University of Virginia Library

II. VOL. II.

BALDER. PART THE FIRST.

PERSONS.

• Balder (a Poet).
• Amy (his wife).
• Doctor Paul.
• An Artist.
• A Servant.

SCENE I.

A Study, with Books, MSS. and Statues. A Window looks over a Country Valley to the neighbouring Mountains. A Door in the Study communicates with an adjoining Room.
Balder
(musing).
To-morrow I count thirty years, save one.
Ye grey stones
Of this old tower gloomy and ruinous,
Wherein I make mine eyrie as an eagle
Among the rocks; stones, valley, mountains, trees,
In which I dwell content as in a nest
Of Beauty,—comprehended less by more—
Or above which I rise, as a great ghost
Out of its mortal hull; vale, mountains, trees,
And stones of home, which, as in some old tale
O' the east keep interchange of prodigies
With me, and now contain me and anon
Are stomached by mine hunger, unappeased
That sucks Creation down, and o'er the void
Still gapes for more; ye whom I love and fear
And worship, or i' the hollow of my hand
Throw like a grain of incense up to Heaven,
Tell me your secrets! That ye have a heart
I know; but can it beat for such as I?
Or do I unbeheld behold the fair
And answering mystery of your countenance
Passionate with rains and sunshine, and, unheard,
Have audience of your voices, but as one
Who in a temple passes unrespect
Between the kneeling suppliant and the saint,
Meeting the uplifted face and the rapt eyes
That look beyond? Am I but as a fly
Touching the vestal beauties of a maid
Unchidden; intimate but by how much
Inferior? Do ye speak over my head
Even as we pray aloud before a child?
You trees that I have loved so well, ye flowers
Unto whom, by so much as ye are more
In beauty, hath befallen a better love
Than mine, being her chosen who to me
Is as your airy fragrance and mere hues
To your unblushed substantial; thou sweet vale
In which my soul, calm lying like a lake,
Reflects the stars, or, stirred, upon the shores
Of mountains maketh music, or more loud,
Rising in sudden flood, and breaking up
That firmament to heaped and scattered stars,
Chaotic to and fro from hill to hill
Defiesthe rounding elements, and rolls
Reverberating thunder; have I lived
Not unbeloved, and shall I pass away
Not all unwept?

SCENE II.

The same. From the adjoining Room, through the half-opened Door, are heard the Rocking of a Cradle and the Voice of Amy.
Amy.

SCENE III.

The same. A Table covered with MSS. and Books.
Balder,
solus.

Balder.
(Taking up a Manuscript.)
Enter Servant, with post-bag.
(Opens and reads.)

Balder
(after a long pause).

[Through the door are heard the rocking of a cradle, and the voice of Amy.]
Amy
(singing)
The cuckoo-lamb is merry on the lea,
The daisied lea; I would I were the lamb!
While that the lark will pipe, the lamb will dance,
And when the lark is mute he danceth still;
Up springs the lark, and pipes again for joy!
He, more by birth, than we by toil and skill,
Is happy with no labour but to live;
He leapeth early, and he leapeth late;
He leapeth in the sunshine and the rain,
Nor fears the hour that will not find him blest,
And milky plenty sauntering by his side.
Also the lamb that doth not toil nor spin,
Lies where he will, and where he lieth sleeps.
Sleeps on the hill-top like a cloud o' the hill,
Sleeps where the trembling Lily of the Vale,
Albeit she is so spotless, sleepeth not,
But like a naked fairy fears all night
The wind that for her beauty cannot sleep.
Sleeps on the nettle or the violet:
Or where the sun doth warm his trance with light,
Or where the runnel murmureth cool dreams,
Or where the eglantine not yet in bloom,
Like a sweet girl full of her sweeter thought,
Reveals unheard the sweetness still to be.
Or where the darnel nods, and, as they tell
Of beauty nursed upon a savage dug,
Sucks grace from the harsh bosom of the waste.
Sleeps in the meadow buttercups at noon,
—A babe a-slumber in a golden crib—
Or like a daisy by the way-side white,
And like a daisy quieteth the way.
The lamb, the lamb, I would I were the lamb!

Balder
(musing).
Thou most pure
And guileless voice. I never breathed thee! No,
Thou meek misfortune, thou art not my past.
My Amy, my own Amy, whom of old
I found as a wild sailor of the sea
Comes on some happy isle of Love and Peace,
Some isle where joys that in all other climes,
Sweet flying thro' the night of his dark way,
A moment rest upon his sail, pass on,
And are beheld no more, in equal haunts
And bright assured communion ever dwell,
Day without night, and native, brood and sing!
Thou who thro' the stern ordeal of this life
Didst cling beside me, while I showed my power,
And turned the dust and ashes where I stood,
To gold and ruby, so that the great throng
Cried out for envy, and with murderous shout
Demanded the pure jewel I had not,
And when I trembled, knowing that mine art
Was ended, and the clamorous people saw,
Unseen didst slide thy wealth into my hand
And save me, so that I, serene, unclosed
My palm before the Judge, and lo! a pearl;
My first Love and my last, so far so near,
So strong, so weak, so comprehensible
In these encircling arms, so undescribed
In any thought that shapes thee; so divine,
So softly human that to either stretch,
Extreme and farthest tether of desire
It finds thee still; my ministering saint,
Attendant sprite, enshrined Egeria!
My ornament, my crown, my Indian gem
And incommunicable amulet
Upon my breast, not me but warm with me!
(pauses.)
You heavens! how far a little breath may blow
The unstable bubble of inflated thought!
O voice, O little voice, what power of thine
Disbands my hosts, which, as a crowd of shades
That scatter at a word, in sudden rout
Like the four winds unloosed have sprung apart
And vanished into distance, until I,
Whose royal and innumerable train
Out-trooped the legioned gods, am left alone
As one uncounted? How those charmèd walls,
And airy castles, that we rear to hold
The powers that plague us, and do well contain
Imprisoned fiends, are pervious to the touch
Of any human hand! That we should build them,
And a mere child should put his vital finger
Thro' the main bulwark! That the head should write,
And, with a gush of living blood, the heart
Should blot it! As one proves there is no God
And falls upon his knees. Right sapient sage!
Supreme intelligence! Sole substantive!
Lord of the empty dark! True Prince of Nil
And Nihilo! a royal argument;
But ere thou sign triumphant demonstration
Be blest and let a benefit refute thee!
My little Amy!

[Exit.

SCENE IV.

The Empty Study.
Through the half-open Door is heard the voice of Amy.
Amy.

SCENE V.

The Study.
Balder, at his writing-table.
Balder.
Death, thou must stand aside! The mood is not
Upon me, and my gold is only dug
I'the vein. The microcosmos, like its twin,
Hath climates and their seasonable fruits.
My brain is warm, and I behold the sun;
Clear as a pulsing wave of hyaline,
And I cry ‘Light;’ tender and beautiful
As the west waiting for the evening star,
And loveliness, like a fair girl, comes forth
Into the dewy silence. As I throb
The sense responds, and, like a courtier's eyes,
Finds for each royal folly of my soul
Portentous reason. The disordered fact
Outruns its antecedent, and so much
Eternity within doth set at nought
The wont of time, that I am stirred yet ere
Disturbance, and do suffer by the ill
Not yet admitted to the sum of things.
I will await what figure now unseen
Is to rise up and lay his charmed hand
Upon this inner harp, from string to string
Already trembling, and arrive, tho' late,
To give a name to that foredone effect
Which else had lacked a father.
[He meditates, writes, and reads aloud.
‘Then saw I Genius, blind, with upturned face,
As one who hears, and to the struggling sense
(Tottering beneath accomplishment, and faint
In touch of the inestimable prize)
Each from his office brings her conscript powers
Auxiliar, and in strained conflux sustains
The sole perception; happy so to gain
The one sufficient knowledge, and therein
Utterly blessed. Like a listening saint
Lifting her wrapt brow to the audible Heaven.
Nor sightless by defect, but that her lids
Closed o'er the needless eyes. Her moving lips
Perfunctory incessant murmur made,
And thus she held her unrespective way,
Following the upper sound which no man heard,
Summer and winter, day and night; but more
Like a sweet madness in those dearer times
Where?n the hornèd seasons fill and wane,
Spring, autumn. morn, and eve; o'er hill and alp,
Forest and city, steep and battlement,
Or wrought or native; through vales, gulphs, and ca
And midnight solitudes, and martial plains,
And sun, and storm, and frost, and flood, and fire.’
Bah, is this Genius who should rule the world
And be incarnate God? Rather, methinks,
Some maimed celestial, feeling back her way
To the lost heavens, or that fair Eve whom once
Genius, what time she ‘listened to the voice,’
Caught in his arms in Eden.
(Turning to a statue.)
[He writes.
(Throws the MS. to the ground.)

[Through the door is heard the voice of Amy.

SCENE VI.

The Vacant Study.
Through the open Door the voice of Amy.
Amy.

SCENE VII.

The Study.
Balder, writing.
Balder
(reads).

SCENE VIII.

The Vacant Study.
Through the open door the voice of Amy.
Amy.
Is there no hostel by the way of life?
My wayfare was from far as I can see;
As far my toil is hot and white before;
I stagger with my load, and halt midway,
And trembling turn beseeching eyes and vain
Backward and forward from my pitiless place.
The weary miles lie infinite beyond,
And each might be the future and the past.
I would lay down my burden lest I die.
Is there no hostel by the way of life?

SCENE IX.

The Study.
Balder, at his writing-table.
Balder.
This very morn
Thro' her green island home the laughing spring
Drove, flinging joy, her blossom-laden car.
Forth from the polar cavern of the snows,
Dripping with winter, leaped a northern storm,
And shook himself; and she lay buried white
Beneath an avalanche. At that dread sight
Up rose the West, and such a wind went by
As stunned the isle with voices, like a chief
Rushing to battle with a sounding host
In shouting ranks wide on the echoing hills.
At first a roar of warning, ‘to the north!’
Then like the shriek of all a ravished land,
‘O Europe, Europe, Europe, Europe, Europe!’
And then like the world's trumpet blown to war,
‘The North, the North, the North, the North, the North!’

Enter, under the window, wandering Sailors, singing.
Sailors.

[Exeunt Sailors.
Balder.

SCENE X.

The Vacant Study.
Through the open door the voice of Amy.
Amy.

SCENE XI.

The Vacant Study.
Through the open door the voice of Amy.
Amy.

SCENE XII.

The Study.
Balder, at his writing-table.
Balder.
Through the door comes the voice of Amy.

Amy
(sings).

SCENE XIII.

The Study.
Balder, at his writing-table.
Balder.

[Exit.
Through the open door comes the voice of Amy.
Amy.
A pool in a deep valley at dead noon,
Lidless and shadeless like a burning eye,
Low lieth looking at the summer sun:
So in my bosom, oh my babe, my babe,
Thou liest low, and lookest up to me.

SCENE XIV.

The Study.
Balder (solus) at his writing-table.
Balder.

SCENE XV.

The Vacant Study.
Through the door the voice of Amy.
Amy.

SCENE XVI.

The Study.
Balder (solus) at his writing-table.
Balder.
(A long pause.)
(Another pause.)

(Starting up.)
[He walks in great agitation.
(Sits again.)

Through the door is heard the voice of Amy.
Amy.

Balder
(sinking his head into his hands).
(A long pause.)
(Looking up.)

SCENE XVII.

The Study.
Balder, solus. Through the door comes a sound of weeping.
Balder.
[Exit through the door of the adjoining room.

SCENE XVIII.

The Study.
Balder, solus.
Balder.

[Takes pen and paper, in attitude to write. The voice of Amy comes through the door.
Amy.

[Listening, he falls into a reverie.
Balder.
[Muses.

SCENE XIX.

The Study.
Balder, at his writing-table, preparing to write, when the voice of Amy comes through the open door.
Amy.

[He rises sorrowfully, and shuts the door.
Balder.
Writes and then reads.

SCENE XX.

The Vacant Study.
Through the door the voice of Amy.

Amy.

SCENE XXI.

The Vacant Study.
Through the door the voice of Amy.
Amy.

SCENE XXII.

The Vacant Study.
Through the door the voice of Amy.
Amy.
Swallow, that yearly art blown round the world,
What seekest thou that never may be found?
Whither for ever sailing and to sail?
I think the gulphs have sucked thine haven down,
And thou still steerest for the vanished strand.
What cheer, what cheer, oh fairy marinere
Of windy billows, sea-mew of the air?
The viewless oceans wash thee to and fro,
Spout thee to Heaven, and dive thee to the deep.
Swallow! I also seek and do not find.

SCENE XXIII.

