Works

I.

Death's Eloquence.


When I shall go
Into the narrow home that leaves
No room for wringing of the hands and hair,
And feel the pressing of the walls which bear...

While I, from that reed-throated whisperer
Who comes at need, although not now as once
A clear articulation in the air
But inwardly, surmise companions
Beyond the fling of the dull ass's hoof,...

Though from without no foes at all we fear,
We shall be wounded by the clothes we wear.

Away with silks, away with lawn,
I'll have no scenes or curtains drawn;
Give me my mistress as she is,
Dress'd in her nak'd simplicities;
For as my heart e'en so mine eye
Is won with flesh, not drapery.

Those garments lasting evermore,
Are works of mercy to the poor,
Which neither tettar, time, or moth
Shall fray that silk or fret this cloth.

A fog has destroyed the world so gently.
Bloodless trees dissolve in smoke.
And shadows hover where shrieks are heard.
Burning beasts evaporate like breath.

Captured flies are the gas lanterns....

With a turn of his magical rod,
That extended and suddenly shone,
From the round of his glory some god
Looks forth and is gone.

To the summit of heaven the clouds
Are rolling aloft like steam;...

One would say your gaze was a misted screen:
your strange eyes (are they blue, grey or green?)
changeable, tender, dreamy, cruel, and again
echoing the indolence and pallor of heaven.
...

'Tis strange to leave this world of woods and hills,
This world of little farms, and shady mills, -
Of fields, and water-meadows fair,
Upon some sad and shadowy day
When all the skies are overcast and grey,...

Down the blue night the unending columns press
In noiseless tumult, break and wave and flow,
Now tread the far South, or lift rounds of snow
Up to the white moon's hidden loveliness....

He that ascended in a cloud, shall come
In clouds descending to the public doom.

All through the tepid Summer night
The starless sky had poured a cool
Monotony of pleasant rain
In music beautiful.

And for an hour I'd sat to watch
Clouds moving on majestic feet,...

Clouds of the autumn night,
Under the hunter's moon,--
Ghostly and windy white,--
Whither, like leaves wild strewn,
Take ye your stormy flight?

Out of the west, where dusk,...

I

|Scene|: A wayside shrine in France.

|Persons|: Celeste, Pierre, a Cloud.

|Celeste| (gazing at the solitary white Cloud):
I wonder what your thoughts are, little Cloud,...

Above the clouds I sail, above the clouds,
And wish my mind
Above its clouds could climb as well,
And leave behind
The world and all its crowds,
And ever dwell
In such a calm and limpid solitude...

The sky is swollen with tears and melancholy.
Only far off, where its foul vapors burst,
Green glow pours down. The houses,
Gray grimaces, are fiendishly bloated with mist.
...

Inscribed to the Memory of John Keats.



Dear uplands, Chester's favorable fields,
My large unjealous Loves, many yet one -
A grave good-morrow to your Graces, all,...

In a quiet, pleasant meadow,
Beneath a summer sky,
Where green old trees their branches waved,
And winds went singing by;
Where a little brook went rippling
So musically low,...

The Text is from the Skene MS., but I have omitted the three final lines, which do not make a complete stanza, and, when compared with Scott's 'Old Lady's' version, are obviously corrupt. The last verse should signify that the ...

Hearken, O passers, what thing
Fortuned in Hellas. A maid,
Lissom and white as the roe,
Lived recess'd in a glade.
Clyti', Hamadryad,
She was called that I sing--...