Reuben and Other Poems | ||
[Released at last! Released from agony!]
The Lord hath answered thus our pleading cry;
And thou hast gone! Sweet peace upon thy brow—
In heaven now.
No longer hath aërial tale to tell
The glad green earth; the vocal air is mute
As broken lute.
Creeps back into our heart his quiet word,
And, with the music of a hidden rill,
Sings to us still.
But, rather, thou shalt help our eyes to see
That thou art closer—dearer—than before
Death oped his door.
REUBEN.
A Dramatic Poem.
ACT I.
Scene I.
A Room. Several young men seated around a table.First Speaker.
Another name would make our list complete;
And since our number is to be restricted,
I should advise we look about for one
Having some quality that we yet want.
Knows any one where Reuben spends his nights?
He used to come amongst us; but of late
He might be dead, or married.—Have you mark'd
How friendships, be they ever so alive,
Grow cold and die without a special cause?
Second Speaker.
Nothing is fix'd: the granite ribs that shield
The continents from the besieging sea,
Are being lick'd into soft layers of sand.
Where cities lie i' the sun, where sickles glance,
Where lovers walk in lanes, and cottages
Wreathe up their lazy smoke in sylvan nooks,
There will be nothing then but sea, blue sea!
A sea of change is ever in our hearts,
Ebbing and flowing; blotting out the lines
That character our present, and anew
Giving our life its margin. Our old loves
Embedded lie, like strata out of date.
Yet who can say they will not rise again
For other, and it may be higher, use?
Buried formations, older than the flood,
Come up and serve the wants of this our day.
Third Speaker.
We are like beads in a kaleidoscope;
And as time moves it round and round, we slip
Out of one fellowship into another,
In hue and form all different: yet through all
Runs the old beauty both of form and hue.
Fourth Speaker.
Or like a pack of cards play'd by the gods:
And as they shuffle, cut, and deal us out,
We find ourselves in many different suits;—
Now link'd between a brace of arrant knaves
With side-long glances, winking to each other;
Now hand in hand with kingly sorts of men
That look straight forward with bright royal eyes;
Breezy in mirth, with the world all at their feet,
Carrying the game before them; and anon,
Close quarter'd with dull miserable rags
That lack the virtue of one living thought,
And can but mutely wait till they are play'd.
Fifth Speaker.
The presences of men are double. This
Which fills the eye and babbles to the ear,
Is but the covert to a timid doe,
Scarce ever to be seen upon the lawns,
But marvellous in beauty when beheld.
Words and side watchings keep that presence in.
Behind the rags you speak of, there is that
Which shrinks from your keen eyes.—In my school time.
I had a cousin; and on holidays
We ever were together: long, long days
We wander'd in lone places, side by side;
Or sat whole hours upon the river's brink,
With not one word between us. Since he died
I've sought in vain another silent mate:
For every one will speak, or wish to speak,
And thus we never can come near enough.—
I dreamt one night there was a crowd of men,
And not one spoke: all were rapt up in thought.
But I could see their spirits coming out,
And flitting, ghost-like, 'mid the silent frames,
Communing with each other without speech.
And when I woke I thought upon my cousin,
Second Speaker.
Let us be silent now: our ghosts will creep
Out of their tenements, like mice at night
When one sits in his slippers, and the fire
Has wink'd itself asleep, and the haunting clock
That had been still all day, goes like a sprite
Ticking through all the house,—O, then they come
Like little clues of worsted o'er the hearth,
And peep about with their black diamond eyes,
Till he's in love with them, and pleased to think
That in the very house with him there are
So many living things that he may love.
Let us be quiet, then, we double men,
And see our beauteous presences come out.
But if we move a foot, or speak one word,
Lord, what a splutter to regain their holes!
First Speaker.
They will not come to watchers: Nature gives
To the unconscious only, things divine.—
Our list still wants a name. I mentioned one,
And that one for this reason. There are some
Whose natures are so mellow in themselves,
They seem to mellow everything they touch;
Most passive souls that put out no strong will,
Their action being chymical. Unknown,
E'en to themselves, they draw bad humours out,
And drop on fever'd natures balmy dew.
Reuben has that rare virtue.
Rare defect!
For that it is defect in him is clear.
He is so undecided in himself
That he takes on the hue of any one,
Be that black, white or green—sinner or saint,
Or simple innocent; and any whim
That any fool may broach, still finds in him
Forbearance, and is even reflected back
With added light on its enraptured sire.
Rare virtue this! I call it rare deceit.
First Speaker.
O no, he is sincere, and only takes
The good that will be found in all bad things.
What if he tackle to a vice at times,
And like an angler runs it with the stream?
Trust me, before he leaves it, it will lie
In all its bareness, strangled at his feet,
Its weak side uppermost.
Fourth Speaker.
Not with a line,
But with a net he fishes. All is fish
That comes to Reuben's net—very good fish.
Sixth Speaker.
He has a strange one in it now, I hear—
A very wary nibbler that has had
Most choice baits offer'd to her. She comes up
And sculls provokingly around the hook,
As if about to take: the fisher's heart
Is up and all on tip-toe for the sport.
'Twas but a nibble, and she's up the stream
To play the same game with some other heart.
The finest twisted lines, the daintiest hooks,
With all old Izaak's art to boot, have fail'd
To wile this sly one from her watery home.
But Reuben comes, and in his blundering way,
Using no art at all, casts in his net,
When straight she falls into it, and is his.
First Speaker.
But has he landed her, and has he knelt
Upon the soft green cushion by her side?
Till then, who knows but she may use an art,
The deeper in seeming none? I do not like
A woman with the habits of a fish,
Treating men's hearts as if they were mere baits
For her especial self, and each conceal'd
A barbed hook which she might rob, then leave.
Your mermaids ever have deceivers been.
Sixth Speaker.
Of wooers she has fifty more at least,
That ply her more than Reuben, and hold out
Flattering inducement: he but lays his heart,
Not in low fawning duty at her feet,
But as a well, over whose brim she stoops,
And sees she is the goddess of its deeps:
And, gazing in, she finds her thoughts all lost
Is mirror'd deep beneath. So that, in him
Her senses being lost, her art is gone,
And love's fine madness leads her like a child.
Second Speaker.
The ladye love of fifty belted knights
Would not go mad for one. But who is she
That in her single bosom thus absorbs
The dues of fifty maids?
Sixth Speaker.
You know the Inn,
Over the river where the two roads meet
And marry with each other on the bridge?
That Inn, her sire has kept for many a year;
And in the good old times when coaches ran,
And carriers and drovers lined the roads,
He fill'd his coffers. The good times went out,
And railway trains had damn'd the house, when lo!
Out of her girlhood's disregarded bud
Burst Margaret into beauty, and became
The house's saviour.
Second Speaker.
I see, I see:
She sets about enlisting simple swains,
And keeps them drinking for the house's good—
Half drunk with love, and half with country ale.
Her heart is sacrificed to save the house,
And this you call the doctrine of salvation.
If men ask drink, it is no part of hers
To serve them with sour looks. If they admire
The sparkling light dancing in her black eyes,
The fine dark stormy beauty in her hair,
The dimpling cheek that mantles like a sea
Flush'd by a ruddy sunset, is it then
Her part to drive them from the house, which house,
Being public, is as free to them as her?
If fifty men would have her, she is led,
Driven, perhaps against her fair intent,
To use the arts I spoke of.
First Speaker.
And you say
Reuben, of all the fifty, is the man!
But since she is not yet securely his,
He has his work before him; and our ends
Were poorly served by the mere patch of heart
That he could spare. Therefore, let each of us
Think of some other friend, so that our list
May be completed the next time we meet.
[Exeunt.
Scene II.
The Bridge, and Road before the Inn. Enter Reuben, reading from a slip of paper.Reuben.
‘And that's the reason lovers long for night.
‘Surely some love-god in the moon doth sit,
‘Throwing a witchery o'er lover's sight!
‘The sun hath no such glamour in his keeping:
‘He is a busy king, and wakes up man
‘To money-making, maid to scrubbing, sweeping—
‘Fixing their thoughts on lowly purse and pan.
‘But our soft sailing moon stoops not so lowly:
‘She is an idle queen: to her belong
‘Young hearts, sad eyes, and that sweet melancholy
‘Which floats on lover's sighs, in lover's song.
‘I do not love thee, sun; would thou wert set
‘That moon and stars may shine, and—Margaret.’
If 'twere not for this safety-valve of rhyme,
Love's heart would burst.—Now is the western sky,
Like the Pacific with its clustering isles,
Fringed round with golden sands and warm green sea.
From yonder one a little speck puts out,
And glides like a canoe across a bay.—
To be a dweller on some tropic isle,
Where nature grows in plenty all we need,
And leaves us nought to do but love and dream,
Were fitting to my spirit. Yet I seek
The company of stirring, restless souls—
E'en when they have a devil in their blood;
And thus methinks in Margaret's black eyes
My second nature leaps, the complement
Of this I call myself. Like a still lake
Circled with hills, I drowse throughout the day,
And live in mere reflection; till eve falls,
When Margaret sweeps o'er me like a wind
That from some mountain gully comes at night,
And stirs the lake to breezy, rippling life.—
In all the evening's changes, in the woods,
Along the breathing meadows, in the stream
That lapses restlessly beneath this bridge,
And through the blinking night, her spirit runs
And gives to all this fine bewildering throb.—
How sweetly up the river comes that knell!
It is the old church telling it is nine.
Ah, slumb'rously it speaks from the nodding wood!
But merrily that ancient tongue will wag
On Marg'ret's bridal morn.—Look! in the east,
Behind yon trees, the big unshapely moon
Moves like a white cow browsing in a thicket.—
Rising and setting, day and night go on;
They neither fail nor rest; and yet no soul
Has any hand in their mysterious rounds!—
Now are the heavens like a busy town
Seen from a distance: as night deepens in,
Lights start out one by one into the dark,
And from the suburb's solitary lamps
They thicken to a centre.—How I seek
I linger on this bridge, and sip and sip
The overflowing beauty of the night,
While Marg'ret, like a jewel in my cup,
Lies at the bottom. Now a dozen steps
Would bring me to her, yet I save them up.—
But, see! O startled heart! 'tis she that comes,
With taper in her hand to light that room;
And now approaches with light springy limb
To shut the darkness out. She looks abroad
Into the vacant dark, but sees not me.
O what a bounteous light is in those eyes!
She is too lavish of it; yet, like founts,
They seem no emptier, though they ever give.—
Ah! beauty should not know when it is seen,
And then 'twere more than beauty. She is gone;
But does not know she has eclipsed herself.
Loud country voices; songs of boisterous key;
Verses that burst the tune—too big by half;
And choruses that break out anywhere.—
To see her drill about 'mid this rough work
Shows the rare mettle in her, but it blunts
The finer edge of love. Another hour,
And these rude brains will drop off to their rest.—
I'll pace a magic-circle round my love
To keep away all glamour—yea a mile
Right round about her heart; and when I've done
No one shall dare to cross it but myself.
Spanker.
If she be not quite struck with me, it's strange!
A very pleasant place, and good ale too.
I'll come here often. Amidst all those louts,
How she mark'd out the gentleman! Her eye
Cast on them sharp reproof: it flooded me
Like April with a shower of rainy light.
And this before we had exchanged one word,
More than—“A glass of so and so,” and—“Yes, sir.”
When we drew near each other and remark'd
Upon the day, the weather, and the crops—
Although in truth I know not wheat from oats:
Let's see, yes, oats grow bristles on their top,
And wheat's that other thing—she was so pleased,
I ventured nearer home, look'd round the bar,
And, seeing all so shiny-like, remark'd,
“Whoever has the management of this,
Will make a rare wife to some lucky wight.”—
“You think so, do you?”—After that, I saw
From out the corner of mine eye, that she—
Ay, more than once—scann'd me from head to foot;
And as I left, she from a vase of flowers
Took this, and placed it in my button-hole.
It is a pink. I wonder what it means.
I'll write to one of those cheap papers; they
Give shrewd replies, and sometimes good advice.—
'Tis lucky I went in, yet merest chance!
I've pass'd here many a time—seen her, no doubt;
But as the settlers saw for many years
The golden clods, yet knew them not as gold.—
I'll keep this Australasia to myself,
And work it at my leisure.
[Exit.
Enter Bradbury, going to the Inn.
Bradbury.
I am old;
That is, compared with her; but from the hints
I got in conversation with her mother,
That seems all in my favour. So it should.
To mate her portion to a spendthrift youth,
Were heartbreak to her parents; and the thought
That their hard raked-up gains were being spent
In madcap thriftlessness, would haunt their graves,
And rob their aged bones of death's sweet rest.
Great fears that plague the spirit in this life
Do hang about it long time after death,
Withholding it from bliss. But she herself
Affects not lack-brain'd youth, and leans, I know,
To large experience and the stable mind
That age alone matures. I could invest
Her money to advantage; could extend
My present business, which, truth to say,
Must have some capital to float it o'er
The bars and banks of trade—ay—banks indeed!—
Or if she'd have me landlord of this house—
This jolly ringing hostelry—why then,
My draught is deep enough;—a landlord's paunch,
Like to a tithebarn in the olden time,
Should give reception to all kinds of goods,
And stow them mixty-maxty. So could mine.
I am no mewling milksop, but, though small,
Season'd and tough. Then, I have wit to give
A ready answer that will turn the mirth
As 'twere against myself, the while I wink
Within myself, and chuckle in my sleeve:
And, when appeal'd to in disputes, I could
Give artful judgment, favouring both sides,
Drawing them on to bets and double gills.
Then, there's the ready laugh to the lame joke;
The affected interest in the maudlin talk,
With, Yes—no—certainly—indeed!
Thrown in to suit the drift of him that speaks:
The sharp eye to anticipate the pipe
That wants a light; the quick officious hand:
The ready-reckoning thumb that counts out change
Without the head's assistance. These have I.—
Some one approaches! I will stand within
The shade of this abutment till they pass. (Cock crows.)
I like not that! I like not that! A cock
Crowing at night, under a waning moon,
Across a wooer's path, bodeth no good;
And that's the big black cock with glossy wings—
A pet of Marg'ret's—I fear some ill.
(Crows again.)
Juniper.
Crow up my gallant bird, use all your nights;
Your days are almost counted; they are few.
Friend.
You know the bird, then?
Juniper.
Know him! deuced well:
They've only one, and he is Marg'ret's pet,
The which I supersede. I've seen her waste
More precious love on that black Spanish Don
Than suited well my stomach; and he struts
So rakishly about her petticoats—
Friend.
Lord! what privilege to give the Don.
Juniper.
He will be superseded: he is doomed.
The other day, whilst lolling in the bar,
Smoking my pipe, she knitting by my side,
In bounced her father—“Margaret,” quoth he,
“That cock has been at his old tricks again:
A bed of radish seed! Not one seed left!
'Twill never do; we'll have him killed straight off.”
“Yes, father, very well; but—not to-day.”
“We'll have him to the wedding breakfast—cold.”
Bradbury.
(aside)
Ah, yes! I do but sleep, and dream all this.
Friend.
You're a lucky dog, Will. 'Tis a large house this;
And all their own, too. Eh?
Juniper.
Yes, all our own,
And a deal of land besides, man—quite a farm.
You'll come and stay a month or two. Let's in—
See how you like our ale.
[Exeunt.
Bradbury.
(coming forward)
Our ale! the snipe!
The wedding breakfast too! What means the rogue?
Have I a rival, then? He might be more!
She would not play me false, and make the while
A paction with an empty kite like that!
No. There are men who whip into the past
Much-wished for, barely possible events,
And trot them out as facts before our eyes,
Merely to be admired. Yet I have seen
These overweening fools make that to be,
By the mere assuming it already was:
For if they work in metal soft enough,
It cannot choose but run into their mould.
And damage him. I'll nick the hoops that gird
His hollow cause: when next he moves his suit,
'Twill fall, like an old cask, into a heap
Of rotten staves, beyond all setting up.
Enter Car, half-drunk, coming from the Inn.
Car.
There need not be no bother. The owd folk may
stay with us, or build themsel's a cottage.
(Looks back, and surveys the house.)
The same sign will do—at least very near—
Bradbury.
(striking him)
You lie, 'twill not do. My name's John Bradbury; that is Richard Riccard.
Car.
Thou dasht owd foo'—if thee strikes me agean, I'll pic thee o'er the brig. What has thee to do wi' it? Didn't Merget tell me hoo was baun' to wed me in a week?
Bradbury.
Ah! this confirms me that I am asleep,
And do but dream it all. I'll wake, and laugh
To think what monstrous things are born in dreams;
How that my pretty Margaret engaged
To marry this rude clown; how that—
Call me a clown? Thou dash't owd foo', I'll punch
thy heod.
(Makes up to Bradbury, who runs off, and Car returns.)
He said he was asleep! The owd foo's drunk. And call'd her his pretty Merget! Na,
na, owd lad; I've spent more brass in the house than
ever thee was worth; and I haven't spent it for nowt,
naither. But I needn't spend no more now—hoo's
safe enough.
(Surveys the sign again.)
It'll welley do as it is. His name is Richard; so is mine; Richard
can stand. Then there's R-I-C-C-A-R—stop now,—
C-A-R!—good lad, Dick, thy name's there already!
A little peant and a brush to peant out R-I-C—and
leave C-A-R-D—No, dang it, that would be Card!
D must come down. I'm a trump; yet my name's
not Card. Ha! ha! ha!—I had welley given her up
when hoo gave in. Well, it's a long loan as never has
a turn. I always said soa.—How goes?
Enter Wheeler, going to the Inn.
Wheeler.
Good night, good night.
[Exit. CAR.]
A most unfortunate thing! I've kick'd myself ever since for
my own stupidity. Why, it was like throwing herself
at me; as much as to say, “Here, Jack, take me and
all my undertakings; you've been a most persevering
wooer, now comes your reward.”—I can read it no
other way; 'tis plainer than plain. Her married
cousin gets a child: while I sit drinking beside her on
It's he that was with her on Sunday!
Greene.
A draw-well has a bottom; the deep sea
Is not so deep but that it may be sounded.
Nothing is bottomless, unless it be
A tailor's thimble and a woman's mind.
But yet, a tailor's thimble can be seen through;
Not so a woman's mind—
(aside.)
He's but a tailor; yet he speaks good sense.
Greene.
This black-eyed witch—
Forgive me, stars! I say this black-eyed queen,
So much my own, and yet not all my own,
So much revealing, yet withholding that
One little word which would elect me king!
Have we not stood before a man of God,
And taken on our consciences joint vows
Anent her cousin's child; thus making me,
As 'twere, one of themselves? And did we not
On our long Sunday drive unfold our hearts,
And lay them side by side, like man and wife,
And seem'd they not as one? Yet here to-night
I work'd her heart up with most winning speech,
Until I thought, Now is my kingdom come,
Then put the final question. 'Sblood, it fell
Like a man's money overboard at sea,
And bought no answer. My bewilder'd ear
Heard but a splash, then all was as before!
Wheeler
(coming forward.)
With him that lost the money?
Greene.
No, my friend,
With me. I got no answer; gain'd no point.
I put it plainly, “Wilt thou be my wife?”
Dropt, and was no more valued than a stone.
Wheeler.
Such questions are as common to some women
As pearls are to the sea. You should have laid
A pearl, or some such trinket, in her hand,
Long, long before that perilous question came.
Greene.
Ah, well, here is this ring—an emerald;
With this I did intend to seal her troth—
After 'twas plighted.
Wheeler.
Did she see the ring?
Greene.
I put it on my finger to that end;
She saw it and admired it very much.
Wheeler.
You know not yet the wooer's A B C. Why, man, she asked you for the ring, and you refused it. Without some guarantee of your sincerity, 'twere mere simplicity in her to yield that point which you complain of losing. I've told her often not to be so foolish. But, for your sake, since you have thus confided in me, I'll make the matter right. I'll scold her into it, and talk father and mother into your favour.
What! are you old Riccard's son? I understood that Margaret had no brother.
Wheeler.
How could old Riccard have a son and she no brother? Give me the ring. With it I'll recover lost ground, and gain the point that you unwisely missed. Come down to-morrow night. I'll back you out.
Greene.
Give me your hand, friend—brother. You know who I am, do you? I was with her you know at the christening.
Wheeler.
Ay, ay, I know. I'll work the thing.
Greene.
She said herself it would be all right.
Wheeler.
Come down to-morrow. Good night.
Greene.
Of course, you'll not tell her what has passed between us. Do it gently; draw it mild, as they say.
Wheeler.
Ay, ay; good night, good night.
[Going.
Well, good night; but here—
Wheeler.
Yes, yes, I know, I know.
[Exit.
Greene.
Yes, yes, but you don't know.—I've acted unwisely now. I should have seen this sooner. I've loved her chiefly because she was an only child, and old Riccard rich. But now I find she has a brother, anxious, apparently, to get her married and out of the way, that he might talk father and mother, as he calls them, not into my favour, but into his own. Scissors! but this is cloth of another colour. I do not want her. She would not make a suitable partner for one of my disposition, and could only be tolerated on account of that which I erroneously supposed she would inherit. I could not put up with her temper. Some say she is pretty. For my part, I could never see it. Nothing but coarse red and black; cheeks like Newton pippins at a penny a dozen, and eyes like black beetles in the sun. Not my style of beauty, by any means. What a goose I was to give that young dog the ring! I see no way of getting it back without making a fool of myself. What with drink and it together, she has been a dear morsel to me already. But first cost is the least, they say; so I'll let by-gones be by-gones, and have no more to do with her.
[Exit.Scene III.
The Old Churchyard in the Wood. Reuben and Joseph leaning over the wall.Reuben.
Speak not of death and graves. Is't not enough
That we should see these mounds and miss our friends,
Without the dragging in of painful thoughts
That might lie dead as they? We think of death,
And lose one-half of life. This holiday
Is not enjoyed, to-morrow being none.
If I could think I lived through endless time,
I could live well each moment of it all:
But this my little span is not half-lived,
Being lessen'd by the dread it is so short.
Stir not the thought of death, and it will lie
Still as the dead themselves.
Joseph.
I doubt it not,
Since they do not lie still. It comes unstirr'd.
Think'st thou we have the origin of thought
Within ourselves? We did not make ourselves.
The thoughts that we most purposely avoid
Do ever haunt us most. This thought of death
At every corner starts out like a ghost
Across our path—I doubt not, to the end
That we be warn'd and well prepared to join
Across the penal sands that lie between
The present world and the next.
Reuben.
Where is the next?
Your lifted eyes look past the winking stars
Into the blue delusion. Is it there
Your next world lies? Or deep beneath our feet,
In the mysterious centre of the earth?
Or is it, Joseph, in the brains of priests?
Trade, trade—a secret of the trade. Yourself,
A cobbler, have a secret—some nice art,
That glosses up a thing, and makes it seem
More than it is. All trades have—so may priests.
Joseph.
Faithless, suspicious Reuben! Canst thou doubt
That immortality—that rock, that crown—
The rock whereon religion builds—the crown
For which she lifts her blessed head to God?
O call not that a trick of priests' device
Which was before priests were. Do not believe
A trick could live through eighteen hundred years,
And gem the earth with churches—massive fanes
On whose high pillar'd walls man graves his soul,
And builds it up in reverential stone—
Seeking to give his finest thoughts hard form.
O do not think delusion or mere trick
Could bear all up. Yet do but take away
And farewell to religion! It were nought,
And I'd be irreligious as thou art.
Reuben.
And am I irreligious? So I am.
I have no priest, do not confess my sins—
To any but myself—go to no church,
And have forgotten all my lisping hymns.
Yet have I some religion: my poor soul,
By the besetting wonder fenced about,
Goes prowling round its little park of time
To seek an entrance into that dim maze,
And gazes with a sad, beseeching eye
Up every dreamy vista. All fine thoughts
That start up in my way, seek to that maze,
And disappear like birds within a wood.
I cannot follow them, I lack their wings.
And I do think there are beyond that bound
A finer beauty, and a deeper truth,
Than we on this side know. But what of that?
They are not there for me. Therefore I come
Back to my own earth, with its vaulted roof,
And here find sweet religion. In the night
It dazzles, and is called the light of stars.
It rises with the moon, and rides all through
The rack of windy skies; or when she hangs
Heavy and low on a still night like this,
It floods the earth with prayer, so creamy soft!
And people call it moonlight. All day long
It purples up the east, and on the meads
It glistens lowly in a daisy's heart.
