Iii

All is change, woe or weal; Joy is Sorrow’s brother; Grief and gladness steal Symbols of each other; Ah! welaway! Larks in heaven’s cope Sing: the culvers mourn All the livelong day. Be not all forlorn; Let us weep, in hope— Ah! welaway!

Nothing Will Die

Reprinted without any important alteration among the Juvenilia in 1871 and onward. No change made except that “through” is spelt “thro’,” and in the last line “and” is substituted for “all”.

When will the stream be aweary of flowing Under my eye? When will the wind be aweary of blowing Over the sky? When will the clouds be aweary of fleeting? When will the heart be aweary of beating? And nature die? Never, oh! never, nothing will die? The stream flows, The wind blows, The cloud fleets, The heart beats, Nothing will die.

Nothing will die; All things will change Through eternity. ’Tis the world’s winter; Autumn and summer Are gone long ago; Earth is dry to the centre, But spring, a new comer, A spring rich and strange, Shall make the winds blow Round and round, Through and through, Here and there, Till the air And the ground Shall be filled with life anew.

The world was never made; It will change, but it will not fade. So let the wind range; For even and morn Ever will be Through eternity. Nothing was born; Nothing will die; All things will change.

All Things Will Die

Reprinted among Juvenilia in 1872 and onward, without alteration.

Clearly the blue river chimes in its flowing Under my eye; Warmly and broadly the south winds are blowing Over the sky. One after another the white clouds are fleeting; Every heart this May morning in joyance is beating Full merrily; Yet all things must die. The stream will cease to flow; The wind will cease to blow; The clouds will cease to fleet; The heart will cease to beat; For all things must die.

All things must die. Spring will come never more. Oh! vanity! Death waits at the door. See! our friends are all forsaking The wine and the merrymaking. We are called—we must go. Laid low, very low, In the dark we must lie. The merry glees are still; The voice of the bird Shall no more be heard, Nor the wind on the hill. Oh! misery! Hark! death is calling While I speak to ye, The jaw is falling, The red cheek paling, The strong limbs failing; Ice with the warm blood mixing; The eyeballs fixing. Nine times goes the passing bell: Ye merry souls, farewell. The old earth Had a birth, As all men know, Long ago. And the old earth must die. So let the warm winds range, And the blue wave beat the shore; For even and morn Ye will never see Through eternity. All things were born. Ye will come never more, For all things must die.

Hero to Leander

Oh go not yet, my love, The night is dark and vast; The white moon is hid in her heaven above, And the waves climb high and fast. Oh! kiss me, kiss me, once again, Lest thy kiss should be the last. Oh kiss me ere we part; Grow closer to my heart. My heart is warmer surely than the bosom of the main.

Oh joy! O bliss of blisses! My heart of hearts art thou. Come bathe me with thy kisses, My eyelids and my brow. Hark how the wild rain hisses, And the loud sea roars below.

Thy heart beats through thy rosy limbs So gladly doth it stir; Thine eye in drops of gladness swims. I have bathed thee with the pleasant myrrh; Thy locks are dripping balm; Thou shalt not wander hence to-night, I’ll stay thee with my kisses. To-night the roaring brine Will rend thy golden tresses; The ocean with the morrow light Will be both blue and calm; And the billow will embrace thee with a kiss as soft as mine.

No western odours wander On the black and moaning sea, And when thou art dead, Leander, My soul must follow thee! Oh go not yet, my love Thy voice is sweet and low; The deep salt wave breaks in above Those marble steps below. The turretstairs are wet That lead into the sea. Leander! go not yet. The pleasant stars have set: Oh! go not, go not yet, Or I will follow thee.

The Mystic

Angels have talked with him, and showed him thrones: Ye knew him not: he was not one of ye, Ye scorned him with an undiscerning scorn; Ye could not read the marvel in his eye, The still serene abstraction; he hath felt The vanities of after and before; Albeit, his spirit and his secret heart The stern experiences of converse lives, The linked woes of many a fiery change Had purified, and chastened, and made free. Always there stood before him, night and day, Of wayward vary colored circumstance, The imperishable presences serene Colossal, without form, or sense, or sound, Dim shadows but unwaning presences Fourfaced to four corners of the sky; And yet again, three shadows, fronting one, One forward, one respectant, three but one; And yet again, again and evermore, For the two first were not, but only seemed, One shadow in the midst of a great light, One reflex from eternity on time, One mighty countenance of perfect calm, Awful with most invariable eyes. For him the silent congregated hours, Daughters of time, divinely tall, beneath Severe and youthful brows, with shining eyes Smiling a godlike smile (the innocent light Of earliest youth pierced through and through with all Keen knowledges of low-embowed eld) Upheld, and ever hold aloft the cloud Which droops low hung on either gate of life, Both birth and death; he in the centre fixt, Saw far on each side through the grated gates Most pale and clear and lovely distances. He often lying broad awake, and yet Remaining from the body, and apart In intellect and power and will, hath heard Time flowing in the middle of the night, And all things creeping to a day of doom. How could ye know him? Ye were yet within The narrower circle; he had wellnigh reached The last, with which a region of white flame, Pure without heat, into a larger air Upburning, and an ether of black blue, Investeth and ingirds all other lives.

The Grasshopper