Poems: Second Series :: :: University of Virginia Library

The serpent tempted them, and they did eat:
They took the fruit of the forbidden tree;
And tasted it, and tasting found it sweet:—
And all was changed—and they did hear and see:—
They heard the silence of God's voice proclaim
Their sentence of irrevocable doom:
They saw the angel sword of living flame:
They looked—and dreadful faces thronged the gloom.
And through the world they went their weary way:
The flaming sword was ever in their sight:
And in the night they would that it were day;
And prayed for darkness in the noonday light.
And so they wandered till the touch of death
Made light the heavy burden of their breath.

II.

Not only our first parents once of old
By disobedience lost what God had given:
The wrath of the Eternal rolled and rolled
From age to age like thunder through the heaven.

What were the pangs of exile from a home
That ne'er had clasped the outlaw to her breast?
'Twere little punishment that one should roam
Who ne'er had known the blessedness of rest.
God cursèd the sons of Adam: each in turn
Must share the bliss that he may share the doom:
Pain is no pain but what glad hearts discern:
We love the light that we may dread the gloom.
Only inheritors of Eden know
Its heritage of ruin and of woe.

III.

There was a time, ere I had learned to look
Beyond the limits of the passing day,
When each new moment lived its life and took
The measure of its joy and went its way.
Not yet the past and future had conspired
To rob the present of its due delight:
Life had no goal to which my heart aspired,—
No happier past to mar the moment's flight.
Oh I was glad because I never knew
What wave of gladness bore my soul along:—
Does the blue heaven know that it is blue?
Does the lark guess the rapture of its song?
Or do the bounding breezes pause to think
How exquisite the fragrance that they drink?

IV.

Why did I thirst for the forbidden fruit?
Why did I yearn to wake and see and know?
What serpent coiled itself about the root,
And tempted me and won me to my woe?
O nature! thine the answer, for in thee
My being has its well-spring and its goal:
And deep beneath these waves, that are of me,
Moves the great stream of thy eternal soul.
Thine is each lust, each impulse, each desire—
In the one current of thy will they blend:
For thee I toil, dream, hope, believe, aspire:
I break thy laws yet serve thy central end.
Thou knowest all things—but I know too well
I was in Eden once and sinned and fell.

V.

There is a moment's rapture in awaking
When half awake we know the sweets of sleep:
And light and darkness when the day is breaking
Give earth a glory that she cannot keep.
And there's a time too when the soul of man
Starts at the message of life's dawning beams,
And dares with half-awakened eyes to scan
Its own mysterious paradise of dreams.

Then for a little while the pulses beat
With the old thrillings of unconscious joy:
While blend their beings in confusion sweet
The thoughtful man—the happy careless boy.
O one fair fruit that God to man forbad—
To know his joy while yet his heart is glad!

VI.

Sweet beyond mortal sweetness was that hour—
If such there ever were—when first I knew
How pure the fragrance of each April flower,—
How green the woodland mist—the heaven how blue:—
When first I saw with half bewildered sight
The solid earth—the world of every day—
Transfigured by a veil of fairy light
From childhood's dreams that scarce had passed away.
Oh then the breeze of morning wandered wide,
Brushing the dewy leaves with airy wing:
Oh then the love of summer glorified,
Ere yet it kissed away, the bloom of spring.
Dawn of my life! and May time of my year!
My heaven is dark—my every leaf is sere.

VII.

I sometimes wonder was it ever mine
The twilight hour that I have deemed so fair:—
Peace, doubting heart! have faith in God's design;—
Trust the abysses of thine own despair.
Were Eden a forgotten dream of night,
Where were the disenchantment of the morn?
Had I no memories of past delight
Why should I weep to wander forth forlorn?
What were the curse without the poisoned sting?
The cup of wrath without the bitter lees?
Autumnal winds wail of remembered spring;—
Sere leaves remind us of the budding trees.
Yes, for a moment in the light of day
I saw my bliss and saw it wane away.

VIII.

If I had travelled from the land of dreams
At once into the fulness of the light,
Nor lingered, dazed by the first golden gleams,
In the sweet borderland of day and night,—
Then had my Eden passed away from thought—
An unremembered dream, a broken bubble,
A breath of midnight air, a thing of nought,
Dead as dissevered grass, or withered stubble.

