University of Virginia Library

II. VOL. II. POEMS

EARLY POEMS.

THOUGHTS OF HOME.

AN EVENING WALK IN SPRING.

It was but some few nights ago
I wandered down this quiet lane;
I pray that I may never know
The feelings then I felt, again.
The leaves were shining all about,
You might almost have seen them springing;
I heard the cuckoo's simple shout,
And all the little birds were singing.
It was not dull, the air was clear,
All lovely sights and sounds to deal,
My eyes could see, my ears could hear,
Only my heart, it would not feel;
And yet that it should not be so,
My mind kept telling me within;
Though nought was wrong that I did know,
I thought I must have done some sin.
For I am sure as I can be,
That they who have been wont to look
On all in Nature's face they see,
Even as in the Holy Book;
They who with pure and humble eyes
Have gazed and read her lessons high,
And taught their spirits to be wise
In love and human sympathy,—
That they can soon and surely tell
When aught has gone amiss within,
When the mind is not sound and well,
Nor the soul free from taint of sin.
For as God's Spirit from above,
So Beauty is to them below,
And when they slight that holy love,
Their hearts that presence may not know.
So I turned home the way I came,
With downcast looks and heavy heart,
A guilty thing and full of shame,
With a dull grief that had no smart.
It chanced when I was nearly there
That all at once I raised my eyes—
Was it a dream, or vision rare,
That then they saw before them rise?
I see it now, before me here,
As often, often I have done,
As bright as it could then appear,
All shining in the setting sun.
Elms, with their mantling foliage spread,
And tall dark poplars rising out,
And blossomed orchards, white and red,
Cast, like a long low fence, about;
And in the midst the grey church-tower,
With one slight turret at its side,
Bringing to mind with silent power
Those thousand homes the elm-trees hide.
And then there came the thought of one
Who on his bed of sickness lay,
Whilst I beneath the setting sun
Was dreaming this sweet hour away.
I thought of hearts for him that beat,
Of aching eyes their watch that kept;
The sister's and the mother's seat—
And oh! I thought I should have wept.
And oh, my spirit melted then,
The weight fell off me that I bore,
And now I felt in truth again
The lovely things that stood before.
O blessed, blessed scene, to thee,
For that thy sweet and softening power,
I could have fallen upon my knee,
Thy stately elms, thy grey church-tower.
So then I took my homeward way,
My heart in sweet and holy frame,
With spirit, I may dare to say,
More good and soft than when I came.

AN INCIDENT.

THE THREAD OF TRUTH.

Truth is a golden thread, seen here and there
In small bright specks upon the visible side
Of our strange being's party-coloured web.
How rich the converse! 'Tis a vein of ore
Emerging now and then on Earth's rude breast,
But flowing full below. Like islands set
At distant intervals on Ocean's face,
We see it on our course; but in the depths
The mystic colonnade unbroken keeps
Its faithful way, invisible but sure.
Oh, if it be so, wherefore do we men
Pass by so many marks, so little heeding?

REVIVAL.

So I went wrong,
Grievously wrong, but folly crushed itself,
And vanity o'ertoppling fell, and time
And healthy discipline and some neglect,
Labour and solitary hours revived
Somewhat, at least, of that original frame.
Oh, well do I remember then the days
When on some grassy slope (what time the sun
Was sinking, and the solemn eve came down
With its blue vapour upon field and wood
And elm-embosomed spire) once more again
I fed on sweet emotion, and my heart
With love o'erflowed, or hushed itself in fear
Unearthly, yea celestial. Once again
My heart was hot within me, and, me seemed,
I too had in my body breath to wind
The magic horn of song; I too possessed
Up-welling in my being's depths a fount
Of the true poet-nectar whence to fill
The golden urns of verse.

THE SHADY LANE.

Whence comest thou? shady lane, and why and how?
Thou, where with idle heart, ten years ago,
I wandered, and with childhood's paces slow
So long unthought of, and remembered now!
Again in vision clear thy pathwayed side
I tread, and view thy orchard plots again
With yellow fruitage hung,—and glimmering grain
Standing or shocked through the thick hedge espied.
This hot still noon of August brings the sight;
This quelling silence as of eve or night,
Wherein Earth (feeling as a mother may
After her travail's latest bitterest throes)
Looks up, so seemeth it, one half repose,
One half in effort, straining, suffering still.

THE HIGHER COURAGE.

WRITTEN ON A BRIDGE.

When soft September brings again
To yonder gorse its golden glow,
And Snowdon sends its autumn rain
To bid thy current livelier flow;
Amid that ashen foliage light
When scarlet beads are glistering bright,
While alder boughs unchanged are seen
In summer livery of green;
When clouds before the cooler breeze
Are flying, white and large; with these
Returning, so may I return,
And find thee changeless, Pont-y-wern.

A RIVER POOL.

Sweet streamlet bason! at thy side
Weary and faint within me cried
My longing heart,—In such pure deep
How sweet it were to sit and sleep;
To feel each passage from without
Close up,—above me and about,
Those circling waters crystal clear,
That calm impervious atmosphere!
There on thy pearly pavement pure,
To lean, and feel myself secure,
Or through the dim-lit inter-space,
Afar at whiles upgazing trace
The dimpling bubbles dance around
Upon thy smooth exterior face;
Or idly list the dreamy sound
Of ripples lightly flung, above
That home, of peace, if not of love.

IN A LECTURE-ROOM.

Away, haunt thou not me,
Thou vain Philosophy!
Little hast thou bestead,
Save to perplex the head,
And leave the spirit dead.
Unto thy broken cisterns wherefore go,
While from the secret treasure-depths below,
Fed by the skiey shower,
And clouds that sink and rest on hill-tops high,
Wisdom at once, and Power,
Are welling, bubbling forth, unseen, incessantly?
Why labour at the dull mechanic oar,
When the fresh breeze is blowing,
And the strong current flowing,
Right onward to the Eternal Shore?

‘BLANK MISGIVINGS OF A CREATURE MOVING ABOUT IN WORLDS NOT REALISED.’

I

Here am I yet, another twelvemonth spent,
One-third departed of the mortal span,
Carrying on the child into the man,
Nothing into reality. Sails rent,
And rudder broken,—reason impotent,—
Affections all unfixed; so forth I fare
On the mid seas unheedingly, so dare
To do and to be done by, well content.
So was it from the first, so is it yet;
Yea, the first kiss that by these lips was set
On any human lips, methinks was sin—
Sin, cowardice, and falsehood; for the will
Into a deed e'en then advanced, wherein
God, unidentified, was thought-of still.

II

Though to the vilest things beneath the moon
For poor Ease' sake I give away my heart,
And for the moment's sympathy let part
My sight and sense of truth, Thy precious boon,
My painful earnings, lost, all lost, as soon,
Almost, as gained: and though aside I start,
Belie Thee daily, hourly,—still Thou art,
Art surely as in heaven the sun at noon;
How much so e'er I sin, whate'er I do
Of evil, still the sky above is blue,
The stars look down in beauty as before:
It is enough to walk as best we may,
To walk, and sighing, dream of that blest day
When ill we cannot quell shall be no more.

III

Well, well,—Heaven bless you all from day to day!
Forgiveness too, or e'er we part, from each,
As I do give it, so must I beseech:
I owe all much, much more than I can pay;
Therefore it is I go; how could I stay
Where every look commits me to fresh debt,
And to pay little I must borrow yet?
Enough of this already, now away!
With silent woods and hills untenanted
Let me go commune; under thy sweet gloom,
O kind maternal Darkness, hide my head:
The day may come I yet may re-assume
My place, and, these tired limbs recruited, seek
The task for which I now am all too weak.

IV

Yes, I have lied, and so must walk my way,
Bearing the liar's curse upon my head;
Letting my weak and sickly heart be fed
On food which does the present craving stay,
But may be clean-denied me e'en to-day,
And tho' 'twere certain, yet were ought but bread;
Letting—for so they say, it seems, I said,
And I am all too weak to disobey!
Therefore for me sweet Nature's scenes reveal not
Their charm; sweet Music greets me and I feel not;
Sweet eyes pass off me uninspired; yea, more,
The golden tide of opportunity
Flows wafting-in friendships and better,—I
Unseeing, listless, pace along the shore.

V

How often sit I, poring o'er
My strange distorted youth,
Seeking in vain, in all my store,
One feeling based on truth;
Amid the maze of petty life
A clue whereby to move,
A spot whereon in toil and strife
To dare to rest and love.
So constant as my heart would be,
So fickle as it must,
'Twere well for others as for me
'Twere dry as summer dust.
Excitements come, and act and speech
Flow freely forth;—but no,
Nor they, nor ought beside can reach
The buried world below.

VI

—Like a child
In some strange garden left awhile alone,
I pace about the pathways of the world,
Plucking light hopes and joys from every stem,
With qualms of vague misgiving in my heart
That payment at the last will be required,
Payment I cannot make, or guilt incurred,
And shame to be endured.

VII

—Roused by importunate knocks
I rose, I turned the key, and let them in,
First one, anon another, and at length
In troops they came; for how could I, who once
Had let in one, nor looked him in the face,
Show scruples e'er again? So in they came,
A noisy band of revellers,—vain hopes,
Wild fancies, fitful joys; and there they sit
In my heart's holy place, and through the night
Carouse, to leave it when the cold grey dawn
Gleams from the East, to tell me that the time
For watching and for thought bestowed is gone.

VIII

O kind protecting Darkness! as a child
Flies back to bury in its mother's lap
His shame and his confusion, so to thee,
O Mother Night, come I! within the folds
Of thy dark robe hide thou me close; for I
So long, so heedless, with external things
Have played the liar, that whate'er I see,
E'en these white glimmering curtains, yon bright stars,
Which to the rest rain comfort down, for me
Smiling those smiles, which I may not return,
Or frowning frowns of fierce triumphant malice,
As angry claimants or expectants sure
Of that I promised and may not perform,
Look me in the face! O hide me, Mother Night!

IX

A SONG OF AUTUMN.

My wind is turned to bitter north,
That was so soft a south before;
My sky, that shone so sunny bright,
With foggy gloom is clouded o'er:
My gay green leaves are yellow-black,
Upon the dank autumnal floor;
For love, departed once, comes back
No more again, no more.
A roofless ruin lies my home,
For winds to blow and rains to pour;
One frosty night befell, and lo,
I find my summer days are o'er:
The heart bereaved, of why and how
Unknowing, knows that yet before
It had what e'en to Memory now
Returns no more, no more.

το καλον.

παντα ρει: ουδεν μενει.

If, when in cheerless wanderings, dull and cold,
A sense of human kindliness hath found us,
We seem to have around us
An atmosphere all gold,
'Midst darkest shades a halo rich of shine,
An element, that while the bleak wind bloweth,
On the rich heart bestoweth
Imbreathed draughts of wine;
Heaven guide, the cup be not, as chance may be,
To some vain mate given up as soon as tasted!
No, nor on thee be wasted,
Thou trifler, Poesy!
Heaven grant the manlier heart, that timely, ere
Youth fly, with life's real tempest would be coping;
The fruit of dreamy hoping
Is, waking, blank despair.

THE SILVER WEDDING.

THE MUSIC OF THE WORLD AND OF THE SOUL.

LOVE, NOT DUTY.

LOVE AND REASON.

Ο Θεος μετα σου!

WIRKUNG IN DER FERNE.

επι Λατμω.

A PROTEST.

Light words they were, and lightly, falsely said:
She heard them, and she started,—and she rose,
As in the act to speak; the sudden thought
And unconsidered impulse led her on.
In act to speak she rose, but with the sense
Of all the eyes of that mixed company
Now suddenly turned upon her, some with age
Hardened and dulled, some cold and critical;
Some in whom vapours of their own conceit,
As moist malarious mists the heavenly stars,
Still blotted out their good, the best at best
By frivolous laugh and prate conventional
All too untuned for all she thought to say—
With such a thought the mantling blood to her cheek
Flushed-up, and o'er-flushed itself, blank night her soul
Made dark, and in her all her purpose swooned.
She stood as if for sinking. Yet anon
With recollections clear, august, sublime,
Of God's great truth, and right immutable,
Which, as obedient vassals, to her mind
Came summoned of her will, in self-negation
Quelling her troublous earthy consciousness,
She queened it o'er her weakness. At the spell
Back rolled the ruddy tide, and leaves her cheek
Paler than erst, and yet not ebbs so far
But that one pulse of one indignant thought
Might hurry it hither in flood. So as she stood
She spoke. God in her spoke and made her heard.

SIC ITUR.

PARTING.

QUA CURSUM VENTUS.

‘WEN GOTT BETRÜGT, IST WOHL BETROGEN.’

POEMS ON RELIGIOUS AND BIBLICAL SUBJECTS.

FRAGMENTS OF THE MYSTERY OF THE FALL.

Scene I.

Adam and Eve.
Adam.
Since that last evening we have fallen indeed!
Yes, we have fallen, my Eve! O yes!—
One, two, and three, and four;—the Appetite,
The Enjoyment, the aftervoid, the thinking of it—
Specially the latter two, most specially the last.
There, in synopsis, see, you have it all:
Come, let us go and work!
Is it not enough?
What, is there three, four, five?

Eve.
Oh, guilt, guilt, guilt!

Adam.
Be comforted; muddle not your soul with doubt.
'Tis done, it was to be done; if, indeed,
Other way than this there was, I cannot say:
This was one way, and a way was needs to be found.
That which we were we could no more remain
Than in the moist provocative vernal mould
A seed its suckers close and rest a seed;
We were to grow. Necessity on us lay
This way or that to move; necessity, too,
Not to be over careful this or that,
So only move we should.
Come, my wife,
We were to grow, and grow I think we may,
And yet bear goodly fruit.

Eve.
Oh, guilt! oh, guilt!

Adam.

Eve.
Guilt! oh, guilt!

Adam.
Peace, woman, peace; I go.

Eve.
Nay, Adam, nay;
Hear me,—I am not dreaming, am not crazed.
Did not yourself confess that we are changed?
Do not you too?

Adam.
Do not I too? Well, well,
Listen! I too when homeward, weary of toil,
Through the dark night I have wandered in rain and wind,
Bewildered, haply scared, I too have lost heart,
And deemed all space with angry power replete,
Angry, almighty—and panic-stricken have cried,
‘What have I done?’ ‘What wilt thou do to me?’
Or with the coward's ‘No, I did not, I will not,’
Belied my own soul's self. I too have heard,
And listened, too, to a voice that in my ear
Hissed the temptation to curse God, or worse,
And yet more frequent, curse myself and die;
Until, in fine, I have begun to half believe
Your dream my dream too, and the dream of both
No dream but dread reality; have shared
Your fright: e'en so share thou, sweet life, my hope;
I too, again, when weeds with growth perverse
Have choked my corn and marred a season's toil,
Have deemed I heard in heaven abroad a cry,
‘Cursed is the ground for thy sake; thou art cursed.’
But oftener far, and stronger also far,
In consonance with all things out and in,
I hear a voice more searching bid me, ‘On!
On! on! it is the folly of the child
To choose his path and straightway think it wrong,
And turn right back and lie on the ground to weep.
Forward! go, conquer! work and live!’ Withal
A word comes, half command, half prophecy,
‘Forgetting things behind thee, onward press
Unto the mark of your high calling.’ Yea,
And voices, too, in woods and flowery fields
Speak confidence from budding banks and boughs,
And tell me, ‘Live and grow,’ and say, ‘Look still
Upward, spread outward, trust, be patient, live;’
Therefore, if weakness bid me curse and die,
I answer, No! I will not curse myself,
Nor aught beside; I shall not die, but live.

Eve.
Ah, me! alas! alas!
More dismally in my face stares the doubt,
More heavily on my heart weighs the world.
Methinks
The questionings of ages yet to be,
The thinkings and cross-thinkings, self-contempts,
Self-horror; all despondencies, despairs
Of multitudinous souls on souls to come,
In me imprisoned fight, complain and cry.
Alas!
Mystery, mystery, mystery evermore.

Scene II.

Adam, alone.
Adam.

Scene III.

(Now the birth of Cain was in this wise.)
Adam and Eve.
Eve.
Oh, Adam, I am comforted indeed;
Where is he? O my little one!
My heart is in the garden as of old,
And Paradise come back.

