 | Soliloquies in Song |  |
Soliloquies in Song
1
AGATHA.
I
She wanders 'mid the April woods,That glisten with the fallen shower;
She leans her face against the buds,
She stops, she stoops, she plucks a flower.
She feels the ferment of the hour:
She broodeth when the ringdove broods;
The sun and flying clouds have power
Upon her cheek and changing moods.
She cannot think she is alone,
As o'er her senses warmly steal
Floods of unrest she fears to own,
And almost dreads to feel.
II
Among the summer woodlands wideAnew she roams, no more alone;
15
Spring's blushing secret now is known.
The primrose and its mates have flown,
The thrush's ringing note hath died;
But glancing eye and glowing tone
Fall on her from her god, her guide.
She knows not, asks not, what the goal,
She only feels she moves towards bliss,
And yields her pure unquestioning soul
To touch and fondling kiss.
III
And still she haunts those woodland ways,Though all fond fancy finds there now
To mind of spring or summer days,
Are sodden trunk and songless bough.
The past sits widowed on her brow:
Homeward she wends with wintry gaze,
To walls that house a hollow vow,
To hearth where love hath ceased to blaze:
Watches the clammy twilight wane
With grief too fixed for woe or tear;
And with her forehead 'gainst the pane
Envies the dying year.
16
LONGING.
I
The hills slope down to the valley, the streams run down to the sea,And my heart, my heart, O far one! sets and strains towards thee.
But only the feet of the mountain are felt by the rim of the plain,
And the source and soul of the hurrying stream reach not the calling main.
II
The dawn is sick for the daylight, the morning yearns for the noon,And the twilight sighs for the evening star and the rising of the moon.
But the dawn and the daylight never were seen in the self-same skies,
And the gloaming dies of its own desire when the moon and the stars arise.
37
III
The Springtime calls to the Summer, “Oh, mingle your life with mine,”And Summer to Autumn 'plaineth low, “Must the harvest be only thine?”
But the nightingale goes when the swallow comes, ere the leaf is the blossom fled;
And when Autumn sits on her golden sheaves, then the reign of the rose is dead.
IV
And hunger and thirst, and wail and want, are lost in the empty air,And the heavenly spirit vainly pines for the touch of the earthly fair.
And the hills slope down to the valley, the streams run down to the sea,
And my heart, my heart, O far one! sets and strains towards thee.
46
A FARMHOUSE DIRGE.
I
Will you walk with me to the brow of the hill, to visit the farmer's wife,Whose daughter lies in the churchyard now, eased of the ache of life?
Half a mile by the winding lane, another half to the top:
There you may lean o'er the gate and rest; she will want me awhile to stop,
Stop and talk of her girl that is gone and no more will wake or weep,
Or to listen rather, for sorrow loves to babble its pain to sleep.
II
How thick with acorns the ground is strewn, rent from their cups and brown!How the golden leaves of the windless elms come singly fluttering down!
47
The straggling blackberries glisten jet, the haws are red on the thorn;
The clematis smells no more but lifts its gossamer weight on high;—
If you only gazed on the year, you would think how beautiful 'tis to die.
III
The stream scarce flows underneath the bridge; they have dropped the sluice of the mill;The roach bask deep in the pool above, and the water-wheel is still.
The meal lies quiet on bin and floor; and here where the deep banks wind,
The water-mosses nor sway nor bend, so nothing seems left behind.
If the wheels of life would but sometimes stop, and the grinding awhile would cease,
'Twere so sweet to have, without dying quite, just a spell of autumn peace.
48
IV
Cottages four, two new, two old, each with its clambering rose:Lath and plaster and weather tiles these, brick faced with stone are those.
Two crouch low from the wind and the rain, and tell of the humbler days,
Whilst the other pair stand up and stare with a self-asserting gaze;
But I warrant you'd find the old as snug as the new did you lift the latch,
For the human heart keeps no whit more warm under slate than beneath the thatch.
V
Tenants of two of them work for me, punctual, sober, true;I often wish that I did as well the work I have got to do.
Think not to pity their lowly lot, nor wish that their thoughts soared higher;
The canker comes on the garden rose, and not on the wilding brier.
49
Rich in the only valid boons that life can withhold or give.
