University of Virginia Library

Spite of the Mask Eternal Love doth wear
At times, that makes us shrink from it in fear,
Because the Father's face we cannot find,
Nor feel the presence of His love behind,
Nature at heart is very pitiful.

How gentle is the hand doth kindly pull
The coverlet of flowers o'er the face
Of Death, and light up his dark dwelling-place!
With fingers and with foot-fall soft and low
She comes to make the quiet mosses grow:
Safe-smiling, draws the Snowdrop through the snow.
Busy in sun and rain, she strives to heal,
Doing her best to comfort or conceal:
With tenderest grass makes green the saddest grave,
And over death her flags of life will wave.
She is the Angel, waiting by the prison,
That saith, “He is not here, he is arisen,”
When lorn in soul we seek the face we knew,
And dream of buried sweetness coming through
The earth in spring-time, every flower a smile
Of that dear Presence we have lost awhile.

Thus, on our old Crimean battle-ground,
A poor, unknown, dead Soldier's bones were found—
(Known with those noble Englishmen of ours!)
When the next May came with her sweet Wild Flowers,
Nestled they lay above-ground in a grave
Of tall, plumed grass, funereally a-wave
In the West wind that breathed of Home: and tender
There rose from earth a dawn of such spring-splendour,
As if the heavens were breaking through the tomb:
The Wild Flowers had so buried them in bloom.

And, if we lift our eyes up from the ground,
We see how surely life is compassed round
With the Divine, that doth so kindly bound
The pitiless blaze of fires that soon would scorch
To ashes and put out our tiny torch
Of being; veil the vastness of the Whole,
As with drooped eyelids for the naked soul.
The silent Ministers of Healing crowd
About the broken heart and spirit bowed,
To stay the bleeding with immortal balm,
And still the cries with lips of blessèd calm;
Out of the old death make the new life spring,
Our earthly-buried hopes take heavenward wing;
And to each blinding tear that dimmed our sight,
They give a starrier self; a Spirit of Light.
No matter in what separate lives we range,
We feel a rootage deeper than all change.
We know the roses flower to fade: We know
The roses also fade again to blow.
Death is Life's Shadow!

Mute the music looks,
And dark and dead when shadowed forth in books:
Do but interpret it, all heaven will roll
The Life of Music through the echoing soul.

So we grow friends, familiar friends, with Death;
Can look up in his face with firmer faith,
To see the frowning brows shade tender eyes,
Like sunny openings into Paradise.

Through all the gloom and stillness of distress,
With life all muffled up in silentness,
We voyage on—ice-locked, snow-blind, frost-bound—
Like Sailors with the Arctic winter round,
Who thought they stranded in the dark, and found
The solid water all one floating ground;
And drifted through the night, divinely drawn,
Out to the open sea, where daylight shone.

The Shadow of Death is changed into the Dawn,
That radiant Angel of Eternity!
The mourners look up from the grave to see
The dark, that bowed them by its awfulness,
Fell from the Father's hands, spread out to bless.
So, in His own good season, God hath given
This beautiful Joy-Bringer from His Heaven,
To bear His benediction from above,
And be the smiling Presence of His love!
Though heaviness endureth for a night,
Joy cometh with the morning. Lo! the Light.
Gone is the winter from our spirit-clime;
This is the herald of our golden time.
In all the beauty of promise, Spring is here—
Our Spring—that will be with us all the year.

O, beautiful Joy-Bringer! everywhere
Happiness smiles around you, like an air
Of glory, which you dwell in—Starrily-fair!
The lives that have in mourning darkling lain
Now gather colour; sun them once again.
The tender shine that cometh after rain
Illumes the eyes of old heart-ache: the pain
Of loss transmuted to all-golden gain.