The Court-yard of the Tower.
Balder, solus.
Enter Dr. Paul.
Balder.
Doctor!

Doctor.
You're well? My patient?

Balder.
Only now
She went to sit beside the little grave.
Prithee, friend, wait awhile. It were ill-done
So soon to follow.

Doctor.
Is this pilgrimage
A manner with her?

Balder.

Doctor.
Poor thing, poor thing, poor thing!
How long think you?

Balder.
An hour?

Doctor.
If it must be.
We men of drug and scalpel still are men
And have our feelings. I call us the gnomes
Of science, miners who scarce see the light
Working within the bowels of the world
Of beauty.

Balder.
But your toil, like theirs, gives wealth
And warmth, and glory, to a fairer sphere,
Brings forth the golden wonder, which in hand
Of prince or clown, of poet or of fool,
Is standard still; lights up the common hearth
Of household joy familiar, and makes bright
The jewelled front of kings.

Doctor.
Ah, my good friend,
I was a poet once, and thought strange things,
Very strange things. How I would walk alone
And mutter in my going, dare the heavens
As thus! clap sudden hand upon my brow,
Hold up a finger and cry hist! to the air,
Walk you a mile bareheaded in the rain,
Stop, gaze the ground, stamp like a bull, and sigh,
Sigh like a painted Boreas! or, in fierce
Obstetric frenzy of the labouring Muse,
Collar the astonished wayfarer with ‘Sir,
Your tablets!’ scare the woodman's hut with calls
For pen and paper, or make eloquent
The graphic bark of beech. Ah, those days when
I courted Sophonisba, long ago,
And we two loved the moonlight and wrote verses!
It melts my very heart to think on't!

Balder.
Love
Makes us all poets. Each man in his turn,
At culmination of one happy hour
Consummate of some sole and topmost day
Hath his apotheosis. Nature thus,
Ere she send forth her mintage to the world
Assays it for eternity, and sets
The stamp of sterling manhood. From the mount
Of high transfiguration you come down
Into your common life-time, as the diver
Breathes upper air a moment ere he plunge,
And, by mere virtue of that moment, lives
In breathless deeps and dark. We poets dwell
Upon the height, saying, as one of old,
‘Let us make tabernacles: it is good
To be here.’

Doctor.
Out of mortal sight! Ay, you
Live to posterity.

Balder.
Your pardon; no!

Doctor.
To the mere present?

Balder.
No. I do not scorn
Fame, and those wide and calmer after days
Where Time's thick flood grows quiet, letting down
Its golden grains to be the jealous wealth
Of nations; but I choose to say, ‘I live
To God and to myself.’ Of God I know
Little to satisfy a human heart
So fashioned to adore Him; of myself
Still less, yet somewhat; of posterity
This only,—that in circling cycles, come
What will come on the ever-rolling years,
The Ages will not outlive a true man
And his Divine Creator.

Doctor.
Well, well, poet,
If love makes heroes it makes fools. And Nature,
If, as you say, fresh from that crucible,
She marks us current, full as often signs
The cap of Momus as the bay of Cæsar.
Were you but where I am, and with my eyes
Saw as I see to what this love can bring
Men down.

Balder.
Not love, but passion, the mere dance
Of this gross body to the soul's sweet singing,
Which you mistake for love, because sometimes
The singer, high and pale, descends to join
(With haughtier step as consciously a god)
The Paphian measure of his mortal twin.
And strange reflection of the glowing flesh
Doth flush the soul.

Doctor.
I have walked far.

Balder.
We'll enter—
From the high window in the turret there,
I see the churchyard in the dale.

Doctor.
Dost spend
The day in watching?

Balder.
I keep vigil on her
As any star behind his golden face
Spends his great gifts upon his proper world,
And lights us with an idle faculty.

[They enter the Tower, and mount to the Study.
Doctor
A poet's studio! I have often passed
The lintel of your home, but ne'er before
The threshold of its penetralia. I
Long to behold your gods.

Balder.
Expect none, Paul.

Doctor.
How?

Balder.
Expect none, my friend, if seeing me
Thou hast seen none. My word on it Æneas
Is godless, or ‘Penatiger Æneas.’

Doctor.
Thou Pagan! why the room is an Olympus!

Balder.
Olympus' top is a long way from heaven.

Doctor.
From heaven say you? The mason, by my count,
Is greater than the house, and I perceive
That old Italian, whose Uranian pride
When his great prince had forfeited the skies,
Built him another heaven, and filled the dome
With angels, like the first.

Balder.
Ay, dauntless Michael,
Who drew the Judgment, in some daring hope
That, seeing it, the gods could not depart
From so divine a pattern.

Doctor.
Ah! thou, too,
Sad Alighieri, like a waning moon
Setting in storm behind a grove of bays!

Balder.
Yes, the great Florentine, who wove his web
And thrust it into hell, and drew it forth
Immortal, having burned all that could burn,
And leaving only what shall still be found
Untouched, nor with the smell of fire upon it,
Under the final ashes of this world.

Doctor.
Shakspeare and Milton!

Balder.
Switzerland and home.
I ne'er see Milton, but I see the Alps,
As once sole standing on a peak supreme,
To the extremest verge summit and gulph
I saw, height after depth, Alp beyond Alp,
O'er which the rising and the sinking soul
Sails into distance, heaving as a ship
O'er a great sea that sets to strands unseen.
And as the mounting and descending bark
Borne on exulting by the under deep,
Gains of the wild wave something not the wave,
Catches a joy of going, and a will
Resistless, and upon the last lee foam
Leaps into air beyond it, so the soul
Upon the Alpine ocean mountain-tost,
Incessant carried up to heaven, and plunged
To darkness, and still wet with drops of death
Held into light eternal, and again
Cast down, to be again uplift in vast
And infinite succession, cannot stay
The mad momentum, but in frenzied sight
Of horizontal clouds and mists and skies
And the untried Inane, springs on the surge
Of things, and passing matter by a force
Material, thro' vacuity careers,
Rising and falling.

Doctor.
And my Shakspeare! Call
Milton your Alps, and which is he among
The tops of Andes? Keep your Paradise,
And Eves, and Adams, but give me the Earth
That Shakspeare drew, and make it grave and gay
With Shakspeare's men and women; let me laugh
Or weep with them, and you—a wager,—ay,
A wager by my faith—either his muse
Was the recording angel, or that hand
Cherubic which fills up the Book of Life,
Caught what the last relaxing gripe let fall
By a death-bed at Stratford, and henceforth
Holds Shakspeare's pen. Now strain your sinews, poet,
And top your Pelion,—Milton Switzerland,
And English Shakspeare—

Balder.
This dear English land!
This happy England, loud with brooks and birds,
Shining with harvests, cool with dewy trees,
And bloomed from hill to dell; but whose best flowers
Are daughters, and Ophelia still more fair
Than any rose she weaves; whose noblest floods
The pulsing torrent of a nation's heart;
Whose forests stronger than her native oaks
Are living men; and whose unfathomed lakes
For ever calm the unforgotten dead
In quiet graveyards willowed seemly round,
O'er which To-day bends sad, and sees his face.
Whose rocks are rights, consolidate of old
Thro' unremembered years, around whose base
The ever-surging peoples roll and roar
Perpetual, as around her cliffs the seas
That only wash them whiter; and whose mountains,
Souls that from this mere footing of the earth
Lift their great virtues thro' all clouds of Fate
Up to the very heavens, and make them rise
To keep the gods above us!

Doctor.
Your hand on it!

Balder.
The wicket swings, how now?

Doctor.
A tattered man.

Balder.
I must go down—

Doctor.
An aged peasant woman,
A chubby child beside her; by my soul
The rosy blossom and the withered crab,
Both on one bough? who are they?

Balder.
Pensioners.

Doctor.
Your's?

Balder.
Her's.

Doctor.
Some say the illumining sun is dark;
But poor as you are—

Balder.
Is this blossom sweet?

Doctor.
Most fragrant!

Balder.

Doctor.
What are they?

Balder.
Listen: when we came here, a bridal pair,
Joyous and young and poor, I took this room
For mine, the forge in which to beat my gifts
To the white heat that lights and warms the world;
And so I left it bare. We had small store,
And that I spent on her's. But still she came,
And sat beside me at her daily tasks
In happy silence; then I said ‘not here!’
But she said ‘here!’ and kissed me; oh those days!
She was so fair——

Doctor.
She was?

Balder.
She is; she was
So fair, so delicately bred; I saw
Her there, and all the strong unseemly place
Disturbed me. ‘Oh for cloth of gold,’ I cried,
‘To make a palace for thee!’ But she smiled.
When she came in I felt the cold grey air
Strike her like a stone, and when she walked methought,
Oft as she passed between me and the wall,
The rudeness of the unhewn and jagged rock,
Albeit that bodily it touched her not,
Harried her beauty; and, whene'er she sat
Looking her sweet content, stern histories
Sank from the dark roof thro' the dungeon day,
And fell upon her face like grinding dust
Upon the apple of mine eye. She knew
My trouble, saying, ‘Where thou art, to me
Heaven arches o'er thee, and I dwell in tents
Of azure; but, my husband! as thou wilt.
Nevertheless, not silver and not gold,
Silver and gold are not for me or thee;
But oh, my poet husband! what thou hast
Give me.’ And so I hung the room with Thought.
Morning and noon, and eve and night, and all
The changing seasons; scenes, or new or old,
Strange faces and familiar; forms of men
Or gods in valleys deep, or mountains high; And how she loved them! Tarry till I come.

[Goes.
Doctor
(unfolding a scroll).

Doctor
(unrolling another scroll).
(Unrolling another scroll.)
Enough. Shall I try Winter?
[Unrolling another scroll, reads.
‘Who is he
That o'er green pastures of the latter year,
And on the mountain-tops, and through the woods
Passeth amid the pageant of the world
Silent and ceaseless, laying hand on nought?
Not as content, for greed is in his eye,
But patient in the confidence of fate.
Downward in face, and as to his bent head
Covered; by night and day, in sun or rain,
Unlooked for, unforeseen, but ever found,
And keeping ever on an aimless way
With the firm foot of purpose, as in dreams
We walk to airy biddings, and as on
A king's death-day, while all the court stand round
Power unresigned, the inevitable heir
Doth eye the crown and pace the palace floors
Expectant. But none know him for a king
Nor do him homage. The too-lusty green
Of the o'er-confident time unawed stands out
Into his path, and the insulting growth
Below retards his unrespected feet.
He sees, and a cold smile comes on his face
As moonlight upon ice; the shivering wind
Starts from his side, and fleeing ominous,
Spreads such a sign as in the latter day
Shall blow from chill Damascus; but no roll
Of answering thunder nor dread bolt of wrath
Smites the roused world that listens and forgets.
Yet some are wise. With him on hill-tops hoar
The o'erruling spirits and attentive hours
Confer, and seek and take his high behest
In secret, and make peace with things to come.
And failing Autumn, like an aged king,
Talked with him on the field of cloth of gold,
And as he spake fell dead; and the lush powers,
And pleasures full, which ruled the summer reign
(Like ships on a calm sea, that, sinking slow,
Of all their gallant bulk above the wave
Leave but a naked mast) sank one by one
Into the earth, and in the wonted place
Were found in lesser fashion, daily less.
And now the fields are empty, but He walks
Hale and unminished to and fro and up
And down, and more and more the observance
Of the astonished year is turned and turned
Upon the Solitary, and the leaves
Grow wan with conscience, and a-sudden fall
Liege at his feet, and all the naked trees
Mourn audibly, lifting appealing arms.
Which when he knew, as a pale smoke that grows
Keeping its shape, he rose into the air
And froze it, and the broad land blanched with fear,
And every breathless stream and river stopped,
And thro' him, walking white and like a ghost
With grim unfurnished limbs, the cold light passed
And cast no shade. Then was he king indeed,
And all the undefended World he saw
Bare at his will. His brow grew black on her;
And with a sound that killed her shuddering heart,
He whistled for the North.’
Nay, rheumatism
Forbid! Let's have some sunshine
(unrolling scrolls)
—Æschylus—
Thor—Balder—a Viking—a Runic Skald—
Kun-y-a and the Gopees—Seeva-deo—
What next? Stay, here's some warmth in prospect. ‘Dawn.’
(Reads.)
‘See her in naked beauty, calm as snow,
And cradled in a cloud upon the east.
Unblushed, unconscious, with unopened lids,
Fair as the first of women where she lay
Among the asphodels of Paradise
Before God breathed for her the breath of life.’
Too cool, I long for morning. Here!
(Opening a scroll, and reading.)
The feast is spread,
And none know wherefore. Wherefore? who shall ask?
Who cannot feast? As a rich bride in smiles
And blushes for her much bliss eateth not,
And seeth that they serve a sacrament
And something more than wine, the poet sits.
While Who stood glorious at the shining head
Of jubilee, where men a light beheld
And he a presence, clad in sounding joy
Moves down the festal aisles. As a true queen,
In whose ennobling eyes her lowliest guests
Are princes, so she slow descends to far
Forgotten places, and with her mere smile
Rights the unequal board. Light shines to light
Down to the earth and upward to the heaven,
And whatsoe'er unknown it is whereof
Our lives default, whatever of divine
Whose all irreparable absence makes
The nameless dolour of a mortal day,
Returns in full. As love, that hath his cell
In the deep secret heart, doth with his breath
Enrich the precincts of his sanctuary
And glorify the brow and tint the cheek;
As in a summer garden one beloved
Whom roses hide, unseen fills all the place
With happy presence; as to the void soul
Beggared with famine and with drought, lo God!
And there is great abundance; so comes MORN,
Plenishes all things and completes the world.’
(Opening another scroll.)
Now for the matron sister, drowsy Noon,
The lotus-eater, nay, nay, I must keep
My eyes open; I'll pass her for the next.
This should be evening by its place. No title!
(Reads.)
‘And seest thou her who kneeleth clad in gold
And purple, with a flush upon her cheek,
And upturned eyes full of the love and sorrow
Of other worlds? 'Tis said that when the son
Of God did walk the earth, she loved a star
Which went aloft with God, but, lest she die,
Day after day looks out on her from heaven
At sunset smiling, so she wears her robe
Sad but imperial, as of right a queen.’
[Turns to another scroll, unrolls, and reads.
‘And lo the last strange sister, but tho' last
Elder and haught, called Night on earth, in heaven
Nameless, for in her far youth she was given,
Pale as she is, to pride, and did bedeck
Her bosom with innumerable gems,
And God, He said, “Let no man look on her
For ever,” and, begirt with this strong spell,
The moon in her wan hand she wanders forth,
Seeking for some one to behold her beauty,
And wheresoe'er she cometh eyelids close,
And the world sleeps.’
(Opens a scroll and reads.)
(Unrolls a scroll, and reads.)

