The Burdens of Belief and Other Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

‘Sir Knight, the moorlands you must cross
Are high and bare,—no friendly trees
To break the blast of ocean seas,
With swollen streams, and treacherous moss.

My house is poor, but yet the bed
Of heather and the blazing fire
Are better than the shrieking choir
Of stormy spirits overhead.’

‘Scant time have I,’ the Knight replied:
‘You know the troubles of our land,
And how we're fighting hand to hand
'Gainst England, upon Scotland's side.

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Not yet has fortune lent her smiles:
Until she does I cannot rest:
And now I go to farthest west
To rouse the Clansmen of the Isles.’

‘No boat, Sir Knight, can cross the sea
Until this storm has passed away;
It will have passed by break of day,
Then gladly I'll be guide to thee.’

And so the Scot and Norman Knight,
On middle floor around the fire,
Communed and slept in far Kintyre,
Until the morning broke in light.

Then when the peaks of Arran stood
In cold dark grays against the sky,
More slowly drifted clouds on high,
More gently swayed the feathery wood.

Up pressed the two, without a stop,
Through tangled thickets of the hill,
Breasting its roughness with a will,
Until, ere noon, they reached the top.

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Beneath them, the vast ocean lay,
Still heaving with a troubled breast;
And many a wave with angry crest
Ran foaming on each rock and bay.

To north the scattered clouds had clung
Round lofty Jura's mountain line;
Whilst silver vapours, thin and fine,
O'er hills of Islay softly hung.

And southward in broad fields of light,
In dazzling shimmers of the sun,
The Antrim coast in dark had won
The nearest hailings of their sight.

And chiefly did the Rathlin Isle
Lie close below them in the clear.
And as the Knight perceived it near
He seemed to greet it with a smile.

Then, resting on broad-hilted blade,
Addressed his comrade of the day:
‘Good friend, you've kindly led my way
Now when my fortunes are in shade.

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'Tis true thou dost not know my name,
Nor hinted thou didst care to know.
With such as thou 'tis always so;
All noble natures are the same.

Nor did I tell thee all I meant,
Nor, closely, where I seek to go;
To hide, to wander to and fro
Till better days, I now am bent.

My life of venture far and wide
Has taught me care,—for fear of wile,
Not from the Scots of leal Argyle,
Yet, still, I lean to caution's side.

I told thee what I seek alone:
With Edward's claims I know no truce:
Start not, good friend,—I am The Bruce,
And I shall sit on Scotland's throne.

The levies he has brought a-field
Will melt like snow in western gale,
But our proud spirit shall not fail;
Again I'll raise the sword and shield.

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In that lone Isle below us, soon,
Hid in some hut beside the shore,
I'll bide my time, come out once more,
And wear the crown I held at Scone.

I tell thee what, in vision seen,
Upholds me oft in hopeless hour;
I know that I shall break the power
That Scotland's curse so long hath been.’

Then bowed the Scot, the son of Kay
And hailed his comrade as his king:—
‘Would I could wait beneath thy wing,
And lift with thee our standard high.’

‘Come thou no farther, friendly man,
I need no guide to what is seen.
Tell thou none else where thou hast been
Until thou see'st me in the Van.’

And when the King's re-coming sail
Had brought him to his great return,
And when he won at Bannockburn
He well remembered Ugadale.

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The lands that bore that sheltering roof,
Their rocks, their shore, their shingly cove,
In token of his kingly love,
Were chartered for Mackay's behoof.

For near six hundred years, that land
Has held his children's children well:
Still o'er and o'er they love to tell
Of Bruce's footsteps on its strand.

Nor thus alone can they approach
So nearly to those ancient days;
For, full accoutred on the ways,
They're plaided with a noble brooch,

Such as were made in elder time,
Which Bruce had gifted to their sire,
With coral, pearl, and crystal fire,
In memory of their morning climb.

And on that spot of parting ways,
Where Robert Bruce and proud Mackay
Had stood in light of sea and sky,
A stone still marks heroic days.

This poem is a true story. It is embalmed in all the traditions of the people, and the brooch given to his ancestor, as also the lands, by Robert the Bruce, are still in the worthy possession of my old friend Hector Macneal, of Ugadale.

