University of Virginia Library

3. PART THE THIRD.

I. YEARS AFTER.

Our world has spun ten circles round the light
Since here she vanished. In my helpless gaze,
To mark the spot, was fixed this carven stone,
Raw, garish, stolidly obtrusive then,
Now harmonising kindly with the rest.
A spray of centipedal ivy creeps
From death to birth, and reaches to her name;
With kisslike touch its tender leaflets feel
The letter's edge,—I scarce can think it chance.
Now scene by scene that strange old long-ago,
Crowding my opened memory, presents
Tumultuous, as in dreams, some dreadful state
Wherein I knew not falsehood from the truth;
Where hope ascending struck the star of Love,
Then fell down headlong grovelling in despair;
But rose at length and walked the beaten way.
So dim and far these things; so worn and changed,
I scarcely feel that I am he who sought
And won her love. And is it true indeed,
That I absorbed in tenderest intercourse
Of trustful glance, and trustful clasping hands,
With her went wandering by the river side;
While over head melodious branches sang,
Scattering the gold of sunset-dazzled flowers
Breathing their perfumed sweetness from our path,
That flickering went to where in purple woods
The rugged church tower burned a wall of fire!
Dallying I loitered in the golden time
Long after the loved nightingale had ceased
To pour his passionate impulse over plains
Of shivering corn, now ripened into wealth;
When sunset-coloured fruit in orchard crofts
Hung slowly mellowing under azure noons;
And, hushed in darkened leaves, the dreaming air
Swelled gently to a whispering sound, and died.
With joy I wandered on from knoll to knoll
And lost in marvel, drank the lisping winds,
The fairy winds that lisped me all was good.
Nor marked I when the clogged horizon flew
In dusky vapour crowding up the skies;
But woke anon when deathlike pallor thrown
From wrathful drift laid the whole land in gloom;
When war, enormous war, broke through the heavens,
In sheets and streaking fire and thunderous clap,
With shock on shock, that crushed the ripened corn,
And swept the piled up midsummer to ruin.
That wrenched great timbers of a thousand years,
Shaking the strong foundations of the land.
And when at last the terrible tempest fell,
Wide heaven was emptied of the sun and stars,
And void of more than all their light to me.
Like fretted me to hollow weariness
When my sweet Dove of Paradise went off,
Ascending, glory-guarded, into heaven.
Then feeding on the past, and fondling death,
I grew in livid horror: soon had grown,
By foul self cankered, to a charnel ghoule,
Had not Almighty God, gracious in love,
Permitted her own presence once again,
Mysterious as a vision, yet once more
To come a shining warning and reveal
Athwart my path unfathomable gulfs,
And kindle hope wherewith I still might gain
The hills that shine for ever to the blessed.
Much striving has been mine since these events
Ruled the pulsation of my daily life:
And now they are a vulgar chronicle,
And gossiped over by the rudest tongues.
A haunting song of old felicities
Lured me, scarce consciously, down here to muse
Upon my shattered dreams; safe from the roar
Of interests in our grim metropolis,
The beating heart of England and the world.
Not seen by me, since on that wondrous night
Her consolation came into my soul;
Yet here again I stand beside her tomb—
And here I muse, more wise and not so sad.
Hers was a gracious and a gentle house!
Rich in obliging nice observances
And famed ancestral hospitality.
A cool repose lay grateful through the place;
And pleasant duties promptly, truly done,
And every service moved by hidden springs
Sped with intelligence, went smoothly round.
The steward to that stately country home
Looked native there as lichen to the oak.
He first held station, chief in care and trust,
That day which gave his baby mistress birth;
And her he loved as father loves his own,
Bearing her too that reverence which we feel
Toward those who, born to loftier state than ours,
Sit their high fortune with becoming grace.
His love she ever sumptuously returned
In bounteous thankfulness for service done:
How brightly twinkled then his shrewd grey eyes,
And shone the roundness where his honest cheeks
Played to the rippling gladness of his mouth!
