University of Virginia Library

SONNETS

I
TO THE EARL OF SHAFTESBURY

1885

Grey Knight of God, new-gathered to thy rest,
Old hero-chief of many a bloodless fight,
Who with no party-strokes didst cleave the night
Of social darkness by no dawn-streak blest;
Of women, babes, and all sad souls confessed
The lifelong champion, who, in birth's despite,
Amid proud peers a toil-worn eremite,
To this aspired—the friendship of the oppressed!
Thee the grim mine and whirring factory-loom
Felt when, like eucalyptus of the fen,
Thou cam'st to purge the poisonous haunts of men.
Long shall thy country mourn thee; long shall bloom
Wealth's one immortal flower thy dust above—
The tear-dewed garland of the poor man's love.

II
TO A GREAT THINKER

O lifelong pilgrim to a nobler shrine
Than e'er was knee'd by trembling worshipper!
No thrall to visionary hope and fear,
But in the light of sovereign thought divine,
Thou madest Truth thy temple: she did shine
O'er the waste leagues that led thy feet to her,
And now thou art entered in; but we stand here,
Halting, not helpless, for these tracks are thine.
O mighty champion! who didst dare to clutch
Earth-strangling Error, at whose every touch
Loose fell some link of Superstition's chain,
The patience of thy soul forbad disdain
Even those who flung the theologic crutch,
Wherewith their souls limped after thee in vain.

III
W. F. D.

He had known sorrow, and not sought, as some,
To strike with fate a bargain of new bliss,
But betwixt two worlds, as one tired of this,
Hung on the skirts of Heaven, and made his home
Adventurous heights, where Science whispered, ‘Come,
And thou shalt commune with what was, and is,
And shall be, wring her secret from the abyss,
And mount in spirit to the eternal dome.’
So, purged of sense, as in prophetic eld,
He through the veil saw, ere Death lifted it,
Light within darkness, and heard gush the springs
That murmur in the mystic heart of things,
Till on the bounds of being he beheld
Man's finite melt into God's infinite.

IV
DRESDEN

Who lives at Dresden without ears and eyes
Lives a lost soul in heaven. What best may be
She lacks not—music in a golden sea,
Majestic dramas, art that deifies,
And treasures that adorn her walls; her skies
Smile on a landscape rife with history:
You wake to live, and live to hear and see
What fires the heart and helps the mind to rise.
Float down the river till her towers appear:
No fog, no smoke, a city virgin-bright!
Then that great marvel of the atmosphere,
The arch of heaven so high, the air so light!
While faithful to their seasons, day or night,
Summer is summer, winter winter here.

V
PRESENCE IN ABSENCE

If this be true within my heart which saith
That thou, sweet soul, art nearer than before
To my lone spirit, wreck'd amid the roar
Of thy life's waters on the shoals of death;
If I, whose earthlier token was thy breath
Upon my brow, thy footstep at my side,
Now feel thy presence like a circling tide
Within me, and around, above, beneath,—
Why, then, let perishable dust repine!
I am not, sure, the wretchedest of men,
Who hold thee still indissolubly mine:
Though hand with hand no longer intertwine,
Though thou art made to mortal ear and ken
Invisible, unvoiced—what then? what then?

VI

[I may not hope through life to comprehend]

I may not hope through life to comprehend,
As earth does sea, this ocean of my loss,
Nor bind its foamy waters to emboss
Thus far the sea-mark, and no farther tend,
Nor sail beyond its barrier, nor descend
To that still region where no storm can toss—
Too deep to fathom, and too vast to cross,
Whatever help a coming hour shall send.
I can but skirt its borders, and explore
The devious creeks, with islets interlaced,
And probe each gloom-filled cavern to the core;
Or wade amid the short'ning shoals, and taste
The bitter of its waves, that rage and waste
With moan immortal round this mortal shore.

VII

[When I reflect how poor a part of all]

When I reflect how poor a part of all
Our soul's fulfilment lies within the brief
And brittle zone that binds one human sheaf
Of months and years; how doubts did ne'er appal,
Nor change afflict thy spirit; when I recall
Our love's eternal promise, and that grief
Which is love's self in absence—as the leaf
Is spring's leaf still, though saddened ere it fall
By winter's widowing finger—and no less
Muse on the power that from deep suffering springs
To elevate and awe, to cleanse and bless—
Then, from the heaven within the heart, glad rays
Of hope illume with dawn-like glimmerings
The sad and watery sunset of my days.

