The Poetical Works of Walter C. Smith :: :: University of Virginia Library

Winifred Urquhart and I, when we were tall school-girls,
Chatting of wooings and weddings while twisting our hair up in curls,
Or whispering some hush-secret, which was not secret a bit,
Only we were confidential, and made a secret of it—
Winnie and I made a paction, silly things that we were!
That she would be sure to tell me, and I must be sure to tell her,
Whoever, first of us, wedded, all the bitter and sweet
Of the life of marriage that makes the life of a woman complete;
The hope, the fear, and the bliss too, we were to set down all,
And none of our Gardens of Eden be hid by a hedge or a wall.

So now she writes me a letter, all underlined, to say
She trusts that I do not forget the promise I made that day;
Hints that, perhaps, I might keep a Diary locked with a key,
And sacred To Early Friendship, which no other eye should see;
And hopes that I will not act like commonplace wives, who drop
Their friends and their French and pianos, and put to the Past a full stop,
So to begin a new paragraph all about beeves and muttons,
Darning, and troubles with servants, and gentlemen's shirts and buttons.
Why does marriage, she adds, so often a woman degrade?
Why is the wife so silly, who was ever so bright as a maid?
Why should a husband like to fallow her intellect,
And starve it on housekeeping cares that lower her self-respect?
But she is sure that mine is all that he ought to be,
Worthy of love and devotion, almost worthy of me.
Yet oh, the young love of girls! it is purer, truer, and better!
And so she concludes with a prayer for a long and an early letter.

This has set me a-thinking that, maybe, I ought to write
The things that my heart is full of, as the noon of heaven with light,
The thoughts that I had not before, which gave me a larger life,
And the bliss that never I knew till he called me his own little wife.
Not that I mean to keep a silly promise like that—
Winnie is clever and scheming; I know what she wants to be at.
Give her a word, good or bad, and she'd spin such a web from the hint,
And colour a meaningless phrase with so suspicious a tint,
That folk would begin to whisper, sure there was something amiss:
And then she would write me, bewailing the world and its wickedness.
Dearly she loves a mystery, dearly she loves to be thought
To know what she ought not to know, and to wit what none else ever wot:
For Winnie is clever and scheming, even when she looks like a fool;
She was not liked by the girls, and she was not happy at school,

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But I came to be fond of her, rather, by having to take her part,
When others were hard upon her, and said that she had not a heart;
Which is not true, I am sure, nor yet the tales that they told
Of wicked books she had read before she was twelve years old.
I have heard that, since she came home, she cultivates science, and writes,
And lectures over the country, most of the winter nights,
Having her hair cut short, and her finger-tips black with ink:—
But Winnie could never forget what is due to a lady, I think.
I am going to write in my book, but not for her eyes to see:
Ought I to hide it from him who keeps not a thought from me?
Oh, there is something in marriage, like the veil of the temple of old,
That screened the Holy of Holies with blue and purple and gold;
Something that makes a chamber where none but the one may come,
A sacredness too, and a silence, where joy that is deepest is dumb.
And it is in that secret chamber where chiefly my days are passed,
With a sense of something holy, and a shadow of something vast,
Till he comes, who alone is free to come and to go as he will,
Till he comes, and the brooding silence begins to pulse and thrill.
Oh come, for my heart is weary, waiting, my love, for thee!
I will lock my bliss from the world, but my love shall have ever the key.

March, 18—

When I remember the way we girls were wont to talk
Up in our rooms at night, or out on the daily walk,
It seems like an unreal echo, ever so far away
From the clear realm of nature, and light of the sun and the day.
Yet it sounded to us, at the time, like absolute reason and good,
As we chattered of woman's rights, and babbled in wrathful mood
Of Maries, thoughtful and wise, that often were met at school,
Changed into careful Marthas under a husband's rule,
Heedless of mental culture, losing their nimble wits,
To be housemaids dusting the rooms, or cookmaids turning the spits.
Winnie was great on that—I thought she was eloquent even,
As the small face kindled up with a light, as it were, from heaven,
Vowing the wife became a traitor to woman in this,
Betraying a noble cause for a petting word or a kiss;
Wronging her husband, too, by giving a lower aim
Of self-indulgence to life, which he knew not at home till she came.
What greater wrong could she do him than teach him only to care
For dainties, and kickshaws, and slippers, and naps in the easy chair?—
But Nature is more than Logic, and wedlock is more than we
Dreamed of then in our folly; and great is the change now in me:
Motherhood, if it should come, will work more wonders still,
For love it is all in all, and it does whatsoever it will;
Dusting, darning, drudging, nothing is great or small,
Nothing is mean or irksome, love will hallow it all;

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Sacrifice there is none if only I see him glad,
And all my pleasure is gone if he be heavy and sad.

April, 18—

Past is the honeymoon; and I think it was not so good
As the home-coming together, in quiet, thoughtful mood.
Then our life truly began: it was like a dream before—
A dream in a boat, while the pale moon glimmered from sea to shore,
And we went swaying about still under the stars, and heard
Dreamily plashing billow, and dreamily whispered word.
Why should we go a-jaunting when the heart just wants to repose
From agitation of bliss, and to know whereto it grows?
Nothing felt real to me then, or brought me the feeling of rest,
As we sped hither and thither, like birds flying far from the nest,
Hid in the bosk of the greenwood, where they are longing to be,
And cosy and warm, and sweet with the scent of the sheltering tree.
I did not like then to say it, because all his plans had been laid
To visit some beautiful spot which poets had famous made,
Or to look on some ancient Abbey that sweetly went down to decay,
Wrapt in the ivy green, amid trees in the lichen grey,
And all with me there beside him, he said, to brighten the view,
And bathe it for him in a light which for ever would make it new.
Therefore my voice was silent; but oh, how I wearied to see
The house-fire which love was to kindle, the home where my life was to be!
For all the pert maids at the inns where we hoped for a little to hide,
Scanning my bonnets and dresses, would smirk at the new-made bride;
Scarcely a railway porter but knew my trunks to be out
Fresh on a marriage trip, and led me, blushing, about,
While Claud was looking so handsome and self-possessed, like a king,
Proud and tender and ready, and seeing to everything.
It is not nice to be stared at by everyone that you meet,
As they smile and whisper together, and scan you from head to feet.
I knew not the rest of love till we sat in our little white room,
Close together, and watched the stars coming out of the gloom,
In the hush of a raptured moment, his strong arm clasping me round,
As on his bosom I leant to feel all the peace I had found;
And he said, “We will fold our wings now, for here I have made you a nest,
And lined it warm with the down of the love that warms my breast.”
Oh, he can say such things! And I cannot say them to him;
I am quietest when I am gladdest; but my heart was filled to the brim.
Just a moment before, and my trembling would not cease,
But now the shiver was stilled in a thrill of bliss and peace.