In childhood rambles, it was mostly he
She chose for partner, spite of blandishment;
And to her winsome ways he would forego
His pompous surveillance of wine and plate,
To guard her, lilting, where the summer lay
On honeyed murmuring limes, and under elms,
August with knotted centuries of strength
And rooks sonorous in their shadowy heights.
By thymy slopes, foot-deep in sward they roved,
Both lightly garrulous, and she, sweet child,
Fusing her whole attention into joy,
Until they stood before the lake, that gleamed
With water-lilies, sun, and moving cloud.
Then straight the flanking sedge, and reeds remote,
Gave clattering ducks and wild outlandish fowl,
That tore in stormy scampering and splash
To snap with clamour at the crumbled bread,
He had provided slyly, bent on fun:
The swans meanwhile, majestic, puffed, and slow,
Came proudly into action; but alas,
To small result; for by mischance the spoil
Through dexterous skirmish fell to meaner bills.
“Our bread is all cast on the waters now,
“And well I'd like to know how many days
“It must bide there before 'tis found again!”—
Some fool's dull joke repeated: good man, he,
Unversed in deep text comment, never dreamed
What time its Abyssinian mountain roots
Swollen by fresh torrents mixed in Nubian lands,
And thundered down from rocky ledge to ledge;
How sacred Nilus flooding bank and plain
Transformed old Egypt to a shining sea:
And slaves in swarthy crowds, despised as dirt,
Paddled upon the water scattering corn,
While swam to their sad eyes a raking glance
Of temple-sphinxes, palms, and pyramids,
Faint sacrificial fire with dismal cries;
And small hard masters, armed with blooded thongs,
Jocose and fierce, scourged out their utmost toil.
Long ages ere man heard this promised hope,
The first shall be the last, the last the first.
But the dear child his vacant prattle heard
In wonder, and believed it lore profound:
And ever after, when in solemn church,
(The very church I have before me now!)
Or household prayer, these words were touched upon,
Pert visions would intrude of gabbling fowls
Mid splashing water, sedge, and lily stars.
In wending home, he filled her lap with flowers;
And she, ere yet the house was reached, unloosed
His guarding hand, ran forward, glinted through
The porch, and with a joyous outcry lit
The room, where sat in converse or at books
Her parents: then, as she an hour before
Had seen those mirrored marvels of the lake
All trembling merge to one confused turmoil
Of beauty broken into shattered light,
When o'er its surface swept the hungry fowls,
So blurred with shifting catches, so involved
Through eagerness, her babbled narrative
To the kind mother, who, embracing her,
Felt satisfied her child had been well pleased.
Then the great father, he would lightly lift
To knee his darling girl; with fingers cup
The tiny chin, and kiss the rosebud mouth;
And gently his large tawny hand would stroke
That woven sunshine glowing down her back,
Which changed to deepest auburn glossed with gold,
Calling her tricksy names. But, when at length
Appeared the calm inevitable nurse,
He laughed; and she in screaming laughter flew
By stalwart arm thrust high above his head
Immeshed in wild flowers emptied from her lap,
Which shaking off, he brought the screamer down,
And gaily swung her into willing arms.
She talked these childhood memories while we strolled
Among the scenes which bred them; for she loved
To dwell on things which some regard as slight:
But in her presence, told by her own self,
With clear apt words and satisfying voice;
The violet poise of her most graceful head
Flung forth in lighted gesture to reveal
The very fact; her hovering white hand
Almost in music warbling with her words,
And bounding all the tenderest care to please;—
Now, one by one, these aits of memory glow
In hallowed splendour, and have made less dark
A life I feel not altogether vain.
Beneath this airy sapphire's brooding rest,
Its shadows overcast me with a chill
Like coming storm, that black calamity
Which struck and took our Darling from their charge
And mine. Grief stupefied us all. At once
The childless mother lost her wavering strength,
And lay prostrated; never tasting life
On earth again! Beside her husband sat
And watched her fading; saw the last poor smile
Wane from her features; till the closing eyes
Lit into tearful rapture; when he knew
Love's immortality to her revealed.
