Sonnets Written After Illness.

 

By arcane knowledge of voluminous
Books of dust gathered time passed in standing
My mind has furnished up a luminous
Shining in colours in white mixed banding.
Sometimes the warming ardour was teaching
Wisdom by slow instilling of language,
The mind by reading in stretched thought reaching,
Can revolve a thesis of an adage.
So the simmer of meditations warms
The pot 'neath the flame of published writing,
Dazzling the mind with the word-woven forms,
Which a hand made of thoughts all alighting;
   And gradually so by reading I learnt,
   Naturally thought thus by spending is earnt.

 

I see you beauteous lady, fair maid,
Aphrodite walking by the water,
With your flowing tresses deftly arrayed
Mother of attraction, nature's daughter;
Primary loveliness in flesh's frame,
Surrounding a canvas of gorgeous paint,
Surely the passions were freed of all blame
Before the picture of a pretty saint;
At least saint I should have you be to me
Embodiment of the virtues I prize,
The perfection of their graces to be;
Now look on your mirror, long on your eyes;
   And do not, for love of God, act amiss,
   Not natural is it to sully such bliss. 

Say where in diamonds I should place your
Garmented person, in your ears, on cloth,
In your hair's all lawless natural law
Red with a passionate amity's wrath.
Say how in stones I should garnish your neck,
As a window of colourful staining
Glows onto a marble pillar, bedeck
Your person with its qualities matching.
May I top your head with a crown of leaves
Plucked from an ancient olive grove's bounty,
And watch your breast as it timefully heaves,
And count by sense all your countless beauty.
   Forgive not the theme, the theme is perfect,
   Forgive the ode for its matchless defect.

Exquisite beauty glows in your features,
Life is verily potent in your skin,
Stirred blushing cheeks a modesty's teachers,
Outward prettiness the hallmarks within.
Look on me, please you, exchange some wonder
Transmission of transmutation's magic,
And near the bowers of trees rest under,

Lazing your shapely limbs, willow's mimic,
Languid marvel of dear female motion,
Drenching me in the fullest love of you
Immersing me in warm and fresh ocean,
Supplying me in the treasureful true
   Living kindness, which made you so lovely,
   Trusting spirit that made you so lively.

 

If I had children, my pleasant offspring
Should swell my breast with the proudest knowledge,
I would wish on them fortune's everything
And all this kingdom's instructions presage
To enquiring minds, wisdom, modesty,
Christian attention, and talents nurtured;
I should beg of their kindness amnesty,
For my absence, my longings had pictured
In life a fuller care, but time decreed
A shorter course for my person's presence;
Yet present in after echoes I say,
Let no reduction of love by absence
Occur at all, only read me, and pray.—
   If children I had indeed it should fill
   The cup of my fondness to overspill.
 
Where in a vein of creation I sit
Thinking on works of the highest regard,
Natural and crafted, where beings submit
To the works of the architect or bard,
The painters, the sculptors, I mourn at loss
That I shall never more see aught of them,
The glory in hiding, the gold in the dross,
When all my diseases myself condemn.
O let it be of the tenor of love
That, sentenced by injury, death at last
Takes my soul in a pictured sense above,
And redeems by poesy my bitter past.
   Too long have I struggled without relief,
   Accept me, my God, in my last belief.

The linnet warbles in the canopies,
With a pleasant morning's dawning excel,
Striking up with sudden intricacies,
Though it slept through night like a silent bell,
Now what a ringing of music summons
Its kindred to imitate example,
For the first intended second happens,
And the produce of talent is ample.
As pecking up water from a puddle,
In careful concentration, shy surveys
About with its feathers all a muddle,
Joy to its witnesses the bird conveys;
   For representative of freedom we
   Desire to possess, we envious see.  
 
I care not for the figurative darts
Shot my way by the ill-meaning cowards,
For they are comprised of malicious parts,
And providential winds beat them southwards.
When the land is displaying its bounties,
Its better parts to my eye, they perish
In the varied shows of many counties,
The displays the appreciative cherish,
The flame which within them outwardly glows;
O it is pity no wider to frame
Imitated splendour of manners' shows,
And not to gladden away a near blame.
   By art to distract the bitter from taste,
   The lesser by volume the greater waste.
 
Welling emotions, effects of traceless
Causes, or tell me the causes, the first
Infinitude of pretence, and caseless
Litigant, too overbearing, disbursed
And practicing ignorance's affects;
You say you know why these things occur
Because your self-love pretends and protects
A flaking humour, your knowledge a blur,
Your listless disbelief critiquing
The magic of reality, the ways
Of the all-seeing deity's wreaking,
Burning the palace of life in a blaze.
   Thus conceive away these frail certainties,
   For causes are sorcerous entities.
 
As the greeks saw Zeus in the clapped lightning,
And Poseidon in the tumult of seas,
Saw Hades' fatal presence in dying,
And Diana in the frolicsome trees;
So see I, but in justified notion,
Emergent personality and soul
The influence underneath all motion,
The inner lying principle and whole.
Where a rebellious lock breaks away
From the linked up beauty of ladies' hair,
And senses are stirred by uncontrolled sway,
Of a property's unrealising heir,
   So we see by a presence all over
   The soul of life, that passionate rover.
 
Whether 't is seething the spume of a wave,
Or mighty anger the riptide at work,
Whether the commanded ripple's a slave,
Or an earthquake geographical smirk;
It does not signify, interpreted
Is understood, and meaning no error
Whose currents in character directed,
Holds up to the world a human mirror.
It is no fallacy to feel accord,
With the same and kindred material,
The presence which common objects afford,
The lifeblood in subjects ethereal.
   Personification is true not false,
   Objectification denying pulse.
 
By Providence I understand freedom
From the locking chains of effect and cause,
Because that staling doctrine's a fiefdom,
Because the vision of God ever awes.
If men by fate steal their purpose away,
It is by faith they return it to use,
Prodigal persons in thought led astray,
By falsehood tied up, by faith rendered loose.
Only a means of emotions stirring,
Is the better not truer method appraised,
Or by a toxin's mirages whirring,
The love of the Lord is taken and razed.
   If we cannot see life we are in death
   If we can, we breathe in our God's own breath.

The fear of death is by nature quite great,
I am not immune to the terror's fork,
We live much to love we love not to hate,
And shun to consider the deadly talk.
Yet the hour will come in spite of dread,
And nothing can thwart its inflowing tide,
The time will come when 't is said we are dead,
When all the pageants of life are denied.
Yet I minded not the time before birth,
Life was not a painful memory then,
I had not the tortures I have on Earth,
And I hope not to have them once again.
   It is not for courage but weariness,
   That I long to escape this dreariness.

