No longer seek him east or west;
And search no more the forest thorough;
For, wandering in the night so dark,
He fell a lifeless corse in Yarrow.
The tear shall never leave my cheek,
No other youth shall be my marrow;
I'll seek thy body in the stream,
And then with thee I 'll sleep in Yarrow.
THE moon had climbed the highest hill
Which rises o'er the source of Dee,
And from the eastern summit shed
Her silver light on tower and tree,
When Mary laid her down to sleep,
Her thoughts on Sandy far at sea, When, soft and slow, a voice was heard Say, "Mary, weep no more for me!"
She from her pillow gently raised
Her head, to ask who there might be, And saw young Sandy shivering stand, With visage pale, and hollow e'e. "O Mary dear, cold is my clay;
It lies beneath a stormy sea. Far, far from thee I sleep in death; So, Mary, weep no more for me! "Three stormy nights and stormy days We tossed upon the raging main ; And long we strove our bark to save, But all our striving was in vain. Even then, when horror chilled my blood, My heart was filled with love for thee: The storm is past, and I at rest
So, Mary, weep no more for me !
"O maiden dear, thyself prepare ;
We soon shall meet upon that shore, Where love is free from doubt and care,
And thou and I shall part no more!" Loud crowed the cock, the shadow fled, No more of Sandy could she see; But soft the passing spirit said,
"Sweet Mary, weep no more for me!
COULD ye come back to me, Douglas, Douglas,
In the old likeness that I knew,
I would be so faithful, so loving, Douglas,
Douglas, Douglas, tender and true.
Never a scornful word should grieve ye,
I'd smile on ye sweet as the angels do;
Sweet as your smile on me shone ever,
Douglas, Douglas, tender and true.
O to call back the days that are not!
My eyes were blinded, your words were few: Do you know the truth now up in heaven, Douglas, Douglas, tender and true?
I never was worthy of you, Douglas ;
Not half worthy the like of you :
Now all men beside seem to me like shadows,
I love you, Douglas, tender and true.
Stretch out your hand to me, Douglas, Douglas,
Drop forgiveness from heaven like dew;
As I lay my heart on your dead heart, Douglas,
Douglas, Douglas, tender and true.
FIRST SPRING FLOWERS.
I AM watching for the early buds to wake
Under the snow :
From little beds the soft white covering take,
And, nestling, lo!
They lie, with pink lips parted, all aglow!
O darlings! open wide your tender eyes;
See! I am here
Have been here, waiting under winter skies
Till you appear
You, just come up from where he lies so near.
Tell me, dear flowers, is he gently laid,
Wrapped round from cold;
Has spring about him fair green garments made, Fold over fold;
Are sweet things growing with him in the mold?
Has he found quiet resting-place at last,
What message did he send me, as you passed
Him in the night,
Eagerly pushing upward toward the light?
I will not pluck you, lest his hand should be
Close clasping you :
These slender fibers which so cling to me
Do grasp him too
What gave these delicate veins their blood-
red hue?
One kiss I press, dear little bud, half shut,
On your sweet eyes;
For when the April rain falls at your foot,
And April sun yearns downward to your root
From soft spring skies,
It, too, may reach him, where he sleeping lies.
Hark! the death-owl loud doth sing
To the nightmares as they go.
My love is dead, etc.
See the white moon shines on high;
Whiter is my true-love's shroud,
Whiter than the morning sky,
Whiter than the evening cloud.
My love is dead, etc.
Here, upon my true-love's grave
Shall the barren flowers be laid,
Nor one holy saint to save
All the coldness of a maid.
My love is dead, etc.
With my hands I'll bind the briers
Round his holy corse to gre ;
Elfin-fairy, light your fires;
Here my body still shall be.
My love is dead, etc.
Come, with acorn-cup and thorn,
Drain my heart's blood all away;
Life and all its good I scorn,
Dance by night, or feast by day.
My love is dead, etc.
Water-witches, crowned with reytes,
Bear me to your lethal tide.
I die! I come! my true-love waits.
Thus the damsel spake, and died.
THOMAS CHATTERTON.
The mountains now are mute: the heifers pass Slow-wandering by, nor browse the tender grass.
Sicilian Muses, pour the dirge of woe:
For thee, O Bion! in the grave laid low,
Apollo weeps dark palls the sylvan's shroud;
Fauns ask thy wonted song, and wail aloud :
Each fountain-nymph disconsolate appears,
And all her waters turn to trickling tears :--
Mute Echo pines the silent rocks around,
And mourns those lips that waked their sweetest
sound.
Sicilian Muses, pour the dirge of woe:
But retribution sure will deal the blow:
I, in this trance of grief, still drop the tear,
And mourn forever o'er thy livid bier :-
O that, as Orpheus, in the days of yore,
Ulysses, or Alcides, passed before,
I could descend to Pluto's house of night,
And mark if thou wouldst Pluto's ear delight,
And listen to the song: O then rehearse
Some sweet Sicilian strain, bucolic verse,
To soothe the maid of Enna's vale, who sang
These Doric songs, while Ætna's upland rang.
