Matin Bells and Scarlet and Gold :: :: University of Virginia Library

In the shade of the cottage she drudges and sings
At her toil, sweet and seven,
Like a bird out of heaven,
Though a child yet a woman in trouble that clings;
With no mother to help her, mid hearts as of stone
All alone, all alone,
Yet she waits on her father and works for the rest
With her best, with her best;
And for them bears the load and provides for the morrow
With a matronly wit
And the bosom true knit,
Finding sunshine in sorrow.
In the shade of apartness she suffers and smiles
At the shock of affliction,
For it bears benediction
And in smiting it carries the balm that beguiles;

373

While the glory of youth is a fountain of song
Very strong, very strong,
And it kindles the darkness that has not a name
Into flame, into flame;
And the child that for love labours on without wages
In that infinite trust,
Because only she must,
Has her foot on the ages.

II

Mistress of many,
Subject to none,
Maid by a righteous resolve, like a Queen
Forth to the fight she goes bravely as any
Where is the duty or work to be done.
Crowned though unseen;
Sceptred and served with a kingdom her own,
Blessing and blest by the heirs of unrest
Sharing her portion and laid on her breast,
If yet unknown;
Bow to her, vow to her homage that's meet,
Brushing away the coarse dust from her feet.
First in the county,
Last in the care
Dealt to herself on her generous track,
Scattering presents to each of her bounty,
Open as daylight, enough and to spare,
Not coming back;
Beauty and riches and rank to her fall
Doubled, divine by the charms that refine
Charity knowing no boundary line
Saving her all;
Give to her, live to her glory and praise—
Ah, she is higher than honours can raise.

III

She's always long
And always late,
She never did a tiny wrong
Nor gathered up her skirts to hate;
But just alike in pain and pleasure

374

With cats and curates and with kings
She metes to all the same mild measure
In grand affairs or bonnet strings;
Her modes and morals, joys and loves
No more important than her gloves,
By some queer squinting or distortion
Lie on one level of proportion.
She never goes
Without a dog,
And has no special friends or foes
Nor thoughts outside the Decalogue;
Distinctly good and dull her marches,
Along the humdrum beaten way,
Avoid the heaven of rainbow arches
And sordid earth and common clay;
Without a colour or a creed
She knows not luxury or need,
A mere appendage to her colley
With no redeeming vice or folly.

IV

Downright black and ugly, Madam—aye and odd;
Dreadful, yet a child of Adam and of God;
Not a feature with apology for grace,
Like a creature out of season and of place;
But in spite of many a fault with a pinch of saving salt
In that heterogeneous mixture,
And a sense of duty calm singing through life as a psalm
Not a fancy but a fixture;
O yes, pick her all to pieces,
Pick out every wart and wen,
So unlike your model nieces
Fattening for the marriage pen!
Quite a horror, in the turning of that frame,
Formed as by a madman's churning for some game
To a sample past the rules of finished art
With her ample waist and every shapeless part!
Meant to be a scarecrow, made for the cherry-clack and shade,

375

And in short a perfect shocker,
Hardly with the right to be granted to a toad or tree—
All you say is clear as Cocker!
But when this and worse you utter
In your slander's cruel feast,
Adding too a limp and stutter—
Give me Duty and the Beast.

V

Full of charms her little body,
Nothing in it sham or shoddy
Or with any hint of stain,
But in spite of pink and white
And allurements infinite
With a little empty brain;
Very sweet
And very stupid,
Though with all the arms of Cupid
And a parish at her feet—
With her roses and her poses and her dainty upturned nose's
Challenge, which it's doom to meet.
Snow and summer must have married
And in loyal union tarried
On her bosom and her brow,
But no trace within that face
Of one reason for her grace,
Though we all before it bow;
Very fair
And very foolish,
With broad acres at Balhoolish
And a heaven within her hair,
Every section worth protection and a figure of perfection—
Nought but mind that needs repair.

VI

Priscilla is too good to live—
Indeed she's ever dying,
With care for weakness fugitive
And errors round her crying;

376

Her busy mop keeps plying,
With all the labour she can give
To send our sins a-flying—
It is her one prerogative;
But in her prim and proper sphere
Which nothing vile may enter,
She will forget the Devil here
Who was the First Dissenter.
And if she had a broader plan
Or noted dirty dishes,
And dwelt not in the tiny span
Just bounded by her wishes,
She'd find two sorts of fishes
And some not fit for cooking pan,
Or only food for swishes,
And man at bottom only man;
But by her crystal palace girt
And with her white virginity,
She sees not our divine has dirt—
Though she is pure Divinity.

VII

This is the Baby-woman, see!
So exquisite and artless,
As playful as a cat and free—
Though some believe her heartless.
I do not know nor greatly care
If she has real affection,
Or but the semblance and to spare—
It is not worth dissection.
Her face is infantine and sweet,
The life has purple patches;
But when you are not at her feet
A captive, look for scratches.
She says most hard and cruel jests
With manner soft and simple,
And if a wounded soul protests
She answers with a dimple;
Her air is innocence and truth,
As if all girls were sisters

377

And she immortal smiling Youth—
But O the blessing blisters!
And so I leave her quite alone,
A white eternal Kitten;
If for these words I must atone,
Be purred on, coaxed and bitten.

VIII

Limp and lazy and with hazy notions of her neighbour's due
But to self devoutly true,
Calmly taking all and making no addition to out stock—
Not for orphans even a frock,
Not a petticoat or particle
Of one useful winter article;
There she lays her pampered length
And her lax voluptuous strength
On the cushioned couch, and lingers over the last book
With her warm white drowsy fingers and a dreamy look,
Half asleep and half awaking as she idly turns
Still the leaves, awhile forsaking toys for which she burns.
Men are dying, women crying at her very palace door,
But across that easy floor
She would never once endeavour to uplift her languid state
To redeem a soul from fate;
No one yet has seen her mightiness
Troubled, save about mere flightiness,
For some spoiled and petted cat
Or her new Parisian hat;
Then those crumpled carnal members stir and heave the frame
And from out its torpid embers rouse the hidden flame,
As the mountain of indulgence in the glow that gives
Clothing of a strange effulgence for a moment lives.

