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

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.