University of Virginia Library

Nestled within a grassy nook, where heaved
Deep rocks their bald heads in the air,
Around whose shoulders mosses weaved
Soft web, to shield them from the wear
Of cold and rain,—like woman's arms
Twined tenderly round husband, whose bold will,
Uplifting him with envied skill,
Bares him to the world's pelting harms,—
A cottage sent its solitary smoke
Into th' all-clasping blue;
And in the sea-tossed sailor woke
Dear thoughts of his far home. The dew
That shone before
The sheltered cottage door,
Its bright aërial twinkle,
Tempered with salt-sea sprinkle
From the near sprayful ocean,
Whose never-ceasing motion,
Through tuneful tidal stress, or tempest's whip,
Was multitudinous companionship
To th' inmates of the cottage. These were three.
In every human group will be,—
Be it man or child or woman,—one,
Through whom, round whom, are spun
Life's finest, strongest threads, woven by Love,
The founder, mover, of all beings that move,
The great heart of this throbbing universe.
Here 'twas an infant girl,
Soft-rounded as a sea-born pearl,
In whom the mystery of growth lay coiled,—
Like deity in the air unspoiled,—
And on whom smiled a watchful nurse.
This exquisite piece of heavenly work
Smiled, too, and chirped, and then began to speak,
The wonders that in such a creature lurk
Outleaping in short syllables, too weak
For their new burden. Him
Who helped to tend her, and whose looks
And thoughts clung to her, as to limb
Of blossomed tree the ripening sun,
She called “pa-pa,” and often drew,
With her fresh joys, from his loved books.
In her bright laughter was a ring
Seraphic, and her earnest chatter
Glad as to thirsty garden-beds in spring
The warm shower's tuneful patter.
Gleeful to make them visible in the twirls,
Wherein upon her head they danced,
Sea-breezes pressed and tossed her curls
Upon her brow and eyes, whence glanced
Beams, as though Joy and Hope
Had found new Heaven in this earthly blue,
Where they revelled in fullest scope,
Looking enraptured through
The darknesses of life,
Seeing nor pain, nor grief, nor strife.
Of these dull darknesses some fell
On Sibyl as she played and laughed,
Unconscious of the malign spell
Which stung the joy that Oswald quaffed
From her sweet ways and cheery lips,
Holding his soul in half eclipse.

As if accordant with his mood,
He chose dark days for longest walks
Upon the shore whereof no rood
But is a rocky dyke that balks
The wind-armed ocean's vast attack.
And if the sea rose angrily, to lash
The lifted land and dash
Against it billows' rage, and they
Were hurled growling and hissing back,
Oswald, amid the flying spray,
Would welcome the resounding fight,
Th' ever-repeated onset and the flight.
And when in darkest night
Tempest took the sea's side,
Flinging it 'gainst the steadfast rocks,
As it would whelm them with new shocks,
The electric air deepening the wide,
Fierce tumult, thunder's crash
Instant upon the blinding flash,
Awed, he stood, on a headland high,
The bellowing, fiery sky
Uplifting him towards the sublime
Great presence, as though, for the time,
The soul were freed, and he stood there, a man
Unfleshed, clean of all mortal earthly ban.

Uprose the Sun above a laughing shore,
Where waves came sweeping in to embrace
The rocks they struck the night before,
Storm's deafening clangor giving place
To melody their meeting made.
Deep Nature's lifeful voice
Is ever tuneful, ceaseless pæan, paid
To the creative Spirit,—a call
On many-tongued creation to rejoice
In being, with cadence musical.
When cataract or lion roars,
Each is in tune with robin's early pipe,
Or the low-nested lark that singing soars.
The storm left Oswald in a sunnier mood.
He walked forth in the glittering day
With thought more apprehensive apt,
Emotions less unripe,
More in deep Nature's wonders lapt;
For he was given to brood
On abstract thinkings, and to play
With barren mongrels, born
Of a subjective inwardness,—
Which no outflamings bless,—
And peering frigid intellect;
A brood that feedeth less on love than scorn,—
A brood so blind that when 't is near being wreckt,
Deems it hath reached victorious goal.
Oswald lived too much in his books;
And they were not the highest, best,
Those that wake aspiration in the breast,
Those that reflect great Nature's soul,
As do what 's over them clear running brooks.
Shakespeare less often would he read
Than Edwards and his juiceless kin,
Keen, intellectual delvers in
Mines of th' unsweetened self, where seed
Can sprout of no benignant blessings,
Or glowing, self-forgetting hopes,
But where, wheedled by self-caressings,
Unconscious drunk with incense from the me,
Which dims the higher vision, the mind gropes
While thinking that it mounts triumphantly.
Close arguments of such books, narrow, bold,
Unlighted by emotion's heat,
Lead only to negations cold:
Within them is no warm heart-beat.
