The complete poetical writings of J. G. Holland

A wife is like an unknown sea;—
Least known to him who thinks he knows
Where all the Shores of Promise be,
Where lie the Islands of Repose,
And where the rocks that he must flee.

Capricious winds, uncertain tides,
Drive the young sailor on and on,
Till all his charts and all his guides
Prove false, and vain conceit is gone,
And only docile Love abides.

Where lay the shallows of the maid,
No plummet-line the wife may sound;
Where round the sunny islands played
The pulses of the great profound,
Lies low the treacherous everglade.

And, as he sails, he is, perforce,
Discoverer of a strange new world;
And finds, whate'er may be his course,
Green lands within white seas impearled,
With streams of unsuspected source

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Which feed with gold delicious fruits,
Kept by unguessed Hesperides,
Or cool the lips of gentle brutes
That breed and browse among the trees
Whose wind-tossed limbs and leaves are lutes.

The maiden free, the maiden wed,
Can never, never be the same.
A new life springs from out the dead,
And, with the speaking of a name,
A breath upon the marriage-bed,

She finds herself a something new—
(Which he learns later, but no less);
And good and evil, false and true,
May change their features—who can guess?—
Seen close, or from another view.

For maiden life, with all its fire,
Is hid within a grated cell,
Where every fancy and desire
And graceless passion, guarded well,
Sits dumb behind the woven wire.

Marriage is freedom: only when
The husband turns the prison-key
Knows she herself; nor even then
Knows she more wisely well than he
Who finds himself least wise of men.

New duties bring new powers to birth,
And new relations, new surprise
Of depths of weakness or of worth,
Until he doubt if her disguise
Mask more of heaven, or more of earth.

379

Tears spring beneath a careless touch;
Endurance hardens with a word;
She holds a trifle with a clutch
So strangely, childishly absurd,
That he who loves and pardons much

Doubts if her wayward wit be sane,
When straight beyond his manly power
She stiffens to the awful strain
Of some supreme or crucial hour,
And stands unblanched in fiercest pain!

A jealous thought, a petty pique,
Enwraps in gloom, or bursts in storm;
She questions all that love may speak,
And weighs its tone, and marks its form,
Or yields her frailty to a freak

That vexes him or breeds disgust;
Then rises in heroic flame,
And treads a danger into dust,
Or puts his doubting soul to shame
With love unfeigned and perfect trust.

Still seas unknown the husband sails;
Life-long the lovely marvel lasts;
In golden calms or driving gales,
With silent prow or reeling masts,
Each hour a fresh surprise unveils.

The brooding, threatening bank of mist
Grows into groups of virid isles,
By sea embraced and sunlight kissed,
Or breaks into resplendent smiles
Of cinnabar and amethyst!

380

No day so bright but scuds may fall,
No day so still but winds may blow;
No morn so dismal with the pall
Of wintry storm, but stars may glow
When evening gathers, over all!

And so thought Philip, when, in haste
Returning from his lengthened stay—
The river and the lawn retraced—
He found his Mildred blithe and gay,
And all his anxious care a waste.

To be half vexed that she could thrive
Without him through a morning's span,
Upon the honey in her hive,
Was but to prove himself a man,
And show that he was quite alive!

II.

A sympathetic word or kiss,
(Mildred had insight to discern,)
Though grateful quite, is quite amiss,
In leading to the life etern
The soul that has no bread in this.

The present want must aye be fed,
And first relieved the present care:
“Give us this day our daily bread”
Must be recited in our prayer
Before “forgive us” may be said.

And he who lifts a soul from vice,
And leads the way to better lands;
Must part his raiment, share his slice,

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And oft with weary, bleeding hands,
Pave the long path with sacrifice.

So on a pleasant summer morn,
Wrapped in her motive, sweet and safe,
She sought the homes of sin and scorn,
And found her little Sunday waif
Ragged, and hungry, and forlorn.

She called her quickly to her knee;
And with her came a motley troop
Of children, poor and foul as she,
Who gathered in a curious group,
And ceased their play, to hear and see.

Tanned brown by all the summer suns,
With brutish brows and vacant eyes,
They drank her speech and ate her buns,
While she behind their sad disguise
Beheld her dear Lord's “little ones.”

She stood like Ruth amid the wheat,
With ready hand and sickle keen,
And looked on all with aspect sweet;
For where she only thought to glean,
She found a harvest round her feet.

