University of Virginia Library

Calm is their sheltered shore of life, caressed
By gentle tides of peace, whose murmurs are
Of storms at rest, and sorrows sanctified.
But not for them alone the honey-time,
And bliss of being! hearts were all too full
Of lusty longing for all human good,
And happiness was only meant to share.
That luminous revealer, hallowing Love,
Gave them the seeing eye, not drooping lid.
His chosen are but caught up into Heaven,
For wider vision of a suffering Earth.
Their lavish bliss ran over to make rich,
And kindle with a spring of laughing life
The poor world kneeling at the feet of theirs.
And not forgotten was that Factory-world,
Which like a doomed Ship far away i' the night
Pleaded—each port-hole lighted up for help!
Christ on the Cross for eighteen hundred years,
And still His Poor their long redemption wait—
Still tempted of the Devil in the Desert.
Still are they, crouching by the fireless hearth,
In the dead winter often driven to burn
The bravest hangings of their house of life,
To scare the gaunt wolf Hunger, whose eyes glare
In at the window lit with bloody lust!
Sometimes a cry runs throbbing thro' the night,
As tho' Creation quickened with the birth
Of new life strange and monstrous, in our world.
Then startled Fear from his high lattice looks,
With face as white as death-toucht Want's below:
There rage a people like a forest of fire!
Grim on the banner Labour's challenge flames,
“Leave to live working, or die fighting.”

Fear
Sends forth his Guards, and to his pillow slinks.
Red Murder leaps up sudden in their midst;
The gathering of fierce suffering breaks in blood:
Begins again the old long agony,
And Order reigns! tho' many a day the Ghost
Of Revolution at his banquet sits,
And standeth Sentry at his door o' nights.

O hopeless Poor, and impotently Rich!
O hurrying host of battling enmities,
That, fighting, feel no earthquake rock the ground!
O human world, panting without the pale
Of harmony, the universal law,
Like Soul, with troublous wail, shut out of bliss!
Shall it not come, the time of which we dream
To crown long years of strife, and blood, and tears,
When from the Book the Poet's thought shall step
Clothed on with human lineaments, and live?
And this Ideal of our hopeful Brave
Come down and dwell with us in daily life,
And Earth and Heaven lie in each other's arms?

They deem so, who, with visionary eyes,
Have held communion with that world to come;
Our wedded pair: their faith made quick by love;
They look within—its Shadow comes that way.
And they will make their outer life a dial,
On which the inner light may rise and shine;
And touch with radiance soft some sullen spot
Where falls the Devil's shadow, till a smile
Is on its face as it turns up to God.
Sing Ho for the New World and its golden age
Of delicate dream-work, and of rich romance.
They bought the Factory: turned its stream of toil
To a flood of Joy, on Lady Laura's lands.
There Life, whose dark and stagnant waters swarmed
With hideous things, in merry radiance runs;
Brightens with health, and breaks in frolic spray;
Peeps thro' a garland green, and laughs in light;
Its rest, blesséd as tho' the calm high heavens
Had lookt it into a transfiguring trance,
Then with light-hearted morrow sparkling on—
So to the dark arch Death, thro' which the stream
Will bicker or darken for the shoreless sea.

They built their little world, wherein the Poor
Might grow the flower of Hope, and fruit of Love;
And human trees, with outstretcht arms of cheer,
Might mingle music, wreathe in bud and bloom,
And in their branches nest the birds of God,
That in immortal beauty whitely hover,
But come not down to build while boughs are bare.

They bought and sold, they ploughed, and sowed, and reapt.
Cheapness, Free Trade, and such Economy
As suck their strength from human blood and tears;
Feeding on beauty's waste, and Childhood's spring;
Shredding with wintry hand life's leafy prime;
They bowed not down to—Baal of the strife
That gives the Devil his own vantage-ground,
Where each man's hand is at his brother's throat;
The knight in golden mail combats the naked!
And hearts must run with never-tiring wheels!
The weak go down; the Victors merciless
Still wield the Sword of Selfish interest,
To win their crown of Individual gain,
And throne of Isolation cold and lone.

Not this, but life of freedom, law of love;
The wine-press trod by each, the cup for all;
In this serener world—this morning star
That rises out of chaos and the night,
Like throbbing heart of some Millennial Day.
Here, life is no soul-sickening round of toil;
No need to blink the Spirit's longing sight.
Here, simple Childhood opens vernal eyes,
And young blood dances thro' the veins of Age.
White Cottage homes rise from the sea of green,
Like clouds where happy spirits sit and sing.

The old wild-brier, Labour, from which spring
The radiant Roses of a warmer world,
With kindlier nurture blossoms forth anew,
A glory of Flowers, and wears immortal green;
Breaks the stern granite, sparkling into beauty,
And precious jewels glow from common stones:
Soft white hands smoothe the brow of wrinkled Wrath;
The gentle balm of Love makes hard eyes soft,
And melted hearts to swim thro' woe-worn looks,
With sweet and delicate human tenderness.
The trampled battle-field of sin-scarred faces
Is healéd with the harvest of ripe love;
Its frowning furrows crowned with ridgéd smiles.

Over their World where Passion hurtled down
Burning instead of beauty, as its sun,
And all around was black eternal night;
Love's radiant shadow sheds an atmosphere
Of soft celestial brightness, calm, and peace.
And Life goes hand in hand with happy things;
In lovely shadow-lands with spirits talks;
There with all gracious Shapes of Beauty walks,
And wins their motion, majesty, and mien;
And rears his temple rich for God, inlaid
With precious jewels and colours fair, and cries,
“Behold how good and joyful a thing it is
To dwell together in peace and unity.”

Thus Lady Laura and her peasant lord
Built o'er the dead past their proud monument,
That signals to far times their message of love:
And God was with them smiling on their work.
They wrought not without hindrance, sorrow and pain:
Who work for Freedom win not in an hour:
Their cost of conquest never can be summed!
They toil and toil thro' many a bitter day,
And dark, when false friends flee, and true ones faint.
The seed of that great Truth from which shall spring
The forest of the future, and give shade
To the reapers of the harvest, must be watcht
With faith that fails not, fed with rain of tears,
And walled around with life that, fighting, fell.