The servant of a loving heart
That intellect must be that aims to teach
Mankind its highest part,
And help it a stout moral stature reach.
Faith, Hope, and Love are holy fire,
Kindled in man by superhuman power.
If even one of these expire,
A lurid cloud would o'er rent manhood lower;
And if all three should fade to lifeless embers,
Men would then screech and howl
Like forest vagrants, and, no more ruled members
Of wide, continuous wholes, would prowl
Voracious, sullen, thriftless, sad;
No memories out of joyance wrought,
Nor visionary pictures glad,
But only low-brow'd thought
Within the shrunken brain,
That gnaws itself in rabid pain,
Having no outward longings to fulfil.
Earth, ocean, sky, their beauty and their might,
Now emptied of man's will,
Would bring to him no wisdom-fraught delight.
Oswald was startled into faith
By the sublimities
Of that resounding sea-coast storm;
That in the lightning's flash there rayeth
A light supernal, wherein lies
The source of every living form,
He felt within a deeper deep
Than yet his soul had bared.
That fiery, thunder-breeding leap
Into his inmost being had glared,
And bred there new religious thought,
Linking him to supremest will,—
Something more than his books had taught,
Joying him with unearthly thrill.
And when, after a calm sleep's rest,
He went forth to re-meet
The lifeful Sun, and tideful Ocean
Coming in majesty to greet,
With peaceful swell and shining crest,
Th' expectant shore, 't was with the glad emotion
Of one about to clasp dear slighted friends
In penitent arms. From th' all-enfolding blue,
Hope, as a moon that bends
In a clear sky her bow anew,
Beckoned him towards her silent beams,
Like bright eyes in a lover's dreams.
With spring of one in re-earned health,
He walked back on th' erst barren shore,
Now ripe with spiritual wealth.
Within a stone's throw of his cottage door
Welcomed he was by Love.
As she had just been born
Of fresh embraces of the sun and sea,
Shone, in a little curvèd cove,
Like dewdrop in an April morn,
Sibyl, leaping with liveliest glee
As th' ocean softly kissed her rosy feet.
Then she would chase his swift retreat,
Laughing with tuneful screech,
As with a shoreward dash,
Catching her on the beach,
He would her little ankles splash.
To Oswald's first surprisèd glance
It seemed as he were gazing
On sudden vision of a trance,
The sun warm blazing
On Sibyl in the curvèd cove,
Outsparkling she
The illuminated sea,
So beautiful, she seemed to move
With an immortal motion,
Beauties of sunlit shore and ocean
Frigid and pale to hers,
Outflamed from fire enkindled
By breath that stirs
Divinely mingled,
To outfill man's resplendent being.
When she saw Oswald near her,
Leaving her giant playmate on the sand,
She ran to meet him who was dearer
Than aught the sea or land
Could show to her young seeing.
Oswald stooped low the joyous child to fold
Close to his heart, as he would press
Her being into his, and hold
It there in endless, warm caress.
Just then a dense cloud passed between
The sun and cove: discoloring shade,
Like bad thoughts sudden seen
Fair visage to degrade,
Fell on the stainless bloom
Of Sibyl, sending arrowy chill
To blast his soul's warm thrill,
As he had heard a deadly doom.
He let the child slip to the earth,
And giving to her little hand his finger,
Unmindful of her prattling mirth,
And her desire to linger,
Silent, he walked in darkness, wrought
By memories that o'ercast his thought.
Near to the cottage they were met by Maude,
The nurse, their sole attendant. She
Looked daily on the broad,
The boundless, changeful, sounding sea.
As from the cottage door she saw it
'Twas a far-stretching gleam,
A rock-framed picture; but she could not draw it
In fancy, or in sunshine see,
Did not its foreground beam
With Sibyl's light and glee.
A daily rainbow in her sky,
A promise and a beauty,
To Maude was Sibyl, a divine
Illumination, high
Celestial gift, a sign
Of blessing, a sweet call to duty.
Sibyl was six months old
When Oswald trusted her to Maude,
Whose first look was not mercenary, cold.
In her strong nature lurked no fraud,
And she was warm with woman's feeling.
As th' infant oped its eyes into her own,
In its dear helplessness appealing
To the “eternal womanly,” a lone
Immortal creature, she in her
Deep soul felt th' angel stir.
The dimpled babe she laid
In her warm heart to warm it,
And turn to brightness shade
That clouded that good heart to alarm it,—
A heart that was not only good
But sound, not only sound but wise:
She was again a mother, and her blood
Blushed with the joy that dyes
Only maternal hearts.
Oswald turned him to th' ocean shore again.
Oh, if its boundless solitude
Could swallow up this pain!
But his were inward smarts.
