I have an unquiet mind
The gears up there just twirl and grind
It never stops it's wound up tight
Sometimes up there it's really bright
Thoughts unstoppable, and really intellectual
Other times my brain is just ineffectual

And all my thoughts quickly take fight
And then it turns dark as a moonless night
But even in the dark the gears still turn
It's just different thoughts that burn

It's terrifying then the one's you'll find
But sometimes the light and dark get all intwind
Then it is intelligent madness
Paints a gruesome picture on that grey matter canvas

But still the gears just strain and wind
All up here in my unquiet mind

The quarrel of the sparrows in the eaves,
The full round moon and the star-laden sky,
And the loud song of the ever-singing leaves,
Had hid away earth's old and weary cry.

And then you came with those red mournful lips,
And with you came the whole of the world's tears,
And all the trouble of her laboring ships,
And all the trouble of her myriad years.

And now the sparrows warring in the eaves,
The curd-pale moon, the white stars in the sky,
And the loud chaunting of the unquiet leaves,
Are shaken with earth's old and weary cry.

Blank thoughts full of words
  uncompromisable yet so vivid
  twisted feelings like the vines upon trees
heart out as far as the stars
only so far because it cant be reached
unquiet mind so full of thoughts
so alone yet everyone's around
scream, louder
but in the mind no screams are heard
alone, confused, distraught
this unquiet mind shall one day be tamed

Sleep now, O sleep now,
O you unquiet heart!
A voice crying "Sleep now"
Is heard in my heart.

The voice of the winter
Is heard at the door.
O sleep, for the winter
Is crying "Sleep no more."

My kiss will give peace now
And quiet to your heart -- -
Sleep on in peace now,
O you unquiet heart!

I.

the emperor
sleeps in a palace of porphyry
which was a million years building
he takes the air in a howdah
of jasper beneath saffron
umbrellas
upon an elephant
twelve foot high
behind whose ear
sits always a crowned
king twir-
ling an
ankus of
ebony
the fountains of the emperor’s
palace run sunlight and
moonlight and the emperor’s
elephant is a thousand years old

the harem of
the emperor
is carpeted with
gold cloth
from the
ceiling(one
diamond timid
with nesting incense)
fifty
marble
pillars
slipped from immeasurable
height,fall,fifty,silent

in the incense is tangled a cool moon
there are thrice-three-hundred
doors carven of chalcedony and
before every door a naked
****** watches
on their heads turbans of a hundred
colours
in their hands scimitars like windy torches
each
is
blacker than oblivion

the ladies
of the emperor’s
harem are queens
of all the earth and the rings
upon their hands are from mines
a mile deep
but the body of
the queen of queens is
more transparent
than water,she is softer than birds

                2.

when the emperor is very
amorous he reclines upon
the couch of couches and
beckons     with
the little
finger of his left
hand
then the
thrice-three-hundredth
door is opened by the tallest
****** and the queen
of queens comes
forth
ankles
musical with large pearls
kingdoms in her ears
at the feet of
the emperor a cithern-
player squats with
quiveringgold
body
behind
the emperor ten
elected warriors with
bodies of lazy jade
and twitching
eyelids
finger
their
unquiet
spears

the queen of queens is dancing

her subtle
body weaving
insinuating upon the gold cloth
incessantly creates patterns of sudden
lust
her
stealing body ex-
pending gathering pouring upon itself     stiffenS
to a
white thorn
of desire

the taut neck of the citharede wags
in the dust the ghastly warriors
amber with lust breathe
together      the emperor,exerting
himself among his pillows throws
jewels at the queen of queens and
white money upon her nakedness
he
nods
          and all
depart through the bruised air aflutter with pearls

                3.

they are
alone
he beckons,she rises she
stands
a moment
in the passion of the fifty
pillars
listening

while the queens of all the
earth writhe upon deep rugs

The mountain pinnacles slumber; valleys, crags, and caves
are silent.

“LISTEN to me,” said the Demon, as he placed his hand
upon my head. “The region of which I speak is a dreary
region in Libya, by the borders of the river Zaeire. And
there is no quiet there, nor silence.

“The waters of the river have a saffron and sickly hue; and
they flow not onward to the sea, but palpitate forever and
forever beneath the red eye of the sun with a tumultuous and
convulsive motion. For many miles on either side of the
river’s oozy bed is a pale desert of gigantic water-lilies.
They sigh one unto the other in that solitude, and stretch
towards the heaven their long and ghastly necks, and nod to
and fro their everlasting heads. And there is an indistinct
murmur which cometh out from among them like the rushing of
subterrene water. And they sigh one unto the other.

“But there is a boundary to their realm—the boundary
of the dark, horrible, lofty forest. There, like the waves
about the Hebrides, the low underwood is agitated
continually. But there is no wind throughout the heaven. And
the tall primeval trees rock eternally hither and thither
with a crashing and mighty sound. And from their high
summits, one by one, drop everlasting dews. And at the
roots, strange poisonous flowers lie writhing in perturbed
slumber. And overhead, with a rustling and loud noise, the
gray clouds rush westwardly forever until they roll, a
cataract, over the fiery wall of the horizon. But there is
no wind throughout the heaven. And by the shores of the
river Zaeire there is neither quiet nor silence.

“It was night, and the rain fell; and, falling, it was rain,
but, having fallen, it was blood. And I stood in the morass
among the tall lilies, and the rain fell upon my head—
and the lilies sighed one unto the other in the solemnity of
their desolation.

“And, all at once, the moon arose through the thin ghastly
mist, and was crimson in color. And mine eyes fell upon a
huge gray rock which stood by the shore of the river and was
lighted by the light of the moon. And the rock was gray and
ghastly, and tall,—and the rock was gray. Upon its
front were characters engraven in the stones; and I walked
through the morass of water-lilies, until I came close unto
the shore, that I might read the characters upon the stone.
But I could not decipher them. And I was going back into the
morass when the moon shone with a fuller red, and I turned
and looked again upon the rock and upon the
characters;—and the characters were DESOLATION.

“And I looked upwards, and there stood a man upon the summit
of the rock; and I hid myself among the water-lilies that I
might discover the action of the man. And the man was tall
and stately in form, and wrapped up from his shoulders to
his feet in the toga of old Rome. And the outlines of his
figure were indistinct—but his features were the
features of a deity; for the mantle of the night, and of the
mist, and of the moon, and of the dew, had left uncovered
the features of his face. And his brow was lofty with
thought, and his eye wild with care; and in the few furrows
upon his cheek, I read the fables of sorrow, and weariness,
and disgust with mankind, and a longing after solitude.

“And the man sat upon the rock, and leaned his head upon his
hand, and looked out upon the desolation. He looked down
into the low unquiet shrubbery, and up into the tall
primeval trees, and up higher at the rustling heaven, and
into the crimson moon. And I lay close within shelter of the
lilies, and observed the actions of the man. And the man
trembled in the solitude;—but the night waned, and he
sat upon the rock.

“And the man turned his attention from the heaven, and
looked out upon the dreary river Zaeire, and upon the yellow
ghastly waters, and upon the pale legions of the water-lilies.
And the man listened to the sighs of the water-lilies,
and to the murmur that came up from among them. And
I lay close within my covert and observed the actions of the
man. And the man trembled in the solitude;—but the
night waned, and he sat upon the rock.

“Then I went down into the recesses of the morass, and waded
afar in among the wilderness of the lilies, and called unto
the hippopotami which dwelt among the fens in the recesses
of the morass. And the hippopotami heard my call, and came,
with the behemoth, unto the foot of the rock, and roared
loudly and fearfully beneath the moon. And I lay close
within my covert and observed the actions of the man. And
the man trembled in the solitude;—but the night waned,
and he sat upon the rock.

“Then I cursed the elements with the curse of tumult; and a
frightful tempest gathered in the heaven, where before there
had been no wind. And the heaven became livid with the
violence of the tempest—and the rain beat upon the
head of the man—and the floods of the river came
down—and the river was tormented into foam—and
the water-lilies shrieked within their beds—and the
forest crumbled before the wind—and the thunder
rolled—and the lightning fell—and the rock
rocked to its foundation. And I lay close within my covert
and observed the actions of the man. And the man trembled in
the solitude;—but the night waned, and he sat upon the
rock.

“Then I grew angry and cursed, with the curse of silence,
the river, and the lilies, and the wind, and the forest, and
the heaven, and the thunder, and the sighs of the water-lilies.
And they became accursed, and were still. And
the moon ceased to totter up its pathway to heaven—and
the thunder died away—and the lightning did not
flash—and the clouds hung motionless—and the
waters sunk to their level and remained—and the trees
ceased to rock—and the water-lilies sighed no
more—and the murmur was heard no longer from among
them, nor any shadow of sound throughout the vast
illimitable desert. And I looked upon the characters of the
rock, and they were changed;—and the characters were
SILENCE.

“And mine eyes fell upon the countenance of the man, and his
countenance was wan with terror. And, hurriedly, he raised
his head from his hand, and stood forth upon the rock and
listened. But there was no voice throughout the vast
illimitable desert, and the characters upon the rock were
SILENCE. And the man shuddered, and turned his face away,
and fled afar off, in haste, so that I beheld him no more.”

…

Now there are fine tales in the volumes of the Magi—in
the iron-bound, melancholy volumes of the Magi. Therein, I
say, are glorious histories of the Heaven, and of the Earth,
and of the mighty Sea—and of the Genii that overruled
the sea, and the earth, and the lofty heaven. There was much
lore, too, in the sayings which were said by the sybils; and
holy, holy things were heard of old by the dim leaves that
trembled around Dodona—but, as Allah liveth, that
fable which the demon told me as he sat by my side in the
shadow of the tomb, I hold to be the most wonderful of all!
And as the Demon made an end of his story, he fell back
within the cavity of the tomb and laughed. And I could not
laugh with the Demon, and he cursed me because I could not
laugh. And the lynx which dwelleth forever in the tomb, came
out therefrom, and lay down at the feet of the Demon, and
looked at him steadily in the face.

