Forest Songs and Other Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

What ails my heart? 'Twere all in vain
I strove to sound its tide of pain.
What bodes this gloom, this vague distress,
This dreariness, this dreariness?

2

The wind that wails through yonder pine
Wails lonelier through this heart of mine;
Yet whence this brooding cloud of woe
I cannot tell, I do not know.

3

Is't vanished love—remorse—or hate
Of life, that leaves me desolate?
Or hope grown sick? Or age that brings
Sad memories of belovèd things?

4

The rain that drips from yonder bough
With wintrier boding chills my brow;
Yet why, alas! it should be so
I cannot tell, I do not know.

THE LOST CHILD.

1

A cry is on the mountains wild—
It is the cry of a lost child;
Like a lost lamb's its bleating cry,
“O mammy, mammy!” to the sky:
And the sky, with azure smile,
Never answers it the while.

2

The mother stares from field to field—
Where can her Hans'l lie concealed?
From mother's wrath to mother's fear
She flies, but finds him far nor near.
To all the Saints she cries in vain,
Then to the Spirits makes her plain.

3

“Thou Wassermännli, what have I done
That thou shouldst take my little son?
Upon the stone beside the lake,
I never failed to leave thy cake.”
And to the water wails she wild:
“Give back my child! give back my child!”

4

The child forlorn went crying still
Up the hill and down the hill,
Till a Cross he came upon,
Where, 'twixt the Virgin and St. John,
The Blessed Saviour bled and wept—
There he laid him down and slept.

5

The weary mother found the place:
He slept with tear-beblubbered face.
She clutched her Hans'l, boxed his ears,
And then she kissed away his tears.
Thou Blessed Mother, when we stray,
Do thou the same for us, we pray!

THE GREY MAN.

1

A wild wind shakes the sashes,
The Forester sits alone,
And cold his heart as the ashes
Upon his cold hearth-stone.

2

The table stands in the middle,
Uncleared of the morning meal,
And the unspun flax hangs idle
From the silent spinning-wheel.

3

The clock with its dreary ticking
Makes loneness more forlorn,
And hark! how caught its cuckoo
That dismal note since morn?

4

And the wind comes whishing and sighing
By fits in the Witch's Oak,
And over the rooftree flying
Hoarsely the ravens croak.

5

A gleam of sunset glistens
Blood-red on the sanded floor;
The Forester starts and listens—
What hand taps at the door?

6

Oh, comes she, reproachless, eager
To lay with one loving kiss
The guilty ghosts that beleaguer
His soul with a dread like this?

7

Mayhap some ten-miles-off neighbour
With news she has passed his way?
“In God's name, enter!”—There enters
A lean old man in grey.

8

What means this mopping and mowing?
The Forester's heart turns sick,
As hobbling, grinning, and bowing,
He enters—he and his Stick!

9

What devil's work is beginning?
What shrieks by the Witch's Tree,
As hobbling, bowing, and grinning,
He enters—his Stick and he?

10

His nerveless arm grips tightly
That lean old man in grey,
And over the threshold lightly
They hurry away, away!

11

Over the threshold leaping
That goblin Stick goes first,
And next goes the Grey Man, keeping
Ever his gripe accurst.

12

The Forester's feet seem flying,
The Grey Man hobbles so fast,
And round them, shrieking and sighing,
The forest bends to the blast.

13

Fast, faster! To work they buckle
In earnest; the pace grows dire—
With many a gleeful chuckle
The Grey Man skips through the mire.

14

Whither, oh whither speed they?
What end to this dreadful race?
These paths, where no Christ hangs, lead they
To yonder unhallowed place?

15

The Forest's most lone recesses
O'ergloom the Unfathomed Pool;
'Tis fishless, and bud ne'er blesses
Its margin from Yule to Yule;

16

Its deadly ways are a wonder—
Like stone sinks raft or boat,
Drawn down, sucked noiselessly under;
But sound it, and lead will float.

17

O God! as the moon smiles drearly,
He suddenly sees it—there,
Like the eye of the murdered, blearly
Its waters accursed glare!

18

Their wild race ends by the margent,
The Stick hath wrought its charm,
And, sneering, that grisly sergeant
Releases his prisoner's arm.

19

“All hail! In this devil's cottage
Your good wife lies at rest,
Your cheer shall be Esau's pottage,
Your pillow her clay-cold breast.”

