare
In heaven’s wide eye, whereunder we
Lie breathless till the season spare:
Life yearns for solace toward the sea.
Fierce hours, with ravening fangs that tire
On spirit and sense, divide and share
The throbs of thoughts that scarce respire,
The throes of d...

Oh many a duel the world has seen
    That was bitter with hate, that was red with gore,
But I sing of a duel by far more cruel
    Than ever by poet was sung before.
It was waged by night, yea by day and by night,
    With never a pause or halt or rest,
And the curious spot where this battle was fought
    Was the throbbing heart in a woman's breast.

There met two rivals in deadly strife,
    And they fought for this woman so pale and proud.
One was a man in the prime of life,
    And one was a corpse in a moldy shroud;
One wrapped in a sheet from his head to his feet,
    The other one clothed in worldly fashion;
But a rival to dread is a man who is dead,
    If he has been loved in life with passion.

The living lover he battled with sighs,
...