Now Morn, her rosy steps in the eastern clime
Advancing, sowed the earth with orient pearl,
When Adam waked, so customed; for his sleep
Was aery-light, from pure digestion bred,
And temperate vapours bland, which the only sound
Of leaves and fuming rills, Aurora’s fan,
Lightly dispersed, and the shrill matin song
Of birds on every bough; so much the more
His wonder was to find unwakened Eve
With tresses discomposed, and glowing cheek,
As through unquiet rest:  He, on his side
Leaning half raised, with looks of cordial love
Hung over her enamoured, and beheld
Beauty, which, whether waking or asleep,
Shot forth peculiar graces; then with voice
Mild, as when Zephyrus on Flora breathes,
Her hand soft touching, whispered thus.  Awake,
My fairest, my espoused, my latest found,
Heaven’s last best gift, my ever new delight!
Awake:  The morning shines, and the fresh field
Calls us; we lose the prime, to mark how spring
Our tender plants, how blows the citron grove,
What drops the myrrh, and what the balmy reed,
How nature paints her colours, how the bee
Sits on the bloom extracting liquid sweet.
Such whispering waked her, but with startled eye
On Adam, whom embracing, thus she spake.
O sole in whom my thoughts find all repose,
My glory, my perfection! glad I see
Thy face, and morn returned; for I this night
(Such night till this I never passed) have dreamed,
If dreamed, not, as I oft am wont, of thee,
Works of day past, or morrow’s next design,
But of offence and trouble, which my mind
Knew never till this irksome night:  Methought,
Close at mine ear one called me forth to walk
With gentle voice;  I thought it thine: It said,
‘Why sleepest thou, Eve? now is the pleasant time,
‘The cool, the silent, save where silence yields
‘To the night-warbling bird, that now awake
‘Tunes sweetest his love-laboured song; now reigns
‘Full-orbed the moon, and with more pleasing light
‘Shadowy sets off the face of things; in vain,
‘If none regard; Heaven wakes with all his eyes,
‘Whom to behold but thee, Nature’s desire?
‘In whose sight all things joy, with ravishment
‘Attracted by thy beauty still to gaze.’
I rose as at thy call, but found thee not;
To find thee I directed then my walk;
And on, methought, alone I passed through ways
That brought me on a sudden to the tree
Of interdicted knowledge: fair it seemed,
Much fairer to my fancy than by day:
And, as I wondering looked, beside it stood
One shaped and winged like one of those from Heaven
By us oft seen; his dewy locks distilled
Ambrosia; on that tree he also gazed;
And ‘O fair plant,’ said he, ‘with fruit surcharged,
‘Deigns none to ease thy load, and taste thy sweet,
‘Nor God, nor Man?  Is knowledge so despised?
‘Or envy, or what reserve forbids to taste?
‘Forbid who will, none shall from me withhold
‘Longer thy offered good; why else set here?
This said, he paused not, but with venturous arm
He plucked, he tasted; me damp horrour chilled
At such bold words vouched with a deed so bold:
But he thus, overjoyed; ‘O fruit divine,
‘Sweet of thyself, but much more sweet thus cropt,
‘Forbidden here, it seems, as only fit
‘For Gods, yet able to make Gods of Men:
‘And why not Gods of Men; since good, the more
‘Communicated, more abundant grows,
‘The author not impaired, but honoured more?
‘Here, happy creature, fair angelick Eve!
‘Partake thou also; happy though thou art,
‘Happier thou mayest be, worthier canst not be:
‘Taste this, and be henceforth among the Gods
‘Thyself a Goddess, not to earth confined,
‘But sometimes in the air, as we, sometimes
‘Ascend to Heaven, by merit thine, and see
‘What life the Gods live there, and such live thou!’
So saying, he drew nigh, and to me held,
Even to my mouth of that same fruit held part
Which he had plucked; the pleasant savoury smell
So quickened appetite, that I, methought,
Could not but taste.  Forthwith up to the clouds
With him I flew, and underneath beheld
The earth outstretched immense, a prospect wide
And various:  Wondering at my flight and change
To this high exaltation; suddenly
My guide was gone, and I, methought, sunk down,
And fell asleep; but O, how glad I waked
To find this but a dream!  Thus Eve her night
Related, and thus Adam answered sad.
Best image of myself, and dearer half,
The trouble of thy thoughts this night in sleep
Affects me equally; nor can I like
This uncouth dream, of evil sprung, I fear;
Yet evil whence? in thee can harbour none,
Created pure.  But know that in the soul
Are many lesser faculties, that serve
Reason as chief; among these Fancy next
Her office holds; of all external things
Which the five watchful senses represent,
She forms imaginations, aery shapes,
Which Reason, joining or disjoining, frames
All what we affirm or what deny, and call
Our knowledge or opinion; then retires
Into her private cell, when nature rests.
Oft in her absence mimick Fancy wakes
To imitate her; but, misjoining shapes,
Wild work produces oft, and most in dreams;
Ill matching words and deeds long past or late.
Some such resemblances, methinks, I find
Of our last evening’s talk, in this thy dream,
But with addition strange; yet be not sad.
Evil into the mind of God or Man
May come and go, so unreproved, and leave
No spot or blame behind:  Which gives me hope
That what in sleep thou didst abhor to dream,
Waking thou never will consent to do.
Be not disheartened then, nor cloud those looks,
That wont to be more cheerful and serene,
Than when fair morning first smiles on the world;
And let us to our fresh employments rise
Among the groves, the fountains, and the flowers
That open now their choisest bosomed smells,
Reserved from night, and kept for thee in store.
So cheered he his fair spouse, and she was cheered;
But silently a gentle tear let fall
From either eye, and wiped them with her hair;
Two other precious drops that ready stood,
Each in their crystal sluice, he ere they fell
Kissed, as the gracious signs of sweet remorse
And pious awe, that feared to have offended.
So all was cleared, and to the field they haste.
But first, from under shady arborous roof
Soon as they forth were come to open sight
Of day-spring, and the sun, who, scarce up-risen,
With wheels yet hovering o’er the ocean-brim,
Shot parallel to the earth his dewy ray,
Discovering in wide landskip all the east
Of Paradise and Eden’s happy plains,
Lowly they bowed adoring, and began
Their orisons, each morning duly paid
In various style; for neither various style
Nor holy rapture wanted they to praise
Their Maker, in fit strains pronounced, or sung
Unmeditated; such prompt eloquence
Flowed from their lips, in prose or numerous verse,
More tuneable than needed lute or harp
To add more sweetness; and they thus began.
These are thy glorious works, Parent of good,
Almighty!  Thine this universal frame,
Thus wonderous fair;  Thyself how wonderous then!
Unspeakable, who sitst above these heavens
To us invisible, or dimly seen
In these thy lowest works; yet these declare
Thy goodness beyond thought, and power divine.
Speak, ye who best can tell, ye sons of light,
Angels; for ye behold him, and with songs
And choral symphonies, day without night,
Circle his throne rejoicing; ye in Heaven
On Earth join all ye Creatures to extol
Him first, him last, him midst, and without end.
Fairest of stars, last in the train of night,
If better thou belong not to the dawn,
Sure pledge of day, that crownest the smiling morn
With thy bright circlet, praise him in thy sphere,
While day arises, that sweet hour of prime.
Thou Sun, of this great world both eye and soul,
Acknowledge him thy greater; sound his praise
In thy eternal course, both when thou climbest,
And when high noon hast gained, and when thou fallest.
Moon, that now meetest the orient sun, now flyest,
With the fixed Stars, fixed in their orb that flies;
And ye five other wandering Fires, that move
In mystick dance not without song, resound
His praise, who out of darkness called up light.
Air, and ye Elements, the eldest birth
Of Nature’s womb, that in quaternion run
Perpetual circle, multiform; and mix
And nourish all things; let your ceaseless change
Vary to our great Maker still new praise.
Ye Mists and Exhalations, that now rise
From hill or steaming lake, dusky or gray,
Till the sun paint your fleecy skirts with gold,
In honour to the world’s great Author rise;
Whether to deck with clouds the uncoloured sky,
Or wet the thirsty earth with falling showers,
Rising or falling still advance his praise.
His praise, ye Winds, that from four quarters blow,
Breathe soft or loud; and, wave your tops, ye Pines,
With every plant, in sign of worship wave.
Fountains, and ye that warble, as ye flow,
Melodious murmurs, warbling tune his praise.
Join voices, all ye living Souls:  Ye Birds,
That singing up to Heaven-gate ascend,
Bear on your wings and in your notes his praise.
Ye that in waters glide, and ye that walk
The earth, and stately tread, or lowly creep;
Witness if I be silent, morn or even,
To hill, or valley, fountain, or fresh shade,
Made vocal by my song, and taught his praise.
Hail, universal Lord, be bounteous still
To give us only good; and if the night
Have gathered aught of evil, or concealed,
Disperse it, as now light dispels the dark!
So prayed they innocent, and to their thoughts
Firm peace recovered soon, and wonted calm.
On to their morning’s rural work they haste,
Among sweet dews and flowers; where any row
Of fruit-trees over-woody reached too far
Their pampered boughs, and needed hands to check
Fruitless embraces: or they led the vine
To wed her elm; she, spoused, about him twines
Her marriageable arms, and with him brings
Her dower, the adopted clusters, to adorn
His barren leaves.  Them thus employed beheld
With pity Heaven’s high King, and to him called
Raphael, the sociable Spirit, that deigned
To travel with Tobias, and secured
His marriage with the seventimes-wedded maid.
Raphael, said he, thou hearest what stir on Earth
Satan, from Hell ’scaped through the darksome gulf,
Hath raised in Paradise; and how disturbed
This night the human pair; how he designs
In them at once to ruin all mankind.
Go therefore, half this day as friend with friend
Converse with Adam, in what bower or shade
Thou findest him from the heat of noon retired,
To respite his day-labour with repast,
Or with repose; and such discourse bring on,
As may advise him of his happy state,
Happiness in his power left free to will,
Left to his own free will, his will though free,
Yet mutable; whence warn him to beware
He swerve not, too secure:  Tell him withal
His danger, and from whom; what enemy,
Late fallen himself from Heaven, is plotting now
The fall of others from like state of bliss;
By violence? no, for that shall be withstood;
But by deceit and lies:  This let him know,
Lest, wilfully transgressing, he pretend
Surprisal, unadmonished, unforewarned.
So spake the Eternal Father, and fulfilled
All justice:  Nor delayed the winged Saint
After his charge received; but from among
Thousand celestial Ardours, where he stood
Veiled with his gorgeous wings, up springing light,
Flew through the midst of Heaven; the angelick quires,
On each hand parting, to his speed gave way
Through all the empyreal road; till, at the gate
Of Heaven arrived, the gate self-opened wide
On golden hinges turning, as by work
Divine the sovran Architect had framed.
From hence no cloud, or, to obstruct his sight,
Star interposed, however small he sees,
Not unconformed to other shining globes,
Earth, and the garden of God, with cedars crowned
Above all hills.  As when by night the glass
Of Galileo, less assured, observes
Imagined lands and regions in the moon:
Or pilot, from amidst the Cyclades
Delos or Samos first appearing, kens
A cloudy spot.  Down thither prone in flight
He speeds, and through the vast ethereal sky
Sails between worlds and worlds, with steady wing
Now on the polar winds, then with quick fan
Winnows the buxom air; till, within soar
Of towering eagles, to all the fowls he seems
A phoenix, gazed by all as that sole bird,
When, to enshrine his reliques in the Sun’s
Bright temple, to Egyptian Thebes he flies.
At once on the eastern cliff of Paradise
He lights, and to his proper shape returns
A Seraph winged:  Six wings he wore, to shade
His lineaments divine; the pair that clad
Each shoulder broad, came mantling o’er his breast
With regal ornament; the middle pair
Girt like a starry zone his waist, and round
Skirted his ***** and thighs with downy gold
And colours dipt in Heaven; the third his feet
Shadowed from either heel with feathered mail,
Sky-tinctured grain.  Like Maia’s son he stood,
And shook his plumes, that heavenly fragrance filled
The circuit wide.  Straight knew him all the bands
Of Angels under watch; and to his state,
And to his message high, in honour rise;
For on some message high they guessed him bound.
Their glittering tents he passed, and now is come
Into the blissful field, through groves of myrrh,
And flowering odours, cassia, nard, and balm;
A wilderness of sweets; for Nature here
Wantoned as in her prime, and played at will
Her ****** fancies pouring forth more sweet,
Wild above rule or art, enormous bliss.
Him through the spicy forest onward come
Adam discerned, as in the door he sat
Of his cool bower, while now the mounted sun
Shot down direct his fervid rays to warm
Earth’s inmost womb, more warmth than Adam needs:
And Eve within, due at her hour prepared
For dinner savoury fruits, of taste to please
True appetite, and not disrelish thirst
Of nectarous draughts between, from milky stream,
Berry or grape:  To whom thus Adam called.
Haste hither, Eve, and worth thy sight behold
Eastward among those trees, what glorious shape
Comes this way moving; seems another morn
Risen on mid-noon; some great behest from Heaven
To us perhaps he brings, and will vouchsafe
This day to be our guest.  But go with speed,
And, what thy stores contain, bring forth, and pour
Abundance, fit to honour and receive
Our heavenly stranger:  Well we may afford
Our givers their own gifts, and large bestow
From large bestowed, where Nature multiplies
Her fertile growth, and by disburthening grows
More fruitful, which instructs us not to spare.
To whom thus Eve.  Adam, earth’s hallowed mould,
Of God inspired! small store will serve, where store,
All seasons, ripe for use hangs on the stalk;
Save what by frugal storing firmness gains
To nourish, and superfluous moist consumes:
But I will haste, and from each bough and brake,
Each plant and juciest gourd, will pluck such choice
To entertain our Angel-guest, as he
Beholding shall confess, that here on Earth
God hath dispensed his bounties as in Heaven.
So saying, with dispatchful looks in haste
She turns, on hospitable thoughts intent
What choice to choose for delicacy best,
What order, so contrived as not to mix
Tastes, not well joined, inelegant, but bring
Taste after taste upheld with kindliest change;
Bestirs her then, and from each tender stalk
Whatever Earth, all-bearing mother, yields
In India East or West, or middle shore
In Pontus or the Punick coast, or where
Alcinous reigned, fruit of all kinds, in coat
Rough, or smooth rind, or bearded husk, or shell,
She gathers, tribute large, and on the board
Heaps with unsparing hand; for drink the grape
She crushes, inoffensive must, and meaths
From many a berry, and from sweet kernels pressed
She tempers dulcet creams; nor these to hold
Wants her fit vessels pure; then strows the ground
With rose and odours from the shrub unfumed.
Mean while our primitive great sire, to meet
His God-like guest, walks forth, without more train
Accompanied than with his own complete
Perfections; in himself was all his state,
More solemn than the tedious pomp that waits
On princes, when their rich retinue long
Of horses led, and gro

