Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore— While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. “’Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door— Only this and nothing more.”
Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December; And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Now that I, tying thy glass mask tightly, May gaze thro’ these faint smokes curling whitely, As thou pliest thy trade in this devil’s-smithy— Which is the poison to poison her, prithee?
He is with her, and they know that I know Where they are, what they do: they believe my tears flow While they laugh, laugh at me, at me fled to the drear Empty church, to pray God in, for them!—I am here.
Grind away, moisten and mash up thy paste, Pound at thy powder,—I am not in haste! Better sit thus and observe thy strange things, Than go where men wait me and dance at the King’s.
I He who has never tasted the grapes of Canaan can only view them from Pisgah.
I have my tides, O sea-foamed Venus, dearer than watercress, pipkins, thyme and clymene. You once held me by the cord of my navel, but I have not died to live in Mahomet’s paradise.
Would that I could gather up my love to me as one does one’s fate, or measure her nature as God does the sea.
We are a weary race that hates seedtime. Poor Persephone, who is Maying springtime, and the coming up of flowers! We remember only what we seed, and Persephone goes down into the earth after Spring and Summer vegetation only because Pluto gave her pomegranate seeds to remember him, but if the seed perish, Persephone will die, and memory shall pass from the earth.
A man of humble blood, with a soul of Kidron, needs a Rachel, but I labored for years in the weary fields for Leah.II The world is a wound in my soul, and I have sought the living waters in meditation, and the angelical fountains in the desert of Beersheba for solitude, for what health there is in friendship comes when one is alone.
I shed tears on the Mount of Olives because people no longer care for each other, but my friends have lacked the character for the vigil. There is no Cana wine in human affections that are not always awake, for people who do not trouble about each other are foes.
It is humiliating being the lamb and bleating to each passerby, “Feed me!” What is the use of saying that men are stones when I know I am going to try to turn them into bread.
I am afraid to say that people are truthful. When a man tells me he is honest I press my hand close to my heart where I keep my miserable wallet. If he says he has any goodness in him, I avoid him, for I trust nobody who has so little fear of the evils that grow and ripen in us while we imagine we have one virtuous trait. These demons lie in ambush in the thick, heady coverts of the blood, where hypocrisy and egoism fatten, waiting to mock or betray us in any moment of self-esteem.
I have no faith in a meek man, and regard anyone that shows a humble mien as one who is preparing to make an attack upon me, for there is some brutish, nether fault in starved vanity.
Yet once a friend leaned as gently on my coat as that disciple had on the bosom of the Saviour, and I went away, not knowing by his affection whether I was the John Christ was said to have loved most. I whispered thanks to my soul because he leaned upon me, for I shall never know who I am if I am not loved.
V Much flesh walks upon the earth void of heart and warm liver, for it is the spirit that dies soonest.
Some men have marshland natures with mist and sea-water in their intellects, and are as sterile as the Florida earth which De Soto found in those meager, rough Indian settlements, and their tongues are fierce, reedy arrows. They wound and bleed the spirit, and their oaks and chestnut trees and acorns are wild, and a terrible, barren wind from the Atlantic blows through their blood as pitiless as the primitive rivers De Soto’s soldiers could not ford.
Do not attempt to cross these mad, tumid rivers, boreal and brackish, for water is unstable, and you cannot link yourself to it.
There are also inland, domestic men who are timid pulse and vetch, and though they may appear as stupid as poultry rooting in the mire, they are housed people, and they have orchards and good, tamed wine that makes men loving rather than predatory; go to them, and take little thought of their ignorance which brings forth good fruits, for here you may eat and not be on guard for the preservation of your soul.
People who have domestic animals are patient, for atheism and the stony heart are the result of traveling: sorrow never goes anywhere. Were we as content as our forefathers were with labor in the fallow, or as a fuller with his cloth, or a drayman with his horses and mules, we would stay where we are, and that is praying.
There are men that are birds, and their raiment is trembling feathers, for they show their souls to everyone, and everything that is ungentle or untutored or evil or mockery is as a rude stone cast at them, and they suffer all day long, or as Paul remarks they are slain every moment.
God forgive me for my pride; though I would relinquish my own birthright for that wretched pottage of lentils which is friendship, I mistrust every mortal.
Each day the alms I ask of heaven is not to have a new chagrin which is my daily bread.
And in a little while we broke under the strain: suppurations ad nauseam, the wanting to be taller, though it‘s simply about being mysterious, i.e., not taller, like any tree in any forest. Mute, the pancake describes you. It had tiny roman numerals embedded in its rim. It was a pancake clock. They had ’em in those days, always getting smaller, which is why they finally became extinct.