But no; it lived in that mysterious hour,
And living still defies me to forget,
And bids me feel the thorn within the flower,
The torture of my impotent regret:—
O fatal fruit! thy sweetness was my doom,
And poisonous dust the fragrance of thy bloom.

IX.

And then the twilight ripened into day:
A fuller light eclipsed the dazzling gold:
The rosy streaks of sunrise died away,
And banks of cloud grew upward grey and cold.
And knowledge killed the joy that it revealed:
The daybreak lost its lustre in its birth:
I was alone and gazed with eyes unsealed
On the wide lifeless disenchanted earth.
And yet methought a form of beauty gleamed
Through the white marsh mists of the river's bed:
And I drew near to clasp it, but it seemed
To mock my grasp; I followed and it fled.
I follow still, till death shall make me blind,
The phantom light that is so far behind.

X.

There came a woman once with lustrous eyes
And golden hair that wandered to her waist:

Was it an angel who had heard my sighs
And come—God's messenger—in holy haste?
For I was weary, and had sat me down,
Dupe of my dreams, to muse awhile on death:
I started and looked up: her eyes were brown:
She stooped: I felt the fragrance of her breath.
One warm white arm hung lightly round my neck:
Over my shoulders fell her floating hair:
She smiled “O Love! thou dost not well to wreck
Life on this rock of too divine despair.”
She held a cup and with a siren's laugh
She raised it to my lips and bade me quaff.

XI.

I touched the rim and lingered and she laughed
“Drink, drink, while yet some respite is allowed.”
But through the clearness of the ruby draught
I saw the subtle poison's floating cloud.
Some lift the cup and drink without a care,
For still the present hides what is to be.
The moments come, and each in turn is fair:—
I saw beyond: I could not choose but see.
In thought I drained the goblet to the lees,
Down to the bitter after-taste of sin:
I drank each pleasure till it ceased to please:
I ate the fruit; the core was hard within.

My foresight fathomed the abyss of lust,
And dropped at last to death, decay and dust.

XII.

And yet I sometimes would that I had drunk—
Drunk deep and tasted all the sweets of Hell,—
And boldly plunged into the slough and sunk
Down to the last defilement when I fell.
For this at least—the moment's joy is sure,
The pulse is heightened and the thrill is sweet:
But dreams of bliss ethereal and pure
Mock our bewildered gaze, our bleeding feet.
So subtle nature tempts us to forego
The apt enjoyment of each offered pleasure,
For love of light that none may ever know,
For quest of life's too deeply buried treasure:
Each unfulfilled, the moments glide away,
And hope deludes us to our latest day.

XIII.

I rose and fled and left the cup untasted,
Her whisper taunting me where'er I went:
“Eternity is lost—shall time be wasted?
The thought was sin—then earn sin's punishment”
And still the witchcraft of her eyes pursued me:
Her golden hair still fluttered in my sight:—

And still the music of her laughter wooed me:—
And still I trembled, for her touch was light.
I fled to seek a refuge from the storm—
A buckler proof against each poisoned dart—
A veil of light to hide the siren's form—
A countercharm to her insidious art.
What joy had earth that should requite the cost,
And make my heart forget what it had lost?

XIV.

The church door opened, and I passed within
To kneel in prayer before the sacred token:
The garish light of day came flooding in
Through mullions bare whose pictured glass was broken.
Dumb was the organ: hushed each quivering chord:
There reigned a death-like stillness everywhere:
The very crucifix had lost its Lord:—
The shrines were empty and the altar bare.
The Saviour's life-blood stained the floor below:—
I veiled my face in agony and wept—
Then started and forgot my tears—for lo!
A chilling whisper from the altar crept.
“All outward forms are doomed to droop and die:
Let others kneel—thy worship were a lie.”

XV.