April, 18—

Our home is a bright little cottage, half-smothered in yellow rose,
Not yet blooming, however; a still river sullenly flows
Deep at the foot of a broomy brae, and the leaping trout
Ripple its gloom in the evening as gay flies flicker about.

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Nor is it all so sullen, for down in a farther reach
It leaps and sparkles and gleams o'er the stones of a pebbly beach,
Under the birch and the hazel, just coming to leaf, and there are
Blue-bell patches of sky, made bright with the primrose star.
Behind is a group of great fir-trees, five of them, red-armed firs,—
Druid sisters he calls them,—that moan when the night-wind stirs;
Last of a great pine forest that stubs the heath with its roots
For miles, till you come to a tarn where gulls and little round coots
Are dipping and diving all day in a quiet solitude;
There the bee haunts, and the air is blithe, and the lapwings brood.
I hear the curlew scream, and the grouse-cock crowing at dawn,
And yet when I stand at the door, where the cowslips laugh on the lawn—
It is only a patch of green turf, enough to pasture a lark—
I see the sleepy old town, and the spires of the Minster dark,
And catch a glimpse of the sea-waves white on the yellow sand,
Where the river leaps at the bar, and the coastguard houses stand.
We have a bright little garden down on a sunny slope,
Bordered with sea-pinks, and sweet with the songs and the blossoms of hope.
Oh, it is all too good for me; often I catch myself singing
In very lightness of heart, and I seem like the birds to be winging
Merry from room to room, as they flutter from bush to tree,
And each has her mate a-coming, as mine, too, is coming to me.
Am I wrong to be always so happy? This world is full of grief;
Yet there is laughter of sunshine, to see the crisp green on the leaf,
Daylight is ringing with song-birds, and brooklets are crooning by night;
And why should I make a shadow where God makes all so bright?
Earth may be wicked and weary, yet cannot I help being glad;
There is sunshine without and within me, and how should I mope or be sad?
God would not flood me with blessings, meaning me only to pine
Amid all the bounties and beauties He pours upon me and mine;
Therefore will I be grateful, and therefore will I rejoice;
My heart is singing within me; sing on, O heart and voice.

May, 18—

Winnie has writ me again—she offers a visit in June;
Some day she must come, I daresay; but that is an age too soon.
What could I do with her? I should be like one reading a book,
Lost in the story and passion, while she would be eager to look
Over my shoulder to find out what was absorbing me so,
And why, when my heart is so happy, the tears are so ready to flow;
And now she would hurry, and now would tarry my turning the leaf;
And I'd hate her in less than a week; and I know it would end in grief.
Alone! I must be alone, to read my romance, for the plot
Is only slowly unfolding; and oh, what a hero I've got!
Noble and true and brave, all that a hero should be;
So much better than I am; and great is his love to me;

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Yet not greater than mine is, save that his mind is more,
For oh I love him, I love, as a God I could almost adore.
That makes me tremble at times, for oh if an idol I make,
What if my idol were broken? Truly my heart it would break.
What, if heaven should be wroth at me shrining and sainting a man
Sinful and mortal as I? Yet God too I love, all I can;
My heart is truer to Him the more I am loved and caressed;
And surely He cannot be jealous of love He has bidden and blessed.

June, 18—

We have walks as the evenings lengthen; sometimes over the moor,
Many-tinted and shadowed; brisk is the air there and pure
Among the brown heath and the bracken that now from its snake-like bonds,
Under the sun's deft fingers, is slowly uncoiling its fronds;
Close-packed now, by and by they, overlapping, will hide
The flower of the slender orchis purpling close by their side.
Dry on the knolls is the whin-bush, massing its golden bloom;
The cotton-grass low in the marshes tosses its small white plume;
And from the hollows is wafted the scent of bog-myrtle or birch
Fragrant after the rain; but, best of all, is the search
Among the roots of the heather for stag-moss' antlers green
Branching over the earth, far-spreading, and rarely seen.
Here and there is a cottage, too, looking just like the heath,
Green on the roof with house-leek, brown with its turf-wall beneath.
Children play at the door, they are dirty and happy and fair,
Sunbrowned all of their faces, sun-bleached their lint-white hair;
The mother is milking the cow, the dog lies coiled in the sun,
The fowls for the roost are making and the labourer's day is done.
Sometimes we rest on a bank, and hear in the evening calm,
Just as the stars come out, the sough of their grateful psalm.

Often we go to the sea-marge, where the long sands give place
To a belt of dark red storm-beaten crags, which grimly face
The baffled billows that lie ever panting below at their feet,
Or gurgling in black-throated caves where still they mine and beat.
Perched on the cliff is a village and far in the cove below
The boats are beached on the shingle, waiting the tide to flow;
Hard-visaged, bunchy women are baiting the lines in hope,
Or carrying laden creels, slow, up the long, shelving slope,
Or spreading their fish on the rocks, or welcoming men from the sea,
As the lugger trips daintily in, and the flapping sail is free.

One thing strikes me about my husband's way with the folk,
Whether the moorland shepherds, or fishermen perched on the rock.
Freely we enter their homes, for he seems to be known to them all,
And knows who is there in the corner, and who in the bed in the wall,
And the idiot dreamily singing by the grandam racked with pain,
And the lad that went off to the sea, and has never come back again—

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All the home life of the people, their good and their evil hap.
So every door flies open just after a warning tap,
And everywhere he is met with a welcome glad and free;
The dogs come fawning upon him, the children get up on his knee,
Great, rough hands are held out to give him a hearty grip,
And the mother's face is shining as he kisses the baby's lip.
Of course they are happy to see me, too, for my husband's sake,
Only they daintily touch me, as fearful perchance I may break,
And, making ungainly curtseys, they have not a word to say;
But oh, I am proud to see him so loved in this lovingest way.

