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197

WIND-VOICES.

199

PURE SOULS.

Pure souls that watch above me from afar,
To whom as to the stars I raise my eyes,
Draw me to your large skies,
Where God and quiet are.
Love's mouth is rose-red, and his voice is sweet,
His feet are winged, his eyes are as clear fire;
But I have no desire
To follow his winged feet.
Friendship may change, or friends may pass away,
And Fame's a bride that men soon weary of;
Since rest is not with Love,
No joy that is may stay.
But they whose lives are pure, whose hearts are high, —
Those shining spirits by the world untamed, —
May at the end, unshamed,
Look on their days gone by.
O pure, strong souls, so star-like, calm, and bright,
If even I before the end might feel,
Through quiet pulses, steal
Your pureness, with purged sight
200

I might Spring's gracious work behold once more:
Might hear, as once I heard, long, long ago,
Great waters ebb and flow;
Might smell the rose of yore;
Might comprehend the winds and clouds again,
The saintly, peaceful moonlight hallowing all,
The scent of leaves that fall,
The Autumn's tender pain.
Ah, this, I fear, shall never chance to me;
But though I cannot shape the life I would,
It surely still is good
To look where such lives be.

CÆDMON.

[_]

Seventh Century.

(Cædmon relates his dream before the Abbess Hilda.)

Because I had no power in me for song,
But songless sat, the singing folk among,
And had no joy to see the harps draw near,
But felt my want as keen as shame or fear,
I turned away dejectedly my face,
And came alone to guard the lonely place.
The night was silent and the level air,
Which had day-long the summer heats to bear,
Seemed by the moonlight cooled and purified;
And from the hall, by glad folk occupied,
I heard the voices with the music blend.
Then, as one friendless, yearning for a friend;
Or as a blind man made a prey to night,
Mad, almost, with sick longing after light;
201

Or as a deaf man, with men singing round,
Dead to the dear companionship of sound;
Or as a dumb man, speechless all his days,
The tongueless sorrow pleading in his face;
Or as a lover who may never press
Close to his heart his loved one's loveliness, —
Even as one and all of these I seemed,
Till, weary with my grief, I slept and dreamed.
But through my sleep I felt my sorrow still,
As one, tormented by some bodily ill,
Has consciousness of pain through deepest sleep;
My eyelids quivered, but I could not weep,
When suddenly one called me by my name,
And all my sleep was lightened as with flame.
Then lifting up my eyes I looked, and, lo!
One stood beside me whom I might not know.
His face was fair and tender, grave and wise;
The mouth had patience, and the large, clear eyes
Had exaltation of the seer's gaze,
Noting, from far, inevitable days.
“Cædmon,” he said, “I charge thee now to sing.”
And I made answer, my voice faltering, —
“Dost thou not know for this I have no power;
Can lighten never thus the heaviest hour?
My heart is even like a dry well-head
That holds no water man's sore thirst to stead;
My life is like a lamp which, being broken,
Lies, of the light that should have been a token.
My soul is like a harp, with harp-strings shivered,
Ere once to music keen as pain they quivered;
Lonely I am, and most exceeding friendless,
And as my grief seems, so my days seem endless.”
Oh, those strong, steadfast eyes that gazed on mine,
With what unwonted splendor did they shine!
Under their irresistible control
New life began to pulsate through my soul,
Till for some inner, nameless joy I smiled,
As smiles the mother when the coming child
202

First stirs within her; and I said: “O thou
Who dost this vision to my soul allow,
Whom all the companies of dreams obey,
A little longer let this sweet dream stay.”
Then silent did I lie, a rapturous space,
With eyes that fed upon the stranger's face.
Again he called aloud: “O Cædmon, sing!”
I answered, humbly, no more faltering, —
“Of what, my master, shall I sing, forsooth?
What theme is fit for my untutored mouth?”
“Sing of Creation, and the matchless might
That shaped the world and gave it day and night, —
The day for labor and the night for rest.”
Such was his answer, such his high behest.
Then as a woman when her hour has come,
For splendid, sovereign pain, is no more dumb,
But cries out in her travail, and is torn
Spirit from body till the babe be born,
I cried in pain, a mighty, passionate cry,
The travail of my soul to testify;
Then wept, then laughed, with some divine, strange mirth;
Then Heaven fulfilled me, and the song had birth,
And sleep was rent as with a thunder-stroke,
And with my song upon my lips I woke.
And all the night they stayed with me, those words,
Nor did they leave me with awakening birds
In virginal, cold daybreak; and I knew
The utmost wonder of my dream come true;
And what the words were, if ye will it so,
Most fain am I that you and all should know.
203

AT PARTING.

I put my flower of song into thy hand,
And turn my eyes away, —
It is a flower from a most desolate land,
Barren of sun and day,
Even this life of mine.
As two who meet upon a foreign strand,
'T was mine with thee to stray, —
I put this flower of song into thy hand
And turn my eyes away,
And look where no lights shine.
By phantom wings this desolate air seems fanned,
Where sky and sea show gray —
I put my flower of song into thy hand
And turn my eyes away,
But to no other shrine.
My hopes are like a little Christian band
The heathen came to slay —
I put this flower of song into thy hand
And turn my eyes away, —
Keep thou the song in sign.
Some day, it may be, thou by me shalt stand
When no word my lips say,
And, holding then this song-flower in thy hand,
Shalt turn thine eyes away,
And drop pure tears divine.
We part at Fate's inexorable command;
We name no meeting day —
I put my flower of song into thy hand,
And turn my eyes away, —
These eyes that burn and pine.
204

Thy way leads summerwards; thy paths are spanned
By boughs where spring winds play —
I put my flower of song into thy hand
And turn my eyes away
To Life's dark boundary line.
Fair are thy groves, thy fields lie bright and bland,
Where evil has no sway —
I put my flower of song into thy hand
And turn my eyes away
To meet Fate's eyes, malign.
Sometime, when twilight holds and fills the land,
And glad souls are less gay,
Take thou this song-flower in thy tender hand
Nor turn thine eyes away,
There in the day's decline.
My life lies dark before me, all unplanned;
Loud winds assail the day, —
I leave my song-flower folded in thy hand,
And turn my eyes away,
And turn my life from thine.

A BALLAD OF BRAVE WOMEN.

Off Swansea — January 27, 1883.

With hiss and thunder and inner boom,
White through the darkness the great waves loom,
And charge the rocks with the shock of doom.
A second sea is the hurricane's blast;
Its viewless billows are loud and vast,
By their strength great trees are uptorn, downcast.
At times, through the hurry of clouds, the moon
Looks out aghast; but her face right soon
Is hidden again, and she seems to swoon.
205

Hark to the voice which shouts from the sea,
The voice of a fiendish revelry!
For the unseen hunters are out, and flee
Over the crests of the roaring deep,
Or they climb the waves that are wild and steep,
Or right through the heart of their light they leap.
Roar of the wind and roar of the waves,
And song and clamor of sea-filled caves!
What ship to-night such a tempest braves?
Yet see, ah, see, how a snake of light
Goes hissing and writhing up all the night!
While the cry, “Going down!” through the winds' mad might,
Through the roar of the winds and the waves together,
Is sent this way by the shrieking weather;
But to help on such night were a vain endeavor.
See! a glare of torches, and married and single,
Men and women confusedly mingle;
You can hear the rush of their feet down the shingle.
Oh, salt and keen is the spray in their faces;
From the strength of the wind they reel in their paces,
Catch hands to steady them there in their places.
How would a boat in such seas behave?
But the lifeboat — the lifeboat — the lifeboat will save!
She is manned, with her crew of strong fellows, and brave.
See! They ride on the heights, in the deep valleys dip,
Until, with a cry which the winds outstrip,
Their boat is hurled on the sinking ship.
206

Its side is gored, for the sea to have way through, —
“It is over!” they cried. “We have done all men may do!
Yet there's one chance left!” and themselves they threw
Right into the wrath of the sea and the wind.
It rages all round them, before and behind;
Their ears are deafened; their eyes are blind.
There in the middlemost hell of the night,
Yea, in the innermost heart of the fight,
They strain and they struggle with all their might, —
With never a pause, while God's mercy they cry on;
Their teeth are set, their muscles are iron, —
Each man has the heart and the thews of a lion.
Wave spurns them to wave. They may do it! Who knows?
For shoreward the great tide towering goes,
And shoreward the great wind thundering blows.
But, no! See that wave, like a Fate bearing on!
It breaks them and passes. Two swimmers alone
Are seen 'mid the waves, and their strength is nigh gone.
Quoth three soldiers on shore, “They must give up all hope.
Neither swimmer nor boat with such surges could cope,
Nor could one stand steady to cast a rope.
“For he who would cast it must stand hip-high
In the trough of the sea, and be thrown thereby
On his face, nevermore to behold the sky.”
But a woman stept out from those gathered there,
And she said, “My life for their lives will I dare.
I pray for strength. God will hear my prayer.”
207

And the light of her soul her eyes shone through,
But the men they jeered, and they cried, “Go to!
Can a woman do what we dare not do?”
Spake another woman: “I, too! We twain
Will do our best, striving with might and main;
And if what we do shall be done in vain,
“And the great sea have us to hold and hide,
It were surely better thus to have died
Than to live as these live. Haste! haste!” she cried.
They seized a rope, and with no word more,
Fearless of death, down the steep of the shore,
They dashed right into the light and the roar
Of the giant waves, which sprang on them there,
As a beast on prey may spring from his lair,
While the roar of his triumph makes deaf the air.
Oh, loud is the Death they hurry to meet;
The stones slip shrieking from under their feet;
They stagger, but fall not. Beat, mad billows, beat!
They raise their arms, with their soul's strength quivering;
They pause, “Will it reach?” Then they shout and fling;
And straight as a stone driven forth by a sling,
Driven far afield by a master hand,
The rope whizzes out from the seething strand.
A shout: “It is caught! For land, now, for land!”
A crash like thunder! They drop to their knees
But they keep their hold in the under seas.
They rise; they pull; nor falter; nor cease.
208

The strength of ten men have these women to-night,
And they shout with the rapturous sense of their might, —
Shout as men shout when they revel in fight.
They reel, but they fall not. The rope winds in, fast;
Then a shout, a near shout, answers their shout at last, —
“That will do! We touch ground.” God, the danger is past!
They turn them, then, from the raging water
With the two they have snatched from its lust of slaughter;
But their feet flag now, and their breath comes shorter.
Hardly they hear in their sea-dinned ears
The sound of sobs, or the sound of cheers;
Their eyes are drowned, but not drowned with tears.
When deeds of valor Coast vaunts over Coast,
As to which proved bravest, and which did most,
Two Swansea women shall be my toast.

ESTRANGED.

Some day she will come back, my poor lost dove, —
My dove with the warm breast and eager eyes!
How did it fail toward her, my passionate love?
Where was the flaw? — since flaw there must have been,
Or surely she had stayed with me, my queen.
Her heart was full of inarticulate cries,
Which my heart failed to catch; and yet she strove
To cleave to me — ah, how she must have striven,
Praying, perchance, ofttimes for strength from Heaven!
But no strength came; and so, one fatal day,
Despairing of all help, she went away.
209

And there her half-completed portrait stands, —
The fresh young face, the gray eyes brimmed with light!
I painted her with flowers in her hands,
Because she always seemed so bright and good.
I never thought the studio's solitude
Would weary her so much. I thought the sight
Of painted forms and unfamiliar lands
Would be enough for her. She was too mild,
Too patient with my painter's life, poor child!
Had she complained at all, by look or tone,
Had she but said, “I seem too much alone,
“I grow half fearful of these painted eyes,
That never change, but, full of sad reproof,
Haunt me and watch me; and these Southern skies
Reflected in deep streams; and that dark boat
From which a girl with bare, sweet breast and throat
Droops, willow-like, and dreams of life and love;
And that youth's dying face, which never dies;
And then, again, that picture of Christ there,
Christ fallen in an agony of prayer,
And His disciples near Him, stern and dumb,
Like men who know the fated hour is come.”
Had she said this, and added, “Take me, dear,
Away from these sad faces; let me stand
Once more within life's shallows, and there hear
Light laughter of the surf upon the beach,
For here the very sea is without speech,
So still it is, and far away from land.
I want life's little joys; this atmosphere
Oppresses me, — I cannot breathe in it.
The light that lights your life leaves mine unlit,” —
I should have answered tenderly, and sought
To carry out, in all, her slightest thought.
She knew I loved her, through those winter days, —
Did it not comfort her at all, my love?
210

It was such joy to look upon her face,
I sat for hours, content to be quite still,
Feeling her warm, bright, breathing beauty fill
My soul and brain; fearful lest she should move,
Or speak, or go; but when she met my gaze
I turned away, as if I had done wrong
In looking on her loveliness so long.
I rarely kissed her, rarely took her hand;
And now I think she did not understand.
Perchance she thought my love was passionless, —
Wanted what I withheld, yet longed to give.
She did not know my silence a caress,
Since passion was by reverence controlled,
And so she deemed my ways of love were cold.
Ah me! the lonely life she had to live;
And I knew nothing of its loneliness.
Hers was a nature quick to give and take, —
A nature to be broken and to break;
She loved confiding valleys, sun-kissed rills,
But saddened at the solemn peace of hills.
All things had been so different had I known
Her nature then as now; and yet, and yet,
If she came in as I sit here alone,
The April twilight failing through the room,
And all the pictures lapsing into gloom, —
Came in, knelt down, and prayed me to forget,
Forgive her, and reclaim her for my own,
I should be glad, and draw her to my heart,
And kiss the rising tears away, and part
The sweet hair back, and fold her to my side,
Yet leave, perchance, some want unsatisfied.
But ah, she comes not! I must wait and bear;
Live on, and serve my art as best I may.
If I can catch the color of her hair,
211

And the neck's poise, and set beneath, her name,
Shall not her loveliness have deathless fame?
Oh, help me, Art, upon my difficult way!
Now lights shine out along the London square,
O dreary place! where no joy comes at all.
There! I must turn the easel to the wall,
I cannot bear her face as yet — O Love!
O wounded of my hands! my wounded dove!

THY GARDEN.

I.

Pure moonlight in thy garden, sweet, to-night, —
Pure moonlight in thy garden, and the breath
Of fragrant roses! O my heart's delight,
Wed thou with Love, but I will wed with Death.
Peace in thy garden, and the passionate song
Of some late nightingale that sings in June!
Thy dreams with promises of love are strong,
And all thy life is set to one sweet tune.
Love wandering round thy garden, O my sweet!
Love walking through thy garden in the night, —
Far-off I feel his wings, I hear his feet,
I see the eyes that set the world alight.
My sad heart in thy garden strays alone, —
My heart among all hearts companionless;
Between the roses and the lilies thrown,
It finds thy garden but a wilderness.
Great quiet in thy garden, now the song
Of that last nightingale has died away!
Here jangling city-chimes the silence wrong;
But in thy garden perfect rest has sway.
212

Dawn in thy garden, with the faintest sound, —
Uncertain, tremulous, awaking birds!
Dawn in thy garden, and from meadows round,
The sudden lowing of expectant herds.
Light in thy garden, faint and sweet and pure,
Dim noise of birds from every bush and tree,
Rumors of song the stars may not endure,
A rain that falls, and ceases suddenly!
Morn in thy garden, bright and keen and strong!
Love calls thee from thy garden to awake:
Morn in thy garden, with the articulate song
Of birds that sing for love and warm light's sake!

II.

Wind in thy garden to-night, my love,
Wind in thy garden and rain;
A sound of storm in the shaken grove,
And cries as of spirits in pain!
If there's wind in thy garden outside,
And troublous darkness, dear,
What carest thou, an elected bride,
And the bridal hour so near?
All things come to an end, my sweet, —
Life, and the pleasure in living;
The years run swiftly with agile feet,
The years that are taking and giving.
Soon shalt thou have thy bliss supreme,
And soon shall it pass away;
So turn thyself to thy rest, and dream,
Nor heed what the mad winds say.
213

III.

Snow in thy garden, falling thick and fast, —
Snow in thy garden, where the grass shall be!
What dreams to-night? Thy dreaming nights are past, —
Thou hast no glad or grievous memory.
Love in thy garden boweth down his head;
His tears are falling on the wind-piled snow;
He takes no heed of life, now thou art dead;
He recks not how the seasons come or go.
Death in thy garden! In the violent air
That sweeps thy radiant garden thou art still;
For thee is no more rapture or despair,
And Love and Death of thee have had their will.
Night in thy garden, white with snow and sleet, —
Night, rushing on with wind and storm toward day!
Alas, thy garden holdeth nothing sweet;
Nor sweet can come again, and thou away!

THE OLD CHURCHYARD OF BONCHURCH.

[_]

(This old churchyard has been for many years slipping toward the sea, which it is expected will ultimately engulf it.)

The churchyard leans to the sea with its dead, —
It leans to the sea with its dead so long.
Do they hear, I wonder, the first bird's song,
When the winter's anger is all but fled;
The high, sweet voice of the west wind,
The fall of the warm, soft rain,
When the second month of the year
Puts heart in the earth again?
214

Do they hear, through the glad April weather,
The green grasses waving above them?
Do they think there are none left to love them,
They have lain for so long there, together?
Do they hear the note of the cuckoo,
The cry of gulls on the wing,
The laughter of winds and waters,
The feet of the dancing Spring?
Do they feel the old land slipping seaward, —
The old land, with its hills and its graves, —
As they gradually slide to the waves,
With the wind blowing on them from leeward?
Do they know of the change that awaits them, —
The sepulchre vast and strange?
Do they long for the days to go over,
And bring that miraculous change?
Or love they their night with no moonlight,
With no starlight, no dawn to its gloom?
Do they sigh: “'Neath the snow, or the bloom
Of the wild things that wave from our night,
We are warm, through winter and summer;
We hear the winds rave, and we say, —
‘The storm-wind blows over our heads,
But we, here, are out of its way’”?
Do they mumble low, one to another,
With a sense that the waters that thunder
Shall ingather them all, draw them under, —
“Ah, how long to our moving, my brother?
How long shall we quietly rest here,
In graves of darkness and ease?
The waves, even now, may be on us,
To draw us down under the seas!”
215

Do they think 't will be cold when the waters
That they love not, that neither can love them,
Shall eternally thunder above them?
Have they dread of the sea's shining daughters,
That people the bright sea-regions
And play with the young sea-kings?
Have they dread of their cold embraces,
And dread of all strange sea-things?
But their dread or their joy, — it is bootless:
They shall pass from the breast of their mother;
They shall lie low, dead brother by brother,
In a place that is radiant and fruitless;
And the folk that sail over their heads
In violent weather
Shall come down to them, haply, and all
They shall lie there, together.