Ah! little need the tale to write
Of garments begged from door to door,
Of needles plying in the night,
And money gathered from the store
Alike of screw and Sybarite,

With which to clothe the little flock.
She went like one sent forth of God

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To loose the bolts of heart and lock,
And with the smiting of her rod
To call a flood from every rock.

And little need the tale to tell
How, when the Sunday came again,
A wondrous change the group befell,
And how from every noisome den,
Responding to the chapel bell,

They issued forth with shout and call,
And Mildred walking at their head,
Who, with her silken parasol,
Bannered the army that she led,
And with low words commanded all.

The little army walked through smiles
That hung like lamps above their march,
And lit their swart and straggling files,
While bending elm and plumy larch
Shaped into broad cathedral aisles

The paths that led with devious trend
To where the ivied chapel stood.
There their long passage found its end,
And there they gathered in a brood
Of gentle clamor round their friend.

A score pressed in on either side
To share the burden of her care,
And hearts and house gave entrance wide
To those to whom the words of prayer
Were stranger than the curse of pride.

And Mildred who, without a thought
Of glory in her week's long task,

383

This marvel of the week had wrought,
Had earned the boon she would not ask,
And won more love than she had sought.

III.

As two who walk through forest aisles,
Lit all the way by forest flowers,
Divide at morn through twin defiles
To meet again in distant hours,
With plunder plucked from all the miles,

So Philip and so Mildred went
Into their walks of daily life,—
Parting at morn with sweet consent,
And—tireless husband, busy wife—
Together when the day was spent,

Bringing the treasures they had won
From sundered tracks of enterprise,
To learn from each what each had done,
And prove each other grown more wise
Than when the morning was begun.

He strengthened her with manly thought
And learning, gathered from the great;
And she, whose quicker eye had caught
The treasures of the broad estate
Of common life and learning, brought

Her gleanings from the level field,
And gave them gladly to his hands,
Who had not dreamed that they could yield
Such sheaves, or hold within their bands
Such wealth of lovely flowers concealed.

384

His grave discourse, his judgment sure,
Gave tone and temper to her soul,
While her swift thoughts and vision pure,
And mirth that would not brook control,
And wit that kept him insecure

Within his dignified repose,
Refreshed and quickened him like wine.
No tender word or dainty gloze
Could give him pleasure half so fine
As that which tingled to her blows.

He gave her food for heart and mind,
And raised her toward his higher plane;
She showed him that his eyes were blind;
She proved his lofty wisdom vain,
And held him humbly with his kind.

IV.

Oh, blessed sleep! in which exempt
From our tired selves long hours we lie,
Our vapid worthlessness undreamt,
And our poor spirits saved thereby
From perishing of self-contempt!

We weary of our petty aims;
We sicken with our selfish deeds;
We shrink and shrivel in the flames
That low desire ignites and feeds,
And grudge the debt that duty claims.

Oh sweet forgetfulness of sleep!
Oh bliss, to drop the pride of dress,
And all the shams o'er which we weep,

385

And, toward our native nothingness,
To drop ten thousand fathoms deep!

At morning only—strong, erect—
We face our mirrors not ashamed;
For then alone we meet unflecked
The image we at evening blamed,
And find refreshed our self-respect.

Ah! little wonderment that those,
Who see us most and love us best,
Find that a true affection grows
More strong and sweet in tone and zest
Through frequent partings and repose.

Our fruit grows dead in pulp and rind
When seen and handled overmuch;
The roses fade, our fingers bind;
And with familiar kiss and touch
The graces wither from our kind.

Man lives on love, at love's expense,
And woman, so her love be sweet;
Best honey palls upon the sense
When it is tempted to repeat
Too oft its fine experience.

And Mildred, with instinctive skill,
And loving neither most nor least,
Stood out from Philip's grasping will,
And gave, where he desired a feast,
The taste that left him hungry still.

She hid her heart behind a mask,
And held him to his manly course;

386

One hour in love she bade him bask,
And then she drove, with playful force,
The laggard to his daily task.

They went their way and kept their care,
And met again—their toil complete,—
Like angels on a heavenly stair,
Or pilgrims in a golden street,
Grown stronger one, and one more fair!

V.