VI
Here is the railway bridge, and see how straight do the bright lines keep,With pheasant copses on either side, or pastures of quiet sheep.
The big loud city lies far away, far too is the cliffbound shore,
But the trains that travel betwixt them seem as if burdened with their roar.
Yet, quickly they pass, and leave no trace, not the echo e'en of their noise:
Don't you think that silence and stillness are the sweetest of all our joys?
VII
Lo! yonder the Farm, and these the ruts that the broad-wheeled wains have worn,As they bore up the hill the faggots sere, or the mellow shocks of corn.
50
And nothing of all man sowed to reap is seen betwixt earth and sky.
Year after year doth the harvest come, though at summer's and beauty's cost:
One can only hope, when our lives grow bare, some reap what our hearts have lost.
VIII
And this is the orchard, small and rude, and uncaredfor, but oh! in spring,How white is the slope with cherry bloom, and the nightingales sit and sing!
You would think that the world had grown young once more, had forgotten death and fear,
That the nearest thing unto woe on earth was the smile of an April tear;
That goodness and gladness were twin, were one:— The robin is chorister now:
The russet fruit on the ground is piled, and the lichen cleaves to the bough.
51
IX
Will you lean o'er the gate, whilst I go on? You can watch the farmyard life,The beeves, the farmer's hope, and the poults, that gladden his thrifty wife;
Or, turning, look on the hazy weald,—you will not be seen from here,—
Till your thoughts, like it, grow blurred and vague, and mingle the far and near.
Grief is a flood, and not a spring, whatever in grief we say;
And perhaps her woe, should she see me alone, will run more quickly away.
1
‘I thought you would come this morning, ma'am. Yes, Edith at last has gone;To-morrow's a week, ay, just as the sun right into her window shone;
Went with the night, the vicar says, where endeth never the day;
But she's left a darkness behind her here I wish she had taken away.
52
In the lonely bed where we laid her last, and can't get her to speak or stir.
2
“Yes, I'm at work; 'tis time I was. I should have begun before;But this is the room where she lay so still, ere they carried her past the door.
I thought I never could let her go where it seems so lonely of nights;
But now I am scrubbing and dusting down, and seting the place to rights.
All I have kept are the flowers there, the last that stood by her bed.
I suppose I must throw them away. She looked much fairer when she was dead.
3
“Thank you, for thinking of her so much. Kind thought is the truest friend.I wish you had seen how pleased she was with the peaches you used to send.
53
But she liked to look at them all the same, so we set them down by her side.
Their bloom and the flush upon her cheek were alike, I used to say;
Both were so smooth, and soft, and round, and both have faded away.
4
“I never could tell you how kind too were the ladies up at the hall;Every noon, or fair or wet, one of them used to call.
Worry and work seems ours, but yours pleasant and easy days,
And when all goes smooth, the rich and poor have different lives and ways.
Sorrow and death bring men more close, 'tis joy that puts us apart;
'Tis a comfort to think, though we're severed so, we're all of us one at heart.
54
5
“She never wished to be smart and rich, as so many in these days do,Nor cared to go in on market days to stare at the gay and new.
She liked to remain at home and pluck the white violets down in the wood;
She said to her sisters before she died, ‘'Tis so easy to be good.’
She must have found it so, I think, and that was the reason why
God deemed it needless to leave her here, so took her up to the sky.
6
“The vicar says that he knows she is there, and surely she ought to be;But though I repeat the words, 'tis hard to believe what one does not see.
They did not want me to go to the grave, but I could not have kept away,
And whatever I do I can only see a coffin and church-yard clay.
55
And that's why I'm hard at work again, for it helps one to forget.
7
“The young ones don't seem to take to work as their mothers and fathers did.We never were asked if we liked or no, but had to obey when bid.
There's Bessie won't swill the dairy now, nor Richard call home the cows,
And all of them cry, ‘How can you, mother?’ when I carry the wash to the sows.
Edith would drudge, for Death one's hearth of the helpful one always robs.
But she was so pretty I could not bear to set her on dirty jobs.
8
“I don't know how it'll be with them when sorrow and loss are theirs,For it isn't likely that they'll escape their pack of worrits and cares.