Enter Balder.
Balder.
Hold!
'Tis sacred!

Doctor.
Pardon, friend, you make me nervous,—
I thought these heads said ‘Hold.’

Balder.
They had cried out
If I had held my peace. A time may come
To raise that veil. Not now.

Doctor.
Your invalid?

Balder.
Not yet returned. I'll fetch her.
[Goes to window.
Look here, Paul!
That figure stealing down the linden grove!
'Tis Evening, or 'tis she! she comes! she comes!

Doctor.
'Tis a most happy symptom. Let her take
Her will. I'll wait.

Balder.
Good God! she turns aside
From the field-path into the winding track
We used in other days.

Doctor.
Still happier sign!
Nay, I'll not hurry her.

Balder.
Thanks, thanks.

Doctor.
But, friend,
Hast thou no song to wear the hour away:
I'm weary.

Balder.
Paul, thou art an emperor!
Decree.

Doctor.
Thou hadst of old ‘a song of seasons,’
With dainty amours and a fire-side close
Most comfortable.

Balder.
Ay, an evensong.
[Goes to his harp, and sings.
In the spring twilight, in the coloured twilight,
Whereto the latter primroses are stars,
And early nightingale
Letteth her love adown the tender wind,
That thro' the eglantine
In mixed delight the fragrant music bloweth
On to me,
Where in the twilight, in the coloured twilight,
I sit beside the thorn upon the hill.
The mavis sings upon the old oak tree
Sweet and strong,
Strong and sweet,
Soft, sweet, and strong,
And with his voice interpreteth the silence
Of the dim vale when Philomel is mute!
The dew lies like a light upon the grass,
The cloud is as a swan upon the sky,
The mist is as a brideweed on the moon.
The shadows new and sweet
Like maids unwonted in the dues of joy
Play with the meadow flowers,
And give with fearful fancies more and less,
And come, and go, and flit
A brief emotion in the moving air,
And now are stirred to flight, and now are kind,
Unset, uncertain, as the cheek of Love.
As tho' amid the eve
Stood Spring with fluttering breast,
And like a butterfly upon a flower,
Spreading and closing with delight's excess,
A-sudden fanned and shut her tinted wings.
In the spring twilight, in the coloured twilight,
Ere Hesper, eldest child of Night, run forth
On mountain-top to see
If Day hath left the dale,
And hears, well-pleased, the dove
From ancient elm and high
In murmuring dreams still bid the sun good-night,
And sound of lowing kine,
And echoes long and clear,
And herdsman's evening call,
And bells of penning folds,
Sweet and low;
Oh maid, as fair as thou
Behold the young May moon!
Oh! happy, happy maid,
With love as young as she
In the spring twil ght, in the coloured twilight,
Meet, meet me, by the thorn upon the hill.
[Interlude of Music.
At the midsummer, at the high midsummer,
Deep in the darkness let me sit embowered
All alone;
What time the children of the earth and heaven,
As of two houses whom a feud divides,
Meet in the mingling mystery of midnight,
And melting clouds sink low with woers' tears,
Felt but unseen, dropping a balm of joy
Whereto the love-touched leaves
Tremble and whisper thro' the gentle land.
The incense riseth and the incense falleth
And all the stolen hour is stirred with kisses,
And silent loves constrain the passionate time;
Rich loves that as they list
Exchange and take and give
Unmeted mede and debts for ever due.
And sweets are mixed along the languid air
Like balmy breath of lovers warm and near,
And glowing faces meeting thro' the dark.
Hush! for the world stands still
Held in mere joy, as nought on earth would lose
The happy place and moment where it stood.
Hush! o'er a stillness, still as Love's delight,
Hearts gushing, bosoms heaving, moving arms
Winding, unwinding; lips that close and part
And love still ending and beginning; Hush!
Put back the dawn, O Phosphor! Set again!
Fall like a sweet drop from the honeyed heavens!
Go down, and carried by a tender cloud!
The exquisite best moment of the night
Sinks down with thee. This is the ecstasy!
It sheds, it sheds! The night is filled with flowers,
——The viewless night, faint night, the yielding night,
The favouring night,—with flowers and happy rain!
As tho' to-morrow's blossoms spreading odours
As they float
Soft thro' the season, shy thro' the dark season,
Like a warm dew sank murmuring from the skies.
[Interlude of Music.
[Interlude of Music.

SCENE XXIV.

The Study.
Balder, solus, writing. Enter Amy.
Amy.
I have somewhat to say: let me come close,
Close to thine ear; my husband, I am well!

Balder.
Thy pain?——

Amy.
Gone! I am well; speak very low;
The butterfly fresh from his living grave
Feels not so frail and new. Hist, not a word,
'Tis resurrection morning; I am free.

Balder.
My poor child——

Amy.
Nay, I know; I am not mad;
Hush! for I think a whisper would disturb
This footing; I am well, so well! I feel
I have slipped through the chains that held me down;
I could move like a mote thro' the warm air
Up to the hills. Let us go to the hills.
Hush, do not answer. I have spoken now.
I though it would not last while I could tell thee.

[Exit.
Balder
(going to his harp and touching a solemn sweet air).
I praise thee, mother earth! oh earth, my mother!
Oh earth, sweet mother! gentle mother earth!
Whence thou receivest what thou givest I
Ask not as a child asketh not his mother,
Oh earth, my mother!

[Amy reappears, habited.
Balder.
[Takes up his hat and staff.

[They pass side by side into the fields.
Amy.
The hay, the new-mown hay! the birds, the birds!

Balder.
The audible soul of the warm balmy wind
That moves in music. Yonder pensive thrush
Singing his rhythmic cadence, and, below,
The blackbird, earnest in the flowering thorn,
Chanting his mellow prose as tho' he told
A wonted story, ever old and new!
The fitful chaffinch, like a bashful youth
That hurries forth his love in sudden speech
And blushing pause, the loud and cheerful wren,
The sparrow's chirp, the swallow on the wall—
The swallow that pours out her liquid joy
Upon the morning flood of happiness,
Wherein it falls with silver sound and sweet
As water into water; these, and all
The warbling voices breathing of the South,
The slender treble of the tuneful year
With throbbing throats that chorus sunshine thro'
The vocal world, dainty, and soft, and low!
And high o'er all a languid noise of rooks,
Lost in bright air, circling in sunny calm,
Or cawing from the haunt of oaken green
The leafy rest of June!

[They enter a meadow of flowers.
Amy.
See!

Balder.
Seems it not,
My Amy, that this prattling Babe, the Earth,
Sole sitting at the footstool of the Heaven,
Strives to repeat her stars?

Amy.
Yes.

Balder.
Thy small feet
May tread the pathway careless of the dews:
We mortals are contemned of Nature,—she
Casts not her pearls before us. But look, Amy,
This blade of grass from the untrodden field,
This green perfection of abundant health,
Complete with dew. Herein behold why Nature
Is the one Teacher whom the Poet needs,
For she alone can show him in her works
Consummate art, and that supreme excess
Which fashions her fair work until the bound
Of possible performance, and the verge
Of the wrapt heart's belief; and while we say,
‘Behold the final good!’ sprinkles a dew,
And with divine complacence, passeth both.
Or having wrought her statue from a block
Infallible, with an unfailing hand
Quickens the faultless whole, and with a touch
Makes cold Perfection live. With her he sees
Not only snow, but driven snow, nor driven snow
But on the sacred summit of an Alp
Immaculate, and on the whitest peak,
Whiter than white; the flower not only fair,
But fragrant, and the light not only warm,
The fire not only bright; the summer fruit
Sweet to the taste but sweeter to the eye,
And over all its tangible a bloom
That never can be touched. She, only she,
In her least work, as in her greatest, shows
To his confessing eyes the unattained
And unattainable, and tho' his pride,
Stung to its strength, outstrain the furthest stretch
Of man, and bring the trophies of the world,
She, still unsatisfied, by Day and Night
Points upward, saying,—‘Be ye perfect as
Your Father in the Heavens!’ Thou hearest me not;
Thy cheek is wet with tears; thou art pale and red;
Amy, my little child!

Amy.
Oh, Love, I live!
I am! I feel! The Earth is not a dream!
The Prison doors are broken! I am free!
I stand forth in the sun! I know the wind!
The utter world doth touch me! I can grasp
The hands that stretch forth from the mystery
That passeth! I am crowded with my life!
It is too much! the vital march doth stop
To press about me! Air, give air—too much,
Too much—forgive, forgive, forgive——

Balder.
My Loved!
My Lost! my Wept! my early-risen! I clasp thee
Fresh from the dead! 'Tis past; new-waked from sleep
Sudden amid the concourse of sweet sounds,
The rush, the pageant tumult, and this tramp
Of Being, the weak sense bewildered laughs
And weeps by turns.

Amy.
Husband, till now, thy speech
Was my sole music, whereunto I kept
The maimed attendance of these feeble feet;
To-day 'tis but a note—the first, the best—
In somewhat that fills all this sunshine space
With sound——since 'tis for sound to stir the heart
Unseen.

Balder.
Here let us rest. Thou hast said well
'Tis Resurrection-day. For I remember
Once in a sleep of childhood I looked forth
Thro' a wide summer window, on a still
And Garden-world. Eden, as at the first
I saw, and all the summers since the first,
Above it like a golden silent sea,
Lay warm and sweet and slumb'rous, soaking deep
All things in honeyed light—flowers, fruits, and trees,
Which breathed their gums and amber, and let down
From their festooned fair tops that no wind stirred
Visible odours—and the tepid Lakes
And the dissolving Hills. And far below,
Down thro' green warmth of the relaxed sod
To hidden secrets of the inner Earth
Slow sank incumbent, sinking, sinking Light.
'Twas Resurrection-morn. Where I beheld
City had never stood, nor ways of men,
Nor place of funeral. But the Dead came up
Like spring-Flowers, white and golden, thro' the ground,
Lifting a little earth, as snowdrops lift,
On their strange heads. This morning, as I stood
Beside my open window, ere thou camest,
And looked upon the day, methought I saw
My childhood's dream. Is it a dream? For thou
Art such a thing as one might think to see
Upon a footstone, sitting in the sun,
Beside a broken Grave!

[They sit musing.
Amy.
Thou hast been silent
So long, that the slow shade of the tree-top
Moved like a dark hand o'er the grass, and took
Another daisy.