As one worn down by petty pains,
With fevered head and restless limb,
Flies from the toil that stings and stains,
And all the cares that wearied him,
And some far, silent summit gains;

And in its strong, sweet atmosphere,
Or in the blue, or in the green,
Finds his discomforts disappear,
And loses in the pure serene
The garnered humors of a year;

And sees not how and knows not when
The old vexations leave their seat,
So Philip, happiest of men,
Saw all his petty cares retreat,
And vanish, not to come again.

Where he had thought to shield and serve,
Himself had ministry instead;
He heard no vexing call to swerve
From larger toil, for labors sped
By Mildred's finer wit and nerve.

387

In deft and deferential ways
She took the house by silent siege;
And Dinah, warmest in her praise,
Grew, unaware, her loyal liege,
And served her truly all her days.

And many a sad and stricken maid,
And many a lorn and widowed life
That came for counsel or for aid
To Philip, met the pastor's wife,
And on her heart their burden laid.

VI.

He gave her what she took—her will;
And made it space for life full-orbed.
He learned at last that every rill
Loses its freshness, when absorbed
By the great stream that turns the mill.

With hand ungrasping for her dower,
He found its royal income his;
And every swiftly kindling power—
Self-moved in its activities—
Becoming brighter every hour.

The air is sweet which we inspire
When it is free to come and go;
And sound of brook and scent of brier
Rise freshest where the breezes blow,
That feed our breath and fan our fire.

That love is weak which is too strong;
A man may be a woman's grave;

388

The right of love swells oft to wrong,
And silken bonds may bind a slave
As truly as a leathern thong.

We may not dine upon the bird
That fills our home with minstrelsy;
The living vine may never gird
Too firm and close the living tree,
Without sad sacrifice incurred.

The crystal goblet that we drain
Will be forever after dry;
But he who sips, and sips again,
And leaves it to the open sky,
Will find it filled with dew and rain.

The lilies burst, the roses blow
Into divinest balm and bloom,
When free above and free below;
And life and love must have large room,
That life and love may largest grow.

So Philip learned (what Mildred saw),
That love is like a well profound,
From which two souls have right to draw,
And in whose waters will be drowned
The one who takes the other's law.

VII.

Ambition was an alien word,
Which Mildred faintly understood;
Its poisoned breathing had not blurred
The whiteness of her womanhood,
Nor had its blatant trumpet stirred

389

To quicker pulse her heart content.
In social tasks and home employ,
She did not question what it meant;
But bore her woman's lot with joy
And sweetness, wheresoe'er she went.

If ever with unconscious thrill
It touched her, in some vagrant dream,
She only wished that God would fill
With larger tide the goodly stream
That flowed beside her, strong and still.

She knew that love was more than fame,
And happy conscience more than love;—
Far off and wild, the wings of flame!
Close by, the pinions of the dove
That hovered white above her name!

She honored Philip as a man,
And joyed in his supreme estate;
But never dreamed that under ban
She lives who never can be great,
Or chieftain of a crowd or clan.

The public eye was like a knife
That pierced and plagued her shrinking heart,
To be a woman, and a wife,
With privilege to dwell apart,
And hold unseen her modest life—

Alike from praise and blame aloof;
And free to live and move in peace
Beneath Love's consecrated roof—
Was boon so great she could not cease
Her thanks for the divine behoof.

390

Black turns to rust and blue to blight
Beneath the shining of the sun;
And e'en the spotless robe of white,
Worn overlong, grows dim and dun
Through the strange alchemy of light.

Nor wife nor maiden, weak or brave,
Can stand and face the public stare,
And win the plaudits she may crave,
And stem the hisses she may dare,
And modest truth and beauty save.

No woman, in her soul, is she
Who longs to poise above the roar
Of motley multitudes, and be
The idol at whose feet they pour
The wine of their idolatry.

Coarse labor makes its doer coarse;
Great burdens harden softest hands;
A gentle voice grows harsh and hoarse
That warns and threatens and commands
Beyond the measure of its force.

Oh sweet, beyond all speech, to feel
Within no answer to the drum,
Or echo to the bugle-peal,
That calls to duties which benumb
In service of the commonweal!

Oh sweet to feel, beyond all speech,
That most and best of human kind
Have leave to live beyond the reach
Of toil that tarnishes, and find
No tongue but Envy's to impeach!

