XVIII.

KING DEATH.

KING Death was a rare old fellow!
He sate where no sun could shine;
And he lifted his hand so yellow,
And poured out his coal-black wine.
Hurrah! for the coal-black Wine!
There came to him many a Maiden,
Whose eyes had forgot to shine;
And Widows, with grief o'erladen,
For a draught of his sleepy wine.
Hurrah! for the coal-black Wine!

The Scholar left all his learning;
The Poet his fancied woes;
And the Beauty her bloom returning,
As the beads of the black wine rose.
Hurrah! for the coal-black Wine!

All came to the royal old fellow,

Who laugh'd till his eyes dropped brine, As he gave them his hand so yellow, And pledged them in Death's black wine. Hurrah! for the coal-black Wine!

BARRY CORNWALL.

English Songs. (G. Bell and Sons.)

For feeling nerves and living breath-
Youth dreams a bliss on this side death!
It dreams a rest if not more deep,
More grateful than this marble sleep;
It hears a voice within it tell :

Calm's not life's crown, though calm is well!
'Tis all perhaps which man acquires,
But 'tis not what our youth desires.

MATTHEW ARNOLD, Poems, Vol. I. (Macmillan.)

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XVIII.

HERE for the living, and the dead,

The weepers and the friends they weep, Hath been ordained the same cold bed,

The same dark night, the same long sleep; Why shouldest thou writhe, and sob, and rave O'er those, with whom thou soon must be? Death his own sting shall cure-the grave Shall vanquish its own victory.

T. B. MACAULAY. Sermon in a Churchyard.

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XVIII.

His life is a watch or a vision
Between a sleep and a sleep.

A. C. SWINBURNE. Atalanta in Calydon. (Chatto and Windus.)

XVIII.

YOUTH AND CALM.

'Tis death! and peace, indeed, is here,
And ease from shame, and rest from fear.
There's nothing can dismarble now
The smoothness of that limpid brow.
But is a calm like this, in truth,
The crowning end of life and youth?
And when this boon rewards the dead,
Are all debts paid, has all been said?
And is the heart of youth so light,
Its step so firm, its eye so bright,
Because on its hot brow there blows
A wind of promise and repose
From the far grave, to which it goes;
Because it has the hope to come,
One day, to harbour in the tomb ?
Ah no, the bliss youth dreams is one

For daylight, for the cheerful sun,

XVIII.

DEATH'S REQUITAL.

How fast around us two Death's arrows fly.
The old and young, the fair and brave, go down,
Age's white wreath and youth's bright golden

crown

Hurled in the dust together equally;

And over all rings out his hunting cry,

So loud it doth my songs and lute-playing drown; And ever falls the shadow of his frown Where we stand clasped together, thou and I. O Love, thy cheek is pale, yet fear him not: Without him surely life would lack its zest,

Love lose with half its bitter all its sweet; His solemn touch gives godhead to our lot, Else poor and trivial, and I love thee best Knowing he shall but make our love complet. HERBERT E. CLARKE

XVIII.

SEA-SHELL MURMURS.

THE hollow sea-shell which for years hath stood
On dusty shelves, when held against the ear
Proclaims its stormy parent; and we hear
The faint far murmur of the breaking flood.
We hear the sea. The sea? It is the blood
In our own veins, impetuous and near,
And pulses keeping pace with hope and fear
And with our feelings' every shifting mood.
Lo! in my heart I hear, as in a shell,

The murmur of a world beyond the grave,
Distinct, distinct, though faint and far it be.
Thou fool; this echo is a cheat as well,-
The hum of earthly instincts; and we crave
A world unreal as the shell-heard sea.

EUGENE LEE-HAMILTON. The New Medusa. (Elliot Stock.)

XVIII.

THE PHANTOM SHIP.

WE touch Life's shore as swimmers from a wreck
Who shudder at the cheerless land they reach,
And find our comrades, gathered on the beach,
Watching a fading sail, a small white speck,-
The phantom ship upon whose ample deck

There seemed awhile a homeward place for each; The crowd still wring their hands and still beseech,

But see, it fades, in spite of prayer and beck.
Let those who hope for brighter strands no more,
Not mourn; but turning inland bravely seek
What rude resources mark the scapeless shore.

The strong must build stout cabins for the weak, Must plan and stint, must sow and reap and store, For grain takes root, though all seems bare and bleak.