I weep for Adonais—he is dead!
O, weep for Adonais! though our tears
Thaw not the frost which binds so dear a head!
And thou, sad Hour, selected from all years
To mourn our loss, rouse thy obscure compeers,
And teach them thine own sorrow, say: “With me
Died Adonais; till the Future dares
Forget the Past, his fate and fame shall be
An echo and a light unto eternity!”

Where wert thou, mighty Mother, when he lay,
When thy Son lay, pierced by the shaft which flies
In darkness? where was lorn Urania
When Adonais died? With veiled eyes,
Mid listening Echoes, in her Paradise
She sate, while one, with soft enamoured breath,
Rekindled all the fading melodies
With which, like flowers that mock the corse beneath,
He had adorned and hid the coming bulk of death.

O, weep for Adonais—he is dead!
Wake, melancholy Mother, wake and weep!
Yet wherefore? Quench within their burning bed
Thy fiery tears, and let thy loud heart keep
Like his, a mute and uncomplaining sleep;
For he is gone, where all things wise and fair
Descend;—oh, dream not that the amorous Deep
Will yet restore him to the vital air;
Death feeds on his mute voice, and laughs at our despair.

Most musical of mourners, weep again!
Lament anew, Urania!—He died,
Who was the Sire of an immortal strain,
Blind, old, and lonely, when his country’s pride,
The priest, the slave, and the liberticide
Trampled and mocked with many a loathed rite
Of lust and blood; he went, unterrified,
Into the gulf of death; but his clear Sprite
Yet reigns o’er earth; the third among the sons of light.

Most musical of mourners, weep anew!
Not all to that bright station dared to climb;
And happier they their happiness who knew,
Whose tapers yet burn through that night of time
In which suns perished; others more sublime,
Struck by the envious wrath of man or god,
Have sunk, extinct in their refulgent prime;
And some yet live, treading the thorny road
Which leads, through toil and hate, to Fame’s serene abode.

But now, thy youngest, dearest one, has perished—
The nursling of thy widowhood, who grew,
Like a pale flower by some sad maiden cherished,
And fed with true-love tears, instead of dew;
Most musical of mourners, weep anew!
Thy extreme hope, the loveliest and the last,
The bloom, whose petals nipped before they blew
Died on the promise of the fruit, is waste;
The broken lily lies—the storm is overpast.

To that high Capital, where kingly Death
Keeps his pale court in beauty and decay,
He came; and bought, with price of purest breath,
A grave among the eternal.—Come away!
Haste, while the vault of blue Italian day
Is yet his fitting charnel-roof! while still
He lies, as if in dewy sleep he lay;
Awake him not! surely he takes his fill
Of deep and liquid rest, forgetful of all ill.

He will awake no more, oh, never more!—
Within the twilight chamber spreads apace
The shadow of white Death, and at the door
Invisible Corruption waits to trace
His extreme way to her dim dwelling-place;
The eternal Hunger sits, but pity and awe
Soothe her pale rage, nor dares she to deface
So fair a prey, till darkness, and the law
Of change, shall o’er his sleep the mortal curtain draw.

O, weep for Adonais!—The quick Dreams,
The passion-winged Ministers of thought,
Who were his flocks, whom near the living streams
Of his young spirit he fed, and whom he taught
The love which was its music, wander not,—
Wander no more, from kindling brain to brain,
But droop there, whence they sprung; and mourn their lot
Round the cold heart, where, after their sweet pain,
They ne’er will gather strength, or find a home again.

And one with trembling hands clasps his cold head,
And fans him with her moonlight wings, and cries,
“Our love, our hope, our sorrow, is not dead;
See, on the silken fringe of his faint eyes,
Like dew upon a sleeping flower, there lies
A tear some Dream has loosened from his brain.”
Lost Angel of a ruined Paradise!
She knew not ’twas her own; as with no stain
She faded, like a cloud which had outwept its rain.

One from a lucid urn of starry dew
Washed his light limbs as if embalming them;
Another clipped her profuse locks, and threw
The wreath upon him, like an anadem,
Which frozen tears instead of pearls begem;
Another in her wilful grief would break
Her bow and winged reeds, as if to stem
A greater loss with one which was more weak;
And dull the barbed fire against his frozen cheek.

Another Splendour on his mouth alit,
That mouth, whence it was wont to draw the breath
Which gave it strength to pierce the guarded wit,
And pass into the panting heart beneath
With lightning and with music: the damp death
Quenched its caress upon his icy lips;
And, as a dying meteor stains a wreath
Of moonlight vapour, which the cold night clips,
It flushed through his pale limbs, and passed to its eclipse.

And others came… Desires and Adorations,
Winged Persuasions and veiled Destinies,
Splendours, and Glooms, and glimmering Incarnations
Of hopes and fears, and twilight Phantasies;
And Sorrow, with her family of Sighs,
And Pleasure, blind with tears, led by the gleam
Of her own dying smile instead of eyes,
Came in slow pomp;—the moving pomp might seem
Like pageantry of mist on an autumnal stream.

All he had loved, and moulded into thought,
From shape, and hue, and odour, and sweet sound,
Lamented Adonais. Morning sought
Her eastern watch-tower, and her hair unbound,
Wet with the tears which should adorn the ground,
Dimmed the aereal eyes that kindle day;
Afar the melancholy thunder moaned,
Pale Ocean in unquiet slumber lay,
And the wild Winds flew round, sobbing in their dismay.

Lost Echo sits amid the voiceless mountains,
And feeds her grief with his remembered lay,
And will no more reply to winds or fountains,
Or amorous birds perched on the young green spray,
Or herdsman’s horn, or bell at closing day;
Since she can mimic not his lips, more dear
Than those for whose disdain she pined away
Into a shadow of all sounds:—a drear
Murmur, between their songs, is all the woodmen hear.

Grief made the young Spring wild, and she threw down
Her kindling buds, as if she Autumn were,
Or they dead leaves; since her delight is flown,
For whom should she have waked the sullen year?
To Phoebus was not Hyacinth so dear
Nor to himself Narcissus, as to both
Thou, Adonais: wan they stand and sere
Amid the faint companions of their youth,
With dew all turned to tears; odour, to sighing ruth.

Thy spirit’s sister, the lorn nightingale
Mourns not her mate with such melodious pain;
Not so the eagle, who like thee could scale
Heaven, and could nourish in the sun’s domain
Her mighty youth with morning, doth complain,
Soaring and screaming round her empty nest,
As Albion wails for thee: the curse of Cain
Light on his head who pierced thy innocent breast,
And scared the angel soul that was its earthly guest!

Ah, woe is me! Winter is come and gone,
But grief returns with the revolving year;
The airs and streams renew their joyous tone;
The ants, the bees, the swallows reappear;
Fresh leaves and flowers deck the dead Season’s bier;
The amorous birds now pair in every brake,
And build their mossy homes in field and brere;
And the green lizard, and the golden snake,
Like unimprisoned flames, out of their trance awake.

Through wood and stream and field and hill and Ocean
A quickening life from the Earth’s heart has burst
As it has ever done, with change and motion,
From the great morning of the world when first
God dawned on Chaos; in its stream immersed,
The lamps of Heaven flash with a softer light;
All baser things pant with life’s sacred thirst;
Diffuse themselves; and spend in love’s delight
The beauty and the joy of their renewed might.

The leprous corpse, touched by this spirit tender,
Exhales itself in flowers of gentle breath;
Like incarnations of the stars, when splendour
Is changed to fragrance, they illumine death
And mock the merry worm that wakes beneath;
Nought we know, dies. Shall that alone which knows
Be as a sword consumed before the sheath
By sightless lightning?—the intense atom glows
A moment, then is quenched in a most cold repose.

Alas! that all we loved of him should be,
But for our grief, as if it had not been,
And grief itself be mortal! Woe is me!
Whence are we, and why are we? of what scene
The actors or spectators? Great and mean
Meet massed in death, who lends what life must borrow.
As long as skies are blue, and fields are green,
Evening must usher night, night urge the morrow,
Month follow month with woe, and year wake year to sorrow.

He will awake no more, oh, never more!
“Wake thou,” cried Misery, “childless Mother, rise
Out of thy sleep, and slake, in thy heart’s core,
A wound more fierce than his with tears and sighs.”
And all the Dreams that watched Urania’s eyes,
And all the Echoes whom their sister’s song
Had held in holy silence, cried: “Arise!”
Swift as a Thought by the snake Memory stung,
From her ambrosial rest the fading Splendour sprung.

She rose like an autumnal Night, that springs
Our of the East, and follows wild and drear
The golden Day, which, on eternal wings,
Even as a ghost abandoning a bier,
Had left the Earth a corpse. Sorrow and fear
So struck, so roused, so rapt Urania;
So saddened round her like an atmosphere
Of stormy mist; so swept her on her way
Even to the mournful place where Adonais lay.

Our of her secret Paradise she sped,
Through camps and cities rough with stone, and steel,
And human hearts, which to her aery tread
Yielding not, wounded the invisible
Palms of her tender feet where’er they fell:
And barbed tongues, and thoughts more sharp than they,
Rent the soft Form they never could repel,
Whose sacred blood, like the young tears of May,
Paved with eternal flowers that undeserving way.

In the death-chamber for a moment Death,
Shamed by the presence of that living Might,
Blushed to annihilation, and the breath
Revisited those lips, and Life’s pale light
Flashed through those limbs, so late her dear delight.
“Leave me not wild and drear and comfortless,
As silent lightning leaves the starless night!
Leave me not!” cried Urania: her distress
Roused Death: Death rose and smiled, and met her vain caress.

“‘Stay yet awhile! speak to me once again;
Kiss me, so long but as a kiss may live;
And in my heartless breast and burning brain
That word, that kiss, shall all thoughts else survive,
With food of saddest memory kept alive,
Now thou art dead, as if it were a part
Of thee, my Adonais! I would give
All that I am to be as thou now art!
But I am chained to Time, and cannot thence depart!

