With snow instead of birds, and all things freeze. How much of all my past is dumb with her, And of my future, too, for with her went Half of that world I ever cared to please! DEATH OF QUEEN MERCEDES In a letter to his daughter from Madrid, July 26, 1878, Lowell wrote of Queen Mercedes: "" Anything more tragic than the circumstances of her death it would be hard to imagine. She was actually receiving extreme unction while the guns were firing in honor of her eighteenth birthday, and four days later we saw her dragged to her dreary tomb at the Escorial, followed by the coach and its eight white horses in which she had driven in triumph from the church to the palace on the day of her wedding. The poor brutes tossed their snowy plumes as haughtily now as then. Her death is really a great public loss. She was amiable, intelligent, and simple - not beautiful but good-looking-and was already becoming popular." HERS all that Earth could promise or bestow, Youth, Beauty, Love, a crown, the beckoning years, Lids never wet, unless with joyous tears, When, the day's swan, she swam along the cheers Of the Alcalá, five happy months ago? The guns were shouting Io Hymen then That, on her birthday, now denounce her doom; The same white steeds that tossed their scorn of men To-day as proudly drag her to the tomb. Grim jest of fate! Yet who dare call it blind, Knowing what life is, what our humankind? Than that what pleased him earliest still should please: And who hath incomes safe from chance as these, Gone in a moment, yet for life his own? All other gold is slave of earthward laws; This to the deeps of ether takes its flight, And on the topmost leaves makes glorious pause Of parting pathos ere it yield to night: So linger, as from me earth's light withdraws, Dear touch of Nature, tremulously bright! PESSIMOPTIMISM YE little think what toil it was to build Of Ill by that wherewith best days are filled; A world whose every atom is self-willed, Whose corner-stone is propt on artifice, Whose joy is shorter-lived than woman's kiss, Whose wisdom hoarded is but to be spilled. Yet this is better than a life of caves, Whose highest art was scratching on a bone, Or chipping toilsome arrowheads of flint; Better, though doomed to hear while Cleon WHEN the down is on the chin Summer's cheek too soon turns thin, When new life is in the leaf Never moments come like those, Be they Heaven or Hell: who knows? The birds but repeat without ending And we men through our old bit of song run, Until one just improves on the rest, And we call a thing his, in the long run, Who utters it clearest and best. AUSPEX My heart, I cannot still it, Shall whirl dead leaves and snow. Had they been swallows only, A moment, sweet delusion, Like birds the brown leaves hover; Before their wild confusion THE PREGNANT COMMENT OPENING one day a book of mine, When next upon the page I chance, |