O earth, so full of dreary noises!
O men, with wailing in your voices!
O delved gold, the wailer's heap!
O strife, O curse, that o'er it fall!
God strikes a silence through you all,
And giveth His beloved sleep.
His dews drop mutely on the hill,
His cloud above it saileth still,
Though on its slope men sow and reap;
More softly than the dew is shed,
Or cloud is floated overhead,
He giveth His beloved sleep.
Ay, men may wonder while they scan
A living, thinking, feeling man
Confirmed in such a rest to keep;
But angels say, and through the word
I think their happy smile is heard,
"He giveth his beloved sleep."
For me, my heart that erst did go
Most like a tired child at a show,
That sees through tears the mummers leap,
Would now its wearied vision close,
Would childlike on His love repose
Who giveth His beloved sleep.
And friends, dear friends, when shall it be
That this low breath is gone from me,
And round my bier ye come to weep,
Let One, most loving of you all,
Say, "Not a tear must o'er her fall!
He giveth His beloved sleep."
SWIFTLY walk over the western wave,
Spirit of Night!
Out of the misty eastern cave,
Where all the long and lone daylight,
Thou wovest dreams of joy and fear,
Which make thee terrible and dear,-
Swift be thy flight!
Wrap thy form in a mantle grey,
Star-inwrought!
Blind with thine hair the eyes of Day:
Kiss her until she be wearied out,
Then wander o'er city, and sea, and land,
Touching all with thine opiate wand—
Come, long-sought!
When I arose and saw the dawn
I sighed for thee;
When light rode high, and the dew was gone,
And noon lay heavy on flower and tree,
And the weary day turned to his rest,
Lingering like an unloved guest,
I sighed for thee.
Thy brother Death came, and cried,
Wouldst thou me?
Thy sweet child Sleep, the filmy-eyed,
Murmured like a noontide bee,
Shall I nestle near thy side?
Wouldst thou me?-And I replied,
No, not thee!
Death will come when thou art dead,
Soon, too soon-
Sleep will come when thou art fled;
Of neither would I ask the boon
I ask of thee, belovèd Night-
Swift be thine approaching flight,
Come soon, soon!
Thoughts of Death.
POOR slaves, how terrible this death is to them!-
If men would sleep, they would be wrath with all
That interrupt them; physic take, to take
The golden rest it brings; both pay and pray
For good and soundest naps, all friends consenting
In those invocations; praying all,
"Good rest the gods vouchsafe you!" But when Death,
Sleep's natural brother, comes; that's nothing worse,
But better (being more rich-and keeps the store-
Sleep ever fickle, wayward still, and poor);
O, how men grudge, and shake, and fear, and fly
His stern approaches! all their comforts, taken
In faith, and knowledge of the bliss and beauties
That watch their wakings in an endless life,
Drowned in the pains and horrors of their sense
Sustained but for an hour.
Hunting Song.
WAKEN, lords and ladies gay,
On the mountain dawns the day;
All the jolly chase is here,
With hawk and horse and hunting-spear ;
Hounds are in their couples yelling,
Hawks are whistling, horns are knelling,
Merrily, merrily, mingle they,
"Waken, lords and ladies gay."
Waken, lords and ladies gay,
The mist has left the mountain gray,
Springlets in the dawn are steaming,
Diamonds on the brake are gleaming,
And foresters have busy been
To track the buck in thicket green;
Now we come to chant our lay,
"Waken, lords and ladies gay."
Waken, lords and ladies gay,
To the greenwood haste away;
We can show you where he lies,
Fleet of foot and tall of size ;
We can show the marks he made
When 'gainst the oak his antlers frayed;
You shall see him brought to bay;
Waken, lords and ladies gay.
Louder, louder chant the lay,
Waken, lords and ladies gay!
Tell them youth and mirth and glee
Run a course as well as we;
Time, stern huntsman ! who can baulk,
Stanch as hound and fleet as hawk;
Think of this, and rise with day,
Gentle lords and ladies gay!
Roderick Dhu, a Scottish chieftain, by a sudden signal, musters his warriors.
He whistled shrill,
And he was answered from the hill;
Wild as the scream of the curlew,
From crag to crag the signal flew.
Instant, through copse and heath, arose
Bonnets, and spears, and bended bows;
On right, on left, above, below,
Sprung up at once the lurking foe;
From shingles grey their lances start,
The bracken bush sends forth the dart,
The rushes and the willow wand
Are bristling into axe and brand;
And every tuft of broom gives life
To plaided warrior armed for strife.
That whistle garrisoned the glen
At once with full five hundred men,
As if the yawning hill to heaven
A subterranean host had given.
Watching their leader's beck and will
All silent there they stood, and still.
Short space he stood-then waved his hand :
Down sunk the disappearing band;
Each warrior vanished where he stood,
In broom or bracken, heath or wood;
Sunk brand, and spear, and bended bow,
In osiers pale and copses low;
It seemed as if their mother Earth
Had swallowed up her warlike birth.
The wind's last breath had tossed in air,
Pennon, and plaid, and plumage fair,
The next but swept a lone hillside,
Where heath and fern were waving wide;
The sun's last glance was glinted back,
From spear and glaive, from targe and jack,—
The next, all unreflected, shone
Or bracken green, and cold grey stone.
Mazeppa, a Pole, having incurred the wrath of a noble of his own country, was bound to the back of a wild horse, and left to his fate. Carried into the wilderness, he was finally rescued by peasants, and restored to liberty. In this poem he is supposed, as an old man, to be relating this adventure of his youth.
AWAY, away, my steed and I,
Upon the pinions of the wind,
All human dwellings left behind;
We sped like meteors through the sky,
When with its crackling sound the night
Is chequered with the northern light:
Town-village-none were on our track,
But a wild plain of far extent,
And bounded by a forest black:
And, save the scarce-seen battlement
On distant heights of some strong hold,
Against the Tartars built of old,
No trace of man. The year before
A Turkish army had marched o'er;
And where the Spahi's hoof hath trod,
The verdure flies the bloody sod:-
The sky was dull, and dim, and gray,
And a low breeze crept moaning by-
I could have answered with a sigh-
But fast we fled, away, away—
And I could neither sigh nor pray;
And my cold sweat-drops fell like rain
Upon the courser's bristling mane;
But, snorting still with rage and fear,
He flew upon his far career:
At times I almost thought, indeed,
He must have slackened in his speed:
But no-my bound and slender frame
Was nothing to his angry might,
And merely like a spur became:
Each motion which I made to free
My swoln limbs from their agony
Increased his fury and affright:
I tried my voice,-'twas faint and low,
But yet he swerved as from a blow;
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