391

Oh sweet, that most unnoticed deeds
Give play to fine, heroic blood!—
That hid from light, and shut from weeds,
The rose is fairer in its bud
Than in the blossom that succeeds!

He is the helpless slave who must;
And she enfranchised who may sit
Unblamed above the din and dust,
Where stronger hands and coarser wit
Strive equally for crown and crust.

So ran her thought, and broader yet,
Who scanned her own by Philip's pace;
And never did the wife forget
Her grateful tribute for the grace
That charged her with so sweet a debt.

So ran her thought; and in her breast
Her wifely pride to pity grew,
That Philip, by his Lord's behest—
To duty and to nature true—
Must do his bravest and his best,

Through winter's cold and summer's heat,
Where all might praise and all might blame,
And thus be topic of the street,
And see his fair and honest name
A football, kicked by careless feet.

She loved her creed, and doubting not
She read it well from Nature's scroll,
She found no line or word to blot;
But, from her woman's modest soul,
Thanked her Creator for her lot.

392

VIII.

He who, upon an Alpine peak,
Stands, when the sunrise lifts the East,
And gilds the crown and lights the cheek
Of largest monarch down to least,
Of all the summits cold and bleak,

Finds sadly that it brings no boon
For all his long and toilsome leagues,
And chill at once and weary soon,
Rests from his fevers and fatigues,
And waits the recompense of noon.

For then the valleys, near and far,
The hillsides, fretted by the vine,
The glacier-drift, the torrent-scar
Whose restless waters shoot and shine,
The silver tarn, that like a star

Trembles and flames with stress of light,
And scattered hamlet and chalet
That dot with brown, or paint with white,
The landscape quivering in the day,
With beauty all his toil requite.

Mountains, from mountain altitudes,
Are only hills, as bleak and bare;
And he whose daring step intrudes
Upon their grandeur, and the rare
Cold light or gloom that o'er them broods,

393

Finds that with even brow to stand
Among the heights that bade him climb,
Is loss of all that made them grand,
While all of lovely and sublime
Looks up to him from lake and land.

Great men are few, and stand apart;
And seem divinest when remote.
From brain to brain, and heart to heart,
No thoughts of genial commerce float:
Each holds his own exclusive mart.

And when we meet them, face to face,
And hand to hand their greatness greet,
Our steps we willingly retrace,
And gather humbly at their feet,
With those who live upon their grace.

And man and woman—mount and vale—
Have charms, each from the other seen,—
The robe of rose, the coat of mail:
The springing turf, the black ravine:
The tossing pines, the waving swale:

Which please the sight with constant joy.
Thus living, each has power to call
The other's thoughts with sweet decoy,
And one can rise and one can fall
But to distemper or destroy.

The dewy meadow breeds the cloud
That rises on ethereal wings,
And wraps the mountain in a shroud
From which the living lightning springs
And torrents pour, that, lithe and loud,

394

Leap down in service to the plains,
Or feed the fountains at their source;
And only thus the mountain gains
The vital fulness of the force
That fills the meadow's myriad veins.

In fair, reciprocal exchange
Of good which each appropriates,
The meadow and the mountain-range
Nourish their beautiful estates;
And lofty wild and lowly grange

Thrive on the commerce thus ordained;
And not a reek ascends the rock,
And not a drift of dew is rained,
But eyrie-brood or tended flock
By the sweet gift is entertained.

A meadow may be fair and broad,
And hold a river in its rest;
Or small, and with the silver gaud
Of a lone lakelet on its breast,
Or but a patch, that, overawed,

Clings humbly to the mountain's hem:
It matters not: it is the charm
That cheers his life, and holds the stem
Of every flower that tempts his arm,
Or greets his snowy diadem.

Dolts talk of largest and of least,
And worse than dolts are they who prate
Of Beauty captive to the Beast;
For man in woman finds his mate,
And thrones her equal at his feast.

395

She matches meekness with his might,
And patience with his power to act,—
His judgment with her quicker sight;
And wins by subtlety and tact
The battles he can only fight.

And she who strives to take the van
In conflict, or the common way,
Does outrage to the heavenly plan,
And outrage to the finer clay
That makes her beautiful to man.

All this, and more than this, she saw
Who reigned in Philip's house and heart.
Far off, he seemed without a flaw;
Close by, her tasteless counterpart,
And slave to Nature's common law.