 

May angels' gentle wings guide them hereto
Down to my poor habitation and bring
Their lovely presence, glowing eyes of blue,
And tender words; to softly, sweetly, sing,
Their celestial music as ribbons
Around itself, harmonic paradise;
Brushing visitation of the heavens,
All the higher loves of man entice.
Cloak me with invisible feathered shields,
Only honour souls with Presence a while
And we shall love, the resolve of man yields,
To a single starry, heavenly, smile.
   We are not merely in sufferance when
   Angels watch over the virtues of men.
 
What is an angel? Pure being's presence,
The primary beauty's involution,
Past knowing, though central in their essence,
Banal thinkers' forgetful dilution
In the paltry shreds of their pleasures' feed,
And leads out a life unangelic, base,
Preferring their want, neglecting their need.
They cannot see in ladies' beauty grace
Of sent down rays, alight in the robes
Of twined up sovereign majesty's colour,
Or the pieces of pearl that hang like globes
From their ears, mirrors of earth in cover
   Of cloudy whites, which smother in mysteries,
   The lives beneath in secreted histories.
 
Catch a leaf, press your lips, silently wish,
Something may come of it, there are more things,
Etcetera, spun with the nice modish
Life of the oak bole, or silk from sulkings
Of laborious and patient spiders;
Or paper milled by a wasp of the day,
Those unconscious but artistic raiders.
Wish for virtue, wishing the world away,
At least that world which engulfs in horror
The better parts of peccant society;
Let the leaf be to you as a mirror,
A call to good thinking and charity.
   Talisman of growth and falls' descending,
   The stories you tell are never ending.

Others I prize, not myself overmuch,
It is difficult to evaluate
Self-knowing articles of such and such,
Which a face's reflections indicate.
I love to see good form of speech, of looks,
Of sentiments, or of kindnesses' gifts;
Yet the alterating tendency brooks
Nothing vanity's immodesty lifts.
Whence arises this unbalanced favour
I am not certain, but I dearly feel
The love-inducing flavour and savour
Of strange, but worthy, sympathetic weal.
   Let me rejoice in the others', they raise
   My own sunken soul in volleys of praise.

A magnet shows by its files repelling
Inner movements of spirited matter,
For mass is but one of energy's telling
Exertions, or will, or conscious patter;
No matter we know touches, no rain wet,
No solid solid, no gas gas, no death,
But fundamentally common form set,
Sometimes in a walking creature's life's breath,
Sometimes in stones, or wood, or in metal,
In clay or in chalk, in grass or in birds,
Or the snows that on these objects settle,
When temperature bids to retirement herds.
   Since no distinction is clear in the soul,
   Let ever God's essence reign pole to pole.
 
What would I have desired of my life Muse,
Had it not been the Fates wanted me now?
To publish my works, to see men peruse
Their wordings, and ask me questions as, 'How
Does this matter match with that?' and laugh,
And share good comradeship over a glass,
To let them praise me, and mock me, and chaff,
To let this particular stay, that pass;
To marry a lady and to love her,
And maintain, protect, a family well
So prevailing in happiness over,
My former memories of living hell;
   And all the trivialities that make
   This world diverting in life I should slake.
 
Years of forgetfulness, did I ever
Live in any wise? I hardly recall.
The ill memories I willingly sever,
And the happy disappear, raindrops fall.
Only in dreams referred can I see some,
When the idle body submits to sleep,
When the subconscious knocks the past's old drum,
And in the liquids of distortions steep
My mind to the process of confusion,
So I have but little to comfort ill,
Aside from the lights of false illusion,
Working against my disestablished will;
   I try to recall but visions are dim,
   And I flounder like a bird on a limb.
 
What will the future hold for my country?
Would that its long character could withstand,
The forces that batter at its entry,
Would that its governors should understand
The injuries to its delicacy.
The Christian centre sullied, the ailments
Damaging its face, its repute, its free
Transmission of ideas, lineaments
Of a dear gentility's chivalry.
May not the ravens depart the tower,
Let Excalibur be drawn from its stone,
Renew the patriotic with power,
No further leave the monuments alone
   To represent our past, but be it so
   My God, the flag with pride again should blow.

When will the tyranny of poor design
Yield once again to the style of ages,
When the symmetry of the curve and line
Formed a glory of artistic wages?
When the wood carver with a dextrous skill,
Formed on a door frame an angel shape,
When the seamstresses spun their threads like a mill,
And romance was reality's escape.
When will the architects rise to their trade,
And sketch out again their cloud-reaching spires?
Or build up a palace in a decade,
And burn with the fervour their faith inspires.
   Would we could fashion these dreams and prepare
   A world for art in a time of despair.
 
How sweet the taste of kindness is to parched
Strangers when it is poured like golden milk,
And touches a tired soul, whose legs had marched
About unkind environs, and their ilk,
Too long to have loathed, to have suffered near;
How like a pleasing downpour in summer,
Refreshing the flaxen grasses in clear
Batalioned orbs of liquid glamour,
Is such a simple cordiality!
It is a very cure for diseases;
Thus the powers of social amity,
Anxiety suddenly ceases
   And goodwill and humour enthrone themselves,
   Which soothe like perfectly synthesised salves.
 
Salary me with your attractions, dear
Bear out the virtuous gifts of your soul,
And do not predate the mint of the year;
Let ever the currents of goodness roll
Along the rivers which run from your eyes,
With a loving compassion's emotion;
There is not the trace of a stain in them,
They are crystalline purity's motion,
With tenderness grown like a flower's stem:
O tear at nothing except boundaries
To the fondness which hold ourselves apart,
And keep the various miscellanies
Of the character that beats from your heart.
   If it is not love, it is a strange hate
   That sees in your person such fine estate.

Lassitude is a sweet and sour grape
Ability to think but deeds thwarted,
Time to wail on Lucrece's shaming rape,
But not the means to protect the courted
Lucreces now, who have suffered her fate,
For the overbearing of villain's taint,
Surely the outcry of outrage is great
To just people, but not just, must they faint,
With unattended sorrows, disbelief,
And the malodorous lying of fools,
Well I will rage for innocence's thief,
And seek to disarm the vermin of tools;
   Live in dread, betrayers of chastity,
   Justice will not sleep, fear the enemy.

Now let the world say when late I am gone,
He battled hard but was beaten at last,
But weak in body, frail, sad, and wan,
His present was overrun by the past;
And all his ghosts encircled the moment,
And all his fears like a smoke of biting
Gnats, with a poison infecting him blent
And blent, and fashioned his death, though fighting
Prolonged the inevitable a time.
But out of that pain, but out of that strife,
Something at least, I trust, was crystallised,
And may they say, though it ended his life,
That his passion was deeply solemnised
   To a final note of farewell that rung
   A sound around which the angels had sung

 

When the winter falls like a curtain blessed
With the subtle protection of contrast,
When the bitter wind blasts now east, now west,
And the hails and the snows are falling fast,
Then say the blooming spring is in storage,
In hibernating nuts and sleeping voles,
In protective, bare, and sap-loaded trees,
In the mitigating rabbits in holes,
And the birds that sleep with a nested wheeze—
Then my sympathising loved ones look on,
Where my body will be buried in sleep,
Remember my thoughts that with me are gone,
And, pardon the wish, but look and so weep;
   For my gravestone will represent much pain,
   And cry from its stones in the falling rain.
 