Sometimes I think, for myself, I would like to tidy the room,
To open the window a bit, and get rid of the smoke and the gloom,
To teach the children a lesson, or read a page from the Book
To the sick man tossed on his pillow, or the old man propped in his nook.
But he does not try, in the least, to do any good, and yet
Somehow they seemed to like him all the better for it.
He is just like one of themselves, and talks of the weather and crops,
The ewes and gimmers and lambs, or the luggers and nets and ropes,
The take of fish, or the beds of mussels they have for bait,
Or the old man's aching bones, or the teething baby's state,
Laughing and joking with all, or telling a story, perhaps,
To the children gaping around him, while grandfather nods and naps;
Yet somehow, all the time, he seems as if reading a book
Full of nature and humour, and leaves with a thoughtful look.

Once I hinted that I would gladly be doing some good
Among these neighbours of ours: and he said in his gentlest mood,
“Yet, I suppose it is right to do all the good that you can;
Only don't break up the peace of their homes, with a cut-and-dry plan
Of tracts and visits and lessons, and scolding the women for dirt,
And tramping on everyone's toes, and sitting on everyone's skirt.
For when you know them as I do, and all their sorrows and cares,
The brave hearts they keep through it all, their patience, their faith, and the prayers,
Self-forgetting, that thrill here loud on the stormy shore
For those on the stormy sea, they never may look on more,
Then you may feel like me, half-ashamed of the good you can do,
Compared with the good you are getting from lives so human and true.
But try it—you're better than I—only mind they have hearts like your own;
And hearts philanthropic, at times, have the trick of the old heart of stone.”

November, 18—

What is it ails me now? I hardly have written a line
For days and weeks and months in this private record of mine.
I seemed to have nothing to say, and I did not seem to care,
And the days have gone wearily by, though there was not a cloud in the air.

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I think that my love is more, yet life is little and low,
And surely a fulness of life from a fulness of love should grow,
For love is summer, when all should be a-blooming and singing;
Yet none of the old things now the old sweet bliss are bringing.
I go a-dreaming and weary, every day and all;
Something is aching within me, I fret at the simplest call
Of commonplace duty that once I went about, cheerful and gay,
Tripping and singing, light-hearted, all through the hours of the day.
Everything burdens me now; and I could cry at a kiss
From the dear lips that I love so: What is the meaning of this?
I am not unhappy; at least, I have nothing to make me: and yet
My gladness is broken and dashed, and comes by the mood and the fit:
I weep when I'm left alone; and when he comes home, there are tears
That mix with the smile of my greeting, and fill him with fond, loving fears.
I want to be cheerful and happy, I want to be busy and good,
Yet I louge through the day, doing nothing, and plain like the dove in the wood.
What can it be? And my ring, too, will slip to my finger-tip,
And it gives me a catch in the throat, and a pain, and a quivering lip:
I know it is silly, and yet I cannot get rid of the fear
That his love may grow loose as my ring, and be lost while I think it is here.

November, 18—

I wonder if every student sits brooding far into the night,
And hides from the wife of his bosom the thing he is fain to write.
Can it be right to conceal the work he is labouring at?
I want to sit up beside him, but he will not listen to that;
Yet rest I cannot; I lie there, sleepless, and feigning to sleep,
When, in the hush of the darkness, soft to my side he will creep,
Fearing to rouse me lying, broad awake, all through the hours,
Watching the moonbeams flitting, or hearing the patter of showers,
The grey owl screech to the bat, or the moan of the throbbing sea,
Or puzzling over the house-books, which will not come right with me.—
We are not rich, and, maybe, I do not keep house as I might,
Though I want to be thrifty, and debt is a thing that I hate outright;
Still there is waste, no doubt, and he has a right to complain,
And maids are so careless, and break things that cannot be mended again;
And will have their young men coming: and how can I say them nay,
When I recall how I longed to see him at evening grey?
I scrimp and save, and, at times, I am almost weary of life;
It would have been better for him had he married a managing wife.
Yet all my cares were as nothing it only my husband were right,
If he were not so silent by day, if he were not so dreamy at night,
Cared for things in the house as he cared for them once on a time,
Sat by my side in the evenings, and made my life sweet and sublime,
Did he not joke at my questions—a wife is not meant for sport,
Always put off with a jest; and jesting is not his forte.

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Yet oh he loves me, he loves; and I hate myself when I complain,
Only the hunger of love ever breeds dream-visions of pain.
What is he always writing? Sometimes I tremble to think,
What, if it be of Religion? what, if he be on the brink
Of falling away from the Faith, and the way which his fathers trod,
And, as the minister told us, out of the hand of God?
Rarely he goes to Church, though he tells me I ought to go,
When the kirk-bells on the Sabbath are chiming soft and low;
“You have your window,” he says, “for outlook on all the vast,
Dim, everlasting hills, and the shadows on earth they cast,—
The old church-window that shines with white-winged angel forms,
And martyred saints they are bearing from earth's most bitter storms;
And life would be dark to you, dear, lacking the light that it brings,
Even though the cobwebs dim the aureoles now, and the wings.
I have my outlook too, but not so pretty as yours
With dreams of the saintly souls, and the love that all endures;
Colder my light and harder, but clearer, at least, to me,
For cobwebbed angels somehow help not my vision to see.
But to the same Eternal, we look for the breaking day
Of an age that is surely coming, when shadows shall flee away.”
I am troubled at sayings like these, though I hardly know what they mean,
And I pray that he yet may see the truth which my heart has seen.
For oh he loves me, loves me, ever so tender and true!—
And yet if he loves not God, too, what shall my poor heart do?