Only the soul can purge
What soul hath fouled. Imbued
With too much me, to a dirge
Life's music sinks, in spite
Of seeming cheerfulness,—
Often a flickering light
To mask a deep distress.
His harp of many strings,
Whereon pure music flings
Th' eternal God, Oswald had jangled:
By rash misuse of freedom's boon,
Had put it rudely out of tune;
And so, his joy was daily mangled
By one bad, selfish deed.
His suffering was proof
Of innate good, and of the power and need
To cleanse his deathless being's woof
Of mortal stains that darkened
His life within, without;
This suffering took from each joy its bloom,
From every act its finer grace,
From every pleasure its perfume,—
Laming him for life's hardy race.
To-day he felt upsprout
Purest desires, and he hearkened
To those profoundest, wisest whispers
That in the sane will not be hushed;
Breathings fresh from the Eternal source,
That mould the speech of earliest lispers,
Choice images of innocent force,—
Breathings that never can be crushed.
Tender, close, strong as sheaves
Of light, Love weaves
Imperishable filaments that bind
The human creature to creative Mind:
Thence wields he of the power native
To the Supreme, and only Love is quick creative.

For four years Oswald had been learning
From Sibyl. Through her mystical unfolding
He had daily sought with burning,
Bold curiosity to spell
Life's riddle, in the ceaseless swell
Of body and of mind beholding
That beautiful great miracle,
A callow human creature climbing
(From inward motion) th' infinite scale of being.
Here nothing was vouchsafed his seeing,
No inward to this outward rhyming.
But when glad Sibyl left her play,
And up to his loved bosom climbed,
His heart's pulse therewith bounding rhymed;
And in his brain upshot a ray
Outshining sage Philosophy,
And throwing on life's mystery,
On th' aim of all creation,
Beaming illumination.
Like worm that 's sudden felt to crawl
On maiden's shining neck,
A shudder would appall
His soul, and joy's fresh cargo wreck,
As when on Sibyl in his arms
That threatening shadow fell,—
Whether from memory's whispering swarms,
Or passing cloud, he could not tell.
Along the shore he roamed,
So sleepy tranquil now the sea
Its greeting to the land not foamed
By billows sparkling sunnily.
He sought a sea-scooped nook,
And sat down on a rock wave-washed
By boldest tides, near which a brook
Warbled among the stones at times tide-lashed.
The little brooklet, hurrying to th' ocean,
To Oswald's saddened musings brought
Sibyl, with onward tuneful motion
Speeding towards womanhood, so fraught
With stormful wreck, through those affections sweet
That gave to Sibyl's heart its happiest beat.
The brooklet's lively monotone,
Like children's sprightly prattle, soothed
Sad Oswald's spirit, and the moan
Of quiet Ocean, as the shore he kissed,
Like mother's lullaby through tearful mist,
His soul's rough tumult smoothed.
In their soft married music he could feel
More than an earthly voice, and ere
He rose adown his cheek did steal
A sweet, repentant tear.
As he walked homeward, the familiar view
Was unfamiliar: it had grown new.
The spiritual is the only sight that sees:
It only can the language read,
And its deep meaning seize,
Written with matter, and can heed
Its deeper lessons, those
That ceaselessly disclose
Wisdom and beauty infinite.
A ray brighter than sunbeam's flight
Shone from within him, laying bare
A hidden life in ocean, earth, and air.
About his inmost being was a glow
Of love and of good will, that made him know
Himself, and feel him strong
With a new strength; so, as he moved along,
He looked upon the wondrous shore
As he had never looked before.
As he were hearing music from the spheres,
When he approached the cottage door
Rang in his changèd ears
Sibyl's loved laughter,
As she upon the floor,
Through love that seemed to waft her
Into far womanhood,
Played mother to a playful kitten.
At sight of the dear child,
Conscience was still more deeply smitten.
With pressure that was almost wild,
Sibyl to his heart he pressed.
“Papa, papa, you are crying!”
As warm tears filled his eyes, tears blessed
Flowing from deeps now first unsealed.
About his head, in rapture flying,
To an illumined eye would be revealed
A jubilant, shining brood
Of that bright, infinite, heavenly swarm,—
Children of earth-life, now enskyed,
Who help us keep our forces nobly warm,
That we, too, may one day be glorified.
Oswald, so deeply was he moved,
Sank weeping on a seat, and, half in fears,
Sibyl ran pale to the other whom she loved.
To Maude they were a mystery, those tears.
Oswald, with a sweet smile, unseen till now,
Folded pale Sibyl on his heaving breast,
Soothing good Maude with tender words and low,
While Sibyl gently sobbed herself to rest.
