University of Virginia Library

SONNETS.

IDLENESS.

And slow and slower still, day after day,
Come the sad Hours, with beauteous upturned eyes
Gleaming with hopes I may not realise,
And seeming in their earnestness to say
Entreatingly—O send us not away
All empty-handed as we came! Arise,
Give us at least some promise we shall prize,
To be fulfilled, though after long delay.—
And I, although I weep to see them pass
With lingering pace and disappointed look,
Am lifeless as a statue bound with brass,
And listless as an open loose-leaved book
Turned by the wind; yea, passive as the grass,
Weak as the wavelet of a summer brook.

THE HOURS.

I saw once in my dreams a Dreamer sit
With half-shut eyes upon a bank of flowers
Bedropt with pearl and gold, the various dowers
Of all the Graces; and with hands fast knit
In long array I saw a vision flit—
A glorious sisterhood, stately as towers—
Before the Dreamer: And these were the Hours.
And as they passed the bank each knelt on it
And bowed her head upon the Dreamer's knees:
And some he crowned awry with chaplets, green
And fresh with flowers, to which clung feeding bees;
Or careless necklaced some with pearly sheen
Or gold; but mostly in material ease
He sat, and let the Angels pass unseen.

CHANGE.

In the grey skies the sun is growing cold,
And all the beauty of the air is gone;
The fays have left their bowers; the flowers alone—
Sweet summer things which never can grow old—
Are bright, but meaningless; the ring of gold
No longer crowns the kingcup, for the wealth
Of all the fields is ravished; and the stealth
Of lovers' glances into violets' eyes
For meanings which these eyes no longer hold
Is sadly unavailing. But, O change
Saddest of all! the hearts I wont to prize
As nearest to my own are cold and strange,
And I am strange to them; and, when we meet,
Our words are commonplace, and few, and fleet.

HOPE.

O bright-eyed Hope, that still look'st back on me,
And beckon'st with thy hand, seeming to say—
“Leave caring for these baubles of To-Day;
Lift up thy heavy lids; look on and see
The glory waiting in the far To-Be,
Before whose beams thy present joys shall show
As shows the wan moon in the morning-glow,
And all thy troubles like the night-fog flee!”
How light at times my labours seem when I
Look up to wipe my brow, and see thee there
O'erwatching all my toil with constant eye,
Lustrous, and oh! above all fancy fair!
And yet the fear—that sometime thou shalt fly
And leave me to the blankness of despair!

FANCY.

Thou sluggard body, that must sit on shore
While sleepless Fancy ranges space at will—
Now shooting boldly o'er the billowy hoar
That bounds the isle; now to some distant hill
Voyaging lightly with mercurial ease
Through the wide hyaline; anon in caves
Deep underground, whose black-arched vastnesses
Ring to the roar of subterranean waves,
Wandering and all but lost: What is thy claim,
Thou sluggard body, to companionship
With this ethereal essence, living flame,
Which cannot yet with perfect freedom slip
Its loose mysterious leash? What mystic spell
Hath pent within thy trunk this Ariel?

MORNING ON MORVEN.

We stood on Morven ere the morning broke:
Night lingered on the hills; a single star
Sent tremulously down on Lochnagar
A smile that wandered o'er his misty cloak
And touched his heart at last: sullen he woke
And bared his bosom, seamed with rent and scar—
The silent wounds of many a Winter's war.
The mist rolled upwards: Sudden a mountain oak,
That in its sunless hollow near us grew,
Through all its leaves shook in the morning air;
The mist still rose, the Dee rolled into view;
The mist still rose, and then, a vision rare
As the first rays of morning smote it through,
And ringed with gold old Morven's forehead bare!

FRIENDSHIP.

O give me speech! companionship I ask
With my own kind: my soul is sick of books,
And longs with passionate longing for the looks
Of living men. Thou flat, insipid flask!
Thou dead man's soul! Thou book! Thou calf-skin mask!
I loathe thee! Lo! abroad the reaping-hooks,
From the high hill-brow to the confluent brooks,
Are cireling in the harvest: Happy task!
Thine, happy peasant! is the healthful breeze,
The beams that call the red blood to the cheek,
The hunger which the plainest meals appease,
And thine, O bliss! companions that can speak:
To me—close chambers, where at noon I freeze,
And musty tomes from dumb-day'd week to week.

NORTHERN STUDENT.

I'm weary of the thing, if this be life—
To dose and prose, companion of the clock,
Bound to my room as seaweed to the rock,
And maddened by a garrulous old wife!
O for the noise, the bustle, and the strife,
And the glad smell of brine down at the dock;
The launch, and the brave timbers that will mock
A winter's voyage with storm and whirlwind rife!
This, this were life, to mount the swelling wave,
And steer the stout ship through the opposing blast,
And, even in dreams, to hear the tempest rave
And the great league-long tides go groaning past,
Till soft winds waft, and smoother waters lave
The good ship, and she gains the port at last!