IX

Tired and trembling
With a foot that falters on the ground,

378

And with open arts dissembling
All the burden that is always found,
As she totters to and fro
With a pleasant word for each,
Cheering hearts within her reach,
Good alike to high and low;
Such is Granny
With her soft and silvered head of frost,
Not without an air uncanny
To the children whom she may accost,
But a treasure to us all
With the wisdom rich and ripe,
And the healing in the stripe
Which at times may lightly fall.
Never fiction
Did devise a comforter so dear,
One whose look is benediction
And to laughter turns the unshed tear;
If she fumbles now and then,
Yet her misses are more true
With the love's compelling clue,
Than more perfect deeds of men.

X

Tall as a lily and red as a rose
Never the same for a minute,
Changing her temper or beautiful pose
Ere she has time to begin it;
Always at play in her will and her way,
Laughing and loving and jesting
Up above cares and our homelier snares,
Save in her slumber unresting.
Tall as a lily and red as a rose
And as deliciously fragrant,
Making the ground of each pilgrimage close
Start of some humour more vagrant;
Tawny her hair and alluring the air
Wreathing her path like caresses,
Making each boast he is favoured the most
Whom she the latest addresses.

379

Tall as a lily and red as a rose
Not without petulant bristles,
Pleasing and pricking impartially those
Gladdened by plums and epistles;
Breezy and blonde and provokingly fond,
Turning on lovers her arrows
Pardoned so much for the delicate touch,
Coaxing the hearts that she harrows.

XI

Too old and timid and an hourly burden
Unto herself and even her closest kin,
She does the little that she can and more
Than thousands with her peaked and palsied fingers
And head that nods in sympathy a tune.
She feels she has outgrown the welcoming
That once outran her services, and turned
The day to pleasure and the night to peace;
And frets to see the puckered brow that gives
But yet denies at heart the grudged attention,
And lips compressed that crying “yea” spell “nay,”
With side-long looks and whispered jealousies
Of place and person. Life is one sad load
For her unequal shoulders, and she bows
Beneath the dull disharmony of things
As one outside the world in which she moves
And has no part or precious interest.
Aloof from all as at a lonely summit,
She hears afar the muffled sounds that break
As on a distant shore, and in the shadow
With great dim eyes of wonderment stoops down
And catches now and then some splintered gleams
Not unfamiliar quite and yet not hers,
And then she gathers up herself in God.

XII

Mocking, gracious
With enchanting airs she walks
Through the world that grows more spacious,
As she moves about and talks;
With a malice

380

Hardly seen and yet put on,
When your mouth would meet the chalice
Of her scarlet lips she's gone,
With a bitter taste that fitter
Seems to rankle in the mind,
Like old sheaves of dead rose leaves,
And is all she drops behind.
Is she woman,
Or a witch of ruddy frost,
Admirable, whom yet no man
Loved but ever loved and lost?
Soft, surprising
In the sweetness of her mood,
Then she asks with tantalising
Grace new passion for her food;
And her gleamy eyes with dreamy
Fascinations to you cling,
Till you wake and with the ache
Find you only have the sting.

XIII

Naughty and nice with no feelings of ice,
Easily wooed but not won,
Quickest to aid and not bought at a price
Pleasant to all and to none;
Wayward and charming and often alarming
Folks of decorum and nerves,
Yet from the wildest recalled to the mildest
Mood if it succours and serves;
Half of her kitten and half of her boy,
Wholly a puzzle and pet,
Treating you either as king or a toy
Made to adore and forget.
Fixed and uncertain and timid and daring,
As it may humour her ends,
Kindness itself and a torment not sparing
Even the fondest of friends.
Nobody trusts her, nobody hates her,
Always so pretty and glad,
Nobody minds her, nobody mates her,

381

And she makes every one sad.
Mischievous, merry, admired and a pest,
Still she has honour and doubting
Going through life and her duties well-drest,
Playing and helpful and pouting.

XIV

She's all elbows and thumbs
And sharp angles and edges,
With a gaze more than human that measures and plumbs
Your most secret pursuits hid by curtains or hedges;
With an awkward intrusion defying seclusion,
And gathering crumbs
From your library ledges
For the feast (not your asking) of awful unmasking.
And she lives in a rage, every hour, every stage,
With herself and society and its impiety;
For whatever may be must be bad,
Must be sad, must be mad,
And by her to be mended or ended.
O her whisper is warm as an average storm
And as savage,
While a cloud seems to wrap her imperious form
In a passion to plunder or ravage.
She is clumsy of gait but walks straight
As her purpose, and never turns back
From her dark and predestinate track,
In her ire and desire
Which no trouble can tire,
Seeking fuel and food from her murderous mood
While behind her she leaves but dead characters' wrack.

XV

With the stream and the multitude drifting,
And with similar straws cut by similar laws
To the same proper shaping and shifting,
But with never a thought of uplifting
To the blue sky above the sweet incense of love;
There she goes,

382

With her dainty particular toes
That would not be aspersed by the drop of a puddle,
And shrink back from a muddle;
The same pattern as this one and that one and all,
Like her sofas and chairs, regulation affairs;
At the breakfast and ball
And the afternoon visit and orthodox round,
She is perfectly sound
And delightfully small.
Nothing wrong in her dress, nothing right in her ways
Before heaven and God,
Though she may as she passes just give Him a nod
Now and then, but alas! never prays.
She has plenty of body and something like mind
Under pretty control,
And a beautiful polish and paint on the rind,
But beneath all the varnish and elegant garnish
Not a trace of a soul.

XVI

One of those fleshly women with full lips
Of summer, animal to the finger tips,
With heavy jowl and heaving breasts that pant
In passionate throbs they care not to conceal,
With greedy eyes that chain you and enchant
By messages of what they would reveal;
A magazine of vice; a lustful face,
That bursts upon you like a tropic flower
In all the splendour of its crimson space
And savage beauty and Satanic power
Of sensuous throat, and large voluptuous chin
That rocks upon the waves of her fierce breath
Unschooled to keep its tale of leachery in
And conquering love yet crueller than death.
Large lazy limbs that fit the exuberant frame,
And move to music of the glorious shame
Outshining in each hot lascivious look
And rippling from the mouth in rosy flame,
Burnt in all letters of that human book
And hanging from each little tag and hook.
A furnace fed with fuel of live store,

383

The souls of men that heat her raging heart
And still fresh fury to the blood impart,
She daily thrives on victims and asks more.