December, 18—

Last night we went to Thorshaven; and the things that I heard and saw
Of the “work” now going on there have filled me with wonder and awe.
I had been told of their meetings, and how they rarely would cease
Till many were conscience-stricken, and many were filled with peace;
How the whole village was changed—its drunkards sober and calm,
Lips that were wont to blaspheme now thrilling the air with a psalm;
Boats were launched with a prayer, and the oars were timed to a hymn;
And when the lines were set, or the ropes and the sails were trim,
Someone took up the tale of the fishers on Galilee,
And told how the Lord drew nigh to them walking over the sea.
These were the marvels I heard, and oh my heart longed to be there
Where the good Spirit was working, and grace was like dew in the air
Dropping on thirsty grass, and making it live anew.
Maybe my husband, beholding, would see that the Gospel was true;
Maybe his soul would be touched; and maybe my own dull faith
Would be refreshed and revived, for it seemed at the point of death.
The night was starry and cold, but just a night for a walk,
Brisk, in the tingling air; and at first I was fain to talk,
His coming had made me so glad then, only my thoughts would not rest,
Flitting about like the swallows that twitter around their nest,

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And then skim away to the river, and dip where the shadows lie
Clear in the glassy calm, which they flick with their wings as they fly;
So would I chatter a little; and by and by thought was away
To the village perched on the cliff, and the people there gathered to pray,
So that in silence at length, arm in arm, swiftly we sped
On by the beetling crags, till we came to a low rude shed,
Roofed with the upturned hull of a wreck that had drifted ashore,
Battered by surf on the shingle there for a month and more;
Gallantly once she had ridden the waves, and the tempest braved,
And true hearts then had been lost in her; now in her wreck they were saved.
Crowds were thronging about it; there was a crowd inside
Singing a hymn that blended well with the wash of the tide—
A wail of sorrow for sin, that swelled to a yearning hope;
Then I heard some one praying, but caught not the words nor the scope,
For many were sobbing aloud; we squeezed a little way in,
Under a guttering candle stuck in a sconce of tin,
The flame blown about by the wind, and shedding uncertain light
Down on rough weather-beat faces. Clear and cold was the night;
Outside, the passionless moon and the quiet stars; but here,
Oh what a tempest of trouble and sorrow, and anguish and fear!
Oh what a peace, at last, that folded its wings on a calm
Throng of spirits entranced, and singing a grateful psalm!
He was a keen-eyed, wiry, beetle-browed man who spoke,
The pale-faced smith of our village; who pleaded loud with the folk,
His voice half saying, half singing the faithful message he bore,
Weirdly and hoarse, like the waves that were crashing down on the shore.
It was not aught that he said—he was just a plain, blunt man,
Earnest, I thought, and acquainted with God and the wonderful Plan
Of saving by surety of Him who hung for our sins on the cross,
And tasted death for our guilt, that we might have gain in His loss—
A plain, blunt man, not a scholar; sometimes his sayings were odd,
Nor could I help a smile though he spake of the great thoughts of God;
But of the fisher-folk no one smiled, let him say what he would;
It was not a season for laughter, nor were they at all in the mood.
“The strength of sin is the law,” he said; “it is like the tree
Serpents take for a purchase in lands where the serpents be;
Clean and straight is its trunk, as the law too is right in its scope,
Slippery the coils and the folds round its bark that are twined like a rope,
Crushing each bone of its victim, and grinding the life out, within;
So is the purchase of Law, for breaking the soul by its sin:
Oh how feeble and helpless we are in its terrible grip!
For the Law cannot be broken, and these knots never will slip!
Coming along the street, I saw the old serpent to-night,
Plainly as eyes could behold him—and oh 'twas a sorrowful sight!—

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Coiling round old men and children, as in a statue I know,
Carved with his cunningest art by a wise Greek ages ago,
But there to save His children the Father was wrestling grim,
Here, as the serpent gripped them, they were all worshipping Him.
Yes, I have seen the old serpent, the devil, the father of lies;
And he had not a hoof or a horn, or a tail to whisk at the flies;
Old men were buying his curses, children were taking his fire
Home to their mothers in bottles, as briskly as hell could desire.
Busy he is at Thorshaven, sails in your luggers with you,
Never a boat goes to sea but the devil is one of the crew;
You carry him too in your creels, and he is defiling your way,
With swearing and lying and cheating, and breaking the Sabbath day,
And sins that I will not speak of, sins that all of you know.—
But oh the blood of the Lamb, it will wash you whiter than snow.”
Always he came back to that, the blood that was shed for sin,
Cleansing our way on the earth, and purging the soul within;
He showed to me all my guilt, he showed me the love of God
Until I wept at the plague of my heart, and the way I had trod,
And the pity that sought me out, and the grace that died for me;
And all were sobbing and swaying about like the waves of the sea.
Then one dropped on the floor, and writhed in a foaming fit;
“Glory to God,” cried the preacher, “He'll snaffle the fiend with his bit;
Let her alone; while the devil is wrestling with her we will pray;
Peace will come like the stars, and light as the dawn of the day.”
Then another was smitten, and lay there with never a breath
In her thin nostril, it seemed, and pallid and cold as death;
I thought she was gone, till at length a smile of serenest grace
Broke on her lips, and beamed all over her lovely face.
She was the first to find Peace, and she said, “I have seen my love;
He's not in the depths of the ocean, but high in the heavens above;
His head is not twined round with tangles, but wreathed with a wreath of palm,
And lo! in his hand is a harp, and loud in his mouth is a psalm.”
(Her lover was drowned last spring, and his body had never been found,
Till she saw him by faith, in her trance, robed in white raiment, and crowned.)
Thus it went on for hours, at first with the women, but then,
Ere long, the power and the wonder smote the strong hearts of the men;
Awed and amazed I stood, unable to stir from the place,
Sometimes thinking my heart might be touched by its marvellous grace,
Sometimes feeling my flesh creep at an unearthly voice,
Sometimes thrilling to hear their songs who for joy did rejoice.
At length there fell a great calm, and the lights were glimmering dim,
And the moon was low in the heaven, when we sang the parting hymn.

On the way homeward I said, “Surely the Lord was there”;
And he, “No doubt, and up in yon star too, and everywhere;

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Hard to say where He is not. Wonderful? Yes, I admit;
Hard to say what is not wonderful, when you look closely at it;
Why, I have wondered for hours at a flower, or a lichened stone,
Or star-moss red on the heath, or a star-fish dry as a bone
On the grey shore, till the tide-wave brought back the pulses of life.
But does not yon queer evangelist tell a good story, dear wife?
Done them some good, you think? Ah! well, we will hope so at least;
God is a chemist who works with stuff that would sicken a priest.
I think it did good to that girl whose lover was drowned at sea,
Gave her some comfort she needed; but it would not do good to me!”
Thus I come home heavy-hearted; he always is ready to mock,
Turning from anything serious, still with a good-humoured joke.