With my coming end let the secrets ope
Which too long had stayed locked in a tome
A cruel and torturing story, no hope
Except in my heart that, longing for home,
Would that it all were a nightmare dispersed,
But truth is such a thing as will not stay
Forever in a silenced box and hearsed.
It must batter at its restraints, run away
Out of the mouths that most wished it to death;
They cannot contain its worst disclosures
But must speak them ever under the breath,
And bring about justice's foreclosures:
   One cannot forever be stilled in lies,
   For they wither to truth like traps to flies.
 
For my dearest ones love abounding
Would suffer ten thousand more ills to fall
Upon my ailing heart's many surrounding
Sicknesses, wearinesses, as appal
My wishful soul that spars vainly in hope
To shake off the fates that have toyed with me,
And required my courage alone to cope.
My life is a perishing chalk to sea,
My soul is a wavering cowardice,
My body is a withering cage's wood,
My happiness the merest artifice,
My last wishes perish where I am stood;
   But remember me, my loved ones, a while,
   And pray for my spirit by God's own aisle.
 
To the Heavens mankind have had to look
As at an answer to all of their strife,
To the stars on crystal clear nights and shook
With the sunless cold by a son or wife;
And wondered, wondered aloud at the stuff
That forms themselves, and the earth, and the touch
Of harmony's music, of feelings rough,
And feelings soothing, but 't is all too much
For one head to bear in a single trance,
Inside we return to banal pleasures;
To a drink, a banquet, a song, a dance,
And forget the celestial treasures
   Which ever present themselves like a Man
   Who offers answer as only He can.
 
It must be that suffering burgeons thoughts
Of the finest metal that we must jewel
With life's experience, of many sorts,
Emeralds for pain, pyrite for the fool
Who believes himself fat in the mystery,
But sapphires for modesty and rubies red
To adorn the people in their history
Of discovery of essence, the dead
Inform this in their majesty silent,
We feel what we cannot see, touch truth,
In the moments full as most quiescent,
And abandon for belief merest proof;
   This is the God that we worship in wisdom
   And His universe is beauty's kingdom.

 
Yes my name is Orlando and I write
To anaesthetise the pain undergone
But will you believe me; well if I might
Show you the passage of my thoughts penned on
All I have had to meditate lately,
You would feel how I fashion and nurture
The words into rhyme and verse, could you see,
Could you but know the palace furniture
I arrange in my addled mind, suffused
In my recent memory's smokes and odours,
It is but a fact, young Weldon's infused,
With his sufferings' telling aromas;
   And wishes you not to neglect his works,
   And keep incredulous inside your smirks.
 
When the passage of my soul is complete
I hope to absorb the truths I tasted
Only slightly in morsels, and replete
With knowing and say 'I was not wasted'
On earth, but performing my duty's oath
Fulfilled a myriad of necessaries;
Although in truth I was often but loath
To answer to threats and to pleasantries.
Yet I was guided as a compassless
Ship in the night by a star foreguiding
To an happier bourn from passionless
Danger, not without purpose though hiding;
   And helped me to find all I once had sought,
   Which owning redeemed the price it was bought.
 
Sometimes when haggard I pace and I count
The stages of my present misery,
I try to call the amazing amount
Of stupendous glories of my country;
Trafalgar and Waterloo, the wars passed
With indomitable courage and nerve,
So then my lot seems of a paler cast
And my passion is instilled with a verve.
But soon I fall, yellowed coward, forget
These hundred tales of sacrifice's worth,
And revolve that my illnesses beget,
Anxious despair, now the lot of my birth;
   But if I can for a while ruminate
   On my country's good, some blood shall dilate.
 
A thesis on distraction, a flower
To the eye to block out its surroundings,
I wrote, put a dandelion nearer
And stared on it to distract from the things
I rather would not see; not think on once,
But the plant did wither as a voice sings
And fades away complete to a silence.
Wrap me then my God in the sweet somethings
Which Thy heavenly religion has stirred
In me before, in me once more I pray;
Such things as the blessed and gifted have heard
In blindness and deafness and let them say:
   He was not without a comfort in pain
   And felt at the end His glory again.
 

The jaded horse at the last will be falling,
The laded mule eventually will die,
And men's most horror is untimely failing
Of their bodily symptoms, in bed to lie
And not to die, if it can be avoided,
Small chance though it seem when desperately ill,
When all of precious life's things seem voided
Or the active hopes which mulch in my will
Turn sour and putrefy to little.
No effort to rally fading power,
To keep ahold of the gem we whittle,
And the time glass is filling by hour,
   Forgive me my plaintive words they intrude
   On myself as a mother's cries exude.

 

The prophets disarm thee Time they predict,
Through sixth sense, thy idle projects' moving,
They announce to the present thy edict
Before they are mobile in the proving.
And I have foreseen thy downfall dread fiend,
For I know thy weakness is guilty deeds,
Whereon the branches thy fatness has leaned,
Some creature suspires, expires, and bleeds.
Prophecy wages its war not in vain,
For unknown instilling in minds thy tales,
Though unmarked fools will defame it insane,
Their proof lights up their wisdom in trails
   Of hidden golden frost on grasses' cleft,
   Where the treads of thy monstrous feet were left.
 
It cannot be that I must endure
All on myself the cloud now fallen,
And confuses my vision of the pure,
Obstructs in a billowing mist swollen,
Maddens with a tactical skill to hold
Understanding of my present and past;
They address me in visions hot and cold,
And bewitch me like a spell that is cast.
I try to rationalise their talking
In conversational whispers in wind,
But feel like a victim of massed stalking,
Or notes on a board by a dart pinned:
   Let them answer for their machinations
   One day at least in their upper stations.

 

There was a sea change turn in natural right
When man was formed of the dust of the earth,
Suddenly much which was dark was made bright
In a creature's mind on a creature's turf;
God instilled His idea in the upright
Animal, which looked with a longing gaze
Around the objects that came to his sight;
Immediately with a lustrous glaze
They seemed to be varnished, to shine and glow,
With sheens roundabout the verdurous place,
And the human mind by belief would know
All of the prospects and the ways of Grace:
   This revelation, the first religion,
   Flashed to the mind as a wondrous vision.
 
If I were told all the colours of faith,
The crimson reds and the beautiful blues
Were all but fancies passing and a safe
Of locked up dreams, or a madness's views,
I should start, but reflect that man's conceit
Is so boisterous and world-prevailing
That we most would miss what was best to greet,
And fall into a spiral of failing
What in man's life is the purpose to find,
Those shapes and hues which are shining before,
And not that dreariness which lags behind
Our ever gurgling experience's maw;
   To live without prospective hope is stark
   And wilful blindness in the light not dark.
 
