The Poetical Works of Aubrey De Vere :: :: University of Virginia Library

339

MISCELLANEOUS POEMS.

340

To the Memory OF JOHN KEATS.

341

ODE TO THE DAFFODIL.

1.

O love-star of the unbelovèd March,
When, cold and shrill,
Forth flows beneath a low, dim-lighted arch
The wind that beats sharp crag and barren hill,
And keeps unfilmed the lately torpid rill!

2.

A week or e'er
Thou com'st thy soul is round us everywhere;
And many an auspice, many an omen,
Whispers, scarce noted, thou art coming.
Huge, cloudlike trees grow dense with sprays and buds,
And cast a shapelier gloom o'er freshening grass,
And through the fringe of ragged woods
More shrouded sunbeams pass.
Fresh shoots conceal the pollard's spike
The driving rack out-braving;
The hedge swells large by ditch and dike;
And all the uncoloured world is like
A shadow-limned engraving.

342

3.

Herald and harbinger! with thee
Begins the year's great jubilee!
Of her solemnities sublime
A sacristan whose gusty taper
Flashes through earliest morning vapour,
Thou ring'st dark nocturns and dim prime.
Birds that have yet no heart for song
Gain strength with thee to twitter;
And, warm at last, where hollies throng,
The mirrored sunbeams glitter.
With silk the osier plumes her tendrils thin:
Sweet blasts, though keen as sweet, the blue lake wrinkle;
And buds on leafless boughs begin
Against grey skies to twinkle.

4.

To thee belongs
A pathos drowned in later scents and songs!
Thou com'st when first the Spring
On Winter's verge encroaches;
When gifts that speed on wounded wing
Meet little save reproaches!
Thou com'st when blossoms blighted,
Retracted sweets, and ditty,
From suppliants oft deceived and spited
More anger draw than pity!
Thee the old shepherd, on the bleak hill-side,
Far distant eyeing leans upon his staff
Till from his cheek the wind-brushed tear is dried:
In thee he spells his boyhood's epitaph.
To thee belongs the youngling of the flock,
When first it lies, close-huddled from the cold,

343

Between the sheltering rock
And gorse-bush slowly overcrept with gold.

5.

Thou laugh'st, bold outcast bright as brave,
When the wood bellows, and the cave,
And leagues inland is heard the wave!
Hating the dainty and the fine
As sings the blackbird thou dost shine!
Thou com'st while yet on mountain lawns high up
Lurks the last snow; while by the berried breer
As yet the black spring in its craggy cup
No music makes or charms no listening ear:
Thou com'st while from the oak stock or red beech
Dead Autumn scoffs young Spring with splenetic speech;
While in her vidual chastity the Year
With frozen memories of the sacred past
Her doors and heart makes fast,
And loves no flower save those that deck the bier:
Ere yet the blossomed sycamore
With golden surf is curdled o'er;
Ere yet the birch against the blue
Her silken tissue weaves anew:
Thou com'st while, meteor-like 'mid fens, the weed
Swims, wan in light; while sleet-showers whitening glare;
Weeks ere by river brims, new furred, the reed
Leans its green javelin level in the air.

6.

Child of the strong and strenuous East!
Now scattered wide o'er dusk hill bases

344

Now massed in broad, illuminate spaces;
Torchbearer at a wedding feast
Whereof thou mayst not be partaker,
But mime, at most, and merrymaker;
Phosphor of an ungrateful sun
That rises but to bid thy lamp begone:—
Farewell! I saw
Writ large on woods and lawns to-day that Law
Which back remands thy race and thee
To hero-haunted shades of dark Persephonè.
To-day the Spring has pledged her marriage vow:
Her voice, late tremulous, strong has grown and steady:
To-day the Spring is crowned a queen: but thou
Thy winter hast already!
Take my song's blessing, and depart,
Type of true service—unrequited heart.

Curragh Chase, 1861.

A FAREWELL.

I

Round me thy great woods sigh
In their full-foliaged glory; but I die:
Ah, blame me not; although
Tired and o'er-spent, I never prayed to go.
In thine old towers I leave
A cradled pledge to take his mother's part;
To vex thee not, nor grieve,
Yet lay, at times, my hand about thy heart.

345

II

Nearer—this dying past—
Bend nearer down that noble head at last;
Lower and yet more low
Till o'er my brow a tear has leave to flow.
Then the brief seizure quell;
And say that all is over; all is well:
Say I lived—and died—
For this, and am in silence satisfied.

SONG.

