The Poetical Works of George Barlow :: :: University of Virginia Library

I strive in verse to render forth the song
Of life, to life's strange message I give heed:
But where my Art is faulty, yours is strong,
And where I fail, you triumph and succeed.

For you in music render forth the psalm
Of life, aye all its passion, all its power;
Music can reproduce June's heavenliest calm
When no breath stirs the frailest cliff-side flower.

And music too can thunder like the seas:
The world's emotion music can express:
The saint's thoughts praying on his bended knees,
The lover's thrill at beauty's first caress.

Through music the one Spirit who sways the whole,
Creates, pulls down, refashions and destroys,
Speaks—ever music is the world's deep soul
Uttering its giant sorrows, giant joys.

From the first hour when on our planet-home
Love spake, in depths of moonlit forest heard
Or by some far-off sea's forgotten foam,
Its priceless first unfathomable word,

From that first hour hath music reigned supreme,
For music's soul and passion's soul are one;
And music still will reign while young hearts dream
And while sweet darkness follows on the sun.

All dim strange thoughts we struggle, and in vain,
To utter—pangs and joys, and hopes and fears—
In music their impassioned utterance gain;
All human longings sound in human ears.

The past grows vocal, history speaks once more.
Above dense war-ranks nods Achilles' plume:
Pale Dido weeps upon the loveless shore:
Masked murder dogs love's steps through Venice' gloom.

At music's touch man's visions all grow real;
We see the matchless face that Bothwell saw:—
We enter too the realms of the ideal,
The mist-clad land where genius' will is law.

A thousand fairies throng the wood-glades, white
Beneath the rays of an enchanted moon;
Their elfin cohorts flash upon our sight,
Armoured in gems that mock the glittering noon.

At music's summons Oberon's snowy steed
Tramples the clover, jingling silver reins:
When music sounds, an unseen world gives heed;
Its starlight waxes as our sunlight wanes.

While music sounds, no barrier to our hope
Looms dark and threatening on the heavenward way,
For music gives the glad soul boundless scope
And points beyond the night to endless day.

The Christian Church through music scales the skies:
The humblest chapel built where wild waves foam
On Cornish rocks, or where Welsh mountains rise,
Through music conquers, even as mighty Rome.

And love through music conquers—when we hear
The haunting magic of some wondrous tune,
Lost loves on golden wings come glimmering near
And life's December is as passion's June.

Dark eyes we never thought to see again
In life shine forth, and speechless joys are won:
Music can crowd with life death's ghostly plain
And make night's dreams more cogent than the sun.

Words—even Shakespeare's words—must sometimes fail,
But music never fails: where man has trod
It follows, gathering up life's tragic tale,
Blending with man's the language of a god.

And this immortal tongue is yours, O friend!
While I must labour through the straits of rhyme
And on my course a world of thought expend,
Your Art is subject not to space or time.

To you the lover, yearning to express
Fancies that ravish, eager thoughts that thrill,
Must turn; demanding love's own voice, no less,
He finds your music's cadence tenderer still.

Demanding passion's voice and soul of fire,
He finds your music equal to his theme;
Strong as deep love's illimitable desire,
Sweet as love's truth, and ardent as its dream.

Demanding that love's sadness shall prevail
And that love's temple change into a tomb,
Still can your varying music tell the tale
Of deepening agony and starless gloom.

To you for many a year will poets turn;
Through you their thought that flagged wins timeless wings:
Eyes soften at your strain, and men's hearts burn
To whom in vain the unaided poet sings.

When pen betrays and silent paper wrongs
The poet, stealing witchery from his strain,
Your touch brings victory; yes, to you belongs
The triumph, and to him the priceless gain.

Envious am I, stern fetters we must wear—
What grim restraints the laws of verse impose!
A flower described is only half as fair,
But music adds a fragrance to the rose.

And when across the heart life's tempest roars
And desolation's trumpet-blast is blown,
Music can catch the clash of echoing shores
And make the night-wind's melody its own.

If I could speak the thoughts that in my brain
Struggle imprisoned, if on music's sea
I once could launch forth, sail that stormy main,
If speech and music wedded once might be,

Then, then indeed, I might shake off time's yoke,
Upon my brow the deathless stars might gleam:
Alas, what poet ever fully spoke
The mastering thought that held him like a dream?

THE SUN

The sun we see that with its fiery gleams
Traverses heaven shall in the end maybe
Bear life, become the home of human dreams,—
Bear mountains, shadowy forests, shadeless sea.

The races it shall bear through years of strife
Shall struggle,—ships shall toss on snowier foam:
Upon the sun, rich in majestic life,
Shall rise new cities, spire and arch and dome.

A thousand Venices shall lift their towers
Upon the sun towards skies of ardent air:
Deep groves shall foster unimagined flowers;
Love's rapture shall awake—and love's despair.

A thousand Londons there shall stream with life:
Upon the vast sun's mightier fiery frame
Shall seethe the currents of unmeasured strife,
Fed by new gods of unknown power and name.

Mars, born again, with eager bound shall leap
Straight to the fray,—his crimson plume shall wave
Where swords flash thickest and where blood runs deep:
Huge ships shall founder in their starless grave.

Venus again from bluer waves than ours
Shall rise, beneath the light of lovelier skies,
Her hair fresh-scented from a thousand flowers,
With unborn centuries dreaming in her eyes.

She, as she ruled on our poor mortal star,
Upon the sun shall rule with queenlier sway;
Make day's bright golden hours diviner far,
And dark night's hours diviner than the day.

Her shall the unseen amorous hosts aspire
Beyond all gods to serve, through joy and pain,
For still love's voice shall wake the unknown desire
And love's sweet sorrow seem man's boundless gain.

Romance, deep-buried when our own star died,
Shall be reborn within the exalted sun,
Reborn, and loved and crowned and deified,
New combats fought and kinglier victories won.

But still for ever shall the sense of love
Old as the skies, in every flower reborn,
Be mightiest power all living hearts to move,
Ruling the clouds of night, the light of morn.

A YOUNG GIRL'S DREAM

Fair the world is, though the breezes of September
O'er the moors and through the forest-alleys pass:
Though the light of burning August we remember
Is a light for ever lost to us, alas!
Though the glory of the branches and the flowers
Has for ever with the summer passed away,
Love is living yet within the forest-bowers
And his heart is still as tender as in May.

Was the spring-time half as sweet to me, I wonder,
When the pearly snowdrops peeped above the mould,
When the green buds burst their wintry sheaths asunder
And the crocus dared to don its crown of gold—
When the sunlight flashed across the river-billows
As the wild wind lashed them into stormy glee,
And the branches dipping in them of the willows
Deemed they dipped their grey-green leafage in the sea?

Was the summer half as fair with all its gleaming
Of the crimson fuchsias near our cottage gate?
Summer—when the stars of midnight watched me dreaming
At the window, when I left it whispered “Wait!”
Summer—when the rose with passion seemed to languish
And the lily sighed her love-tale to the rose;
When the world's heart scorned the very thought of anguish
And its spirit was a spirit at repose.

Summer—when I wondered, wondered, looking forward,
Who would love me, strove to picture and divine;
Started at a fancied footstep, gazing doorward,—
Sat in fancy, often, with his hand in mine:
Summer—when my heart knew little as I wandered
Counting blossoms, watching butterfly and bee,
Knew so little of the love-lore that it pondered,
Knew so little, O my lover-soul, of thee!

Was the summer half as lovely as the season
That brings perfect love and passion to my heart?
Let the blossoms madden at September's treason!
Pangless I can watch their glowing tints depart.

For my heart and all its thoughts are given over
To my darling, and there's summer in his gaze:
Let the lily go in mourning for her lover!
All my heart is full of dreams of summer days.

All my heart is full of dreams of love and heaven;
God is good to me, aye good to me indeed:
Love for teacher and for prophet he has given,
Love for sermon and for bible and for creed.
I was lonely in the wild world, I remember,
Lonely through the leafy balmy days of June;
I am happy and companioned in September;
Envious, doubtless, is the silver lonely moon.

Envious doubtless are the sea-birds on the ocean:
On the tossing waters where have they to rest?
Round them stretch the waves in ceaseless angry motion,
Where is any nook for haven or for nest?
Envious, doubtless, are the stars i' the airy spaces;
Leagues they are from any loving star apart;
Lonely sail they, leagues from love in starry faces,
But my darling has his dwelling in my heart.

He will raise me, he will lift me by his passion
Towards a region wholly pure and wholly fair:
We shall love with angels' love in holiest fashion,
Yet find sweetness in the old earth's summer air.
We will visit all the old earth's sacred places
And in every land be happy and at home,
Knit in union closer for the stranger faces;
Dream in Paris, pass our honeymoon in Rome.

We will wander hand in hand, with love and slowly,
Through the cornfields and the towns of Palestine;
Fancy that we see the eyes of Jesus holy,
Dream we hear the voice most tender and divine.
We, the children of the dark-blue Northern ocean,
Born in mist-land, loved and nurtured by the sea;
In the sunny East will gaze with deep emotion
On sunstricken leafless drear Gethsemane.

All our life will be the better for the glory
That once shone through Jesus' figure and his face;
Better shall we understand the sweet old story
When we see with tearful eyes the very place,

As we say, “Beneath this heaven of cloudless weather
Wandered Jesus, here he prayed and here he spoke”—
We shall wander through the vineyards, we together,
Where his loving heart grew weary, where it broke.

Though the beauty and the glamour have departed,
Doubtless, from the fields and hills that Jesus saw,
Yet we'll gaze with love upon them, tender-hearted,
And with something still within the soul of awe:
For the paths that God as perfect man hath taken
Must for ever gleam with wonder, where he trod
Still the human heart with love and faith unshaken
Will behold the man,—beholding him, the God.

We will trace in fancy spots he may have cherished,
Say, “This corner of a vineyard he held dear:”
See in fancy the lone hill-side where he perished
And the rock-tomb whence his risen voice rang clear.
“Here,” we say, “the loving sad disciples wept him;
Here they laid his silent body to repose,
Deeming that the eternal darkness would have kept him
Sleeping ever; here they marvelled, when he rose.”

Here our cottage has been home to me, and pleasure,
Priceless happiness of girlhood, I have known:
To my mother been her darling, her one treasure,
Made my father's life less weary, less alone.
—Now my life at last will leave the lowly places,
Break to noble freedom, burst its prison bars;
But for ever I shall love the dear lost faces,
Love them as the golden morning loves the stars!

I will tell my husband many a simple story;
He will listen, for he loves me, to my tale:
Tell him of our dear old garden's summer glory,
From my girlish dreaming draw aside the veil—
Tell him how I wandered through the hazel cover
Dreaming of him, dreaming of him by the lake;
How I longed to be of service to my lover,
How I yearned to give my life-blood for his sake.

Foolish dreams, it may be,—weak and very girlish;
Yet they have their beauty and value, let them be!
The vast ocean is not angry, is not churlish:
Let the river sing its ditty to the sea!

Let the river tell its quiet tales and simple
Of the blossoms growing in the inland nooks,
Though the sea receive with hardly a surface-dimple
All the life-throbs of a thousand eager brooks.

All my thoughts and dreams are his and he will treasure
Touch them tenderly, transfigure one by one
All my girlish hopes and every girlish pleasure,
As the shadowy vales are lighted by the sun.
All my friends are his—he'll make me love them better,
Never rob me of the true heart of a friend;
Make me faithful to each promise to the letter,
Make me cling to father and mother to the end.

All the children shall be happy at our wedding!
(They will miss their girlish teacher's loving rule)—
While another path and happier I am treading,
They will tread the worn old pathway to the school;
To the same old school with honeysuckle clinging
Round the doorway and festooning from the eaves—
I shall often hear the hymn that they are singing,
Hear their fingers rustle through their lesson-leaves.

I shall see them trotting underneath the larches,
See them in their scarlet tippets and their hoods,
See them enter 'neath the school-house' grey-stone arches,
Hear their laughter in the playground of the woods:
Hear some tiny child's glad cry of sudden pleasure
When he spies the first blue egg within the nest,
Gathers up with careful hands his turquoise-treasure,
Shows it, full of lordly triumph, to the rest.

I shall see the first rich golden daffodilly
Don its gorgeous glittering raiment on the bank,
Mark the snow-white wedding-garment of the lily,
Stand again upon our brook-bridge—just a plank—
Marking, as the gentle West wind lightly winnows
The dark leafage of the rustling alder-tree,
Half a hundred darting gleaming saucy minnows
Make believe that they are salmon in the sea!

Then, that every thought and dream may be the sweeter,
I will turn to him, my husband and my friend:
How the present joy will make the past completer!
How the early days will sanctify the end!

Passing from my pleasant dream of days behind me,
Dream of English gardens, English hill and sky,
Golden splendid Southern sunlight will remind me
That I'm dreaming on the shores of Italy!

Then a loving kiss will bring me to my senses;
I must leave the children, leave them far away,
Leave them labouring over nouns and verbs and tenses,
Leave them lonely at their labour and their play:
I must leave them, for my husband's voice is calling;
Leave the tender lovely dreams of early life;
See the curtain o'er the girl's work swiftly falling—
There's a grander mission waiting for the wife!

THE FEAST OF LANTERNS

I. THE LANTERNS

One evening, weary in brain and sad of heart,
I strolled along a sea-front—watched the tide,
Saw golden sunset glitter, then depart
While raven darkness spread her mantle wide.

But in that hour my soul was left alone,
Unloved of night, unsolaced of the sea:
I turned aside, and lo! a garden shone
With glittering lanterns strung from tree to tree.

I entered, and through all my heart there rushed
The sense of youth and gladness once again:
Half pleased, yet half in very truth I blushed
To think how slight a salve cures human pain!

I had been sad at heart, but here was light,
Warmth, colour—pain had loosed its strangling hold:—
The dark trees framed more star-lamps than the night;
Their branches flashed with gems, or burned with gold.

Then, in that mood in which one takes account
Of little things and lets all great cares flee,
I let my gaze from lawn to terrace mount,
From bush illumed to lamp-bedizened tree.

My fancy revelled in the fiery gleams
Of Eastern colour from the lanterns flung;
There mixed a thousand artists' wayward dreams
Love-tales unheard and Epics never sung.

There crimson mandarins put emerald flocks
Of huge Satanic cranes to shameful flight,
And gorgeous fishes cruised amid blue rocks,
Golden, with eyes whence flashed unearthly light.

Pale black-capped soldiers, massed in threatening groups,
Loomed fierce upon the lanterns,—pig-tailed kings,
And executioners, red-handed troops,
And giant butterflies with jewelled wings.

Knives raised from severed necks yet dripped with gore;
Delicious damsels, dainty, almond-eyed,
Ogled their swains; upon a yellow shore
Strange painted junks lay basking in their pride.

Grim hieroglyphics, Chinese down-strokes, meant
No doubt, “I love you—all my heart is thine!”
—While over all flowed soft the mystic scent
The night-wind culls from heliotrope and pine.

Then 'mid that maze of sweet bewildering light
The fears that silence lovers fled away,
And young hearts gathered courage from the night
Who found no words nor courage in the day.

And there were shadowy places, bowers apart,
Where lovers quitting lamp-land for awhile,
Might interchange the thoughts of heart and heart,
With ardour plead, or vanquish with a smile.

There some who had dreamed for years yet never won
The gift of one soft tress, one treasured flower,
Tongue-tied beneath the harsh gaze of the sun,
Found passionate words within the kindly bower.

And lips too coy by day to yield their fill
Of sweetest ecstasy and pure delight
Bent forward eager answering lips to thrill,
Full of the balm and magic of the night.

Eyes which by day were cowards were braver now
And dared within the shadowy bowers to gleam,
Full of the light that makes the lover vow
That but for love's light star-land were a dream!

And tender tongues, sweet cowards alas! by day,
Won from the stars the mandate to be bold,
Heedless what jewels of speech they flung away,
What lovely word-gems of seductive gold.

For round about the thousand lanterns gleamed;
Upon the leafy boughs they gently swung:
Of fairy-land all fervent young hearts dreamed,
And old hearts dreamed of days when they were young.

Then underneath two elms whose verdant gloom
Shadowed a mimic stage, a play began.
The armoured hero tossed his snowy plume:
The villain of the piece disclosed his plan.

A play wins magic from the soft night air,
Steals glamour from surroundings such as these;
The lovely village-maid seems twice as fair
Beneath the actual shadow of living trees.

The courtly dame of passionate romance
Seems twice as courtly, more romantic far,
When o'er real leaves her lover's steps advance
And through real branches peeps the evening star.

Moreover sombre deeds that dye the soul
Crimson, dark horrors fleeing from the light,
Seem twice as grim when actors play their rôle
Beneath the sombre ceiling of the night.

All is so real—we watch no more a part
That some mere actor, aping passion, plays:
We feel the wild love throb through Romeo's heart
And Shakespeare's Juliet thrills us as we gaze.

I gazed—the strange spell seized me, and I felt
While in the background countless lanterns gleamed
As if before some sacred shrine I knelt
Or in Art's holiest temple gazed and dreamed.

Music was rapture—notes that ne'er before
Had aught of magic power, creative might,
Now struck the airs, each note a tiny oar
Urging the soul's bark towards unknown delight.

The universe seemed made for love alone;
All men were lovers, women all were sweet:
Sorrow was but a phase to be outgrown
And death a phantom cringing at our feet.

II. A VOICE FROM THE SEA

The night waxed onward—still the lanterns shone
Swung, gently still, by slightly freshening air;
Still love was king and pleasure held its own
Untired, and still the daring wooed the fair.

Still in that magic garden life seemed good
And still from young lips rang their silvery glee
When I through bosky paths in thoughtful mood
Moved slowly forth and sought the silent sea.

Not far it was—the garden sheltered lay,
A sweet enchanted stormless lamplit spot;
Yet hardly a stone's throw forth a waste of grey
Stretched, hearing love's soft laugh, but heeding not.

No lanterns flashed upon the sombre deep,
No throne of pleasure stood exalted there,
But stirring as it were in troubled sleep
The windless ocean murmured to the air:

“I hear the sounds of joyance—through dark leaves
Uncounted tiny meteor-lanterns shine;
The earth is gladdened, or my ear deceives:
Yet what abysmal loneliness is mine!

“No stars to-night through all the cloud-draped halls
Of heaven shall glitter, nor shall laughter be
To-night within the black sky's boundless walls
Save only mine, the laughter of the sea.”

I heard, and as I heard my spirit thrilled
Moved deep within me—from the sea there came
A sudden sense of mighty power that filled
My spirit with might and joy without a name.

No more the scent of heliotrope and pine
Suggested love's soft hour and passion's glee;
My nostrils drank the scent, the scent divine,
That gives to man the strange soul of the sea.

And, as I drank the scent, my soul grew great
And amorous for the sea's embrace and strong;
Then through the starless dark heaven's cloudy gate
Came the first cadence of the night-wind's song:—

“One fête, O sea! and are not thousands thine,
When through the heights and depths of purple space
The frenzied spears of forked red lightning shine
And when the pale ships shudder at thy face?

“One mortal fête, one garden's joyous bowers
Wherein swift-hearted lovers urge their claims—
Lo! theirs are one night's perishable flowers,
Thine are the golden stars' immortal flames.

“Fêtes thou hast watched on balmier shores than these
Beneath a softer heaven, where gentler night
Darkens the myrtle-groves and orange trees
And where fair women's eyes flash lovelier light.

“Where are the lovers who beside thy waves
Exchanged love's vows a thousand years ago?
Thy waters wash above their lampless graves:
Above their summer haunts thy wild waves flow.

“Fêtes thou hast watched on ships that through the deep
Urge venturous keels—then changing light to gloom
Hast bade the music pause, the dancers sleep
No wakeful slumber in their cold vast tomb.

“Man is but mortal but, immortal sea,
Beyond all words thine heart and mine are strong:
Thou hast the music of eternity
Within thy silence, I within my song.”

Then, as the wind's song ceased, from cloud on cloud
The sudden spears of lightning flashed their gleams;
The thunder pealed above the plains unploughed;
Far in the past seemed passion's languid dreams.

For now a larger passion shook my soul
Swayed by the prowess of the stormy night:
I laughed to hear the rising breakers roll,
Watching the echoing coast-line fringed with white.

The storm-wind and the sea were holding there
Majestic parley, their wild hearts were one:—
The lightning's fiery radiance thrilled the air,
The midnight blackness that defies the sun.

And through it all I mortal was a part
Of the immortal—time had ceased to be.
The mighty sea's was as the storm-wind's heart:
The storm-wind's soul was boisterous with the sea.

All was forgotten save the strife I saw,
The strife that hurls the doomed ships to their goal:
With rapture deeper even than deepest awe
I saw revealed the ocean's deathless soul;

The soul that though man's race to-day might die
Would still hold parley with the storm, the night,
And still through limitless eternity
Worship the gloom and battle with the light.

III. THE DAY AFTER

A silent morn—the storm had wholly passed,
The sunless ocean rested still and grey;
I sought the garden paths, the lawns green-grassed,
Where last night's feastful hours had slipped away.

Ah! in one night wild autumn's hand had flung
The spoil of months upon the sodden ground:
The trees where last night's graceful lanterns swung
Seemed now in sombre funeral robes enwound.

Their leaves that yesterday bore summer's green
And made believe that June's sky still was bright
Were robbed to-day of all their lustrous sheen,
Stained to disastrous russet in a night.

Upon the lawns the brown sere leaves were strewn,
Mixed with some scattered lanterns' coloured shreds;
Bright paper globes that mocked the golden moon
Last night lay tattered on wet paths and beds.

Among the heliotrope the mandarins
In hopeless wild forlorn confusion lay,
Blending their gorgeous reds and vivid greens
With purple flowers in desolate array.

Where last night's graceful Juliet moved divine
A few damp planks and boards neglected frowned,
And sombre seemed the lawn's dark fringe of pine
That last night heard soft amorous laughter sound.

Then through my soul there ran a sudden dread,
An icy terror—“Can this horror be?
Must soon all bright and joyous things be dead?
Is nought immortal save the storm and sea?

“Is even the sea itself with all its waves
Mortal? Hath time who slays each human form
The power to dig for oceans monstrous graves,
The strength to hush the trumpets of the storm?

“Is there one Spirit who gazing from on high
Sees planet after planet reach its goal,
Who sees each star within the starry sky
Enact its part, and every human soul,—

“Who then the farce being ended, says to all,
To last night's lovers and to moon and sun,
‘The play is over—let the curtain fall!
Pass into darkness, for your hour is done’?”

