Part 3
When I do count the clock that tells the time, And see the brave day sunk in hideous night; When I behold the violet past prime, And sable curls all silvered o'er with white; When lofty trees I see barren of leaves, Which erst from heat did canopy the herd, And summer's green all girded up in sheaves, Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard; Then, of thy beauty do I question make, That thou among the wastes of time must go, Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake, And die as fast as they see others grow; And nothing 'gainst Time's scythe can make defence, Save breed, to brave him, when he takes thee hence.
* * * * *
My glass shall not persuade me I am old, So long as youth and thou are of one date; But when in thee Time's furrows I behold, Then look I death my days should expiate. For all that beauty that doth cover thee Is but the seemly raiment of my heart, Which in thy breast doth live, as thine in me; How can I then be elder than thou art? O therefore, love, be of thyself so wary, As I not for myself but for thee will; Bearing thy heart, which I will keep so chary As tender nurse her babe from faring ill. Presume not on thy heart when mine is slain; Thou gav'st me thine, not to give back again.
* * * * *
As an unperfect actor on the stage, Who with his fear is put beside his part, Or some fierce thing replete with too much rage, Whose strength's abundance weakens his own heart; So I, for fear of trust, forget to say The perfect ceremony of love's rite, And in mine own love's strength seem to decay, O'ercharged with burthen of mine own love's might. O let my books be then the eloquence And dumb presagers of my speaking breast; Who plead for love, and look for recompense, More than that tongue that more hath more expressed. O learn to read what silent love hath writ: To hear with eyes belongs to love's fine wit.
* * * * *
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate: Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer's lease hath all too short a date: Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, And often is his gold complexion dimmed; And every fair from fair sometime declines, By chance, or nature's changing coarse, untrimmed; But thy eternal summer shall not fade, Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest; Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade, When in eternal lines to time thou growest; So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
_William Shakespeare._
* * * * *
LOVE NOT.
Love not, love not! ye hapless sons of clay! Hope's gayest wreaths are made of earthly flowers,-- Things that are made to fade and fall away Ere they have blossomed for a few short hours. Love not!
Love not! the thing ye love may change; The rosy lip may cease to smile on you, The kindly-beaming eye grow cold and strange, The heart still warmly beat, yet not be true. Love not!
Love not! the thing you love may die,-- May perish from the gay and gladsome earth; The silent stars, the blue and smiling sky, Beam o'er its grave, as once upon its birth. Love not!
Love not! O warning vainly said In present hours as in years gone by! Love flings a halo round the dear ones' head, Faultless, immortal, till they change or die. Love not!
_Caroline Norton._
* * * * *
AE FOND KISS.
Ae fond kiss, and then we sever! Ae fareweel, alas! forever! Deep in heart-wrung tears I'll pledge thee; Warring sighs and groans I'll wage thee. Who shall say that Fortune grieves him, While the star of hope she leaves him? Me, nae cheerfu' twinkle lights me; Dark despair around benights me.
I'll ne'er blame my partial fancy,-- Naething could resist my Nancy: But to see her was to love her, Love but her, and love forever. Had we never loved sae kindly, Had we never loved sae blindly, Never met,--or never parted, We had ne'er been broken-hearted.
Fare thee weel, thou first and fairest! Fare thee weel, thou best and dearest! Thine be ilka joy and treasure, Peace, enjoyment, love, and pleasure! Ae fond kiss, and then we sever! Ae fareweel, alas! forever! Deep in heart-wrung tears I'll pledge thee; Warring sighs and groans I'll wage thee.
_Robert Burns._
* * * * *
BREAK, BREAK, BREAK.
Break, break, break, On thy cold gray stones, O sea! And I would that my tongue could utter The thoughts that arise in me.
O well for the fisherman's boy That he shouts with his sister at play! O well for the sailor lad That he sings in his boat on the bay!
And the stately ships go on, To the haven under the hill; But O for the touch of a vanished hand, And the sound of a voice that is still!