20

A shriek of unearthly laughter,
Re-echoed in thunders dread,
And, Stick first and Grey Man after,
They've splashed in, heels over head!

21

Sudden the tempest ceases
When sunk are the goblin pair,
And herding her silver fleeces
The moon shines wondrous fair.

22

Alone with the awful brilliance,
In silence that takes the breath,
He stands—from man's kindly millions
Remote as a soul in death.

23

But hark! what a gruesome twitter
Begins from yon blasted pine!
What eyes of accusers glitter
Like ghosts' in the pale moonshine?

24

There, cuddled like traitor cravens,
Sit gibbering three fiendlike fowls—
You could not say they were ravens,
You could not say they were owls.

25

It thrills to his inmost marrow,
The song of those baleful birds;
Each note, like a poisoned arrow,
Sows seed of venomous words.

The First Bird.
I fretted Pilate over the sea,
He drowned himself to be rid of me;
And when he lay weltering on the beach
I picked his red hands and left them to bleach.

The Three Birds.
Pilate! Pilate! leap in the flood,
And wash thy hands of that woman's blood!

The Second Bird.
I sat on the back of Caiaphas' chair,
I whispered sin, and I sang despair,
And when he lay strangled upon his bed,
I tore the tongue from his crafty head.

The Three Birds.
Thou Caiaphas! where is thy loving wife?
Thy tongue's false witness hath reft her life!

The Third Bird.
I roosted near when Judas was born,
I sang in his ear till he hung on the thorn,
And when he had fall'n with a ghastly shriek
His entrails I tore with my raging beak.

The Three Birds.
Judas, Judas! Thy cursed deed
Has made the five wounds of Christ to bleed!

The First Bird.
In!

The Second Bird.
In!

The Third Bird.
In!

The Three Birds.
Or we follow thee, follow thee;
Till thou wert happy that Hell should swallow thee!

26

He hears, and with fixed eyes staring,
As drawn by a snakish spell,
He glares at the water, glaring
Snake-still as the eye of Hell.

27

The Birds are after him—quaking
He draws to the fatal verge,
Great blood-gouts the surface breaking,
The fathomless deeps upsurge;

28

The Birds are after him—stooping
Upon him with claws and beak—
He feels the wind of their swooping,
He hears their appalling shriek.

29

They shriek, they gibber, they twitter,
They darken the moon's pale beam,
Till into the caldron bitter
He leaps, with a shuddering scream.

FOREST-POOL.

I.

Is there a thing more sweet
Than thus to sit—my feet
Deep in this forest-pool,
So clear, and ah! so cool,
Hid from the sun-sick noon?

ON THE SEUFZERS-BANK.

1

Where is thy breast, bright Daughter of the Morn?
Where are thine arms to give my longing rest,
That I may die, and find myself new-born?
Where is thy breast?

2

Oh, let thy beauty pasture my desire,
Appease, arouse, sustain me in some sphere
Where passion's tears may turn to action's fire!
Appear! appear!

LONELY FLOWERS.

1

Lonely in the light of morning,
In the Forest's gladed stillness,
Exiled from the flowery meadows,
Trembling stand three delicate hairbells.

2

Pale, forsaken of your kindred,
Wherefore, like estrays of azure
Lured by forest-pools from heaven,
Lurk ye here, ye tremulous hairbells?

3

In the footsteps of the morning,
Lonely wandering in the wildwood,
I alone have seen the vision
Of your solitary beauty;

4

And I know not why ye haunt me
Like familiar things, yet strangely,
With dim, ghostlike sense of strangeness,
Mystify this shadowy woodland.

5

In the footsteps of the morning,
Through forgotten fields of dreamland
Wandering, have my lonely footsteps
Stirred, long since, this virgin stillness?

6

Do these dew-dimmed branches know me?
Or these crags and shadowy places?
What embalmed enchantment breathe I,
That enraptures and affrights me?

7

Witchlike, sphynxlike, dumb for ever,
Hang their heads, those desolate hairbells;
Some mysterious past concealing,
Some mysterious fate foreboding.

WATERFALL.

1

I heard a brook, new-weanèd from a cloud,
Sing in a glen, as down the rocks it sprang:
It clapt its watery hands, and laughed aloud,
And silver-voiced it sang:—

2

“Throw off thy swaddling clothes, thou child grown grey,
Leap, like a naked babe, into the sun;
Hive, beelike, joy on joy the livelong day
Till thy soul's cells o'errun.