KING SOLOMON

When at the last the great King's heart grew weary,
When pleasure's wild impassioned reign was done,
When laughter of bright lips rang dull and dreary,
When sadness veiled the stars and veiled the sun,

Then with grim Death the great King thus debated:
“The end is drawing near, lift up thine eyes,”
Said Death; “through all these long years I have waited,
But now my patient keen spear claims its prize.”

“But, Death, the world is mine, its every season—
I am the lord of winter and of spring;
If one flower failed to obey me, it were treason.”
Then answered Death: “I also am a King.

“The flowers of all the flower-filled world obey me;
They smile one hour upon thee half in scorn,
Yet not for all thy wealth will they gainsay me:
I steal the rubies from the brow of morn.

“Where is thy last month's concubine? thou hast missed her?
The dark-brown eyes, the soft lips' fragrant bloom—
With lips more masterful than thine I kissed her,
Then built our bridal chamber in the tomb.

“Arise. The sun and stars were thine, the glory
Of empire measureless as morning's light:
Green plains and forests dark and mountains hoary;
Rest in the day and rapture in the night.

“Thy throne was molten gold, with ivory blended,
A work of which no craftsman's heart had dreamed:
On the six steps by which thy foot ascended
Twelve golden lions, maned with terror, gleamed.

“Beside the throne two lions even more massive,
Sculptured in silent gold, yet seemed to say,
‘If man's heart trembles while our strength rests passive
Earth's soul must shudder when we pant for prey.’

“Sheba's fair queen with costliest presents sought thee;
Thy wisdom through the wide earth won renown:
Kings did thee homage,—Ophir's gold they brought thee:
The golden sun was envious of thy crown.

“The moon was envious in her pearly whiteness
Of women whose soft whiteness gladdened thee:
Through pitchy night, or under noontide's brightness,
Thy countless strong ships coursed from sea to sea.

“Horses they brought thee from far Egypt's regions,
Proud-nostrilled, fiery, many a flawless form;
Steeds fit to mount thine horsemen's mustering legions,
Maned like the night and footed like the storm.

“Thy chariots gathered in each chariot city
Flashed back the sunlight from their wheels of gold:
Where David's splashed through blood-pools without pity
Through flower-strewn streets thy cars of triumph rolled.

“Not heaven itself had stars enough to greet thee—
Bright India's birds for thee must rob the skies,
Spread star-besprinkled plumes, and raise to meet thee
Their banners glorious with a thousand eyes.

“David's fierce wars and warrior-deeds were over;
The light of peace on all the glad land fell:
Thine eyes were ever soft eyes of a lover,
Though sombre David's eyes took fire from hell.

“Thou hadst no need of mad adultery's rapture
For thy strong men sent forth through land on land
Brought thee, through fair gifts won or kingly capture,
Forms by some love-god's passionate genius planned.

“The women of all the realm were thine. Didst covet
Some girl with hair that mocked the raven's wing?
At night her mouth was thine, thy lips might love it,
And she might say, ‘I worship thee, O King!’

“At morn, if thou didst weary of her embraces,
Let the joy wane with dawning of the light!
For thee another of countless sweet girl-faces
Rose with the stars, resplendent on the night.

“The joy men seek and many a life foregoes it,
The pressure of virgin lips by no man won,
Was thine a thousand times—the dark night knows it
That for thy sake craved respite from the sun.

“To thee the God of David seemed austerer
Than gentler gods of nations round thy throne:
To thee the white-armed Ashtaroth was dearer
Than the stern Lord whom Sinai's peaks enthrone.

“The women-gods of nations round thy borders
To thee were lovelier than Jehovah's form:
Upon the hill-sides temples at thine orders
Rose to the gods of starlight or the storm.

“Thy soul was full of artist-dreams and fancies;
Thou ponderedst on the tales thy women told,
On Midianitish lore and strange romances
Of passionate gods who ruled in kingdoms old.

“But now the end has come. Lift up thy glances—
Glances that shook the earth and shook the sea.
O King, a mightier step than thine advances:
Tremble,—as all the world once quailed at thee.”

Then Solomon: “O Death with gaze tremendous
What lamp shall light me when I leave the sun?”
And Death, with voice than thunder more stupendous:
“All stars I extinguish, King, save only one.”

Then Solomon: “O Death with lance that quivers,
What cup shall proffer me my costly wine?”
And Death: “O King, within my realm are rivers;
The right to lap their black waves shall be thine.”

Then Solomon: “O bitter Death, thus leaving
The land of plenty, what food shall I take?”
And Death: “Thy soul will hunger not, receiving
Each day one loaf of memory's bread to break.”

Then Solomon: “O Death, what change or raiment
Shall I select from all my priceless store?”
And Death: “Thou hast robbed the world, the time for payment
Approaches—take thy winding-sheet, no more.”

Then Solomon: “Of queens whose eyes mocked morning
Which shall I choose for mistress of the night?”
And Death: “The faithfullest—but with this warning,
Find, if thou canst, one woman who was not light.”

Then Solomon: “On what couch shall I slumber,
I who with many a white-limbed love have lain?”
And Death: “Thy loves have been so many in number
That surely to sleep single will be gain?”

Then Solomon: “And how long shall I tarry
Within the darkness that man's spirit fears,
The gloom where bodiless souls eat not nor marry
Nor drink nor slumber?” Death: “Three thousand years.”

Four times the great King's loneliness was broken,
Four times a spirit in those three thousand years
Hovering approached him, and a word was spoken
That rang like thunder in the great King's ears.

Four times a spirit he once had loved addressed him;
Four times that spirit forsook him as in scorn:
Four times a spirit whose arms had once caressed him
Left him in darkness, crying, “I love the morn!”

The first time thus it happed. He saw swift-sailing
On starlike wings through night's perpetual gloom
A spirit whose glory and loveliness unfailing
Had sweeter been to him than summer's bloom.

She on the bridal night with queenly laughter
Had said: “Bestow a gift on me, O King—
A gift that may recall through all the hereafter,
In life's dim winter, passion's peerless spring.”

And he: “Ask what thou wilt. The world of flowers
Is mine, and the underworld of jewelled gleams.
O love, shall blood-bright rubies gem thy bowers?
O queen, shall star-bright diamonds haunt thy dreams?

“Shall Hiram's vessels bring thee gold unmeasured
From Tyre, from Sidon? Shall the purple sea
Yield up the noblest pearls its depths have treasured?
Shall looms of Edom weave rich robes for thee?

“Thou art the fairest of far Moab's daughters.
For this thy first kiss what gift shall I bring?
Ores from the mountains, amber from the waters?
Speak thou, O queen—command thy slave, the King.”

And she with eyes of more than mortal splendour,
Eyes whose bright glance might lead the sun astray,
Smiling had said: “In love's supreme surrender
My heart is thine, thy will I must obey;

“I am thy slave—thou art my lord, my master,—
Thine am I from this moment to my grave;
Yet woman am I—my desire is vaster
Than starlit night, more hungry than the wave.

“To-night take all my beauty—it is fairer,
They say in Moab, than the day-dawn bright:
A royal crown is mine, win thou the wearer;
Win from me all thou canst of strange delight.

“Yet grant me this, O King—one thing I covet;
In Moabitish blood desire runs high:
Thou fondlest my white hand,—thou sayest, ‘I love it!’
Place in that hand the rainbow from the sky.”

The great King laughed. “O queen, the rainbow's splendour
In that white hand of thine thou yet shalt hold—
Its gleaming hues, its changing tints most tender,
Its red and green, its lilac and its gold.”

Then by his magic spells the great King, knowing
Secrets revealed to him on earth alone,
Created opals—thus for e'er bestowing
The rainbow's charm and glamour on a stone.

But now she said: “The opal's charm has vanished;
My soul has grown beyond such gauds as these.
Listen, thou King to night's deep darkness banished;
On earth new sunlight shines on lands and seas.

“I am the spirit of Freedom—thou the enslaving
Strong King of all the world liest chained and bound.
Thou mayest not even see the green grass waving;
Thou mayest not hear stern Sparta's trumpet sound.

“From Asia once again harsh slavery threatens;
The dateless future on a thin thread hangs:
Asia's tumultuous vast host hourly greatens,
One monstrous serpent with unmeasured fangs.

“Three hundred heroes in the pass are posted
With keen eyes gazing on the silvery sea,
The sea that guards the fair land golden-coasted:—
Man's history pauses at Thermopylæ.

“Lo! time is poised upon a moment breathless:
Of centuries Leonidas is lord.
Three hundred deaths shall make three hundred deathless;
Ten thousand years are balanced on a sword.

“As by a hair all Europe's fate is dangling:
‘Draw back,’ saith darkness to the golden morn—
‘Draw back, give place, while Xerxes' hand is strangling
The neck of Freedom, in its iron scorn.’

“Five hundred years have passed since in thy palace,
O Solomon, my love I gave to thee:
Our rainbow-opals circled passion's chalice;
Now Freedom's rainbow-circlet crowns the sea.

“I, once a slave to all thy royal caprices,
Am now to Freedom only chainless thrall
For Freedom's touch enslaving, yet releases;
At Freedom's voice the inveterate fetters fall.

“Now, while pale Europe shrinks from regal capture,
With brave Leonidas I pause to see
How fearless death may lead to deathless rapture
And time pay tribute to eternity.”

She spoke—the King remained alone and weeping,
But she flew forth to watch the unequal fight
That left three hundred in the dark pass sleeping,
Their foreheads crowned with everlasting light.

Again five hundred years of darkness, lighted
By the faint radiance of that single star,
Passed o'er the mighty King in gloom benighted,
Closed in by past deeds, as by bolt and bar.

Then through the gloom he marked a spirit approaching;
Before her feet aside the mist-wreaths fell:
Her golden wings upon the dark encroaching
Lit up like sudden lamps the vaults of hell.

A thousand years ago (she then a maiden
Of Ammon, he great Israel's peerless lord)
He had said, his kingly heart with passion laden,
“Choose what thou wilt—then trust my unfailing sword.”

And she, within whose hair the stars mistaking
Its blackness for sweet night aspired to rest,
Said, “Of all jewels of the earth-gods' wondrous making
I love the deep-green emerald far the best.

“Yet bring me not the emerald's transient lustre;
Plant a vast forest round about our throne,
Within whose leafage the sun's rays may muster
Legions of emeralds nobler than the stone!”

So Solomon with ready heart had ordered
For her the dark-haired amorous white-browed queen
A palace to be built, by dense woods bordered,
Where living emeralds flashed their leafy green.

But now to-day she said: “O King, low-lying
Within the darkness, helpless in the gloom,
Upon the earth the sullen night is dying!
A living light has flashed upon the tomb!

“A nobler reign than thine is now beginning:
A mighty Lord, descended, King, from thee,
Shall make an end of lust and wrath and sinning,—
By love's voice hush the thunder-throated sea.

“Rome's empire now through all the world extending
Recalls and yet exceeds thine empire old,
But this King's empire, when pale Rome's is ending,
Boundless, shall storm the sunset's gates of gold.

“Women shall seek him—aye, throughout the eras—
But by sweet pureness are his victories won.
While past kings' dreams dissolve like mist-chimeras
His kingdom shall outstay the flagging sun.

“The skies shall hear the last low roll of thunder
That wearies on the horizon's pallid verge;
Beside the lessening waves man's heart shall wonder
At the last effort of the worn-out surge:

“The very stars with fragments golden-gleaming
May strew the heavens, the night drown out the day,
The moon may cease to set the green woods dreaming,—
Christ's timeless kingdom cannot pass away.

“Within his kingdom clasping all things human
In deathless clasp of sympathy divine
A fairer throne than thy throne waits for woman,
A kinglier love, great Solomon, than thine.”

In fifteen hundred years the shadows shifted;
More light flashed downward from the single star:
His weary brow once more the great King lifted,—
He saw a spirit approaching from afar.

A queen he recognised whose golden tresses
Through the Eastern night shone fairer than the sun
In the old lost hours of mirth and love-caresses,
A wife in Midian's mountain-regions won.

“And art thou come to cheer my lonely slumber,
To be once more my light?” the great King said:
“I, once the lord of palaces past number,
Have now no pillow for thy golden head!”

The sweet ghost answered: “Past all power of telling
Is the great change within my spirit wrought
Since by those Eastern fountains upward welling
We wandered, mingling queenly and kingly thought.

“O King, my soul has grown beyond thy dreaming;
Thine harem's backward blossoms all have blown:
The eyes that once were stars upon thee gleaming
Are now as suns to lands thou hast not known.

“A mighty power beyond the Western waters,
England, has risen—a land where all are free.
My heart is now as hearts of England's daughters,
Full of the passion of the chainless sea.

“Work have I now to do—work vast, undying;
I may not share with thee thy timeless sleep:
I have to watch, on my keen sight relying,
A mighty fleet whose sails are on the deep.

“Beyond thy dreams of love my soul has risen;
I am thy slave, thy love-crowned queen, no more!
Rest thou for ever in thy lonely prison;
I am as free as waves that kiss the shore.

“Lo! from the South a giant fleet approaches;
Slaves are they who man it, and a king who sends:
On English waters their lewd flag encroaches;
On me the Armada's destiny depends.

“Fate has bestowed on me the power of hurling
Upon the Armada all the ocean's might,
Wild winds and thunders and white waters whirling:
Woman I was—I am the spirit of night!

“Fate's hand has stolen the stars of night for crowning
My forehead—starless yet my wreath shall be
That Philip's fleet may perish, darkness drowning
A godless host in hell-depths of the sea.

“That is my work, O King—not now to sunder
The self-forged chains that hold thee powerless there
But forth to hurl the lightning and the thunder,
Queen of the storm and sovereign of the air.”

Ere long once more the lonely watch was broken—
A spirit approached on dawn-pink pinions borne,
Then, ere the great King's doubtful word was spoken,
Said: “King, behold in me the spirit of morn!

“Dost thou remember me the Hittite maiden
Of whose blue eyes thou didst one morning say,
‘The sunlit heights beside them are mist-laden;
Twin sovereigns are they of the golden day!’

“Ages have passed—behold! in England rises
The mightiest poet whom man's race shall hear,—
He who can penetrate all hearts' disguises
And make all history's darkest moments clear.

“Him have I now to aid, smiting asunder
Old shackles, pouring through his song supreme
Whereat all time to come shall pause in wonder
The force of truth, the sweetness of a dream.

“Woman I was—I am the spirit of morning
And morning's breath in Shakespeare's song shall be;
Strength as of dawn, when rose-flushed peaks give warning,
And boundless light as of the shoreless sea.

“Not Milcah, Tirzah, Asenath,—no longer
Our dark-eyed maidens hold man's spirit bound;
Man worships even far sweeter souls and stronger,
Souls whom the poet of mankind has crowned.

“England to-day takes up the chant of the ages,
And through that chant rings woman's rallying cry:
Within her heart a blossoming hope assuages
Her long despair, her voiceless agony.

“Thou in the East didst hold our spirits fettered:
Prisoned we were, though golden were the walls!
Wast thou for one slave's soft kiss truly bettered,
Thou, loveless tyrant of a thousand thralls?

“Now in the West our agelong bonds are broken.
Was Desdemona modelled from a slave?
Could any word by mightiest monarch spoken
Curb Portia's spirit,—or control the wave?

“The sea's force in the hearts of England's daughters
From tyrant-kings for ever sets them free.
Thy sceptre swayed the hills, but not the waters:
The desert was thy footstool, not the sea.

“The sea is Shakespeare's, and his land's, for ever;
The sea, the stars, the everlasting sun,
The passionate heart of love that wearies never—
These all are England's, till all time be done.”

Again five hundred years—the star seemed nearer:
Its golden portals filled with fiery light
Flashed till the dense surrounding gloom grew clearer;
A gleam of hope shot radiance through the night.

Hope! For three thousand years the King, despairing,
In woe profound and darkness' depths had lain:
Can hope whose soul is love, whose breath is daring,
Light up those lampless soundless deeps again?

Then starlike—even as if the star, creating
Its fairy spirit of brightness, from afar
Had sent her—came on wings unhesitating
A spirit whose glance was radiant as a star.

Then Solomon remembered, slowly raising
The shadowy curtains of three thousand years,
A maiden passing forth from love, and gazing
One moment back with dark eyes full of tears.

She had given the King one month of kingly pleasure,
One month,—and then had passed into the gloom:
But in that month her soul with all its treasure
Had blossomed, all its wealth of scent and bloom.

She had loved the King, she just a captive maiden—
He ruler of the earth, of sea and land.
She gave her soul to him, with sweetness laden:
He took the flower,—then dropped it from his hand.

But now, though vast strange centuries intervening
Had done their varying tasks, then waned and fled,
She, apprehending love's eternal meaning,
Had sought the King among the living dead.

She spirit-ruler of the star whose brightness
Had dared to face the midnight's sombre scorn
Now, pure as mountain-snow's ethereal whiteness,
Came whispering words of sweet hope newly born.

“Rise!” said she: “time is nought, and life is vaster
Than all the swift-winged ways and moods of time.
Not death, but love, is all the ages' master,—
Lord even of hell, star-garlanded, sublime.

“A thousand hearts have failed thee. Yet, immortal,
A mightier love than theirs pulsates through one.
Lift up thine eyes. Through morning's golden portal
Rolls slowly forth the chariot of the sun.”

Then Solomon arose.—The star receded;
Its task accomplished, that pale lamp might die:
But in the East its lustre was not needed,
For love's majestic morning lit the sky.

JOHN HENRY NEWMAN AND VICTOR HUGO

[_]

(John Henry Newman: born Feb. 21st, 1801, died Aug. 11th, 1890. Victor Hugo: born Feb. 26th, 1802, died May 22nd, 1885.)

While all men's hearts with new-born hope were fed,
Hope in the morning, sweet faith in the sun,
Hope that dark tyrannous ages all were dead,
That reigns of kings and reigns of priests were done;

While all men's eyes beheld the morning light
Red in the skies, but blood-red over France,—
While all men dreamed that now the starless night
Had quailed before the high sun's fiery glance;

While all men dreamed that now on Europe's plains
Untinged with blood might wave the untrodden rye,—
While Revolution's forehead red with stains
Confronted unabashed the sunlit sky,

Two sunlike spirits arose—on each the doom
Of endless love, redemptive of their race:
And unto one the sweet morn's light was gloom,
And one's eyes looked the strong sun in the face.

To one the light of morn was but a dream;
His heart was with the ages past and dead:
The sunshine seemed a pale deceptive gleam,
And Freedom's sword was soiled with ominous red.

His hands groped backward through blind ways and strange,
Seeking to grasp the Cross; his eyes yearned back:
His thoughts that moved within a narrow range
Guided his feet along a flowerless track.

Born in an age when thought had risen to smite
All chains and fetters from the soul of man,
Born at the morn, he rested in the night,
Turned from thought's sea to where thought's stream began.

The stars were more to him—the stars that gleamed
Leading wise men along a desert way—
Than the great sun whose glory round him beamed;
The shadowy night was lovelier than the day.

True, noble of heart he was—all men loved well
Our English Newman, English to the last.
Rome tempted, tempted subtly, and he fell:
Yet from his heart the sweet love never passed.

Still was there something alway in his soul
Of English greatness, still his soul was free:
Rome's thunders never wholly hushed the roll
Of stormier thunders, thundering from the sea.

But on the other's soul the morning gleamed.
Born at the century's dawn, for him the night
Was as a far-off past whereof some dreamed
While he dreamed only of the golden light.

For him when Revolution's thunders spoke
It was as if a thousand reigns were done,—
Man freed for ever from night's fruitless yoke
And servant only of morning and the sun.

All hopes and joys and passions of the race
Were his to sing, were his in soul to share:
He saw the sun-bright form of Freedom chase
Gaunt Slavery's form to its last sunless lair.

He saw man's soul as man's soul is to be;
Upon the necks of kings and popes he trod:
Man's serfs and thralls in love's name he set free,
And broke man's idols in the name of God.

Woman he saw, not as she is to-day,
Man's slave, man's harlot, with the streets for home,
But as she will be when men's hearts obey
Love's nobler law, in happier years to come.

Lightning of anger flashed along his strain;
Through resonant verse the loud song-thunder broke:
Yet had he pity for a child's least pain—
Through him the very heart of childhood spoke.

Pity he had for kings, for all who erred,
For tyrants, for the ravening souls that slew;
Aye, tenderest pity for even each captive bird
That pines for deep green woods and skies of blue.

The eternal love to him was God supreme;
The love that dwells behind the sombre skies,
In woman's heart, in woman's passionate dream,—
The God whose sunlight shines in sinless eyes.

When loudest fell the cataracts of the waves
And thunder pealed from heaven's exalted dome
Fearless he faced the stormy God who paves
His floors with shipwreck and his path with foam.

Nature was his—the solemn starlit night;
The winds that range the echoing hills for prey;
Sunrise upon the waters golden-bright;
The rose whose beauty triumphs for a day.

And love was his to sing—fair beauty's rose
Triumphant through wild hours of centuries long:
While through the heart of man love's strange thrill goes
The heart of man shall love the poet's song.

While on the earth green grows the tender grass
Each amorous springtide, while on flower and tree
Love scatters jewels as the seasons pass,
While love's eyes steal their sapphire from the sea;

While on the mountains the eternal snows
Gleam white as on the world's first birthday morn,
While first love's kiss is fragrant as the rose,
While passion laughs the thought of death to scorn;

While other Esmeraldas still arise
With summer's flower-sweet darkness in their hair,
While once more Doña Sol's imperious eyes
Bid pale Hernani worship—and despair;

While beauty still is unto man the chief
Of all things, sweeter than the dream of power,
Shaming with deathless hues the thorns of grief,
The tints that blush and perish in the flower;

While woman's beauty still is crown of Art,
The one thing worshipful, the one thing pure,
All loveliness that wrought on Hugo's heart
In Hugo's song shall blossom and endure.

Another century dawns,—the thought of each
Therein beyond all doubt shall have its day:
To some the churchman's cloistered life shall preach,
And some the poet's stormier heart shall sway.

Some who love best the sunlight filtering through
Stained glass shall seek with Newman shadowy fanes,
And some with Hugo's spirit shall seek the blue
Bright sun-kissed sea's illimitable plains.

Aye, some shall dream with Hugo on the waves
And seek with him the sunlit road to God,
And some with Newman, seeking starlit graves,
Shall tread the thorn-strewn paths that dead saints trod.

Some souls shall worship where the wild wind reaps
Its fruitless harvest from the fields of foam,
And some where time is chained and progress sleeps
Within the walls of immemorial Rome.

Some souls shall deem, deep-moved by Newman's thought,
The ardent passion of his eager brain,
That England—sea-zoned England—can be brought
Beneath the yoke of haughty Rome again.

