University of Virginia Library

I love the grey old City's storied walls.
Not all the glare and turmoil of the day,
The hum and whirl of commerce in the streets,
Can dim for me the light of old romance,
That gilds its hoary monuments and towers.
I love to see the quiet dignity
With which, when work is done and night draws on
And all the din of footsteps fades away,
It shakes from off its flanks the ebbing tide
Of busy life, slips off the glare of day,
Wraps round its walls the mantle of the past
And settles back to its historic calm,
As if no break divided its long rest.
And ever, in the golden calm of eve,
When the clear sky grows dim toward the dusk,
Its streets for me are thick with memories,
Stately and sweet and sorrowful. I hear
The feet of Sidney echo on the stones
And see, in silence, noble Raleigh's face,
Pale with long prison, peer from out the bars
Upon a shadowy crowd. But not alone
My fancy dwells upon the peopled past.
I have no taint of that unlovely scorn
Which sees no beauty save in things long dead,
No sweetness in the world we live amongst.
I feel that, in the new as in the old,
Great deeds are possible, heroic lives
Lived nobly and true deaths died faithfully,
And please myself to find out quiet flowers,
That have bloomed bravely in the City smoke,
And souls whose clear eternal Spring of love
Has made their thought immortal. Many such,
Unknown to fame, have blossomed, lived and died,
Quiet dull lives, whose course the peace of God
Has, as the sky on broad, unrippled streams,
Filled with reflected heaven. Such a life,
Uncelebrate and sweet, my memory holds
Within its holiest casket, as one lays
A graven gem in velvet. One, whose path
Of years I love to follow, all his life
Dwelt in the City's dim and sunless shade
And there, from early youth to quiet death,
Worked hardly at dull toil for daily bread.
One of those earnest, tender-hearted men
We find sometimes among hard-handed folk,
Whose souls' mute poetry, expressionless,
Is hidden by the sameness of their lives,
To him God's world was one great fairy tale,
As sad and sweet as such tales use to be.
With heart too large to hold aught else but love,
He had but few to love. The delicate
And shrinking clearness of his mental sense
Held him aloof from those who shared his task
And he was lonely in the world of men.
His soul was full of sweet and tender doubt.
Across the hum and whirl of toil he oft
Looked, with mute wistfulness, at that great world
Of fame and action which, thus seen afar,
Was lovely to him as the rainbow is,
That is our symbol of unreal hope;
And there were times when he would grieve to think
He could not serve God in some nobler way.
He felt a barrier lay 'twixt him and it,
A wall of crystal, that he might not pass;
And so he did but yearn and to his work
Turned dumbly. Yet the chrism of his love
Rounded his life-work to ideal shape,
Unknown to him, and all his heart was full
Of such a deep and sweet humanity,
His life grew fragrant with the inner soul;
And weary folk, who passed him in the streets,
Saw Christ's love beam from out the wistful eyes
And had new confidence in God and man.
And so he worked and longed and lived and loved,
Did noble deeds, unknowing what he did,
Thought noble thoughts, unconscious of their worth,
And lived that greatness he desired in vain.
One friend he had, as poor as he, perchance,
But rich in hope; one of those wide-souled men
Whose natural mission seems the cure of souls,
Lark-hearted, with a native trick of song,
He looked on all with clear and hopeful eyes
And with a thinker's austere tenderness,
Tried all things in the crucible of thought.
He loved the gentle humble-minded man
And had long drawn from him his secret soul
As tenderly as Spring draws primrose-blooms
From the young earth. And once, when they had talked
Awhile together and some chance had turned
The converse on the worker's long desire,
The other rose and pacing up and down,
Said to his friend, “Had you told Hafiz this,
The poet who brought down the golden sun
And with it made his verses glad and bright,
He might have answered somewhat on this wise,
Veiling, as was his wont, the barb of thought
Under the wreathing blooms of metaphor.”
Then he took up his parable and spoke.

“A lily grew upon the plains of Fars
And drank the living radiance of the sun
And fed her fill upon those golden dews
That Persian poets call the tears of God.
About her lay a paradise of sweets.
Narcissus-cups and stately amaranths
And many another gorgeous Eastern flower
Hid the brown earth with rainbow-coloured blooms:
And now and then, when the light morning breeze
Inclined the lily's stalk toward the dim
Horizon's golden marge, the regal bloom
Of roses met her vision and she knew
Their scent upon the perfumed winds of heaven,
Wherewith the evening cooled the glowing plains.
But she herself stood on a little hill,
Unmated and alone, a stretch of sand
Parting her from the crowd of kindred blooms.
Great grief to her this was; it seemed as if
Her place had been forgotten in the plan
And she alone could have no part in God
Nor work for Nature, as her comrades did.
The distant hum of some small neighbouring towns,
Where afar off dwelt sparsely-scattered men,
Came to her, sweetened by the breath of flowers.
At times she heard the tinkling camel-bells,
Sparkles of sound upon a murmurous sea,
And her heart yearned to grow toward the world
And take her share of duty with the rest.
And with the yearning brighter grew her bloom
And richer waxed the fragrance of her breath,
Until the air was filled with that sweet scent,
The soul and essence of desireful love;
And from afar the perfume of the flower
Was wafted unto many a toiling man,
So that he felt refreshed and comforted
And said, “What angel hovers in the air?
I smell the almond-blooms of Paradise.”
So sweet it was that, over all the rest,
An angel, hovering o'er the neighbouring flowers,
Caught the unearthly fragrance, which recalled
To him the odorous balms of his own heaven;
Then, nestling in the lily's cup, he felt
The stir of yearning at its fragrant heart
And comprehending, with the skill of love,
All that lay hidden in its candid soul,
‘Take heart,’ said he, ‘white lily. God is sweet
And life that is not sweet has little God.
Who thinks a life, unstirred by sounding deeds
And void of settled aim save love and peace,
Is dutiless, knows little of the links
Of purpose that conjoin all natural things.
Life is lived less in action than in thought
And all its aims are summarised in love.
Thou givest all thyself. Can God give more?
Would'st thou give more than God, love more than Love?
Be comforted; thou hast the praise of God.’
And the white flower was sorrowful no more.”