Love laid down his golden head
On his mother's knee;
‘The world runs round so fast,’ he said,
‘None has time for me.’

Thought, a sage unhonoured, turned
From the on-rushing crew;
Song her starry legend spurned;
Art her glass down threw.

Roll on, blind world, upon thy track
Until thy wheels catch fire!
For that is gone which comes not back
To seller nor to buyer!

346

A PICTURE OF HERODIAS' DAUGHTER BY LUINI.

Alas, Salomè! couldst thou know
How great man is—how great thou art—
What destined worlds of weal or woe
Lurk in the shallowest human heart,

From thee thy vanities would drop
Like sins in noble anger spurned
By one who finds, beyond all hope,
The passion of his youth returned.

Ah, sunbright face whose brittle smile
Is cold as sunbeams flashed on ice!
Ah, lips how sweet yet hard the while!
Ah, soul too barren even for vice!

Vanity's glittering mask! Those eyes
No beam the less around them shed
Albeit in that red scarf there lies
The dancer's meed—the prophet's head.

VANITY.

I

False and fair! Beware, beware!
There is a tale that stabs at thee!
The Arab seer, he stripped thee bare,
He told thy secret, Vanity!
By day a mincing foot is thine;
Thou runn'st along the spider's line:
Ay! but heavy sounds thy tread
By night, among the uncoffined dead!

347

II

Fair and foul! Thy mate, the ghoul,
Beats, bat-like, on thy latticed gate;
Around the graves the night-winds howl;
‘Arise,’ they cry, ‘thy feast doth wait!’
Dainty fingers thine, and nice,
With thy bodkin picking rice!
Ay: but when the night's o'erhead.
Limb from limb they rend the dead!

CHAUCER.

Escaped from the city, its smoke, its glare,
'Tis pleasant, showers over, and birds in chorus,
To sit in green alleys and breathe cool air
Which the violet only has breathed before us!

Such healthful solace is ours, forsaking
The glass-growth of modern and modish rhyme
For the music of days when the Muse was breaking
On Chaucer's pleasance like dawn's sweet prime.

Hands rubbed together smell still of earth:
The hot-bed verse has a hot-bed taint;
'Tis sense turned sour, its cynical mirth:
'Tis pride, its darkness: its blush, 'tis paint!

His song was a feast where thought and jest
Like monk and franklin alike found place,
Good Will's Round Table! There sat as guest
Shakespearian insight with Spenser's grace.

348

His England lay laughing in Faith's bright morn!
Life in his eye looked as rosy and round
As the cheek of the huntsman that blows on the horn
When the stag leaps up, and loud bays the hound.

King Edward's tourney, fair Blanche's court,
Their clarions, their lutes in his verse live on:
But he loved better the birds' consort
Under oaks of Woodstock while rose the sun.

The cloister, the war-field tented and brave,
The shout of the burghers in hostel or hall,
The embassy grave over ocean's wave,
And Petrarch's converse—he loved them all.

In Spring, when the breast of the lime-grove gathers
Its roseate cloud; when the flushed streams sing,
And the mavis tricks her in gayer feathers;
Read Chaucer then; for Chaucer is Spring!

On lonely evenings in dull Novembers
When rills run choked under skies of lead,
And on forest-hearths the year's last embers
Wind-heaped and glowing, lie, yellow and red.

Read Chaucer still! In his ivied beaker
With knights, and wood-gods, and saints embossed
Spring hides her head till the wintry breaker
Thunders no more on the far-off coast.

349

SPENSER.

One peaceful spot in a storm-vexed isle
Shall wear for ever the past's calm smile;
Kilcolman Castle! There Spenser sate;
There sang, unweeting of coming fate.

That song he sang was a life-romance
Woven by Virtues in mystic dance
Where the gods and heroes of Grecian story
Themselves were Virtues in allegory.

True love was in it, but love sublimed,
Occult, high-reason'd, bewitch'd, be-rhymed!
The knight was the servant of ends trans-human,
The women were seraphs, the bard half woman.

Time and its tumults, stern shocks, hearts wrung,
To him were mad words to sweet music sung,
History to him an old breviary quaint
Bordered round with gold Angel and sworded Saint.

Creative indeed was that eye, sad Mary!
That hailed in thy rival a queen of faery,
And in Raleigh, half statesman, half pirate, could see
But the shepherd of ocean's green Arcady.

Under groves of Penshurst his first notes rang:
As Sidney lived so his Spenser sang:
From the well-head of Chaucer one stream found birth,
Like an Arethusa, on Irish earth.