Round with a prevailing power of thought,
I fancied numbers to each tree and plant,
Respected the existence which they brought
To this universal world in a chant
Of ecstatic creation, completion
And total of forward assuming self,
So I thought each number modulation
Of One Whole Self in a respective health;
Here the supplying rain was awashing,
Here the warming sun was enervating,
There oxygenating wind was brushing,
And each in a synergy of creating
   Gathered together the essence of worth
   In a long and wide supplying of Earth.
 
They tell, my love, of thy counted beauties
But I, alas, see not the form without
But the shape within to decide, love sees
With a piercing sight, and the shapes I flout.
Inside I see what I fain would know well
So many virtues coiled as rose petals,
Which with that flower's scent attract the heart,
And the bees of fondness on it settles,
Extracting nectar of its love in part:
For all my eyes, my dear, are tired by vain,
Inglorious mockery of the soul,
Which only owning, all beauty is pain
And sultry poison to the plastered whole.
   Never say love is by outward shine found,
   All love without virtue is dust on ground.
 
Stormy seasons the weather well endows
To test the mettle of a wondered man,
Heaven knows, when the wind-tossed raining bows
Our heads and move us underneath the span
Of some shelter's bower, we shiver much
And wait out the angry length of the storm,
Till to houses we retreat as to such
Medicants that best can comfort and warm
The chilling temperatures of our frail frames.
Yet this too has a pleasure in the new,
We seldom can see good's variety
Except with an alloyed eye, darkened hue,
And trespassing words of a soured glee.
   Regard differentiations of time,
   They touch us like balm onto hurts and grime. 

If the witching hour plagues harrowed souls
Who wander around a night's town pathways,
When cloud cover secretes the heaven's poles,
When hooting owls haunt the brackish airways;
Take a penny of wishes in thy coat
Let it be of the nature of a charm,
Guarding thy shivering fears like a moat,
And protecting thee from its bothers' harm.
There never was a man who walked with fear
But did not suffer now and then to hope,
That the taunts which entered within his ear
Could not be stilled by a protective cope:
   This take thy troubled spirit's part to heal,
   In the midst of woe there ever is weal.

 

If I were asked for my deepest regret
I do not think I could make an answer,
There is nothing introspections beget,
Not a thing, not a whit, not a glimmer.
There is but little more I could have done
To help other people, all my knowledge,
Has run the course which it must have so run.
Not a glint of a pang in the boscage.
Everything that has happened must have come,
Nothing which has not could ever have been;
And when I collect together the sum
Of all my deeds, I am proud, and I ween
   That a great good will emerge from the wreck,
   Which is my life, a victorious check.
 
It is a terrible thing to be pained,
But more terrible by far to cause pain,
No amount of training for the fore-trained
Can lessen the suffering, in vain
To think on pretty thoughts in agony,
Only on higher and disinterested
Meditations on God abundantly
Manifest, even in concentrated
Evildoers, somehow their actions must
Be rationalised in a manner
That understands while it condemns the rust
   Of their wickednesses' blighting power,
   Which lessens their happiness hour by hour.

Evocations of memory now play
Around the battered wreck of my head's mind,
Full of echoes of the things they would say,
Steeped with the afterpress of visions' rind;
And now my memory is my torment,
My safety my danger, myself my gaol,
My tongue soft-moving to things I resent,
And every moving way an horror's trail.
The curses they cursed, the worse flatteries,
Become to me a satiric nightmare,
And my fear extends to contemporaries,
And fair is foul but foul never is fair.
   Because my mind is a host to others,
   My life is crushed by the weight that smothers.

In essentia this wide globe is ill,
Full of dissimulating villains' nests,
When animals would not follow the will
That evil men do, the disgusting pests,
Full of questionings I am as to good,
Where is she to be found? When is she near?
For surely the things that should happen could,
But why do they not? For all they would fear.
Because evil is a strong force it wreaks
Very immediately on presents,
And I hear to deafness the dreadful shrieks
Of the righteous ailing to malpleasance.
   Yet the weak force, as the scientists know,
   Like gravity, is stronger at large to show.

If there were one I loved she would know it,
By festooned flowers, a thousand kisses
But since there is not I cannot show it,
And the heart minds not the things it misses.
By scents of roses, reciprocal words
Of tender compassion and anxious care,
Our juice in time's passage to sweetened curds
We each with each other on bread would share.
There would be no dusks in the dawn of joy,
No fear of betrayed emotion nor lies,
No practiced acting, no pleasure would cloy,
For one another most highly should prize
   The love that we felt like a mountained sight
   Of awing inspiration, heaven's light.

 

Idleness is a dreadful scourge and here,
I have nothing to do but stare on walls,
Attempting to stave off impious fear,
And the woe that hourly strikes and falls.
No company, no sights, no smells, no love,
No diversion, no relief, all hopeless.
My life is become a jest and the dove
Of peace, to still the waters, is aimless.
She flies about without an olive branch.
To tide my thoughts with improving goodwill,
And the rainbow of God seems a sword's tranch
Through my very soul and spirit, and ill
   Invests me with a powerless being,
   That sees, but is much the worse for seeing
 
Surrender your spirit diseased body,
Heaven knows there is but a little left,
And that little but a heap of shoddy,
And the heart remains as ever bereft.
Surrender your spirit my ailing own,
Yield to the providential call's hark'ning.
It is not a light thing the burden grown,
And vision is blurring, changing, dark'ning.
With a total release, ease me, my Lord,
And with the life let the pain be dispersed,
And betake me to Elysium's sward.
For the matter in my mind is rehearsed.
   Heal me with death, do not with life curse me,
   Let this befall my prisoned self, be free.

 

Withal my furrowed brow is deeply strained,

None can count the manifold stresses borne,

None may justify a person so pained,

Or the overwhelming toll on nerves worn

To a shivering and an helpless wight,

Though trapped in a cage I dreamt of the day,

Which should disperse my fallen, hopeless, night.

And scatter my worried despair away.

Comfort in crumbs of wearied destiny,

Let me taste them at least a little time,

To trap a wounded bird is ignominy,

An odious action, a brackish crime.

   May fair and scented mists relieve my lot,

   For an hand of freedom, deprive me not.

 

A vocation of love, to marry true,
Before the altar of God, plighting selves
Two bonded hearts letting their love renew,
Two mixed individuals, the trust that delves;
Like Winchester's plumbing diver fixing
The foundations of that gloried structure,
O may there be to marriage no jinxing,
No broken cracks, no destroying rupture.
Lovers are potently intertwining,
They cannot if true be rendered alone,
Except till death, say they, but not entwining
In mutual grave sight were a cry, a groan,
   By death even consummated the vows,
   Which made kisses like two ships touching prows. 

