University of Virginia Library

SONNETS.

TO HIS EMINENCE CARDINAL NEWMAN.

Father;—for loftier titles cannot hide
The tenderness of thy paternity
From eyes that turn with filial gaze to thee—
Sons of thy Faith across the ocean wide,
Led of thy light from paths unsanctified,
Thine own begotten, though unseen are we.
Thy loss, thy gain, we count our own to be:
And now our hearts exulting in the tide
Of favors shed upon thee from the hand
Whose grace outgrows its giving, fondly glow
With more than silent syllables express—
O, westward, as the sunshine, to our land
Still let thy love, a light perpetual, flow,
Thy children, bowed in reverence, to bless.

EUGENIE.

JUNE 1879.

In exile, widowed, childless, desolate,
Thou sittest in the majesty of woe,
And nations gaze, with shuddering murmurs low,
Upon the direful trilogy of Fate.
Hushed are the warring interests of state
Beneath the pall of Sorrow. Foes forego
Their wonted discord, and with footsteps slow
And meekened foreheads, move compassionate.
All exiles weave their miseries with thine;
All widows turn with sympathy to thee;
All mothers, desolate and childless made,
Mingle their moan with this thine agony:
And yet, to thee the royal lot is laid—
Threefold the cross that measures love divine.

COLUMBUS.

'Tis read of one, a ferryman of old,
St. Christopher, who on his shoulders bore,
Across the torrent to the welcome shore,
The infant Christ. The alien waters rolled
Their weltering weight tumultuous; but 'tis told
The pilot swerved not 'mid the desperate roar,
Till, landed safe, his tottering burden sore
He trembled, lost in reverence, to behold.
And thou, to me, in that prophetic dream,
Which led thee westward o'er the wandering main,
Christ-laden, to the land whereof no gleam
Had cleft the compass of the narrower brain,
The legendary Christopher dost seem,
Fulfilling all his destiny again.

SHAKESPEARE'S MOURNERS.

I saw the grave of Shakespeare in a dream,
And round about it grouped a wondrous throng,
His own majestic mourners, who belong
Forever to the Stage of Life, and seem
The rivals of reality. Supreme
Stood Hamlet, as erewhile the graves among,
Mantled in thought: and sad Ophelia sung
The same swan-dirge she chanted in the stream.
Othello, dark in destiny's eclipse,
Laid on the tomb a lily. Near him wept
Dejected Constance. Fair Cordelia's lips
Moved prayerfully the while her father slept,
And each and all, inspired of vital breath,
Kept vigil o'er the sacred spoils of death.

YESTERDAY.

As light on lids that slumber, warms unseen,
So now, thy veiled presence breathing near,
Soft penetrates the web of darkness drear,
That Night, the grim Arachne, weaves between
Wan Twilight and her roseate sister-queen,
Imperial Dawn. Behold how many a tear
(Pale records of immortal memory dear)
Attests thy wonted influence serene!
And, lo! the winged moments, one by one,
Foreshadowed of the ages yet to be,
Upon the bleak horizon where the sun
Tinges the mist of dim futurity,
Beholding here thy glimmering footsteps gone,
Speed through the trackless interval to thee.

AD MONTEM.

I lift mine eyes, and lo! impetuous tears
Bedim them, as the tides of thought o'erflow
The soul's expansion. On thy peaks of snow,
Above the boreal revel, Nature hears
The chorus of the night-enkindled spheres
Roll westward, while their flickering torches grow
Like phantoms, in the orient's warmer glow,
Ere yet the Dawn's imperial crest appears.
But on thy deep foundations slumber Night
And everlasting Silence. 'Tis their dream
Alone that lingers when the darkness wanes;
Amid the ephemeral seasons' bloom and blight,
When earth and sky and ocean changeful seem,
That sovereign Calm inviolate remains.

TO AN ANCIENT LUTE.

As one who on the precincts of a shrine,
Treads softly, lest his footfall, echoing there,
Profane the cloistered solitude of prayer,
So, reverence stays this venturous hand of mine,
Upon the brink of sound. Lo! themes divine,
Hushed of the folding silence, everywhere,
Upon the drowsy bosom of the air,
Around thy form, oblivious recline:
O, bid me wake them! Let me call again,
Thy latest born—the last whose lingering sigh
Sank, as departing Genius retired,
Into the mist of slumber. Hark, a train
Of Echoes, heralding the anthem high!
Prepare, my soul, to greet the strain inspired.

AT ST. HELENA.

The Night encamps around thee. From afar,
The bannered hosts of outer darkness throng,
And crested billows shout their battle song
To greet the dreadful summoner of war.
The throbbing bursts of molten thunder jar
The firmament: and lo! the mountains strong
Are livid with the lightning's leprous tongue,
As nations smit of some malignant star!
What spirit wroth, from Erebos uptorn,
Is launched upon the laboring tempest wide?
Is it the Captive Conqueror's, forlorn,
His late avenging destiny defied?—
Who laughed?—or was it but the seething scorn
Of Ocean kindled at the dream of pride?

THE PASCHAL MOON.

Thy face is whitened with remembered woe;
For thou alone, pale satellite, didst see,
Amid the shadows of Gethsemane,
The mingled cup of sacrifice o'erflow;
Nor hadst the power of utterance to show
The wasting wound of silent sympathy,
Till sudden tides, obedient to thee,
Sobbed, desolate in weltering anguish, low.
The holy night returneth year by year,
And while the mystic vapors from thy rim
Distil the dews, as from the Victim there
The red drops trickled in the twilight dim,
The ocean's changeless threnody we hear,
And gaze upon thee as thou didst on Him.

ENGADDI.

Hail, trackless waste! a heart made desolate
Speeds from a sterner solitude to thee!
O, let me, lost in contemplation, be
Among thy children numbered—at the gate
Of Mercy, meekly pleading, still to wait,
With lifted eye and penitential knee,
The silent herald of Eternity—
The swift, relentless messenger of Fate!
Heaven weeps not here o'er man's ingratitude,
Where, from the heart perpetual fountains flow;
But Love, in cloudless majesty revealed,
Sustains the soul with Hope's celestial food,
Till, life to Life, the flame supernal grows,
And dust to dust the parting spirit yield.

TO MY LAMP.

Companion of my vigil, silently,
At midnight, when the voiceful world is still,
Alone with me thou watchest. Peaceably
Thy radiance stems the darkened tide and chill
That floods the outer prospect. On thy ray
Night's foamless torrent breaks not, but retires
As from a charmed circle, far away,
To glooms beyond. E'en so, Promethean fires,
Within my throbbing temples, fed of pain,
Resist the powers around them—wild desires,
Fevered of passion, as the troubled main
That slumbers not. Thy task with morn expires,
But nought to me of respite brings the day,
Till life is wasted, as thine oil, away.