Beneath the trees at noon it comes and goes
Like some faint hymn upon a drowsy ear;
And some say this is but the hum of bees,
Or murmur of the wind among the leaves.
Along yon meadowy banks where, like a child
All heedless of the hours, the river plays,
Religion fills me—ah! I see you smile.
But if you knew how much I love these things,
And how they move my heart, my lips, to prayer,
You would not lightly laugh, but think, with me,
There was a spirit in them, which the names
We learn to call them by serve but to hide.
Joseph.
Why, God is in them—any one knows that;
But surely not religion. In the church,
And in God's book—if thou would'st read that book—
Alone is the religion that can save.
Reuben.
Is not the universe the book of God?
And who can read it through? I can but spell
As much as tells its Author; and He is
A fine besetting wonder to my soul.
So this is my religion. More than this
I read no reason for—would that I could!
I know not what you mean by save; no church,
My saddest thought is, that our eyes must close
On this most beauteous earth, and see no more.
Therefore, I seek to shun the thought of death.
Joseph.
And yet I meet thee in a lonely wood,
Beside an old churchyard, pack'd full of death!
Reuben.
(aside)
I wish you had not met me.—Ah, dear love,
Thywards leap all the currents of my blood;
My heart rocks in suspense, and, like a boat
At anchor in a stream, it drags to thee. (To Joseph.)
Let us go down to the Bridge and drown these thoughts
In Margaret's old October.
Joseph.
Not to night.
You see I'm laden with old boots and shoes.
And yet I will. Let's see; I'll take them home
And meet you there in less than half an hour.
[Exit.
Reuben.
A whole one if you like.—'Tis ever thus:
I nibble at a good thing, like a child
That saves the daintiest morsel to the last;
And while I spare the luscious bite, some one
Or appetite is sated with plain fare,
And that which is most toothsome finds no tooth.—
The moon walks up the stately hall of night
Unto her throne, and all the courtier stars,
At her approach fall back and give her way.
Tuts! these are but the plain fare of the night,
And blunt my appetite.—Ah, sweet, sweet love!
[Exit.
Scene IV.
The inside of the Inn. Margaret and Wheeler in the Bar. Voices from an inner Apartment.Wheeler.
He pass'd me when I fell. Some few came round,
And he among the rest. I knew his face,
As having seen him here; begg'd he would speed
To the appointed place, plead my excuse
Of sudden accident, and give you this;
Which at the christening I did intend
To place upon this finger.
(Puts the ring on her finger.)
Margaret.
It is strange!
He neither spoke of you nor of the ring.
I saw it on his finger here to-night
For the first time.
Wheeler.
Alas! when will ambition
Be satisfied with what itself can reach
From its own stand of merit? I can see
He reached this little beating heart of thine,
Standing upon my shoulders. True, he spoke
Nothing against me, mention'd not my name:
But that suppression put me under foot:
My non-appearance was the pedestal
Trampling on no one, trusting to that love
Which rises to one level in our breasts—
Say, shall it float our hearts again together,
Billing like two young ducklings in a pond,
Beyond the reach of the pecking tribe on the banks?
Sweet lips, dear eyes, say yes.
Margaret.
You had no right
To fall at such a time. I am not pleased.
Wheeler.
It was my too great haste that made me fall;
My red-hot, reckless haste to be with thee.
My love outran my foot: though it lay lamed,
My heart was with thee.
Margaret.
Is your foot much hurt?
Wheeler.
At first I could not point it to the ground,
No, not for love.
Margaret.
O, do take care of it.
(Knocking, and voices from within.)
Voices.
Ale, ale! more ale! tobacco! bring the jug!
I've heard a piece of flannel boiled in salt
Was a good thing for a sprain.
Wheeler.
Ay, so they say;
But, bless your heart, it's almost well again.
One little kiss—come love—'twere worth a web
Of flannel boil'd in salt.
Margaret.
Behave yourself!
I'm very angry with you. No! not one.
Do you not hear them calling? Let me go.
[Kisses her, and exeunt, she following to the door.
Juniper
(within, knocking and shouting.)
Margaret, Alice, Ann! More ale, some one.
Re-enter Margaret, admiring the ring on her finger.
Margaret.
Have you no patience there? How very neat!
How lustry green the stone! and fits so well!
Yet, there is something strange in the two tales
Of Greene and Wheeler; they do not fit well.
(More knocking.)
Bradbury.
What, is there no one here?—Ah! pardon me. (Margaret takes in the ale-jug.)
His impudence is not to be endured.
He sits and shouts there, “Margaret, bring the jug”—
As if she were a common waiting-maid;
And asks his friend, “Tom, how do you like our ale?”
And bets that he will play a game at bowls
On our own green with any man for a sovereign. (Laughing within.)
That's he, the swaggering fool!—She comes: ah, sweet!
Fill me another glass, I'll drink it here,
And thou wilt sit beside me.
Margaret.
My dear sir,
You should not leave the company! Go in
And sit amongst them; take your pipe and glass;
Be jolly, man! What, company must be humour'd!
Let that be your department—this be mine.
Bradbury.
In proper company keeping, that's my part;
But, there's that coxcomb there, he does not know
What company keeping is. You would not have
A man like me descend to humour him?
Margaret.
He's but a braggart: heed not what he says,
In all you overhead upon the bridge?
Juniper
(within) sings.
Went out with days gone by;
But do not you believe the tale,
And if you ask me, Why?
My argument is in my hand—
This glass gives it the lie.
Grows every day more rare;
But we have still the antique grace,
And if you ask me, Where?
My Peggy comes at love's command
And you behold it there.
Voices
(within.)
Bravo! bravo! Your health, Juniper!
Bradbury.
No, no, my dear, I'll not go in again.
To-night he has it too much his own way—
He and his myrmidons. Content am I
That his most certain fall may be postponed.
Let him enjoy his visionary bliss
While we concoct the real.—Now, dear love, (Takes her hand.)
Vouchsafe a word or two. I will not blink
Your evident design that I, not you,
Should be the mover. I have weighed this well,
To make the wife's home his, yet I agree,
For reasons touching your weal more than mine.
But more of this hereafter. There are things—
Preliminary, love, to the event—
That claim our prior notice. Pardon me,
I wish not to procrastinate the time;
But business reasons will not let me name
Sooner than this day six weeks—
Margaret.
What! Six weeks?
Bradbury.
Well, then, say four. I think I can arrange.
Margaret.
O, go along; four weeks! the man is mad!
Bradbury.
What say you then, my pretty one? Let's see—
Perhaps I could arrange—O yes, I can:
Name any day you please within a fortnight.
Margaret.
Worse and worse! Why, it would take six months
To screw my courage up to name a day,
And six to get my dresses made. Young men
Are so impatient. O, my dear good sir!
It is a serious thing. Be not too rash;
And then—we'll talk about it.
Bradbury.
Fiddlesticks!
We've talked enough;—but ah! I understand,
And much commend thee for thy delicate sense
Of the proprieties. The woman's play
Is ever to be passive. Thus must she
Be looked at, loved, visited and admired,
Wooed, flattered, treated and sonneted,
Bowed to, kneeled to, solicited, implored;
No charm should move her lips to yield consent,
Till, like a lamb, she is led without consent;
Withholding to the last her sweet “I will,”
That she may drop it through the wedding ring.
Is it not so, my sweet? Well, well, good night;
We understand each other. For a woman
The finest gem in all her coronet
Is modesty; and Margaret, in thy sphere,
Amid the rude attacks and ribald jokes,
Still to retain the lustre of that gem,
Shows what a crown of studded virtues sits
Around these raven tresses! Dear, good night.
(Knocking on table within.)
[Exit Bradbury followed by Margaret.
Juniper
(within) sings.
He sneak'd out at night, but avoided the day;
He entered a henhouse and gobbled away.
He pick'd of the hens all the sattest and best,
Suck'd the eggs, and got drunk on the blood of the cocks;
And when he had feasted he lay down to rest:—
But the little cock chicken it swallowed the fox.
This little cock chicken, who was he, say you?
The greedy old fox was a foolish old man.
Then rede me my riddle, come rede me my riddle,
O rede me my riddle, lads, rede if you can.
She never came out when the sunshine was bright;
But her eyes gleam'd like lamps in the murkiest hour,
And she haunted the farm-yards over the night.
She pounced on the varmint that crept for the stacks,
Groped under the sheds when the weather was foul;
And the rats squeak'd out as she pinched their backs;
But the little wee mousey it swallow'd the owl.
This little wee mousey, who was she, say you?
This greedy old owl was a foolish wo-man.
Then rede me my riddle, come rede me my riddle,
O rede me my riddle, lads, rede if you can.
Enter from the inner room several gents, followed by Juniper. They go off, and he remains.
Juniper.
Walk slowly, gentlemen, I'll follow you.—
Now, darling dear, come, put away the towel:
Let Alice do the glasses. Why should you
And sat beside us. Did you hear my songs?
Has Daddy Bradbury left? What an old fool that is!
Are all the yokels gone from the other rooms?
How quiet 'tis without them! Well, good night.
What, not a word to spare?
Margaret.
O, yes;—good night.
Juniper.
O, bother to its little saucy lips;
I'll make them speak.
[Kisses her, and exit.
Margaret.
How can you be so rude?
[Follows him, slapping him with the towel.
ACT II.
Scene I.
The Bar in the Inn.Enter Reuben, looking up at the clock.
Reuben.
Peggy, your clock is wrong,—and yet this quiet
Corroborates the clock! One may almost
Discern the hours by anything; our clocks
Are needed but for minutes. In this house
Each hour has its own sound; for, even now,
This silence has a ring that tells the time.
The husbandman can note it in the field
By the peculiar creaking of his plough;
The housewife by the blinking of her fire;
And they that live in cities know the stride
Of any hour that walks along the streets.
Enter Margaret.
Margaret.
Now, where have you been raking to all night?
Perhaps you think I did not see you pass.
Pray, keep away your hand. Go chuck her chin
With whom you have been walking.
By this hand,
Thou hast thyself been with me all the night;
And, like the marble Venus of the wood,
Hast stood before me in the dusky shades.
I throned thee up in niches of the clouds,
To be admired by all night's gazing eyes;
And, from my bended knee up to thy throne,
My heart would leap to think thee all my own.
Margaret.
And by such leaps it overleaps the mark.
But do not think to cheat me with fine talk
Of marble Venuses and hearts that leap
Up from a bended knee. Be plain, confess,
That with some country lass you've been to-night
Hanging about the lanes.
Reuben.
'Twould wrong the sun,
And prove a man insane, if, in broad day,
To pick his steps he used a farthing light.
Margaret.
I grant the insanity, but not the wrong.
The monarch sun smiles at the little act.
He is not wrong'd more than his light is paled
By that poor farthing blaze; nor yet withholds
One ray from him that would insult his light.
Then be thou like the sun and feel no wrong.
Margaret.
O, do not think you wrong me: you may flirt
With all the country lasses in the place:
It makes no odds to me: not it, not it.
Reuben.
Thy busy brain hath spun both warp and woof,
And woven of itself this spider's web;
And love is wrestling in it like a fly.
Sit down and I will brush it from thy brain,
And loose the wingèd prisoner from its snare.
Sit down beside me and I'll tell thee all.
Margaret.
O, keep it to yourself. Pray, why should I
Be made to listen to your love affairs? (Sits down beside him.)
Impudent gipsies! What care I for them!
Reuben.
When first I cross'd the bridge to-night, this house
Buzzed like a hive with honest country men,
Who talk'd, and laugh'd, and sang all in a breath.
And thou wert on the move from room to room.
But why should I come in to sit and stare,
Without this luxury of sweet discourse;
To see thee at the beck of everyone,
Fall to my share—who would have all of them,
Compress'd, distill'd, served up on those red lips,
And drink their spirit thus?
(Kisses her.)
On through the moonstruck lanes, along the heights,
And round upon the wood—
But not alone?
Reuben.
Not if thy sweet idea be a presence.—
On coming by the church, I met—
Margaret.
So, so!
I thought it would come out. Persuade me now
It was by chance, mere chance, you met her there.—
Now do not come so near me. Pray, keep off.
Who was she? But I do not want to know.
Reuben.
I met a cobbler coming by the church.
Reproof sits in thy unbelieving eyes;
But if the cobbler come not here to-night,
And witness this the truth, then may those eyes
Never again receive me in soft folds,
But be the hard impenetrable glass
That they are now.
I cannot, for my life,
See what can take you into woods alone
At these late hours, or any time alone.
I have no fellowship with anything
That smacks not of humanity; no love
For dusky shades, cold skies and mewling streams,
Unless they are alive with whisper'd words
Or ring with merry laughter; and mute night,
That, like a cockatrice with myriad eyes,
Sits staring at the earth, I hate and shun,
Making it day inside with cheerful lights.
Oh, frightful is that silence which redounds
The beat of one's own heart! And solitude,
In which we breathe the fume of our own thoughts,
Is no more pleasant than a smoky house.
Your musing, moping, solitary fits
Are a disease.
Reuben.
Of which be thou the cure.
There is a dancing spirit in thy veins
Which sets my blood on tiptoe. Let my breast
To thine lie nearer, love, so that my heart,
By sympathy, may time itself to thine.
Margaret.
O, not through bony ribs can hearts be moved,
But through the electric channels of the brain;
As, when some sudden news leaps in the ear,
To the music of that news; or when we read
Some stirring tale that gallops to a close,
The heart goes with it and obeys the theme.
If you would have your heart keep time with mine,
Be minded as I am.
Reuben.
Then, in my ear
Drop thou thy heart's best news, or let me read,
Within the stirring volume of those eyes,
The tale which I could wish might never close;
Or hand lock'd into hand, or lip to lip,
Or cheek heaved on the soft sea of thy breast;
Whichever way thy spirit may embue
My languid being with thy richer life!
And then, ah then!—
Margaret.
If you indeed were true—
If there were one true bosom amongst men,
And that were yours, I'd give myself unto it,
Confidingly as does a new built ship
Pass from her mother's arms into the sea—
Into the bosom of the fondling sea,
Who proudly bears away his new-made bride.
Reuben.
Yes, while in view of home, and all her friends,
He gently dallies with this maiden bride:
But when he takes her to his desert keep,
A very Blue Beard does her lord become;
And having beaten her, he thrusts her down
In some vile dungeon, never to be seen:
Or spurns her from him on a foreign shore
To languish in neglect. Or if, perchance,
He brings her home again, a haggard thing,
It is to cast her on her parent's bosom,
Then run away and leave her. Faithless sea!
Yet, if my breast were true as the false sea,
The trim-built Peggy would resign herself
Unto it with the surety of a duck
That throws itself upon a glassy lake.
Margaret.
I almost think your eye does not deceive,
But may not trust your words.
Reuben.
Then take the eye.
Spirits out of the flesh could not deceive;
Their closest thoughts lie bare, and all may read.
The guile is in this clothing of the soul,
In which the only loop-holes are the eyes.
Think'st thou, my sweetest, we shall live and love
After this shabby habit is put off?
Margaret.
Most surely, yea. They tell us who best know.
Reuben.
Ah, that is why I doubt it; that we need
But do'st thou think, for ever? love for ever!
As much as we do now? O, heaven indeed!
Our earthly cares laid in an earthly grave,
And evermore to feel this luxury
Of being with each other—this deep pulse
That beats to the extremest edge of joy
In both our breasts at once, as from one heart,
Whose office is to give out love for blood!
Were it not heaven to be always thus,
Without the dread of coming separation?
Margaret.
Such is not heavenly love. The love you paint
Is deeply tinged with earth: it is, indeed,
Our greatest earthly care, and must go down
With all our lesser cares into the grave.
This ache o' the heart which we on earth call love,
Little befits us for the love in heaven.
It is too pure for our sin-spotted souls,
Which must be washed in the living blood of Christ,
Ere they can take the dye of heaven on.
Reuben.
But is not earth God's earth? He loves the best,
And lives the most, who fills the God-given cup
Of present capability to the brim—
E'en though he stain it with earth's blood-red wine,
Unfitting it for nectar. Change of drink
Will have a change of cup. But I want none,
Either of cup or drink. From this sweet thee
A nectar which the gods themselves might sip,
And be the more celestial. Lay thy cheek
Here, love, and I will live upon its glow.
Hear'st thou the satisfaction of my heart
That bears so sweet a burden?—God! to die,
And be for ever thus!—Time, cease thy hours,
Arrest us in our deepest trance of joy,
That we, when thou art run, may so remain
Through the eternal day.
Margaret.
Reuben, my Heart!
Let us not go too deep in this god's cup,
For fear the dregs prove devil's drink.
Reuben.
Then, bring
Right sovereign ale, for here King Crispin comes.—
Politic prince! one who submits his rule
All to the understandings of his subjects,
Yet, stooping, takes the measure of their foot.
Inheriting the ancient virtue, he
Heels more than any doctor, cures more soles
Than all the curates of them: nor restricts
His bounty to their higher wants alone,
But sometimes adds to his poor subjects' corn;
Yea, bountifully administers his awl,
And measures out his mercy to the last.
O, worthy king of cobblers!
Joseph.
Sweet King Love,
That would not talk of death and the old churchyard.
I see, I see; nor do I marvel thou
Should'st see an Eden in this sinful earth.
And, welt me, but this Eve of thine would make
A worse place Eden. The forbidden fruit
Might ripen in the sunshine of her eyes—
Ripen to heavenly sweetness; and the sin
Of taking it were such a tempting sin,
That angels might transgress and be forgiven.
Reuben.
What will you have, Joseph? Let us sit down inside.
I'll talk to you now about any mortal thing—
Aye, or immortal either. When the heart
Stands proudly on the top of its desires,
No longing unaccomplished, then the mind—
Perch'd high above the ambitious mists that creep
Out of the marshy troubles of our nature—
Sees far and clearly. Come: what shall we have?
[They pass into the inner room.
Scene II.
The Kitchen of the Inn. Mrs. Riccard sitting at a table with tea-things on it.Mrs. Riccard.
Come, Margaret, come to supper; get them out:
It's time they were gone home.—Well, folks that keep
A public-house work harder for their living
Than he that breaks stones on the public road.
He stops when wearied, has the cheerful run
Of all the passers-by, yet none to serve.
His day ends with the dusk; his humble cot
Is his while in it; and when Night and Sleep
Go through the villages from door to door,
Gathering to blessed rest, he can obey.
And when the morning's level beam walks in
Upon his lowly floor, he wakes, as if
It were an angel stirring in the house—
Wakes gently and refresh'd: then plods to work,
Over the beaded grass, with songs of birds,
Pelting like raining music in his ears.—
Not such our life who must the public serve.
Though weary unto death we may not stop;
Fresh comers must be served. Our one day ends
Just where the next begins—at twelve at night!
There is no room in all this roomy house
But may be anybody's for three ha'pence—
And a glass of ale to the bargain. Any lout
May order like a lord; we humbly wait,
The cock that crows up all pure-living things,
Warns us, like guilty spectres, to our lairs,
To restless unregenerate repose;
And when we wake we scarce can name the day,
Our calendar having run all into one.—
But then, it pays, and money mends it all.
With us the worst is over: speedy wealth
Will give us long retirement. Best of days
Are those that fight up through a blustering morn;
And having clear'd the rifted clouds by noon,
Break out in azure, and go blithely down
The long slope of a sunny afternoon.—
Come, Margaret—come, my lass, I yawn for sleep;
Mine eyes nip and grow rheumy. Get them out—
It's little they'll drink now.—There is some wit
In knowing when to fill, when not to fill;
And there's a knack in getting people out.
When drink won't pay for light, it's time to stop.—
Now, come—are those two gone?
Enter Margaret.
Margaret.
Gone! bless yo, no. They seem set in for a two hours' sit, at least; and even that won't finish their subject. If I fill them another glass in half an hour, they'll not be half a minute advanced in their argument. It keeps no pace with the clock, and seems, indeed, more fitted for eternity than time. They
Mrs. Riccard.
You see they are both already full, each of his own conviction. Though both strive to convince, yet neither will hold any more; and that is why both speak, but neihter listens. I have always seen that gentlemen whose minds are made up and comfortably settled, the moment one begins a-talking to them, they likewise begin. It is like filling bottles that are already full.—But, Margaret, let me tell you this: you allow that Reuben too much his own way. You lay yourself too open to him. Men will push themselves far enough into a woman's affections without facilities given on her part. One in your position should be fenced about with thorns.
Margaret.
Now, mother, have you not often said that a pretty girl in a public-house—if she be judicious enough—is the making of it? Have you not often hinted to me
Mrs. Riccard.
Yes, through the fence; but the thorns should interfere, and make the intruder draw back.
Margaret.
Why, so they do. O, I can be throny enough, and sweet enough too—thorns and honeysuckle twined together. I'll warrant you, none shall take the one without feeling the other.
Mrs. Riccard.
I fear you with none so much as Reuben; and that is the reason of my counsel. For, looking through the lattice here into the bar to-night, I could see him fondling you, and pressing you to his lips, and devouring all your sweet breath, as if you had been a plucked rose that had lost its barbs; and I could see no attempt on your part to cast him off. Now, this is wrong—quite wrong—and very dangerous. Had he been a man of standing among folks;—if he had money, property, or a good business; if he had been a marriageable sort of man, it would have been another thing,
Margaret.
A little more sugar in this—I mean a little more tea —yet, wait a little till I taste again. Well, I don't know what it wants.
Mrs. Riccard.
Why, child, your lips have lost all taste.
Margaret.
Ay, so it seems—at least your lecturing would make it appear so.
Mrs. Riccard.
My lecturing! Oh! Well, my lass, you know it's for your own good. If a husband were a thing for gratifying your lips merely, I should not object even to Reuben; but a husband cannot be held as a sweetmeat and no more, he cannot be shut up in a cupboard, a secret to all but yourself. No, the world
Margaret.
Why, mother, what makes you talk of marriage in earnest? I thought it was only your usual mirth that was venting itself. You know my reasons well enough for playing with these men-mice. I can crush any of them on the instant when it suits me. Trust me, I know better than you seem to be aware of how far to let them transgress into my favours. As for going the length of marriage! bless your heart! and with Reuben too! a man we should have to keep. Why, to suggest such a thing is equal to suspecting that I am not your daughter.
Mrs. Riccard.
I am not so much afraid that you go the length of marriage, as that you overstep it and go farther.
Margaret.
Ah, I see what you mean, but there again you belie
Mrs. Riccard.
Aye, manners are changed, like dress; but when young folks come together, and love gets in between them, the ancient souls and bodies of all our young days are found breaking through both manners and dress. The blood of our first parents runs down all the centuries, and this is seen in nothing so much as in the love between man and woman. I would not have you trust too much to the custom of the times. It is but the froth upon life's stream. Old nature runs strong beneath it, and is ever tumbling up and shouldering aside the giddy bubbles. Your changed manners are not a footing that I could like to venture on. If they are the glittering froth upon the stream, they are also the treacherous ice. People skip gaily enough over it for a time, but a sudden stroke of nature, like a sunbeam, melts it, and they fall through.—
(Knocking within.)I have no fear of her, for she is one
That ever keeps upon the windward side
Of any one she copes with, let them sail
As close as skill can steer them. I have seen
Full many a bouncing gallant thrown aback,
To take the breezes out of her full sails,
And reach a tack beyond her. Yet 'tis well
That I at times should bring her to the chart
To see how fares her voyage; for to-night
I fear she ventured too far off her course,
And fell among the pirates. If she still—
That time she seem'd so rudely overhaul'd—
Made but a feint and overhaul'd the pirate,
She outreaches even me. So I'll to bed
And dream of old scenes. I have talked myself
Back to the time when from my father's door
I've gazed whole hours, with my roaming thoughts
Quite lost upon the sea. From our bleak coast
It stretched far out until it met the sky,
And both seem'd rounded with a belt of sleep.
Sometimes white sails would dip into my sight,
And pass away like beings in a dream;
And sometimes, when a rattling breeze was on,
And sea and sky, sunshine and flakes of cloud,
Were blown about together, troops of ships
Would pass our way. Ah! 'twas a gallant sight
To see some leap and bound before the gale,
And lay their black sides in the hissing wave,
Whilst others battled up against the wind,
And veer'd and tack'd, and came so near the shore
That we could see the features of the crew,
And hear them speak,—whiles in strange foreign tongues.