XVII

I was busy, of course, in the sweet of a sonnet,
When she came without name, without shame,
Unannounced, with excuses and worse—a new bonnet
And her good-natured face in a flame;
But I wanted a rhyme, not a pitiful reason
Of statistics and facts
And political tracts,
So her presence and poke then were quite out of season
And high treason.
I was going to dine and with visions of wine
And dear faces and turtle,
When she popt in to hurtle
A fresh tale at my head, though the table was spread;
While she kept me in woe, treading on my pet toe,
Till the dinner was ruin
And the cook cross as Bruin,
And each savoury dish done just right to my wish
Was quite spoiled and digestion's implacable foe.
I was starting by train in a hurry and rain,
When she seized my poor buttonhole
And held on,
With some yarn about meats and the mutton-hole
And New Zealand and freezing and sneezing—
Till my last chance was gone.

XVIII

God made her, God bade her
Simply to go forth and witness
In her frailty and unfitness,
As He clothed her and betrothed her
To Himself and to no other, mate or brother;
Simply with the message of His love
Ripe and red-hot from above,
From the sunny fountains and the golden mountains
Whence comes down the Holy Dove,

384

In the mercy and the might and the dark excess of light.
So she went
All alone because commanded, single-handed,
With her one sublime intent
Only to proclaim the pact
And the fact,
With the wonder of the awful endless act.
Sisters turned aside, she went and still straight on,
Shipwrecked on the hidden shoal
Oftentimes till all but life itself had gone,
To the goal.
God bade her, God made her
Like Himself at last, in perfect beauty
Of a consecrated will offered whole in good and ill,
And delight of duty.

XIX

Who is here, who is there, with a craze or a crotchet,
With a mandate and mission for all,
Or the last bit of news—she is certain to botch it—
And the message that's not from St. Paul?
Who is never at ease and is always in motion
With her peppery tales and the pills of devotion,
Up and down like a carrier's cart,
In your street better known and more heard than her own
And the voice of the backstairs and mart?
With her curious eyes and inquisitive nose
And the foot that despises our weaker repose
Poked in any retreat but your pocket—
Who is this, on each floor and at every door
Which if shut she is sure to unlock it?
To and fro, high and low, as a prophet of woe
She keeps gadding abroad from the pen to the board
On all business excepting the one
That concerns her the most, like an upstarting ghost
When you deem that your worries are done.
At your elbow, when sure now your place is secure,
She is dribbling the scum and the scandal;

385

For however we chafe no one's credit is safe,
And like creatures that creep in your innocent sleep
To the bedside she comes with a candle.

XX

Ordered here and there and harried, just to pay a grudge
Owed another but miscarried, everybody's drudge,
Never stayed and still;
Ugly in the eyes of stupid folks who cry her down
Blind as confidence or Cupid, in her homely gown
Darned with dainty skill.
Neat with careworn face she flutters through the hostile house,
Not a word of protest utters, quiet as a mouse
But without its play;
Worked from morn to evening, scolded, and by children chid
With no kindness fenced and folded, even at servants' bid,
Always in the way.
Used, abused, desired, discarded as a worn out tool,
Ridiculed for tears unguarded, never out of school
Nor one moment right;
Pecked at in the very village by the tattler's voice,
Made a field for fun or pillage at her tyrants' choice,
Till the restless night.
Learning truths herself more bitter than the lessons meet,
Shaped to graces fairer, fitter, at her pupils' feet,
Gifts that do outshine;
And by daily loves and losses serving neighbours' need,
Lifted as on Christ-like crosses in her patient creed
To the peace Divine.

XXI

Scorched by Indian skies, and pinched and pale
With the burden of the years
Writing in each line a passion tale,
Fought afar with hopes and fears;
Moulded by the trial and denial

386

As of flame,
To the texture of a true heroic sort
That will somehow ere it reach the Port
Leave a name.
She has travelled long on sea and land
And been tost about the globe,
Which has felt the impress of her hand
With the trailing of her robe,
And is rich and sweeter and yet meeter
From her touch
Laid upon it like a queenly law,
Taking little from the wealth she saw,
Giving much.
Scarred by sorrow that would shadow forth
In the tightening of the mouth,
But with all the fibre of the north
Wedding sunshine of the south;
Built to stature full and tall and fair,
Out of tempest, fire, and larger air.

XXII

Scarlet-lipt with warm blood flowing
Full and generous and free,
As if summer prime were blowing
In some heavy-blossomed tree,
Where through queaches wild and reaches
Roam the butterfly and bee;
Dusky-haired, though gold threads glitter
In the tangles dim and coy,
Making those deep shadows fitter
Thus to be a monarch's toy;
Like a gipsy, who is tipsy
With the wine of human joy;
There she stands a goddess blushing
Over with the life that runs
Madly through the bosom, flushing
With the fire of Orient suns,
At my hidden hope and chidden
Praises that she courts and shuns.
Ah, the love, that through the channels

387

Of her nature strong and true
Mocks at social bars and pannels,
Yet will drink its splendid due
In a passion beyond fashion—
If I only find the clue.

XXIII

Mark how carefully adjusted and correct
Looks the frock that is entrusted to protect
This most precious piece of goods,
Hawked and higgled up and down and not worth your half a crown,
Fashion's pride, not womanhood's!
She indeed becomes the clothing meant for use
And at last beneath is nothing but excuse
For a life without defence,
An apology for stuff lining mantles or a muff
And a paltry art's pretence.
Peg for hanging on the jewels cold as she,
Or the fancy work and crewels that agree
With a nature small and thin;
All outside and labelled clear, “Going for so much a year,”
Painted cheeks and pointed chin.
Just the product of a little lying stage,
Bubble-wise with tenure brittle of a page
Turned when downright troubles press,
With the lusts that fret and leap and if charming yet are cheap,
Not a woman but a dress.
Admirably made to order and the price
Which the market may command,
Hovering sweetly on the border of the vice
Prudence only does withstand.

