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223

EARLY POEMS:

MEDITATIVE OR DEVOTIONAL.

224

Dedication. TO THE MEMORY OF SOUTHWELL AND CRASHAN.
225

ODE TO JERUSALEM.

I

Jerusalem, Jerusalem!
If any love thee not, on them
May all thy judgments fall;
For every hope that crowns our earth,
All birth-gifts of her heavenly birth
To thee she owes them all!

II

Deep was thy guilt, and deep thy woe;
The brand of Cain upon thy brow
Each shore has felt thy tread:
No Altar now is thine; no Priest;
Upon thy hearth no paschal feast:
The paschal moon is dead.

III

When from their height the Nations fall
The kind grave o'er them strews her pall;
They die as mortals die:
But He who looked thee in the face
Stamped there that look no years erase
His own on Calvary.

IV

Awe-struck on thee men gaze, and yet
Confess thy greatness, own our debt
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And trembling still revere
The Royal Family of Man
Supporting thus its blight and ban
With constancy austere.

V

Those Sciences by us so prized
The sternness of thy strength despised,
Devices light and vain
Of men who lack the might to live
In that repose contemplative
Which Asian souls maintain.

VI

By thee the Book of Life was writ;
And, wander where it may, with it
Thy soul abroad is sent:
Wherever towers a Christian Church
Palace of Earth, Heaven's sacred Porch
It is thy monument.

VII

Thy minstrel songs, like sounds wind-borne
From harps on Babel boughs forlorn
O'er every clime have swept;
And Christian mothers yet grow pale
With echoes faint of Rachel's wail;
Our maids with Ruth have wept.

VIII

Thou bind'st the Present with the Past
The prime of ages with the last;
The golden chain art thou
Whereon alone all fates are hung
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Of nations springing, or upsprung
Earthward once more to bow.

IX

Across the World's tumultuous gate
Thou flingest thy shadow's giant weight;
The mightiest birth of Time
For all her pangs she may not bear
Until her feast she bids thee share
And mount her throne sublime.

X

Far other gaze than that he pours
On empires round thee sunk, and shores
That once in victory shone,
Far other gaze and paler frown
The great Saturnian star bends down
On cedared Lebanon.

XI

He knows that thou, obscured and dim
Thus wrestling all night long with him
Shall victor rise at last:
Destined thy mystic towers to rear
More high than his declining sphere
When, downward on the blast

XII

God's mightiest Angel leaps and stands,
A Shape o'er-shadowing seas and lands;
And swears by Him who swore
A faithful oath and kind to Man
Ere worlds were shaped or years began,
That ‘Time shall be no more.’
228

PERSECUTION.

AN ODE.

I

There was silence in the heavens
When the Son of Man was led
From the Garden to the Judgment;
Sudden silence, strange, and dread!
All along the empyreal coasts
On their knees the immortal hosts
Watched with sad and wondering eyes
That tremendous sacrifice.

II

There was silence in the heavens
When the priest his garment tore;
Silence when that Twain accursed
Their false witness faintly bore.
Silence—though a tremor crept
O'er their ranks—the Angels kept
While that Judge, dismayed though proud,
Washed his hands before the crowd.

III

But when Christ His cross was bearing,
Fainting oft, by slow degrees,
Then went forth the angelic thunder
Of legions rising from their knees.
Each bright Spirit grasped a brand;
And lightning flashed from band to band:
An instant more had launched them forth
Avenging terrors to the earth.
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IV

Then from God there fell a glory
Round and o'er that multitude;
And by every fervent angel
With hushing hand another stood:
Another, never seen before,
Stood one moment and no more!
—Peace, brethren, peace! to us is given
Suffering; vengeance is for Heaven.

THE MARTYRDOM.

ANGELS.
Bearing lilies in our bosom
Blessed Agnes, we have flown,
Missioned from the Heaven of Heavens
Unto thee and thee alone:
We are coming, we are flying,
To behold thy happy dying.

AGNES.
Bearing lilies far before you,
Whose fresh odours backward blown
Light those smiles upon your faces
Mingling sweet breath with your own
Ye are coming, smoothly, slowly,
To the lowliest of the lowly.

ANGELS.
Unto us the boon was given—
One glad message, holy maid,
230

On the lips of two blest Spirits
Like an incense-grain was laid;
As it bears us on like lightning
Cloudy skies are round us bright'ning.

AGNES.
I am here, a mortal maiden:
If our Father aught hath said
Let me hear His words and do them—
Ought I not to feel afraid
As ye come your shadows flinging
O'er a breast to meet them springing?

ANGELS.
Agnes, there is joy in Heaven!
Gladness like the day is flung
O'er the spaces never measured;
And from every angel's tongue
Swell those songs of impulse vernal
All whose echoes are eternal.
Agnes, from the depth of Heaven
Joy is rising like a spring
Borne above its grassy margin
Borne in many a crystal ring;
Each o'er beds of wild flowers gliding,
Over each low murmurs sliding.
When a Christian lies expiring
Angel choirs, with plumes outspread,
Bend above his death-bed singing
That when Death's mild sleep is fled
There may be no harsh transition
While he greets the heavenly vision.

