His face, who thought to vanquish wrong with wrong,
Erring, and make rage and redemption meet,
Havoc and freedom; weaving in one weft
Good with his right hand, evil with his left;
But all a hero lived and erred and died;
Looked thus upon the living world he left
So bravely that with pity less than pride
Men hail him Patriot and Tyrannicide.
EVENING ON THE BROADS.
Over two shadowless waters, adrift as a pinnace in
peril,
Hangs as in heavy suspense, charged with
irresolute light,
Softly the soul of the sunset upholden awhile on the
sterile
Waves and wastes of the land, half repossessed
by the night.
Inland glimmer the shallows asleep and afar in the
breathless
Twilight: yonder the depths darken
afar and asleep.
Slowly the semblance of death out of heaven descends
on the deathless
Waters: hardly the light lives on
the face of the deep—
Hardly, but here for awhile. All over the grey
soft shallow
Hover the colours and clouds of the twilight,
void of a star.
As a bird unfledged is the broad-winged night, whose
winglets are callow
Yet, but soon with their plumes will she
cover her brood from afar,
Cover the brood of her worlds that cumber the skies
with their blossom
Thick as the darkness of leaf-shadowed
spring is encumbered with flowers.
World upon world is enwound in the bountiful girth
of her bosom,
Warm and lustrous with life lovely to
look on as ours.
Still is the sunset adrift as a spirit in doubt that
dissembles
Still with itself, being sick of division
and dimmed by dismay—
Nay, not so; but with love and delight beyond passion
it trembles,
Fearful and fain of the night, lovely
with love of the day:
Fain and fearful of rest that is like unto death,
and begotten
Out of the womb of the tomb, born of the
seed of the grave:
Lovely with shadows of loves that are only not wholly
forgotten,
Only not wholly suppressed by the dark
as a wreck by the wave.
Still there linger the loves of the morning and noon,
in a vision
Blindly beheld, but in vain: ghosts
that are tired, and would rest.
But the glories beloved of the night rise all too
dense for division,
Deep in the depth of her breast sheltered
as doves in a nest.
Fainter the beams of the loves of the daylight season
enkindled
Wane, and the memories of hours that were
fair with the love of them
fade:
Loftier, aloft of the lights of the sunset stricken
and dwindled,
Gather the signs of the love at the heart
of the night new-made.
New-made night, new-born of the sunset, immeasurable,
endless,
Opens the secret of love hid from of old
in her heart,
In the deep sweet heart full-charged with faultless
love of the friendless
Spirits of men that are eased when the
wheels of the sun depart.