And some, whose hearts the great French poet stirs,
Shall dream that Paris in the end shall be
The wide world's centre—all man's worship hers,
And hers the wealth of many a far-searched sea;

That in the end when all men's minds are one
And all men's hearts love's uninvaded home
Love's reign, already in his heart begun,
Shall be complete in Paris, not in Rome.

Some hearts shall dream with Newman that the ghost
Of love, the ghost the Roman Church allows,
Is fittest bride for man aspiring most,
Man's purest helpmate, most seductive spouse;

Deeming that human love must ever err
When passion through it throbs with mighty force,—
Not seeing woman, but the shadow of her,—
Deeming love's rapture senseless half, half coarse;

Holding that ever far beyond the skies
Must love accomplish its diviner dream,
And that the light that flashes from the eyes
Of woman draws from hell its magic gleam.

Others will hold with Hugo that the light
Of woman's eyes in far-off heaven was born;
That till it shone, no starshine lit the night;
That her hand fills with flowers man's wreath of thorn;

That woman's beauty is the gift supreme,
Man's holiest rapture, his divinest bliss;
That heaven with all its joys was but a dream
Till heaven met earth in passion's fiery kiss.

SONG

[Some love endures a season]

Some love endures a season;
It blossoms as the rose:
It blooms without a reason,
Without a thought it goes.
It comes through dreamland's portal;
It flashes on our eyes;
It makes some song immortal,
Then in an hour it dies.

Such love, though brief and hollow,
Wins worship as of old:
A thousand lovers follow
The form they may not hold.
“The fairest love is fleetest
And soonest lost in gloom;
Love's dawn,” they say, “is sweetest
When sunset brings its doom.”

If pleasure's white hand beckons,
What eager hearts pursue!
The pain, the cost, who reckons?
Who asks if love be true?
That love is sweet is certain,
The noontide sun is bright—
Why lift the future's curtain?
Why peer into the night?

Yet with immortal passion,
Though not in all men's ears,
A love of nobler fashion
Sings—as to one that hears.
To live,—if life be needed;
To die,—if she may gain;
For this my heart hath pleaded:
Will passion's prayer be vain?

A LOST MOTHER

1892

IN MOST LOVING MEMORY OF MY MOTHER FRANCES CHARLOTTE BARLOW

[This time last year, mother, thou wast with me—]

This time last year, mother, thou wast with me—
The flowers still bloomed, the world was full of light:
The sun still flamed at morn, o'er land and sea;
The stars still ruled the empire of the night.

To-day thou art gone, and all is changed indeed!
For me the whole dim world in shadow lies.
Not from the sun, the stars, doth light proceed,
But from the love that fills a mother's eyes.

Yet, though the light die out on hill and plain,
Though darkness spread its veil across the deep,
Though I shall never meet on earth again
Thine eyes, closed in their everlasting sleep,—

Though thou art gone from thine accustomed place,
Though sorrow do its deadly best to kill,
God, who divides, can bring us face to face,
The Power that wrought our love is with us still.

September, 1892.

A LOST MOTHER

I.

From immemorial time thou hast been here
With each sweet new-born year:—
Must this year's hours
Keep lonely watch with me for bloomless flowers?

From immemorial time thou hast been mine,
Love's gift, love's tenderest sign:—
Now must I see
The unpitying darkness shroud love's form and thee?

O mother! mother! So the breezes cry,—
The listening waves reply;
What, art thou dead!
Does no strong help stoop downward from on high?

O mother! mother! So the forests moan
And heavenly heights, star-sown:
Thou art dead! thou art dead!
And I am left in all the world alone.

From babyhood to childhood, and from this
To manhood, thy grave kiss
Shielded,—Dead! Dead!
What hath become of thy revered grey head?

Thou hast closed the door,—thou wilt again appear
With the new green-robed year:
Thou art not dead,—
'Twas but a dream, one moment of wild fear.

Thou hast closed the door,—thou wilt again return?
This madness we shall spurn.
Thou art not dead:
Thou wilt walk with me through the flowers and fern?

Thou art asleep,—thou wilt again awake,
Mother, for thy son's sake?
Thou art not dead,—
Dead! O my God,—and will my heart not break?

Thou art just sleeping for a little while
And then thou'lt wake and smile!
Living, not dead,
Thou wilt arise from that cold white still bed.

What, never more awake? Thine eyes no more
Watch the new daylight pour
In at the window-pane,—
Thine ears hear no sea-music on the shore?

Never? I'll not believe it! 'Tis not so:
Thou canst not wholly go;
Nay, thou wilt come again,
And with the same eyes watch the green buds grow.

And yet, where art thou? Oh, the spring comes back:
It is not green, but black!
And summer brings no flowers
Now, to pour round her on the sunny track.

Yea, all things change for me; the morn will long
Be dim with sense of wrong,
The starlit hours
Most dumb, most dark, that once were light and song.

Thou hast been with me these glad many years,
Mother,—Oh grant that I,
Since thou art dead, may die!
Love pleads for death: 'tis life alas! who hears.

II.

Surely I needed thee the most of all,—
Thy heart on which to call.
And now thou art dead,—thou art dead,—
On me most weak this heaviest blow must fall.

There could not be beneath the blue calm sky
One mother-needing spirit such as I,—
And yet thou art dead,
Thou turn'st not back for groan or prayer or cry.

I needed thee,—and yet a million more
Are motherless as well:
Vast is pain's iron hell;
Millions have watched at death's relentless door.

And now I join the army robed in grief
Whom from afar I've seen:
What sorrow's depth may mean
They tell me,—none can point me to relief.

III.

And must I live my life, and rise and sleep?
Work,—since I cannot weep?
Must daily toil begin,
A joyless strife renewed, with nought to win?

Has life a value, mother, now for me
Lonely, apart from thee?
From dawn to set of sun
Never was work without thy counsel done!

How shall I strive, alone,
To lure the coy Fame downward from her throne?
If Fame should stoop at last
Would not the soul's exultant power be past?

IV.

No friends around can know,
Mother, dead mother, that I loved thee so!
I am not one to speak
Or ease my heart by passionate overflow.

They are kind,—but have they heard
With me for many a spring the spring's first bird,
Seen gulf and creek
Flash with a thousand gems at summer's word?

Have they, when exiled summer dies of pain,
Watched autumn's glittering reign,
And, labouring even as one,
Through sunless winters sighed not for the sun?

Have flowers and ferns and shells in many lands
Gathered by earnest hands
Taught loveliest lessons?—Now must all be o'er,
Delight of groves and shore?

V.

O beautiful blue sky, thou gleamest on,
Though she, my light, is gone!
And ye too have no hearts to sympathize,
Ye placid starlit skies!

Great careless fragrant rose
Blooming and shining in the garden-close,
How canst thou do this thing?
Art thou still crowned, when crownless pain is king?

How the world followeth still
Its weary selfish ceaseless restless will!
She has passed away: and what
Is that to world,—or star or lake or hill?

Cold nature cannot mourn. We tell our woes
To cowslip or to rose:
They heed us not:
No sorrow breaks the griefless deep's repose.

Little it is to wave or star indeed;
These fail us at our need:
But if on heights divine
Listening my mother's soul be touched of mine

Most deeply sorrowing, will she not come down,
Casting aside her crown?
Will she not yearn to help me where I wait,
Eyeing the close-shut gate?

Shall she not answer prayer
Who hath answered even a thought, a wordless fear?
Through night's soft darkness shall she not draw near?
Ah!—black void endless air!

VI.

In far-off years, a child, I used to pray
That death the self-same day
Might fall upon us both, my mother and me;
God, hast thou answered,—see!

Here am I in my power of manhood,—strong,
Alas!—I may live long:—
I may live years and years and years alone,
A suppliant at death's throne.

Shall I live years and years, and never see,
Mother, the face of thee?
See death call shuddering nations forth to die,
Yet, doing so, pass me by?

Shall I see day give place to starlit night,
Yet miss my one star's light?
Miss, when spring's cowslips load with scent the breeze,
One flower more sweet than these?

VII.

If I could see thee!—know
Just once for certain that thou waitest me,
The dreariest pang would go:
But this is just the gift which cannot be.

Most hard it seems to bear,
Most hard,—that, if the dead be living yet,
Our foreheads may be met
Never by breathings from their mountain-air.

O mother—just to know
That Death's forlorn black “Never” is a lie!
Then could I wait to die;
Will no Power speak the word I long for so?

I gaze into the void
Of silent sea and starlit deep-blue air,
By the heart's madness buoyed:—
It is in vain; thou art not there.

VIII.

I did not see thee waxing day by day
Older,—how could I see?
Thou wast the same to me
As flower or moon or sun or starry ray.

Though thou wast growing grey,
I noticed not,—thou wast there every morn:
Fair credulous love hath only sweetest scorn
For death, and dreams no dream can pass away.

IX.

That thou shouldst be my mother hour by hour,
Changeless, of sovereign power,
That all of thine should last
Though aging worlds drew deathward, darkening fast,

This seemed past question: yea, that when the morn
O'er golden hills was borne,—
That when at drowsy noon
The glad earth slept, with eyelids touched by June,—

That when from budding copse or white-flowered tree
Rang forth the throstle's glee,—
That when the blue waves bore
Tribute of rainbow shells to rock or shore,—

That when the boats black-hulled and russet-sailed
Gleamed, till the light wind failed,—
That when the bright star-rebels, one by one
Glittering, deposed the sun,—

That then thou shouldst be with me seemed so right
That never, save at night
Sometimes, when flashes of the future came
Across me like a flame,

Could I conceive that one day all these things
Would go on as before,
But thou wouldst never mark the throstle's wings
Nor watch the white-edged shore.

X.

Herein the agony lies,
The dark strange torment past man's power to bear,—
That thou art wrapped in dim funereal air
Unpierced of mortal eyes;

That never—never again—this much is sure—
Can I behold thy face
Until I pass the gateway of the place
Sunless, unknown, obscure.

E'en yesterday—it seems—to find thy room
I had but to cross one street:
To-day...before we meet
I too must pass the gateway of the tomb.

XI.

I saw thy face in death;
Calm, lovely, almost girlish, so it seemed—
Lying like one that dreamed
A dream so sweet the dreamer held her breath.

Yet, mother, unto me
Thy lined sweet aged face was sweeter far:
Whatever angels are,
My need is not of angels, but of thee.

XII.

We held the gates in force,—but in the night
When on our baleful town
The murderous fog sank down,
When moon nor star gave sweet and helpful light,

Then, through one postern-gate
The silent Shadow crept;
It slew her while she slept;
We seized our weapons...Ah, too late! too late!

XIII.

For years beyond man's dream
That viewless host of death has held its own:
With trumpet-sound, or with no bugle blown,
No warning lance-point's gleam,

That dim veiled host has crept from town to town
Changing man's mirth to sighs—
Snatching from monarch's brow the lordliest crown,
Closing the fairest eyes.

And yet to those who weep
The shock seems ever new and ever strange:
Though all the world might change,
The form they loved they thought their love could keep.

XIV.

Could we have known that death was near
How many things our lips would then have said,
Winning sweet answer from the lips now dead,
Things sweet to say and hear!

What loving farewell then upon the verge
Of this the change supreme,
Within full sight, full hearing of the surge
Of that strange sea that flashed with distant gleam!

What thoughts to tarry with us night and day
Then through the coming years,
Thoughts that might wipe away
Some well-nigh hopeless tears!

Ah! so we dream. In this the answer lies
Perhaps to our despair—
That love is changeless, whether past the skies
Or breathing here our earthly air:

That where most perfect love
Has been, no farewell formal and forlorn
Could aid, or serve to move
From the pierced brow one point of thorn.

The last “Good-night”—not known to be the last—
This, it may be, far more availed
Than any summing up of all the past
Or kiss, while life's strength slowly failed.

XV.

O Death that sparest not the tiniest flower,
The smallest sea-weed in the whole wide sea,
Wilt thou spare me,—
Wilt thou not give me my victorious hour?

Thou takest to thyself all summer bloom;
Along the violet-scented vales thy hand
Sweeps, and behold the land
Is as a tomb!

No timid prayers, no blossom-pleas, delay
Thine hosts upon their way:
Thou steal'st the rose,—
Then at thy touch September's glory goes.

Dead golden Junes are glad within thy halls,
And thy voice calls
In the end all weary singers unto thee:
Forget not me.

Thou showedst Keats within thy starlit bowers
Fairer than earthly flowers,
And her my mother thou didst gently take,—
Me thou wilt not forsake?

When thou dost light within thy sombre sky
Lamps lovelier far than ours that wane and die,
For me reserve thou one;
Then lead thou back the mother to the son.

XVI.

He who redeems from death
Is with the unerring mighty death-force one;
There are not two vast Powers beneath the sun;
One God bestows, the same God stays, the breath.

One God, and only One,
In flower-filled Galilee
By the clear inland sea
Spake through blue waves, bright blossoms, to his Son;

Then, at the bitter end,
Built up with iron hands the cross that slew,
Aye held the spear that smote his Son's side through;—
Death, life, are one same Friend.

So, mother, unto thee and me
It may be God first spake
At crimson sweet daybreak,
Even as the Giver of long glad days to be:

Then 'neath the noontide sun
Spake still,—spake as the One
Who brought unto our door
Of rich pure blessings so divine a store:

Then lastly, it may be,
When came the sunset, then the dim night's close
(Oh night—that night!), God as sweet Death arose,
Thy Steersman still—to shores we may not see.

XVII.

Though swathed in mists and storm
That Steersman's shape, that Steersman's face, may be,
Yet may we sometimes see
Erect, unmoved, the Watcher's form.

Though starlight fails us, though the wild ship goes
Through lampless wastes where never sun arose,
Yet, mother, “Hitherto”—so thou didst say—
“The Lord hath helped us on our way.”

I take the inspiring word,
On thy lips lately heard:
“Through starless nights, through days of strife and storm,
May he who guided two, guide still one form!”

XVIII.

Aye, even in disease
When fail the heart and brain,
When fails still more the soul of him who sees,
Yet cannot lull, the maddening pain—

Then, even then, the Lord
Within the strange unknown disease may lurk,
Watching his atom-armies at their work,
Giving each germ its keen small sword:—

That so this bodily frame
Assaulted, stormed, or undermined at last,
May fade by natural laws into the past,
Given back to earth, or given to flame;

That then, the fleshly scaffolding removed,
The soul's fair palace, finished quite, may gleam,
Lovelier than palace of the loveliest dream,
Lovelier than all we loved.

XIX.

When face to face I stood
With the dim form by death already veiled,
When heart and spirit quailed
Already at life's o'ershadowing solitude,—

Then—though in days gone by
It needed not a cry
To bring sweet answer from the lips divine
That were alive, and mine—

Then—though the slightest plea
Brought answer back to me
Once—then my soul's most hopeless moan
Wrung forth no answer from thy lips of stone.

XX.

This saddens me—that never more
On whatsoever golden shore
We twain may meet, will mother and son
Be made through weakness even more fully one.

It breaks my heart to think,
Mother, my one best friend,
That I no more may lend
My aid to thee on the dark river's brink.

So sweet it is—the weakness of old age!
So sweet thy gentle face,—
And in it one might trace
The lessons of long life, pure page by page.

Thou needest me no more!
Thou needest not my arm on which to lean—
Oh God, no angel-form, no heavenly scene,
No palace flashing gems from roof to floor,

Only my mother's figure, slightly bent,
Herself, not able to walk far,
This I desire!—no stately angel sent
From deathless sun or star.

XXI.

Yea, now the sudden change!
Now am I, as it were, once more a child:
Thou from the heights to me most strange
Canst stoop to aid me, weary and sin-defiled.

Thou art renewed, reborn;
Now thou hast passed the dark sad hour
Thou hast the sunlit brow, the deathless power:
'Tis I who am weak,—and utterly forlorn.

XXII.

And if in one swift flash I understand,
Mother, the heart of thee,
Thou too mayest know more fully me
Than when we walked here, hand in hand.

Thou now dost see more fully—is it so?—
That I was seeking God, through darkling ways;
That I was compassed round by fiend and foe
And fought 'mid gloom and haze.

Is death's hand, after all, the only hand
That leads two spirits towards one haven at last?
Is death even as the watcher at the mast
Whose voice rings through the silence, crying “Land!”

XXIII.

They “sealed” the sepulchre and “made it sure,”
“Setting a watch”—but yet...
Can God's light traverse even the ways obscure
Where death's and horror's ice-cold hands have met?

Us the foul horror chills:
O God of sunlight, canst thou pierce the gloom?
The tomb of Jesus was an empty tomb;
My mother's?...Empty also, if God wills.

XXIV.

In the cold early morn
The ringing at the bell,—the message sent!
Through the dark streets I went,
Encountering full death's glance of scorn.

O silent streets, O night
That ended as the light
So dim, so cheerless, so heart-broken, came,
Were ye the very same,

The same streets, and the night
Through which a few short hours before
I passed, while all around seemed bright?
Even so the ship is doomed when nearest shore.

XXV.

God to this agony brought me—did he plan
In far-off days the mode to bear me through?
Is not one point unknown to him and new,
Though strange to suffering man?

Can he who sees the whole
Bear through the darkness threatening from afar,
Even as a small but unextinguished star,
The vessel of my soul?

XXVI.

And if the sorrow of one
Be thus discounted, thus foreseen and known,
Can God in every case not hold his own
And cope with every grief beneath the sun?

Not only with our grief,
But with the sorrow in each most distant star,—
If in those golden orbs there are
Souls clamorous for relief?

Is all foreseen—this universe of ours,
Is it held safe within the Father's hand?
Is all foreknown and planned,—
Our human deaths, and even the deaths of flowers?

Is there no pang too much?
No grief that cannot in the far-off end
By Love's transmuting touch
Be changed to joy, a foe become a friend?

Shall I be told, when pain is past,
By thine own lips, O mother, it may be,
Why thou wast taken thus from me?
Will death the conqueror be dethroned at last?

XXVII.

How huge is man's long-historied grief!
Aye, even in days ere history was begun
Death stabbed some mother, and her son
Mourning as I mourn, found as small relief.

In some vague land forgotten of light,
Buried beneath the weight of endless years,
The same cry pierced the night—
“Mother!” Who heard? Who hears?

XXVIII.

To be made wholly one
With all the world in fellowship of grief
May count for something. Human joy is brief,
And sorrow stalks between us and the sun.

I told my story of pain to one I met;
He gentler seemed, to grief more reconciled.
He said: “A grey-haired mother you regret;
I sorrow for a child.”

XXIX.

So many have gone before!
Surely thou art not lonely, mother, there.
Strong souls are ready, faces sweet and fair,
To welcome thee upon the further shore.

'Tis I who am left alone!
Thou feel'st the grasp of many a loving hand:
Thy brothers by thee stand;
My father claims thee, long-lost, for his own.

But oh! forget not me
Left on this dreary earth,—prepare a place
Where I again may see thy face,
Mother, and dwell with thee.

XXX.

The years between seem nought:
Across the years towards boyhood now I go;
Again the blue waves flow
Of seas that shine in thought.

My life's steps I retrace:
For four and forty years thou hast been with me—
It seems, now God has taken thee
But one brief moment's space.

100

Thy day of death (O day of mist and tears!)
Looms from behind interminable years:
The day we gathered those white starlike flowers
Seems distant only a few short hours!

XXXI.

If thou couldst wake as if from trance
Saying, “I have slept—I feel much stronger now;”
If I could meet again thy glance
And see morn's sunlight kiss thy brow:

If thou couldst say, “I journeyed to the tomb
But now again God gives me back to thee,
Back to the flowers (how sweet their bloom!)
Back to our sky and sea:”

Why, then I might perhaps forget,
If thou wert thus restored,
These hours of agony—and own my debt
Then to the pitying Lord.

101

XXXII.

Oh! why should only Lazarus return,
Quitting the clay-cold grave, the narrow bed?
So many souls lament, and wild hearts burn—
God, give us back our dead!

Why choose—it seems unjustly—only one?
Why blunt but once Death's eddying sword?
Why hear a sister's prayers, yet not a son—
What of my mother, Lord?

XXXIII.

When the soul longs to weep
Then to feel turned to stone,
This is indeed an agony most deep—
Deadlier than pain of tears or passionate moan.

Some sob themselves to sleep—
Sleep soothes the pent-up agony within,
Comfort and aid they win:
Weep thou, O God, for those who cannot weep!

102

XXXIV.

Through this last strange sad year
Beside the graveyard gate
I seem to have stood, there watching bier on bier,
Myself most desolate.

I have seen a beauty radiant as the morn,
A young girl's bloom,
Into that starless blackness borne
We, shuddering, call the tomb:

I have seen a mother's love depart—
Having struck once, O Lord,
Not in its sheath, but in my heart,
Thou hast sheathed thy dripping sword!

XXXV.

“The singer feels not, in that thus he sings,”
You say?—Nay, if he sang not, pain would kill.
He takes the help God brings
Who bids him even in hell's depths sing on still.

103

“The singer feels not”—Nay, so much he feels
That, if he sang not, every day
In blank despair would creep away
And self-destruction lurk at darkness' heels.

XXXVI.

When all is done that can be done
And all that can be said is said,
Time leaves alone the mother with the son—
The son alive, the mother dead.

That is the torture. Through the day and night
The vision still is there;
The face so calm, but oh! so white—
The silent lips, the silver hair.

The night before she kissed me, and the kiss
Just like another came and passed:
O God how different, had we known that this—
This—was the very last!

104

XXXVII.

The sorrow is spread across a wider space
When brothers, sisters, mourn one common loss.
But she and I stood face to face:
I bear alone my cross.

A widow she, and I an only son—
That made communion sweet.
Our lives were closely linked, as few or none
Have had the gladness—and the grief—to meet.

No separation marred our joy;
The mother had become the perfect friend:
The man drew even nearer than the boy,
Aye, ever nearer, till the very end.

XXXVIII.

Her mind was ripening till the very last,
Alive to all the news that each day brings;
Before her earth's wild pageant passed,—
Its crowned Republics and its throneless kings.

105

When battle's trumpet rang out shrill
Her eyes with passionate interest watched the fray,
And every stormy question of the day
Drew close attention still.

Mingled with holier lore
She loved the legends of old Greece and Rome,
And crossed in thought the dim sea's foam,
Landing on many a far-off shore.

The conversation ready and bright
So keenly I miss—the well-stored brain;
The mind's unintermittent light,
Quenchless by age or pain;

The thought wherein confusion never crept,
Not weakness even—to the last hour clear;
The thought that from the first hour kept
Pace with my own thought here;

This, not the loving heart alone,
I miss, and shall till life is o'er:
The soul that made one music with my own,—
Music that sounds no more.

