by John Greenleaf Whittier  (1807 – 1892)

“As the Spirits of Darkness be stronger in the dark, so Good Spirits which be Angels of Light are augmented not only by the Divine Light of the Sun, but also by our common Wood fire: and as the celestial Fire drives away dark spirits, so also this our Fire of Wood doth the same.”

        COR. AGRIPPA,
           Occult Philosophy, Book I. chap. v.

“Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,
Arrives the snow; and, driving o’er the fields,
Seems nowhere to alight; the whited air
Hides hills and woods, the river and the heaven,
And veils the farm-house at the garden’s end.
The sled and traveller stopped, the courier’s feet
Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit
Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed
In a tumultuous privacy of storm.”

                                       EMERSON

The sun that brief December day
Rose cheerless over hills of gray,
And, darkly circled, gave at noon
A sadder light than waning moon.
Slow tracing down the thickening sky
Its mute and ominous prophecy,
A portent seeming less than threat,
It sank from sight before it set.
A chill no coat, however stout,
Of homespun stuff could quite shut out,
A hard, dull bitterness of cold,
That checked, mid-vein, the circling race
Of life-blood in the sharpened face,
The coming of the snow-storm told.
The wind blew east; we heard the roar
Of Ocean on his wintry shore,
And felt the strong pulse throbbing there
Beat with low rhythm our inland air.

Meanwhile we did our nightly chores, —
Brought in the wood from out of doors,
Littered the stalls, and from the mows
Raked down the herd’s-grass for the cows;
Heard the horse whinnying for his corn;
And, sharply clashing horn on horn,
Impatient down the stanchion rows
The cattle shake their walnut bows;
While, peering from his early perch
Upon the scaffold’s pole of birch,
The **** his crested helmet bent
And down his querulous challenge sent.

Unwarmed by any sunset light
The gray day darkened into night,
A night made hoary with the swarm
And whirl-dance of the blinding storm,
As zigzag, wavering to and fro,
Crossed and recrossed the wingàd snow:
And ere the early bedtime came
The white drift piled the window-frame,
And through the glass the clothes-line posts
Looked in like tall and sheeted ghosts.

So all night long the storm roared on:
The morning broke without a sun;
In tiny spherule traced with lines
Of Nature’s geometric signs,
And, when the second morning shone,
We looked upon a world unknown,
On nothing we could call our own.
Around the glistening wonder bent
The blue walls of the firmament,
No cloud above, no earth below, —
A universe of sky and snow!
The old familiar sights of ours
Took marvellous shapes; strange domes and towers
Rose up where sty or corn-crib stood,
Or garden-wall, or belt of wood;
A smooth white mound the brush-pile showed,
A fenceless drift what once was road;
The bridle-post an old man sat
With loose-flung coat and high cocked hat;
The well-curb had a Chinese roof;
And even the long sweep, high aloof,
In its slant spendor, seemed to tell
Of Pisa’s leaning miracle.

A prompt, decisive man, no breath
Our father wasted: “Boys, a path!”
Well pleased, (for when did farmer boy
Count such a summons less than joy?)
Our buskins on our feet we drew;
With mittened hands, and caps drawn low,
To guard our necks and ears from snow,
We cut the solid whiteness through.
And, where the drift was deepest, made
A tunnel walled and overlaid
With dazzling crystal: we had read
Of rare Aladdin’s wondrous cave,
And to our own his name we gave,
With many a wish the luck were ours
To test his lamp’s supernal powers.
We reached the barn with merry din,
And roused the prisoned brutes within.
The old horse ****** his long head out,
And grave with wonder gazed about;
The **** his ***** greeting said,
And forth his speckled harem led;
The oxen lashed their tails, and hooked,
And mild reproach of hunger looked;
The hornëd patriarch of the sheep,
Like Egypt’s Amun roused from sleep,
Shook his sage head with gesture mute,
And emphasized with stamp of foot.

All day the gusty north-wind bore
The loosening drift its breath before;
Low circling round its southern zone,
The sun through dazzling snow-mist shone.
No church-bell lent its Christian tone
To the savage air, no social smoke
Curled over woods of snow-hung oak.
A solitude made more intense
By dreary-voicëd elements,
The shrieking of the mindless wind,
The moaning tree-boughs swaying blind,
And on the glass the unmeaning beat
Of ghostly finger-tips of sleet.
Beyond the circle of our hearth
No welcome sound of toil or mirth
Unbound the spell, and testified
Of human life and thought outside.
We minded that the sharpest ear
The buried brooklet could not hear,
The music of whose liquid lip
Had been to us companionship,
And, in our lonely life, had grown
To have an almost human tone.

As night drew on, and, from the crest
Of wooded knolls that ridged the west,
The sun, a snow-blown traveller, sank
From sight beneath the smothering bank,
We piled, with care, our nightly stack
Of wood against the chimney-back, —
The oaken log, green, huge, and thick,
And on its top the stout back-stick;
The knotty forestick laid apart,
And filled between with curious art

The ragged brush; then, hovering near,
We watched the first red blaze appear,
Heard the sharp crackle, caught the gleam
On whitewashed wall and sagging beam,
Until the old, rude-furnished room
Burst, flower-like, into rosy bloom;
While radiant with a mimic flame
Outside the sparkling drift became,
And through the bare-boughed lilac-tree
Our own warm hearth seemed blazing free.
The crane and pendent trammels showed,
The Turks’ heads on the andirons glowed;
While childish fancy, prompt to tell
The meaning of the miracle,
Whispered the old rhyme: “Under the tree,
When fire outdoors burns merrily,
There the witches are making tea.”