XXIV

Bow to the maid with a mission,
Place for the mandate of heaven,
Though to society's fission
And with an earthlier leaven!
Up with the woman, and down with the man

388

Long such a despot and so egotistical!
Cook him alive in equality's pan,
Warmed with his own pretty fires Calvinistical!
No more election of males, but affection
Free as the breezes and broad as the sky,
Room in a boundless new world with no groundless
Barriers raised that admit not reply!
Liberty here for the slave and the chattel
Treasured and duped for a moment of joy,
Ransomed at length and all armed for the battle,
Fetterless, wise, and no longer a toy!
Rifled of jewels and trifled with long,
Treated as children to sweetmeats and song,
Cloyed with the surfeit of sugar and praise
Meant to repress her and not to upraise,
Fooled with the story of compliments hoary
Binding the wings that were spreading for flight,
Now she surprises herself and arises
Forth to the riches of honour and right.

XXV

Millions they say she is worth, but her hat
Clearly a home-fashioned article,
Kindness to all from the king to the cat
But of mere self not a particle;
Shabbilydrest, but the world in her breast
Carried to toil for and honour,
Just as if Christ laid upon her
Care for the least whether lost or the beast.
Homely of features but finding all creatures
Everywhere fellows and friends,
Working with God along paths that He trod
But to His merciful ends;
Bearing the burden alone as her guerdon,
Opening her heart to the knife
Edged for the stricken who suffer and sicken,
Watching and living the life.
Ever in hidden low channels though chidden,
Runs like a river of gold
Charity wide as from Love's riven side

389

Out of her heart never old.
Millions they tell us she owns, but her jacket
Utters impossible things,
Gives her the look of a badly-tied packet—
Over angelical wings.

XXVI

She is one of the masses and lost in a crowd
And just nobody still,
But yet one of God's lasses and pretty and proud—
The machine of a mill;
A mere item in numbers and reckless and young,
With some melody fresh
From her maculate slumbers that trips on her tongue
And belief in the flesh.
She is ready for Handel and takes her own part
In a concert or strife;
And, though ripe for a scandal, at times in her heart
Beats the music of life.
On her head is no bonnet or hat, but her own
Is the beautiful hair
With the sunshine upon it, and carelessly thrown
A shawl out of repair.
And her dark eyes defiant that cheerily face
The whole world without fears,
Though they look so reliant relax in soft grace
And will melt into tears.
If her language is shocking and fingers can strike
She is woman in all,
And all hell in her mocking and heaven alike
Lie beneath that red shawl.

XXVII

See not the ill in her, only the milliner
Slaving from dawn to the night,
Turned as a flower to the light,
Crumpled and faded, by sickness invaded,
Yet with some dew and delight.
Up at her lattice she sews,
Watching her shroud as it grows
Under white fingers—no task of her lingers—

390

Serpentine round her it flows.
Look at the will in her, only a milliner
Outside the tumult and babble and whirl,
Far from the story of man and the glory,
Yet by the calendar nought but a girl.
Yet in her teens and as proudly as queens
Treasuring stores on the shelf,
All for a living with some left for giving,
Working and keeping herself.
Brand not the ill in her, should the poor milliner
Play with the morals we serve
And from propriety swerve—
Say, by a hair's breadth—say, by a stair's breadth;
Ah, she is only a drudge,
And but a step is between heaven and hell, if unseen;
Leave her to God, who is Judge.

XXVIII

Here is to the Bluestocking,
All health and wealth and reason's dress
And every kind of happiness,
Except a husband and the cradle-rocking!
She's half a folio, half imbroglio
In that dear head with Girton pap
So fed and fuddled, mixed and muddled,
That life to her is strata, stones and bones
And dreadful gases, lectures, laws and classes
All jumbled up like China's map.
And yet we love you, sweet Blue Buskin,
With spectacles and skimpy hair,
Not only for the spice of Ruskin—
Your independence makes you fair.
For you are English to your short frock's hem
In teeth of thoughts and virtues bound in vellum,
And to the last whorl of your cerebellum—
Yes, though I praise you not, I can't condemn.
And though your tameless virgin freedom
Assumes a funny form
And savours of the robber Edom,
It makes a tea-cup storm;

391

And we might better drop a lace or two,
Than part with you.

XXIX

She is plain as York Minster,
Weather-beaten and wrinkled and grave,
Just a spinster,
But a bulwark in trouble and brave;
Though her dress might require an apology,
And defies the commands of chronology,
A born hater of nothing but sin.
She is awkward and wrangles a bit and all angles,
And her nose may encroach on her chin;
Yet in spite of her roughness and manifest toughness,
There's an angel within.
While you flourish in plenty and carefully nourish
The mere flesh on the loaves and the fishes,
She may pass you a solemn memorial column
Or at most with a bow and good wishes.
But in darkest extremity
When false comrades like rats are clean gone,
She would fly to the Valley Yosemite
To relieve you a bit or help on.
She looks harder than nails, but can soften
In your sorrow with sympathy deep—
Aye, and often
When we're tucked in the blankets asleep,
She will nurse by the dying and weep.

XXX

Miss Coquette!
She is pleasant and pure
At her heart, though she still may forget
To be always devout and demure
When she could and she should and she would,
If you only had talent to stop her
And she were not a trifle improper,
Our sweet privileged pet, the delightful Coquette.
When I look at her eyebrows so arched
And her foot that keeps restlessly tripping,
I forgive her for casual slipping

392

And her modes and her manners unstarched;
For her dear little nose of celestial pose
Is upturned to the stars as if native,
And her mutinous lips and her fingers' red tips
Are at times a delicious donátive;
And though fribbles may fret,
It is only Coquette!
She is pretty, of course—it's her duty,—
Though the brightness be half of her beauty;
And when fogeys and frumps become dismal as dumps,
Because she is with lovers beset
And goes splash from one trouble head first into double,
I observe, “It is only Coquette!”