Adam.
My love,
Blessed be this good day to thee indeed;
Blessed the balm of joy unto thy soul.
A sad unskilful nurse was I to thee;
But nature teaches mothers, I perceive.

Eve.
But you, my husband, you meantime, I feel,
Join not your perfect spirit in my joy.
No; your spirit mixes not, I feel, with mine.

Adam.
Alas! sweet love, for many a weary day,
You and not I have borne this heavy weight:
How can I, should I, might I feel your bliss,
Now heaviness is changed to glory? Long,
In long and unparticipated pangs,
Your heart hath known its own great bitterness:
How should, in this its jubilant release,
A stranger intermeddle with its joy?

Eve.
My husband, there is more in it than this;
Nay, you are surely, positively sad.

Adam.
What if I was (and yet I think I am not),
'Twere but the silly and contrarious mood
Of one whose sympathies refuse to mix
In aught not felt immediate from himself.
But of a truth,
Your joy is greater—mine seems therefore none.

Eve.
Nay, neither this I think nor that is true.
Evermore still you love to cheat me, Adam:
You hide from me your thoughts like evil beasts
Most foolishly; for I, thus left to guess,
Catch at all hints, and where perchance one is,
People the forest with a hundred ills,
Each worse perhaps a hundred times than it.
No; you have got some fearful thoughts—no, no;
Look not in that way on my baby, Adam—
You do it hurt; you shall not!

Adam.

Scene IV.

Adam and Eve.
Eve.
O Adam, it was I was godless then;
But you were mournful, heavy, but composed.
At times would somewhat fiercely bite your lip
And pass your hand about your brow; but still
Held out, denied not God, acknowledged still
Those glories that were gone. No, I never
Felt all your worth to me before; I feel
You did not fall as I did.

Adam.
Nay, my child,
About our falls I don't profess to know.
I know I ne'er was innocent as thou;
I only know, as you will have it so,
Were your descent more lengthy than was mine,
It is not that your place is lower now,
But that first 'twas higher up than mine;
It is, that I being bestial, you divine,
We now alike are human beings both.
About our fall I won't profess to know,
But know I do,
That I was never innocent as thou.
Moping again, my love; yes, I dare swear,
All the day long while I have been at work,
With some religious folly in your head.

Eve.
No, Adam, I am cheerful quite to-day;
I vary much, indeed, from hour to hour,
But since my baby's birth I am happier far;
And I have done some work as well as you.

Adam.
What is it tho'? for I will take my oath
You've got some fancy stirring in your brain.

Eve.
Nay, but it vexes me for evermore
To find in you no credence to my thought.

Adam.
What is it then you wish me to subscribe to?
That we were in a garden put by God,
Allowed to eat of all the trees but one.
Somehow—I don't know how—a serpent tempted us,
And eat we did, and so were doomed to die;
Whereas before we were meant to live for ever.
Meantime, turned out—

Eve.
You do not think then, Adam,
We have been disobedient unto God?

Adam.
My child, how should I know, and what do you mean?
Your question's not so simple as it looks;
For if you mean that God said this or that—
As that ‘You shall not touch those apples there,’
And that we did—why, all that I can say
Is, that I can't conceive the thing to be.
But if it were so, I should then believe
We had done right—at any rate, no harm.

Eve.
O Adam, I can scarcely think I hear;
For if God said to us—God being God—
‘You shall not,’ is not His commandment His?
And are not we the creatures He hath made?

Adam.
My child, God does not speak to human minds
In that unmeaning arbitrary way.
God were not God if so, and good not good.
Search in your heart, and if you tell me there
You find a genuine voice—no fancy, mind you—
Declaring to you this or that is evil,
Why, this or that I daresay evil is.
Believe me, I will listen to the word;
For not by observation of without
Cometh the kingdom of the voice of God:
It is within us—let us seek it there.

Eve.
Yet I have voices, surely, in my heart.
Often you say I heed them over much.

Adam.
God's voice is of the heart: I do not say
All voices, therefore, of the heart are God's;
And to discern the voice amidst the voices
Is that hard task, my love, that we are born to.

Eve.
Ah me, in me I am sure the one, one voice
Goes somehow to the sense of what I say—
The sense of disobedience to God.
O Adam, some way, some time, we have done wrong,
And when I think of this, I still must think
Of Paradise, and of the stately tree
Which in the middle of the garden grew,
The golden fruit that hung upon its boughs,
Of which but once we eat, and I must feel
That whereas once in His continual sight
We lived, in daily communing with Him,
We now are banished, and behold not Him,
Our only present communing, alas!
Is penitential mourning, and the gaze
Of the abased and prostrate prayerful soul;
But you, yourself, my Adam, you at least
Acknowledge some time somehow we did wrong.

Adam.
My child, I never even granted that.

Eve.
Oh, but you let strange words at times fall from you.
They are to me like thunderbolts from heaven;
I listen terrified and sick at heart,
Then haste and pick them up and treasure them.
What was it that you said when Cain was born:
‘He's born of us and therefore is not pure.’
O, you corrected well, my husband, then
My foolish, fond exuberance of delight.

Adam.
My child, believe me, truly I was the fool;
But a first baby is a strange surprise.
I shall not say so when another comes;
And I beseech you treasure up no words.
You know me: I am loose of tongue and light.
I beg you, Eve, remember nought of this;
Put not at least, I pray you—nay, command—
Put not, when days come on, your own strange whim
And misconstruction of my idle words
Into the tender brains of our poor young ones.

Scene V.

Adam with Cain and Abel.
Adam.
Cain, beware!
Strike not your brother! I have said, beware!
A heavy curse is on this thing, my son.
With doubt and fear,
Terror and toil and pain already here,
Let us not have injustice too, my son.
So Cain, beware!
And Abel, too, see you provoke him not.

Scene VI.

Abel alone.
Abel.
At times I could believe
My father is no better than his son:
If not as overbearing, proud and hard,
Yet prayerless, worldly, almost more than Cain.
Enlighten and convert him ere the end,
My God! spurn not my mother's prayers and mine.
Since I was born, was I not left to Thee,
In an unspiritual and godless house,
Unfathered and unbrothered—Thine and hers?
They think not of the fall: e'en less they think
Of the redemption, which God said should be;
Which, for we apprehend it by our faith,
Already is—is come for her and me.
Yea, though I sin, my sin is not to death;
In my repentance I have joy, such joy
That almost I could sin to seek for it—
Yea, if I did not hate it and abhor,
And know that Thou abhorr'st and hatest it,
And will'st, for an example to the rest,
That Thine elect should keep themselves from it.
Alas!
My mother calls the fall a mystery;
Redemption is so too. But oh, my God,
Thou wilt bring all things in the end to good.
Yea, though the whole earth lie in wickedness, I
Am with Thee, with Thee, with Thee evermore.
Ah, yet I am not satisfied with this!
Am I not feeding spiritual pride,
Rejoicing over sinners, inelect
And unadmitted to the fellowship
Which I, unworthy, most unworthy, share?
What can I do—how can I help it then?
O God, remove it from my heart; pluck out,
Whatever pain, whatever wrench to me,
These sinful roots and remnants which, whate'er
I do, how high so e'er I soar from earth,
Still, undestroyed, still germinate within.
Take them away in Thy good time, O God.
Meantime, for that atonement's precious sake
Which in Thy counsels predetermined works
Already to the saving of the saints,
O Father, view with mercy, and forgive;
Nor let my vexed perception of my sin,
Nor any multitude of evil thoughts,
Crowding like demons in my spirit's house,
Nor life, nor death, things here or things below,
Cast out the sweet assurance of my soul
That I am Thine, and Thou art mine, my God.

Scene VII.

Cain alone.
Cain.
Am I or am I not this which they think me?
My mother loves me not; my brother Abel,
Searing my heart, commends my soul to God;
My father does not shun me—there's my comfort:
Almost I think they look askance on him.
Ah, but for him,
I know not what might happen; for at times
Ungovernable angers take the waves
Of my deep soul and sweep them—who knows whither?
And a strange impulse, struggling to the truth,
Urges me onward to put forth my strength,
No matter how. A wild anxiety
Possesses me moreover to essay
This world of action round me so unknown;
And to be able to do this or that
Seems cause enough without a cause for doing it.
My father, he is cheerful and content,
And leads me frankly forward. Yet, indeed,
His leading—or, more truly, to be led
At all, by any one, and not myself—
Is mere dissatisfaction: evermore
Something I must do individual,
To vindicate my nature, to give proof
I also am, as Adam is, a man.

Scene VIII.

Adam and Eve.
Adam.
These sacrificings, O my best beloved,
These rites and forms which you have taught our boys,
Which I nor practise nor can understand,
Will turn, I trust, to good; but I much fear.
Besides the superstitious search of signs
In merest accidents of earth and air,
They cause, I think, a sort of jealousy—
Ill-blood. Hark, now!

Eve.
O God, whose cry is that?
Abel, where is my Abel?

Adam.
Cain, what Cain!

Scene IX.

Cain alone with the body of Abel.
Cain.

Scene X.

Adam alone.
Adam.
Abel is dead, and Cain—ah, what is Cain?
Is he not even more than Abel dead?
Well, we must hope in Seth. This merest man,
This unambitious common-place of life,
Will after all perhaps mend all; and though
Record shall tell men to the after-time
No wondrous tales of him, in him at last,
And in his seed increased and multiplied,
Earth shall be blest and peopled and subdued,
And what was meant to be be brought to pass.
Oh but, my Abel and my Cain, e'en so
You shall not be forgotten nor unknown.

Scene XI.

Cain and Eve.
Cain.
I am come. Curse me;
Curse Cain, my mother, ere he goes. He waits.

Eve.
Who? What is this?
Oh Abel! O my gentle, holy child,
My perfect son!
Monster! and did I bear thee too?

Cain.
He was so good, his brother hated him,
And slew him for't. Go on, my mother, on.

Eve.
[OMITTED] For there are rites and holy means of grace
Of God ordained for man's eternal [weal].
With these, my son, address thyself to Him,
And seek atonement from a gracious God,
With whom is balm for every wounded heart.

Cain.
I ask not for atonement, mother mine;
I ask but one thing—never to forget.
I ask but—not to add to one great crime
Another self-delusion scarcely less.
I could ask more, but more I know is sin.
If sacrifices and the fat of lambs,
And whole burnt-offerings upon piles of turf,
Will bring me this, I'd fill the heaven with smoke,
And deface earth with million fiery scars.
I could ask back (and think it but my right,
And passionately claim it as my right)
That precious life which one misguided blow,
Which one scarce conscious momentary act,
One impulse blindly followed to its close,
Ended for ever; but that I know this vain.
If they shall only keep my sin in mind,
I shall not, be assured, neglect them either.

Eve.
You ask not for atonement! O my son—
Cain, you are proud and hard of heart e'en now.
Beware!
Prostrate your soul in penitential prayer,
Humble your heart beneath the mighty hand
Of God, whose gracious guidance oft shall lead
Through sin and crime the changed and melted heart
To sweet repentance and the sense of Him.
You ask not for atonement! O my son!
What, to be banished from the sight of God;
To dwell with wicked spirits, be a prey
To them and prey yourself on human souls;
What, to be lost in wickedness and wrath,
Deeper and deeper down;
What, Cain, do you choose this?

Cain.
Alas! my mother,
I know not; there are mysteries in your heart
Which I profess not knowledge of: it may be
That this is so; if so, may God reveal it.
Have faith you too in my heart's secrets; yea,
All I can say, alas, is that to me,
As I now comprehend it, this were sin.
Atonement—no; not that, but punishment.
But what avails to talk? talk as we will,
As yet we shall not know each other's hearts;
Let me not talk, but act. Farewell, for ever.

Scene XII.

Adam and Cain.
Cain.
This is the history then, my father, is it?
This is the perfect whole?

Adam.
My son, it is.
And whether a dream, or if it were a dream,
A transcript of an inward spiritual fact
(As you suggest, and I allow, might be),
Not the less true because it was a dream.
I know not—O my Cain, I cannot tell,
But in my soul I think it was a dream,
And but a dream; a thing, whence'er it came,
To be forgotten and considered not.

Cain.
Father, you should have told me this before;
It is no use now. Oh God, my brother! oh God! [OMITTED]

Adam.
For what is life, and what is pain or death?
You have killed Abel: Abel killed the lamb—
An act in him prepense, in you unthought of.
One step you stirred, and lo! you stood entrapped.

Cain.
My father, this is true, I know; but yet,
There is some truth beside: I cannot say,
But I have heard within my soul a voice
Asking, ‘Where is thy brother,’ and I said—
That is, the evil heart within me said—
‘Am I my brother's keeper? go ask him.
Who was it that provoked me? should he rail,
And I not smite? his death be on his head.’
But the voice answered in my soul again,
So that the other ceased and was no more.

Scene XIII.

Adam and Cain.
Cain.
My father, Abel's dead.

Adam.
My son, 'tis done, it was to be done; some good end
Thereby to come, or else it had not been.
Go, for it must be. Cain, I know your heart,
You cannot be with us. Go, then, depart;
But be not over scrupulous, my son.

Cain.
Curse me, my father, ere I go. Your curse
Will go with me for good; your curse
Will make me not forget,
Alas! I am not of that pious kind,
Who, when the blot has fallen upon their life,
Can look to heaven and think it white again—
Look up to heaven and find a something there
To make what is not be, altho' it is.
My mother—ah, how you have spoke of this!
The dead—to him 'twas innocence and joy,
And purity and safety from the world:
To me the thing seems sin—the worst of sin.
If it be so, why are we here?—the world,
Why is it as I find it? The dull stone
Cast from my hand, why comes it not again?
The broken flow'ret, why does it not live?
If it be so,
Why are we here, and why is Abel dead?
Shall this be true
Of stocks and stones and mere inanimate clay,
And not in some sort also hold for us?

Adam.
My son, Time healeth all,
Time and great Nature; heed her speech, and learn.

Cain.
My father, you are learned in this sort:
You read the earth, as does my mother heaven.
Both books are dark to me—only I feel
That this one thing
And this one word in me must be declared;
That to forget is not to be restored;
To lose with time the sense of what we did
Cancels not that we did; what's done remains—
I am my brother's murderer. Woe to me!
Abel is dead. No prayers to empty heaven,
No vegetative kindness of the earth,
Will bring back warmth into his clay again,
The gentleness of love into his face.
Therefore, for me farewell;
Farewell for me the soft,
The balmy influences of night and sleep,
The satisfaction of achievement done,
The restorative pulsing of the blood
That changes all and changes e'en the soul—
And natural functions, moving as they should,
The sweet good-nights, the sweet delusive dreams
That lull us out of old things into new.
But welcome Fact, and Fact's best brother, Work;
Welcome the conflict of the stubborn soil,
To toil the livelong day, and at the end,
Instead of rest, recarve into my brow
The dire memorial mark of what still is.
Welcome this worship, which I feel is mine;
Welcome this duty—
—the solidarity of life
And unity of individual soul.
That which I did, I did, I who am here:
There is no safety but in this; and when
I shall deny the thing that I have done,
I am a dream.

Adam.
My son,
What shall I say?
That which your soul, in marriage with the world,
Imbreeds in you, accept;—how can I say
Refuse the revelations of the soul?
Yet be not over scrupulous, my son,
And be not over proud to put aside
The due consolements of the circling years.
What comes, receive; be not too wise for God.
The past is something, but the present more;
Will not it too be past?—nor fail withal
To recognise the future in our hopes;
Unite them in your manhood each and all,
Nor mutilate the perfectness of life.
You can remember, you can also hope;
And, doubtless, with the long instructive years,
Comfort will come to you, my son, to me,
Even to your mother, comfort; but to us
Knowledge, at least—the certainty of things
Which, as I think, is consolation's sum.
For truly now, to-day, to-morrow, yes,
Days many more to come, alike to you,
Whose earliest revelation of the world
Is, horrible indeed, this fatal fact—
And unto me, who, knowing not much before,
Look gropingly and idly into this,
And recognise no figure I have seen—
Alike, my son, to me, and to yourself,
Much is now dark which one day will be light;
With strong assurance fortify your soul
Of this; and that you meet me here again,
Promise me, Cain. Farewell, to meet again.