BETWEEN JOY AND SORROW.

Between joy and sorrow,
As 'twixt day and morrow,
I lay for a space;
And I heard, so lying,
My old Grief sighing
From her far-off place.
I said, “Thou art over,
And where dreams hover
Thou hoverest now;
In the land of thy dwelling
What waters are welling,
And blossoms what bough?
216

“Old tears are its rivers;
The wind that there quivers
Is breath of old sighs;
Wreck-strewn are the shores there;
And sunset endures there
Through infinite skies.
“But all there is quiet;
There no wave makes riot
On the waif-cumber'd coasts,
Where thou movest banished,
But not quite vanished, —
A ghost among ghosts.”

THE TWO BURDENS.

Over the deep sea Love came flying;
Over the salt sea Love came sighing —
Alas, O Love, for thy journeying wings!
Through turbid light and sound of thunder,
When one wave lifts and one falls under,
Love flew, as a bird flies, straight for warm Springs.
Love reached the Northland, and found his own;
With budding roses, and roses blown,
And wonderful lilies, he wove their wreath;
His voice was sweet as a tune that wells,
Gathers and thunders, and throbs and swells,
And fails, and lapses in rapturous death.
His hands divided the tangled boughs;
They sat and loved in a moist, green house,
With bird-songs and sunbeams faltering through;
One note of wind to each least light leaf:
O Love, those days they were sweet but brief, —
Sweet as the rose is, and fleet as the dew!
217

Over the deep sea Death came flying;
Over the salt sea Death flew sighing:
Love heard from afar the rush of his wings,
Felt the blast of them over the sea,
And turned his face where the shadows be,
And wept for a sound of disastrous things.
Death reached the Northland, and claimed his own;
With pale, sweet flowers, by wet winds blown,
He wove for the forehead of one a wreath;
His voice was sad as the wind that sighs
Through cypress trees under rainy skies,
When the dead leaves drift on the path beneath.
His hands divided the tangled boughs,
One lover he bore to a dark, deep house,
Where never a bridegroom may clasp his bride, —
A place of silence, of dust, and sleep;
What vigil there shall the loved one keep,
What cry of longing the lips divide?

UNGATHERED LOVE.

When the autumn winds go wailing
Through branches yellow and brown,
When the gray, sad light is failing,
And the day is going down,
I hear the desolate evening sing
Of a love that bloomed in the early Spring,
And which no heart had for gathering.
I and my lover, we dwell apart, —
We twain may never be one;
We shall never stand heart to heart,—
Then what can be said or done,
218

When winds and waters and song-birds sing
Of a love that bloomed in the early Spring,
And which no heart had for gathering?
When day is over and night descends,
And dank mists circle and rise,
I fall asleep, and slumber befriends,
For I dream of April skies;
But I wake to hear the silence sing
Of a love that bloomed in the early Spring,
And which no heart had for gathering.
When the dawn comes in with wind and rain,
And birds awake in the eaves,
And raindrops smite the window-pane,
And drench the eddying leaves,
I hear the voice of the daybreak sing
Of a love that bloomed in the early Spring,
And which no heart had for gathering.

JUST ASLEEP.

For a space the shadows lift now,
Now that we are nearly met;
By what windings shall we drift now,
To what shore our keel be set?
Dearest Sleep, so long denied me,
To what regions wilt thou guide me?
Let us leave behind old sorrow,
In the room where Death has been;
Let it bide there till to-morrow,
Let it stalk, of no man seen.
Though to-morrow it will find me,
Yet to-night 't will stay behind me.
219

Ah, to-morrow, iron-hearted
As the hearts of all my days,
We shall be no longer parted, —
No more travelling by strange ways;
But together, whom forever
Death alone can really sever.
Thou shalt show me fair dream-spaces,
Where my dead ones do not seem
Dead with dust upon their faces,
Underground where comes no dream;
But with living lips to cheer me,
And with ears that love to hear me.
Thou shalt take me to the shining
Happy, precious, fleetest past,
When the heart had no divining
Of what life could be at last,
Driven out of all its courses,
Beaten back by viewless forces:
From the terror and the passion,
And the loneliness and strife,
Take me in soft, tender fashion
To the old sequestered life;
Let me move in the old places,
Let me look on the old faces.
Close against thy deep heart press me
Till thine inmost soul I see;
With thy loveliness caress me,
Who am tired of all but thee, —
So, belovèd, till the morrow
There shall be no thought of sorrow.
220

NIGHTSHADE.

[_]

(The following poem is founded on the conclusion of Oliver Madox Brown's “Dwale Bluth,” as designed though not completed by himself. In one or two particulars I have deviated from his expressed intention; but the tragic tale of the lady and her blind lover, with its tragic ending, belongs to him.)

When she had gone, who was his light of life,
Back to her lord, — yet not to be his wife,
But rather Death's, — her lover, knowing this not,
Alone in darkness wailed his hapless lot.
Most men have joy in stars and moon and sun,—
Joy when the lengthening days are well begun;
And love to mark, as birds take heart to sing,
The sweet, transitional processes of Spring, —
Love well the delicate, various flower-faces;
Of wild-wood plants the free, untramelled graces.
But he in all these things had no delight,
And walked by day in fastnesses of night.
She was his love, his Spring, earth, moon, and sky,
His soul's one goal, and light to seek it by.
Lest questioning should make her lot more hard
His lips forbore; so through sad days, debarred
From joy and her, he roamed about the land,
Remembering how her cool and subtle hand
Could make the grateful blood leap in each vein,
What time his lips of her lips were so fain;
When of his life love made so sweet a thing,
It grieved not for the unbeholden Spring,
Nor longed so very much to see by night
The distant stars, the moon's immaculate light,
While they two loved, and time flew fast and faster,
Till that dread night of infinite disaster
221

When he — the strange, hard man for years deemed dead,
Sunk with his ship to some deep salt sea-bed,
The man to whom her girlish hand was wed,
Whereof had come such sorrow to them both —
Stood there and claimed her by her marriage troth,
Seeing that the woman was fair, and very his,
And that of old her lips were sweet to kiss.
And when he bade her come, saying: “Right or wrong,
This blind man with his lips just closed on song,
The song he sang you of his love's delight,
Falls in one moment from this rocky height
To instant violent death, if you delay.
By chance he fell; nought else shall any say.”
Then for his sake — not seeing without her life
Could be for him but a most bitter strife,
Vain strife with all the black-plumed powers of night,
And memories wailing for a lost delight—
She stayed her trembling voice, and said, “Good-by, —
God keep you, dear;” and dark against the sky,
The sunset sky, she, turning, saw him stand,
Sightless and wordless, with his out-stretched hand.
Then, knowing well his way about that part,
He crept along, with his wrung, broken heart.
At length he sank in some soft, leafy place,
Nor knew the moon shone full upon his face;
And, lying there, he moaned, but could not weep,
And far from him was any comfort of sleep.
In that green place, with many trees girt round,
The nightingales had tranced the night with sound.
Ah me, ah me, what melody they made
Within the moon-thrilled, palpitating shade!
Hark, the exultant joy of each high note
Sent gushing from the unseen, singing throat!
The exultant music mocked him; but the long
222

Low, passionate, tender pleading of the song,
Appealing vainly 'gainst some ancient wrong, —
He heard his heart's cry uttered in that strain!
So poets into music pour their pain.
Chill turned the air; the singers ceased their tune,
Between the climbing dawn and sinking moon.
From fields near by there came a low of herds
And soft, consenting murmuring of birds,
Which grew and strengthened, till a blackbird came,
And through that dim sound flashed his song like flame.
Then into singing all the others broke;
Out shone the sun, and all the world awoke.
And then, above all notes that morn in May,
Now sometimes near, and sometimes far away,
He heard the violent cuckoo high in air —
He saw it not, yet felt the day was fair.
'Twixt him so sad, now, and his lost delight,
There lay but one brief, singing, moonlit night;
But 'twixt himself and self of yesterday,
A gulf more wide than gulf of death there lay.
Morn being come, he rose and took his road.
He entered not in any man's abode,
Until, one day, sore worn and scant of strength,
He came upon a narrow path, at length;
And leaning there, against the wall behind,
He heard a sound of wailing on the wind.
It came close by. Close by him was the fall
Of heavy steps that tend a funeral, —
So near they came, they brushed him with the pall.
“Whose funeral?” he cried, with dread surmise;
And one made answer, mingling words with sighs.
They bore to church her body, who had been
Of all his life, of all his heart, the queen.
223

He let them pass, and followed with the rest;
His lips set fast, and hands together prest.
And when the coffin was lowered into the ground,
And on the lid he heard the dull earth sound,
Men saw him tremble; but he kept his place,
Bent o'er the void, as if his spirit's gaze
Could see therein that dear and worshipped face
His hands and lips had loved so well to cherish,
Which now, forever, from his life must perish.
That day he was no more by any met;
But when he felt the warm May sun had set,
He sought the churchyard and the grave new-made,
On which he stretched himself, yet no word said;
And lying there he knew a storm was nigh,
For thunder heavily rolled along the sky.
Vain throes of death, or throes of some strange birth,—
Which horror was it so constrained the earth?
The air was dumb, as if in dread affright,
Save when the thunder shuddered along the night.
Then tardy rain-drops came down, one by one,
As from some wound the large, slow blood-drops run.
The lightning flashed out bright and fitfully;
The waxing thunder seemed more near to be.
Then a dread, soundless, flameless interval;
Then a fierce blaze of light, enkindling all;
And then — as if God, roused to wrath at length,
Had smitten with almighty, vengeful strength
The old, wrong-doing world, that, stricken so,
Cowered and reeled beneath the pitiless blow —
Fell the loud thunder, crashing through the heaven,
And all the night with fire and storm was riven.
Then, suddenly, a stormy wind up-sprang,
And wild and shrill the song was that it sang,
And with a rush and roar came down the rain,
To save the earth, and make her whole again;
224

And soon that place where death held sway, alas!
Smelt fresh and sweetly of the growing grass.
Then he who lay upon the grave found there
A sprig of that dread plant she loved to wear
In her abundant tresses. Who would braid
But she her locks with deadliest nightshade?
And one who knew how well she loved the plant
Had placed that sprig there, as to fill some want.
“At last!” he cried, and ate with bated breath, —
For him dear buds of life, not buds of death.
“Sweetheart,” he cried, “I come, I come to thee,
And when we meet again may it not be
With unsealed eyes I may thy beauty see?
At least, if all else fail, I shall have rest,
Though it should be no more upon thy breast.
Whether to light, or deeper night, I go,
I cannot tell — this thing no man may know.”
His body above, and hers unseen, beneath, —
Only an earth-mound severing death from death, —
So shone the morning sun upon them both
Who had kept thus in death their life's dear troth.

A LAMENT.

OLIVER MADOX BROWN — Born 1855, Died 1874.

My friend has left me, he has gone away;
Before his time — so long before — he went.
Bright was the dawn of his unended day;
But love might not, yea, nothing, might prevent
The hand of Death from striking. O fair Art!
First mistress of his intellect and heart,
Of this our common sorrow bear thy part,
Bow down, and weep now for the words I say.
225

His lips are mute, and stilled is the great brain;
The strong heart beats no more; the strife is done.
So near the goal, he reached it without pain;
We crowned him, then he went beyond the sun.
But though he has gone out from us, his name
Shall lessen not with time; and his young fame
Shall burn forever, an enduring flame, —
A steadfast light, that may not wax or wane.
Lo, that first work whereby we bowed to him,
Calling him master, though he was so young!—
Shall intervening centuries make dim
Those sea-tossed lovers who together clung,
What time they had for common enemies
The blasting tropic suns and treacherous seas,
And torture of long thirst they might not ease,
Till hearts began to fail, and brains to swim?
The years that might have been, I seem to see;
I know the great work ended, and I hear
Rumors of storms, and voice of waves that flee;
I breathe a fierce and fervid atmosphere;
I see strong warriors meet, and armed for war,
I see each helmet shining like a star,
I hear the shock of weapons near and far,
And in the densest of the strife is he.
My friend, my friend! He strikes with confident hand,
I hear the blows ring on opposing shields,
And none, I know, his prowess may withstand;
I know the shield he bears, the sword he wields.
Before his strength I see his foes give place;
And in my heart I see a spectre race
Look with glad eyes upon his lifted face,—
They who inhabit now the flowerless land.
226

O friend and brother, if this thing might be,
That souls live after death, the great elect
Should throng the portals to give hail to thee;
And they thy wandering footsteps should direct, —
Should take thee where the fairest gardens glow,
Should take thee where the deepest rivers flow,
Should show thee all the faces thou wouldst know,
And linger with thee by the jasper sea.
But perfect rest is now thine heritage;
For though the labor of thy hand and brain
Had made thy life triumphant, none engage
To point the world new paths without the strain
Of long and arduous fighting. Oh, my friend,
Not thine our loss, — this unimagined end.
Life is not sweet, but sharp with thorns that rend;
And the soul's thirst what springs in life assuage?
Fame is not always good, — remember this,
All ye with whom I mourn, who mourn with me;
Nor is love always a sure path to bliss,
And time works many changes sad to see.
Between the dearest friends estrangements rise,
Across wide gulfs they look with longing eyes;
But they have done with questions and replies,
And sad and very hard to bear this is.
London I never loved for London's sake;
Her crowds oppressed me more than solitude.
But some strange music his fine ear could take
Mine failed to catch; yea, since he found her good, —
Loved the strong ebb and flow of fluctuant life,
The night's uneasy calm, the day's loud strife;
Found all her ancient streets with memories rife, —
Shall I not love her too, asleep, awake?
227

O friend, my friend, there is so much to tell, —
Since that September night when we met, last,
Dreams have passed by, and hopes have said farewell.
O love that lives, and life that soon is past!
From where he is he may not make reply;
Too far away he is to hear my cry.
Love weeps for us; for him love may not sigh;
And grief saith but one word, — irreparable!
We talked about our future, many times;
Planned work together, jested and were grave;
And now he will not listen to my rhymes.
My sorrow breaks above me in one wave,
For he has left me, he has gone away
To lands that do not know the night from day;
Where men toil not, neither give thanks, nor pray;
Where come no rumors from the sounding climes.
O men and women, listen and be wise;
Refrain from love and friendship, dwell alone,
Having, for friends and loves, the seas, the skies,
And the fair land, — for these are still your own.
The sun is yours; the moon and stars are yours;
For you the great sea changes and endures,
And every year the spring returns, and lures:
I pray you only love what never dies.
For life hath taught me with much diligence
How bitterest sorrow springs from things most fair, —
Remorseless Fate that calls those loved ones hence,
Who living gave us strength our cross to bear;
The failure of high purposes; the death
Of fairest inspiration; the quick breath,
The ebbing light, and the last words one saith;
Then dust and sleep and death, for recompense.
228

I know it was of his a favorite creed,
That when the body dies the existing soul
Of other souls becomes a fruitful seed,
Changing, surviving through the years that roll;
Flashing continually from state to state,
Not ceasing with the lives that terminate, —
A part of life, of destiny, of fate,
The germ and the fulfilment, thought and deed.
Here, where I stumble, he walked, sure of foot;
And here more clear than mine his spirit's sight;
His high thought sprang from no uncertain root;
His intellect was like the broad noonlight;
He stemmed the tide of passion, strong and deep;
He walked most confidently up paths most steep;
And, in the path he loved, he fell asleep,
And of his life we gather now the fruit.
I clasp another sorrow in my soul;
I take another memory to weep,
To love and cherish, while the seasons roll,
To think of while I wake or fall asleep.
The weary winter-time shall pass, and Spring
The patient earth at last revisiting,
With soft and flowerlike skies, and birds that sing,
Shall come most hearts to gladden and make whole.
But mine she shall not gladden; I, for one,
By all her sweets will not be comforted.
The summer days shall glow with stress of sun;
The placid light of golden stars be shed;
With dew, at eve, the roses shall be sated;
And all the earth by slumber softly weighted, —
But love shall keep its sorrow unabated
Till all the fears and pains of life be done.
229

Alas! what can be said? What can we do?
Ah me! we have no words; we can but wait,
Wait and remember, while the years wear through.
Life is at longest but a brief estate;
As a flower of the field, the Psalmist saith,
It blooms, and the fashion of it perisheth;
We cannot tell when we may chance on death,
To be resolved into the light, the dew.
O friends, who sit together, well content,
Throwing your personal news out pleasantly,
Or meeting hotly in some argument,
Or interchanging deepest sympathy,
Prize well the precious moments; for indeed
You cannot tell when you may sorely need
The friendly talk and counsel. Take good heed
Your lips let through no word they might repent.
Sleep well, my friend, the sleep that no dreams break!
I, too, some day, of sleep shall take my fill;
But now I live, and work for mere work's sake,
Missing the strength of thy controlling will.
I know my soul, through all, shall thirst and fret
For thee, for thee whom time may not forget;
And when I see dear friends together met,
I know my heart will fail in me and ache.

IN MEMORY OF ARTHUR O'SHAUGHNESSY.

Died January 30, 1881.