With both her own she mutely clasped his hand,
And held it in most gentle pressures fixed:
But when the tender grasp relaxed and fell,
The world closed round him to a stony blank.
And now was stricken down the mighty man;
As the ripe harvest levelled by a storm
At morningtide; which, ere sun warmth anew
Can flatter into strength, a second storm
O'erwhelms and scattereth to waste at even.
When that torpidity which follows pain
Through strangeness passed to natural regard
For daily wants; his vacant home he loathed:
His spacious garden grounds; his lake; his woods;
The breezy air; the overhanging heaven,
He loathed: he loathed them all. When spring aroused
The amorous songsters of the copse and field
To seasonable joy, their music mocked
His sadness with its echoes, babbling tales
Of what had been: and he, in bitterness,
Resolved to quit a place where every turn
Stood like a foe, whose settled leering eye
In silence gloared with hope to mark his fall;
He left our country. Far, in Eastern climes,
His nation serving well, he fought and died:
And never had a nobler man upheld
The majesty of England's worth and name.
Long toil-devoted years have gloomed and shone
Since these events closed up my doors of life.
Partly from choice, and part necessity,
With constancy have I sustained and urged
The work it was my duty to advance.
For, when my vision cleared again, I looked
And saw how mean a thing was man, who used
The produce of his fellows' energies
And gave back nothing.
Then my spirit saw
This Island race two thousand years ago
In simple savagery, controlled by priests
More fell and bloody than the wolves that howled
At midnight round their monstrous altar-stones,
Scenting the sacrificial human blood.
Saw girt with legions lynx-eyed Cæsar come
To taste of Briton's valour. When appeared
Legions suceeeding legions, and the swarms
Marshalled by skilful discipline had fallen
To tributaries of all-conquering Rome.
Saw when Rome's grip, through fierce luxurious guilt,
Could hold no longer; and with tattered plume
Her eagles left her slaves to stem or tide
The hungry Pict incursions as they could.
Next when a burly genial race here raised
The White Horse Standard: men who wrought the soil
Till yellow corn, responsive, sunned the plains.
When, lured by booty, Ravens from the North
Bent hitherward: stiffly the contest tugged
Long years; till both the wearied champions joined
Their hands, as common home to share the Isle.
With peace the land grew fat; and wholesome bonds
Of nobles to their kings, and serfs to them,
Fell slackened or distorted to misrule;
When Norman William, hard as rocks and fierce
As fire, with charge of mailèd horse and showers
Of steel, won England. Her rough sons he drilled
Grimly: by stern command and strength of sword
He forced obedience where he fixed a law.
For ages long against men's stubborn minds,
With give and take, the bold Plantagenets
Kept up the drill. At length the race, now grown
By constant wrestle into thews of power,
Moved calm with strength beneath the Tudor's sway.
And then a Northern Stuart wore their crown,
Whose son, unmindful he was over men
Truth-lovers, lied to them and lost his head;
For Puritans held no respect for lies.
Next flared Charles Satyr's saturnalia
Of Lely Nymphs, who panting sang “More gold;
We yield our beauties freely; gold, more gold.”
Hapless explosions, folly, frenzied plots;
Till well coerced by Lowland William's craft.
Then plans that led to nought, or worse, enforced
By Marlborough's cannon thundering over-seas.
Then through the Guelphic line; our race now grows
To that great power which is to sway the world.
Down from those human shambles, wolf-belapt,
To when, in pardonably grand excess
Of pity, through our people's will was bought
Free indolence for Isles of Western slaves:
And now, when thousands blandly would deny
The proven murderer his rope, the thief
Due chastisement; and when a General
May blunder troops to death, yea, and receive
His Senate's vote of thanks and all made smooth;
And when, as much from universal trust
In other states' goodwill as from the pinch
Of blinking parsimony, we our fleets
Let rot, and regiments shrink to skeletons.—
From those fell rights to such urbanity
The march indeed is long; tho' kindly freaks
May sometimes clamour Justice from her throne;
Yet gentleness is still a noble gain,
And we will trust such freaks are nobly meant.