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A SUNSET SKY

Sometimes to us in looking up
A wondrous blue is given,
So soft, so calm, divinely pure,
It seems the gate of heaven.
The clouds that gather in the sky
And pass across its face
Are bathed in one ethereal hue,
As of unfathomed space.
And yet they tell us 'tis the dust
Of this poor world of ours
That, floating in the deeps beyond,
So crowns our evening hours.
'Tis well to know it: it may be
Fit emblem to our sight
How earthly things, when lifted hence,
Can be dissolved in light.
Transforming radiance! Stay with us.
Sad skies are overhead;
For mournful days and ‘dust to dust’
Have left us with the dead.

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TEWKESBURY

Where Avon and the Severn join
In one fair tide to reach the sea,
Rises with stately arch and groin
The minster tower of Tewkesbury.

Built in the grand old Norman days
When rugged strength in massive stone
Enshrined Belief, and all the ways
In which men felt and built alone,

It stands unmoved through later times
Beloved of all this English land;
And from its bells we hear the chimes
Rung out by many a mouldered hand.

Beneath its great round-columned floor
Lies many a knight with arms at rest,
Borne shoulder-high through lofty door
That oped its chancel to the West.

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It holds the warrior bones of those
Whose fame still rings with loud report.
The mighty men who faced the foes
Of Crecy and of Agincourt.

Round its grey walls for England's crown
The Roses clashed in bloody fight,
And now they both, low lying down,
Sleep in its calm and jewelled light.

And woman's love, enshrined for him
To whom she gave her virgin heart,
Still holds the colours faint and dim
That glowed on forms of loveliest art.

The slender shaft, the spreading fan,
The garland leaves that range o'erhead
Still bower the rich and costly plan
Of lordly Warwick's burial bed.

Is there no blood that flowing still
From that old love in living veins,
Can rise to work with heart and will
To keep its tomb from Time and stains?

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Some marble shafts are missing now,
Some tender pendents from the roof,
The altar stone where prayer and vow
Were spoken for a soul's behoof.

The world is changed: but Christian faith
Stands where it stood in days of old.
Old forms are gone; yet sorrow saith
All that it then in beauty told.

Let reverent hands restore the lost,
Re-tint the faded colours there,
That those by sorrow tempest-tossed
May find a kindred rest for prayer.

A FOREST POOL

I passed by a pool in a wood,
Its waters were still and black,
The winds of heaven touched it
And came with an odour back:

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A scent of decay and death,
Of rotting and soddened leaves;
And I turned to the fields beyond,
With their promise of golden sheaves.
Summer passed: the fields were bare
And the corn was killed with blight,
And the landscape lay in gloom
In a burning and misty light.
I turned to the pool in the wood
From a world that was sad with scars,
For the lilies had blossomed there
And covered its face with stars.
They made it a gorgeous pool,
With radiance rich and rare;
And the rotting leaves had changed
Into visions of glory there.

A CROSS OF FLOWERS

She brought me such a lovely cross
As I had never seen,—
Of water lilies and of moss,
Rare gold and silver sheen.

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The radiant petals on it lay,
Full opened to the skies;
And yellow anthers hailed the day
With rich and grateful eyes.

To her pale hand the patient lake
Its starry treasures gave,
That she might lay them for his sake
Upon the new-made grave.

‘But they will droop, my sister dear,
Ere they can reach his side.’
‘I care not; but I do not fear,’
The loving child replied.

Yes! She was right, and I was wrong.
The true reply she made.
The flowers might die; but love was strong:—
Her gathering cannot fade.

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ISLAM

All plants not planted by My Father's hands,—
Each one of these shall yet be rooted out.
How long, O Lord? When shall we hear the shout
Of that great victory, and ransomed lands
Be open to Thy light—when see the rout,
In the long sun of that triumphant day,
Of evil legions, as they swarm away
From this fair earth, that would be fair indeed,
But for the noisome growths of evil seed
That choke its furrows? The Arabian sands
Have sent their raging Prophet forth, and hurled
His bolts of ravage over half the world.
He holds Thy Land. He treads the sacred street
That heard the echoes of Thy blessèd feet.

May, 1892.

