The TavernWhenever I go by there nowadays And look at the rank weeds and the strange grass, The torn blue curtains and the broken glass, I seem to be afraid of the old place;And something stiffens up and down my face, For all the world as if I saw the ghost Of old Ham Amory, the murdered host, With his dead eyes turned on me all aglaze.
The Tavern has a story, but no man Can tell us what it is.We only know That once long after midnight, years ago, A stranger galloped up from Tilbury Town, Who brushed, and scared, and all but overran That skirt-crazed reprobate, John Evereldown.
SonnetOh for a poet -- for a beacon bright To rift this changeless glimmer of dead gray;To spirit back the Muses, long astray, And flush Parnassus with a newer light;To put these little sonnet-men to flight Who fashion, in a shrewd, mechanic way, Songs without souls, that flicker for a day, To vanish in irrevocable night.
What does it mean, this barren age of ours?
Here are the men, the women, and the flowers, The seasons, and the sunset, as before.
What does it mean? Shall not one bard arise To wrench one banner from the western skies, And mark it with his name forevermore?
George CrabbeGive him the darkest inch your shelf allows, Hide him in lonely garrets, if you will, --But his hard, human pulse is throbbing still With the sure strength that fearless truth endows.
In spite of all fine science disavows, Of his plain excellence and stubborn skill There yet remains what fashion cannot kill, Though years have thinned the laurel from his brows.
Whether or not we read him, we can feel From time to time the vigor of his name Against us like a finger for the shame And emptiness of what our souls reveal In books that are as altars where we kneel To consecrate the flicker, not the flame.
CredoI cannot find my way: there is no star In all the shrouded heavens anywhere;And there is not a whisper in the air Of any living voice but one so far That I can hear it only as a bar Of lost, imperial music, played when fair And angel fingers wove, and unaware, Dead leaves to garlands where no roses are.
No, there is not a glimmer, nor a call, For one that welcomes, welcomes when he fears, The black and awful chaos of the night;For through it all, -- above, beyond it all, --I know the far-sent message of the years, I feel the coming glory of the Light!
On the Night of a Friend's WeddingIf ever I am old, and all alone, I shall have killed one grief, at any rate;For then, thank God, I shall not have to wait Much longer for the sheaves that I have sown.
The devil only knows what I have done, But here I am, and here are six or eight Good friends, who most ingenuously prate About my songs to such and such a one.
But everything is all askew to-night, --
As if the time were come, or almost come, For their untenanted mirage of me To lose itself and crumble out of sight, Like a tall ship that floats above the foam A little while, and then breaks utterly.
SonnetThe master and the slave go hand in hand, Though touch be lost.The poet is a slave, And there be kings do sorrowfully crave The joyance that a scullion may command.
But, ah, the sonnet-slave must understand The mission of his bondage, or the grave May clasp his bones, or ever he shall save The perfect word that is the poet's wand!
The sonnet is a crown, whereof the rhymes Are for Thought's purest gold the jewel-stones;But shapes and echoes that are never done Will haunt the workshop, as regret sometimes Will bring with human yearning to sad thrones The crash of battles that are never won.
VerlaineWhy do you dig like long-clawed scavengers To touch the covered corpse of him that fled The uplands for the fens, and rioted Like a sick satyr with doom's worshippers?
Come! let the grass grow there; and leave his verse To tell the story of the life he led.
Let the man go: let the dead flesh be dead, And let the worms be its biographers.
Song sloughs away the sin to find redress In art's complete remembrance: nothing clings For long but laurel to the stricken brow That felt the Muse's finger; nothing less Than hell's fulfilment of the end of things Can blot the star that shines on Paris now.
SonnetWhen we can all so excellently give The measure of love's wisdom with a blow, --Why can we not in turn receive it so, And end this murmur for the life we live?
And when we do so frantically strive To win strange faith, why do we shun to know That in love's elemental over-glow God's wholeness gleams with light superlative?
Oh, brother men, if you have eyes at all, Look at a branch, a bird, a child, a rose, --Or anything God ever made that grows, --
Nor let the smallest vision of it slip, Till you can read, as on Belshazzar's wall, The glory of eternal partnership!
SupremacyThere is a drear and lonely tract of hell From all the common gloom removed afar:
A flat, sad land it is, where shadows are, Whose lorn estate my verse may never tell.
I walked among them and I knew them well:
Men I had slandered on life's little star For churls and sluggards; and I knew the scar Upon their brows of woe ineffable.
But as I went majestic on my way, Into the dark they vanished, one by one, Till, with a shaft of God's eternal day, The dream of all my glory was undone, --And, with a fool's importunate dismay, I heard the dead men singing in the sun.
The Night BeforeLook you, Dominie; look you, and listen!
Look in my face, first; search every line there;Mark every feature, -- chin, lip, and forehead!
Look in my eyes, and tell me the lesson You read there; measure my nose, and tell me Where I am wanting! A man's nose, Dominie, Is often the cast of his inward spirit;So mark mine well.But why do you smile so?
Pity, or what? Is it written all over, This face of mine, with a brute's confession?
Nothing but sin there? nothing but hell-scars?
Or is it because there is something better --A glimmer of good, maybe -- or a shadow Of something that's followed me down from childhood --Followed me all these years and kept me, Spite of my slips and sins and follies, Spite of my last red sin, my murder, --Just out of hell? Yes? something of that kind?