December, 18—

Now I know why he sits so late and alone in his room,
And why there comes over his face that shadow I took for gloom,
Which falls like a sudden haze all over the summer sky,
And makes him look stony and cold, with a dream-like fixèd eye,
Seeing not what we see, for the outer vision is dim,
As he looks on a world unseen, and hears it singing to him.
Often it filled me with fear, for I thought he was wroth with me;
But he is not angry at all—only trying, he says, to see
Thoughts that are hard to get at, and hardly worth getting when done;
But the fool's habit of dreaming he learnt when living alone;
I must not fancy he sulks; he was only a bit of a poet,
Dram-drinking verses in secret, and hoping that no one would know it.
So then he brought me some poems, writ for our marriage-day,
“Orange-blossoms” he calls them, “A wreath for a wedding gay.”
I do not know that I care for poems—though hymns are sweet—
I do not want to be talked of, or sung some day in the street,
And at the time I was plagued with these horrible tradesmen's books,
And maybe my words were dry, and listless also my looks.
They are nice enough verses, I fancy —but oh those dreadful bills!
And he just laughs at my trouble, and calls it the care that kills—
A faithless terror of bakers and butchers and Philistines,
Unworthy a true believer in orthodox, sound divines.
Well, they are pretty verses, and so I will write them here—
But how can he pen such trifles with that shadow of debt so near?

ORANGE BLOSSOMS

BUDDING

It was the gloaming of the day,
And first pale glimmer of the moon,
The fishing-boats were in the bay,
And to and fro they seemed to sway,
Rhythmic, to a mystic tune,
In the pale glimmer of the moon.

We sat us on a thymy bank,
Where sea-pink and the wild-rose grew,
And blue campanulas were rank,
And wild geranium blossoms drank

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Red sunsets that enriched their hue,
And pansies twinkled, gold and blue.

And fronting us the broad sea-sand
Spread, ribbed and freckled, to the spray
Crisp-curving to the curving land,
And plashing on the pebbly strand;
Beyond, the vague, vast waters lay
Lazily heaving in the bay.

Three children played along the beach
With laughter, as the small waves broke;
I heard their laughter and their speech
Rippling along the sandy beach,
Though fear and trouble in me woke
Like the waves surging as they broke.

I told my love, and for a space
She gazed out far away from me.
O throbbing heart, how still the place!
Was that a smile that lit her face?
Or but the moon drawn from the sea
To kiss the lips that can bless me?

I told the love you knew before;
You said, I did not need to tell,
And that you would not answer more,
For that I also knew before
The secret of your heart so well
It did not need that you should tell.

BLOOMING

O bleak November morning chill,
When trees are bare, and haws are ripe!
Hopping upon my window sill
I heard the cheery redbreast pipe;
And through the crackling twigs there ran
A twitter of birds since day began.

With great frost-ferns the panes were white,
The fields were white with dust-like snow,
The trees, all crystalled overnight,
In white robes made a ghostly show,
And where the fountain used to drip
The ice had clutched it in its grip.

Chanticleer at barn-door crew,
Geese were gobbling 'mong the stubble,
My dog in circles round me flew,
Barking loud at its shadow-double,
And ploughed the crisp frost with his nose
Right where the cluttering partridge rose.

Crowding close, the dainty sheep
Nibbled by the bridled brook,
The hare pricked up her ears to leap
Behind the ricks to a quiet nook,
Knee-deep in straw the black ox lowed,
His every breath like a steaming cloud.

Jenny, looking tossed and tumbled,
Stept out with her milking-pails;
Yawning Robin crept and grumbled,
Blowing on his finger-nails,
Tingling fingers, purple-tipped,
Sharply by the frost-wind nipped.

But I laughed at ice and snow,
Shouting to the shrill north wind;
She is mine, I said, and no
Winter in the world I find;
Love, my life is filled with thee,
And all is summer now with me.

BURSTING

O pathway through the meadow green,
And thou, grey stile, beneath the thorn,
And murmurous river softly borne
In dimpling ripplets hardly seen,

Sweet path by happy footsteps worn,
If all our visions linger there,
The poet now shall find thine air,
More fancy-full than early morn.

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We wandered in a dreamland fair,
Beside the huge, coiled willow trees,
Discoursing of a life to please
The Man who took our grief and care.

Not ours the dull, ignoble ease
Of cushioned seats, or routs and balls,
Brain-dulling dinners, civil calls,
And poor respectabilities;

Not ours to care for marble halls;
A modest home, and frugal fare,
With love for cobwebbed wines and rare,
And peace for pictures on the walls—

For more than these we would not care:
But generous culture should be ours,
And pious use of all our powers,
And knowledge, as the primal pair

Knew all the beasts and birds and flowers;
And with our best we'd serve the Best,
And in His goodness find our rest,
Untroubled through the years and hours.

April, 18—

These were the first of the poems he read to me up in my room;
By and by others came, soon, like the coming of spring with its bloom;
And we are rich now and happy, and everything goes quite smooth;
All the newspapers praise him, but do not say half of the truth:
I keep them all in a book, and read them often alone;
They make me angry at times, when they speak in a critical tone,
But I am happy and proud, for now I am nobody's debtor,
Paying odd things with a verse which he writes me as fast as a letter.
He laughs at me, vowing that poets should never pay bills, but draw
At large on the shopkeeping world, exempt from all action at law;
Honouring bakers and butchers enough by eating their things;
For angels pay not a jot for repairing the plumes of their wings,
And bees are not charged by the flowers they visit for tapping the honey—
I am not quite sure what he means, but I know he is loose about money.

May, 18—

Sick! I am sure death is coming: I never have felt like this;
Such giddy sinkings and swimmings, and fainting away into bliss!
Life in the swooning of life, as if the soul fluttered within,
Panting, exhausted, in hope to escape from the body of sin!
Heart, O my heart so unquiet, why wilt thou not be at rest?
Clinging to this life of trouble, shrinking from life of the blest!
Better to be with Jesus! yet husband and home too are dear;
And oh if my love be a sin, I cannot help sinning, I fear.
All other idols are broken, this one I never can break.
Could I be shout out of heaven because of the heaven that I make
Out of my true love to him, and out of his great love to me,
Arching as deep blue sky still over a deep blue sea?

If this be death, as I take it, one thing fain would I do,
Ere I go hence to the world where all things are made new:
Again with my husband I'd walk, on the quiet Sabbath day,
When bells from the old kirk chiming call Christian souls to pray,

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Down by the green footpath, and the sweet-briar hedge that leads
Straight to the house of the Lord through the clover-scented meads;
Under the high-arched roof there meekly to sit by his side,
In love to remember the Love that bled for us once and died.
Oh it were good to think, if I should be taken from him,
That once we sat there together, where falls the light chastened and dim
Through the tall thin-shafted windows, on hallowed bread and wine,
And vows that we vowed together, of life for the love divine.
I cannot die till we do it: God would not call me hence,
A broken life and unfinished, with a fruitless influence.

