Sadness and Melancholy

A Visit To The Asylum

Once from a big, big building,
When I was small, small,
The queer folk in the windows
Would smile at me and call.


And in the hard wee gardens
Such pleasant men would hoe:
"Sir, may we touch the little girl's hair!"—
It was so red, you know.


They cut me coloured asters
With shears so sharp and neat,
They brought me grapes and plums and pears
And pretty cakes to eat.


And out of all the windows,
No matter where we went,
The merriest eyes would follow me
And make me compliment.


There were a thousand windows,
All latticed up and down.
And up to all the windows,
When we went back to town,


The queer folk put their faces,
As gentle as could be;
"Come again, little girl!" they called, and I
Called back, "You come see me!"

The Bells - A Collaboration

The bells! — ah, the bells!
The little silver bells!
How fairy-like a melody there floats
From their throats. —
From their merry little throats —
From the silver, tinkling throats
Of the bells, bells, bells —
Of the bells!


The bells! — ah, the bells!
The heavy iron bells!
How horrible a monody there floats
From their throats —
From their deep-toned throats —
From their melancholy throats!
How I shudder at the notes
Of the bells, bells, bells —
Of the bells!

The City In The Sea

Lo! Death has reared himself a throne
In a strange city lying alone
Far down within the dim West,
Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best
Have gone to their eternal rest.
There shrines and palaces and towers
(Time-eaten towers that tremble not!)
Resemble nothing that is ours.
Around, by lifting winds forgot,
Resignedly beneath the sky
The melancholy waters he.

No rays from the holy heaven come down
On the long night-time of that town;
But light from out the lurid sea
Streams up the turrets silentlyGleams
up the pinnacles far and freeUp
domes- up spires- up kingly hallsUp
fanes- up Babylon-like wallsUp
shadowy long-forgotten bowers
Of sculptured ivy and stone flowersUp
many and many a marvellous shrine
Whose wreathed friezes intertwine
The viol, the violet, and the vine.
Resignedly beneath the sky
The melancholy waters lie.
So blend the turrets and shadows there
That all seem pendulous in air,
While from a proud tower in the town
Death looks gigantically down.


There open fanes and gaping graves
Yawn level with the luminous waves;
But not the riches there that lie
In each idol's diamond eyeNot
the gaily-jewelled dead
Tempt the waters from their bed;
For no ripples curl, alas!
Along that wilderness of glassNo
swellings tell that winds may be
Upon some far-off happier seaNo
heavings hint that winds have been
On seas less hideously serene.


But lo, a stir is in the air!
The wave- there is a movement there!
As if the towers had thrust aside,
In slightly sinking, the dull tideAs
if their tops had feebly given
A void within the filmy Heaven.
The waves have now a redder glowThe
hours are breathing faint and low



And when, amid no earthly moans,
Down, down that town shall settle hence,
Hell, rising from a thousand thrones,
Shall do it reverence.

A Dream

In visions of the dark night
I have dreamed of joy departedBut
a waking dream of life and light
Hath left me broken-hearted.

Ah! what is not a dream by day
To him whose eyes are cast
On things around him with a ray
Turned back upon the past?


That holy dream- that holy dream,
While all the world were chiding,
Hath cheered me as a lovely beam


A lonely spirit guiding.

What though that light, thro' storm and night,
So trembled from afarWhat
could there be more purely bright
In Truth's day-star?

A Dream Within A Dream

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avowYou
are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sandHow
few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep- while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

Clown in the Moon

My tears are like the quiet drift
Of petals from some magic rose;
And all my grief flows from the rift
Of unremembered skies and snows.


I think, that if I touched the earth,
It would crumble;
It is so sad and beautiful,
So tremulously like a dream.

Wail


Love has gone a-rocketing.
That is not the worst;
I could do without the thing,
And not be the first.


Joy has gone the way it came.
That is nothing new;
I could get along the same, --
Many people do.


Dig for me the narrow bed,
Now I am bereft.
All my pretty hates are dead,
And what have I left?

The Trifler

Death's the lover that I'd be taking;
Wild and fickle and fierce is he.
Small's his care if my heart be breaking-
Gay young Death would have none of me.


Hear them clack of my haste to greet him!
No one other my mouth had kissed.
I had dressed me in silk to meet him-
False young Death would not hold the tryst.


Slow's the blood that was quick and stormy,
Smooth and cold is the bridal bed;
I must wait till he whistles for me-
Proud young Death would not turn his head.