And there were fishermen upon our coast—
Squat, red-faced men, that smelt of bait and lines,
Came often to our house. Ah me, the tales
He told us of the sea! And as he spoke,
He roll'd about a huge quid in his cheek,
And peer'd around with moist and wandering eyes,
As if the dim horizon still he search'd
For some expected sail. And in the midst
Of the most breathless passages he stopp'd
And blash'd the black juice out upon the hearth,
Then with his hard palm wiped the wicks o' his mouth,
And to his tale. He brimm'd so of the sea,
His merest look or motion blabb'd it out;
And, like a shell press'd to the listening ear,
Though dead he would have sounded of the sea.
And crept a far way inland on the moors—
A very wilderness of doleful sounds.
And everything was stunted in its growth:
The most unearthly trees, all bent one way,
Knotty and blasted. When the sea-wind brought
The haur and rain, and drove them up the holmes,
Our trees seem'd terror-struck: like skinny hags
They stood, with rags and loose bewilder'd hair
Streaming before them, and long wither'd arms,
All pointing to one terror, whilst the wind
Beat as 'twould force them on it. And at night
Both sea and land were cross'd by wandering lights—
In sooth, it was a very old-world place.
It comes upon me with a fear-ful love.
Margaret.
Ran over me like fire; and as he went,
I thought he would have parted with his soul
In that long, wild, last kiss. I sleep! Oh, all
The pulses of my life are twice awake!
My heart beats in my brain—yet in my breast—
And here, and here—I am all one beating heart!—
None loves me more than he, and but for pride
I should confess I love none more than him.
Well, no one hears me, and I will confess;
Our faults are turn'd to virtues by confession.
Then to my own ear my own tongue confides
The secret of my love. I that have held
Love as a weakness, and with mettled nerve
Withstood the blast of many forging hearts
Unmelted, even unblister'd, while they burn'd
Themselves to ashes—when the true heat comes,
Have found myself most malleable—so soft
That he might mould me into any shape.
And would I could be shaped to fit his breast!
Ah, Reuben! Reuben! Reuben! that dear name
Comes like a wave upon my thirsty soul;
And I could keep repeating Reuben, Reuben,
Until he came himself, like a high spring-tide,
And fill'd the bay of my out-reaching arms.
And find I have been a fool; and turning to
This dish of love—life's cream, so sweet to-night—
I'll find it sour and curdled. Day's clear thought
Is to the yesternight a glass, from which
It often shrinks at sight of its own face,
Abash'd as painted beauty when it sees
Itself next morning after a late-up ball.
Heart rules evening and night—head, morn and day;
And heart-love will not bear the head's reflection.
Yet, if the world would keep away its head,
I could hood-wink my own, and be love-blest
With my poor heart's election. But the choice
Of husbands, raiment, modes of life, and friends,
Belongs all to the world, is no more ours
Than choice of parentage, or place of birth.
We only think it is. My mother looks
On this, my heart's affair, as would the world,
And as my after judgment must approve,
When this sweet fever passes from my brain;
For, like a hot day, love is wrapt in haze;
Its beauties are near-sighted. I may trust
My mother's eye, which in my picture sees
A miserable background. Were he one
That boded higher rising, there were time,
Good time, for us hereafter. But he sets
No count on high estate, and even sneers
At my allusion to it. If I lean
The least on my position, he lets fall,
As if by accident, some lumbering word
That knocks away my prop, and makes me feel
Not low but lowly company—poor folks;
And, while he seems like one that ought to float
Among the better sort, I find he sinks—
Like wood that one picks up along the shore—
But yet he sinks not lower than my heart;
Too low, yet high enough—and there's the plague.—
Would that I had no cousins, that there might
Be no comparisons 'tween them and me.
For though well match'd, I've often jeer'd them both
About their plodding husbands, and extoll'd
The better marketry they might have made.
This curbs my heart's free action. They must feel
How proudly I have ridden the high horse;
And if I marry Reuben, what a fall!—
I'll straightway cease to love him—if I can;
And then, what matter though he still love me?
I have some thirty in my toils besides,
All adding to our custom—and, indeed,
It's not my part to drive them from the house.—
Yet, after all, to abuse the thing we love,
Or even once loved, is a heavy shame
That hangs about the bottom of one's heart.
And he must ever be that thing to me.—
I'll break this love-bond slowly, so that he
May never know the breaking. My heart's change
Shall cross him like the seasons of the year.
The summer of my love will pass, and be
Succeeded by another season's joy;
Each filling up the voided heart. Thus I
Will wear him on to winter ere he know,
When he of choice will leave the frozen thing.—
He comes to-morrow evening to our dance.
I'll trip a reel of ‘Cumberland’ with him—
It is his favourite—and after that
My love-leaves shall begin to droop.—Good night—
Another sweet good-night go after thee,
My Reuben—this night more I call thee mine.
To-night I'll let my dreams loose, and like bees
To fields of clover, they will swarm to thee;
And having revell'd, Bacchanalian like,
On thy rich blooms of love, they will come back
Loaded with love to me; and all night through,
My brain will hum with dreams—hum like a hive.
Scene III.
The Bridge. Reuben and Joseph.Reuben.
What light is this? It cannot be the dawn!
No—see the moon straight up above our heads,
Her face bent earnestly down on this spot,
As full of wonderment as one that looks,
With bright enchanted eyes, into a nest.
Joseph.
A lark's nest, with two eggs, down in the grass.
But do you not see two moons? I see two!
And, by the mass, they jostle one another,
And try to get into each other's place.
Something's to happen—we have seen two moons!
Reuben.
No—only one; and she is still as Faith.
The ale has put your eyeballs out of gear;
They do not pull together. Their old bond
Of partnership dissolved, each has set up
Upon its own account; and thus your brain
Sees one moon twice at once, and thinks it twain.
Joseph.
My brain sees twice the words, and twice the trouble
That need be used to say I am seeing double.—
Well, drink works great divorcement in a man!
His tongue becomes a traitor to the state,
Of which his head is king; his arms throw down
Industrious trades and handicrafts, and rise
In idle high rebellion; and his legs
Pay swaggering fealty, or quite throw off
All manner of allegiance; till at length
The lords are driven from their seats i' the brain,
And leave no government in all the land.
Then rocks the throne, down comes the kingly head,
Clod-hopping feet are up, and in his stead.
Reuben.
I never felt a softer light than this:
It lies about the soul like folds of silk.
Yet does it seem unearthly. See the road,
How lank and pale and like a corpse it lies!
How like two ghosts we stand upon the bridge,
And, ghost-like, cast no shadow!
Joseph.
By my brogues,
And neither do we! But I seem to stand—
Not very like a ghost—on mine own hat!
Reuben.
The bridge strides like a mammoth skeleton,
Its big bones weather-bleach'd ten thousand years.—
Joseph.
Four thousand years before the world began!
I think I hear the moaning of the sea!—
Though no external sound be in the ear,
Yet, if we listen, we can hear a sound
Coming from depths within. So when the earth
Is speechless, and the air has ceased to breathe,
Then in the night's vast ear the sea is heard,
Though miles and miles away. I never hear
That voice, hoarse-toned and ancient, but I feel
The embedded ages pressing on my soul.
It comes with all their burdens in its moan;
And I am crush'd into the merest grain
Of rock that tides build in a million years!—
Joseph.
Lord, how he adds and multiplies! A man,
Thus reckon'd, might be Adam's grandfather.
The earth itself but counts six thousand years—
Reuben.
Crush'd from my place in Time! But living souls
Can travel to the very brink of Time
And look a stage beyond it; and though lost,
There on the marge of the eternal gulf,
'Tis higher life to be sublimely lost
Than keep one place in Time, and stop within
The little circuit that we think we know.—
A thought can crush the soul to nothingness!
But if it be the soul that form'd the thought,
Is there not hope that it will rise again?
It be beneath the weight itself creates.
Joseph.
I never knew thee worse of drink till now—
And this is sober drunkness. Thou hast ta'en
Glass after glass with me till I've been blind,
Then with another till he could not stand,
And with a third till he went mad and raved;
Yet who can say he ever saw thee drunk?
Reuben.
Not you, if you were blind. But what of that?
I could be drunk, if I liked, upon one glass,
Or sober after fifty. There is none
Of all the spirits stronger than the will.
Joseph.
It must be taken first, then—and unmix'd.—
But, come, will you go home with me to-night?
I have a butt of prime ale in the house,
And we can drink until it's time to rise.
Reuben.
Some other time I'll taste it—not to-night.
The night is past! Look, in the east, the clouds
Are shifting like the scenes upon a stage,
Preparing for the entrance of a star.
How busy all is there! And, see, the hills
Have turn'd their shining faces to the east,
And throb with expectation.
High in air
The two lights struggle. 'Tis a fight between
A golden eagle and a silvery snake,
And I know which will conquer.
Reuben.
So do I:
For as the snake's is borrow'd flight,
So the moon's is borrow'd light;
The sun that lends will conquer. Let us go
Before their bright blood shed on us; for soon
'Twill sparkle on the dew-tips of the grass.—
Good morning—for the morning is begun.
Joseph.
Nay, nay, good night—all's night above the sun.
[Exit.
Reuben.
The air this side the keystone is at least
A breathing nearer her. It may have play'd
About her lips in sleep, and even now
Be laden with dream kisses meant for me.
I have but parted from her and my heart
Hungers and thirsts to be with her again.
But certain hours of sleep—at least of bed—
And then a drudging day, and tasteless meals,
Stretch like a wilderness between the times
Of parting and of meeting. Thus, I find
That, when far off the object of my joy,
But when within my grasp, I am content
To catch the mere idea of my joy:
I fondle it in thought, and would delay
The inexorable hour that drives me on.—
By this, sleep lies about her like a bath,
All warm and breathing round her lovely form;
And I so near her yet that, but for walls,
I could look in upon her charmèd rest,
And watch the dreaming thought upon her lip.
But like a pearl within a deep-sea shell
She lies with all her beauty to herself,
And is unconscious of it. Beauty is lost
If no soul drinks it in: and here I parch
The while it flows to loss. But as the air
Is dower'd with the beauty that earth wastes,
So my imagination is enrich'd
With that my love is wasting. The sweet air
Owes all its sweetness to the abundant earth;
And there is not a sweet thought in my brain
But comes, my love, from thee.
And though the night still lies along the ground,
Up yonder it is morning, and their wings
Beat out bright gleams of fire. Into yon wood
An owl pass'd like the rag-end of a cloud.
Things of the night steal one by one away;
And I am grown so much a thing of night
That I feel scared like them at this pure hour;
I feel upbraided by the eye of heaven,
And, in the presence of the morning star,
So deeply dyed in wrong that to do right
Has still the hue of wrong on it: for now,
It seems like guilt to undress and go to bed
When all pure things are rising, and the birds
Have sung the matin-hymn of a new day.—
How fearfully distinct the fields have grown,
All witnessing against me; while the inn—
My drunken friend the inn—stands there asleep,
And leaves me all to answer for. Hillo!
Nay—'twas myself that started—not the inn.
Hillo! hillo! it is dead-drunk asleep.
But, whisht! or I shall break diviner rest.
Not rudely her sweet slumber would I end;
Yet were I by her side, one kiss, just one
Should fall like dew upon her rose-bud lip.
And if that gently waked her, O, my heart!
It were a sight to watch her fringèd eyes
Open and close, like sunrise in the clouds—
Open and close, whilst consciousness broke out,
And grew on her like morning on the earth.
It were to see a sweet creation, this—
To mark the change from birth to womanhood,
Press'd in a little age. First she would look
As blank of meaning as a new-born babe,
And then her eyes would form on mine, child-like,
As when a mother, in a fresh delight,
Cries “See, the darling notices!” And then,
The rippled smiling of a little girl
Would chase itself a-while about her face,
As saying “I see one I've seen before;”
Of riper maidenhood would rise, and burst
Into the woman's comprehending glance,—
Ah, then, the mantling blush, the hiding shame
To find me there, close to her naked bed!
It were, indeed, a pantomime of love—
And I should play the fool—so there's an end.
ACT III.
Scene I.
Reuben's parlour. Jane sitting at the breakfast table.Jane.
Already comes the morning sun across
To lick the shadows from our side the street,
And noisy children shift their playing ground
To bask like flies i' the heat. Outside, the day
Is thoroughly awake—indeed half done,
While here, inside, it seems not yet begun. (Rings bell.)
The greater part of life is spent in waiting
To do that which the other never does.
My appetite is sated through the eyes,
Waiting for Reuben, who leaves his in bed;
Or if he bring it with him, his affairs
Step in 'tween it and the meal. Breakfast with him
Is but the flourish of the instruments
Before a piece of music left unplay'd.
Enter Mary.
Tell him that breakfast waits; if still abed,
Give double knocks, and shake him from his dreams;
Give him no chance to fall asleep again;
Tell him he sleeps enough for all of us,
And tell him I'm very angry.
Please, Miss, he's only been two or three hours in bed, Miss; and he does not sleep such a terrible deal, Miss; his key never comes to the door, not much before I get up, and good broad daylight, too, Miss, and the sun shining; and boots just awful to clean, Miss, and ------
Jane.
Well, do as I bid you.
Mary.
He pass'd me in the lobby just as I went to let in the sweeps, and they kept bawling in the chimney a full hour at least, Miss; and no wonder he doesn't get up; and, I'm sure, if you was me—that is, if I was you ------
Jane.
Now, now; that's enough. [Exit Mary.
He ever was a wanderer of the night,
Yet seldom past night's noon. When he returned
We saw he had not been in vicious ways;
He came as from a bath of meditation,
Its freshness still about him; in his eyes
A mild light, got with looking in the moon,
And all his nature dimpling as a spring
Of sweet good humour, mellow as rich cream.
So am I not untroubled by the change
That, like a sudden rack on a fleet wind,
Has over-run his life, and hung a cloud
Between him and this little world of home.
His presence lacks the soul; in through his eyes
I see no moving tenant, but the mould
And desolation of a haunted house.
His outward garniture bespeaks a lover;
But worthy love within illumes a ruin—
Gives it the semblance of a lighted fane;
He loves unworthily, if he love at all.
I've used my artfullest wiles to incline his heart
Towards my friend Eliza, my best friend;
'Tween whom and me needs but a brother's love
To make us more than sisters. But in vain.
He cannot see how dotingly her soul
Pours out its wealth on him; nor can he see
How much her virtues even exceed the bound
Of my great estimate. With such a one,
How prosperous were the matrimonial voyage,
So often jarr'd by storms.
Enter Reuben.
Reuben.
My breakfast, Jane.
You should have waked me sooner. Sleep's a vice
Confoundedly tenacious of its hold.
Like all the little vices, it will claim
That as its due to-morrow which to-day
We give by way of favour.
Jane.
True enough;
But hunger'd creatures are not to be blamed
You bedded late last night.
Reuben.
Yes, pretty late.
How over-hot this coffee is for haste!
Jane.
I did not hear you coming in last night.
At what time came you, did you say?
Reuben.
Past twelve.
You should have had it pour'd ere I came down.
Jane.
I'll bring it cold enough,
[Exit Jane.
Reuben.
Past twelve! and yet,
'Twas but a quarter—of a day—past twelve.—
I trust they hanged him that invented clocks.
Not only do they lie among themselves,—
They are the most prolific cause of lies,
Quibble, and deceit, in us who would be true.
Had not the steeples with their babbling tongues
Rung all the morning hours into my ear,
I had been ignorant, and could not lie.
It were a virtuous world without a clock!
Yet virtue come of ignorance never raised
A soul one step to heaven: therefore, those things
Are ministers of virtue and of heaven.—
I never can escape that infinite circle.
In argument I reach the self-same point,
Whichever way I turn; and thus I find
I never can become a partizan.
[Rises to go.
Re-enter Jane.
Jane.
Now, try a cup of this. What, done already!
You've taken nothing! Do begin again.
Reuben.
Thank you, I've eaten heartily, very heartily;
So heartily, indeed, my heart is full.
Jane.
I'd rather that your stomach were. But stay,
I want to speak to you. This afternoon
I go to spend the evening with Eliza,
Who accuses us that we do not return
Her frequent visits hither. I will go
Early, and take my needlework, and you
Will come and fetch me home.
Reuben.
Well, but—I have—
That is—at least—I—you—and then—you see—
But yet, it may keep fair—it may, it may.
Keep fair! look out—there's not a flake in the sky!
But what although it come a glittering shower!
There's many a sheltering tree along the way.
Nothing so pretty as the summer rain,
Shooting like silver arrows from the sun,
Darting and pattering on the leafy shield
Above one's head. How pleasant when it fairs,
To step again into the beamy day,
Along the reeking hedgerows, while the thorns
Wink with their little eye-drops! And how sweet
To hear the bees resume their droning song,
The woods, the bushes, the blue sky itself
Break out in bells of music, as the cloud
That brought the shower lifts up its skirts and limps
Northward beneath the bright and shiny bow
That spans the valley. If you think 'twill rain
I cannot choose but go. Say, then, you'll come.
Reuben.
Of course; but then, you'll stay so late; and then,—
But yet, I'll come—if I can find the way.
Perhaps I'll find it.
Jane.
If you would, you will.
You cross the river by the wooden bridge—
You know the way right well!—then straight along
The ruin'd tram-road where the rank grass whistles
Over the broken rails, and toad-stools gaze,
With blind eyes, from the sides of rotten planks,
'Mong wrecks of waggons and overturn'd wheels,
Infect the mind with sadness—
Reuben.
Ah, you mean
The broken bridge that crosses the canal
Near to its head or end. It is indeed
The melancholiest picture of decay,
In midst of thriving traffic, I have seen!
The sodden punts lie swamp'd up to the lips;
The green sink is long dead, and yet alive,
With reptile and with vegetable life;
It bocks and bubbles, and anon a toad
Raises a black snout through the slimy scum,
Startles the dead dogs with a horrid croak,
Then back to slime and silence. Round the marge
The long rank grass and fat unwholesome docks
Harbour the water-rat and bloated worm;
And all around, fragments of strange machines,
Invented and then left to rust and rot.
Jane.
You know very well that's not the way I mean,
But quite the opposite. When you have cross'd
The river—not canal—and gone along
The little ancient railway till you come
To the second lane on the right, you turn down that,
Pass an old lime-kiln and a white-wash'd house,
And on and on, leaving, upon your left,
An old house with three gables, and a date
Then onward, crossing by a one-arch'd bridge
A sluggish little stream; and then your road
Winds round a small wood, deafen'd with noisy rooks.
There, in a bed of roses and sweet briars,
You come upon a cottage roof'd with straw.
You'll know it by the taste—indeed, sweet thoughts
It breathes around it; by the little green,
And by the antique dial 'fore the door,
The honeysuckle tangling to the eaves,
The narrow casements curiously set
With stain'd glass like a chapel. That is it.
Reuben.
Ah—bridge—white-house and tram-road—right and left;
And then the old lime-kiln on the one-arch'd bridge;
Then the house with the seven gables. Let me see—
You'll leave Eliza's, say at half-past six;
I'll meet you at the seven-gabled house.
Till then—
[Going.
Jane.
(following)
Nay, stop; why that's the loneliest part,
The very dreariest bit of all the road!
I'll stay until you come, however late.
[Exeunt.
Scene II.
A room in Eliza's Cottage. Enter Eliza, opening letters.Eliza.
I scarce dare open it, for every line
I know is writ in tears—tears which a word
Had dried up in their cells ere they were shed,
That word had I but spoken.
“Thanks to the tides, or to the moon who sways them, I shall see you once again before I sail. It will be the day after to-morrow before we can float. O, Eliza! bethink you seriously of our last interview. You sent me away with my soul toss'd on a sea of uncertainty. Heaven sends me one opportunity more. Be prepared to decide my fate for ever. On you it depends, whether I return in two short years, prosperous and happy, or find a home—perchance a grave—on some barbarous shore. My soul knows but one haven of refuge, and that is your breast. Let me depart in the divine trust that to it I may freely return. To-morrow evening I will be with you. Edward.”
That most capricious mistress of the tides—
Had been more constant, or the calendar
'Tis but to lacerate a closing wound,
Meeting so soon again, merely to part:
Though, if my heart were not constrain'd to love
Another more than him, I'd welcome him
To thrice as many meetings. For, in sooth,
I know not why he should not be sole lord
Of all my future hopes, but for this thing
That riots in my heart—this other love.
Not violate his word, and hope to thrive.
Conscience oft counsels us to seeming ruin:
Be counsell'd—and behold how great the gain!
So love, though blindly follow'd, leads to bliss
Beyond our poor conception. This my faith,
As well as the sweet luxury it is
To love the other, even in dearth of hope,
Controls me, Edward, and decides thy fate.—
But that need not be fatal! The blue sea
Soon cures a green love-sickness; and black eyes,
Down in the South, soon burn our Nor'land blue
Out of men's thoughts.—Now, what says Jane? I wonder.
“Dearest Eliza,—You often tell me that I owe you twenty visits. Well, this very day I will pay the half of them with one long one. I shall be with you early in the afternoon, and stay until Reuben comes for me. This is to apprise you of my coming, that you may not otherwise dispose of yourself. Meantime, I am, affectionately yours, Jane.”
I half mistrust my eyes! And yet they read
Reuben in good black ink, in Jane's plain hand.
If this be verity, and Reuben comes,
I'll think that all my withering hopes have been
The falling blossoms, heralding the fruit.
My love of him has fed on hopes alone—
Hopes sown within my heart, not by himself,
But by his sister; and this fertile soil,
Together with the rain of many tears,
The sunshine of his presence when I went
On friendly visits, and the dewy winds
Sighing from my own breast, has given my love
Unseemly growth perhaps, since he has been
But passive in his husbandry—the cause,
But not the causer. Yet where'er it grows
In wild uncultured strength, the flower asserts
Its birthright by the fact that it has grown.
So may it be with love. And I have seen
That love and wild-flowers droop, and often die,
When nicely train'd by man. Ah, if thou lov'st
The wild-flowers, Reuben, where they bloom unask'd,
In sunny hedgerows or in quiet woods,
In dingles deep and dusk, or where they dance
In meadows green, and lave in meadow streams,
Come here to-night—here grows the wild-flower love.
[Exit.
Scene III.
A street. Enter two gentlemen.First Gent.
Yes, we have many instances of love
As sudden as the shooting of a star—
Second Gent.
Coming to nothing, like a shooting star.
First Gent.
Not so.—I grant, some finer looking men,
And many richer, may have fill'd her gaze;
But love stands not on looks,—a lip, a nose,
Although of import in the general mind,
Is little thought of when love makes a choice.
They tell us that in heaven all are fair:
So love with angel-eyes looks through the flesh,
And sees the heavenly features even here.
Then, as to wealth, with her of whom I speak,
That cannot be an object; for, in short,
The old man's rich, and she an only child.
Second Gent.
I cannot think such progress could be made
In one short interview.
First Gent.
Yourself shall judge.
To-night they give a treat to some few friends—
Their customers. She said I must be there,
Ill take you with me.
Second Gent.
No, I'll meet you there:
The Bar is public, I presume.
First Gent.
Agreed.
[Exit.
Second Gent.
What folly to conclude upon a glance—
Yea, but a twinkle of that fine black eye,
Which she perforce must give to all that come,
Or not be there at all! That he must love
Is only the necessity of all
Who see her. But that she dotes in return
Is equally their folly to suppose.—
He'll take me with him! Take! How strange to me,
Who was, of course, the first that she invited!
He's but a stranger to the house. He'll blush
For these his soft revealments when he sees
Me paramount to-night! And, strange to say!
This is the very friend I thought to make
Groom at our wedding. Had I but prevail'd
Last night on Margaret to name the day,
I should have broach'd the subject even now,
And quench'd his passion ere it burnt his heart.—
'Tis better as it is. I have observ'd
That what we've said is oftener regretted
Than what we should have said but have omitted.
[Exit.
Scene IV.
—A Street. Bradbury outside, surveying his shop window.Bradbury.
Methinks I have displayed unusual taste,
A readier art and quicker expedition,
In hanging out my bannerets to-day:
My hands seem quicken'd with a conqueror's heart,
And everything I touch slips bravely through them.
As schoolboys at the approach of holidays,
So I, who am almost on the happy eve
Of still diviner days, address myself
As lightly to my task as if 'twere none.
The theory is, we summon up the nerve
Of all our coming idleness, and do
With force of many hours, the work of one. (Draws from his pocket a note, and reads.)
“Supper at nine,” she says, “and then a dance.”
A dance! 'Tis awkward, very! Had it been
A mental thing!—It matters not, but thus
To shuffle all one's self-respect away—
Excuse me, love, I have not learnt the way.—
But let me catch her deeper sense: it needs
Profounder study, larger grasp of mind,
In him that truly reads than him that wrote;
For he must grasp subject and writer both,
And see their wants ere he see all they mean.