Balder.
I do know this moment!
This is the very wind that long ago
In the first morning of sweet life we breathed
By the open gate of Love, when thou and I
Went happy in together, knowing not
The place, nor heeding if 'twere Earth or no.
We were so young, thou wert so pure, the woes
And weary ills that keep the gate of Love
Looked on us as on shapes concerning whom
They had no charge; the guardians of the trees
Slept all, and with us the sublimer Fates
Dealt softly as with children. Did we dream
A dream of years upon some flowery knoll,
And do we wake where we lay down? Is this
The outer world? Is this the common day
Of all the living? Oh Amy! my own child,
I could believe this fancy; never since
I felt this wind upon me in my youth
Have I beheld thee as now. Dost thou remember
The old days when at trysting-time thou camest
Forth down the winding valley to the stile
To meet me, and beside me all the sweet
Meandering way trode back in silent joy,
With downcast eyes that ever sought the ground,
But tell-tale smiles that could not choose but come
Me-ward; quick smiles that every word of mine
Stirred up anew so often that they met
Like sudden roses caught in a warm wind,
And did provoke each other, ruffling sweets
In dear confusion, and in all the change
Of my swift fancy changing till they lay
Upon thee like the thousand lines of light
Upon the shimmering water that the west
Moves with a sigh? So we past slowly on,
And so, fond gazing on thy silent face,
I poured the glorious wine of love into
A vase of crystal, where it blushed and shone
More fair. Sometimes I marvel when I think
Of those first days of love; love that unknown
Knew not himself, and still went in and out
Among the happy inmates of the heart
As an unconscious prophet walks amid
His brethren ere his equal lips be touched
With the live coals of fire. I that so long
Spake, and we knew not that I spake of love
Because it filled my speech, and being all
Seemed nothing, I who that I saw it not
Never believed it present, nor remembered
That the sole face on which I cannot look
Is this men know for mine—how did I win thee?
Canst tell me?

Amy.
I can sing a little song.
[She sings.
The sun he riseth up on new year's day,
And looketh on the earth and goeth down;
The earth she stirreth to be looked upon.
The faithful sun he riseth day by day,
And looketh on the earth and goeth down;
The earth she trembleth to be looked upon.
The faithful sun he riseth day by day,
And looketh on the earth and goeth down;
The earth she blusheth to be looked upon.
The faithful sun he riseth day by day,
And looketh on the earth and goeth down;
The earth she smileth to be looked upon.
The faithful sun he riseth day by day,
And looketh on the earth and goeth down;
The earth she sigheth to him from the south;
The earth she stands before him all in flowers;
The many-voiced earth, she calleth him;
She singeth at his chamber that he rise,
And long time holdeth him lest he go down.

Balder.
Thou wert as silent as a bird that sits
On her dear treasure, and while steps pass nigh
Is hushed and hid, but, when the plunderer nears
And only silence could have saved her, cries.
I ne'er forget my little Amy's face
Upon the blessed chance that owned us one;
The happy chance that struck me by her side,
And all heard that which else had died unheard!

Amy.
How did she look?

Balder.
[They ascend the hill.
The fort
Is won, and here I plant the stalwart sign
Of sovereignty. A little while this staff
Shall be the solar centre of creation.
All that thou seest is thine!
[He lies down.
How passing sweet
To rest the weight of this mortality
Upon such friendly turf, while the free soul
Released from earthly shackles shines a star,
Above the great horizon of this world,
Giving and taking Light.

Amy.
Oh love, the song of life!
Oh love, the music of the world! my ears
Are open! since the years I was a child
I have not heard it! Tho' mine eyes have seen
The ordered pomp and sacred dance of things,
And marvelled at the measure, it passed on
In silence, but to-day, to-day, I hear
The voice to which it moves! Too sweet, too sweet.

[They pause.
Balder.
[Pauses.

Amy.
'Tis a fair world!

Balder.
Look down upon it in the sunny haze
Of silent noon, sole in the void of heaven
Asleep, divine with the unconscious smile
Of everlasting beauty. A well-spread
And ordered world; not the bright elements
Innumerous of unrespective change,
The broken argosy of the universe
On spangled waters; but a multiform
Supreme event, the single continent
Of all; like immaterial deity,
Full of the coloured thought of an unmade
Creation.

Amy.
'Tis thy kingdom, 'tis thy kingdom,
My king, my king!

Balder.

Amy.
I—I, too, even I? ah, husband,
To feel beside thee!

Balder.
But I see them, Amy,
Whitening the world like harvest. Wheresoe'er
We stay they pasture; in the temperate sun
Disport on hills for ever green and fair,
Or at our word with universal feet
Pass to new fields, their great sound overhead
Borne like a banner: under favouring skies
Drink of salubrious streams, in innocent lands
Lie down to harmless sleep, and rise with us
To follow day and summer round the globe!

Amy.
My husband!

Balder.
Sing a song of love to me,
This glory burns me up; fetch me some tears.

Amy
(sings).

Balder.
Nay the poor wanderer, fallen from heaven, drew near
The guarded gate; but with his forfeit skies
Had lost his privilege and master-sign,
And turned aside and plucked an asphodel,
And, wearing, passed unchallenged.

Amy.
Hist! who comes?
Ah husband, we must be alone to-day!
I feel new-married and do blush to speak.
Let us go hence.

Balder.
An artist by his satchel.
Lie silent he will pass us. (Starts up.)
What! my comrade!

Artist.
My old friend!

Balder.
Welcome! but how many days
Before your assignation?

Artist.
Fairly asked.
Sooth is, I was a wooer of Dame Nature
Down in your sylvan valley there. My goddess
Left me love-tokens, but denied herself;
I wearied, you may guess; and every night
Looked upward to these western tops and saw
Her footsteps, and the cloudy draperies
She put aside in passing, closing red
Behind her, dyed with honour. So I came
To sit here and waylay her.

Balder.
Amy, this
Is that good Gerald whom thou knowest well
By many a song and fireside history.
Dear old companion, we must meet again;
This is a sweet and solemn festival
Which we two keep together, she and I.
But ere you leave us for my sake remember
One of the songs we used to sing of old;
We sang it three at once, and it was called
‘The Song o' the Sun.’ The glowing orb of joy
Within my head must shine, or 'twill consume me.
You, each of you, chime in the needful chorus.
I am the sun!

Artist.
With all my heart. Begin.

Balder.
Thou knowest it, little Amy?

Amy.
Did I e'er
Forget a word of thine?

[Balder rises to his feet.
Artist.
Phœbus-Apollo!

Balder.
[They sing.

Artist.
I also. And I also singing lauds
To see you both so happy.

[Exit.
Balder.
Brave old friend!

Amy.
Shall we walk, husband, to yon shady tree
Above the little stream?

[They walk.
Balder.
Alas! that one
Should use the days of summer but to live,
And breathe but as the needful element
The strange superfluous glory of the air!
Nor rather stand apart in awe beside
The untouched Time, and saying o'er and o'er
In love and wonder, ‘these are summer days.’

Amy.
Let us sit here.

[They sit.
Balder.
Under this ash, last spring,
I saw a sight more sweet than ever clown
Came on a-sudden in a fairy-ring
By summer moon. A growth of primroses,
Thick as the stars by night, and like the stars
In constellations and in orbits due,
Shone round the central tree. I could believe
Queen Flora, on a royal progress tired,
Halted beneath it, and her flowery court
Pitched their fair tents about her, or, well-pleased,
Sole or by twins, in fragrant converse, lay
Upon the enchanted ground. Thou hadst a song,
A country song, a chanted calendar,
Fit to be timbrelled to the tambourine—

[Amy interrupts him.
Amy
(sings).

[She runs off to neighbouring flowers.
Balder.

Amy
(returning).
A crown! a crown!

Balder.
My beautiful!

Amy.
Am I? Then give me now
The long long promised lesson; teach me what
Is beauty. I am very well to-day,
My brain is like that sea of glass and fire
Whereof we read together, whereupon
The angels walked. Let them walk thro' my soul.
Dost thou remember idle days when we
Lay here, and thou didst roll the broken rocks
That spun into the valley round as stars?
So take the worlds and bowl them round about me,
For well I think thou canst; and I'll not flinch;
Nay try me!

Balder.
And thou liest among the bells
And blossoms, and lookest up to any star,
And thinkest in some Angel's face to read
The mystery of beauty? Loveliness
Is precious for its essence; time and space
Make it nor near nor far nor old nor new,
Celestial nor terrestrial. Seven snowdrops
Sister the pleiads, the primrose is kin
To Hesper, Hesper to the world to come!
For sovereign Beauty as divine is free;
Herself perfection, in herself complete,
Or in the flowers of earth or stars of heaven.
Merely contained in the seven-coloured bow
Arching the globe, and still contained in each
Of all its raindrops. This, my thought, I give
To thee, and am no poorer; no, nor thou
Still giving, nor a singular of all
Who ever shall possess it, tho' my thought
Become the equal birthright of unborn
Nations of men, in every heart a whole.
There cannot be a dimple on the cheek
But all an everlasting soul hath smiled;
Day is but day to all the eyes on earth,
No less than day to mine. Love strong as death
Measures eternity and fills a tear;
And beauty universal may be touched
As at the lips in any single rose.
See how I turn toward the turf, as he
Who after a long pilgrimage once more
Beholds the face that was his desert dream,
Turning from heaven and earth bends over it,
And parts the happy tresses from her brow,
Counting her ringlets, and discoursing bliss
On every hint of beauty in the dear
Regained possession, oft and oft retraced,
So could I lie down in the summer grass
Content, and in the round of my fond arm
Enclose enough dominion, and all day
Do tender descant, owning one by one
Floweret and flower, and telling o'er and o'er
The changing sum of beauty, still repaid
In the unending task for ever new,
And in a love which first sees but the whole,
But when the whole is partially beloved
Doth feast the multitude upon the bread
Of one, endow the units with no less
Than all, and make each meanest integer
The total of my joy. Yet I have stood
And clasped the earth as if she were a maid;
And held her, bearing all her sparkling stars
Upon her like a vase of Castalie
Upon a Greek girl's head, and made my boast
Of her, and as a lover let her fill
My feeding eyes! Or I have hovered far
Upon the verge of all things, and beheld
The round globe as a fruit upon a tree,
The spangled tree that night by starry night
Stands o'er us, and have seen an angel pass,
Pluck it and cool his lips, and drop the hull
To chaos, and this earth, that I have loved
And worshipped, fall out of the universe
As unrespected as a dead leaf falls
From summer aspen, while the innumerous stars
Twinkled and quivered in the wind of God
Walking between the shade of fruited heavens
Untold as once between the river-trees
Of Eden. But wherever I beheld
Or one or every one, the whole or part,
Some better thing that is not either or all
For ever putteth forth from all and each
A hand, and toucheth me, as he of old
Was touched in sleep; and I as one in sleep
Know not or how or where, but, having felt,
Believe, and serve the Invisible Unknown,
Calling it Beauty. Therefore in sweet awe
Tread the bright mystery of the sod beneath
Thy feet, thou priest of Beauty! who dost stand
Bareheaded neath the stars, nor dare to slight
Her presence in the floweret of the field!
Beware, for beauty, as a maid, delights
In summer ambush. Often the mere hem
And flutter of her garment doth betray
Her covert; or low murmurings of the leaves
O'er-fond about her naked loveliness,
Or jealous whisperings of envious winds,
Or voice of birds when her unwonted smile
Makes sudden sunshine in the dusky dell,
Or stir of showers that fall like kisses on her,
Or song of streams made happy by her limbs,
Is all her bruit. And oft she buried is
—Rapt from her upper realm by gnomes and ghouls,
A moment powerful in the pause of Fate.
And her immortal body thrust in haste
Below the earth some lingering tress reveals
That floateth like a floweret in the wind.
There shalt thou stand, and say thy counter-spell,
Bard of the future! Master-Prophet! Man
Of men, at whose strong girdle hang the keys
Of all things! Lo, the gaping earth and all
The breathing presence of the Goddess risen,
At thy shrunk side full statured from the grave.

Amy.
Art thou not he?

Balder.
The day shall answer.

Amy.
I
Will answer for the day. And being He
Thou must be born to feel as no man felt
Before thee. Husband, to be born to feel
As no man felt before thee! I do yearn
To know! Not yonder panting lamb that kneels
To drink is more athirst—

Balder.
My beaming Amy!
I stroke the tresses from thine eager brow,
And looking on thee deem the prodigy
Already wrought.

Amy.
Thou wilt not mock me, husband;
Thou must have somewhat in thee hid and deep,
Which, when the future Truth shall be revealed,
Will rise to meet it. Try thy soul for me
With many thoughts as fishers try a lake
With flies; it may be thou shalt find a shape
Whereunto something in thy soul shall rise
That never yet hath risen. Hast thou no guess
Like the dim pictures of a blind man's brain,
Or as altho' thou touch me in the dark
I know the hand is thine.