Scene XIV.

Adam's Vision.
Adam.

THE SONG OF LAMECH.

GENESIS XXIV.

JACOB.

Come near to me, my sons: your father goes,
The hour of his departure draweth nigh.
Ah me! this eager rivalry of life,
This cruel conflict for pre-eminence,
This keen supplanting of the dearest kin,
Quick seizure and fast unrelaxing hold
Of vantage-place; the stony hard resolve,
The chase, the competition, and the craft
Which seems to be the poison of our life,
And yet is the condition of our life!
To have done things on which the eye with shame
Looks back, the closed hand clutching still the prize!—
Alas! what of all these things shall I say?
Take me away unto Thy sleep, O God!
I thank thee it is over, yet I think
It was a work appointed me of Thee.
How is it? I have striven all my days
To do my duty to my house and hearth,
And to the purpose of my father's race,
Yet is my heart therewith not satisfied.

JACOB'S WIVES.

THE NEW SINAI.

QUI LABORAT, ORAT.

υμνος αυμνος.

THE HIDDEN LOVE.

SHADOW AND LIGHT.

‘WITH WHOM IS NO VARIABLENESS, NEITHER SHADOW OF TURNING.’

It fortifies my soul to know
That, though I perish, Truth is so:
That, howsoe'er I stray and range,
Whate'er I do, Thou dost not change.
I steadier step when I recall
That, if I slip, Thou dost not fall.

IN STRATIS VIARUM.

‘PERCHÈ PENSA? PENSANDO S'INVECCHIA.’

To spend uncounted years of pain,
Again, again, and yet again,
In working out in heart and brain
The problem of our being here;
To gather facts from far and near,
Upon the mind to hold them clear,
And, knowing more may yet appear,
Unto one's latest breath to fear,
The premature result to draw—
Is this the object, end and law,
And purpose of our being here?

‘O THOU OF LITTLE FAITH.’

It may be true
That while we walk the troublous tossing sea,
That when we see the o'ertopping waves advance,
And when we feel our feet beneath us sink,
There are who walk beside us; and the cry
That rises so spontaneous to the lips,
The ‘Help us or we perish,’ is not nought,
An evanescent spectrum of disease.
It may be that indeed and not in fancy,
A hand that is not ours upstays our steps,
A voice that is not ours commands the waves;
Commands the waves, and whispers in our ear,
O thou of little faith, why didst thou doubt?
At any rate,
That there are beings above us, I believe,
And when we lift up holy hands of prayer,
I will not say they will not give us aid.

‘THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY.’

AH! YET CONSIDER IT AGAIN!

NOLI ÆMULARI.

‘WHAT WENT YE OUT FOR TO SEE?’

EPI-STRAUSS-IUM.

Matthew and Mark and Luke and holy John
Evanished all and gone!
Yea, he that erst his dusky curtains quitting,
Thro' Eastern pictured panes his level beams transmitting,
With gorgeous portraits blent,
On them his glories intercepted spent.
Southwestering now, thro' windows plainly glassed,
On the inside face his radiance keen hath cast,
And in the lustre lost, invisible and gone,
Are, say you, Matthew, Mark and Luke and holy John?
Lost, is it, lost, to be recovered never?
However,
The place of worship the meantime with light
Is, if less richly, more sincerely bright,
And in blue skies the Orb is manifest to sight.

THE SHADOW.

EASTER DAY.

[I]

II

DIPSYCHUS

PROLOGUE TO DIPSYCHUS.

‘I hope it is in good plain verse,’ said my uncle,—‘none of your hurry-scurry anapæsts, as you call them, in lines which sober people read for plain heroics. Nothing is more disagreeable than to say a line over two, or, it may be, three or four times, and at last not be sure that there are not three or four ways of reading, each as good and as much intended as another. Simplex duntaxat et unum. But you young people think Horace and your uncles old fools.’

‘Certainly, my dear sir,’ said I; ‘that is, I mean, Horace and my uncle are perfectly right. Still, there is an instructed ear and an uninstructed. A rude taste for identical recurrences would exact sing-song from “Paradise Lost,” and grumble because “Il Penseroso” doesn't run like a nursery rhyme.’ ‘Well, well,’ said my uncle, ‘sunt certi denique fines, no doubt. So commence, my young Piso, while Aristarchus is tolerably wakeful, and do not waste by your logic the fund you will want for your poetry.’

I. Part I.

—Scene I.

The Piazza at Venice, 9 p.m. Dipsychus and the Spirit.
Di.
The scene is different, and the place, the air
Tastes of the nearer north; the people
Not perfect southern lightness; wherefore, then,
Should those old verses come into my mind
I made last year at Naples? Oh, poor fool!
Still resting on thyself—a thing ill-worked—
A moment's thought committed on the moment
To unripe words and rugged verse:—
‘Through the great sinful streets of Naples as I past,
With fiercer heat than flamed above my head
My heart was hot within me; till at last
My brain was lightened when my tongue had said—
Christ is not risen!’

Sp.
Christ is not risen? Oh, indeed,
I didn't know that was your creed.

Di.
So it went on, too lengthy to repeat—
‘Christ is not risen.’

Sp.
Dear, how odd!
He'll tell us next there is no God.
I thought 'twas in the Bible plain,
On the third day He rose again.

Di.
‘Ashes to ashes, dust to dust;
As of the unjust, also of the just—
Yea, of that Just One, too!
Is He not risen, and shall we not rise?
Oh, we unwise!’

Sp.
H'm! and the tone, then, after all,
Something of the ironical?
Sarcastic, say; or were it fitter
To style it the religious bitter?

Di.
Interpret it I cannot. I but wrote it—
At Naples, truly, as the preface tells,
Last year, in the Toledo; it came on me,
And did me good at once. At Naples then,
At Venice now. Ah! and I think at Venice
Christ is not risen either.

Sp.
Nay,
Such things don't fall out every day:
Having once happened, as we know,
In Palestine so long ago,
How should it now at Venice here?
Where people, true enough, appear
To appreciate more and understand
Their ices, and their Austrian band,
And dark-eyed girls.

Di.
The whole great square they fill,
From the red flaunting streamers on the staffs,
And that barbaric portal of St. Mark's,
To where, unnoticed, at the darker end,
I sit upon my step—one great gay crowd.
The Campanile to the silent stars
Goes up, above—its apex lost in air—
While these do what?

Sp.
Enjoy the minute,
And the substantial blessings in it:
Ices, par exemple; evening air,
Company, and this handsome square;
And all the sweets in perfect plenty
Of the old dolce far niente.
Music! Up, up; it is'nt fit
With beggars here on steps to sit.
Up, to the caffé! take a chair,
And join the wiser idlers there.
And see that fellow singing yonder;
Singing, ye gods, and dancing too—
Tooraloo, tooraloo, tooraloo loo—
Fiddledi diddledi, diddle di di;
Figaro sù, Figaro giù—
Figaro quà, Figaro là!
How he likes doing it—Ha, ha!

Di.
While these do what? Ah heaven! too true, at Venice
Christ is not risen either.

Scene II.

—The Public Garden.
Di.
Assuredly, a lively scene!
And, ah, how pleasant something green!
With circling heavens one perfect rose
Each smoother patch of water glows,
Hence to where, o'er the full tide's face,
We see the Palace and the Place,
And the white dome; beauteous, but hot.
Where in the meantime is the spot—
My favourite—where by masses blue,
And white cloud-folds, I follow true
The great Alps, rounding grandly o'er,
Hugh arc, to the Dalmatian shore?

Sp.
This rather stupid place, to-day,
It's true, is most extremely gay;
And rightly—the Assunzione
Was always a gran' funzione.

Di.
What is this persecuting voice that haunts me?
What? whence? of whom? How am I to detect?
Myself or not myself? My own bad thoughts,
Or some external agency at work,
To lead me who knows whither?

Sp.
Eh?
We're certainly in luck to-day:
What crowds of boats before us plying—
Gay parties, singing, shouting, crying—
Saluting others past them flying!
What numbers at the causeway lying!
What lots of pretty girls, too, hieing
Hither and thither—coming, going,
And with what satisfaction showing
Their dark exuberance of hair,
Black eyes, rich tints, and sundry graces
Of classic pure Italian faces!

Di.

Scene III.

—At the Hotel.
Sp.
Come, then,
And with my aid go into good society.
Life little loves, 'tis true, this peevish piety;
E'en they with whom it thinks to be securest—
Your most religious, delicatest, purest—
Discern, and show as pious people can
Their feeling that you are not quite a man.
Still the thing has its place; and, with sagacity,
Much might be done by one of your capacity.
A virtuous attachment formed judiciously
Would come, one sees, uncommonly propitiously:
Turn you but your affections the right way,
And what mayn't happen none of us can say;
For, in despite of devils and of mothers,
Your good young men make catches, too, like others.

Di.
To herd with people that one owns no care for;
Friend it with strangers that one sees but once;
To drain the heart with endless complaisance;
To warp the unfinished diction on the lip,
And twist one's mouth to counterfeit; enforce
Reluctant looks to falsehood; base-alloy
The ingenuous golden frankness of the past;
To calculate and plot; be rough and smooth,
Forward and silent, deferential, cool,
Not by one's humour, which is the safe truth,
But on consideration.

Sp.
That is, act
On a dispassionate judgment of the fact;
Look all the data fairly in the face,
And rule your judgment simply by the case.

Di.
On vile consideration. At the best,
With pallid hotbed courtesies to forestall
The green and vernal spontaneity,
And waste the priceless moments of the man
In regulating manner. Whether these things
Be right, I do not know: I only know 'tis
To lose one's youth too early. Oh, not yet—
Not yet I make the sacrifice.

Sp.
Du tout!
To give up nature's just what would not do.
By all means keep your sweet ingenuous graces,
And use them at the proper times and places.
For work, for play, for business, talk and love,
I own as wisdom truly from above,
That scripture of the serpent and the dove;
Nor's aught so perfect for the world's affairs
As the old parable of wheat and tares;
What we all love is good touched up with evil—
Religion's self must have a spice of devil.

Di.
Let it be enough,
That in our needful mixture with the world,
On each new morning with the rising sun,
Our rising heart, fresh from the seas of sleep,
Scarce o'er the level lifts his purer orb
Ere lost and sullied with polluting smoke—
A noon-day coppery disk. Lo, scarce come forth,
Some vagrant miscreant meets, and with a look
Transmutes me his, and for a whole sick day
Lepers me.

Sp.
Just the one thing, I assure you,
From which good company can't but secure you.
About the individual's not so clear,
But who can doubt the general atmosphere?

Di.
Ay truly, who at first? but in a while—

Sp.
O dear, this o'er-discernment makes me smile.
You don't pretend to tell me you can see
Without one touch of melting sympathy
Those lovely, stately flowers that fill with bloom
The brilliant season's gay parterre-like room,
Moving serene yet swiftly through the dances;
Those graceful forms and perfect countenances,
Whose every fold and line in all their dresses
Something refined and exquisite expresses.
To see them smile and hear them talk so sweetly,
In me destroys all lower thoughts completely;
I really seem, without exaggeration,
To experience the true regeneration.
One's own dress, too—one's manner, what one's doing
And saying, all assist to one's renewing.
I love to see, in these their fitting places,
The bows, the forms, and all you call grimaces.
I heartily could wish we'd kept some more of them,
However much we talk about the bore of them.
Fact is, your awkward parvenus are shy at it,
Afraid to look like waiters if they try at it.
'Tis sad to what democracy is leading—
Give me your Eighteenth Century for high breeding.
Though I can put up gladly with the present,
And quite can think our modern parties pleasant.
One shouldn't analyse the thing too nearly:
The main effect is admirable clearly.
‘Good manners,’ said our great-aunts, ‘next to piety:’
And so, my friend, hurrah for good society!

Scene IV.

—On the Piazza.
Sp.
Insulted! By the living Lord!
He laid his hand upon his sword.
‘Fort,’ did he say? a German brute,
With neither heart nor brains to shoot.

Di.
What does he mean? he's wrong, I had done nothing.
'Twas a mistake—more his, I am sure, than mine.
He is quite wrong—I feel it. Come, let us go.

Sp.
Go up to him!—you must, that's flat.
Be threatened by a beast like that!

Di.
He's violent; what can I do against him?
I neither wish to be killed nor to kill:
What's more, I never yet have touched a sword,
Nor fired, but twice, a pistol in my life.

Sp.
Oh, never mind, 'twon't come to fighting—
Only some verbal small requiting;
Or give your card—we'll do't by writing.
He'll not stick to it. Soldiers too
Are cowards, just like me or you.
What! not a single word to throw at
This snarling dog of a d---d Croat?

Di.
My heavens! why should I care? he does not hurt me.
If he is wrong, it is the worst for him.
I certainly did nothing: I shall go.

Sp.
Did nothing! I should think not; no,
Nor ever will, I dare be sworn!
But, O my friend, well-bred, well-born—
You to behave so in these quarrels
Makes me half doubtful of your morals!
. . . . . . . It were all one,
You had been some shopkeeper's son,
Whose childhood ne'er was shown aught better
Than bills of creditor and debtor.

Di.
By heaven, it falls from off me like the rain
From the oil-coat. I seem in spirit to see
How he and I at some great day shall meet
Before some awful judgment-seat of truth;
And I could deem that I behold him there
Come praying for the pardon I give now,
Did I not think these matters too, too small
For any record on the leaves of time.
O thou great Watcher of this noisy world,
What are they in Thy sight? or what in his
Who finds some end of action in his life?
What e'en in his whose sole permitted course
Is to pursue his peaceful byway walk,
And live his brief life purely in Thy sight,
And righteously towards his brother-men?

Sp.
And whether, so you're just and fair,
Other folks are so, you don't care;
You who profess more love than others
For your poor sinful human brothers.

Di.
For grosser evils their gross remedies
The laws afford us; let us be content;
For finer wounds the law would, if it could,
Find medicine too; it cannot, let us bear;
For sufferance is the badge of all men's tribes.

Sp.
Because we can't do all we would,
Does it follow, to do nothing's good?
No way to help the law's rough sense
By equities of self-defence?
Well, for yourself it may be nice
To serve vulgarity and vice:
Must sisters, too, and wives and mothers,
Fare like their patient sons and brothers?

Di.
He that loves sister, mother, more than me—

Sp.
But the injustice—the gross wrong!
To whom on earth does it belong
If not to you, to whom 'twas done,
Who saw it plain as any sun,
To make the base and foul offender
Confess, and satisfaction render?
At least before the termination of it
Prove your own lofty reprobation of it.
Though gentleness, I know, was born in you,
Surely you have a little scorn in you?

Di.
Heaven! to pollute one's fingers to pick up
The fallen coin of honour from the dirt—
Pure silver though it be, let it rather lie!
To take up any offence, where't may be said
That temper, vanity—I know not what—
Had led me on!
To have so much as e'en half felt of one
That ever one was angered for oneself!
Beyond suspicion Cæsar's wife should be,
Beyond suspicion this bright honour shall.
Did he say scorn? I have some scorn, thank God.

Sp.
Certainly. Only if it's so,
Let us leave Italy, and go
Post haste, to attend—you're ripe and rank for 't—
The great peace-meeting up at Frankfort.
Joy to the Croat! Take our lives,
Sweet friends, and please respect our wives;
Joy to the Croat! Some fine day,
He'll see the error of his way,
No doubt, and will repent and pray.
At any rate he'll open his eyes,
If not before, at the Last Assize.
Not, if I rightly understood you,
That even then you'd punish, would you?
Nay, let the hapless soul go free—
Mere murder, crime, or robbery,
In whate'er station, age, or sex,
Your sacred spirit scarce can vex:
De minimis non curat lex.
To the Peace Congress! ring the bell!
Horses to Frankfort and to ------!

Di.
I am not quite in union with myself
On this strange matter. I must needs confess
Instinct turns instinct out, and thought
Wheels round on thought. To bleed for others' wrongs
In vindication of a cause, to draw
The sword of the Lord and Gideon—oh, that seems
The flower and top of life! But fight because
Some poor misconstruing trifler haps to say
I lie, when I do not lie,
Why should I? Call you this a cause? I can't.
Oh, he is wrong, no doubt; he misbehaves—
But is it worth so much as speaking loud?
And things so merely personal to myself
Of all earth's things do least affect myself.