Free will, the emotion of being glad
Of necessity's moving hands and feet,
Compulsion, the feeling of being sad
At a badly enforced action's deceit,
There is no further remark to contend,
Except that cause is truly providence,
Not a stricted chain of pulling and force,
Nature itself the strongest evidence,
As rivers run in their decided course
But widen in an estuary of wild
And riotous general freedom, a sea
Of an unpredicted dancing in styled
Calligraphic beauty that longs to be
   Seen in its freedom's acceptance of fate,
   And reinforcing pleasure of the state.

Wild tulips abounding in a meadow,
With here or there a dainty poppy's stem,
And nearabouts a sunflower's shadow,
Or the roses dresses brushing their hem;
Glad visions of the beauties of nature,
Becoming the wanderer within,
And delighting in their every feature,
Washing away all the stains of a sin.
When will not passions be stirred to action,
Or deeper feelings emerge from a place
Where heavenly drops of indication,
Fall down on the barren earth, harrowed race?
   When these interchanges of forms distilled,
   Surely the intellect's body was thrilled.

As rare metals ore requires refinement,
So the human being undergoes long
And whittling processes of improvement,
The strong by the weak, the weak by the strong,
Reciprocate their virtues like medleys,
Whose notes gather up as bunches of flowers,
Whose strains are as a prismed lights' volleys,
Whose effect is a magician's powers.
And the being by inward surges prays,
And does not pray in vain, to be transformed,
Like the potter moulding his wettened clays,
Like the good news of a person reformed.
   These, as many balms and potions have spread
   Their enlivening influence in stead.

I cannot much say of these three months' pain,
For I am bound, opposite meaning word,
Not to speak of the hundreds — and again,
What after all would be the purpose served?
Aided, at least, the nation has been most
Of all I hope, nay, believe, hearts bursting
With a plenty of good released, I boast
Not without some cause, rely on nothing
Spoken, not without the twitch of a smile.
Terrible cliffs looming largely withstand
The blasts of sea and time, the winters' while,
Why then I will elect to understand,
   The wily ways of this far-seeing Eye,
   That looked on me as I staggered on by.

 

Alerted I live in defensive stance,
Trying to fend off invisible foes,
Or walk away the invidious chants
My mind repeating the words and the blows
That strike upon my past's disturbed memory,
O if I could sit still in peaceful mood!
And could only rest in infinity,
I would sup on a celestial food,
Manna and honey, lightsome sugared sweets,
Digested in my spirit's intellect.
My better parts my conscience warmly greets,
And my attempts are ever circumspect.
   To live without peace is the instinct made
   By longing selves, alas mine is in shade. 

A glittering pattern of golden drops
Scatters and sprays about the atmospheres,
Flying like the fine wind-blown seeds of crops,
Or the vapour effervescence of weirs;
Sounding like little tuneful bells ringing,
Passing like glow-worms, embers of the night,
Or a thousand songbirds gently singing,
Embossing and gilding the world with light.
Faery pleasance, whirling around the sky,
Tincting the surfaces with platinum,
And gladdening senses wandering by,
Blowing with colour, spero lucem.
   Be the world inspired with magic favour,
   Nothing is fiction in mindful flavour.

Final wishes I have, selfish but dear,
That my written work should not be unread,
It is my life accumulated near,
The struggle of a friendless soul which led
A sad endeavour to understand fate,
Curtailing fate and purpose in despair,
A means to a prospect, opening gate,
And studied answers attempting repair.
Though final my present state of ill health,
They remain as they were, new and potent,
Bearing, I mind not to say it, some wealth;

For I have had time to think of Intent.
   Let it not pass that such efforts should fade,
   Not to be heaped up as ash were they made.

 

Such the method of the braggart who plays
Up to his every peer while he gambles,
As with coins and dice, expending his days,
Prodding at all with speech as he rambles;
Extending an unwelcome handshake out,
Blindsiding veracity and honour,
Shaking a shy passer by with a shout,
And upbraiding them all with his manner.
What astounding temerity to most,
To lose goodwill by ill humour's disdain,
To tribute gestures of love for a boast,
To reward the pleasure of love with pain.
   This is not to be human but ghoulish,
   A creature of curses, merely foolish.

O why cannot goodness prevail at last?
Too many pockets of evil remain,
Scything destroyers, inherited past.
To engage in which is fully insane,
To indulge in the putrid matters foul;
In cloaked darkness they commit their follies,
By the night's hooting of the watchful owl,
Without regard to the things it sullies.
O why cannot another essence win,
When so much is beautiful and peaceful,
And free of the scourges involved in sin?
These are to be happy, wise, and easeful.
   Tell me, my God, why it cannot be so;
   Full of questionings I came and I go.

Serenity is a kind of live sleep,
And soft caresses of an happy state,
To say, 'No more should the world wail and weep,
No more should we shudder and start at fate.'
Surely, it is the touch of rays' descent,
Gifted of the truth we associate
Higher, above the clouds, better intent,
Encompassed with a loving wide and great.
To be stilled a little while in tumult,
Is a virtue-bestowing kindness passed,
Calming the emotions whose wage is revolt,
Like an human maelstrom storming a last
   Castle of hope and besieged trusting prayer,
   Which answers only to love and to care.

Love is the main theme of the passionate,
And I have a passion for its absence,
For I have no time for the delicate,
Delectable, savour of its presence;
No future to prepare its table for;
Though often I wished to savour thereof,
It seems a thing that in having asks more,
Obsesses with the origins whereof
Extend its alleviating powers,
In lips, in eyes, in necks, in brows, in cheeks,
In slight attractions, in staring hours,
In all a wanting and roving sight seeks;
   This like a drug is the poets' desire,
   Playing on words like hands on a lyre.

 

O I am tired and weary of living
And yet, I have a curious streak still
To the end that I should prefer seeing,
A little more, but a trifle more, and fill
My blanched eyes with new knowledge some further,
Though spare enough are the interests yet left,
I half long for more, half for another
Realm beyond the bounds of this world's bereft
Mortals, weeping for the loss of a friend,
When grey clouds overhang the maudlin skies,
When drearily the narrow streamlets wend,
And the crow crows forth and sombrely flies;
   Still I have a longing to know some more,
   Though I shall be dying full soon and poor.

 

I see in my dreams greater realism
Than anything in the common senses;
Nothing as absurd as surrealism,
Nothing as trivial as time's tenses;
I see vividness and yet I am blind,
I hear a concert, yet I am deafened,
Direction neither ahead nor behind;
Nothing increased and nothing is lessened;
Of my experience, life is not flesh,
Although flesh can be life, not flesh alone,
And the man is more than the meat is fresh;
We borrow far more than ever we loan.
   Something in dreaming is truer than truth,
   Something in dying is living forsooth.