That day returns which took thee from our sight
And did forever hush that voice of thine.
Thine eyes beheld, through thy youth's fair sunshine,
And not so far away, the end of light;
And not from far thy young ears heard Death say, —
“It shall be good to rest with me some day!”
230

Singer and seer, who, ere the end of all,
Didst turn thy back on death, and look past birth
To where, in terror of the life on earth
And all the griefs to which it should be thrall,
Thine unborn soul did in sublime despair
Assail “En Soph” in unavailing prayer!
This year that bears us on to storm — or what? —
Has no acquaintanceship with thee, O brother,
Gone home, now, to the earth, our common mother.
Men come and go; things are remembered not:
But I shall think of thee, O parted friend,
Till, even as thou, I reach the journey's end.
First come of us, to leave the first thou wert, —
To fall from out the ranks of us who sang.
How clear along the ranks thy full note rang
With individual sweetness, lyric art;
Thou who hadst felt John's spiritual stress,
What time he tarried in the wilderness.
May not thy soul in song embodied be,
As patriots dead, who once strove here with wrong,
Bequeath their souls to make new patriots strong?
May not all spirits in their own degree
Be unseen sources, feeding evermore
The causes which on earth they labored for?
Thy day of death was Landor's day of birth;
And, while all hearts that revel in his might,
Rejoicing in that soul's immaculate light
Which was so long as sunlight on our earth,
Give thanks, I will keep mute upon this day
On which thy singing spirit passed away.
Often when in my room I brood alone
With weary heart, bowed down to death almost,
Hearing waves break upon an unknown coast
Where be great wrecks of ships that were mine own,
231

With all their freights of precious merchandise
That comes alone from ports of Paradise,
I seem to hear a step, a voice I know;
Almost I feel a hand; and then my heart
Thrills and leaps in me with a sudden start,
Then sinks again, because this is not so.
Here, where thy feet so many times passed o'er,
Again thy footstep shall fall nevermore.
When through these outer and unpitying ways,
With all their loud and lacerating noises,
Thunder of wheels, and jar of unknown voices,
I walk alone, I think of those past days
When arm-in-arm we walked the same way through,
Talking and laughing as good comrades do.
Thou wert so full of song and strength and life,
Hadst such keen pleasure in small things and great,
It hardly can seem real to know thy state
Is with the ancient dead, where jars no strife,
Where very surely I shall come some day,
Hands torn, and feet left bleeding from the way.
Take thou this song, as yet another wreath
To those we dropped into thy resting-place,
Each bending low, with eager, hungering gaze,
Knowing it was thy dust that lay beneath;
Knowing thy fair, fleet, singing life was done,
Thy light extinguished, and thy bay-wreath won.
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A BURDEN.

Have I not dreamed of you all night long,
Love, my Love?
Shall I not tell my dream in a song,
O my Love?
Have I not worshipped you six long years,
Queen, my Queen?
Have I not given you bounteous tears,
O my Queen?
Have I not said, when the spring was here, —
“Sweet, my Sweet,
More than the pride and flower of the year,
O my Sweet”?
Have I not said, in the dawning gray, —
“Heart, my Heart,
I shall see my lady ere close of day,
O my Heart”?
Have I not said, in the silent night, —
“Dove, my Dove,
So soft of voice and rapid of flight,
O my Dove”?
Have I not said, in the summer hours, —
“Rose, my Rose,
Greatly exalted above all flowers,
O my Rose”?
Have I not said, in my great despair, —
“Soul, my Soul,
Love is a grievous burden to bear
O my Soul”?
233

Have I not turned to the sea, and said, —
“Life, my Life,
If she be not mine, be thou my bed,
O my Life”?
Have I not dreamed of your eyes, and cried, —
“Light, my Light,
Lead me where love may be satisfied,
O my Light!”
Have I not trodden a weary road,
Saint, my Saint?
And where, at last, shall be my abode,
O my Saint?
Sometimes I say, in an hour supreme,
“Bride, my Bride!
I shall hold you fast, and not in a dream,
O my Bride!”

CAUGHT IN THE NETS.

a.d. 1180. — “This year, also, near unto Orford in Suffolk, certain fishers took in their nets a fish, having the shape of a man in all points, which fish was kept by Bartholomew de Glandeville in the Castle of Orford six months and more. He spake not a word; all manner of meats he did gladly eat, but most greedily raw fish. Oftentimes he was brought to the church, but never showed any sign of adoration. At length, not being well looked to, he stole to the sea, and was never seen after.” — Sir Richard Baker: Chronicle.

“Would I were back, now, in my own sea caves!
Curse that March twilight, and those stormy waves
Which rioted above me till I said
I too must rise and frolic, so I sped
Up dim green twilights of the under sea;
And louder seemed the waves to call to me,
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Until I dashed their foam apart, and, lo!
The sky above with fire seemed to glow,
And in the waste, wide glare of crimson light
Made merry the mad waves, all vast and white,
And each to each roared loud some secret thing;
And the Wind seemed a strange new song to sing,
And wantoned with the waves in violent play,
As great sea-monsters do, then fled, and they
Roared after, and made haste upon her track;
Then, suddenly turning, she would hurl them back,
And they, with their own speed and rage made blind,
Wild, rent, and staggering before the Wind,
Fell, and in falling dashed high up their spray,
As with it they would drown the eyes of day.
“Being of hearing quick, it seemed to me
I heard strange sounds abroad upon the sea,
That cursed March twilight; yea, but it was fun
To swing in the waves and see the blood-red sun
Strike sharp their white and hurrying heights between,
And when the Wind would cut too strong and keen,
Just for a moment the waves dive under,
And go, as it were, through the heart of the thunder.
“How sweet the weed smelt, by the wave washed warm!
Ah, could I smell it now, and hear the storm
Make white and loud the sea above my head,
I would not leave again my soft sea bed,
And coral groves the dear sea-girls come through,
Singing the songs I love to hearken to.
That last time that I went through a great wave
Something did catch about me; and some waif
Of monstrous floating weed it was, I thought;
But when about my head and feet it caught
And seemed to bear me forward, surely then
I knew myself snared in the nets of men, —
The nets wherein our simple fish are taken.
Then, with great fear the heart in me was shaken;
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My one hope was, I knew, to break the net.
For this I strove, while, with my face down set,
Through all the interposing sea I prayed
That some bold merman would make haste to aid.
But all were in their homes; none answered me, —
Only, at times, most friendly seemed the sea,
When a great wave would with a mighty blow
Send me afield; but in the fall and flow
I spun round helplessly, half choked and blind,
Hearing, above, the singing of the wind.
Then franticly the net I strove to rend,
But, being weak, came suddenly the end, —
A strain, a rush, the wind cold on my breast,
No sea, then light, then darkness was the rest,
Until I found myself here, and breast high
In dead sea-water, and above no sky,
Nor light of sea, but something hard and black;
Ah me! if I could only once go back!
“I heard a mighty noise about me; then
I looked into the faces of cursed men.
Right hard they stared. They questioned me, I knew;
But never word from me their cunning drew.
They gave me food, of which I was full glad;
And strange it was, and sweet, so that I had
Some joy in eating it; and fish they gave, —
Dear fish, that smelt and tasted of the wave;
And then they left me dark and lonely there.
“There was no sound at all upon the air;
The awful silence filled me with such dread
I violently dashed with hands and head
The water round me, that some sound might be,
Some littlest whisper from the far-off sea;
But with the light of day came noise again,
And strange it was to me, and bitter pain,
To hear the wind outside, but not the sea.
Then came fresh faces and looked hard at me,
236

In the cold, pitiless glare of the new day.
I heard them say it was the time to pray;
And one man cast a chain my neck about,
And with a mighty grasp he dragged me out, —
Right out into the sunlight and the wind, —
And some men walked before, and some behind.
So on we wended, till we reached a hall,
Where all around upon their knees did fall,
And made together a most dismal noise.
Then one cried to them, in a louder voice;
Whereat more wail upon the air they poured,
Then rose. Next in their midst a monster roared,
Whereat they yelled; yea, all they yelled as one,
So that I thought by fear they were undone;
And much I marvelled that they kept their ground,
For still that monster made the dreadest sound.
Then ceased he, and they ceased; and one man rose
And shouted to them, and with many blows
Did beat himself, and long and loud he screamed;
And like some fearful dream that I had dreamed
It seemed to me, and full of dread I was,
Not knowing well what next might come to pass.
But back they took me to my lonely place;
And here go by the dreary nights and days.
O shining home, wherein are all things fair;
O sea, O world of mine, where art thou, where?
O deep sea caves, wherein strange, rare things are,
And great sea-shells, that praise the sea from far!
Green hills of slippery seaweed, wet and high,
Where green-haired mermaids love full length to lie,
Their faces in the wet weed buried deep,
Till, by their gambols tired, they fall asleep!
“What joy it was to dance among the rocks,
And startle, unaware, the mild sea flocks;
Or, from afar, that low, long sound to hear,
Whereby that cruel whaling-ships are near
One whale warns all the whale-fields, and all start,
237

Nor rest until they reach a safer part;
To see the waves above, now green, now blue,
With light of silver fishes flashing through.
“Here through a chink I watch the evening sky;
Sometimes I think my bar is not so high
But I could overleap it, and be free,
And so go forth to seek and find the sea.
Even now the gate stands open which leads out;
I hear no sound of any man about!
Shall I not do it? Gently! It is done.
Released I stand. Ah, which way shall I run?
Straight on, I think. Ah, now be swift, my feet!
The sky is full of light; the air is sweet.
Fly fast, my feet, and faster, and more fast,
Until my long lost home be found at last.
“What sound is this ahead? O joy of joys!
It is the sea's and my own people's voice.
And as more fast I run, more loud it comes;
Mermaidens call me from their deep sea homes.
And now upon the verge of my own land
And yet within this world of men I stand.
A vast and empty place it is — ah me!
But I shall sleep to-night beneath the sea,
And wake to hear the great dear waves wash over,
And some sea-girl shall have me for her lover,
And wind about me with her cold, green tresses,
And comfort me with damp and salt caresses.
O world of men, good-by, I love ye not,
Mine is a wilder and a happier lot;
White in the moonlight shines the flying foam,
O joy! O joy, now I make haste and home!”
238

THE BALLAD OF MONK JULIUS.

Monk Julius lived in a wild countrie;
And never a purer monk than he
Was vowed and wedded to chastity.
The monk was fair, and the monk was young;
His mouth seemed shaped for kisses and song,
And tender his eyes, and gentle his tongue.
He loved the Virgin, as good monks should;
And he counted his beads, and kissed the rood;
But great was the pain of his manlihood.
Sweet Mary Mother,” the monk would pray,
Take thou this curse of the flesh away, —
Live me not up to the devil's sway.
Oh, make me pure as thine own pure Son!
My thoughts are fain to be thine, each one;
But body and soul are alike undone.”
And, even while praying, there came, between
Himself who prayed and Heaven's own Queen,
A delicate presence, more felt than seen, —
The sense of woman though none was there,
Her beauty near, her breath on the air,
Almost the touch of her hand on his hair;
And when night came, and he fell on sleep,
Warm tears in a dream his eyes would weep,
For strange, bright shapes that he might not keep, —
The fair dream-girls who leaned o'er his bed,
Who held his hand, and whose kisses were shed
On his lips — for a monk's too full and red.
239

O fair dream-women with flowing tresses
And loosened vesture! Their soft caresses
Thrilled him through to his soul's recesses.
He woke on fire, with rioting blood,
To scourge himself and to kiss the rood,
And to fear the strength of his manlihood.
One stormy night, when Christ's birth was nigh,
When snow lay thick, and the winds were high
'Twixt the large light land and the large light sky,
Monk Julius knelt in his cell's scant light,
And prayed, “If any be out to-night,
O Mother Mary, guide them aright.”
Then there came to his ears, o'er the wastes of snow,
The dreadest of sounds, now loud, now low, —
The cry of the wolves, that howl as they go.
Then followed a light quick tap at the door;
The monk rose up from the cell's cold floor,
And opened it, crossing himself once more.
A girl stood there, and “The Wolves!” she cried.
“No danger now, daughter,” the monk replied,
And drew the beautiful woman inside, —
For fair she was, as few women are fair,
And tall and shapely; her great gold hair
Crowned her brows, that as ivory were.
Her deep blue eyes were two homes of light,
Soft moons of beauty to his dark night, —
What fairness was this to pasture sight?
But the sight was sin; so he turned away
And knelt him down yet again to pray;
But not one prayer could his starved lips say.
240

And, as he knelt, he became aware
Of a light hand passing across his hair,
And a sudden fragrance filled the air.
He raised his eyes, and they met her own, —
How blue hers were, how they yearned and shone!
Her waist was girt with a jewelled zone;
But aside it slipped from her silken vest,
And the monk's eyes fell on her snowy breast,
Of her marvellous beauties the loveliest.
The monk sprang up, and he cried, “O bliss!”
His lips sought hers in a desperate kiss;
He had given his soul to make her his.
But he clasped no woman; no woman was there —
Only the laughter of fiends on the air;
The monk was snared in the devil's own snare.

RENUNCIATION.

Here in my sheltering arms at rest she lies,
Her head upon my shoulder, and one hand
About my neck; sleep has sealed fast her eyes.
The pensive twilight gathers round the land,
The first star ventures forth into the skies,
The air is gentle, and the month is May,
And peaceful is the death of the fair day;
And with the dying day my life's hope dies, —
It sinks, it sets, — and then alone I stand.
How breathes she, like a little child at rest!
Above her brown hair's warmth I lean my face.
Ah me! the day when first my glad lips pressed
Her answering lips, and in a long embrace
I felt against my own her throbbing breast!
241

First day of love, first gathered fruit of bliss, —
O day made memorable by the first kiss,
Pressure of hands, sweet secret things confessed!
Art thou not holy, day above all days?
O Love! between that first kiss and this last
How many kisses were, — how sweet they were!
Still, Love, within my arms I hold you fast,
My tears and kisses fall upon your hair;
Your sleep and this brief hour will soon be past.
Then shall my heart grow strong in its endeavor;
Then shall I put you from my arms forever,
Saying, “We part, we part, and the wild blast
Sweeps over all my life, and life lies bare.”
Indeed I know you thought you loved me, sweet;
You pitied me, and loved my love of you;
In all I said you heard my heart's swift beat.
“This heart that loves me so is warm and true,
A flower to wear, not trample 'neath my feet,” —
Thus to yourself you thought, that dear, dead day,
We sitting in the twilight still and gray,
Your hands in mine. When hands of lovers meet,
Not long, O Love, before the lips meet, too.
Because my kisses thrilled your eager blood,
I thought I found love in your ardent kiss,
And said, “She loves!” 'T was but your womanhood,
With all its great capacities for bliss.
Without a word, in time I understood, —
You did not love me, though I saw you strove
To think you were returning love for love.
O my beloved, so passionately wooed,
In your new freedom, sweet, forget not this, —
That he who loves you gives you liberty
And joy transcendent, when the rightful lover,
242

Predestined by mysterious powers to be
Heart of your heart, the days at length discover.
Then, fast in Love's divine captivity,
In twilights like this twilight, or some night
When earth lies still beneath the moon's large light,
Think then a little, not untenderly,
Of one who walks where only sad ghosts hover.
About my life strange winds begin to rouse, —
I hear strange voices call me from afar;
Outside the moonbeams rain through moveless boughs,
And heaven grows stronger with each confident star.
God's very peace encompasses the house;
But what have I to do with peace or Heaven?
To the outer seas let my lone bark be driven:
One last kiss laid on mouth and fair broad brows,
Then let me go where storm and shipwreck are.

HIS VIEW.

Do you think she dreams of me for a minute,
Would care, were I out of the world, or in it?
Not she, — no, no.
I might do my best, or my worst in evil;
Be enshrined as a saint, or damned as a devil,
And she not know.
Yet of all the many that love and tend her
She will find no heart so true to befriend her,
Though she does not know.
But I think some day when the ninth wave takes her,
Grips her and lifts her, batters and breaks her,
Then she may know.
243

UNCOMPLETED LIVES.

At last we stand again upon the heather here.
Just where we stood five years ago to-day, my dear:
The morning is all round us, — wind and light and scent;
Above us are the high, blue, foreign, summer skies;
That way lie cornfields and rich, pastoral content;
In front the great sea shines, and almost blinds the eyes.
You hear the ripple, stirring shell and pebble, —
A pleasant sound, that delicate, tremulous treble;
The air is warm with the sun, and keen with the sea;
And cliffs and sky and summer are the same:
But we are greatly changed; we twain can never be
As we were when we last this path together came.
That day we let our dreams fly far away like birds;
Fools were we, surely, for a few impatient words
To give up all the joy which had been ours, indeed, —
The perfect spiritual community,
The rapture of a passion naught might supersede,
The unapproachable, divinest ecstasy
Of being wholly one with one you love the best;
For love with sweetness does the simplest things invest.
How fair it looked to us! — that life we cast away;
And yet we are not wretched, neither you nor I.
You have your children and their interests, to-day;
And I paint pictures that find men to praise and buy.
Sometimes I have forgotten you; and yet at hours, —
And mostly when Spring comes with all her birds and flowers, —
At twilight, when the winds are gathered into rest,
A vision of you, as I saw you last of all,
Fills my poor lonely room, and leans upon my breast,
Till for passionate self-pity the tears begin to fall.
244

And I call you from my deep and desolate heart,—
From the life in which you have no longer any part;
But silence only mocks my bitter discontent,
And the cruel darkness sweeps away the vision,
And I sicken at the roses' potent scent,
And the moon and starlight laugh me to derision.
And now we stand together, and I hear your voice.
We had our time for choosing once, — we made our choice;
We chose to part; we twain in Love's sight did this sin.
Has Love forgiven it to us? — consider well:
You know he has not, for we only now begin
To know the meaning of that word — “irreparable.”
It is our punishment that we should meet to-day;
And do you bid me help you, find some word to say
To heal our wounded spirits with, and stanch regret?
Too late it is for words our stricken lives to heal;
Deep in your soul, as deep in mine, the pain is set
Which hardly to each other yet we may reveal:
No great despair, — so noble and intense
It elevates the heart, is its own recompense, —
But dull, continuous ache of incompleteness,
Persistent sense of failure in life's highest good,
Echoes of songs, and breaths of parted sweetness,
From lands we may not now re-enter though we would.
Come on, to where the little wind-blown chapel stands,
With all its quaint inscriptions carved by seamen's hands.
Last night, when I came in from wandering by the sea,
And saw you sitting lonely in the salon there,
Your face bent down, and sweet eyes never seeing me,
The lamplight falling on your shining, golden hair,
245

The knowledge of your actual presence in the place,
The sight, again, of your fair, often-dreamed-of face,
Overcame me; and I stood there, only knowing
In a moment more perchance we should be meeting;
And I ceased to hear the summer sea-wind blowing,
And louder than the seas I heard my own heart beating.
You must have risen, though I did not see you rise,
For a moment more, I was looking in your eyes,
And I heard your voice, low and sweet and nothing changed, —
The strangely quiet, deeply passionate voice;
And so we met again, whom fate had long estranged,
Who loved, yet in this meeting hardly could rejoice.
Then in the fresh, sweet darkness we sat upon the beach, —
We twain, and he, your husband, weak of will and speech;
I took your hand, and my eager blood turned fire,
As a great flame that a great wind drives before it;
My heart turned to you with a cry of wild desire,
But my lips kept mute, and I wonder how I bore it.
And all night long I lay awake, and heard the sea
Under the light, dry summer wind sound fitfully, —
Now soft among the pebbles, stirring stone by stone;
Now vehement with hiss and bubble of spray;
Now soft again, in some most tender undertone;
Now loud and very near, then faint and far away, —
And the thought of you so filled me that I could not sleep;
And the moonlight bright and broad lay over shore and deep;
And I told my passion to the moon and to the sea;
And every way I looked I seemed to see you there,
The head bent back, and sweet eyes never seeing me;
The lamplight falling on your shining, golden hair.
246

And now we stand alone together, you and I, —
We twain who saw Love come, and let him pass us by, —
Give me your hands, and listen, dearest. We must wait,
And bear the trouble of our days as best we may;
And when we are both older, passion shall abate,
As summer winds that at the sundown fall away,
And leave the earth to feel the moon's pure light, —
The great, compassionate quietude of night.
You say that day seems distant? Yes, but come it will, —
As surely as our death-day it will come to pass, —
When we may meet as friends, without a single thrill,
And smile at all the joy and all the grief that was.
But here is the chapel, smelling damp as any cell;
We have it wholly to ourselves, though; that is well.
Rest here, my dear; you understand now all it meant,
That day you let the scorn break out of lips and heart,
And then the deep, unutterable discontent, —
Your life divorced from mine, of which your life was part.
But now, before we part forever, I and you,
One kiss upon the lips to last my whole life through, —
One draught of joy, one blessèd glimpse of paradise,
With sound of shining angels singing round Love's throne.
O lonely place! O moment that Love deifies!
I hold you to my heart now, mine, and mine alone.
O my divided life, my first and only love!
O sweet, pale Northern flower! O fairest, fluttered dove!
Alas! there is no help in life for our great pain;
The winter winds must blow, and summer suns must burn,
The tides obey the moon, all things fulfil their reign,
And we must bear to walk apart, and vainly yearn.
247

HE AND SHE.

