Calm Queen of Hades, art thou she
Who stepped so lightly on the lea-
Persephone, Persephone?
When, in her destined course, the moon
Meets the deep shadow of this world,
And labouring on doth seem to swoon
Through awful wastes of dimness whirled-
Emerged at length, no trace hath she
Of that dark hour of destiny,
Still silvery sweet-Persephone.
The greater world may near the less,
And draw it through her weltering shade,
But not one biding trace impress
Of all the darkness that she made;
The greater soul that draweth thee
Hath left his shadow plain to see
On thy fair face, Persephone!
Demeter sighs, but sure 't is well
The wife should love her destiny:
They part, and yet, as legends tell,
She mourns her lost Persephone:
While chant the maids of Enna still-
"O fateful flower beside the rill-
The daffodil, the daffodil!"
I HAVE had playmates, I have had companions
In my days of childhood, in my joyful school-days;
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.
I have been laughing, I have been carousing,
Drinking late, sitting late, with my bosom cronies;
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.
I loved a Love once, fairest among women:
Closed are her doors on me, I must not see her-
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.
I have a friend, a kinder friend has no man:
Like an ingrate, I left my friend abruptly;
Left him, to muse on the old familiar faces.
Ghost-like I paced round the haunts of my childhood, Earth seem'd a desert I was bound to traverse, Seeking to find the old familiar faces.
Friend of my bosom, thou more than a brother,
Why wert not thou born in my father's dwelling?
So might we talk of the old familiar faces,
How some they have died, and some they have left me, And some are taken from me; all are departed;
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.
LOOK at the leaves I gather up in trembling-
Little to see, and sere, and time-bewasted,
But they are other than the tree can bear now,
For they are mine!
Deep as the tumult in an archèd sea-cave,
Out of the Past these antiquated voices
Fall on my heart's ear; I must listen to them,
For they are mine!
Whose is this hand that wheresoe'er it wanders,
Traces in light words thoughts that come as lightly?
Who was the king of all this soul-dominion?
I? Was it mine?
With what a healthful appetite of spirit
Sits he at Life's inevitable banquet,
Tasting delight in everything before him!
Could this be mine?
See how he twists his coronals of fancy
Out of all blossoms, knowing not the poison-
How his young eye is meshed in the enchantment!
And it was mine!
What, is this I?--this miserable complex
Losing and gaining, only knit together
By the ever-bursting fibres of remembrance-
What is this mine?
Surely we are by feeling as by knowingChanging our hearts our being changes with them; Take them away-these spectres of my boyhood; They are not mine.
ONE year ago my path was green,
My footstep light, my brow serene;
Alas! and could it have been so
One year ago?
There is a love that is to last
When the hot days of youth are past:
Such love did a sweet maid bestow
One year ago.
I took a leaflet from her braid
And gave it to another maid.
Love! broken should have been thy bow
THE DAYS THAT ARE NO MORE.
THE DAYS THAT ARE NO MORE.
“TEARS, idle tears, I know not what they mean,
Tears from the depth of some divine despair
Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,
In looking on the happy Autumn-fields,
And thinking of the days that are no more.
"Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail
That brings our friends up from the underworld,
Sad as the last which reddens over one
That sinks with all we love below the verge;
So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more.
“Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns
The earliest pipe of half-awaken'd birds
To dying ears, when unto dying eyes
The casement slowly grows a glimmering square;
So sad, so strange, the days that are no more.
"Dear as remember'd kisses after death,
And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feign'd
On lips that are for others; deep as love,
Deep as first love, and wild with all regret;
O Death in Life, the days that are no more!"
A. Tennyson.
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