The Poetical Works of George Barlow :: :: University of Virginia Library

I watch the silent night fall o'er the sea.—
Is this strange sombre mantle, Death, like thee?
Doth this dim starless void
Whence the faint breath of summer air floats meward
Hold all the souls whose wings have travelled seaward
By the awful deep decoyed?

Where are the myriad souls who went before?
Who watched the same seas break on the same shore,—
Then trusted Death, and went?
Sometimes an army on the golden beach
Encamps, with hum of multitudinous speech;
The next day, not one tent!

The next day not one white-topped tent is seen:
Only the white-topped billows, dark and green,
And the dark threatening skies.
The foot-prints of the host are on the shore,
But the bright-armoured warriors mix no more;—
No shouts, and no replies.

Can there be room in the celestial fields
For such a concourse of gay swords and shields?
Would all the stars provide
Home for the increasing countless hosts of these,
Or all the untravelled dark-blue billowy seas
Of heaven from side to side?

Nor only human souls have gone. The flowers
Have sent their delegates from woods and bowers
To try the land of death:
To bring back tidings whether sister-stems
Within that land wave petalled diadems
And mingle fragrant breath.

Armies of blossoms past all mortal thought
Since Eve amid their primal host was brought
Have dared the fatal track:
And of these blossoms not one single rose
Breathes answer to our doubt. No hare-bell throws
One faint blue petal back.

The winds of night come scented from afar
As though from worlds where deathless blossoms are:
Sisters perhaps of these.
But never flower from that far land returns:—
No violet-messengers: no risen ferns:
No flushed anemones.

And yet the land where these dead blossoms meet
Must surely be beyond all gardens sweet,
Beyond all woodlands fair.
The land whereto our loved ones, smiling, passed
Cannot be lonely. Though the land be vast
We shall be welcomed there.

II.

O over-crowded fields of starry death
What message lingers in the sea's faint breath
Of you to me to-night?
Just like a blind man passing through a camp
I guess an army round me by the tramp,
Yet no forms loom in sight.

The pulsing of the innumerable feet
Of all the dead seems now mine ear to meet:
This sombre sea and air
Seem full of viewless hints and whispers strange,
And cloud-girt hosts the watch-word interchange;
Great shadowy plumes they bear.

Ah! we shall join you. Ready or the reverse,
With lips that bless or foaming mouths that curse,
We shall be summoned,—each.
Some from laborious days and some from rest:
But all the unfailing and fatigueless quest
Of equal Death shall reach.

The woman waiting in the summer night
With hair unfastened and a glimpse of white
Bosom that pants for breath
Sees a strange face against her window shining,
Where those green helpful ivy-stalks are twining:—
“No, not thy lover. Death!”

What fingers steal around this girl's slim waist
In the ball-room, and cannot be displaced,—
Strong fingers, stiff and cold?
Death's, the eternal partner's.—And he twists
Around his fingers and remorseless wrists
Reluctant locks of gold.

III.

Yes: all will pass.—The cities where we trod
When youth was with us like a laughing god,
Guarding our joyous track,—
These all will pass, and leave no trace behind.
The days when round our brows bright flowers were twined
Pass,—and not one comes back.

The old loves pass. With soft eyes full of tears
They fill the autumnal gardens of the years
Where the grey daisies grow;
And their breath makes the gardens sweet as those
Wherein their cheeks were once red like the rose,
That now are like the snow.

We see them pass. They stretch out pallid hands
Towards ours from lanes and fields of many lands
And far-off streets and ways.
But when we kiss their lips, their touch is cold,
And damp and clammy are the hands we hold,
And dull the eyes they raise.

They all are dead. Cold Death lays hand on each.—
The bride within her chamber he can reach,
And smite the glad bridegroom.
He lusts for lips that man has never kissed:
His fingers grip the dainty blue-veined wrist:
He storms the bridal room.

He climbs upon the fragrant bridal bed
And lo! the bright lips hardly kissed are dead
And death the ravisher
Hath carried off the blossom as it lay
To regions where the very sun is grey
And chill the summer air.

The cities that we loved shall perish too:
The skies of Paris shall no more be blue;
They shall be dark and dread;—
Venice shall die: and all the seas that filled
Her streets and at the touch of love-oars thrilled
Shall wash around the dead.

IV.