Just now we are in the shadow of great change,
And faces darken, and old things grow strange;
And from the new Unknown a many shrink.
Our world is getting tilted, Sages think.
“The wine of life is drawn, and the mere lees”
All that is left us. Shame on fears like these!
Whate'er Eclipse may come, storm-signals threat,
We are English yet, my friends, true English yet.
We are standing in the shadow of some sublime
Wide-wingèd Angel of the coming time.
No need to wring our own hands. Let us clasp
Each other's strongly with a manlier grasp.
No fear the pillars of the house will fall
Because we brush our cobwebs from the wall.
Exultingly, O storm-winds, rise and roll
All misty blight from off the stagnant soul,
And lift its trailing wing to winnow through
The cloudy heaven, and bare it to the blue.
As in the very heart of Hope we'll ride,
Borne on the ninth wave of our triumph's tide,
That with its new life heaves Old England's breast,
To lift the lowly, succour the oppressed;
Only be loyal to the Loftiest.
Arise and crown old sanctities anew,
By nobler conquest make your lordship true;
Awake the spirit in our English blood,
That slowly brightens to the fervid flood,
And does not flash till the leap comes that shows
Power all the lustier for its long repose.
And if the proudest Nobles have to bow,
Then let it be as Rowers bend to row
A sturdier stroke; and faint not, though ye know
Not under what dark arch we have to go:
But win the nod of an approving soul,
Even though ye never reach your chosen goal.

O! young hearts, dancing to the rise and fall
Of life's most winsome tune at festival,
Looking on your new world wherein ye move
With all the large, sweet wonder of young love,
The moments thronging with the life of years;
Crowded with happiness and quick to tears;
New smiles of greeting in each minute's face;
New worlds of pleasure brimming every space;
This is no winter-withered earth to you.
Love comes, and life is deified anew!
And hearts grow larger than their fortunes are.
The horizon lifts around, sublime and far,
With god-like breathing-space—an ample scope
For loftier life, and glorious ground for hope.
Turn, happy Lovers, turn on those below
A little of the light in which ye glow;
A little of your sunshine round you shed,
And make our old world blossom where ye tread.
Bring back a little seed from Eden-bowers
To sow our fallows with immortal flowers.
Ah! Nobles, what a chance is yours to be
The founders of a lordlier Chivalry!
And, with the proud old fire this people lead.
When they were weak, I threatened; now I plead,
Give eyes to their blind strength, for great the need.

The Word of Life is well-nigh preached to death;
The Flower of all sweetness withereth,
Crushed in the grip of many that handle it,
As though they thought Life would but yield its sweet
In giving up the breath; shut the live flower
In a dead Book, and kill it every hour
By reason of their clasp:

We want the Book
Translated into life, not the mere look
Of Life embalmed and shrouded in the Book.
We want the life indeed, quick in the lives
Of Fathers, Mothers, Children, Husbands, Wives.
We need the life itself—lived in the Home
On Week-days, ere, the Sabbath-rest will come
To many a homeless hungerer for home.

We pray “Thy Kingdom Come.” But not by prayer
Can it be ever built of breath in air.
In life through labour, must be brought to birth
The Kingdom; as it is in heaven, on Earth.
The light that left Heaven centuries ago
Hath not yet reached dark myriads here below:
Your lives should be the lamp that bears this light,
Still burning, as the stars through all the night.
Because ye are looked up to, they would mark
Your shining!

O, the spirits lying dark
To-day, as jewels waiting but the spark
Of splendour that to Love's dear smile is given,
To brighten with the best that brighten Heaven!
Look down, you Shining Ones, look kindly down,
And save them, set as jewels in your crown.

How beautiful upon the mountain height,
The feet of them that bring the Lowly light—
O'ershadowing, on wings of gentle Love,
The faults and failings that they soar above!
How beautiful the face of those whose smile
Doth make rare sunshine in the heart of Toil;
In low, sick rooms a presence as of Health;
The true Rich folk, in whom the Poor have wealth!
A beautiful life begets itself anew
In other lives, as perfume stealing through
The sense creates the flower to live again;
Its spirit re-embodied in the brain.