350

From the court he had fled, and the courtly lure:
One virgin muse in an age not pure
Wore Florimel's girdle, and mourned in song
(He guessed not its import) Ierne's wrong.

Roll onward, thou western Ilyssus, roll,
‘Mulla,’ far kenned by ‘old mountain Mole!’
With thy Shepherds a Calidore loved to dwell;
And beside him an Irish Pastorel.

Where are they, those garlands she flung on thy tide,
Bending over thee, giftless—that well-sung bride?
The flowers have passed by, but abideth the river;—
May thy Genius, its Guardian, be near it for ever!

‘Song made in lieu of many ornaments.’

Spenser's Epithalamium on his own Marriage.

ODE, WRITTEN BESIDE THE LAGO VARESE.

[_]

(SEE SIR HENRY TAYLOR'S POEM, ENTITLED ‘LAGO VARESE.’)

Still rise around that lake well sung
New growths as boon and good
As when, by sunshine saddened, long
Beside its margin stood
That northern youth, and o'er it breathed a lay
Which praised things beauteous, mourning their decay.

As then, great Nature, ‘kind to sloth,’
Lets drop o'er all the land
Her gifts, the fair and fruitful both,
Into the sleeper's hand:

351

On golden ground once more she paints as then
Starred cistus bower, and convent-brightened glen.

Still o'er the flashing waters lean
The mulberry and the maize,
And roof of vines whose purple screen
Tempers those piercing rays,
Which here forego their fiercer shafts, and sleep,
Subdued, in crimson cells, and verdurous chambers deep.

And still in many a sandy creek
Light waves run on and up,
While the foam-bubbles winking break
Around the channelled cup:
Against the rock they toss the bleeding gourd,
Or fret on marble stair and skiff unmoored.

Fulfilled thus far the Poet's words:
And yet a truth, that hour
By him unsung, upon his chords
Descends, their ampler dower.
He sang of Nature's cyclic life, nor knew
That frailer shape he mourned should bloom perpetual too.

There still—not skilful to retract
A glance as kind as keen—
By the same southern sunset backed
There still that Maid is seen:
Through song's high grace there stands she! from her eyes
Still beam the cordial mirth, the unshamed surprise!

Not yet those parted lips remit
A smile that grows and grows:

352

The Titianic morning yet
Breaks from that cheek of rose:
Still from her locks the breeze its sweetness takes:
Around her white feet still the ripple fawns and rakes.

And, bright'ning in the radiance cast
By her on all around,
That shore lives on, while song may last,
Love-consecrated ground;
Lives like that isthmus, headland half, half isle,
Which smiled to meet Catullus' homeward smile.

O Sirmio! thou that shedd'st thy fame
O'er old Verona's lake,
Henceforth Varese without blame
Thine honours shall partake:
A Muse hath sung her, on whose front with awe
Thy nymphs had gazed as though great Virtue's self they saw!

What Shape is that, though fair severe,
Which fleets triumphant by
Imaged in yonder mirror clear,
And seeks a hardier sky,
With locks succinct beneath a threat'ning crest—
Like Juno in the brow, like Pallas in the breast?

A Muse that flatters nothing base
In man, nor aught infirm,
‘Sows the slow olive for a race
Unborn.’ The destined germ,
The germ alone of Fame she plants, nor cares
What time that secular tree its deathless fruitage bears;

353

Pleased rather with her function sage—
To interpret Nature's heart;
The words on Wisdom's sacred page
To wing through metric art
With life; and in a chariot of sweet sound
Down-trodden Truth to lift, and waft, the world around.

Hail, Muse, whose crown, soon won or late,
Is Virtue's, not thine own!
Hail, Verse, that tak'st thy strength and state
From Thought's auguster throne!
Varese too would hail thee! Hark that song—
Her almond bowers it thrills and rings her groves along!

October 4, 1856.

ODE.

THE GOLDEN MEAN.

Fortune! unloved of whom are those
On whom the Virtues smile,
Forbear the land I love, and choose,
Choose still some meaner isle!
Thy best of gifts are gilded chains;
The gold wears off; the bond remains.

Thus much of good, nor more, is thine,
That, clustering round the wand
Thou lift'st, with honey smeared and wine,
In that unqueenly hand,
Close-limed are trapped those sun-bred flies
Which else had swarmed about the wise.

354

The vanities of fleeting time
To powers that fleet belong;
They fear and hate the sons sublime
Of science and of song,
And those that, scorned as weak, o'errule
The strong, and keep the world at school.

