The Cup of Comus: Fact and Fancy

Survives, though shattered, and about it caught,
The strangling dodder streams.

Gaunt weeds: and here a bayonet or pouch,
Rusty and rotting where men fought and slew:
Bald, trampled paths that seem with fear to crouch,
Feeling a bloody dew.

Here nothing that was beauty's once remains.
War left the garden to its dead alone:
And Life and Love, who toiled here, for their pains
Have nothing once their own.

Death leans upon the battered door, at gaze —
The house is silent where there once was stir
Of husbandry, that led laborious days,
With Love for comforter.

Now in Love's place, Death, old and halt and blind,
Gropes, searching everywhere for what may live. —
War left it empty as his vacant mind;
It has no more to give.

THE IRON AGE

And these are Christians! – God! the horror of it —
How long, O Lord! how long, O Lord! how long
Wilt Thou endure this crime? and there, above it,
Look down on Earth nor sweep away the wrong!

Are these Thy teachings? – Where is then that pity,
Which bade the weary, suffering come to Thee? —
War takes its toll of life in field and City,
And Thou must see! – O Christianity!

And then the children! – Oh, Thou art another!
Not God! but Fiend, whom God has given release! —
Will prayer avail naught? tears of father, mother?
To give at last the weary world surcease

From butchery? that back again hath brought her
Into that age barbarian that priced
Hate above Love; and, shod with steel and slaughter,
Stamped on the Cross and on the face of Christ.

THE BATTLE

Black clouds hung low and heavy,
Above the sunset glare;
And in the garden dimly
We wandered here and there.

So full of strife, of trouble
The night was dark, afraid,
Like our own love, so merely
For tears and sighings made.

That when it came to parting,
And I must mount and go,
With all my soul I wished it —
That God would lay me low.

ON RE-READING CERTAIN GERMAN POETS

They hold their own, they have no peers
In gloom and glow, in hopes and fears,
In love and terror, hovering round
The lore of that enchanted ground! —
That mystic region, where one hears,
By bandit towers, the hunt that nears
Wild through the Hartz; the demon cheers
Of Hackelnberg; his horn and hound —
They hold their own.

Dark Wallenstein; and, down the years,
The Lorelei; and, creased with sneers,
Faust, Margaret; – the Sabboth sound,
Witch-whirling, of the Brocken, drowned
In storm, through which Mephisto leers, —
They hold their own.

ON OPENING AN OLD SCHOOL VOLUME OF HORACE

I had forgot how, in my day
The Sabine fields around me lay
In amaranth and asphodel,
With many a cold Bandusian well
Bright-bubbling by the mountain-way.
In forest dells of Faun and Fay
How, lounging in the fountain's spray,
I talked with Horace; felt his spell,
I had forgot.

With Pyrrha and with Lydia
How oft I sat, while Lalaga
Sang, and the fine Falerian fell,
Sparkling, and heard the poet tell
Of loves whose beauty lasts for aye,
I had forgot.