Sp.
Sweet eloquence! at next May Meeting
How it would tell in the repeating!
I recognise, and kiss the rod—
The methodistic ‘voice of God;’
I catch contrite that angel whine,
That snuffle human, yet divine.

Di.
It may be I am somewhat of a poltroon;
I never fought at school; whether it be
Some native poorness in my spirit's blood,
Or that the holy doctrine of our faith
In too exclusive fervency possessed
My heart with feelings, with ideas my brain.

Sp.
Yes; you would argue that it goes
Against the Bible, I suppose;
But our revered religion—yes,
Our common faith—seems, I confess,
On these points to propose to address
The people more than you or me—
At best the vulgar bourgeoisie.
The sacred writers don't keep count,
But still the Sermon on the Mount
Must have been spoken, by what's stated,
To hearers by the thousands rated.
I cuff some fellow; mild and meek
He should turn round the other cheek.
For him it may be right and good;
We are not all of gentle blood
Really, or as such understood.

Di.
There are two kindreds upon earth, I know—
The oppressors and the oppressed. But as for me,
If I must choose to inflict wrong, or accept,
May my last end, and life too, be with these.
Yes; whatsoe'er the reason, want of blood,
Lymphatic humours, or my childhood's faith,
So is the thing, and be it well or ill,
I have no choice. I am a man of peace,
And the old Adam of the gentleman
Dares seldom in my bosom stir against
The mild plebeian Christian seated there.

Sp.
Forgive me, if I name my doubt,
Whether you know ‘fort’ means ‘get out.’

Scene V.

—The Lido.
Sp.
What now? the Lido shall it be?
That none may say we didn't see
The ground which Byron used to ride on,
And do I don't know what beside on.
Ho, barca! here! and this light gale
Will let us run it with a sail.

Di.

Sp.

Di.
Vineyards and maize, that's pleasant for sore eyes.

Sp.
And on the island's other side,
The place where Murray's faithful Guide
Informs us Byron used to ride.

Di.
The trellised vines! enchanting! Sandhills, ho!
The sea, at last the sea—the real broad sea—
Beautiful! and a glorious breeze upon it.

Sp.
Look back; one catches at this station
Lagoon and sea in combination.

Di.
On her still lake the city sits,
Where bark and boat around her flits;
Nor dreams, her soft siesta taking,
Of Adriatic billows breaking.
I do; I see and hear them. Come! to the sea!
Oh, a grand surge! we'll bathe; quick, quick!—undress!
Quick, quick!—in, in!
We'll take the crested billows by their backs
And shake them. Quick! in, in!
And I will taste again the old joy
I gloried in so when a boy;
Aha! come, come—great waters, roll!
Accept me, take me, body and soul!
That's done me good. It grieves me though,
I never came here long ago.

Sp.
Pleasant, perhaps; however, no offence,
Animal spirits are not common sense;
They're good enough as an assistance,
But in themselves a poor existence.
But you, with this one bathe, no doubt,
Have solved all questions out and out.

II. Part II.

—Scene I.

The interior Arcade of the Doge's Palace.
Sp.
Thunder and rain! O dear, O dear!
But see, a noble shelter here,
This grand arcade where our Venetian
Has formed of Gothic and of Grecian
A combination strange, but striking,
And singularly to my liking!
Let moderns reap where ancients sowed,
I at least make it my abode.
And now let's hear your famous Ode:
‘Through the great sinful’—how did it go on?
For principles of Art and so on
I care perhaps about three curses,
But hold myself a judge of verses.

Di.
‘My brain was lightened when my tongue had said,
“Christ is not risen.”’

Sp.
Well, now it's anything but clear
What is the tone that's taken here:
What is your logic? what's your theology?
Is it, or is it not, neology?
That's a great fault; you're this and that,
And here and there, and nothing flat;
Yet writing's golden word what is it,
But the three syllables ‘explicit?’
Say, if you cannot help it, less,
But what you do put, put express.
I fear that rule won't meet your feeling:
You think half showing, half concealing,
Is God's own method of revealing.

Di.
To please my own poor mind! to find repose;
To physic the sick soul; to furnish vent
To diseased humours in the moral frame!

Sp.
A sort of seton, I suppose,
A moral bleeding at the nose:
H'm;—and the tone too after all,
Something of the ironical?
Sarcastic, say; or were it fitter
To style it the religious bitter?

Di.
Interpret it I cannot, I but wrote it.

Sp.
Perhaps; but none that read can doubt it,
There is a strong Strauss-smell about it.
Heavens! at your years your time to fritter
Upon a critical hair-splitter!
Take larger views (and quit your Germans)
From the Analogy and sermons;
I fancied—you must doubtless know—
Butler had proved an age ago,
That in religious as profane things
'Twas useless trying to explain things;
Men's business-wits, the only sane things,
These and compliance are the main things.
God, Revelation, and the rest of it,
Bad at the best, we make the best of it.
Like a good subject and wise man,
Believe whatever things you can.
Take your religion as 'twas found you,
And say no more of it, confound you!
And now I think the rain has ended;
And the less said, the soonest mended.

Scene II.

—In a Gondola.
Sp.
Per ora. To the Grand Canal.
Afterwards e'en as fancy shall.

Di.

Sp.
Pooh! Nature meant him for no better
Than our most humble menial debtor;
Who thanks us for his day's employment
As we our purse for our enjoyment.

Di.
To make one's fellow-man an instrument—

Sp.
Is just the thing that makes him most content.

Di.

Sp.
Oh come, come, come! By Him that sent us here,
Who's to enjoy at all, pray let us hear?
You won't; he can't! Oh, no more fuss!
What's it to him, or he to us?
Sing, sing away, be glad and gay,
And don't forget that we shall pay.

Di.
Yes, it is beautiful ever, let foolish men rail at it never.
Yes, it is beautiful truly, my brothers, I grant it you duly.
Wise are ye others that choose it, and happy ye all that can use it.
Life it is beautiful wholly, and could we eliminate only
This interfering, enslaving, o'ermastering demon of craving,
This wicked tempter inside us to ruin still eager to guide us,
Life were beatitude, action a possible pure satisfaction.

Sp.
(Hexameters, by all that's odious,
Beshod with rhyme to run melodious!)

Di.
All as I go on my way I behold them consorting and coupling;
Faithful it seemeth, and fond; very fond, very possibly faithful;
All as I go on my way with a pleasure sincere and unmingled.
Life it is beautiful truly, my brothers, I grant it you duly;
But for perfection attaining is one method only, abstaining;
Let us abstain, for we should so, if only we thought that we could so.

Sp.

Di.

Sp.

Di.

Sp.

Di.

Sp.
Nay;
'Fore heaven, enough of that to-day:
I'm deadly weary of your tune,
And half-ennuyé with the moon;
The shadows lie, the glories fall,
And are but moonshine after all.
It goes against my conscience really
To let myself feel so ideally.
Come, for the Piazzetta steer;
'Tis nine o'clock or very near.
These airy blisses, skiey joys
Of vague romantic girls and boys,
Which melt the heart and the brain soften,
When not affected, as too often
They are, remind me, I protest,
Of nothing better at the best
Than Timon's feast to his ancient lovers,
Warm water under silver covers;
‘Lap, dogs!’ I think I hear him say;
And lap who will, so I'm away.

Di.

Sp.
Tre ore. So. The Parthenone
Is it? you haunt for your limone.
Let me induce you to join me,
In gramolate persiche.

Scene III.

—The Academy at Venice.
Di.

Sp.
I come, I come.

Di.
So quick, so eager; ha!
Like an eaves-dropping menial on my thought,
With something of an exultation too, methinks,
Out-peeping in that springy, jaunty gait.
I doubt about it. Shall I do it? Oh! oh!
Shame on me! come! Shall I, my follower,
Should I conceive (not that at all I do,
'Tis curiosity that prompts my speech)—
But should I form, a thing to be supposed,
A wish to bargain for your merchandise,
Say what were your demands? what were your terms?
What should I do? what should I cease to do?
What incense on what altars must I burn?
And what abandon? what unlearn, or learn?
Religion goes, I take it.

Sp.
Oh,
You'll go to church of course, you know;
Or at the least will take a pew
To send your wife and servants to.
Trust me, I make a point of that;
No infidelity, that's flat.

Di.
Religion is not in a pew, say some;
Cucullus, you hold, facit monachum.

Sp.

Di.
On that, my friend, you'd better not insist.

Sp.
Well, well, 'tis but a good thing miss'd.
The item's optional, no doubt;
But how to get you bread without?
You'll marry; I shall find the lady.
Make your proposal, and be steady.

Di.
Marry, ill spirit! and at your sole choice?

Sp.
De rigueur! can't give you a voice.
What matter? Oh, trust one who knows you,
You'll make an admirable sposo.

Di.
Enough. But action—look to that well, mind me;
See that some not unworthy work you find me;
If man I be, then give the man expression.

Sp.
Of course you'll enter a profession;
If not the Church, why then the Law.
By Jove, we'll teach you how to draw!
Besides, the best of the concern is
I'm hand and glove with the attorneys.
With them and me to help, don't doubt
But in due season you'll come out;
Leave Kelly, Cockburn, in the lurch.
But yet, do think about the Church.

Di.
'Tis well, ill spirit, I admire your wit;
As for your wisdom, I shall think of it.
And now farewell.

Scene IV.

—In St. Mark's. Dipsychus alone.
Sp.
(from within).

Scene V.

—The Piazza at Night.
Di.

Sp.
O yes.
To moon about religion; to inhume
Your ripened age in solitary walks,
For self-discussion; to debate in letters
Vext points with earnest friends; past other men
To cherish natural instincts, yet to fear them
And less than any use them; oh, no doubt,
In a corner sit and mope, and be consoled
With thinking one is clever, while the room
Rings through with animation and the dance.
Then talk of old examples; to pervert
Ancient real facts to modern unreal dreams,
And build up baseless fabrics of romance
And heroism upon historic sand;
To burn, forsooth, for action, yet despise
Its merest accidence and alphabet;
Cry out for service, and at once rebel
At the application of its plainest rules:
This you call life, my friend, reality;
Doing your duty unto God and man—
I know not what. Stay at Venice, if you will;
Sit musing in its churches hour on hour
Cross-kneed upon a bench; climb up at whiles
The neighbouring tower, and kill the lingering day
With old comparisons; when night succeeds,
Evading, yet a little seeking, what
You would and would not, turn your doubtful eyes
On moon and stars to help morality;
Once in a fortnight say, by lucky chance
Of happier-tempered coffee, gain (great Heaven!)
A pious rapture: is it not enough?

Di.
'Tis well: thou cursed spirit, go thy way!
I am in higher hands than yours. 'Tis well;
Who taught you menaces? Who told you, pray,
Because I asked you questions, and made show
Of hearing what you answered, therefore—

Sp.
Oh,
As if I didn't know!

Di.
Come, come, my friend,
I may have wavered, but I have thought better.
We'll say no more of it.

Sp.
Oh, I dare say:
But as you like; 'tis your own loss; once more,
Beware!

Di.
(alone).
Must it be then? So quick upon my thought
To follow the fulfilment and the deed?
I counted not on this; I counted ever
To hold and turn it over in my hands
Much longer, much: I took it up indeed,
For speculation rather; to gain thought,
New data. Oh, and now to be goaded on
By menaces, entangled among tricks;
That I won't suffer. Yet it is the law;
'Tis this makes action always. But for this
We ne'er should act at all; and act we must.
Why quarrel with the fashion of a fact
Which, one way, must be, one time, why not now?

Sp.

Scene VI.

—On a Bridge.
Di.

Sp.
O yes! you thought you had escaped, no doubt,
This worldly fiend that follows you about,
This compound of convention and impiety,
This mongrel of uncleanness and propriety.
What else were bad enough? but, let me say,
I too have my grandes manières in my way;
Could speak high sentiment as well as you,
And out-blank-verse you without much ado;
Have my religion also in my kind,
For dreaming unfit, because not designed.
What! you know not that I too can be serious,
Can speak big words, and use the tone imperious;
Can speak, not honiedly, of love and beauty,
But sternly of a something much like duty.
Oh, do you look surprised? were never told,
Perhaps, that all that glitters is not gold.
The Devil oft the Holy Scripture uses,
But God can act the Devil when He chooses.
Farewell! But, verbum sapienti satis—
I do not make this revelation gratis.
Farewell: beware!

Di.
Ill spirits can quote holy books I knew;
What will they not say? what not dare to do?

Sp.
Beware, beware!

Di.

Sp.
(from within).

Di.
O God, O God! The great floods of the soul
Flow over me! I come into deep waters
Where no ground is!

Sp.

Di.
Is the hour here, then? Is the minute come—
The irreprievable instant of stern time?
O for a few, few grains in the running glass,
Or for some power to hold them! O for a few
Of all that went so wastefully before!
It must be then, e'en now.

Sp.
(from within).

Scene VII.

—At Torcello. Dipsychus alone.
Di.
I had a vision; was it in my sleep?
And if it were, what then? But sleep or wake,
I saw a great light open o'er my head;
And sleep or wake, uplifted to that light,
Out of that light proceeding heard a voice
Uttering high words, which, whether sleep or wake,
In me were fixed, and in me must abide.

Scene VIII.

In the Piazza.
Di.

Sp.
(aside).
A truly admirable proceeding!
Could there be finer special pleading
When scruples would be interceding?
There's no occasion I should stay;
He is working out, his own queer way,
The sum I set him; and this day
Will bring it, neither less nor bigger,
Exact to my predestined figure.

Scene IX.

—In the Public Garden.
Di.
Twenty-one past—twenty-five coming on;
One-third of life departed, nothing done.
Out of the mammon of unrighteousness
That we make friends, the Scripture is express,
My Spirit, come, we will agree;
Content, you'll take a moiety.

Sp.
A moiety, ye gods, he, he!

Di.
Three-quarters then? O griping beast!
Leave me a decimal at least.

Sp.
Oh, one of ten! to infect the nine
And make the devil a one be mine!
Oh, one! to jib all day, God wot,
When all the rest would go full trot!
One very little one, eh? to doubt with,
Just to pause, think, and look about with?
In course! you counted on no less—
You thought it likely I'd say yes!

Di.
Be it then thus—since that it must, it seems.
Welcome, O world, henceforth; and farewell dreams!
Yet know, Mephisto, know, nor you nor I
Can in this matter either sell or buy;
For the fee simple of this trifling lot
To you or me, trust me, pertaineth not.
I can but render what is of my will,
And behind it somewhat remaineth still.
O, your sole chance was in the childish mind
Whose darkness dreamed that vows like this could bind;
Thinking all lost, it made all lost, and brought
In fact the ruin which had been but thought.
Thank Heaven (or you) that's past these many years,
And we have knowledge wiser than our fears.
So your poor bargain take, my man,
And make the best of it you can.

Sp.
With reservations! oh, how treasonable!
When I had let you off so reasonable.
However, I don't fear; be it so!
Brutus is honourable, I know;
So mindful of the dues of others,
So thoughtful for his poor dear brothers,
So scrupulous, considerate, kind—
He wouldn't leave the devil behind
If he assured him he had claims
For his good company to hell-flames!
No matter, no matter, the bargain's made;
And I for my part will not be afraid.
With reservations! oh! ho, ho!
But time, my friend, has yet to show
Which of us two will closest fit
The proverb of the Biter Bit.

Di.
Tell me thy name, now it is over.

Sp.
Oh!
Why, Mephistophiles, you know—
At least you've lately called me so.
Belial it was some days ago.
But take your pick; I've got a score—
Never a royal baby more.
For a brass plate upon a door
What think you of Cosmocrator?

Di.
Τους κοσμοκρατορας του αιωνος τουτου.
And that you are indeed, I do not doubt you.

Sp.
Ephesians, aint it? near the end
You dropt a word to spare your friend.
What follows, too, in application
Would be absurd exaggeration.

Di.
The Power of this World! hateful unto God.

Sp.
Cosmarchon's shorter, but sounds odd:
One wouldn't like, even if a true devil,
To be taken for a vulgar Jew devil.

Di.
Yet in all these things we—'tis Scripture too—
Are more than conquerors, even over you.