“Fools we shall have in plenty; but I trust
“That Bradbury will bear with all.” Just so;
And her unwritten thought is clearly this:
That she expects I will not join this troop
Of light feet and light heads, but keep aloof,
And with a patron-majesty look on:
Yes, sit sedately by the old man's side
And smoke a quiet pipe, drop shrewd remarks,
And look approvingly—well pleased to see
Such innocent enjoyment, yet withal
Bearing myself as in a higher sphere.—
“Make no advances to me; you will learn
“Reasons for this ere long.” I see them now—
Yes, thanks to this,
(Tapping his forehead)
Thus she concludes: “No more”—Ha! ha!—“no more
“Of fortnights or six weeks!”—Well, well, my flower,
Bloom yet a little longer; I can wait,
So long's none else may wear thee in his coat.—
There comes that popinjay—I'll stare him out.
Juniper.
Good morrow, daddy. Got your window dress'd?
Fine display. Splendid shawl that! Gaudy, though!
Coming down to-night, eh? Dance, you know.
Good morning, daddy
[Exeunt.
“Fools we shall have in plenty.” Verily,
Of all the fools she mentions, he is king!
An empty-headed pack! I scorn them all.
Of such, however, we, the shrewd, the 'cute,
Our profits make, in every branch of trade.
They are the life-blood of the taverns,
And therefore I will teach myself to bear,
To “bear with all,” for Margaret and the house.
[Exit.
Scene V.
Corner of the Market-place. Car, selling vegetables.Car.
Not twelve o'clock yet! I wish it was neet! Can
onybody tell me if that clock bees stonin'? It doesn't
look to me to move a bit! Yet it did tak' a stert when
I look'd a while the other way.—Supposing it was
twelve now, how long would that be while eight?
Add twelve from eight. No, substract twelve to eight.
You cannot. Put down your ought and then reduct.
Why, it's more till a whole day put together; which is
some error.—Howsomever, I must goa to the Brig at
eight. Merget said nine; but it's best to be in time.
(Enter a woman, who looks at the vegetables.)
Two-pence a stone missus.
(Woman goes away.)
Verra weel; yo needn't buy them. It's dirt cheap for
turmits.—I doant need to lower my price now for no
woman. I want to leave the merket with a good
character; so that hucksters will say, “He was a rare
good chap was Richard for keepin' up prices.” “Prices
has never been what they was since Richard wed
Merget and went to the Brig.” “It was a ill day for
aur trade when Richard sterted landlord.” “But a
man has a reet to better hissel', and here's wishin' his
verra good health.”—Yonder comes Wheeler, one o'
them town swells that would like to catch Merget.
But hoo wouldn't have a town's mon on no account.
Enter Wheeler.
Wheeler.
(aside)
There's Car the gardener. I met him on the road half drunk last night, shouting to everyone that passed, “My name is Richard Car, or Dick, if you will. I'll be wed to Merget Riccard in a week, and never sell a turmit nor a green thing no more.”—Good morning, Richard. I hear you are going to be married and turn landlord.
Car.
What, down at the Brig? Nay, nay, Measter Wheeler, Merget would never take the like o' me. You've the best chance yonder.
Wheeler.
I once thought so, Richard. She's an excellent wench, and a pretty. But she wants a man that knows gardening and farming; and that's just the reason she's taking you in preference to me.
Car.
Hoo always said hoo would have nowt but a country mon. But I howp yo'll take no offence, Measter Wheeler. It's not my fault yo knoan. Yo'll not leave the house will yo?
Wheeler.
Leave the house! Hang it, no! I'll take my glass
Car.
You'll be vastly welcome, Measter Wheeler; for I'm nowt at cowreels mysel'. I've been too much at cow heels for that,—ha, ha, ha!
Wheeler.
You've that to thank for your good fortune, Richard. (Thanks to the tailor's ring, I can afford to joke on this subject.) Good morning, Richard.
[Exit.Car.
Good day, Measter Wheeler.—He's a verra nice gentlemany gentleman that.—I must go, though; for there will be nowt more done to-day.—Merget's been telling him all about it, I can see; and he taks it weel—verra weel. I thowt he would be vext, but he wasn't; for he sees it isn't my fault.
(Loads his barrow, preparing to leave the market, and sings.)If you will but be mine, O,
The pansies shall be your wedding clothes,
And our bed the camavine, O.
We'll lie in the sun the live-long day,
And the merry birds shall sing, O,
The bees on their drowsy pipes shall play,
And the bonnie blue bells shall ring, O.
It's ring, ring, ring, and it's ding, ding, ding,
The bonnie blue bells shall ring, O.
What's troth, if it be not true, O?
I've plighted mine to the rose so red,
And I may not marry you, O.
Sweet William hung his head and wept,
The merry birds ceased their song, O,
The bees into mossy silence crept,
And the bonnie blue bells beat dong, O.
Dong! dong! dong! dong! dong!
The bonnie blue bells beat dong, O!
It's a very lamancholy sweet song; and if I could bethink me of the rest of it, I would sing it over all day; for I'll be like to give it them at neet. So I'll goa and bethink me.
[Exit.Re-enter Wheeler, with Greene.
Greene.
—because, if you have not given it her I would rather ------
Wheeler.
But I have given it her.
Greene.
I would rather ------
Wheeler.
But I tell you I have given it her.
Greene.
Are you quite certain of that?
How could I be uncertain?
Greene.
And how did she take it?
Wheeler.
O, not with the tongs—gingerly.
Greene.
I mean, how did she look? What did she say or think? In short, how did the thing take?
Wheeler.
Well, she looked as if she had been newly shaken
out of a bag; and when she came to herself, she said
it was a sweet pretty thing, kissed it, and put it on her
finger. What she thought, I could not swear to, but I
flatter me she wished such brotherly love might continue.
In short, the thing took just as I expected it
would; and of this you shall shortly be convinced.
So, go on and prosper, my boy.
(Slapping him on the shoulder.)
Good-day.
Greene.
It might be well to prosecute this thing, and not tamely give it up, as I had determined. My battle, it would seem, is half fought by this ally of mine, her brother. And the prize! Why, it may not be so bad after all. She's extremely pretty, and I love her distractedly
[Exit.
ACT IV.
Scene I.
—A Country Road.Enter Reuben.
Reuben.
Gnarly and oaken, which, despite the winds,
Keeps its own bent. This willow-twig of mine
Needs but a breath to warp it. True, it seems
Stalwart, and many take it for a staff;
But being inwardly mere rind, it goes
All with the pressure, and becomes no staff.
My acts are not my offspring, but the bastards
Of circumstance and accident. Our wills
Should be the parents of our yeas and nays;
But mine, alas! is barren and adopts
The wandering yea or nay of any one.—
I would decide between two ways to act,
And fish around me for the merest fin
To move me on towards either; or I keep
Deciding till belating Time decides.
Whether to go or not remains my doubt.
My arguments, like corncrakes, lead me on,
But when I think I have them, they are gone.
My mind's a tangled field through which they run,
Defying clear perception. I can see
Only those arguments that come like larks,
Clear throated from above me. Anything
Were potenter than reasons from within.
Some stale acquaintance, passing either way,
Would take me with him, or a threaten'd rain
End all my indecision. But the road
Shows not a foot, is sacred to young linnets,
Hopping across it, light as breezy leaves:
The sky is spotless, and the afternoon
Glides like a molten river to the west.
Yet will I not—she has designs on me.
She woos for me, makes love on my behalf,
And would transfer the progress she has made.
Thanks, gentle sister!—but the heart must grow
Its own flower love, and mine's already blown.—
The harmonies of love surpass all thought,
As do those tints that hold the gazer's eye
Enamour'd in the bosom of a rose.
We only know they are—wherefore and how,
No one shall ever know. I cannot love
A thing for its perfections: some sweet fault
May better fill my imperfectness of soul:
And though Eliza's virtues rise like day
Over the black and starry Margaret,
These eyes are so enheaven'd with my night,
My Margaret with the planetary eyes
That rule my heaven of love! I have no heart,
No, not an inch, for any one but thee.
I'll go a little farther; some kind fate
May either send me back, or lead me on.
[Exit.
Scene II.
The Garden and Grounds about Eliza's Cottage. Enter Eliza and Jane.Eliza.
The shadows lengthen, and the afternoon
Already puts an evening sadness on;
And so should I, Jane, had you not been here.
Jane.
Your senses dream all inwardly: awake!
Look with me, and behold how glad we are.
There's not a branch but has its little throat
Loading the air with melody; light winds
Steal through the garden, kissing the pretty flowers—
How sweet their breath is as they trip away!
That brook that prattles at the foot o' the green,
O list how glad it is! And do you hear
The oaten rustle of yon full-eared fields—
Suggesting harvest-homes?
Eliza.
I hear and see
Their bodies, but their spirits, where are they?
They come to you, being in harmony;
I lean my ear upon the throbbing air,
And hear my own heart—not the spirit tongues
That drop their music into ears attuned.
We know not what we lose, being unprepared.
Yet who shall misbelieve them and be sure
That he is not the dreamer?
Jane.
It is true.
Our faculties, not nature, limit us;
And every new development doth find
Its object hath been waiting. But I know
You did but speak the momentary mood
When you bewailed the want of harmony:
For we have ever with a similar eye
Beheld the self-same beauty in a flower;
Our ears have caught the same particular notes
That many hear not on the wafting air;
And evermore our lips would speak the thought
That had arisen in the other's mind.
Therefore I think some passing cloud or mist,
Or it may be the gathering of love,
Has come between you and the souls of things.
Eliza.
Love comes not like a mist, nor does it throw
The shadow of an interposing cloud;
But rather, like a new created orb,
Adds lustre to our firmament—a sun
That wakes us out of night and gives new day—
In whose revealing light all dusky things
Assume their brightest meanings.
But the sun
Doth ever rise in cloud or haze; if, then,
Love be the orb that rules our day of life,
It, like the sun, may have a misty rise.
Love sits on the horizon of thy day,
And looks with moist eyes o'er the dew. But see!
Thy heaven is blue above; when love stands there,
Eliza will be bright again.
Eliza.
Indulge me in a little cloudy grief.
In sooth, when I look backward through the past,
My days of sadness show a brighter gleam,
Reflect a deeper warmth upon my heart,
Raise more desire to live them o'er again,
Than hours of keenest joy. Joy in itself
Is but the annual bloom that dies as soon
As it unfolds its beauty to the eye:
It has no resurrection. Present grief,
Though ugly in itself, becomes the root
Of a perennial beauty.
Unconsciously, into my favourite grove.
'Tis one of Nature's temples, built of elms.
This little path, amid the grass, that leads
Nowhere, but still returns upon itself,
These feet have worn, for none comes here but me.—
Would'st know the service of my leafy church?
Ay. Be it e'er so simple, e'er so rude,
I doubt not even Heaven will lend an ear.
Eliza.
Three times a-day, at morn and noon and even,
Do sweet religious bells call me to prayer.
First, at the gray and earliest wink of dawn,
The mellow-throated blackbirds of this brake,
Send soft devotional peals along my sleep;
And when I waken into real thought,
'Tis not like tearing from a blessed dream,
But a continuation of the dream,
For still the soft peals come. Then I arise,
And, stepping forth into the morn, behold
The sun at orisons upon a bank
Far in the east, and with his lowly beams
Clasping the whole earth to his loving breast.
The grass, the hedges, yea the rankest weeds
So dazzle with the sapphire dew, that earth
Seems all a paradise, whose very dust
Is pearls and precious stones.—The dimpling well
That laves the entrance to this hallow'd grove
Receives my first obeisance. There I drink.
Pure water is the symbol of pure life:
The morning draught should be a daily pledge;
And inasmuch as 'tis the God-given wine
That comes direct from Nature, so we reach
The immediate Presence, even by that thought.
It is the ruling feature of all things,
By passing into them, still come to God.
What can we more beyond the Eternal Thought,
Which in itself is sermon, hymn, and prayer—
The sole heart of my service? So I pace
This quiet sward to find it; and when found,
It is the inauguration of a day
On which all things go heavenward: the birds
Sing hymns, the flowers in sweet odours pray;
The herd boy's whistle, and the mower's song,
With sound of sharpening scythes, seem all to ring
Of innocence and Eden.—I return
To household duties, to a simple meal,
And find the consecration on them all.
Jane.
And this your matin service! But I see
It's all thought service. You should give, I think,
At least one voiced hymn to the morning; thus:—
Thy hope before thee in the east ascending,
Come to our cushion'd earth, God's footstool, where
Immortal hearts are bending.
The hope in heaven, the action still aspiring:
We are, like thee, beclouded on our way;
But not, like thee, untiring.
To higher excellence; thy regularity;
Thy patient strength throughout the adverse day;
Thy universal charity.
Though years pass from us and have no returning;
Since out of death, our night, we shall unfold,
And rise like thee, bright morning!
Eliza.
The thoughts are good, and wonderfully sung,
Considering how untunable the measure.—
I would augment my service with a hymn,
And have a heart for music; but my ear
Is spoil'd, I think, with living near a wood.
Therefore I'll leave that part to you.
Jane.
Describe
Your noontide service then; and if a hymn
Arise by nature from it, I shall sing.
All song should seem spontaneous, if 'tis not.
Eliza.
In which all Nature, even Time, doth rest.
Few know of that, for in this rushing world,
Many divinities of daily presence
Are passed unseen. It is the merest span—
Yea, to the onward harmony of time,
'Tis as the rest in music. Yet, thus brief,
It is, of all the day, the very break
For heavenly thought and pray'r.
Before the dial points to noon, I seek
Amid whose branches is a little world
Of green and gold and flickering beams, and bees
Whose tiny pipes keep up a honey'd drone,
Awaking thoughts of fairy-land. And there,
On that imaginative bank, I watch
The climbing day, the pant of Nature. Soon,
The larks drop singing from the clouds, and quench
Midway their song, as falling stars their light;
The little drones up in the slumbrous tree
Sing smotheringly and cease; the lisping brooks
Grow deeper throated, hum a quiet bass;
The sunny winds lie down outside the woods.
Anon, the Day takes his last upward step,
And, on the golden pinnacle of noon,
Stands still to breathe one breath, before he turns
With meek brow down upon the western vale.
That breathing was the time—a pause too brief
For anything but thought, for thought enough
To reach the inner sanctities of heaven,
To reach them and return on wings of pray'r.—
The start, each little cloud has broken out
In lark notes, and rains music. In the woods
The winds have entered on their gleaming wings,
And leaves are in a flutter of delight;
My canopy, the tree, is in full blast,
Its hives of bees have tuned their honey'd pipes.
So Nature's organ, with its myriad stops,
Plays me from church, dower'd with a glimpse of heaven.
Somewhat indefinite service, is it not?
Eliza.
I do not know; but if it be, 'tis well—
You have the greater license for the hymn.
Jane.
To tarry on the endless path,
'Tis not the faintness of her beams,
The love of ease, the rest of sloth.
No deeper life to do than be;
So is that quiet Nature still
The all of good and fair we see.
At peace within their molten calm,
Than when on high and tempest-riven,
They shout their grand impassion'd psalm.
The tides hold on to ebb and flow,
And thoughts are passing in the seas,
Which only God may truly know.
And know the tranquil joy of rest,
There will be peace as deep within
The fathoms of the human breast.
Eliza.
When gloaming loans ring with the throstle's pipe,
And sing the day's good-evening to the night;
When daisies sleep and blue-bells do not ring,
Labour at rest and lovers whispering,
I to my bosky temple come again.—
Has its own dew of thought, and then it comes
Divinely from the stars: that bright lone one,
Venus, amid whose beams Love loves to stray,
On whose excess of beauty poets thrive;
And all the unnumber'd lesser beads of light
That break out on Night's Ethiop brow like sweat,
As up the dark he labours; and the moon,
That beauteous lunatic who dotes on Night,
Hangs on his skirt, lies in his breast, falls out,
Then turns her back and leaves him, till some days
Of cloud and weeping bring her back again:
Yea, all that walk the eternal rounds of space,
On what God's-errand we shall never know:
Yet while their unknown message speeds, or hearts
Live on their waste, the dewy light they spill.
A glare of moonshine in it, you will say,
And vacancy of space: but save that star,
The Conscience, whose fine light the fumes of hell
May dim, but not put out, which pure hearts know
To be the very life of God in us,
I know of nought that leads so straight to God
To think of space, to know it has no bound,
Nor could have, needs a mind like space itself,
Eterne, with but illusionary bounds.
The mind once born to illimitable thoughts,
Must live them through illimitable time.
They could not enter in a mind that ends.—
Beyond the glimmer of the farthest star,
Or in whose unimaginable deeps
There is no end of stars! our wings of thought
Not long sustain their flight through thee, but flag
As thy horizon ever more recedes;
They fail, and we, the living souls of thought,
Should fall like plummets from the spheres of flight;
But the divine necessity of God
Is round us, and receives us, and we find
Answer and rest more blessed than we sought.
Is still my full amen: I can no more.
In very truth we need no more: for that,
Breathing the soul of everything, supplies
The very soul of all our life's deep wants.
By whatsoever name with us, or none;
However dimly reach'd, whom yet we know
To be the soul of life, the heart of love,
The essence of all beauty, and the power
O grant that we may know Thee more and more,
Not as the past and future God, but now
And here, on plain unconsecrated ground!
We grandly see Thee in the unfrequent storm
That rends the woods and cracks the quarried rocks!
O may we know Thee in the simplest air
That gathers odours on the thymy banks,
And cheaply brings them any summer day!
We meekly say the thunder is Thy voice;
And e'en philosophy, 'mid causes lost,
At last takes up the thought. So may we know
That voice as Thine which in our wilful hearts
Whispers the simple truth, the honest right.
Then knowing it is Thine, may it command
Our ready act, however dim the end
Jane.
Amen. The conscience is indeed God's voice;
It cannot be out-reason'd; therefore 'tis
The reflex of a higher mind than ours.
As well earth burn the sun out with her fires,
As we by argument put out this light.
Eliza.
See! Evening, with the eyelids almost closed,
Looks through their long dusk lashes, half in dream,
And passes softly into deeper sleep.
Sing us a hymn and then we'll go along.
Laid him in a golden shroud:
Tears, sad but beautiful, were lying
On the earth when Day was dying.
You and I be like the Day—
Not die but with accomplish'd duty,
And pass amid increase of beauty:
Lost in blank imagin'd night,
Our places vacant, friends repining,
We, like Day, elsewhere be shining.
Enter Reuben.
Reuben.
“The willing horse is always ridden blind.”
Be you but half disposed to attend a woman,
She'll keep you trotting; be you whole disposed,
And there's an end to all your own affairs.
What hindered her from coming home herself?
O, no; they can do nothing of themselves.
Madam, your leave to help you o'er—a straw!
Allow me, miss, to lift you o'er the stile!
Tuts, put a husband on the other side,
The oldest maid among them takes the leap.
I stopp'd an instant at the gabled house;
And straight the old house whistled; every nook,
Gable, and cranny whistled, and my heart,
E'en quicker than my ear, was on the beat.
I ran, and hardly dared to look behind—
The pelt of feet was after me; but soon
The thing, whate'er it was, gave up the chase.—
I stood a while on the bridge of the sleepy stream,
And bent my eyes within its tide. I gazed
Until it took me from myself. Methought
I left my body on the bridge, and slid
Away into perdition on the back
Of a gigantic snake. A leaping trout
Restored me, and I breathed—I felt I breathed.
Were breaking through the prairies of the skies,
And on our meads arose the creeping rime;
The air felt wet all round; and yet, no Jane!
O, hadst thou not been pulling at my heart,
My Margaret, my magnet, I'd have felt
All this were pleasant fooling. I have chased
A will-o'-wisp through many a squander'd night,
And may be none the poorer for the waste.
The heart that has no idol to enshrine
Is free to sow its hours on thriftless winds:
It reaps unconscious increase; does no crime.
But thou art my religion; every hour
To thee not dedicated is rank sin.
Pity, the cause of sin felt not its hell!
Thou, Jane, shouldst roast for this.
[Exit.
ACT V.
Scene I.
A Room in Eliza's Cottage.Eliza.
He loves not me—he may love, but not me.
My heart o'erflow'd its love into his eyes,
The conduits of his heart; it filter'd through,
And seem'd to leave in him nought but the sands.
His presence, constantly, would drain my heart,
Which, getting no return, would cease to love.
Were all the dews earth breathes into the air
Not lavish'd back again upon the earth,
Parch'd earth would soon have nothing more to give.
Better be mateless, then, than match'd with him.
Better! Harsh argument! It could not be:
He is not to be reason'd from my heart.
Yet, would that I had seen one hope of Spring
In all the Winter of his speech—one beam
Behind that black ice of his eye, to tell
There was a coming Summer in his heart.
But there was none; and when he took my hand
To bid Good night, I felt 'twas but a hand
That touch'd me, not a spirit.—While he stayed
I could not realise the full despair,
For mine he was, as much as eyes could hold:
But when he went, without one poor exchange—
A look, a sigh, on which a thought might hang,—
Sweet Hope, I drain, and throw away the cup.—
I've pour'd my soul into a fine ideal,
Imagined it a lover, and loved that.
Away, sweet dream, that seem'd my waking day!
Be what thou art, a dream; and, like most dreams,
Leave not on memory one scratch of truth
By which thy foolish reign might be recall'd. (Knocking without.)
Edward? Ah me! I had forgot the sad
Announcement of his coming here to-night.—
The loved unloving gone, and in his stead
The unloved loving.
Enter Edward.
Edward.
Eliza, by the weather in your face
I read sweet summer changes. Why, you stand
Like blue-eyed April, looking through her showers.
But whence the tears—the showers?
Eliza.
From the clouds.
Edward.
Ay, but the clouds, Eliza, whence are they?
Eliza.
The sun exhaled them from this little earth,
And when he set, they rain'd.
Were I your sun
I'd never set, nor leave so loved an earth.
But truce to these poor similes—they limp.—
Eliza!—
Eliza.
Edward!
Edward.
Ah! what need for speech?
You know what I would say.
Eliza.
I do, I do:
And therefore will I use no idle speech:
I scorn to trifle with an earnest heart.
Edward.
Perfection perfected! Yet speak not thus
If afterwards you do not mean to grant
This heart the prize due to its loyalty:
But rather let each word make less your worth,
If I'm to be the loser of it all.
Eliza.
If you can keep a secret, here is one:—
You shall not lose—
Edward.
O heaven!—
Till you possess.
Edward.
Who scorn'd to trifle with an earnest heart?—
I'll risk the loss, if you will the possession.
Eliza.
But you are going on a tedious voyage:
Full twenty moons will fill their orbs and wane,
Ere Time redeem the pledges of our troth.
Love's moon itself may wane with you ere that.
Urge me no further now: when you return,
If then—
Edward.
The doubt would kill me long ere then!
My life is poison'd with the hope deferr'd;
The food I eat is poison'd, and my sleep;
And I am neither nourish'd nor refresh'd:
I die even now. But ah! thou hast not known
The agony of unrequited love.
Eliza.
(aside)
A kindred sorrow kindles love: our hearts
Are nearer by the binding of a grief.
Edward.
What would'st thou say, Eliza? With a word
Thou could'st so sweetly medicine my soul,
Infect my being.
Eliza.
And if that could be,
It were itself the greatest ill. We live
By overcoming ills; and to be freed
From feeling them were hopeless death. But no,
That may not be: the present gone, 'twill seem
That but some other ill has push'd it out,
And stands there in its stead.
Edward.
Yet is it well
To think the present ill shall be our last,
Lest, feeling there's no end of them, we rest
Desponding in the old, and thereby miss
The very uses of adversity.
Then, let me conquer the impediment
To present bliss, and I'll be doubly steel'd
For those that have to come.—But list! O love,
The wind has whistled, and I know the tide
Is almost waiting for me. 'Tis no time
To analyse fine sentiments. In brief,
Wilt thou be mine, Eliza—mine for aye?
Eliza.
(aside)
Alas! What should I say? He loves me not;
Nor show'd that night of love that closed him in,
One ray to herald whence a dawn might come.
Why am I fascinated with despair?
Lay hands upon my will? Away thou shade! (To Edward.)
Edward, forgive me, I am not myself:
I have no mind; take answer as thou wouldst.
Edward.
