Last Poems | Page 5

must man the ditch without you,?March unled and fight short-handed,
Charge to fall and swim to drown.?Duty, friendship, bravery o’er,?Sleep away, lad; wake no more.
XXX
SINNER’S RUE
I walked alone and thinking,
And faint the nightwind blew?And stirred on mounds at crossways
The flower of sinner’s rue.
Where the roads part they bury
Him that his own hand slays,?And so the weed of sorrow
Springs at the four cross ways.
By night I plucked it hueless,
When morning broke ‘twas blue:?Blue at my breast I fastened
The flower of sinner’s rue.
It seemed a herb of healing,
A balsam and a sign,?Flower of a heart whose trouble
Must have been worse than mine.
Dead clay that did me kindness,
I can do none to you,?But only wear for breastknot
The flower of sinner’s rue.
XXXI
HELL’S GATE
Onward led the road again?Through the sad uncoloured plain?Under twilight brooding dim,?And along the utmost rim?Wall and rampart risen to sight?Cast a shadow not of night,?And beyond them seemed to glow?Bonfires lighted long ago.?And my dark conductor broke?Silence at my side and spoke,?Saying, "You conjecture well:?Yonder is the gate of hell."
Ill as yet the eye could see?The eternal masonry,?But beneath it on the dark?To and fro there stirred a spark.?And again the sombre guide?Knew my question, and replied:?"At hell gate the damned in turn?Pace for sentinel and burn."
Dully at the leaden sky?Staring, and with idle eye?Measuring the listless plain,?I began to think again.?Many things I thought of then,?Battle, and the loves of men,?Cities entered, oceans crossed,?Knowledge gained and virtue lost,?Cureless folly done and said,?And the lovely way that led?To the slimepit and the mire?And the everlasting fire.?And against a smoulder dun?And a dawn without a sun?Did the nearing bastion loom,?And across the gate of gloom?Still one saw the sentry go,?Trim and burning, to and fro,?One for women to admire?In his finery of fire.?Something, as I watched him pace,?Minded me of time and place,?Soldiers of another corps?And a sentry known before.
Ever darker hell on high?Reared its strength upon the sky,?And our football on the track?Fetched the daunting echo back.?But the soldier pacing still?The insuperable sill,?Nursing his tormented pride,?Turned his head to neither side,?Sunk into himself apart?And the hell-fire of his heart.?But against our entering in?From the drawbridge Death and Sin?Rose to render key and sword?To their father and their lord.?And the portress foul to see?Lifted up her eyes on me?Smiling, and I made reply:?"Met again, my lass," said I.?Then the sentry turned his head,?Looked, and knew me, and was Ned.
Once he looked, and halted straight,?Set his back against the gate,?Caught his musket to his chin,?While the hive of hell within?Sent abroad a seething hum?As of towns whose king is come?Leading conquest home from far?And the captives of his war,?And the car of triumph waits,?And they open wide the gates.?But across the entry barred?Straddled the revolted guard,?Weaponed and accoutred well?From the arsenals of hell;?And beside him, sick and white,?Sin to left and Death to right?Turned a countenance of fear?On the flaming mutineer.?Over us the darkness bowed,?And the anger in the cloud?Clenched the lightning for the stroke;?But the traitor musket spoke.
And the hollowness of hell?Sounded as its master fell,?And the mourning echo rolled?Ruin through his kingdom old.?Tyranny and terror flown?Left a pair of friends alone,?And beneath the nether sky?All that stirred was he and I.
Silent, nothing found to say,?We began the backward way;?And the ebbing luster died?From the soldier at my side,?As in all his spruce attire?Failed the everlasting fire.?Midmost of the homeward track?Once we listened and looked back;?But the city, dusk and mute,?Slept, and there was no pursuit.
XXXII
When I would muse in boyhood
The wild green woods among,?And nurse resolves and fancies
Because the world was young,?It was not foes to conquer,
Nor sweethearts to be kind,?But it was friends to die for
That I would seek and find.
I sought them far and found them,
The sure, the straight, the brave,?The hearts I lost my own to,
The souls I could not save.?They braced their belts about them,
They crossed in ships the sea,?They sought and found six feet of ground,
And there they died for me.
XXXIII
When the eye of day is shut,
And the stars deny their beams,?And about the forest hut
Blows the roaring wood of dreams,
From deep clay, from desert rock,
From the sunk sands of the main,?Come not at my door to knock,
Hearts that loved me not again.
Sleep, be still, turn to your rest
In the lands where you are laid;?In far lodgings east and west
Lie down on the beds you made.
In gross marl, in blowing dust,
In the drowned ooze of the sea,?Where you would not, lie you must,
Lie you must, and not with me.
XXXIV
THE FIRST OF MAY
The orchards half the way
From home to Ludlow fair?Flowered on the first of May
In Mays when I was there;?And seen from stile or turning
The plume of smoke would show?Where fires were burning
That went out long ago.
The plum broke forth in green,
The pear stood high and snowed,?My friends and I between
Would take the Ludlow road;?Dressed to the