Take me, O world! and clasp me to thy breast:
Take me, O glare and turmoil of the day!
O surging tides of uproar and unrest!
O multitudes that throng the crowded way!
Beneath the waves of your tumultuous sound
Bury that speaking stillness of despair:
Let me forget that I had ever found
A moment's shelter in that house of prayer.
Take me O world! my heart has somewhere seen
A white-robed phantom in the dead of night:
It haunts me yet: come busy world between!
My blood is chilled and curdled at the sight.
I spoke and plunged into the eddying flood,
And life renewed the current of my blood.

XVI.

I dreamed that yet some perfect end should crown
The toil and anguish of humanity:—
That yet each weary stream that wanders down
Should rush into the rolling of the sea.
I dreamed that hate and misery should cease:
That each should labour for the common good:—
And war be hushed in universal peace:—
And all mankind be one wide brotherhood.

I dreamed that yet the golden sun of love
Should rise and melt the darkness of our night:
And with sudden glory leap above
The struggling waves and make the whole world bright.
Through clouds of stormy splendour daylight broke:—
But oh! the disenchantment when I woke.

XVII.

For still the world held on its wonted way;
And men still wallowed in the mire of sin:
Lust ruled their hearts with undivided sway;
They toiled—but gold was all they toiled to win.
Hate rose triumphant: Love was trampled down:
Rude oaths and railing curses filled the air:
The cannon thundered, and the helpless town
Answered with cries of anguish and despair.
The rich were clothed in insolence and pride:
Their fellow men were counters in their game:
The starving poor were huddled by their side
In dens of filth and misery and shame.
O progress! empty vaunt—with straining eyes
I watched in vain:—the sun would never rise.

XVIII.

My heart was sick: the times were out of tune:
Hope died away: I only prayed to find
A place of shadow in the glare of noon,—
A refuge from the ravings of the wind.
I longed for deep inviolable peace
Such as recluses find in cloistered shade,
Far from the babel sounds that swell and cease,
Far from the rays of light that gleam and fade:
Where there is nothing wished for, nothing lost:—
Where hope and disappointment are unknown:—
I prayed—but evermore my prayer was crossed
By warnings whispered in a deeper tone:—
“Better the whirlwind of chaotic strife—
Better the frost of death than death in life.”

XIX.

O love! warm love of a warm human heart!
Key to each riddle!—clue to every maze!
In thee beloved one, whosoe'er thou art,
I solve at last the mystery of my days.
O love! without thee life is all accurst:—
Come sovereign healer of each earthly care!
Thou living wave that slakest every thirst!
Thou one fulfilment of each inward prayer!

I sigh for peace when winds awake,—and lo!
Love is a haven of unrippled rest:
I long to feel the great world's ebb and flow—
Its truest pulse is in the loved one's breast.
I ask what end shall bless man's travailing soul,—
But when I love I touch the very goal.

XX.

Hide lower slopes! oh hide the mountain height—
The broken buttresses of torrent ice—
The upland fields of ever dazzling white—
Gully of snow and storm-gashed precipice.
Hide them from sight and hiding set me free
From bondage of imperious desire,
That most enthrals me when from far I see
The last white crest touched with the sunset fire.
I am content to rest my gazing eyes
On your high meadows deep with unmown hay,
Or where grey rocks through depths of woodland rise,
And climbing pine trees break the light of day.
Is aught of earth above you, for you lie
Against the very azure of the sky?

XXI.

So for awhile I dwelt beneath your shade,
Deep in the shelter of a leafy dell:

The streams came down in cataracts, and made
Eternal verdure where the spray mist fell.
Mellowed and softened came the fiercest ray
Through blended boughs of overarching trees:
The very storm-blast, if it lost its way
In those dark woods, became a wandering breeze.
But once I chanced to roam in pensive mood
I knew not whither:—and I looked—and lo!
High o'er the pine-clad hill's horizon stood
A dazzling dome of pure untrodden snow.
Its wintry stillness seemed to murmur “Come
I wait for thee:” it spoke—and it was dumb.

XXII.

I look around: the rocks are black and bare:
The splendour of the snowfields blind my eyes.
I gaze above through depths of quivering air
On the blue ocean of the burning skies.
Each stream of life is frozen at its source:
If winds are hushed, the slumber is of death:
If winds awake, destruction marks their course,
And hail and clouds and darkness are their breath.
What have I gained? At times a breath of wind
Wafts me a murmur from the far-off stream:
It tells of all that I have left behind,
Of blissful days that vanished like a dream.