For how could Song her tenderer notes
Elaborate for the ear
Of one on vulgar noise who doats;
Of one through deserts drear
On-rushing in that race distraught
Whose goad is hate, whose goal is naught?

And how could Science trust that line,
Her labyrinth's sacred clue,
Of subtly-woven thought, more fine
Than threads of morning dew,
To those unhallowed hands and coarse
The drudges base of greed or force?

Faith to the sensual and the proud
Whom this world makes her prey
But glimmers with the light allowed
To tapers at noonday;
When garish joys have ta'en their flight
Like stars she glorifies the night.

Nor less the Heroic Life extracts
From circumstance adverse
Her food of sufferings and of acts;
While pain, a rugged nurse,
On the rough breasts of wintry seas
Rocks it 'mid stormy lullabies.

355

Hail, Poor Estate! Through thee man's race
Partake, by rule controlled,
The praise of them discalced who pace,
And them that kneel white-stoled;
Where thou hast honours due, hard by
Obedience stands and Chastity.

Hail, too, O Bard, nor poor nor rich,
Whom one blue gleam of sea
Binds to our British Cuma's beach;
Our gold we store in thee;
To thee not wealth but worlds belong,
Like Delos raised; such might hath song!

Through thee to him who climbs that down
Arched onward toward the west,
White cliff, green shore, and stubble brown
In Idyl grace are dressed;
Beside low doors, a later Ruth,
Thy Dora sits—serene as truth.

Thy song can girdle hill and mead
With choirs, more pure, more fair,
Their locks with wild flower dressed and weed,
Than ever Hellas bare:
Theocritus, we cry, once more
Treads his beloved Trinacrian shore!

O long with freedom's gale refreshed,
With mild sea-murmurs lulled,
O long by thee, in cares unmeshed,
Those healthier flowers be culled
Rich Egypt knew not, nor the wain
That creaked o'er deep Bœotian plain!

356

They lit Arcadian peaks: they breathed—
Light soils have airs divine—
O'er Scio's rocks with ivy wreathed,
Stern Parnes' brow, and thine,
Pentelicus, whose marble womb
With temples crowned all-conquering Rome.

Teach us in all that round us lies
To see and feel each hour,
More than Homeric majesties,
And more than Phidian power:
Teach us the coasts of modern life
With lordlier tasks are daily rife

Than theirs who plunged the heroic oar
Of old by Chersonese:
But bid our Argo launch from shore
Unbribed by golden Fleece:
Bid us Dædalean arts to scorn
Which prostituted ends suborn!

That science—slave of sense—which claims
No commerce with the sky,
Is baser thrice than that which aims
With waxen wing to fly!
To grovel, or self-doomed to soar—
Mechanic age, be proud no more!

Lugano, October 7, 1856.

357

LINES COMPOSED NEAR SHELLEY'S HOUSE AT LERICI, ON ALL SOULS' DAY, 1856.

DEDICATED TO J. W. FIELD, IN MEMORY OF A DAY PASSED WITH HIM AT LERICI.

I

And here he paced! These glimmering pathways strewn
With faded leaves his light swift footstep crushed;
The odour of yon pine was o'er him blown:
Music went by him in each wind that brushed
Those yielding stems of ilex! Here, alone,
He walked at noon, or silent stood and hushed
When the ground-ivy flashed the moonlight sheen
Back from the forest carpet always green.

II

Poised as on air the lithe elastic bower
Now bends, resilient now against the wind
Springs up, like Dryads that one moment cower
And rise the next with loose locks unconfined:
Through the dim roof like gems the sunbeams shower;
Old cypress trunks the aspiring bay-trees bind,
And soon will have them wholly underneath,
Types eminent of glory conquering death.

III

Far down on weedy shelves and sands below
The respirations of a southern sea
Beat with susurrent cadence soft and slow:
Round the grey cave's fantastic imagery,

358

In undulation eddying to and fro,
The purple waves on roll or backward flee;
While, dewed at each rebound with gentlest shock,
The myrtle leans her green breast on the rock.

IV

And here he stood! upon his face that light
Streamed from some furthest realm of luminous thought,
Which clothed his fragile beauty with the might
Of suns for ever rising! Here he caught
Visions divine. He saw in fiery flight
‘The hound of Heaven,’ with heavenly vengeance fraught,
‘Run down the slanted sunlight of the morn’—
Prometheus frown on Jove with scorn for scorn.