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CORINTH IN 1843

I

I stood at Corinth in the dying lights
Of one fair-born Mediterranean day:
The hills of Athens glimmered in its ray;
Whilst deepest shadows held Morea's heights.
Soft lines of silver traced out all the bay,—
The old, immortal bay of Salamis.
Ah me! how ill can we remember this
When all is changed, and odours of decay
Breathe from the myrtled plain where Greek met Greek,
And all his Isles came crowding here to seek
The triumph of the Games. Yet, from the ground
Lone columns rise that listened to the sound
Of murmurous feet, the tumult, and the cries,
The shouts of Victory that rent the skies.

May 30, 1892

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II

How full this speechless sadness of the past,
This sense that every young and noble brow
That rose and fronted men is mouldered now
By suns and rains and storms,—its atoms cast
In lower forms, each meaner than the last.
Alas! shall all our strivings thus be lost
Indeed? Shall all our gettings, tempest-tost,
Be scattered, like the dust before the blast
Of all-devouring Time? Shall nothing stand—
Not the great stars, nor seas, nor solid land?
I called again, ‘Is nothing worth these cries
Of high endeavour, and of great emprise?’
The answer came,—‘No wrestler for the Truth
Shall lose the laurels of immortal youth!’

Danbury: June 2, 1892

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TO THE SONNET

Avon's great Prophet has revealed thy power
To twine all tendrils of the human heart,
And hold its sweetness through melodious art
Within the leafage of thy slender bower.
Green Rydal's Bard recounts thy glorious part
In Poet's song; recalls the tender voice
That took thee with a long and loving choice
To tell their sorrows; and indeed we start
To hear the roll-call of the names that lie
With thee,—since thou wert born in Italy:—
Immortal names; and as we hear the calls
They sound to us from out thy narrow walls,
We bend our ears, and almost seem to see
The mighty Dead who loved to speak in thee.

London: May 21, 1892

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WALMER CASTLE

July 16-17, 1893

And was it here he died who shook the power
Of Europe's tyrant in his days of pride?
Who taught the peoples to await the hour
That did, through him, both stay and stem the tide

Till roused to hope, with burning sense of wrong,
The flocking nations to his standard came,
And one who seemed so ruthless and so strong
Broke to his onset, and fell down in flame?

And was it here he lived in peaceful days—
In this old Fort that held his native land,
And watched with cannon all the southern bays
That fronted France, and lay to foeman's hand?

Upon these strong old bastioned walls he paced,
Beside the guns that woke no thunder then;
Where pilèd balls, by seedling flowrets graced,
Unhandled, showed the changeful ways of men.

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Changeful, and yet unchanged, for well he knew
Those winding tendrils round the cannon balls
Still flowered and fruited in the Lines he drew
Round Torres Vedras, and fair Lisbon's walls.

And so through years of his most honoured age
He knew that peace was conquered still by arms,
Wrote and re-wrote on many a warning page
How, only, England could be kept from harms.

Nor feared he to retreat, as once before,
When civil strife had laid too hard a strain;
Peace above all within this Island shore
He strove to make, nor did he strive in vain.

And therefore did he bear with calm reserve
The loud reproaches that on him were cast,
Knowing that those who really faithful serve
Will hold the love of nations at the last.

Nor did he think or care for human thanks
Save as they came with sense of duty done;
In civil strife he fought as in the ranks,
Command obeyed,—the only spoils he won.

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And here for years of tribute and of praise
He held the post of Warden, as was meet,
Beside the Roads where saw his younger days
The glorious flag of Nelson and his fleet.

For thanks had come at length in vast acclaim
From all his country's fields, and towers, and towns
Holding in love the letters of his name,
Till here he died—still looking on ‘The Downs.’

TO WILLIAM PITT

I heard the noises of outrageous seas,
And angry breakers leaping on the strand,
And sounds more deep and dreadful still than these,
As rifts and quakings shook the solid land.
Then saw I one majestic front, whose form
Rose like a mountain peak above the storm.
Around his head all lightnings harmless played.
Men looked and felt they could not be dismayed,
So firm he stood. In clarion tones he spoke,—

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Calling to arms until the morning broke.
And when it broke, the deluge past,
The storm, the ravage, and the shattered throne,
Then in the calmness of our peace at last
He dwells in memory—silent and alone.