231

AGNES.
Am I dreaming, blessed angels?
Late ye floated two in one;
Now a thousand radiant Spirits
Round me weave a glistening zone,
Lilies as they wind, extending,
Roses with those lilies blending.
See! the horizon's ring they circle!
Now they gird the zenith blue;
And now o'er every brake and billow
Float like mist, and flash like dew.
All the earth with life o'erflowing
Into heavenly shapes is growing!
They are rising: they are rising:
As they rise the veil is riven!
They are rising; I am rising:
Rising with them into heaven;
Rising with those shining legions
Into Life's eternal regions.

ODE.

The marvels of the seas and earth
Their works and ways, are little worth
Compared with man their lord:
He masters Nature through her laws
And therefore not without a cause
Is he by all adored.
232

Lord of the mighty Eye and Ear,
Each centring an immortal sphere
Of empire and command:
Lord of the heavenly Breast and Brow,
That step which makes all creatures bow,
And the earth-subduing hand.
And yet, not loftier swells the state
Of Man o'er shapes inanimate
In majesty confest
Than among men, that man by Faith
Assured in life, confirmed in death
Uptowers above the rest!
For God is with him; and the end
Of all things, downward as they tend
Toward their term and close
A sov'reign throne for him prepares;
And makes of vanquished pains and cares
A couch for his repose!
While kingdoms lapse, and all things range
He rules a world exempt from change;
He sees as Spirits see:
And garners ever more and more
While years roll by, an ampler store
Of glorious liberty;
Yea, ten times glorious when at last
The enfranchised Soul, her trials past,
Stands up, prepared to die;
And, fanning wide her swan-like plumes
A glory flings across the glooms
Through which her course must lie.
233

VESPER HYMN.

The lights o'er yonder snowy range
Shine yet, intense yet tender;
Or, slowly passing, only change
From splendour on to splendour.
Before the dying eyes of Day
Immortal visions wander;
Dreams prescient of a purer ray
And morn spread still beyond her.
Lo! heavenward now those gleams expire
In heavenly melancholy;
The barrier mountains, peak and spire,
Relinquishing them slowly.
Thus shine, O God! our mortal Powers,
While grief and joy refine them;
And when in death they fade be ours
Thus gently to resign them!

NOCTURN HYMN.

Now God suspends its shadowy pall
Above the world, yet still
A steely lustre plays o'er all
With evanescent thrill.
Softly, with favouring footstep, press
Among those yielding bowers;
Over the cold dews colourless
Damp leaves and folded flowers.
234

Sleep, little birds in bush and brake!
'Tis surely ours to raise
Our hymns ere humbler choirs awake
Their anthem in God's praise.
The impatient zeal of faithful love
Hath forced us from our bed;
But doubly blest repose will prove
After our service said.
How dim, how still this slumbering wood!
And O how sweetly rise
From clouded boughs and herbs bedewed
Their odours to the skies!
Sweet as that mood of mystery
Where thoughts that hide their hues
And shapes are only noticed by
The fragrance they diffuse.
But hark! o'er all the mountain verge
The night-wind sweeps along;
O haste, and tune its echoing surge
To a prelusive song;
A song of thanks and laud to Him
Who makes our labour cease;
Who feeds with love the midnight dim
And hearts devout with peace.
235

ADAM REFUSES THE GIFTS OF THE RACE OF CAIN.

A FRAGMENT.

I.

Enthroned, and mantled in a snow-white robe
Man's sire I saw, the Lord of all the globe;
High-priest of all the Church, and Prophet sure
Of Him whose promised kingdom shall endure
Until the last of Adam's race is dead.
Nor crown, nor mitre rested on his head;
Yet kings with awe had viewed him! Deep and slow
His speech; the words I knew not nor could know;
But sighed to hear amid their golden sound
A melancholy echo from the ground.
Ages were flown since Adam's lifted hand
Had plucked, insurgent 'gainst Divine command,
That Fruit, a sacrament of death which gave
Perpetual life a forfeit to the grave:
Yet still those orbs their Maker once that saw
Governed the nations of the world with awe.
Mournful they looked, as though their sorrowing weight
Reposed for aye on Eden's closing gate;
Mournful, yet lustrous still those lordly eyes
First mortal mirror of the earth and skies
And still with piercing insight filled as when
God's new-made creatures passed beneath their ken
While he decreed, in his celestial speech,
Prophetic names symbolical for each.
All round, checkering the steep with giant shade
His mild and venerable race were laid,
236

For dance and song no wreaths as yet had won:
Many their strong eyes bent upon the sun,
Some on a sleeping infant's smiling face,
Wherein both Love and Faith were strong to trace
The destined Patriarch of a future race!

II.

Then through the silent circle, winged with joy,
A radiant herald moved, a shepherd boy.
Wondering he stepped; ere long, like one afraid
A tribute at those feet monarchal laid,
A Lyre, gem-dowered from many a vanished isle.
Thereon the Father gazed without a smile:
But some fair children with the bright toy played;
While sound so rapturous thrilled the echoing glade
That Seers, cave-hid, looked up with livelier cheer;
And the first childless mother wiped away a tear!