She
(to herself).
O lost to me, lost more than if by death!
Why did I let him take me back at all?
Did I not know
He never could forgive my perjured breath?
Could he forego
From height of his proud faith to scorn my fall?
I loved that other man, and that God knows;
I know it, to my bitter shame and cost.
O fair and cruel face,
Which like a baneful and false beacon rose,
And by its rays
Lit me to shipwreck, where, then, all was lost!
Do I not hate him, now, cast off by him?
Surely I do, with all my strength of heart;
As tired and cold,
In this man's strange forgiveness, bleak and grim,
My wings I fold,
And ache for love of which I once was part.
O happy, shameful, shameless days gone by,
As warm with sun as these are cold with snow!
False love! And yet
Did he not build for me new earth and sky?
Can I forget
The joy he made my body and soul to know?
Doubtless, as I this evening sit and shiver,
Here in the twilight by the flickering fire,
248

Those lips of his
Make other women's lips with joy to quiver,
As 'neath their kiss
Mine trembled, while my blood was all desire.
Do I not hate him? Yea, with heart and soul;
But am I sure that if he came in now, —
Came in and turned,
With the old air of confident control,
Or looked and yearned
Into my eyes, or touched my cheek or brow,
My scorn would strike as I would have it do?
O vanished heaven of love in which I was,
Could I resist,
If once again my face towards his he drew
And my lips kissed,
And things that were should come again to pass?
There sits my husband, thinking what? Who knows
What thoughts are busy in his working brain?
He kept his word,
And took me back, to shelter from the crows
A wounded bird,
With draggled plumage, on its breast a stain.

He
(to himself).
Yes, if this case goes rightly, it will make
A difference to my fortunes certainly.
If they can only nurse the patient well!
Much hangs on them in this — more than on me;
And yet a cure would seem a miracle:
So save we folks for our and not for their sake.
Still sitting there, poor, punished, contrite thing!
And can she be the woman for whose love
I once had given all that men most prize?
It seems she has no heart in her to move,
249

But sits and gazes with those great, sad eyes,
And sad, strained lips that never smile or sing!
O pale and changed! No longer proud of mien,
Who held herself with such a stately grace
That scarce your utmost praises could beguile
A faint, pink flush to the all-perfect face,
Or stir the cold composure of her smile, —
Fair are you still; but not as once, my queen!
Nay, queen no more of mine! Queen of what, then?
Queen of dishonor and all treachery —
But why upbraid? Has she not borne her part?
Her life went down with mine beneath that sea,
Whose depths close over many an eager heart,
Whose wrecks are ruined lives of women and men.
I have not thought enough of her, I fear,
Pondering my own profession and my fame;
We have not spoken this long afternoon;
'T is hard to leave her to her speechless shame.
(Aloud.)
Come, now, and play me some slow, sleepy tune,
And as you pass me, stay and kiss me, dear.

COME, BUY.

Some things which are not yet enrolled
In market lists are bought and sold. Rossetti's Jenny

“Who will buy my roses,
Roses red and white,
Sweetest of all posies
For a man's delight?
250

“Who will buy my gold grass,
Feathery, sweet, and tall, —
Buy, ere the summer pass,
Sweetest thing of all?
“Who will buy my violets,
Fresh from warm, wet earth?
He who stops to buy them gets
All his money's worth.”
“I will buy your roses,
Roses red and white,
Sweetest of all posies
For a man's delight.
“I will buy your gold grass,
Feathery, sweet, and tall, —
Buy, ere the summer pass,
Sweetest thing of all.
“I will buy your violets,
Fresh from warm, wet earth,
Since he who buys them gets
All his money's worth.
“Violets, grass, and roses,
You are mine to-day, —
When you're faded posies,
Then I throw away.”
251

FALSE REST AND TRUE REST.

I

“And thou hast taken from me my fair faith,
Which like a star lit the waste night of death, —
A light I thought no blast could ever kill.
O friend of mine, was it for me so ill
To fancy that my lips when void of breath
Should open in that land one entereth
Through portals of the grave, — how dark, how chill?

II

“What hast thou set me in my dear hope's place
But thy stern Truth, with white, implacable face,
Cold eyes, shut lips, clenched hand, and barren breast?
I stand, of all my sweet faith dispossessed, —
Discrowned of my belief. Death hath no grace,
But seems a thing to shudder at. My days
Are joyless, and my nights are void of rest.

III

“I thought that I, in some far paradise,
Should hear the old, sweet voices, and that eyes
Of those I loved and lost my eyes should greet.
O visionary fields that felt the feet
Of my impatient thought, which no more flies
From you to me, but in my cold heart lies
Quite cold and dead, once warm with my heart's heat!

IV

“Oh, life was full of comfort in those years, —
Sweet things I dreamed of the impossible spheres;
I had a haven. If the winds were strong,
Above their roar I caught from far the song
252

Of beckoning angels. Now no light appears —
No song at all my heart, desirous, hears;
The day is short, but oh the night is long!

V

“Oh, long, oh, dreary long, that night of death!
No dawn it hath, no star that lighteneth.
There comes no love, no passionate memory
Of all the dear delights that used to be.
Shall one see God there, lying without breath;
Or shall the dead give thanks? — the psalmist saith.
Nay, if the dead thank, they thank silently.”

VI

“There is no dreariness in death for one
Who sets his eyes on Truth, — that cold, calm sun,
By whose impartial and unvarying light
Men might walk surely, who now grope in night.
Who fears, when labor of the day is done,
To rest and sleep? Then wherefore should ye shun
The sleep no dream, no waking, come to spite?

VII

“Lift up and fix on Truth thy timorous eyes,
Till they can tolerate her awful skies.
Thy rest was warm and sweet, but could it save?
Would thy hope's torch have lasted to the grave?
How suddenly the grim mistrusts arise, —
‘My soul, wilt thou find hell or paradise?
Pray, dear life, keep me till I grow more brave.
253

VIII

“‘Oh mighty mystery of mysteries!
I venture forth upon the unsailed seas.
I go to face the awful, the unknown;
O Death, how full of terror art thou grown!
I trust I go to lands of perfect peace,
Wherein are all the mighty companies
Of the illustrious dead, and those, my own, —

IX

“‘My own, whose loss was such sharp gall to drink.
I trust! Yet what are we, that we should think
Eternal peace and rapture must be ours?
Again by fear appalled my spirit cowers
In abject terror on the grave's dark brink.
Can I believe that through a coffin-chink
From dust of me it breaks anew and flowers?

X

“‘But, nay, I do believe and will attest
That God is good, and on my Saviour's breast
I shall lie safely, when this life is over,’ —
So say thy lips; but thy soul sees above her
No visible heaven of deep joy and rest;
She knoweth not the end of her long quest,
And deathly fears once more about her hover.

XI

“That music which of old so loud did seem
Comes faint, as from a dawn-receding dream.
How has it paled — thy hope of future bliss!
Lo, by chill winds thy light extinguished is—
Not quite, for by its fluctuating gleam,
Its little, wandering, insufficient beam,
Death has a ghastly look, not really his.
254

XII

“Were it not best all thought to concentrate
Upon this life in which we work, and wait,
And love, and grieve, and bear? Life is a day;
And death the night that follows it? — nay, nay,
If, when our days of toil we terminate,
We go to be a very part of fate,
Or, no end serving, simply pass away.

XIII

“How shall death be, or night be, when we know not
That life has ceased in us; that wild winds blow not
For us again; for us no more the sun
Fulfils the earth, when winter-time is done;
For us the tender things of Spring they show not;
For us the birds are mute, the rivers flow not, —
What pain is there in this sweet dissolution?”

XIV

“A slothful soul, in time of war, I slept.
While other men their dangerous outposts kept;
And when you did command me to arise,
And with the light and air familiarize
My spiritual senses, I had crept
Back to my lair, by wholesome winds unswept,
Had you not fixed on Truth my coward eyes.

XV

“If life be full of comfort, fair and sweet,
I will be meekly thankful that my feet
Are spared the stones that wound, and as I may
Try to make smooth for others a rougher way;
255

But should life bitter prove, and incomplete,
This pain of living it is very fleet,
And rest will come, with quiet set of day.

XVI

“I feel an ardor never felt till now, —
A stimulus to work, to keep the vow
I take to help each weary woman and man.
There was no room before in my life's plan
For this, — my dreams and visions filled it so;
But now I know the way my soul shall go,
Shall I not use it here as best I can?

XVII

“Death holds no longer any fear for me,
Now that my hopes and doubts cease equally.
I know, at length, the place I journey to,
I know the work in life I have to do.
This rest of ours is true rest, verily.
O power of undeniable Truth, set free
All souls that from false rest a false joy drew!”

MY GARDEN.

O my Garden, full of roses,
Red as passion and as sweet,
Failing not when summer closes,
Lasting on through cold and heat!
O my Garden, full of lilies,
White as peace, and very tall,
In your midst my heart so still is
I can hear the least leaf fall!
256

O my Garden, full of singing
From the birds that house therein,
Sweet notes down the sweet day ringing
Till the nightingales begin!
O my Garden, where such shade is,
O my Garden, bright with sun;
O my loveliest of Ladies,
Of all Gardens sweetest one!

PARTED LOVERS.

O Love, the way is steep,
And dark the night and deep,
And rest is not in sleep,
Where evil dreams roam free.
O hearts no longer glad,
But worn with pain and sad,
Because the joy they had
Perchance no more may be.
O Love, so far away,
Out of this night-like day
One lifts his voice to say
His thoughts are all of thee,
Even as streams that blend
Only to one goal tend,
And ever, in the end,
Eventuate in the sea.
O lonely, loveless lover,
Walking where dream-things hover,
Whose lips no more discover
How sweet her sweet lips be, —
257

Does she at all desire
Once more Love's subtle fire,
That thrilled her as a lyre
Is thrilled when tune goes free?
O parted, weary lives
The cruel billow rives,
The pitiless storm-wind drives
To where all wrecked lives lie.
For all are wrecked at last,
Though long delayed the blast,
Though long withheld the vast
Ninth wave that cries Death's cry.
There, done with smiles and tears,
Desires and hopes and fears,
Under the whelming years,
At length at rest they lie.
Heart of his heart, sweetheart,
He feels of her grief the smart,
And sighs as he walks apart, —
“Only less sad than I!”

A GRAY DAY.

Forth from a sky of windless gray
Pours down the soft, persistent rain;
And she for whom I sigh in vain,
Who makes my bliss, now makes my pain,
Being far from me this autumn day, —
So far away.
258

Upon the waters void and gray
No floating sail appears in sight;
The dull rain and the humid light
No wind has any heart to spite,
This dreary, weary, autumn day,
With love away.
No gull wings out 'twixt gray and gray, —
All gray, as far as eye can reach;
The sea too listless seems for speech,
And vaguely frets upon the beach,
As knowing she, this autumn day,
Is far away.
Ah, like that sea my life looks gray;
Like a forgotten land it lies,
With no light on it from her eyes
Lovely and changeful as those skies
'Neath which she walks this autumn day
So far away.
But they shall pass, these skies of gray,
And she for whom I sigh in vain,
Who makes my bliss and makes my pain,
Shall turn my gray to gold again,
Being not, as now, that future day,
So far away.

A SONG'S MESSAGE.

To her to whom all sweetnesses belong,
In whom all deep and opposite charms unite,
Who is at once the shadow and the light,
I send my pilgrim song.
Say unto her how I am fain to be
Where she is, who is all my life's desire,
For whom my love is pure as vestal fire,
And deep as the deep sea.
259

Say unto those whom now she moves among, —
“Though for a while you in her days have part,
Ye have no habitation in her heart,
As I, a little song.”
Yet be thou humble, song, for her dear sake,
Knowing thou hast no grace at all but this, —
To sing of her for whose transcendent kiss
Hearts of all men might break.

THE SWEETEST DREAM.

Fold, white arms, about me;
Cling, sweet lips, to mine!
Sweetest sweet, without thee
I but waste and pine.
Lean, dear face, above me;
Soft hands, hold mine close;
Let me look and love thee,
O my very rose!
Comfort me with kisses
That your soul comes through;
Let the old dead blisses
Breathe and burn anew.
Lean upon my bosom
Till I feel yours beat,
And your mouth's sweet blossom
Passion make more sweet.
O my sweet one, sweetest,
Love of loves supreme,
This has been the fleetest,
Sweetest, bitterest dream.
260

IN EXTREMIS.

Now that Hope lies sick to death,
Come and weep;
None can stay her parting breath;
Dark and deep
Let her grave be, — cool and quiet
Under all the summer riot.
At her head let roses be,
For a sign
Of Love's ardent wreath that she
Might not twine;
And, for Peace, she might not meet with,
Lilies cover her white feet with.
Now that she is dead and dumb,
Stay your tears;
In the years that are to come,
Sunless years,
She again will never move you,
Only hopeless sorrow prove you.
All your weeping is in vain, —
She is dead!
Her no tears can make again, —
Lift her head.
Dearest, most divine deceiver,
Say your last farewell, and leave her.
261

AT HOPE'S GRAVE.

We said that Hope was dead
So many years ago;
We planned to make her bed
Where all the sweet flowers blow;
To lay her quiet head
Where the long grasses grow.
But while with tearful eyes,
Though tears must fall in vain,
And just permitted sighs
To ease our weary pain, —
Deeming she should not rise
Nor speak to us again, —
While thus we sat, behold!
She stirred; she was not dead!
Take off the wreath; unfold
The shroud; raise up her head, —
Not yet beneath the mould
And flowers shall be her bed.
But now when Spring is here, —
This day, this heavy day,
When skies are pure and clear,
And earth with flowers is gay, —
We clasp sad hands, my dear,
And turn our eyes away,
Our burning eyes away,
Because not by Hope's bed
We sit this young Spring day,
And fancy she is dead,
And find soft words to say,
And roses for her head;
262

But by her very grave,
Whereon the earth we heap,
Knowing no thing can save, —
That this is death, not sleep, —
We stand, but do not rave,
Too numb at heart to weep.

SOLITARY.

My thoughts have been with you the whole night long;
I wonder did you know, my dear?
My heart went flying to you, in a song;
I wonder, sweetheart, did you hear?
Here, where I kissed your hands and lips and hair, —
Here, where I held you to my heart,
While passion thrilled and kindled all the air,
Till hands and lips and lives must part,
I have lain, weary, at Sleep's shadowy gate,
Which would not ope to let me in
Where happy dreams of you I knew must wait,
So that I might some rapture win.
I have been weary for your voice, your touch,
The desperate sweetness of your kiss, —
The joy which almost thrills me over-much,
O sweet, my sweet, so sweet it is.
I strove to think you leaned above me here,
Laid lips to mine, then found to say
The dearest words, — as dear as love is dear;
But, O Love, you were far away.
263

Only for me this drear, ghost-haunted room,
And noises in the street outside;
Only for me to go from gloom to gloom,
And at the end, dark Death for bride.

FROM FAR.

“O Love, come back, across the weary way
Thou wentest yesterday, —
Dear Love, come back!”
“I am too far upon my way to turn:
Be silent, hearts that yearn
Upon my track.”
“O Love! Love! Love! sweet Love, we are undone,
If thou indeed be gone
Where lost things are.”
“Beyond the extremest sea's waste light and noise,
As from Ghost-land, my voice
Is borne afar.”
“O Love, what was our sin, that we should be
Forsaken thus by thee?
So hard a lot!”
“Upon your hearts my hands and lips were set, —
My lips of fire, — and yet,
Ye knew me not.”
“Nay, surely, Love! We knew thee well, sweet Love!
Did we not breathe and move
Within thy light?”
264

“Ye did reject my thorns who wore my roses;
Now darkness closes
Upon your sight.”
“O Love! stern Love! be not implacable.
We loved thee, Love, so well!
Come back to us.”
“To whom, and where, and by what weary way
That I went yesterday,
Shall I come thus?”
“Oh, weep, weep, weep! for Love, who tarried long
With many a kiss and song,
Has taken wing.
“No more he lightens in our eyes like fire;
He heeds not our desire,
Or songs we sing.”

“LOVE HAS TURNED HIS FACE AWAY.”