3

“Joy is the golden honey of the wise,
The nectar of the strong. O fool forlorn,
From all the fulness that about thee lies
Suck joy, and be new-born!”

A SYMPOSIUM.

1

Over the mountains, over the meadows
Dreamily roaming,
Caught by the twilight, I strayed in the Forest
Self-outlawed, alone.

2

Deeper the shade grew, deeper the silence;
Only the spruces,
Gathering around me, frowning above me,
Gloomily whispered.

3

Only, at times, the far voice of the valley
Stirred, through the loneness,
Memories of man and his world in my spirit,
Remote as a ghost.

4

Something exultant, something audacious
Surged in my soul then:
“I am your comrade, ye forests, ye mountains!”
Proudly I sang.

5

Softly the moon grew bright in the heavens;
Mounted serenely,
Ambushed she shone, till over the pine-tops
She looked in my face.

6

And I was mute—my song ceased; the vast silence,
Ebbed for a moment,
Flowing, o'erwhelmed me; then—was it thunder
That scornfully laughed?

7

Then was I'ware of a Giant beside me,
Tall as a pine-tree,
Towering above me, laughing like thunder,
Scornfully laughing—

8

Tall as two pine-trees, gloomily laughing!
Out of the twilight
Gleamed his great face, hale and red as a Viking's
Bearded with eld.

9

Cloud-grey his hood was, spruce-green were his garments,
Lordly his presence;
Frostily keen as the stars of mid-winter
Flashed his fierce eyes—

10

Fierce, yet a twinkle of savage good-humour
Bade me take courage.
Boldly I greeted him: “Wotan the wanderer,
Why dost thou laugh?”

11

Wordlike the thunder pealed down from his summit:
“Thou art our comrade,
Inch of an earth-worm! Call'st thou me Wotan?
Spruce is my name.

12

“I am the hoary life of this Forest;
I am the spirit
Breathing whose breath, in winterless greenness
Wax mighty these hosts.”

13

Crestfallen I stood. In savage good-humour,
Down sat the Giant,
Whistled a gnome from a cave in the forest:
“Pipes, lad, and beer!”

14

Lo, a new wonder! Back in a twinkling
Came the swart Kobold,
Bringing two stone-ware mighty-mouthed flagons
Brimmed with spruce-beer;

15

Bringing two pipes with stems like huge branches,
Which, in a twinkling,
Deftly he filled with balm of the pine-wood,
Lit with a glow-worm.

16

Towering above me rose a tall flagon,
Stretching beside me
Lay a huge pipe-stem. “Ho! ho!” laughed the Giant:
“Comrade, your health!”

17

Wistfully up the sides of my flagon,
Cliff-like above me,
Looked I bewildered. Lo! from a fissure
Gurgled a beer-fall!

18

Gurgled a beer-fall, foaming and sparkling
Down to the valley.
Gravely I pledged him, out of my hat-brim:
“Comrade, to you!”

19

Then from my pipe its exquisite odour
Blandly imbibing,
Cross-legged in front of its mouth-piece, I asked him:
“What think you of man?”

20

Verily, as though some jest had broke covert—
Luring slow laughter
Through his mind's maze to stolidly course it
Half the night long,—

21

Holding at poise his flagon uplifted,
Blankly my Giant
Stared a long stare, then suddenly thundered
Into huge mirth.

22

“Man! Think of man?—that mischievous vermin!
Man? By Thor's hammer,
Earth when she spawned so filthy a creature
Must have been mad!

23

“All things were good till, crawling and climbing,
Rooting and tearing,
Out brake this pest, this itch of creation,
Scabbing Earth's face.

24

“Then, when meek Earth, with Brahmin-like patience,
Bore with his tickling,
Spared him her nails, save one or two scratches,
Hoped he would mend;

25

“Bolder he grew, and fuller of malice,
Fuller of mischief;
Over the world he spread like a tetter,
Ugliest of things;

26

“Blasted his betters, fought with his fellows,
Planted diseases;
Till the World-Spirit, in shame and in loathing,
Vowed he should die:—

27

“Vowed he should die; but scorning his slaughter
Left him to slowly
Seethe in his own most virulent venom—
Left him to think;

28

“Left him to learn his shame, and despairing
Worship despair, till
Orgy on hopeless orgy consumes him
Out of the world.”