XXXI

O, she is always careful, trust her wit and sherry!
And sometimes not unprayerful, when disease is merry
Among the sheep and cattle, and the roots look queer
And men begin to tattle o'er the glass of beer.
Broad-bosomed, with square shoulder to the storm she stands
And meets its blast the bolder with hard working hands,
To issue from it brightened by each adverse part
Though with a pocket lightened yet with stouter heart.
She notes with watchful glances weather and the maid,
And does not lose her chances and is always paid;
She knows the market matters and the proper price,
And bread she freely scatters is no sacrifice
Returning in its season to her profit book,
And all the right of reason lurks in every look.
By paring and by pinches grows the goodly pile,
And with its waxing inches her metallic smile
That smacks of prudent scraping and the solid hoard,
And then the pious draping grace to bless the board!
But still, despite her daily lust for more and more
She can deal out as gaily from her treasure store,
And to the starving cottage while she screws her pence
She takes no meagre pottage if at pounds' expense;
And while in golden vision yet the gain mounts up,
She gives with glad decision brimming plate and cup.

393

XXXII

I know nothing so sweet as her pout,
And the pulse of her patter, the chime of her chatter—
Don't they charm away cobwebs of doubt,
And relieve the worst pinches of gout?
For the Baby is Queen in the gray and the green
Of December and June, and sets all things in tune,—
There is not a house furnished without.
For the husband, if lord of the strife,
Is yet swayed by his dutiful wife,
And the will of the mother is checked by another—
By the Baby that governs her life.
Here is She,
With that simple and innocent dimple inspiring no awe,
Fair and free,
But still breathing commandments and wreathing us round with her law.
Can't you see, it's not we with our clumsier ruling
And our old legislation and impotent fooling
Or occasional sop, who are truly at top?
We are helplessly feigning,
While the Baby below is the prop
And as autocrat reigning.
We have Royalty, Peers and the Commons, the Press:
But the Baby apparelled in utter undress,
Is our fate and the State.

XXXIII

Sparkle through the branches of the fountain,
Fragrance of the heather on the hill,
Frolic laughter where across the mountain
Carves the stream a pattern at its will
Green and glowing, with its flowing, flowing,
And the footstep that is never still;
Thus I make my picture of the English girl
Sweetly country-born and country-bred,
With her sense of guidance overhead
Shining through the tumble and the daily whirl
And the shadows lavishly outspread,
As the rift of blue among the clouds that swirl.

394

Bright as breezes, when the water crisps and freezes
As they bear it from the neighbouring well;
Brave and merry, though the bird can find no berry
And forgets the song it used to tell;
Red-lipt, so that sweetest kisses love her;
Gray-eyed, as the English heavens above her;
With the freedom of the wind that lights her face,
And keeps time with each imperious pace;
Nowise daunted, howsoever taunted
By the trials of her troubled lot;
Fresh and fervent, everybody's servant
And afraid of nothing, but a blot.

XXXIV

The spirit of a Dorcas and the might
Of the pure matron (Rome was patron)
Who mothered heroes for the death or fight,
Meet on her comely face in one delight.
The clergywoman! with her kindly glance
That has sweet leaven of high Heaven,
But yet can linger on the earthly dance
And in the world doth conquer circumstance.
All honour to that pleasant busy form
Which in the quiet seeks its diet,
For ever winning and for ever warm,
And on her bosom bears the alien storm.
See how she walks her humble lowly way
And thoughtful carries help and tarries
In cottage gloom alike to feed and pray,
And gently guides the footstep that would stray.
She never grudges of her little store
And ready basket (none need ask it),
Or pious precepts out of sacred lore,
And leaves new light where it was night before.
Ah, I have seen a beauty on her brow,
Not on the splendid head attended
By rank and wealth, to which the myriads bow—
The blessing of the Lord: I see it now.

395

XXXV

“New,” but not “woman,” a sign and an omen,
Sinister, sexless, ill-famed;
Horribly rising from habits surprising,
Naked, and yet unashamed!
Turn from her, learn from her how not to trifle
So with the sacred and sweet;
Mark in her, hark in her where we may stifle
Modesty under the feet!
Never a figleaf, tiny or big leaf
Now for the leprosy show;
Nothing but crudity, nothing but nudity,
Flaunting the blemish below!
Masculine, muscular, coarse and crepuscular,
Revelling still in the shades—
Edge of impurity, saddling futurity
Lightly with all that degrades!
Nebulous, bibulous, crapulous crank,
Daily dehumanised, frisky,
Dabbling in deeps that are rotten and rank,
Sourly unfeminine, risky!
You are a rumpled black rosebud, a crumpled
Scion of Sodom or Heth,
Nameless and tameless and aimless and shameless,
O you disease or new death!

XXXVI

Wan and weary, with the long and dull and dreary
Gilded season that began without a reason,
And will end without one brief regret;
Lo, she trifles with the pleasant hour, and rifles
Of their honey man and mignonette;
Sips her cup of Mocha coffee or affliction,
Riseth up and lieth down with malediction
Of the most impartial sort and sweep,
Drawled from lazy lips and mind that has a hazy
Unfledged notion that strong language is a potion
Ministering to relief or sleep.
Not unloved by two or three and not ungloved,
Though her stays and starch are hardly taxing

396

And her bolts and bosom know relaxing,
Dawdling on till the next tedious joy is gone;
Sometimes flirting, sometimes by rosewater squirting
Compliments opprest with sickly breath,
Worn and worried, but by earthquakes even unhurried,
Tickled as by butterflies to death.
Bored and flattered with amusements, freely scattered
And as brightly, on her passage daily, nightly;
Seizing moments' rapture as they fly,
In her fated eyes she keeps unsoothed, unsated,
All the langours of Eternity.

XXXVII

Brown as sun and wind can make her,
Not uncomely, not unmeet
For the homely tasks that take her
Here and there with mind discreet;
With the pottage of the cottage
And the endless conquered care
Waxing stronger, in the longer
Stress of strife and frugal fare.
Motherly, a drudge, big-breasted
And with equal thews and skill,
While the babies unarrested
Yet keep adding to the bill.
All a tragedy's emotion,
All a tigress's devotion
Lurking under the plain gown,
And below the soil and grimmer
Seams a semblance like the glimmer
Coming from a martyr's crown;
Rough and rude as Nature nude,
Shaped and shaken by the winter's
Frost and storm to sturdy form,
While mere buffets break as splinters
On resolve; in act and face,
Tossed and tumbled to wild grace.