ABOVE THE STARS.

To my sad soul the balm of sleep was sent,
Grateful as falling rain when dry winds parch
The withered tassels of the drooping larch;
And through my dream voices inviting went—
“Come, range with us the higher firmament:
For it is high and of exalted arch,
And suns unwearied round horizons march
To which thy compass narrows to a tent.”
And in my dream methought my soul was blown,
By wind of wings behind it and around,
To a most distant sky o'er-arching ground,
If ground it might be called, with stars bestrewn!
And all my human cares and fears were drowned
In a vast sea of harmony round me thrown!

IN IMITATION OF “THE ‘NAME UNKNOWN,’”

By Campbell—After Klopstock.

Where is the Wizard that will tell me true,
Of all the beauteous female forms I meet,
In green suburban walk or crowded street,
While I the daily rounds of life pursue,
Which of them all shall journey with me through
The coming years, a helpmate kind and meet:
Where wons she now? or whither point her feet?
And whether tend they to or from my view?
What is she doing now? But is she nigh?
Or in what Eden do her steps delay?
Or have I missed her in the crowd?—O why
Should cruel fate thus with blind lovers play?
Perhaps she's in an early grave, and I
But follow vainly searching all the way.

A BACK-LYING FARM.

A back-lying farm but lately taken in;
Forlorn hill-slopes and grey, without a tree;
And at their base a waste of stony lea
Through which there creeps, too small to make a din,
Even where it slides over a rocky linn,
A stream, unvisited of bird or bee,
Its flowerless banks a bare sad sight to see.
All round, with ceaseless plaint, though spent and thin,
Like a lost child far-wandered from its home,
A querulous wind all day doth coldly roam.
Yet here, with sweet calm face, tending a cow,
Upon a rock a girl bareheaded sat,
Singing unheard, while with unlifted brow
She twined the long wan grasses in her hat.

“TO-MORROW AND TO-MORROW AND TO-MORROW.”

My youthtime past, Life's joyous season o'er,
The April of our years, when buds half-blown
Of golden promise, seedlings too, thick sown,
Delight the soul a rich uncounted store,
Which future suns in splendour shall restore—
Poor creditor! Autumn perhaps will moan
Most inconsolably from stone to stone
Over a field that prematurely bore
A harvestry of buds reaped by the wind
That never came to fruitage! I remember
The very day when to my youthful mind
A low-born thought that counselled ease did clamber
And drugged my energies: I woke to find
The dark winds and the cold snows of December.

EPICUREAN.

“Gather we in, our wishes are complete,
This room our temple, and this board our shrine:
See where his godship, laughing from the wine.
Flings to each devotee a welcome sweet,
And waves him to a rose-encircled seat!
No boding suppliants we, pale-faced that pine
Beneath an angry tyrant: we recline
Around our blushing god, companions meet!
Ha! what is that? Whence came the sprig of yew
Among our roses? Who has stilled the lyre?”
The lamps are out, or shed a ghastly blue,
The palsied revellers with black lips retire,
Crash goes the lattice! There the lightning flew!
And hark! the deafening thunder's awful ire!

AMBITION: IN “ERCLES' VEIN.”

Pooh! stay me not! What though—or gem, or pearl?
Let the red gold to silver blanch! What reck?
Shall Plutus lure my heart? Shall Venus' neck
Entice my arm to twine? Neæra's curl
With silken chain bind me, a soulless churl?
Shall Bacchus have me at his drunken beck
Io to shout, and with vine-fronds to deck
Myself a fool, and life a tipsy whirl?
Perish th' ignoble thought! Why stay me? See!
Yonder! 'Tis she! She calls me—let me go!
She is my gem, my gold—my crown is she,
Aye flashing in mine eye misering the glow!
She is my love, my mistress! I am he
That, drunk with love, adores her! On! Io!

YOUTH.

Thus end the Moorish annals: “On the hill
The poor king paused, and turned a mournful gaze
Backward o'er green Granáda to the blaze
Of the red-towered Alhambra; then a thrill
Of sudden anguish wrung his soul, until
Relief came in a rush—a tearful haze
Blinded his view; and to unhonoured days
With one deep sigh departed Boäbdil.”
Unhappy Prince! Methinks I pity thee,
For that thy fate prefigures forth my own:
Here, from the specular mount of Memory,
I gaze across my Youth, so quickly flown,
Bidding its joys and hopes eternally
A long adieu, and heaving many a moan.

LOVE.

Bright in the dim horizon of the years
Hung the unsettled Light that leads to Fame:
Smit with the beckoning witchery of its flame
I followed on girt round with hopes and fears
That sometimes smiled but oftener, drowned in tears,
Made the dark march a sad one: sudden there came
Between my vision and the wandering aim
A glorious form that claimed the long arrears
Of my be-wasted youth, and fixed my eye:
I gazed adoring—nor devoid of pain
Lest the angelic visitant should fly,
But, as she lingered on, Surely, thought I,
Surely the primal sentence was in vain;
Only stay thou, and Eden blooms again!