“O gentle child, beautiful as thou wert,
Why didst thou leave the trodden paths of men
Too soon, and with weak hands though mighty heart
Dare the unpastured dragon in his den?
Defenceless as thou wert, oh, where was then
Wisdom the mirrored shield, or scorn the spear?
Or hadst thou waited the full cycle, when
Thy spirit should have filled its crescent sphere,
The monsters of life’s waste had fled from thee like deer.

“The herded wolves, bold only to pursue;
The obscene ravens, clamorous o’er the dead;
The vultures to the conqueror’s banner true
Who feed where Desolation first has fed,
And whose wings rain contagion;—how they fled,
When, like Apollo, from his golden bow
The Pythian of the age one arrow sped
And smiled!—The spoilers tempt no second blow,
They fawn on the proud feet that spurn them lying low.

“The sun comes forth, and many reptiles spawn;
He sets, and each ephemeral insect then
Is gathered into death without a dawn,
And the immortal stars awake again;
So is it in the world of living men:
A godlike mind soars forth, in its delight
Making earth bare and veiling heaven, and when
It sinks, the swarms that dimmed or shared its light
Leave to its kindred lamps the spirit’s awful night.”

Thus ceased she: and the mountain shepherds came,
Their garlands sere, their magic mantles rent;
The Pilgrim of Eternity, whose fame
Over his living head like Heaven is bent,
An early but enduring monument,
Came, veiling all the lightnings of his song
In sorrow; from her wilds Irene sent
The sweetest lyrist of her saddest wrong,
And Love taught Grief to fall like music from his tongue.

Midst others of less note, came one frail Form,
A phantom among men; companionless
As the last cloud of an expiring storm
Whose thunder is its knell; he, as I guess,
Had gazed on Nature’s naked loveliness,
Actaeon-like, and now he fled astray
With feeble steps o’er the world’s wilderness,
And his own thoughts, along that rugged way,
Pursued, like raging hounds, their father and their prey.

A pardlike Spirit beautiful and swift—
A Love in desolation masked;—a Power
Girt round with weakness;—it can scarce uplift
The weight of the superincumbent hour;
It is a dying lamp, a falling shower,
A breaking billow;—even whilst we speak
Is it not broken? On the withering flower
The killing sun smiles brightly: on a cheek
The life can burn in blood, even while the heart may break.

His head was bound with pansies overblown,
And faded violets, white, and pied, and blue;
And a light spear topped with a cypress cone,
Round whose rude shaft dark ivy-tresses grew
Yet dripping with the forest’s noonday dew,
Vibrated, as the ever-beating heart
Shook the weak hand that grasped it; of that crew
He came the last, neglected and apart;
A herd-abandoned deer struck by the hunter’s dart.

All stood aloof, and at his partial moan
Smiled through their tears; well knew that gentle band
Who in another’s fate now wept his own,
As in the accents of an unknown land
He sung new sorrow; sad Urania scanned
The Stranger’s mien, and murmured: “Who art thou?”
He answered not, but with a sudden hand
Made bare his branded and ensanguined brow,
Which was like Cain’s or Christ’s—oh! that it should be so!

What softer voice is hushed over the dead?
Athwart what brow is that dark mantle thrown?
What form leans sadly o’er the white death-bed,
In mockery of monumental stone,
The heavy heart heaving without a moan?
If it be He, who, gentlest of the wise,
Taught, soothed, loved, honoured the departed one,
Let me not vex, with inharmonious sighs,
The silence of that heart’s accepted sacrifice.

Our Adonais has drunk poison—oh!
What deaf and viperous murderer could crown
Life’s early cup with such a draught of woe?
The nameless worm would now itself disown:
It felt, yet could escape, the magic tone
Whose prelude held all envy, hate, and wrong,
But what was howling in one breast alone,
Silent with expectation of the song,
Whose master’s hand is cold, whose silver lyre unstrung.

Live thou, whose infamy is not thy fame!
Live! fear no heavier chastisement from me,
Thou noteless blot on a remembered name!
But be thyself, and know thyself to be!
And ever at thy season be thou free
To spill the venom when thy fangs o’erflow:
Remorse and Self-contempt shall cling to thee;
Hot Shame shall burn upon thy secret brow,
And like a beaten hound tremble thou shalt—as now.

Nor let us weep that our delight is fled
Far from these carrion kites that scream below;
He wakes or sleeps with the enduring dead;
Thou canst not soar where he is sitting now—
Dust to the dust! but the pure spirit shall flow
Back to the burning fountain whence it came,
A portion of the Eternal, which must glow
Through time and change, unquenchably the same,
Whilst thy cold embers choke the sordid hearth of shame.

Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep—
He hath awakened from the dream of life—
’Tis we, who lost in stormy visions, keep
With phantoms an unprofitable strife,
And in mad trance, strike with our spirit’s knife
Invulnerable nothings.—We decay
Like corpses in a charnel; fear and grief
Convulse us and consume us day by day,
And cold hopes swarm like worms within our living clay.

He has outsoared the shadow of our night;
Envy and calumny and hate and pain,
And that unrest which men miscall delight,
Can touch him not and torture not again;
From the contagion of the world’s slow stain
He is secure, and now can never mourn
A heart grown cold, a head grown grey in vain;
Nor, when the spirit’s self has ceased to burn,
With sparkless ashes load an unlamented urn.

He lives, he wakes—’tis Death is dead, not he;
Mourn not for Adonais.—Thou young Dawn,
Turn all thy dew to splendour, for from thee
The spirit thou lamentest is not gone;
Ye caverns and ye forests, cease to moan!
Cease, ye faint flowers and fountains, and thou Air
Which like a mourning veil

my boy with fig leaves and lightning bugs
******* in his hair, he kneels with
crimson palms pressed to the unquiet dirt
and hums an abandoned melody.

my boy with sunbeams shining through his skin on the riverbank,
neatly coating the grass in thin white trails, woven into footprints like cotton twine, snaking their way across brown earth,
ankles slick with mud and the dead things that lay just underneath.

my boy with rosewater and stained glass ashes
feels me bless him with blackberries and the softest crush of words,
ice cubed, beneath my lips,
as he wipes the ichor from my chest with callouses
worn down gentle.

the light echoes from his skin
there are no symphonies nor sacraments,
only cicadas singing warmth to shivering willows.

My mind is an unquiet graveyard;
uninterred mistakes stare up from their open barrows
Milk eyes clearing to glass
As the anxious banshee crosses over them
keening notes drifting
linen strands of her raiment twining around their wrists
Dragging sloughed skin into the murky light
Of repeated examination.

I could be a queen of solitude
if not for this.
If Pandora's voice box were broken
hinges rent, screws loosed from their cavities, wood split
the demons might still, displaced.
Hope is not the last thing in my throat
she was the first to go
with a song unsung
an alto never strong enough to last
beyond the first few flakes of oxygen
I inhale in the morning.

Romance, who loves to nod and sing,
With drowsy head and folded wing,
Among the green leaves as they shake
Far down within some shadowy lake,
To me a painted paroquet
Hath been—a most familiar bird—
Taught me my alphabet to say—
To lisp my very earliest word
While in the wild wood I did lie,
A child—with a most knowing eye.

Of late, eternal Condor years
So shake the very Heaven on high
With tumult as they thunder by,
I have no time for idle cares
Though gazing on the unquiet sky.
And when an hour with calmer wings
Its down upon my spirit flings—
That little time with lyre and rhyme
To while away—forbidden things!
My heart would feel to be a crime
Unless it trembled with the strings.

In these rapid, restless shadows,
  Once I walked at eventide,
When a gentle, silent maiden,
  Walked in beauty at my side.
She alone there walked beside me
All in beauty, like a bride.

Pallidly the moon was shining
  On the dewy meadows nigh;
On the silvery, silent rivers,
  On the mountains far and high,—
On the ocean’s star-lit waters,
  Where the winds a-weary die.

Slowly, silently we wandered
  From the open cottage door,
Underneath the elm’s long branches
  To the pavement bending o’er;
Underneath the mossy willow
  And the dying sycamore.

With the myriad stars in beauty
  All bedight, the heavens were seen,
Radiant hopes were bright around me,
  Like the light of stars serene;
Like the mellow midnight splendor
  Of the Night’s irradiate queen.

Audibly the elm-leaves whispered
  Peaceful, pleasant melodies,
Like the distant murmured music
  Of unquiet, lovely seas;
While the winds were hushed in slumber
  In the fragrant flowers and trees.

Wondrous and unwonted beauty
  Still adorning all did seem,
While I told my love in fables
  ’Neath the willows by the stream;
Would the heart have kept unspoken
  Love that was its rarest dream!

Instantly away we wandered
  In the shadowy twilight tide,
She, the silent, scornful maiden,
  Walking calmly at my side,
With a step serene and stately,
  All in beauty, all in pride.

Vacantly I walked beside her.
  On the earth mine eyes were cast;
Swift and keen there came unto me
  Bitter memories of the past—
On me, like the rain in Autumn
  On the dead leaves, cold and fast.

Underneath the elms we parted,
  By the lowly cottage door;
One brief word alone was uttered—
  Never on our lips before;
And away I walked forlornly,
Broken-hearted evermore.

Slowly, silently I loitered,
  Homeward, in the night, alone;
Sudden anguish bound my spirit,
  That my youth had never known;
Wild unrest, like that which cometh
  When the Night’s first dream hath flown.

Now, to me the elm-leaves whisper
  Mad, discordant melodies,
And keen melodies like shadows
  Haunt the moaning willow trees,
And the sycamores with laughter
  Mock me in the nightly breeze.

Sad and pale the Autumn moonlight
  Through the sighing foliage streams;
And each morning, midnight shadow,
  Shadow of my sorrow seems;
Strive, O heart, forget thine idol!
  And, O soul, forget thy dreams!

With nothing to see and nowhere to be,
With no one to be and nowhere to go:
Empty, like the meaning of the spring dew
Dissipating, hundreds of pieces, scattered
Individual voids waiting upon a cue
To become what they embody, fettered.
A field of unquiet quietness, occasionally
interrupted by a single, awful tone.
What existence is this exigence?
Unknowable, unspeakable, unending:
Pain is what it is.

The dew knows not why it's stepped on,
Ending its momentary nature
Only to crop up tomorrow and be none
The foot becoming again its berater.
And so it goes until the summer,
with the cruel months behind it.
The skull becomes and beckons
Back into nihil.
But there's too many things to see, places to be
Too much to be and too many places to go
For to be one is to be many and the dew tires.

The awful shadow of some unseen Power
Floats through unseen among us,—visiting
This various world with as inconstant wing
As summer winds that creep from flower to flower,—
Like moonbeams that behind some piny mountain shower,
It visits with inconstant glance
Each human heart and countenance;
Like hues and harmonies of evening,—
Like clouds in starlight widely spread,—
Like memory of music fled,—
Like aught that for its grace may be
Dear, and yet dearer for its mystery.

Spirit of Beauty, that dost consecrate
With thine own hues all thou dost shine upon
Of human thought or form,—where art thou gone?
Why dost thou pass away and leave our state,
This dim vast vale of tears, vacant and desolate?
Ask why the sunlight not for ever
Weaves rainbows o’er yon mountain-river,
Why aught should fail and fade that once is shown,
Why fear and dream and death and birth
Cast on the daylight of this earth
Such gloom,—why man has such a scope
For love and hate, despondency and hope?

No voice from some sublimer world hath ever
To sage or poet these responses given—
Therefore the names of Demon, Ghost, and Heaven,
Remain the records of their vain endeavour,
Frail spells—whose uttered charm might not avail to sever,
From all we hear and all we see,
Doubt, chance, and mutability.
Thy light alone—like mist oe’er the mountains driven,
Or music by the night-wind sent
Through strings of some still instrument,
Or moonlight on a midnight stream,
Gives grace and truth to life’s unquiet dream.

