University of Virginia Library

Say you that there's no food for poetry
In all the life around us—that our age
Is too prosaic and mechanical
To find a subject for the poet's pen?
Tush! as well might the blind old beggar say,
Who walks in night through this majestic world,
That all the wonders that he cannot see
Have no existence; trust me, friend, in you,
Not in the manners—spirit of our age,
Or what else you have named, the reason lies.
The want is yours; a Shakespeare yet would find
In many a drawing-room and busy street,
Nay, in the squalid alleys of our towns,
And in our very jails and workhouses,
Full many a pale Ophelia with her doom
Struggling in vain, in wordless agony.
Ah, if you had a Chaucer's eye to see!
How many a meek Griselda round us bears,
With uncomplaining misery of heart,
The load her nature was not fashioned for!
Why, if I were a poet, I could tell
A tale of every-day unvarnish'd life,
That should upon the common heart of all
Knock, and bring tears for answer. In our place,
A quiet village in the heart of Kent,
There lived two families well known to all;
For, through the country, not the oldest man
Could tell the time when first to settle there
The earliest of the Blakes or Hills had come.
There had they, in their two white cottages,
Father and son, dwelt on beyond the reach
Of even our oldest memories; the boy
Growing into labour as the aged man
Grew out of it and laid him down to rest.
A widower long, Nathaniel Blake was now
Not old, but yet some half score years beyond
The point where life slopes downwards, at the time
My tale begins. How plain I see him now
As if he were before me, tall and stern,
With a firm step and an unbending gait,
Though toiling years had touch'd his hair to gray;
His eye—'twas like a hawk's, as sharp and bright,
An eye that few amongst us cared to meet,
Even in its friendly greetings, so it seem'd
To look the man it gazed on through and through.
'Twas said by those who knew him in his youth
That none then show'd an eye or laugh'd a laugh
More brimming over with a light heart's mirth
Than he; his tongue dropp'd jokes and moving jests
On all he met with; so he moved, a sun,
To all our neighbourhood; with him gladness came,
And often quoted sayings—harmless mirth,
A very wealth of laughs remain'd behind.
These were his boyish days; but manhood came,
And with it, all the usual cares of life,
And many most men know not; he was tried,
They say, most sorely; surety for a friend
His trusting kindliness could not refuse,
He lost the little wealth his father left,
And sank at once almost to beggary;
He struggled hard with fortune, though his life
At times was harder than he well could bear;
Through want of needful comforts, want of friends,
Of even bread itself, he struggled on.
The first pale streak of daylight call'd him out
To labour, and night found him still at work.
He struggled manfully, and well, at length
He fought his way right up with his own arm
To needful comfort, if not competence;
But, in this sore-fought fight with fate, he lost
All the light-hearted buoyancy of youth,
Its laughs and playful mockeries; in their stead,
Men saw a settled calm, that, if not stern,
Was cold and distant far from his old mirth.
His words were few, and as we could but know,
Even in his very kindliest moments, cold,
Though it was said his heart beat warm beneath.
This was his common temper; but when roused,
'Twas shown how much the world had soured its tone;
His language then was harsh to one and all,
Even to those who knew he loved them most.
He brook'd not opposition; argument
Would lash him into fury that would threat
To root the best affections from his heart
And fling them by, the victims of his will.
One only child, a daughter, bless'd his home.
Now, at the time I speak of, she had grown
Into fair womanhood, but neither plain
Nor very lovely could she well be call'd,
But rather she was neither in extreme,
Excepting when she smiled, and then but few
Could say that Mary was not sweeter far,
And better worthy note and praise than some
Who took the eye more when her smile was gone.
'Twas a sweet smile—so full of human love,
Of gentle tenderness and kindly heart,
Of meek and self-denying charity;
It doubly bless'd her giving to the poor
When weigh'd against the stooping-down disdain
That fell with larger doles from other hands;
She won on all that knew her, so that none,
I'm bold to say, amongst us, harbour'd one
Ungentle thought towards sweet Mary Blake.
