English

False world, thou ly'st: Thou canst not lend
The least delight:
Thy favours cannot gain a Friend,
They are so slight;
Thy morning pleasures make an end
To please at night:
Poore are the wants that thou supply'st:
And yet thou vaunt'st, and yet thou vy'st
With heav'n; Fond earth, thou boasts; false world, thou ly'st.
Thy babbling tongue tells golden tales
Of endless treasure;
Thy bountie offers easie sales
Of lasting pleasure;
Thou ask'st the Conscience what she ails,
And swear'st to ease her;

Lost amid gloom and solitude,
A pool lies hidden in the wood,
A pool the autumn rain has made
Where flowers with their fair shadows played.

Bare as a beggar's board, the trees
Stand in the water to their knees;
The birds are mute, but far away
I hear a bloodhound's sullen bay.

Blue-eyed forget-me-nots that shook,
Kissed by a little laughing brook,
Kissed too by you with lips so red,
Float in the water drowned and dead.

And dead and drowned 'mid leaves that rot,
Our angel-eyed Forget-me-not,

No more auction block for me,
No more, no more;
No more auction block for me,
Many thousand gone.

No more peck o' corn for me,
No more, no more;
No more peck o' corn for me,
Many thousand gone.

No more driver's lash for me,
No more, no more;
No more driver's lash for me,
Many thousand gone.

No more pint o' salt for me,
No more, no more;
No more pint o' salt for me,
Many thousand gone.

No more hundred lash for me,
No more, no more;
No more hundred lash for me,

The conies had their hiding-place,
The wily fox with stealthy tread
A covert found, but Christ, the Lord,
Had not a place to lay his head.

The eagle had an eyrie home,
The blithesome bird its quiet rest,
But not the humblest spot on earth
Was by the Son of God possessed.

Princes and kings had palaces,
With grandeur could adorn each tomb,
For Him who came with love and life,
They had no home, they gave no room.

The hands whose touch sent thrills of joy
Through nerves unstrung and palsied frame,

See an old unhappy bull,
Sick in soul and body both,
Slouching in the undergrowth
Of the forest beautiful,
Banished from the herd he led,
Bulls and cows a thousand head.

Cranes and gaudy parrots go
Up and down the burning sky;
Tree-top cats purr drowsily
In the dim-day green below;
And troops of monkeys, nutting, some,
All disputing, go and come;

And things abominable sit
Picking offal buck or swine,
On the mess and over it
Burnished flies and beetles shine,
And spiders big as bladders lie

In the dim chamber whence but yesterday
Passed my belovèd, filled with awe I stand;
And haunting Loves fluttering on every hand
Whisper her praises who is far away.
A thousand delicate fancies glance and play
On every object which her robes have fanned,
And tenderest thoughts and hopes bloom and expand
In the sweet memory of her beauty's ray.
Ah! could that glass but hold the faintest trace
Of all the loveliness once mirrored there,
The clustering glory of the shadowy hair
That framed so well the dear young angel face!

O thou, or friend or stranger, who shalt trend
These solemn mansions of the silent dead!
Think, when this record to inquiring eyes,
No more shall tell the spot where Dicey lies;
When this frail marble, faithless to its trust,
Mould'ring itself, resigns its moulder'd dust;
When time shall fail, and nature's self decay,
And earth, and sun, and skies dissolve away;
Thy soul this consummation shall survive,
Defy the wreck, and but begin to live.
This truth, long slighted, let these ashes teach,

Between the wet trees and the sorry steeple,
Keep, Time, in dark Soho, what once was Hazlitt,
Seeker of Truth, and finder oft of Beauty;

Beauty's a sinking light, ah, none too faithful;
But Truth, who leaves so here her spent pursuer,
Forgets not her great pawn: herself shall claim it.

Therefore sleep safe, thou dear and battling spirit,
Safe also on our earth, begetting ever
Some one love worth the ages and the nations!

Falleth no thing that seemed to thee eternal.
Sleep safe in dark Soho: the stars are shining,

I will not mourn thee, lovely one,
Though thou art torn away.
'Tis said that if the morning sun
Arise with dazzling ray

And shed a bright and burning beam
Athwart the glittering main,
'Ere noon shall fade that laughing gleam
Engulfed in clouds and rain.

And if thy life as transient proved,
It hath been full as bright,
For thou wert hopeful and beloved;
Thy spirit knew no blight

If few and short the joys of life
That thou on earth couldst know,
Little thou knew'st of sin and strife

Blessed with a joy that only she
Of all alive shall ever know,
She wears a proud humility
For what it was that willed it so,—
That her degree should be so great
Among the favored of the Lord
That she may scarcely bear the weight
Of her bewildering reward.

As one apart, immune, alone,
Or featured for the shining ones,
And like to none that she has known
Of other women's other sons,—
The firm fruition of her need,
He shines anointed; and he blurs
Her vision, till it seems indeed
A sacrilege to call him hers.