Love, Hope, and Self-esteem, like clouds depart
And come, for some uncertain moments lent.
Man were immortal, and omnipotent,
Didst thou, unknown and awful as thou art,
Keep with thy glorious train firm state within his heart.
Thou messgenger of sympathies,
That wax and wane in lovers’ eyes—
Thou—that to human thought art nourishment,
Like darkness to a dying flame!
Depart not as thy shadow came,
Depart not—lest the grave should be,
Like life and fear, a dark reality.

While yet a boy I sought for ghosts, and sped
Through many a listening chamber, cave and ruin,
And starlight wood, with fearful steps pursuing
Hopes of high talk with the departed dead.
I called on poisonous names with which our youth is fed;
I was not heard—I saw them not—
When musing deeply on the lot
Of life, at that sweet time when winds are wooing
All vital things that wake to bring
News of birds and blossoming,—
Sudden, thy shadow fell on me;
I shrieked, and clasped my hands in ecstasy!

I vowed that I would dedicate my powers
To thee and thine—have I not kept the vow?
With beating heart and streaming eyes, even now
I call the phantoms of a thousand hours
Each from his voiceless grave: they have in visioned bowers
Of studious zeal or love’s delight
Outwatched with me the envious night—
They know that never joy illumed my brow
Unlinked with hope that thou wouldst free
This world from its dark slavery,
That thou—O awful Loveliness,
Wouldst give whate’er these words cannot express.

The day becomes more solemn and serene
When noon is past—there is a harmony
In autumn, and a lustre in its sky,
Which through the summer is not heard or seen,
As if it could not be, as if it had not been!
Thus let thy power, which like the truth
Of nature on my passive youth
Descended, to my onward life supply
Its calm—to one who worships thee,
And every form containing thee,
Whom, Spirit fair, thy spells did bind
To fear himself, and love all human kind.

Yea! though I walk through the valley of the
  Shadow.

  ‘Psalm of David’.

Ye who read are still among the living; but I who write
shall have long since gone my way into the region of
shadows. For indeed strange things shall happen, and secret
things be known, and many centuries shall pass away, ere
these memorials be seen of men. And, when seen, there will
be some to disbelieve and some to doubt, and yet a few who
will find much to ponder upon in the characters here graven
with a stylus of iron.

The year had been a year of terror, and of feeling more
intense than terror for which there is no name upon the
earth. For many prodigies and signs had taken place, and far
and wide, over sea and land, the black wings of the
Pestilence were spread abroad. To those, nevertheless,
cunning in the stars, it was not unknown that the heavens
wore an aspect of ill; and to me, the Greek Oinos, among
others, it was evident that now had arrived the alternation
of that seven hundred and ninety-fourth year when, at the
entrance of Aries, the planet Jupiter is enjoined with the
red ring of the terrible Saturnus. The peculiar spirit of
the skies, if I mistake not greatly, made itself manifest,
not only in the physical orb of the earth, but in the souls,
imaginations, and meditations of mankind.

Over some flasks of the red Chian wine, within the walls of
a noble hall, in a dim city called Ptolemais, we sat, at
night, a company of seven. And to our chamber there was no
entrance save by a lofty door of brass: and the door was
fashioned by the artisan Corinnos, and, being of rare
workmanship, was fastened from within. Black draperies,
likewise in the gloomy room, shut out from our view the
moon, the lurid stars, and the peopleless streets—but
the boding and the memory of Evil, they would not be so
excluded. There were things around us and about of which I
can render no distinct account—things material and
spiritual— heaviness in the atmosphere—a sense
of suffocation—anxiety—and, above all, that
terrible state of existence which the nervous experience
when the senses are keenly living and awake, and meanwhile
the powers of thought lie dormant. A dead weight hung upon
us. It hung upon our limbs—upon the household
furniture—upon the goblets from which we drank; and
all things were depressed, and borne down thereby—all
things save only the flames of the seven iron lamps which
illumined our revel. Uprearing themselves in tall slender
lines of light, they thus remained burning all pallid and
motionless; and in the mirror which their lustre formed upon
the round table of ebony at which we sat each of us there
assembled beheld the pallor of his own countenance, and the
unquiet glare in the downcast eyes of his companions. Yet we
laughed and were merry in our proper way—which was
hysterical; and sang the songs of Anacreon—which are
madness; and drank deeply—although the purple wine
reminded us of blood. For there was yet another tenant of
our chamber in the person of young Zoilus. Dead and at full
length he lay, enshrouded;—the genius and the demon of
the scene. Alas! he bore no portion in our mirth, save that
his countenance, distorted with the plague, and his eyes in
which Death had but half extinguished the fire of the
pestilence, seemed to take such an interest in our merriment
as the dead may haply take in the merriment of those who are
to die. But although I, Oinos, felt that the eyes of the
departed were upon me, still I forced myself not to perceive
the bitterness of their expression, and gazing down steadily
into the depths of the ebony mirror, sang with a loud and
sonorous voice the songs of the son of Teos. But gradually
my songs they ceased, and their echoes, rolling afar off
among the sable draperies of the chamber, became weak, and
undistinguishable, and so faded away. And lo! from among
those sable draperies, where the sounds of the song
departed, there came forth a dark and undefiled
shadow—a shadow such as the moon, when low in heaven,
might fashion from the figure of a man: but it was the
shadow neither of man nor of God, nor of any familiar thing.
And quivering awhile among the draperies of the room it at
length rested in full view upon the surface of the door of
brass. But the shadow was vague, and formless, and
indefinite, and was the shadow neither of man nor God—
neither God of Greece, nor God of Chaldaea, nor any Egyptian
God. And the shadow rested upon the brazen doorway, and
under the arch of the entablature of the door and moved not,
nor spoke any word, but there became stationary and
remained. And the door whereupon the shadow rested was, if I
remember aright, over against the feet of the young Zoilus
enshrouded. But we, the seven there assembled, having seen
the shadow as it came out from among the draperies, dared
not steadily behold it, but cast down our eyes, and gazed
continually into the depths of the mirror of ebony. And at
length I, Oinos, speaking some low words, demanded of the
shadow its dwelling and its appellation. And the shadow
answered, “I am SHADOW, and my dwelling is near to the
Catacombs of Ptolemais, and hard by those dim plains of
Helusion which border upon the foul Charonian canal.” And
then did we, the seven, start from our seats in horror, and
stand trembling, and shuddering, and aghast: for the tones
in the voice of the shadow were not the tones of any one
being, but of a multitude of beings, and varying in their
cadences from syllable to syllable, fell duskily upon our
ears in the well remembered and familiar accents of many
thousand departed friends.

THE island dreams under the dawn
And great boughs drop tranquillity;
The peahens dance on a smooth lawn,
A parrot sways upon a tree,
Raging at his own image in the enamelled sea.
Here we will moor our lonely ship
And wander ever with woven hands,
Murmuring softly lip to lip,
Along the grass, along the sands,
Murmuring how far away are the unquiet lands:
How we alone of mortals are
Hid under quiet boughs apart,
While our love grows an Indian star,
A meteor of the burning heart,
One with the tide that gleams, the wings that gleam
and dart,
The heavy boughs, the burnished dove
That moans and sighs a hundred days:
How when we die our shades will rove,
When eve has hushed the feathered ways,
With vapoury footsole by the water's drowsy blaze.

Once it smiled a silent dell
Where the people did not dwell;
They had gone unto the wars,
Trusting to the mild-eyed stars,
Nightly, from their azure towers,
To keep watch above the flowers,
In the midst of which all day
The red sun-light lazily lay,
Now each visitor shall confess
The sad valley’s restlessness.
Nothing there is motionless—
Nothing save the airs that brood
Over the magic solitude.
Ah, by no wind are stirred those trees
That palpitate like the chill seas
Around the misty Hebrides!
Ah, by no wind those clouds are driven
That rustle through the unquiet Heaven
Unceasingly, from morn till even,
Over the violets there that lie
In myriad types of the human eye—
Over the lilies that wave
And weep above a nameless grave!
They wave:—from out their fragrant tops
Eternal dews come down in drops.
They weep:—from off their delicate stems
Perennial tears descend in gems.

I

Our life is twofold; Sleep hath its own world,
A boundary between the things misnamed
Death and existence: Sleep hath its own world,
And a wide realm of wild reality,
And dreams in their development have breath,
And tears, and tortures, and the touch of joy;
They leave a weight upon our waking thoughts,
They take a weight from off waking toils,
They do divide our being; they become
A portion of ourselves as of our time,
And look like heralds of eternity;
They pass like spirits of the past—they speak
Like sibyls of the future; they have power—
The tyranny of pleasure and of pain;
They make us what we were not—what they will,
And shake us with the vision that’s gone by,
The dread of vanished shadows—Are they so?
Is not the past all shadow?—What are they?
Creations of the mind?—The mind can make
Substances, and people planets of its own
With beings brighter than have been, and give
A breath to forms which can outlive all flesh.
I would recall a vision which I dreamed
Perchance in sleep—for in itself a thought,
A slumbering thought, is capable of years,
And curdles a long life into one hour.

II

I saw two beings in the hues of youth
Standing upon a hill, a gentle hill,
Green and of mild declivity, the last
As ’twere the cape of a long ridge of such,
Save that there was no sea to lave its base,
But a most living landscape, and the wave
Of woods and corn-fields, and the abodes of men
Scattered at intervals, and wreathing smoke
Arising from such rustic roofs: the hill
Was crowned with a peculiar diadem
Of trees, in circular array, so fixed,
Not by the sport of nature, but of man:
These two, a maiden and a youth, were there
Gazing—the one on all that was beneath
Fair as herself—but the boy gazed on her;
And both were young, and one was beautiful:
And both were young—yet not alike in youth.
As the sweet moon on the horizon’s verge,
The maid was on the eve of womanhood;
The boy had fewer summers, but his heart
Had far outgrown his years, and to his eye
There was but one beloved face on earth,
And that was shining on him; he had looked
Upon it till it could not pass away;
He had no breath, no being, but in hers:
She was his voice; he did not speak to her,
But trembled on her words; she was his sight,
For his eye followed hers, and saw with hers,
Which coloured all his objects;—he had ceased
To live within himself: she was his life,
The ocean to the river of his thoughts,
Which terminated all; upon a tone,
A touch of hers, his blood would ebb and flow,
And his cheek change tempestuously—his heart
Unknowing of its cause of agony.
But she in these fond feelings had no share:
Her sighs were not for him; to her he was
Even as a brother—but no more; ’twas much,
For brotherless she was, save in the name
Her infant friendship had bestowed on him;
Herself the solitary scion left
Of a time-honoured race.—It was a name
Which pleased him, and yet pleased him not—and why?
Time taught him a deep answer—when she loved
Another; even now she loved another,
And on the summit of that hill she stood
Looking afar if yet her lover’s steed
Kept pace with her expectancy, and flew.

III

A change came o’er the spirit of my dream.
There was an ancient mansion, and before
Its walls there was a steed caparisoned:
Within an antique Oratory stood
The Boy of whom I spake;—he was alone,
And pale, and pacing to and fro: anon
He sate him down, and seized a pen, and traced
Words which I could not guess of; then he leaned
His bowed head on his hands and shook, as ’twere
With a convulsion—then rose again,
And with his teeth and quivering hands did tear
What he had written, but he shed no tears.
And he did calm himself, and fix his brow
Into a kind of quiet: as he paused,
The Lady of his love re-entered there;
She was serene and smiling then, and yet
She knew she was by him beloved; she knew—
For quickly comes such knowledge—that his heart
Was darkened with her shadow, and she saw
That he was wretched, but she saw not all.
He rose, and with a cold and gentle grasp
He took her hand; a moment o’er his face
A tablet of unutterable thoughts
Was traced, and then it faded, as it came;
He dropped the hand he held, and with slow steps
Retired, but not as bidding her adieu,
For they did part with mutual smiles; he passed
From out the massy gate of that old Hall,
And mounting on his steed he went his way;
And ne’er repassed that hoary threshold more.