The very outcasts of the village, those
Who lived the butts of every other's scorn,
Receiving gentle services from her,
Still felt they were not sever'd from their kind,
And, feeling it, grew worthier; so they sought,
As pleasures to be prized, to do her will,
And run her little errands through the place;
The very chickens of our village green
Flock'd round her footsteps for her gracious gifts,
And cats would try to nestle in her lap,
And bleating lambs thrust noses in her hand,
To find the bread they seldom sought in vain.
You knew her window that the jessamine
And honeysuckle hung with draperies rare,
By the brown sparrows on the garden trees,
That hopp'd and twitter'd, perked their knowing heads,
Or sharpen'd on the bark their tiny bills,
In waiting for her morning shower of crumbs,
That never was forgotten; the mazed bee
That beat its wings against the sunny glass,
And humm'd its longing to be our again,
Her hand threw up the window for, and sent
Through bed and border, noisy in her praise.
I've seen her, twenty times, set free the fly
From the fine meshes of the spider's web,
And do a thousand acts as full of love,
Towards the dumb brute creatures in her way.
So she was loved by everything that lived;
And, loved by strangers, I need hardly say,
That she was dear as sunshine in her home;
And, as she grew, grew tenfold in the love
Of her stern father, and became his pride.
When but a child, her prattling tongue had been
The only thing that brought his own old laugh
Back on the coldness of her father's face;
And, when she grew a girl, there hardly seem'd
A thing that gave him such true, real delight,
As anything he did that pleasured her;
For her the thrift that all his long, hard strife
With poverty had used him to, and made
A natural habit of his life, until
Those knowing not the virtues whence it sprung,
Call'd Blake hard names, close-handed, and so forth,
His thrift, I say, with her became a thing
Forgotten, or, if thought of, beaten down
By the still growing love he bore his child.
So lived she, loving and beloved by all;
And, as years came and went, the prattling child
Grew up into the girl; the laughing girl
Became the calmer woman. Now, perchance,
You ask if such a heart, so form'd for love,
Still treasur'd all its wealth of heart for home?
If her unsumm'd affection were confined
To acts of sisterly regard for all?
Found she no one among our village youths
To harbour some yet deeper feeling for?
I answer, Yes; and so, I could be sworn,
Young Edward Hill could then have answer'd too;
For playmates in their childhood they had been,
Twin hunters of the hiding violet,
Trippers together through the April lanes,
To find the treasures of their earliest May.
They, in the summers of their childish days,
Would roam the bright, green meadows, hand in hand,
And bring a very wealth of king-cups home,
Of silver daisies and pale primroses;
There might you see them many a summer's day,
Their sunny curls half-buried in the grass,
With mighty heaps of field-flowers by their side,
Sorting from all the ones they loved the best,
And tossing with a pretty, sweet disdain,
The lowliest of their gather'd hoards away;
I've watch'd them often, and a sweeter sight
I dare believe the summer never saw.
At shearing-time, together still you found
The tiny playmates, running in and out
Among the thick-fleeced, shaggy, bleating sheep,
And hiding from each other, oftener found
By their own laughter, not to be kept down,
Than anything besides; still were they seen
At hay-time, side by side, in the heap'd fields,
Rolling among the new-mown swathes of grass,
And happy to their very heart's content;
And when the last cart came in triumph home,
Piled up to heaven with all its golden sheaves,
Leaving but stubble for the seas of grain
That dimpled in the dances of the wind,
In the full corn-field—at our harvest-home,
'Twas Mary Blake and little Edward Hill
That rode together on old Dobbin too,
Straddling, with little outstretch'd naked legs,
Not easily across his broad old back,
And laughing through the sunshine, not all blind,
If I mistake not, to the many words
Of admiration round them.

So they grew,
And long the changing pleasures, hopes, and fears,
The changing years brought with them, found the two
Sharing alike their laughter and their tears,
True honest partners in the game of life,
The gains and losses of their ripening hearts
Dividing; long the passage of each day,
Changing so many, wrought no change in them.
As the child loved, the boisterous boy loved on;
The youth, the boy's affection treasured up,
With all the usury by the heart laid by
To swell its sum with every season's growth.
Ah, well I mind the scene when then a dance
Together call'd our village neighbours round,
To laugh away a frosty winter's night,
And kill its quiet with their boisterous mirth.