I will not bid thee speak it: plighted troth
Has stood ere now on the unspoken word
As firmly as on parchment. I can read
The unwritten contract even in thy face.
To such a bond be this the fitting seal. (Kissing her.)
Now fare-thee-well, Eliza!
Eliza.
Nay, not yet.
Come in and eat; and, while we sit, trace all
Your voyage on the map, that day by day
I may keep reckoning of your whereabouts.
I'll keep a daily journal of the winds,
Read dissertations on the law of storms,
Be up in latitudes and longitudes,
And in the papers turn to Vessels spoken with,
Even before Births, Marriages and Deaths.
Edward.
The speedy winds shall be our messengers.
The one that stirs your poplars here to-day
May fill my sails to-morrow. Therefore give
Each breeze sweet greeting, and a word for me.
I'll entertain the rudest for your sake,
And speed them round to you with freights of love.
[Exeunt.
Scene II.
The Green before the Inn. The Inn lighted up. Music, dancing and laughter within.Enter Reuben.
Reuben.
How swiftly flies the heart on wings of love!
Mine has been here an hour since, and my feet
Have hardly yet o'ertaken it.—I hear
The beat of Margaret's foot amid the dance.
It comes into my soul like a sweet strain
Play'd in the midst of thunder. As I came
Over the bridge, her gorgeous figure dash'd
Across the lighted blind; my spirit leapt,
And even my arms involuntarily stretch'd
To clasp the instant beauty. O, my brow,
Flaming with thoughts of her, pants to be bathed
In the luxurious bath of her dark hair.
That battery of love, her burning lips,
I almost shrink from touching the first time
After the absence of a day, an age;
The shock of ecstasy runs into pain. (Laughter within.)
'Tis her's, that dulcet laugh that ripples through
The harsh-lipp'd merriment. She is the flute
Amid the brazen music.—Here comes one
Reel'd from the dance, all puffing hot and soil'd,
And beaded as a haggis newly boil'd.
[Exit Reuben into the Inn, passing Spanker, who comes from it.
Hot work! hot work! But O, that maid divine!
Riches of womankind! Yea, each one's good
Collected and transfused into one best!
And now to think, to feel this treasure mine!
Did I not say she'd be a mine, indeed,
That I might work at leisure? Leisure! nay,
She's too impetuous for a laggard's love.
Have at her then: all duties else I throw
Contemptuously aside; and on my knees
Thus give my energies—Bah! that old man.
Enter Bradbury from the Inn, and Spanker retires into the shade.
Bradbury.
How dark! bless me! I cannot see a stime!
When one has lived a comfortable lie,
How blind he is to its opposing truth!
So I, with looking at the glare inside,
Am blind to all the outlines of the night.
We need to live a truth that we may see it;
And when I've look'd a while into the night
I'll see its faintest margins.
Spanker.
Ah! if love
Spurr'd that old ass as hard as it spurs me,
He could not amble thus with an idea.
The knowledge of a fact comes by the brain;
So thinks the world; but the affectional heart
Has more to do with it than the world thinks.
Spanker.
The world's a fool, that's clear, and he a sage.
Bradbury.
Love gives the eyes to see what is unseen
By others in the face of them we love;
It gives the intellect to know their worth:
Thus eyes and intellect without the heart
Are impotent—mere tools without the hand.
We all are better featured than we seem
To the dispassionate external eye:
The heart's eye, it alone, can see the true.
How else amid this troop of dashing youth
Who—for I will admit the fact—outstrip
The falsely seen John Bradbury,—and all
Apparently in madness for her hand,—
How else could she set all aside for me,
Unless John Bradbury, the truly seen,
To her heart's eye, outrivall'd all of them?
I'll bear me more supremely—'tis my right.
Ye eyes of night, look at me, and endorse
What Margaret's consummate taste approves.
Am I not he, the destined man?
Spanker.
I thought
The imagining faculty belong'd to youth.
Bradbury.
Rheumatics seize his shanks! He crosses me
Not only in the rosy ways of love,
But on the glebes of ruminating thought.
The darkness favours me, I will withdraw
Within the sombre shadow of the wall.
Friend.
But, Will, I see you have powerful opposition.
Juniper.
Yes, in numbers; but what of that? Numbers in love, my boy, are not like numbers in war. Here it's every one for himself. Take each singly, and I've no opposition. What are they? That kangaroo who talks so much about Australasia and gold finding; he'll find no gold here, I can tell him. He made his appearance only the other day, and presumes already to hope. He leaps too far at a time, that fool.
Spanker.
(aside)
It won't be too far to leap down your throat, and that's what I may do before all's done.
Juniper.
Then Daddy Bradbury, what's he? My butt, my foil, my background. He serves but to throw me more fully into Margaret's eye. These are a sample
Bradbury.
(aside)
No: for it's not intended you shall win the race. His butt! his foil! his background! If I had but a part of his youth on my side, I'd butt him, and foil him too, and give him a background into the bargain: the dirtiest part of the road should be his background.
Friend.
That may all be well enough; but women's fickleness is proverbial; and sometimes they make such a villainous choice—love being reputed to be blind— that even old Bradbury—
Bradbury./
(aside)
Even! He dare not say that to my face.
Friend.
Who's this comes spinning like a top? Stand aside, or he'll waltz over us.
Enter Hopkins from the Inn.
Hopkins.
The reel, the waltz, the intoxicating whirl,
The pressing bosom of that glorious girl,
The cheeks of ruby and the teeth of pearl,
The sable tresses, their enamouring curl,
The bust that might owe Angelo a debt,
A one in which the graces three are met,
Whom luck calls mine, and I call Margaret!
(Whirls off.)
Friend.
I'll bet you, Will, he robs you of your treasure.
What woman could withstand both rhyme and measure?
Enter Wheeler and Greene from the Inn.
Wheeler.
I told you I should make it all right for you.
Greene.
She's got the ring on, I see.
Wheeler.
Yes, and did you see how her attention was divided between it and you?
Greene.
You'll drink at my expense to-night, Jack.
Wheeler.
O dear, no—that would be too much.
Greene.
You shall. She's a splendid girl, Margaret, eh?
Well, but it's not for a brother, you know, to praise her over much.
Greene.
When it does come off, Jack, you'll be best man, of course. Don't you think she would come out and take a walk with us? It's so oppressively hot inside! Besides, there's so many, I can't get spoken with her.
Wheeler.
Well—ah—I'll try. Just walk you over the bridge there.
[Exit Greene.]
What a monstrously silly fool that is! He has not cut his eye-teeth yet, or he
would see through my glaring deceptions. The
breach that was between her and me is now completely
fill'd up by his ruins—the broken-down walls
of his suit. They must not speak together, though.
I'll after him and send him a wool-gathering, so that
they may not meet to-night at all. By to-morrow
night, please the pigs, she'll be too much mine to care
for him or any one else.
Bradbury.
They know I'm here, and have made up this among them—pure envy at seeing an elderly man preferred.
Juniper
(to friend.)
His name is Wheeler—empty as a bell—all talk
Spanker.
Surely there can be no reality in all this. She would not, could not speak to me, look at me,—yea, let me approach her as she does, and at the same time afford these fellows the inlet to her affections they seem to have got. No; it's a silly piece of tomfoolery made up among them, for what purpose I know not. —Here comes a decent country fellow. Surely he is not one of them.
Enter Car from the Inn.
Car.
Well, we're keepin' it up ony way. Them town chaps is squeezin' Merget rayther more till I like though; but yet a-wouldn't gie the wink hoo casts me at every turn for all their squeezin's. I'll have all that to mysel' in another week. Aigh isn't hoo pritty the neet, wi' her glossy black heur dancin' at her cheeks? —Wain't I be proud when I see my name abuv that door? A peanter might mann it better till me too; but them raskets is like cobblers. Gie a cobbler your shoes to heel and he soles them as weel, and nails you into three-and-sixpence, instead o' ninepence. Merget would pay it certainly: but it's all one for that; what's hoo's is mine.
Spanker.
Even this simpleton is into the trick. Can it be
Car.
Ay, I doan't mind if I do: I never likes to refuse nowt.
Spanker.
Before we go in, tell me now—there's a good fellow— What's the meaning of so many of you coming out and talking about Miss Riccard in this way—Margaret, as you call her—and zounds! each one of you pretending to be on the point of getting married to her?
Car.
Did thee hear it up in the town?
Spanker.
Hear what?
Car.
That hoo was baund to wed me. It's pritty well known now, I daresay. Them things will out.
Spanker.
That'll do, that'll do; don't think you've caught a flounder.
Car.
Flounder! Call Merget a flounder? I'll make a flounder o' thee—flat enough too!
Spanker.
There now, that's enough: a joke may be carried
Car.
Well, dash it! be my friend. What does thee want?
Spanker.
I want to know who set you on to this, and is it aimed at me?
Car.
I doan't know what thee means.
Spanker.
Why, this: You know very well that Margaret—Miss Riccard—would not take the like of you, and that—
Car.
Get out, you foreign Portuguese!
Hopkins.
(coming forward)
Pardon me, sir; but am I to understand that you, sir, have any expectations in that quarter?
Spanker.
Excuse me, sir, I don't know you; but if you, sir, pretend to any expectations, I beg politely to remark that it's no use, it won't fit, and the sooner your name is Walker, the better.
Your politeness is insulting, sir, and I beg to say that the sooner your name is Walker, the better.
Bradbury.
(coming forward)
Gentlemen, you are exceedingly polite; but I beg
to inform you
[Enter Greene]
that if Margaret—Miss Riccard—be the lady in dispute, you may keep
your politeness for another; for she is engaged.
Greene.
Yes, gentlemen, to me.
Bradbury.
To me, sir; who are you?
Juniper.
(Coming forward and knocking their heads together.)
You lie, Daddy, she's mine.
Car.
Yours, you snig! (striking him).
Or yours! (striking Bradbury).
Or yours either!
(striking Greene).
Greene.
Holloa! here, Jack! help! help! thieves! they'll carry her away! help, Jack!
Get out, you're a set of poppies; I'll lick you all.
(Hits them right and left, a general melée ensues, all striking one another, and enter Wheeler, who beats Greene.)
Greene.
Murder! Jack! Margaret! Any one! any one!
[Exeunt all into the Inn, fighting and shouting.
Enter Margaret, followed by Reuben.
Margaret.
What's all this noise?
Reuben.
Ah, now we are alone!
Margaret.
Hold off!
Reuben.
You do not know me in the dark!
Look, Margaret, 'tis I!
Margaret.
I know, begone!
[Exit into the Inn, shutting the door after her.
Reuben.
Begone! was that the word? or was it come?
Bear witness, as she spoke that word, the moon
Look'd o'er the edge of yonder bank of cloud,
The light fell on her face, and I could see
A very fiend glare at me, with no trace
Of love or beauty left: it was Begone!
O what a devil's glare! There's no such thing
As outward beauty: no, the heavenliest sace
Puts on at once hell's features if a fiend
Takes up abode inside.—Hold off! Begone!
Ah, whither could I go? These words have ta'en
The very earth from me, with all its hopes:
Life holds me only by one thread—despair.
So have I felt in dreams, and waked with shrieks;
But after thanking God, have slept again.
Would I could shriek, and turn me, and forget
This night as 'twere a dream!—And may I not?
How know I it was Margaret? We danced
A reel together scarce a minute since!
And as we swept between the admiring lines
My soul drank love from her upturnëd eyes:
Yea, from her willing lips I snatched a kiss.
Amid the scramble of the breaking-up dance
And forming of a new, she left the room.
I follow'd. Some disturbance brought her here.
'Twas nothing when we came: and seeing her
Alone, and even, I thought, expecting me,
I rush'd to press her to my heart—Hold off!—
Methinks it was not Margaret at all.
In coming out I've miss'd her in the crush,
And this has been some other. O fool, fool!
They whisper even now inside the door.
Suspicion justifies me if I listen,
To be still more assured it was not she. (Listens.)
His love is not ethereal: that voice
Has never yet been touch'd with the soft oil
Wherewith love's angels trim their wings for flight.
Ah, now she'll speak.—Curst be my ears! that sigh
Was Margaret's; and, death! it is her voice!
She loves another! O, infernal thought!
It leaps like fire within me. Would to God
That from the calendar this night would drop,
And Time close up the blank! What have I done,
Or left undone, that from her heaven of love
Thus suddenly, unwarn'd, she casts me out?
And who is he that she has made a god?
'Twere well I saw him—saw him with her eyes—
That I might know the attribute I want.
Ah, if she bear him only half the love
She seem'd to hold for me! she does not—no!
All love has gone from her—love that imparts
The angel to humanity. That thing
That stood before me in sheer ugliness,
And croak'd the fiendish words Hold off! Begone!
Retains no love for any one: for love
Reflects itself, and makes all else beloved:
The heart that thoroughly loves one loves all,
And could not be a fiend to any one.
Joseph.
O ho! and that's her game! If I were him—
As, praise be blest, I am not,—Reuben, eh?
Why, I've been looking for you up and down,
In every room and corner of the house.
Reuben.
What for?
Joseph.
For company. The mirth is up,
And twice they've knock'd down Reuben for a song.
No Reuben answers, nor is Margaret there;
And so, 'mid jealous looks, the whisper runs
That she and you have other fish to fry.
Reuben.
Our fish is fried and eaten, and the bones
Stick in my throat.
Joseph.
I could have guess'd as much.
Reuben.
You guess'd? From what?
Joseph.
From what to-night I've seen.
She hath a score of wooers in that house.
I know; but what of that? they make no speed.
Joseph.
Love blinds you, Reuben—they make speed enough:
Her lips are common as a village green,
And all the geese graze on them.
Reuben.
Rogue, you lie!
I know it is a lie. 'Tis true they seek,
Ay, scramble for that luxury; but they
Taste not the fervid lips she gives to me.
Joseph.
I saw her even now, behind that door,
Close bosom'd with a man.
Reuben.
What kind of man?
Joseph.
A publican and sinner, both in one;—
Cutely they call him, he that keeps the inn
Up there in Fleukergate; who beat his wife—
Ay, beat her, so they say, till she, poor soul,
Was fain to quit that blacken'd tenement
Her body, which he buried some three weeks since.
Reuben.
I'll not believe it, Joseph. Two round years
Have fann'd her beauty with impassion'd sighs;
I have not miss'd a night, yet never once
Have seen that man on the contested ground.
Besides, in him there's no attraction—none!
Joseph.
There's money, boy, money—lots of that!
Reuben.
That I had gain'd what money could not buy:
If she can set a price upon herself,
She stands not in my market. So adieu,
My pretty huckster, get what price you can.
The moonlight paves a meditative walk.
We who have ever been the last to move
When Mirth and quiet Humour at the board
Sat President and Vice; who oft ourselves
Have added an appendix to the night,—
For once shall be the first.—I know not which,
Wisdom or Folly, draws us most; we've been
True knights of both perhaps, but now I feel
A desperate inclining to be wise.
Joseph.
God help our wisdom, and our learning too!
Your Latin mends a pen, my Greek a shoe;
We be not classic, but plain English fools,
And none can call us debtors to the schools.
God's universal book is writ in thoughts:
The Tongues have merely turn'd it into words.
We cannot read translations, and are forced
To go to the original. That's all
The secret of their scholarship. Let's go.
[Exeunt.
Scene III.
—A Room in the Inn. Margaret and Cutely.Cutely.
True, true, it is uncertain; life's uncertain: but I'll make it two hunder pound a-year, that is per annim, if I die.
Margaret.
Two hundred pounds—that is two hundred pounds. Ah, well, life's so uncertain. A written contract, of course?
Cutely.
Black on white.
Margaret.
Yes, well,—that's over and above what the law might allow?
Cutely.
By course. The law you know is the law; but this is certain and sure.
Margaret.
Then, there's that dear little boy, your son.
Cutely.
He'll be provided for.
Margaret.
By law? or—
No; let's see though—yes: ah, well, we'll see about that after.
Margaret.
O, certainly, see about that; make it something definite, you know, dear little fellow!
Cutely.
Yes, yes; all them things can be settled, when we get settled ourselves.
Margaret.
Ah, but life, you know, life is so uncertain, and there's no time like the present.
Cutely.
I'll do it to-morrow. Where's your mother? Let's arrange about the wedding-day.
Margaret.
We've some sharp young men in the house now— attorney's clerks, and the like. One of them could do the settlement, and—
Cutely.
O, any barber's clerk could do that.—I understand there's something they call a special license, that one can get at once. Now, what day would be convenient?
Margaret.
—And we've writing things in the house. It could
Cutely.
Very well, very well; go get your pen and paper
—some ink too; and if you can pick me out a clerk
that can keep a thing, do so.
[Exit Margaret.]
Ay, that's the sort for me; a girl of business. My
affairs is running into a ravel since my poor, dear Maryhann,
heaven forgive me, died; and I must have another
at once.—She'll have money, too, money; old Riccard
cannot last for ever. They tell me she has some fifty
after her on that account—young, penniless shavers,
that don't know how to take a woman. I've had my
eye upon the girl these two weeks; but never spoke
with her before to-night. Every man—and woman—
has her price, as the poet says: and very proper too.
Re-enter Margaret.
Margaret.
Now, love, everything's ready—young man and all— in the little back parlour, No. 7.
Cutely.
Kiss me Margaret.
(Kisses him.)
There; send me in a pipe and tobacco; and let's have a bottle of sherry
over the job; and come yourself in a little, to see that
it's all nicely written. They tell me you can do something
in that way. You'll have all my writing to do.
(throwing herself into a chair)
Mother!
[Enter Mrs. Riccard.]
Mother, my bannock's baked for life.
Mrs. Riccard.
I thought it would, my girl; I told you that was the right sort of man. What has he come to?
Margaret.
Two hundred pounds a-year, settled and certain— send him in a pipe and tobacco—that is on his death, you know—and a bottle of sherry into No. 7.
Mrs. Riccard.
Bless my heart! two hundred pound! Well, well, well, well.
[Exit Mrs. R.
Margaret.
(rising)
Two hundred pounds at death, and twice my age.
Besides, the law, despite his will, allows
One third, I think, of all his moveables.—
He's not so handsome as I could have liked.
Then there's that brat, that boy by his first wife:
Ay, what of him? He shan't be in the house,
With young ones of our own: I'll board him out
With some one who—he's delicate, poor thing,
And may not live long.—But, about the day:—
'Tis Friday now—say this day week—no, no;
Friday would be unlucky—Wednesday—
'Tis not too soon.—Two hundred pounds a-year!
And what will Master Reuben think of that?—
Two hundred pounds and Reuben! or half that!
Love, love, methinks, were worth the other half.
Or nothing! if he had the name of rich.
His name's a golden key that opes my heart:
Where art thou, Reuben? Ah, come back, come back!
Two hundred pounds! two hundred wither'd leaves—
Are scatter'd by the breathing of thy name.
Re-enter Mrs. Riccard.
Mrs. Riccard.
He wants you, Margaret—run, my girl, fly—he's made of money—but run to him. See you! here's fifty pound he's given me to buy livery for myself and the wenches—but go, go—any prints will do for them —and there's other fifty yonder for yourself, to buy dresses with—away with you!
Margaret.
Other fifty! he must indeed be made of money!
What have I been thinking of!
Mrs. Riccard.
Run, run, there's no time for thinking.
[Exeunt.
Scene IV.
A Country Road.Reuben.
We mostly grow into them, and to-day,
Not knowing wherefore, we adopt beliefs
Which yesterday we could not. There are truths
That reason may reject; yet there they stand;
And, by some inward faculty received,
Become our chiefest glory, greatest joy.
Is necessary to my thought, as Time
To the division of the days and years.—
Eternal life to every human soul
Is needed to complete the thought of life,
And round the highest vision. What! to all
Those cities-full of festering souls? to all?
Ay, even so: the nature of that life,
Being unlimited, demands them all.
God works with the infinities, and thoughts
That lead us on and lose us amid these,
First stagger, then sustain. I almost feel
The fact that we can think eternity,
Is proof that we shall live it: for a thought
Is, after all, the very soul of life.
Unless they have a corresponding soul!—
And which indeed they have. The thing may pass,
Its most essential self. So even now
'Tis possible that we might truliest live
As 'twere in the interior of things:
A realm that passes not—the very Heaven
That all are striving for, and yet so near!—
There was a time when this had been mere words,
Weak breath, and borne me nothing: some one thought
Is given to us, and becomes a key
Into a very hemisphere of thought.
Whose love-fill'd eye has seem'd to hang on me
Like that fine star, which threatens even now
To fall into my soul; and yet to me
What was she but a name—until to-night?
And now, dear one, my brain shoots beams of love
That centre all in thee. I've been till now
Dazzled to blindness by a love of fire,
And miss'd my better angel. Had'st thou been
More of the earth, Eliza, I had reach'd
Thy sphere of love ere this: but thou hast still
Been lofty and retiring; used no wiles,
No witchery of motion, manners, dress;
And seem'd to hold the province of a heart
As sacred ground, not to be rudely trench'd.
O if, Eliza, I have been or am
More than a mere acquaintance in thy thoughts,
Blot from thy memory my heartless past,
And from the ordeal of a lowlier love
I'll bring a heart the worthier of thee.
[Exit.
Scene V.
A Room in Eliza's Cottage. Eliza seated, with a Map before her.Eliza.
He should be here, here, where he said the sea
Was of a deeper blue than my own eyes.—
Alas! how is it with me? I am faint;
And something like a mist is on the map.
'Tis nothing.—And to-morrow he'll be there.—
O! he has gone with radiance on his soul,
But left me dark in spirit, ill at ease.—
This hand I plighted, and before he left
I felt that I had given him all my heart.
And so I had; but, like a new-drawn tooth,
I feel as if the fragment were left in
That caused the pain.—Then, in about a week,
The Falkland Isles—no, no, I've lost my course:
My thoughts are crowded, I am press'd with thoughts,
Yet to no end or purpose can I think. (A knock.)
Come in, and welcome, be ye whom ye may;
Come any one, and take these thoughts away. Enter Reuben.
Ah, Jane! I am so glad, so very, very glad.
Reuben.
And so am I, to find you are so very, very glad.
But where is Jane? She was not telling me—
Is she not with you, then? Not ill, I trust, not ill?
Be seated, Reuben, and tell me.
Reuben.
She is well. 'Tis I that am ill.
Eliza.
And you do well to walk for it. There is nothing better than a country walk for a slight illness.
Reuben.
And you with me, Eliza.
Eliza.
(aside)
Ah!—what means he?
Reuben.
O! how may I approach you, how obliterate the old impressions you must have of Reuben? Eliza, I— I love you.
Eliza.
O, God! too late! too late! Away, dear Reuben!
Leave me! I cannot—may not—O, you are too late!
Reuben.
Too late! O, how?
Eliza.
I am another's! I—I am betrothed.
O! thou hast plucked my soul out! I have no thought, no word—dumb silence all!
Eliza.
O! Reuben, I did love thee—love thee now; and even yesterday would—O, God! God! Farewell— thy presence maddens me. O leave, for Heaven's dear love.
Reuben.
I go, Eliza! but the love of Heaven methinks I leave behind. Farewell! Be happy, and—forget me.
[Exit.Eliza.
He should have said forget, and then be happy—
Not happy and forget.—O! I could pray
That thou, my God, would'st teach me to forget,
But that thy will is visible in this,
And rules it as it is. If thus to-day
He loves me, surely yesterday he loved.
What unseen finger then lay on his lips,
Or held back in his eye that tongue of light,
And loosed them now to speak unto a heart
That dares not hear?—I have been as a tree,
Whose inward principle of life is love;
Which from the earliest spring has budded out
Nothing but leaves of sorrow. Surely now
I've reach'd the full flow'r of my agonies!
And next, in Heaven's good time, must come the fruit;
Bitter or sweet, I leave with thee, O God!
Scene VI.
A Country Road.Reuben.
Although another man may call her his.
What is it that possesses? 'Tis the mind.
These arms for this inner self can nothing hold;
And that I love in her, no hand can touch.
Is she not mine, then, since my mind is fill'd,
And all my bosom flooded with her being?
This light that lighteth me comes from her eyes,
And 'tis the light of soul that never sets:
I take her very spirit in as breath,
And seem to think, and feel, and speak, and act
By the high standard of her excellence.
Is she not mine? Who can possess her more?
Do we have life? Not more than I have her.
We put upon it. All this glorious earth
Is by that tenure held. Its landed lords
Are not a whit more lords of it than I.
As well lay out those blue domains of air
And call them theirs!—They would too, if they could—
But that they cannot—save by love, love, love.
