sad

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.

Sad Hesper o'er the buried sun
And ready, thou, to die with him,
Thou watchest all things ever dim
And dimmer, and a glory done:
The team is loosen'd from the wain,
The boat is drawn upon the shore;
Thou listenest to the closing door,
And life is darken'd in the brain.
Bright Phosphor, fresher for the night,
By thee the world's great work is heard
Beginning, and the wakeful bird;
Behind thee comes the greater light:

In high noon's heat in a Caucasian valley
I lay quite still, a bullet in my breast;
The smoke still rose from my deep wound,
As drop by drop my blood flowed out.

I lay alone upon the valley's sand;
The mountain ledges closed in all around,
Sun burned their yellow peaks
It burned me, too-but deep as death I slept.

I dreamt I saw the shining lights
Of evening feasting in my homeland.
Young maids with flowers in their hair
Spoke gaily of me 'mongst themselves.

But one maid sat apart in thought

So you're back from up the country, Mister Lawson, where you went,
And you're cursing all the business in a bitter discontent;
Well, we grieve to disappoint you, and it makes us sad to hear
That it wasn't cool and shady -- and there wasn't whips of beer,
And the looney bullock snorted when you first came into view --
Well, you know it's not so often that he sees a swell like you;
And the roads were hot and dusty, and the plains were burnt and brown,
And no doubt you're better suited drinking lemon-squash in town.

The leaves are many under my feet,
And drift one way.
Their scent of death is weary and sweet.
A flight of them is in the grey
Where sky and forest meet.

The low winds moan for sad sweet years;
The birds sing all for pain,
Of a common thing, to weary ears,--
Only a summer's fate of rain,
And a woman's fate of tears.

I walk to love and life alone
Over these mournful places,
Across the summer overthrown,
The dead joys of these silent faces,
To claim my own.

WHAT can I write in thee, O dainty book,
About whose daintiness faint perfume lingers—
Into whose pages dainty ladies look,
And turn thy dainty leaves with daintier fingers?

Fitter my ruder muse for ruder song,
My scrawling quill to coarser paper matches;
My voice, in laughter raised too loud and long,
Is hoarse and cracked with singing tavern catches.

No melodies have I for ladies’ ear,
No roundelays for jocund lads and lasses—
But only brawlings born of bitter beer,

O THOU, whose stern command and precepts pure
(Tho' agony in every vein should start,
And slowly drain the blood-drops from the heart)
Have bade the patient spirit still endure;
Thou, who to sorrow hast a beauty lent,
On the dark brow, with resolution clad,
Illumining the dreary traces sad,
Like the cold taper on a monument;
O firm Philosophy! display the tide
Of human misery, and oft relate
How silent sinking in the storms of fate,
The brave and good have bow'd their head and died.

Far from me and like the stars, the sea and all the trappings of poetic myth,
Far from me but here all the same without your knowing,
Far from me and even more silent because I imagine you endlessly.
Far from me, my lovely mirage and eternal dream, you cannot know.
If you only knew.
Far from me and even farther yet from being unaware of me and still unaware.
Far from me because you undoubtedly do not love me or, what amounts to the
same thing, that I doubt you do.
Far from me because you consciously ignore my passionate desires.

If Mary had known
When she held her Babe's hands in her own­
Little hands that were tender and white as a rose,
All dented with dimples from finger to wrist,
Such as mothers have kissed­
That one day they must feel the fierce blows
Of a hatred insane,
Must redden with holiest stain,
And grasp as their guerdon the boon of the bitterest pain,
Oh, I think that her sweet, brooding face
Must have blanched with its anguish of knowledge above her embrace.

But­ if Mary had known,

I sit in the twilight dim
At the close of an idle day,
And I list to the soft sweet hymn,
That rises far away,
And dies on the evening air.
Oh, all day long,
They sing their song,
Who toil in the valley there.

But never a song sing I,
Sitting with folded hands,
The hours pass me by -
Dropping their golden sands -
And I list, from day to day,
To the 'tick, tick, tock'
Of the old brown clock,
Ticking my life away.

And I see the twilight fade,