To touch the power we hold, what work has been
Of vigorous brawn, and keen contriving brains!
Stout men with mighty battle in their limbs;
Thinkers, whose cunning struck beyond the strength
Of hosts; priests sworn to God, whose daily lives
Preached gospel purity and kindliness;
Wise chroniclers, whose patience garnered facts
For present want and food for coming time;
And dames who made their homes a paradise,
And kept their husbands great;—have greatly given
The light and choicest substance of their lives
For generations mingling each with each,
Wave multitudinously urging wave,
Toward the one great broadening flow of things,
Then passed into the gloom that swallows all.
Could I dwell here in our proud Island Home,
Preserved by countless victories; made strong
By kings and kingly councillors; enriched
By artisans, whose skill surpassed all men's;
And by such wondrous song immortalised
It glorifies mankind: could I dwell here;
Here feed on this accumulated wealth,
Like senseless swine on acorns of the wood,
And own no wish to render thanks in kind?
Surely there could be found some waste wild flower
To yield one honey-drop that I might drain
To swell the general hive!
At last resolved
Out to its utmost spray my force should strive,
And bring to fruit its yet unopened buds,
I, craving gracious aid of Heaven, straightway
Began the work which shall be mine till death.
If it be granted me that I disroot
Some evil weeds; or plant a seed, which time
Shall nourish to a tree of pleasant shade,
To wearied limbs a boon, and fair to view;
I then shall know the Hand that struck me down
Has been my guide into the paths of truth.
And She, my lost adored One, where is She?
Where has She been throughout these dragging years
Of labour?
She has been my light of life!
The lustrous dawn and radiance of the day
At noon: and She has burned the colours in
To richer depth across the sun at setting:
And my tired lids She closes: then, in dreams,
Descends a shaft of glory barred with stairs
And leads my spirit up where I behold
My dear ones lost. And thus through sleep, not death,
Remote from earthly cares and vexing jars,
I taste the stillness of the life to come.
What time his scythe in misty summer morns
With cheery ring the mower whets; and kine
Move slowly, breathing sweetness, toward the pail
Their milking-maid is jingling, as she calls
“Hi Strawberry and Blossom, hither Cows;”
While slung against the upland with his team
The ploughman dimly like a phantom glides:
What time that noisy spot of life, the lark,
Climbs, shrill with ecstasy, the trembling air;
And “Cuckoo, Cuckoo,” baffling whence it comes,
Shouts the blithe egotist who cries himself;
And every hedge and coppice sings: What time
The lover, restless, through his waking dream,
Nigh wins the hoped-for great unknown delight,
Which never comes to flower, maybe; elsewhere,
The worshipped Maid, a folded rose o'er-rosed
By rosy dawn, asleep lies breathing smiles:
Then ofttime through the emptied London streets,
When every house is closed and spectral still,
And, save the sparrow chirping from the tower
Where tolls the passing time, all sounds are hushed;
Then walk I pondering on the ways of fate,
And file the past before me in review,
Counting my losses and my treasured gains,
And feel I lost a glory such as man
Can never know but once: but how there sprung
From out the chastening wear of grief, a scope
Of sobered interest bent on vaster ends
Than hitherto were mine; and sympathy
For struggling souls, that each held dear within
A sacred meaning, known or unrevealed:—
And these, in their complexities and far
Relations with the sum of general power
Which is the living world, now are my gain;
And grant my spirit from this widened truth
A glimpse of that high duty claimed of all.
