Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

“Narratione autem historica cum præterita etiam hominum instituta narrantur, non inter humana instituta ipsa historia numeranda est; quia jam quæ transierunt, nec infecta fieri possunt, in ordine temporum habenda sunt, quorum est conditor et administrator Deus.” S. Augustine.

1.THE PRESENT. 1.

Magnify not the times in which we live:
The Present is a double shadow cast,
Part from the Future, partly from the Past,
And deeply blended is the light they give.
The shadow is across our spirits thrown,
We know not how much further it hath gone.
The great, ennobling Past is only then
A misty pageant, an unreal thing,
When it is measured in the narrow ring
And limit of the Present by weak men.
The Future is the open trench, the ground
Whereon our deeds are built, wherein we cast,
As though we did a reverend temple found,
The corner-stones to build another Past.

517

2.THE PRESENT. 2.

In truth, but his must be a purblind sense,
To whom the solemn days in which we live
No room for awe, no scenes of rapture, give,
Or of historical magnificence.
When for long years have men been so intent
To march through change unto one steady scope,
With hearts to dream, and energy of hope
To force their dreams upon accomplishment?
Yet, if there be no other grandeur here,
Each Present hath a stirring shadow near,
A magnifying halo o'er it cast,—
The thought that this same strife of good and ill,
Which we have helped with individual will,
By time transferred, shall be our children's Past.

3.USE OF THE PAST.

There is no bent of mind so vile, so weak,
As that which on the glorious Past doth set
In currents of inordinate regret;
And with a sphere of dreams content, doth wreak
Itself upon the love of beauty, raw,
And not by lowly heart and patient thought
To act or inward disposition wrought,
Nor made obedient to the manly law
Of diligent love, whereby men would recast
For their own times the greatness of the past.
But he, who to that temple shall intrude
For purpose less beneficent than this,
Shall be outlawed unto the barren bliss
Of lifelong intellectual solitude.

518

4.CHIVALRY.

They built a bridge, and bade the church supply
The scaffolding, while they the keystone brought
Of Honour most elaborately wrought,
And hailed the new device with jubilant cry.
Thenceforth could men in meek and quiet ways
Pass o'er the rudeness of those difficult days.
Bolder the arch had seemed, but that within
The Church had left her scaffold undisplaced;
And to that age the edifice was graced
By such memorial of its origin.
But times came on, to whose fastidious mind
That framework seemed uncouth; and to the ground
Went arch and scaffold:—so was Honour found
Too weak to bear the tread of human-kind.

5.ROMAN INFLUENCES.

Wading amid a sea of wind-stirred bloom
Of some bright crimson heath-plant, there I found
Upon a mountain pass in Noricum,
Engulfed, one half in verdure, in the ground
The other, a grey milestone of old Rome.
Such admonitions in strange sort abound,
Aliens, mid those romantic forms that stir
Across the days of that chivalric past,—
Relics whereby Rome's spirit hath recast
And mastered their original character.
For her abiding influence yet indents
The face of things; her very wrecks fulfil
An office; earth wears some expression still
Of pagan Rome on her mute lineaments.

519

6.CHIVALROUS TIMES. 1.

Beautiful times! times past! when men were not
The smooth and formal things they are to-day,
When the world, travelling an uneven way,
Encountered greater truths in every lot,
And individual minds had power to force
An epoch, and divert its vassal course.
Beautiful times! times past! in whose deep art,
As in a field by angels furrowed, lay
The seeds of heavenly beauty, set apart
For altar-flowers and ritual display.
Beautiful times! from whose calm bosom sprung
Abbeys and chantries, and a very host
Of quiet places upon every coast,
Where Christ was served, and blessed Mary sung.

7.CHIVALROUS TIMES. 2.

Unlovely times! times past! when it was thought
That peer and peasant were of different earth;
When it was not believed that God had wrought
In both one human heart of equal worth,
One equal heart, which by the Saviour's Birth
And Passion, at the selfsame price was bought.
Unlovely times! times past! within whose womb
Rapine and pride and the unmanly jar
Of local feuds are ever heard at war,
Like midnight sounds within a bad man's tomb.
Unlovely times! when the sweet summer breeze,
A merry traveller wending through the land,
Found no fair farms and lonesome cottages,
Whose casements he might stir with his soft hand.