June, 18—

Ah me! we plot and plan, but the great God orders all;
And that is not good to Him, which good we are fain to call.
Oh how I longed and hoped for the high communion day!
Oh how my heart leaped up when he did not say me nay!
Oh how I prayed, and was glad and tremulous through the Fast!
Oh how happy I was, with my hand on his arm, at last,
As gravely we paced together, down by the broomy brae,
Along by the sweet-briar hedge, and the clover-scented way,
All the maids robed in white, and the men in their sober black,
Sweet birds a-singing, and sweet bells ringing; and Paradise back!
Better I never had spoken; better he had not gone!
Better a yearning sorrow than a heart that is turned to stone!
What had come over our pastor, he so gentle and mild,
Leading his flock to still waters as father leadeth his child,
That day of all days, to preach terrors of wrath and hell,
Darkening God's house with the smoke of those in the pit that dwell?
Oh it was dreadful to listen! The very Psalms that he chose
Rung in the ear like curses hurled at the heads of foes;
The prayers were dry and dewless, and hard; and my heart grew sick,
To glance at my husband's face with its curious laughing trick:
I knew, in that furtive glance, that my hope was worse than lost,
And that, in my effort to save, I had perilled and harmed him most.
Pained there we sat in our pews, the victims of one man's mood,
And vainly tried to be patient; and vainly tried to be good;
E'en the sweet symbols of sorrow and love of the Crucified
Failed to lighten the gloom, for he took not his place by my side.
Never I sat at the Table so barren of grace as then,
Joyless and undevout, and wroth at the thoughts of men.
I had brought to the living water a thirsting soul with care,
And there was no living water, but a broken cistern there.

When we came home he sat alone in his room for a while;
But all that night he was gentle; and said, at last, with a smile,
“You want to know what I think of our minister's work to-day;
But shrink to ask me outright, for the wild words you fear I may say.

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Why should you dread me, Hilda? You wished to do me some good;
So did the parson, no doubt, if he only had understood
The right way of going about it. He made a mistake; that is all;
Hell is the weak point, you see, and a cleverer general
Were fain to conceal the spot where the foe might thrust him sore;
But he is honest, and plays his tune by the regular score.
You are vexed that I happened to hear only that loud devil's chorus—
Very well done by the way—which brought all the horror before us,
When you had hoped to have only the lyric of love and endurance,
Swelling out high, at the close, to the joy and the hope and assurance.
But it is all of a piece, love, whether you like it or no,
All of it close-knit together; branched, but the branches grow
Out of the same deep root. I heard but the part of a whole;
I know that the chorus needed the lyric to melt the soul,
The lyric implies, too, the chorus; whichever you chance to hear,
Always the other is present to fill the heart or the ear.
I am not an unbeliever, love; only I cannot wink
At things I had rather not see, and thoughts I had rather not think;
Does it not seem, too, an odd way of quickening love and faith,
Picturing wrath that refuses e'en the grim mercy of death?
The higher my vision of God, the more I can trust and pray;
The better I seem to know Him, the broader appears the way;
God and charity grow together; and I cannot see
Any dark moment of Time when Hope must cease to be.
But will you hear what I thought as that sermon thundered on,
With lurid flashes of horror, and God's heart turned to stone?

So then he read to me this—“Other-world ballad” he calls it—
Of the meek soul that for love heeds not what sorrow befalls it,
Heeds not the bliss and the glory, but longs for them that are lying
Dim in the outer darkness, tossed in the anguish undying.
What can I think of it? what? who will guide me aright—
Me, a weak woman—to walk in the straight pathway of Light?
Sometimes it rings in my ear as deadly as error could be;
Sometimes I feel in my heart it is true as the gospel to me,
A thing I would do, myself, just then when my faith is most,
As I remember the love that suffered to save the lost.
But through the years and the ages, the Church, unchanging, cries,
Sad are the foolish virgins, and glad for ever the wise.
Dare I trust my heart's voice against the voice of the whole?
Yet should the roar of the crowd ever drown the true voice of the soul?
Oh, if clear it were only!

THE SELF-EXILED

There came a soul to the gate of Heaven
Gliding slow—
A soul that was ransomed and forgiven,
And white as snow:
And the angels all were silent.

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A mystic light beamed from the face
Of the radiant maid:
But also there lay on its tender grace
A mystic shade:
And the angels all were silent.

As sunlit clouds by a zephyr borne
Seem not to stir,
So to the golden gates of morn
They carried her:
And the angels all were silent.

“Now I'll open the gate, and let her in,
And fling it wide,
For she hath been cleansed from stain of sin,”
St. Peter cried:
And the angels all were silent

“Though I am cleansed from stain of sin,”
She answered low,
“I came not hither to enter in,
Nor may I go”:
And the angels all were silent.

“I come,” she said, “to the pearly door,
To see the Throne
Where sits the Lamb on the Sapphire Floor,
With God alone”:
And the angels all were silent.

“I come to hear the new song they sing
To Him that died,
And note where the healing waters spring
From His piercèd side”:
And the angels all were silent.

“But I may not enter there,” she said,
“For I must go
Across the gulf where the guilty dead
Lie in their woe”:
And the angels all were silent.

“If I enter heaven I may not pass
To where they be,
Though the wail of their bitter pain, alas!
Tormenteth me”:
And the angels all were silent.

“If I enter heaven I may not speak
My soul's desire
For them that are lying distraught and weak
In flaming fire”:
And the angels all were silent.

“I had a brother, and also another
Whom I loved well;
What if, in anguish, they curse each other
In depths of hell?”
And the angels all were silent.

“How could I touch the golden harps,
When all my praise
Would be so wrought with grief-full warps
Of their sad days?”
And the angels all were silent.

“How love the loved who are sorrowing,
And yet be glad?
How sing the songs ye are fain to sing,
While I am sad?”
And the angels all were silent.

“Oh clear as glass is the golden street
Of the city fair,
And the tree of life it maketh sweet
The lightsome air”:
And the angels all were silent.

“And the white-robed saints with their crowns and palms
Are good to see,
And oh so grand are the sounding psalms!
But not for me”:
And the angels all were silent.

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“I come where there is no night,” she said,
“To go away,
And help, if I yet may help, the dead
That have no day.”
And the angels all were silent.