I must wait till my breast is wilted.
I must wait till my back is bowed,
I must rock in the corner, jilted-
Death went galloping down the road.


Gone's my heart with a trifling rover.
Fine he was in the game he played-
Kissed, and promised, and threw me over,
And rode away with a prettier maid.

Symptom Recital

I do not like my state of mind;
I'm bitter, querulous, unkind.
I hate my legs, I hate my hands,
I do not yearn for lovelier lands.
I dread the dawn's recurrent light;
I hate to go to bed at night.
I snoot at simple, earnest folk.
I cannot take the gentlest joke.
I find no peace in paint or type.
My world is but a lot of tripe.
I'm disillusioned, empty-breasted.
For what I think, I'd be arrested.
I am not sick, I am not well.
My quondam dreams are shot to hell.
My soul is crushed, my spirit sore;
I do not like me any more.
I cavil, quarrel, grumble, grouse.
I ponder on the narrow house.
I shudder at the thought of men....
I'm due to fall in love again.

Summary


Every love's the love before
In a duller dress.

That's the measure of my loreHere's
my bitterness:

Would I knew a little more,
Or very much less!

Rondeau Redoublé

[and scarcely worth the trouble, at that]

The same to me are somber days and gay.
Though Joyous dawns the rosy morn, and bright,
Because my dearest love is gone away
Within my heart is melancholy night.

My heart beats low in loneliness, despite
That riotous Summer holds the earth in sway.
In cerements my spirit is bedight;
The same to me are somber days and gay.

Though breezes in the rippling grasses play,
And waves dash high and far in glorious might,
I thrill no longer to the sparkling day,
Though joyous dawns the rosy morn, and bright.

Ungraceful seems to me the swallow's flight;
As well might heaven's blue be sullen gray;
My soul discerns no beauty in their sight
Because my dearest love is gone away.

Let roses fling afar their crimson spray,
And virgin daisies splash the fields with white,
Let bloom the poppy hotly as it may,
Within my heart is melancholy night.

And this, O love, my pitiable plight
Whenever from my circling arms you stray;
This little world of mine has lost its light....
I hope to God, my dear, that you can say
The same to me.

Purposely Ungrammatical Love Song

There's many and many, and not so far,
Is willing to dry my tears away;
There's many to tell me what you are,
And never a lie to all they say.

It's little the good to hide my head,
It's never the use to bar my door;
There's many as counts the tears I shed,
There's mourning hearts for my heart is

There's honester eyes than your blue eyes,
There's better a mile than such as you.
But when did I say that I was wise,
And when did I hope that you were true?

Pattern


Leave me to my lonely pillow.
Go, and take your silly posies
Who has vowed to wear the willow
Looks a fool, tricked out in roses.


Who are you, my lad, to ease me?
Leave your pretty words unspoken.
Tinkling echoes little please me,
Now my heart is freshly broken.


Over young are you to guide me,
And your blood is slow and sleeping.
If you must, then sit beside me....
Tell me, why have I been weeping?

Little Words

When you are gone, there is nor bloom nor leaf,
Nor singing sea at night, nor silver birds;
And I can only stare, and shape my grief
In little words.


I cannot conjure loveliness, to drown
The bitter woe that racks my cords apart.
The weary pen that sets my sorrow down
Feeds at my heart.


There is no mercy in the shifting year,
No beauty wraps me tenderly about.
I turn to little words- so you, my dear,
Can spell them out.

Light Of Love

Joy stayed with me a night --
Young and free and fair --
And in the morning light
He left me there.


Then Sorrow came to stay,
And lay upon my breast
He walked with me in the day.
And knew me best.


I'll never be a bride,
Nor yet celibate,
So I'm living now with Pride --
A cold bedmate.


He must not hear nor see,
Nor could he forgive
That Sorrow still visits me
Each day I live.

Landscape


Now this must be the sweetest place
From here to heaven's end;
The field is white and flowering lace,
The birches leap and bend,


The hills, beneath the roving sun,
From green to purple pass,
And little, trifling breezes run
Their fingers through the grass.


So good it is, so gay it is,
So calm it is, and pure.
A one whose eyes may look on this
Must be the happier, sure.


But me- I see it flat and gray
And blurred with misery,
Because a lad a mile away
Has little need of me.