Ah me! I loved, till love forsook my breast:
Love was my doom—the very love that blessed.

XXIII.

So many ways of wandering have I traced,
So many paths my bleeding feet have trod
Through poisonous undergrowth and thorny waste,
That lies without the garden bowers of God.
And each in turn has led me to the gate
Where stands the angel with his sword of flame;
And evermore inexorable fate
Bids me retrace the way by which I came.
Oh lost! Oh Eden! is there no return?
No hope of final pardon for my soul?
And shall the flaming sword for ever burn?
And must the voice of thunder ever roll?
Must Nature share my doom and roam for aye
A homeless planet—blind, forlorn, astray?

XXIV.

Wail on bleak wind—wail on, and do thy worst:
Make wintry moan across the barren heath:—
“No hope for nature past redemption cursed”—
Is this the burden of thy bitter breath?
Wail on bleak wind: thy dark despairing tone
Finds in my breast its own sad counterpart:

Nature has many voices:—thine alone
Wakes a full echo in my listening heart.
For here within is Nature's crown of life,
Whose every breath is one more travail throe:
Here is her last intensity of strife—
Her worst despair—the climax of her woe.
Without she toils on dumb and deaf and blind:
Within she wakes—wail on thou bitter wind!

XXV.

Oh many-mooded Nature! there are times
When skies are blue and balmy zephyrs blow:
And I have heard of softer, sunnier climes
Where heaven's own brightness robes the earth below.
But those thy rifts of light and hope and mirth
Darken the fringes of thy rolling clouds:
And thy true image is the wintry earth,
And thy true garments are thy burial shrouds.
Unending travail towards a far-off goal—
Toil—imperfection—sorrow—sin—despair—
These are thy life—and in man's inmost soul—
What voice is thine when thou awakest there?—
Wail on bleak wind—wail on and do thy worst—
Be mine the echo “Past redemption cursed.”

XXVI.

I stood alone upon the white cliff's verge:
The great blue sea came rolling in below:
I heard the murmur of the restless surge:
I watched the ripples melting into snow.
A few white clouds that floated o'er the blue
Deepened the azure splendour of the sky:
Through fields of golden corn the south wind flew,
And ripples tracked it as it wandered by.
I could have thought that Nature lay asleep:
It was the hush of noon when all things rest:
The measured flow and reflow of the deep
Where rhythmic pulsings of her mighty breast.
And when the poppies fluttered and I heard
The rustling wind—it was her breath that stirred.

XXVII.

Her breath was mine: I breathed and was content:
Her life was flowing in a boundless flood:
No need to ask what Nature's being meant:
My answer was the pulsing of her blood.
I only knew that all around me moved
A vast eternal self-sufficing life:
The faintest flutter of the poppies proved
How deep a harmony controlled the strife.

Somewhere in woodland depths the cooing dove
Sent from afar this message to my soul—
“When life is light and liberty and love,
Life is itself its own supremest goal.”
The south wind whispered as it fanned my hair—
“Be strong: trust Nature: wake from thy despair.”

XXVIII.

Yes, Nature lives, although my life be death:
I slip and fall—she heeds not—she shall stand:
Sunshine and joy and beauty are her breath:
Blessings of peace and plenty fill her hand.
Yet what avails it that the mighty river
Sweeps on triumphant—wave pursuing wave?
How shall it help me that it finds for ever
In every drop its well-spring and its grave?
Nature is everywhere herself the home,
The happy haven where her toil is crowned:
But what am I? A wandering bell of foam—
A bubble in a whirlpool eddying round.
Roll on blue waves—blow, buoyant breezes! blow:
Your gladness is the measure of my woe.

XXIX.

I heard a voice that was not of the wind—
A laughing sound that was not of the sea:

It came again—I turned and looked behind—
A little child was standing near to me.
Her hair was golden as the sun in heaven:—
Her arms were browner than the sunburnt wheat:
The ruddy flush that life and health had given,
Rivalled the scarlet poppies at her feet.
She looked at me from eyes of Heaven's own blue,
That like the sky glowed with a sunny smile,—
A smile of joy and innocence that knew
No tear of misery—no cloud of guile.
I bade her tell the secret of her bliss,
She raised her lips and answered—with a kiss.