St. Peter he turned the keys about,
And answered grim:
“Can you love the Lord, and abide without,
Afar from Him?”
And the angels all were silent.

“Can you love the Lord who died for you,
And leave the place
Where His glory is all disclosed to view,
And tender grace?”
And the angels all were silent.

“They go not out who come in here;
It were not meet:
Nothing they lack, for He is here,
And bliss complete.”
And the angels all were silent.

“Should I be nearer Christ,” she said,
“By pitying less
The sinful living, or woeful dead
In their helplessness?”
And the angels all were silent.

“Should I be like Christ were I
To love no more
The loved, who in their anguish lie
Outside the door?”
And the angels all were silent.

“Did He not hang on the cursèd tree,
And bear its shame,
And clasp to His heart, for love of me,
My guilt and blame?”
And the angels all were silent.

“Should I be liker, nearer Him,
Forgetting this,
Singing all day with the Seraphim,
In selfish bliss?”
And the angels all were silent.

The Lord Himself stood by the gate,
And heard her speak
Those tender words compassionate,
Gentle and meek:
And the angels all were silent.

Now, pity is the touch of God
In human hearts,
And from that way He ever trod
He ne'er departs:
And the angels all were silent.

And he said, “Now will I go with you,
Dear child of love,
I am weary of all this glory, too,
In heaven above”:
And the angels all were silent.

“We will go seek and save the lost,
If they will hear,
They who are worst but need me most,
And all are dear”:
And the angels all were silent.

July, 18—

O my baby, my baby! O sweet sunbeam of bliss!
Brightening my earth for a moment as with a heaven-sealing kiss:
Oh the sweet smile on his lips! it haunts me by night and day!
All his brief life was a smile that slowly faded away,
As if he just looked in on us here, on his heavenward road,
And saw that we were not meet to rear up the child of God.

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Sometimes I try to think, oh, what a joy to have given
Child of mine to the host that serve and praise in heaven!
He did not need to be christened, his robes were clean and white,
Touching the earth but a moment, he passed to the realm of light.
Sometimes I shudder to think of the earth and the little grave
Under the great church tower where the budding poplars wave.
O my baby, my baby! whether in heaven or there,
Why am I here, and my baby left with no mother's care?
I thought I was dying at one time—would I were dying to-day;
O my baby, how could the Father take thee away?

August, 18—

Winnie has come: my husband thought it might cheer me a bit,
Having an old friend near me, clever and sparkling with wit,
Sharing old memories with me, full of the gossip of town—
The last new book or picture, or fashion of bonnet or gown.
And she was nice, at first, with her chatter about the old times,
When we were schoolmates, and sauntered under the oaks and limes,
And heard the hum of the bees, and the hum of our future in them,
Or watched the swift, brown squirrels climbing the grey beech-stem;
Bright little pictures she cut me out of the old school-world—
All about how we were dressed, and drilled, and scolded, and curled,
And lectured; and then she knows where all the girls have gone—
This with her husband to India, that to New Zealand alone,
Trusting to pick up a husband somewhere away in the bush,
Or, maybe, to set up a school, or to open a shop at a push.
May Grant, the wildest of us, has married a Low Church vicar,
Who holds by the orthodox faith, and port as the orthodox liquor;
While Helen, her sister, is all for chasubles, roods, and stoles,
Liftings and bowings, and Catholic manner of saving souls;
Elphie Deering has sold herself to a widower,
And drives in her carriage past his son who once courted her;
Others are strumming pianos, or working in Berlin wools
Pictures of foolish youths for catching the youthful fools;
Lizzie Morrit is dead—she was jilted by a dragoon,
When all her fortune appeared to be railway shares in the moon.
Winnie is clever, but sharp and sarcastic; and lays herself out
To please the men by her wit, which she scatters like sparks about;
No matter who may smart, if only herself may shine
With her spirits unflagging, that sparkle and gleam like wine.
I do not quite like her way with my husband; but all the same
I laugh, and she does me good, and I really am glad that she came.

September, 18—

Surely Winnie is changed; we ne'er had been friends together,
Had she always been ready to sting like a wasp in October weather.
I think there is hardly a name she has not some story about—
Of all that we knew long ago—a story suggesting a doubt.

177

Each face that I used to remember as beaming with kindly light,
Is smirched with something or other, and no one escapes her spite.
Sneering with scornful laughter, turn wherever she may,
All the glory is dimmed of all that come in her way;
She creeps on the noblest natures stealthily as a cat,
Now with a bite of venom, and now with a wanton pat,
Leaving them not till crushed. And one thing I cannot abide,
The way that she flatters my husband even when I am beside,
Now flopping down on her knees, and staring up in his face,
Clasping her hands, and feigning an ecstasy quite out of place;
Pumping up tears at his pathos, or sighing with heaving breast,
Or giggling and clapping her hands when his humour is wickedest.
He is weak enough to believe her, which makes me colder in praise,
And I care for poetry less than I ever did all my days.
She flatters him daily with words that are silky and soft and sleek,
And no true wife can be pleased when seeing her husband weak.

'Tis growing quite dreadful to hear her now and then, when she speaks
Jauntily of a Faith that needs no God, nor seeks
To trace His work on the earth, or follow His way on high,
Noting His glorious footprints clear in the starry sky;
For Nature has in herself the reason for all that is,
And God is an unscientific, needless hypothesis,
Like witches, ghosts, and miracles—dreams of the slumbrous night
Which the great dawn of reason has driven away with its light!

Thereto my husband made answer—and oh I was proud and glad;
“Look you, Miss Winnie,” he said, “it's your method of science that's bad;
Good for its own end, of course; but here it is clearly at fault;
God is not found by the tests that detect you an acid or salt.
While you search only for secrets that process of science sets free,
Nothing you'll find in the world, but matter to handle or see.
Here is a book I am reading now; what can your method find there?
Boil it, or burn it, dissect it, let microscope scan it with care;
What does it show you but paper and ink and leather and thread,
All made of chemical simples that, no doubt, you have in your head?
But where is the thought, which is all the end and use of the book,
And which flows on through its pages clear to my mind as a brook,
Rippling and singing sweet music to him that hath ears to hear?
Have you an acid will test it? a glass that will make it all clear?
Or scalpel to cut it? And yet paper and leather and ink
All are but trash, if I find not the thought which the writer can think.
What, now, if Spirit and God are the thought which is written out plain
On the great page of the world, and your method of seeking is vain?”