Sp.
Come, come, don't maunder any longer.
Time tests the weaker and the stronger;
And we, without procrastination,
Must set, you know, to our vocation.
O goodness! won't you find it pleasant
To own the positive and present;
To see yourself like people round,
And feel your feet upon the ground!

(Exeunt.)

EPILOGUE TO DIPSYCHUS.

‘I don't very well understand what it's all about,’ said my uncle. ‘I won't say I didn't drop into a doze while the young man was drivelling through his latter soliloquies. But there was a great deal that was unmeaning, vague, and involved; and what was most plain, was least decent and least moral.’

‘Dear sir,’ said I, ‘says the proverb—“Needs must when the devil drives;” and if the devil is to speak—’

‘Well,’ said my uncle, ‘why should he? Nobody asked him. Not that he didn't say much which, if only it hadn't been for the way he said it, and that it was he who said it, would have been sensible enough.’

‘But, sir,’ said I, ‘perhaps he wasn't a devil after all. That's the beauty of the poem; nobody can say. You see, dear sir, the thing which it is attempted to represent is the conflict between the tender conscience and the world. Now, the over-tender conscience will, of course, exaggerate the wickedness of the world; and the Spirit in my poem may be merely the hypothesis or subjective imagination formed—’

‘Oh, for goodness' sake, my dear boy,’ interrupted my uncle, ‘don't go into the theory of it. If you're wrong in it, it makes bad worse; if you're right, you may be a critic, but you can't be a poet. And then you know very well I don't understand all those new words. But as for that, I quite agree that consciences are much too tender in your generation—schoolboys' consciences, too! As my old friend the Canon says of the Westminster students, “They're all

so pious.” It's all Arnold's doing; he spoilt the public schools.’

‘My dear uncle,’ said I, ‘how can so venerable a sexagenarian utter so juvenile a paradox? How often have I not heard you lament the idleness and listlessness, the boorishness and vulgar tyranny, the brutish manners alike, and minds—’

‘Ah,’ said my uncle, ‘I may have fallen in occasionally with the talk of the day; but at seventy one begins to see clearer into the bottom of one's mind. In middle life one says so many things in the way of business. Not that I mean that the old schools were perfect, any more than we old boys that were there. But whatever else they were or did, they certainly were in harmony with the world, and they certainly did not disqualify the country's youth for after-life and the country's service.’

‘But, my dear sir, this bringing the schools of the country into harmony with public opinion is exactly—’

‘Don't interrupt me with public opinion, my dear nephew; you'll quote me a leading article next. “Young men must be young men,” as the worthy head of your college said to me touching a case of rustication. “My dear sir,” said I, “I only wish to heaven they would be; but as for my own nephews, they seem to me a sort of hobbadi-hoy cherub, too big to be innocent, and too simple for anything else. They're full of the notion of the world being so wicked, and of their taking a higher line, as they call it. I only fear they'll never take any line at all.” What is the true purpose of education? Simply to make plain to the young understanding the laws of the life they will have to enter. For example—that lying won't do, thieving still less; that idleness will get punished; that if they are cowards, the whole world will be against them; that if they will have their own way, they must fight for it. As for the conscience,

mamma, I take it—such as mammas are now-a-days, at any rate—has probably set that agoing fast enough already. What a blessing to see her good little child come back a brave young devil-may-care!’

‘Exactly, my dear sir. As if at twelve or fourteen a round-about boy, with his three meals a day inside him, is likely to be over-troubled with scruples.’

‘Put him through a strong course of confirmation and sacraments, backed up with sermons and private admonitions, and what is much the same as auricular confession, and really, my dear nephew, I can't answer for it but he mayn't turn out as great a goose as you—pardon me—were about the age of eighteen or nineteen.’

‘But to have passed through that, my dear sir! surely that can be no harm.’

‘I don't know. Your constitutions don't seem to recover it quite. We did without these foolish measles well enough in my time.’

‘Westminster had its Cowper, my dear sir; and other schools had theirs also, mute and inglorious, but surely not few.’

‘Ah, ah! the beginning of troubles.’—

‘You see, my dear sir, you must not refer it to Arnold, at all at all. Anything that Arnold did in this direction—’

‘Why, my dear boy, how often have I not heard from you, how he used to attack offences, not as offences—the right view—against discipline, but as sin, heinous guilt, I don't know what beside! Why didn't he flog them and hold his tongue? Flog them he did, but why preach?’

‘If he did err in this way, sir, which I hardly think, I ascribe it to the spirit of the time. The real cause of the evil you complain of, which to a certain extent I admit, was, I take it, the religious movement of the last century, beginning with Wesleyanism, and culminating at last in

Puseyism. This over-excitation of the religious sense, resulting in this irrational, almost animal irritability of conscience, was, in many ways, as foreign to Arnold as it is proper to—’

‘Well, well, my dear nephew, if you like to make a theory of it, pray write it out for yourself nicely in full; but your poor old uncle does not like theories, and is moreover sadly sleepy.’

‘Good night, dear uncle, good night. Only let me say you six more verses.’

DIPSYCHUS CONTINUED.

[An interval of thirty years.]

Scene I.

—In London. Dipsychus in his Study.
Dipsychus.
O God! O God! and must I still go on
Doing this work—I know not, hell's or thine;
And these rewards receiving—sure not thine;
The adulation of a foolish crowd,
Half foolish and half greedy; upright judge—
Lawyer acute—the Mansfield and the Hale
In one united to bless modern Courts.
O God! O God! According to the law,
With solemn face to solemn sentence fit,
Doing the justice that is but half just;
Punishing wrong that is not truly wrong!
Administering, alas, God! not Thy law. (Knock at the door.)

What? Is the hour already for the Court?
Come in. Now, Lord Chief Justice, to thy work.

(Enter a Servant.)
Serv.
My lord, a woman begging to be seen.

Di.
A woman begging to be seen? What's this?
'Tis not the duty of your post, my friend,
To give admittance on the busy days
Of a hard labourer in this great world
To all poor creatures begging to be seen.
Something unusual in it? Bid her wait
In the room below, I'll see her as I pass.
Is the horse there?

Serv.
He's coming round, my lord.

Di.

Wom.
Once you knew me well enough.

Di.
Oh, you! I had been told that you were dead.

Wom.
So your creatures said;
But I shall live, I think, till you die too.

Di.
What do you want? Money, subsistence, bread?

Wom.
I wanted bread, money, all things, 'tis true,
But wanted, above all things, to see you.

Di.
This cannot be. What has been done is o'er.
You have no claim or right against me more;
I have dealt justly with you to the uttermost.

Wom.
I did not come to say you were unjust—
I came to see you only.

Di.
Hear me now.
Remember, it was not the marriage vow,
Nor promise e'er of chaste fidelity,
That joined us thirty years ago in a tie
Which I, I think, scarce sought. It was not I
That took your innocence; you spoiled me of mine.
And yet, as though the vow had been divine,
Was I not faithful? Were you so to me?
Had you been white in spotless purity,
Could I have clung to you more faithfully?
I left you, after wrongs I blush with shame
E'en now through all my fifty years to name.
I left you; yet I stinted still my ease,—
Curtailed my pleasures—toil still extra toil,—
To repay you for what you never gave.
Is it not true?

Wom.
Go on, say all and more.
Upon this body, as the basis, lies
The ladder that has raised you to the skies.

Di.
Is that so much? am I indeed so high?
Am I not rather
The slave and servant of the wretched world,
Liveried and finely dressed—yet all the same
A menial and lacquey seeking place
For hire, and for his hire's sake doing work?

Wom.
I do not know; you have wife and child, I know,
Domestic comfort and a noble name,
And people speak in my ears too your praise.
O man, O man! do you not know in your heart
It was for this you came to me—
It was for this I took you to my breast?
O man, man, man!
You come to us with your dalliance in the street,
You pay us with your miserable gold,
You do not know how in the—

Di.
(looks at his watch).
You must go now. Justice calls me elsewhere;
Justice—might keep you here.
You may return again; stay, let me see—
Six weeks to-morrow you shall see me again;
Now you must go. Do you need money? here,
It is your due: take it, that you may live;
And see me, six weeks from to-morrow, elsewhere.

Wom.
I will not go;
You must stay here and hear me, or I shall die!
It were ill for you that I should.

Di.
What! shall the nation wait?
Woman, if I have wronged you, it was for good—
Good has come of it. Lo, I have done some work.
Over the blasted and the blackened spot
Of our unhappy and unhallowed deed
I have raised a mausoleum of such acts
As in this world do honour unto me,
But in the next to thee.

Wom.
Hear me, I cannot go!

Di.
It cannot be; the court, the nation waits.
Is not the work, too, yours?

Wom.
I go, to die this night!

Di.
I cannot help it. Duty lies here. Depart!

Wom.
Listen; before I die, one word! In old times
You called me Pleasure—my name now is Guilt.

Scene II.

—In Westminster Hall.
1st Barrister.
They say the Lord Chief Justice is unwell;
Did you observe how, after that decision
Which all the world admired so, suddenly
He became pale and looked in the air and staggered,
As if some phantom floated on his eyes?
He is a strange man.

Bar. 2.
He is unwell, there is no doubt of that,
But why or how is quite another question.
It is odd to find so stern and strong a man
Give way before he's sixty. Many a mind,
Apparently less vigorous than his,
Has kept its full judicial faculty,
And sat the woolsack past threescore and ten.

Bar. 3.
No business to be done to-day. Have you heard
The Chief Justice is lying dangerously ill?
Apoplexy, paralysis, Heaven knows what—some seizure.

Bar. 1.
Heavens! that will be a loss indeed!

Bar. 2.
A loss
Which will be some one's gain, however.

Bar. 1.
Not the nation's,
If this sage Chancellor give it to ---.
But is he really sure to die, do you think?

Bar. 3.
A very sudden and very alarming attack.
And now you know to the full as much as I,
Or, as I fancy, any lawyer here.

Bar. 2.
Do you know anything of his early life?

Bar. 1.
My father knew him at college: a reading man,
The quietest of the quiet, shy and timid.
And college honours past,
No one believed he ever would do anything.

Bar. 2.
He was a moral sort of prig, I've heard,
Till he was twenty-five; and even then
He never entered into life as most men.
That is the reason why he fails so soon.
It takes high feeding and a well-taught conscience
To breed your mighty hero of the law.
So much the worse for him; so much the better
For all expectants now.

Bar. 3.
For ------, for one.

Bar. 2.
Well, there'll be several changes, as I think.
Not that I think the shock of new promotion
Will vibrate quite perceptibly down here.
There was a story that I once was told,
Some woman that they used to tease him with.

Bar. 1.
He grew too stern for teasing before long;
A man with greater power of what I think
They call, in some new sense of the word, Repulsion,
I think I never saw in all my life.

Bar. 2.
A most forbidding man in private life,
I've always heard. What's this new news?

Bar. 4.
The Lord Chief Justice has resigned.

Bar. 1, 2, 3.
Is it true?
Really? Quite certain?

Bar. 4.
Publicly announced.
You're quite behind. Most probably ere this
The Times has got it in a new edition.

Scene III.

—Dipsychus in his own house, alone.
Di.
She will come yet, I think, although she said
She would go hence and die; I cannot tell.
Should I have made the nation's business wait,
That I might listen to an old sad tale
Uselessly iterated? Ah—ah me!
I am grown weak indeed; those old black thoughts
No more as servants at my bidding go,
But as stern tyrants look me in the face,
And mock my reason's inefficient hand
That sways to wave them hence.

Serv.
You rung, my lord?

Di.
[Exit Servant.

POEMS ON LIFE AND DUTY.

DUTY.

Duty—that's to say, complying,
With whate'er's expected here;
On your unknown cousin's dying,
Straight be ready with the tear;
Upon etiquette relying,
Unto usage nought denying,
Lend your waist to be embraced,
Blush not even, never fear;
Claims of kith and kin connection,
Claims of manners honour still,
Ready money of affection
Pay, whoever drew the bill.
With the form conforming duly,
Senseless what it meaneth truly,
Go to church—the world require you,
To balls—the world require you too,
And marry—papa and mamma desire you,
And your sisters and schoolfellows do.
Duty—'tis to take on trust
What things are good, and right, and just;
And whether indeed they be or be not,
Try not, test not, feel not, see not:
'Tis walk and dance, sit down and rise
By leading, opening ne'er your eyes;
Stunt sturdy limbs that Nature gave,
And be drawn in a Bath chair along to the grave.
'Tis the stern and prompt suppressing,
As an obvious deadly sin,
All the questing and the guessing
Of the soul's own soul within:
'Tis the coward acquiescence
In a destiny's behest,
To a shade by terror made,
Sacrificing, aye, the essence
Of all that's truest, noblest, best:
'Tis the blind non-recognition
Or of goodness, truth, or beauty,
Save by precept and submission;
Moral blank, and moral void,
Life at very birth destroyed.
Atrophy, exinanition!
Duty!
Yea, by duty's prime condition
Pure nonentity of duty!

LIFE IS STRUGGLE.

IN THE GREAT METROPOLIS.

THE LATEST DECALOGUE.

Thou shalt have one God only; who
Would be at the expense of two?
No graven images may be
Worshipped, except the currency:
Swear not at all; for, for thy curse
Thine enemy is none the worse:
At church on Sunday to attend
Will serve to keep the world thy friend:
Honour thy parents; that is, all
From whom advancement may befall;
Thou shalt not kill; but need'st not strive
Officiously to keep alive:
Do not adultery commit;
Advantage rarely comes of it:
Thou shalt not steal; an empty feat,
When it's so lucrative to cheat:
Bear not false witness; let the lie
Have time on its own wings to fly:
Thou shalt not covet, but tradition
Approves all forms of competition.

THE QUESTIONING SPIRIT.

BETHESDA.

A SEQUEL.

HOPE EVERMORE AND BELIEVE!

BLESSED ARE THEY THAT HAVE NOT SEEN!

COLD COMFORT.

SEHNSUCHT.

HIGH AND LOW.

The grasses green of sweet content
That spring, no matter high or low,
Where'er a living thing can grow,
On chilly hills and rocky rent,
And by the lowly streamlet's side—
Oh! why did e'er I turn from these?—
The lordly, tall, umbrageous trees,
That stand in high aspiring pride,
With massive bulk on high sustain
A world of boughs with leaf and fruits,
And drive their wide-extending roots
Deep down into the subject plain.
Oh, what with these had I to do?—
That germs of things above their kind
May live, pent up and close confined
In humbler forms, it may be true;
Yet great is that which gives our lot;
High laws and powers our will transcend,
And not for this, till time do end,
Shall any be what he is not.
Each in its place, as each was sent,
Just nature ranges side by side;
Alike the oak tree's lofty pride
And grasses green of sweet content.

ALL IS WELL.

παντα ρει: ουδεν μενει.

THE STREAM OF LIFE.

IN A LONDON SQUARE.

THE BOTHIE OF TOBER-NA-VUOLICH: A LONG-VACATION PASTORAL.

I

II

III

IV

V

So in the cottage with Adam, the pupils five together,
Read, and bathed, and roamed, and thought not now of Philip,
All in the joy of their life, and glory of shooting-jackets.

VI

VII

VIII

IX

IDYLLIC SKETCHES.

ITE DOMUM SATURÆ, VENIT HESPERUS.

A LONDON IDYLL.

NATURA NATURANS.

AMOURS DE VOYAGE.

CANTO I.

Over the great windy waters, and over the clear-crested summits,
Unto the sun and the sky, and unto the perfecter earth,
Come, let us go,—to a land wherein gods of the old time wandered,
Where every breath even now changes to ether divine.
Come, let us go; though withal a voice whisper, ‘The world that we live in,
Whithersoever we turn, still is the same narrow crib;
'Tis but to prove limitation, and measure a cord, that we travel;
Let who would 'scape and be free go to his chamber and think;
'Tis but to change idle fancies for memories wilfully falser;
'Tis but to go and have been.’—Come, little bark! let us go.