III.

Later there came, as one who comes from far
A branded warrior, gloomy from the war:
Dark was his face, yet bright, and stern as though
It bent o'er that of an expiring foe,
Retorting still with sympathetic glare
The imprecating anguish imaged there!
A tribute too that warrior brought, a shield
Graven with emblems of a death-strewn field
And placed it at the Patriarch's feet, and spoke;
‘Certain Oppressors reared an impious yoke
And passed beneath it brethren of their race;
Therefore we rose and hewed them from their place.’
All pale the Patriarch sat—long time his eye
Fixed on the deepening crimson of the sky
237

Where sanguine clouds contended with the dun:
Then turned, and whispered in the ear of one
Who, on his death-bed, whispered to his son—
That son beheld the Deluge!

THE PLANETS;

OR, OLD AND NEW.

The Legend of the last of Grecian dreams—
A wandering Bard's. As silver stream that bounds
Singing, from rock to rock, when through dark pines
The moonbeams break their javelins on its mail,
Gloom-loving splendour fairer for that gloom,
So bright so sweet his Pagan songs, poured forth
Full oft at rural festival: but Grace
Came to him, that he scorned his country's Gods
And lived, though late, true bondsman of the Cross,
Spurning those beauteous Fables fair but false,
All that in youth the mythic Seers had taught him,
For Beauty deathless, sacred and eterne.
On Asian shores he strayed while Polycarp
Ruled yet at Smyrna; from that Martyr old
First heard of Christ. 'Twas there his lyre he brake:
This was the last of all the songs he sang.
Of Love, whose golden chain makes all things one;
Of Zeal, that keeps earth pure; of Majesty,
Which, like a crown, steadies the world's great head;
Of Wisdom, which all these tempers and guides,
Of Love, and Zeal, and Majesty, and Wisdom,
Which light as stars our mortal night, and give
Limits to Empire, and free space to Good,
238

Had been my thoughts. Within a bark I lay
And in a book was reading of the Gods.
Reading, I marvelled how that record old
Fabled of Truth: how Song, not yet corupt
Like a great wave lifted the mind of man,
And gave him ampler prospect. While I mused
The setting sun flamed on the deep, the bells
Pealed from a Church hardby and songs went forth:
Then waned that radiance and the anthem died;
My brow dropped on the volume; and I dreamed.
Methought it was the vigil of the day
Of Resurrection; when the kings alone
Shall throng as nations. In a murmuring field
Of harvests by autumnal suns embrowned,
Declining softly to the Western sea
I lay; then night fell, cloud-like, o'er the deep.
An Angel caught me by the hands, and bore me
Far up, and on. Ere long I stood alone
Upon the point of a great promontory:
A Cross was on the edge: from thence a bay
Went back oblique into the heart of Heaven:
Heaven's phantom mountains girt it marble-black,
Though streaked with flying heralds of the dawn.
I on that Cross had leaned methought an hour,
When from the bosom of that darkness old
A glorious semblance momently more large,
Emerged with speed divine: beneath his feet,
Which scarcely touched it, was a Planet bent;
I marked it not at first, but deemed him flying,
Such joy was from his lustrous forehead poured
While his bright hair streamed back, both hands upheld
239

As though expectant of some heavenly crown!
Like homeward bark he wound into that bay.
A milder Star came next; and he thereon
Was like a youthful god: high as his lips
He held a golden Shell; calm-faced as one
Who late hath sung, and for the echo waits.
Into that haven wound he. Next I saw
A lovely Virgin standing in white robes
That shone like silver on the Morning Star.
She, with one hand into her bosom pressed
A dove: the other more than lily white
Was ever smoothing down its snowy wings,
And yet on it she gazed not but on Heaven.
I turned—in minstrel's garb beside me stood
That Youth who last had vanished; ‘Well,’ he sang,
‘Doth Love, without the aid of eyes assure
His heart; upon some other heart reposing
With beatings undistinguished from his own.’
She too had passed, when loud I cried, ‘Declare
The Vision!’ ‘She loved much,’ the youth replied,
‘Therefore to her the star of Love is given.
But see’—and Mars towards us moved—the fourth!
A shield was on his breast; and, raised to Heaven,
Both hands held high a Sword of God that beamed
From hilt to point with blood incarnadine,
The Cross upon his heart. His helm thrown back
The warrior's eyes were fixed on that Sword's point,
Which from pure ether drew a stream of fire,
And, blazing like an amethystine star
Poured beatific splendour on his face.
‘No other Spirit with a deeper joy,’
Thus spake the Youth, ‘from out those crimson urns
That stand beside the everlasting Altar
Shall drink the sacramental wine of Life.’
240