How noisy then were all! how to its height,
Enjoyment leapt, till all was merriment,
And ceaseless motion, and unmeasured talk!
How the cold hearts of aged folks beat fast
In the tumultuous laughter of the hour,
And young again, and thoughtless of their years,
Half thrust them off their soft old quiet seats,
To join the happy dance they idly watch'd
From the red blaze of the huge piled-up fire,
Whose crackling logs out-roared the very wind
Without, and drown'd its voices in their own!
In such a scene, when every heart was glad,
And sadness, finding theirs no place for it,
Went moaning off to wait for fitter time,
You'd little need, if Mary Blake were there,
To run your eye along the lusty line
Of our young bachelors, a-tiptoe all,
Waiting their turn to whirl their partners off,
To tell if Edward Hill were there or no;
For, in her absence, in her vacant gaze,
That, though it looked on all the scene around,
Seem'd not to see it, straying somewhere else,
In the neglect her partner's questions met,
That, steeped in rustic flattery to the full,
Yet for a moment, honied as they were,
Drew not a word of notice, till at last
Their recollection woke upon her mind,
And brought some sudden answer, short reply,
Some single word, a hurried “Yes,” or “No,”
Which said, the blush that just had stain'd her cheek
With sweet confession of her short neglect
Died off again and left her as before—
In all these things, to those who chose to mark
Their presence, lay the words, “He is not here,”
And round for Edward you might look in vain.
But O how different was the look she wore
When he was present! Lip and eye and cheek
And the full rush of her young glad heart's mirth
Let loose to pour its treasures on the sight,
And dance and wanton in the eye of night,
Why all and each a hundred answers gave
To tell to every one that he was there,
There, there, her partner, facing in the dance,
An Easter sun among the lesser lights
That, sparkle as they might to others' eyes,
By him were dim and lustreless to her.
These were their childish days: but little change
Their youth found in them, save that, it may be,
Edward found pleasure in far more pursuits
That were not shared by her than when a boy.
His dog—a gun—a horse—a hundred things
Had power to draw him from her gentle side,
And to divide his thoughts and hopes with her;
Hence did it happen that whole days would come
And go, without his entering once their door,
While Mary moved like sunlight, sadden'd through
The weeping clouds of April, through the house,
With looks that spoke his absence, which her talk
Dwelt not upon, though now and then a word
Would drop by chance, or, it may be, a sigh
Would tell too well the current of her thoughts,
And how her heart was brooding over him.
But then he came; the April clouds were gone,
With all their twilight showers, that seemed to serve,
Now they were gone, to render but more bright
The bursting splendour of the cloudless day
In the deep joy of sunshine, flooding all,
Till very sadness brighten'd in its touch
And sparkled into gladness in the light.

There are some natures in this world of ours
That walk the earth with spirits wing'd for heaven,
So meek, so wholly strange to selfish thoughts,
That injuries in them wake no sense of wrong.
You might as soon to fierceness stir the lamb,
Or from the soak'd fleece strike the granite's fire,
As draw a spark from gentleness like theirs;
Heap on them ills on ills so numberless
That patience hardly could the load endure,
And, like the o'erladen camel, they shall sink,
But never murmur. Gentle souls like these
Do move among us, and of such was she.
Hence she of Edward's absence took no note
As of a thing to marvel at or blame;
One meek strong love her being so possess'd,
Such sense absorbing of her low desert,
That she had bought him smiles with weary tears,
With heaviest sobs had told her days away,
To lighten his, nor dreamed he owed one thought,
One poor, short, passing memory to her;
His love she never took as gift for gift,
Affection for affection, thought for thought,
But as man takes the charities of heaven,
As bounteous blessings, rain'd without a claim
On our unworthiness, and fitly own'd
With praise and lowliness and humble joy.
Not so her father. Mary long had grown
A want so needful to his widow'd home
That, stinted of her presence, his old years
Had been as peaches hidden from the sun,
Mark'd, not for mellow ripeness, but decay.
No thought had he, long after years had borne
Her childhood from her, of a coming time
When his old ears for her accustom'd foot
Should listen vainly, and his aged eyes
No more would lose their dimness, following her.