106

XXXIX.

What are all crowns of fame—
If any wreath, though my desert be small,
Should in the end to love and labour fall—
What are they worth,—what is a poet's name?

For years I toiled to win
The laurel crown—it seemed the one thing worth
Eternal effort on the ephemeral earth:
Such effort seems to-day almost a sin.

This was the one thing worth
Far more than all the highest success on earth—
To lay my tired pen down,
To cease from dreaming of the bay-leaf crown,

To seek my mother's room
And there, though on the city darkness lay,
To meet the glad smile lovelier than the day,
Sunlike in London's deepest gloom.

107

XL.

And yet I think that she would say to me,
“Cease not from effort—rather struggle on!
Thou shalt not work alone:
Thy father and I will toil along with thee.

“Win thou the flower of fame;
Its odour shall be sweet
Even here,—yea, labour nobly till we meet:
Thou labourest for our name.”

XLI.

The golden crocus blows again,
But oh so different seems its brightness now!
I see it through a mist of pain:
The leaves seem altered on each budding bough.

Yea, all things take their colour from our thought:
The radiant waves
Will flash their countless gems for nought
On eyes that dream of graves.

108

So must it ever be.
I saw the flowers, the summer skies,
The splendour of the sea,
Not through my own, but through my mother's eyes.

XLII.

The sorrow of one appeals to all.
A song of deepest pain
In men's hearts may remain
When loveliest strains of pleasure's music pall.

No song of flower or sea,
No song of morning on the sun-kissed hills,
No song that takes its cadence from the rills,
Hath in it grief's forlorn eternity.

No Venus hath the power,
Though white and sweet and fair of limb she be
And full of glory of her mother-sea
And her soft mouth in flower,

109

Yet hath she not the power to lure mankind
For all her deathless charms
As grief can lure,—and as grief's song can bind,
Not with white hands but with gaunt iron arms.

XLIII.

Had we but closelier watched that day,
Had we but guessed that then the attack was planned,
Could we, a small but fully awakened band,
Have held the hosts of death at bay?

Could we have kept death at the door
And given, if but for one sweet summer more,
Life and the joy of life to one
Gladdened so simply by fresh air and sun?

I think we might have,—who can say?
But does not that most piteous “might”
In its mute force convey
A sense of horror deeper than the night?

110

Yea, deadlier, deeper, than the tomb
That shrouds my mother's form from mortal eyes
Is the persistent gloom
That on her son's soul lies;

On his,—and on another watcher's soul.
Two feel that, had their task been fully done,
Two broken hearts might even to-day be whole:
God help the watcher,—and the son!

XLIV.

And yet I seem to hear the dead sweet voice
Saying, “Blame not overmuch yourselves, my son:
God watched—no evil is done;
Be thou not sad,—rejoice!

“Even if the door of life was left ajar
Not through that door came death alone,
Nay, Love came with him,—Love who can atone
For all mistakes and sins in every star.”

111

XLV.

Somewhat no doubt at every death is felt
Of self-reproach—the watchers deem they slept
Or watched not keenly, when the blow was dealt,
When from its scabbard death's sword leapt.

God help us—though we love, we are but frail:
When we would watch, we sleep.
May God the unsleeping Watcher keep
O'er all the loving watch that cannot fail!

XLVI.

If now my father claims thee, is it well?
If well for him, is it then ill for me?
—Nay, surely golden flower and purple sea
And emerald hill-side have their tale to tell?

If now in heaven more dazzling flowers
Await her gaze, yet many a lovely sight
On this old earth was ours:
Fair sunlit morns, and many a moonlit night.

112

XLVII.

Through work now lies the road,
Through work and daily duties, back to thee:—
As with clear gentle voice thou biddest me
Stoop and lift up my load;

The burden of daily labour to be done,
The burden of lonely thought—
Somewhat is waiting, ever, to be wrought
By patient toil, some summit to be won.

Not through the graveyard, through the gate of life
Lies the road back to thee:
Through earnest labour, noble strife,
Working out ends my tired eyes cannot see.

XLVIII.

We dream of angel-forms;
Heaven is to us some wondrous land afar,
Lighted by rays of many a distant star,
Remote, untroubled by our dark-winged storms.

113

Aye, so we dream—the truth we little heed.
The angel-voice spake clear;
The heaven we sought was here;
We see it now, too late,—too late indeed!

XLIX.

The storms, the troubles, brought the angelic aid:
Our land of rain and sun
Must sweeter be than one
All shadow, or devoid of any shade.

The daily help, mother, the daily smile,
These were thine angel-tributes unto me;
Time then was lovelier than eternity—
Alas! but for awhile.

L.

Yet cannot he whose power first wrought the dream
Prolong it—aye for ever, if he wills?
He who upon earth's emerald hills
Set sunlight, on the sea its sapphire gleam;

114

He who bright day by day, glad hour by hour,
Hath helped us, filling every spring the land
With laughter of a thousand fields in flower
That flashed with countless gold beneath his hand;

Can he not, though our hearts despond,
Elsewhere with nobler tints adorn the year?
The love that drew so fair a picture here
Has failed not ever. Can it fail beyond?

LI.

We say: “The dead know not;
If they were with us, they could help to-day,
Share this dark grief, or bear this pain away—
If they could know, less sunless were our lot!

“Again, if they could share our thought
Some thoughts of ours might bring delight,
Some rays from earthly stars might pierce their night;
We should not either weep or smile for nought.

115

“Gladness (if such remain
For us) would be more glad
And sadness shared would be some shades less sad;
Less painful would be pain.”

Ah, they may not be far!
Our gladness may be theirs to-day;
Our sorrows they may bear away:
They gaze not down from some cold callous star.

They, though their life be lovelier far than ours,
Subject to higher laws,
May daily and nightly pause
To lay beside us fair memorial flowers.

The wreaths we weeping brought,
The white pure sad funereal bloom
We left beside them in the tomb,
May be restored—in ways beyond our thought.

Our life more fully, it may be, they can share
Than we their life to-day;
We gaze through skies of sullen grey,
They gaze through cloudless air.

116

Far more of us they know
Than we of them at this strange hour:
Death may bestow on love undreamed-of power,
Bursting the senses' prison-gates at a blow.

LII.

We were so well content,
So all-sufficient each to each,
So glad beyond all speech:
How could we dream the clear skies would be rent?

How could we dream that from bright summer skies
This thunder-bolt would fall?
We never watched at all
For death—we only watched each other's eyes.

When the green meadows bask beneath the sun
In summer, is there one
Who, seeing a tiny cloud, would hold his breath
Dreaming of death?

117

LIII.

If we would value love aright,
Must love be taken away?
Can no man truly love the day
Save only for the contrast of the night?

O mother, was it just?
Did I not feel the blessing of thine hand
Upon my brow? Can I not understand,
Save when that hand is turning into dust?

LIV.

If so the lesson must be learned,
If love be taken from the earth
That we may know love's utmost worth,
Will there be scope to use the knowledge earned?

Will there be given me power to show,
Mother, that while thou wast with me
I failed to grasp the God in thee,
Knowing not what now I know?

118

LV.

This is a helpful thought—
That something wondrous waits
Behind the cloud-girt mystic gates
Of death,—a something each day nearer brought.

“Look forward,” thou didst say,
“To meeting those we love.” Ah! through the strife,
The toil, the cares, of every day,
Mother, the great hope shines, and hallows life.

LVI.

Still, as each year the lilies blow
And gardens grow
Divine with fragrance, as each year the sea
In centuries yet to be

With royal smile puts on anew
Its radiant robes of sunlit blue,
Through all the glory of Nature men will cry,
“Why must our loved ones die?”

119

LVII.

And will the wild cry then
As now ring through the unanswering air?
Will no God mingle with the sons of men?
Will still the eternal silence mock man's prayer?

Or do the night's wings bear
Answer, as only each one knows?
Can God who sends the sorrow, send repose?
Can God send hope, who sent despair?

LVIII.

I deemed I was alone,
But now from every side I hear the sound
Of weeping—mourners gather round:
My grief is linked with endless griefs unknown

My sorrow is part of these.
O God, amid the darkness round thy throne
We fall upon our knees:
Hear thou the prayer,—hear thou the wordless moan!

120

LIX.

Such fierce shocks pave the way
For our departure. All seems different now:
On sunlit mountain-height and leafy bough
Death sets his seal to-day.

In even the slightest things we mark a change:
The value of all things alters here;
Far more familiar grows the sphere
That seemed remote and strange.

Life's roots are loosened by successive shocks:—
Even so the pine that braves the stormiest blast,
That lightning rends not from the rocks,
Falls to a puff of summer wind at last.

LX.

The ice-cold horror of the tomb,
This haunts my heart by night, by day;
It never passes quite away;
'Mid sunlit thoughts the under-thought is gloom.

121

Behind the flowers that light the garden bed,
Among the stars, within the blue waves' sheen,
I see the grim gaunt faces of the dead,
The countless graves at Kensal Green.

LXI.

One most of all I see.
Forgive me, mother, if in my despair
Even though thou art not there
I seek the spot that saw the last of thee.

I know not what thou mayest be now:
I only know
(And with the extreme deep bitterness of woe)
That eyes and hands and the belovéd brow,

That all I held so dear,
At this point vanished. Could my thoughts forsake
At once the spot, even though an angel spake
Saying, “She is not here!”

122

LXII.

The old doubts confront the soul
To-day that man has had to face
In every age, in every place:
We, knowing a part, still yearn to know the whole.

Sometimes a mother dies:
For her the eternal rest is won
While still youth's bright glad sun
Gleams through her daughter's eyes.

In heaven how shall it be?
The daughter lives on year by year:
The end seems not more near;
Life's river finds not yet the shoreless sea.

The varying days go by:
Some hours are glad with sunniest light,
Some dark with deepest night;
Glad, dark, the countless hours are born and die.

123

But still the mother waits—
The daughter's hair grows grey;
No light yet flashes from the solemn gates
Through which the mother's form was borne away.

Where shall they meet and how?
The daughter now
Is altered, worn and old:
The hair the mother stroked was sunniest gold.

How will the mother recognise
The changed dim eyes?
For time has stolen the light, the glow,
That filled them long ago!

How shall I, mother, being a son,
If thou art quite transformed to youth again,
Endorse the work by heavenly magic done,—
Save only with unutterable pain?

124

LXIII.

If there be answer, then this thought
Must shape the answer—that the forms we see,
By whatsoever hand those forms be wrought,
Are wrought for time, not for eternity.

They change, they are fugitive:
But the sweet love that from a mother's eyes
Shines, this shall surely live;
Aye live for ever, though its framework dies.

Time, change,—these count for nought:
The soul outlives the ever-shifting years,
By slow steps towards its victory brought
Through days of triumph, nights of bitter tears.

The thought the forms expressed,
This lives for ever. When all stars wax old
Still will the mother see the hair of gold
Her hand in ages past caressed.

125

So, mother, though love's earlier phase be o'er,
Though here thy task is done,
Thou art my mother evermore,
I, evermore, thy son.

LXIV.

If day by day I love the dead
With deeper passion, holier power,
May not they likewise feel from hour to hour
Not love's extinction—love's new birth instead?

If I love them the more,
May not they too—if this high gift may be—
Love on, and even purelier than before?
May not they also feel more love for me?

LXV.

Something it is to know that in the gloom
A love most sweet abides;
That, when I seek the tomb,
I then shall grasp at once a hand that guides:

126

That strong and tender aid
Waits in advance. Then, though death's surges swell,
Where thou art, mother, surely it will be well
For me to follow, unafraid.

LXVI.

Straight from the loves and flowers of sweet midday
My soul has passed. No afternoon
Has intervened, my thought to attune;
With no slow steps the hours have stolen away.

Straight from the sunlit morn
To this most sombre evening-hour
I have been led by some swift Power:—
Is it love that leads, or Fate's resistless scorn?

LXVII.

As one was doomed to bear
The pang of parting, maybe it was well,
Mother, that on thy son the burden fell;
Thou wouldst have had no strength to face despair.

127

Thou in that other world mayest see
So many things that lighten pain:
But here I bear—I bear for thee—
The unalloyed deep grief that would have slain.

LXVIII.

I have crossed Song's threshold now so many a time
And alway, mother, thou hast been with me
To help my wayward rhyme;
To-day I write not with, but only of, thee.

I have written of joy, of passion's rose in bloom,
Of sea-waves, of the light—
But now of sadness and of grief I write,
Of darkness and the tomb.

LXIX.

Yet in this song, the saddest by far
Of all my songs, wilt thou not help me still?
Gift me with nobler notes, a purer will—
Shine through the gloom, mine everlasting star!

128

Wilt thou not aid mine heart to make
This last sad task divine
Even though it break?
Like all the rest, let this song too be thine!

LXX.

Sometimes, when first I wake,
My heart, forgetting all, forgets to ache:
Then comes remembrance with its poisoned fang
And its most sharp-edged pang.

So may a prisoner in dim vault entombed,
At earliest daylight doomed,
When first he wakes for one wild moment see
Youth's meadows,—not the gallows-tree.

LXXI.

As later on, he gazes down and meets
Eyes that betoken heedless hearts,
And through his soul an added horror darts
As laughter sounds from the tumultuous streets,—

129

So with mute horror as I gaze
A host of mocking forms I seem to see:
They jeer and point at me,
And laughter rings up from the crowded ways.

LXXII.

So much I miss
Amid the strife and turmoil of the fray
The mother's good-night kiss,
That closed with blessing many a stormy day.

However far away
For hours my wandering feet might roam
At night they found, and sweeter for delay,
The haven of home.

LXXIII.

“The dead repose,” you say?
“The lines on brow and cheek are smoothed away”—
But then those lines meant life,
For this means strife.

130

They meant the growing in love, the growing in grace,
They engraved life's history on the face:
Remove them—let them fade and die—
You steal as well the personality.

You steal the self—you “smooth away” the thing
That long life, struggling life, alone can bring;
You blur the sacred lessons of the years,
Learnt doubtless, some, through grief and tears.

“Repose”—I grant you this, but life is dear,
Nought else we know of here:
To see the “lines” “smoothed out,” when fails the breath,
To me brings horror and accentuates death.

LXXIV.

The streets so empty seem!
I wander through them, weary and sad:
Where once so many hearts were glad
I move, as in a dream.

131

So it will be, till after many days
Or few (fewer pangs to bear!)
I pass from London's thinly-peopled ways
To crowded paths and populous streets elsewhere.

LXXV.

Upon this Sabbath day
I dream of summer Sabbaths long ago,
Far oh! so far away—
Ere hope died out and doubt had time to grow.

We sought the small white church, my mother and I—
The heath stretched green and wide:
We walked on side by side:
Above us burned the cloudless summer sky.

All was so perfect then,
So joyous and complete;—
God, was it well to make those days so sweet
If that pure joy can ne'er be ours again?

132

LXXVI.

So much there is to say!
Her grief with mine would be so wholly one.
If mother could but speak to son
For one half-hour, on but one day!

One day in all the year—
The heart might then less wildly ache,
The dawn less sadly break,
With less of stormy pain or sunless fear.

There must be since she died
Such worlds on worlds in either heart
Pent-up—so much to ask, so much to impart
On either side.

LXXVII.

If lordliest strength of song were mine
Still would it be worth while
To add sweet verse to verse and line to line—
Without the mother's eyes, the mother's smile?

133

I lift the pen...I let it fall...
No labour now on earth
Seems of the slightest worth:
The shadow of death broods over all.

LXXVIII.

Who hath not felt despair
Hath never loved at all:
Yea, whoso sayeth that death doth not appal
Hath sought no grave, nor felt the darkness there.

But whoso loveth well,
He sayeth with anguished heart,
“Thou glib and easy, smooth-tongued hope, depart!
Truth, truth alone, unbars the gates of hell.”

LXXIX.

This sorrow sometimes brings—
That round about our path small fair white flowers
All undiscerned in gladness' hours
We now perceive; or forth some new bud springs.

134

And larger flowers the searching hand may glean—
Blossoms of love we saw not heretofore
Or, seeing so close at hand, glanced at no more;
These now yield fragrance unforeseen.

So, wife, thy love for me reveals,
Now that I walk beneath the shadow of night,
Now that unlooked-for grief appeals,
Undreamed-of depth and height.

LXXX.

In after-years,
Though it may seem that boyhood's memories fade
Shrouded in far-off shade,
They never fade—they thrill the soul to tears.

The true sweet lessons taught
By a mother's voice, a mother's eyes,
These influence all our after-thought:—
The whole day's doom is settled at sunrise.

135

LXXXI.

Though manhood's creed may change,—
Though faith's tired ship may wander far from home,
Tossed 'mid unkindred waves and alien foam,
Entering new ports and strange,—

Still will the thought most pure and undefiled
Of early faith, of early prayer,
Weigh with the man, recalling everywhere
The creed the mother taught the child.

LXXXII.

Enter a graveyard—all around you see,
Though warm on turf and marble falls the sun,
Though round the green banks hums the bee,
Signs of Death's conquest won.

Just here and there a few sad blossoms shine—
What art thou doing, O rose?
No blossom here of royal line
Without reluctance grows.

136

“In loving memory.” So the legend runs:
What memories here unite!
Memories of moonlit hours, of August suns,—
Memories of young years bathed in golden light.

“In loving memory.” Countless souls have wept;
The graveyard takes no note of groan or tear.
No lasting record can be kept
Of those who are resting here.

“In loving memory.” Round each sacred word,
Urged on by Time, the sluggish moss will creep:
Ah! those who loved, in love's sweet weakness erred
Deeming they graved so deep.

LXXXIII.

Each day I miss thee more,
In that the friends who thronged around
Pass—each on his own mission bound—
And all goes on as heretofore.

137

Each day more clearly—this perhaps is well—
The difference measureless I see,
Mother, between the love that spake through thee
And love that speaks—with its own tale to tell.

LXXXIV.

Sometimes, when music speaks,
The dead return. For one sweet hour
The fields of youth around me flower:
Life's warm blood tinges ghostly lips and cheeks.

But when the music fails, then oh!
Gone are the flowers, fled are the ghostly folk—
It is as if from summer dreams one woke
Upon a world of snow.

LXXXV.

At times I pray that Fate may place
Vast leagues of deathless air and griefless space
Between me and the spot
Where thou wast with me once, and now art not.

138

Wide fields made fragrant with sweet summer's breath,
Valleys that know not death,
Hills with no clouds of sorrow overcast,
These interpose between me and the past!

New cities I would see
And in them feel more near to thee
Perchance beneath a heaven of cloudless blue
Than in the sunless town that slew.

So for one hour I dream—
Then fades the light from mountain, tower, and stream:
My home seems here, in London's gloom;
I long to live and die beside thy tomb.

LXXXVI.

Once did I dream—for but one moment's space—
Of the belovéd face:
God sends not such dreams twice;
One unforeseen glad instant must suffice.

139

One word is spoken in extremest need:
Well must the listener heed!
One moment flashes forth the heavenly light;
Then silence, and the night.

A thousand dreams of stars and flowers and sun—
Of her alas! but one:
With deepest awe, with measureless surprise,
I heard her voice and met her eyes.

“Do what is given you”—this, I know, she said,
Standing beside my bed:
Once—only once—the dear voice spoke;
I marvelled, and I woke.

LXXXVII.

Most desolate is this universe of ours!
The very stars must pass away
With all their human lives, with all their flowers:
To them their centuries seem but as a day

140

We mourn our ceaseless dead—
But there are countless stars whose light
Is quenched within the eternal night,
Whose last word has been said.

Far more in number than the bright live orbs
Are these whose work is done:
Their ranks are ever swollen, as time absorbs
The light and heat of many an aging sun.

In this vast pathless universe I groan;
I have no hold on night, no grasp of day:
O mother, thou wast all my own!
When thou wast here, I never lost my way.

LXXXVIII.

A child was gathering blossoms in a lane:
She turned now and again
To meet the mother's glance, the eyes that smiled
Their deep love on the child.

141

Then all was well—one short sigh of relief—
No dread, no thought of grief.
Now back once more to search the grassy banks
And thin the cowslip-ranks!

I watched:—I heard a sudden cry,
“Mother!” The sun was sinking in the sky;
Dark clouds assailed him on his golden throne,
Evening approached: the child was now alone.

The mother's form had passed beyond her sight:
I saw the blossoms just now held so tight
Dropped from the trembling fingers one by one.
...How is it, mother, with thy son?

One thought is left, but one—to overtake,
Though foot may weary, heart may break:
Once more, ere falls the darkness, lowers the storm,
To see, to clasp, the mother's form.

142

LXXXIX.

...The child? Ah! she will see
Beyond that turning, past that gate or tree,
The mother—sobs will cease;
For her wild grief will change to perfect peace.

For her the sunset heavens will clear;
The purple clouds that threatened came not near:
No star will veil its splendour; night will be
Spread over windless hills and waveless sea.

But I—ere I may stand
Holding, alive in mine, the far-off hand,
Ere I may overtake the far-off form,
Above my head must burst the boundless storm.

XC.

Yet ought I to despair?
When one so pure and sweet has passed away,
Does her hand point to darkness or to day?
To gloom or sunlit air?

143

Her life was tenderest love, from end to end.
Can such supreme love die—
Be mixed with stars or sky?
Is not the vanished still the present Friend?

Mother, where art thou now?
Not surely in the tomb!
Not there the loving eyes, the stainless brow,
Not there—but far beyond death's mists and gloom.

Thou wouldst not have me weep;
This much—amid the sorrow—this I know:
Thou sentest me the sleep
That gave me strength to bear the unmeasured woe.

If I give way to pain
My pain, O mother-heart, may trouble thee.
What thou wouldst have me gain
Is strength—and selfless love, and purity.

It may be that my eyes
That linger overlong upon thy tomb
Should now reseek the skies
Where deathless starlight battles still with gloom.

144

It may be that thou say'st
With voice more sweet than morning's sweetest song,
“I tarry for thee, son—be brave, be strong;
So shall the hours make haste.”

XCI.

'Tis said of grief's wild dart
However near its dripping red point goes
That God goes nearer, and can interpose
Himself between the spear-point and the heart.

If this be so, though we discern not how,
How close God stands to every being born,
If every thorn-point in each crown of thorn
Wounds God's, not only wounds each human brow!

XCII.

Deep is the human heart:
When anguish comes, how true friends rally round;
If human love had power, then death discrowned
And forceless would depart.

145

But human love has power—to this extent,
That the mute frozen horror melts at last;
The pain no human strength can bear is past;
By whom were loving friends who saved me sent?