Break, break, break, At the foot of thy crags, O sea! But the tender grace of a day that is dead Will never come back to me.
_Alfred Tennyson._
* * * * *
ASTARTE.
When the latest strife is lost, and all is done with, Ere we slumber in the spirit and the brain, We drowse back, in dreams, to days that life begun with, And their tender light returns to us again.
I have cast away the tangle and the torment Of the cords that bound my life up in a mesh; And the pulse begins to throb that long lay dormant 'Neath their pressure; and the old wounds bleed afresh.
I am touched again with shades of early sadness, Like the summer-cloud's light shadow in my hair; I am thrilled again with breaths of boyish gladness, Like the scent of some last primrose on the air.
And again she comes, with all her silent graces, The lost woman of my youth, yet unpossessed; And her cold face so unlike the other faces Of the women whose dead lips I since have pressed.
The motion and the fragrance of her garments Seem about me, all the day long, in the room; And her face, with its bewildering old endearments, Comes at night, between the curtains, in the gloom.
When vain dreams are stirred with sighing, near the morning, To my own her phantom lips I feel approach; And her smile, at eve, breaks o'er me without warning From its speechless, pale, perpetual reproach.
When life's dawning glimmer yet had all the tint there Of the orient, in the freshness of the grass (Ah, what feet since then have trodden out the print there!) Did her soft, her silent footsteps fall, and pass.
They fell lightly, as the dew falls, 'mid ungathered Meadow-flowers, and lightly lingered with the dew. But the dew is gone, the grass is dried and withered, And the traces of those steps have faded too.
Other footsteps fall about me,--faint, uncertain, In the shadow of the world, as it recedes; Other forms peer through the half-uplifted curtain Of that mystery which hangs behind the creeds.
What is gone, is gone forever. And new fashions May replace old forms which nothing can restore; But I turn from sighing back departed passions, With that pining at the bosom as of yore.
I remember to have murmured, morn and even, "Though the Earth dispart these Earthlies, face from face, Yet the Heavenlies shall surely join in Heaven, For the spirit hath no bonds in time or space.
"Where it listeth, there it bloweth; all existence Is its region; and it houseth where it will. I shall feel her through immeasurable distance, And grow nearer and be gathered to her still.
"If I fail to find her out by her gold tresses, Brows, and breast, and lips, and language of sweet strains, I shall know her by the traces of dead kisses, And that portion of myself which she retains."
But my being is confused with new experience, And changed to something other than it was; And the Future with the Past is set at variance; And Life falters with the burthens which it has.
Earth's old sins press fast behind me, weakly wailing; Faint before me fleets the good I have not done; And my search for her may still be unavailing 'Mid the spirits that have passed beyond the sun.
_Robert Bulwer Lytton._
* * * * *
MY HEID IS LIKE TO REND, WILLIE.
My heid is like to rend, Willie, My heart is like to break; I'm wearin' aff my feet, Willie, I'm dyin' for your sake! O, lay your cheek to mine, Willie, Your hand on my briest-bane,-- O, say ye'll think on me, Willie, When I am deid and gane!
It's vain to comfort me, Willie, Sair grief maun ha'e its will; But let me rest upon your briest To sab and greet my fill. Let me sit on your knee, Willie, Let me shed by your hair, And look into the face, Willie, I never sall see mair!
I'm sittin' on your knee, Willie, For the last time in my life,-- A puir heart-broken thing, Willie, A mither, yet nae wife. Ay, press your hand upon my heart, And press it mair and mair, Or it will burst the silken twine, Sae strang is its despair.
O, wae's me for the hour, Willie, When we thegither met,-- O, wae's me for the time, Willie, That our first tryst was set! O, wae's me for the loanin' green Where we were wont to gae,-- And wae's me for the destinie That gart me luve thee sae!
O, dinna mind my words, Willie, I downa seek to blame; But O, it's hard to live, Willie, And dree a warld's shame! Het tears are hailin' ower your cheek, And hailin' ower your chin; Why weep ye sae for worthlessness, For sorrow, and for sin?