Interior


Her mind lives in a quiet room,
A narrow room, and tall,
With pretty lamps to quench the gloom
And mottoes on the wall.


There all the things are waxen neat
And set in decorous lines;
And there are posies, round and sweet,
And little, straightened vines.


Her mind lives tidily, apart
From cold and noise and pain,
And bolts the door against her heart,
Out wailing in the rain.

Distance


Were you to cross the world, my dear,
To work or love or fight,

I could be calm and wistful here,
And close my eyes at night.

It were a sweet and gallant pain
To be a sea apart;

But, oh, to have you down the lane
Is bitter to my heart.

A Fairly Sad Tale

I think that I shall never know
Why I am thus, and I am so.
Around me, other girls inspire
In men the rush and roar of fire,
The sweet transparency of glass,
The tenderness of April grass,
The durability of granite;
But me- I don't know how to plan it.
The lads I've met in Cupid's deadlock
Were- shall we say?- born out of wedlock.
They broke my heart, they stilled my song,
And said they had to run along,
Explaining, so to sop my tears,
First came their parents or careers.
But ever does experience
Deny me wisdom, calm, and sense!
Though she's a fool who seeks to capture
The twenty-first fine, careless rapture,
I must go on, till ends my rope,
Who from my birth was cursed with hope.
A heart in half is chaste, archaic;
But mine resembles a mosaic-
The thing's become ridiculous!
Why am I so? Why am I thus?

Sabbaths, W.I.

Those villages stricken with the melancholia of Sunday,

in all of whose ocher streets one dog is sleeping
those volcanoes like ashen roses, or the incurable sore
of poverty, around whose puckered mouth thin boys are
selling yellow sulphur stone

the burnt banana leaves that used to dance
the river whose bed is made of broken bottles
the cocoa grove where a bird whose cry sounds green and
yellow and in the lights under the leaves crested with
orange flame has forgotten its flute

gommiers peeling from sunburn still wrestling to escape the sea
the dead lizard turning blue as stone
those rivers, threads of spittle, that forgot the old music
that dry, brief esplanade under the drier sea almonds

where the dry old men sat

watching a white schooner stuck in the branches
and playing draughts with the moving frigate birds
those hillsides like broken pots
those ferns that stamped their skeletons on the skin
and those roads that begin reciting their names at vespers
mention them and they will stop

those crabs that were willing to let an epoch pass
those herons like spinsters that doubted their reflections
inquiring, inquiring

those nettles that waited
those Sundays, those Sundays

those Sundays when the lights at the road's end were an occasion
those Sundays when my mother lay on her back
those Sundays when the sisters gathered like white moths
round their street lantern

and cities passed us by on the horizon

Anxiety


The hoar-frost crumbles in the sun,
The crisping steam of a train


Melts in the air, while two black birds
Sweep past the window again.


Along the vacant road, a red
Bicycle approaches; I wait


In a thaw of anxiety, for the boy
To leap down at our gate.


He has passed us by; but is it
Relief that starts in my breast?


Or a deeper bruise of knowing that still
She has no rest.

Autumn Song

Know'st thou not at the fall of the leaf
How the heart feels a languid grief
Laid on it for a covering,
And how sleep seems a goodly thing
In Autumn at the fall of the leaf?

And how the swift beat of the brain
Falters because it is in vain,
In Autumn at the fall of the leaf
Knowest thou not? and how the chief
Of joys seems--not to suffer pain?

Know'st thou not at the fall of the leaf
How the soul feels like a dried sheaf
Bound up at length for harvesting,
And how death seems a comely thing
In Autumn at the fall of the leaf?

The Castaways

The vivid grass with visible delight
Springing triumphant from the pregnant earth,
The butterflies, and sparrows in brief flight
Chirping and dancing for the season's birth,
The dandelions and rare daffodils
That touch the deep-stirred heart with hands of gold,
The thrushes sending forth their joyous trills,--
Not these, not these did I at first behold!
But seated on the benches daubed with green,
The castaways of life, a few asleep,
Some withered women desolate and mean,
And over all, life's shadows dark and deep.
Moaning I turned away, for misery
I have the strength to bear but not to see.

Sing Me A Song

Sing me a song -
What shall I sing? -
Three merry sisters
Dancing in a ring,
Light and fleet upon their feet
As birds upon the wing.
Tell me a tale -
What shall I tell?
Two mournful sisters,
And a tolling knell,
Tolling ding and tolling dong,
Ding dong bell.