The moon above the eastern wood
Shone at its full; the hill-range stood
Transfigured in the silver flood,
Its blown snows flashing cold and keen,
Dead white, save where some sharp ravine
Took shadow, or the sombre green
Of hemlocks turned to pitchy black
Against the whiteness at their back.
For such a world and such a night
Most fitting that unwarming light,
Which only seemed where’er it fell
To make the coldness visible.

Shut in from all the world without,
We sat the clean-winged hearth about,
Content to let the north-wind roar
In baffled rage at pane and door,
While the red logs before us beat
The frost-line back with tropic heat;
And ever, when a louder blast
Shook beam and rafter as it passed,
The merrier up its roaring draught
The great throat of the chimney laughed;
The house-dog on his paws outspread
Laid to the fire his drowsy head,
The cat’s dark silhouette on the wall
A couchant tiger’s seemed to fall;
And, for the winter fireside meet,
Between the andirons’ straddling feet,
The mug of cider simmered slow,
The apples sputtered in a row,
And, close at hand, the basket stood
With nuts from brown October’s wood.

What matter how the night behaved?
What matter how the north-wind raved?
Blow high, blow low, not all its snow
Could quench our hearth-fire’s ruddy glow.
O Time and Change! — with hair as gray
As was my sire’s that winter day,
How strange it seems, with so much gone
Of life and love, to still live on!
Ah, brother! only I and thou
Are left of all that circle now, —
The dear home faces whereupon
That fitful firelight paled and shone.
Henceforward, listen as we will,
The voices of that hearth are still;
Look where we may, the wide earth o’er,
Those lighted faces smile no more.

We tread the paths their feet have worn,
We sit beneath their orchard trees,
We hear, like them, the hum of bees
And rustle of the bladed corn;
We turn the pages that they read,
Their written words we linger o’er,
But in the sun they cast no shade,
No voice is heard, no sign is made,
No step is on the conscious floor!
Yet Love will dream, and Faith will trust,
(Since He who knows our need is just,)
That somehow, somewhere, meet we must.
Alas for him who never sees
The stars shine through his cypress-trees!
Who, hopeless, lays his dead away,
Nor looks to see the breaking day
Across the mournful marbles play!
Who hath not learned, in hours of faith,
The truth to flesh and sense unknown,
That Life is ever lord of Death,
And Love can never lose its own!

We sped the time with stories old,
Wrought puzzles out, and riddles told,
Or stammered from our school-book lore
“The Chief of Gambia’s golden shore.”
How often since, when all the land
Was clay in Slavery’s shaping hand,
As if a far-blown trumpet stirred
Dame Mercy Warren’s rousing word:
“Does not the voice of reason cry,
Claim the first right which Nature gave,
From the red scourge of ******* to fly,
Nor deign to live a burdened slave!”
Our father rode again his ride
On Memphremagog’s wooded side;
Sat down again to moose and samp
In trapper’s hut and Indian camp;
Lived o’er the old idyllic ease
Beneath St. François’ hemlock-trees;
Again for him the moonlight shone
On Norman cap and bodiced zone;
Again he heard the violin play
Which led the village dance away.
And mingled in its merry whirl
The grandam and the laughing girl.
Or, nearer home, our steps he led
Where Salisbury’s level marshes spread
Mile-wide as flies the laden bee;
Where merry mowers, hale and strong,
Swept, scythe on scythe, their swaths along
The low green prairies of the sea.
We shared the fishing off Boar’s Head,
And round the rocky Isles of Shoals
The hake-broil on the drift-wood coals;
The chowder on the sand-beach made,
Dipped by the hungry, steaming hot,
With spoons of clam-shell from the ***.
We heard the tales of witchcraft old,
And dream and sign and marvel told
To sleepy listeners as they lay
Stretched idly on the salted hay,
Adrift along the winding shores,
When favoring breezes deigned to blow
The square sail of the gundelow
And idle lay the useless oars.

Our mother, while she turned her wheel
Or run the new-knit stocking-heel,
Told how the Indian hordes came down
At midnight on Concheco town,
And how her own great-uncle bore
His cruel scalp-mark to fourscore.
Recalling, in her fitting phrase,
So rich and picturesque and free
(The common unrhymed poetry
Of simple life and country ways,)
The story of her early days, —
She made us welcome to her home;
Old hearths grew wide to give us room;
We stole with her a frightened look
At the gray wizard’s conjuring-book,
The fame whereof went far and wide
Through all the simple country side;
We heard the hawks at twilight play,
The boat-horn on Piscataqua,
The loon’s weird laughter far away;
We fished her little trout-brook, knew
What flowers in wood and meadow grew,
What sunny hillsides autumn-brown
She climbed to shake the ripe nuts down,
Saw where in sheltered cove and bay,
The ducks’ black squadron anchored lay,
And heard the wild-geese calling loud
Beneath the gray November cloud.
Then, haply, with a look more grave,
And soberer tone, some tale she gave
From painful Sewel’s ancient tome,
Beloved in every Quaker home,
Of faith fire-winged by martyrdom,
Or Chalkley’s Journal, old and quaint, —
Gentlest of skippers, rare sea-saint! —
Who, when the dreary calms prevailed,
And water-**** and bread-cask failed,
And cruel, hungry eyes pursued
His portly presence mad for food,
With dark hints muttered under breath
Of casting lots for life or death,