Recognise I was due with Pandora
To deal the fortune teller's tarot cards,
To feel her crystal ball, and to score her
Prophecies, her backward stories in bard's
Strains and words revealing like clarity,
Secrets in obscurity's prevalence,
A fog of mists round actuality,
The sounds and noises immersed in silence;
They are veracious and I am distressed
To see their markings etched into bronzes,
To see their sad divulgences impressed,
And loathe the past whereon my sight gazes;
   In retentive memory's new releases,
   The trauma returns and seldom ceases.

 

Of illness treated by barbarous modes
I have had much experience of late,
My person laden with the loveless loads
Of heaping rudeness, to scold, to berate,
Of those who feel small pity for patients,
Who lack the milk of an human kindness,
Who deal in defective acts of science,
Who forget their positions, most remiss,
Who call torture's submission compliance,
Betraying Judases without a kiss,
And the most can be hoped is somnolence,
To try to pass time dispersed so amiss.
   Reform your ways you too careless nurses,
   Life is worth more than prison rehearses.

 

Malleability, learning's mother,
Abused though so important a parent
By manipulators of another,
Who wielding fire play up as the errant
Personality personality's
Destruction or injury, woe is theirs,
When fuelling vice rapidly empties
And their self-hatred their consciences bares.
I have no forgiveness for corruption
Intending misplacement of wisdom's part,
That disturbs learning, an interruption
Of the rightful inheritors of art.
   Minds should as gardens with love be tended,
   And degraders thereof apprehended.

Where Egypt first arose in ancient might,
Millennia ago with mighty obelisks,
And pyramid structures loomed into sight,
Where the long cooling wind of the Nile whisks
The green agriculture of that water,
Bringing fertility to the deserts,
And a lifespring to its every daughter,
Runs the Sea of the civilised senates.
In hieroglyphic language of fabled
Creatures depicting the faith and the thoughts,
Which occurred to their minds in this labelled
Illustrative pictured manner of sorts;
    Where the Sphinx mulls mutely on this history
    Snore peasants undisturbed by its mystery.

 

When will the ironwork of England's gates
Return with all their ornament, lanterns
Held up like goblets by the harbour's rates,
Guarding entry at its noble posterns?
Or, painted black, run the length of cities,
With leaves and curves decorated in fine,
And along the regency balconies,
With spearheads protecting the fences' line?
When will not our architecture return,
In its splendid combination of style,
When will not the teachers and builders learn
The examples of our past the meanwhile?
   Where details are topped, arcades are shielded,
   There the old metal work grandeur yielded.

 

Pugin! how I understand your illness,
Though with the profit of fourteen annums,
I know the horror of the brain's duress,
And that ghost of the reaper Time fathoms
Out in the minds who must suffer the means
To bear under, something of distraction,
By profit of art's and religion's scenes,
The action of mind quick with inaction,
O what a genius was laid thus low!
How admirable your gothic revival!
What a privilege to witness the show
Of your buildings' immortal survival!
   Although young at time, and still younger me,
   Great artists outlast feeble man's frailty.   

I hold it with Christian resolution
Angels exist as our dearest mothers,
For female and grown I hold their vision,
Carers beyond the tied chains of others;
Watchful sadness but joyful impression,
I feel their regardful natures in sleep,
Sense their manifold beams of compassion,
And feel their patience while other souls weep.
None are beyond their presence's watching,
For they are God's own slight emissaries,
They report to their Master by touching
The minds of the guilty with miseries;
   But the minds of innocents are blessèd
   And with infinite goodness invested.

Roll on inexorable Time, roll on,
But I shall rebel against thy bondage,
Though presently here, when once I am gone,
I shall no more be borne by thy carriage.
While now in a melancholic humour,
I will be cured of thy attainting curse,
A spell of distresses, folly, rumour,
Shall be flurried and released in the hearse.
I care not for the illusions you stir,
I mind not all the vague pleasures you feint,
The senses' mirages make life a blur,
And stain histories and minds like a taint.
   Begone from me crushing influence, fly;
   You cover truth with the sheet of a lie.

I wish for a tomb to inter my pride
Of large proportions, my remnants to catch
With four angels guarding its every side,
And decoration their details to match;
For angels have long been visiting me,
And nursing my shattered body and mind,
And I see them because I do not see,
I feel their feathers round my soul entwined.
Because my life has been short let its death
Be marked by something of largeness to show,
That not in vain did I draw out my breath,
As thus be inscribed, in stone, my motto:
   'All things are divided—yet they are one
   And in them we see all purpose—or none.' 

 

Universal silence of space enfold,
Profound indication of God near,
As wisest Socrates stayed still through the cold
All night with loaded thought, and musings dear;
So, Lord of all, I feel meditation,
Where most calmly substance is quieted,
A highest prayer, divine invocation,
And where slight candles of faith are lighted;
Omniscience surely prevails in such,
Or not at all, certain I am that peace
Is the greater movement to warring much,
Wonderful counselling where soundings cease
   To one clear heaven of silencing noise,
   Where all originates, resting and buoys. 

I do not say God is not a Person,
Naturally He is a character steeped
In every possible quality, certain
In all the wisdom omnipotence reaped;
Only that Person cannot be confined,
But breaks out everywhere in time and space,
And so not by equilateral mind,
Cancelling out by check, both time and place.
Welling up in Transcendence this mortal,
Transient, moment in lateral planes,
Emerging as a king from a portal,
Or a chariot royal in crowded lanes.
   Here therefore not, and now therefore never,
   Inspiring for a time, thus forever.

 

My angel love has the lips of a rose,
The eyes of turquoise waves gently welling,
Her eyelids in wondrous care faintly close,
And her tongue is so soft in the telling.
She has an oval face made of marble,
As white as pearl but twice as radiant,
And her hair is a downpour of sable,
That falls on her shoulders in gradient;
She looks over me with a figure carved,
As a curtain that flutters for breezes,
By the force of her love my pain is halved,
And my anxiousness suddenly eases.
   She will not absent herself ever more,
   Herself and her riches my reservoir. 

To the olden days of chivalry fly
My spirited imagination now,
Where gored on the fields of Roncesvalles die
Those inseparable friends, Orlando
And Oliver, with star lasting glory,
Where the rearguard bore up an army's might,
And enshrined into legend the story
Of courage in the teeth of war despite
Unbeatable odds, heroism set,
With that faithful sword Durandal slaying
The enemied army Christians beset,
And Orlando at last, faint and paling,
   Lay still, with his friend, in immortal death,
   Blowing the horn with his last gasping breath.

O why must I dwell on feminine charms?
Because they strike me like water in heat.
And I love to see their delicate arms,
I love to admire their hair in the street,
Coiling or flowing like cascades of ink,
Of gold, of fire, of bronze, or of silver,
Their figures, their faces, to see them think,
With pretty contemplation, and glimmer
Of mirth in their joys, expressioned in curves,
Dimples like ripples in reflective lakes,
And all the love which their beauty deserves,

Their passion like a tempest wave that breaks,
   On their doting lovers who adore them,
   As their vilest pursuers abhor them.