I. Claude to Eustace.

II. Claude to Eustace.

Rome disappoints me still; but I shrink and adapt myself to it.
Somehow a tyrannous sense of a superincumbent oppression
Still, wherever I go, accompanies ever, and makes me
Feel like a tree (shall I say?) buried under a ruin of brickwork.
Rome, believe me, my friend, is like its own Monte Testaceo,
Merely a marvellous mass of broken and castaway wine-pots.
Ye gods! what do I want with this rubbish of ages departed,
Things that nature abhors, the experiments that she has failed in?
What do I find in the Forum? An archway and two or three pillars.
Well, but St. Peter's? Alas, Bernini has filled it with sculpture!
No one can cavil, I grant, at the size of the great Coliseum.
Doubtless the notion of grand and capacious and massive amusement,
This the old Romans had; but tell me, is this an idea?
Yet of solidity much, but of splendour little is extant:
‘Brickwork I found thee, and marble I left thee!’ their Emperor vaunted;
‘Marble I thought thee, and brickwork I find thee!’ the Tourist may answer.

III. Georgina Trevellyn to Louisa ---.

IV. Claude to Eustace.

V. Claude to Eustace.

Luther, they say, was unwise; like a half-taught German, he could not
See that old follies were passing most tranquilly out of remembrance;
Leo the Tenth was employing all efforts to clear out abuses;
Jupiter, Juno, and Venus, Fine Arts, and Fine Letters, the Poets,
Scholars, and Sculptors, and Painters, were quietly clearing away the
Martyrs, and Virgins, and Saints, or at any rate Thomas Aquinas:
He must forsooth make a fuss and distend his huge Wittenberg lungs, and
Bring back Theology once yet again in a flood upon Europe:
Lo you, for forty days from the windows of heaven it fell; the
Waters prevail on the earth yet more for a hundred and fifty;
Are they abating at last? the doves that are sent to explore are
Wearily fain to return, at the best with a leaflet of promise,—
Fain to return, as they went, to the wandering wave-tost vessel,—
Fain to re-enter the roof which covers the clean and the unclean,—
Luther, they say, was unwise; he didn't see how things were going;
Luther was foolish,—but, O great God! what call you Ignatius?
O my tolerant soul, be still! but you talk of barbarians,
Alaric, Attila, Genseric;—why, they came, they killed, they
Ravaged, and went on their way; but these vile, tyrannous Spaniards,
These are here still,—how long, O ye heavens, in the country of Dante?
These, that fanaticized Europe, which now can forget them, release not
This, their choicest of prey, this Italy; here you see them,—
Here, with emasculate pupils and gimcrack churches of Gesu,
Pseudo-learning and lies, confessional-boxes and postures,—
Here, with metallic beliefs and regimental devotions,—
Here, overcrusting with slime, perverting, defacing, debasing,
Michael Angelo's dome, that had hung the Pantheon in heaven,
Raphael's Joys and Graces, and thy clear stars, Galileo!

VI. Claude to Eustace.

Which of three Misses Trevellyn it is that Vernon shall marry
Is not a thing to be known; for our friend is one of those natures
Which have their perfect delight in the general tender-domestic;
So that he trifles with Mary's shawl, ties Susan's bonnet,
Dances with all, but at home is most, they say, with Georgina,
Who is, however, too silly in my apprehension for Vernon.
I, as before when I wrote, continue to see them a little;
Not that I like them much or care a bajocco for Vernon,
But I am slow at Italian, have not many English acquaintance,
And I am asked, in short, and am not good at excuses.
Middle-class people these, bankers very likely, not wholly
Pure of the taint of the shop; will at table d'hôte and restaurant
Have their shilling's worth, their penny's pennyworth even:
Neither man's aristocracy this, nor God's, God knoweth!
Yet they are fairly descended, they give you to know, well connected;
Doubtless somewhere in some neighbourhood have, and are careful to keep, some
Threadbare-genteel relations, who in their turn are enchanted
Grandly among county people to introduce at assemblies
To the unpennied cadets our cousins with excellent fortunes.
Neither man's aristocracy this, nor God's, God knoweth!

VII. Claude to Eustace.

Ah, what a shame, indeed, to abuse these most worthy people!
Ah, what a sin to have sneered at their innocent rustic pretensions!
Is it not laudable really, this reverent worship of station?
Is it not fitting that wealth should tender this homage to culture?
Is it not touching to witness these efforts, if little availing,
Painfully made, to perform the old ritual service of manners?
Shall not devotion atone for the absence of knowledge? and fervour
Palliate, cover, the fault of a superstitious observance?
Dear, dear, what do I say? but, alas! just now, like Iago,
I can be nothing at all, if it is not critical wholly;
So in fantastic height, in coxcomb exultation,
Here in the garden I walk, can freely concede to the Maker
That the works of His hand are all very good: His creatures,
Beast of the field and fowl, He brings them before me; I name them;
That which I name them, they are,—the bird, the beast, and the cattle.
But for Adam,—alas, poor critical coxcomb Adam!
But for Adam there is not found an help-meet for him.

VIII. Claude to Eustace.

IX. Claude to Eustace.

Yet it is pleasant, I own it, to be in their company; pleasant,
Whatever else it may be, to abide in the feminine presence.
Pleasant, but wrong, will you say? But this happy, serene coexistence
Is to some poor soft souls, I fear, a necessity simple,
Meat and drink and life, and music, filling with sweetness,
Thrilling with melody sweet, with harmonies strange overwhelming,
All the long-silent strings of an awkward, meaningless fabric.
Yet as for that, I could live, I believe, with children; to have those
Pure and delicate forms encompassing, moving about you,
This were enough, I could think; and truly with glad resignation
Could from the dream of Romance, from the fever of flushed adolescence,
Look to escape and subside into peaceful avuncular functions.
Nephews and nieces! alas, for as yet I have none! and, moreover,
Mothers are jealous, I fear me, too often, too rightfully; fathers
Think they have title exclusive to spoiling their own little darlings;
And by the law of the land, in despite of Malthusian doctrine,
No sort of proper provision is made for that most patriotic,
Most meritorious subject, the childless and bachelor uncle.

X. Claude to Eustace.

XI. Claude to Eustace.

XII. Claude to Eustace.

But I am in for it now,—laissez faire, of a truth, laissez aller.
Yes, I am going,—I feel it, I feel and cannot recall it,—
Fusing with this thing and that, entering into all sorts of relations,
Tying I know not what ties, which, whatever they are, I know one thing,
Will, and must, woe is me, be one day painfully broken,—
Broken with painful remorses, with shrinkings of soul, and relentings,
Foolish delays, more foolish evasions, most foolish renewals.
But I have made the step, have quitted the ship of Ulysses;
Quitted the sea and the shore, passed into the magical island;
Yet on my lips is the moly, medicinal, offered of Hermes.
I have come into the precinct, the labyrinth closes around me,
Path into path rounding slyly; I pace slowly on, and the fancy,
Struggling awhile to sustain the long sequences weary, bewildered,
Fain must collapse in despair; I yield, I am lost, and know nothing;
Yet in my bosom unbroken remaineth the clue; I shall use it.
Lo, with the rope on my loins I descend through the fissure; I sink, yet
Inly secure in the strength of invisible arms up above me;
Still, wheresoever I swing, wherever to shore, or to shelf, or
Floor of cavern untrodden, shell sprinkled, enchanting, I know I
Yet shall one time feel the strong cord tighten about me,—
Feel it, relentless, upbear me from spots I would rest in; and though the
Rope sway wildly, I faint, crags wound me, from crag unto crag re-
Bounding, or, wide in the void, I die ten deaths, ere the end I
Yet shall plant firm foot on the broad lofty spaces I quit, shall
Feel underneath me again the great massy strengths of abstraction,
Look yet abroad from the height o'er the sea whose salt wave I have tasted.

XIII. Georgina Trevellyn to Louisa ---.

Dearest Louisa,—Inquire, if you please, about Mr. Claude ---.
He has been once at R., and remembers meeting the H.'s.
Harriet L., perhaps, may be able to tell you about him.
It is an awkward youth, but still with very good manners;
Not without prospects, we hear; and, George says, highly connected.
Georgy declares it absurd, but Mamma is alarmed, and insists he has
Taken up strange opinions, and may be turning a Papist.
Certainly once he spoke of a daily service he went to.
‘Where?’ we asked, and he laughed and answered, ‘At the Pantheon.’
This was a temple, you know, and now is a Catholic church; and
Though it is said that Mazzini has sold it for Protestant service,
Yet I suppose this change can hardly as yet be effected.
Adieu again,—evermore, my dearest, your loving Georgina.

P.S. by Mary Trevellyn.

I am to tell you, you say, what I think of our last new acquaintance.
Well, then, I think that George has a very fair right to be jealous.
I do not like him much, though I do not dislike being with him.
He is what people call, I suppose, a superior man, and
Certainly seems so to me; but I think he is terribly selfish.
Alba, thou findest me still, and, Alba, thou findest me ever,
Now from the Capitol steps, now over Titus's Arch,
Here from the large grassy spaces that spread from the Lateran portal,
Towering o'er aqueduct lines lost in perspective between,
Or from a Vatican window, or bridge, or the high Coliseum,
Clear by the garlanded line cut of the Flavian ring.
Beautiful can I not call thee, and yet thou hast power to o'ermaster,
Power of mere beauty; in dreams, Alba, thou hauntest me still.
Is it religion? I ask me; or is it a vain superstition?
Slavery abject and gross? service, too feeble, of truth?
Is it an idol I bow to, or is it a god that I worship?
Do I sink back on the old, or do I soar from the mean?
So through the city I wander and question, unsatisfied ever,
Reverent so I accept, doubtful because I revere.

CANTO II.

Is it illusion? or does there a spirit from perfecter ages,
Here, even yet, amid loss, change, and corruption, abide?
Does there a spirit we know not, though seek, though we find, comprehend not,
Here to entice and confuse, tempt and evade us, abide?
Lives in the exquisite grace of the column disjointed and single,
Haunts the rude masses of brick garlanded gaily with vine,
E'en in the turret fantastic surviving that springs from the ruin,
E'en in the people itself? is it illusion or not?
Is it illusion or not that attracteth the pilgrim transalpine,
Brings him a dullard and dunce hither to pry and to stare?
Is it illusion or not that allures the barbarian stranger,
Brings him with gold to the shrine, brings him in arms to the gate?

I. Claude to Eustace.

What do the people say, and what does the government do?—you
Ask, and I know not at all. Yet fortune will favour your hopes; and
I, who avoided it all, am fated, it seems, to describe it.
I, who nor meddle nor make in politics,—I who sincerely
Put not my trust in leagues nor any suffrage by ballot,
Never predicted Parisian millenniums, never beheld a
New Jerusalem coming down dressed like a bride out of heaven
Right on the Place de la Concorde,—I, nevertheless, let me say it,
Could in my soul of souls, this day, with the Gaul at the gates shed.
One true tear for thee, thou poor little Roman Republic;
What, with the German restored, with Sicily safe to the Bourbon,
Not leave one poor corner for native Italian exertion?
France, it is foully done! and you, poor foolish England,—
You, who a twelvemonth ago said nations must choose for themselves, you
Could not, of course, interfere,—you, now, when a nation has chosen—
Pardon this folly! The Times will, of course, have announced the occasion,
Told you the news of to-day; and although it was slightly in error
When it proclaimed as a fact the Apollo was sold to a Yankee,
You may believe when it tells you the French are at Civita Vecchia.

II. Claude to Eustace.

III. Claude to Eustace.

Will they fight? They say so. And will the French? I can hardly,
Hardly think so; and yet—He is come, they say, to Palo,
He is passed from Monterone, at Santa Severa
He hath laid up his guns. But the Virgin, the Daughter of Roma,
She hath despised thee and laughed thee to scorn,—the Daughter of Tiber,
She hath shaken her head and built barricades against thee!
Will they fight? I believe it. Alas! 'tis ephemeral folly,
Vain and ephemeral folly, of course, compared with pictures,
Statues, and antique gems!—Indeed: and yet indeed too,
Yet methought, in broad day did I dream,—tell it not in St. James's,
Whisper it not in thy courts, O Christ Church!—yet did I, waking,
Dream of a cadence that sings, Si tombent nos jeunes héros, la
Terre en produit de nouveaux contre vous tous prêts à se battre;
Dreamt of great indignations and angers transcendental,
Dreamt of a sword at my side and a battle-horse underneath me.

IV. Claude to Eustace.

Now supposing the French or the Neapolitan soldier
Should by some evil chance come exploring the Maison Serny
(Where the family English are all to assemble for safety),
Am I prepared to lay down my life for the British female?
Really, who knows? One has bowed and talked, till, little by little,
All the natural heat has escaped of the chivalrous spirit.
Oh, one conformed, of course; but one doesn't die for good manners,
Stab or shoot, or be shot, by way of graceful attention.
No, if it should be at all, it should be on the barricades there;
Should I incarnadine ever this inky pacifical finger,
Sooner far should it be for this vapour of Italy's freedom,
Sooner far by the side of the d---d and dirty plebeians.
Ah, for a child in the street I could strike; for the full-blown lady—
Somehow, Eustace, alas! I have not felt the vocation.
Yet these people of course will expect, as of course, my protection,
Vernon in radiant arms stand forth for the lovely Georgina,
And to appear, I suppose, were but common civility. Yes, and
Truly I do not desire they should either be killed or offended.
Oh, and of course, you will say, ‘When the time comes, you will be ready.’
Ah, but before it comes, am I to presume it will be so?
What I cannot feel now, am I to suppose that I shall feel?
Am I not free to attend for the ripe and indubious instinct?
Am I forbidden to wait for the clear and lawful perception?
Is it the calling of man to surrender his knowledge and insight,
For the mere venture of what may, perhaps, be the virtuous action?
Must we, walking our earth, discern a little, and hoping
Some plain visible task shall yet for our hands be assigned us,—
Must we abandon the future for fear of omitting the present,
Quit our own fireside hopes at the alien call of a neighbour,
To the mere possible shadow of Deity offer the victim?
And is all this, my friend, but a weak and ignoble refining,
Wholly unworthy the head or the heart of Your Own Correspondent?

V. Claude to Eustace.

VI. Claude to Eustace.

VII. Claude to Eustace.

VIII. Georgina Trevellyn to Louisa ---.

IX. Claude to Eustace.

X. Claude to Eustace.

XI. Claude to Eustace.

There are two different kinds, I believe, of human attraction:
One which simply disturbs, unsettles, and makes you uneasy,
And another that poises, retains, and fixes and holds you.
I have no doubt, for myself, in giving my voice for the latter.
I do not wish to be moved, but growing where I was growing,
There more truly to grow, to live where as yet I had languished.
I do not like being moved: for the will is excited; and action
Is a most dangerous thing; I tremble for something factitious,
Some malpractice of heart and illegitimate process;
We are so prone to these things, with our terrible notions of duty.

XII. Claude to Eustace.

Ah, let me look, let me watch, let me wait, unhurried, unprompted!
Bid me not venture on aught that could alter or end what is present!
Say not, Time flies, and Occasion, that never returns, is departing!
Drive me not out, ye ill angels with fiery swords, from my Eden,
Waiting, and watching, and looking! Let love be its own inspiration!
Shall not a voice, if a voice there must be, from the airs that environ,
Yea, from the conscious heavens, without our knowledge or effort,
Break into audible words? And love be its own inspiration?

XIII. Claude to Eustace.

Wherefore and how I am certain, I hardly can tell; but it is so.
She doesn't like me, Eustace; I think she never will like me.
Is it my fault, as it is my misfortune, my ways are not her ways?
Is it my fault, that my habits and modes are dissimilar wholly?
'Tis not her fault; 'tis her nature, her virtue, to misapprehend them:
'Tis not her fault; 'tis her beautiful nature, not ever to know me.
Hopeless it seems,—yet I cannot, though hopeless, determine to leave it:
She goes—therefore I go; she moves,—I move, not to lose her.

XIV. Claude to Eustace.

XV. Georgina Trevellyn to Louisa ---.

. . . . . . To-morrow we're starting for Florence,
Truly rejoiced, you may guess, to escape from republican terrors;
Mr. C. and Papa to escort us; we by vettura
Through Siena, and Georgy to follow and join us by Leghorn.
Then—Ah, what shall I say, my dearest? I tremble in thinking!
You will imagine my feelings,—the blending of hope and of sorrow!
How can I bear to abandon Papa and Mamma and my Sisters?
Dearest Louise, indeed it is very alarming; but, trust me
Ever, whatever may change, to remain your loving Georgina.