The next day, balmy summer day,
Oswald, who had never known an hour's illness,
Rose not, but as he lay
Listened to the great ocean's stillness:
He, whom the sun had never failed to waken
And draw forth, lay contented not to rise,
Filling Maude, Sibyl, with a new surprise.
His earthly life was shaken.

Who carries in his brain such true ideal,
That when he puts it forth to view,
Whether with chisel, pencil, or with pen,
It shines for aye a beaming real,
Like daily sunrise, ever new,
Inspirer, lifter, of true men,—
He is a revelator,
One trusted with the sacred fire,
Seer, prophet, poet, a creator,
One who through beauty points us higher.
This upward pointing, nowhere is it done
With more illuminated finger
Than in that lofty poem of Raphaél,
('Mong Dresden's treasures, high alone,)
That with angelic spell
Ever recalls and makes the vision linger.
Before this glowing, painted masterpiece
A mourning lady sat, not the first time;
In thirty years her movement, figure, face
Had ripened into faultless beauty's grace.
Some of her pain would cease,
When she beheld those heads sublime,
The holy Infant and his holy mother:
Her grief they could assuage, they could not smother.
One day, as will be with a rooted sorrow,
Her pangs shot sharper than was wont:
Great Grief from cheerfullest things will borrow,
To make his pallid cheeks more gaunt.
But from the splendent figures came
A finer effluence; as she gazed,
A feeling that she could not name
Sweetened her tears, her soul amazed.
Upon their floating throne
The child and mother shone
As though from inward light
Kindled by awful omnipresent might.
A gentle touch, and her companion friend
Laid in her lap a letter.
She knew the hand: to rend,
As 't were a spider's fetter,
The enclosing folds, and rifle
The sheet of all its meaning,
Was instant: scarcely could she stifle
A shriek of joy, as, leaning
On her close friend, she cried, “No more delay!
She lives! she lives! Away, away!”
The letter ran in broken lines,
Drawn from the soul's most secret mines.
“Forgive! Forgive! Forgive!
How could I live
After such act!
I robbed thee of thy child!
Oh, I was rackt
With devils, wild
With love and hate!
Upon my heart did skeleton fingers grate.
Thou gav'st thy hand and heart (Oh no!
Thy heart,—that could not be:
Thy heart thou hadst given to me!)
Unto my foe!
What a revenge! I stole
Thy babe, believing I had given my soul
Some peace! 'T was fiercer war, a darker hell!
But for thy child this theft
Had been my knell.
(Much more than thou was I bereft!)
I soon began to love her: threw me
Into her angelhood:
Out of my damnèd self she drew me.
The sun and stars and earth and sea
Came back to me and pitied me.
Less darkly coursed my blood:
Me her light guided, saved:
Deep on my heart was her heart graved.
I'm teaching her to love thee,—easy part
To her so quick, so loving heart.
I ceased to hate and fear
Myself. Again I shed a tear.
Forgive! Forgive! Forgive!
Then come: I have not long to live.”

The sun was showering his great boon
Of light upon the rock-based shore:
Such calm was in the summer afternoon,
That peaceful sea, how could it ever roar?
Oswald lay restless in his bed;
Like torches in a cavern glowed
His large dark eyes beneath his black-haired head;
Life round his features flowed
With her inseparable dear comrade, Death,
Gently as summer breeze's tenderest breath,
That seems each moment just about to cease.
He feebly turned his head to listen:
The whirl of rapid wheels
Made his dark eyes to glisten:
Into his ear it peals,
Like bells announcing peace.
The carriage stops: a gush
Of joy and his last tears;
Then quick he hears
The impatient rush:
Then Sibyl cries, half frightened
As she is snatched up from the floor,
To be smothered in mother's kisses
(To him, as her, sweetest of blisses):
Then through the open door
His long-loved Mary lightened
Into his eyes before they died.
Mary staggered to the bedside,
Sank on her knees, while Sibyl, trembling pale,
Fell into Oswald's arms with piteous wail.
Oswald, laying his fleshless palm
On sobbing Mary's head,
“Thou hast forgiven me, Mary,” calm
And confident, he said.
She raised her vivid eyes to his, and sobbed,
“Forgive, Henry, forgive! 't was thou was robbed.”
Oswald pressed Sibyl to his breast:
“Go to thy mother, Sibyl dear!”
The quivering child obeyed without a tear.
His head fell back: he was at rest.
Maude knelt by the bedside, weeping:
Sibyl still in her mother's lap, as she were sleeping:
Ocean rolled slow long billows in, and sighed:
Mary, who should have been his bride,
In raptured awe gazed at his face,
Beholding there unearthly gleam,—
The beauty of angelic grace,
The glow of an ecstatic dream.
Through that blest look there breathed a breath
Of Love divinely pure instilled:
There was no mortal taint of death,
But Hope immortally fulfilled.