Offered, if Heaven withheld supplies,
To be himself the sacrifice.
Then, suddenly, as if to save
The good man from his living grave,
A ripple on the water grew,
A school of porpoise flashed in view.
“Take, eat,” he said, “and be content;
These fishes in my stead are sent
By Him who gave the tangled ram
To spare the child of Abraham.”
Our uncle, innocent of books,
Was rich in lore of fields and brooks,
The ancient teachers never dumb
Of Nature’s unhoused lyceum.
In moons and tides and weather wise,
He read the clouds as prophecies,
And foul or fair could well divine,
By many an occult hint and sign,
Holding the cunning-warded keys
To all the woodcraft mysteries;
Himself to Nature’s heart so near
v That all her voices in his ear
Of beast or bird had meanings clear,
Like Apollonius of old,
Who knew the tales the sparrows told,
Or Hermes, who interpreted
What the sage cranes of Nilus said;
A simple, guileless, childlike man,
Content to live where life began;
Strong only on his native grounds,
The little world of sights and sounds
Whose girdle was the parish bounds,
Whereof his fondly partial pride
The common features magnified,
As Surrey hills to mountains grew
In White of Selborne’s loving view, —
He told how teal and loon he shot,
And how the eagle’s eggs he got,
The feats on pond and river done,
The prodigies of rod and gun;
Till, warming with the tales he told,
Forgotten was the outside cold,
The bitter wind unheeded blew,
From ripening corn the pigeons flew,
The partridge drummed i’ the wood, the mink
Went fishing down the river-brink.
In fields with bean or clover gay,
The woodchuck, like a hermit gray,
Peered from the doorway of his cell;
The muskrat plied the mason’s trade,
And tier by tier his mud-walls laid;
And from the shagbark overhead
The grizzled squirrel dropped his shell.

Next, the dear aunt, whose smile of cheer
And voice in dreams I see and hear, —
The sweetest woman ever Fate
Perverse denied a household mate,
Who, lonely, homeless, not the less
Found peace in love’s unselfishness,
And welcome wheresoe’er she went,
A calm and gracious element,
Whose presence seemed the sweet income
And womanly atmosphere of home, —
Called up her girlhood memories,
The huskings and the apple-bees,
The sleigh-rides and the summer sails,
Weaving through all the poor details
And homespun warp of circumstance
A golden woof-thread of romance.
For well she kept her genial mood
And simple faith of maidenhood;
Before her still a cloud-land lay,
The mirage loomed across her way;
The morning dew, that dries so soon
With others, glistened at her noon;
Through years of toil and soil and care,
From glossy tress to thin gray hair,
All unprofaned she held apart
The ****** fancies of the heart.
Be shame to him of woman born
Who hath for such but thought of scorn.
There, too, our elder sister plied
Her evening task the stand beside;
A full, rich nature, free to trust,
Truthful and almost sternly just,
Impulsive, earnest, prompt to act,
And make her generous thought a fact,
Keeping with many a light disguise
The secret of self-sacrifice.

O heart sore-tried! thou hast the best
That Heaven itself could give thee, — rest,
Rest from all bitter thoughts and things!
How many a poor one’s blessing went
With thee beneath the low green tent
Whose curtain never outward swings!

As one who held herself a part
Of all she saw, and let her heart
Against the household ***** lean,
Upon the motley-braided mat
Our youngest and our dearest sat,
Lifting her large, sweet, asking eyes,
Now bathed in the unfading green
And holy peace of Paradise.
Oh, looking from some heavenly hill,
Or from the shade of saintly palms,
Or silver reach of river calms,
Do those large eyes behold me still?
With me one little year ago: —
The chill weight of the winter snow
For months upon her grave has lain;
And now, when summer south-winds blow
And brier and harebell bloom again,
I tread the pleasant paths we trod,
I see the violet-sprinkled sod
Whereon she leaned, too frail and weak
The hillside flowers she loved to seek,
Yet following me where’er I went
With dark eyes full of love’s content.
The birds are glad; the brier-rose fills
The air with sweetness; all the hills
Stretch green to June’s unclouded sky;
But still I wait with ear and eye
For something gone which should be nigh,
A loss in all familiar things,
In flower that blooms, and bird that sings.
And yet, dear heart! remembering thee,
Am I not richer than of old?
Safe in thy immortality,
What change can reach the wealth I hold?
What chance can mar the pearl and gold
Thy love hath left in trust with me?
And while in life’s late afternoon,
Where cool and long the shadows grow,
I walk to meet the night that soon
Shall shape and shadow overflow,
I cannot feel that thou art far,
Since near at need the angels are;
And when the sunset gates unbar,
Shall I not see thee waiting stand,
And, white against the evening star,
The welcome of thy beckoning hand?

Brisk wielder of the birch and rule,
The master of the district school
Held at the fire his favored place,
Its warm glow lit a laughing face
Fresh-hued and fair, where scarce appeared
The uncertain prophecy of beard.
He teased the mitten-blinded cat,
Played cross-pins on my uncle’s hat,
Sang songs, and told us what befalls
In classic Dartmouth’s college halls.
Born the wild Northern hills among,
From whence his yeoman father wrung
By patient toil subsistence scant,
Not competence and yet not want,
He early gained the power to pay
His cheerful, self-reliant way;
Could doff at ease his scholar’s gown
To peddle wares from town to town;
Or through the long vacation’s reach
In lonely lowland districts teach,
Where all the droll experience found
At stranger hearths in boarding round,
The moonlit skater’s keen delight,
The sleigh-drive through the frosty night,
The rustic party, with its rough
Accompaniment of blind-man’s-buff,
And whirling-plate, and forfeits paid,
His winter task a pastime made.
Happy the snow-locked homes wherein
He tuned his merry violin,

Or played the athlete in the barn,
Or held the good dame’s winding-yarn,
Or mirth-provoking versions told
Of classic legends rare and old,
Wherein the scenes of Greece and Rome
Had all the commonplace of home,
And little seemed at best the odds
‘Twixt Yankee pedlers and old gods;
Where Pindus-born Arachthus took
The guise of any grist-mill brook,
And dread Olympus at his will
Became a huckleberry hill.