Balder.

Amy.
Now I will crown thee.

Balder.
Wherefore? for we rule
By right which any diadem on earth
Nor gives nor takes. Here on this summer bank
With neither gold nor tinsel, cap nor crown,
Hocus nor title, puck nor premier, gown
Nor robe of state, nor conjuring rod nor sceptre,
Nor high nor low grimace of sovereignty,
To lie here thus and find the earth and air
Conscious; or mid their fealty and unclaimed
Allegiance, free as the wild phantasy
I follow, and as far from common men,
Sole wandering like an unasserted god
Displendoured undeclared but not unknown
Thro' the sequestered places of my reign,
Lone glens and glades, dells and enchanted streams,
Silent hill sides, and holy mountain tops
Untenanted, without the care of kings,
Counsel or forethought or the toil of change,
But pausing in mere power where'er I love,
As the heart beats to people them at will
From heaven!—my Amy, my throned queen, is this
Royal?

Amy.
My dread lord, my dear husband, oh
My teacher, friend, and father, all in one,
My poet!

Balder.
Shall I do a miracle
To please thee? This green realm of thine, this fair
Sweet hill is lonely. Yon much-whispering stream
Interprets no fond lovers; the old thorn
Flowers for no village maid; the aged oak
Shades not the hoary council of the dale;
Yet ne'er was silent wilderness more apt
For vocal habitation. Say wilt thou
Be monarch of a Pastoral? Shall I
Endow thy reign with subjects?

Amy.
Whence and how?

Balder.
This empty space above the turf is full
Of living shapes, that shapes as yet are not,
But possible to my strong-gazing eye
Charming the air. Shall they come down to thee?
There are necessities they must obey,
Laws which these undimensioned wanderers
Cry out to think of; thou hast heard them cry
When we have sat together on the hill
Upon a night of wind, for well they know
That whoso of their viewless race shall pass
Hapless across the field of poet's gaze
Is bound.

Amy.
Thou seest him?

Balder.
I but feel the place
Informed with presence, which my fixèd eye
Constrains, till having broken the first law
The essential motion self-perpetuate
Of spirits, and unhesitating change,
Time holds and all the straits of lower life
Compel.

Amy.
Alas! Alas!

Balder.
I see them yield
Ponderable, visible, subdued
To mortal separation and the lot
Of self and substance; flushed with earth, and sad
With human beauty.

Amy.
Pity!

Balder.
My own Amy!

Amy.
Heed it not, Love. A shower out of yon Heaven
Depeopled. Tell me.

Balder.

Amy.
Dream on!

Balder.
Nay, not for thee
The populous fever of a poet's brain.

Amy.
To-day! To-day! To-day thou saidst to me
I should be with thee in thy Paradise.

Balder.
Ay, but the three days in the heart of the earth?
Dear happy child of sunshine, bless thy lot!
The grave for me! For thee, who watchest in love,
The garden of the sepulchre!

Amy.
I ask not
To see thine awful visions, but the Prophet,
Having come down the hill, interpreteth
To feeble ears. And all the shaking signs
And thunders of the mountain may be read
In whispers. Therefore put me like a sense
Behind thine eyes, and let me know the unknown
Thicken to apprehension.

Balder.

Amy.
I cannot play;
My heart is heavy with thy strange sad thoughts;
The daisies look too happy; tell me, love,
Some sorrowy history.

Balder.

Amy.
My pain! my pain!
Oh Husband, tell me it is evening; say
The sun is set; say it is dark to thee;
No, no, it comes! it comes! Husband! it comes!
Like a great Vampyre blackening all the air
Milking the day of light and sucking blood
Out of the cheeks o' the World. My pain! my pain!
[Pauses.
Why dost look wretched, Husband? we are fools.
No, there was nothing fair! 'twas all a dream!
A flight of happy angels stopped to rest
And stood upon the earth and hid it out!
And now they rise again; hark how they rise!
And all that seemed the surface of the world
Goes up, and the foul earth is like a skull
Scalped of its golden hair. Do not go up!
Do not go up! I catch your skirts! my child,
My little child, my little child,—me also—
Me also—oh me also!

Balder.
The sun shines,
This flower is the same colour; the bird sings;
The clouds, the plain, the mountains, are not changed.

SCENE XXV.

The Study.
Balder. solus.
Balder.

SCENE XXVI.

The Study.
Balder, solus. Through the door the voice of Amy.
Amy.

SCENE XXVII.

The Study.
Balder, solus.
Balder.
And is this your device, you Heavens,
When ye would have the music of our groans?
The feeble lamentations of such pale
Hereditary anguish as is born
To pangs, and with the dread entail receives
Inheritance of patience, the dull howl
With which accustomed guilt receives his stripe
In skin that thickens to the lash, each ill
That carries with the wrong the slow redress
Cries not for you; the lax and languid strings,
Which Nature, careful of herself, doth loose
To save her heart, cannot ring out such sounds
As startle pleasure in your sated ears.
They should be giants who make sport for gods!
As we enjoy we suffer; legends tell
That Eden is the utter wilderness,
And the archangel's stature did become
The measure of the fiend. Therefore, ye eld
And sager gods, whose reeking Vulture once
Did gorge your youthful vengeance on the rock
In Crete, ye have grown wise, and no more
Subtract the needful vitals that may throb
A lustier pang, nor bleed the bull ye bait.
Prometheus, keep thine heart! There is no trick
Of Hell's contrivance that can plague thee so,
Nor with as subtle mastery dispense
Such dire infliction! Even the rude skill
Of mortal cruelty hath learned to breed
The gladiator to die hard; and they
Who roast the human feast upon the shore
Do supple him with kindness. What nice nerve
Thrills the best pleasure twangs the sorest pain;
The sense that faints with bliss will faint with woe:
And he who dieth of a rose is damned
Upon the thorn. Therefore, ye jubilant gods,
Pamper the victim, fill his veins with joy,
Build him of soft endurance, tender and strong
As a flayed lion; finish each stern power
To such an exquisite final that it ends
A plumèd feeling; let delicatesse
Weave his thin cuticle, and mesh him in;
Be his most sensitive structure the extreme
That meets and makes a whole with matchless strength—
Even as the dread Apocalyptic beasts
Were full of eyes. Thews of asbestos, ribs
Of adamant, wound in so fine a thread
Of life produced and ambient that he stands
The heroic total of great opposites;
Firm as a tower in any wind that blows,
And trembling to a fragrance in the wind!
Then on some human pyre whose dainty frame,
As 'twere of frankincense and gums of Ind,
His vital heat might warm into decay,
Stretch him out, like the prophet on the dead,
Limb upon fateful limb, and bind him down
With the strong bonds of love, and rivet fast
What everlasting anguish could not break!
And fire the pile! and let your ready flames
Wrap the incumbent health and scorch the strength
They not consume! unguarded, unsuspect,
Naked, and toiled, not as a hero falls,
Nor in the wont of battle to receive
His fate, and, by contending, half subdue;
But bound and prone, expatiate with nice art
To the invenient horror, oped and spread
To the elective lust of keener flame,
Lifting with incommunicable throes
The inevitable torment, leaping high
In vain and higher, every desperate strain
Stirring new fires that burn a loftier bound
That fans worse anguish and more wild despair
For ever self-renewed, let him plunge, gods,
And cheer Olympus!

SCENE XXVIII.

The Study.
Balder. Enter Dr. Paul.
Balder.
Come? Thanks!

Doctor.
How? is she worse?

Balder.
I know not that.
I sent for thee to hear yet once again
The story of her sorrows.

Doctor.
The old errand!

Balder.
Not so. Thou hast been here in vain to seek
A hope, but I send for thee now to find.
Cure her!

Doctor.
Four solemn times within this month
Have I told thee——

Balder.
Paul, Paul, if I can bear
My portion in this venture dost thou blench
At thine? Is it so very much that thou
Who canst sit careless of the stars, whose hand
Shakes not already with adverse aspècts,
Shouldst draw the horoscope once more for me
And cast the fates anew? 'Tis the last time.
I swear that what conjuncts for bliss or bale
This sovereign hour determines I accept
As doom. Therefore be patient. Strain thy skill!
Draw it so well that were the burning sun
Nought but an eyeball, and his sight to thine
As he to thee, he could not magnify
Thy deviation! Thine art is not mine,
I am no Esculapian, but I know
Less alteration than our sense can mete
Would make the inexorable asymptote
Close like fond lips. Get thee new instruments;
No pinhole points and measure of mortal hairs,
But compass that shall set his foot between
Two feathers of a butterfly; a scale
Scored with——

Doctor.
Well, well, I'll see her, and do my best.
But hope for nought; if even thine anxious gaze—
And love is more than science,—can discern
No better sign.

Balder.
Full many a time and oft
I have sat still thro' all a summer day,
And listened to its change as to a book
Read by untiring lips. Thou wouldst have sworn
The day was like a field of buttercups,
Where every shining moment stood and smiled
Beside his golden likeness; but not I!
I know the hours, and call them by their names,
As a shepherd his sheep. So in thy world
The microcosm——

Doctor.
Ah that word microcosm!
A true word, my dear poet, a true word,
For in six days God makes us, and, alas,
If the seventh day wherein He rests be not
The sabbath of the grave——

Balder.
In that world, Paul,
Which is thy study, as this other mine,
I would look with thine eyes.

Doctor.
As you will, friend.
Shall I go in?

Balder.
Ay, no, I had forgotten;
She sleeps; I'll waken her.

Doctor.
Not hastily.

Balder.
With saddest music.
[Goes to his harp by the open window.
Do ye well to smile
Superior, ye wise Heavens, because ye see
I am a coward and fool Time to keep
Fate at the door? All this and more I know
No less than you. I am as wise as you
If this be wisdom! I pray you cloud over.
[Balder sings.

Balder.
I think she stirs. Go in!

[The Doctor enters, remains, and reappears.
Balder.
Is there no change?

Doctor.
None that brings hope.

Balder.
That day seems scarcely past—
That day of——

Doctor.
My poor friend, when a ship strikes
Long time on the mad surge she heaves and falls,
And dips in winds and waves her leaning spars:
Till, like a dying horse, with a last plunge
She rises, reels, and over from the reef
Goes mast-down in the deep. To see her rise
Rises the landsman's cheer along the shore,
And sinks with her.

Balder.

Doctor
(aside).
[Doctor lifts the veil, and reads the scroll beneath.
(Reads.)

Balder.
Do not smile!
This is no dream, for she came in September,
And if she were o'erlaid with lily-leaves,
And substantived by mere content of dews,
Or limbed of flower-stalks and sweet pedicels,
Or made of golden dust from thing of bees,
Or caught of morning mist, or the unseen
Material of an odour, her pure text
Could seem no more remote from the corrupt
And seething compound of our common flesh!
Nay, as I oft have told thee—a whole year
Ere she was born, her mother fed on fruits.
Read on, Sir Science, for thou readest truth!
Truth is a Janus, Paul, but either face
Herself, therefore be reverent.

Doctor
reads.

Doctor.
Aye—veil it over!

Balder.
Once again I say
Cure her!

Doctor.
And, good friend, hear me once for all.
I have brought to your wife's lamented case
What skill I own,—and twenty years of cure
Have taught me something—but for much esteem
Of her and you, I made her malady
The subject of my college. I stand here
A simple country surgeon, but where'er
Men worship Science, some one of her Priests
Calls me his friend; whatever oracles,
As yet unbruited, murmur from the cell,
I learn from these. Therefore in my poor words
You hear a verdict sworn to by the prime
Of Europe.

Balder.
There is no most rare device
Occult, or cunning of the eye or hand,
Or mastery of subtle elements,
Beyond thee?

Doctor.
No.

Balder.
Whatever lesson new
These latter days have spelled in the unread
And polyglot palimpsest of this body
Is thine already? Thou hast it within
By rote?

Doctor.
Yes.

Balder.
Let us speak of other things.
The sun must be near setting—shall we watch him
From the old rampart of my Ruin? Follow.

Doctor.
With all my heart!

[They ascend to the ramparts.
Doctor.
(emerging).
Truly the light is sweet!
That winding stair—two hundred steps and more——
My head swims.

Balder.
'Tis a fearful height. My Dog,
Whose stature thou didst praise, seen hence appears
Notably less. His kennel which thou knowest
Befits a mastiff of the English breed,
Might house a cur. We have a legend here.
A maniac dwelt in this old tower and hence
Throwing his keeper, hid the battered corse
In yonder tarn. His ghost preserves my fish.
A dalesman would as soon drop line in hell
As in the murder-pool.

Doctor.
I shudder.