56
But sickness, and age, and bereavement seem to work in the same old grooves.
Fine they may grow, and that, but Death as lief takes the moth as the grub.
When their dear ones die, I suspect they'll wish they'd a floor of their own to scrub.
9
“Some day they'll have a home of their own, much grander than this, no doubt,But polish the porch as you will you can't keep doctors and coffins out.
I've done very well with my fowls this year, but what are pullets and eggs,
When the heart in vain at the door of the grave the return of the lost one begs?
The rich have leisure to wail and weep, the poor haven't time to be sad:
If the cream hadn't been so contrairy this week, I think grief would have driven me mad.
57
10
“How does my husband bear up, you ask? Well, thank you, ma'am, fairly well;For he too is busy just now, you see, with the wheat and the hops to sell:
It's when the work of the day is done, and he comes indoors at night,
While the twilight hangs round the window-panes before I bring in the light,
And takes down his pipe, and says not a word, but watches the faggots roar—
And then I know he is thinking of her who will sit on his knee no more.
11
“Must you be going? It seems so short. But thank you for thinking to come;It does me good to talk of it all, and grief feels doubled when dumb.
An the butter's not quite so good this week, if you please, ma'am, you must not mind,
And I'll not forget to send the ducks and all the eggs we can find;
58
With only one pair of hands, and those fast wiping away one's tears.
12
“You've got some flowers, yet, haven't you, ma'am? though they now must be going fast;We never have any to speak of here, and I placed on her coffin the last.
Could you spare me a few for Sunday next? I should like to go all alone,
And lay them down on the little mound where there isn't as yet a stone.
Thank you kindly, I'm sure they'll do, and I promise to heed what you say;
I'll only just go and lay them there, and then I will come away.”
X
Come, let us go. Yes, down the hill, and home by the winding lane.The low-lying fields are suffused with haze, as life is suffused with pain.
59
We grope, and wrangle, and boast, but Death is the only certain truth.
O love of life! what a foolish love! we should weary of life did it last.
While it lingers, it is but a little thing; 'tis nothing at all when past.
XI
The acorns thicker and thicker lie, the briony limper grows,There are mildewing beads on the leafless brier where once smiled the sweet dog-rose.
You may see the leaves of the primrose push through the litter of sodden ground;
Their pale stars dream in the wintry womb, and the pimpernel sleepeth sound.
They will awake; shall we awake? Are we more than imprisoned breath?
When the heart grows weak, then hope grows strong, but stronger than hope is Death.
60
GRANDMOTHER'S TEACHING.
I
“Grandmother dear, you do not know; you have lived the old-world life,Under the twittering eaves of home, sheltered from storm and strife;
Rocking cradles, and covering jams, knitting socks for baby feet,
Or piecing together lavender bags for keeping the linen sweet:
Daughter, wife, and mother in turn, and each with a blameless breast,
Then saying your prayers when the nightfall came, and quietly dropping to rest.
II
“You must not think, Granny, I speak in scorn, for yours have been well-spent days,109
Grandfather's gone, but while he lived you clung to him close and true,
And mother's heart, like her eyes, I know, came to her straight from you.
If the good old times, at the good old pace, in the good old grooves would run,
One could not do better, I'm sure of that, than do as you all have done.
III
“But the world has wondrously changed, Granny, since the days when you were young;It thinks quite different thoughts from then, and speaks with a different tongue.
The fences are broken, the cords are snapped, that tethered man's heart to home;
He ranges free as the wind or the wave, and changes his shore like the foam.
He drives his furrows through fallow seas, he reaps what the breakers sow,
And the flash of his iron flail is seen mid the barns of the barren snow.
110
IV
“He has lassoed the lightning and led it home, he has yoked it unto his need,And made it answer the rein and trudge as straight as the steer or steed.
He has bridled the torrents and made them tame, he has bitted the champing tide,
It toils as his drudge and turns the wheels that spin for his use and pride.
He handles the planets and weighs their dust, he mounts on the comet's car,
And he lifts the veil of the sun, and stares in the eyes of the uttermost star.
V
“'Tis not the same world you knew, Granny; its fetters have fallen off;The lowliest now may rise and rule where the proud used to sit and scoff.