I'm weary o' this warld, Willie, And sick wi' a' I see, I canna live as I ha'e lived, Or be as I should be. But fauld unto your heart, Willie, The heart that still is thine, And kiss ance mair the white, white cheel Ye said was red langsyne.
A stoun' gaes through my heid, Willie, A sair stoun' through my heart; O, haud me up and let me kiss Thy brow ere we twa pairt. Anither, and anither yet!-- How fast my life-strings break!-- Fareweel! fareweel! through yon kirk-yard Step lichtly for my sake!
The laverock in the lift, Willie, That lilts far ower our heid, Will sing the morn as merrilie Abune the clay-cauld deid; And this green turf we're sittin' on, Wi' dew-draps shimmerin' sheen, Will hap the heart that luvit thee As warld has seldom seen.
But O, remember me, Willie, On land where'er ye be; And O, think on the leal, leal heart, That ne'er luvit ane but thee! And O, think on the cauld, cauld mools That file my yellow hair, That kiss the cheek, and kiss the chin Ye never sall kiss mair!
_William Motherwell._
* * * * *
THE MANGO TREE.
He wiled me through the furzy croft; He wiled me down the sandy lane; He told his boy's love, soft and oft, Until I told him mine again.
We married, and we sailed the main,-- A soldier, and a soldier's wife. We marched through many a burning plain; We sighed for many a gallant life.
But his--God keep it safe from harm. He toiled, and dared, and earned command, And those three stripes upon his arm Were more to me than gold or land.
Sure he would win some great renown; Our lives were strong, our hearts were high. One night the fever struck him down. I sat, and stared, and saw him die.
I had his children,--one, two, three. One week I had them, blithe and sound. The next--beneath this mango tree By him in barrack burying-ground.
I sit beneath the mango shade; I live my five years' life all o'er,-- Round yonder stems his children played; He mounted guard at yonder door.
'Tis I, not they, am gone and dead. They live, they know, they feel, they see. Their spirits light the golden shade Beneath the giant mango tree.
All things, save I, are full of life: The minas, pluming velvet breasts; The monkeys, in their foolish strife; The swooping hawks, the swinging nests;
The lizards basking on the soil; The butterflies who sun their wings; The bees about their household toil;-- They live, they love, the blissful things!
Each tender purple mango shoot, That folds and droops so bashful down, It lives, it sucks some hidden root, It rears at last a broad green crown.
It blossoms: and the children cry, "Watch when the mango apples fall." It lives; but rootless, fruitless, I,-- I breathe and dream,--and that is all.
Thus am I dead, yet cannot die; But still within my foolish brain There hangs a pale blue evening sky, A furzy croft, a sandy lane.
_Charles Kingsley._
* * * * *
TO MARY IN HEAVEN.
Thou lingering star, with lessening ray, That lov'st to greet the early morn, Again thou usherest in the day My Mary from my soul was torn. O Mary! dear departed shade! Where is thy place of blissful rest? See'st thou thy lover lowly laid? Hear'st thou the groans that rend his breast?
That sacred hour can I forget, Can I forget the hallowed grove, Where by the winding Ayr we met, To live one day of parting love? Eternity will not efface Those records dear of transports past; Thy image at our last embrace; Ah! little thought we 'twas our last!
Ayr gurgling kissed his pebbled shore, O'erhung with wild woods, thickening green; The fragrant birch, and hawthorn hoar, Twined amorous round the raptured scene; The flowers sprang wanton to be pressed, The birds sang love on every spray,-- Till too, too soon, the glowing west Proclaimed the speed of wingéd day.
Still o'er these scenes my memory wakes, And fondly broods with miser care! Time but the impression deeper makes, As streams their channels deeper wear. My Mary, dear departed shade! Where is thy place of blissful rest? See'st thou thy lover lowly laid? Hear'st thou the groans that rend his breast?
_Robert Burns._
* * * * *
A SONG FOR SEPTEMBER.