520

8.CHIVALROUS TIMES. 3.

Oh! if ye would not have your spirits shorn
Of the deep consolations of the past,
Or drop the links, wherewith ye can make fast
The Present to the Bygone, think no scorn
Of those great times whose double aspect seems
Like the revolving phases of our dreams.
Could we step back from out this present stir
Of good and ill, which interpenetrate
In every land and age the social state,
How dread would seem its twofold character!
So we revere the past, when time hath furled
The skirts of mist, and to our vision cleared,
In luminous distinction, all unsphered,
The adverse circles of the Church and World.

9.BELGIAN TOWNS. 1.

Was it in many hearts at once, or one—
What was the land, the place, the cause, the hour,
When it first dawned in men, that there is power
In Numbers, that the healthy streams which run
In poor men's veins are red like other blood?
O blissful dawn! the thoughtful and the good
Do thee glad homage in these antique haunts,
Where from ten thousand wills a Popular State
Sprang like an arrow from a bow, elate
Beneath the pressure of degrading wants.
Here, in this street of Ghent, where evening smiles,
The Church and Freedom seem but one great name,
And surely they so deemed who reared these piles,
As knowing whence and how their freedom came.

521

10.BELGIAN TOWNS. 2.

Hail to the land of sumptuous abbeys, built
By royal-hearted burghers! Feudal keeps
And tourney rings, where highest blood was spilt,
I pass, yet my unkindled spirit sleeps.
But all my powers with deepest reverence stir,
At wrong and suffering, and the trampling down
Of hill and dale, broad land and merry town,
Beneath a kingly heel or knightly spur.
See! from the fettered people's hungry heart,
With tossing heat, and many an uncouth start,
Indignant patience is inspired to draw,
As from a holy womb, that wondrous birth,
That truest regal thing upon the earth,
The unimpassioned Sovereignty of Law!

11.BELGIAN TOWNS. 3.

Law do I worship as a sovereign thing,
The rich man's lord, the poor man's vassal, here
In this dim street, where the town-hall doth fling
Quaint shadows on the grass-grown pavement near.
And can the scene around no depths unfold,
Gable and arch, bay-window, woodwork old?
Do not the forms grotesque in silence wait
Upon the wise man's eye, themselves intent
To be the symbols of a Popular State,
Interpreting its fashion, growth, and bent?
The streets claim kindred with each other; skills
Of diverse trades and ages blend to be
One lucid type of that strong harmony,
Engendered of a thousand warring wills.

522

12.THE CRUSADES.

In the long discipline of earth, not least
We note how Europe, in those ages past,
The burden of her martial spirit cast,
With wise exorcism, far into the east;
And many a noble kingdom, self-relieved,
Joyed in new joys, o'er holier sorrows grieved.
Then localized affections grew unharmed,
And home was felt, and sympathy, before
Unknown, ascended to embrace the poor,—
Meek wisdom learned by Europe thus disarmed.
In this sweet respiration after strife,
So ruled by Heaven, men's hearts began to draw
To peace, the blissful order of calm law,
And hallowing restraints of private life.

13.OUR LADY IN THE MIDDLE AGES.

I looked upon the earth: it was a floor
For noisy pageant and rude bravery,—
Wassail, and arms, and chase, among the high,
And burning hearts uncheered among the poor,
And gentleness from every land withdrew.
Methought that beds of whitest lilies grew
All suddenly upon the earth, in bowers;
And gentleness, that wandered like a wind,
And nowhere could meet sanctuary find,
Passed like a dewy breath into the flowers.
Earth heeded not; she still was tributary
To kings and knights, and man's heart well-nigh failed;
Then were the natural charities exhaled
Afresh from out the blessed love of Mary.

523

14.THE POOR IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 1.