And, when at last, time show'd the truth it hid,
The bitterness of his old life came back,
Hardening yet more his nature, hard before.
Strange it had been if Edward, bleakening thus
To winter the mild autumn of his days,
Had found that favour in the father's sight
That met him in the daughter's; natural 'twas
The want of him should, in the old man's eyes,
Be dearer than the presence; so you'd guess,
And so, at last, we plainly saw it was;
Yet all of this was felt far more than said,
For, though his tongue familiar was with words
Harder and harsher than the thoughts they spoke,
And though his speech could little brook a curb
On the straight utterance that its purpose told,
Yet for the doting love he bore his child,
And, if I err not, it may be, perchance,
From something of old fondness for the boy,
Blake ever stay'd the quick, harsh words, that rose
At Edward's coming, and had, utter'd, bid
The youth to never cross his threshold more.
And so the change towards him show'd itself
In alter'd tones, and want of the old smile,
And hearty joke, and greeting when they met,
More than in open speech; and still the house
That had, through happy years, been to the boy
Another home, to him remain'd the same
In all but in its altered owner's looks,
And lack of cordial welcome, when he came;
And so it had remain'd, but for an act,
The very turning-point of this sad tale,
That brought a crisis in poor Mary's fate,
And gave the old man's smother'd passion vent.

Now cursèd be the tyrant laws that set
The worth of game above the good of men,
That for the matter of a wild bird, crowd
Our loathsome prisons with the pride and youth
Of all our villages, and turn to shame,
To vagrancy, and crime, lives that had else
Borne to their country fruit of worthy deeds,
Of honest industry and useful toil;
Bootless it were to try to prove to such
That God's wild creatures, fresh from out his hands,
Are but for luxuries for the favour'd few,
And never meant to be a joy to all.
The man that from a plain and open theft
Would start in horror—ay, would turn to starve,
Will see, in this, no act of shame or wrong,
While even the daring that the crime demands
Adds a wild pleasure to the poacher's life.
Around our village lay wide-spread preserves,
Own'd by the reverend guider of our souls,
And by our squire, both dealers out of law,
Both deeply sworn to put all poachers down;
Adjudging their own wrongs, their vengeance wrung
Its sternest reading from the vengeful law;
And many a felon at the gallows' foot
Could trace up his career of crime to them—
An honest labourer, ere their sentence thrust
Him nameless out to herd with desperate crime.
Now Edward poach'd, as all his fellows did,
And, bold and daring, laugh'd to scorn all fear,
Till, mark'd and watch'd, on one September night,
The keepers came upon him; overpower'd,
He fronted justice, a convicted man.
What boots it to repeat a common tale,
How, fair in fame, before the jail be trod,
He blasted left it, poor in honest hopes,
And rich in promise of despair and crime!
Ah! I remember, as 'twere yesterday,
That bright September morning when I call'd
At neighbour Blake's, and learn'd the bitter truth
From weeping Mary, while, through sobs that burst,
Convulsions of her being, rose, in words
As broken as the heart that utter'd them,
Her father's stern command that never more
Should Edward's name be spoken in their home,
That never more, if she held dear his love,
Should word of Edward Hill be heard by her.
Well might her tears be rain'd like wintry hail,
Her sobs came thick and fast as Autumn's own!
Often, thank God! the madnesses of wrath
The kindly sense of memory will not hear,
And time forgets them; but who knew him best
Knew well, let who would carve resolves in air,
Her father's sunk in marble, hard as life,
By time less worn than deepen'd; therefore, well
Did Mary see how misery bade her weigh
Loss against loss, and treasured love with love,
A father's blessing with a husband's faith,
Each won with agony of such a want
As beggar'd all to come of perfect joy,
And dimm'd the future's dearest smiles with tears.
There stood she; and, through blinding mists of grief,
Saw life depart from father, comfort, home,
All early fondnesses and old respects,
Or, through all after-being, take its way
Afar from hope, youth's fondest dreams and love;
O dull in heart is he who, ask'd her choice,
Ponder'd to tell; need have I to repeat
How love, in its great passion, trod o'er fear,
And prostrate joy and duty, to its end?
The feeblest, in its mighty strength, are strong,
And fears are reckless in its hardihood.