September strews the woodland o'er With many a brilliant color; The world is brighter than before,-- Why should our hearts be duller? Sorrow and the scarlet leaf, Sad thoughts and sunny weather! Ah me! this glory and this grief Agree not well together.
This is the parting season,--this The time when friends are flying; And lovers now, with many a kiss, Their long farewells are sighing. Why is Earth so gayly dressed? This pomp, that Autumn beareth, A funeral seems where every guest A bridal garment weareth.
Each one of us, perchance, may here, On some blue morn hereafter, Return to view the gaudy year, But not with boyish laughter. We shall then be wrinkled men, Our brows with silver laden, And thou this glen may'st seek again, But nevermore a maiden!
Nature perhaps foresees that Spring Will touch her teeming bosom, And that a few brief months will bring The bird, the bee, the blossom; Ah! these forests do not know-- Or would less brightly wither-- The virgin that adorns them so Will nevermore come hither!
_Thomas William Parsons._
* * * * *
OFT IN THE STILLY NIGHT.
Oft in the stilly night, Ere Slumber's chain has bound me, Fond Memory brings the light Of other days around me; The smiles, the tears, Of boyhood's years, The words of love then spoken; The eyes that shone, Now dimmed and gone, The cheerful hearts now broken! Thus in the stilly night, Ere Slumber's chain has bound me, Sad Memory brings the light Of other days around me.
When I remember all The friends, so linked together, I've seen around me fall, Like leaves in wintry weather, I feel like one Who treads alone Some banquet-hall deserted, Whose lights are fled, Whose garlands dead, And all but he departed! Thus in the stilly night, Ere Slumber's chain has bound me, Sad Memory brings the light Of other days around me.
_Thomas Moore._
* * * * *
THE DAYS THAT ARE NO MORE.
Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean, Tears from the depth of some divine despair Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes, In looking on the happy autumn fields, And thinking of the days that are no more.
Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail That brings our friends up from the under world, Sad as the last which reddens over one That sinks with all we love below the verge,-- So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more.
Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns The earliest pipe of half-awakened birds To dying ears, when unto dying eyes The casement slowly grows a glimmering square,-- So sad, so strange, the days that are no more.
Dear as remembered kisses after death, And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feigned On lips that are for others; deep as love, Deep as first love, and wild with all regret, O death in life! the days that are no more.
_Alfred Tennyson._
* * * * *
THE OLD FAMILIAR FACES.
I have had playmates, I have had companions, In my days of childhood, in my joyful school-days; All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.
I have been laughing, I have been carousing, Drinking late, sitting late, with my bosom cronies; All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.
I loved a love once, fairest among women; Closed are her doors on me, I must not see her; All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.
I have a friend, a kinder friend has no man; Like an ingrate, I left my friend abruptly,-- Left him, to muse on the old familiar faces.
Ghost-like I paced round the haunts of my childhood. Earth seemed a desert I was bound to traverse, Seeking to find the old familiar faces.
Friend of my bosom, thou more than a brother, Why wert thou not born in my father's dwelling? So might we talk of the old familiar faces,--
How some they have died, and some they have left me, And some are taken from me; all are departed, All, all are gone, the old familiar faces!
_Charles Lamb._
* * * * *
TIME'S CHANGES.
I saw her once,--so freshly fair, That, like a blossom just unfolding, She opened to life's cloudless air, And Nature joyed to view its moulding: Her smile, it haunts my memory yet; Her cheek's fine hue divinely glowing; Her rosebud mouth, her eyes of jet, Around on all their light bestowing. O, who could look on such a form, So nobly free, so softly tender, And darkly dream that earthly storm Should dim such sweet, delicious splendor? For in her mien, and in her face, And in her young step's fairy lightness, Naught could the raptured gazer trace But beauty's glow and pleasure's brightness.