V

He saw white Arethusa, leap on leap,
Plunge from the Acroceraunian ledges bare
With all her torrent streams, while from the steep
Alpheus bounded on her unaware:
Hellas he saw, a giant fresh from sleep,
Break from the night of bondage and despair.
Who but had cried, as there he stood and smiled,
‘Justice and Truth have found their wingèd child!’

VI

Through cloud and wave and star his insight keen
Shone clear, and traced a God in each disguise,
Protean, boundless. Like the buskined scene
All Nature rapt him into ecstasies:

359

In him, alas! had Reverence equal been
With Admiration, those resplendent eyes
Had wandered not through all her range sublime
To miss the one great marvel of all time.

VII

The winds sang loud; from this Elysian nest
He rose, and trod yon spine of mountains bleak,
While stormy suns descending in the west
Stained as with blood yon promontory's beak:
That hour, responsive to his soul's unrest,
Carrara's marble summits, peak to peak,
Sent forth their thunders like the battle-cry
Of nations arming for the victory.

VIII

Visions that hour more fair, more false, he saw
Than those the mythologic heaven that throng;
Mankind he saw exempt from Faith and Law,
Move godlike forth, with science winged and song;
He saw the Peoples spurn religious awe,
Yet tower aloft through inbred virtue strong.
Ah, Circe! not for sensualists alone
Thy cup! It dips full oft in Helicon!

IX

Mankind he saw one equal brotherhood,
All things in common held as light and air!
‘Vinum dæmonum!’ Just, and wise, and good—
Were man all this, such freedom man might bear!
The slave creates the tyrant! In man's blood
Sin lurks, a panther couchant in his lair:
Nature's confession came before the Creed's;
Authority is still man's first of needs.

360

X

All things in common; equal all; all free!
Not fancies these, but gifts reserved in trust:
A spiritual growth is Liberty;
Nature, unnatural made through hate and lust,
Yields it no more, or chokes her progeny
With weeds of foul desire or fell disgust.
Convents have all things common: but on Grace
They rest. Inverted systems lack a base.

XI

The more obedience to a law divine
Tempers the chaos of man's heart, the less
Becomes his need of outward discipline
The balance of injustice to redress:
‘Wild Bacchanals of Truth's mysterious wine’
Must bear the Mænad's waking bitterness.
Anticipate not heaven. Not great thy worth
Heaven without holiness, and heaven on earth!

XII

Alas! the errors thus to truth so near
That sovereign truths they are, though misapplied,
Errors to pure but passionate natures dear,
Errors by aspirations glorified,
Errors with radiance crown'd like Lucifer
Ere fall'n, like him to darkness changed through pride,
These of all errors are the heart and head:
The strength of life is theirs; yet they are dead!

361

XIII

That Truth Revealed, by thee in madness spurned,
Plato, thy master in the walks of light,
Had knelt to worship! For its day he yearned
Through the long hungry watches of the night:
Its dawn in Thought's assumptions he discerned
Silvering hoar Contemplation's star-loved height;
The God-Man came! Thy pagan phantasy,
Feigning a Man-God, stormed against His sky!

XIV

Sorrowing for thee, with sorrow joy is mixed,
With triumph shame! Our hopes themselves are sad;
But fitful lustres break the shades betwixt;
So gleams yon olive bower, in mourning clad,
And yet at times with showery gleams transfixed,
That opal among trees which, grave or glad,
Its furtive splendour, half revealed or wholly,
Shoots ever from a base of melancholy.

XV

Our warfare is in darkness. Friend for foe
Blindly, and oft with swords exchanged, we strike:
Opinion guesses: Faith alone can know
Where actual and illusive still are like:
Thine was that strength which fever can bestow;
The madness thine of one that, fever-sick,
‘Beats a sad mother in distempered sleep!’
Perhaps death woke thee, on her breast to weep!

362

XVI

Thee from that Mother sins ancestral tore!
No heart hadst thou, from Faith's sole guide remote,
With statutable worship to adore,
Or learn a nation-licensed Creed by rote;
No heart to snatch thy gloss of sacred lore
From the blind prophet of the public vote.
Small help from such in life, or when thy pyre
Cast far o'er Tuscan waves its mirrored fire!

XVII

Hark! She thou knew'st not mourns thee! Slowly tolls,
As sinks the sun, yon church-tower o'er the sea:
Abroad once more the peal funereal rolls,
And Spezia now responds to Lerici:
This day is sacred to Departed Souls;
This day the Dead alone are great; and we
Who live, or seem to live, but live to plead
For the departed myriads at their need.

