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``Wound up in the heart of his error
He must sweep through the silences dire,
Like one in the dark of a desert
Allured by fallacious fire.''
And she faltered, and asked, like a doubter,
``When he hangs on those Spaces sublime
With the Terror that knoweth no limit,
And holdeth no record of Time,-
``Forgotten of God and the demons -
Will he keep to his fancy amain?
Can he live for that
horrible Chaos
Of flame and
perpetual rain?''
But an answer as soft as a prayer
Fell down from a high
hidden Land,
And the words were the words of a language
Which none but the gods understand.
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IN MEMORIAM.
DANIEL HENRY DENIEHY.
TAKE the harp, but very
softly for our brother touch the strings:
Wind and wood shall help to wail him, waves and
mournful mountain-springs.
Take the harp, but very
softly, for the friend who grew so old
Through the hours we would not hear of - nights we would not fain behold!
Other voices, sweeter voices, shall
lament him year by year,
Though the morning finds us
lonely, though we sit and
marvel here:
Marvel much while Summer cometh, trammelled with November wheat,
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Gold about her
forehead gleaming, green and gold about her feet;
Yea, and while the land is dark with plover, gull, and
gloomy glede,
Where the cold, swift songs of Winter fill the interlucent reed.
Yet, my harp, and O, my fathers, never look for Sorrow's lay,
Making life a
mighty darkness in the patient noon of day;
Since he resteth whom we loved so, out beyond these
fleeting seas,
Blowing clouds, and
restless regions paved with old perplexities,
In a land where
thunder breaks not, in a place unknown of snow,
Where the rain is mute for ever, where the wild winds never go:
Home of far-forgotten
phantoms - genii of our
peaceful prime,
Shining by
perpetual waters past the ways of Change and Time:
Haven of the harried spirit, where it folds its wearied wings,
Turns its face and sleeps a sleep with deep
forgetfulness of things.
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His should be a grave by mountains, in a cool and thick-mossed lea,
With the lone creek falling past it - falling ever to the sea.
His should be a grave by waters, by a bright and broad lagoon,
Making
steadfast splendours
hallowed of the quiet-shining moon.
There the elves of many forests - wandering winds and flying lights -
Born of green, of happy mornings, dear to yellow summer nights,
Full of dole for him that loved them, then might halt, and then might go,
Finding fathers of the people to their children
speaking low -
Speaking low of one who, failing, suffered all the poet's pain,
Dying with the dead leaves round him - hopes which never grow again.
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MEROPE.
FAR in the ways of the hyaline wastes - in the face of the splendid
Six of the sisters - the star-dowered sisters ineffably bright,
Merope sitteth, the shadow-like wife of a
monarch unfriended
Of Ades - of Orcus, the
fierce, the implacable god of the night.
Merope -
fugitive Merope! lost to thyself and thy lover,
Cast, like a dream, out of thought, with the moons which have passed into sleep,
What shall avail thee? Alcyone's tears, or the sight to discover
Of Sisyphus pallid for thee by the blue, bitter lights of the deep?
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Pallid, but patient for sorrow? Oh, thou of the fire and the water,
Half with the flame of the
sunset and kin to the streams of the sea,
Hast thou the songs of old times for desire of thy dark-featured daughter,
Sweet with the lips of thy yearning, O 锟絫hra! with tokens of thee -
Songs that would lull her, like kisses forgotten of silence where speech was
Less than the silence that bound it as
passion is bound by a ban;
Seeing we know of thee, Mother, we turning and
hearing how each was
Wrapt in the other ere Merope faltered and fell for a man?
Mortal she clave to, forgetting her
birthright, forgetting the lordlike
Sons of the Many-winged Father, and chiefs of the plume and the star,
Therefore, because that her sin was the grief of the grand and the godlike,
Sitteth thy child than a morning-moon bleaker, the faded, and far.
Ringed with the flowerlike Six of the Seven, arrayed and anointed
Ever with beautiful pity, she watches, she weeps, and she wanes,
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Blind as a flame on the hills of the Winter in hours appointed
For the life of the foam and the
thunder - the strength of the
imminent rains.