29

Thus having said, he lapsed into silence,
Scornfully smoking;
While his uncultured views of man's nature
I gently assailed;

30

Filled his great ears with great words—Evolution,
Progress, Art, Culture;
Steeped him in science, statistics, æsthetics,
In sweetness and light;

31

Gleaned the best books of all the best authors—
Quoted him Darwin,
Quoted him Spencer, Huxley, and Wallace,
Talked prose and talked verse;

32

Talked till he dozed, overcome—till his snoring
Sounded no longer,
Talked till, behold, day dawned, and my Giant—
No Giant was there!

33

Then I arose, and down through the Forest
Walked in the dawnlight,
Solemnly, slowly, through the grey spruces,
Dimmed with sweet dew;

34

Down through the dew-drenched glades, through the meadows,
Down to my Gasthof;
Wondering what God could say for man's nature
And place in the world.

BIRDS OF PREY.

“Rinder zeugen, und die nähren so gut es vermag.”

1

Two Ravens sat upon an oak,
Two Hawks upon a pine,
And thus they spoke, with scream and croak,
When the day began to shine.

2

The Hawks said: “Deep in a forest brake
There lies a wounded roe,
What will ye give us that ye make
Your profit of his woe?”

3

The Ravens answered: “By yonder wood
Two wheatears have their nest,
To-day come fluttering forth their brood,
And ye may choose the best.”

4

The Hawks flew north, and the Ravens south,
With many a scream of glee,
For the Ravens' nestlings cried from a crag,
The Hawks' from a tall pine-tree.

5

The Ravens pecked out the roe's two eyes,
While still he drew his breath,
He shuddered, and with piteous cries
Went blindly to his death.

6

The Hawks pounced down on the wheatears brood,
And bore the best away;
The wheatears shrieked through their happy wood
For terror and woe that day.

7

The sun shone gay that livelong day,
Nor heeded each plaintive shriek,—
The sun were mad if he looked sad
When the strong oppress the weak.

5

On the wandering wind of sunset,
Hale with forest balm, that folksong,
Like the wind's mysterious spirit
Floating, floods my heart with longing.

BY THE SCHLUCHSEE.

1

Grey twilight out of the Forest
Comes flying on downy wings,
The bats fly forth to meet her
With petulant twitterings.

2

The gathering dews are bending
The long grass drowsily,
In meadows left by the mower
This night for the moths and me.

3

The beautiful moths come hovering
Like restless ghosts in white,
The fond white moths fly trooping
To burn at my bed-room light.

4

Soft night sinks down on the Forest,
I sink on my Gasthof bed,
And sigh for some splendid candle
To burn my wings at instead.

FOREST MYSTERY.

I.

Deep within the haunted Forest
Lies a plot of gladed stillness,
Secret as a maiden's longing,
Sweet as lovers' vows new-whispered.

Rarely mortal foot can find it,
Rarely mortal eye behold it;
None can tell if Autumn bleaken,
Winter waste, or Spring restore it.

Only when with sunny tresses
Blue-eyed June flies through the Forest,
Breathing love, its ominous vision
Scares the solitary hunter.

Woe betide the happy lover
Who with fated foot shall find it!
Woe betide the ill-starred lover
Whose o'erhardy eye behold it!

II.

Lovelier glade wind ne'er o'er-wandered,
And the sunbeams and the moonbeams,
Through the woodbine and wild-roses
Glimmering, make all sweet things sweeter;

But from rank, rich lilacs, blooming
All forlorn in that wild Forest,
Wafts of heavy perfume floating
Fill the soul with bodeful dreaming;

And the wind comes whispering, sighing,
Through dim cypresses that strangely
Haunt the woods with alien presence,
Gloomily gazing till you shudder;

And, deep-hid in tangled roses,
Lurks a nightingale, and warbles
All day long and all night long there
Songs of yearning and foreboding.

For the blood of murdered lovers
At the root lies of the lilacs,
And the cypresses are waving
O'er the grave of murdered lovers.

III.

O ye cypresses and lilacs,
Mysteries of the lonely wild-wood,
I, the solitary hunter,
Come with fated feet to find you!

Tell me, with the wind conspiring,
What dread thing of me ye whisper?
What dares yet my fate more bitter?
What new woe can ye foretell me?

O thou nightingale that singest
All day long and all night long there,
I, the ill-starred happy lover,
I alone have found thy covert!