How wildly flares the West about the sun,
Now fallen low! And as one, nameless, sails,
Lost deep in witching reverie, along
A silent river; passing villages
Busy with toil; flowered banks and shadowy coves,
And cattle browsing peaceful in the meads;
Who only wakes to consciousness, when full
A burst of sunshine from the sinking orb
Smiting the flood first strikes his dazzled sight;—
So to the present hour am I recalled
By yon red sun-light flaming up the spire,
And vane that sparkles in the warm blue heaven
And that too-well-remembered tolling bell.
Now on the broad mysterious ocean leans
The sailor o'er his vessel's side, and feels
The buzzing joys of home; wondering if fate
Will bear him on to end his being there.
Now pleased the housewife down the path descries
Her husband's footsteps hitherward; his meal
Prepared, the children each made tidy; she
With smiling comfort means to soothe her man,
By labour wearied, through the evening hours.
They whirl their life web, humming like a wheel,
These airy insects. Birds have ceased to sing,
But twitter faintly, settling to their rest;
And not a rook's caw rends the placid air.
I must begone; but ere I go, will kneel
To kiss this ivy—modest earthly type,
That would with constant verdure grace her name,
As I enshroud her memory with my love!
For She has been the blessing that has nerved
My strength in failing hours of blackest night,
When doubts oppress and fears distract; and when
Gigantic Evil's hoofs are crushing good,
And pity burns in terror; while, appalled,
Blanched Justice shrinks aloof; and not a voice,
The smallest, dares uplift itself against
The dripping blood-red horror which pollutes
With death and danger, heaven and earth and sea;
When men's belief grows wild, seeing alone
The dreadful black abominable sin,
Forgetful that the light still shines beyond;
And doubting last the very truth of God,
They hate their fellow creatures and themselves;
Groaning beneath a Despot, who thinks less
Of precious human blood, than shipwrights count
Of water in the dock, so many feet
Will bear so many tons, if it but aid
One little step his brutalising aims,
Who as an armed thief sacks his people's wealth.
Then shines my Love's star-brightness thro' the gloom;
And comes, as comes a glorious Conqueror
Returning from that Despot's overthrow,
His brow yet flashed and pale with victory:
Whose prowess long withstood the charging shocks
Of hosts that swarmed; who, baffling with his skill
Their cunning combinations, in good time
Closed his own force and wrought them utmost woe;
Smashed the huge liners of the hostile fleet,
Their swiftest frigates sank to watery hell:
Others he scared like fowls; and trailed the rest
In foamed victorious wake, a captured prize,
Where thronged his people stand in proud acclaim
Of “Welcome, Welcome, Welcome! To our hearts
O Saviour of thy country! to our hearts
O Father of thy people! welcome back!”
And shout in exultation his dear name;
Who moves through storms of music, and beholds
Gay seas of faces tossed with happiness,
And lit through rapture into wondering awe.
And as that grateful multitude forgets
Whatever wrong he may have done, do I
My scathing sorrow, and embrace the good.
And when, in after years, that honoured One
Returns at last unto his native land,
From having wrought his last great victory,
A solemn corpse; in state his people close,
Solemnly to do honour to the dead,
And stand in silence, mid the mournful sway
Of martial music wailing he is gone
Who saved them from the shackles they abhorred;
And in all reverence, with tenderest hands,
And tearful eyes, and hearts that burn and throb,
They lower their consecrated Hero down,
Down sinking slowly to his lasting rest:
Whose glory rises to a settled star
Lighting the land he loved for evermore.
So comes my love to me: its glorious light
Yet hovers sacredly, and guides me on
To grander prospects, and more noble use
Of powers entrusted me. Henceforth my soul
Will never lack a spot whither to flee,
When crowding evils war to shake my faith
In righteousness: for thinking of Her life
Made up of gracious act and sweet regard,
Compassionately tender; and enshrined
In such a form, that oft to my fond eyes
She seemed divine, I scarcely can withhold
My wonder Heaven could spare Her to a world
So stained as ours. And now, whatever come
Of wrong and bitterness to break my strength;
Whatever darkness may be mine to know;
A ray has pierced me from the highest heaven—
I have believed in worth; and do believe.

II. WORK.