Balder.
Sounds
The old tale credible? How say thy craft?
Is the leap death?

Doctor.
Death to a hundred lives!
His mother would not know the face that reached
Yon stones from these.

Balder.
Thou art a feeble man,
I am no giant, but am thrice thy match;
Cure her!

Doctor.
Thou hast mine answer.

Balder.
And thou mine.
Cure her.

Doctor.
I cannot.

Balder.
In mine art I know
Passion and terrible occasion make
Men poets, poets gods. Thine may have like
Apotheosis. Cure her!

Doctor.
Hands off! see
The precipice we stand on——

Balder.
Ah! ah! ah!
Cure her!

Doctor.
Thou jestest with me!

Balder.
By the Heavens
No!

Doctor.
Stand back!

Balder.
Cure her!

Doctor.
Free me! Mercy! Help!
We have been friends, thou wilt not murder me?

Balder.
We have been lovers, but I sent a shaft
Into her heart. If thou canst draw it forth
Well; but if not——

Doctor.
Nay, I can fight for life!
Madman! Hold! Murderer! Mercy! Mercy!

Balder.
Cure her!

Doctor.
Spare me! my wife! my children!

Balder.
Cure her!

Doctor.
Christ!
God! oh God!

Balder.
Cure her!

Doctor.
I will!

Balder
(releasing him).
Thou wilt not!
Liar! Begone! Haste! Lest in my despair
Thou 'scape not twice.

SCENE XXIX.

The Study.
Balder, solus.
Balder.
I will sit down
And let the stars roll on. Such pitiless signs
Cannot for universal health maintain
An hour's ascendant. If the heavens could halt
I might despair, but the worst orb that moves
Betters my fate.

SCENE XXX.

The Study.
Balder sits by the open window.
Balder.
[Turns to papers on the table.
[A pause.

SCENE XXXI.

The Study.
Balder at his table in act to write. Through the door the voice of Amy. As she sings he rises and rushes from the room.
Amy.

SCENE XXXII.

The Study.
Balder
sits at the table, turning the leaves of a MS.
[Pauses.

[Amy is heard thro' the door.
Amy.
Blind, blind I stand and dare not stir for fear.
Blind, blind I turn my face up to the sky.
I have no hope to hide my bruisèd face
Which evermore a strong hand in the air
Smites with a burning rod and will not rest.

SCENE XXXIII.

The Study.
Balder solus.
Through the half-open door is heard the voice of Amy. [He rises and shuts the door
Balder.

SCENE XXXIV.

A Field near the Tower.
Balder
solus.
[Pauses.

SCENE XXXV.

The Study.
Balder, solus.
Balder.

SCENE XXXVI.

A Hill near the Tower
Balder, solus.
Balder.

SCENE XXXVII.

A Glen among the Hills near the Tower.
Balder, solus.
Balder.
[He rises and walks homewara.
[Enters the Garden.
[Enters a room.
[Enters an inner room.

SCENE XXXVIII.

The Hill-side.
Enter Balder.
Balder.
I that walked
All this long night upon the bare hill-top
Grow heavy in the sunshine and would sleep.
[He lies down and sleeps—after a while starts up.
This dream! why I came leaping out of it
Half-witted and half-dead as one escapes
From dungeons into air. I must have wept, too,
The grass below my face is all bedewed,—
Away! [Turns and sleeps.
[Leaps up with disordered looks.

No, no, it cannot be, it must not be,
It shall not be!—Amy!
[Looking up, his eye catches the clouds.

SCENE XXXIX.

The Study.
A Writing-table, with Paper and Pens.
Balder.
Yes, I will bear, forbear, hope, labour, wait,
Yet once again. He who from love of day
Doth end his life in the obscurest hour
Of long-lived night flies not from aged Nox
But from unborn Aurora. 'Tis the part
Of wisdom to endure. Whatever clime
Surround, more fair, this sublunary scene,
Howe'er we name those undiscovered Powers
That rule us and do place our weal and woe,
The problem of the wretched is to pass
Not the set circumscription of his known
And ordered ill, but the unsearched confines
Of their supreme disposals. Failing that
All fails; and the poor slave for whom extends
No safe inviolable shore, no last
Red Stygian frontier where the angry hordes
Of hurrying hell must needs stand balked and droop
The unavailing scorpions,—had best bend
To his worst task, nor heat the blood of swift
Inevitable vengeance. Once again—

[Through the open door, Amy is heard.
Amy.
That I were broken as a thing defect,
Wholly rubbed out as of no right to be,
And as a heedless error of the hand
Cancelled for ever from the book of life!
[After a long silence she is heard again.
That I might die and be no more at all,
That I might cease out of the scheme of things,
And all my place be filled up evermore!
I am galled with my destiny; that one
Would take my lot out of my scorched hands,
And all my heritage in heaven and earth.
Oh, God, forget me from thy universe,
Oh, God, I have retired out of my life,
The functions of my soul are dead, and I
Am but a burning hope of not to be!
Oh, God fulfil me; I am but this thirst,
This all-consuming thirst, quench it and me!
[After a long silence she is heard again.
My punishment is more than I can bear,
Oh, men, oh, living men, oh, passers by,
No, this was not my sentence, no man yet
For such a fault hath heard so hard a doom!
For a small matter did they shut me in
Upon the eve of war, and on the morn
The tower was taken and the gaoler fled!

[Listening to this he rises.
Balder.
[After a pause.
[She comes.

Amy
(kneeling before him).
To set me free?
Am I to be free? oh to set me free?
It cannot be so. Sir, thou knowest not;
They have forgotten me where I do lie;
The tower was taken and the gaoler fled;
The ruins fell on heap; the many stones
Are o'er me; no man can come near nor tell
The under earth is hollow. Oh to help me,
Oh to come near me, oh to set me free!

[She sinks on the floor weeping.
Balder
(musing).
You Gods, I curse ye!
[After a pause.
I did not tremble, therefore I can do't.
[A very long silence, during which she still sleeps at his feet. Clock strikes.

SCENE XL.

The Study.
Balder, solus, at the open window.
Balder.
Oh you o'er-arching and high heavens on whom
I call, because that as remote from me
Ye must be good; that as diverse from me
Ye must be strong; that as serene above
The comprehension of my human sense,
Ye may be happy; is it well, you heavens,
That ye look down on such a thing as I?
If your innumerous hosts be seraphs crowned,
Thronèd, with radiant limbs and upturned eyes
Reflecting God,—and such, methinks, but now
I saw at eve ere the great choir was filled
Taking their thrones expectant of the hour,
And for the general anthem one by one
Tuning their harps and shedding dewy tears
Ecstatic,—if they sit there to adore,
And have perpetual function of mere praise,
Were it not wise, ye heavens, to draw your clouds
Between us? I was faithful once as they,
And mighty as the mightiest who doth sweep
His golden starry strings, and with the sound
Lighten these tuneless deeps. If I were God
They should not see this heart.

SCENE XLI.

The Study.
Balder, solus, by the window.
Balder.
[Pauses.
[Pauses.
[He sits silent for two hours by the window.
[He attempts to rise.
[Sinks in a swoon.
[After lying long he rccovers and sits up.
[Clock strikes.
[Going to the window.

SCENE XLII.

The Vacant Study.
Busts, books, a harp, &c. A locked writing-case on the table.
Enter Amy (her face very pale,—her hair dishevelled,—her dress disordered).
Amy.
Aye—this is the place,
This is the chamber of his nights and days.
Let me lie close. Where be these mistresses
For which his lawful wife must sit in the shade?
[Taking up the writing-case.
What are you in here?
[Shaking the case.

[Crouches down in a corner.
Enter Balder.—He stands a long time silent.
Balder.
[Opening the case and taking forth a scroll.

[Amy, rising suddenly, approaching wildly, snatches the scroll and throws it through the open window into the moat.
Amy.
[Looks vacantly on the ground.
[Sings.

[Striking her head against the stone wall.
Balder.
My Amy!

Amy.
[Dancing before him.
Thou canst not shut up ears and eyes.
List to my voice, my voice which I upheave
As I did force it through a dome of brass.
Mine hour is come. I will cry in thine ears
And burst in crying. Canst thou tell how deep
By the sound? Black—black—Hast a good ear for colour?
It bubbles thro' it all, up—up—I think
Thou dost not hear me, but thou shalt hear once,
Once, only once, and I will be so silent,
So silent—thou shalt not look pale at me,
Thou shalt not chatter thy long teeth at me.
Thou shalt not show out thy black beard at me.
What, does it grow so fast? What, have I scared thee?
What, does the white skin shrink back down the roots?
Art thou a porcupine? What! Shall I dance?
Aye, husband, dance and sing; aye, hear me sing.
Hear! thou shalt hear; my voice is coming up;
Hark, hark, it comes; dyed with the dark, it comes!
Now it comes into me, now I will cry;
[She shrieks.
I am his wife! This is my murderer!
Make way, make way, this is a murderer!
I am in hell, slain, lost, robbed, murdered, mad,
He did it, he!

Balder.
He knows it.

Amy.
Mad, mad, mad.

[Sinking in his arms in a swoon.
Balder.
[Begins to divest her.
[Throws a kerchief over her face.
[Frantically lifts the kerchief.

LATER MISCELLANEOUS POEMS.

THE MAGYAR'S NEW-YEAR-EVE.

THE YOUTH OF ENGLAND TO GARIBALDI'S LEGION.

LOVE.

TO A LITTLE GIRL.

AN AUTUMN MOOD.

SONNETS AND OTHER SHORT POEMS.

TWO EPIGRAMS.

I. ON A PORTRAIT PRESENTED TO J. Y. SIMPSON, M.D. (AFTERWARDS SIR JAMES SIMPSON).

Unto myself my better self you gave.
I give yourself yourself: but ah, my friend,
In how inverse a ratio! To amend
The unjust return these thanks are all I have,
Except a sigh, when that poor ‘all’ is o'er,
To feel, alas, no less your debtor than before.

II. ON THE DEATH OF EDWARD FORBES.

Nature, a jealous mistress, laid him low.
He woo'd and won her; and, by love made bold,
She showed him more than mortal man should know,
Then slew him lest her secret should be told.

ON A RECENTLY FINISHED STATUE.

Said Sculptor to immaculate marble—‘Show
Thine essence; into necessary space
Most pure describe thine unshaped Purity!’
And lo this Image! As a bubble blown,
Swiftly her charms, dilating, went through all
The zones of sphered Perfection, till the stone
Smiled as to speak. Some coming thought half-shown
Forms on her parting lips, so that her face
Is as a white flow'r whence a drop of dew,
White with the fragrant flow'r, inclines to fall.
‘Oh Everlasting Silence keep her so!
Immortalise this moment, lest she grow
To such a living substance as can die!’
He cried. Consent Eternal heard his cry.

THE CONVALESCENT TO HER PHYSICIAN.

Friend, by whose cancelling hand did Fate forgive
Her debtor, and rescribe her stern award,
Oh with that happier light wherein I live
May all thine after, years be sunned and starred!
May God, to Whom my daily bliss I give
In tribute, add it to thy day's reward,
And mine uncurrent joy may'st thou receive
Celestial sterling! Aye and thou shalt thrive
Even by my vanished woes: for as the sea
Renders its griefs to Heaven, which fall in rains
Of sweeter plenty on the happy plains,
So have my tears exhaled; and may it be
That from the favouring skies my lifted pains
Descend, oh friend, in blessings upon thee!

SAMUEL BROWN.

He came with us to thy great gates, oh Thou
Unopened Age. Our noise was like the wind
Chafing the wordy Deep; but broad and blind
They stood unmoved. Then He,—we knew not how,—
Laid forth his hand upon them. Lo, they grind
Revolving thunders! Lo, on his dark brow
The unknown light! Lo
Azrael came behind
And touched him. They clanged back, and all was Now.
We wondered and forgot; but He, unbent,
With eye still strained to the forbidden day,
Towered in the likeness of his great intent
As if his act should be his monument,
Till Azrael pitied such sublime dismay,
And led him onward by another way.

TO PROFESSOR AND MRS. J. S. BLACKIE.

If Time that feeds love dies to die no more,
Immortal hours, dear friends, were yours and mine;
For Morn that on the hills oped eyes divine,
And Eve that walked like Mary by the shore
Where that old Dreamer, as he built, of yore,
Saw her, and told his dream in such a shrine
As was a kind of Mary, and the shine
Of Noon, and starry censers swinging o'er
With Night, all made ye dearer: thou whose soul,
Palimpsest of a dead and living world,
Taketh no dust from that nor stain from this,
And thou who with thyself hast so empearled
The writing—knowing well how rare it is—
That the scrolled jewels and the jewelled scroll
In total more than both complete a married whole.