Who hath a
portion, Alcyone, like her? Asterope, fairer
Than
sunset on snow, and
beloved of all
brightness, say what is there left
Sadder and paler than Pleione's daughter, disconsolate bearer
Of trouble that smites like a sword of the gods to the break of the heft?
Demeter, and Dryope, known to the forests, the falls, and the fountains,
Yearly, because of their walking, and wailing, and wringing of hands,
Are they as one with this woman? - or Hyrie wild in the mountains,
Breaking her heart in the frosts and the fires of the
uttermost lands?
These have their
bitterness. This, for Persephone, that for Oechalian
Homes, and the lights of a kindness blown out with the
stress of her shame:
One for her child, and one for her sin; but thou above all art an alien,
Girt with the halos that vex thee, and wrapt in a grief beyond name.
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Yet sayeth Sisyphus - Sisyphus,
stricken and chained of the Minioned
Kings of great darkness, and trodden in dust by the feet of the fates -
``Sweet are the ways of thy watching, and pallid and perished and pinioned,
Moon
amongst maidens, I leap for thy love like a god at the gates -
Leap for the dreams of a rose of the heavens, and beat at the portals
Paved with the pain of unsatisfied pleadings for thee and for thine,
But Zeus is immutable Master, and these are the walls the Immortals
Build for our sighing, and who may set lips at the lords and repine?
Therefore,'' he saith, ``I am sick for thee, Merope, faint for the tender
Touch of thy mouth, and the eyes like the lights of an altar to me;
But lo, thou art far, and thy face is a still and a
sorrowful splendour!
And the storm is
abroad with the rain on the
perilous straits of the sea.''
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AFTER THE HUNT.
UNDERNEATH the windy mountain walls
Forth we rode, an eager band,
By the surges, and the verges, and the gorges,
Till the night was on the land -
On the hazy, mazy land!
Far away the bounding prey
Leapt across the ruts and logs,
But we galloped, galloped, galloped on,
Till we heard the yapping of the dogs!
The yapping and the yelping of the dogs.
Oh! it was a madly merry day
We shall not so soon forget,
And the edges, and the ledges, and the ridges,
Haunt us with their echoes yet -
Echoes, echoes, echoes yet!
While the moon is on the hill
Gleaming through the streaming fogs,
Don't you hear the yapping of the dogs -
The yapping and the yelping of the dogs?
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ROSE LORRAINE.
SWEET water-moons, blown into lights
Of flying gold on pool and creek,
And many sounds and many sights,
Of younger days are back this week.
I cannot say I sought to face,
Or greatly cared to cross again,
The subtle spirit of the place
Whose life is mixed with Rose Lorraine.
What though her voice rings clearly through
A
nightly dream I
gladly keep,
No wish have I to start anew
Heart-fountains that have ceased to leap.
Here, face to face with different days,
And later things that plead for love,
It would be worse than wrong to raise
A
phantom far too fain to move.
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But, Rose Lorraine - ah, Rose Lorraine,
I'll
whisper now where no one hears.
If you should chance to meet again
The man you kissed in soft dead years,
Just say for once ``he suffered much,''
And add to this ``his fate was worst
Because of me, my voice, my touch,''-
There is no
passion like the first!
If I that breathe your slow sweet name
As one breathes low notes on a flute,
Have vext your peace with word of blame,
The
phrase is dead - the lips are mute.
Yet when I turn towards the wall,
In stormy nights, in times of rain,
I often wish you could recall
Your tender speeches, Rose Lorraine.
Because, you see, I thought them true,
And did not count you self-deceived,
And gave myself in all to you,
And looked on Love as Life achieved.
Then came the bitter, sudden change,
The fastened lips, the dumb despair:
The first few weeks were very strange,
And long, and sad, and hard to bear.
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No woman lives with power to burst
My
passion's bonds, and set me free;
For Rose is last where Rose was first,
And only Rose is fair to me.
The faintest memory of her face,
The wilful face that hurt me so,
Is followed by a fiery trace
That Rose Lorraine must never know.
I keep a faded
ribbon string
You used to wear about your throat;
And of this pale, this perished thing,
I think I know the threads by rote.
God help such love! To touch your hand,
To
loiter where your feet might fall,
You
marvellous girl, my soul would stand
The worst of hell - its fires and all!
The End