XXXVIII

With book in hand, and on her guarded face
The ten commandments keeping down the lace

397

And carnal ribbons with their worldly ties
That need the fetters of phylacteries,
She seeks the early service; at the feast
Always the foremost quite, nor yet the least
In rapt responses chanted to the Throne
Besieged by murmurs of her monotone,
Like faint sweet incense rising clear and calm;
With dim suggestions of the crown and palm,
Above a cross that has a doubtful hue
And smacks of pasteboard under skies too blue
For heavens outside her fancy. Matin's bell
Brings her grave legal step, and knows her well;
And never, never, did she wreak the wrong
Of absence from the joys of Evensong,
With priestly robes and rites not all revealed
To her monastic gaze, nor yet concealed,
And genuflexions dear to the poor flesh
Which asks abasement if it sins afresh.
She lives within a shrine of painted glass,
Through which the earth and all its glories pass
And give her what she knows of human things—
Blurred and distorted by fair shadowings.

XXXIX

Fair—yes, fair
With the scarlet scorn upon her lips,
And her golden hair
Proud and properly arranged—
Not a thread estranged;
Words that can and do at seasons fall as whips.
Tall and queenly
With the cultured look,
Like some blazened book
Of a gentle and heroic page,
Which has travelled down serenely
Centuries of sword and song,
And has gathered up in this last age
All its goodly heritage.
Faultless in the rich attire,
Conscious of her rank

398

And the awful blank
Stretched between the mob and her calm crowned desire;
Holding out the sceptre now and then
To a favoured few,
Suffered to ascend the starry stair
Just a step or two within her courtly ken;
If from that diviner bloom and dew,
She stoops down awhile to lower air.

XL

Cold as the charity that with the purse
Begins and ends, doled out so much a day,
And has no part in heart or generous usage
Rooted in love and that large sympathy,
Which marries class to class and builds a bridge
Whereby the humblest may pass into peace
And in his measure taste delight; a thing
Of starch and stays, conventionalities
And parsimonious breath that in mid-sunshine
Withdraws the welcome and damps down the fires.
Ashamed of Nature and its naked bliss
And innocences of stark healthy life
Where passion is all purity; afraid
Of letting go the hand that holds the rule
And rigid safeguards of correct cast-iron.
She dares not ever to be quite herself
And ties her feelings to the forms she knows,
The apron-strings of sour authority;
But still is others' mask, her priest, her wet-nurse,
Reflected in the tepid shallowness
Which is her soul and whole. No liberal blast
Beats on her hide-bound platitudes of creed,
Or ruffles with its glorious challenge once
Her calculated loves and pieties.

XLI

Under the gas, without credit or class,
Reckless in wrong,
Haunted by evil and taunted by pride,
Slinking along;
Yet with the shadow of shame at her side

399

Always contemning, always condemning
Her in her heart with the judgment that drags
Down to the darkness at length—if it lags.
Pretty enough for a kiss
Or the gloves
That your purse would not miss,
But whom nobody loves;
Friend of an hour, fair as a flower
With the sentence upon it,
Good for a jest—with too open a breast,
But not worth a bonnet.
Ah, on the pavement
She finds her one home and her business and plot,
And the life that is not—
Venal enslavement;
Though beneath brass and the reek of stale wine,
While she is powdered and painted and tainted
Fresh for her lot,
Still is the spark of a splendour divine.

XLII

Beautiful thing, hiding the sting
Left by the sneer in the bosom that rankles,
Crippled and yet with the neatest of ankles,
Sweet as a lark and as ready to sing;
Ay, and as soaring
Upward, adoring
Love that has wried and disfigured her frame,
Letting the shame
Darken a life which is guiltless of blame.
O from the eyes and pure lips of red coral
Grace that is moral,
Grace that is power
Bursts into splendour and breaks into flower.
Broad is the forehead, and brilliant the glance
Whispering treasures of secret romance,
Eager to ope the great tideways of hope
Armed for adventure and fired to advance.
Beautiful still under the ill
Clouding her sky,

400

Shutting her in to infirmity's mesh,
Though with the thoughts that as eagles do fly
Far from the bounds of imprisoning flesh,
Straight to the glorious
Silence that's God, over weakness victorious.

XLIII

Here is brown Jenny,
Madcap and romp,
Only a beggar—but give her a penny
Grudged not from comfort, that she would think pomp!
Ragged she is and malicious she looks,
Saucy and stained with the weather engrained,
Spurning the books
We with more civilised tastes reckon high;
Yet at her crossing,
Yet with the tossing
But of a broom to make gentlefolks' room
Cleanly, to God she is surely as nigh,
Simpering madam
Swelling in silks, as are you with your purse,
Equally dear and a daughter of Adam
Under the common blue sky and the curse.
Bright with her blarney the maid of Killarney
Offers you smiles and most innocent wiles;
But if she's rich in her glory and bloom,
Where is the broom?
I prefer Jenny,
Towsled and tattered and naughty and spattered
Freely with mud (from which glimmers the bud)
Over all girls from Cape Cod to Kilkenny.

XLIV

She never had a chance; her hopeless life
Burst all unwished and blasted into being,
With every woe and foe that wickedness
For ages educated could confer,
And want with its grim heritage of crime.
Damned at the start, and with a curse foredoomed
To sin and suffering beyond reach of help,
She sucked in poison with her mother's milk

401

Yet had no mother; for in lust conceived
She came into a world of hate and evil,
Stamped as the devil's own indelibly,
And herded with wild beasts and fared and fought
For just a pittance, as did they and died
Daily the death of shame insufferable
And lied and swore and marketed her body
To any bidder. Vice is meat and drink;
She hears not once the tale of purity
Nor feels its presence and exceeding power;
She sees no gentle love. But yet at times
There is a flutter in her breast of wings
That fain would rise, and in her ears an echo
Of distant strains and solemn symphonies
Sounding through tears and maledictions deep,
And then she sinks beneath her slough again.