Thus while he spake the Planet disappeared;
And instant o'er his track great Jove advanced
A kingly shape, and crowned with diamond:
All round his loins a jewelled zone, inwrought
With many symbols, like the zodiac clung;
The brightest sphere of Heaven beneath his feet:
And He was sceptred. ‘Lo! how soon,’ thus sang
That joyous Youth, ‘doth Empire, crowned by Death,
Tread in the bloody steps of Martyrdom!
Go forth, great King!’ and Jupiter passed by.
Then all was hushed: till slowly like a sound
So faint we know not when began its tremor
Forth from the darkness the Saturnian star
Began to move. An old man knelt thereon
With prophet robes and face depressed and pale
In hue like that which vaporous Autumn breathes
On the dim gold of her discoloured woods.
He bent his plaited brow and tawny beard
O'er a short bar clasped tight in both his hands—
‘Lo,’ cried that youth, ‘the hoary might of Time!
The Linker of the End to the Beginning!
Ever his iron sceptre thus he bends
Into a cirque, type of Eternity,
And crown for the most worthy: when 'tis wrought,
Time's hard and iron sway is gone for ever,
His boast to crown a mightier than himself.’
As Saturn passed, methought a smile there lay
Hid in his sallow cheek.
‘Declare,’ I cried,
‘The mystery—what these are, and what art thou?’
‘These are the Planets,’ spake the Youth, ‘and they
Who ride them are the loftiest Soul of each,
By Virtue raised to rule those glittering orbs.
The first that passed was Earth, thine ancient home.
241

The third was Venus, in the solar beam
That bathes as water-lily in clear lake;
Her children are a choir of loving Spirits
Lying on violet banks by tuneful streams;
There on the plume-like trees the wind blows gently
For ever gently: not a mother there
Would fear to rock her new-born infant's cot
Upon the topmost bough. Of these but few
Have sojourned on the earth and striven to lure
By gentleness your race to gentleness;
Oftenest not long their exile—by the sword
Hewn down, or trampled under foot of men.
The fourth was Mars: there dwell a hero race
Warring on evil. Ofttimes to the earth
Oppressed by tyrants, one of these was sent
Breaker of chains. The Star of Jupiter
Unto imperial Spirits doth belong:
There, o'er its sea-like levels rise their thrones
Like pyramids o'er Nilus kenned: on earth
Men stare in wonder at their haughty feet,
That tread your Planet like a thing foredoomed.
In Saturn dwell the Prophets, far apart,
'Mid groves, and caves in sequence hollowed out
Within the walls of the precipitous mountains.
Before them, like a veil, from heights unknown
The noiseless torrents stream scarce pierced by beams
From seven broad moons: their wrinkled foreheads old
They bend o'er emblemed scrolls and books of Fate.
Of these but few have ever dwelt on earth.
Mortal! in Heaven was concord thus with men!
Love, Zeal heroic, Majesty, and Wisdom,
There where ye guessed not lived and wrought and reigned:
242

In seats by Pagan fancies long usurped
They wound their choral dances thus round earth:
Men their own greatness knew not, but exchanged
For dust, celestial sympathy.’ He spake,
And light flashed from him making all things plain!
‘Tell me thy name.’ ‘I am,’ the Youth replied
‘The Shaping Instinct of the universe
By bards of old named Hermes. I bestow
Voice on all being; I of every Art
Am father; earlier, in lone wastes I cry
Scaring those demons which in dance obscene
Trample to mire of clay the heart of man
Which should be singing ever, like this Shell
Whose warbling but the echo is of strains
Yon vanished Planets ever sang. Henceforth
They rest:—but hark their sabbath song!’ He raised
That Shell, and straight a harmony so rich
It seemed the blending of all lovely voices,
Moved o'er us like one wave that fills a bay:
And 'mid that Pæan murmuring I could hear
A low deep music tremulent though sweet
With that Eolian anthem sink and rise.
‘My task is done,’ it said;
‘My wrinkled hands have rest; the Crown is made:
But who of earth can wear it?
Whose brows are strong and broad enough to bear it?
Let him speak, let him speak,
For my veins are waxing weak;
These eyes no longer can their vigil keep,
My lids are growing heavy—I must sleep.’
A sound that quelled all other sounds, as stars
At sunrise, shook my heart; and I beheld
Upon another and a larger sphere
243

Than all which yet had passed—a sphere unguessed
By them of Pagan times—an Old Man standing:
Older than all the Prophets seemed that Man,
Older, methought than Time himself; sea-sands
Had numbered not his childhood's years. His hair
And beard rolled down athwart his breast, more white
Than snows when Boreal lights from polar skies
Shine keen on icy streams, or lies the Moon
Dead on the glacier's lap—
O'er his calm face bright thoughts went sweeping ever
Like gleams from rippling waters heaved o'er rocks:
His eyes seemed yet to hold those vanished stars.
I closed my own; and when I dared to look
He had not wound into that bay but passed
Far to the North. That Youth beside me still
Fixed on him eyes with awe distent, as though
In garden-haunt long-loved a man at ease
Up glancing o'er the lily and the rose,
Confronted stood by some white mountain range
Marvel till then unkenned, though ever there,
Dwarfing a subject world. At last he spake;
‘Him knew I not of old: Him, knowing now,
I fear to name: Old Bard of Grecian Race
The time of Finite Beauty is gone by:
The time of all the Infinitudes is come
And Beauty throned mid all. Lay down thine ear
Down to this Shell, and hear Him what He speaks
With that crystalline bass which like a sea
Ingulfs all other sounds or lets them float
As bubbles on the surface.’ I replied,
‘Not so! I will not hear Him lest I die;’
And in that terror woke.
244

A TALE OF THE MODERN TIME.