XVIII

Behold, the long procession scales the rock;
In the red glare dusk banners sadly wave:
Behold, the lambs of the immaculate flock
Fling flowers on noted and on noteless grave:
O Cross! sole Hope that dost not woo to mock!
Some, some that knew thee not thou liv'st to save,
At spirits not wholly—by their own decree—
From infinite Love exiled, and lost to thee!

‘Prometheus Unbound.’

‘Revolt of Islam.’

Shelley's ‘Ode to Liberty.’

From ‘Prometheus Unbound.’

363

SONNETS.

1.

At times I lift mine eyes unto ‘the Hills
Whence my salvation cometh’—ay, and higher—
And, the mind kindling with the heart's desire,
Mount to that realm nor blight nor shadow chills:
With concourse of bright forms that region thrills:
I see the Lost One midmost in the choir:
From heaven to heaven, on wings that ne'er can tire,
I soar; and God Himself my spirit fills.
If that high rapture lasted need were none
For aid beside, nor any meaner light,
Nothing henceforth to seek, and nought to shun:—
But my soul staggers at its noonday height
And, stretching forth blind hands, a shape undone,
Drops back into the gulfs of mortal night.

August 6, 1846.

2.

Then learn I that the Fancy's saintliest flight
Gives or a fleeting, or a false relief;
And fold my hands and say, ‘Let grief be grief,
Let winter winter be, and blight be blight!’
O Thou all-wise, all-just, and infinite!
Whate'er the good we clasped, the least, the chief,
Was Thine, not ours, and held by us in fief;
Thy Will consummate in my will's despite!
‘Blessèd the Dead:’ and they, they too, are blest
Who, dead to earth, in full submission find,
Buried in God's high Will, their Maker's rest:
Kneeling, the blood-drops from the Saviour's feet,
Their brows affusing, makes their Passion sweet;
And in His sepulchre they sleep enshrined.

August 6, 1846.

364

3.

Alone, among thy books, once more I sit;
No sound there stirs except the flapping fire:
Strange shadows of old times about me flit
As sinks the midnight lamp or flickers higher:
I see thee pace the room: with eye thought-lit
Back, back, thou com'st once more to my desire:
Low-toned thou read'st once more the verse new-writ,
Too deep, too pure for worldlings to admire.
That brow all honour, that all-gracious hand,
That cordial smile, and clear voice musical,
That noble bearing, mien of high command,
Yet void of pride—to-night I have them all.
Ah, phantoms vain of thought! The Christmas air
Is white with flying flakes. Where art thou—where?

Christmas, 1860.

4.

To-night upon thy roof the snows are lying;
The Christmas snows lie heavy on thy trees:
A dying dirge that soothes the year in dying
Swells from thy woodlands on the midnight breeze.
Our loss is ancient: many a heart is sighing
This night, a late one, or by slow degrees
Healssome old wound, to God's high grace replying:—
A time there was when thou wert like to these.
Where art thou? In what unimagined sphere
Liv'st thou, sojourner, or no transient guest?
By whom companioned? Access hath she near,
In life thy nearest, and beloved the best?
What memory hast thou of thy loved ones here?
Hangs the great Vision o'er thy place of rest?

Christmas, 1860.

365

5.

‘Sweet-sounding bells, blithe summoners to prayer!’
The answer man can yield not ye bestow:
Your answer is a little Infant bare
Wafted to earth on night-winds whispering low.
Blow him to Bethlehem, airs angelic, blow!
There doth the Mother-maid his couch prepare:
His harbour is her bosom! Drop him there
Soft as a snow-flake on a bank of snow.
Sole Hope of man! Sole Hope for us, for Thee!
‘To us a Prince is given: a Child is born!’—
Thou sang'st of Bethlehem, and of Calvary,
The Maid Immaculate, and the twisted Thorn.
Where'er thou art, not far, not far is He
Whose banner whitens in yon Christmas morn!

Christmas, 1860.

A Song of Faith. By Sir Aubrey de Vere.

ON REVISITING A SPOT BY THE ROTHA, NEAR AMBLESIDE.

Oct 17, 1862.

6.