P.S. by Mary Trevellyn.

. . . . . . ‘Do I like Mr. Claude any better?’
I am to tell you,—and, ‘Pray, is it Susan or I that attract him?’
This he never has told, but Georgina could certainly ask him.
All I can say for myself is, alas! that he rather repels me.
There! I think him agreeable, but also a little repulsive.
So be content, dear Louisa; for one satisfactory marriage
Surely will do in one year for the family you would establish;
Neither Susan nor I shall afford you the joy of a second.

P.S. by Georgina Trevellyn.

Mr. Claude, you must know, is behaving a little bit better;
He and Papa are great friends; but he really is too shilly-shally,—
So unlike George! Yet I hope that the matter is going on fairly.
I shall, however, get George, before he goes, to say something.
Dearest Louise, how delightful to bring young people together!
Is it to Florence we follow, or are we to tarry yet longer,
E'en amid clamour of arms, here in the city of old,
Seeking from clamour of arms in the Past and the Arts to be hidden,
Vainly 'mid Arts and the Past seeking one life to forget?
Ah, fair shadow, scarce seen, go forth! for anon he shall follow,—
He that beheld thee, anon, whither thou leadest must go!
Go, and the wise, loving Muse, she also will follow and find thee!
She, should she linger in Rome, were not dissevered from thee!

CANTO III.

Yet to the wondrous St. Peter's, and yet to the solemn Rotonda,
Mingling with heroes and gods, yet to the Vatican Walls,
Yet may we go, and recline, while a whole mighty world seems above us,
Gathered and fixed to all time into one roofing supreme;
Yet may we, thinking on these things, exclude what is meaner around us;
Yet, at the worst of the worst, books and a chamber remain;
Yet may we think, and forget, and possess our souls in resistance.—
Ah, but away from the stir, shouting, and gossip of war,
Where, upon Apennine slope, with the chestnut the oak-trees immingle,
Where, amid odorous copse bridle-paths wander and wind,
Where, under mulberry-branches, the diligent rivulet sparkles,
Or amid cotton and maize peasants their water-works ply,
Where, over fig-tree and orange in tier upon tier still repeated,
Garden on garden upreared, balconies step to the sky,—
Ah, that I were far away from the crowd and the streets of the city,
Under the vine-trellis laid, O my beloved, with thee!

I. Mary Trevellyn to Miss Roper,—on the way to Florence.

II. Claude to Eustace,—from Rome.

III. Claude to Eustace.

IV. Claude to Eustace.

V. Mary Trevellyn to Miss Roper,—from Florence.

Dearest Miss Roper,—Alas! we are all at Florence quite safe, and
You, we hear, are shut up! indeed, it is sadly distressing!
We were most lucky, they say, to get off when we did from the troubles.
Now you are really besieged; they tell us it soon will be over;
Only I hope and trust without any fight in the city.
Do you see Mr. Claude?—I thought he might do something for you.
I am quite sure on occasion he really would wish to be useful.
What is he doing? I wonder;—still studying Vatican marbles?
Letters, I hope, pass through. We trust your brother is better.

VI. Claude to Eustace.

VII. Claude to Eustace.

Juxtaposition is great,—but, you tell me, affinity greater.
Ah, my friend, there are many affinities, greater and lesser,
Stronger and weaker; and each, by the favour of juxtaposition,
Potent, efficient, in force,—for a time; but none, let me tell you,
Save by the law of the land and the ruinous force of the will, ah,
None, I fear me, at last quite sure to be final and perfect.
Lo, as I pace in the street, from the peasant-girl to the princess,
Homo sum, nihil humani a me alienum puto,—
Vir sum, nihil fæminei,—and e'en to the uttermost circle,
All that is Nature's is I, and I all things that are Nature's.
Yes, as I walk, I behold, in a luminous, large intuition,
That I can be and become anything that I meet with or look at:
I am the ox in the dray, the ass with the garden stuff panniers;
I am the dog in the doorway, the kitten that plays in the window,
On sunny slab of the ruin the furtive and fugitive lizard,
Swallow above me that twitters, and fly that is buzzing about me;
Yea, and detect, as I go, by a faint, but a faithful assurance,
E'en from the stones of the street, as from rocks or trees of the forest,
Something of kindred, a common, though latent vitality, greets me;
And, to escape from our strivings, mistakings, misgrowths, and perversions,
Fain could demand to return to that perfect and primitive silence,
Fain be enfolded and fixed, as of old, in their rigid embraces.

VIII. Claude to Eustace.

IX. Claude to Eustace.

X. Claude to Eustace.

XI. Claude to Eustace.

Tibur is beautiful, too, and the orchard slopes, and the Anio
Falling, falling yet, to the ancient lyrical cadence;
Tibur and Anio's tide; and cool from Lucretilis ever,
With the Digentian stream, and with the Bandusian fountain,
Folded in Sabine recesses, the valley and villa of Horace:—
So not seeing I sang; so seeing and listening say I,
Here as I sit by the stream, as I gaze at the cell of the Sibyl,
Here with Albunea's home and the grove of Tiburnus beside me;
Tivoli beautiful is, and musical, O Teverone,
Dashing from mountain to plain, thy parted impetuous waters!
Tivoli's waters and rocks; and fair unto Monte Gennaro
(Haunt even yet, I must think, as I wander and gaze, of the shadows,
Faded and pale, yet immortal, of Faunus, the Nymphs, and the Graces),
Fair in itself, and yet fairer with human completing creations,
Folded in Sabine recesses the valley and villa of Horace:—
So not seeing I sang; so now—Nor seeing, nor hearing,
Neither by waterfall lulled, nor folded in sylvan embraces,
Neither by cell of the Sibyl, nor stepping the Monte Gennaro,
Seated on Anio's bank, nor sipping Bandusian waters,
But on Montorio's height, looking down on the tile-clad streets, the
Cupolas, crosses, and domes, the bushes and kitchen-gardens,
Which, by the grace of the Tibur, proclaim themselves Rome of the Romans,—
But on Montorio's height, looking forth to the vapoury mountains,
Cheating the prisoner Hope with illusions of vision and fancy,—
But on Montorio's height, with these weary soldiers by me,
Waiting till Oudinot enter, to reinstate Pope and Tourist.

XII. Mary Trevellyn to Miss Roper.

XIII. Claude to Eustace.

Therefore farewell, ye hills, and ye, ye envineyarded ruins!
Therefore farewell, ye walls, palaces, pillars, and domes!
Therefore farewell, far seen, ye peaks of the mythic Albano,
Seen from Montorio's height, Tibur and Æsula's hills!
Ah, could we once, ere we go, could we stand, while, to ocean descending,
Sinks o'er the yellow dark plain slowly the yellow broad sun,
Stand, from the forest emerging at sunset, at once in the champaign,
Open, but studded with trees, chestnuts umbrageous and old,
E'en in those fair open fields that incurve to thy beautiful hollow,
Nemi, imbedded in wood, Nemi, inurned in the hill!—
Therefore farewell, ye plains, and ye hills, and the City Eternal!
Therefore farewell! We depart, but to behold you again!

CANTO IV.

Eastward, or Northward, or West? I wander and ask as I wander,
Weary, yet eager and sure, Where shall I come to my love?
Whitherward hasten to seek her? Ye daughters of Italy, tell me,
Graceful and tender and dark, is she consorting with you?
Thou that out-climbest the torrent, that tendest thy goats to the summit,
Call to me, child of the Alp, has she been seen on the heights?
Italy, farewell I bid thee! for whither she leads me, I follow.
Farewell the vineyard! for I, where I but guess her, must go.
Weariness welcome, and labour, wherever it be, if at last it
Bring me in mountain or plain into the sight of my love.

I. Claude to Eustace,—from Florence.

Gone from Florence; indeed! and that is truly provoking;—
Gone to Milan, it seems; then I go also to Milan.
Five days now departed; but they can travel but slowly;—
I quicker far; and I know, as it happens, the house they will go to.—
Why, what else should I do? Stay here and look at the pictures,
Statues, and churches? Alack, I am sick of the statues and pictures!—
No, to Bologna, Parma, Piacenza, Lodi, and Milan,
Off go we to-night,—and the Venus go to the Devil!

II. Claude to Eustace,—from Bellaggio.

Gone to Como, they said; and I have posted to Como.
There was a letter left; but the cameriere had lost it.
Could it have been for me? They came, however, to Como,
And from Como went by the boat,—perhaps to the Splügen,—
Or to the Stelvio, say, and the Tyrol; also it might be
By Porlezza across to Lugano, and so to the Simplon
Possibly, or the St. Gothard,—or possibly, too, to Baveno,
Orta, Turin, and elsewhere. Indeed, I am greatly bewildered.

III. Claude to Eustace,—from Bellaggio.

IV. Claude to Eustace,—from Bellaggio.

I have returned and found their names in the book at Como.
Certain it is I was right, and yet I am also in error.
Added in feminine hand, I read, By the boat to Bellaggio.—
So to Bellaggio again, with the words of her writing to aid me.
Yet at Bellagio I find no trace, no sort of remembrance.
So I am here, and wait, and know every hour will remove them.

V. Claude to Eustace,—from Bellaggio.

I have but one chance left,—and that is going to Florence.
But it is cruel to turn. The mountains seem to demand me,—
Peak and valley from far to beckon and motion me onward.
Somewhere amid their folds she passes whom fain I would follow;
Somewhere among those heights she haply calls me to seek her.
Ah, could I hear her call! could I catch the glimpse of her raiment!
Turn, however, I must, though it seem I turn to desert her;
For the sense of the thing is simply to hurry to Florence,
Where the certainty yet may be learnt, I suppose, from the Ropers.

VI. Mary Trevellyn, from Lucerne, to Miss Roper, at Florence.

There is a home on the shore of the Alpine sea, that upswelling
High up the mountain-sides spreads in the hollow between;
Wilderness, mountain, and snow from the land of the olive conceal it;
Under Pilatus's hill low by its river it lies:
Italy, utter the word, and the olive and vine will allure not,—
Wilderness, forest, and snow will not the passage impede;
Italy, unto thy cities receding, the clue to recover,
Hither, recovered the clue, shall not the traveller haste?

CANTO V.

There is a city, upbuilt on the quays of the turbulent Arno,
Under Fiesole's heights,—thither are we to return?
There is a city that fringes the curve of the inflowing waters,
Under the perilous hill fringes the beautiful bay,—
Parthenope, do they call thee?—the Siren, Neapolis, seated
Under Vesevus's hill,—are we receding to thee?—
Sicily, Greece, will invite, and the Orient;—or are we to turn to
England, which may after all be for its children the best?

I. Mary Trevellyn, at Lucerne, to Miss Roper, at Florence.

II. Claude to Eustace.

III. Mary Trevellyn to Miss Roper,—at Lucca Baths.

IV. Claude to Eustace.

Let me, then, bear to forget her. I will not cling to her falsely;
Nothing factitious or forced shall impair the old happy relation.
I will let myself go, forget, not try to remember;
I will walk on my way, accept the chances that meet me,
Freely encounter the world, imbibe these alien airs, and
Never ask if new feelings and thoughts are of her or of others.
Is she not changing herself?—the old image would only delude me.
I will be bold, too, and change,—if it must be. Yet if in all things,
Yet if I do but aspire evermore to the Absolute only,
I shall be doing, I think, somehow, what she will be doing;—
I shall be thine, O my child, some way, though I know not in what way,
Let me submit to forget her; I must; I already forget her.

V. Claude to Eustace.

VI. Claude to Eustace.

VII. Mary Trevellyn to Miss Roper.

He has not come as yet; and now I must not expect it.
You have written, you say, to friends at Florence, to see him,
If he perhaps should return;—but that is surely unlikely.
Has he not written to you?—he did not know your direction.
Oh, how strange never once to have told him where you were going!
Yet if he only wrote to Florence, that would have reached you.
If what you say he said was true, why has he not done so?
Is he gone back to Rome, do you think, to his Vatican marbles?—
O my dear Miss Roper, forgive me! do not be angry!—
You have written to Florence;—your friends would certainly find him.
Might you not write to him?—but yet it is so little likely!
I shall expect nothing more.—Ever yours, your affectionate Mary.

VIII. Claude to Eustace.

IX. Claude to Eustace.

Shall we come out of it all, some day, as one does from a tunnel?
Will it be all at once, without our doing or asking,
We shall behold clear day, the trees and meadows about us,
And the faces of friends, and the eyes we loved looking at us?
Who knows? Who can say? It will not do to suppose it.

X. Claude to Eustace,—from Rome.

XI. Mary Trevellyn to Miss Roper.

So go forth to the world, to the good report and the evil!
Go, little book! thy tale, is it not evil and good?
Go, and if strangers revile, pass quietly by without answer.
Go, and if curious friends ask of thy rearing and age,
Say, ‘I am flitting about many years from brain unto brain of
Feeble and restless youths born to inglorious days:
But,’ so finish the word, ‘I was writ in a Roman chamber,
When from Janiculan heights thundered the cannon of France.’

SEVEN SONNETS ON THE THOUGHT OF DEATH.

I

That children in their loveliness should die
Before the dawning beauty, which we know
Cannot remain, has yet begun to go;
That when a certain period has passed by,
People of genius and of faculty,
Leaving behind them some result to show,
Having performed some function, should forego
The task which younger hands can better ply,
Appears entirely natural. But that one
Whose perfectness did not at all consist
In things towards forming which time can have done
Anything,—whose sole office was to exist,
Should suddenly dissolve and cease to be
Is the extreme of all perplexity.

II

That there are better things within the womb
Of Nature than to our unworthy view
She grants for a possession, may be true:
The cycle of the birthplace and the tomb
Fulfils at least the order and the doom
Of earth, that has not ordinance to do
More than to withdraw and to renew,
To show one moment and the next resume:
The law that we return from whence we came,
May for the flowers, beasts, and most men remain;
If for ourselves, we ask not nor complain:
But for a being that demands the name
We highest deem—a Person and a Soul—
It troubles us that this should be the whole.

III

To see the rich autumnal tint depart,
And view the fading of the roseate glow
That veils some Alpine altitude of snow,
To hear of some great masterpiece of art
Lost or destroyed, may to the adult heart
Impatient of the transitory show
Of loveliness that but come and go,
A positive strange thankfulness impart.
When human pure perfections disappear,
Not at the first, but at some later day,
The buoyancy of such reaction may
With strong assurance conquer blank dismay.

IV

But whether in the uncoloured light of truth,
This inward strong assurance be, indeed,
More than the self-willed arbitrary creed,
Manhood's inheritor to the dream of youth;
Whether to shut out fact because forsooth
To live were insupportable unfreed,
Be not or be the service of untruth:
Whether this vital confidence be more
Than his, who upon death's immediate brink,
Knowing, perforce determines to ignore;
Or than the bird's, that when the hunter's near,
Burying her eyesight, can forget her fear;
Who about this shall tell us what to think?

V

If it is thou whose casual hand withdraws
What it at first as casually did make,
Say what amount of ages it will take
With tardy rare concurrences of laws,
And subtle multiplicities of cause,
The thing they once had made us to remake;
May hopes dead slumbering dare to reawake,
E'en after utmost interval of pause,
What revolutions must have passed, before
The great celestial cycles shall restore
The starry sign whose present hour is gone;
What worse than dubious chances interpose,
With cloud and sunny gleam to recompose
The skiey picture we had gazed upon.

VI

But if as not by that the soul desired
Swayed in the judgment, wisest men have thought,
And furnishing the evidence it sought,
Man's heart hath ever fervently required,
And story, for that reason deemed inspired,
To every clime, in every age, hath taught;
If in this human complex there be aught
Not lost in death, as not in birth acquired,
O then, though cold the lips that did convey
Rich freights of meaning, dead each living sphere
Where thought abode, and fancy loved to play,
Thou yet, we think, somewhere somehow still art,
And satisfied with that the patient heart
The where and how doth not desire to hear.