Love has turned his face away
Weep, sad eyes!
Love is now of yesterday.
Time that flies,
Bringing glad and grievous things,
Bears no more Love's shining wings.
Love was not all glad, you say;
Tears and sighs
In the midst of kisses lay.
Were it wise,
If we could, to bid him come,
Making with us once more home?
265

Little doubts that sting and prey,
Hurt replies,
Words for which a life should pay, —
None denies
These of Love were very part,
Thorns that hurt the rose's heart.
Yet should we beseech Love stay,
Sorrow dies;
And if Love will but delay
Joy may rise.
Since, with all its thorns, the rose
Is the sweetest flower that blows.

“LOVE LIES A-DYING.”

Come in gently, and speak low,
Love lies a-dying;
By his death-bed, standing so,
Hush, hush your crying.
Once his eyes were full of light,
Who now lies a-dying;
Round about him falls the night,
Hush, hush your crying.
Ghostly winds begin to blow,
Love lies a-dying;
Hark where distant waters flow,
Hush, hush your crying.
From a Land of Lost Delight —
Now he lies a-dying —
Visions come to haunt his sight,
Hush, hush your crying.
266

From a land he used to know—
Love lies a-dying—
Ghosts of dead songs come and go,
Hush, hush your crying.
Perished hopes like lilies white—
Now he lies a-dying —
Leave beside him, in Death's night,
Hush, hush your crying.
Round about him, to and fro —
Now he lies a-dying —
Phantom feet move soft and slow,
Hush, hush your crying.
Sharply once did sorrow bite, —
O Love lies a-dying! —
Tears and blood sprang warm and bright,
Hush, hush your crying.
Pain is done now; strength is low, —
Love lies a-dying, —
Let him gently languish so,
Hush, hush your crying.

AT LOVE'S GRAVE.

Now we stand above Love's grave,
Shall we weep, —
We who saw and would not save?
Let him sleep.
267

Shall we sing his requiem?
Ah, for what?
Better stand here, cold and dumb;
Vex him not.
He was young and strong and fair,
Myrtle-crowned;
Now no myrtle wreathes his hair,
Cypress bound.
Did we slay him? Nay, not we;
We but said,
“Doubts and bitter words must be.”
He is dead!
Of those doubts and words he died.
Hush, keep still!
Late regrets would but deride.
One calm will,
Perfect peace, and perfect faith,
Had these been,
He had never chanced on death,
Never seen
Darkness of the under night
Where he lies,
No song on his lips, no light
In his eyes.
Leave him where he lies alone,
Void of care;
Only carve upon his stone, —
“Love was fair.”
268

LOVE'S RESURRECTION SONG.

I made a grave for dead Love to lie in;
And I dug it deep in a grassy place,
With trees above it for winds to sigh in,
Or birds to make song in through blithe Spring days.
Then I stretched myself on the grave in sorrow,
Remembering Love, and how fair was he;
Yesterday poisoned the thought of the morrow,
The blank morrow, in which no Love should be.
And I cried, “O Love, thou wert full of splendor
And pomp and dominion but yesterday,
Thy voice was kind and thine eyes were tender;
But all, now, all, has been taken away.
“Love, canst thou hear?” But the wind moaned only,—
Only the grass on Love's grave was stirred;
In the trees above sang, faint and lonely,
One sad, little, bright-eyed, unmated bird.
The twilight fell as I lay and wept there;
And dew dropped silently, wetting my face;
Alone my weary vigil I kept there,
Till the moon arose in its placid grace:
And the air was charged with her benediction;
And my desolate heart was soothed and filled
With a spirit of some divine prediction,—
And suddenly all my weeping was stilled.
Then I beheld, in the moonlight tender,
A presence more bright than the moon's pale fire;
For there stood Love, with increase of splendor,
And my heart was made one with my heart's desire.
269

A SONG OF MEETING.

I look down days and nights.
And see Love's beckoning lights
Shine from his fairest heights.
On winds that come and go
I hear, now loud, now low,
The song my heart loves so.
I know the way shall end,—
The weary way I wend;
I know that God shall send
A great, propitious day,
When she I love shall say,
“Rest here, with Love to stay.”
As ships to harbor bear,
Through seas and deeps of air,
Through darkness and despair,
I bring to Love's high goal,
To his supreme control,
My body and my soul.
O joy of day begun,
O joy of day just done,
Lessening the days by one,
Until her lips meet mine,
Until we drink the wine
Of Love's most hidden vine!
Oh, in Love's land with me
Will my belovèd be?
Shall our eyes live to see
270

Those dim and mystic ways
Haunted by many a face
Of lovers from old days?
O Love, those ways are sweet,—
Their stillness so complete
We hear our own hearts beat.
And there forever blows
Of roses, the one rose
Whose leaves for us unclose.
Love, from thy distant place,
Lift up thy loveliest face
To greet the passing days,—
Each day a wave that sweeps
Back to the sunless deeps
Where Life forgotten sleeps.
O thou for whose love's sake
New souls in men might wake,
And harp of sweet song break
To know itself so slight,—
Forgive Song's failing flight,
Bow, Love, from thy fair height!
271

CHANGED LOVE.

When did the change come, dearest Heart of mine,
Whom Love loves so?
When did Love's moon less brightly seem to shine,
While to and fro,
And soft and slow,
Chill winds began to move in its decline?
When did the change come, thou who wast mine own?
When heard the rose
First, far-off Autumn winds begin to moan,
At sunset's close,
When sad Love goes
About the Autumn woods to brood alone?
When did the change come in thy heart, Sweetheart,
Thy heart so dear to me?
In what thing did I fail to bear my part,
My part to thee,
Whose deity
My soul confesses, and how fair thou art?
Alas for poor, changed Love! We cannot say
What changes Love.
My love would not suffice to make your day
Now gladly move,
Though kisses strove
With answering kisses, in Love's sweetest way.
But though I know you changed, right well I know
That, should we meet,
Deep in your heart some love for me would glow;
Though not that heat
Which made it beat
So fast with joy, two years— one year ago.
272

TOO LATE.

Love turns his eyes away.
He had so long to wait
Before the words we say,
But say, alas, too late,—
He turns his eyes away.
“Oh, pity our dismay,
Our sad and fallen state;
Ah, pity us, we pray,
Let it not be too late!”
He turns his eyes away.
“O Love, up some dark way—
If so thou wilt—and straight,
Lead us; but on some day
Let our hands meet!” — Too late!
He turns his eyes away.
“Our sky is cold and gray,
Our life most desolate,
If we no more may lay
Gifts on thy shrine.” — Too late!
He turns his eyes away.
Down drear paths we must stray,
Each faring separate,
Because Love would not stay,
But cried “Too late! too late!”
And turned his eyes away.
273

NEW GARDEN SECRETS.

BEFORE AND AFTER FLOWERING.

BEFORE.

First Violet.
Lo here! how warm and dark and still it is;
Sister, lean close to me, that we may kiss.
Here we go rising, rising—know'st thou where?

Second Violet.
Indeed I cannot tell, nor do I care,
It is so warm and pleasant here. But hark!
What strangest sound was that above the dark?

First Violet.
As if our sisters all together sang,—
Seemed it not so?

Second Violet.
More loud than that it rang;
And louder still it rings, and seems more near.
Oh, I am shaken through and through with fear—
Now in some deadly grip I seemed confined!
Farewell, my sister! Rise, and follow, and find!

First Violet.
From how far off those last words seemed to fall!
Gone where she will not answer when I call!
274

How lost? how gone? Alas! this sound above me,—
“Poor little Violet, left with none to love thee!”
And now, it seems, I break against that sound!
What bitter pain is this that binds me round,
This pain I press into! Where have I come?

AFTER.

A Crocus.
Welcome, dear sisters, to our fairy home!
They call this Garden; and the time is Spring.
Like you I have felt the pain of flowering;
But, oh, the wonder and the deep delight
It was to stand here, in the broad sunlight,
And feel the Wind flow round me cool and kind;
To hear the singing of the leaves the Wind
Goes hurrying through; to see the mighty Trees,
Where every day the blossoming buds increase.
At evening, when the shining Sun goes in,
The gentler lights look down, and dews begin,
And all is still, beneath the quiet sky,
Save sometimes for the Wind's low lullaby.

First Tree.
Poor little flowers!

Second Tree.
What would you prate of, now?

First Tree.
They have not heard; I will keep still. Speak low.

First Violet.
The Trees bend to each other lovingly.

275

Crocus.
Daily they whisper of fair things to be.
Great talk they make about the coming Rose,
The very fairest flower, they say, that blows!
Such scent she hath; her leaves are red, they say,
And fold her round in some divine, sweet way.

First Violet.
Would she were come, that for ourselves we might
Have pleasure in this wonder of delight!

Crocus.
Here comes the laughing, dancing, hurrying rain;
How all the Trees laugh at the Wind's light strain!

First Violet.
We are so near the earth, the Wind goes by
And hurts us not; but if we stood up high,
Like Trees, then should we soon be blown away.

Second Violet.
Nay; were it so, we should be strong as they.

Crocus.
I often think how nice to be a Tree;
Why, sometimes in their boughs the Stars I see.

First Violet.
Have you seen that?

Crocus.
I have, and so shall you
But hush! I feel the coming of the dew.

276

NIGHT.

Second Violet.
How bright it is! the Trees, how still they are!

Crocus.
I never saw before so bright a Star
As that which stands and shines just over us.

First Violet
(after a pause).
My leaves feel strange and very tremulous.

Crocus and Second Violet together.
And mine, and mine!

First Violet.
O warm, kind Sun, appear!

Crocus.
I would the Stars were gone, and day were here!

JUST BEFORE DAWN.

First Violet.
Sister! No, answer, sister? Why so still?

One Tree to Another.
Poor little Violet, calling through the chill
Of this new frost which did her sister slay,
In which she must herself, too, pass away!
Nay, pretty Violet, be not so dismayed;
Sleep only, on your sister sweet, is laid.

277

First Violet.
No pleasant Wind about the garden goes,
Perchance the Wind has gone to bring the Rose.
O sister! surely now your sleep is done.
I would we had not looked upon the Sun.
My leaves are stiff with pain. O cruel night!
And through my root some sharp thing seems to bite.
Ah me! what pain, what coming change is this?

(She dies.)
First Tree.
So endeth many a Violet's dream of bliss.

THE ROSE'S DREAM.

I.

O sisters, when last night so well you slept
I could not sleep; but through the silent air
I looked upon the white Moon, shining where
No scent of any Rose can reach, I know.
And as I looked, adown the path there crept
A little trembling, restless Wind, and lo!
As near it came, I said, “O little breeze,
That hast no strength wherewith to stir the trees,
What dost thou in this place?” It only sighed,
And paused a little ere it thus replied,—

II.

“I am the Wind that comes before the rain,—
Which, even now, bears onward from the west,
The rain that is as sweet to you as rest.
When all the air about the day lies dead,
And the incessant sunlight grows a pain,
Then by the cool rain are you comforted.
278

O happy Rose, that shall not live to see
This summer garden altered utterly,—
You know not of the days of snow and ice,
Nor know the look of wild and wintry skies.”

III.

Then passed the Wind, but left me very sad,
For I began to think of days to come,
Wherein the Sun should fail and birds grow dumb,
And how this garden then should look, indeed.
And as I thought of all, such fear I had
I cried to you, asleep, though none would heed;
And so I wept, though none might see me weep,
Till came the Wind again, and bade me sleep,
And sang me such a small, sweet song that soon
I fell asleep while looking on the Moon.

IV.

And as I slept I dreamed a fearful dream:—
It seemed to me that I was standing here,
The sky was sunless, and I saw anear
All you, my sisters, lying dead and crushed.
I could not hear the music of the stream
That runs hard by, when suddenly there rushed
A giant Wind adown the garden walk,
And all the great old Trees began to talk,
And cried, “What does the Rose here? Bid her go,
Lest buried she should be in coming snow.”

V.

I strove to move away, but all in vain;
And flying, as it passed me, cried the Wind,
“O foolish, little Rose, and art thou blind?
Dost thou not see the snow is coming fast?”
And all the swaying Trees cried out again,
“O foolish Rose, to tarry till the last!”
279

Then came a sudden whirl, a mighty noise,
As every Tree that lives had found a voice;
And I was borne away, and lifted high,
As birds that dart in summer through the sky.

VI.

And then the great Wind fell away, and so
I felt that I was whirling down and down,
Past Trees that strove, with branches bare and brown,
To catch me as I fell; and all they cried,—
“She will be buried in the cold, deep snow;
Ah, would she had like other Roses died!”
Then, as I thought to fall, I woke to find
The cool rain dropping on me, and the Wind
Singing a rainy song among the Trees,
Wherein the birds were building at their ease.

VII.

First Flower.
A fearful dream, indeed, and such an one
As well may make you sad for days to come.

Second Flower.
A sad, strange dream!

The Rose.
Why is the Lily dumb?

The Lily.
Too sad the dream for me to speak about!

The Rose.
I fear, this night, the setting of the Sun.

280

A Tree.
Nay, when the Sun goes in the Stars come out.
You shall not dream, Rose, such a dream again;
Forget it, now, in listening to the rain.

The Rose.
I would the Wind had never talked to me
Of things that I shall never live to see!

THE FLOWER AND THE HAND.

Just after Nightfall.

I heard a whisper of Roses,
And light, white Lilies laugh out—
“Ah, sweet when the evening closes,
And Stars come looking about;
How cool and good it is to stand,
Nor fear at all the gathering hand!”
“Would I were red!” cried a White Rose,
“Would I were white!” cried a red one.
“No longer the light Wind blows,
He went with the dear dead Sun.
Here we forever seem to stay,
And yet a Sun dies every day.”
A Lily.
“The Sun is not dead, but sleeping,
And each day the same Sun wakes;
But when Stars their watch are keeping,
Then a time of rest he takes.”

281

Many Roses together.
“How very wise these Lilies are!
They must have heard Sun talk with Star!”

First Rose.
“Pray, then, can you tell us, Lilies,
Where slumbers the Wind at night,
When the garden all round so still is,
And brimmed with the Moon's pale light?”

A Lily.
“In branches of great Trees he rests.”

Second Rose.
“Not so; they are too full of nests.”

First Rose.
“I think he sleeps where the grass is;
He there would have room to lie;
The white Moon over him passes;
He wakes with the dawning sky.”

Many Lilies together.
“How very wise these Roses seem,
Who think they know, and only dream!”

First Rose.
“What haps to a gathered flower?”

282

Second Rose.
“Nay, sister, now who can tell?
One comes not back a single hour,
To say it is ill or well:
I would with such an one confer,
To know what strange things chanced to her.”

First Rose.
“Hush! hush! now the Wind is waking—
Or is it the Wind I hear?
My leaves are thrilling and shaking—
Good-by—I am gathered, my dear!
Now, whether for my bliss or woe,
I shall know what the plucked flowers know!”

GARDEN FAIRIES.

Keen was the air, the sky was very light,
Soft with shed snow my garden was, and white,
And, walking there, I heard upon the night
Sudden sound of little voices,
Just the prettiest of noises.
It was the strangest, subtlest, sweetest sound,—
It seemed above me, seemed upon the ground,
Then swiftly seemed to eddy round and round,
Till I said: “To-night the air is
Surely full of garden fairies.”
And all at once it seemed I grew aware
That little, shining presences were there,—
White shapes and red shapes danced upon the air;
Then a peal of silver laughter,
And such singing followed after
283

As none of you, I think, have ever heard.
More soft it was than call of any bird,
Note after note, exquisitely deferred,
Soft as dew-drops when they settle
In a fair flower's open petal.
“What are these fairies?” to myself I said;
For answer, then, as from a garden's bed,
On the cold air, a sudden scent was shed,—
Scent of lilies, scent of roses,
Scent of Summer's sweetest posies.
And said a small, sweet voice within my ear,—
“We flowers that sleep through winter, once a year
Are by our flower queen sent to visit here;
That this fact may duly flout us,—
Gardens can look fair without us.
“A very little time we have to play,
Then must we go, oh, very far away,
And sleep again for many a long, long day,
Till the glad birds sing above us,
And the warm sun comes to love us.
“Hark what the roses sing, now, as we go;”
Then very sweet and soft, and very low—
A dream of sound across the garden snow—
Came the chime of roses singing
To the lily-bell's faint ringing.

Roses' Song.

“Softly sinking through the snow,
To our winter rest we go,
Underneath the snow to house
Till the birds be in the boughs,
And the boughs with leaves be fair,
And the sun shine everywhere.
284

Softly through the snow we settle,
Little snow-drops press each petal.
Oh, the snow is kind and white,—
Soft it is, and very light;
Soon we shall be where no light is,
But where sleep is, and where night is,—
Sleep of every wind unshaken,
Till our Summer bids us waken.”
Then toward some far-off goal that singing drew;
Then altogether ceased; more steely blue
The blue stars shone; but in my spirit grew
Hope of Summer, love of Roses,
Certainty that Sorrow closes.
285

SONNETS TO C. N. M.

THE NINTH WAVE.

Lo, now, the end of all things come at last!—
The great ninth wave, whose coming none might stay;
A bitter wave made strong to ruin and slay!
I stretch my hopeless hands out to the past
From which it whirls me; and I hear a blast
Of melancholy music sweep this way,
That makes my very soul afraid to pray,
And all my life shrink fainting and aghast.
O dead mute mouths and unrecording eyes;
Dead hearts that loved me,—is it well with ye?
Is death made sweeter, now that even she
For whom alway my spirit thirsts and cries—
Who, going, took the light from out of my skies—
Has joined your high and silent company?
286

BEREAVEMENT.

What words have I for thee o'er whom I bow,
Whose soul has reached the undiscovered land?
In densest midnight of my life I stand,—
The light which lightened it is darkened now.
Thy love cruel Death would not to me allow;
Once more went forth the inexorable command,
And in thy place he sets at my right hand
A still sad ghost, thine absence to avow.
To-day I look away from Death, and see
The bitter days thy love sustained me through;
Bright days thy love made brighter — let them be;
I move about a world I never knew—
A sunless, soulless world that knows not thee
From whose dear life my life took strength and grew.

ALONE.