No need to boast of a scutcheoned stock, claim rights from an ancient wrong;
All are born with a silver spoon in their mouths whose gums are sound and strong.
111
At my feet is the ball, I will roll it on, till it spins through the golden goal.
VI
“Out on the thought that my copious life should trickle through trivial days,Myself but a lonelier sort of beast, watching the cattle graze,
Scanning the year's monotonous change, gaping at wind and rain,
Or hanging with meek solicitous eyes on the whims of a creaking vane;
Wretched if ewes drop single lambs, blest so is oilcake cheap,
And growing old in a tedious round of worry, surfeit, and sleep.
VII
“You dear old Granny, how sweet your smile, and how soft your silvery hari!But all has moved on while you sate still in your cap and easy-chair.
112
The alien tongues of the earth converse, and whisper from strand to strand.
The very churches are changed and boast new hymns, new rites, new truth;
Men worship a wiser and greater God than the halfknown God of your youth.
VIII
“What! marry Connie and set up house, and dwell where my fathers dwelt,Giving the homely feasts they gave and kneeling where they knelt?
She is pretty, and good, and void I am sure of vanity, greed, or guile;
But she has not travelled nor seen the world, and is lacking in air and style.
Women now are as wise and strong as men, and vie with men in renown;
The wife that will help to build my fame was not bred near a country town.
113
IX
“What a notion! to figure at parish boards, and wrangle o'er cess and rate,I, who mean to sit for the county yet, and vote on an Empire's fate;
To take the chair at the Farmers' Feast, and tickle their bumpkin ears,
Who must shake a senate before I die, and waken a people's cheers!
In the olden days was no choice, so sons to the roof of their fathers clave:
But now! 'twere to perish before one's time, and to sleep in a living grave.
X
“I see that you do not understand. How should you? Your memory clingsTo the simple music of silenced days and the skirts of vanishing things.
Your fancy wanders round ruined haunts, and dwells upon oft-told tales;
Your eyes discern not the widening dawn, nor your ears catch the rising gales.
114
The dear old Past is an empty nest, and the Present the brood that is flown.”
I
“And so, my dear, you've come back at last? I always fancied you would.Well, you see the old home of your childhood's days is standing where it stood.
The roses still clamber from porch to roof, the elder is white at the gate,
And over the long smooth gravel path the peacock still struts in state.
On the gabled lodge, as of old, in the sun, the pigeons sit and coo,
And our hearts, my dear, are no whit more changed, but have kept still warm for you.
II
“You'll find little altered, unless it be me, and that since my last attack;115
You bade me not die till you returned, and so you see I lived on:
I'm glad that I did now you've really come, but it's almost time I was gone.
I suppose that there isn't room for us all, and the old should depart the first.
That's as it should be. What is sad, is to bury the dead you've nursed.
III
“Won't you have bit nor sup, my dear? Not even a glass of whey?The dappled Alderney calved last week, and the baking is fresh to-day.
Have you lost your appetite too in town, or is it you've grown over-nice?
If you'd rather have biscuits and cowslip wine, they'll bring them up in a trice.
But what am I saying? Your coming down has set me all in a maze:
I forgot that you travelled here by train; I was thinking of coaching days.
116
IV
“There, sit you down, and give me your hand, and tell me about it all,From the day that you left us, keen to go, to the pride that had a fall.
And all went well at the first? So it does, when we're young and puffed with hope;
But the foot of the hill is quicker reached the easier seems the slope.
And men thronged round you, and women too! Yes, that I can understand.
When there's gold in the palm, the greedy world is eager to grasp the hand.
V
“I heard them tell of your smart town house, but I always shook my head.One doesn't grow rich in a year and a day, in the time of my youth 'twas said.
Men do not reap in the spring, my dear, nor are granaries filled in May,
Save it be with the harvest of former years, stored up for a rainy day.
117
It's honest labour and steadfast thrift that alone are blest by God.
VI
“You say you were honest. I trust you were, nor do I judge you, my dear:I have old-fashioned ways, and it's quite enough to keep one's own conscience clear.
But still the commandment, “Thou shalt not steal,” though a simple and ancient rule,
Was not made for modern cunning to baulk, nor for any new age to befool;
And if my growing rich unto others brought but penury, chill, and grief,
I should feel, though I never had filched with my hands, I was only a craftier thief.