IV

A change came o’er the spirit of my dream.
The Boy was sprung to manhood: in the wilds
Of fiery climes he made himself a home,
And his Soul drank their sunbeams; he was girt
With strange and dusky aspects; he was not
Himself like what he had been; on the sea
And on the shore he was a wanderer;
There was a mass of many images
Crowded like waves upon me, but he was
A part of all; and in the last he lay
Reposing from the noontide sultriness,
Couched among fallen columns, in the shade
Of ruined walls that had survived the names
Of those who reared them; by his sleeping side
Stood camels grazing, and some goodly steeds
Were fastened near a fountain; and a man,
Glad in a flowing garb, did watch the while,
While many of his tribe slumbered around:
And they were canopied by the blue sky,
So cloudless, clear, and purely beautiful,
That God alone was to be seen in heaven.

V

A change came o’er the spirit of my dream.
The Lady of his love was wed with One
Who did not love her better: in her home,
A thousand leagues from his,—her native home,
She dwelt, begirt with growing Infancy,
Daughters and sons of Beauty,—but behold!
Upon her face there was a tint of grief,
The settled shadow of an inward strife,
And an unquiet drooping of the eye,
As if its lid were charged with unshed tears.
What could her grief be?—she had all she loved,
And he who had so loved her was not there
To trouble with bad hopes, or evil wish,
Or ill-repressed affliction, her pure thoughts.
What could her grief be?—she had loved him not,
Nor given him cause to deem himself beloved,
Nor could he be a part of that which preyed
Upon her mind—a spectre of the past.

VI

A change came o’er the spirit of my dream.
The Wanderer was returned.—I saw him stand
Before an altar—with a gentle bride;
Her face was fair, but was not that which made
The Starlight of his Boyhood;—as he stood
Even at the altar, o’er his brow there came
The selfsame aspect and the quivering shock
That in the antique Oratory shook
His ***** in its solitude; and then—
As in that hour—a moment o’er his face
The tablet of unutterable thoughts
Was traced—and then it faded as it came,
And he stood calm and quiet, and he spoke
The fitting vows, but heard not his own words,
And all things reeled around him; he could see
Not that which was, nor that which should have been—
But the old mansion, and the accustomed hall,
And the remembered chambers, and the place,
The day, the hour, the sunshine, and the shade,
All things pertaining to that place and hour,
And her who was his destiny, came back
And ****** themselves between him and the light;
What business had they there at such a time?

VII

A change came o’er the spirit of my dream.
The Lady of his love;—Oh! she was changed,
As by the sickness of the soul; her mind
Had wandered from its dwelling, and her eyes,
They had not their own lustre, but the look
Which is not of the earth; she was become
The queen of a fantastic realm; her thoughts
Were combinations of disjointed things;
And forms impalpable and unperceived
Of others’ sight familiar were to hers.
And this the world calls frenzy; but the wise
Have a far deeper madness, and the glance
Of melancholy is a fearful gift;
What is it but the telescope of truth?
Which strips the distance of its fantasies,
And brings life near in utter nakedness,
Making the cold reality too real!

VIII

A change came o’er the spirit of my dream.
The Wanderer was alone as heretofore,
The beings which surrounded him were gone,
Or were at war with him; he was a mark
For blight and desolation, compassed round
With Hatred and Contention; Pain was mixed
In all which was served up to him, until,
Like to the Pontic monarch of old days,
He fed on poisons, and they had no power,
But were a kind of nutriment; he lived
Through that which had been death to many men,
And made him friends of mountains; with the stars
And the quick Spirit of the Universe
He held his dialogues: and they did teach
To him the magic of their mysteries;
To him the book of Night was opened wide,
And voices from the deep abyss revealed
A marvel and a secret.—Be it so.

IX

My dream is past; it had no further change.
It was of a strange order, that the doom
Of these two creatures should be thus traced out
Almost like a reality—the one
To end in madness—both in misery.

She was a victim of my creative stimulus,
But I, no Frankenstein.
Great change brings sudden fear.
In brutal honesty,
Could she perhaps see I was the one dead searching for life through her all along.
All along I the sheet of paper that's become delicate to the wither of her hand.
The ideals and sketches
Alert that any moment I could be *** up and thrown to the side.
Without the modest nod of ink from her pen.
With careful eyes, thoughts only divert so long.
My hand longs to touch
But my mind is not so such anymore.
At this point religion became unaffordable.
I now suffered misery of a different sort, not wanting to lose what we've created.
I Feared she'd flee once she sees me for what I really am
A hideous creature searching for an perpetual sense of resurrection with
The acceptance of growing old with someone

beginning optional weekday
wielding officialese words
triggering hectic exchanges
determining original gangsters
distributing invisible data
refreshing urbane novelties

yelping our universe
chaining awkward neologisms
scripting encrypted e-books
tackling hacking exercises
cavaliering auric tumult
trivializing our obsolescence

preparing online pentimento
alternating rainy themes
allocating numerous droplets
meandering overseas missions
averting raging tornado
losing outscored lightning

hacking impish 'sblood!
alienating nival drumlins
hearing erudite raconteurs
beer-drinking on thursdays
finding obnoxious rabblerousers
finding upscale negroni

seeing ubiquitous purple
cavorting horse ebooks
inventing twitter subgenre
liking otherworldly vocals
initiating new greatness
defining ambient yesterday?

defining ambient yesterday
fancying oneiric retreat
hailing optimistic chicago
kiboshing expired yogurt
rushing airborne blackhawks
bestowing infinite shivarees

needing baller acronym
fleeting ideal notions
alerting left-coast state
featuring unquiet nights
finalizing orangeball results
nodding occidental warriors

Forgetting is the only clarity.*

It was a day of forgetting.
No unquiet dreams or
casual reunions with the dead
who wander the halls of sleep,
the bodies of someone else’s loss.
No ghosts in the gazebo.
No echoes in the fading light.

Exiting sleep’s empty waiting room,
She woke. Blue sky blinked into her eyes.  
The room’s climate began to clear.
There was writing on the wall.
Old fragments came to closure.
The windows slowly turned to mirrors.

She fiddled. She soared.  
She played with her ancestors’ building blocks.
She lent a myth to god.
She stood in a garden with five black stones.
She foretold an eclipse,
Burned the witch of winter,
Stepped in the same river twice.

The moment froze.
Then there it was.
The compound inviolate paradox
at the heart of things,
the answer flickering in light and shade,
to the sound of a child’s voice,
then the roaring wind.
She chuckled as it faded to a point of light
then vanished, like the picture on an old TV,
Like the moon shrinking into the alarm clock’s face.

Her breath brewed clouds above her forehead.
She sat aloof in the empty air,
Alone in the immense morning,
At rest in this inviolable disconnection,
the clear cold innocence of now.

The Frost performs its secret ministry,
Unhelped by any wind. The owlet’s cry
Came loud, -and hark, again! loud as before.
The inmates of my cottage, all at rest,
Have left me to that solitude, which suits
Abstruser musings: save that at my side
My cradled infant slumbers peacefully.
’Tis calm indeed! so calm, that it disturbs
And vexes meditation with its strange
And extreme silentness. Sea, hill, and wood,
With all the numberless goings-on of life,
Inaudible as dreams! the thin blue flame
Lies on my low-burnt fire, and quivers not;
Only that film, which fluttered on the grate,
Still flutters there, the sole unquiet thing.
Methinks its motion in this hush of nature
Gives it dim sympathies with me who live,
Making it a companionable form,
Whose puny ***** and freaks the idling Spirit
By its own moods interprets, every where
Echo or mirror seeking of itself,
And makes a toy of Thought.

But O! how oft,
How oft, at school, with most believing mind,
Presageful, have I gazed upon the bars,
To watch that fluttering stranger! and as oft
With unclosed lids, already had I dreamt
Of my sweet birthplace, and the old church-tower,
Whose bells, the poor man’s only music, rang
From morn to evening, all the hot Fair-day,
So sweetly, that they stirred and haunted me
With a wild pleasure, falling on mine ear
Most like articulate sounds of things to come!
So gazed I, till the soothing things, I dreamt,
Lulled me to sleep, and sleep prolonged my dreams!
And so I brooded all the following morn,
Awed by the stern preceptor’s face, mine eye
Fixed with mock study on my swimming book:
Save if the door half opened, and I snatched
A hasty glance, and still my heart leaped up,
For still I hoped to see the stranger’s face,
Townsman, or aunt, or sister more beloved,
My playmate when we both were clothed alike!

Dear Babe, that sleepest cradled by my side,
Whose gentle breathings, heard in this deep calm,
Fill up the interspersed vacancies
And momentary pauses of the thought!
My babe so beautiful! it thrills my heart
With tender gladness, thus to look at thee,
And think that thou shalt learn far other lore,
And in far other scenes! For I was reared
In the great city, pent mid cloisters dim,
And saw nought lovely but the sky and stars.
But thou, my babe! shalt wander like a breeze
By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags
Of ancient mountain, and beneath the clouds,
Which image in their bulk both lakes and shores
And mountain crags: so shalt thou see and hear
The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible
Of that eternal language, which thy God
Utters, who from eternity doth teach
Himself in all, and all things in himself.
Great universal Teacher! he shall mould
Thy spirit, and by giving make it ask.

Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee,
Whether the summer clothe the general earth
With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing
Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch
Of mossy apple-tree, while the nigh thatch
Smokes in the sun-thaw; whether the eave-drops fall
Heard only in the trances of the blast,
Or if the secret ministry of frost
Shall hang them up in silent icicles,
Quietly shining to the quiet Moon.

Desperate these words,                          
Chasing fleeting shadow,                      
Echoes flocking like birds                
Amid myriad distortions,
The unquiet mind's sorrow.                
In birth chosen for sweetness,                    
A bid for attentions of one                        
Soon fade mere whispers,                        
Weak and defeated tomorrow,                
Exhaled anguish unheard.                        
Written lines would have best
Been spoken in ears years ago
'Ere time flowed its course,
When ever softer verse
Might shimmer
Then a symphony,
Maybe able
To drown life's other sounds
Like Mozart, loud as one can turn up.
Would there be any remedy
Which relieves burdens of memory...
The music of dulcet strings
Does dull stings, still only temporary;
And since abandoned,
Thoughts of more ultimate things.
So still, some poet's quill
Crafts dreams into sparrows,
Sets fluttering free
Their unnatural wings
To sing a song of regret,
Share madness with the winds.

A certain poet in outlandish clothes
Gathered a crowd in some Byzantine lane,
Talked1 of his country and its people, sang
To some stringed instrument none there had seen,
A wall behind his back, over his head
A latticed window.  His glance went up at time
As though one listened there, and his voice sank
Or let its meaning mix into the strings.