Not as of old times do I come, to-day,
To breathe the strength and freshness of the sea
Until as part of it I seemed to be,—
Part of the sea-wind and the blowing spray:
She who once came with me is far away,
For Death was kind to her, though cruel to me,
And all my empty life drifts aimlessly,
Like vessels that no more their helm obey.
O sea, that had my childish love and hers,
What message from my dead one dost thou bring?
Surely with me through thee her soul confers,
In some inexplicable way, to wring
Mine eyes with bitterest tears, remembering
What no more lights my dark, disastrous years.
287

THY BIRTHDAY.

To-day it is thy birthday; but we twain
Are not together as in days gone by,—
Silence and darkness gird thee round, and I
Apart from thee for a brief while remain.
Some little joy; perhaps some strange new pain;
Some doubt; some wonder, —then my spirit's cry
To which my bitter singing made reply,
Shall cease, and leave me what the gods ordain.
What that may be, indeed, we cannot know:
Silence and patient night, methinks; and yet
No man can surely say that this is so.
Thy heart to-day may on past days be set,
Even as mine is, wandering to and fro
In sunset lands where tongueless ghosts are met.

EIGHT YEARS AGO.

To-night for the first time, eight years gone by,
We stood in Dante's Florence, and felt beat
Our hearts to know we passed where fell his feet.
To-night I walk beneath an English sky,
And round me, meek and very peacefully
Our English country stretches. Oh, how fleet,
How fair with dreams accomplished, heavenly sweet,
Was that, our sovereign month in Italy!
I wonder if your soul has been, this hour,
To lean with mine where sacred Arno flows,
So much, to-night, the Past asserts its power.
Nay, no dream comes through your divine repose
Deep under grass and many a watching flower;
'T was but my love that feigned it drew thee close.
288

FIVE YEARS AGO.

Five years ago to-day, since Death, thy friend,
Hushed all the music of thy noble life
With his long, icy kiss, and called thee wife;
And I am five years nearer to the end,
When with the stars and winds my life shall blend.
This loud and populous world to-day is rife
With thoughts of thee. O wild and tragic strife
Of one who wars with memories that rend!
Dear heart, which for so long beat close to mine,
Nor quailed before the darkness, and could bear
With bitterness and violence of despair,
Rest, in these later days, deep rest is thine;
And I, bereft of hope, too sad for prayer,
Still kneel, in soul, and worship at thy shrine.

AFTER READING IN INGRAM'S MONOGRAPH ON OLIVER MADOX BROWN THE CHAPTER ENTITLED “FRIENDSHIP.”

I.

Walking my way, with face to sorrow set,
A voice, most like the wind's voice when it says
Some grieving word within a pine-thronged place
Spake low to me; and turning round, I met
The eyes my spirit never may forget,
Then for long time unseen; and down the ways
A spectral band, the ghosts of my old days,
Came to me sighing, “Ah, not forgotten yet!”
289

And some looked sad, and some were garlanded
With flowers that long ago made fair the land;
And in the midst there came, hand clasped in hand,
My friend, and those to whom my life was wed.
“But ah, what shape,” I cried, “now heads the band?”
“What shape but thine old self?” the wind's voice said.

II.

And did it really live, that far-off day,
That day in March, so memorably sweet,
When to the country went our hastening feet,
And small spring flowers made blithe the country way,
And birds sang to us of the coming May;
And in the soft, blue air, with song replete,
We felt glad presage of the longed-for heat,
When summer should be come in brave array?
Now only one of us can ever go
To give Spring welcome where skies show more clear,
When birds attest the glad youth of the year;
And grief is not quite unassuaged, while so,
On winds that, whispering, wander to and fro,
Spring's inner message the hushed heart can hear.
290

MISCELLANEOUS SONNETS.

BEYOND REACH.

Dear Love, thou art so far above my song,
It is small wonder that it fears to rise,
Knowing it cannot reach my Paradise;
Yet ever to dwell here my thoughts among,
Nor try its upward flight, would do thee wrong.
What time the lark soars singing to the skies,
We know he falters, know the sweet song dies,
That fain would reach Heaven's gate, sustained and strong:
But angels bending from the shining brink
Catch the faint note, and know the poor song fails,
Having no strength to reach their heavenly height;
So listen thou, belovèd, and so think—
More for the earth than Heaven his song avails,
Yet sweetest heard when nearest to God's light.
291

I, LEAST OF ALL.

No man is worthy of her favoring grace,
I, least of all, on whom the gods have laid
A heavy hand; who live with soul afraid,
As one who walks by dark, precipitous ways,
Knowing on either side lie death and space.
Yet in a desperate mood my whole heart prayed
That she by whose least touch my blood is swayed,
Whose soul is as a high and heavenly place,
Would love me, seeing how wholly I was hers.
Behold, she did accept my prayer: even she,
Ringed round by bands of goodly worshippers,
Stept from their midst to sit alone with me
Under the shadow of my dark yew-tree,
Where, parted, still her soul with mine confers.

LOVE AND MUSIC.

I listened to the music broad and deep:
I heard the tenor in an ecstasy
Touch the sweet, distant goal; I heard the ery
Of prayer and passion; and I heard the sweep
Of mighty wings, that in their waving keep
The music that the spheres make endlessly,—
Then my cheek shivered, tears made blind mine eye:
As flame to flame I felt the quick blood leap,
And, through the tides and moonlit winds of sound,
To me love's passionate voice grew audible.
Again I felt thy heart to my heart bound,
Then silence on the viols and voices fell;
But, like the still, small voice within a shell,
I heard Love thrilling through the void profound.
292

LOVE'S STRESS.

About my love, O love, why do I sing?
Canst thou by my weak words my great love know?
Or can I hope that any words should show
That exquisite interchange of June with Spring
That makes thy sweet soul the divine, sweet thing
Of which no man the memory lets go,
Once having known? What breath have I to blow
The clarion of thy praise to echoing?
I sing, not for thy sake, nor for men's sake,—
I do but sing to ease mv soul from stress
Of love, and thy deep, passionate loveliness;
So, in some great despair, our hearts must break
But for our bitter sobs and frantic cries,
Sent out against the inaccessible skies.

CROWNING LOVE.

Am I not very part of thee, O Sweet,
Even as a soul is part of the great sun?
In davs before I knew thee, life had run
With me to barren wastefulness; no heat
Informed my days: I only heard the beat
Of Death's dull sea no traveller may shun,—
I did not fear to meet it, being as one
Who goes with head downcast and flagging feet;
When, lo, between me and Death's wave a light,
A sudden heat and splendor in the air!
Thy soul from far caught the importunate prayer
For dawn of one who wrestled with the night;
And, as mine eyes. mv soul had instant sight
Of things divine and strange, for Thou wert there.
293

OUTER SADNESS.

I held my Love against my heart, and knew
The deep dehght of loving her; yea, all
The maddenmg sweetness, when beyond recall,
Her lips through mine my longing spirit drew
And uttermost heaven opened to my view,
Where she and I with Love kept festival.
But with the calm that followed, and the fall
Of gentler kisses, soft and sweet as dew,
Came in the March wind's melancholy voice,
A weary monster seeking after prey;
And farther off I seem to eatch the noise
Of waves that hiss and thunder while they slay,—
A sudden terror seized me 'mid my joys,
And “Death” was all the word Love found to say.

REMEMBERED HOURS.

Not here at all, nor in thy far-off place,
I stand to-day in heart; but by those seas
Which two years back made choral symphonies
To Love's great hymn of rapture and of praise;
I stand and hear the clamor of old days,—
The days of sun, and winds that made no peace
At dusk, but through the night's wide radiances
Fought on, before the moon's affrighted face;
And o'er the confluent thunder of the deep,
The infuriated shrieking of the gale,
I hear the sweetness of thy tones prevail.
Ah. how the blood thrills, and the pulses leap,
When all Love's burning memories assail
This heart which only meets thee, now, in sleep!
294

A DREAM.

Here, where last night she came, — even she for whom
I would so gladly live, or lie down dead, —
Came in the likeness of a Dream, and said
Such words as thrilled this desolate, ghost-thronged room,
I sit alone now, in the absolute gloom.
Ah, surely on her breast was leaned my head!
Ah, surely on my mouth her kiss was shed,
And all my life broke into scent and bloom.
Give thanks, heart, for thy rootless flower of bliss;
Nor think the gods severe, though thus they seem —
Though thou hast much to bear and much to miss —
Whilst thou, through nights and days to be, canst deem
One thing, and that thing veritably this,
Imperishable, —the memory of a Dream.

ALIEN HOURS.

These days that bring no word of hope to me,
From her whose presence turns my dark life bright,
Are guests with whom one may not live aright,
Because they enter not that sanctuary
Of intimate, perfect, dearest secrecy,
As friends to whom one speaks without affright
Of Love, and Love's immaculate delight,
Knowing their heart's unuttered sympathy.
These days— though fair enough, with Summer's soul
Reflected in their eyes, and in their tone
The deep sea's chime —are yet to me unknown.
Depart from me, —your goal is not my goal!
Come that dear day, to make my spirit whole,
Which brings me word of her, my queen, my own!
295

THE HEAVEN OF HEAVENS.

Not to the general heaven take thy flight,
O happy, happy, happy song of mine;
But to the heart of innermost heaven divine;
O'er fields of day, to privacies of light,
Take thou thy way, and being come aright
To that fair place which is my heaven and thine,
Where my thoughts throng, as pilgrims to a shrine, —
Even to her heart, whose love is my soul's sight, —
Say unto her that other songs are free
To sound about the world and win men praise;
Thy greater glory is this sovereign grace
To live alone in her sweet memory, —
To have thy heavenly and abiding place
In her deep heart, Love's holiest sanctuary.

SOON TO MEET.

When a man sails to far-off, longed-for ways,
With many days to pass 'twixt sea and sky,
At first he heeds not time, and seeks thereby
To mock its power; but after weary days,
When one cries, “Land in sight!” he takes his place
With others on the deck, and can descry
The outlines of the land; then feverishly
He counts the minutes till he win their grace.
So when my venturous life put forth alone —
Yourself the lovely land it steered unto —
I dared not count the hours that now are flown,
All but these last remaining, lessening few;
And these, being few enough to count, have grown
As painful ages till they bring me you.
296

LOVE'S LOST DAY.

When thou and I are parted, presently,
This dead day's ghost, with white, accusing face,
Shall walk among our harsh, unpitying days,
Saying, “For tenderness Love fashioned me;
And, lo! ye did defame my deity,
Reft me of sweetness, took away my grace,
And set a horror in my fair self's place, —
That self no tears can make again to be.”
But when, for one of us, vain days go by,
The while the other sleeps beneath the flowers,
Heedless of sunshine, or soft, April showers,
“Look ever in my eyes,” this day shall cry,
“Wherein, as in deep streams, reflected lie
Love's murdered, irrecoverable hours!”

OTHER TWILIGHTS.

O Love, does she recall the far-off place, —
The place we loved in, but two years ago,
And through gray twilights heard the sea-winds blow,
And thunder of the sea that shines and slays?
I walk alone, now, by still, inland ways;
The time is Autumn, and the light is low,
Through which a wind like that we used to know,
Comes, like the voices of those other days, —
Those other twilights, thronged with dreams and hopes,
When all my way with flowers seemed fair to see,
Who now must go by harsh, unflowering slopes,
Through night with which no least light ever copes,
Until some blessed day I come to be
Where all my silent dead ones wait for me.
297

TWO PALACES.

Lo, now, how well, at last, all things come right!
We thought a lordly pleasure-house to raise,
But, shaken by the shock and change of days,
It fell; and now we build upon its site
Another palace of more moderate height, —
Not large, or lordly, but a pleasant place,
With quiet paintings, and a waving grace
Of leaves for June, when suns are over-bright.
“How fair it is! How better in all ways
Than that we strove to build before!” we muse,
Both silently; yet o'er some buried trace
Of that first palace both to bend might choose,
Saying: “This last is worthy of most praise,
Yet here was something that we loved, and lose.”

TWO LIVES.

In a still twilight one sits very still, —
There is no light of rapture in her eyes,
But they are peaceful as the twilight skies.
Life's joy is past; past also is Life's ill;
Soon sleep with dreamless rest her heart shall fill.
Through sunset wastes, where many a wild bird flies,
Thrilling the lurid glow with short, sharp cries,
Wheeling above great waves made strong to kill,
Up a precipitous, unflowering way,
Where salt sea-grasses shiver drearily,
One labors on, toward the disastrous sea,
Moaning, “We were together in Life's day,
But now the night is on us, where are we?”
And the waves, answering, thunder, “Where are they?”
298

HOPE.

I said, “Who art thou, with the flower-crowned hair
And shining eyes?” She answered, “I am Hope,
Thy friend for life, with all thy foes to cope.”
Sweet songs she sang me, of far lands and fair;
Her face made starlight in a starless air;
But once, as down a dark and flowerless slope
That heard the sea, we strove our way to grope,
A sudden terror came upon her there;
She fell, — the strength ebbed from her, and she died.
Above her, dead, in body and soul I bowed,
While with strange tongues the darkness was endowed;
And well I knew the thing they prophesied:
Then up the shore came the waves large and loud,
And my life answered, tide to bitter tide.

AT THE END.

If now, indeed, O Love, the end be near,
And thou and I — who for so many days
Have struggled on, up steep and perilous ways,
Crying “Good cheer,” when there was no good cheer—
Gain now this topmost summit, steep and sheer,
And see below that sad, abysmal place
Where all fair lost things are, whereof one says,
“They rise not ever, who lie buried here,”—
If this be so, once more take hands and kiss;
Let our souls rush together as two flames
Of which the wind makes one flame. By Love's bliss,
By all his saddest, most memorial names,
We swear that no love ever, after this,
Shall claim us, till ourselves Death, mightier, claims.
299

LOVE'S INFINITY.

When to thine arms myself I do consign,
And yield thee with my body all my soul,
Why seems it that I give not yet the whole, —
That by some way thought hardly may divine
I might be more irrevocably thine, —
More utterly subject to thy heart's control?
Oh, far away, before I reached Love's goal,
Lie the dead days which were and were not mine,
Being days that saw not, heard not, felt not thee.
Now, wailing, unconsolable ghosts of days,
They would anew their lives re-live in me,
That so thou might'st have all in thine embrace:
Nay, were it thus, would Love's infinity
Not yearn for gifts of still more lavish grace?

MY LOVE.

My Love is like great music when it fills
Man's heart and brain with high, all-hail delight;
My Love is like some still, immaculate night,
When through the hushed and sleeping earth there thrills
God's very peace; my Love is like the hills
That welcome first the dawn upon each height, —
For is she not as pure as they and bright,
With eyes like sunlight upon wind-kissed rills?
But ah, my song, that thou canst never say
How fairer far she is than all these things, —
My governing moon by night, my sun by day,
My nightingale, in whom the whole choir sings,
My summer of women, in whose beauty clings
What men to pluck would give their souls away!
300

WHAT TWO SAW.

I heard thunder of drums, and the trumpet's blast;
And I saw red banners that waved on the air;
And I heard the shouts of those fighting there;
I saw fires blaze, saw the tents o'ereast,
Saw cannon front cannon, deep, deadly, and vast;
Heard the conqueror's shout, the cries of despair
Of falling and wounded, who died with the glare
Of flame on their features, distraught, and aghast.
You stood beside me, but what did you see? —
No field of battle, but one sown with corn,
Yellow corn, which in time man's bread should be;
You heard not the cry of the hope forlorn;
You heard not the feet of the hosts that flee, —
But my soul at your feet lay dead, down borne.

BESIDE THE DEAD.

Sad seems the room, and strangely still, where lies
Some form now motionless, in which of late
Glad life exulted. Mark the changed estate,
The helpless hands, clasped in such peaceful wise,
The speechless lips, and unbeholding eyes
Which might not look into the eyes of Fate;
And as about the bed you watching wait,
What pleading pity to your spirit cries!
But, surely, yet a sadder thing is this
To look upon Love's face, where Love lies dead,
While all his memories of pain and bliss,
Thorn-crowned and rose-crowned, watch beside the bed.
Sped souls may live again, no man can tell;
But dead Love shall not break Death's awful spell.
301

SPRING SADNESS.

O Spring, and art thou here again, as one
Who, bearing erst the tidings of high things,
And echoes of that song that no man sings,
Com'st now, with all thy promises foredone?
Thy clear, fresh wind, thy clouds surprised by sun,
Swallows that wheel and dart in mazy rings,
Thy charitable wall-flower scent that clings,
And noise of streamlets carolling as they run, —
Are these not sweet as in the far-off days,
When the heart answered some mysterious call,
And eyes discerned the fair, indefinite face,
Of future things to be memorial?
Aye, sweet; and yet, alas for one who says:
“Ghosts of the vanished Springs! and is this all?”

IN EARLY SPRING.

With delicate wind, clear light of the warm sun,
Surely I know the subtle charm of Spring,
The earth and man's worn heart revisiting.
I would not have thy brief existence done,
And yet I would, O new-born Spring, that one
Might meet thine eyes without their mirroring
The ghost of many a sweet and bitter thing, —
Old dreams, old hopes, too frail to lean upon.
O last descended of a hostile race,
Though in thyself so gently, softly fair,
Within thine eyes ancestral Springs I trace!
Thus some wronged woman, in her baby's face
May shuddering see its father's likeness there,
While parted raptures thrill through her despair.
302

MAN AND SPRING.

When love upon the man's side falls away,
And delicate finger-tips and the slow kiss
Which kindled once such wild, delirious bliss
As no words seemed intense enough to say,
And dear, low voice, and eyes that seemed to pray
For Love's reply, —when, at the last, of this
Only the unavailing memory is, —
“Once it was sweet; once, on a far-off day —”
Is there in life, indeed, a sadder thing?—
I answer, there is one thing even more sad, —
To greet with loveless heart and eyes the Spring,
In which of old such pure high joy we had;
To grieve anew, when all her glad birds sing,
Remembering that we too — we once were glad.

VOID SPRING.

This placid day, here at the Winter's end,
This day of temperate sunshine and mild air,
Filled with high promise of glad things and fair,
Is unto me like some dear, chosen friend, —
Loved well by twain whose two lives might not blend
Because Death called the worshipped woman where
Is no delight in love or love's sweet care,
Where neither prayers nor songs nor sighs ascend.
If any comfort to the lover's heart
Yields the dear friend who holds so much of her
At whose light footfall he no more shall start,
Such comfort to my soul these hours impart;
I greet of Spring the Spring-like harbinger,
Knowing with me Spring's self may not confer.
303

YOUTH AND NATURE.