By whom if not by thee,
Mother, whose care still active from above
Incarnate once is unincarnate love
And perfect ever-present sympathy.

Old enmities give way
Buried in love's vast overwhelming wave,
And hearts estranged to-day
Grow one, though one in tears, beside thy grave.

XCIII.

So large the army grows,
The unseen army of the well-loved dead!
We, here, for yet a little while make head
Against unnumbered foes.

146

But broken is the square—now back to back
Or side by side we stand,
A small sore-smitten band;
Blood freely runs and corpses strew the track.

And yet amid wild blows
Somewhat of strange delight
Waxes and heightens, thrills the heart and glows:
So much of day is done, so near is night.

So near is night, when on the hard-fought field
As the great moon from silent heaven peers down
The square that would not yield
Will rest—for every brow has won death's crown.

XCIV.

But yet a greater host
Of silent mourners seems to encompass me:
They cross the wastes of many a shadowy sea
Swift-hovering, ghost on ghost.

147

They cross the unknown years;
They say, with grasp of hand or loving look,
“From each of us death took
A mother”—then their eyes grow dim with tears.

Then through the darkness starlight slowly flows,
A strange sense thrills me as of love drawn nigh:
They say, “Thou knowest not what it is to die;
What warrior dreams of rest 'mid shouts and blows?

“From each of us death stole
Our dearest,—but to each did Love restore
That dearest spirit:” I wait to gather more;
Nay, silence—but less strife within the soul.

XCV.

“Must many nights and mornings flee away
Ere comes the all-golden day
When we shall meet?” I said,
And sought news of the dead.

148

No answer reached me. Then again I cried,
“However wildly I grieve
If unto thee I leave
All times and seasons, is my prayer denied?

“Wilt thou, if thus I trust,
Promise while I thy sacred oath record
That we shall meet, though this our star be dust?”
“I promise:” said the Lord.

XCVI.

'Tis right the sun should shine, the blossoms blow,
Though, mother, thou art gone:
'Tis right the stream of life should still flow on;
And who am I to say thou dost not know?

The spring that comes may bring
Not only joy to man, but joy to thee.
'Tis well that once again should smile the sea,
The birds once more with unchanged sweetness sing.

149

When in the fields and lanes
Once more the cowslips and the kingcups blow,
Mother, I will not say thou dost not know,—
I will not say no sunlit spot remains.

Renew thy wondrous tints, thou radiant rose,
And thou, white lily, don thy tenderest white!
My mother loves, my mother knows:
Wear lovelier robes, to gladden keener sight.

XCVII.

I owe a debt of thanks
To him who chose from out the angelic ranks
One having power to kill
With sweetest tenderness and perfect skill.

So sad it might have been!
Some noble souls die hard,
Tortured and racked, pain-marred:
Some suffer terribly, and not for sin.

150

But she, my mother, gently fell asleep.
No time to raise a hand;
The attack was subtly planned;
The eyes closed, ere the eyes had time to weep.

The head not even dropped
Forward, but on the pillow calmly lay:
The heart that beat for me by night, by day,
Wavered—then softly stopped.

XCVIII.

Yet other thanks I owe
To him the guardian Power who guides our way
That every sense was clear when closed the day;
Clear almost as beneath the morning's glow.

The eyes that in the far-off days looked down,
Ever with love, on flower and flower,
Growing in love, ne'er failed in power:
Death, having force to slay, could not discrown.

151

Still were the stars discerned
As clearly as when in years long dead,
Mother, upon thy bridal night they burned:
No tiniest star could veil its golden head.

And still was music sweet.
Thine ears that ever heard Love's pæan sung
Lost still few notes, however soft or fleet,
Of notes that charmed in days when thou wast young.

XCIX.

And this is sweet to think—
That through long years thy firm faith never failed:
Failed neither at death's dim brink,
Nor in those earlier days when doubt assailed.

I, later born in this
The saddest century since the news went round
That death was sceptreless and Christ was crowned,—
I, seeking hope, full often sought amiss.

152

Doubt smote, and smote me hard.
I, seeking God, full often found instead
Darkness, and thoughts ill-starred;
I sought Christ overlong amid the dead.

But thou, whom love inspired,
Didst seek thy Saviour without doubts or fears:
Thou soon didst gain the goal that I desired
And still desire, with tears.

While I was lingering at the ill-fated tomb
Where Jesus' corpse in desolation lay,
Thine eyes could pierce the gloom:
Heaven thou didst reach,—and by a nobler way.

As Jesus first appeared
To Mary, so when thy pure aid I sought
I found sweet faith within thy being inwrought;
Thought's stormy dark heaven cleared.

For God appeared to thee
Though not in waves or sun:
While I was seeking God within the sea
Or in the mountains, thou with God wast one.

153

The poet seeks—and finds
Somewhat divine within the wild waves' roar,
Within the music of the warring winds,
Upon the storm-swept shore.

But thou who carriedst God within thine heart
Hadst never need of Nature's kiss,
Though sweet to thee was this
And sweet the land of Art.

Thou wast so near to God that every day
When God's clear sunshine rose
No dark doubts fled away:
Love questions not, but knows.

C.

And now I hold thy letters in my hand:
As from another land
They come—they deepen holiest grief,
And yet bring some relief.

154

They speak of meeting—simple words and wise—
Not overmuch is said:
Yet in each sacred phrase a volume lies
For she who wrote is dead.

A few sweet thoughts and perfect words suffice,—
But the whole soul is there:
No fruitless sorrow, no prolonged advice,
Only a mother's heart laid bare.

Enough it is. I thank thee for the gift
Sent from God's starriest sky
That bids me not despair, but ever lift
My thoughts from death to love that cannot die.

CI.

They say that “Jesus wept.”
Sweet is the old record, sweet the loving thought—
God into contact with our sorrow brought;
Heaven's boundary over-stept.

155

Dogmas? Save this point, none;
That through the heart of man in saddest hour
Flashed the conviction that some deathless Power
Crossed swords with death—and won.

CII.

They say that Jesus “rose.”
Sweet is the old record, sweet the gracious thought—
God with our griefs and agonies inwrought;
God conscious of our woes:

God, lord of life and master of the sun,
Encountering starless night,—
Putting to desperate flight
The hosts that rule the darkness, one by one.

Dogmas? Nay, Love instead!
No thought abides save this,
That Love's eternal kiss
Hath fallen upon the forehead of the dead;

156

That at that kiss the dead
May pass into the land of light supreme,
Where joy is real and sorrow is the dream
And “Farewell” is not said.

Mother, if Jesus rose,
Then thou in God's sweet strength hast risen as well;
When o'er thy brow the solemn darkness fell
It was but for one moment of repose.

Thy love is mine—my deathless love to thee!
May God's love guard us till all death is o'er,—
Till thine eyes meet my sorrowing eyes once more,—
Then guard us still, through all eternity!

159

THE STORY OF THE LIFE OF CALEB SMITH THE METHODIST MINISTER

TOLD BY HIMSELF

[_]

This poem—which has been much misunderstood—is simply intended as a study of the phases through which an originally religious and devoted spirit passes, who has been driven by a succession of the cruellest shocks from faith in God to pessimism, and from pessimism to sheer madness.

It seems hardly necessary to say—and yet it must be said—that Caleb Smith was utterly wrong in his inferences. He was imbued with the ever-rigid idea of the unity of the world-force which prevailed during the reigns of Huxley, Darwin, Tyndall, and their group, and he failed to discern the vast correlative fact which is now becoming daily more obvious; the fact, namely, that the personal power of God eternally wages war with personal powers of evil. In his scientific madness he attributed Satan's action to God. His agony of doubt was in exact proportion to his previous rapture of belief. When he seems to rail at God, his heart is in reality like the heart of a child, who, having believed with utter abandonment of faith that his father was supreme and omnipotent, weeps for grief and disappointment at seeing that father disregarded and dishonoured.

The poem is, in fact, a cry of love turned into horror, and its true moral is: Shun pessimism as you would a pestilence. Believe in God and good eternally, and fight with and for God against all that is evil and dark and impure. Greater is he that is for you than he that is against you.

I would like to add that I have now come to see that the views which I expressed in the preface to the First Edition of “The Crucifixion of Man” were quite erroneous, and that Laurence Oliphant, whose opinions I there opposed, was, after all, nearer to the truth than I was.

January, 1902. G. B.

What a change from London, drearier as the hot days hotter grew,
To the silent bay in Cornwall, to the calm sea's ceaseless blue,
To the breeze from off the moorlands! What a change for her and me
From the hospital in London to the hospice of the sea!

—Living quietly down in Cornwall with my mother, we alone,
Having nothing of a week-day we could call our very own
(On the Sabbath I was busy with the chapel-service, quite,
Busy from the early morning till the stars shone out at night)—

160

Having nothing of a week-day we could care for just as ours,
Save the fuchsias in the window—what to living hearts are flowers?
I had brought away from London a small girlish flower-bud dropt
From some heavenly hand, we fancied, for our lone hearts to adopt.

She was daughter of a teacher—in a village school she had taught,
But some handsome roué from London whom Fate's reckless guidance brought
To her peaceful home in Sussex taught her love, and taught her well,
For he found her safe in heaven, but he left her lost in hell.

That was dark-eyed Annie's mother—through the round of sin and shame
She had passed when he forsook her—to the lowest deep she came
Till the hospital received her, and I found her lying there,
Just a mournful wreck of beauty, once a woman strangely fair.

161

I had taken a friend's sad duty, taken his mission for the day,
Just to visit these poor outcasts, and to speak to them, and pray;
So it happened that I saw her,—heard her pale sad lips impart
Just an every-day sad story, merely of one more broken heart.

So it happened, a while later, when the mother's fate was sealed
And the gateways of the darkness at her frail touch 'gan to yield,
That I promised on her death-bed that my mother and I would take
Her small darling child, and rear it with all kindness for her sake.

Down in sunny quiet Cornwall, as the months and years sped on,
First she grew to girlish beauty,—then a tenderer sweetness shone
In her eyes, her figure rounded. Which is loveliest in a rose?
Its coy beauty when it's budding, or its splendour when it blows?

162

Hardly tongue of man can answer—hardly tongue of man could tell
Which was loveliest, childish Annie, at whose feet the bright leaves fell
In the autumn, one might fancy, just to hear the laugh that rang
As her childish steps pursued them, or the girl whose sweet voice sang.

Yes: for ever she was singing, with a voice that mocked the birds,
Putting wonderful new sweetness into even the homeliest words;
Singing to the morning breezes, singing to the midday sun,
Singing to the stars that listened when the summer day was done.

Ah: how often have I watching seen some stalwart sailor stand
Silent in the narrow roadway, with his nets in sunburnt hand,
Listening as she sang some love-song, with his dark eyes full of tears:
Leagues away the sweet voice took him, to far other lands and years.

163

And I've seen a mother listening, with sad eager eyes and deep,
To a wild song of the storm-wind, and I've seen her turn and weep,
For she thought—her eyes disclosed it—all her heart was plain to me—
Of some sailor-boy, the offering of the storm-wind to the sea.

And the younger women listened, as the girl's pure sweet voice rang,
And I knew their hearts were hanging on each simple word she sang:
They were dreaming of their sweethearts, of the lads they loved so well,
And to each the song spoke gently, with its own strange tale to tell.

So the days and years fled past us, and I rendered thanks and praise
To the good God who had sent us such a help for lonely days.
We should nevermore be lonely. Could one's heart ache when she smiled?
Was she not our own for ever? Was the girl not as the child?

164

But a mighty change came o'er me, for one lovely August morn
Off we started, I and Annie, and we walked through fields of corn,
Over many a breezy hill-top, while the sea beneath us shone,
Flashed its sapphires in the sunlight, as it smiled up at the sun.

There the fishing-boats were lying which in winter-time had dashed
Through the blinding whirling snow-storms, while the thunderous great waves crashed
Over gunwale, over bulwark; there they rested like the boats
On some silent summer river, where the untrembling lily floats.

Oh, the splendour of that morning! How it all comes back to me!
The sweet scent from cottage gardens, and the fresh scent from the sea:
Endless perfect radiant sunlight poured on meadow, hill, and plain;
For one hour the calm of Eden seemed to rest on earth again.

165

Hard it was, most hard, to fancy that the golden fields of corn
Ever by the winds of autumn had been smitten and lashed and torn:
Hard it was before the vision to call up the breakers white,
Filling all the bay in winter with their thunder day and night.

Perfect peace upon the waters—now the soft breeze sang a psalm;
The old trumpet-throated storm-wind had subsided into calm.
Perfect peace upon the moorland—dark the silent fir-clumps gleamed,
And within them the wood-pigeon murmured gently as she dreamed.

Wondrous light upon the town too; as we clambered up the hill
All the houses down below us seemed asleep, they were so still:
Little quiet whitewashed houses—all was peace in Newlyn town;
Peace and rest and golden sunlight, so it seemed as we looked down.

166

Such a sense there was in Nature, past the reach of words or Art,
Of a silent something waiting, of a loving spirit and heart.
I could almost feel the sweetness of a kiss within the air:
Almost catch within the cornfields the quick flash of golden hair.

Never till that very morning had the strange sense come to me
Of a life behind all Nature, of a soul within the sea;
Of a glory past expression, of a rapture to be won
From the silent heart of Nature, of a secret in the sun.

As we passed the cottage gardens where in sunlit soft repose
Gleamed the giant climbing fuchsias, the geranium and the rose,
I could see and love the blossoms, but the blossoms' selves were nought:
There was something hid behind them, even a sweet creative Thought.

167

There was then a soul in Nature—all was soulless, dark, no more;
There was woman's silvery laughter in the wave-pulse on the shore:
There was mystic meaning hidden in the dark-blue depth of air;
Far within the being of Nature was a Presence yet more fair.

And this Presence, turning meward, filled the land and filled the sky
With a glory vast and solemn, with a rapture pure and high:
I could reach the sacred Presence, I could worship at its shrine;
More—my very soul could claim it, I could murmur, “Thou art mine!”

There was something, deep in Nature—something sweet to be attained;
Heights of holy love to reach to, sacred friendship to be gained:
Something strange that, ever eluding mortal grasp and touch of hand,
Seemed to whisper, “Yet I love you—yet I smile and understand!”

168

“I am weary of the cornfields, I am weary of the air
Full of scents of radiant summer, I am weary of the fair
Starlit night that follows sunset, I am weary of the tides
Laving lonely coasts of granite and lone coral-islands' sides;

“I am weary of the sunrise over mountains lone and vast,
I am weary of dead ages, I am weary of my past;
I am weary of the worship of the star-hosts as they wheel,
As they dress their ranks obedient to the bugling thunder-peal;

“I am weary: I am eager not for soulless sympathy
Of my soulless white-sailed cloud-ships as they plunge along the sky;
I would see my love reflected in the human soul, my thought
In the brain that I for ages past man's lengthiest dream have wrought.”

So the loving sweet voice whispered—then it changed to mocking mirth,
Saying, “Yet I dwell in dreamland, I am part not of the earth:
Never human soul shall reach me till the course of time is run,
For I dwell beyond the sunset, and I dwell beyond the sun.

169

“Mightiest poets all have sought me—they have found me passing fair;
They have sung the glittering radiance of the morning in my hair:
Every soul has thought to claim me—each has seen within my eyes,
When he dreamed that he possessed me, the first virgin teardrops rise.

“Byron thought our wedding-chamber was the palace of the sea;
Wordsworth sought me on the mountains, Shelley sought in Italy,
And the lips of Keats my lover on my own lips seemed to close
So he fancied in the violet, so he felt within the rose.

“What the Christians find in Jesus, other loving souls have found
In the golden light of morning, in the rushing rivers' sound:
Yes, a godhead is in Nature, a divinity in me;
Once God thundered upon Sinai—now he thunders through the sea!

170

“Now he thunders on your mountains—when your mighty poet heard
Jura thunder, he was listening just as surely to the word
Of Jehovah as was Moses in the desert lone and grim:
Ever in Nature ye may find me, though to-day ye find not him.

“Though the Jewish God has vanished, though his angry lightnings gleam
Down the rocky heights no longer, though his kingdom was a dream,
I am living, I am with you, there is majesty in me:
In the red rose there is passion—there is love within the sea.”

So the sweet voice seemed to whisper, and I fancied as I heard
That a tenderer soft note sounded from the throat of every bird,—
That the lovely colour deepened in the flowers beside the road,—
That the sea's plain in the distance with a nobler radiance glowed:

171

And a wondrous sense came o'er me that for me that very day
Virgin was the spirit of Nature, that within my arms she lay
Never touched and never fondled, that she cared for me alone;
That she deigned to love a mortal, and to draw him towards her throne.

Though the far primordial hill-tops and the ancient winds and streams
Wrought their passion into music and had brought a million dreams,
Though man's heart throughout the ages had paid homage at her shrine,
Yet that day the spirit of Nature seemed superbly, wholly, mine.

But the loving spirit of Nature had yet further gifts in store:—
Turning homeward, round the cliff-tops, as we gazed on sea and shore
Came the marvel of the sunset—as the sun sank to his grave
Such a flood of golden glory lighted cliff and beach and wave!

172

Golden glory—stainless molten glowing wonderful deep gold:
Many a sunset from those cliff-tops had I watched and loved of old,
Never sunset quite so perfect, never sunset so divine,—
All the stars' whole wealth of radiance in its least ray seemed to shine.

This was Nature's bridal raiment, thus was Nature robed for me
In this golden wedding-garment flung across the sky and sea.
All that day had Nature wooed me, but her noblest gift was this;
With her soft voice she had charmed me—now she thrilled me with her kiss.

—That was just one August sunset; but the glories never known!
Wealth of tropical strange sunsets where the weird sun sets alone
Over lonely wastes of water, or by reed-swamps dim and deep,
From his lonely labour passing to his loveless lonelier sleep!

173

Glory of prehistoric sunsets, when no man's eye might behold
All the Western far heaven flushing or with rose-tints or with gold:
When no lover whispered gently, “Though the sun beyond the sky
Should depart and dwell for ever, golden love would never die!”

Sunsets it may be in star-land, countless sunsets it may be
Over starry silent oceans, many a dark-blue astral sea;
These the Spirit of Nature painting ever paints alone, apart,
Mocking human pen and pencil, with strange laughter at her heart.

“Would one human artist follow? Can he pass amid the stars?
Can he cross their golden portals? Can he leap their harbourbars?
Lo! I paint ten million sunsets, while he strives to understand
Just one earthly sunset colouring half a mile of sea and land.

174

“While the deep sea drags a vessel down beneath the tossing foam
In the heaven I mix my colours, fiery lake and magic chrome;
In the peaceful heaven above them, while the sailors shriek distraught,
I achieve a feat of sunset Turner's genius never wrought.

‘Painters, poets, all have striven—all have failed to follow me
When my brush sweeps o'er the canvas of the answering sky or sea.
They may struggle, they may marvel—Nay, the flamelit sunset air
That for me breathes only triumph for man's genius breathes despair.”

Then the next day in the chapel, lovely summer still without,
How I preached, with what an unction! Not one single shadow of doubt
Crossed the preacher's mind that morning—all he said, to him was true;
So his passion reached the people and it held them spellbound too.

175

I had preached to them of Jesus, I had told them of his grace;
I had drawn them moving pictures of the Saviour's grief-lined face;
I had preached to them of heaven—I had pictured to my fold
Heavenly doorways bright with jewels, heavenly mansions wrought of gold.

I had told them that the Saviour is not dead—that still he stands
With the infinite same pity in his heart and outstretched hands:
That the Father's heart is changeless; that to every soul who wills
Jesus speaks his Father's message, by our Cornish rocks and hills.

“Is there one heart in this chapel full of sadness?” so I had said;
“Let him grasp the fact eternal that the Saviour is not dead:
He is living yet to pity, he is living to redeem—
All of real life is the Christian's, all the world's life is a dream.

176

“As he spake to his disciples by the Galilean sea
So he speaks to-day in Cornwall, so he speaks to you and me:
He is near us, he is with us, and he sees with pitying glance
Every suffering soul in Newlyn, every sorrow in Penzance.

“Though your boats upon the Atlantic, not on any inland lake,
Bury deep their bows in winter when the thundering great waves break,
Tremble not, for he is near you—aye, the tiller is in his hand,
And it has not lost its cunning—he can steer your boat to land.

“Jesus dreads not all the Atlantic; he is just as much at home
On your vessels, when you are blinded with the scudding sleet and foam,
As on boats of humbler fashion on a sea of humbler waves
When he succoured other sailors. Still he watches, still he saves.

“Not the sea alone he conquers, all of Nature he can rule:
By his grace the water-lily buoys its white cup on the pool.
Nature is but as his servant, and beyond the sights we see
There are sights more glorious waiting, waiting in eternity.

177

“Past the blue waves of the ocean there are bluer waves than ours,
And the roses at your windows tell of heavenly fairer flowers:
For each passion that we conquer, for each joy that we disdain,
There are heavenly high gifts waiting, when our Master comes to reign.

“Comes to reign, for he will surely from the highest heaven descend
And all human sins and sorrows, aye the world's whole life, shall end:
There are many—I believe it—even now living who will see
Jesus coming in his glory, in his power and majesty.

“Oh, the flowers of earth are nothing! oh, the loves of earth are nought!
Oh, the joys of earth are trifles, hardly worth a passing thought!
Earthly flowers may dread the winter, mortal sunshine yield to night,
I proclaim the life immortal where the Lord God is the light.”

178

—But that day I preached of Nature, for the spirit of Nature seized
All my soul and chained and held me, and compelled me as she pleased:
I was thinking of the sunlight on the sea the day before—
How it glittered on the ocean, how it gleamed along the shore.

“Heaven is close, aye all around you!” so I cried to them that day;
“It is in the golden sunlight as it flashes on the bay:
Even the highest heaven is sunless when God sends, some summer morn,
All the sunlight he can gather to assist your fields of corn.

“Moonless, starless are the heavens, lampless is God's house on high
Sometimes, when the lamps immortal gleam across a mortal sky,—
And the angels seem less stately, and their gold robes seem less fair,
When the glory of God's sunlight glitters through a woman's hair.

179

“Woman was not made to tempt us! Was not Christ, the God-child, born
Of the pure womb of a Virgin? Did the world's Creator scorn
Even the lowly flesh of woman? Was it not the great God's plan
Through the stainless heart of Mary to redeem the race of man?

“Sacred evermore is woman, sacred is this world of ours,
For the fingers of its Maker now have plucked its humble flowers:
Sacred are its fields and valleys, and its mountain-heights sublime,
For eternity has sought us, and has kissed the lips of time.