Excellent features of swallow-like cheeks
I see in thy blushing complexion, dear;
And in thy ruby-red hair see the streaks,
Of isolated gold, spun by an ear;
I love thy daisy leaf chin, and thy breast
Is like the moulding of vases; thy eyes
Are pure as a glass that sleeps in the sea,
And thy voice doubly clear, my beauty's sighs,
Which flow from a long neck of porphyry,
As sprinkles of fountains so gently rise.
Thy pretty nose is a place for the sun
To shine upon and brown in the summer,
Thy limbs are the weeping willows' that run
In languid shapes, as seem in a dolour,
   Almost for sadness, for loveliness asks
   Of a parallel, as its witness basks.

 

Whether this midnight is speaking who knows?
I cannot say, only the moon is strong
And brightly full, and shines and casts shadows;
It spells on the night, its trails in the long
Silver slithers of night painting frost rime,
And communicates, at least I fancy,
'To-night I am purging the wild of crime;
To-night all its victims have clemency.'
Where over a damsel alone has left
An house to pursue her inner feelings,
And finds the place where her heart was bereft,
Her lover's grave stone, and cries sweet nothings;
   How many sad tales have you witnessed, Moon?
   And when will you witness my own, how soon?

The elegance of living departed
With the war and latter ages of peace,
Before society was comported
With perfect manners, and rudeness should cease
To the pleasant tip of a hat, to smiles,
To excellent array of fashioned clothes;
And the maintaining faith, nearby the aisles
Of God in churches, but modern man loathes,
These conspicuous marks of chivalry,
These pleasant routines of tradition's ways,
In favour of disgusting revelry,
Bloodshot of nights and comatose of days.
   When a quarter of the world was British,
   All the world had a golden gilt finish.

My Lord, release me from these mortal chains.
The time teller has bonded me too much,
My spirit is failing, my blood life drains
To illnesses' sad and sickening touch.
Too long have I lingered in settling woe,
In untreated, unmitigated, pain,
Disintegrating influences slow,
My life, and my mind is sinking again,
Yielding up the treasures I slowly stashed
Through my reading and meditation, lost,
A very cruel sword of Damocles' slashed
A decade of efforts, ruined and tossed.
   Everything taken from me once I thought,
   I had, all illusion, nothing and nought. 

How much like a goddess, created belle,
The stirred up crystal in liquefaction
In the drooping tears which thy eyes excel,
And watering thy diffusioned vision!
Sometimes I look at the worlds in these drops,
And see distillations of paradise,
The clouds, the skies, the flowers, the rivers
Which wandering round each other entice
By giving the reception of givers,
Where God Himself takes an active interest,
Unlike where He leaves us to free mistake,
Where all the arts of the world are impressed,
On the moulds of these better worlds intake.
   So cry, my dearest love, let me travel,
   Through the wonders therein, all unravel.

Regarding the truth that character joys,
With fond amusement for its little flaws,
More as it pleases the less it annoys,
I stall and wonder at perceptions' doors.
For God is perfect by necessity,
But being perfect must be perfect in lieu
Of those human virtues of amity,
Full of good humour, exceedingly true,
While able to stall all depravity.
He must, for being more man-like, have all
The pleasant aspects of the best persons,
So wielding a total power never fall
To temptations of overuse, he suns
   Himself in capacity to restrain
   His omnipotence, and laugh at the vain.  

From the earth I take up a richness full
With the life of an orange, an apple,
The zest of a lemon, the blackberry, all
That summons up flavour from death's own pall;
Whence arises this sweetness, not from nil,
Not from the doctrines of nothingness strained,
Not from an universe devoid of will,
Not from the hellish ledgers of the pained;
No! Take away the nothings called logic,
They are not relevant to the high scheme,
They do not answer the longings that trick
Ourselves into the spiral of a dream;
   But they also refer us to goodness,
   And to the second life of God's Witness.

Granted we share identical fabric,
The differences only are apparent,
And therefore the principle of magic
Returns to the mind as a message sent,
A good message brought that knowledge is flawed
To the infinitesimal degree
That it must before the infinite horde
Of information proposed presently.
We are not two but one, not separate,
Your love is my love, your self is my own,
And nothing at all is aught disparate,
And nothing at all is ever alone.
   When the freedom of fresher airs we breathe,
   What soul or heart or man will not believe?

The Lord knows I am tired, over tired,
I am in exceeding pain and distress
And dry of the words which once had inspired,
For I have no object and no mistress.
What can the poet write as an hermit?
A self-confined monk without any friends?
Aside from the limits my lots permit,
Trapped as in a tower, now autumn wends,
Eating into another summer lost,
And dead to three months' torture, I shoulder
The toll of a siege, the past's steepest cost,
And like Sisyphus condemned with his boulder:
   Put me in a locket and remember,
   I shall not see another December.

If death is the end of all things why care?
When its finger touches memory, I,
Already live half on earth, half in air,
And sacrifice truth for the kinder lie.
To aid others only I suffer more,
To try and pour realisation on them,
In recognised deeds of the past's tremor,
And to reconcile them in Bethlehem.
What more can I do? I wonder often,
How with a last flicker of life to serve?
My actions to forfend, my words soften,
To assist my loves, to open reserve
   Of the vaults which contain their benefit,
   That I might unlock for the hope of it.

A million twinkling lights show thy fame,
It is lit up like a sunrise of gold
Or fires of wide illuminating flame,
Renewing ardour, making warm the cold.
Do not for a moment doubt it, it sends
Fireworks of colourful blazes blue,
Red, green, and purple, white, topaz, and trends,
Towards a combining rainbow of true
Intermixture of spectacular show;
A pinnacle of awed discovery;
My love, do not neglect to think, to know,
Effects of thy personal reverie:
   It will last as long as the lasting may,
   Longer; the life of a man is a day.

Let this be my last sonnet, the form passed,
I have written since my illness plenty,
Describing my struggle in its strained cast,
Dying at the age of six and twenty.
It is my lot, but not solely my lot,
For with it I contend with forces strange,
Watching, listening, and speaking, and not,
Subsiding to a silence, all derange
Me out of my peaceful meditations;
But how shall I fathom them again, fear
Bestrides my shuddering inclinations,
Drugged out of feeling, not a single tear
   Falls from my eyes, anymore, nevermore,
   I am not what I was, O close the door.

 

Why write I again in sonnets' mould?
Because its confining set is freedom
Which makes my imagination unfold,
And flourish in colour like a sedum.
So thought fed dripping like drops instilling
Seep and widen dilating in earth beds,
Growing in land and turning in tilling,
The flower spreading that happily weds
Itself to another nearby it, fresh
As the morning's finished rain rests on grass,
Which round them the spider's glistening mesh
   Surprises the world as jewellery glows
   Up to the sun, as the eye brightly shows.