Is this the sky, and this the very earth
I had such pleasure in when I was young?
And can this be the identical sea-song,
Heard once within the storm-cloud's awful girth,
When a great storm from silence burst to birth;
And winds to whom it seemed I did belong
Made the keen blood in me run swift and strong
With irresistible, tempestuous mirth?
Are these the forests, loved of old so well,
Where on May nights enchanted music was?
Are these the fields of soft, delicious grass;
These the old hills with secret things to tell?
O my dead youth, was this inevitable,
That with thy passing, Nature, too, should pass?

A JUNE DAY.

The month is June, but all the sky is gray,
And to the weary earth seems leaning low;
There is no little breath of wind to blow
The searching perfume of these flowers away
That climbing round my window peer and stay;
The thrush sings, where the branches thickly grow;
The day moves by, with heavy feet and slow;
“Death endeth all,” the stillness seems to say.
But Love shall come before Death's nuptial hour;
There sits my queen, and silent — pondering what?
Sees she, as I, Love's joy-environed bower,
Where sweet, conspiring things one sweeter plot;
Or does she hear, 'neath some grave's guardian flower,
Sad sighing of dead loves remembered not?
304

A JULY DAY.

To-day the sun has steadfast been and clear;
No wind has marred the spell of hushful heat,
But with the twilight comes a rush and beat
Of ghost-like wings; the sky turns gray and drear,
The trees are stricken with a sudden fear.
O wind forlorn, that sayest nothing sweet,
With what foreboding message dost thou greet
The dearest month but one of all the year?
Ah, now it seems I catch the moan of seas
Whose boundaries are pale regions of dismay,
Where sad-eyed people wander without ease;
I see in thought that lamentable array,
And surely hear about the dying day
Recorded dooms and mournful prophecies.

MOMENTS OF VISION.

I.

One came to me, and led me by the hand,
And took me from the city far away;
Bright was the sun, and loud with wind the day,
And on we wended till we took our stand
Where mighty waters broke against the land.
Bright in the sunlight shone the shivering spray,
While, loud as monsters roaring after prey,
Roared the strong waters laboring up the strand:
And through their roar an inner note I caught
Of passionate remembrance; and mine eyes
Beheld a light long lost and vainly sought.
My heart was stormed by a divine surprise;
For, lo! this was the sea, — even she who wrought
For the dead boy miraculous ecstasies.
305

II.

So once in Summer walking 'mid the hills,
What time the twilight clothes them with her peace,
And birds fly home to rest in deep-leaved trees
Through which a last, low song one moment thrills,
Then ceases; and the unobtrusive rills
Babble along their ways, and small winds cease,
And in their soft, blue spaces stars increase
Before the moon of Heaven her light fulfils, —
Through that deep peace, long seen though unfelt long,
As from a land divine and most remote
Wherein alone do pale-mouthed dreams make song,
The ancient peace of boyhood seemed to float;
O heart of Heaven! deep rest and undefiled
Needs the man less than the untroubled child?

III.

Then spoke a low, clear voice to me and said:
“What knew the boy of the hot strife for fame,
Or love that often slighted turns to shame?
Ambition's curse you drew upon your head,
And with strange food unnatural hungers stayed;
Then ghosts, with tongues against you to declaim,
With cruel, deriding lips, and eyes of flame,
Filled all your sleep with sorrow and sick dread.
“Good gifts I, Nature, gave you, — storm and rest,
Sundawn and sunset, and the shade profound.
‘Good gifts!’ you laugh, ‘but man must be renowned,
So I will forth. nor weary in the quest
Till mighty gods my ambitious brows have crowned.’
Lo, the lost child! Lo, the forsaken breast!”
306

PARABLES.

I.

I built a house for quiet and dim peace, —
A place whereto when weary I might go,
To sit alone and let the pent tears flow,
And feel a little while their bitter ease.
I built my house, I ringed it round with trees,
And often, when the sun and winds were low,
I sat and mused there, while there seemed to grow
A rest begotten of dear memories.
But strange, unholy shapes with snake-wreathed brows
Did throng my refuge and defile my grove, —
So now no more about that house I move.
Still it looks peaceful through its shadowy boughs;
But voices from within the calm disprove:
What say you, then — shall I not burn my house?

II.

A magic circle holds me round, to-day, —
The air is vital with the young, sweet Spring;
In the fresh wind the leaves and grasses sing;
The songs of birds are blown from spray to spray;
The time is pure, and ardent, and how gay!
Now falls the saintly dusk; low whispering
The gentle wind goes by with flagging wing,
The sun to follow, on his downward way.
Great quietude of moonlight holds the land;
Now if one word I whisper to the air,
If one way turn, or even reach my hand,
The spell is broken, and my Spring to scare
Comes Winter back, and shivering I stand,
Once more the old blast of his old winds to bear.
307

III.

I walked in Summer through green, pleasant ways,
And heard a soft wind singing as I went,
And casual songs of birds; sweet was the scent
Of wild things prospering in a sheltered place;
But suddenly chill rain-drops smote my face,
And, like the sad, melodious discontent
That wakens in the wind-played instrument,
The low wind sighed, recalling other days.
I passed into a churchyard filled with dead;
And all the graves, it seemed, had separate tongues,
For over each a bird poised, wings outspread,
And sang sad things of those deaf, eyeless throngs:
“What may this mean?” I cried, and one there said,
“These be thy griefs of old, and these thy songs.”

IV.

Thou sayest, “The skies are dark above my head,
Destroying waves break loud upon my strand,
Wild winds and ruining blight infest my land:
'T is Summer still, but Summer flowers lie shed
On wind-scourged paths; my song-birds all are dead:
Only the oldest trees may hope to stand
Against this mad wind's devastating hand,
There will I house me till its wrath be sped.”
Thou fool! Thou shalt awake some day to see
Thine oldest trees crash round thee, every one;
To meet no darkness, but the insatiate sun,
A beast with eyes of flame, and thee for prey;
And slight, indeed, on that disastrous day,
Will seem this dead day's harsh calamity.
308

V.

She sits at home in lordly palaces,
With glowing eyes, and flowing, vine-wreathed hair,
And dainty, white-rose body left half bare;
And they who find life glad and full of ease
Make love to her, and sweet she is to these;
And they who know the blackness of despair
Turn to her, seeing she is surely fair,
And from their pain she gives them swift release.
The same she is who walks the populous street,
A painted, brazen harlot without shame;
But all her lovers, poor and rich, shall meet
There where she leads them, — where in lurid flame
Those gone before her fiery kiss entreat,
Gnash teeth, and dying execrate her name.

THREE SONNETS ON SORROW.

I.

A child, with mystic eyes and flowing hair,
I saw her first, 'mid flowers that shared her grace;
Though but a boy, I cried, “How fair a face!”
And, coming nearer, told her she was fair.
She faintly smiled, yet did not say “Forbear!”
But seemed to take a pleasure in my praise.
She led my steps through many a leafy place,
And pointed where shy birds and sweet flowers were.
At length we stood upon a brooklet's brink, —
I seem to hear its sources babbling yet, —
She gave me water from her hand to drink,
The while her eyes upon its flow were set.
“Thy name?” I asked; she whispered low, “Regret,”
Then faded, as the sun began to sink.
309

II.

We met again, as I foresaw we should;
Youth flooded all my veins, and she had grown
To woman's height. yet seemed a rose half-blown.
Like sunset clouds that o'er a landscape brood
Her eyes were, that they might not be withstood;
And like the wind's voice when it takes the tone
Of pine-trees was her voice. I cried, “My own!” —
And kneeling there I worshipped her and wooed.
O bitter marriage, though inevitable, —
Ordained by Fate, who wrecks or saves our days!
Lo, the changed bride, no longer fair of face,
And in her eyes the very fires of hell!
“Thy name?” I cried; and these words hissing fell:
“Anguish and madness come of my embrace.”

III.

What thing may be to come I cannot know.
Her eyes have less of Hell in them, meanwhile;
At times she almost smiles a ghastly smile,
I have in all things done her bidding so.
Chill are the rooms wherein no bright fires glow,
Where no fair picture doth the eye beguile;
Once awful laughter shook the gloomy pile;
Unholy, riotous shapes went to and fro.
There is no sound, now, in the house at all,
Only outside the wind moans on, alway:
My Lady Sorrow hath no word to say,
Seems half content; for well she knows her thrall
Shall not escape from her; that should God call
She would rise with him at the Judgment Day.
310

IN PRAISE OF SLEEP.

I.

There is a Land where nightly I repair,
At whose dim gate I put my cross aside,
Stretch out my arms toward Rest as toward a bride,
And am withal assuaged. Ah, even there,
Beyond false hope, beyond the stress of prayer,
Beyond the hurt and smart of broken pride,
With no more hunger for sweet things denied,
My heart has rest and respite from despair.
O land of mystic shapes and languid pleasure,
Waste field of poppies without track it seems!
O scentless lilies, by the voiceless streams
Where come my ghosts and dance a silent measure,
Hold my last joy, now! — only in dear dreams
Give back to me, sometimes, my buried treasure!

II.

I have no heart in me for Love's delight:
How sweet the Summer was! How strong its spell!
I care not, now, what stars may have to tell;
To me the day is void, and void the night.
Upon her dim and inaccessible height
Fame stands above me, robed and crowned. Ah, well!
Let those who love her find her pleasurable;
She hath no grace or merit in my sight.
I am in love alone with tender Sleep, —
Dew on my sad, unfruitful flower of life
Of which no man the memory may keep.
O most divine forgetfulness of strife,
My sky is not too dark, my path too steep,
While Thou art mine, for Friend, for Love, for Wife!
311

MY LIFE

To me my life seems as a haunted house,
The ways and passages whereof are dumb;
Up whose decaying stair no footsteps come;
Lo, this the hall hung with sere laurel boughs,
Where long years back came victors to carouse.
But none of all that company went home;
For scarce their lips had quaffed the bright wine's foam,
When sudden Death brake dank upon their brows.
Here in this lonely, ruined house I dwell,
While unseen fingers toll the chapel bell;
Sometimes the arras rustles, and I see
A half-veiled figure through the twilight steal,
Which, when I follow, pauses suddenly
Before the door whereon is set a seal.

HAUNTED ROOMS.

Must this not be, whate'er the years disclose,
When I and those in whom my heart has vent,
From whose dear lives soul-light to mine is sent,
Lie at the last 'neath where the long grass grows,
Made one, in one interminable repose,
Not knowing whence we came or whither went, —
Done with regret, with black presentiment
Of greater griefs, or more victorious foes, —
Must this not be that one then dwelling here,
Where one man and his sorrows dwelt so long,
Shall feel the pressure of a ghostly throng,
And shall upon some desolate midnight hear
A sound more sad than is the pine-trees' song,
And thrill with great, inexplicable fear?
312

WORTH REMEMBRANCE.

Of me ye may say many a bitter thing,
O Men, when I am gone, — gone far away
To that dim Land where shines no light of day.
Sharp was the bread for my soul's nourishing
Which Fate allowed, and bitter was the spring
Of which I drank and maddened; even as they
Who wild with thirst at sea will not delay,
But drink the brine and die of its sharp sting.
Not gentle was my war with Chance, and yet
I borrowed no man's sword, — alone I drew
And gave my slain fit burial out of view.
In secret places I and Sorrow met:
So, when you count my sins, do not forget
To say I taxed not any one of you.

A LIFE.

He walked 'midst shadows, and he nursed at heart
A grief that set strange poison in his blood;
He lived, and was of no man understood.
In all glad things that be he had no part;
And wearily he turned unto his art,
But of his labor had he little good.
Comfort he sought in cheerless solitude;
But visionary faces made him start.
Wrong things he did, was quick of thought and speech.
For grievous sin had grievous punishment;
Missed Love, missed Fame, both once within his reach,
Nor might succeed in any high intent;
And when he died had on his monument:
“All that Life taught him, Lord, let Death unteach.”
313

ANTICIPATED DEATH.

Let none be sad for this man when he lies
Alone and out of torment, — past the sting
Of all his various agonies, — but bring
The brightest flowers to lay upon his eyes.
With no high, glad, triumphant chants surprise
His perfect quietness; bend low and sing
Some wistful song, soft as winds whispering
Through leafy branches under twilight skies.
And if when death was on him he had yearned
Once more to try his desperate chance, and so
Had died with life and death unreconciled, —
Think of him only as a wayward child,
Who craves ill things because he does not know;
The rest which shall be his he will have earned.

PRISONED THOUGHTS.

O soul of Song, hast thou forsaken me?
Thoughts journey through my spirit night and day,
And throng the gateways of my soul, and pray
That thou, who holdest in thy hand the key,
Would'st let them forth, that they may wander free.
Listen, O distant soul, to what they say:
“We wander up and down, yet find no way
To lead us forth from our captivity.
“Lo! we have messages for those outside,
And all day long we beat against the gate.”
Come then, O Song, my thoughts to liberate;
Make thou, in turn, each one thy fruitful bride, —
Through life else must they daily watch and wait,
And in dark places of my soul abide.
314

IRREVOCABLE.

Because it did not yield me shade enough,
Because the time seemed long till fruit should be,
I smote at root my flowering apple-tree:
It was the fairest tree in my scant grove,
And fell with little sound. I watched above
And viewed it where it lay, content to see
My fearful handiwork, and angrily
I shook its boughs, and plucked the leaves thereof, —
Poor leaves that never a deep shadow made,
Yet were so fair! I dropped them, one by one;
And then I wept, for what I cannot say, —
Unless my heart conjectured of some day
When I should stand alone, and no such shade
Should interpose between me and the sun.

MY LAND.

I walk 'neath sunless skies; by flowerless ways
With failing feet and heavy heart I go, —
Through leafless trees vague winds of twilight blow.
A strange, still land this is: ghosts of old days
Rise up to meet me; a beloved, dead face
Emerges on my path; or sweet and low
The accents of some voice I used to know
Fall on my heart, where only sorrow stays.
My ghostly Land, wherethro', myself a ghost,
I journey ever toward that stranger strand
By which no ships from this world ever coast, —
Ah, there shall I remember, still, my Land?
Nay, God, — if any God indeed there be, —
Grant me, in Death, release from Memory.
315

THE TEMPTRESS.

I.

Unto the awful Temptress at my side,
From whose embrace comes madness at the end,
I said, “I will not yield, but will defend
My weary soul till body and soul divide.”
“Art thou so much in love with grief?” she cried,
“That thou wilt have no other love or friend?”
I answered her, “In guile thou dost transcend
All other foes who have my strength defied.”
“Once thou didst tarry in my halls,” quoth she,
“And to fair chambers were thy footsteps led.”
“Blood-red and hot thy kisses were,” I said,
“Thralled was I, then, who now, at least, am free;
But if again those floors my feet should tread,
Then thou and Hell should have me utterly.”

II.

Because she stands so fatally close to me;
Because I breathe in anguish with each breath,
Who may not face the awful eyes of Death,
Nor 'scape the pitiless eyes of Memory;
Because my soul is deaf, nor may it see;
Because within my ear the Temptress saith:
“Am I not fair, crowned with my fragrant wreath?
Have I not pleasant gifts to give to thee?”
Because I know the sweet mouth only lies,
Yet surely know that she is very fair, —
I venture not to look into her eyes,
As in a lighter mood I might have done,
Nor touch her hand, nor idle with her hair,
Seeing of this could come no end but one.
316

III.

“Look at me once again,” she pleaded yet;
“Come thou with me, and be no more alone;
Why should thy heart perpetually make moan?”
She took my hand. Then, being so beset,
I spoke no word, but turned, and our eyes met.
My blood leaped in me, as a flame wind-blown.
“Call me again,” she said, “thy very own,
And teach thy heart its sorrow to forget.”
I gazed, and gazing saw that she was fair,
And full of grace; but while I looked, behold
Her beauty like a robe fell from her there,
And left her standing, wrinkled, lean, and old;
“Go hence,” I cried, “base mother of sins untold,
And leave my soul its undefiled despair.”

WARFARE WITH THE GODS.

This man was full of strength once, hope, and fire;
And when the gods derided him, he said:
“O Gods, your curse lies heavy on my head;
Against my peace I know that you conspire;
But, lo! I can defy you. Will ye tire
Yourselves with warfare? Shall my soul fall dead
Because scant blessings on her path are shed?
Some things are left still, dear to my desire;
“And these shall give me courage in despite.”
“Thou fool!” the gods laughed, and with wrong on wrong,
As seas come wave on wave when winds are strong,
They came against him, and laid waste his might,
Till, utterly humbled, prostrate in their sight,
He fell, and moaned, “My Masters, oh, how long?”
317

LIFE.

Prisoned I was within a noble hall,
Ringed round with many gracious images,
And through it floated strains that might appease
The soul's sore thirst for music. On each wall
Fair pictures hung to hold the eye in thrall, —
High mountains clothed in cold, immaculate peace,
A light of water between wavering trees,
Wild seas wherefrom drowned mariners seemed to call.
A table stood there, heaped with fruits and wine,
But, lo, the fruits turned ashes at my gaze,
And to my taste the gold juice seemed like brine:
Here must one die, then, with no chance for strife,
Loathing the impotent beauty of the place? —
Then these words shivered past me, “This is Life!”

A WISH.

I do but ask a little time of peace
Before the end of all. I crave no bliss;
I crave no love, nor fame; but only this, —
On summer days to bask beneath old trees,
Or half asleep to lie by gentle seas,
Hearing the waves that whisper ere they kiss,
Then break and babble; or, when twilight is,
And one by one the birds from singing cease,
Wander the patient, tranquil hills among,
And languish in an exquisite regret,
And hear a sad but not discordant song
Possess the air; and when the sun is set,
Lie down with thankfulness to know, ere long,
All things that ever were I shall forget.
318

A QUESTION.

If I had been in love with Life, had Death
Seemed any ghastlier, more full of dread,
Or I shrank more from thought of being dead,
Sightless and still, and in my lips no breath,
Night all about me, and the dust beneath?
Not so, I think, for then I should have said:
“I have been glad, though now I make my bed
Where dead folk lie, and never a word one saith.”
Harder seems this, — to die and leave the sun,
And carry hence each unfulfilled desire.
I heard one cry, “Come where the feast is spread;”
But when I came the festival was done;
Somewhile I shivered by the extinguished fire,
And now retrace my steps uncomforted.