TO THE AUTHORESS OF ‘AURORA LEIGH.’

Were Shakspeare born a twin, his lunar twin
(Not of the golden but the silver bow)
Should be like thee: so, with such eyes and brow,
Sweeten his looks, so, with her dear sex in
His voice, (a king's words writ out by the queen,)
Unman his bearded English, and, with flow
Of breastfull robes about her female snow,
Present the lordly brother. Oh Last-of-kin,
There be ambitious women here on earth
Who will not thank thee to have sung so well!
Apollo and Diana are one birth,
Pollux and Helen break a single shell.
Who now may hope? While Adam was alone
Eve was to come. She came; God's work was done.

TO MRS. J. S. BLACKIE.

Dear Friend, once, in a dream, I, looking o'er
The Past, saw the Four Seasons slow advance
Dancing, and, dancing, each her cognizance
So gave and took that neither dancer bore
Her sign, but in another's symbol wore
An amulet to lessen or enhance
Herself: till as they fast and faster dance
I see a dance and lose the dancing four.
Thus thy dear Poet, at his sportive will,
Commingling every seasonable mood
Of old and young, and the peculiar ill
Of each still healing with the other's good,
Bends to a circle life's proverbial span
Where childhood, youth, and age are unity in man.

DEDICATORY.

Beauty is One. But that so equal gold,
Run in the apt and kindly difference
Of each receptive and significant sense,
Configures to our many-minded mould.
Therefore, oh Love, though I no more behold
That sometime world where summer eloquence
I saw and spake, (adding nor time nor tense,
But singing forth the silent music old),
Yet walled in winter cities still sing I;
For conscious of thy beauty mere and whole,
The perfect unit of thy face and soul
(Thy face thy soul confest to mortal eye,
Thy soul thy face by new perceptions known),
Thy One becomes my Many. Take thine own.

SISTER TO SISTER,

‘When I received that love which is a face,
When I perceived that face which is a love,
Two voices, like those two old nations, strove
Within my heart, and the first-born gave place
And served the younger. “Ah this golden space
Doth cage the airy pinions of my dove!
And ah this value, which might prove and more
Another love, seems simony to the grace
Of ours!” Thus while one passion doth protest,
The other cries: “I care not how it be!
For, givest thou much or little, worst or best,
Nor am I richer nor thou dispossest;
My fond subtraction is still thine in me,
And all thy dear remainder mine in thee!”’

ON THE DEATH OF MRS. BROWNING.

Which of the Angels sang so well in Heaven
That the approving Archon of the quire
Cried, ‘Come up hither!’ and he, going higher,
Carried a note out of the choral seven;
Whereat that cherub to whom choice is given
Among the singers that on earth aspire
Beckoned thee from us, and thou, and thy lyre
Sudden ascended out of sight? Yet even
In Heaven thou weepest! Well, true wife, to weep!
Thy voice doth so betray that sweet offence
That no new call should more exalt thee hence
But for thy harp. Ah lend it, and such grace
Shall still advance thy neighbour that thou keep
Thy seat, and at thy side a vacant place.

TWO SONNETS ON THE DEATH OF PRINCE ALBERT.

I.

[In a great house by the wide Sea I sat]

In a great house by the wide Sea I sat,
And down slow fleets and waves that never cease
Looked back to the first keels of War and Peace;
I saw the Ark, what time the shoreless flat
Began to rock to rising Ararat;
Or Argo, surging home, with templed Greece
To leeward, while, mast-high, the lurching fleece
Swung morn from deep to deep. Then in a plat
Of tamarisk a bird called me. When again
My soul looked forth I ponder'd not the main
Of waters but of time; and from our fast
Sure Now, with Pagan joy, beheld the pain
Of tossing heroes on the triremed Past
Obtest the festive Gods and silent stars in vain.

II.

[And as I mused on all we call our own]

And as I mused on all we call our own,
And (in the words their passionate hope had taught
Expressing this late world for which they fought
And prayed) said, lifting up my head to the sun,
‘Ne quibus diis immortalibus,’—one
Ran with fear's feet, and lo! a voice distraught
‘The Prince’ and ‘Dead.’ And at the sound methought
The bulwark of my great house thunder'd down.
And, for an instant,—as some spell were sapping
All place—the hilly billows and billowy hills
Heaved through my breast the lapping wave that kills
The heart; around me the floor rises and falls
And jabbling stones of the unsteady walls
Ebb and flow together, lapping, lapping.

TO 1862.

(IN PROSPECT OF WAR WITH AMERICA.)

TO TÖCHTERCHEN, ON HER BIRTHDAY.

As one doth touch a flower wherein the dew
Trembles to fall, as one unplaits the ply
Of morning gossamer, so tenderly
My spirit touches thine. Yet, daughter true
And fair, great Launcelot's mighty nerve and thew
Best clove a king or caught a butterfly,
(Since each extreme is perfect mastery
—Accurate cause repaid in the fine due
Of just effect—) and, child, it should be so
With Love. The same that nicely plundereth
The honeyed zephyrs for thy cates and wine
Should train thee with the tasks of toil and woe,
Or hold thee against adverse life and death,
Or give thee from my breast to dearer arms than mine.

TO THE SAME.

Töchterchenlein, by whom the least became
The greatest title of dear Daughterhood,
Who hast not laid down life, nor spilled thy blood
For me, but throbbed them thro' the living frame
Of duteous days less different than the same,
Yet not too much the same to be construed
In number, that still multiplied thy good,
And, by the figure of a changing name
For changeless love, helped my weak utterance
Of thy desert; as step by step we climb
A height, or by a thousand measure one:
I verse this Poetry which thou hast done,
As he who gazing on a rhythmic dance
Finds even his common speech a little keep the time.

TO A FRIEND IN BEREAVEMENT.

No comfort, nay, no comfort. Yet would I
In Sorrow's cause with Sorrow intercede.
Burst not the great heart,—this is all I plead—
Ah sentence it to suffer, not to die.
‘Comfort?’ If Jesus wept at Bethany,
—That doze and nap of Death—how may we bleed
Who watch the long sleep that is sleep indeed!
Pointing to Heaven I but remind you why
On earth you still must mourn. He who, being bold
For life-to-come, is false to the past sweet
Of Mortal life, hath killed the world above.
For why to live again if not to meet?
And why to meet if not to meet in love?
And why in love if not in that dear love of old?

AT THE GRAVE OF A SPANISH FRIEND.

Here lies who of two mighty realms was free;
The English-Spaniard, who lived England's good
With such a Spain of splendour in the blood
As, flaming through our cold utility,
Fired the north oak to the Hesperian tree,
And flower'd and fruited the unyielding wood
That stems the storms and seas. Equal he stood
Between us, and so fell. Twice happy he
On earth: and surely in new Paradise,
Ere we have learn'd the phrase of those abodes,
Twice happy he whom earthly use has given,
Of all the tongues our long confusion tries,
That noblest twain wherein the listening gods
Patient discern the primal speech of Heaven.

TO AN AMERICAN EMBASSY.

Since Sovereign Nature, at the happy best,
Is rightful and sole paragon of Art,
Who, tho' she but in part, and part by part,
Paints, carves, or sings the whole, is still possest
By thee, all thee, oh somewhere unconfest
Apollo! in the worlds of men who art
A man, and, with a human body and heart,
Lookest her visible truths, and livest the rest;
Surely that strategy was well design'd
Which, laying siege to Art's proud Capital,
Armed not, against her matchless pow'rs-that-be,
Music, Painting, Sculpture, Poetry,
But sent a living womanhood of all
To queen, by their own laws, the masters of mankind.

JOHN BOHUN MARTIN.

Keeping his word, the promised Roman kept
Enough of worded breath to live till now.
Our Regulus was free of plighted vow
Or tacit debt: skies fell, seas leapt, storms swept;
Death yawned: with a mere step he might have stept
To life. But the House-master would know how
To do the master's honours; and did know,
And did them to the hour of rest, and slept
The last of all his house. Oh, thou heart's-core
Of Truth, how will the nations sentence thee?
Hark! as loud Europe cries ‘Could man do more?’
Great England lifts her head from her distress,
And answers ‘But could Englishman do less?’
Ah England! goddess of the years to be!

DEPRECATING A GIFT.

(OF SOMETHING MADE BY THE GIVER.)

Child, your effectual hands create too much.
The things they fashion having, thenceforth, less
The type of matter than the preciousness
Of you, how can I serve myself of such?
The kindred in my being doth avouch
Your essence; in the very press and stress
Of action I am foiled to a caress.
Ah! give me something you but meant to touch!
Something your love has ripen'd till I'm 'ware
Of thoughts that came in light and stay'd in sweet,
Or th' apostolic shadow of your care,
Passing by, hath healed of malady,
Or wholed in use and grace: gifts rare and meet,
But not too rarely yours to be for me
Still meet, nor meetly mine to be still yours and rare.

PERHAPS.

Ten heads and twenty hearts! so that this me,
Having more room and verge, and striking less
The cage that galls us into consciousness,
Might drown the rings and ripples of to be
In the smooth deep of being: plenary
Round hours; great days, as if two days should press
Together, and their wine-press'd night accresce
The next night to so dead a parody
Of death as cures such living: of these ordain
My years; of those large years grant me not seven,
Nor seventy, no, nor only seventy sevens!
And then, perhaps, I might stand well in even
This rain of things; down-rain, up-rain, side-rain;
This rain from Earth and Ocean, air and heaven,
And from the Heaven within the Heaven of Heavens.

TO JAMES H.

Without Life's toil to win Life's earthly prize
What was thy mystery, oh, early Dead?
The careless world but counted thy young head
Among the multifarious heads that rise
And sink, forgot. For thee, no watching eyes
Starred darkness; no torch led thee to the bed
Of clay. Yet (if the Apostle justly said
Of all oblation) who or lives or dies
So well as to achieve a fairer fame
Than henceforth should be thine, oh, unknown youth,
Since on your votive marble, for once, Truth
Indites an Epitaph, and, 'neath thy name,
Transcends all laudatory verse in one,
‘To him John Hunter raised this tributary stone.’

ON READING A DICTATED LETTER.

Dear Friend, methinks when thus thy plenary soul
Speaks from yon pale default that lies so low,
The hale and stalwart by thy couch must know
Such fond intoleration to be whole
As he, who, where the storms of battle roll,
Himself unthrown beholds the cannon throw
His father at his feet, and, while a woe
Of splendid shame dements him to that sole
Passion, above the fallen field looks round
The red conversion of the baptized ground
For aught whereon to spend his sanguine wealth
And, seeking not the value but the cost,
Rushes to win whatever, won or lost,
May end this gross unwounded infamy of health.

UNDER ESPECIAL BLESSINGS.

Lord Christ, Lord Christ, ah for a little space
Turn hence. Some day, when I again am low
In the new dust of whatsoever blow
Time hath in license, from Thy perfect place
Oh let the awful solace of thy face
Sun me, but not now! Lord, Thou seest me! How
Can I, o'erborne by what Thy hands bestow,
Bear what Thine eyes? Now, therefore, of Thy grace
I ask but that if ever, as of yore,
Thou lookest up and sigh'st, my kneeling thought
May kiss Thy skirt, and Thou, who know'st if aught
Touch Thee, mayst know, and through Thee, what no more
Is I, but, ne'ertheless, began in me,
May rise to Him Whom no man hath seen, nor can see.

ON RECEIVING A BOOK FROM ‘X. H.’

Oh, great-eyed contemplation whom I saw
Walk by the blue shores of the Northern Sea
Leaning upon a giant, who for thee
Seemed gentle, while black Night far west did gnaw
The jagged Eve, and, near, the flapping caw
Round Beatoun's shadowy Tower croaked down on me
More than the gloom of Night: ere thou couldst see
Beyond the inhuman ruin, or withdraw
Thy soul from eyes, which, as one tune can fill
Two voices, made the pathos of that soul
A double passion, standing dim and still
I saw and wondered. Is this book thy scroll,
Ah Sybil? Hast thou writ the unheard cry
I saw thee look that eve to Eartn and Sea and Sky?

TO JAMES Y. SIMPSON.

Oh teeming heart, that, for this once, in vain
Big with our good, didst undeliver'd die,
Had some god got thee with a progeny
O'er-great, that, born, might even dispute the reign
Of Death, as Death had seen the realms of Pain
Won by thine elder brood? We marvell'd why,
So seeming-careless of his sovereignty,
He spared and spared thee: doth this day explain
The Fabian greed that grudged a needless blow?
Knowing too well what deity possest
Thee, did the dead-eyed strategist foreknow
How the huge god must choke the mortal breast?
The mortal breast, deep under clod and sod,
Out of the half-saved world drag down the abortive god?