A careless boy that night he seemed;
But at his desk he had the look
And air of one who wisely schemed,
And hostage from the future took
In trainëd thought and lore of book.
Large-brained, clear-eyed, of such as he
Shall Freedom’s young apostles be,
Who, following in War’s ****** trail,
Shall every lingering wrong assail;
All chains from limb and spirit strike,
Uplift the black and white alike;
Scatter before their swift advance
The darkness and the ignorance,
The pride, the lust, the squalid sloth,
Which nurtured Treason’s monstrous growth,
Made ****** pastime, and the hell
Of prison-torture possible;
The cruel lie of caste refute,
Old forms remould, and substitute
For Slavery’s lash the freeman’s will,
For blind routine, wise-handed skill;
A school-house plant on every hill,
Stretching in radiate nerve-lines thence
The quick wires of intelligence;
Till North and South together brought
Shall own the same electric thought,
In peace a common flag salute,
And, side by side in labor’s free
And unresentful rivalry,
Harvest the fields wherein they fought.

Another guest that winter night
Flashed back from lustrous eyes the light.
Unmarked by time, and yet not young,
The honeyed music of her tongue
And words of meekness scarcely told
A nature passionate and bold,

Strong, self-concentred, spurning guide,
Its milder features dwarfed beside
Her unbent will’s majestic pride.
She sat among us, at the best,
A not unfeared, half-welcome guest,
Rebuking with her cultured phrase
Our homeliness of words and ways.
A certain pard-like, treacherous grace
Swayed the lithe limbs and drooped the lash,
Lent the white teeth their dazzling flash;
And under low brows, black with night,
Rayed out at times a dangerous light;
The sharp heat-lightnings of her face
Presaging ill to him whom Fate
Condemned to share her love or hate.
A woman tropical, intense
In thought and act, in soul and sense,
She blended in a like degree
The ***** and the devotee,
Revealing with each freak or feint
The temper of Petruchio’s Kate,
The raptures of Siena’s saint.
Her tapering hand and rounded wrist
Had facile power to form a fist;
The warm, dark languish of her eyes
Was never safe from wrath’s surprise.
Brows saintly calm and lips devout
Knew every change of scowl and pout;
And the sweet voice had notes more high
And shrill for social battle-cry.

Since then what old cathedral town
Has missed her pilgrim staff and gown,
What convent-gate has held its lock
Against the challenge of her knock!
Through Smyrna’s plague-hushed thoroughfares,
Up sea-set Malta’s rocky stairs,
Gray olive slopes of hills that hem
Thy tombs and shrines, Jerusalem,
Or startling on her desert throne
The crazy Queen of Lebanon
With claims fantastic as her own,
Her tireless feet have held their way;
And still, unrestful, bowed, and gray,
She watches under Eastern skies,
With hope each day renewed and fresh,
The Lord’s quick coming in the flesh,
Whereof she dreams and prophesies!
Where’er her troubled path may be,
The Lord’s sweet pity with her go!
The outward wayward life we see,
The hidden springs we may not know.
Nor is it given us to discern
What threads the fatal sisters spun,
Through what ancestral years has run
The sorrow with the woman born,
What forged her cruel chain of moods,
What set her feet in solitudes,
And held the love within her mute,
What mingled madness in the blood,
A life-long discord and annoy,
Water of tears with oil of joy,
And hid within the folded bud
Perversities of flower and fruit.
It is not ours to separate
The tangled skein of will and fate,
To show what metes and bounds should stand
Upon the soul’s debatable land,
And between choice and Providence
Divide the circle of events;
But He who knows our frame is just,
Merciful and compassionate,
And full of sweet assurances
And hope for all the language is,
That He remembereth we are dust!

At last the great logs, crumbling low,
Sent out a dull and duller glow,
The bull’s-eye watch that hung in view,
Ticking its weary circuit through,
Pointed with mutely warning sign
Its black hand to the hour of nine.
That sign the pleasant circle broke:
My uncle ceased his pipe to smoke,
Knocked from its bowl the refuse gray,
And laid it tenderly away;
Then roused himself to safely cover
The dull red brands with ashes over.
And while, with care, our mother laid
The work aside, her steps she stayed
One moment, seeking to express
Her grateful sense of happiness
For food and shelter, warmth and health,
And love’s contentment more than wealth,
With simple wishes (not the weak,
Vain prayers which no fulfilment seek,
But such as warm the generous heart,
O’er-prompt to do with Heaven its part)
That none might lack, that bitter night,
For bread and clothing, warmth and light.

Within our beds awhile we heard
The wind that round the gables roared,
With now and then a ruder shock,
Which made our very bedsteads rock.
We heard the loosened clapboards tost,
The board-nails snapping in the frost;
And on us, through the unplastered wall,
Felt the light sifted snow-flakes fall.
But sleep stole on, as sleep will do
When hearts are light and life is new;
Faint and more faint the murmurs grew,
Till in the summer-land of dreams
They softened to the sound of streams,
Low stir of leaves, and dip of oars,
And lapsing waves on quiet shores.
Of merry voices high and clear;
And saw the teamsters drawing near
To break the drifted highways out.
Down the long hillside treading slow
We saw the half-buried oxen go,
Shaking the snow from heads uptost,
Their straining nostrils white with frost.
Before our door the straggling train
Drew up, an added team to gain.
The elders threshed their hands a-cold,
Passed, with the cider-mug, their jokes
From lip to lip; the younger folks
Down the loose snow-banks, wrestling, rolled,
Then toiled again the cavalcade
O’er windy hill, through clogged ravine,
And woodland paths that wound between
Low drooping pine-boughs winter-weighed.
From every barn a team afoot,
At every house a new recruit,
Where, drawn by Nature’s subtlest law,
Haply the watchful young men saw
Sweet doorway pictures of the curls
And curious eyes of merry girls,
Lifting their hands in mock defence
Against the snow-ball’s compliments,
And reading in each missive tost
The charm with Eden never lost.
We heard once more the sleigh-bells’ sound;
And, following where the teamsters led,
The wise old Doctor went his round,
Just pausing at our door to say,
In the brief autocratic way
Of one who, prompt at Duty’s call,
Was free to urge her claim on all,
That some poor neighbor sick abed
At night our mother’s aid would need.
For, one in generous thought and deed,
What mattered in the sufferer’s sight
The Quaker matron’s inward light,
The Doctor’s mail of Calvin’s creed?
All hearts confess the saints elect
Who, twain in faith, in love agree,
And melt not in an acid sect
The Christian pearl of charity!