So she quail'd not to look with steady eye
On partnership in shame and blacken'd name,
In chance of penury, and dread of want,
And misery, scorn'd of pity and relief;
Beyond them look'd her eye, to where love stood,
And all between was as she saw it not.
She left her home; she left her father's sight,
Dogg'd with his curse, to share a felon's fate;
For joy and sorrow, she became a wife;
And time stole on, until their names became
But as the remnants of a half-told tale,
That rose with pity and conjecture sad,
When the eye fell upon her father, now
A childless, broken, solitary man,
More worn with stern and tearless strife with grief,
And silent agony of heart, than years;
Never her name was known to pass his lips,
But all who look'd upon him, saw his love,
Laughing to scorn his will, dared hoard it still;
Long afterwards it was, before we knew
How, spite of all, his stern old purpose held;
Little we guess'd that his firm heart had brook'd
To hear his dear, dear girl—his darling child—
His Mary beg, in bitterest want, of him,
Closing all ear of pity to her prayer;
Yes, she had written—written in despair—
In want of bread had written. First, it seem'd,
Turning their steps towards London, Edward hoped,
Flying the knowledge of his guilt, to gain
Honest employ, that so long diligence
And upright years again might make his name
A thing to utter with no sound of shame;
Of yet calm days hope babbled; but, alas!
Hope is no constant prophet of the truth.
Who once has breathed of prison air, henceforth
Loathed of his fellows, walks a tainted man;
To him all paths of good are ever closed,
All ways to crime unbarr'd and open wide.
Dogg'd with a felon's name, he sought for work,
And sought it vainly; month on month went by,
Lowering their slender stock of means and hope,
Till front to front with utter want they stood;
Then Mary wrote; she told of faults atoned
In hunger, disappointment and despair,
A future—fear; a present—misery.
Came there no answer? Yes; “Come back,” it said,
“Leave you your husband, daughter, and return!
“My home is yours, but it is none for him,
“And all shall be forgotten; else henceforth
“Know not your father, girl!” Tears drown'd the note,
And nevermore from her the old man heard.
But let me hasten; for a time again
All trace of them we lost, save that there came,
I know not how, a rumour to our ears,
That Edward, urged of want, to evil ways
Had turn'd, a drunkard and a ruin'd man,
Familiar with all modes of crime and sin;
And often, round our evening cottage fire,
Our thoughts would be of Mary, and our talk
Shape darkest fancies of her state of life,
Her sufferings and her sorrows. Well we knew,
Bred in the strictness of a pious youth,
Much had she changed, if guilt and vice to her
Had grown familiar, and conjecture closed,
Almost with hope's half prayer, that, ere this,
Within the quiet of the grave she lay,
Where grief is not and weariness hath rest;
Alas! alas! how otherwise it was!
O Power Supreme! thy ways are hard to man,
And faith alone has strength to read them right,
Good out of suffering brought—from evil, good.
Business to London call'd me, when, it chanced,
Running my eye across the morning's Times,
What should it light on but poor Mary's name,
Prologue to such a bitter tale of wrong
As memory yet companions with quick tears.
It seems that Edward, bitter with despair,
Turn'd on the cold hard world that on him trod,
And headlong threw him down the depths of crime,
Till he had fathom'd, ere yet well a man,
The last abysses of all guilt and sin;
Herding with vilest lives and shameless ill,
His being shaped itself on all around,
Till he, in will and inward impulse, moved
A thing his sinless soul had shudder'd from.
Oaths, desperate as his days, were words with him,
And, hour on hour, the hellish fire of drink
Raged in his brain and burnt along his blood,
Fled of remorse, of meekness and of good,
Till love, their fellow, desolate and lone,
Last lingerer, with slow steps and turn'd eyes, pass'd,
Leaving to savage thoughts and brutal deeds
The unholy life that it no longer stirred
To acts and words that had some touch of heaven.
And Mary, how bore she the spites of fate?
Lower'd she to his level, day by day,
Soiling the spotless whiteness of her soul,
Dragg'd down by love's own strength from purity?
Or kept she still her sinlessness of youth,
Girt in from ill with childhood's Sabbath ways,
Its infant piety and holy prayers?