TWO SONNETS.

I. SLEEP.

And now 'tis Night, and with oblivious plume
Sleep fans the eyelids of the sons of care,
And souls to their mysterious haunts repair
Where the dim dreamland spreads its warping gloom.
O sweet and soft the glories that illume
The land of dreams, and multiform as fair,
Brighter than gorgeous tissues of the loom,
Or sunset splendours of the waking air!
The worldling and his brother of the soil,
This one his toilsome, that his tedious day,
His suit the lawyer, and the smith his toil,
His rags the beggar, and the child its play—
Each his peculiar care forgets a while,
And all, sweet Sleep, under thy peaceful sway.

II. DEATH.

But if thou findest eyes that will not close,—
Eyes that through suffering wet or, in despair
Guarding a secret which they cannot share,
Tearless refuse the respite of repose—
Not thine, sweet Sleep, to end the sufferer's woes;
Believe not thou canst dissipate a care
So dark; thy blandishments forbear;
There is a grief that no cessation knows.
Yet, ere thou goëst, hear the sufferer crave
One boon of thee, and oh! thou need'st not fear
To kill a sorrow where thou canst not save,
However dark the sad request appear—
Call thy more pallid brother of the grave,
He only is the true physician here.

THE KNIFEGRINDER.

I met a Knifegrinder, a glorious fellow,
Upon the dusty highway, and I stood
And saw him push his one-wheeled thing of wood
Before him lustily, and heard him bellow
With a strong voice, whole-lung'd and loud and mellow,
For work with a becoming hardihood:
His cheek was brown, by many a summer hued,
And his rough foxy beard was fring'd with yellow.
And, if you will believe me, as I gazed
'Twas with both praise and envy: here methought
Is happiness on no foundation raised
External to the mind, but safely wrought
In self; and then the manliness I praised
With which he met the meanness of his lot.

FAITH.

With the dim brooding of a painless woe
Sent from afar, I knew not how nor why,
My soul was dark beneath so bright a sky
The light seemed from beyond the sun to flow:
Onward I went in gloom with all this glow
Falling about me, when a joyful cry
Escaped my lips, as, twinkling swiftly by,
A thousand doves flew up with wings of snow.
That instant I was glad: the gloom gave way,
And left th' horizon of my spirit clear;
And from behind I heard the rustling play
Of winging hopes and memories drawing near—
There was not one of all the memories gray,
And with the hopes there did not blend a fear.

IN THE SHADOWS.

“OCTOBER WINDS.”

October winds are hungering o'er the hill
In a vain search for summer joys that flee
The approaching day of desolated tree
And vanished flower and unmelodious rill;
And yet a parting beauty lingers still
Of Autumn's own, which were not sad to see
But for bare fields and flower-forsaken lea
And wan loose leaves that all the valley fill.
For I have found, when summer days were dead,
In a sad glen of whisper'd memories full,
Autumn rejoicing in the berries red
Of a gay rowan by a Highland pool,
Amid the signs of sorrow Nature shed
When Summer's love for her began to cool.

BEAUTY.

It is not in the air that Beauty dwells;
Nor do you steal upon her in her dreams
In the far glens; among the lonely streams
She is not now, pursuing water-bells;
Her feet are not among the pearly shells
Of some fair islet that we do not know,
Severed from sister archipelago,
And sitting in the sea that round it swells
Gently in the broad belt of calms. But where
From human eyes a noble soul looks forth
On Nature with the freedom of an heir—
Greedy, perhaps, but grateful for his share—
Beauty arising sings: She is the birth
Of the sweet sympathy of man with earth.

A RETROSPECT.

Now what this pebbly strip of Kentish coast
And the lone sweep of this blue curling bay
Has waked my fancy to I cannot say,
That most is busy when I idle most,
But backward through the years she seems to post;
She seems in running to devour the way,
And I, dull laggard, follow as I may,
Till at the last she stops: And lo! a host
Of whitening sails, far as the eye can reach,
Advancing from the sky-line more and more!
‘These are the men that bring your Shakespeare speech!’
I look again, and, closer than before,
Lo! Hengist's galley cabled to the beach,
And Horsa's sailors pulling for the shore.

ARCADIA.

A glorious day among the Ochil hills!
Blue April skies above; and all about
Green primrose banks that slope to where the trout
In silver glance athwart the gleaming rills,
And wagtails bob, and ouzels wet their bills;
And linnets in the heather in and out
Weaving sweet music; and the shepherd's shout;
And the fine fragrance which the birk distils:
Arcadia! and ten hours of it! But stay,
There was no clock in Arden; let me see;
Suppose we borrow Milton's words, and say—
From morn till dewy eve. And who were we?
Why, Jack and I. Angling: we ‘whipt’ all day.
Well, I got none, but Jack was good for three!

MICHAEL BRUCE:

A Poem in Sonnets.