When it consumes; and therefore many hearts
May love one being, and that still remain
The all-sufficient object of their loves.
Eliza, we shall never meet again!
Yet say I not adieu, for thou art here,
Here in the more abiding world of thought.
And what should part us now? The cease of love—
That only. Then have we for ever met;
Since this our passion, even at its height,
Pass'd from the world of death into mind's heaven,
Where all things are immortal. There I'll build
For thee a temple of my purest thoughts,
And christen it the Temple of Eliza;
That through all future time our love shall be
A sweet devotion and a joy to me.
[Exit.
MISCELLANEOUS.
HOUSE-HUNTING.
That man is never pleased with his condition,
And yet it is a truth that, even though old,
Consoles poor fallen mortals when re-told.
However home into the heart it strike,
E'en be content—all mankind are alike:
However out of place your lives may be,
What matter if, when changed, no change you see?
So each takes to his own again, right glad
To think his neighbours' troubles are as bad;
Or that his lot unto another's mind
May seem as good as he need wish to find.
Take for the sermon Brown, his wife and mansion.
Could want to make a comfortable life—
That is, so far as earthly mansion can
Comfort the heart of any wife or man;
But yet they growl'd, in accents shrill and gruff;
They both were tired of it—and that's enough:
And so to Robins, the great auctioneer,
Brown gave instructions, definite and clear,
Its tenements, messuages, field and fold.
But lest a curious public should effect
Too easily admission to inspect,
Locality and name of the domain
Should be withheld—inquirers to obtain
These at the office of the auctioneer,
Also the terms of sale, or rent per year.
Had been all round the outskirts of the town.
In order to economise the day,
They went exploring in a separate way,
And home at eve, each eager to express
The day's exploits, both radiant with success;
And as they chatted o'er their tea and toast,
'Twas hard to say which had succeeded most:—
We've seen—almost a palace for a king—
So closely wooded, and so snug withal,
The rooms so large, yes, and the rent so small;
A mansion built when building was more rare,
With labour cheap, and plenty ground to spare;
Grandly palatial in its gates and walls,
Broad flights of steps and spacious entrance halls,
Elizabethan windows, gables, towers,
An ample garden, stock'd with fruits and flowers,
And, bless your heart, a rookery of rooks,
Wherein the library or study looks,
Throstles and blackbirds in perpetual song—
A sort of paradise the whole day long.”
Nor be so jubilant, until you hear
The sort of house that I have seen to-day,
And then you'll change your note, I'm bound to say.
Not one of those mediæval haunted halls,
Where every footstep echoes and appals,
But one of modern build, with all the best
Improvements of the age—among the rest,
High ceilings, ventilation, faultless drains,
Great windows, each of two strong plate-glass panes;
(And light, by modern science has been shown
A requisite of health—a thing not known
In former times;) then water, cold and hot,
Through all the house, with bath-rooms, and what not?
All heretofore unused, too, I presume,—
And by the way, there's gas in every room.
But what about the garden, do you say?
The ground's too precious to be thrown away,
And so there's none—'twill be a care the less;
Each luxury is but one more distress.—
Where is the house? That's where the attraction lies;
The situation is the thing we'll prize.
It overlooks the Alexandra Drive—
The newest line of fashion, and alive
With all the pomp and beauty of the town.”
“I will not have the house, no, dearest Brown,
Just think of my house as with yours compared;
Indeed, comparisons may well be spared—
They are as different as night and day—”
As different, in fact, as day and night;
But of the two mine's the more fair and bright,
And consequently stands for day, you know.”
To save dispute, you may as well resign
All thoughts about your house. Just look to mine—
The sweet seclusion, the abundant room,
The grand antiquity, the wooded gloom,
The rookery, the garden and the birds,
With all the etceteras such a place affords!
My dearest Brown, I wonder that you don't
Jump after such a house!—”
Your dim secluded dens, have ever been
The nurseries of ennui and the spleen;
Your gardens are rheumatic, trees are damp,
And to a person of a studious stamp
Your birds were an intrusion; as for rooks,
Their din would drive the devil from his books!
I must have life and quietude combined—
Something to cheer as well as soothe the mind;
And this is in the mansion of my choice—
Light, airy, free from all gross rural noise—
Seclusion broken only by the rush
Of cheerful carriages and glints of plush.”
“We seem to differ in our tastes,” she said;
“And so I think we'd better go to bed.”
They took their houses with them, and resumed
The subject, each in solitary guise—
A mood wherein we all are wondrous wise.
Were silent, though 'twas clear both were athirst
To speak their minds—it might be said they burn'd—
And therefore to the subject they return'd.
What I've been thinking—for I will confess
I am myself surprised to find it so—
The house you've been so pleased with, do you know,
On second thoughts, I rather like it too”—
Cried Brown; “and if the truth must be confess'd,
I like your Elizabethan house the best.
There's that about these fine old halls which blends
Divinely with our thoughts, and even lends
The mind a touch of the dramatic age,
When England's best possession was the stage.
I even think the cawing of the rooks
Would help to deeper meaning in my books.
And then the high-wall'd garden, with its walks
Of ancient-smelling boxwood and sweet stalks
Of hoary lavender,—there's much in this”—
But this is merely sentimental stuff,
Last evening I was wrong, and you were right;
I've turn'd the matter over in the light
Of common sense, which says, with ready tongue,
This morning I am right, and you are wrong.
Thus being equal, dearest Brown, agree
To leave the taking of the house to me.”
The judge of right and wrong, of false and true,
And taught you such glib verdicts to dispense
'Tween sentimental stuff and common sense?
And now you would consign me to the shelf,
And have the taking of the house yourself!
With all my heart, if you will leave alone
What you miscal my house, and take your own.”
To have my fixed determination bent.
I've thought the houses over, one by one,
And this is the conclusion—yours or none!”
Do after this? He took the quiet plan;
And since the grey mare was the better horse,
Fell to the morning papers, mute, of course.
When, turning to his spouse, he blandly said,
“My love, there's plenty houses to be had—
Now here's a house embracing, I opine,
The best attractions of both yours and mine.
‘Strong-built, substantial mansion,’ and so forth.
‘A southerly exposure; on the north
Well sheltered by a thickly-wooded range
Of hills. About an hour's walk from the Exchange.
Extensive suites of rooms’—and all the rest.
‘The situation is pronounced the best
Within ten miles of town. Romantic view.
Fine vista, with the river peeping through.
An opportunity not to be lost.’
A likely place,” continued he, and toss'd
The paper to his wife, and bade her read:
“It is,” said she, “a likely place indeed;
Yes, lawn in front, and garden in the rear.
Apply to Robins, our own auctioneer!
We should not lose a moment; go at once:
I look upon it as a lucky chance—
A providential, accidental miss—
We did not fix before we look'd at this.”
About this house, I hold it safe that we
Go after it together.”
And found the busy Robins all intent
Framing advertisements. First they desired
To know if any one had yet inquired
After their own house, but seem'd not to look
The paper from his pocket, and said, “Here's
A house that, from the advertisement, appears
The very thing for us. Is it yet sold?
What is the price? and is it new or old?
Where situate? Is its present owner dead?
Or wherefore—”
Robins laugh'd and wagg'd his head:
“Excuse me—dead! no, no,—he and his wife,
I'm glad to see, are in exuberant life.
But, sure, a plain description might have shown
This house that took your fancy was your own!”
And they look'd puzzl'd, half perplex'd, and loath
To own they could have made the strange mistake;
But, seeming from their muddle to awake,
Rejoiced so fair a mansion was unsold—
Nor would they sell it for its weight in gold.
SIR PETER'S CURE.
They think their servants dirt beneath their feet.
At best mere cattle to be driven in reins,
Not fellow-beings with the use of brains,
Further than comprehend their brief commands,
Then execute them—not with heads but hands.
But old Sir Peter, who was of this class,
Got cured, and this was how it came to pass.
Was sent to grass outside the manor grounds,
For some disorder, as was understood,
That wanted rest, free air, and change of food;
And once a-day, at least, the Knight contrived
To walk across and see how Roland thrived.
He spied some distance off, all stiff and stark,
This famous hunter lying on his side,
With legs and tail outstretch'd, and nostrils wide.
“Yes, yes, I knew 'twould come to that,” he said;
“A noble beast—five hundred pounds—dead, dead!”
Then straightway to the hall his steps retraced,
And called his groom: “Here, sirrah, sharp, make haste,
And skin me Roland!” “But, sir—” cried the man,
“You have your orders, go, bring me the skin—
A sorry prize by such a horse to win.”
Behind the manor, bending with his load;
And with Sir Peter chancing there to meet,
He laid the burden at his master's feet:—
“Sir, there is Roland's skin. I think he knew
We came to take it, for he up and flew
At such a sweep as only bird could match—
Never before was he so ill to catch!”
“You thoughtless rascal! skin a living horse!
Was he not dead, you villain?”
After we killed him—dead enough, and still;
But he was ill to catch and hard to kill.”
You've killed the noblest horse that ever ran:
Roland the brave, Roland my only pride,
Slain by an ass, diminish'd to a hide!
See what it is to want a thinking head!
You might have known I thought the horse was dead.”
“If in your orders you had left me room
To use this brainless and unthinking head;
But what are orders, sir, if not obeyed?”
So take this gory record from my sight.
I still must order, and you must obey;
But there's the literal, and the other way;
And if you take the latter, I will wink
At the offence, and give you leave to think.”
FORBIDDEN FRUIT.
To Foxdale Castle, there to spend the day,
Perhaps the morrow also, if they found
The dogs in fettle and the sport abound.
A mile upon their way, the thoughtful Knight
Pulled up his horse, and, turning to his man,
“Ride back,” he said, “as smartly as you can,
And tell my lady that she's not to speak
To Binns the butler, when I am from home,
Not even if I tarry for a week;
Be off, and I'll ride slowly till you come.”
That while Sir Peter was both gray and old,
Her ladyship was in her blooming prime—
'Twas Hebe in the hoary arms of Time.
The butler, too, to make the matter worse,
Was pleasing to the eye, and young of course.
But that Sir Peter had the slightest cause
For jealousy, 'twere wrong even to suppose.
Espied the lady in the drawing-room,
At open window, with the gauze withdrawn,
And just one step between her and the lawn.
But startled by the groom's abrupt advance,
She in sweet consternation dropt the book,
And cast on him a fine, defiant look.
“Fellow, what brings you back? What seek you here?
Get to your stables! Is Sir Peter near?”
And, first, your pardon I would beg and pray,
For I am but the instrument, the horn
Through which Sir Peter's warning note is borne.”
Sir Peter's horse has fallen, you would say,
And dash'd Sir Peter's head against a stone,
Broken his limbs, his ribs, his collar-bone;
Or horse and rider headlong in a ditch!
Speak, fellow, speak this instant! tell me which.”
And, with your pardon, I have but to tell
The message that to me he did confide,
Which is, ‘That you on no account must ride
On the Newfoundland dog!’”
His steed, and left without another word;
As if he could not venture to engage
The dreaded onset of my lady's rage.
For rage she did, and storm'd at dogs and men;
And, like a pretty panther in its den,
Railing at old Sir Peter and his groom:—
“Newfoundland dog!” she cried, “the dotard fool!
Am I a child? a girl let loose from school?
I must not ride on the Newfoundland dog!
Who wanted to? Sir Peter, O Sir P!
Your brains are in a muddle, in a fog,
Your reason stranded, and your wits at sea.”
And with the prettiest laugh that ever ran
The gamut of hysteria, she took
Her seat, and tried to settle at her book;
The words she read, but knew not what she read,—
Sir Peter's paltry message came instead;
And as she threw the fruitless book aside,
Behold, the dog, in all his strength and pride,
Came bouncing o'er the lawn. “Ah, ha, my steed!
I must not ride upon you! no, indeed!
Sir Peter says I must not,—but I will.
Come in, good dog. There, now, be still, be still.
If he can bear me, what a jolly thing,
To turn this room into a circus ring!
Now then, my Shetland; steady, Neptune, steady!
Sir Peter, hem! your most obedient lady!
Bravo, brave dog, thus round and round we go,
Whether Sir Peter like the pace or no.
Yo ho! yo ho! how nice, how jolly nice!
Thanks, good Sir Peter, for your good advice.”
Over a footstool made a sudden leap,
He pitch'd her, heels o'er head, inside the fender,
And left her, as they say, all in a heap.
The maids and footman, summon'd by the crash
Of tongs and shovel, burst upon the scene.
They found her swooning, bleeding, and between
Her nose and jewell'd ear a frightful gash.
Some call'd for water, and some call'd for wine,
Rags, balsam, bandages, and anodyne:
They marvell'd how it happen'd, and agreed
The shovel or the grate had done the deed.
But soon her pale lips show'd returning bloom,
And whisper'd, as they bore her from the room,
“Bravo, my Shetland! quicker, quicker, there!
Now stop us, poor Sir Peter, if you dare.”
Inform'd Sir Peter of the accident,
Just as the dogs were ready for the fray,
And all gave promise of a glorious day.
His heart was braced to join the clanging pack,
But duty and affection held him back.
“Homeward, my men!” And as they homeward bent,
He question'd much about the sad event;
But all the breathless messenger could tell
Was, that some sort of accident befell
Her ladyship soon after he had gone,
Its nature, how, and wherefore, all unknown.
“We found her in a swoon; I saw her bleed.”
At hearing which Sir Peter mends his speed;
The sudden fire leaps from his horse's heels,
The road-side trees fly past, the landscape reels.
The drowsy porter coming to the gate.
And, in a breath, dismounting at the hall,
He seeks his lady's room, boots, whip and all.
And when Sir Peter finds himself denied,
He turns in anger to the maids, who tell
All how their lady's sad mishap befell,
And how it was a shame, a cruel shame
That gentlemen could find no better game.
If they had husbands, they would let them know
Them and their grooms and messages—
Sir Peter cried, and left their loosen'd tongues,
In rising clamour about woman's wrongs.
He reason'd with himself, “I cannot see
How this Newfoundland accident can be
Connected with the message that I sent.
The butler's name through all the strange event
Never appears;—but stay,—does that not add
Suspicion to a case already bad?
It does, it does; I've been befool'd, 'tis clear:
His absence from this female clamour here,
And my exclusion from my lady's room—
What mean they but—Ah, come, my trusty groom,
And help me to unwind this ravell'd clue.
The very thing we told her not to do,
She's done,—but find the butler, bring him here.”
Drunk in the cellar, snoring on the ground.”
Drunk as he may be, than some other where.
Why, he's an honest fellow, after all—
No way connected with these women's squall.
But what about this drawing-room ado—
My lady's fiction?”
E'en to the rumour'd wound upon her cheek.
Your orders were, ‘That she was not to speak
To Binns, the butler;’ but for once I lied;
I said your orders were, ‘She must not ride
On the Newfoundland dog,’ and tho' I knew
It was the likeliest thing that she would do,
I did not think 'twould end as it has ended.
Forgive me, sir, 'twas Duty that offended.”
You are forgiven, and I'll raise your wages;
For you have rid my bosom of its thorns,
And saved me from a noble head of horns.—
I'm sorry for my lady; but her case
Is curable. A scratch upon the face
Is not so bad, e'en tho' it leave a scar,
As many matrimonial scratches are.—
Take this;” and from his purse's silken fold,
He gave the groom a piece of shining gold.
Well pleas'd the solid offering to receive,
He took it, and went, laughing in his sleeve.
THE ROOKERY.
Much of the inner life of the crows;
But there's something human intertwin'd
With all their habits, and to my mind
The ancient, noisy Rookery
Is as haunted a place as well can be.
The trees with old age are hollow and hoar,
With a rent near the root, like a half-open door;
And the ghastly sound of the hollow ground,
Starts up like a warning wherever you tread;
While the croaking, cawing overhead
Some quaint old woodland brogue appears;
For they say the crow lives a hundred years,—
And you'll often see patriarchal crows
With big white carbuncles on their nose,
That must have taken that time to grow;
And by their cracked old croaks you may know
They are come of an antiquated people:
The creak of the rusty vane on the steeple,
Or the swinging signboard over the way,
Speaks not from an older world than they.
With its gothic gables and chimneys tall:
Grown into the old-fashion'd life of the crows;
And I make no doubt if the chimneys could speak,
They would tell us the same old carbuncled beak
That croak'd on the roof when the old squire lay,
Fighting with Death for one more breath,
May be heard in the Rookery croaking to-day.
Without being told by the funeral bell,
When anything deadly is doing there,
And make narrowing circles in the air,
To reconnoitre, from on high,
The grave where the well-known corpse is to lie.
The well-known corpse, did I say? Ay, ay;
For they know a deal better than you or I
The neighbour that's ailing and going to die.
I heard two crows on an outside tree:—
“Quhare haif yo bein, gossip Croak?“ quoth the one:—
Quoth the other, “Just to see quhat good could be done
In the old kirkyard—” “And what your reward?”
“Red worms all over and fine white grubs
At the new-happ'd grave of honest John Stubbs.”—
Quoth the first, “Then to-morrow we'll all of us go,
And hold a grand hilario!”
When the couples prance o'er the village green,
What a skelloching hulla-baloo would arise
As the Rookery emptied into the skies:
For the gossiping rooks without papers or books
Know all the news of the country side—
Croak for the corpse and caw for the bride.
When spring comes round and nests to be found,
Almost a dozen on every tree!
Four nests deep, how they manage to keep
Each pair to their own, is a marvel to me!
Building the new, and repairing the old,
What a Babel of tongues! how they clamour and scold!
No doubt like us, they have rights to defend,
And perhaps like us, too, they borrow and lend;
While some will thieve, and some show their greed,
By massing up more than they'll ever need—
Which of course will give rise to many a plea,
And they'll have their lawsuits as well as we.
How else account for all this babble,
This “plucking of crows,” and perpetual squabble?
When eggs are hatched and mouths are to fill,
Four or five gaping in every nest,
And the old ones alighting from east and west,
From north and south, and far and wide,
With their dainty pickings to dole and divide.
Tempted to fly, yet afraid they fall;
And shooters appear from far and near,
Round the old dilapidated hall—
For the lord of the manor appoints a day,
To come who will and shoot who may;
And the shopkeeper leaves both scoop and scale,
The carpenter stops at a half-driven nail,
The smith drops the hammer, his bellows their blast,
The cobbler kicks into a corner his last,
The tailor jumps up with three cuts and a caper,
Hops over his goose, and is off with the draper,
And student and clerk throw aside their books,—
For all are bent on the same intent—
A regular racketing day at the rooks!
As the shooters make head with their powder and lead,
And the lärum is spread from tree to tree;
The young on the branches, the old in the air,
Screaming a curse and cawing a pray'r;
And as crack, crack, crack go the belching pieces,
The madden'd roar of the siege increases,
Till the quietest sepulchres in the wood
Are shrieking of broken solitude.
Comes to a close; and, with slaughtered crows,
In bunches their foes go marching away;
To wet their weazens and rest their loads.—
The evening breeze lifts away the smoke,
And the roar of the Rookery sinks to a croak,—
Croak, croak, half the night through,
About this battle of Rookieloo.
And the Rookery rises to famous tune.
The young that were spared from the fiery assault,
With full-fledged quill arise at will,
And tumble and wheel through the azure vault.
Both old and young let loose the tongue,
And lord! what a song of madcap glee:
For now their days are idle and long,
And every one a jubilee.
Up, up in the morning, up and away
To some chosen field to feed and play,
And home at night in gossiping flight
And daft delight of their merry day;
All fearless now of the treacherous gun,
Or lure of the wiliest mother's son;
For they scent his powder, see through his trick,
And know when a gun is a gun or a stick:
So a good wide berth they give to their foe,
Slanting aside with an easy glide,
And a fine contempt for all below.
For them, I am sure they would not care
Though I sat up beside them in a tree
For I know they have something worth our ear,
Which all my life I have yearn'd to hear;
But woe is me! it may not be,
They never will let me come so near.
So this is all I may hear or see,
About the rooks and the Rookery.
THE WEASEL'S CAIRN.
“They are varmints for money,” old Denis said,As he took off his hat and scratched his head,
Where he stood in the field with his foot on his spade,—
“Money they never in honesty made.”
“And where do they get it?” “Steal it, to be sure;
For a weasel will rob both rich and poor;
Steal from the cabin, the church or the hall,
Without any conscience for helpless or old,
And not for a hap'orth of use at all,
But just for the love of the silver and gold.
Wherever the miser may bury his store,—
In the garden three feet deep or more,
In a hole of the wall or under the floor,
Or behind the cross-beam over the door,
Hidden, however securely or dim,
It's known to the weasel as well as to him.—
Sometimes it lives in the miser's house,
In the crannied walls, like rat or mouse;
But rats and mice leave their cozy homes
When the bold little cunning weasel comes.
Or it worms its way through the mouldy thatch,
And up in the rafters keeps secret watch
To see where their money is hidden, you know.—
When the careful housewife counts her gear,
Half dead for fear of anyone near,
Stretch'd on a joist it leans its ear,
For the clink, clink, clink, and chink, chink, chink,
Is the sweetest music a weasel can hear.
Its little black diamonds gleam at the sight,
And its pretty white waistcoat heaves with delight:
And aye, as the housewife clink, clink, clinks,
That silver and gold shall be mine, it thinks.
Or perhaps, it lies crouch'd inside of the wall,
And peeps thro' a crevice so round and small,
That anyone catching the glance of its eye,
Takes it for the sheen of a blue-bottle fly.
Then the miser, thinking all safe and sound,
Creeps to his hoard, looking round and round,
Pausing and list'ning in horrible fear
At the thought of a footstep coming near,
Falls down, and worships his god in the pose;
But he little knows, he little knows
That the blue-bottle fly is the weasel's eye
Peering at him wherever he goes.”
“But, when does the weasel help itself,
And where keeps it all this ill-gotten pelf?—”
“Why, just at the gray of the morning, sir,
That sound sleeping hour when no one's astir.
Ay, then may the weasel be seen on the hearth,
A perfect wonder of playful mirth,
A bright gold coin it has stolen or found.
But, ere the red streaks light up the gray,
It nips up its guinea and scampers away,
Without e'en the faintest patter or noise,
And up through the walls to the place of its choice;
Or down through the floor to its crannied store,
Somewhere about the foundation-stone,
And drops its guinea among many more,
To lie unknown, long, long unknown,
Till all the folks are dead or away
To the Irishman's home in Amerikay;
When the poor old cabin is pull'd to the ground,
And the long hidden wealth of the weasel found,
As much as had kept them here at home
For generations and years to come.
You don't believe it, sir! By the lord,
It's truth I tell ye, every word,
And none knows the truth of it better than I;
Just listen a minute and I'll tell you why.
This very ground on which we stand—
Twenty acres of arable land,
Ten of old pasture, and ten of bog,
And five of gnarly woody scrog—
Five and forty acres all told
My grandfather bought with a weasel's gold.—
In his day to tell it to everyone,
For fear of the treasure-trove, you know.
And in their graves an age ago.
In this very field, he rented it then—
On a sweet summer day as ever shone,
He was digging potatoes here alone;
And, raising his body to ease his bones,
He look'd across at yon cairn of stones,
The gathering of many a bygone day,
With moss and mould all green and gray,
And there he spied a weasel at play,
Out and in through cranny and seam,
And down the cairn like a jaggëd gleam
Of lightning in a leaden sky,
Or, leaving the cairn, it would scamper by,
And down the potato furrows pass,
Like a sunny brook through the meadow grass,
Now leaping, now lost to the watcher's eye;
Yet, ever and aye 'twould again return,
To one little hole in the stony cairn,
Where it hid for a while, then came peeping out,
Looking up and down and round about.
But once when it left, cried he, ‘By my soul,
I'll see what there is in the weasel's hole.’
So he ran to the spot, and with nimble stroke
Into its little castle broke,
Picked out the stones, and the mossy mould,
Deeper and deeper let in the light,
Till he reached the last chamber, and lord, what a sight
Of shining silver and gleaming gold!
He could do nothing but stand and gaze,
He gazed till he felt himself gazing blind;
But he heard the brush of the weasel behind,
And then, oh dear, oh dear what a sound
Of piteous misery and dismay
Pierced through that quiet summer day
When the weasel saw that its treasure was found!
It sprang with one leap to its golden heap,
Bewail'd and wrung its little fore-paws,
And then with one of its sharpest claws—
Would you believe it? it's past all belief!—
Ript up its belly from tail to throat,
Put off its skin like a cast-off coat,
Lay down in its flesh, and died with grief!