I saw her twice,--an altered charm, But still of magic richest, rarest, Than girlhood's talisman less warm, Though yet of earthly sights the fairest; Upon her breast she held a child, The very image of its mother, Which ever to her smiling smiled,-- They seemed to live but in each other. But matron cares or lurking woe Her thoughtless, sinless look had banished, And from her cheeks the roseate glow Of girlhood's balmy morn had vanished; Within her eyes, upon her brow, Lay something softer, fonder, deeper, As if in dreams some visioned woe Had broke the Elysium of the sleeper.
I saw her thrice,--Fate's dark decree In widow's garments had arrayed her; Yet beautiful she seemed to be As even my reveries portrayed her; The glow, the glance, had passed away, The sunshine and the sparkling glitter,-- Still, though I noted pale decay, The retrospect was scarcely bitter; For in their place a calmness dwelt, Serene, subduing, soothing, holy,-- In feeling which, the bosom felt That every louder mirth is folly,-- A pensiveness which is not grief; A stillness as of sunset streaming; A fairy glow on flower and leaf, Till earth looks like a landscape dreaming.
A last time,--and unmoved she lay, Beyond life's dim, uncertain river, A glorious mould of fading clay, From whence the spark had fled forever! I gazed--my heart was like to burst-- And, as I thought of years departed-- The years wherein I saw her first, When she, a girl, was lightsome-hearted-- And as I mused on later days, When moved she in her matron duty, A happy mother, in the blaze Of ripened hope and sunny beauty,-- I felt the chill--I turned aside-- Bleak Desolation's cloud came o'er me; And Being seemed a troubled tide, Whose wrecks in darkness swam before me!
_David Macbeth Moir._
* * * * *
QUA CURSUM VENTUS.
As ships becalmed at eve, that lay With canvas drooping, side by side, Two towers of sail at dawn of day Are scarce, long leagues apart, descried;
When fell the night, upsprung the breeze, And all the darkling hours they plied, Nor dreamt but each the selfsame seas By each was cleaving, side by side:
E'en so,--but why the tale reveal Of those whom, year by year unchanged, Brief absence joined anew to feel, Astounded, soul from soul estranged?
At dead of night their sails were filled, And onward each rejoicing steered; Ah, neither blame, for neither willed, Or wist, what first with dawn appeared!
To veer, how vain! On, onward strain, Brave barks! In light, in darkness too, Through winds and tides one compass guides,-- To that, and your own selves, be true.
But O blithe breeze, and O great seas, Though ne'er, that earliest parting past, On your wide plain they join again, Together lead them home at last!
One port, methought, alike they sought, One purpose hold where'er they fare,-- O bounding breeze, O rushing seas, At last, at last, unite them there!
_Arthur Hugh Clough._
* * * * *
CHANGES.
Whom first we love, you know, we seldom wed. Time rules us all. And life, indeed, is not The thing we planned it out ere hope was dead. And then, we women cannot choose our lot.
Much must be borne which it is hard to bear; Much given away which it were sweet to keep. God help us all! who need, indeed, his care. And yet I know the Shepherd loves his sheep.
My little boy begins to babble now Upon my knee his earliest infant prayer. He has his father's eager eyes, I know; And, they say, too, his mother's sunny hair.
But when he sleeps and smiles upon my knee, And I can feel his light breath come and go, I think of one (Heaven help and pity me!) Who loved me, and whom I loved, long ago;
Who might have been ... ah, what I dare not think! We are all changed. God judges for us best. God help us do our duty, and not shrink, And trust in Heaven humbly for the rest.
But blame us women not, if some appear Too cold at times; and some too gay and light. Some griefs gnaw deep. Some woes are hard to bear. Who knows the past? and who can judge us right?
Ah, were we judged by what we might have been, And not by what we are,--too apt to fall! My little child,--he sleeps and smiles between These thoughts and me. In heaven we shall know all!
_Robert Bulwer Lytton._
* * * * *
I REMEMBER, I REMEMBER.
I remember, I remember The house where I was born, The little window where the sun Came peeping in at morn; He never came a wink too soon, Nor brought too long a day; But now, I often wish the night Had borne my breath away!