It is the Past ye worship; ye do well,—
If the sweet dues of reverence which ye pay
Be equally disposed, nor lean one way
For lack of balance in your thoughts. To spell
The past in its significance, to ponder,
In the embrace of judgment, fear and love
In the disguises of those days, should move
More than the weak idolatry of wonder,
Or beauty-stricken eye; they should grow part
Of the outgoings of your daily heart.
And be not scared by show of kings and knights,
As if those times were in such gauds embraced;
Remember that the people claim a past,
And that the Poor of Christ have lineal rights.

15.THE POOR IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 2.

They, in whose hearts those mighty times have wrought
Most deeply, have upon their aspect gazed
As on an éclipse, with their eye upraised
Through the subduing mean of sombre thought.
And then it is a very fearful vision
To see the uncounted poor, who strayed forlorn
With wrongs unrighted, and with natures worn
To heartlessness through every day collision
With arrogance and wrong. Proud knights, fair dames,
And all the pomp of old chivalric names,
Fade, like a mimic show, from off the past;
And to the Christian's eye ungathered flowers
Of suffering meekly borne, in lowliest bowers,
With solemn life fill in the populous waste.

524

16.THE PAPACY.

That such a Power should live and breathe, doth seem
A thought from which men fain would be relieved,
A grandeur not to be endured, a dream
Darkening the soul, though it be unbelieved.
August conception! far above king, law,
Or popular right; how calmly dost thou draw
Under thine awful shadow mortal pain,
And joy not mortal! Witness of a need
Deep laid in man, and therefore pierced in vain,
As though thou wert no form that thou shouldst bleed!
While such a power there lives in old man's shape,
Such and so dread, should not his mighty will
And supernatural presence, godlike, fill
The air we breathe, and leave us no escape?

17.PETRARCH AND LUTHER AT ROME.

Mysterious Rome! thy very ills are fraught
With somewhat of thy fearful destiny,
So that the vision of thy sins hath wrought,
Even like a curse, within the passer-by.
Here gazed of old, with no religious eye,
Petrarch the worldling; here the apostate monk
Came ere his fall; and when they saw how nigh
Good lay to evil, their base spirits shrunk,
As from a touch-stone which could bring to light
Unworthy natures that must walk by sight
Through lack of trust:—and thus are sceptics made,
By that half-faith which seeks for good unbound
From ill; and hearts are daily wanting found,
Upon the balance of that problem weighed.

525

18.THE HUMILIATION OF HENRY IV. AT CANOSSA.

It is a thing to be much dwelt upon,
And mastered in its length and breadth of thought,
That this strange deed hath verily been wrought
Before the face of men in times bygone,—
That in one place, and at one solemn hour,
The passing shadow of eternal power,
In momentary transit, deeply fell
On all the pride and pageant of the world
Within one person for that crisis furled,
To be eclipsed by things invisible.
Men brooked the admonition, and they gazed
Like seers inspired, while in their souls they felt
That he who stooped was by submission raised
Near to the height of that to which he knelt.

19.RIENZI AT AVIGNON.

Throughout the earth there is a kindred dream
Moored alongside of each reality,
A greatness, prayed for, and yet ne'er to be,
Save as the shadow lying by the beam.
Yet earth is rich in grandeur unfulfilled:
Thereof comes hope, whereby hot hearts are stilled;
And in that dream, as in a waking trance,
Great spirits walk, and by serenest law
From shadows unexplored they daily draw
The strength in which they battle with mischance.
Rienzi in the papal tower doth lie;
His Livy and his Bible near him rest,
And in those symbols tangibly compressed,
Were Cola's dream and his reality.

526

20.ORDEALS.

Faith owns the rude magnificence of thought,
Wherewith those venturous ages, in the dearth
Of homage due to law, as umpire brought
The Hand of Heaven to show the right on earth,
And so for God's interposition pined,
That they, in weal or woe, were quick to find
Foot-prints of marvel. Better to make sure
Of earth in Heaven, by training love and awe
To supernatural heights, than so to draw
Our Heaven within this maze of life obscure.
Yet oh! how far beneath both moods are we,
Who from our place of exile fain would strike,
As an intrusive Presence we dislike,
The sweet forebodings of eternity!