Who Knows!

Ah me!-- O’er the wide Deep I glide Where flows For me Either waters ’mid the plashes Of the lacing star-light lashes, Or a sea ’mid lightning gashes With their booming cannon-crashes-- Who knows! Ah me!

In the wide River’s tide Still flows For me Either waters bearing bubbles From the waves that pelt the pebbles, Or a muddy sea of troubles With its melancholy trebles-- Who knows! Ah me, Ah me!

THE DEATH-HOWL.

I shall die to-night, dear mother, I have heard the long death-howl, That long plaintive, mournful cry like the wail of some lost soul.

And it sounded like a spirit crying through a distant storm, Moaning that another mortal should put on the brutish form!--

Wailing that a brother-spirit should exchange its form for that Of the baying hound, or worse, of the death-rhymed Irish rat.

But my mother, darling mother! old Pythagoras was wrong, For the death-howl dies away, and I hear the angel-song.

--Yet, I’ve heard that death-howl, mother, and I know I’ll die to-night-- And the room is filling, filling with a strange, unearthly light!

Oh that glorious sight out yonder in the vast eternity Where the light and song are leading--come! oh come and go with me!

Dearest mother, mother, mother! what a joyous, joyous sight! Each glad soul as life has dreamed it clad in purest angel-white!

The death-howl’s died away, dear mother,--and I’m dying now to-night!-- Good-night mother, earth’s dear angel, once more mother, sweet good-night!

ON PLUCKING A CROCUS.

Sweet Crocus! harbinger of spring, Awake, with others sleeping, How have I wrecked thy new-born life And set thy parent weeping!

See! sad her weeping eyes upturning, Adrip with love for thee, And arms outstretched implore thy slayer That thou’lt returnéd be.

Alas! in vain her tears must flow, Her palms implore the youth Who pluckéd thee from out her heart And set in his such ruth.

I cannot give thee back--I would I might! I’d send thee thither; It grieveth me to see her weep, To know that thou shalt wither.

My heart ne’er tho’t when thee I plucked, For thou not yet hadst won it, How much I took, how little gave-- I would I had not done it.

Lift up thy drooping head again-- I would the word would do it!-- Make me not weep for plucking thee; Thou know’st how much I rue it.

Thy pure and purple-tinted petals, Thy open lily-lips, Thy olden-golden anthered stamens Thy saffron pistil-tips!--

Would I could here embalm them all And wrap in verses meet So that thou’dst be, when years should roll, To others just as sweet!

Envoy.

’Tis thus, O soul-inspired poet, The world shall greet thy song-- Shall pluck it from thy throbbing soul To die amidst the throng.

And thus, O plucker of the crocus, Shall Death come unto thee-- Shall pluck thee from thy mother’s heart, Shall thy embalmer be.

So may’st thou live and do and be That Death, with riches rife, Shall be thy welcome harbinger,-- The crocus of thy life.