MAN'S DAYS.

From sorrow unto sorrow man progresses,
If length of days be his; till, come at last,
Nigh to that realm unknowable and vast,
Which hides the whole world's dead in its recesses,
Where iron night on every sleeper presses,
In its strange neighborhood he moves aghast;
Remembering intermittently his past,
Lulled sometimes by a gentle ghost's caresses.
He moves down ways and by-ways listlessly, —
A traveller who, having paid his score,
Knowing therewith he hath to do no more,
Waits till the ship already in sight be free
To bear him back to his far, natal shore,
Back though the darkness and the awful sea.
319

VAIN FREEDOM.

I sat between two shapes with eyes of fire:
All there was dark except those eyes of flame;
Each shape spake severally its dreadful name;
Through them was life made barren of desire.
I heard a sound as of a stricken lyre,
And lust of power and song upon me came;
But they cried out, “For thee shall be no fame;
Kneel down, now, and cast dust on thine attire.”
Silent I knelt, in my most abject woe,
Till from my lips there brake a passionate prayer.
Then Love's voice called me, and I strove to go.
They freed me, with wild laughter on the air;
I struggled forward to the light, and, lo!
Not Love it was, but Death who met me there.

EVEN FOR THEE.

Thy feet are weary, and thy strength is low;
Life's brightness is behind thee, and thy face
Is set against the darkness. For a space
Sad winds about thy path shall moaning blow,
And ghosts on either hand with thee shall go.
Great dread shall be upon thee, in those days, —
Dread of the darkness and the uncertain ways,
Such dread as man again may never know.
But even for thee shall come at last the end,
And Death thy soul with slumber shall assuage.
No painful thought of altered or dead friend
Shall hurt thy heart again, nor impotent rage
At Fate's blind mysteries thy soul shall rend;
But rest shall be thy well-earned heritage.
320

THE PRISONER.

Gloom girdeth gloom, and in the central gloom,
Yea, in the inmost sanctuary of despair,
Lies one who knows the impotence of prayer,
Waiting, perchance, yet more disastrous doom.
Outside his night fair women and sweet flowers bloom,
And doubtless laughter and glad song are there;
No music ever trembles on this air,
But phantoms wail, dread ghosts that burst their tomb.
He broods in solitude, remembering
He once was free about God's world to go;
He once kept holiday with Love and Spring;
He once felt Summer in his glad veins glow:
But now, but now, what hope of anything
Save this, — to cease, to pass, and not to know!

THE LONG WAY.

Still the old paths and the old solitude,
And still the dark soul journeying on its way,
A little nearer to its goal each day.
About it does an awful silence brood,
Nor may it know what dread vicissitude
Shall overwhelm it, ere of it men say:
“It is not; and the place of its dismay
Shall know it never more, and this is good.”
“But, ah, poor Soul, how long?” I questioning cry.
“Already thou hast journeyed very long,
By barren ways, beneath a dumb, dark sky.
Once light was with thee, yea, and birds made song,
And voices cheered thee; but of all that throng
What voice to thy voice shall to-day reply?”
321

BURIED SELF.

Where side by side we sat, I sit alone,
But surely hear the absent voice, — as one
Who, playing, when the tune he plays is done,
Hears the spent music through the strings yet moan.
I rove, through places that my soul has known,
Like the sad ghost of some departed nun
Who comes between the moonrise and the sun,
To sit beside her monumental stone.
So by my buried self I take my seat,
And talk with other ghosts of vanished days,
And watch gray shadows through the twilight fleet,
And half expect to see the buried face
Of my dead self rise in the silent place,
To look at me with mournful eyes and sweet.

MY GHOSTS.

When dark days come, and winds are charged with sleet,
And strong men shiver with cold as if with fear,
Then will I ponder by my bright fire here
On things gone by, — half drowsing seem to meet
Fair, gracious comers, who the silence cheat;
And, as the twilight gathers, seem to hear
About the room, and near me and more near,
Soft stir of robes and fall of phantom feet.
But now, to-day, to-day, when it is Spring,
And larks are almost mad with their delight,
Shall I not go where I can hear them sing,
And send my spirit following on their flight? —
Though still within mine ear old tones shall ring,
And from Spring woods ghosts steal upon my sight.
322

DREAM-MOONLIGHT.

Dream-moonlight, which for me sometimes makes bright
And fair and wonderful the vales of sleep,
Where spirits come in dreams to laugh or weep,
Is, more than that which floods the actual night,
A secret, subtle message to the sight.
Sometimes it shines upon a pale dream-deep,
Or on untrodden fields no reapers reap,
Or some unscaled and inaccessible height; —
Sometimes it falls 'twixt branches of dream-trees,
Where the soft light and shade divinely blend.
O fair dream-moonlight, which dost give surcease
To this sore heart from memories that rend,
If death were but to languish in thy peace
How could one stay and battle to the end?

BIDDEN.

One man at Life's feast sat an honored guest, —
Fame on his left hand, Love upon his right,
And Fame and Love were goodly in his sight;
But while those feasting there waxed merriest,
Sudden his smile flagged far behind the jest.
Then in his eyes altered and failed the light;
For one stood there, vast, garmented in night,
Against whose presence men in vain protest.
Another had gall for wine, and stones for bread;
By Fortune buffeted and overthrown,
Knew neither Fame nor Love, but dwelt alone.
To him, “Come hence with me, O Son,” Death said:
Now which seems worse, since all must bow the head;
To know and leave, or never to have known?
323

LIFE'S UNCERTAINTY.

Man draws his fleeting breath in utmost dread,
Not knowing from what ambush ill may start
To plunge another dagger in his heart.
He scarcely knows his living from his dead;
The skies are dark with gloom above his head;
He hears night-birds upon their meek prey dart, —
O Night, of whom he is a very part,
How long is he his dubious path to tread?
Sometimes he hears, and this appals him most,
Ring through the night a chiming wedding-bell.
It is the signal summoning to its post
A new despair to lead his steps to hell, —
So 'twixt wild seas and some implacable coast
Men, sailing, know their doom inevitable.

VAIN WAITING.

One waits and watches all his days away
For what may never come. So looks alone
Some man, upon a desert island thrown,
For sails that pass not; till, too faint to pray,
He folds his hands, and waits the eventful day
When Death, unintercepted, claims his own,
Bids hope lie down by fear, stills the long moan,
And folds the weary feet, no more to stray.
None knew of his sad life and death, till, lo,
Men voyaging from afar, by fierce winds driven,
Cast anchor on that isle, where tempest-riven
They see a log-propped hut, by which they know
That one has lived and died there, hoped and striven;
They shed their unavailing tears and go.
324

FATAL DELAY.

There sat with Love who feasted and were glad,—
Strong men whose lids through love wax warm and wet,
And amorous women whose soft looks beget
Most poignant passion. There, not richly clad,
Sat one, remote, and on his robes he had
Dust of long journeyings; his fingers met
About Love's goblet, but he sighed, “Not yet,”
Though often through great thirst he was nigh mad.
He held the goblet up against the light,
And saw the sparkling wine therein was good;
But sudden darkness settled on his sight;
The guests were gone; he sat in solitude;
The goblet clanging fell, with all its might,
And now he moistens his charred lips with blood.

DEAD LOVE.

And will you now cry out upon dead Love,
Inform the lifeless clay with new, warm breath?
I tell you that Love sleeps the sleep of death.
Cry out, wring hands, and weep! You will not move
Those lips to any speech: yea, though you clove
With yours to his, enfolded him with faith,
He would not stir your word or kiss beneath;
His soul now dwells from pain and joy aloof.
What time Love lay a-dying you stood near,
With lips shut tight, and cold, confronting eyes;
Love's voice had then no music for your ear,
You had no pity, though one cried, “Love dies!”
And now, behold, as to another sphere
You call on Love, and lo! no voice replies.
325

LATE LOVE.

With two who might have loved each other well
Had they met earlier who meet too late,
How does it fare? Do they keep separate,
Each one with feelings incommunicable;
Or are they as dear friends content to dwell
In heart together till they change this state?
Or may their sad and unaccomplished fate,
Instead of joining, wound them and repel?
So when, unjust, a father wills away
His land and fortune from his rightful heirs,
They, wronged, incensed, come after set of day,
And thief-like gain the house, and scale the stairs,
And slay the invader, spite his threats and prayers;
Yet there for fear of judgment may not stay.

LOVE AND DESPAIR.

One came to me with sad, sweet eyes, and said,
A mighty sorrow trembling in his voice,
“Weep now, poor heart, for all thy dreams and joys,
For, lo, thy very hope of them lies dead.”
And as he spake, withal, he bowed his head,
And for a little while there was a noise
As of one weeping, when fell Chance destroys
The life whereby his following life was led.
And he who spake to me for Love I knew,
Though cypress leaves were bound about his hair:
Then close to us another form there drew,—
Stern was his aspect, surely; nowise fair;
Yet round me a strange, awful rest there grew.
“Thy name?” I cried; and he replied, “Despair!”
326

LEAST LOVE.

This small least love of mine, which can but creep
Between the twisted stems of joy and pain,
Is warmed by sun and bathed by every rain.
Last night, transplanted to the fields of sleep,
It blossomed so I could not choose but weep,
Knowing the sweet, familiar scent again.
Mostly it grows unnoticed, fair, and fain
In depths of sunlit air its leaves to steep;
But there are times when every fairer flower
Looks cold, unsympathetic, in my sight;
Then am I glad to turn, in such an hour,
To this my blossom, neither red nor white,
Holding the fragrance of the last warm shower:
But gather it, it fades before the night.

BITTER-SWEET.

With roses, lilies, and the eglantine,
Love filled our hands; and from the grapes that hung
Above his garden, quick with scent and song,
He pressed a sweet and sleep-begetting wine;
And melody intense, remote, divine,
For our delight from his own harp he wrung:
And when sense failed, so many sweets among,
And very passion threatened to decline,
He plucked for us the sharp and bitter brier,
Wherewith our aching brows he garlanded,
And made a sudden discord with his lyre.
Then with new color lips and cheeks grew red,
And pain was straight converted to desire;
“For thus my bitter turns to sweet,” Love said.
327

BRIDAL EVE.

Half-robed, with gold hair drooped o'er shoulders white,
She sits as one entranced, with eyes that gaze
Upon the mirrored beauties of her face;
And through the distances of dark and light
She hears faint music of the coming night;
She hears the murmur of receding days;
Her future life is veiled in such a haze
As hides, on sultry morns, the sun from sight.
Upon the brink of imminent change she stands,
Glad, yet afraid to look beyond the verge;
She starts, as at the touch of unseen hands;
Love's music grows half anthem and half dirge.
Strange sounds and shadows round her spirit fall,
Yet to herself she stranger seems than all.

THE SOUL'S PREGNANCY.

If all be irrecoverably lost,
Why linger here to watch the dull days out,
To greet the meaningless spring, or hear the shout
Of winds and waves upon some stormy coast,
To wither in the winter's deadly frost,
To think on Death, to speculate, to doubt,
To move in funeral train, or festive rout,
'Mid living presences a very ghost?
'T is that the pain-wed soul is conscious of
Some in-wombed child of spiritual good
The heart, before the end, would recognize, —
So some young widow, feeding with her blood
Her own and her dead husband's fruit of love,
But lives that she may see her baby's eyes.
328

ATHEIST TO PANTHEIST.

No future, separate life, — such is your creed, —
But general life of which you grow a part;
A heart-beat of the universal heart;
A rose, perchance, or poor, unnoticed weed;
A fraction of the brilliance and the speed
Of starlit, gusty nights, when meteors dart
Down all the brightening wind; a pulse of Art;
A portion of man's speech, and actual deed:
And thus, absorbed in all-pervading God,
You think to live, conscious, yet knowing nought
Of all the past with pain and joyance fraught,—
An atom, where the atoms onward plod.
What you call God, I Nature name, and hence
Am Atheist; but where the difference?

TO PAUL HAMILTON HAYNE.

Not in this life shall we meet, O my friend,—
My friend unseen, but not unknown of me,—
My friend so far away beyond the sea,
To whose sequestered home my thoughts oft tend.
Nor dare I trust that some new life shall blend
Our lives together; yet strange things may be,
And sweet for thinking is the phantasy
That some new life this failure might amend;
And I might hear a voice, unheard till then,
And clasp a hand, till then unclasped of mine.
At once should I not know them to be thine,—
Poet, and man “who loves his fellow-men,”
Whose thoughts are pure and limpid as star-shine,
And greet thee by thy name, that happy when?
329

NO DEATH.

I saw in dreams a mighty multitude,—
Gathered, they seemed, from North, South, East, and West,
And in their looks such horror was exprest
As must forever words of mine elude.
As if transfixed by grief, some silent stood,
While others wildly smote upon the breast,
And cried out fearfully, “No rest, no rest!”
Some fled, as if by shapes unseen pursued.
Some laughed insanely. Others shrieking, said:
“To think but yesterday we might have died;
For then God had not thundered, ‘Death is dead!’”
They gashed themselves till they with blood were red.
“Answer, O God; take back this curse!” they cried,
But “Death is dead,” was all the voice replied.

WITHOUT PASSION.

Yes, I am changed. When passion warmed my blood,
What time your kisses thrilled me through and through,
There was no thing I would not dare or do
Because your manhood stormed my womanhood.
You were my lord, and all you did was good;
Through you, it seemed, my very breath I drew;
My sun-god, in whose bountiful light I grew.
Now that no more my being with joy you flood;
Because the altered blood flows tranquilly,
For the first time I see you with clear sight,—
Changed, now, indeed from Passion's deity,—
Selfish of heart, ambitious, prone to spite,
Mostly at fault, occasionally right,
Your soul's one claim, your steadfast love of me.
330

LOST SOULS.

Ah, fair, lost Love, I thought once to make mine,
Till you chose God, and turned your face away!
Not cruelly, but firmly did you say:
“I must be God's, none other's, — at no shrine
But His bow knee; God only is divine.”
And so you left me, and behold, to-day,
While fair among the rest you chant and pray
Where fumes the incense and the tapers shine,
I, who with you had walked unblamed as most,
I, whom you cast off in your heavenly zeal,
See my own face, grown old before its time,
Scarred deep by grief and many an unguessed crime,—
My own lost soul, and those my soul has lost
At the last day against you shall appeal.

AT THE LAST.

Because the shadows deepened verily;
Because the end of all seemed near, forsooth,—
Her gracious spirit, ever quick to ruth,
Had pity on her bond-slave, even on me.
She came in with the twilight noiselessly,
Fair as a rose, immaculate as Truth;
She leaned above my wrecked and wasted youth,
I felt her presence, which I could not see.
“God keep you, my poor friend,” I heard her say;
And then she kissed my dry, hot lips and eyes.
Kiss thou the next kiss, quiet Death, I pray;
Be instant on this hour, and so surprise
My spirit while the vision seems to stay;
Take thou the heart with the heart's Paradise.
331

JONATHAN SWIFT; HIS LAST ILLNESS.

Thou sawest from far the curse thou might'st not stay,
Most mighty spirit, strong to love and hate.
For what great sin, sinned in some former state,
Was thy soul forced to contemplate that day
Which should not at one blow take life away,
But on each vital sense shut gate by gate,—
Until thy lord's unfathomable hate,
Supreme, relentless, and which none gainsay,
Left thy great brain confounded in black night,
And wild with pain? Yea, thou wert all alone,
Shut fast in night, as in a living tomb
Where no sound was; Death quenched thy spirit's light
So long before, oh, racked in uttermost gloom,
He made thy poor, dark, tortured body his own.

TO ARTHUR O'SHAUGHNESSY.

ON THE SECOND ANNIVERSARY OF HIS DEATH, JANUARY 30, 1883.

Again returns this day, and still, my friend,
I listen for a step that comes not near,
And hearken for a voice I may not hear
Save in my dreams, where many memories blend.
Two years have passed, and still the days extend,
Void day on day. He, too, has gone away
Who loved thy lyric work; his praise a bay
For which all songs most gladly might contend.
April, that came and found him with us yet,
And took him hence, makes sad the heart of Spring,
And January days shall not forget
That then it was thy sweet lips ceased to sing,
And we who loved thee, knew our feet were set
In paths where thine were no more journeying.
332

TO JAMES THOMSON, AUTHOR OF “THE CITY OF DREADFUL NIGHT.”

I.

Brother, and fellow-citizen with me
Of this great city whose tremendous gloom
Weighed on thee with the heaviness of doom,—
I walk its ways to-day, and seem to see
Thy saddest eyes; again with thee to be
As on that day when, in this very room,
Thine eyes and ours who watched thee saw Death loom,
A mighty monarch, strong to set thee free.
Still, still the same, this “City of Dreadful Night,”—
Still does it hear a sound of lamentation,
As of a conquered. broken-hearted nation;
Still glowers the Sphinx, and breaks us with her might
Of unresponsive front. There is no light;
There is no hope; God, there is no salvation.

II.

No tears of mine shall fall upon thy face;
Whatever City thou hast gained, at last,
Better it is than that where thy feet passed
So many times, such weary nights and days.
Those journeying feet knew all its inmost ways;
Where shapes and shadows of dread things were cast,
There moved thy soul, profoundly dark and vast,
There did thy voice its hymn of anguish raise.
Thou wouldst have left that City of great Night,
Yet travelled its dark mazes, all in vain;
But one way leads from it, which found aright,
Who goes by it may not return again.
There didst thou grope thy way, through thy long pain;
Hast thou, outside, found any world of light?
333

IN MEMORY OF D. G. ROSSETTI.

What wreath have I above thy rest to place,
What worthy song-wreath, Friend, — nay, more than friend?
For so thou didst all other men transcend
That the pure, fiery worship of old days—
That of the boy, content to hear, to gaze—
Burned on most brightly; though as lamps none tend
The lights on other shrines had made an end,
And darkness reigned where was the festal blaze.
Far from us now thou art; and never again
Thy magic voice shall thrill me, as one thrills
When noblest music storms his heart and brain.
The sea remembers thee, — the woods, the hills,
Sunlight and moonlight, and the hurrying rills,—
And Love saith, “Surely this man leads my train!”
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