June 1840.

PART I.

I

An old man once I knew whose aged hair
A summer brilliance evermore retained:
Youthful his voice and full not flawed nor spare;
His cheek all smooth and like a child's engrained,
Or marble altar innocently stained
With roses mirrored in its tablet white—
Like May his eye; his foot-fall slow but light.

II

Yet no one marvelled at him: of his ways
Rarely men spake as of the buried dead;
And dropped him from their lips with trivial phrase:
‘Gentle he was, and kind,’ the neighbours said,
‘Albeit an idle life and vain he led.’
Odours he loved from flowers at twilight dim;
And breath and song of morn: children loved him.

III

I have beheld him on a wintry plant
An eye delighted bending full an hour!
As though the Spring o'er every tendril scant
Crept 'neath his ken. Methought he had the power
To see the growing root plain as the flower.
O'er a leaf's margin he would pore and gaze
As o'er some problem of the starry maze!
245

IV

Over a rose his palm he loved to curve
As though it brought him warmth from out the ground.
Instinctively his step would often swerve
Following slow streams that down in darkness wound:
His body there he bent above the sound
Heard but by him. A virgin world he trod
As though it were the precinct of some god.

V

I wondered at him long: but youth and awe
Restrained me from demanding of his story.
At last, it chanced one day this man I saw
Reclining 'neath an oak rifted and hoary
Last tree of a wild, woodland promontory.
Far round, below, the forest deep and warm
Lay waving in the light of an illumined storm.

VI

I placed me at his feet: his eyes were closed;
Celestial brightness hung upon his mien,
And all his features, tranquilly composed:
I gazed on him, and cried, ‘Where hast thou been
In youth? What done, what read, what heard, what seen?’
Irreverent was the inquest: yet the man
Looked on me with a smile, and thus began.

VII

The Tale, true told, of every Human Being
Were awful; yet upon each new-born child,
246

As though none else there lived, the Eye All-seeing
Rested in glory! Heaven looked down and smiled:
And choirs of joyful Angels undefiled
Around the cradle sang and evermore
In youth walked near him, after, and before.

VIII

Stranger! the veil of Sense in mercy hides
The perils round us, as the mercies! Say,
Amid the forest on the mountain sides
What miles of mazes hast thou tracked to-day?
Had some black chasm girt visibly thy way
Couldst thou secure have wandered thus? Not so—
The danger is not ours while danger none we know.

IX

My life hath been a marvel. Thine no less.
If thou that marvel hast not yet discerned
Lament not therefore. Unto wretchedness
That knowledge grew for which our parents yearned.
The best and happiest ofttime least have learned
Of Man's dread elements—what dust—what spirit—
That which we are, what have, what make, and what inherit.

X

Action in trance, in panic Thought were lost,
If all we are we knew ourselves to be.
O'er a great deep, now calm, now tempest-tossed
Rises one rock; but, hid below the sea
That rock slants down—a mountain! Such are we—
Our being's summit only o'er the deeps
Ascends: the rest is blind, and in the abysses sleeps.
247

XI

In Man the Finite from the Depth ascends:
Centre is Man of all men hear or see;
Chapel where Time with Incorruption blends
Where Dust is wedded to Divinity.
All but omnipotent in Will is he.
Freedom his awful privilege! Like a God
He walks at noon; at night lies cold beneath the sod.

XII

Thou seekest Knowledge: every lore we prize
But as a lamp thereby ourself to know.
Stranger! 'tis well within to turn our eyes
If we look heavenward having turned them so.
Horror unnamed and phantom forms of woe
Rebuke the haughtier quest. With single aim
If thou my tale require receive in joy the same.

PART II.

I

Happy my childhood was; devout and glad:
My youth was full of glory, joy, and might,
Like some volcanic morn, and tempest-clad,
In tropic regions, when from gulfs of night
Day leaps at once to the empyreal height.
Strength without bound in spirit, body, and soul,
I felt: and in my rapture mocked control.

II

In the madness of that strength I went abroad
Where'er Ambition called, or Passion led:
248

Full many a deep my ploughing bark hath scored:
Full many a plain hath echoed to my tread:
All enterprise I sought: all books I read:
All thoughts I pondered murmuring in my mirth
That text, ‘Be thou, O Man, the Lord of Earth.’

III

Deeply I studied in all tomes and tongues
The Historic legend, Philosophic page:
More deeply yet those earlier mythic songs
Built up by Bard for legislative Sage
Himself a builder up, from age to age,
Of States—true poems—Policies sublime,
Wherein well-balanced Functions metre make, and rhyme.