Heartfull of shining love and singing hopes,
Come down where life, blind-folded, gnome-like gropes.
We house the Poor to lie and die. But give
Them room to stand in; house the Poor to live;
A little touch of clasping hands might prove
Mightiest of all the languages of Love.
Give them a glimpse of kindlier, sweeter grace,
And be the model of a nobler race—
The living Poem that we may not write;
The Picture that we cannot paint to sight;
The Music that we dream but do not get;
The Statue marble never mirrored yet.

Now while the Thrush upon the barest bough
Stands piping high in azure, telling how
The Spring-wind wanders where the Children go
A-violeting by the warm hedge-row;
Daily more rich the Sallow-palms unfold
And change their silver-gray for sunny gold;
“Good-bye, Old Winter,” the blue heavens laugh;
“The flowers shall write you a kindly epitaph,”
Far on a sea of Light the twinkling Lark
Is launched, and floating like a heaven-bound bark,
In which some happy spirit sails and sings,
And stirs us in a dream of waking wings,
With homeward yearnings, heavenward flutterings,
As all about the inner life there plays
A breath of bliss from out old innocent days,—
Now, while the Spring mounts somewhere up the blue,
We bring our firstling flowers to offer you!
Violets, dim and tender; glad Primroses,
That promise, ere the happy prospect closes,
Ye, hand in hand, through rosier days shall tread
Green earth, with richer glories garlanded;
Where the wild Hyacinths, all a-dreaming, lean,
In peeps of deep sea-azure through the green;
And Summer sets that Golden Age of hers
A-bloom, in mellow miles of yellow Furze;
While, smiling down the distance, Autumn stands,
The ripened fruitage glowing in his hands.

And, if among the flowers some few appear
Sacred to woe, and leaning with the tear
Still in the eyes, I did but seek the leaf
Of Healing—gather Heartsease for the grief:
Nor are they tears, but rather drops of dew
From heaven, that hidden Love is looking through.

As, after death, our Lost Ones grow our Dearest,
So, after death, our Lost Ones come the nearest:
They are not lost in distant worlds above;
They are our nearest link in God's own love—
The human hand-clasps of the Infinite,
That life to life, spirit to spirit knit!
They fill the rift they made, like veins of gold
In fire-rent fissures torture-torn of old;
With sweetness store the empty place they left,
As of wild honey in the rock's bare cleft.
In hidden ways they aid this life of ours,
As Sunshine lends a finger to the flowers,
Shadowed and shrouded in the Wood's dim heart,
To climb by while they push their grave apart.

They think of us at Sea, who are safe on Shore;
Light up the cloudy coast we struggle for!
The ancient terror of Eternity—
The dark destroyer, crouching in Life's sea
To wreck us—is thus Beaconed, and doth stand
As our Deliverer, with a lamp in hand.
We would not put them from us when we are sad;
We will not shut them from us when we are glad;
Nor thrust our Angel from the Marriage Feast,
Although he comes, not clothèd like the rest
In visible garment of a Wedding-Guest.

Now pray we.

Lord of Life, look smiling down
Upon this Pair; with choicest blessings crown
Their love; the beauty of the Flower bring
Back to the bud again in some new spring!
Long may they walk the blessèd life together
With wedded hearts that still make golden weather,
And keep the chill of winter far aloof
With inward warmth when snow is on the roof;
Wed in that sweet for-ever of Love's kiss,
Like two rich notes made one in bridal bliss.

We would not pray that sorrow ne'er may shed
Her dews along the pathway they must tread:
The sweetest flowers would never bloom at all
If no least rain of tears did ever fall.
In joy the soul is bearing human fruit;
In grief it may be taking divine root.

Come joy or grief, nestle them near to Thee
In happy love twin for eternity!
They take our Darling's place; long may they be
As glad and beautiful a hope as he
Hath left a bright and blessèd memory:
Their day fulfil the promise of his dawn—
That, as with Thee, he may with us live on.