Not unrewarded should thy ditties prove :
As the sweet harper, Orpheus, erst could move
Her breast to yield his dear departed wife,
Treading the backward road from death to life,
So should he melt to Bion's Dorian strain,
And send him joyous to his hills again.
O, could my touch command the stops like thee,
I too would seek the dead, and sing thee free!
From the Greek of MOSCHUS,
by CHARLES ABRAHAM ELTON.
O FOREST dells and streams! O Dorian tide!
Groan with my grief, since lovely Bion died :
Ye plants and copses, now his loss bewail :
Flowers, from your tufts a sad perfume exhale :
Anemones and roses, mournful show
Your crimson leaves and wear a blush of woe :
And hyacinth, now more than ever spread
The woeful "ah," that marks thy petaled head
With lettered grief: the beauteous minstrel 's
dead!
Sicilian Muses, pour the dirge of woe:
Ye nightingales, whose plaintive warblings flow
From the thick leaves of some embowering wood,
Tell the sad loss to Arethusa's flood:
The shepherd Bion dies: with him is dead
The life of song: the Doric Muse is fled.
Sicilian Muses, pour the dirge of woe:
The herds no more that chant melodious know:
No more beneath the lonely oak he sings,
But breathes his strains to Lethe's sullen springs:
[In memory of a young clerical friend of the poet's, drowned A. D. 1637.]
YET once more, O ye laurels, and once more,
Ye myrtles brown, with ivy never sere,
I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude ;
And, with forced fingers rude,
Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year.
Bitter constraint, and sad occasion dear,
Compels me to disturb your season due :
For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime,
Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer.
Who would not sing for Lycidas? he knew
Himself to sing, and build the lofty rhyme.
He must not float upon his watery bier
Unwept, and welter to the parching wind,
Without the meed of some melodious tear.
Begin, then, sisters of the sacred well
That from beneath the seat of Jove doth spring ;
Begin, and somewhat loudly sweep the string.
Hence with denial vain, and coy excuse :
So may some gentle Muse
With lucky words favor my destined urn;
And, as he passes, turn,
And bid fair peace be to my sable shroud.
For we were nursed upon the selfsame hill,
Fed the same flock by fountain, shade, and rill;
Together both, ere the high lawns appeared
Under the opening eyelids of the morn,
We drove afield, and both together heard
What time the gray fly winds her sultry horn,
Battening our flocks with the fresh dews of night,
Oft till the star, that rose at evening bright,
Towards heaven's descent had sloped his westering
wheel.
Meanwhile the rural ditties were not mute,
Tempered to the oaten flute;
Rough Satyrs danced, and Fauns with cloven heel
From the glad sound would not be absent long;
And old Damætas loved to hear our song.
But, O the heavy change now thou art gone, Now thou art gone, and never must return! Thee, shepherd, thee the woods, and desert caves, With wild thyme and the gadding vine o'ergrown, And all their echoes, mourn.
The willows, and the hazel copses green,
Shall now no more be seen
Fanning their joyous leaves to thy soft lays.
As killing as the canker to the rose,
Or taint-worm to the weanling herds that graze,
Or frost to flowers, that their gay wardrobe wear,
When first the white-thorn blows;
Such, Lycidas, thy loss to shepherds' ear.
Where were ye, nymphs, when the remorseless deep
Closed o'er the head of your loved Lycidas?
For neither were ye playing on the steep,
Where your old bards, the famous Druids, lie,
Nor on the shaggy top of Mona high,
Nor yet where Deva spreads her wizard stream :
Ay me! I fondly dream,
Had ye been there for what could that have done?
What could the Muse herself that Orpheus bore,
The Muse herself, for her enchanting son,
Whom universal nature did lament,
When, by the rout that made the hideous roar,
His gory visage down the stream was sent,
Down the swift Hebrus to the Lesbian shore?
Alas! what boots it with incessant care
To tend the homely, slighted shepherd's trade,
And strictly meditate the thankless Muse?
Were it not better done, as others use,
To sport with Amaryllis in the shade,
Or with the tangles of Neæra's hair?
Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise
(That last infirmity of noble minds)
To scorn delights, and live laborious days;
But the fair guerdon when we hope to find,
And think to burst out into sudden blaze,
Comes the blind Fury with the abhorred shears,
And slits the thin-spun life. "But not the praise,'
Phoebus replied, and touched my trembling ears;
"Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil,
Nor in the glistering foil
Set off to the world, nor in broad rumor lies:
But lives and spreads aloft by those pure eyes,
And perfect witness of all-judging Jove;
As he pronounces lastly on each deed,
Of so much fame in heaven expect thy meed!"
O fountain Arethuse, and thou honored flood,
Smooth-sliding Mincius, crowned with vocal reeds!
That strain I heard was of a higher mood:
But now my oat proceeds,
And listens to the herald of the sea
That came in Neptune's plea ;
He asked the waves, and asked the felon winds,
What hard mishap hath doomed this gentle swain?