To climb with fierce, familiar stride
His dizzy paths of life and thought,
Would but degrade him from her pride,
And bring the majesty to naught
Which love and distance magnified.

If she should grow like him, she knew
He would admire and love her less;
The eagle's image might be true,
But eagle of the wilderness
Would find no consort in the view.

A woman, in her woman's sphere,
A loyal wife and worshipper,
She only thirsted to appear
As fair to him as he to her,
And fairer still, from year to year.

396

And he who quickly learned to purge
His fancy of the tender whim
That she was floating at the verge
Of womanhood, half hid to him,
Saw her with gracious mien emerge,

And stand full-robed upon the shore,
With faculties and charms unguessed;
With wondrous eyes that looked before,
And hands that helped and words that blessed—
The mistress of an alien lore

Beyond the wisdom of the schools
And all his manly power to win;
With handicraft of tricks and tools
That conjured marvels with a pin,
And miracles with skeins and spools!

She seemed to mock his dusty dearth
With flowers that sprang beneath his eyes;
Till all he was, seemed little worth,
And she he deemed so little wise,
Became the wisest of the earth.

In all the struggles of his soul,
And all the strifes his soul abhorred,
She shone before him like a goal
A shady bower of fresh reward—
A shallop riding in the mole,

That waited with obedient helm
To bear him over sparkling seas,
Into a new and fragrant realm,
Before the vigor of a breeze
That drove, but might not overwhelm.

397

IX.

To symmetry the oak is grown
Which all winds visit on the lea,
While that which lists the monotone
Of the long blast that sweeps the sea,
And answers to its breath alone,

Turns with aversion from the breeze,
And stretches all its stunted limbs
Landward and heavenward, toward the trees
That listen to a thousand hymns,
And grow to grander destinies.

Man may not live on whitest loaves,
With all of coarser good dismissed;
He pines and starves who never roves
Beyond the holy eucharist,
To gather of the fields and groves.

And he who seeks to fill his heart
With solace of a single friend,
Will find refreshment but in part,
Or, sadder still, will find the end
Of all his reach of thought and art.

They who love best need friendship most;
Hearts only thrive on varied good;
And he who gathers from a host
Of friendly hearts his daily food,
Is the best friend that we can boast.

398

She left her husband with his friends;
She called them round him at her board;
And found their culture made amends
For all the time that, from her hoard,
She spared him for these nobler ends.

He was her lover; that sufficed:
His home was in the Holy Place
With that of the Beloved Christ.
And friendship had no subtle grace
By which his love could be enticed.

Of all his friends, she was but one:
She held with them a common field.
Exclusive right—with love begun—
Ended with love, and stood repealed,
Leaving his friendship free to run

Toward man or woman, all unmissed.
She knew she had no right to bind
His friendship to her single wrist,
So long as love was true and kind,
And made her its monopolist.

No time was grudged with jealous greed
Which either books or friendship claimed.
He was her friend, and she had need
Of all—unhindered and unblamed—
That he could win, through word or deed.

Her friend waxed great as grew the man;
Her temple swelled as rose her priest—
With power to bless and right to ban;—
And all who served him, most or least,—
From chorister and sacristan

399

To those whose frankincense and myrrh
Perfumed the sacred courts with alms,—
Were gracious ministers to her,
Who found the largess in her palms.
And him the friendly almoner.

X.

The river of their life was one;
The shores down which they passed were two;
One mirrored mountains, huge and dun,
The other crimped the green and blue,
And sparkled in the kindly sun!

Twin barks, with answering flags, they moved
With even canvas down the stream,
In smooth or ruffled waters grooved,
And found such islands in their dream
As rest and loving speech behooved.

Ah fair the goodly gardens smiled
On Philip at his rougher strand!
And grandly loomed the summits, isled
In seas of cloud, to her who scanned
From her far shore the lofty wild.

Two lives, two loves—both self-forgot
In loyal homage to their oath;
Two lives, two loves, but living not
By ministry that reached them both,
In service of a common lot,

400

They sailed the stream; and every mile
Broadened with beauty as they passed;
And fruitful shore and trysting-isle,
And all love's intercourse were glassed
And blessed in Heaven's benignant smile.

University of Virginia Library

LOVE'S PHILOSOPHIES.

I.

II.

III.

IV.

V.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

IX.

X.