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October, 18—

I'll not bear this any longer. I know that his heart is mine;
But in my house no girl shall make my life sicken and pine.
When dead—which may soon be— they may do what they list; I shall be
With my sweet baby, who now smiles out of the darkness on me;
My baby, whose soft little hands pull steadily at my heart,
To think of the better land, and cleave to the better part.
But this is my home while I live, and none shall bring trouble to it;
And he is my own while I live, and she, with her saucy wit,
Shall not come between him and me. He cares not for her in the least;
If she respected herself she might see that the west and the east
Are not more sundered than he from a woman who stings and pricks;
He laughs at her sallies of wit, but he sees through all of her tricks.
I know what is due to a wife; she thinks me a poor, silly fool,
But I can be dignified too, and I don't mean to sit down and pule.
Only last evening my ring slipped from my finger, and ran
Under her chair—my finger is thin and wasted and wan—
And picking it up, she put it, before my eyes, on her own,
Bidding him look how it fitted her, tight to the joint and the bone,
Just as if meant for her hand. And this was my marriage ring!
How can she sit by my fire, and smile in my face and sting?
Oh it is dreadful, a woman who has innuendoes and arts,
And looks so simple and sweet, while she is breaking hearts.
Yet I heed not her sneering; but oh to be once more alone,
To lay my head on his shoulder, and thrill at the old true tone
Of love that cherished me once, ever petting his fond little wife,
And, making a nest for me, rounded off all the angles of life.
Not that I care for petting—I'm not of the March-blossom kind,
Best in its velvet-sheath wrapt up from the blustering wind;
Rough weather I could bear, if only his heart were true
Unto the love he once bore me, and unto the God he once knew.

That is what troubles me most. The time was I prayed him to read
Daily the Book where my soul found help in my sorest need,
Light when my day was dark, and strength to my fainting will,
Comfort in time of trouble, and healing from every ill.
Now there is nothing dread so much as a text from him,
It is as if all the old stars of heaven were changed and dim,
Were not in their old places, and had not the same clear sense,
Nor dropt on my spirit the dews which gave it a gladness intense.
Changed is the meaning of all, though he keeps to the words and names;
They are new pictures that look now out of the antique frames;
They are new words that he sings now to the old tunes I know;
And strange is the taste of the streams now that in the old channels flow.
“Lo! as the rod of Aaron,” he says, “to minds perplexed
The critical art brings water e'en out of the flintiest text,

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Clears a way through the desert, and gives to us angels' bread,
And quickens anew to life the faith that was well-nigh dead.”
But when I'm fain to learn the faith he is fain to boast,
Oh but it seems like another God speaking to men not lost;
No more the gate is strait, nor heaven is hard to win,
No more the world is fallen, nor death the wages of sin—
No more is there a curse now crucified on the tree—
No more any Redeemer, nor ransom paid for me.
Nothing is as it used to be; nothing is what it seems;
Nothing says what it used to say; and the old Faiths are all dreams;
Blindly the saints read the Scriptures, and like dotards obeyed them—
They've taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid Him
Now when I say this to him, he laughs in his good-humoured way,
Putting me off with a jest, as one with a child might play,
Which is not fair to his wife, however silly I be,
And I am no fool, although I be not so clever as he.
But Winnie, seeing me vexed thus, silently smiles where she sits,
Turning her eyebrows up, and sharpening her scornful wits,
Adding perhaps, by and by, “Ye buried your Lord in a creed,
Dark as the Golgotha tomb, and there He lay dead, indeed;
Should you complain that He is not there for you still to embalm
With unguents and spices, the while ye praise your dead Christ in a psalm?
If there's a chance for your gospel to live, which I very much doubt,
It is in this new resurrection the critics would fain bring about,
Laying aside the grave-clothes,—dogma, miracle, myth,
All the dust that the ages have covered His glory with,—
That we may look on the simple man as He lived and died,
Loved and loving and worshipped, and hated and crucified.”
So does she cap his wild words with others more wild, and a sneer
Hardens her voice as she speaks, and grates on my heart while I hear.

November, 18—

Winnie has left us at length. I had some trouble about it;
He laughed at her flattery, vowing he hardly could live now without it,
Called her a nice little goose, his Caberfae, with the head,
Brown, of a startled deer just raised from its ferny bed;
And not a thing would he do, and never a word would he say;
It was no business of his; the girl might go or stay;
He would have nothing to do with it; women had ways of their own,
No man could venture on trying, of letting their wishes be known.
He trusted I did not think his heretic heart was smit
By a girl, because her tongue had a trick of heretical wit;
Sure, he was sound in heart, whatever his head might be;
And, if not very devout, he was devoted to me;
And held to the saying of Paul as the strong hope of his life,
That maybe the faithless husband was saved by the faith of his wife.

180

That is the way that he speaks now, always with some poor jest,
Leaving a text in the mouth with a strange and a bitter taste.
So he left me that morning. Oh, how my heart beat wild!
As I went into my room, and prayed to be kept then meek and mild,
Speaking the truth in love; and I said to myself a psalm
That nerved my soul to be patient, and dignified too and calm.
Hardly I know what followed. I meant to be firm, but kind,
And for her own sake tell her the thing that was in my mind;
But on the hint of it only, Winnie broke out in wrath,
Scornful, vowing that I had all along darkened her path,
Made her life fruitless, and that she laughed at my pious advice;
I was but a watery saint, and lapt in a fool's Paradise;
And she could shatter my baby-bliss, if she cared to do it.
Oh how she pitied my husband! mated, and now, too, he knew it,
Wived by mistake, with one who was wife of his weakness only,
Hardly a housekeeper even, and leaving his intellect lonely,
Having no part in his genius, meeting no play of his wit,
Standing outside of his true life, only a drag upon it!
Vain and weak as he was, had he met but a woman of mind
He yet might have run in the race, but now he is left far behind.
Thus she broke out in her wrath, and packing her boxes the while,
Stole a look as she stabbed me, hiding a venomous smile,
Furtive; but I was heedless of all that she said about me,
Till the slighting of him made me wroth, as a wife should be.
Pity I lost my temper; but, all the same, truly I would
Lose it to-morrow again if they say of him aught but good.
Altogether it was a weary and heartless day,
But there is light towards evening, and peace, too, for she is away.