And questioned every gust of rugged wings,
That blows from off each beakèd promontory :
They knew not of his story;
And sage Hippotades their answer brings,
That not a blast was from his dungeon strayed :
The air was calm, and on the level brine
Sleek Panope with all her sisters played.
It was that fatal and perfidious bark,
Built in the eclipse, and rigged with curses dark,
That sunk so low that sacred head of thine.
Next Camus, reverend sire, went footing slow, His mantle hairy, and his bonnet sedge, Inwrought with figures dim, and on the edge. Like to that sanguine flower inscribed with woe. "Ah! who hath reft," quoth he, "my dearest pledge?"
Last came, and last did go,
The pilot of the Galilean lake:
Two massy keys he bore of metals twain, (The golden opes, the iron shuts amain,) He shook his mitered locks, and stern bespake : "How well could I have spared for thee, young
Besides what the grim wolf with privy paw
Daily devours apace, and nothing said :
But that two-handed engine at the door
Stands ready to smite once, and smite no more.
Return, Alpheus, the dread voice is past,
That shrunk thy streams; return, Sicilian Muse,
And call the vales, and bid them hither cast
Their bells, and flowerets of a thousand hues.
Ye valleys low, where the mild whispers use
Of shades, and wanton winds, and gushing brooks
On whose fresh lap the swart-star sparely looks;
Throw hither all your quaint enameled eyes,
That on the green turf suck the honeyed showers,
And purple all the ground with vernal flowers.
Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies,
The tufted crow-toe, and pale jessamine,
The white pink, and the pansy freaked with jet,
The glowing violet,
The musk-rose, and the well-attired woodbine,
With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head,
And every flower that sad embroidery wears :
Bid Amaranthus all his beauty shed,
And daffadillies fill their cups with tears,
To strew the laureate hearse where Lycid lies.
For, so to interpose a little ease,
Let our frail thoughts dally with false surmise;
Ay me! whilst thee the shores and sounding
Wash far away, where'er thy bones are hurled,
Whether beyond the stormy Hebrides,
Where thou, perhaps, under the whelming tide,
Visit'st the bottom of the monstrous world;
Or whether thou, to our moist vows denied,
Sleep'st by the fable of Bellerus old,
Where the great vision of the guarded mount
Looks toward Namancos and Bayona's hold;
Look homeward, angel, now, and melt with ruth :
And, O ye dolphins, waft the hapless youth.
Weep no more, woful shepherds, weep no more ;
For Lycidas your sorrow is not dead,
Sunk though he be beneath the watery floor;
So sinks the day-star in the ocean bed,
And yet anon repairs his drooping head,
And tricks his beams, and with new-spangled ore
Flames in the forehead of the morning sky:
So Lycidas sunk low, but mounted high,
Through the dear might of Him that walked the
Where, other groves and other streams along,
With nectar pure his oozy locks he laves,
And hears the unexpressive nuptial song,
In the blest kingdoms meek of joy and love.
There entertain him all the saints above,
In solemn troops, and sweet societies,
That sing, and, singing, in their glory move,
And wipe the tears forever from his eyes.
Now, Lycidas, the shepherds weep no more;
Henceforth thou art the Genius of the shore,
In thy large recompense, and shalt be good
To all that wander in that perilous flood.
Thus sang the uncouth swain to the oaks and
While the still morn went out with sandals gray;
He touched the tender stops of various quills,
With eager thought warbling his Doric lay:
And now the sun had stretched out all the hills,
And now was dropt into the western bay:
At last he rose, and twitched his mantle blue :
To-morrow to fresh woods, and pastures new.
SELECTIONS FROM "IN MEMORIAM.”
[ARTHUR HENRY HALLAM, OB. 1833.]
GRIEF UNSPEAKABLE.
I SOMETIMES hold it half a sin
To put in words the grief I feel;
For words, like Nature, half reveal
And half conceal the Soul within.
But, for the unquiet heart and brain,
A use in measured language lies;
The sad mechanic exercise,
Like dull narcotics, numbing pain.
In words, like weeds, I'll wrap me o'er, Like coarsest clothes against the cold ; But that large grief which these enfold Is given in outline and no more.
DEAD, IN A FOREIGN LAND. FAIR ship, that from the Italian shore Sailest the placid ocean-plains
With my lost Arthur's loved remains, Spread thy full wings, and waft him o'er!
So draw him home to those that mourn
In vain; a favorable speed
Ruffle thy mirrored mast, and lead
Through prosperous floods his holy urn!
All night no ruder air perplex
Thy sliding keel, till Phosphor, bright As our pure love, through early light Shall glimmer on the dewy decks !
Sphere all your lights around, above; Sleep, gentle heavens, before the prow ; Sleep, gentle winds, as he sleeps now, My friend, the brother of my love;
My Arthur, whom I shall not see Till all my widowed race be run ; Dear as the mother to the son, More than my brothers are to me!
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