XLV

Against the darkness thrown out pure and white
She walks her lily way,
A point of hope in horror infinite
Where all are far astray.
The night around her heaves broad splashes up
Of awful inky gloom,
And though she drains alone the deadly cup
No shadow dims her bloom;
Which seems to grow yet brighter and more fair
Among the dirt and din,
Immaculate in that mephitic air
And sweeter from the sin.
For oft those wolfish eyes that on her glare
And feel the chasm so wide,
Behold together with the cross of care
An angel at her side;
Or even the One whom blindly we adore
Perfected by the pain,
Who went Himself a blacker way before
And gathered not one stain.
But at her presence oaths to blessings turn,
And all disarmed is hate;

402

She goes, with mightier loves that in her burn,
Anointed, separate.

XLVI

Most helpless of all helpless things,
Thou baby child,
Yet with a dower and awful power
Enjoyed by every little flower
But not by kings,
Because thy breast is undefil'd!
Ah, who shall guess
The curve thy pretty wings may take
When they forsake
Their shelter, and in fear awake
To see their own great loveliness,
And poise a moment ere they try
Their maiden strength and outward fly,
Bathed as in all Eternity?
O whither then
Among the works and ways of men,
Wilt thou with treasure more than gold
Direct thy flight,
Or where unfold
Those charms that tremble to the light?
Perhaps on paths that none have trod
Thy beauty waits to play a part,
To break a kingdom or a heart
Or guide a wandering soul to God.

XLVII

A true Domestic!
When her mistress needs
Her service, smart and with an eye that heeds
The smallest blot, and in the room majestic
With company and silver at her hand;
Then every inch a queen,
Admired when seen
As born to greatness and command.
Observe the calm and serious face,
The head
Well poised, and each quick attitude a grace,

403

The soft and supple tread,
And in the comprehensive eye
What dignity!
But then
When work is done and all the strain is over,
She drops the mask and gambols among men
The wildest rover,
And flings decorum to the winds; and rude
She flits and flirts, no more a stately form,
About the kitchen in a little storm
Of quips and laughter,
Free'd from the stays of servitude
And the hereafter.

XLVIII

In the thick of the turmoil I turn
From the business and babble and knife,
And the fires of affliction that burn
Their deep messages into my life;
From the hateful and mean, and I lean
On the love and the prayers of my wife.
For a moment my heart,
Set apart
From the strife, feels a mystery solemn,
And the walls of a temple upstart
With the stillness of cloister and column,
In a wonder of white
Infinite.
And her saintly calm face of pure love
Looking down
From the glamour and glow of a crown
Lifts me high to her summits above;
Out of care and the glare and the carking
Petty worries and barking
As of dogs at my heels,
To the blessing that steels.
I return to the load like a hod,
With new might and a mystical sight—
All is mingled with her and with God.

404

XLIX

Omnisapient surely is this
Funny growth,
Half a man, half a woman, but scorning a kiss—
Or a little of both.
Here are Oxford and Girton boiled down
With the “Martyrs' Memorial,”
And the “Lady's Pictorial”
With the cap and Academy gown;
To produce such a curious cult,
And result!
I feel nervous and Mervous and more,
As I hearken in shadows that darken
To the torrent of terrible lore,
Which this monster part cherub, part chicken,
Ladles out from her store;
Ah, I sicken
At the thought of my ignorant state,
While she carries debate
Into regions undreamt of by me
And horizons unbounded and blessings to be.
Yet, it's well
After all and I don't feel so small,
When I note on her back in her wonderful track
Just a fragment of yesterday's shell.

L

English mother, with the serious blue grey eyes
And their sober look of England's clouded skies,
Irish women do their part
Pouring passion and the heart
Into all their nursing and maternal skill,
And the joy of fancy round their cradle lies;
But you only have the secret more than art,
And the will.
It is well, to be an English mother's child
Wrapt in folds and folds of care from buffets wild,
Tucked in warmly safe and sound
With her jealousy around,
Shielded from the shadow of a fear or fall

405

And the evil glance or touch that had defil'd,
Cuddled to her very life and all enwound
With her all.
Oft I long to feel an English mother's breast,
In the many hours of darkness and unrest;
And with this dull fretting pain
To be rocked awhile again,
On the sweetest pillow which to Heaven is clue;
And when I by earthly care am overprest,
Just to see in English eyes as washed by rain
God's grey blue.

LI

Is it daytime, darling, is it night
Under that sealed curtain where no hour is certain,
Though it's always light?
Dost thou mark the morning with its grey adorning
Strewing pearls upon the eastern sky,
As a carpet for the sun
On his royal way to run,
In the circle of eternity?
Is it evening, sweet, or purple dusk
Where the magic moonshine pours the waves like noonshine
From its silver husk?
Can'st thou catch a glimmer, when our eyes are dimmer,
Of that vision which in splendour drops
Over the enchanted Space
Which is God's own blessed face,
On the silence of the mountain tops?
Ah, my dearest, thou dost truly note
Ecstasies of being with a perfect seeing,
Ransomed from each mote;
Far beyond our gazing in a Dawn amazing,
Thou dost freely range abroad and find
Ready to thy heart and hand
Glimpses none can understand
Of that glory, to which we are blind.

406

LII

Gone the love that was a shelter
From the cruel heat,
And a comrade in the welter
Of the battle seat;
Where sharp fears, like hostile spears,
Grimly on the bosom beat.
He is gone, alas, and on
Thou must weary for the sight
Of some friend or saving end
And the never-coming light;
While the sun sits on the rock and rill,
And thou art a bird dismated still.
But a Husband for thee tarries,
Waiting for His hour
And the faith in Him that marries
Thee and brings new dower;
When things die, He passes by
In the fulness of His power,
Watching for the opening door
And the timid outstretched arm,
If the life in tumbling strife
Feels His choosing and the charm;
He is now a-wooing at thy side,
And thou art His blessed heavenly bride.