IV

All Art and Science at the Gentile feast
Of Western pride advanced, I knew right well:
And laughed to mark the great Book of the East
Push on through all as through a garden dell
Bright with frail flowers and paved with glittering shell
Some Asian Elephant. I sought within
For God, and there alone; and recked not of my sin.

V

Corporeal instincts only I denied:
My larger concupiscence temperance feigned.
Humble oft seemed I through the excess of pride
And calm of conscious strength. No muscle strained;
That which the eye desired, the hand attained:
249

Too proud for Pride's less triumphs I had sworn
To shun them; or, first won, to fling them back in scorn.

VI

Was I then wicked? Child! applauding nations
Such question asked, had called me great and good.
I loved my kind—but more their acclamations:
My thoughts were birds of prey and snatched that food
From weak and strong to gorge their infant brood:—
Much knowing, this I knew not. But the hour
Was come that proved at last my fancied power.

VII

One day a mountain's summit I was pacing:
Through cloudy chasms the sunbursts fell thereon;
Over its plain the mighty winds were racing
Quiring Eolian anthems in loud tone.
Long time I walked in pride and walked alone:
And what I was revolved—and turned again,
To mark the far off towns and visible main.

VIII

Man I considered then: and I looked forth
Upon the works and wonders of his hand:
The deep his beaten road, his palace earth;
Commanding all things; yet beneath command
Of Mind—whereof I grasped the magic wand.
—Fronting the sun, that set in blood, I saw
Man's shape against its disk; and yet I felt not awe.

IX

All treasures of my Thought again I spread
Unrolled as in a map before my eyes;
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And walked among them with a conqueror's tread
That moves o'er fields of hard-won victories,
Dreaming of mightier yet. A long disguise
Fell from me in that rapture; and I trod
A worshipper no longer but a God!

X

Towards me a throne descended through the air—
Then lo! the crown of my demoniac Pride
Updrawn, raised up my horror-stricken hair!
For, wheresoe'er I wandered, by my side
Another step appeared to tread and glide:
No mortal form was near: and in the abyss
Of heaven, the mountain floors are echoless.

XI

I stopped; it stopped: I walked; it walked: I turned:
My fears I mocked, unworthy of a man.
Then a cold poison from that heart self-spurned
Welled forth: and I, with eyes unfilmed, began
Once more my life and inmost heart to scan:
Till suddenly what shape in soul I was
Before me I beheld plainly as in a glass.

XII

Then my disease I knew; but not the cure.
Lightning, sent flaming from the breast of heaven,
Revealed my sins long-hid from lure to lure:
Beams from the eyes of God, like shafts were driven
Against me: to her depth my soul was riven
Whereof each portion, conscious and amazed,
In stupor of despair upon the other gazed.
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XIII

Thus on my throne, that marble mountain height,
My Soul I saw! I went I know not whither.
Down like a tempest fell from heaven the night:
I heard the sea and rushed in panic thither;
By ghost-like clouds, and woods my step made wither,
And rock, and chasm that seemed to gape and sever,
I rushed—and rushed, methought, for ever and for ever.

PART III.

I

I woke in a great cavern of the main.
The wave rolled in upon its strong breast bearing
A storm of icy wind and cloudy rain
With sound as if of souls that died despairing:
The billows, that rough beach harrowing and tearing,
Thundered far off: while morning, just begun,
Peered dimly through the spray, and through the shadows dun.

II

That shore was piled with death, like Nature's bier.
There, whitening spread a sea-beast's mouldering bones:
The rifted wings of some dead eagle here.
Over the wet cliff went funereal moans.
Yet calm at first I paced those wave-washed stones,
Whose crash the deadlier sound awhile could quell
Of that low step close by, my spirit's knell.
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III

Still, still, where'er I turned that step would follow.
My fate above me hung as by a thread:
Beneath me yawned the earth, a vast veiled hollow!
To battle-fields athirst for death I fled.
Yet there, while headlong hosts beside me sped,
That footstep still I heard and knew from all;
Now harsh, now dull as moth fretting a coffin's pall.

IV

Thick, thick like leaves from autumn's skeleton woods
The shafts went by me, and as idly went.
Then back I turned into my solitudes
As slow, in sullen cloud of rage o'er-spent,
As mountain beast into dim forest tent,
With hunger unabated, when the night
Melts; and the eastern wolds spread wide in hated light.

V

Stranger! I tell you part: I speak not all.
Thenceforth I walked alone; and joined my kind
Only when lured by some black funeral:
On capital cities oft, with watchings blind,
I gazed, what time rushed forth the freezing wind
Between their turrets and the wintry stars;
All day I lay in tombs, or caves dim-lit with spars.

VI

On peaks eclipsing to its rim the ocean
Hath been my dwelling: rivers I have seen
Whose sound alone dispersed a gradual motion
O'er cloud-like woods, their deep primeval screen.
Sand-worlds my feet have trod beneath the sheen
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Of spheres unnamed. From zone to zone I fled
As though each land in turn grew fire below my tread.