ON RECEIVING A BOOK FROM DANTE ROSSETTI.

Since he is Poet of whom gods ordain
Some most anthropic and perhuman act
Whereby his manhood shall so man his fact
That but his man of man is born again,
And since humanity is most humane,
Not at our pyramid's base, where we have tact
Of dust and supersurge the common tract
Of being, but up there, where form doth reign
To apex, let a Poet ask no fame
But that which, high o'er floods of Life and Death
From singing arks Ararat echoeth
To Ararat, and let him rather be,
Oh Poet, writ on yonder page by thee
Than hear what vulgar breath should make his world-wide name.

THREE SONNETS ON LOVE AND BEAUTY.

I. TO A PROMESSA SPOSA.

Look on this flower, which, from its little tree
Of bodily stem and branches and leaves green,
Leans lovelier, being toucht, and smelt, and seen
A Rose, a Rose, a Rose! and, though thy three
Senses praise it triply unto thee,
And all their parlous difference intervene,
Yet unto thee, who knowest what they mean,
Thee who art one, and hast been, and shalt be,
Is one as thou; one Rose, one beauteous Rose,
One rosy Beauty. Who shall reason why
The slow stem, on a sudden season, shows
It can be worm unto this butterfly?
We know but this, that when yon ecstasy
Transfigures the green tree, its time of fruit is nigh.

II. TO THE SAME.

Oh Soul! that this fair flower dost so mirrour,
Ask of thyself, saying—‘Soul beautiful,
Oh Soul-in-love, oh happy, happy Soul,
That wert so dull and poor, and this sweet hour
Art so more floral even than a flower,
That in thee it is better'd to a full,
Whereto each former rose is poor and dull,
Ah, what doth thus enlarge thee and empower,
That thou who, at thy most, wert a priesthood,
A vassal strength, a bliss feudàtory,
Hast grown a final joy, an absolute good,
A god that, for being god, believest in God
The more?’ Thou canst not clear this mystery,
Ah happy, happy soul, whose fruit of life is nigh.

III. TO A FAIR WOMAN, UNSATISFIED WITH WOMAN'S WORK.

If Beauty is a name for visible Love,
And Love for Beauty in the conscious soul,
Which when commoving to its highest whole,
Or making that whole part of wholes above
Itself, feels, like an eye, that it doth move,
But cannot see the motion visible
To others and in others; if the sole
Difference is ours who see the spirit a dove,
Or feel the dove a spirit; and if in
All worlds Love, Love, as song and text allege,
Sums the full good of life, who shall not bow
To Beauty? Thou, born in her shrine, if thou
Shouldst dare profane her, what would be thy sin?
The sacrilegious priest does more than sacrilege.

TO THE TIBER.

On its late (in 1871) Inundation of Rome.

Well done, old Flood, that, hiding a clear eye
Beneath thy yellow veil, dost wend among
Those epic hills and dales of seven-topp'd song,
To keep watch on the stone eternity
Whereof the mortal tenants die and die;
One more is gone, the deadliest of the long
Line, the foul vast of whose unmeasured wrong
Twined to its summit in the triple Lie
Of that thrice-cursèd Crown. And thou, brave flood,
Enterest a thousand years of carrion
To swill away the deeps of dung and blood,
And drown the garbaged tribes that stank thereon,
That so, at least, the new investiture
Be on clean threshold and a hearth-stone pure.

[Where are you, Poets, that a Hero dies]

Where are you, Poets, that a Hero dies
Unsung? He who, when Duty brought too soon
His billet of rest toiled on till he had won
The countersign of Glory? There he lies,
And in the silence of your poesies
He looks a Poem; yea, so made and done
As if the Bardic Heavens had thrown him down
In model to your making. Close his eyes,
That yours may learn him. To fulfil the Law
In Gospel, force the seeds of use to flower
In Beauty, to enman invisible Truth
And then transfigure—this is Poetry.
And this the World and his dear Country saw
Hymned unawares in that unconquer'd youth
Who, scorning to give less than all his power,
Having bled for us, then aspired to die;
And, dying thus, left one more pledge behind
That England may again deserve to lead Mankind.

ENGLAND'S DAY:

A WAR-SAGA.

Russian, Yankee, and Prussian,
Wherever you be,
That stand by the shores of our sea
And shake your fists over,
This is the Castle of Dover,
You knaves!
And yon's the flag unfurl'd,
That shall flog you over the waves
Of the world.
Ay, by the shores of our sea,
You knaves!
For wherever the breeze blows free,
And the hurling, swirling, up and down deeps go thundering under and over,
There the sea is our sea,
And there's a Castle of Dover,
Which carries a flag unfurl'd
That shall flog you off the waves
Of the world.
What are you trying to say,
You knaves?
Whatever it be, it so maddens the waves
That not a word comes this way.
Speak up! you've no need to be shy,
This is the land of charity,
Where we never regret the labours
We spend for the sake of our neighbours:
So no more thrimming and thrumming,
But mention whatever you want;
And if you can show us 'tis good for you,
We're just the People to grant.
Should you like, for instance, a drubbing or two?
We'll take neither fees nor thanks,
But do you the very best we can do:
Ay! and do it aboard your own planks,
And ask you nothing for coming!
Louder, my boy, ahoy!
Why what the fiends can you say
That makes such mountainous weather?
You look to be talking loud,
But I hear you no more than I see a feather
That a cyclone spouts to a cloud.
If you've got any breath, don't save it.
Well done! once more! I have it—
‘England’—that's good for one's ears—
‘England’—all right! and three cheers—
But unless that voice of your own
Can hoist up higher, I'm blest
If I'll catch a word of the rest!
For you no sooner open your jaws
Than there roars such a vast sea-shout
That I hear you no more than I'd hear the daws
If Dover cliffs tumbled down.
Now then, there's a lull, sing out!
Yo hoy! that's better. Soho!
I've got it! ‘England’—Yes—No—
‘Has had her day.’ Oh, that's your say—
‘England has had her day!’
O ye who bear, on every sea,
That flag of flags, so often sung,
Whose name, in every human tongue,
Is t'other word for Victory,
That banner of eternal youth
Your sires and grandsires, great and good,
Have colour'd with their mortal blood
And cross'd with their immortal truth,
A cheer, a cheer, and you shall hear
News that's worth a British cheer.
Do you see yon braggarts three,
Like three swash-bucklers in a play?
They've found it out for you and me,
So 'twon't be civil to say Nay.
And verse one of chapter A
In this great discovery
Is ‘England’—what? ay, wait for that
And while you wait, my hearts, haul down
Your wind-blown pageant of renown,—
Yon glorious weed whose bayonets
The grasping tyrant ne'er forgets,—
Yon harp whose throbbing chords can beat
All sounds of battle but retreat,—
And let the keeper's hand lay low
The lions that ne'er fell to foe;—
Reef, reef the flapping toy away,
England, my hearts,—has had her day!
Now, true-blues, you've heard the news,
Hip hip hip, hurrah?
Not hip hip hip, hurrah, my boys,
But hip hip hip, aha!
From decks to shrouds, from shrouds to clouds,
Hip hip hip, aha!
The stays are taut, the sails are caught,
With ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!
Like woods at play, the big masts sway,
With ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!
The big ships ride from side to side,
With ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!
The north waves roll from pole to pole,
Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!
From pole to pole the south winds troll,
Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!
From air to sea, from sea to air,
The cross-clang clamours everywhere,
Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!
From Baffin Bay, by Matapan,
Round Hindostan, and far Japan,
Back, back, to where it first began,
Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!
Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, my boys,
Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!
The very globe shakes like a man,
With ha, ha, ha, ha!
Russians, Yankees, Prussians, all you
Who stand there scowling at Dover,
‘England has had her day’—is that your cry?
Flood and earthquake! it's our cry too!
Had it, had it, a thousand times over!
Yea, and as sure as sky is sky,
And sea is sea, and shore is shore,
You shall see England have one day more!
And such a day shall England have,
That a thousand cities over the wave
Shall wring their bitter hands and say,
‘England, England, has had her day!’
Some of us, when that day is done,
You knaves!
Shall go down with the battle sun
In the battle waves.
But as day by day
The sun goes round
Where'er yon flag's unfurled,
And still through dews of morn
Comes back to find Britannia crown'd,
And tell her of her world,
So sure with morrow
At sweet sunrise,
Like mourn of horn,
Like roll of drum,
Like boom of gun,
Like swell of bells,
Our name and our fame
Thro' England's tears shall come
Up the skies!
And, putting by the shades
From early window-pane
Of castled palace or white-cottaged lane,
Pass without rebuke,
And look
On what the sun sees:
Little children on their knees,
And pale dishevelled maids,
And ancient sires whose sorrow is not sorrow,
And mother sitting by the bed,
Where, years ago, was born
The face she shall not see again,
Who bows the passionate winter of the head
And sobs Amen.
And some of us shall come
In triumph home
Beneath yon flag unfurl'd!
Over the foam, over the foam,
Conquerors, conquerors, conquerors home.
Joyously sailing the lightsomest foam
That the gayest of gales ever curl'd.
On, on, over ocean and ocean,
To the goal of the patriot's devotion,
Once more, with heaving heart, to see
The Native-land of all the free,
The Mother-earth of Liberty,
The sacred soil that bears the tree
That sowed the world.
On, on, over ocean and ocean,
On, on, by shores that gaze and wonder,
Shores where friendly cities shout,
Shores where frantic foes blaze out
Their paffing wrath in vain.
On, on, like gods on living thrones of thunder,
Heclas and Ætnas smoking thro' the main:
On, on, like kings and kings,
In wingèd towns and tow'rs with wings;
On, on, town after town,
And, in their train,
Up ocean hill and down hollow,
Horn'd Leviathans that mount and wallow,
And all
The jubilant Elephant-herd of the sea,
That roar and roll and follow
Where the sea-shepherds call.
But some of those who come
In glory home
That day,
Shall envy us who sleep
In the Deep,
Far away!
When they see the eyes that weep,
When they hear the lips that pray,
Because we sleep
Far away!
Millions and millions of eyes that weep,
Millions of lips that cry
To God that day,
Because we sleep
Far away!—
Thousands and thousands of eyes that are dry
As they never were dry till that day,
Because we sleep
Far away!—
Thousands of lips that shall keep
Silence to God and Man that day,—
Silence, silence, deep,—
Deep, deep as the Deep
Where we sleep
Far away!

FRAGMENTS.

THE OLIVE.

SONG OF A MAD GIRL, WHOSE LOVER HAS DIED AT SEA.

Under the green white blue of this and that and the other,
That and the other, and that and the other, for ever and ever,
Under the up and down and the swaying ships swingswonging,
There they flung him to sleep who will never come back to my longing.
The Father comes back to his child and the son comes back to his Mother,
But neither by land or sea
Will he ever come back to me,
Never, never, never
Will he come back to me.
All day I run by the Cliff, all night I stand in the sand,
All day I furrow and burrow the holmes and the heights.
But whether by night or day
There's never a trace or a track,
Never a word or a breath,
In the swill and the swoop and the flash and the foam and the wind,
Never a fleck or a speck
Coming, coming my way.
The mew comes back to the strand and the ship comes back to the land,
But he will never come back
To all the prayers that I pray thro' the scorching black of the day
And the freezing black of the nights,
Never, never come back
To the ear that harks itself deaf and the eye that strains itself blind,
And the heart that is starving to death.
He was chill and they threw him to cold,
He was dead and they threw him to drown,
He was weary and wanted rest—
They should have laid him on my breast,
He would have slept on my breast,
But they threw him into the boiling boil and bubble,
The wheel and the whirl, the driff and the draff
Of the everlasting trouble.
I swear to you he was mine! I swear to you he was my own.
Madam, if I may make so bold,
Do you know what the dead men do
In the black and blue, in the green and brown?
Deep, deep, you think they sleep
Where the mermen moan and the mermaids weep?
Ah, ah, you make me laugh!
I'm not yet twenty years old,
But lean your ear
And you shall hear
A little thing that I know.
Up and up they come to the top,
Down and down they go down.
To and fro the finny fish go,
But slow and slow, and so and so,
Low over high, high under low,
Up and up they come to the top,
Down and down they go down:
When the sun comes up they come to the top,
When the sun sinks they go down.

FRAGMENT OF A SLEEP-SONG.

BALLAD.

LORD ROBERT.

FRAGMENT OF BALLAD.

FRAGMENTS OF POEMS FOUND SINCE THE WRITER'S DEATH.

BAYONET SONG.

MENTANA.

SNOWDROPS.

NEW-YEAR'S EVE.