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

With joy and sadness strangely, sweetly, blended
We hail, my wife, the silver-shining morn
That sees so many joys and sorrows ended;
White-winged precursor of the days unborn.

In speedy concourse, thoughts throng round us flinging
Aside the mantles of the buried days.
All live again: old flower-wreathed springs come singing
And risen summers perfume woodland ways.

Again we watch the purple mountains, dreaming
That Wordsworth still their secret heart divines:
Again we see the cataract silver-gleaming
That leaps for evermore through Southey's lines.

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Again white Paris spreads her streets before us,
Her palaced glories, arched cathedral glooms.
The sky of sunny friendly France smiles o'er us,
A land for us of well-loved worshipped tombs.

For there at Boulogne, where in grey completeness
The rampart looks towards Paris or the sea,
There lived long since in girlhood's simple sweetness
The mother whose young life formed part of me.

There too the brothers who with love most tender
Watched o'er my youth, in far-off golden hours
Plucked 'mid the corn the poppy's crimson splendour
And wove their boyhood's wreath of perfect flowers.

We have not journeyed far or much, wide-wandering;
We know not scents down Indian valleys blown:
We have not stemmed the Nile's brown eddies, pondering,
Or gazed at Athens on her timeless throne.

But we have seen the Bernhardt's glances lighten,
Marked Art wax prouder, as her genius grew;

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Watched her firm fingers round the dagger tighten
And watched that white hand redden as it slew.

And we have trodden old shadowy paths together,
Heard through “Milady's” lips the serpents hiss,
And loved those sunniest hearts in blackest weather,
D'Artagnan, Porthos, Athos, Aramis.

Year after year at wind-kissed sea-stormed Brighton
We, studying heaven and sea with earnest eyes,
Have watched the crests of green-blue billows whiten
And watched God paint new sunsets in his skies.

Year after year, returning to the city
Whose turrets seek the blue through smoke-wreaths rent,
We have felt our hearts go out in unfeigned pity
Towards those within the smokeless country pent.

For ever thought has star-crowned heaven for neighbour
And thought steals stars from heaven, and with them crowns
The tireless brows that ever muse and labour
Not in the country, in the flowerless towns.

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Here in old London year by year retiring
Has seen prayers answered, problems that depart:
We both have laboured,—you my thought inspiring,
I setting thought's raw gold in frame of Art.

And ever through the past's now mist-wreathed portal
Visions of pleasures shared together shine:
Delights that youth's keen senses made immortal
And love made tenderer by his touch divine.

On Dover's heights we chase the “clouded yellows,”
Mocked still by many a winged and jewelled form:
In Balcombe orchards the red apple mellows;
Broad Sussex charms us under sun or storm.

Again, as often and often by me sitting
At Lord's, you watch the rival school-teams play;
Mark with a thrill the Dark Blue's marvellous hitting
And see triumphant Harrow win the day.

Again, on many a night of swift emotion
We see some strong great drama aptly done;
Believe in canvas swaying like the ocean,
And paper moons, and simulated sun.

178

And Mulgrave once again with magic finger
Touches to gold its dark trees' aging locks:
Beside the strange old ruin again we linger;
Again the sea-flowers gem the tide-washed rocks.

Again we leap the stream that seeks the ocean
At Robin Hood's, the immortal outlaw's, Bay:
We leap; but still I have a lurking notion
One cleared the stream—the other stopped half-way!

The sea-gulls that we shot,—or missed them, was it?
The thyme-sweet cliffs we climbed, the jokes that sped!
The sun that, laughing, bent down to deposit
Gold, countless gold, upon your crownless head!

The moon and stars that kissed the silvered billows;
The peace at night upon the stormless deep:
Old Oxford's towers, and blue waves under willows,
And meadows where youth's flower-crowned fancies sleep.

All these we saw and loved. We worshipped Mary,
Her whom each poet dreading, yet adores:

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Murderess divine, half tigress heart, half fairy,
Whose ghost at Holyrood spurns the blood-stained floors.

We stole, yes stole, bright daffodils, not knowing
The crowned slim beauties were but fostered slaves.
We deemed the sun had set them all a-blowing,
The free wind kissed them into yellow waves!

We watched the Thames, a streak of silver lying
Beneath the windy firs of Abbey Wood;
Across waste moors saw many a sunset dying:
On Scarboro's castled storm-blown crags we stood.

And through it all the sense of pure devotion,
Of wifely love, thrilled ever my young heart;
Adding a splendour to the moonlit ocean,
Adding a glory to all crowns of Art.

Yes: if I, fervid, sought the poet's laurel,
Remember, for your sake I largely sought;
That to your feet past question, doubt or quarrel,
The world turned suppliant might at last be brought.

180

Time spurred the lagging years: we hardly noted,
For love arrests life's steeds upon their road.
We walked and drove, and climbed bright downs, and boated,
And drew strange fishes from their green abode.

We hurled o'er ocean meads the flashing cobble,
The dark-winged fairy of the North Coast fleet;
Her in whose wake the swiftest wild waves hobble,
Pursuing vainly with white spray-splashed feet.

We knew and loved the sun-burned North Coast sailors:
Ah! still true faces on my memory gleam.
Alas! Death's prison, where none may bribe the gaolers,
Holds many of whom our lingering thoughts would dream.

Ah! when upon our race we gaily started,
Youth's sunshine glittering on your golden head,
How many loving souls, divine, great-hearted,
Smiling, beheld us start. The most are dead.

How many watched us then! what loving faces,
What friendly eyes, what hearts who wished our good.

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But five and twenty years thin crowded places,
As surely as storm-winds thin the gold-leafed wood.

They wished us well; they wish us well, it may be:
They watched us start; they watch us touch this goal.
Glad let our five and twentieth wedding-day be!
For five and twenty years wed soul to soul.