VII

But Heaven had ended now my time of sorrow
When most I seemed in penal horror bound:
Dreamless one night I slept, and on the morrow
Strange tears now first amid the dew I found
Wherewith my heavy hair and cheeks were drowned;
And in my heart, fanned by that morning air,
There lay, as I walked on, my childhood's long-lost prayer.

VIII

Wearied, I sat upon a sunny bank,
Ridged o'er a plain yet white with virgin snows
Though now each balmy noon and midnight dank
Lightened the burden of the vernal rose;
My eyes, their wont it was till daylight's close,
Fixed on my own still shadow, in that light
Intense keenly defined, and dark as night.

IX

I hung above it: sudden, by that shade
Another shadow rested; faint and dim:
At first I thought my tears the phantom made;
Then cried ‘I do but dream it, form and limb.’
In horror then abroad I seemed to swim:
Then my great agony grew calm and dumb;
For now I knew indeed my destined hour was come.

X

My spirit's foe was now the spoil to claim:
My heart's chill seemed his hand upon my heart—
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O marvel! clearer while that shade became
No mocking fiend, I saw, no lifted dart;
But a dejected Mourner! down, apart,
His head declined: one hand in grief he pressed
Upon the heaving shadow of a sorrowing breast.

XI

The other round my neck was thrown, so fair,
So kind, so gentle, none thereon might gaze
Nor feel that Love alone had placed it there!
There dropped the cloud of my Self-haunted days.
He who for years had tracked my wandering ways
Had followed me in love! O Virgin-born,
Thy shadow was the light of my eternal morn!

XII

Stranger! there came a joy to me that hour;
Such joy that never can it leave my soul:
All Heaven, condensed to one ambrosial flower,
Fell on my bosom—Truth's inviolate whole!
Obedience was the way; Love was the goal:
God, the true Universe, around me lay:
Systems and suns thenceforth were motes in that clear ray!

XIII

From that time saw I what 'tis Heaven to see,
That God is God indeed, and good to Man.
Theist then first. Who Love's Reality
Hath proved, forgets himself to probe and scan.
Knowledge for him remits her ancient ban:
Back fly those demons outwardly to sin
That lure the soul or turn our inquest sad within.
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XIV

Then looked I up; and drank from Heaven that light
Which makes the world within and world around
Alone intelligible, pure, and bright:
My forehead then, but not by me, was crowned:
Then my lost youth, no longer sought, was found:
My penance then complete; or turned to pain
So sweet, the enamoured heart embraced it like a gain.

XV

My kind, new-vested in the eternal glory
Of God made Man, glorious to me became.
Thenceforth those crowns that shine in mortal story
I deemed it grief to bear, madness to claim.
To be a man seemed now man's loftiest aim.
True Rule seemed this—to wait on one the least
Of those who fight God's fight, or join His kingly feast.

XVI

Then the Three Virtues bade me kneel and drink:
Then the Twelve Gifts fell from the heavenly tree:
Then from the Portals Seven, and crystal brink,
Dread Sacraments and sweet came down to me.
Then saw I plain that Saintly Company
Through whom, as Living Laws, that world which Sense
Conceals, is ruled of God, by Prayer's Omnipotence.

XVII

Thus in high trance, and the way unitive,
I watched one year: which sabbath ended, God
Stirred up once more my nest, and bade me live,
Active and suffering. So again I trod
256

The temporal storm and wrestled with the flood;
And laboured long; and, by His grace, behold,
Two grains I brought, or three, to swell the hills of gold.

XVIII

Lastly, my faculties of body and mind
Decayed, through God's high will and boundless love,
And from the trunk whereon they grew declined,
As leaves from trees or plumes from moulting dove.
Thenceforth, more blest, I soared no more, nor strove;
But sat me down, and wait the end, as waits,
Sun-warmed, a beggar by great palace gates.

XIX

Stranger! this tale of one man's life is over.
No knowledge mine in youth have I unlearned:
But I the sense was gifted to discover
Of lore possessed long since, yet undiscerned:
Truths which, as abstract or remote, I spurned
In youth, as real most my heart now prizes;
And, what of old looked real, now as dream despises;

XX

Or but like dreams reveres. Hollow and vain
To me the pageants of this world appear;
Or truth but symbolled to the truthful brain.
The future world I find already here;
The unbeholden palpable and dear:
Firm as a staff to lean on; or a rod
Of power miraculous, and sent by God.
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XXI

Stranger, farewell! Far off a bell is tolling:
A bridal or a funeral bell—whate'er
It chaunts, in harmony the tones are rolling.
All bells alike summon mankind to prayer!
Yea, and for me those twain one day shall pair
Their blended chimes to one. When I am dead
Stain not with tears my grave: it is a bridal bed.

XXII

He ceased. The inmost sense of that I heard
I know not: yet, because the man was wise,
His legend I have written word for word.
All things hold meaning: to unclouded eyes
Where eagle never soared are auguries.
It may be then this weed some balm doth bear;
Some cure for sight long dim; some charm against despair.

MAGDALENE IN THE DESERT.