VII

Shall I decide it by a random shot?
Our happy hopes, so happy and so good,
Are not mere idle motions of the blood;
And when they seem most baseless, most are not.
A seed there must have been upon the spot
Where the flowers grow, without it ne'er they could;
The confidence of growth least understood
Of some deep intuition was begot.
What if despair and hope alike be true?
The heart, 'tis manifest, is free to do
Whichever Nature and itself suggest,
And always 'tis a fact that we are here,
And with being here, doth palsy-giving fear
(Whoe'er can ask or hope) accord the best?

MARI MAGNO OR TALES ON BOARD.

[A youth was I. An elder friend with me]

THE LAWYER'S FIRST TALE.

Primitiæ, or Third Cousins.

I

II

III

O had some happy chance fall'n out,
To turn the thing just round about,
In time at least to give anew
The old affectionate adieu!
A little thing, a word, a jest,
A laugh, had set us all at rest;
But nothing came. I went away,
And could have really cried that day,
So vexed, for I had meant so well,
Yet everything so ill befell,
And why and how I could not tell.
Our wounds in youth soon close and heal,
Or seem to close; young people feel,
And suffer greatly, I believe,
But then they can't profess to grieve:
Their pleasures occupy them more,
And they have so much time before.
At twenty life appeared to me
A sort of vague infinity;
And though of changes still I heard,
Real changes had not yet occurred:
And all things were, or would be, well,
And nothing irremediable.
The youth for his degrees that reads
Beyond it nothing knows or needs;
Nor till 'tis over wakes to see
The busy world's reality.

IV

V

She wrote from Helston; begged I'd come
And see her in her husband's home.
I went, and bound by double vow,
Not only wife, but mother now,
I found her, lovely as of old,
O, rather, lovelier manifold.
We all made thanks. ‘My tale were quickly told,’
The other said, ‘but the turned heavens behold;
The night two watches of the night is old,
The sinking stars their suasions urge for sleep,
My story for to-morrow night will keep.’
The evening after, when the day was stilled,
His promise thus the clergyman fulfilled.

THE CLERGYMAN'S FIRST TALE.

Love is fellow-service.

A youth and maid upon a summer night
Upon the lawn, while yet the skies were light,
Edmund and Emma, let their names be these,
Among the shrubs within the circling trees,
Joined in a game with boys and girls at play:
For games perhaps too old a little they;
In April she her eighteenth year begun,
And twenty he, and near to twenty-one.
A game it was of running and of noise;
He as a boy, with other girls and boys
(Her sisters and her brothers), took the fun;
And when her turn, she marked not, came to run,
‘Emma,’ he called,—then knew that he was wrong,
Knew that her name to him did not belong.
Her look and manner proved his feeling true,—
A child no more, her womanhood she knew;
Half was the colour mounted on her face,
Her tardy movement had an adult grace.
Vexed with himself, and shamed, he felt the more
A kind of joy he ne'er had felt before.
Something there was that from this date began;
'Twas beautiful with her to be a man.
The tale, we said, instructive was, but short;
Could he not give another of the sort?
He feared his second might his first repeat,
‘And Aristotle teaches, change is sweet;
But come, our younger friend in this dim night
Under his bushel must not hide his light.’
I said I'd had but little time to live,
Experience none or confidence could give.
‘But I can tell to-morrow, if you please,
My last year's journey towards the Pyrenees.’
To-morrow came, and evening, when it closed,
The penalty of speech on me imposed.

MY TALE.

A la Banquette, or a Modern Pilgrimage.

‘But how,’ said one, ‘about the Pyrenees?
In Hamlet give us Hamlet, if you please;
Your friend declares you said you met with there
A peasant beauty, beauteous past compare,
Who fed her cows the mountain peaks between,
And asked if at Velletri you had been.
And was Velletri larger than was Rome?
Her soldier-brother went away from home,
Two years ago,—to Rome it was he went,
And to Velletri was this summer sent;
He twenty-three, and she was sweet seventeen,
And fed her cows the mountain peaks between.
Lightly along a rocky path she led,
And from a grange she brought you milk and bread.
In summer here she lived, and with the snow
Went in October to the fields below;
And where you lived, she asked, and oh, they say,
That with the English we shall fight some day;
Loveliest of peasant girls that e'er was seen,
Feeding her cows the mountain peaks between.’
‘'Tis true,’ I said, ‘though to betray was mean.
My Pyrenean verses will you hear,
Though not about that peasant girl, I fear.’
‘Begin,’ they said, ‘the sweet bucolic song,
Though it to other maids and other cows belong.’

Currente calamo.

THE MATE'S STORY.

One after night we took ourselves to task
For our neglect who had forborne to ask
The clergyman, who told his tale so well,
Another tale for our behalf to tell.
He to a second had himself confessed,
Now, when to hear it eagerly we pressed,
He put us off; but, ere the night was done,
Told us his second, and his sadder one.

THE CLERGYMAN'S SECOND TALE.

Midnight was dim and hazy overhead
When the tale ended and we turned to bed.
On the companion-way, descending slow,
The artillery captain, as we went below,
Said to the lawyer, life could not be meant
To be so altogether innocent.
What did the atonement show? he, for the rest,
Could not, he thought, have written and confessed.
Weakness it was, and adding crime to crime
To leave his family that length of time,
The lawyer said; the American was sure
Each nature knows instinctively its cure.
Midnight was in the cabin still and dead,
Our fellow-passengers were all in bed,
We followed them, and nothing further spoke.
Out of the sweetest of my sleep I woke
At two, and felt we stopped; amid a dream
Of England knew the letting-off of steam
And rose. 'Twas fog, and were we off Cape Race?
The captain would be certain of his place.
Wild in white vapour flew away the force,
And self-arrested was the eager course
That had not ceased before. But shortly now
Cape Race was made to starboard on the bow.
The paddles plied. I slept. The following night
In the mid seas we saw a quay and light,
And peered through mist into an unseen town,
And on scarce-seeming land set one companion down,
And went. With morning and a shining sun,
Under the bright New Brunswick coast we run,
And visible discern to every eye
Rocks, pines, and little ports, and passing by
The boats and coasting craft. When sunk the night,
Early now sunk, the northern streamers bright
Floated and flashed, the cliffs and clouds behind,
With phosphorus the billows all were lined.
That evening, while the arctic streamers bright
Rolled from the clouds in waves of airy light,
The lawyer said, ‘I laid by for to night
A story that I would not tell before;
For the last time, a confidential four,
We meet. Receive in your elected ears
A tale of human suffering and tears.’

CHRISTIAN.

The Lawyer's Second Tale.

To bed with busy thoughts; the following day
Bore us expectant into Boston Bay;
With dome and steeple on the yellow skies,
Upon the left we watched with curious eyes
The Puritan great Mother City rise.
Among the islets, winding in and round,
The great ship moved to her appointed ground.
We bade adieu, shook hands and went ashore:
I and my friend have seen our friends no more.

SONGS IN ABSENCE.

[Farewell, farewell! Her vans the vessel tries]

[Ye flags of Piccadilly]

[Come home, come home! and where is home for me]

[Green fields of England! wheresoe'er]

[Come back, come back, behold with straining mast]

[Some future day when what is now is not]

[Where lies the land to which the ship would go?]

[The mighty ocean rolls and raves]

[That out of sight is out of mind]

[Were you with me, or I with you]

[Am I with you, or you with me?]

[Were I with you, or you with me]

[Were you with me, or I with you]

[O ship, ship, ship]

ESSAYS IN CLASSICAL METRES.

TRANSLATIONS OF ILIAD.

(l. 1–32.)

[Goddess, the anger sing of the Pelean Achilles]

(l. 121–218.)

[And replying, said godlike, swift-footed Achilles]

ELEGIACS.

I

[From thy far sources, 'mid mountains airily climbing]

From thy far sources, 'mid mountains airily climbing,
Pass to the rich lowland, thou busy sunny river;
Murmuring once, dimpling, pellucid, limpid, abundant,
Deepening now, widening, swelling, a lordly river.
Through woodlands steering, with branches waving above thee,
Through the meadows sinuous, wandering irriguous;
Towns, hamlets leaving, towns by thee, bridges across thee,
Pass to palace garden, pass to cities populous.
Murmuring once, dimpling, 'mid woodlands wandering idly,
Now with mighty vessels loaded, a mighty river.
Pass to the great waters, though tides may seem to resist thee,
Tides to resist seeming, quickly will lend thee passage,
Pass to the dark waters that roaring wait to receive thee;
Pass them thou wilt not, thou busy sunny river.

II

[Trunks the forest yielded with gums ambrosial oozing]

Trunks the forest yielded with gums ambrosial oozing,
Boughs with apples laden beautiful, Hesperian,
Golden, odoriferous, perfume exhaling about them,
Orbs in a dark umbrage luminous and radiant;
To the palate grateful, more luscious were not in Eden,
Or in that fabled garden of Alcinoüs;
Out of a dark umbrage sounds also musical issued,
Birds their sweet transports uttering in melody:
Thrushes clear piping, wood-pigeons cooing, arousing
Loudly the nightingale, loudly the sylvan echoes;
Waters transpicuous flowed under, flowed to the list'ning
Ear with a soft murmur, softly soporiferous;
Nor, with ebon locks too, there wanted, circling, attentive
Unto the sweet fluting, girls, of a swarthy shepherd;
Over a sunny level their flocks are lazily feeding,
They of Amor musing rest in a leafy cavern.

ALCAICS.

So spake the voice: and as with a single life
Instinct, the whole mass, fierce, irretainable,
Down on that unsuspecting host swept;
Down, with the fury of winds, that all night
Upbrimming, sapping slowly the dyke, at dawn
Fall through the breach o'er holmstead and harvest; and
Heard roll a deluge: while the milkmaid
Trips i' the dew, and remissly guiding
Morn's first uneven furrow, the farmer's boy
Dreams out his dream; so, over the multitude
Safe-tented, uncontrolled and uncon-
trollably sped the Avenger's fury.

ACTÆON.

Over a mountain slope with lentisk, and with abounding
Arbutus, and the red oak overtufted, 'mid a noontide
Now glowing fervidly, the Leto-born, the divine one,
Artemis, Arcadian wood-rover, alone, hunt-weary,
Unto a dell cent'ring many streamlets her foot unerring
Had guided. Platanus with fig-tree shaded a hollow,
Shaded a waterfall, where pellucid yet abundant
Streams from perpetual full-flowing sources a current:
Lower on either bank in sunshine flowered the oleanders:
Plenteous under a rock green herbage here to the margin
Grew with white poplars overcrowning. She thither arrived,
Unloosening joyfully the vest enfolded upon her,
Swift her divine shoulders discovering, swiftly revealing
Her maidenly bosom and all her beauty beneath it,
To the river water overflowing to receive her
Yielded her ambrosial nakedness. But with an instant
Conscious, with the instant the' immortal terrific anger
Flew to the guilty doer: that moment, where amid amply
Concealing plane-leaves he the' opportunity pursued,
Long vainly, possessed, unwise, Actæon, of hunters,
Hapless of Arcadian, and most misguided of hunters,
Knew the divine mandate, knew fate directed upon him.
He, to the boughs crouching, with dreadful joy the desired one
Had viewed descending, viewed as in a dream, disarraying,
And the unclad shoulders awestruck, awestruck let his eyes see
The maidenly bosom, but not—dim fear fell upon them—
Not more had witnessed. Not, therefore, less the forest through
Ranging, their master ceasing thenceforth to remember,
With the instant together came trooping, as to devour him,
His dogs from the ambush.—Transformed suddenly before them,
He fled, an antlered stag wild with terror to the mountain.
She, the liquid stream in, her limbs carelessly reclining,
The flowing waters collected grateful about her.

MISCELLANEOUS POEMS.

COME, POET, COME!

THE DREAM LAND.

IN THE DEPTHS.

DARKNESS.

But that from slow dissolving pomps of dawn
No verity of slowly strengthening light
Early or late hath issued; that the day
Scarce-shown, relapses rather, self-withdrawn;
Back to the glooms of ante-natal night,
For this, O human beings, mourn we may.

TWO MOODS.

YOUTH AND AGE.

SOLVITUR ACRIS HIEMS.

THESIS AND ANTITHESIS.

ανεμωλια.

COLUMBUS.

EVEN THE WINDS AND THE SEA OBEY.

Said the Poet, I wouldn't maintain,
As the mystical German has done,
That the land, inexistent till then,
To reward him then first saw the sun;
And yet I could deem it was so,
As o'er the new waters he sailed,
That his soul made the breezes to blow,
With his courage the breezes had failed;
His strong quiet purpose had still
The hurricane's fury withheld;
The resolve of his conquering will
The lingering vessel impelled:
For the beings, the powers that range
In the air, on the earth, at our sides,
Can modify, temper and change
Stronger things than the winds and the tides,
By forces occult can the laws—
As we style them—of nature o'errule;
Can cause, so to say, every cause,
And our best mathematics befool;
Can defeat calculation and plan,
Baffle schemes ne'er so wisely designed,
But will bow to the genius of man,
And acknowledge a sovereign mind.

REPOSE IN EGYPT.

TO A SLEEPING CHILD.

TRANSLATIONS FROM GOETHE.

I

[Over every hill]

Over every hill
All is still;
In no leaf of any tree
Can you see
The motion of a breath.
Every bird has ceased its song,
Wait; and thou too, ere long,
Shall be quiet in death.

II

[Who ne'er his bread with tears hath ate]

III

[You complain of the woman for roving from one to another:—]

You complain of the woman for roving from one to another:—
Where is the constant man whom she is trying to find?

IV

[Slumber and Sleep, two brothers appointed to serve the immortals]

Slumber and Sleep, two brothers appointed to serve the immortals,
By Prometheus were brought hither to comfort mankind;
But what in heaven was light, to human creatures was heavy:—
Slumber became our Sleep, Sleep unto mortals was Death.

V

[Oh, the beautiful child! and oh, the most happy mother!]

Oh, the beautiful child! and oh, the most happy mother!
She in her infant blessed, and in its mother the babe—
What sweet longing within me this picture might not occasion,
Were I not, Joseph, like you, calmly condemned to stand by!

VI

[Diogenes by his tub, contenting himself with the sunshine]

Diogenes by his tub, contenting himself with the sunshine,
And Calanus with joy mounting his funeral pyre:—
Great examples were these for the eager approving of Philip,
But for the Conqueror of Earth were, as the earth was, too small.

URANUS.

When on the primal peaceful blank profound,
Which in its still unknowing silence holds
All knowledge, ever by withholding holds—
When on that void (like footfalls in far rooms),
In faint pulsations from the whitening East
Articulate voices first were felt to stir,
And the great child, in dreaming grown to man,
Losing his dream to piece it up began;
Then Plato in me said,
‘'Tis but the figured ceiling overhead,
With cunning diagrams bestarred, that shine
In all the three dimensions, are endowed
With motion too by skill mechanical,
That thou in height, and depth, and breadth, and power,
Schooled unto pure Mathesis, might proceed
To higher entities, whereof in us
Copies are seen, existent they themselves
In the sole kingdom of the Mind and God.
Mind not the stars, mind thou thy Mind and God.’
By that supremer Word
O'ermastered, deafly heard
Were hauntings dim of old astrologies;
Chaldean mumblings vast, with gossip light
From modern ologistic fancyings mixed,
Of suns and stars, by hypothetic men
Of other frame than ours inhabited,
Of lunar seas and lunar craters huge.
And was there atmosphere, or was there not?
And without oxygen could life subsist?
And was the world originally mist?—
Talk they as talk they list,
I, in that ampler voice,
Unheeding, did rejoice.

SELENE.

AT ROME.

O, richly soiled and richly sunned,
Exuberant, fervid, and fecund!
Is this the fixed condition
On which may Northern pilgrim come,
To imbibe thine ether-air, and sum
Thy store of old tradition?
Must we be chill, if clean, and stand
Foot-deep in dirt on classic land?
So is it: in all ages so,
And in all places man can know,
From homely roots unseen below
The stem in forest, field, and bower,
Derives the emanative power
That crowns it with the ethereal flower,
From mixtures fœtid, foul, and sour
Draws juices that those petals fill.

LAST WORDS. NAPOLEON AND WELLINGTON.

NAPOLEON.

WELLINGTON.

PESCHIERA.

ALTERAM PARTEM.

SAY NOT THE STRUGGLE NOUGHT AVAILETH.