EUGENE LEE-HAMILTON.

XVIII. A CRY.

Lo, I am weary of all,

Of men and their love and their hate ; I have been long enough Life's thrall And the toy of a tyrant Fate.

XIX.

MODERN SPECULATIVE-PANTHEISTIC.

DUST to the dust! but the pure spirit shall flow
Back to the burning fountain whence it came,
A portion of the Eternal, which must glow
Through time and change, unquenchably the

same.

He is made one with Nature; there is heard His voice in all her music, from the moan Of thunder, to the song of night's sweet bird; He is a presence to be felt and known In darkness and in light, from herb and stone, Spreading itself where'er that Power may move Which has withdrawn his being to its own; Which wields the world with never-wearied love, Sustains it from beneath, and kindles it above.

He is a portion of the loveliness

Which once he made more lovely: he doth bear His part, while the one Spirit's plastic stress Sweeps through the dull dense world, compelling there

All new successions to the forms they wear; Torturing the unwilling dross that checks its flight

To its own likeness, as each mass they bear; And bursting in its beauty and its might From trees and beasts and men into the Heaven's light.

P. B. SHELLEY.

Adonais.

Only within a little round I seek
To see perturbëd nature as she is,
Or is to these mine eyes of frenzy free,
Myself even as I am, and death my doom;
And, seeing all, bear all.

G. F. ARMSTRONG. The Tragedy of Israel: King Solomon. (Longmans.)

XX.

Ay, but to die, and go we know not where;
To lie in cold obstruction and to rot,
This sensible warm motion to become
A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit
To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside
In thrilling region of thick-ribbed ice;
To be imprison'd in the viewless winds,
And blown with restless violence round about
The pendent world; or to be worse than worst
Of those that lawless and incertain thoughts
Imagine howling!-'tis too horrible!
The weariest and most loathèd worldly life
That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment
Can lay on nature, is a paradise
To what we fear of death.

WILLIAM SHAKSPERE.
Measure for Measure, Act III., Sc. 1.

To see wherein I stand, as far as eye

Of man may see, and mind of man may know,
The brain not shaken, jerking its poor freight
Like wine i' the drunkard's goblet. For, in sooth,
Dear friend, this sultry air wherein we breathe,
And act, and perish, wraps us from the truth,
The very truth, as the green waters case
The broods of ocean in his narrow caves.

And as these know not us, the vaster life
We know not: the universal element

It breathes would choke and blind us, as our air
Dense ocean's children, and his billows earth's.
Alas, the vaster life! Nay, when I speak
Of deeper truth and loftier life, I know not
Of what I speak; and of the unseen cause,
Or mind, or will, or essence, none may know.

And wist not of thy journey, nor the end And exit of that gloomy subterrene

Which thou didst enter, and whose unknown mouth

May be in Chaos? This, the upper gate,

Was fair, and, hanging o'er, the flowers looked down

After thee going, shedding many dews
That went as falling stars into the gulph,

A moment bright like thee. But, oh thou babe,
What of the nether port, which thou hast reached
Who wert so swift to go? We shut thee in
As to a chamber of rest, and did confirm
The outer bars, and on the adit set

The seal of Hermes, and o'er all dispread

The cheerful turf, and sowed it round with spring. Mad faith-false father!-customary fool!— Tool of low instinct and obsequious use !— Curse thee, blind slave ! why didst thou leave her thus

In her worst need? Who, who shall certify Her rest? And thou, oh mother, that didst plunge

So boldly into the vexed flood of life,
Holding thy babe aloft, with thy right hand,
Braving the billows; what unseen sea-scourge
Had struck thee, that thou too didst bow thine
head

A-sudden succourless, and hast gone down

As others? Doth no voice out of the ground
Up thro' the music of the grasshoppers
Smite thee? Whence, mother, had thy nursling
child

This gift to sleep alone? Whence knowest thou,
O mother, who in its long dying swoon
Didst warm it in thy bosom, and forfend
The summer wind, and kiss the tenderness
Of years upon its momentary brow,

And with the wild haste of thy maddened eyes
Course heaven and earth, as to glean anywhere
One help forgotten; and at the last breath
Distraught and bending over it didst break
Thy life upon it, if perchance that balm
Might heal; and ere it died wert as one dead
With dread of ill, whence knowest thou what
change

Absolves thy care? What thunder or what bush
Of burning spake to thee when thou didst rise

And veil thy face, and, unresisting, feel
Thy child go forth from thee out into the rains
And dews, and didst kneel silent while we threw
Cold earth upon it, and piled up that wall
Which late compunction and awakening throes,
Pangs of reproach and passion of despair,
And starting eyes mocked by the empty world,
And famished breasts convulsed when nights are
chill,

And stretched-forth arms that waste with

vacancy,

And all the tumult of the desperate heart
That leaps to the impossible desire,
And unsurrendered bliss, can pass no more?