Tell me what sad song thou singest?
Wherefore should thy warbling chill me
With its yearning and foreboding,—
With its yearning—its foreboding?

SONG.

[Bring from the craggy haunts of birch and pine]

1

Bring from the craggy haunts of birch and pine,
Thou wild wind, bring
Keen forest odours from that realm of thine,
Upon thy wing!

2

O wind, O mighty, melancholy wind,
Blow through me, blow!
Thou blowest forgotten things into my mind,
From long ago.

SWALLOW FLIGHT.

1

Yes, once more; for, like the swallow
Holding in her heart the vision
Of her nesting-nook last summer,
Back I fly to thee, my Forest!

2

So farewell to Freiburg minster,
Where the angels of the sunshine,
Gliding in through glowing windows,
On their plumes bring peace from heaven.

3

Where the sunset-angels freely,
Through the spire of airy fretwork
Wing their way, and, for mere love's sake,
Kiss the cowering gargoyle-demons.

4

Not the Himmelreich detains us,
With its slopes of orchard-meadow,
Not the Höllenthal beguiles us,
With its crags and misty pinewoods.

5

Past the meadow and the pinewood,
Lumbering in the dull Post-Wagen,
Little boots it that our thought flies
With the swiftness of the swallow;

6

Lumbering on, or glad to leave them,
Changing horses, beer imbibing,
While we breathe the balmy freshness,
And trudge onward, rain defying.

7

Till at last we leave behind us
Mist, and rain, and dull Post-Wagen,
And we seek the friendly Gasthof,
Timbered from its native pinewood.

8

There my Forest darkly stretches
Over dale and over mountain;
There my Titi-See lies sparkling,
Shimmering back the sunlit spruces.

EVENING PRIMROSE.

Sweet as a dream of one beloved, yon star,
Sole in the skies, the placid Evening Star
Floats glimmering o'er the sunset-lighted pines
Upon the mountain's brow, and trembling drinks
The ether cool, and blends its trembling ray
With evening's colours in the stream. I hear
The vale's serenest voice, in murmurs low
From rivulets dim, and in the rippling tune
Of cowbells, as the gathering herds flow down
From upland pastures home—a gurgling brook
Of cool and silver sound. The wild, sad, sweet
Accords that chime at fitful intervals,
As wills it wanton chance, wake in my heart's
Most lonely cave its melancholy spring,
Whose waters, trembling into gloomy peace,
Image delights more deep than ever grew
By mortal mere, or brook the eager hands
Of passionate desire.

But now the voice

Of the glad vale, the vision of its peace,
Fade from my brooding sense—grow but a vague
And distant dream; such alien forms arise,
Born of my reading of to-day, between;
And baleful as a murderer's sudden torch,
Scaring the moon upon a night of joy,
And making love-dilated eyes to shrink,
Another scene grows vivid to my view.

The star of love has vanished in the glare
Of Eastern noon; the golden pine-woods fade
In sun-baked steppes and bleak Tartarian hills;
For thronging cows, the kneeling camels clank
A few harsh bells; and for the valley's voice
Are heard wild shouts, and laughter, and the din
Of a victorious host. The conquerors feast
In silken luxury in a royal tent,
While on their mirth a gory head looks down
From a spear planted in the doorway. That
Is the defeated Khan's head. All around
Fierce Turcomans divide the spoil of war—
Horses and camels, victuals, raiment, arms,
And bleeding captives. On a basking rock,
A bowshot off, stray vultures, come too late
To gorge their fill of slaughter, one by one

Light heavily and wait; for in the sun,
Unpitied, scoffed at, cursed at, spit upon,
Hang, maddening in their horrible agony,
Six Mollahs, each impaled upon his stake.

Here is a dell of Evening Primroses,
Which bow their heads, like weeping Magdalens,
Around the cross-foot of a carven Christ
Upon the edge of a wood. O loveliest flower,
Whose delicate petals, tinctured like yon sky,
Faint twilight lemon, rival thy sweet breath
In tender salutation of the sense!
Fosterer of gentle dreams! why look'st thou now
Like a soft incarnation of Love's soul,
Like Mercy pleading at the gate of Hell,
Like new-born Pity in the ugly world
Of human misery? Perhaps when dawned
The day of woman's hope, and women brought
Their children to their Saviour, those blest eyes
Pitied thy faint, sweet blossoms, as they fell
Withering from infant hands. Perhaps his tears
Were rained upon them ere he knelt by night,
Drinking, for man, the inevitable cup
Of Earth's despair in lone Gethsemane.