“Now the heart of God that revelled through the years that baffle thought
Far in heaven 'mid heavenly splendour loves the flowers his earth has brought,
And a fairer light than heavenly is in sunlit Cornish skies.”
Then I stepped down from the pulpit—and my eyes met Annie's eyes.

180

Next there came a time of horror, when my soul saw nought of light,
Wildly longed by day for Annie, then yearned heavenward through the night;
Till at last my thought grew clearer—I would seek the friendly sea—
The vast loveless waves should heal me and the winds should set me free.

Round the coast just now was sailing, ere the summer days were spent,
The dark fleet of herring-fishers, on their Northward voyage intent,
From Penzance to Whitby steering: I would join them once again;
Strangle love, the sea's strength helping—stifle love, and deaden pain.

So I sailed with them and struggled, was victorious for awhile,
Dreamed of passionless cold sea-wastes and the white moon's loveless smile—
Dreamed that love had never thrilled me, dreamed my heart was wholly dead—
Till one starlit night we anchored, half the fleet, off Beachy Head.

181

Then there came through all the calmness of that starlit night at sea
The full fierce storm of reaction, smiting body and soul of me:
While the stars upon the water in untroubled silence gleamed
Thus my storm-tossed troubled spirit in its starless anguish dreamed:—

“What a peace upon the waters! What a storm within my soul!
Through my heart the giant surges of an endless sorrow roll:
All is calm and still around me, countless stars above me shine,
And the peace of God is in them, but the travail of man is mine.

“Shall I never win God's peace now? must I bid sweet love depart?
Wrench the image of a woman, and for ever, from my heart?
On the land the roses blossom, and God bending from his throne
Sends them love and sends them fragrance: I am loveless, I alone.

182

“Star to star sends holiest greeting,—even the sea-bird from the wave
Takes not back the kiss that, passing, with its swift white wing it gave:
But God sends a heart to love me—then he takes that heart from me;
I am lonelier than the lone stars, I am lonelier than the sea.

“In the morning past the green banks in our Cornwall she will go,
Through the lovely Cornish deep lanes draped with fern-fronds loiter slow:
Will she think of me, I wonder? Will the fern-fronds hear her sigh?
Or will all be peace and gladness like the gladness of the sky?

“Bird to bird will softly murmur, ‘This is fairy-land's pure queen
Sent to tarry here with mortals, for a season known and seen:
How the heart of man must love her?’ Then the violet in repose
On the mossy bank will whispher, ‘She is lovelier than the rose!

183

“‘Though I love the wild red rosebud, she is lovelier far than this!’
Then the wild red rose will murmur, ‘Though I love the violet's kiss
There's a softer sweet kiss waiting, there's a sweeter mouth than hers;
Aye, a noble kiss more luscious than the flower-kiss of the furze.

“‘I am only a hedgerow blossom—I would die in her embrace
Were I but a man to love her, were I in her lover's place!
I would bring the whole world's emeralds, every ruby I would take;
I would search the depths for diamonds, sack the gold-fields for her sake.

“‘That must be the glory of loving,’ so the rose will murmur low,
‘Not to rest among the hedge-leaves while the days pass, dull and slow,
But to ruin oneself for love's sake—ruin the world, if that may be!
Steal the stars to fill love's coffers, drag lost treasures from the sea.

184

“‘Were I but a man, my violet, were my violet but a maid,
I would lift her into sunlight, I would lift her from the shade:
I would chaffer with the angels, bring their choicest gold robes down;
I would even drive a bargain with Jehovah for his crown!’—

“So the wild red rose will whisper, as it were rebuking me.
Have I torn for her strange treasures from the green depths of the sea?
Have I brought her rubies, sapphires? There are nobler jewels above:
These I craved for, these I sought for—and my heart was closed to love.

“O my Master, have I left you? Is there even a stronger power
In the world than that of Jesus? Is this simple snow-white flower,
Even the flower of love that Jesus in his kingly sternness scorns,
Far more potent through its fragrance than his pale wreath through its thorns?

185

“Have I after all been preaching of the life beyond the tomb,
Preaching of the heavenly blossoms, while I loved a lily in bloom
Here on earth? Have I been preaching of sunlight beyond the skies,
Dazzled all the while with starlight, even the light in Annie's eyes?

“Have I only dreamed of Jesus? Have I acted all the while
As if dearer far than Jesus was a girl's quick sudden smile?
Have I been content with fancies of the sinless heavenly land
While to me the heavenliest rapture would have been to kiss her hand?

“All these years have I been traitor—yes, a traitor to my Lord?
When I thought I worshipped Jesus, it was Annie I adored:
When I thought the Spirit of Nature spoke from wave and bush and flower,
It was Annie whom I worshipped,—she was sovereign in that hour.

186

“It was not the Spirit of Nature, it was passion after all,
Just the same old pagan passion—what a hideous lapse and fall!
I had sworn to banish passion from my life—to live and die
As a preacher of the gospel, with my home beyond the sky—

“I had preached of self-denial—I was conquered, I was base,
Conquered by a girl's young laughter, by the young pure lovely face:
Venus still alas! was living; I was sin-stained and defiled;
Madly (I see) I loved the woman, while I thought I loved the child!

“While I taught her of the next world, she was slowly teaching me
Just what Venus taught to mortals when she sprang from out the sea.
I was teacher—she was pupil—but the pupil was more wise;
While I taught with pen and pencil, she was teaching with her eyes.”

187

So I reasoned through the night-time, but my spirit reached no goal:
Star to star gave loving answer, but they spake not to my soul.
I was left alone and joyless 'mid the universal peace;
“Love is born,” my heart had whispered—now it whispered “Love must cease.”

But the morning came resplendent—when the summer night was done
All the sea flashed laughing answer to the first kiss of the sun,
And my soul flashed laughing answer to the thought that in it lay:
All my past life had been darkness—Now at last triumphant day!

Now at last sunrise immortal! As I gazed across the waves
Leaping, smiling, snowy-crested, could one dream that they were graves?
Never! Where was thought of shipwreck? Surely shipwreck could be none
In a world where such blue waters laughed beneath so bright a sun!

188

All was peace and all was beauty. Could I dream that love was wrong
Listening, as my whole soul listened, to the bright waves' morning song?
Was not passion in the sunlight, was not passion in the sea?
Was not passion too in God's heart, doubtless, from eternity?

Had some souls perchance made shipwreck through their passion, so 'twas said?
Yet behold the flood of sunlight flashing down on Beachy Head!
Beachy Head had seen its wreckage: Beachy Head that summer morn
Laughed the very thought of shipwreck 'neath its high white cliffs to scorn.

No: there never had been shipwreck—it was but a dream of pain,
And there never could be shipwreck on this sapphire sea again;—
Never wreck of any vessel, or of any soul should be,
For God vowed it through the sunlight, and he promised through the sea.

189

All the universe was passion; all the universe proclaimed
The pure glory of love for ever, with a million tongues unshamed:
Every flower on earth proclaimed it, every wave upon the deep;
Would God plant love's golden cornfield, then forbid man's hand to reap?

Annie—yes, my love for Annie was one verse, one radiant line,
Of the universal poem written by the hand divine:
I could add one perfect stanza to the world's vast hymn of praise;
Though the ages' joy was in it, I could add one summer day's!

I could write one passionate lyric, one small song, if heaven should please,
Though the Epics were Jehovah's and the vast Odes were the sea's;
Though the sweetest tenderest poems bore God's signature, 'tis true,
Yet I, loving past expression, could strike out some music too.

190

So my soul won liberation: as the sun climbed higher I saw
All my future stretched before me with a throbbing sense of awe;
All our future—yes, our future—for my life and hers were one,—
So God promised through the bright sea, and he sware it by the sun.

What it many a soul, defeated, down had sunk beside the way?
She and I would be victorious! love at last should have its day!
Were a thousand women traitors, yet one woman (sang the sea)
Would be loyal and true for ever, and bring perfect love to me.

Yes, to-day creation started on its journey quite anew:
For the first time heaven was cloudless, and the sea was stainless blue.
Though a thousand women wavered, yet one woman (said the sun)
Through all life would follow bravely—and my Annie was that one.

191

I would carry out my purpose now my heart had found repose,
Would not quit my sailor comrades till their summer journey's close:
I would watch them at their fishing; I would preach (with what a force!)
I would let all things that summer take their old unaltered course.

Then when they were leaving Whitby, sailing South and sailing West
In the first days of the autumn, I would travel with the rest:
When the summer was quite over, then my summer should begin;
I sailed North to lose a life's love—I would Southward sail to win.

I would Southward sail to win her. Oh, my darling, waiting there,
Far in dear old magic Cornwall, joy is sometimes hard to bear!
I should find her as I left her, hear her sing that old sweet song;
Tell her—tell her how I loved her—though she knew it all along.

192

Why, when hopes of man are fairest, does some dark fate dash them down?
Does it give the Lord God pleasure first to crown us, then discrown?
—When I came again to Cornwall, with the first autumnal leaf,
Love, who had given me lordly pleasure, brought me never-dying grief.

She was gone—to her destruction—so they told me, when I came;
If she had not fallen already, she was on the road to shame:
Dazzled by the foolish glitter of a troop of acting knaves
She had joined the troop of players,—she had left our moors and waves.

She had left Penzance for ever—so the little letter said
That my mother grave-eyed gave me—would we think of her as dead?
She was weary of quiet pleasures—she remembered all we had done—
But the wide sweet world was waiting—there were grand crowns to be won!

193

There were crowns of fame and love-crowns, so the poor sad scrawl went on:
She could never rest contented here to live and die unknown;
I must never never seek her, she would not disgrace us, no—
It was her own choice, her doing; she had freely chosen to go.

She had joined the travelling actors for a season, so she said:
That was just as a beginning—soon she would be better paid;
She would send us wondrous presents from great London,—she was told
That her voice alone would bring her fabulous wealth, uncounted gold.

We were not to be too sorry—she would far far happier be
In the midst of wild excitement than by our grey lonely sea;
For she needed wild excitement—it was always rest to dance,
And I knew what dull companions came to see her at Penzance.

194

She did so like jolly people! all the actors were so bright—
Got up late and tired, that's certain, but they sat up half the night
Talking, singing, telling stories—and the acting was great fun;
She liked gaslight, always, better than the ugly glaring sun.

She would like me to be sorry—just a little—for her sake;
Sorry only just a little—did not want my heart to break:
I should doubtless soon find some one who would make me a better wife
(If indeed like that I loved her)—mine was not her view of life.

She was grateful, very grateful—we had always been most kind;
We must try now to forget her, try not overmuch to mind:
When she thought of all our goodness the thought always made her cry,
But then crying made her eyes red—that would never do—Good-bye!

195

So the weary search began then, and for months that search went on:
Half through England I went seeking, silent, grim, forlorn, alone,
Past all human words despairing, with despair that mixed with shame,
For I knew well, if I found her, she would never be the same.

No: the damning step was taken. Fate had tossed her on the sea
Of the great world, given the devil his grand opportunity:
If the devil did not seize it, he was not the devil of old,
Swaying man by lust of woman, woman's heart by lust of gold.

As the dark sad thought flashed through me, I remembered where he reigns,
Satan, chiefliest crowned as monarch, not as king of hills and plains
But as deathless lord of London—king eternal and supreme
Of the city where the gaslights on his countless armies gleam.

196

There, it might be, I should find her. There for some two years I sought
Vainly, vainly, ever vainly—hearing nothing, finding nought;
Till at last, one evening, entering Charing Cross to catch the train
I ran almost up against her—yes, her very self again.

Yes, her very self unaltered—so at first I fondly dreamed:
Nay, the light that through the dark eyes flashed and sparkled, shone and gleamed,
Bright and lovely, was not lovely as it used to be of old;
Now the gaze had grown self-conscious, it might be a trifle bold.

Yet she seemed well pleased to see me and with tears the brown eyes filled
(Ah, for just one rapturous moment all the storm of life seemed stilled!)—
Then we moved away together, out of sound and sight of all;
Much my heart fails to remember, but these wild words I recall:—

197

“Yes, I always loved you dearly, but you would not understand,
You were thinking of your preaching—you were sombre, and so grand!
You were thinking of the next world—I was happy, quite, in this—
And you dreamed of heavenly mansions, while I coveted a kiss.

“You were wrong and I was right, love—I was ready, you were not;
You were writing passion's novel but mismanaging the plot:
Come with me—I want to show you that my life is glad and bright;
I will love you, sad old lover, I will love you for a night.

“I will love you—yes, for nothing—that I never did before;
I will show you all my treasures, you shall be one conquest more:
You look grave and you are solemn, but I know you love me well;
When you travel back to Cornwall you shall have a tale to tell.

198

“You shall see my diamond earrings, and my lovely china jars
With such strange old pictures on them—one of Venus kissing Mars:
You shall see my blue plush curtains and my ostrich-feather fans;
All my room is like a dream, love,—fairer far than dream of man's.

“Oh, you used to tell me stories of the fairies, what they did,
In their palaces immortal or their leafy coverts hid;
But my palace is the richer and my jewels are more grand
Than the jewels of the fairies through the whole of fairy-land!

“There are blossoms everlasting in my room, they never fade;
It is merely a small question of the florist's man well paid:
Did the fairies' blossoms glitter even in wintry hostile hours?
That is nought; in mid-December I can gather hot-house flowers!

199

“I have strawberries—yes, at Christmas—I have peaches when the moon
Dreads her dreary five months' journey to the purple skies of June:
I have everything I wish for; if I craved for one thing more
I should surely in the morning find it set outside my door!

“That is love, you know—to gratify a woman's every whim:
That is better far than preaching of the saints and seraphim;
Those old saints you used to preach of—how I pitied them poor things,
Dragging o'er the heavenly hill-tops their gold harps and heavy wings!

“I'm a saint too—some one thinks me quite a lovely perfect saint:
If you knew how he adores me—and his stories are so quaint;
Oh! the anecdotes he tells me—(let me whisper in your ear,
He's a lord too—but be careful—not a soul must ever hear!)

200

“There was never girl so perfect—and he says a perfect girl
(Shall I trust you even further? yes, I'll tell you—he's an earl!)
Ought to know all sorts of stories, ought to hear all kinds of things;
Yes, I like him all the better for the funny books he brings.

“There are goody-goody stories—there are novels of intrigue,—
And I read the former yawning, but the last without fatigue;
There are wonderful French novels, full of horrors—just like life—
Where the good man dreams of heaven, while the bad man steals his wife.

“I get up at twelve to breakfast, and I go to bed at two;
That seems wonderful, old lover, and disgraceful—yes, to you.
Down in Cornwall you don't labour like us Londoners at night:
When the stars and weak moon fail us, we turn on the electric light.

201

“But we're wasting time—step out now—I will show you where I live,
And I'll give you one night's pleasure—that's a real big boon to give
(All for love too, all for nothing) when the golden youth in town
Pay a brougham for a smile, dear, and a bank-note for a frown!

“For I frown upon them sometimes, and they love me just as well,
Stuff their bank-notes in my pocket—then I laugh and come and tell
My real darling, my brave lover, my kind ducky of an earl,
That he's found a faithful mistress, quite a treasure of a girl.

“Come, come quickly, for to-morrow—so he writes me—he'll return;
There's one night, my friend, still left you—hasten—never look so stern!
Why your whole glad face should brighten with a measureless content
When a girl so tries to please you. You'll come with me?” And I went.

202

Yes, my soul had been too eager; I had raised my hopes too high;
I had dreamed of perfect goodness there beyond the starry sky:
I had thought that over all things reigned a God supremely pure,
That he stooped from heaven to help us—but my faith was premature.

I had dreamed that by his Spirit every noble deed was wrought,
That he bent from heaven inspiring every sweet unselfish thought,
That he bade us seek his counsel and his grace to sanctify,
Breathing round us ghostly comfort, ever watching, ever nigh.

I had dreamed that all our sorrows could be used by him to teach
Holy lessons worth man's learning, mysteries passing thought and speech;
I had loved and I had worshipped—by the wintry Cornish foam
I had dreamed of stormless havens, of a Father and a home.

203

When before the grey-green breakers, plunging wildly through the waves,
Fled the fishing-boats in winter, while the hoarse wind through the caves
And the crags and coigns of granite swept with horror in its roar,
I had dreamed of heavenly sunshine shed along a waveless shore.

I had loved the bearded seamen—I had preached to them of peace
On their tossing boats in winter, when the storm-trumps never cease:
When the surges yearned to swallow man and boat within their graves
I had told them how the Saviour closed the wild mouths of the waves.

I had told them—and they listened, with stern faces very still—
That the raging deep was subject to a Father's loving will;
That the maddest wave was free not from its halter and its chain,
Though it seemed to us unfettered as it coursed along the main.

204

I had said, while all around us streamed the cataracts of the foam,
“God is lord of the wild waters, and of all ye love at home;
Here the waves' throats howl and raven, but on shore the storm is done,
And your children gather blossoms on the cliffs beneath the sun.

“There they pluck the golden trefoil, while our vessel sways and rocks,
With its brave bows never swerving at the rude waves' countless shocks:
There they gather the sea-poppies; God is guarding every one;
Here he rules in mist and darkness, there he smiles within the sun.

“Fathers, mothers, little children—he can shield you one and all;
Aye, without his loving mandate not a sparrow's plume shall fall,
No white feather of a sea-bird, till the course of time is run:
God can lighten the sea's darkness, he is mightier than the sun.”

205

I had comforted the widow, I had soothed the soul bereaved,
I had sought to bring God's comfort to the spirit as it grieved;
I had preached the eternal rapture of the life beyond the grave
While in hearing of my hearers death's voice sobbed within the wave.

In the little whitewashed chapel, with its hideous walls and pews,
I had preached to eager hearers Christ's, the gospel's, great good news;
I had preached of heavenly glories till the hearers' eyes grew dim,
Aye, and preached of hell's red terrors with insistence stern and grim.

I had said to the poor woman, when they brought her darling home
With his yellow hair still dripping with the clammy beads of foam,
“Christ has taken—yield him gently. Still your sweetheart with him waits
Smiling, watching, tarrying for you, just behind the golden gates.”

206

I had preached, and striven to comfort—now I knew it was a lie:
Of all hopeless hearts and weary the most hopeless heart was I,
The most hopeless and the weariest—I the preacher of the Lord,
I who trusted in his mercy, had been smitten by his sword.

I had preached of hell's red terrors—now my preaching all was done;
'Tis not hard to preach of darkness in the full light of the sun:
Easy it is to tell hell's captives to break through their prison bars
When oneself is steering heavenward in the full light of the stars!

I had preached, but now I knew it, the eternity of pain;
Heaven was lost, aye lost for ever, or there was no heaven to gain:
Now I knew what I had dreamed of, what the godless void may be—
Hell's fierce breakers stretching onward, and no Christ's foot on the sea.

207

Yes, my noblest dreams were scattered. I had dreamed that God had sent
Annie, my one love, my darling, my one priceless treasure lent
By the Lord to me, to lift me—so I fancied—yet more near
Ever unto him in spirit; a delusion—that was clear.

Oh my darling whom I worshipped, whom I would have died to win
In her pureness, her perfection, safe from weakness, stain, and sin;
Whom my whole soul would have honoured, in her tender girlish bloom;
Whom God gave me—for one moment—in a gaslit London room!

Was it noble, was it worthy of the Lord of heaven to make
Her my destined bride a harlot? was it godlike thus to take
From a weary heart its gladness, from a lonely soul its light,
When I lost her for a lifetime, having won her for a night?

208

Just one night—aye, one night only—and one night in such a place!
There to see her gazing at me with the same sweet girlish face
Little hardened, scarcely altered, that I used to watch at home,
While the moon outside the window lit the pure wild wastes of foam.

She the same—yet not the same one—nevermore the same to me
Who had held my hand in silence by the blue clear Cornish sea;
Who as pure as heaven above us had beheld the stars arise
Over sinless leagues of ocean, with love's starlight in her eyes.

She the very same for ever—with the wealth of raven hair,
Throat whose every curve was perfect, yes if anything more fair;
Yet with something lost for ever—with one jewel on the track
Dropped—and never through all ages shall we win that jewel back!

209

She the same in sinful London—she, with girlish eyes and heart,
Now a sinner, yes a sinner—just a portion, just a part
Of the wanton selfish city, she who might have been my own;
Now all London stood between us—we should never be alone!

I had preached of Christ's redemption. Could his rich blood wash out this?
Could he undo what had happened, and unfasten kiss from kiss?
Could he link by link remove it, sin's once-fashioned deadly chain?
Set before me my lost darling in her whiteness once again?

Could he take the feeling from me—though I found her very fair—
That another hand before me had caressed the raven hair?
That malignant haunting horror, of all poisonous pangs the worst,
That each touch had been discounted, that each kiss had been rehearsed!

210

Such a bridal—such a bride-bed—with the drama played before
And the author's step, it might be, even now close at the door:
Such a bride and such a marriage—just one hour love in the room,
Love's voice singing for one moment, then the silence of the tomb!

Singing—ah! and such a song too—not the song sung by the sea
When the envious throstle clamoured for the copyright from me:
When the gold sun paused to listen, though but half his toil was done;
When the sun forgot the cornfields, and the lark forgot the sun.

This was something like the cadence—still I carry it in my brain:
How the words light up those cornfields with the sun's old glory again!
How the words, though sweet and simple, sum the history up in brief,
For a covert threat lurks in them and a prophecy of grief!

211

The blue sea brings its greeting to the swallow,
Then drives it inland with the wild sea-storm.
The fields are crowned with bloom, but cold winds follow:
Hardly the flowers can keep each other warm.
The sun cries to the sky, “Soon must we part:
I love you—yes—but not with all my heart!”

“We love you, yes, but with a love most fleeting,”
So cry the stars to the eternal night:
“Farewell! farewell! the sun awaits our greeting;
We loved the darkness, now we love the light.
Farewell! farewell! the tenderest souls must part:
'Tis good to love—but not with all the heart.”

“I love you!” cries the vessel to the river:
I love your ripples and their harmless glee;
Yet one day with delicious shock and shiver
My bows will meet the white waves of the sea.
I love you, river, yet we needs must part:
I love you well—but not with all my heart.”

“I love you!” cries the sea's voice to the vessel,
“But I have loved a thousand loves before

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Then flung them, after one wild amorous wrestle,
Pale and discarded on the loveless shore.
New loves await me, when the old loves depart:
My locks are grey, but youth is in my heart.”

Then her ringing clear voice deepened though the song more cruel grew;
Still I carry it in my memory, for the cadence thrilled me through:
Ah! how well the song expressed her—all her soul through the refrain
Chimed out silver-sweet and girlish, yet so careless of man's pain.