So days went on: a week had passed
Since the great world was heard from last.
The Almanac we studied o’er,
Read and reread our little store
Of books and pamphlets, scarce a score;
One harmless novel, mostly hid
From younger eyes, a book forbid,
And poetry, (or good or bad,
A single book was all we had,)
Where Ellwood’s meek, drab-skirted Muse,
A stranger to the heathen Nine,
Sang, with a somewhat nasal whine,
The wars of David and the Jews.
At last the floundering carrier bore
The village paper to our door.
Lo! broadening outward as we read,
To warmer zones the horizon spread
In panoramic length unrolled
We saw the marvels that it told.
Before us passed the painted Creeks,
A   nd daft McGregor on his raids
In Costa Rica’s everglades.
And up Taygetos winding slow
Rode Ypsilanti’s Mainote Greeks,
A Turk’s head at each saddle-bow!
Welcome to us its week-old news,
Its corner for the rustic Muse,
Its monthly gauge of snow and rain,
Its record, mingling in a breath
The wedding bell and dirge of death:
Jest, anecdote, and love-lorn tale,
The latest culprit sent to jail;
Its hue and cry of stolen and lost,
Its vendue sales and goods at cost,
And traffic calling loud for gain.
We felt the stir of hall and street,
The pulse of life that round us beat;
The chill embargo of the snow
Was melted in the genial glow;
Wide swung again our ice-locked door,
And all the world was ours once more!

Clasp, Angel of the backword look
And folded wings of ashen gray
And voice of echoes far away,
The brazen covers of thy book;
The weird palimpsest old and vast,
Wherein thou hid’st the spectral past;
Where, closely mingling, pale and glow
The characters of joy and woe;
The monographs of outlived years,
Or smile-illumed or dim with tears,
Green hills of life that ***** to death,
And haunts of home, whose vistaed trees
Shade off to mournful cypresses
With the white amaranths underneath.
Even while I look, I can but heed
The restless sands’ incessant fall,
Importunate hours that hours succeed,
Each clamorous with its own sharp need,
And duty keeping pace with all.
Shut down and clasp with heavy lids;
I hear again the voice that bids
The dreamer leave his dream midway
For larger hopes and graver fears:
Life greatens in these later years,
The century’s aloe flowers to-day!

Yet, haply, in some lull of life,
Some Truce of God which breaks its strife,
The worldling’s eyes shall gather dew,
Dreaming in throngful city ways
Of winter joys his boyhood knew;
And dear and early friends — the few
Who yet remain — shall pause to view
These Flemish pictures of old days;
Sit with me by the homestead hearth,
And stretch the hands of memory forth
To warm them at the wood-fire’s blaze!
And thanks untraced to lips unknown
Shall greet me like the odors blown
From unseen meadows newly mown,
Wood-fringed, the wayside gaze beyond;
The traveller owns the grateful sense
Of sweetness near, he knows not whence,
And, pausing, takes with forehead bare
The benediction of the air.

Written in  1865

Sometimes it starts
It's faint, but quaint,
Whispering across your skin
A breath, the fog
There's no need to talk
Silence is all you need
In your conflicting state of mind.

You sit, it speaks
Volumes to me
Words can't quite convey
Your thoughts, your feelings,
The rushes of contrary
Swirling in your contradicting states of mind

You hesitate, and take a little light step
Making a mockery of grace
But then you taste the rain in the air
You decide that life's never fair
Pretty or just, both seem to rust
Leaving you with the unrestful state of mind.

Oh, how I wish that I could fall asleep
But sleep won’t come when loneliness prevails
Along with voices of the scars that run so deep
And memories too much like living hell
Trying to forget the past and all regret
But they scream their where although they’re dead and gone
The present, like the past, I wish I could forget
Lying here alone, the nights are just too long

This bed is far too empty, just as I feel inside
Despite so much that weighs upon my soul
My heart longs for a love that always proves denied
Each time I fool myself takes such a toll
My dreams become the nightmares in each unrestful hour
This broken heart just never seems to mend
‘Til hope that once sustained becomes the monster that devours
This love that burns within me will destroy me in the end

Won’t you come and lay my broken heart to rest?
I’ve tried a thousand times to no avail
I’m dying here alone
This is my last request
Prove to me that love can still prevail

I’m sitting here with just myself for company
Rewriting words I’ve said too many times
Still, they go unanswered as they echo back to me
In every word I bleed
In every line
Professing my emotion is my darkest curse
And yet, I find I’ve still so much to say
My silence or expression…
I don’t know which is worse
When these sleepless nights are much too long to make it go away

Won’t you come and lay my broken heart to rest?
I’ve tried a thousand times to no avail
I’m dying here alone
This is my last request
Prove to me that love can still prevail

Won’t you come and lay my broken heart to rest?
Speak the words I long to hear you say
I’m dying here alone
Please grant my last request
Prove to me that love will find a way

grey
the sky is
the fields are sometimes, too;
it is England, after all

view upon view, an expanse of
dusty hues -
the sorts of colours you might find
locked up in an attic, unused
for years

the grey is a stillness, an unrestful quiet
that stretches out across the country
like a tapestry of disdain

we feel nothing here, because
the grey has taken it - well
has dimmed it; perhaps
it still exists somewhere
beneath the sombre sea

of colour, or a lack of it;
and i can make no sense of it, nor it
of me
because, you see
the grey pervades

it turns everything the same shade,
and impossible to pick out hues
it blends in one
leaving but an impression
of a world no longer clear

yet artists, poets, lovers and children still hope
and they stare expecting to suddenly see a sunburst of colour
across the grey.