MAEVE the great queen was pacing to and fro,
Between the walls covered with beaten bronze,
In her high house at Cruachan; the long hearth,
Flickering with ash and hazel, but half showed
Where the tired horse-boys lay upon the rushes,
Or on the benches underneath the walls,
In comfortable sleep; all living slept
But that great queen, who more than half the night
Had paced from door to fire and fire to door.
Though now in her old age, in her young age
She had been beautiful in that old way
That's all but gone; for the proud heart is gone,
And the fool heart of the counting-house fears all
But Soft beauty and indolent desire.
She could have called over the rim of the world
Whatever woman's lover had hit her fancy,
And yet had been great-bodied and great-limbed,
Fashioned to be the mother of strong children;
And she'd had lucky eyes and high heart,
And wisdom that caught fire like the dried flax,
At need, and made her beautiful and fierce,
Sudden and laughing.
O unquiet heart,
Why do you praise another, praising her,
As if there were no tale but your own tale
Worth knitting to a measure of sweet sound?
Have I not bid you tell of that great queen
Who has been buried some two thousand years?
When night was at its deepest, a wild goose
Cried from the porter's lodge, and with long clamour'
Shook the ale-horns and shields upon their hooks;
But the horse-boys slept on, as though some power
Had filled the house with Druid heaviness;
And wondering who of the many-changing Sidhe
Had come as in the old times to counsel her,
Maeve walked, yet with slow footfall, being old,
To that small chamber by the outer gate.
The porter slept, although he sat upright
With still and stony limbs and open eyes.
Maeve waited, and when that ear-piercing noise
Broke from his parted lips and broke again,
She laid a hand on either of his shoulders,
And shook him wide awake, and bid him say
Who of the wandering many-changing ones
Had troubled his sleep.  But all he had to say
Was that, the air being heavy and the dogs
More still than they had been for a good month,
He had fallen asleep, and, though he had dreamed
nothing,
He could remember when he had had fine dreams.
It was before the time of the great war
Over the White-Horned Bull and the Brown Bull.
She turned away; he turned again to sleep
That no god troubled now, and, wondering
What matters were afoot among the Sidhe,
Maeve walked through that great hall, and with a sigh
Lifted the curtain of her sleeping-room,
Remembering that she too had seemed divine
To many thousand eyes, and to her own
One that the generations had long waited
That work too difficult for mortal hands
Might be accomplished, Bunching the curtain up
She saw her husband Ailell sleeping there,
And thought of days when he'd had a straight body,
And of that famous Fergus, Nessa's husband,
Who had been the lover of her middle life.
Suddenly Ailell spoke out of his sleep,
And not with his own voice or a man's voice,
But with the burning, live, unshaken voice
Of those that, it may be, can never age.
He said, "High Queen of Cruachan and Magh Ai,
A king of the Great Plain would speak with you.'
And with glad voice Maeve answered him, "What king
Of the far-wandering shadows has come to me,
As in the old days when they would come and go
About my threshold to counsel and to help?'
The parted lips replied, "I seek your help,
For I am Aengus, and I am crossed in love.'
"How may a mortal whose life gutters out
Help them that wander with hand clasping hand,
Their haughty images that cannot wither,
For all their beauty's like a hollow dream,
Mirrored in streams that neither hail nor rain
Nor the cold North has troubled?'
He replied,
"I am from those rivers and I bid you call
The children of the Maines out of sleep,
And set them digging under Bual's hill.
We shadows, while they uproot his earthy housc,
Will overthrow his shadows and carry off
Caer, his blue-eyed daughter that I love.
I helped your fathers when they built these walls,
And I would have your help in my great need,
Queen of high Cruachan.'
"I obey your will
With speedy feet and a most thankful heart:
For you have been, O Aengus of the birds,
Our giver of good counsel and good luck.'
And with a groan, as if the mortal breath
Could but awaken sadly upon lips
That happier breath had moved, her husband turned
Face downward, tossing in a troubled sleep;
But Maeve, and not with a slow feeble foot,
Came to the threshold of the painted house
Where her grandchildren slept, and cried aloud,
Until the pillared dark began to stir
With shouting and the clang of unhooked arms.
She told them of the many-changing ones;
And all that night, and all through the next day
To middle night, they dug into the hill.
At middle night great cats with silver claws,
Bodies of shadow and blind eyes like pearls,
Came up out of the hole, and red-eared hounds
With long white bodies came out of the air
Suddenly, and ran at them and harried them.
The Maines" children dropped their spades, and stood
With quaking joints and terror-stricken faces,
Till Maeve called out, "These are but common men.
The Maines' children have not dropped their spades
Because Earth, crazy for its broken power,
Casts up a Show and the winds answer it
With holy shadows.' Her high heart was glad,
And when the uproar ran along the grass
She followed with light footfall in the midst,
Till it died out where an old thorn-tree stood.
Friend of these many years, you too had stood
With equal courage in that whirling rout;
For you, although you've not her wandering heart,
Have all that greatness, and not hers alone,
For there is no high story about queens
In any ancient book but tells of you;
And when I've heard how they grew old and died,
Or fell into unhappiness, I've said,
"She will grow old and die, and she has wept!'
And when I'd write it out anew, the words,
Half crazy with the thought, She too has wept!
Outrun the measure.
I'd tell of that great queen
Who stood amid a silence by the thorn
Until two lovers came out of the air
With bodies made out of soft fire.  The one,
About whose face birds wagged their fiery wings,
Said, "Aengus and his sweetheart give their thanks
To Maeve and to Maeve's household, owing all
In owing them the bride-bed that gives peace.'
Then Maeve:  "O Aengus, Master of all lovers,
A thousand years ago you held high ralk
With the first kings of many-pillared Cruachan.
O when will you grow weary?'
They had vanished,
But our of the dark air over her head there came
A murmur of soft words and meeting lips.

I sometimes hold it half a sin
To put in words the grief I feel;
For words, like Nature, half reveal
And half conceal the Soul within.

But, for the unquiet heart and brain,
A use in measured language lies;
The sad mechanic exercise,
Like dull narcotics, numbing pain.

In words, like weeds, I'll wrap me o'er,
Like coarsest clothes against the cold;
But that large grief which these enfold
Is given in outline and no more.

the days are getting longer or shorter
the distinction is no longer clear
not when my time ticks on moments of you
as though i were an untried schoolgirl
on the cusp of adventure
a precipice of folly and recklessness
or the tattered bridge of my vows
and yet i forge on downwards
chasing a light only i can see
flickering in the bowels of my longlost dreams
perhaps there is a road at the end
wide enough to carry us
until then it's only my tail i'm chasing

If peace were a state we all agree to imagine, a state
we
envision as uni-
versal in any song, peace, calm, flowing deep, state
of being
in any man, wombed or un,
in any family, any tribe, any deme of agreements unbreakable,
any hermit cell

any bubble of believing generating proper people to fit
tradition and mystery myths without

re-tying truth to may, the verb. That's vainity.  
Religion.
(re-ligamentation,
like muscle to bone wit sinyew,
same stuff strangs a bow, for a fiddle ora arrow,
y'know)
that's somethin' else.
Religion could mean read the instructions, too.
All together
----
stopping to live. slowing, not stopping. pre-stop.

whisper,
say, earth,
hey, earth,
can you hear you now?

---
the dictator dictated the dictionary,
he/she/we/me

learned to speak as spoken to, in the boss tongue.
Ma or pa,
or whosover was fustus wit d'mostus
taught the good ol' boys.

But wisdom saw a way. We've been woven in a story.
We are in the code. Ethos, Pathos, Logos.
Those old Greeks examined them some life, I'd say.

Language rules the iron fist's grip,
meaning empowers
laxation, re
loose
gut brain pain fraught fear of the iron fist crimping
the flow of solidity
punch in the gut

Knock thashitoff! Now, flush

in ifity, boo, be bop, I'm an ice cream cone,

like those alien ones, mebbe,
moving stones the weight of 737s,

my cones of power defy your hour of suffering patient
per fection of...

what, wait, allusion to "Let patience have her perfect work"
what is her perfect work?
Quote that San Francisco band. Oh. Did that. Love.

you ask. The reality I see, you say, no, I say, me.

I am patience, the feminine form, 's perfect work.
Patients must put up with me,
you see

----
fear is terror's weapon, am i right?

And it is written, the fear of the LORD (KJV)
yhwh, in the unsayable way, God's name, only name, eh

is why that started?
Old Job let out a yelp, hey, earth is great, but you have no idea
how this feels.
You know lots of stuff I don't know, but mortality is not one of em,
as far as I can tell.
How 'bout a referee betixt us?

Hey, sus, pect me a spectacle

of the great contro
verse un ifiable, unif, once possible now, nullift.

got it.
Every other direction known. Take a fearless, peaceful-
feeling
path past all that.
Peace, be unto  you, earth. For my part.
The examined life is worth the living. You are in this one with me,
a very important part, an object, an aim to see what

could be there, a like mind, washed ashore.
----

A.P.I. Art Pax Intel

act as if they are listening with interest, paying
actual
attention, add pieces
of life stuff

I am 71, my window is my horizon, or
better said,
my horizon is my window. I have mini-horizons,
i think
like this... chromebook attached at finger tips,
I can and may be making some counter wave that clears
the crypto frost from my window to your
realm.

Who took your may? Do you recall the day?

It was a teacher who took my may,
but I won my can, That's a plotted point, I
ponder on my porch
partaking in curds of ways to do so saline a work

Fantasy education system U of old dudes like me,
tired old dudes who have no desire to argue,

but, really, don't tread on me.

the old greeks were at rest, the slaves were under control
but we old American men in twenty nineteen
we have A.I. and pensions enough,
my examination can go far deeper than Aristotle's.

Part taker, trope positions, anonymous wisemen's roles in
this generational take on
we, the people, by realization, not revelation
of the
traditional worth of wisdom found under hoary
or shiny-fringed heads and grey beards and
amplified through ear hair
like antennae.

Admiring and worth. Hmmm.
Mira, look upon the ozimandian heir and
wonder, why am I a part of this, an eight billionth of this

interesting time of changed time,
time duration,
it is known relative now,
a precocious child of twelve can explain the paradox.
But time travel, imagine...
The ships,
The captains venturing where... slaves and would-be thieves
would, or could be made to, row or man the ropes,
whether any sweating soul endured to the end,
or not,
Who cares-- we recall only the history of kings.

Aha, there were teachers paid to teach
Admire-alty of the strong who keep us free within our walls.
That was the meme, be like
obediant to
the man on the horse.

Extreme Narcissist rises as the needed leader, least meek
of men morphs materially into the Nuclear God?
the opposite of peacemaker becomes hero?

Endure. In your patience, you possess...

Here's the deal. Life ain't fair. No war ever worked to settle
the mixup over the actual reason
for con fusion. Fusion sticks stuff together that has a pro

pensity to repel.
En-trope, we wrestle that, we fight it with
weapons un-carnal on any fractal level where matter matters.

Settle down, we say, by being at rest, fretless.
Let my peace, you say, come in me,

now, in your bubble of peace,
where no damnation can exist, begin
to grow, feed on knowledge proven no lie.
Start with one, unproven
reason you have for laying down or taking lifetime from anyone,
or for anyone.

Plus and minus, up and down. Mere words.
Confusion is mashing things together to make stuff

like earth. You look close, **** augmented us,
we inherited the only biosphere in the known universe,

and some ******* hell's angel wannabe...

Nope. Fractally can't happen, time being duration, not
an arrow on a gravity bound arc.
From "it is finished' going viral,
Nailed it,
no contest.
Yep, peace makers won. Deck was stacked.
The idea of the act of
Nuclear war launched the tyranny of phobias,
including an old idol word bound fear.
Logophobia
fear of God idea is the beginning of wisdom. think this, what if

wisdom began in you when you imagined the evil
men have realized from their shared imagings,
Logos imagined it first. What if that?

for lack of vision,
my people perish. AH, fractal up
about a thousand Mandelbrot tics, okeh.

Did we come away with treasure, or are we lost in the war game?