The closing horror of her hapless fate
No utterance gave distinctly, yet led on
The following thought, by glimpse and broken hint,
To all but surety that her latter life
Held swerveless on its early blameless way,
Till murder with strange horror strode her path,
And, even for her pureness, smote her down.
'Twas known the law's grasp, closing upon him,
Had never laid its wrathful hand on her,
And, in the night of blood to which I tend,
The dwellers in the house, before her shriek,
Caught threats and curses and disjointed words,
As of one urging to some deed of sin
Another vainly, while prayers, pray'd in vain
By Mary, gave refusal to his will;
Then came fierce bursts of wrath, and then a shriek,
And heavy feet that fled along the stairs;
And, as they rush'd towards the sight of death,
A parting glance of him proclaim'd them his;
Upon the bare room's bloody floor she lay,
A sight that to the flying murderer's eyes
Should have been madness; he had struck her down,
And they who found her in her senseless form
Saw little life; even while I shuddering read,
Within a hospital she dying lay,
Within a prison, he. No time I lost,
Urged by strong interest in her hapless fate;
In haste I went, and, as a well-known friend,
Urged my request to see her. I had come
Most opportunely, for, the by-gone night,
After a weary strife of sense with death,
Life for a moment won; that morning, Sir,
I found was order'd for the solemn act
Of her accusal of her murderer;
For, though life with a fitful brightness shone,
It was a farewell flicker ere it sank,
We saw. O Sir, O Sir, it was a thing
To flood the eyes with sorrow for a life,
To stand, as I did, by her dying bed,
Looking upon the wreck that lay below.
Poor thing! poor thing! through what a thorny track
Of agony and sickness of the heart
Must she have wander'd ere she sank to this;
So changed from her old times of joy and smiles,
That memory hardly on her face could find
One feature of its knowing; worn and thin,
With an unnatural lustre of the eyes,
Through which, with ghostly fire, the parting soul
Peer'd through its mortal dwelling on the world,
She lay, with pinch'd sharp features, whiter than
The ghastly bandages around them bound,
And lips that, moving, utter'd not a sound,
As though the spirit communed with itself;
Her eyes met mine, and once the old sweet smile
A moment trembled on her hollow cheek,
And a weak shadow of her happy self
Stole back a fleeting moment and was gone;
She named my name, and would have spoken; alas!
A coming tread had fix'd her eager eye
And struck all else into one utter blank,
In which the world, all circumstance and time,
Were blotted out and nothing. O'er her face
The ghastly memory of that fearful night
Shudder'd, and in her sight her murderer stood.
No, not the Edward of her girlish love,—
No, not the husband of her woman's faith,—
He stood before her, one whose sullen front
Was reckless sin; half master of its dread,
To hers his fearful eye stole struggling up,
But, daring not the accusal of her look,
Fell from the depth of love within her gaze,
That love that trembled through her faltering words,
“Edward, my Edward—I accuse you? I?
“O gentlemen, he could not—'twas not he—
“A dream—a shuddering dream—it's all forgot.
“O husband, kiss me—kiss me once again,
“Your own fond wife—and, Edward, when I'm gone,
“Husband—my husband, think of me but as
“That Mary, she that smiled your heart away
“In the old years—that loved you to the last,
“O Edward, Edward, how, no words can say.”

Upon her pillow back she sank, her eyes
Shut in exhaustion; but about her lips
Wander'd the blessedness of such a smile
As gladden'd with its joy the songs of heaven,
A smile that told of injuries forgiven,
And all of earth but peace and love forgot;
A moment more, that glory on her lips,
Without a sound, she pass'd to find that rest
The weary find within the quiet grave.
Now there's a tale that by our Mitford told,
Our Wordsworth, or in the haunting music sung
Of him who wrote of Dora, should have power
And reign eternal o'er the hearts of men,
Wedded unto the sweetest tears of time.
Go, study them, and see how life is life,
Despite of clothings, customs, forms and creeds,
To eyes that see, as theirs, our nature bare.
Trust me, the heart still throbs and breaks the same,
Laughs with the laugh and lives the very life
Of all the ages. Go—go—study them!