XXX.

But the wind answered as it rustled by,
And the waves answered from the rocks below:—
There came this answer from the azure sky—
This from the ocean's fringe of melting snow.
“She is our sister—and our hearts are glad,—
For we are Nature's children, and our breath
Is Nature's breath—whose eyes are only sad
What time she weaves new life from threads of death.”
And so I learned that joy is all around,
That whoso wills can make that joy his own:

I learned of every tint and every sound
That life and happiness are theirs alone,
The central currents of whose being glide
In harmony with Nature's ample tide.

XXXI.

In thought I traversed the abysmal past:
Unnumbered æons came and rolled away:
And then I saw no further, for at last
Out of primeval darkness dawned the day.
In thought I traversed the wide world of space
Wherein this earth of boundless sea and land—
Itself a world in each minutest place—
Is but a speck—an eddying grain of sand.
And still I came no nearer to the brink;—
The more I strove the tighter grew my bond:
And still I knew that all that I could think
Was but the thought of all that lay beyond:
For our eternities are less to thee
Than drops, O Nature! in thy shoreless sea.

XXXII.

But is this all of Nature? for my soul
Rose up triumphantly—I knew not how—
And in a moment passed from pole to pole,
And said “O Nature! I am more than thou.

Roll on from world to world, from clime to clime:
My passion's changing moods are mightier far:—
My thought is deeper than the depths of time:
My love soars higher than thine utmost star.”
And still I mused, and still the ripples broke,
And through the cornfields flew the rustling wind—
Breathing of joy:—yet oft as Nature spoke
Lingered a darker after-tone behind—
An after-tone of yearning, that confessed
“My truest life is hidden in thy breast.”

XXXIII.

And here alone shall her true life be found—
Here in this world of human hopes and fears:
Without she moves on one eternal round,
Tracing one orbit through the circling years.
But here she yearns for her own inmost light,
Her heart's ideal self, and still the screen
Of what she is is hung before her sight,
And all she sees still points to the unseen.
And here she reaches onward and atones
For what she is not by her final aim,—
True to herself when she herself disowns—
Because she changes ever, still the same.
For death alone can triumph over death,
And restless movement is her being's breath.

XXXIV.

I said “What art thou, Nature?” and the wind
And water bore this answer back to me—
“I am the very light that makes thee blind:
I am what in thy breast I yearn to be.”
I bade her tell in what a far-off goal
The river of her life should find its rest:
She answered, “Ask the longings of thy soul:
I have no voice but in thine inmost breast.”
So pulse for pulse her truest life is mine:
If I am sick at heart, 'tis she who sighs:
Hers is the travail, hers the thirst divine:
In me she toils: for her I agonize:—
Still most myself when Nature most inspires
My heart with her own infinite desires.

XXXV.

But thou, O Nature! thou art none the less
Nature, the mighty mother—mistress—queen—
Fountain of life and light and loveliness—
Author of all that shall be or has been.
Nor less I love the splendour of the sun—
The roll of waters—the free rush of air:—
Fair as of old each thread that thou hast spun:—
The robe Time weaves for thee is not less fair.

Nay now they teach me—and I love them more—
To read thy riddle—guess thy hidden plan:
The wind sweeps on—the waters climb the shore—
Art thou less mighty in the life of man?
And if the sun above me be so bright,
How pure the radiance of thine inward light!

XXXVI.

Thy cause must conquer: he alone who loves
To walk with thee shall never go astray:
Thy cause is mine, for all creation moves
To lead me nearer to the light of day.
Then I will follow thee where'er thy hand
May guide me on, from airy height to height:
I will not fear to step where thou dost stand,
Nor dread the darkness that to thee is light.
All must be well when thou art near my side:
Even now the first faint glimmer has begun;—
Still through the stormy daybreak be my guide,
Till the last triumph of thy life be won:
And in the end, O Nature! thou shalt rest,
And I in thee on God's eternal breast.