VIII
LONELY GREATNESS

Unto the sea said God, ‘I thee create
Naked of all the kind air nourisheth;
Be thou tempestuous, terrible as death,
And bitter, and of man's life insatiate:
The melancholy wind be thy sole mate;
The lone moon vex thee, as she wandereth;
Yet shalt thou chide not for these things,’ God saith,
‘Seeing that for greatness’ sake I have made thee great.’
O man! if thou, too, from sweet helpful art
Be driven, and all the harvest of thine hand,
Fair hopes of fruitful promise, fall from thee,
Remember to be great; accept thy part;
Bethink thee of the waste time-sifted sand
And sovereign desolation of the sea.

IX
AT SEATOWN

As love breaks in upon the simple dreams
Of some shy maid, whose spirit, lowly-wise,
Ne'er ranged beyond the sober sanctities
Of home affection—sudden the air teems
With unknown rapture; earth's strait valley seems
To widen, and her life's low dome to rise
High as the wing-flown region, whilst her eyes
Yearn toward some light that in the distance gleams;
So may the wanderer in these vales descry
A change come o'er the landscape, as the fells
Heave bolder, and a sense of liberty
And ampler distance to the heart foretells
What yon bare brow shall consummate—the free
Expanse and breathing brightness of the sea.

X
THE SCHILLER-HOUSE AT LOSCHWITZ

Two shrivelled oak-leaves of a vanished year
Blown by the breeze into that garden-bower
Where Schiller once sang mightily! His power
Haunts the dim chamber yet, and you may hear,
Outside, a shuddering fountain, no less dear
To the Nine Sisters than Peirene's shower,
Or where the twin Parnassian peaks uptower,
Castalia's murmur, as the god drew near.
Still stands the oak, though its frail honours fell;
Low lies the bard, but from his boughs were shed
Imperishable garlands; it is well:
And, earthward stooping, in my hand I take
The withered emblems, for sweet fancy's sake,
And to leaves living dedicate leaves dead.

XI
DAWN

At every tick of time—when eve is grey,
When skies are scorched with noon, or blurred with night,
Somewhere, on opening wings of early light,
The young Dawn breaketh; without haste or stay
Moves the bright Wizard on his lustral way,
To wind-blown seas, or cities glimmering white,
Hamlet and homestead, or bleak mountain-height,
Or misty vale, each moment bringing day.
O midnight watcher, woe-distraught, and sick
Of the blind heaven, whose very hopes do lour
Like clouds upon thee palpable and thick—
Thyself thy sole horizon!—in that hour
Be such sweet thought thy pillow: 'twill have power
To cleanse and calm, and make thee catholic.

XII
FROM MOFFAT DALE

Come, friend, with me, if simple thoughts console,
To our glad session bring no wiser brain;
Come where, betwixt the mountain and the plain,
The billowy uplands of the Border roll.
Better than yon bleak alps to travail'd soul
This half-way heaven, and happier far to gain,
Than heights of ecstasy o'er gulfs of pain,
The grey-green hills of sober self-control.
Be wisely passive; strive not here to find,
But ope thy heart, and, when the hills have sway,
Let the great Minstrel of the Border-lay
About thy spirit all his witchery wind,
Or travel to the height of Wordsworth's mind,
And with some glorious sonnet crown the day.

XIII
NORMAN NÉRUDA

She stood with lifted bow in act to sweep
The strings: sound flashed; the silent air caught fire;
And, wave on wave upsurging high and higher,
The waters of our soul—one stormy heap—
Hung menacing. Anon she bade them sleep,
She woke the winds of Memory: dead desire
Revived; hope grappled with the eternal liar;
Love saw the end, and deemed the forfeit cheap.
She pierced the bounds of Being; with one breath
Of that prevailing strain she fell on fate
And slew it; back swung the adamantine gate,
Self-opening; there was no more time or death.
And then she ceased. And oh, how steep the fall
From heaven to that dark, disenchanted hall!

XIV
HIDDEN GRIEF

When Grief had lost his ancient mastery,
One morn I wandered in a forest-dell
Whose floor was tricked with many a trembling bell
And starry blossom far as eye could see.
There grew white violet, pale anemone,
Sweet orchis—all the flowers she loved so well;
But fast-immured in some more secret cell
Sorrow lay bound, and these had not the key.
Anon I turned me where the woodman's axe
Had cleft an opening; there, by trunks laid whole,
Stood piled-up faggots for the burning kept.
One waft of fragrance from the withered stacks
Reached me; a gust of anguish caught my soul;
I bowed my forehead to the earth, and wept.

XV
AFTER THE FUNERAL

When all the funeral-train were passed away,
Stood one beside the gaping earth who said,
‘Into this grave, leaf after leaf, I shred
The garland of my life, there to decay
Till she rise with it at the Judgment Day.’
First, the fair dreams whereon his childhood fed,
Then youth's high promise, half-accomplishèd,
Dropped into Death's irrevocable Nay;
Pleasure, and all sweet sense of lovely things,
Fell fluttering next, and that fond parasite,
Hope, that to life's frail stem so closely clings;
Last, trailing Memory, hung with dead delight.
When all these blossoms in the dust were strown,
He, with his empty heart, returned alone.