Her arms are covered in ink,
doodles of barbaric things sprouting forth, like venus fly traps ready to pounce.
and words are branded on her arms like red scars.
Ink stains that scream hateful things

Not a single shred of skin is left untarnished
the ink is a cover up of her identity.
hiding her flesh with poisonous writing
the thoughts inside finally on show.

she covers her arms with long sleeve tops
to hide the hateful ink from the world
trying to keep some dignity of her own
yet still drawing childish hateful things on her arms

her face is blank, her eyes are emotionless
as she scrawls poetry and images on her arms till she draws blood.
she is just an emotionless zombie, an empty shell.
no longer existing in this world or belonging in it.

and thats how she'll always stay, forever here in body alone but never in mind or spirit. and always the unanswered question 'why do you do this to yourself?' floats around like an unrestful spirit.

You there sitting in that window aimlessly thinking
Like the thought bubble in a comic you sit
You there with the darkened eyes
That show your soul bright as day
You there with the shaking leg
Take a break from what ever your doing and think
You there speaking to the class
Stand up tall and don’t be afraid
No one can judge you by the way you talk or your opinion
Because what you say is yours and you own that
You there sleeping all day
Get up make your restful life unrestful
You there listen to these words
That I say for today might be the last day you hear
You there open your eyes
For today might be the last day you see
You there with the sewn mouth
Speak up for today might be the last day that you speak
You there holding the hand of your child
Tell them you love them For today might be the last day you hold their hand
You there with the depression and sadness that drowns you
Smile like you have never been hurt and nothing matters
For today might be the last day that you smile
You there with the excuse for everything
Just do it because today might be the last day you do anything
You there yes you
Everyone of you live life like it was your last day

Last night I got lost
in the vast expanses of myself.
Who knew there was so much of me?
While the shifting realities
churned before my black eyes,
changing just after I named them,
I drifted, eyes closed, on an unrestful sea
made of the most chilling noises.
Thrilling voices
soaring from the television,
as I light another cigarette.
My friend, Nicotine, seems colder
tonight.
Unreasonably less vital,
woefully less communicative.
The couch refuses to speak with me as well,
and the only voices are those of the television,
masked and muffled by the dense,
strangely spinning, parallel homes
of the dead, of the living,
of everything but me,
for I am become POET
the describer of worlds!
Laugh now, kid. It's okay.
Blame it on the television, or the acid, or a joke you could swear someone made.
But laugh, because I never knew there was this much of you,
and the things coming out of the deeper waters
are beginning to make me uncomfortable.

In sleep sings memory,
abnormal, eclectic melodies,
impressing to me what needed attention,
because, today was successful,
until the latent rears its unrestful head,
friends deceived, belief left dead
could I dispense such blatant injustice?
apparently so,
for, deep in the throes of these old unknowns
lies knowledge uncovered, under errors disowned.

— for Síneánn*

We drove to a lost, lonely isle,
If only once to find ourselves
Again belonging to the strands
That tided us in beads and wave,
The sea new, aloft and birds moved
As we flew, sailing under cascades,
What breathtaking strides to make
And the sun was dripping and swept
Away to us on the gentle crests breaking
We spoke soft nothings, as to know things
So simple to be kept wanting nor ever said,
The lonely star of day was sleepy, dimmed
By sparks, the shimmer to our eyes, so clear,
Shall be the hills of the isle to us, will always
Remain cast with new lamb and crowned deer,
By thorn and thistle and rimmed with broken shells
Strung on a beach so singular, before innocence
And grace, by two ****** lovers aloft in only sky
To be joined, with hands of the long night stars,
Finally reached, by the glass in the running grains
Untouched, ingrained, stained into ocean salt
Always by the seas of joy and given to each
Ever to be moved on the high tune eternal,
In stations of grass and stray wood drifted
Among wings by the slip of tides monumental,
Till when we drove away, this time, in a carriage
Old of unrestful sleep, crossed, beyond—
A bridge of sighs.