SYDNEY DOBell.

Balder: Poetical Works, Vol. II. (Smith, Elder, and Co.)

XX.

AFTER THE BURIAL.

YES, faith is a goodly anchor;
When skies are sweet as a psalm,
At the bows it lolls so stalwart,
In bluff, broad-shouldered calm.
And when over breakers to leeward
The tattered surges are hurled,

It may keep our head to the tempest,
With its grip on the base of the world.

But, after the shipwreck, tell me
What help in its iron thews,
Still true to the broken hawser,
Deep down among sea-weed and ooze?

In the breaking gulf of sorrow,
When the helpless feet stretch out
And find in the deeps of darkness
No footing so solid as doubt,

Then better one spar of Memory,
One broken plank of the Past,
That our human heart may cling to,
Though hopeless of shore at last!

To the spirit its splendid conjectures,
To the flesh its sweet despair,
Its tears o'er the thin-worn locket
With its anguish of deathless hair!

Immortal? I feel it and know it,
Who doubts it of such as she?
But that is the pang's very secret,-
Immortal away from me.

There's a narrow ridge in the graveyard
Would scarce stay a child in his race,
But to me and my thought it is wider
Than the star-sown vague of Space.
Your logic, my friend, is perfect,
Your morals most drearily true;

;

But, since the earth clashed on her coffin,
I keep hearing that, and not you.
Console if you will, I can bear it
'Tis a well-meant alms of breath;
But not all the preaching since Adam
Has made Death other than Death.
It is pagan; but wait till you feel it,—
That jar of our earth, that dull shock
When the ploughshare of deeper passion
Tears down to our primitive rock.
Communion in spirit! Forgive me,
But I, who am earthly and weak,

Would give all my incomes from dreamland
For a touch of her hand on my cheek.

That little shoe in the corner,
So worn and wrinkled and brown,
With its emptiness confutes you,

And argues your wisdom down.

J. R. LOWELL.

Under the Willows: Poetical Works. (Ward, Lock, and Co.)

XX.

A DEAD CHILD.

VERY, very still,

With close-shut lips and eyes,

Sweet and white and chill,

Our little Alice lies.

While the night breathed heavy and deep,

How we prayed that she might sleep!
Now a slumber wraps her round
All too peaceful and profound.

Touch her-she will not speak;
Call her she will not rise;
Rain kisses on her cheek-
She will not ope her eyes.

Little happy elfish thing,

Once she was wild as a bird on the wing; How she would laugh and dance and sing!

And now how still she lies!

Over her form I bow,

My darling dead and sweet.
My heart is beating now

Just where her heart would beat;
My clinging lips are pressed to hers;
And yet she never speaks or stirs.
Mouth to mouth, heart to heart,
And yet, O God, how wide apart!
My Alice, yesternight

At the least of my caresses,

If I but touched your ringlets bright—

Those poor shorn tumbled tresses— You knew me, darling, all the while, And in your anguish tried to smile; And now your cold heart presses mine, Oh, won't you give one little sign?

My Alice, is it you,

This cold and callous clay?

Or is it the weed which aside you threw
For comelier array ?

O Alice, down in the deepest deeps,

Or aloft in some shining star,

Give, give some sign to my soul that weeps

To tell me where you are.

Nay, God, if Thou dost hear,

Let my dead darling speak!

Let but one flush of warm blood rush

Across the chilly cheek;

Let her but lift a moment's space

Her sweet eyes' fringed pall— A token blest that this grim rest

Is not the end of all.

Lo, black eclipse,

Senseless, dumb;

From those pallid lips

Ne'er will answer come. From the chaos void and black Throbs my prayer unheeded back. Yea, that secret dread and vast, None may know it till the last, When he lies with pulseless brow, As my little one lies now.