I walked in dream. Alone the bright Boy stood
Half imaged in the waters round his feet:
His line had just been cast into the flood,
Then first; his glance leaped forth the spoil to meet!
The gold-brown curls about him waved, and sweet
The blithesome smile of parted lips; the blood
Flushing the fresh cheek like a rose whose hood
With night-dews glittering, airs of morning greet.
Ah me! Since there he stood full sixty years,
Snow-laden, on their wintry pinions frore
Have sailed beyond the limit of our spheres,
And like that fleeting pageant are no more—
That Boy my Father was! the autumnal day
He led me to that spot his hair was grey.

In 1845.

366

A FRAGMENT.

Like two smooth waves that o'er a foamless ocean
On slide in sequence past a grassy lea,
Made beautiful by sunrise and with motion
Serener than unmoved tranquillity,
Or like two gusts that toward one bowery shore
Successive sweep in fragrance, then go by,
Were those two Sisters. They who wept of yore
This day partake their happy rest on high,
Happier—how much—in heaven for each poor earthly sigh.

I. WRITTEN AT VEVEY, SEPTEMBER 15, 1856.

From terraced heights that rise in ranks
Thick set with almond, fig, and maize,
O'er waters blue as violet banks,
I hear the songs of boyhood's days.

Up walnut slopes, at morn and eve,
And downward o'er the pearly shore
From Clarens on they creep; nor leave
Uncheered cold Chillon's dungeon-floor.

Fair girls that please a mother's pride,
Bright boys from joy of heart that sing,
The voice of bridegroom and of bride,
Through clustered vines how clear they ring!

367

For me they blot these southern bowers:
The ghosts of years gone by they wake:
They send the drift of northern showers
Low-whispering o'er a narrower lake.

Once more upon the couch he lies
Who ruled his halls with stately cheer;
Waves slow the lifted hand; with eyes
And lips rewards the strains most dear.

And ah! from yon empurpled slope
What fragrance swells that arch beneath!
Geranium, jasmine, heliotrope—
They stay my breath: of her they breathe!

Flower-lover! wheresoe'er thou art
May flowers and sunshine greet thee still,
And voices vocal to the heart:
No sound approach of sad or ill!

II. WRITTEN NEAR SPEZIA, OCTOBER 19, 1856.

In boyhood's flush when first I strayed
'Mid those delicious, classic climes,
Troubling each river-bank and glade
With petulance of forward rhymes,

Of thee the oft recurrent thought
Was yet but casual, and could pass,
A brightness every shade might blot,
An image faithless to its glass:

But now that thou art gone, behold,
Where'er I roam, whate'er I see,

368

Of all I feel, the base or mould
Is one unchanging thought of thee.

Thousands with blank regard pass by
All-gracious Nature's open doors:
The barren heart, the beamless eye,
Ah not for these her priceless stores!

But thou, the nursling of the Muse—
On hearts as pure, as still as thine,
All beauty glistening lies like dews
Upon the smooth leaf of the vine!

Even now on yonder hill-girt plain
Sea-lulled, and hollowed like a vase,
I see thee gaze, and gaze again,
With bright and ever-brightening face;

And hear thee say, ‘More fair that vale,
With happy hearths and homesteads strewn,
Than Alpine summits darkly pale
Where loveless grandeur reigns alone.’

III. WRITTEN IN ISCHIA, FEBRUARY 1, 1859.

Here in this narrow island glen
Between the dark hill and the sea,
Remote from books, remote from men
I sit; but O how near to thee!

I bend above thy broidery frame;
I smell thy flowers; thy voice I hear:
Of Italy thou speak'st: that name
Woke long thy wish; at last thy tear!

369

Hadst thou but watched that azure deep;
Those rocks with myrtles mantled o'er;
Misenum's cape, yon mountains' sweep;
The smile of that Circean shore!

But seen yon crag's embattled crest,
Whereon Colonna mourned alone,
An eagle widowed in her nest,
Heart strong and faithful as thine own!

This was not in thy fates. Thy life
Lay circled in a narrower bound:
Child, sister, tenderest mother, wife—
Love made that circle holy ground.

Love blessed thy home—its trees, its earth,
Its stones—that ofttimes trodden road
Which linked the region of thy birth
With that till death thy still abode.

From the loud river's rocky beach
To that clear lake the woodlands shade
Love stretched his arms. In sight of each,
The place of thy repose is made.

IV. WRITTEN NEAR SPEZIA, 1864.

Since last with thee, my guide unseen,
I loved, where thou hadst loved, to stray,
Eight years have passed; and, still heart-green,
They tell me that my head is grey.

370

Again I mark yon nectared plain:
Again I pace the rhythmic shore:
But o'er my gladness triumphs pain;
I muse on things that are no more.