Most nights I dont have to wish for her to keep me warm,
my blankets embrace me just as softly but they dont squeeze my ribs the same.
One time my grandfather told me when I was really young that a woman can never be  anything less than everything shes supposed to be, and that if its your woman your job is to see that through. I like to think if maybe I could rewind time about 3 years and somehow manipulate all 3 of our timelines enough that you would get to meet him and hear his laugh, or get a nickname from him and be able to tell me if my hugs feel like his cause ive never felt safer than those moments.
I never wanted to take you from your family and I feel each day they like me less and I like you more.
Marriage is a weird concept to me and ive never been sure if its what I want, its no fear of commitment or fear of missing out on anything but it just seems silly to me. non essential even.
I dont know but I know that standing in the doorway to my bathroom and looking her in the eyes as my breaths matched hers Ive never been more positive of who I wanted to spend the rest of my life with,
of who I want to watch our friends grow old with,
of who I want to argue over song lyrics with ( and lose ) forever,
of who I want to be the one I trust with the things im afraid of telling myself,
of the one whos poison I would drink if the last words I heard were
"I love you b"
Ive never been happier to be called disgusting by anyone than when they refer to the unreasonable amount of attachment and affection we have for each other,
I have NEVER cried more over anyone other than my grandfather and thats because ive never met anyone more monumentally important in my life I like to think my grandfather would be so proud of the woman you are, someone with a voice and soul, someone with  a warm heart filled with cold winters and the same unrestful home life he knew I had and tried to sing me through with songs and nicknames, I can never know the struggles you had, I can never feel your pain or rub away the scars, but I just want to make you smile and hear you sing, I just want to kick it in Australia with a blunt in my mouth while I watch you dip your toes in the sea and know your love is just as expansive, nobody gets to decide who they need in their life, as I dig this hole with each smiling shovel of dirt she pushes a little back in, sneakily slowing my progress and saving my soul there is nothing greedy about my love but encompassing is an all to applicable adjective
tell your father im sorry his little girl isnt home every night anymore, and tell your mom im sorry that im the reason you guys dont hang out,
tell your niece im sorry i keep randomly showing up and asking her weird questions,
tell your cat to keep your bed warm for me cause I know you tend to feel ghost chills in the absence of your best friends curls,
tell your baggage theres tons of room in my closet,
tell your Ex's that they are history, not to be forgotten and their impact is forever but their opinions are irrelevant,
I dont know why im so dependant on you, or ****, or the ******* sunsets in the sky but there hasnt been a day when death hasnt seemed easier, but there also hasnt been a day when I have felt ready to give any of this up and I want you to know that there is nothing on this god ****** planet I wont do to make sure youre safe,
do you remember when I walked to your house just to read words to you from a dictionary?
I think back to ten months ago and smile at the way things were,
the best parts of our memories shine the brightest and the stresses of our day to days stay hidden behind the rays of good memories, the stresses of today will soon be eclipsed by good memories,
dont let the whispers in your mind tear at your heart and Ill do my best to silence mine,
there will be doubts and there will be struggles but never doubt that my grandfather blessed me with the strength to help you become everything you are meant to be and ill be here till the day we figure out the afterlife,
and if you figure it out before me im not saying ill last a month or a week even but ill do my damndest to make sure people know about your curls and skin and voice and mind,
I never want to live a day i cant tell you about,
I never want to see the world without the sound of your laugh filling the wind in my ears,
I never want to take a breath you couldnt breathe and if I ever have to I might just break.
tonight I wish she was here to keep me warm,

There you were on 658 North Skyline drive, visiting the place where you once called home
With those innocent, helpless girls on your restless, manic mind.
At the age of twenty-five, a hopeless law-student drop out
Sitting in the blistering hot Summer Tacoma heat in your battered beige Volkswagen windows down,
wind blowing on your ruddy face.
Wishing you had a flashy Maserati
Thousands of beads of sweat trickle down your head like a waterfall.
Frustrated and exhausted
Knowing the fate what's going to become of the pretty, carefree girls laughing, walking ahead on the street by your car, but they're completely unaware.
The reminisce of cheap beer and stale cigarettes on your breath
As you quickly glance at your velvet crowbar, that resides on your chair-less passenger side, so desperately wanting another hit.

Jittering with panic inside, that familiar feeling surges with an adrenaline rush in your body, going from zero to eighty in 0.01 seconds
You start to get in a trance with self-destruction, panicking with chaotic anger beginning to emerge again, in waves like the ocean.
The entity begins to set in
Yet something abruptly stops you.
Holding a crumbled picture of dear Elizabeth and Molly, you keep your wallet in your right blue jean back pocket.
Yet you don't give in to your double life.No. Not this time.
Letting the devastating, destructive behavior from the entity consume your entire being.
As you begin to have sudden regret ignoring the powerful, impatient fidgety urge.


Ten girls have now suddenly evaporated into thin air, caused by your harmful doing.
Police and newspaper sightings of a certain man named "Ted" have appeared out of the woodwork,
But you keep that identity hidden under lock and key.
Newsflashes pop up at the five o'clock hour, but nothing seems to phase you into utter shock.

Now sitting in an unclean, rat-infested jail cell in Colorado
The walls only seem to know the REAL you
The light fixture is almost sawed off entirely to your liking, for your excitingly filled escape, set for tonight.
Going through the small labyrinth of the ceiling of the jail,
New, fresh, clean clothes on, and annoying coveralls off
You open the front door, as a blast of the bone-chilling cold goes through your body,
Fast, snow falling on the ground, and luckily a car with its doors  unlocked
You now fade away into the blackness.

After you've completed the horrendous event in Lake City that you so desired to do on a whim
There's now no recollection of your recent event, even though you were there.
The trees with the wind are whispering and gossip your horrific acts.
Only they truly know your lawless stories


A couple of years has rolled by,
Trial after trial, day in and day out
Hoping and confident that you'll win, but each time, you've disappointingly lost.
Judge Cowart sits on his throne, tentatively listens
The buzz from the ***** and pills that your beloved Carole snuck in for you is finally beginning to wear off.
Irritation sets
As you razzle-dazzle each individual with your stealthy charm
The time has finally come that the jury decides your ultimate, timely fate


Flash forward to eight years on death row, with that heavy metal that you wear
Living in a concrete castle, in a desolate foreign land
Indeed not Buckingham Palace.
Rowdy, loud, *****, unclean, unshaven men surround you.
Something that your not used to doing.
Not the place you wish to be at the moment.
Body odor and sweat with no air conditioning in a stagnant, minuscule cell might also be Hell on Earth.
While just an old malfunctioning fan tries to keep you cool from Florida's oppressive heat.
You talk to the four walls, that listen when the detectives get fed up and bored. With your perpetual beating around the bush rhetoric.
You wasted  your life on behalf of your destructive behavior and wrong choices
Time is ticking faster and faster when you only have a few days left till death day arrives
Rose is officially gone and is now a long distant faded memory of your failed career of a deadbeat father and husband.
It's been a few years since you last saw her and Carole as they vanished from your life.
Vanished and stolen.
Like the girl's lives, you had vanished and stolen from happy families only to destroy when you willingly obeyed and fulfilled the entity's destructive wish.
Your tears become your lullaby, for your last night on Earth.