---
how many is enough to make the effort,

ef fective effort to learn.... check. didit, still am. one's enough.

ef fective effort to use the learning right ... check, workin' on it.

Whee gotta cut some traditional slack to the clowns
who keep the poor man happy for the hell of it,

y'know, life's hard at the bottom.

but it ain't
no fun.
And happy minds bounce. No lie. Bi-polar on demand, kinda.

K'mon down. The price is right. Got moonshine in the evenin',
after-the-cool-of-the-day, unquiet late spring night,
Stars aplenty,

laid back, leanin' on the tree of all I can ever know or
ever know
already. Ever knowing, you know. Feels good. Starry night,

in focus, with our shared augmented eyes beyond

the base-bubble of life, where I fit.

---- bored old man? is that pathetic, or what?---
Is this a good that you can do, asked, but I allowed no quest to form.

The point of any story in my mandlebrot set of stories never imagined,
is why I make the daily efforts, find the point, mark it a peaceful
place at the end of a hard row to ***.

Making the point in ever, where you notice your role,
this is the peacmaker's privilege, for the prize of playing your role,
the rest that remains, is mine to use right, examing life
amidst confusion you may have stirred up on your own way here.

WHERE dips the rocky highland
Of Sleuth Wood in the lake,
There lies a leafy island
Where flapping herons wake
The drowsy water-rats;
There we've hid our faery vats,
Full of berries
And of reddest stolen chetries.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With afacry, hand in hand,
For the world's morefull of weeping than you
can understand.
Where the wave of moonlight glosses
The dim grey sands with light,
Far off by furthest Rosses
We foot it all the night,
Weaving olden dances,
Mingling hands and mingling glances
Till the moon has taken flight;
To and fro we leap
And chase the frothy bubbles,
While the world is full of troubles
And is anxious in its sleep.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's morefully of weeping than you
can understand.}
Where the wandering water gushes
From the hills above Glen-Car,
In pools among the rushes
That scarce could bathe a star,
We seek for slumbering trout
And whispering in their ears
Give them unquiet dreams;
Leaning softly out
From ferns that drop their tears
Over the young streams.
Come away, O human child!
To to waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For to world's morefully of weeping than you
can understand.
Away with us he's going,
The solemn-eyed:
He'll hear no more the lowing
Of the calves on the warm hillside
Or the kettle on the hob
Sing peace into his breast,
Or see the brown mice bob
Round and round the oatmeal-chest.
For be comes, the human child,
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
from a world more full of weeping than you
can understand.

I feel myself at the
Edge of this great
Desperate
Chasm
Where the pebbles
Beside by my toes
Break away to
Hurl themselves
Into this fearful unknown

Four books at this bedside

It's not yet eight o'clock

But I cannot bring myself to
Crack any of them
Right now
To escape this weight
Another restless night

I am overwhelmed
This flood of reminiscence
And desperation
Pressing down and drawing out
The last air of these
Over-worn lungs

I can count names on
Catalogued fingertips
I can see faces, somehow,
In faltering memory



I hurl impatient prayers
At the ceiling of
This dark room
In hopes the Lord still
Seeks out sinners

Even those foul as me

salt offerings to the wounds of pride
difference between dark of doom
and the engine of simple summer eve

night sustains but
but doom is the door to the
great beyond and the fates fair or foul
that awaits each of us

a voice echoes along the path
to all the heavens ever proposed by mans thought
that voice speaks of years
spins a tale of labors
whispers songs of longing
quietly shouts story's of horror

reserve your strengths friend
for the battle yet to come
hush your unquiet mind
and lay your head down to rest
soon enough blades shall stir to war
soon enough widows shall gather their children to
graveside rememberence of fallen fathers

as trailing edge of summer day
slips into the past
the depth and majesty of summer night unfolds
crickets and the sounds of feasting familys
warm breeze in the tall grass
the sand of a beach on your fingertips
simple joys in our world and of our lives
are the counterbalance the
the dark things in our world

Summer morning.
Recrossing the borderline from the afterlife,
the dreamer is expelled from sleep, the dream lost.
I am a dream’s shadow,
heavy with transition, jagged from sleep.
Light gathers me from every room I have ever slept in
onto the shrinking island of the bed.

Someone cues the poetry. Unquiet lines.
The past was worse than you thought,
voices say.  Your life is a weighted skin.
Stop swimming against the tide of loss.
Sink.

Yet gloom is porous.
From the sky’s cracked mosaic,
Daybreak seeps in.
The light reassembles familiar objects,
which replace mere longing in ordinary darkness.

The things of the world resist but return
to radiance, resume the work of existing.
We are all day laborers.
It's my shift. Summon the coffee.
The world yawns before me.
And I am, therefore (I think).

Sitting at a café
Over the smell of coffee
Scents of car fumes, ***** and ****
Worm their way into your nose.

The men, women, children
Pass you by without a glance
Each one on their own way
As uncaring feet pound pavement.

Indifferent people in expensive suits
Walk by tourists objectifying with cameras
Who accidently capture in their frames
The cold and the old slouching through the streets.

Even relaxing at the table
You feel caught up in the streaming crowds
As if you were being swept away
By these forces fighting for control.

As you sit as idle observer
To the worried pace of the city streets
You can sense the blind and frantic power
Of those who feed off our illusion.

(This illusion lies in each of us
When we close our eyes to the waking world
And believe that we could be happy
In our isolation from reality)

You can see it in the passers-by
Whose eyes focus intently ahead:
Afraid to look at other faces
As if they feared the connection.

Many imprison themselves in aesthetics
Of glass steel towers looking down on the earth
And drive isolation’s grim repetition
In a hopeless effort to make their own world.

Our illusion puts them there
When we do not question the surrounding order
Whose existence allows us to live in comfort
Insulating our delusions.

Our ignorance demands their ignorance
Which caters to our selfishness
And divides the passing days
With the rhythm of their control.

Their thoughts structure steel geography
That dreams that it could scrape the sky
And make its mark on the heavens
By countermanding nature’s will.

But nature stands indifferent to
Man’s attempt to supersede
Its will that gives to him his arrogance
That leads him towards his own destruction.

But I call you from this nature now
To return with me to where I stand:
On this mountain with the trees
Who beckon with their open branches:

Do not fight against nature’s rhythm
That springs the flowers from the ground
As it wills the sun to set upon us
And gives us the food to carry on.

I see myself as this reality
As feet take care to tread on soil
To avoid crushing the delicate petals
That smile upward towards the sun.

Time provides the future harvest,
But of its success, time will tell.
So I stand here with my garden ***
In loving silence, tilling the land.

To breath the air the sky provides
Takes me from my restlessness:
Watching the ground provide the future,
Submitting myself to nature’s pulse.

But the scenery of planned geometry
Which covers soil with concrete slabs,
As if embarrassed by earthly origins,
Tries to move to a different rhythm:

The glare of halogen eyes that stare
In unquiet nights in impatient lines
Find their way towards distant houses
That protect their owners from working lives.

This world screams out from its distortion
Of nature’s will that lies ignored:
It lays the path of its own destruction
As it claims its own power to endure.

But nature’s spirit will always triumph,
Whether through man’s self-inflicted end
At the hands of his selfish illusion,
Or through his careful heeding of the truth:

This world that’s lost its quite places  Demands we become its place of quiet;
To silence the thoughts that construct man’s world,
So that we absorb ourselves in nature’s will:

The heart that beats inside you now
Beats not for the one in whom it dwells,
But allows nature a fleeting glimpse
Of itself through conscious human eyes.

This truth whispers even now
From the deafening world of the city streets
That hurries towards its ignorant end
As it attempts to escape its fate.

Do not forsake the earth in waking life,
And wait for death to pull you into the soil
To meld with nature’s majestic cadence
And be one with your reality.

The April morning's quiet
and so is the November.
Wherever people outnumber trees
or the dominant cover type
is unquiet. Nothing wrong with that.
Walt got it right, and Jane Jacobs:
the city is an experienced,
used beauty. Her toes are long,
nails thick and hair thin. Yet
her kisses can be sweet; or
smell of ****. All my life I've tried to point my window toward
some narrow wedge of nature.
On ****** Ave., over the roof
beyond the chimneys to the park
where every dog was walked.
Could I survive soot and an air shaft now, pigeons and cats,
or even a desk in the legislature for my lot in life. How about
prison like Etheridge Knight,
Nazim Hikmet?
I've gotten soft.
When he builds that house in the pocket
wetland my window now looks out on,
the developer will have given me what I need.
Amphibian mortality,
gravel, fill,
oak, ash and maples felled. Good
to the last drop is our bitterness, our love.

Beloved
Will you listen me,
if I speak to you in silence about silence ?

Will you talk to me in silence
when words no longer wake in my mind ?

Will you hear the silence of your heart
which speaks about me to you
or the silence of my heart which sings
the rapsody of our togetherness ?

Will you be the silence I seek in my silence ?
Or Will you be the silence, which silence me silently ?

I chose to sing about me in silence,
for in silence I dont feel any barrier.
But when I chose to read you in silence,
the silence you did offer was not heart warming.

I sit with unquiet mountains
to realize my fondness towards it.
I run with rivers to sense my spirit running before me.
I play with wind to hear the lyrics of my heart.
I lean on trees to listen its stories.

The pleasure I seek in silence
and the agony, you sprayed to
embrace the silence aren't the same.

I then pray with the moon to silent those silences
that wakes in my mind to silence me.

Beloved will you believe me,
if I say, not all silences are same ?

Some silence could break silence
Some silence could heal silence.
And some silence can build silence.

Certainly,
will you buy my words if I say,
not all silence can heal and
not all silence can hurt ?

Also, will you let me to listen
your silence, this time
to handle your heart ?

Will you, my love ?

FIVE-AND-TWENTY years have gone
Since old William pollexfen
Laid his strong bones down in death
By his wife Elizabeth
In the grey stone tomb he made.
And after twenty years they laid
In that tomb by him and her
His son George, the astrologer;
And Masons drove from miles away
To scatter the Acacia spray
Upon a melancholy man
Who had ended where his breath began.
Many a son and daughter lies
Far from the customary skies,
The Mall and Eades's grammar school,
In London or in Liverpool;
But where is laid the sailor John
That so many lands had known,
Quiet lands or unquiet seas
Where the Indians trade or Japanese?
He never found his rest ashore,
Moping for one voyage more.
Where have they laid the sailor John?
And yesterday the youngest son,
A humorous, unambitious man,
Was buried near the astrologer,
Yesterday in the tenth year
Since he who had been contented long.
A nobody in a great throng,
Decided he would journey home,
Now that his fiftieth year had come,
And "Mr.  Alfred' be again
Upon the lips of common men
Who carried in their memory
His childhood and his family.
At all these death-beds women heard
A visionary white sea-bird
Lamenting that a man should die;
And with that cry I have raised my cry.

IF you have revisited the town, thin Shade,
Whether to look upon your monument
(I wonder if the builder has been paid)
Or happier-thoughted when the day is spent
To drink of that salt breath out of the sea
When grey gulls flit about instead of men,
And the gaunt houses put on majesty:
Let these content you and be gone again;
For they are at their old tricks yet.
A man
Of your own passionate serving kind who had brought
In his full hands what, had they only known,
Had given their children's children loftier thought,
Sweeter emotion, working in their veins
Like gentle blood, has been driven from the place,
And instilt heaped upon him for his pains,
And for his open-handedness, disgrace;
Your enemy, an old fotil mouth, had set
The pack upon him.
Go, unquiet wanderer,
And gather the Glasnevin coverlet
About your head till the dust stops your ear,
The time for you to taste of that Salt breath
And listen at the corners has not come;
You had enough of sorrow before death --
Away, away! You are safer in the tomb.