Where is thy father? In the grave he lies,—
And the keen worms are busy with his eyes,
And his pale mistress, death,
With scentless bloodless breast above him hangs,
And lo! her lips are as a vampire's fangs
And poisonous is her breath.

He had his day and passed. And then the sun
Was bright for thee, and thy day was begun
And all the air was sweet:
Soft loves flocked round thee, and the summer flamed,
And thou wast young and strong and unashamed;
Winged were thy passionate feet.

Yet dost thou not remember, when thy breath
(On some June night when all is still as death,—
No murmur in the trees)
Passes, caressing, through a woman's hair,
That some day God will plant the black mould there,
Or stray shells from the seas?

That tossed about from wandering wave to wave
The body thou wouldst give thy life to save
May on the next night be?
Hurled in its naked whiteness by white tides
Against the unkissing grim cliff's iron sides,—
Sport to the wanton sea.

So it has been and shall be.—For the dead
Now round and over us are poured and shed:—
They fill the vital air.
The rose is redder in this hedge to-day
For Cleopatra's blood: the waves less grey
That Shelley's soul is there.

Thy little day shall pass,—and then the great
New centuries shall roll in regal state
Along their destined road.
Art thou renowned? Yet see how small a mark
Thy light hath made upon the eternal dark,
The eternal fates' abode!

Just like one foot-print on the desert sand
Is one frail human life. Grey leagues expand
In front, behind, around.
There is the foot-print,—and the endless waste,
And the cold stars interminably chaste
Far up, and never a sound.

V.

No lover ever kissed the eternal blue
Broad sky. No eyes of stars have e'er shone through
A golden star-wife's eyes.—
In lonely loveless silence through the waste
Trackless abysses must their footsteps haste.
Forlorn are all the skies.

If we set forth from this our planet's rim
And sailed the sky-sea to the farthest brim
We should not find one fair
Oasis-island thronged by human faces:—
Vacant and eyeless are the abysmal spaces:
No laugh thrills the blue air.

No woman's silvery laughter rings along
The far heights,—only the dull wind's bleak song:
No children's shouts are heard.
The gold stars have not found one single harp:—
They swim the purple seas like golden carp,
One dense and brainless herd.

Death reigns through all the heights and all the deep,
One lone interminable dreary sleep.
The stars have golden wings—
Yet oh how far more sweet one dear green glade
On earth, wherein beneath tall pine-trees' shade
A grey-eyed glad girl sings.

Just earth we know, and love,—and nothing more.
The far star-spaces are an unknown shore
Whereon the unknown tides beat.
Oh, let us love, and kiss, and hand in hand
Upon our poor small homely planet stand:—
A cottage-home is sweet.

Our planet, though it be not first nor third
Nor tenth in order, none the less hath heard
Divine love-laughter sound.
In its green vales the amorous myrtle grows,
And red carnations, and the sovereign rose:
Its nights are passion-crowned.

Here live we, here we die. The gods have bent
Above our planet's forests well content:
Here they have dwelt of old.
What gods dwell in the air? We know not these
We know the nymphs of our own woodland trees
And elves o' the purple wold.

O earth, thou art our own! The stars shine far
Above our heads: we know not what they are:
Great gold grand dreary things.
We love our earth because she is a bride
For ever near us, seated at our side;
She hath no hurtling wings!

She hath a sunburnt bosom good to kiss:
Sweet with the smell of corn and with the bliss
Of countless summer flowers.
We covet not a bride with breast more white;
We know her beauty waits us every night
In her deep-scented bowers.

VI.

The great dark sunders, and its curtains dread
Are as the curtains of a bridal bed.
What new love waits therein?
What lips the flower-god's very hand has fashioned?
What eyes like blue seas, fervid and impassioned?
What strange delights to win?

Ah! is the dark not lonely after all,
But full of voices like a festive hall
Where laughter rings around?
Full of glad feet that thread gay marriage-dances
And sweet with love's inexorable glances—
Crowded, and full of sound?

Are the great spirits we have dreamed of there?
Is the next world's sun brighter for the hair
Of Helen, and the grace
Of countless women whom our souls have missed,—
Who wander through the shades with lips unkissed
And light the lonely place?

Are women there from white strange Eastern halls
Wherethrough the night-wind's sombre footstep falls
But finds no sweethearts now?
Are all Death's sweethearts in that far-off land?
Myriads:—sweet eyes on eyes, soft hand on hand,
Angelic brow on brow?

September, 1882.