January 24th, 1989.
Your expiration date has arrived.
Rowdy, drunk onlookers are at your last hurrah
The warden swiftly comes to your death watch cell and wakes you up from the unrestful, anxiety-filled sleep you had gotten
Are you ready? He asks you.
No longer now is a handsome forty-two-year-old, but a shaven bald gangly, ailing man, with the appearance of looking like a sixty-year-old who's unrecognizable to one's eye.
"Deadman walking," the warden shouts.
Emotionless expression looks of people that you've once known in your past are now seated in small white chairs
As officers restrain you in the infamous wooden chair, of the many in-humane men who've gone, years before your time.
Adjust your electric crown
Nerves begin to quake internally like a rattlesnake
And in less than a flash, with two- thousand volts, you'll be gone from this world forever.
At approximately 7:16 am, you're pronounced dead.




Alone & Forgotten.

At times, I believe I am more than just my own worst enemy
At times, it seems I am incapable of finding peace
No matter how I struggle to find comfort in the fact that my day will come
There are too many days where everything seems like nothing
And far too few where nothing seems like everything
Maybe it is just this depression that I can never quite shake
Or maybe it is the fact of so many years holding to the words I speak to others
As the comfort they provide finds no home in my own endeavours
For it is getting harder to hold to hope more often in the bad times
When the bad times come more frequently, with no resolution but unrestful sleep
And the dreams that have finally returned to me
Bring more often than not what I cannot have and cannot hold
As if living ghosts, too impatient to wait for their demise
There are so many in the physical world who seek my words and advice
When that very advice fails me time and time again
And I cannot understand how such a thing can be so
I have waited so long, and have held to hope until my fingers have bled
But far too often it seems hope is all I get in return
Until even my poetry, which is so often my salvation, begins to seem monotonous to me
And every day that passes waiting for things to improve becomes a little harder
My words become more struggled and strangled
And the only consolation is that they may help others, even if not myself at times
Maybe it is just so many years of waiting, with no change or relief
Maybe it is just my depression finally getting the better of me
Maybe I am just not as strong as I used to be
So weary and tired from this repetitive journey
Travelling so many weary miles
Only to find myself at the beginning time and time again
Until even when there are smiles and laughter
Even when there are shoulders to cry on and friends beside me
Even when the storms of mind flee and the world seems beautiful
Even when I know things can't stay like this forever
The seconds drag on like hours
The hours seem as days
And the days seem eternal
And the only hope left to hold on to
Is that hope continues to hold on as tightly as I do
Until my day finally arrives

it is hard to be a girl because you are torn between what you are supposed to do and what you are supposed to want, nevermind what you really feel, because that is the role you play:
this is the price you pay.

you are supposed to want a good boy,
a relationship,
opened doors and emotional connection,
nothing more intense than holding hands in public
and a white, white wedding down the line.

and if you decide that you want something else,
if you are interested in nothing more and nothing less
than dim-lit nights and passing men
the intoxication of physical contact,
no expectations expected,
than you are broken, or you are in denial,
and no one wants a crazy girl.

you are supposed to do
whatever he tells you to,
whatever he asks, in that careful tone,
that tells you what it means if you say no.
he knows, and you do not,
and you are his playtoy,
even though you are a woman
and he is a boy.

and if you decide that you will not stand for it,
question him or make him talk,
push emotions on him that he is not yet mature enough to handle,
(nevermind that he is older than you, but there is such a word as man-child but not woman-child because we have no choice but to grow up),
then you a *****, then you are a fool,
then you will lose him,
or worse,
he will tell the world,
and you will lose yourself.

so you tell me that I am supposed to want one thing and do another?
you do not want me to want to do what he says,
and yet you expect me to obey anyway?
I am supposed to have no desire beyond a child's,
no needs like he has,
and yet I am supposed to lay there nonetheless,
obedient but not longing,
just following the unwritten rules.

you want me to be unhappy, I see it now,
it is a game that I am never meant to win.
either I am broken and strange
or destined to be alone...
what kind of choice is that?

so I grit my teeth and pretend I don't want this,
pretend that I do not ache for more unrestful nights,
pretend that I love you when I do not,
I just love touching you,
that is your expectation,
but if I ever said it,
it would mean my downfall and my shame.

they tell you, in these situations,
that you need to be yourself,
but no one ever gave me that kind of choice.

they showed me beauty and love and said:
"here is the role a woman will play"
"this is the price you have to pay"

I wish to sleep a long dark sleep
Where there has never been
Such a silence, or epic shyness
Being haunted by my every sin
Oh great creator, what is it in my nature
So depraved and deathly forlorn
That haunts my twisted sleep, where I fight to keep
That baby-smell with which I was born...…

I long to dream a most decrepit dream
In deaths most unrestful rest
Whose sinful fall at my soul does gnaw
Into this most troubled trespass
Where man's duality is ripped at the seams
And *** is woven into its twist
Where innate ideas on procreation
Pains my most selfish aching
And my bid for God's congress....bleeds

I wish to witness, the light that shines on the other side
Where life, in its truth, is the dream
Where blood is quantum love and tangerine doves
Paint nothing as it seems
Where we are understanding and the creator the planning
So I can finally find that Big Sleep
Filled with blissfulness and end emptied of painfulness
Where all is precisely as it should be
And so,
With no need to cry, I wrap myself up
Ever-so comfortably
Inside,
My time,
To die...

Dartanion2