 

'To be without tobacco has been most
Irksome' spoke the dying detective Holmes,
Or nicotine as I, imitating host,
Have had recourse, as my mind tramps and roams,
The various dark prospects, they live
Amongst, as the shadowing branches hang,
I too am an amateur detective,
And consulting, when the forces all rang
Upon my powers I answered them best
As I could, not inconsiderable,
My retentive memory did divest
That which it studied, indisputable
   The strength I have blasted every way,
   So let them all aware clap, sing, and say.
 

Here where I sit ailing in bed at rest,
To all known purposes, without a thin
Strand of hope to initiate interest,
Or remission doctrines make of sin,
My mind vaguely wanders through dusty ways,
Shocking my all injured heart to panic,
My eyes clouding over in deathly glaze,
My patience with injury made manic.
God knows I try every day to be good,
To know and accept the truth's every guise,
To try to 'find my way out of the wood',
And to make of ignorance something wise,
   Yet I must fail at last, as ever
   I have been wont, my life's last thread sever.

 

Mortar and stone are all I am made with,
Held together by magic comprised,
Which crumbling but standing makes me to live,
Though falling, with knowledge sorely apprised.
My gratitude extends to attendants,
Who yet hold me up by scaffolded tools,
But since I have no one, no dependents,
My place will be taken in stars of fools;
Fool me! to have attempted life so much,
Fool me! without necessary purpose full,
Dear me! my days are so dismal and such
A terrible pang as death's is a pull
   Away from the prospects we love to feel
   And call, in our strange little way, the real.

 

O sing sweet music angel songstress, sing!
Send sound strains in turning rills around me,
Till my downtrodden heart is on the wing,
Till my burdened soul is set at last free.
Let me taste what I hear involving all,
The perfect distillations flowering,
Varied harmonies, the glorious fall
Of notes which weakening, empowering,
Work up together an heavenly sense.
A formless feeling untrammelled, fine,
Serene sublimity that supplements,
And gladdens up love like instilling wine.
   Sing, O my angel, till the darkness comes,
   My loving echo will hear as it hums.

I do not know how the dullness passed,
'T was too dull to feel and too benumbing,
Or how my patience the moments outlast,
In a mind that is still, and still summing
The total of tedious fractioned times
When I should feel like my skin was crawling,
Attempting to stave off boredom with rhymes,
Or forfend an hour of sad bawling.
There is very little insufferable
I have had not to suffer in this span,
Thus I hope reward commensurable
Will be given to me, as began
   My life in tumult and woe and horror,
   May it end with love and joy and honour.

Goodbye, I shall say goodbye if to-night,
I fall not to rise again in this frame,
Not again in this time or pictured plight,
This identity of frustrated shame,
A young man tired of tiredness, begone
All which had held me together, disperse,
All that my sprinting motion sprung on,
Or the strained mannerisms I rehearse;
Fly to the fuller scene, spirit ailing
And do not muddy my midnight delight,
When fools in despite of faith are wailing,
Or the arrogant talks his sorrow trite,
   Not feeling the care he pretends, not true
   As my willing, God, to return to You.

Since I am a cauldron of sudden death
Waiting for the internal explosion,
And cannot be certain of my next breath,
My care has fallen to fate's erosion,
I do not mind anymore my God! Nought
Arouses my fear remotely, nothing,
I have seen the eternity fraught
With the meanings which glance as a something
Fleeting as the look of a summer
Beauty's eyes to a catching vision;
The loud noise bedims itself to murmur,
And all our pride is turned to derision.
   There, in the far glowing lights of His Place,
   I turn my battered but dauntless young face.

 

Rail against the sky, improvident
Workings, rebel towards the near distance,
And please God with a lightly impudent
Strength summoned against this cruel instance.
I do not care for your pains, deaths, and ills,
I detest the habit of worry,
And the fear which all locomotion kills;
My intention is now to wear hurry
Around my shoulders, and do and not think.
I have thought enough and writ enough,
I would if I could now largely all drink
The lees of this life to pant and to huff,
   And stagger about looking on beauty,
   And make of this pleasure a nice duty.

O low, very low, am I laid this eve,
In loneliness awake without a friend,
Finding in little but little reprieve,
Thinking on my slowly oncoming end.
How like a dream seem all the lights of earth,
All the business and information spread
Like much proliferated air or surf,
To the very ill, to the walking dead.

Life all strikes me with a mute confusion,
That it should e'er be here in the first place,
Drive so much energy, such suffusion
Of ardour in this strange and human race.
   Lord, I am suffering again and lone,
   Awake as a lion, live as a stone. 

If torment exists then I am in it,
And no reprieve from others will take me
Out from the fires which engulf within it
Or prevent the devices that break me.
Nothing helps me I am lost and broken,
Everyone else but a mimic of help,
My failing life is a cracking token,
The perishing mark of an ailing whelp.
Why, dear my God, must I suffer so much
And others' deserts not suffer at all,
When I have given up freely so much,
And heeded when asked long justice's call?
   Why must I with the others die, languish,
   When the adults deserve the dread anguish?

O what of loveliness's fond compare
Can measure the measure of thy beauty?
Could a thousand silks be woven as hair,
Or ribbons be tied to a nicety,
'T would not be a patch of thy whole comprise,
'T would not account to the gorgeous version
Or reflect like dewdrops thy peerless eyes,
But sully thy love's frame to dispersion.
There are, my Sisi, no finer things left
To bewitch like thy pictured self my heart,
For I am ill and my spirit is cleft,
And failing is the technique of my art;
   May I meet you my love in dreams this night,
   And so rally my soul in sparkling light.

What to fond Sisi's beauty could fathom
A fifth of her quantative qualities?
True it is her dear self were a ransom
Never, O never, too costly to please
With hundreds of opals, rubies, and silk,
With costliest raiments, gemstones, and gold,
With the cream at the top of fine cow's milk,
Or the snowflake diamonds locked in cold.
Not a thousand bars of silver would pay,
Not a million curls of platinum,
Nothing such precious cargo could defray,
Nor would compare the coloured nasturtium.
   When nothing should equal such prize I pray,
   To see her at night if not in the day.

Tell me thy thoughts gentle empress, no write
My poetess the several troubling things
Which keep you alone and awake at night,
In death's timeless regions, the bitter stings,
Let not such loveliness be clouded once,
It is not purpose nor passion to be
Titania's not a villain nor dunce
But only all beauty severally
Attired, displayed, well furnished, and thinking,
Think on, my dear, in a sovereign's own strain,
With not corruption's corruption sinking
Away at thy too lovely soul in pain.
   We are akin you and I, for we know,
   The ills of this life, its hammering blow.