LIII

They went down in the battle and the waves
Swept over them and she,
The beautiful and free,
Was left to water with her tears their graves;
But yet she lived, the little only—
And yet she loved, the little lonely—
One who should rather have been taken first;
While all her empty heart, that dwelt apart
And on itself was fed and on the dead,
Ached with an inextinguishable thirst
In its great groping blindness
For drink of human kindness.
They went down in the battle, son and sire

407

And mother with the rest,
All beaten, over-prest,
And she remained to nurse the secret fire;
For simple love that did not falter
Burnt in her breast as on an altar,
Amid the hosts of darkness and of doubt;
And incense seemed to flow from her and glow
Which made a passage sweet for her white feet
And from each action breathed its fragrance out;
Till the wide world was debtor
For her pure life, and better.

LIV

She is nobody, simply obscure
With a colourless mien and a mode
Which is cut in the orthodox code,
And is always discreet and demure;
There is nothing about her, to doubt her
Proper feelings and nondescript mind,
And the baggage within and without her
Is the same common dulness and kind;
She can show no extraction or action
That's above the old regular rut,
Nor a ghost with a story nor fraction
Of a skeleton drowned in a butt.
She is nobody, one of the crowd,
A respectable item, no more,
To be covered some day with a shroud
While the fooling goes on as before;
There is nothing to flutter or smut her
Or suppose hers a chronicle queer,
Though she takes the society stutter
And the latest society leer;
No one ever will kiss her or miss her
Or give less than conventional grief,
Or for spoiling a character hiss her
And despatch with regret or relief.

LV

The ugly Duckling! No one loves her,
No one cares

408

If she complains, the sheep-dog shoves her
Aside and victuals with her shares;
But takes of course the larger section
With the best,
And growls at any weak objection
Or arrest.
And all the earth is singing, singing,
Nor heeds her trouble and the wrong,
And all the bells are ringing, ringing,
In Nature's church to evensong.
The ugly Duckling! No one holds her
Little hand,
Or pats her freckled cheek and folds her
Safe up and snug in Babyland;
Friends always pass her by and blessings
Miss her lot,
The cat gets kindness and caressings
She does not;
But God is King and reigning, reigning
Above our cruel creeds in Love,
And past these mists of feigning, feigning,
He counts her beautiful above.

LVI

By gaslit shops and shelves she passes
With ragged form and famished eyes,
And mirrored sees in magic glasses
Another earth and other skies;
And, with the lone damp pavement stone
Her chill companion and her bread,
She feels the stark and deadly dark
With numbing fingers like the dead.
But men are laughing, women quaffing,
The cup of nectar full and deep,
While some have clothing, some have nothing,
And others only death or sleep.
Moved on she paces up and down
And hears the babble of the feast,
Or rustling of some silken gown
And envies even the fatted beast.

409

She wonders why her bitter cry
Still goes to Heaven and wins no help,
And deaf to need yet thousands heed
The pampered lapdog's lazy yelp.
And through the rifting night her drifting
Life vanishes in mist once more,
Beneath the scourges of the surges
That beat on earth's old burial shore.

LVII

She is pleasant to flirt with perhaps for an hour
And perhaps for a minute or two,
But that face like an angel's can yet look as sour
As a Tartar's with murder to do.
Then she bustles and hustles
You out of the room,
And her skirt in a tempest of black
With a crisping and wisping
Suggestive of doom,
Flies afar till the boards even crack.
She has tantrums and tiffs and with her you must take them,
But I think she's as pretty as God ever makes them.
There's no humbug about her, you know what you've got,
And for baggage like that dearly pay;
You will have a good meal and delightfully hot,
And a temper that goes its sweet way.
She's not painted or tainted
With folly and fluff
And indulges no vice, I am sure;
By most pressing caressing,
No powder or stuff
Will come off—she is simple and pure.
If you don't mind the sauce and the sharpest of pepper,
She's a thoroughbred filly and beautiful stepper.

LVIII

Most gentle and all-perfect lady,
Queen among women, yet
Preferring cloisters shy and shady—

410

Whom none that see forget;
As often Nature dimly weaves
A rose, that's hidden by its leaves.
O excellent fair Dorothy,
Thy touch so tender in affliction
Is patent of nobility,
Thy breath is only benediction;
And in thy heart, which dwells apart,
Is love that loves exceedingly.
I try to paint thee in thy glory—
But then I cannot guess
One half the wonder of the story,
Told by that Christ-likeness.
My hand is weak, my purpose fails—
And yet I see the bitter nails.
For now the veil, no vulgar pride,
Reveals when dropt the sacred stigma,
The piercèd hands, the riven side,
And all the sad and sweet enigma.
For thou hast borne the cruel scorn,
And been with Jesus crucified.

LIX

Her eyes were gates of Heaven, her mouth was praise,
And on her happy brow
Bright with the peace which doth to God upraise,
Was writ the holy vow;
The sacred sign, so blest, benign,
To which the nations bow.
Carved out of worship seemed that humble frame,
One beautiful petition,
One blessing, like a pure embodied flame
Which held in God fruition,
And must adore for evermore
But of its own volition.
For on her heart's white altar freely burned
A love, which wholly gave
The gentle life which to its Lord returned
Through self-denial's grave;
And in its fall recovered all,

411

For other souls to save.
The virtue of the Cross, which from her shed
The shine of benediction,
Made the blind world the better for her tread
And healed the worst affliction;
At each step grew, of crimson dew,
The flower of crucifixion.

LX

O, more than beautiful and best,
Whom none hath truly seen
In thy sweet naked glory drest,
I humbly crown thee Queen;
But not on any earth thy throne
Nor in a clouded sky,
We build who build for thee alone,
But in Eternity;
And if we may not ever know
The fulness of thy face,
We catch some glimpses here below
In every woman's grace.
O more than beautiful, the One
Whom all so vainly sue,
And fair and finished meet in none
Though each possess a clue;
I mark thy presence through the land
In happy virgin fears,
The whiteness of a wedded hand,
And in a harlot's tears;
But what thou art and whither bent
Save in the Heaven of Love
We guess not, though with pure intent
I stretch blind arms above.