THE CHRIST OF THE TITI-SEE.

1

Poor pale Christ that hang'st there dumbly,
Spear and sponge thy cross beside,
With thy crown of thorns upon thee,
And thy blood-streams never dried!

2

Wherefore comest thou to haunt me,
With thy wide wounds gaping red?
All last night thy dolorous vision
Glared at me beside my bed.

3

With that look of mute upbraiding
In thy ghastly face of pain,
Dost thou ask, “Have I, the Saviour,
Died for this bad world in vain?”

4

Eighteen centuries and three-quarters
Since that world, O Blessed One,
Heard thy death-cry, “It is finished!”
Criest Thou now, “Is it begun?”

A DREAM OF JUDGMENT.

1

A weird, wild dream this morning,
I dreamt as in bed I lay,
That One was come to Judgment at last,
The Christ of the Titi-See!

2

The terrible Judgment-Trumpet
Brayed loud as the Righi horn,
And summoned to meet by the Titi-See,
All folk that ever were born.

3

Through the chill, grey, last morning
Pealed on its shuddering tones,
And slowly, drowsily, out of our graves
We dragged our clattering bones.

4

In the chill, grey, last morning,
Half-waked, we shivering stood,
And strove to blanket our bones with flesh
Hastily, as we could.

5

In terror, upon his death-bed
The sun lay, loth to rise;
Grey Dawn, with her doomsday candle,
Made ghastly gleam in the skies.

6

And crowding, struggling, striving,
We hurried a doleful way
To where, 'mid angels, stood in the sky
The Christ of the Titi-See.

7

On either hand an angel
Stood, holding the sponge and spear,
And in His face the terrible look
Froze our weak bones with fear.

8

He spoke not a word of cursing,
But with each glittering eye,
That shone like a star in his weary face,
He damned us utterly.

9

The blood ran down in great rivers,
From his red wounds ne'er dried;
With bloody fire the Titi-See
It kindled from side to side;

10

And struggling, shuddering, and striving,
Our bones all a-quake for fear,
The angels down to that Lake of Fire
Drove us with sponge and spear.

11

I woke: my innocent lakelet
Was glittering in the sun,
In dewy pastures cows were abroad,
The beautiful day begun.

12

Through fields a-shimmer with hairbells
I took my lonely way,
To where hung bleeding, with piteous face,
The Christ of the Titi-See.

GOLGOTHA.

1

On his cross still hangs the Saviour,
Bears our sins in dreadful sum,
Eighteen centuries and three quarters,
Yet his kingdom is not come.

2

“It is finished!” Was it finished
When thy path of pain was trod?
Thou didst bear the sins of mortals,
Who shall bear the sins of God?

THE MODERN GETHSEMANE.

1.

No, I'm no god, alas! Christ or Prometheus—
What boots my anguish? The blood of my passion
Works no redemption. Ah! wearied with sorrow,
Pale and reproachful, ye poor and opprest ones,
With sullen eyes will ye wither my roses,
Passing me moaning?

2.

Call you these roses? Nay, here be great blood-drops
Blown into flowers—see! If this be a garden,
Name it Gethsemane. Still, ye opprest ones,
With weary eyes will ye pass by my roses?

3.

Is it my fault that my blood brings no healing?
Think ye my anguish the less, being little,
Dull, unheroic; my mountain of passion
This poor, small garden? What look ye to me for?

4.

Come ye for grapes filled with wine of redemption,
Holy, newbirthful, the blood eucharistic
Of a great Lamb slain? Nay, I'm but a small one—
Sad as your eyes as ye pass by my roses.

5.

Yet, even for me, 'mid the clouds of some dawning,
Pale, like the ghost of Life's babe, tranquil, terrible,
I may see standing the angel of agony,
With new, strange chalice—shall I not drink it?

6.

Ah! what avails it? The blood of my passion,
What can it purchase? When, six long hours hanging,
Loud, with rent heart, I would cry, “It is finished!”
Were the world saved? I, alas! am no Saviour.

7.

I would hang twelve, though, for my little world's sake,
I would hang twelve, would my Father in Heaven
Heal but Love's wounds, and I felt through the death-swoon
There at my cross-foot the Magdalen standing,
Kissing the blood from my feet, loving, weeping,
Beautiful, with long hair.