When he counted the money into his hat,
There were spade-ace guineas three hundred and five,
And ten pounds in silver, as I'm alive!
Into the place where the money had lain,
Built the cairn all up again,
And pray'd for the honour'd dead within.
And unto this day man, woman and bairn
Give it the name of the ‘Weasel's Cairn.’”
THE LOTTERY TICKET.
John Skippangoe was footman to a squire,Willing and prompt as master could desire,
And oftentimes his faithful service got
Such recompense as all good service ought—
The kindly word, the patronising joke,
Which condescension in its turn awoke
Familiar reverence in the breast of John.
Full many gifts he gave him and anon
A ticket for the lottery, sure to gain—
The lottery of Frankfort-on-the-Maine.
But honest John, though prodigal of thanks,
Knew well his master's luck was all for blanks:
In truth, both John and squire knew well enough
The ticket was not worth a pinch of snuff.
But, one day, when the squire was snugly set
Over his breakfast, reading the Gazette,
His eyes fell carelessly upon the list
Of Frankfort prizes. Suddenly his fist
Came down upon the table with a thump
That made his egg out off the egg-cup jump:—
“Can I believe my eyes? No, no,—yet zounds!
It is John's ticket! eighty thousand pounds!
For years and years have I this lottery tried,
The most unlucky dog may have his day,
But I, poor whelp, have given my turn away.
Had it but been a hundred pounds or so,
I could have bid my disappointment go;
I would have e'en congratulated John,
And sworn how glad I was that he had won.
But eighty thousand pounds all in a crack!
'Twere well I think to get my ticket back.—
No, no, not even a mint of money can
Outweigh the honour of a gentleman,
Whereas this breach of honour would distrain
The very worth of its unworthy gain.
John shall enjoy it; I will realise
More interest from his joy than from his prize.
And John's no common footman; I have seen
A dash of higher breeding in his mien—
A sort of gentleman in short; and Fate,
Having seen the same, bequeaths him an estate.”
Thus mused and mused the squire, till in the end
Poor John seem'd not his footman but his friend.
Such sudden wealth he thought as suddenly gave
The attributes a gentleman should have;
And, acting in the same becoming way,
Invited John to dine with him that day.
John marvell'd greatly how he could deserve
This honour, he whose business was to serve,
But stopp'd no fine-spun theory to draw,
For well he knew his master's word was law;
John's only argument was to obey.
He knew their modes and manners just as well
As any of the quality could tell;
He knew the cut of collar, coat or vest,
And came to dinner in the very best;
So that, to judge of them by their attire,
You could not tell the footman from the squire.
It matters little how the squire had plann'd
To let his wife and daughter understand
John's new position; but their looks confess'd
He was no more their servant, but their guest.
The lady, ripen'd by long years and grief,
Was falling fast into the yellow leaf:
The daughter, though unwater'd by a tear,
Was falling just as fast into the sere,
And so, if all the truth must needs be told,
Was shelv'd as something that could not be sold.
Who knows but that the squire began to dream
Already of some matrimonial scheme?
A daughter ancient—and a footman rich—
Might well suggest the hymeneal hitch.
Nor does it matter how the dinner sped,
How John was drunk to, patronized and fed.
The viands and the wines went round galore,
His health was drunk a score of times and more,
As he some proper gentleman had been,
And much he wonder'd what it all could mean.
And John is left hobnobbing with the squire.
“Fill up your glass John; try those sugar'd plums;
Or there's some nuts to exercise your gums.
And, hearken John—believe me if you can—
You are in truth a perfect gentleman.”
An honest man, a man that paid his way,
That stood his bets and never sold his vote,
Although reduced to one last threadbare coat,
Was still a gentleman.”
But that's not what I mean; I say that you,
John Skippangoe, plain John, may now aspire
To dub yourself John Skippangoe, Esquire.”
And if it be your will that I must go,
I cannot help it; but, at least, you'll give
Me back my character—a man must live.”
But certainly your character's worth knowing:
A man of most uncommon common sense,
Preserving honour without wasting pence;
An instinct that requires no settled plan,
But does the stroke that makes the prosperous man,
And takes the world for what it really is;
As fit to be my master as I his.”
But, since you've made me in some sort your guest,
I'd be so bold as ask you how it comes
That you and I should meet like equal chums?”
Your wisdom have I proved, and now I find
That you are even wealthier than wise;
For, hark ye John, your ticket's won a prize
Of eighty thousand pounds!”
Cried John, “that such a thing should come to pass!”
Then fumbled in his pockets, pulled his hair,
And on his master fixed a stupid stare.
Your ticket—is it lost? or but your voice?
Confound you, what's the matter? speak, man speak!”
While waiting for you at the Opera door,
I dropt into the Bull with two-three more—
All servants, sir—and having no money handy,
I swapt my ticket for a glass of brandy.”
Your ticket—eighty thousand—for a glass!
You blockhead, simpleton, you worse than knave—
Fate made you master, Folly keeps you slave:
Go from my presence!”—and, to seal his doom,
His furious master kick'd him from the room.
THE WIDOW AND THE PRIEST.
Outside our village, up within a croft,Shelter'd from all the winds except the soft
Sweet clover breath that comes out of the west,
There lived a widow in a lonely nest—
A clay-built cottage in against a bank,
Choked up with brambles, docks and nettles rank;
Before the door a small potato bed,
A bush or two of roses, white and red,
Some herbs we used to know in days of old,
As rue, and thyme, and balm and marigold;
And one tall willow, in whose wiry top
A pair of pyets came to jibe and hop:
A sleepy place but for the little stream
That brattled through the croft and broke its dream.
For thirty years of lonely widow-hood
She strove to make ends meet as best she could,
Her chief support one small milk-cow that housed
Within a little byre at night, and browsed
All day among the whins, or took a turn
About the herby borders of the burn:
And if she straggled from the widow's ken
A gentle calling brought her back again.
The little beast would at the door be found,
Crooning of well-fill'd udders. Little need
The widow had for watching, and indeed
Long hours within the willow shade would sit,
Or on some hillock, in the sun, and knit
The coarse gray woollen stockings, which she sold
About the village when the days grew cold.—
This, with her scanty butter, milk and cheese,
Made up her little stock-in-trade: and these
Found ready market; for 'twas thought and said,
The natural herbs whereon her cow was fed
Gave to the milk rare virtues, and in turn
The products of her chizzard and her churn.
Thus did she by her merchandise provide
The livelihood that never is denied
To honest, careful labour, and could give
A portion to the priest, as well as live.
But here it was her brooding trouble lay;
For left alone all thro' the thoughtful day,
With priestly terrors rankling in her brain,
And penal fears, and everlasting pain,
She conjured up a load of outward sin
Far more than one might carry, and within
A poor, weak, helpless soul. “Alas!” cried she,
“The holy Jesus never comes to me,
To loose me from this burden of my cares;
Nor will, save thro' a world of costly pray'rs:
And what can my small pittance do to bring
A poor old woman to her Lord and King!”
It was his wont to do, came up the croft.
Thou bearest with thee, shining in thy face!
Grant only that their sunshine fall on me,
And make me strong, yet thou no weaker be.”
Such loud and fervid pray'rs for one so poor
Never went up before. Peter and Paul,
The powerfullest among the older saints, and all
The weightiest of the new, have been implored
That thou to Christian comfort be restored.”
“Ah, woe is me! so many holy saints
To strengthen me, and yet my poor heart faints
Beneath its load! Good father, what beside
Is in thy power? Can nothing else be tried?”
Thy money's worth in daily pray'rs to Heaven,
And, out of charity, some aves more,
For which I ask no pay.”
Will open! Like a beggar I must wait,
Pleading, with all my rags, outside the gate!
Will no good saint take pity? Would a pray'r
To God's own mother, Mary—”
Think'st thou a person of thy mean estate
Need look for what we grant but to the great!
No, no. 'Tis true the Virgin is alone,
Through whom an intercession could not fail;
But what can thy small worldly means avail?”
Perhaps my little, like the widow's mite,
Would find much favour: try, good father, try;
And if great faith be needed, that have I.”
“Great faith is needed; but the price is much
Above thy means, the intercession such
As only wealth indulges in. Yet thou,
I just bethink me, hast a good milk cow—
And what are worldly goods to sins forgiven,
A cleansëd heart, a place secured in heaven?
What profits it a man to gain the whole
Of earth, if, gaining that, he lose his soul?
And, earth possessing, it were well he gave
All up, if thereby he his soul could save.”
Some while the widow sat without a word—
Although her breast with much unrest was stirr'd—
Brooding, with downcast eyes and thoughtful brow,
Between her soul's salvation and her cow;
And when she spoke 'twas with a sigh:—
“Alas!
We know not what a day may bring to pass:
Why need we set our hearts on worldly gear,
And death, that severs us and it, so near—
So ever near that any footslip may
From all our clinging hoards snatch us away!
O, reverend father, thou shalt have my cow.
But pray for me to Mary, Mother in Heaven,
On bended knees, till I am wholly shriven.”
It was agreed that he should pray and pray,
And keep the courts of heaven, both night and day,
For one whole week, with supplications plied—
Enough to purify a soul, though dyed
As black as sin itself—far more than lift
Her burden off, and give her peaceful shrift.—
All that was needed on both sides was this—
Unbounded faith on hers, fervour on his.
And for the rest, the cow might nibble there,
About the croft, until the Lammas fair,
A fortnight hence, when he would have her sold.
Meanwhile the widow's grief grew manifold.
If all those holy saints and all those pray'rs
Have fail'd to rid her of her sinful cares,
How great must these now be! So greatly more
Than ever she had dreamt they were before,
That even the Virgin's interceding word
Unto the bar of Heaven may rise unheard!
And to her crowding sorrows she has now
To add the speedy parting with her cow:—
“Alas! alas! the world has never seen
Such friends, poor Crum, as thou and I have been.
And must we part at last! And must we part—
To save my soul—ay, ay—but break my heart!”
Into its eyes, until she thought a haze
Rose from their deeps and gather'd in a tear;
And as the day grew nearer and more near
When they must part, her fondness for the beast,
Her fondness and her kindness, still increased.—
She moved beside it both by burn and brake,
And sadly shared with it her oaten cake.
Now when the week of prayers was at an end,
Up through the croft the priest was seen to wend,
And coming on the widow and her cow,
“Woman,” said he, “how is it with thee now?”
“No better, reverend father, none, but worse;
And all my life seems blacken'd with some curse
That even holy church has not the power,
I fear, to charm away, or priest to scour.
O, reverend father, hast thou pray'd thy best?”
“Good woman, I perceive thy great unrest
Arises from a want of faith as great.
For one whole week I've pray'd, early and late,
For thee and thee alone, and am assured
Thy soul's salvation is right well secured.
Believe it, just believe it is, and lo!
That very instant thou wilt find it so.
This want of faith, my woman, is thy hell,—
Yes, think all well with thee, and all is well.—”
And ere she well knew what to think or say,
While, in a trance of curious, mute surprise,
Up through the croft she track'd him with her eyes,
Beyond the knolls till through the upland gap
His long, black breezy skirts were seen to flap.
And then she sank into her own sad breast,
As to the last extremity distress'd,
All outward trust cut off, the last hope gone,
Her sole reliance in herself alone.
And long she brooded over her despair:—
“If I have but to think his week of prayer
Has brought me peace from Heaven, why might I not
Myself raise comfort by the power of thought?
My thinking or his praying—which, ay which,
It matters not. If I could think me rich,
Believe myself a duchess or a queen,
I should not feel that I am poor and mean;
If I can think away my sins, what need
Of priest or holy church to intercede?”
But while she reason'd thus, the priest's man came,
With quick official strides. Said he, “Old dame,
I'm come to fetch the cow.” She look'd him—Nay!
“Go back to him that sent thee, man, and say
He's got the cow: if not, be his the blame;
Tell him to think he has—it's all the same!”
And there was such commanding in her look
As plainly told the man that she could brook
No parley with him, so he turned and left.
Alone again, she felt as one bereft
'Twere wise to break with priest and church together;
“For though they fail'd to rid me of my grief,
The thought that yet they would, gave some relief;
But, now I've cast them off, I see their worth,
And feel the desolation of this earth.”
Her eyes fell on the damp earth where she stood,
And there a daisy in sweet solitude
Was meekly folding to the setting sun,
And all around it not another one.
Its loneliness so touch'd her heart that she
Let go her sorrow, and on bended knee
Gazed deep into the being of the flower,
And seem'd its sweet existence to devour:
“Dear God, dear God, what need have I to doubt
Thy far-descending care, which leaves not out
Even this lowly daisy? Dear, dear, look!
Within its leaves a spray-drop from the brook
Gleams like a star; Thy sun that rules the day
E'en stoops to glorify a drop of spray!
O, nothing is too lowly for Thy light,
Nor any soul unworthy in Thy sight.
If this poor daisy, looking to the sky,
Is dower'd with such radiance, may not I,
By looking unto Thee, O God, receive
The spirit, at whose touch all troubles leave?
When Thou thyself didst walk this earth, God-Christ,
'Twas not the rich man, not the learned priest
That got Thy benedictions, but the poor;
Yea, even those that begg'd from door to door,
If they but kneel'd unto thee and confess'd
Their sins, as I do now, they rose up pure—
Lord of the lowly, thou! friend of the poor!”
While thus she kneel'd, she seem'd to look right thro'
This frame of earth that hides from mortal view
The real world behind; and when she came
Back to her common self, the glori-flame
In which departed spirits, as 'tis said,
And all angelic beings are array'd,
Came flickering with her, as if she had been
Within the unseen world behind the scene.
She rose with such meek majesty and grace
As though she had seen Jesus face to face,
And softly to her dumb companion talk'd,
Patting its neck as side by side they walk'd
Along the croft into their clay-built home,
Where never more the priest was known to come.
SEVEN CHURCHES OF CLONMACNOISE.
Seven Churches of Clonmacnoise—
As noisy a place as ever squalled,
If the Churches have each a different voice.
I never was there myself, or mayhap
I'd say something authentic of my own,
Only, I see the place on the map,
Some miles on the south side of Athlone;
And it strikes me, as the name I read,
That it must be a very queer place indeed.
When the ranting protestant sects began?
Or farther back, when St. Patrick came,
And fashioned the heathen on the Roman plan?
And for what good reason was such a name given?
Did he actually seven churches raise?
Was the necromantic number seven
Supposed to be all essential for praise?
No; Patrick had too much equipoise
To pitch the whole seven at Clonmacnoise.
Subsequent to Luther, Calvin and Knox—
Three of the Pope's most terrible foes,
Who broke up his fold into many flocks.
Then seven of the sects, for all one knows,
Had made their way to this central spot,
And seven churches, we may suppose;
Might then be built as well as not.
Hence Clonmacnoise when the noisy seven
Sang each in a different key to Heaven.
THE NEGLECTED CANARY.
Our little golden songster hung,
Singing, piping merrily,
With dulcet throat and clipping tongue;
Singing from the peep of morning
To the evening's closing eye;
When the sun in blue was burning,
Or when clouds shut out the sky;
Foul or fair, morn, eve, or noon,
Its little pipe was still in tune.
That gave sweet echo to its note,
And strings of tiny silver bells
Rang with the pulsings of its throat;
Song all through its restless frame,
Its very limbs were warbling strings;
I well believe that music came
E'en from the tippings of its wings;
Piping early, late and long,
Mad with joy, and drunk with song!
O, welcome to thy little store,
Thy song repays it o'er and o'er.
And bade our city hearts prepare
To leave a while our beaten ways
For sandy shore and breezy air.
Some busy days the needles flew,
And, though no special heed it drew,
Our warbler up above us there
Was each one's joy—but no one's care.—
The noise of preparation rang
From room to room, from head to head,
Until our little minstrel sang
Almost unheeded, and—unfed;
Singing on with trustful lay,
Piping through the livelong day!
Or how eked out its lessening meal,
We may but guess, we cannot tell—
We only think, and sadly feel.
It saw the kittens on the floor
Regaled with plenty from our board;
It saw the crumbs swept from our door,
Feeding the sparrows in the yard.
Ah, were those prison wires away,
And were it only free as they!
As thirst and hunger gnaw'd apace;
And when to the accustom'd place,
It came its food or drink to seek,
Rose in its breast when none was there!
Or whether, springing to its perch,
It piped again the merry strain,
Alighting to renew its search—
Search and sing again, again:
We cannot tell, our busy brains
Unconsciously drank in its strains;
Nor missed at morning, noon, or night,
The sweet unrecognised delight.
“Ah! who will tend the bird?” we said.
“Chirp, chirp! sweet, sweet!—Alas! no sound
Of wing or note! And is it fled?”
We look'd into the cage, and found
Our little minstrel cold and dead!
And scatter'd on its sanded floor
The chaffy remnants of its store.
The last drop in its well was drain'd,
And not a grain of seed remain'd.
And wonder'd how so small a thing
Had ever piped the merry stave
That made our hearts and household ring.
Surely it was not this that sung,
But something that has pass'd away—
The life that ran through limb and tongue—
Ay, call it spirit, if we may;
Repeats the song that charm'd us here.
For life is sacred—great and small,—
And He that notes the sparrow's fall
May keep a higher home for all.
THE LAIRD OF BRETHERTON.
Far, far up in the north countrie,
Beyond the Tweed, the Clyde and the Forth,
Even Beyond the Tay and the Dee;
In a green sunny glen,
Almost out of our ken,
And a somewhat mysterious man is he.
His only companion a big tame goose:
At the jambs of the fireside sit these two—
He silent and thoughtful, it silent and croose;
And whether his thought
Be something or nought,
He's at least what the Scotch call “unco douce.”
More than the syllable no or ay;
And often his tongue lies silent for weeks,
Unless when the goose gives a cackling cry:
Then a guttural note
Wells up in his throat,
But unknown the nature of his reply.
As for papers they rarely come up the glen,
And never at all to his chimla nook—
For what are to him the doings of men?
They may love, they may hate,
They may legislate,—
He cares not a button how or when.
The ten-pound bill of '32;
Household suffrage has come at last,
Yet his manhood seems but half gone through.
The whole of the time
He's been in his prime,
But with their Reform had nothing to do.
Alma and misty Inkermann,
And the black revolt in India,
Where innocent blood in torrents ran,
And the gory well
Remains to tell
The dire success of a traitor's plan.
Where lips of iron decided fates;
The sharp week's war in Germany;
And the grapple of death in the Western States,
When the world look'd on,
From Charleston
To Richmond's slowly yielding gates.
And small ones come to immortal fame;
But what to Bretherton and his goose
How the one class went or the other came?
No requiem
Ever comes to them,
Or blatant sound of a living name.
And he seems to be thinking hard and deep.
'Tween the goose and the fire his looks are shared;
The goose sits churming half asleep;
The tongues of fire
Lick higher, higher,
And with the smoke up the chimney leap.
And he seems to enjoy the curling reek;
To the tongues that play so fast and loose,
He listens, and thinks he can hear them speak:
No doubt they do,
And he knows too
That language older than Latin or Greek.
And the winds break out in their highest key,
And the glen is alive with whoop and howl,
All the spirits of air in jubilee,—
O then may be heard
The goose and the laird
Enjoying it all with a chuckling glee.
When the laird's loved silence is all supreme,
And the bee on its tiny bugle plays
To deepen the glen in its noonday dream;
And the sheep are still,
In the shade of the hill,
And the tail-tossing cows knee-deep in the stream.
And out to the drowsier braes they come,
Or, like creeping mist up the whinny loan,
They slowly wander a mile from home,
List'ning at times
To the grasshoppers' rhymes,
That spin in the grass their monotonous thrum.
The goose goes nibbling the grass in the loan.
He snuffs the whins with half-uttered thanks,
Or a blue-bell peeps by the side of a stone,
And he kneels to gaze,
His eyes in a haze,
And his thoughts—but his thoughts remain his own.
To all our worldly ways so blind—
Can see some farther than others can
Into the world this world behind,
And through the cell
Of the little blue-bell,
And into the very soul of the wind?
Is a goose that pretends to be nothing more.
He leaves the rest to their scramble and noise,
Their empty pretensions and blustering roar;—
Their risings and fallings,
Professions and callings,
An unheard sea on an unseen shore.
A CHRISTMAS CAROL.
Give us a taste of Christmas weather—
Tinkling ice or silent snow,
Wind and hail, or all together.—
Days of drizzle, quit the scene,
And let the snow-clad monarch enter:
Christmas, come, and bring us Winter,
Crowned with hollies, red and green.
Your carpet white with gleaming spangles;
Bring the robin to our door;
Fringe the eaves with icy tangles;
On the shrubs hang coral chains;
Paint the forests in the panes;
From the apple-tree or oak,
Bring a bunch of mistletoe;
And pass around the song and joke,
Ere you go, ere you go.
Warm our hearts, and make us merry,
And further to increase our mirth,
Fill the cups with elderberry.
Out of Extra Double Numbers,
Until the fireside listeners draw
Closer round the crackling embers.
Touch our hearts, lest we forget
The shivering singers in the snow;
They only ask what we can spare—
A little of our Christmas fare:
Freely give and let them go.
Take their simple benediction;
And as they go onward singing,
Let us hear the mingled ringing
Of the joyful city bells,
Chiming with their song that tells
The marvel of the Crucifixion.
Lead us to the dying year;
Lying there beside his bier,
Conning o'er his weal and woe,
And his many faults confessing.
All past life feels weak we know.
But let us kneel and get his blessing
Ere he go, ere he go.
A' BURDENS ARE LICHT, EXCEPT TO THE BEARER.
Guidwife, you and I ha'e a hantle to bear,
We've scrimpit an' clootit to mak baith ends meet,
Yet for a', there's but little between's and the street.
There's something far wrang whan the like o' us want,
And plenty for Idleness, Quack'ry, and Cant.
The fat o' the land is enjoy'd by sic gentry,
While hard handed Wark has a beggarly pantry.
But we've comforts and joys neither little nor few.
We gree weel thegither, our bare leggit weans
Are lichtsome as linties and sturdy as stanes:
Hard wark and sound sleep, a clear conscience and peace;
And richly we dine when guid health says the grace.
Awa' wi' your envy o' lots that look fairer—
A' burdens are licht, except to the bearer.
The heirs o' the siller, the lords o' the soil;
Your limbs o' the law, wi' a scart o' the pen
Each makin' as muckle's wad sair ony ten;
And that, too, for only ae day in the week;
Your doctors, your merchants, your traders and tricksters,
That live by their lees and their villainous mixtures!
For the weariest labour is—naething to do;
Nor wad I the lawyer, though cramm'd be his purse,
Ilk penny that fills it is paid wi' a curse:
The parson's hard set for his seventh day's scrieve,
And aften maun preach what he canna believe:
Wi' doctor and dealer, Death and Debt deal nae fairer:—
A' burdens are licht, except to the bearer.
And aften denied e'en the curse o' hard wark;
Ilka day eatin' up what the ither has won,
Wi' nocht to fa' back or look forrad upon;
Yet plenty for a' in the lap o' the earth,
To whilk we've a richt by the charter o' birth!
It's hard to be borne, and wrang to defend it;—
We shouldna put up wi't—plain Justice cries “mend it!”
The troubles o' life are the makin' o' men:
Ilk ane gets his share, and what matter the kind,
Be this through the body or that through the mind.
Ah, mony's the licht-seemin' heart on the road,
Wad part wi' its pack for your wearisome load.
The mair we repeat it, the proverb grows clearer—
A' burdens are licht, except to the bearer.
DRUMM'D OUT.
But as proper a lad as could be seen,
So I 'listed for to serve the Queen
In the Seventy-second Regiment.
And being the worse of drink one day,
I cut my stick and ran away
From the Seventy-second Regiment.
They gave me fifty on the back,
Which, being my first, was a very small whack
For the Seventy-second Regiment.
But they hauled me back, as they did before,
And they doubled my punishment three times o'er,
Did the Seventy-second Regiment.
And in using my fingers I was not slack,
But soon it became a well-known fac'
In the Seventy-second Regiment.
They played the hangi-ment with me,
Likewise disgraced her Majestie,
And the Seventy-second Regiment.
They tried me with prison discipline;
But they saw that I did not care a pin
For the Seventy-second Regiment.
And turned it round with the tails before,
Then marched me down to the barrack door,
And kicked me out of the Regiment.
On a cracked old fife that would hardly play;
With tootle-teetle-toot, and r-r-r-r-rummy-dummy day
They drumm'd me out of the Regiment.