“I love you, friend—I love you, strong and tender,
And full of care for me and kindly thought:
I love the summer morning's golden splendour,
The frosty lacework on our windows wrought:
And yet I love not wholly, only in part;
All things I love—yet not with all my heart.

“There is a something still before me waiting;
I stand and tremble on the wave-washed shore:
I stand in doubt, uncertain, hesitating;
Love it may be has lovelier gifts in store.

213

Love only as yet has given himself in part:
Me Love has loved, but not with all his heart!

“If with your heart you love me, let the swallow
Point out the road to other shores than ours:
I am a bird of passage—I would follow
The blue-winged birds to lands of gayer flowers.
They tarry not—they love us, yet depart;
And I would follow them with all my heart.

“I love you well, but yet the hours are flying;
The summers pass us by—they gaze in scorn:
Yes, hour by hour the golden days are dying;
Life dies, while pleasure hardly yet is born.
Oh give your bright-winged bird leave to depart,
And I will love you then with all my heart.

Where she found the song, I know not—nor if here and there a word
She had altered, lightly singing, like the light heart of a bird:
In some book maybe she found it; he who wrote it knew not then
That on one heart 'twould be written with a dagger, not a pen.

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I would leave the accursed city—I would take her child with me,
So she begged me, so she wished it—I would seek the old pure sea:
There by stainless wastes of water, by blue wavelets undefiled,
It might be a fairer future might await the sinless child.

It was something—just a little—for the lost sad mother's sake
That I still might do—a little—so my heart not quite might break;
Break not yet at least,—my life's work not as yet was wholly done;
I had yet to preach of darkness, I the prophet of the sun.

How my thoughts flew back remembering how some fifteen years before
I had borne away the mother, then a child, and left the door
Of the hospital in London thanking God that I could give
To a dying woman comfort—then it seemed worth while to live!

215

Annie—little dark-eyed darling—how I proudly bore you away!
How I showed you to my mother! how I watched you at your play!
How I bought you dolls and trinkets, and a hundred wondrous toys,
And tin soldiers—till my mother said that soldiers were for boys.

When the railway journey ended, the long journey to Penzance,
How I watched your bright eyes sparkle, when you saw the white waves dance:
How I thought, “There yet is sunlight, if all other sunlight dies;
This is God's eternal sunlight—even the light in sinless eyes!”

Oh, how well I can remember when the sea flashed on your sight
How you stretched your eyes wide open, with a laugh of pure delight;
How with that same voice which, later, made the throstle's heart despond
With an eager gasp you asked me, “Are there ducks upon that pond?”

216

How you loved to gather sea-weed—red and green and white and pink;
I can see to-day your shudder—I can see your fingers shrink
At their sudden startling contact with that cold flower of the sea,
The bright scarlet turquoise-beaded furtive sea-anemone.

With what pride—I can remember—you once brought me in your hand
A translucent lovely treasure which the sea had tossed on land;
Just a piece of broken bottle—but to us it seemed to be
Surely a priceless emerald stolen from the fairies of the sea!

Then the terror—oh! the terror—when beneath that granite slab
Your poor finger came in contact, cruel contact, with a crab;
How I kissed the poor pinched finger—how I soothed your sobs and sighs—
And we bore the rude crab homeward in a teacup for a prize.

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Then the rapture, the wild rapture, when we saw the goby gleam
In our net at last, a captive—the fulfilment of a dream
That had lasted the whole summer, for that summer's dearest wish
Was to capture from his rock-pool that swift-darting tiny fish.

Then the glories of the shore too—there were butterflies on land,
Fair to see, but hard to capture. Once you brought me in your hand
(Now a hundred bright wing-cases count for nothing on your fan)
Such a prize—a great rose-beetle—splendid past the speech of man!

Has one jewel in London glittered with as fairylike a gleam
As the spots upon the trout's side which we jerked from out the stream,
Making all the alder-bushes—and our clothes too—wringing wet,
With a happy sudden side-jerk of the diamond-dropping net?

218

Oh those were our golden moments, though more golden were to come
When I read you in the quiet and the silence of our home
Tales of giants, dwarfs, and ogres, tales of knights and ladies fair
—Thinking all the time “no lady ever had my Annie's hair!”

How you loved the marvellous stories—nothing as you older grew
Was too marvellous, too fantastic, too miraculous for you:
Yes—I sometimes even think that our old readings' very charm
Turned your mind from life's real duties, did your dawning spirit harm.

Take for instance that grand story which would move you even to tears
Of the wondrous Fairy Palace which no mortal footstep nears,
Magic Palace of the Seasons where the seasons four are one,
Where the white snow gleams for ever, yet it melts not at the sun.

219

How your fancy seized the notion of the mingled seasons there,
Of the scents of summer mixing with the snow-flakes in the air,
Of the measureless bright Palace where eternal summer gleamed,
Where the nightingale for ever sang and loved, and loved and dreamed.

How you revelled in the notion of the fragrant summer room
Where for ever all the roses of the fay-land were in bloom:
Where the leafage of a summer that no mortal might behold
Lit the deep trees with a splendour mortal tongue has never told.

Summer—yes, eternal summer—in that fragrant central room
Nought of darkness, nought of horror, nought of sorrow, nought of gloom:
That is how your life, my darling (so I murmured!) ought to be;
Perfect happiness proceeding from unsullied purity.

But the Palace—the bright Palace—oh! my fancy lingers there;
If a mortal could but find it, and could breathe its sinless air—

220

If again we could but find it, how contented we should be
Even its solemn winter chamber, not the summer room, to see!

For within the winter chamber endless hoary winter reigned;
Whitest snows of earthly mountains would seem muddy, blurred and stained,
By the pure unsullied whiteness of the eternal snows within
That far-off enchanted Palace, where no heart had dreamed of sin.

Yes, the keen eyes of the fairies might with reason view with scorn
Even the bluest ice that glitters on our lordly Matterhorn:
Not from noblest Alpine summit was there ever view so grand
As from even the humblest summit of the hills of fairy-land.

And the night, the wondrous night there, when upon the peaks sublime
Fell a silence, such a silence; on the shadowy hills of time
That our Wordsworth made immortal, when the moon breathed down her spell
And the stars shed forth their glamour, never such a silence fell:

221

Silence perfect, strange, unearthly—silence as of utmost peace—
Such as when the trumpet clamours of the warring wild winds cease
On a sudden in mid-ocean, and the sea with gentle lips
Whispers, “I was only playing,” to the sea-birds and the ships:

Silent peace—I used to fancy—such as Jesus might have known
When he murmured “It is finished,” when he stood at last alone
Face to face with labour ended; peace no mortal sorrow mars:
Such the calm was when those ice-peaks glittered underneath the stars!

Sinless calm and peace most holy, so the dear old fable ran,
Brooded o'er those stainless summits never soiled by foot of man:
Calm divine and rapture perfect—through the crags no thunder rolled;
There the sun rose storm-defiant, there he sank in cloudless gold.

222

That was far too grand for mortals—we could breathe with easier breath
In that Palace of the Seasons where life mocks the sword of death
When we entered the bright chamber where rich autumn reigned superb,
Crowned with fiery leaves and sunshine, and with glowing corn and herb.

(That was just what took your fancy—to have all good gifts in one—
Noble whiteness of the winter, nobler glory of the sun;
Spring's soft colours never dreading, with a pang of sudden grief,
Death that turns the green leaf living to the golden dying leaf.)

For within the fairy palace the rich woods of autumn shone,
Forest after forest flaming into distances unknown:
No such colours in the far-famed Indian summer of the West
Ever burned on leafy banners, ever flashed from leafy crest.

223

Fairy oaks and fairy beeches, scarlet maples, glittered there
And such radiance gleamed along them from the magic heights of air
That, had mortal vision seen them, mortal tongue could never tell
How the tossing waves of colour on the light wind rose and fell.

Even here was contradiction. What would fairy landscapes be
Without wizard feats of colour, glorious incongruity?
There were roses, there were snow-drifts, there were yellow autumn leaves—
There were dahlias by the ice-ponds, there was frost upon the sheaves.

But the loveliest of the chambers in the Palace was the one
Where the green leaves gave a softness to the full flame of the sun:
Where the may-bloom ever glistened, but more fragrant far than ours;
Where the children of the fairies gathered never-dying flowers.

224

There was spring-time everlasting—not a spring that fades away
Leaving littered in the foot-paths trodden blossoms of the may,
Not a spring that shrinks from summer, but a spring that still will last
When the earthly flowers and foliage of a million springs are past.

You with sunlight in your glances, and with spring-time in your heart,
Seemed yet fuller fairer meaning to the story to impart:
When the fairy queen came singing through her palace, every word
Seemed to suit you, to express you—it was Annie that I heard.

Ours is the unfading pleasure
That never can grow old;
A joy beyond man's measure,
Delight no tongue has told.
No death within our palace
For ever will there be,—
No wild storm's wrath or malice,
No terror of the sea.

225

If man with all his sorrow
Could reach us where we dwell
There would be no to-morrow
For fairy mount or fell;
If man with all his sadness
Within our gates could stand
There would be no more gladness
Then left for fairy-land.

For man would bring his yearning,
His hopes and fears and sighs,
His passions fierce and burning,
His feverish enterprise:—
We post our keen-eyed warders
Along the frontier line;
Upon the magic borders
Their fairy sabres shine.

If man could ever enter
The fairy-land, what grief
Would thrill its very centre,
A horror past belief.

226

For all our flowers are stainless
And all our fields are fair:
The life we live is painless,
But man's life means despair.

Never the fairy warders
Will let one mortal pass:
Imperative their orders—
Were they to yield alas!
What thunderous change of weather
Upon our hills would loom,
For man and sin together
Would bring about our doom.

But man with heart infernal
Will never trespass here;
His sentence is eternal,
His destiny is clear:
He sees the golden portal
Through silent slumber gleam,—
He cries “I am immortal!”
He wakes—It is a dream.

227

I was dreaming of the Palace—I was in the railway train
Bearing Annie, ever Annie, to the old lost home again:
I was dreaming of the fairies, but my fairy queen was gone;
I was only alas! a mortal, broken-hearted and alone.

No, the pure-eyed child was with me, with her hand within my hand,
Just a stray gold blossom-petal drifted here from fairy-land!
But the mother, my lost fairy—she would never, nevermore,
See the fairy legions mustering all along the mystic shore!

She would never hear the bugles of the fairy squadrons sound,
See the fairies line the frontier, guard the old enchanted ground:
She would never see the gateways at her coming open wide
And the fairy guards saluting, straight, erect, on either side.

Day by day the guards would wonder that her chariot never rolled,
Drawn by milk-white noble prancers, through the glittering gates of gold:
Day by day the keen-eyed watchers, peering out, would peer in vain;
Never trumpet in the distance! never dust upon the plain!

228

There the guards will wait for ever—there the sentinels will stand—
All will still go on for ever as of old in fairy-land:
As of old, with one thing wanting—not at evening nor at morn
Through the gates with shouts of triumph will the fairy queen be borne.

Though the fairy soldiers know not, though the sinless peaks of snow
In the wondrous winter chamber smiling on the meads below,
Though these know not, I could tell them where their mourned-for mistress dwells—
In a land remote for ever from their stormless fields and fells.

Well the years sped on in Cornwall, but I'll pass those swift years by;
Nothing varied the vast calmness of the expanse of sea and sky.
All the love in me was softened into fatherhood again:
Ah, the love in man enables Fate to inflict the endless pain!

229

All went on in steady sequence—that is how the days depart
When Fate lurks behind the sunshine with new dark deeds in his heart:
Just the same they seem to pass us, smiling, sun-kissed, every one;
But Fate, black-browed, thunder-wielding, stands alert behind the sun.

—So in summer when the ocean with its soft voice to the land
Sings its love-song, sings so gently, he whose heart can understand,
Versed in all the ways of Nature, still within the sound can hear
Something of its wintry storm-voice, when its wild wrath stuns the ear.

For the one same sea in summer to the listening sunlit shore
Says with voice as of a lover, “Lo, I love you, I adore!”
And in winter to the cliff-sides, ribbed with granite though they be,
“Lo, I hate you—ye shall perish from the pathway of the sea!”

230

Fate arose at last: a letter in the old handwriting came—
How the light of coming evil flashed across my eyes like flame!
Half I broke it open—waited—tore the envelope once more—
Trembled then again and waited—till I read it on the shore.

She was dying, said the letter, dying in London all alone—
Would I come once more and see her? (Would a mother leave her own?)
So once more I journeyed townward, took the route I knew so well;
Left the quiet sea behind me, entered London—entered hell.

Not the same as when I left it was the once well-furnished room:
All to-day was desolation, all was emptiness and gloom.
No silk curtains to the bed-posts, not a picture now was there;
Just a bed—a dying woman—a white ghost with raven hair!

231

Yes, the fairy guards were waiting, far away in fairy-land,
But the fairy queen lay dying in a bed-room off the Strand.
Not again in fairy regions would her golden sceptre wave:
She was just a poor lost woman, five days' journey from her grave!

He had left her in man's fashion, wearied when the prize was gained:
Of the wedding-robes of passion not a worn-out shred remained!
—Left her all alone in London, with the one vile bitter word
“Earn your living, you are young yet;” was there any Christ who heard?

Was there any Christ, I wonder, who had seen the whole thing done,
Seen the girl's heart grow to woman's, seen the woman lightly won,
Watched at night within the bed-room, seen the man come, then depart,
Any Christ—we'll grant his godhead—but with manhood in his heart?

232

Was there any Christ who knew it, all the lies the man had told,
All the lying talk of marriage—who had seen the ring of gold,
Just the saddest of all tokens, worn to shirk the social ban,
Worn to link her to her sisters, not to link her to the man?

Was there any Christ who knew it and whose pure true heart contained
All a strong man's mightiest passion, all a strong God's anger chained?
Any Christ whose deep love blended in its vast and complex whole
All the pity in man's deep nature, all the love in woman's soul?

Was his pity quite exhausted? Was his healing power outworn?
Did he wear just for one season one ephemeral crown of thorn?
In Jerusalem he triumphed? When he rose from out the grave
Did he deem his work was over, that no souls were left to save?

233

Did he deem when man betrayed him that no Judas would arise
In the ages that he saw not, under Western sunless skies?
Did his soul foresee the horror that the years to come would bring?
Was he only for one moment just a pale apparent King?

Was his kingship wholly vested in the moments that he spent
Here on earth with men and women, ere the Temple's veil was rent?
Could he face the sin of London? Could he see our streets by night
Yet retain his stormless splendour, and his crown's imperial light?

Could he bear to see our city—could he know the evil done
Every hour, yes every moment, when the gaslights drown the sun?
Every night some woman ruined, every night some base seeds sown
For whose harvests of fierce evil not God's whole blood could atone!

234

Had he seen this woman ruined? Had he followed Annie's life?
Would he not now track the villain, hunt him down with dagger or knife?
Would he not proclaim God's justice—if a God indeed there be—
God's eternal hate of evil, God's unsullied majesty?

—So the thoughts in swift wild sequence flew with frenzy through my brain
As I saw the dying woman, heard her speak yet once again,
Heard her tell with broken accents all her story of despair;
Then my whole soul cried out Godward as I watched her lying there,

Cried out heavenward: “If the mountains or the lurid storm-clouds hold
Any strong God, a Jehovah, as the peoples deemed of old,
If there be a God of anger, past the anger of the sea,
And behind the love of Jesus, noble wrath's intensity;

235

“If there be within the thunder still a living God more strong,
If the lightning's sword be his sword, if his soul detests the wrong,
If the righteous power of judgment yet within some God remains,
If he be not blind for ever, if his sceptre he retains;

“If he be not weak or slothful, be not sunk in lethargy,
Let him mark this London death-bed, let him gaze from heaven and see:
Let him stay no longer dallying with his minor toils on high,
Let him stoop to us in London, let him quit the starry sky;

“Let him rise up in his anger—as they say of old he rose—
Let his sword leap from the scabbard, on the hilt his fingers close;
Let him carry out my curse now, carry it out by day, by night,
Let the living God do justice, let the Lord God hear and smite;

“Let the living God do justice, let the living God proclaim
Once again his deathless glory, and the greatness of his name;

236

Let him follow with his vengeance this one man, where'er he be—
Let my soul's curse light upon him, let it traverse land and sea;

“If he scale the lofty mountains, let my curse, God, still be there;
Let it peal within the thunder, let it sound through sunlit air;
Let it follow him all his lifetime, let it ring his earthly knell,
Let it follow him to the graveyard, let it haunt his steps in hell.”

Then my whole soul changed to pity. Now the storm of wrath was dead:
Very tenderly I raised her, and I kissed the raven head,
Kissed it gently, oh so gently—and I kissed the pale sad brow,
Thinking, “Though past words I loved her, yet I never loved till now!”

All the fieriest early passion had not half the strength or power
Of the sense of deathless pity that transfused my soul that hour;

237

I was conscious now of nothing save a love so deep, so strong,
That the sense of horror vanished, and the deadly sense of wrong.

Here was death to make atonement for the vast wrong done to me:
Here was sin's whole end, commencement of a pure eternity.
Sin had done its violent utmost to degrade and to defile;
Life had strangled her young laughter—death had given her back her smile.

Yes, her smile—for as she lay there such a sweetness through her eyes
Came with lovely radiance gleaming as through stormiest sunset skies
When an autumn wild day closes and the sullen vapours part
And we know the sun is living and that love lives at his heart.

Just the very same old sweetness, only sweeter so it seemed,
That I worshipped when that sunset on the far-off cliff-sides gleamed—
When she gave the waves their laughter, gave its lustre to the sky,
Gave the evening star its splendour, even her girlish purity.

238

Then I thought, “Whatever happens in the land to which she goes,
Whether life or love be waiting, or profound and sweet repose,
One thing surely is not waiting, surely it is not in God's plan
When the grave's past to confront her with the lies and lust of man.

“Whether angels group around her, or the friends of former years,
Some with outstretched hands of welcome, some with grave eyes full of tears,
Whether Jesus there be waiting, this at least I know right well,
That the villain who betrayed her will be leagues away in hell.

“God will turn hell's keys upon him, God will keep him safe within
The dark region he exults in, even the land of lust and sin:
If in God's heart or in Christ's heart any noble anger be
The destroyer is damned for ever, but the victim shall go free!”

239

Then she signed to me to listen, and I stooped above the bed:
“I know better now, forgive me,” with the same sweet voice she said,
Yes the same, but sadly weak now, that had won my heart of old;
Then she grasped my hand so firmly in a tight strange childlike hold—

“Guard my darling, guard my daughter, save her from this world of sin;
There's another Annie left you, there's a victory left to win:
If you see her heart misguided, if you see her going wrong,
Kill her...kill her—that way save her—you can save, if you are strong.

“If you see her copy her mother, if you see her growing too like,
Be more merciful than God is, call on pure-souled death to strike!
Swear to me, whatever happens, you will never let her be
Any rich man's sport and plaything, never let her grow like me.

240

“Do not speak to her of her mother—or, if you must speak at all,
Only speak of early days, dear, long before the mother's fall:
If she wants to know my ending, asks you what became of me,
Say my death was strange and lonely...say that I was drowned at sea....

“Don't forget me, for I loved you—though I did not know it then—
You were grave and I light-hearted, and I could not fathom men:
When they told me that they loved me, I believed it, till I knew
That the grave love was the true love—till at last I fathomed you.

“Till at last I understood, dear, wholly learned and not in part
How my folly had made you suffer, how my sin had wrecked your heart:
Yes, at last I understood you, but the knowledge came in vain;
Now it could not bring atonement—it could only deepen pain.

241

“Why, I wonder, is it—always—that a woman's soul must win
Perfect knowledge of what love is through the trial first of sin?
Perfect knowledge of the noblest through experience of the worst?
When she's on the road to Jesus, why must Judas win her first?

“Ah! I cannot understand it—nothing now to me is clear
Save this one thing, that I love you and I like to feel you near:
Come yet closer, come quite close now, for I cannot see you well;
Tell me, is God very angry? will he send my soul to hell?

“I don't fear him—I can face him, if there's love within his mind;
If he loves me as you love me, he will never be unkind:
If he loves me as you love me, I could love him in the end;
And the next world seems so lonely—I want some one for a friend!

242

“Shall I have to be alone there? I was frightened long ago
In that dark strange cave in Cornwall—when I went alone, you know,
Seeking ferns within the cavern. When you found me, all was right,
For the sunshine came in with you, and that gloomy cave grew bright.

“Put your hand beneath the pillow—I have still some seaweed there,
Dried, in that small sealed-up packet, and a tuft of maiden-hair
That we gathered—you've forgotten?—in remembrance of the cave
And my grand deliverance from it: I should like them in my grave.

“They may serve there to remind me—who can tell us?—it may be—
That you saved me from that darkness and the hoarse threats of the sea:
They may serve to give me hope there”—then the voice failed—then she said,
“It is dark again, dear—kiss me...” as I kissed her she was dead.

243

Soon I passed into the darkness of the quiet street outside,
Just to seek the last sad tendance for a woman who had died;
That was all in outward seeming—just to send a human frame
Living help in its last journey to the dust from whence it came.

That was all in outward seeming: as I turned into the Strand
What a rage and crush of people, what a crowd on either hand!
Life was hurrying on for ever in its immemorial stream;
Which was truth, my whole soul wondered—which, I wondered, was the dream?

Which was life in very truth now, which was after all most sweet?
Were they living, these lost women, as they pressed along the street,
Coarse, with coarser men companions—were they living, or was she
Rather living? Had the dead soul won life's genuine victory?

244

“Where is right and where is justice? All is accident and chance.
As I passed just now that woman I saw deep within her glance
All the latent power of loving that in happier sisters leads
Their own souls to heights of virtue, those they love to noble deeds.

“Must one woman be degraded, while another woman soars
Clad in rustling silks and satin towards the heavenly golden doors?
Why must all the stars, obsequious, lend one honeymoon their light
While another woman in darkness changes husbands every night?

“Why must one display with rapture, happy, wifely, pure and sweet,
All her gifts and wedding presents, with the whole world at her feet,
While another, just as noble, had her life's chance been the same,
Dips her soul each night more deeply in the nameless mire of shame?

245

“Why must one parade in Venice, with her husband by her side,
While another walks in London, all the town's promiscuous bride?
Analyse them when they started, eyes and lips and mind and heart—
It may be you'd hardly have known them, after all, at first, apart?

