Page images
PDF
EPUB

Arsenic, arsenic, sure, would do it,

Except that now we poison our babes, poor souls!

It is all used up for that.

VII.

Tell him now: she is standing here at my head; Not beautiful now, not even kind;

He may take her now; for she never speaks her mind,

But is ever the one thing silent here.

She is not of us, as I divine;

She comes from another stiller world of the dead,

Stiller, not fairer than mine.

VIII.

But I know where a garden grows,

Fairer than aught in the world beside,
All made up of the lily and rose

That blow by night, when the season is good,
To the sound of dancing music and flutes:
It is only flowers, they had no fruits,
And I almost fear they are not roses, but blood;
For the keeper was one, so full of pride,
He linkt a dead man there to a spectral bride;

For he, if he had not been a Sultan of brutes, Would he have that hole in his side?

IX.

But what will the old man say ?

He laid a cruel snare in a pit

To catch a friend of mine one stormy day;
Yet now I could even weep to think of it;
For what will the old man say

When he comes to the second corpse in the pit?

X.

Friend, to be struck by the public foe,
Then to strike him and lay him low,
That were a public merit, far,
Whatever the Quaker holds, from sin;
But the red life spilt for a private blow
I swear to you, lawful and lawless war
Are scarcely even akin.

XI.

O me, why have they not buried me deep enough?

Is it kind to have made me a grave so rough, Me, that was never a quiet sleeper?

Maybe still I am but half-dead;

Then I cannot be wholly dumb;

I will cry to the steps above my head,
And somebody, surely, some kind heart will

[blocks in formation]

Thro' cells of madness, haunts of horror and fear,

That I come to be grateful at last for a little

thing:

My mood is changed, for it fell at a time of

year

When the face of night is fair on the dewy

downs,

And the shining daffodil dies, and the Char

ioteer

And starry Gemini hang like glorious crowns
Over Orion's grave low down in the west,
That like a silent lightning under the stars
She seem'd to divide in a dream from a band
of the blest,

And spoke of a hope for the world in the coming wars

“And in that hope, dear soul, let trouble have

rest,

Knowing I tarry for thee," and pointed to

Mars

As he glow'd like a ruddy shield on the Lion's breast.

II.

And it was but a dream, yet it yielded a dear delight

To have look'd, tho' but in a dream, upon eyes

so fair,

That had been in a weary world my one thing bright;

And it was but a dream, yet it lighten'd my

despair

When I thought that a war would arise in defence of the right,

That an iron tyranny now should bend or cease, The glory of manhood stand on his ancient height,

Nor Britain's one sole God be the million

naire :

No more shall commerce be all in all, and Peace

Pipe on her pastoral hillock a languid note, And watch her harvest ripen, ber herd increase, Nor the cannon-bullet rust on a slothful shore, And the cobweb woven across the cannon's throat

Shall shake its threaded tears in the wind no

more.

III.

And as months ran on and rumor of battle

grew,

"It is time, it is time, O passionate heart,"

said I

(For I cleaved to a cause that I felt to be pure and true),

"It is time, O passionate heart and morbid eye, That old hysterical mock-disease should die." And I stood on a giant deck and mix'd my breath

« PreviousContinue »