I have no trade within my hands,
And live by breaking the ten commands,
Since they drumm'd me out of the Regiment.
I do not fear the face of clay,
The devil himself, or Botany Bay,
Or the Seventy-second Regiment.
LONDON.
To live in London was my young wood-dream—London, where all the books come from, the lode
That draws into its centre from all points
The bright steel of the world; where Shakspere wrote,
And Eastcheap is, with all its memories
Of gossip Quickly, Falstaff and Prince Hal;
Where are the very stones that Milton trod,
And Johnson, Garrick, Goldsmith and the rest;
Where even now, our Dickens builds a shrine
That pilgrims thro' all time will come to see;
London! whose street names breathe such home to all:
Cheapside, the Strand, Fleet Street and Ludgate-hill,
Each name a very story in itself.
To live in London! London, the buskin'd stage
Of history, the archive of the past—
The heart, the centre of the living world!
Wake, dreamer, to your village, and your work.
THE ALBUM.
A household treasury, where all that comeMay leave the impression of the varied mind
In pencil's breathing lines, that speak, though dumb;
Or words that give a picture to the blind:
A casket where the gems of thought and art
We gather on life's rugged way are set
In lasting beauty, to renew the heart
When sear'd and sadden'd with this worldly fret;
A glass in which our future will behold
Our present feature, and compare the two.
O may the characters we now unfold
Be such as bear progressive Time's review,
That in these pages eyes unborn may glean
A worthy glimpse of what our lives have been!
SONNET.
[Since, twenty years ago, you took this hand]
Since, twenty years ago, you took this hand,And robed me in the mantle of your name,
My raven locks are gray with time's white sand,
But yet this heart, then young, remains the same.
I see no wrinkle of the aged man;
For love's eyes look all inwardly, and know
A deeper truth than outward vision can.—
O wherefore need we ever think of age,
Or mourn the lapse of time, unless to learn
That life is endless, and time but a gauge
Whereby we comprehend the great eterne?—
Then, grow we old or young, what matter whether,
So long as you and I grow on together.
STRATFORD-ON-AVON.
To Stratford-on-the-Avon. And we pass'dThrough aisles and avenues of the princeliest trees
That ever eyes beheld. None such with us
Here in the bleaker north. And as we went
Through Lucy's park, the red day dropt i' th' west;
A crimson glow, like blood in lovers' cheeks,
Spread up the soft green sky and pass'd away;
The mazy twilight came down on the lawns,
And all those huge trees seem'd to fall asleep;
The deer went past like shadows. All the park
Lay round us like a dream; and one fine thought
Hung over us, and hallow'd all. Yea, he,
The pride of England, glisten'd like a star,
And beckon'd us to Stratford.
TO JANET,
With a small book, entitled, “Ears of Corn, from various Sheaves.”
If cares in others may be understoodBy feeling what ourselves bear and have borne,
Then may I judge your spirit sometimes lorn,
And often craving for a higher good.
How precious, then, the stores of heavenly food
Bequeathed in books! And these few “Ears of corn,
From various sheaves,” by various reapers shorn,
May help the longings of your upward mood.
For, as the body lives by nourishment,
So does the spirit; and its daily bread
Is truth and beauty, God's fine mystery blent
Through art and nature; and the hopes that shed
Perpetual morning in our way; yea, all
Of joy or grief that can our day befal.
MUSINGS.
TO JANET,
On her Forty-second Birth-Day Anniversary.
Some youthful dreams from both your heart and mine;
Yet do we feel as young as when we carried
Pea-hules for Herrit's swine.
Among the lower classes or the upper—
As when we sang of tuskers to our tea,
And soor-dook to our supper.
Have parted us since then, forget we cannot;
And who so fit to sing of auld langsyne
As I should be to Janet?
Awake in each the notes that harmonize;
An incident is mentioned—in our minds
The self-same pictures rise.
Sweet music out, as of a distant lute:—
The Murraygate, Monikie, and The Law;
Or Mickie with his flute.
Bring back long-buried humour to new life:—
Paulina, Tibbie Neish, or Toorin Broon;
The Auld Gudeman and Fife.
Whose mind's a chronicle—whose every day
Is anniversary of lives begun,
Or others pass'd away?
Above them all your own day shall be reckon'd;
And for your sake my tartan breeks I'll mount—
The gallant forty-second.
May you outwear the tartans of the north,
And ere you don the last garb, be attired
In famous ninety-fourth!
And early pass from earth, or long remain;
The deepest thought says life lives on from this,
The first link of the chain.
But largely love and live our highest truth;
Be fill'd with sentiment, give heart to friends,
As in our greenest youth.
The heart to ready joyance: praise the Giver—
Believing that as much as we can love,
Is ours now and for ever.
SOLITUDE.
With the allurements of the town at hand
To take or leave according to the mood!
How easy to withstand!
The panorama of the streets go by,
The orator declaim unheard, and sit
At home in lonely joy.
Fill'd with the living drama of the age—
Even them we can afford to leave for some
Elizabethan page.
The wheels of history, the hearts of men,
Beyond the range of life's accustomed grooves—
How hard the yoke is then!
Upon the slow combustion of the heart,
Leisure unused, the ends of being miss'd,
Craving the world apart!
Our fancied wants; we hanker after news,
And lay down Shakspere for the tatter'd sheets
That wrapt our last new shoes.
BOOKS AND THOUGHTS.
Remembering years of reading leisure flown,
It kills all hope to think how many books
He still must leave unknown.
Regret grows less for what he cannot read,
If he reflects how many learned tomes
One thought may supersede.
And the idea, like an added sense,
Of God informing all his life, he can
With many a book dispense.
Wakes into higher dream—this thought will brook
Denial of the libraries, and keep
The key of many a book.
TOO MANY BOOKS.
And wrote no more, or in rare heats of soul
Sweated out thoughts when the o'er-burden'd brow
Was powerless to control.
And, freed of dross, the soul's refinèd gold;
So should we have a chance to read the new,
Yet not forego the old.
Of daily papers, books and magazines!
We scramble blind as reptiles in the mud,
And know not what it means.
Whose growth would overwhelm both sea and shore,
Yet after necessary loss, provides
Sufficient and no more?
And from the stones, the thorns and fertile soil,
Only enough to serve the world's great needs
Rewards the sower's toil?
Gives not the teeming press a book too much—
Not one, but in its dense neglect shall find
Some needful heart to touch?
No mission has—superfluous as it looks?
Then wherefore feel oppressed and cry, alas,
There are too many books!
INCENSE OF FLOWERS.
On which I almost think my soul could live,
This sweet ambrosia, which even in death
Its leaves hold on to give.
Or from the inner sanctuaries of heaven?
We probe the branch, the root—no incense there—
O God, whence is it given?
Or distillation of a purer sphere—
The breath of the immortals coming through
To us immortals here?
The living inspiration, and I know
Sweet revelations with the breath of flowers
Into our beings flow.
MIND'S SEASONS.
To clothe the boughs that have been dead so long?
And whence the thought that breaks our silent moods,
And blossoms into song?
I feel no stir of any inward breath;
Of what oblivious Lethe have I drunk,
To bring this barren death?
Its sun that draws new being from the roots?
Its periods of long waiting? winter dearth?
Spring days? autumnal fruits?
I reach to thee my bare, bleak, frozen arms,
And pray for leaves, pray for the quick'ning stroke,
Pray for the breath that warms.
That floods the mountain tops with hope of day.
The getting of the good that we desire
Enables us to pray.
THE MYSTERY OF THOUGHT.
Or only stir the latent seeds to grow?
Or do we but dispose the brain and wait
The unknown inward flow?
And who shall say his thoughts can be constrain'd?
Or that he did more service than reveal
The thought by thinking gain'd?
All from the unseen world that lies behind.
Earth only is the body and the brain,
The other is the mind.
Both thought and food when into being brought,
The unknown something in the process flies
That made them food and thought.
Of ignorance, where fancy blindly roams,
I turn to the Unseen, and pray for light,
I often find it comes.
UNWITTING TRIBUTE.
No subject is too prosy for my muse,
And thus methinks unwittingly he pays
A tribute he'd refuse.
He is no poet if in the merest clod
He may not find some trace of Poesy,
His all-besetting god.
It gazes out on him from stocks and stones;
The world moves by on grating wheels—he still
Can hear celestial tones.
The birring sonnet of her spinning wheel,
No prosier are than heaven's lurid chain,
Or earth's resounding peal.
To them the drowsiest senses are awake:
It needs a poet's ear to catch the song
That breathes in things prosaic.
Unto the poet all reflect his dream:
He needs no spic'd event, no special lure,
But finds in all a theme.
LOGIC.
'Tis said you cannot with precision think;
In reasoning it gives the needed tools
To hammer link by link.
‘It were as necessary to advance
Through certain studies in anatomy
Ere you can learn to dance.’
Who thinks by logic will be more exact
Within his rules, but often fail to see
The truth beyond the fact.
Though often lost within the night of thought,
Will often reach that all-redeeming light
The other vainly sought.
UNCLASSIC.
In the great masters of old Greece and Rome,
Much of the modern is to me half dead,
And wholly dead is some.
The names they use, and references, unknown,—
Though in good English given, to me they yield,
Instead of bread, a stone.
From gleanings in my own unletter'd waste,
Aught of commanding interest to take
The literary taste!
With any recognition, to receive
As critically “literatesque” and fit,
The unschool'd things I weave?
But trust to lower audience; and for themes,
Find them at home, along the trodden ways,
In work-begotten dreams.
A dim, deep thought that wants the light of words,
It will be such as for the unclassic mind
God every day affords.
In Saxon tongue, for Saxon eye and ear—
So plainly that the classic taste will say
“Pooh, pooh, there's nothing here!”
BEAUTY THE FLOWERING OF VIRTUE.
The flowering of virtue; yet, in sooth,
With added insight into nature, we
Can barely reach that truth.
Pure chastity within the eye imparts,
And in the cheek what roses, red and white,
Bloom up from gentle hearts!
And virtue in the heart's core, with them bear
Until some soft emotion burst the sward,
Then see what beauty there!
Yet know the soul within of no esteem,
Be sure there has been virtue in the race,
This but its setting gleam.
If into flowers of loveliness it shoot,
Through trade's close bargain or artistic toil,
Has virtue at the root.
THE DANDELION.
Its world-wide reputation to prolong;
But here's its yellow neighbour—who has given
The dandelion a song?
Will ne'er a one of them assert thy claim,
But, passing by, contemptuously connect
Thee and thy Scottish name?
Its very homeliness has been extolled:
Less beautiful thou art, yet not uncomely,
Thou star of shining gold!
Yield to the man of herbs their potent juice:
Not all an outward tinsel is thy dower—
It serves a deeper use.
Some struggle hard along the dusty roads,
While some upon the meads, and lawns delicious,
Are blest with pure abodes.
The sleep of death usurps thine earthly post;
And then outcomes from thy re-opening portals,
A beautiful white ghost.
They pluck the apparition frail, and blow;
And by the flittings of its spectral shadows
They wise conclusions know.
Passes away like sighs into the air:
Not to be lost, although beyond our seeing,
But breathing otherwhere.
Whose wingèd thoughts speed on to unknown parts,
Take root and are, though he may never know it,
The joy of thankful hearts.
THOUGHT SPRINGS.
Seem stopped, and all thought's ebbing cisterns low,
We draw upon the little they contain,
Soon, soon the springs will flow.
And thro' all earth the living waters break;
Believing all we seek is here and there,
We need but reach and take.
Soon bid their waters find another way;
But drawing daily of their plenty, brings
Abundance day by day.
USE OF BEAUTY.
To beauty; that around the meanest things
The semblances of higher thought it weaves,
Seeking to give them wings?
Give nectar and ambrosia through the eyes;
We needs must find, too, on footstool and rug,
Fruits, flowers, clouds and skies.
Given with such lavish heart unto the waves!
We may not be without it: it equips
Our cradles and our graves.
Nature provides it for us, night and day!
All seasons bring it, sky and sea and land
Are giving it away.
With life that runs beyond the earthly goal;
For beauty is the everlasting food
That nourishes the soul.
SEEING.
Truth when it comes; it often stands aloof
From that; while, simply seeing, we believe,
Nor ask for any proof.
Proof of their harmony, so truth appeals
Unto an inward faculty as clear,
That argues not, but feels.
That this is as he says, and that is so,
He has not given any, but confess'd
“I cannot, yet I know.”
HOPE'S ARGUMENT.
Should be to lose this conscious life and pass
Impersonally into earth and sky—
Lost in the general mass.
To pass through love into another's life—
To yield this rooted self all up, and be
All husband or all wife.
Whose self is sunk in earth, dead as the sod,
Whose will has passed into divine control,
And being into God.
Wherefore this trouble for the loss of breath?
Ay, ay, but will the ecstasy remain
An ecstasy in death?
To the restraining earth, the more we rise
Into the rapt beatitudes that lie
Hidden to mortal eyes.
Entanglement or tie that binds to earth—
The cutting of the cord umbilical
That frees the higher birth.
THE STREET SINGERS.
Of shivering children singing in the street,—
Discord that sadly fills the heart, although
The thing may be a cheat.
About the man's mock-miserable condition;
Better believe his plaint than have your heart
Contracted by suspicion.
The ways of Providence are wisely dim;
Your alms may purchase the reward for you,
The punishment for him.
To run a thousand risks of being cozen'd,
And hold your heart still open for the sake
Of one among the thousand.
SELF-DENIAL.
That runs the risks of poverty or pelf,
Great independence and great virtue his
Who can deny himself.
How small the service he shall ask or need!
The slights of pride he shall not feel; its taunts
Hearing, he shall not heed.
But mostly to some selfish want refused,
Or petty dignity of no account,
Or appetite abused.
These are but waves that seek to storm the rock:
It slips them back into the passing tide,
And never feels the shock.
FACT AND FICTION.
When it is known that every scene and act
Of cruel sorrow or triumphant glory
Was one time living fact.
Invented narrative we hold as cheap:
Not fact, not fact; but is there not in fiction
Reality as deep.
As veritable as his daily strife;
The pilgrim just as real as the tinker—
John Bunyan's thought and life.
Unacted thought is soul without the frame
But no less fact; and they that call it fiction
Are cheated with a name.
AT THE CHURCH DOOR.
Of all the world by a poor man was borne,
And judged the great ones of his day to blame,
Who held that name in scorn.
Look'd with God's eye alike on rich and poor,
And even thought the holder of the pelf
Was not of heaven so sure.
Have chosen from the highest in the land,
Poor fishermen found favour in his sight,
And welcome at his hand:
Went to uplift the lowly, and to make
All mankind brothers, of one equal birth,
For God the Father's sake.
From heart to heart—one light, one hope had shone
From heaven, upon one family of God,
Kneeling around one throne!
Meets in a swarm of smiles and shaking hands;
While Poverty shrinks out and off by stealth,
Or at a distance stands.
On lowly fellow-worshipper to rest,
'Tis with the cruel patronising air
That stabs the poor proud breast.
Whose breath, more potent than the strongest blast,
Broke down all earthly difference, ignored
The very thought of caste.
And this his Sabbath, this his temple door!
O recreant Poor, with Christ within your hearts,
To feel that you are poor.
PETTY PRIDE.
Of entertainment, what are they to him
Who leans on Nature—in her calms and storms—
Nor vainly seeks his whim?
The immemorial whisper of the tide—
The missionary breeze that wingeth by—
They shame your petty pride.
Affront your poor conceit; the seas that roll
With loud acclaim of liberty upbraid
Your fashion-fetter'd soul.
And all her mystery of stars, can note
As worthy of a thought the pompous slight
Of a superior coat?
Usage from all sincerity exempt;
But spare your pains on him in whom they wake
No feeling but contempt.
MASTER AND SERVANT.
And Tom and Dick the masters;—endless care
To think for them, to plan their work, to pave
Their way and keep them there.
Their hands alone might do the tasks assigned;
Some labour of the muscle and the bone,
But little of the mind.
The placement of the stone, the served-up lime—
Their only care that Time, slow as a snail,
Delays the loosening chime.
He comes, he leaves, yet not their freedom knows,
But drags his business, as the snail its shell,
With him where'er he goes.
IMAGINATION.
The highest truths its argument can teach,
Imagination steps into a sphere
That Reason cannot reach.
And round them throws its sunshine—thoughts that need
No further proof, but unto those that wist,
Are very truth indeed.
Where Reason halts, it brings from far above
Those mysteries the present time avoids,
And after days approve.
1861–62.
Sing him a requiem for his soul's release:
Give him a sprig of cypress with his holly,
And let him go in peace.
Or make them precious for our future weal;
Leave with the passing shade our fruitless wailings,
And on with hearts of steel.
All faithful to the hour—his soldiers we.
There is no time to weep like maids forsaken,
If we would faithful be.
For be they great or small 'tis all the same;
Obedience has in all an equal beauty,
Neglect an equal shame.
We'll take with equal thanks what may befal;
The heart that stands by Right thro' all confesses
An equal gain in all.
The warp that gives our webs their varied hue,
A thousand welcomes and a brave beginning
We give to Sixty-two.
10TH MARCH, 1863.
But not in victor-plume or captive-chain:
With stronger fetters than were used of yore
We bind the warlike Dane.
From end to end, and shouts from side to side,
A British welcome for the day that brings
Our Albert Edward's bride.
But that they represent the brave, the free;
They are the nationality, and claim
The nation's bended knee.
Got homage. Such a time has England seen.
That day is past, and Britain proudly owns
A Heaven-anointed Queen.
As she, your queenly mother was; so may
Your wedded love flow with as little noise,
And deepen day by day.
A kingdom with its sceptre—may you bring
Your father's heart and wisdom to the throne,
And be indeed a king.
5TH FEBRUARY, 1868.
Through all her streets the cloudy brow and eye,
And from her mournful ships the weeping fire
Of red flags, half-mast high?
In moral strength the bravest of the brave—
Her most revered, her pride, has gone to rest
In William Rathbone's grave.
All honour, honesty, and judgment ripe,—
Of what an English Merchant ought to be,
He was the perfect type.
He leaves it to his race without one stain,
And to his thankful town assurance gives
Of such another reign.
Their fights of progress, from his manly youth;
Stern foe to error, ignorance, and thrall,
His sword, unyielding Truth.
They come at times, to save her failing breath;
But we have known, and mourn the loss of one
In William Rathbone's death.
Who held a deeper interest in his wealth,—
Great Charities that through his aid endure,
And alms he gave by stealth.
He did not merely play, but lived his part:
And now—his immortality in God,
And in the human heart.
LIVERPOOL.
The grand old relics of a reverend past—
Cathedrals, shrines that pilgrims come to kiss—
Walls wrinkled by the blast.
You find, go where you will, all England through:
But what have we to venerate, all here
Ridiculously new.
Redcross Street, but its legend who can learn;
Oldhall Street, too, we have, the old hall gone;
Tithebarn Street, but no barn.
Tea and tobacco, log and other woods,
Oils, tallow, hides that smell so foully foreign—
Yea, all things known as goods.
The spirit of old times, save here and there
An ancient mansion with palatial door,
In some degenerate square.
Their silken dames; their skippers from the strand,
Who brought their sea-borne riches, not always
Quite free from contraband.
Harbours for fallen fair ones, drifting tars;
Some, manufactories of blacking, some
Tobacco and cigars.
St. Nicholas, nodding by the river-side—
In old times hail'd by ancient marinërs
That came up with the tide.
Yet old enough for antiquated thoughts:
Ah, many a time I lean against the rail
To hear its sweet crack'd notes.
And wander'd down the short hour after noon,
Then to the heedless world that hurries by
The clock bells clink a tune.
And in its turn breaks out “The Scolding Wife,”
To show that home, however sweet it be,
Is yet not free from strife.
And surely every listening heart is charm'd;
For what are even the sorrows of the earth
When, past, they are transform'd?
Except, perhaps, the river and the sky—
The waters and the immemorial blue
For ever sailing by.
For old and new are just the same sky dream—
One metal in a slightly different mould,
The same refilter'd stream.
SAILING UP THE FIRTH.
And at his touch the misty hills unveil'd,
And all gave promise of a glorious day
As up the Firth we sail'd.
Thinn'd into gauze; the wak'ning morn look'd thro'
And soon, withdrawing e'en her gauzy shrouds,
Came forth in radiant blue.
To turn the waters into crisping curls;
You could not say the Firth was calm or rough—
It danced in crested pearls.
A margin of white foam crept to and fro;
And up the steep cliffs rose the snowy spray,
Silent to us as snow.
And rais'd an old-world rapture in the blood;
Far-off it loom'd like some great stranded hulk,
Left there by Noah's flood.
The bold sky-pictured craig stood more defined;
We sail'd within a presence now that fill'd,
And e'en distress'd, the mind.
In idle numbers, never to be told;
They wheel'd and slid across the skiey blue,
Like sunbeam-specks of gold.
‘As one big grandeur,’ all unto the breast;
Its greatness only mock'd our feeble grasp,
And on we sail'd distress'd.
And Kyle, the classic, hid in warm white haze;
However hid, reveal'd for evermore
To the poetic gaze:
The ‘Twa Brigs,’ flyting almost side by side,
The ancient town of Ayr, and scene by scene
Of Tam O'Shanter's ride.
Its Holy Isle and hidden loch behind,
Within whose reaches ships for shelter steer,
When storms are in the wind.
Took all our eyes, piled up so sheer and high:
'Twas Nature's easel—this her freak of freaks,
Her canvas the blue sky.
The Arran hills in dark-blue blackness lay;
Surely not all the Highlands can put on
So grim a scowl as they!
Their knitting eyebrows and their gleaming eyes;
But soon their dark brows lifted, and they smiled
Grandly at our surprise.
So like to what a paradise should be,
That all declared the name would better suit
With an accented é.
Beside its little lake, a sylvan scene,
And thought to cast in solitude his lot:
Alas, for tragic Kean!
The eagle to forget the soaring wing;
He came to Bute and solitude, but found
The play was still the thing.
Were pass'd with small remark, tho' fairy splores,
And devil-builded dykes and warlock wiles
Are rife about their shores.
Where Alexander fought the invading Dane,
And made him the last hope of conquest yield,
Never to come again.
And History, and Old Tradition vied
Which should be minister of most delight,
And preach'd from side to side:
And luggage dragg'd us back to common earth,
And finger-pointing porters broke our dream
Of sailing up the Firth.
POET'S CORNER.
But sorrow and the finger of the scorner?
And dead, the highest honour you can give
Is burial in a corner.
Disprove that mean, yet prevalent conception.—
Once in an age that may be; but the rule
Is proved by the exception.
To all your benefices a poor foreigner;
Considered well rewarded if he gains
At last rest in a corner.
Some two-three Kings usurp one-half the Abbey,
Whole generations of the Poets share
This nook so dim and shabby.
The needy vergers of the Abbey wait us;
And while we pay to see the Royal scions,
We see the Poets gratis.
While others, who in body are not near it,
Are here as in the pages of a book—
Present only in spirit.
His sword of cutting humour in its scabbard;
And, sooth, he did not find such quiet rest
In Southwark at the Tabard!
And Shakspere over all the host commanding;
And rare Ben Jonson, who got scanty room,
And so was buried standing.
Filled with the glamour of some dreamy notion,
Admired the more that half his “Faerie Queen”
Was lost in middle ocean.
And Guy, with face and cowl round as a saucer;
And Dryden, who, some think, should be put out
Because he murdered Chaucer.
Is here, with look of sweet, yet strong decision—
John Milton, with the soft poetic locks
And supernatural vision.
And Cowley, metaphysical and lyric;
And Addison, the elegant and clear;
And Butler all satiric.
His churchyard in the country rather lonely,
Lies with the rest in this more classic ground,
Although in spirit only.
Comes here with tender heart and rugged feature,
And mingles through this wilderness of stones
His milky human nature.
And so is Johnson, who discover'd “Winter,”
And Garrick, too, who had poetic lore
Enough to bid him enter.
Of prose and verse a progeny plethoric,—
And he that sung the lays of ancient Rome—
Macaulay, the historic.
He for a national song eclipsed by no land;
And in whose grave the patriotic Pole
Sprinkled the earth of Poland.
And think of many from their non-appearance;
Byron, for one, who was denied a place
Through priestly interference.
A few, perhaps, on little else than quackery;
But all in all, they are a glorious band,
From Chaucer down to Thackeray.
Reuben and Other Poems | ||