“Why must one child in the cradle by a mother rocked to sleep
Rest, while through the foggy darkness other weary footsteps creep,—
Weary footsteps of some mother, in her madness carrying down
Her first baby to the river, for the cradling waves to drown?”

So I thought, and through my spirit a wild sense of godship ran,
But a godship fierce, nefarious, not a godship good for man.
I had grown in strength of being, but my faith in God was gone:
I was standing silent, self-poised—loving truth and that alone.

246

As I watched the crowded pavement and the sad lost faces there
All my soul was rent and tortured by a measureless despair;
Yet a living force within me seemed to meet the sense of wrong,
Living, holy, deathless, godlike, inextinguishably strong.

“Death is peace and life is anguish; death's the end, the perfect goal;”
This I'll preach in tones of triumph to each listening suffering soul:
I shall win, maybe, more hearers—talk of joy, you seem to jest!—
But all mortal souls have suffered, and all sufferers long for rest.

“Other souls have loved before you, they have suffered, they have passed:
Now they call you from the sea-waves, now they summon from the blast.
Through a thousand storms they wrestled, through all stormy days but one—
That day bore them, wild with rapture, down to darkness from the sun.

247

“And our hope is just to join them, those old ancestors of ours,
Stalwart ghosts of brave old Vikings in the deep sea's crystal bowers;
There they wait, the staunch old Norsemen—we shall join them, we shall be
Welcomed with a shout of triumph through the gateways of the sea.

“Though a million ships have safely sailed along the ocean way
Little heeded by the waters, not caressed of wind or spray,
Yet a chance is left for each one, for the ocean's heart is large;
‘Still it loves you’ the wind whispers, as it sings along its marge.

“Still the mighty ocean loves you—yes, the ocean's heart is grand.
Has life failed to apprehend you? Still the sea can understand.
Are you weary of the pleasures and the loves of every day?
There's a kiss fatigueless waiting on the white lips of the spray!

248

“Not in quiet gardens lighted by the soft light of the sun,
Nor in heavenly golden palace, shall your final bliss be won;
Nay, beneath a stormier moonlight than the light that filled the sky
When the sea to the Armada spake one sweet wild hoarse word: ‘Die!’

“Sweet and wild and hoarse and loving—life was waiting them in Spain,
Life with all its feeble pleasures, its vast loss, its little gain;
Then the infinite sea had mercy—while it baulked the Spaniards' plan,
To its bosom's cold pure sweetness it clasped every vessel and man.”

So I preached awhile in London, and I found that I could win
Hearers—not perhaps save sinners from the ways of wrath and sin
As I once (I thought) could save them; now I saved them by the cry
“Life is failure, life is torture—lay firm hold on death, and die!”

249

Yes, I found I reached the people: they were ripe and ready there
In dark cruel evil London for the gospel of despair.
Many sufferers crowded round me, and I gave them of my best;
Even the hope of rest from suffering, deep unconscious painless rest.

But I wearied of the city, and I longed to hear once more
The old angry white waves beating on the stedfast Cornish shore;
Longed to see how time was dealing with the bright-eyed girl to whom
Life was still a fairy palace, not a dungeon or a tomb.

So I came, and when I saw her lo! the budding rose had blown;
While I toiled and preached in London, the swift sunny days had flown
Down in Cornwall: very lovely was the Annie whom I saw—
Yet a thrill of pain ran through me, and I watched her half in awe.

250

She had grown so like her mother! all the past came storming back;
Far away my mind went roaming on the old sad trodden track:
I was busy while in London—here my mind was void and free,
Open to the wind's weird whisper, and the wild voice of the sea.

Is there one pure maid, one virgin, in this universe at all?
Did not all fair women totter at the first fair woman's fall?
—Pure she seems and very tender on the sacred nuptial night,
Yet in ages past with passion the same eyes, maybe, waxed bright.

Is there one sure sign to show you that she has not lived before,
Watched the sunlit blue waves rippling on some quiet Eastern shore?
Here i' the North to-day she loves you. Yet her eyes, it may be, gleamed
Ages since with Southern passion, as in ancient Rome she dreamed.

251

Your fair bride, maybe, was harlot in some Babylonian street:
Many ages she has traversed, and her lips were always sweet
And her laugh was always tender—she was dark-eyed, even the same,
When the towers of Carthage reddened into violent spires of flame.

You to-day may deem you hold her. Not one soul is ever held
Safe, securely, by another! By love's laws we are compelled
On from passion unto passion, on from wild hope to despair:
Maybe through a thousand ages she will still be here and fair.

Virgin!—let the weak dream perish, for God laughs the dream to scorn.
Is one life of any moment, is it of value to be born
Pure just for one single lifetime? Every woman pure to-day
In some past life has been wanton, and has flung her soul away.

252

Flung her soul away—as Annie now will fling away her soul,
For I see the horror coming, past a man's or God's control;
Clearly I feel the horror coming—in her beauty and her pride
She will pass into the darkness, like her mother, my lost bride.

Surely soon her fate will seize her, for last week I saw her play
With a diamond on her finger—when I tore the ring away
Such a fierceness flashed upon me from her eyes that it was plain
Here was just the mother's nature, reproduced on earth again.

Reproduced—for good or evil? Could I doubt which when she said,
“I would sell my soul for diamonds”—(how I thought of some one dead!
How a desolate room in London flashed upon my sight once more!
How I seemed to see men carry a black coffin from the door!)

253

Lovely is she, very lovely, and the donor of the ring
Doubtless covets her young beauty, full of sweetness as of spring:
Doubtless, eager to possess her, he who gave the child the toy
Will proceed—in man's sure manner—first to flatter, then destroy.

All the horror will return then. Must I live to see her sink
Down hell's fiery seething centre, after gathering on the brink
Tender blossoms many-scented, flowers she finds exceeding fair?
Must the old mad pain redouble and the speechless old despair?

Doubtless all her heart is changing—as her mother's changed before;
Now she hears no simple music in the waves' beat on the shore:
Now her longing when she watches the moon soar across the sky
Is the longing to escape us, and to revel in liberty!

Doubtless she too dreams of passion, when we think she dreams of prayer:
When her form is in the chapel, her swift spirit is not there;

254

It is far away with some one—who can hold her or retain?
God can chain the winged wild ocean, but a girl he cannot chain.

Neither man nor God can chain her, nor can strong life hold her fast:
Only death can ever hold her, when life's efforts all are past.
When life fails and when the Lord fails, man and death may sometimes win;
When the sun fails, then the darkness puts an end to love and sin.

The eternal darkness closes, and the woman no more sees
Silvery moonlight on the waters, golden sunlight on the trees:
The eternal darkness saves her, whom nor God nor man could save.
Was she wanton on the green earth? She is chaste within the grave.

Therefore seeing ever clearlier that the time has come at last
For one frail man's giant protest, I have summoned up the past
—I have written, since I saw the fatal ring upon her hand,
Plainly all our strange sad story, that the world may understand.

255

In the long week since I saw it, that clear token of our doom,
I have relived all the stages, seen the sunlight, felt the gloom,
Every scene and every trifle have endeavoured to recall.
I alone knew all the sorrow. Now the world shall know it all.

I will leave the story written, signed and sealed, within my desk,
Then will rise up fierce for action, calm no longer, statuesque
Now no longer—not a statue, but a living breathing frame
Wild for wrestle with the Author of the sin, the woe, the shame.

Even now I feel within me strange swift heart-throbs of relief,
Somewhat even of exultation, triumph born of deadliest grief;
Even now I see before me as it were with prophet's glance
All the future made the present, known, experienced, in advance.

I will steer into the Atlantic: Fate has wrecked and ruined me—
I will form a last alliance with the thunder of the sea.
Heaven has failed, aye God has failed me—Christ has failed me in my need;
But the sea's heart still is left me, with the sea's heart I will plead.

256

I will steer into the sunset: as that sunset years ago
Bathed the world for me and Annie in its loving golden glow,
As that sunset flashed before us with the radiance of a dream,
Now another spotless sunset shall deliver and redeem.

For this girl—another Annie—now another sunset waits:
Yea, the sunset shall receive her in its fiery golden gates.
All the fairy guards are waiting, far behind the walls of flame;
For long years they have been waiting for their queen who never came.

But their pure queen now is coming; let the fairy bugles blow!
Let the fairies line the roadway! let the news fly to and fro!
Let there be a stir, a bustle, through the fairies' wide domain,
For the queen they've lost for ages is returning home again.

Stately, noble, pure and queenly, full of girlish grace and charm,
With God's genius as a sculptor shown in curve of throat and arm,
With God's holier sense of sweetness in her maiden heart made known,
She is coming, she for ever is returning to her own.

257

She, returning, will be with us now for evermore, and bring
As the golden gates she enters such a sudden sense of spring
As on earth we feel when Winter with one foot yet on the wold
Starts and trembles, as the furze-shoots flash their sudden spears of gold.

She, returning, will be with us—lo! the golden sunset waits:
She will enter far within it, far beyond the golden gates.
She will traverse the old region, she its everlasting queen,
With a sovereignty of splendour never witnessed in her mien.

With a sovereignty of sweetness now within the queenly eyes
She will traverse the old region, see the mountain land that lies
Far beyond the fairy borders, which no eye of man has seen,—
She the eternal perfect ruler, she the eternal sinless queen.

Once again the golden sunset—once again, then never more—
Shall flash out with heaven's own brilliance all along the Cornish shore.
Here, where Tristram at Tintagel sinned with Iseult at his side,
To the sunset, to the Atlantic, I will bring a sinless bride.

258

Here, where Arthur's endless vigil of wild sorrow was begun,
I will end all mortal sorrow; it shall set as sets the sun.
It shall vanish in the sunset, it shall vanish in the sea;
It shall vanish in the radiance of the sky's immensity.

What the Lord God failed in doing when he placed upon the hand
Of the world her ring of wedding, and espoused the sea and land,
I a mortal, I so erring, will accomplish by my might:
I will end the pain of living, pain shall vanish in a night.

Pain shall vanish—for, a mortal, I can show the immortal road
That not even Christ's brave footstep in its fullest grandeur showed:
I can add to Jesus' gospel; I can follow where he went;
I can bring on earth the silence of a measureless content.

I can take this woman holding as it were within her womb
A vast power of sorrow endless, endless summers' dying bloom,
Endless souls unhinged by anguish, boundless agonies to be,—
I can plunge the mortal mother in the vast womb of the sea.

259

I can stay a million curses and avert a million pangs:
Grief, men fancied, was immortal—I can blunt grief's deadly fangs.
Men will follow where I lead them: I will lead them to the deep,
To the sea of vast oblivion, to the shores of endless sleep.

There all sorrow shall be ended, and the whole race shall atone
For the crime of its creation and revert without a groan,
Nay with one wild hymn of triumph, to the unconscious ecstasy
Of the fields no ploughshare furrows and the unfurrowed shipless sea.

That was joy and life unfailing, free from conscious life's despair;
Then the pale moon swam in silence through the sorrowless blue air:
Then the soul that gazes downward from the red depths of the sun
Watched the earth, yet saw no evil, for no human deed was done.

260

That was rapture for creation! then the golden lonely stars
Tilted not with rays immortal at our mortal prison bars:
Then they saw no prisoner dying on his silent couch,—they heard
Neither battle's shout of triumph nor the lover's whispered word.

Love was waiting to destroy us,—but love had not dawned on earth.
All the sea laughed out unconscious, through its voice rang thoughtless mirth:
Not the mirth it caught from Venus when she sprang from waves that smiled;
Not the laughter of the lover, but the laughter of the child.

Love was waiting to destroy us,—but as yet the world was free.
Lovers loved not on the ocean for no ships sailed on the sea:
Lovers loved not in the forests, and the lone hills watched the moon
Trodden not by feet of lovers; loveless were the fields of June.

261

That was peace and pleasure perfect; that great peace I will restore.
Love shall vanish from the mountains, love shall die out on the shore.
I, the preacher of the gospel of despair and boundless gloom,
Will restore the world its silence, and its empire to the tomb.

Men shall follow my example: step by step the world will cease
To run madly after pleasure, and will long alone for peace.
Then the cornfields will be weed-grown: who will care to reap the corn
When man views himself with hatred and the whole of life with scorn?

Man shall wreak at last his vengeance—as I wreak my vengeance, I,
Steering out into the darkness, for the sun has left the sky;
Bearing with me this one woman—would Fate lower her and deprave?
Her at least he shall not conquer—her at least my hand shall save.

262

Though I could not save the mother, is not she the mother now,
With the same young strange pure sweetness in the eyes and on the brow?
All the long sad years have vanished—Lo! love rises from its grave:
I may save from black pollution her I would have died to save.

Not in London shall she perish: now our bridal couch shall be
Pure and sweet and holy and stainless, even the holy and stainless sea.
She whom once I loved in London, where I loved her for an hour,
Shall be mine in love immortal, far beyond Fate's lurid power.

This is nobler, this ends better than the sad old tale began;
This is worthier of my passion, this is worthier of a man.
Now the tender night is coming, and the stars will light our way
To the room where death is bridegroom, not the room where once we lay.

263

I am death her perfect bridegroom, we are on the lonely deep:
Now the night eternal waits us, we have many an hour for sleep;
Sweet long hours for sleep, my darling—there's no footstep at the door!
Nay, the winds and waves shall guard us, we are many a league from shore.

We are lonely at last together, we have left the adulterous land:
Lo! our solemn marriage-chamber, lo! our spotless couch at hand.
You and I are all alone, love—mortal sounds have died away;
Hear the stars' song to the ocean! hear the wind's voice to the spray!

Lest our deep calm should be troubled, lest our marriage should be marred,
God has sent the unnumbered armies of the deathless stars to guard:
That our rapture may be endless and our souls past waking one
He has darkened earth for ever, he has slain the intrusive sun.

264

Lest I find you all too lovely, he has sent the moon to show
With her soft light for the first time your uncovered breast of snow:
Lest I scorn all flowers for ever when your first kiss startles me,
He has left the flowers on land, love—he has set us on the sea.

Lest the roses all be envious, he has made your mouth a rose;
He has left a thousand blossoms on the cliff-sides in repose,
He has given ephemeral fragrance to the flowers, ephemeral bliss,
He will make the rose eternal in the sweetness of your kiss.

Lest the thought of an invasion of our joy should e'er intrude,
Any thought of old dead cities, he has given us solitude:
Lest a dream of other beings should bring sadness to your face,
He has ended other life, love, he has slain the human race.

He has had at last great mercy, he has given us bliss divine,
Perfect death for you and me, love—life in death, for you are mine.

265

Ours will be the last embrace, love: on this white-waved ocean-plain
One last rapture superhuman shall end superhuman pain.

All the rapture of the passion that from Eve's first soft kiss ran
Like a torrent, like a fire-flood, through the throbbing veins of man,
All the raptures of old history, shall be gathered into ours,
As the rose resumes the fragrance of a million nameless flowers.

That is mightiest compensation—thus to loose within our veins
The full torrent of past passion, and to fix the past in chains:
Thus to bind the world for ever, but to set two lovers free,—
Then to send a world's kiss pressing through your single mouth to me.

This is noblest compensation—to put out the human race,
But to leave the love-light burning through your eyes and in my face
—Thus to let us feel our oneness, I with you, and you with me,
And your oneness with the starlight, and my oneness with the sea.

266

Place this once, my stainless darling, your pure lips upon my own:
These at least are wholly sinless, these at least are mine alone.
Now let sweet death seal the marriage! when two souls are one at last
Then death's darkness is not darkness, for the power of death is past.

Not to-morrow shall we, waking, hear the wheels of London roll,
You with sin's kiss on your whiteness, I with madness in my soul:
Nay, for ever now around us let the vast night's curtains be!
We are safe within the darkness; we are safe within the sea.

269

TO THE UNIVERSE-GOD

God who leadest human creatures safe through many a path and winding way;
Thou whose word the leaping thunders and the foam-sprent warrior-waves obey:

Thou whom not alone the roses worship with their tender-glowing bloom
But, besides, the waving grasses gleaming round about the granite tomb:

Thou whom all the ancient nations sought, and brought their gifts to thine abode;
Thou through whom the heart of Jesus with the eternal perfect pity glowed:

Thou through whom our country's glory reached its splendid perfect flower indeed;
Thou who gavest to the people Love for sign and Freedom for a creed:

270

Still thou livest,—livest surely? God, thou art not dead, as some men say,
Men who preach the saws of Science and they win the people to their way?

Nay, thou livest, livest surely. Far beyond the fiery whirl of fate
Thou the God of Love art thronéd, King on whom the giant ages wait.

Through a thousand mystic voices thou hast spoken to unnumbered years,
Thrilled the heart of priest and singer, thrilled man's fervent soul to fire or tears.

Thou wast in the old religions, God of glittering war and white-robed peace;
Thou wast in the face of Venus, thou didst tread with her the shores of Greece.

Thou wast in the buoyant waters leaping round her rising from the wave;
To her hands their deathless magic thine hand full of stranger magic gave.

271

In the gods and in the people thou the Spirit of all things hast thy part;
Thou wast in the ancient temples, in the splendours of Athenian Art.

All true souls and noble found thee, thee the unchanging God, the deathless One,
In the million stars of midnight, in the flowers, the sea-waves and the sun.

In strange shrines of many a goddess thou wast hidden, thou the God supreme,
Light behind the deadly darkness, truth within the interminable dream.

Never one soul quite escaped thee. Thou its Maker hadst a word for each.
Through wild sins and wild contritions thou hadst ceaseless power to raise and teach.

Thou didst thunder over Sinai, thou didst stablish David on his throne;
Through the starless midnight darkness thou didst speak to Solomon, alone.

272

Hast not thou, thou Power omniscient, watching over stars that crowd the skies
Still reserved the light of passion, unrevealed save only in woman's eyes?

Lovelier than the leagues of starlight, purer than the heavens where great suns gleam,
Is the light that passion kindles, even as truth is lovelier than the dream.

Thou art deep within all pleasure—thou who scatterest on the hills the snows
Art as well within the fragrance of the luscious crimson-petalled rose.

Thou who o'er the viewless summits passest like the thunder-footed storm
Art as well within the valleys,—grace thou givest to the wood-nymph's form.

Thou wast in the soul of Phidias when within the imperishable stone
Deep he graved eternal beauty,—and the dream of beauty yet unknown.

273

For in every noble statue sleeps a dream of wonder unrevealed,—
Something that the stars have seen not, something that the sweet earth cannot yield.

From the statue's lips of triumph comes a murmur, “Not yet all is done!
Lovelier than all earthly beauty waits beyond the moonlight and the sun.”

Thou, immortal Spirit of beauty, speakest thus through lips of flawless stone,
And through other than the statue's, through the model's soft lips' living tone.

While the man can mould the statue, thou alone with loving touch and warm
Canst enshrine thy dream of beauty in the woman's lovelier living form.

Thou the eternal heavens' own Sculptor sendest forth the products of thy skill,
Shapes that haunt man's heart for ever, eyes that dazzle and the lips that thrill.

274

Through all poets thou hast spoken, leading each along the darkling ways;
Crowning each with thorns of sorrow, then with star-crowns woven of deathless rays.

Unto each some word eternal thou dost give—the power to raise or smite;
Music of the golden morning or the dark storm-music of the night:

Power to speak thy timeless message on man's planet to the sons of time;
Power to make love's dream immortal, power to make a moment's bliss sublime.

Fragrance of a million blossoms on the breezes every morning dies,
But the flower within the poem blooms beneath thought's ever-radiant skies.

Fragrance of unnumbered passions on the wind of time is wafted far,
But a mighty poem's passion, changeless, shares the life of sun or star.

275

From the hell where woman struggles, lurid hell where ceaseless bale-fires gleam,
She shall rise, superb, immortal, changing into love's wild passion's dream.

Though for ages vast, unnumbered, she content has been half queen, half slave,
Heedless how or what she squandered, so that only her generous instinct gave:

Though for ages she has given, winning not the high return she sought,
Yet her sweet deferred pure triumph waits her in the dawning age of thought.

Thou who hast watched her tribulation, watched her anguish through the darkling years,
Spirit of love not only of passion, thou hast heard her moans and marked her tears.

Not one maid in Eastern harem sold and wrecked that man's fierce lust might reign
But shall win rich restitution, in some sphere where joy shall balance pain.

276

Not one girl in modern London ruined and soiled for some man's passing whim
But shall in the end be queenlike, bring deliverance it may be to him.

Thou dost keep divinest record: not one silent sacrifice of tears
But shall see its hope accomplished, after it may be twice a thousand years.

Time is nought, and thou art deathless—thou on whom thou willest canst bestow
Life on life in which to blossom, endless years in which the soul may grow.

Flowers on earth for a million ages, these have lit the ways with boundless bloom,—
Thou the Spirit of love retainest still thy fairest flowers enwrapped in gloom.

Woman's is the unknown future—man's has been the long past dark with crime;
Now through many a golden era woman's heart shall make man's heart sublime.

277

She shall bring the earth redemption,—fit our star to hold communion high
With bright sister-stars and sinless, glittering spotless in the untainted sky.

For all stars may hold communion, all the planets' souls are doubtless one;
Star to star may speak responsive, moon to white-souled moon, and sun to sun.

Woman on our earth may doubtless render earth as pure and man as free
As pure stars and starry races hidden in blue mist on the astral sea.

Not alone on earth thou toilest: in the countless stars that traverse night
Thou the Spirit of all art regnant, filling all the cloudy tracts with light.

Rivers flashing hues of sapphire, emerald groves and opal-coasted isles,
Waves that welcome ardent sunrise with a thousand golden-rippling smiles:

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Boundless plains and giant forests, mountains lordlier than our hearts can dream,
These upon the stars thou rulest—icy wastes on phantom-planets gleam.

Titan Andes, Himalayas, heights that dazzle with perpetual snows,
Bowers wherein the flowers fade never, deathless lily, never-darkening rose:

Bowers wherein pure love speaks ever, love more soft-voiced than our planet hears,
Shores where passion's richer rapture thrills far tenderer souls to sweeter tears:

These in unknown realms thou swayest, realms where suns are scattered like the grains
Flying abroad in windy harvests, torn by tempest from the golden wains.

Lo! the brain of man turns dizzy at the thought of sky-leagues stretching far;
Never gate nor wall nor barrier—past each outpost still another star.

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Is there any farthest outpost, any silent sentry-star that waits
Guardian on the dim sky's borders, watchful at the invulnerable gates?

Nay! beyond, another sentry—still another, ceaseless through the night;
Still another's bright spear glittering, still another helm of fiery light.

Human brain may well turn giddy, human thought will never reach the goal:
Yet the Ruler of the star-waste hath his temple also in the soul.