XVI
THE SILENT POOL

Was ever lake so calm, so clear, so deep?
Distinct as birds in a blue heaven might show
The fish lie poised, or, flashing to and fro,
Shiver the crystal surface as they leap.
Yet, Silent Pool, funereal boughs o'erweep
Thy margin, and about thy bason cold
Black horror broods. Nor is the tale untold—
Making the blood freeze and the flesh to creep—
How, centuries since, as her pure limbs she laves
Here, 'twixt thy banks, a maid who might not win
From that vile prince to save her maidenhead,
Sought deeper refuge, till she took the waves
For garments of her shame, and, robed herein,
Sank to thy silver floor—her virgin bed.

XVII
AT THE ENGLISH LAKES

This is a land where earth to heaven aspires
In multitudinous pinnacles of prayer,
And doth a thousand altar-heights lay bare
Unto the rising and the setting fires.
The enraptured eye, the foot that never tires,
Ill here bestead, if custom or if care
Have doomed the soul with Tantalus to fare,
Starving in sight of unfulfilled desires.
Spirit of beauty! that on each lone lake
And hoary summit hast thy breathing shrine,
What ban forbids our spirits to partake
The dumb world's worship? Do thou blend with thine
My being, conform me to thy likeness, make
Each day with beatific thought divine.

XVIII
‘THE INTEGRITY OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE’

1878

There was a time when he had feared to sit
At England's helm who had not feared to own
'Twas England's aim to prop the tyrant's throne,
The oppressor's chain not rive, but rivet it.
Once Freedom's cause was England's; she would pit
Her voice against the world's in thunder-tone
When captive's shriek or patriot's dying moan
Made discord of her music. Now we fit
Those heaven-tuned numbers to a harsher key,
Where loud self-interest dominates the scale,
And apes the tone of honour. Best be mute
When, sick with guilty fear lest good prevail,
We arm the sovereign instinct of the brute,
And bid rebellious manhood bow the knee.

XIX
AT AYR

Heaven rent his cloud-hung curtain of despair,
And lo! the sea glowed golden, sunset-kissed,
While, like some stranded monster, through the mist
Loomed Ailsa Crag beyond the Heads of Ayr.
But who shall paint how delicately fair
Arran's clear outline, cut in amethyst,
From level ocean like a wraith uprist,
Till Goatfell soared in empyrean air?
Or who with such high commerce hath been blest
As yon lone peak, for all its buffetings,
Now holds with heaven in ecstasy of rest?
Such peace alone the enfranchised spirit knows—
The deep unutterable calm that springs
Of aspiration blended with repose.

XX
GARPEL GLEN

Dear friends, forget not—I shall ne'er forget—
That summer-tide at eve when Garpel's Glen
Lay like an inkblot flung from Nature's pen
Between the sun-bleached uplands; whilst afret
To overleap his mountain parapet
The stream, here curdling like a wisp of wool,
Flung out his gold fleece pendent o'er the pool,
Where, far below, beech, oak, and ilex met.
A spirit-haunted spot! As there we stood,
Behold the form of ancient Solitude!
That, chin on hand, slow-dropping tear on tear,
Sat, Sphinx-like, crouched upon a ledge of stone,
One moment seen; the next his very throne
Had vanished, and the cliff rose stark and sheer.

XXI
MORS MORTE PEREMPTA

From the far Soudan desert comes a voice,
‘Slain, on my breast heroic Gordon sleeps:
Mourn all true hearts!’—and England, Europe weeps.
Yet mourn not him, nor mar with funeral noise
His birth in heaven: and, Wordsworth's soul, rejoice!
For he of all men in these latter days
Hath earned the meed of that melodious praise—
‘The happy warrior,’ hero of thy choice.
Mourn for who fill life's cistern to the brim
With lust of having, and desire to slay,
Wrath, pride, and vengeance: mourn for these who may;
But with your thriftless pity mock not him
Who died to life with every passing breath,
And, breath resigning, died at last to death.

XXII
THE POWER OF THE SPOT

Well, if my heart beat quicker at the sight,
Let it be heard in music. But was he
Indeed a hero that here fell—Dundee,
In Killiecrankie's woful-glorious fight,
Or, sworn to a bad cause, darkness for light,
A monster steeped in blood and bigotry,
His country's evil genius, and we
Slaves but to fancy's witchery and time's flight?
I know not, and if, gazing thus to-day,
Beclouds our eye one sympathetic tear,
If not unmoved we conjure to our ear
The silver summons that no charm could stay,
In Urrard Garden 'tis enough to say
He perished bravely, and he perished here.