The sky is cloudy, yellowed by the smoke. For view there are the houses opposite Cutting the sky with one long line of wall Like solid fog: far as the eye can stretch Monotony of surface & of form Without a break to hang a guess upon. No bird can make a shadow as it flies, For all is shadow, as in ways o'erhung By thickest canvass, where the golden rays Are clothed in hemp. No figure lingering Pauses to feed the hunger of the eye Or rest a little on the lap of life. All hurry on & look upon the ground, Or glance unmarking at the passers by The wheels are hurrying too, cabs, carriages
I would to God, that mine old age might have Before my last, but here a living grave; Some one poor almshouse, there to lie, or stir, Ghost-like, as in my meaner sepulchre; A little piggin, and a pipkin by, To hold things fitting my necessity, Which, rightly us'd, both in their time and place, Might me excite to fore, and after, grace.
—Was it for this That one, the fairest of all Rivers, lov'd To blend his murmurs with my Nurse's song, And from his alder shades and rocky falls, And from his fords and shallows, sent a voice That flow'd along my dreams? For this, didst Thou, O Derwent! travelling over the green Plains Near my 'sweet Birthplace', didst thou, beauteous Stream
I tell thee, Dick, where I have been, Where I the rarest things have seen; Oh, things without compare! Such sights again cannot be found In any place on English ground, Be it at wake, or fair.
Late, late yestreen I saw the new Moon, With the old Moon in her arms; And I fear, I fear, my Master dear! We shall have a deadly storm. (Ballad of Sir Patrick Spence) I Well! If the Bard was weather-wise, who made The grand old ballad of Sir Patrick Spence, This night, so tranquil now, will not go hence
Miracles Attending Israel’s Journey When Isr’el, freed from Pharaoh’s hand, Left the proud tyrant and his land, The tribes with cheerful homage own Their king; and Judah was his throne.
PART I 'Tis the middle of night by the castle clock, And the owls have awakened the crowing cock; Tu—whit! Tu—whoo! And hark, again! the crowing cock, How drowsily it crew. Sir Leoline, the Baron rich, Hath a toothless mastiff bitch; From her kennel beneath the rock She maketh answer to the clock, Four for the quarters, and twelve for the hour; Ever and aye, by shine and shower, Sixteen short howls, not over loud; Some say, she sees my lady's shroud.
Oh! yet one smile, tho' dark may lower Around thee clouds of woe and ill, Let me yet feel that I have power, Mid Fate's bleak storms, to soothe thee still.
Tho' sadness be upon thy brow, Yet let it turn, dear love, to me, I cannot bear that thou should'st know Sorrow I do not share with thee.
Romance, who loves to nod and sing, With drowsy head and folded wing, Among the green leaves as they shake Far down within some shadowy lake, To me a painted paroquet Hath been—a most familiar bird— Taught me my alphabet to say— To lisp my very earliest word While in the wild wood I did lie, A child—with a most knowing eye. Of late, eternal Condor years So shake the very Heaven on high With tumult as they thunder by, I have no time for idle cares Through gazing on the unquiet sky.
When he would not return to fine garments and good food, to his houses and his people, Loingseachan told him, “Your father is dead.” “I’m sorry to hear it,” he said. “Your mother is dead,” said the lad. “All pity for me has gone out of the world.” “Your sister, too, is dead.” “The mild sun rests on every ditch,” he said; “a sister loves even though not loved.” “Suibhne, your daughter is dead.” “And an only daughter is the needle of the heart.” “And Suibhne, your little boy, who used to call you “Daddy”—he is dead.” “Aye,” said Suibhne, “that’s the drop that brings a man to the ground.” He fell out of the yew tree; Loingseachan closed his arms around him and placed him in manacles.—AFTER THE MIDDLE-IRISH ROMANCE, THE MADNESS OF SUIBHNE
"As certain also of your own poets have said"— (Acts 17.28) Cleon the poet (from the sprinkled isles, Lily on lily, that o'erlace the sea And laugh their pride when the light wave lisps "Greece")— To Protus in his Tyranny: much health!
MEanwhile the hainous and despightfull act
Of Satan done in Paradise, and how
Hee in the Serpent, had perverted Eve,
Her Husband shee, to taste the fatall fruit,
Was known in Heav'n; for what can scape the Eye
Of God All-seeing, or deceave his Heart
Omniscient, who in all things wise and just,
Hinder'd not Satan to attempt the minde
I In a far country, and a distant age, Ere sprites and fays had bade farewell to earth, A boy was born of humble parentage; The stars that shone upon his lonely birth Did seem to promise sovereignty and fame— Yet no tradition hath preserved his name.
II ’T is said that on the night when he was born, A beauteous shape swept slowly through the room; Its eyes broke on the infant like a morn, And his cheek brightened like a rose in bloom;
Kneel down, fair Love, and fill thyself with tears, Girdle thyself with sighing for a girth Upon the sides of mirth, Cover thy lips and eyelids, let thine ears Be filled with rumour of people sorrowing; Make thee soft raiment out of woven sighs Upon the flesh to cleave, Set pains therein and many a grievous thing, And many sorrows after each his wise For armlet and for gorget and for sleeve.
O Love's lute heard about the lands of death, Left hanged upon the trees that were therein; O Love and Time and Sin, Three singing mouths that mourn now underbreath,
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