I

Say, who that woman kneeling sole
Amid yon desert bare?
The cold rain beats her bosom,
The night-wind lifts her hair—
It is the holy Magdalene,
O listen to her prayer.
‘Lord, I have prayed since eventide:
And midnight now hath spread
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Her dusky pall abroad o'er all
The living and the dead.
The stars each moment shine more large,
Down-gazing from the skies:
O Father of the sorrowful
Turn thus on me Thine eyes!’

II

Hark, thunder shakes the cliff far off!
The woods in lightning glare;
The eagle shivers in her nest
The lion in his lair:
And yet, now trembling and now still,
She makes the same sad prayer.
‘Lord of the sunshine and the storm!
The darkness and the day!
Why should I fear if Thou art near?
And Thou art near alway!
Thus in the wilderness, Thy Son
Was tempted, Lord, by Thee:
He triumphed in that awful strife:
O let Him plead for me.’

III

How often must that woman pray?
How long kneel sighing there?
O joy to see the Holy Cross
Clasped to a breast so fair!—
Speak louder, blessed Magdalene,
And let me join thy prayer.
‘Lord! Thou hast heard my plaint all night;
And now the airs of morn
My forehead fan, my temples wan,
My face, and bosom worn!
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O! o'er my weak and wildered soul,
Make thus Thy Spirit move;
That I may feel the light once more
And answer love with love!’

ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS.

I

‘Those destined Thoughts that haunt my breast,
And throb, and heave, and swell,
Impatient of their painful rest
And state invisible,
Those Thoughts at last must meet the day,
And with me dwell, or on me prey:
On me, on me those Thoughts must call
And act, and live, and move abroad:
I am the mother of them all:
Be Thou their Father, God!’

II

Thus prayed I; musing on that law
By which the children of the brain
Their linked generations draw,
A melancholy train
From moods long past which feigned to die
But in whose quickening ashes lie
Immortal seeds of pain or pleasure
No foot can crush, no will control,
No craft transmute, no prescience measure,
Dread harvests of the ripening soul!
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REALITY.

Love thy God, and love Him only:
And thy breast will ne'er be lonely.
In that one great Spirit meet
All things mighty, grave, and sweet.
Vainly strives the soul to mingle
With a creature of our kind:
Vainly hearts with hearts are twined;
For the deepest still is single.
An impalpable resistance
Holds like natures still at distance.
Mortal! love that Holy One!
Or dwell for aye alone.

HUMANITY.

I

Earth's green expanse: her dawns one wave of light:
Her soft winds creeping o'er the forest tall:
Her silence; and the comfort of her night;
Are these then all?
All thou canst give to me,
Humanity?

II

Tears running down the track of buried smiles:
Time's shades condensed into the sable pall:
Hope that deserts; and Gladness that beguiles;
Are these then all?
All thou canst give to me,
Humanity?
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III

I saw a Spirit dark 'twixt Earth and Heaven,
Holding a cup in both hands lest it fall—
O friends! a mournful life to us were given,
If Earth were all!
But He who lives for aye hath looked on thee,
Humanity.

VIA INTELLIGENTIÆ.

O wash thine eyes with many a bitter tear;
And all things shall grow clear.
Bend that proud forehead nearer to the ground;
And catch a far foot's sound.
Say! wouldst thou know what faithful suppliants feel?
Thou, too, even thou, must kneel.
Do but thy part; and ask not why or how:
Religion is a Vow.
They sang not idle songs; pledges they made
For thee, an infant, laid
In the Church's lucid bosom. These must thou
Fulfil, or else renounce! Fulfil them now.
A Cross, and not a wreath was planted on thy brow.

[Forward, a step or two, where'er we go]

Forward, a step or two, where'er we go
We gaze; not on the spot our feet are treading:
Reading, we look along, or glance below,
Unconscious of the letters we are reading.
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The Future moulds the Present. Do not halt
To probe, or mourn, each felt, or fancied fault;
‘Steadfast by Faith,’ who treads where Hope hath trod,
Following her wingèd Sister to the throne of God!

ST. DYMPHNA.

Within the crowded fane she knelt,
As if before God's throne:
Nought heard, saw nought; alone she felt:
Alone with Christ alone.
Amid the desert knelt the maid;
Alone, yet not alone;
Praying with all that ever prayed
Before the eternal Throne.
No wealth was hers in fields or flocks:
The poor had all her gold:
But honey gushed from the sunny rocks,
And in milk the streamlet rolled.
O blissful maid, through light and shade
So bright a path was thine;
Round hill and glade thy lustre played,
And still o'er earth doth shine!
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MARTHA AND MARY.

I

‘O Sister! leave you thus undone
The bidding of the Lord?
Or call you this a welcome? Run,
And deck with me the board.’
Thus Martha spake; but spake to one
Who answered not a word:
For she kept ever singing,
‘There is no joy so sweet
As musing upon one we love;
And sitting at his feet!’

II

‘O Sister! must my hands alone
His board and bath prepare?
His eyes are on you! raise your own:
He'll find a welcome there!’
Thus spake again in loftier tone
That Hebrew woman fair.
But Mary still kept singing,
‘There is no joy so sweet
As musing upon him we love;
And resting at his feet!’
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