VII
“That isn't the way they look at it there? All worshipped the rising sun?Most of all the fine lady, in pride of purse you fancied your heart had won.
118
Far better a steadfast cottage wench than grand loves that come and go.
To cleave to their husbands, through weal, through woe, is all women have to do:
In growing as clever as men they seem to have matched them in fickleness too.
VIII
“But there's one in whose heart has your image still dwelt through many an absent day,As the scent of a flower will haunt a closed room, though the flower be taken away.
Connie's not quite so young as she was, no doubt, but faithfulness never grows old;
And were beauty the only fuel of love, the warmest hearth soon would grow cold.
Once you thought that she had not travelled, and knew neither the world nor life:
Not to roam, but to deem her own hearth the whole world, that's what a man wants in a wife.
119
IX
“I'm sure you'd be happy with Connie, at least if your own heart's in the right place.She will bring you nor power, nor station, nor wealth, but she never will bring you disgrace.
They say that the moon, though she moves round the earth, never turns to him morning or night
But one face of her sphere, and it must be because she's so true a satellite;
And Connie, if into your orbit once drawn by the sacrament sanctioned above,
Would revolve round you constantly, only to show the one-sided aspect of love.
X
“You will never grow rich by the land, I own; but if Connie and you should wed,It will feed your children and household too, as it you and your fathers fed.
The seasons have been unkindly of late; there's a wonderful cut of hay,
But the showers have washed all the goodness out, till it's scarcely worth carting away.
120
I suppose God intends to remind us thus that something depends on Him.
XI
“God neither progresses nor changes, dear, as I once heard you rashly say:Man's schools and philosophies come and go, but His word doth not pass away.
We worship Him here as we did of old, with simple and reverent rite:
In the morning we pray Him to bless our work, to forgive our transgressions at night.
To keep His commandments, to fear His name, and what should be done, to do,—
That's the beginning of wisdom still; I suspect 'tis the end of it too.
XII
“You must see the new-fangled machines at work, that harrow, and thresh, and reap;They're wonderful quick, there's no mistake, and they say in the end they're cheap.
121
There's something more precious in country life than the balance of wealth it yields.
But that seems going; I'm sure I hope that I shall be gone before:
Better poor sweet silence of rural toil than the factory's opulent roar.
XIII
“They're a mighty saving of labour, though; so at least I hear them tell,Making fewer hands and fewer mouths, but fewer hearts as well:
They sweep up so close that there's nothing left for widows and bairns to glean;
If machines are growing like men, man seems to be growing a half machine.
There's no friendliness left; the only tie is the wage upon Saturday nights:
Right used to mean duty; you'll find that now there's no duty, but only rights.
XIV
“Still stick to your duty, my dear, and then things cannot go much amiss.122
There's little that's called amusement, here; but why should the old joys pall?
Has the blackbird ceased to sing loud in spring? Has the cuckoo forgotten to call?
Are bleating voices no longer heard when the cherryblossoms swarm?
And have home, and children, and fireside lost one gleam of their ancient charm?
XV
“Come, let us go round; to the farmyard first, with its litter of fresh-strewn straw,Past the ash-tree dell, round whose branching tops the young rooks wheel and caw;
Through the ten-acre mead that was mown the first, and looks well for aftermath,
Then round by the beans—I shall tire by then,—and home up the garden-path,
Where the peonies hang their blushing heads, where the larkspur laughs from its stalk—
With my stick and your arm I can manage. But see! There, Connie comes up the walk.”
130
NIGHTINGALE AND CUCKOO.
O nightingale and cuckoo! it was meetThat you should come together; for ye twain
Are emblems of the rapture and the pain
That in the April of our life compete,
Until we know not which is the more sweet,
Nor yet have learned that both of them are vain!
Yet why, O nightingale! break off thy strain,
While yet the cuckoo doth his call repeat?
Not so with me. To sweet woe did I cling
Long after echoing happiness was dead,
And so found solace. Now, alas! the sting!
Cuckoo and nightingale alike have fled;
Neither for joy nor sorrow do I sing,
And autumn silence gathers in their stead.
THE END
| Soliloquies in Song | |