With thee how fares it? Endless youth
Is thine in regions still and pure:
In climes of Beauty and of Truth
Some place is thine, serene, secure.

From thee the obscuring mist at last
Is lifted; loosed the earthly bond:
The gloomy gates of death are passed,
And thine th' eternal Peace beyond:

Not lonely peace! Thine earlier lost
And latest, by thy side or knee,
With thee from that celestial coast
Look down as when they waited thee,

Singing those hymns that, earthward borne,
To these dull ears at last make way
From realms where life is always morn,
And climes where Godhead is the day.

TO A BIBLE.

She read thee to the last, beloved Book!
Her wasted fingers 'mid thy pages strayed;
Upon thy promises her heart was stayed;
Upon thy letters lingered her last look
Ere life and love those gentlest eyes forsook:

371

Upon thy gracious words she daily fed;
And by thy light her faltering feet were led
When loneliness her inmost being shook.
O Friend, O Saviour, O sustaining Word,
Whose conquering feet the Spirit-land have trod,
Be near her where she is, Incarnate Lord!
In the mysterious silence of the tomb
Where righteous spirits wait their final doom,
Forsake her not, O Omnipresent God!

SPRING.

Winter, that hung around us as a cloud,
Rolls slowly backward; from her icy sleep
Th' awakened earth starts up and shouts aloud,
The waters leap

From rock to rock with a tumultuous mirth,
With Bacchanalian madness and loud song;
From the fond bosom of the teeming earth
All young things throng;

And hopes rise bubbling from the deepest fountain
Of man's half-frozen heart. Faith trustingly
Rests its broad base on God, as doth a mountain
Upon the sea.

Affections pure, and human sympathies
The summer sun of charity relumes,
That fire divine that warms and vivifies,
But not consumes.

372

Love, vernal music, charity, hope, faith,
Warm the cold earth, fair visions from on high,
Teaching to scorn and trample fear of death;
For naught can die.

S. E. de Vere.

STANZAS.

Although I know that all my love,
My true love, is in vain; yet I
Must loose the strainèd cord that holds
My bursting heart within its folds,
And love or die.

Dear is the breath of early Spring
To the low-crouching violet;
The grateful river smiles upon
The glories of the sinking sun;
But dearer yet

Than breath of Spring to the young flower,
Or sun-burst to the clouded sea,
One glance of pity from thine eye,
The music of thy faintest sigh,
Sweet love, to me.

This dreary world is very cold:
A heavy sorrow presses down
My famished heart. One tear-drop shed
In memory of the faithful dead,
When I am gone.

S. E. de Vere.

373

CHARITY.

Though all the world reject thee, yet will I
Fold thee, with all thine errors, in my heart,
And cherish even thy weakness! Who can say
That he is free from sin; or that to him
Belongs to speak the judgments of the Lord,
To vindicate the majesty of Heaven?
Behold the Master! prostrate at His feet,
Shuddering with penitential agony,
Magdalen! O those mild forgiving eyes,
Mercy and pity blossoming in Love!
O lips full founts of pardon and of blessing!
Shall I, a sinner, scorn a sinner, or
Less love my brother seeing he is weak?
Shall not my heart yearn to his helplessness
Like the fond mother's to her idiot boy?
O cruel mockery, to call that love
Which the world's frown can wither! Hypocrite!
False friend! Base selfish man! fearing to lift
Thy soilèd fellow from the dust! From thee
The love of friends, the sympathy of kind
Recoil like broken waves from a bare cliff,
Waves that from far seas come with noiseless step
Slow stealing to some lonely ocean isle;—
With what tumultuous joy and fearless trust
They fling themselves upon its blackened breast,
And wind their arms of foam around its feet,
Seeking a home; but finding none, return
With slow, sad ripple, and reproachful murmur.
No! No! True Charity scorns not the love
Even of the guiltiest, but treasures up

374

The precious gift within its heart of hearts,
Freely returning love where wanted most,
Like flowers that from the generous air imbibe
The essences of life, and give them forth
Again in odours. Spirit of Love Divine
That filledst with tenderness the reverent eyes
Of Mary as she gazed upon her Babe,
Soften our stony nature; make us know
How much we need to be forgiven; build up
True Charity on humbleness of heart.

S. E. de Vere.

ODE.

THE ASCENT OF THE APPENNINES.

May, 1859.

I.

I move through a land like a land of dream,
Where the things that are, and that shall be, seem
Wov'n into one by a hand of air,
And the Good looks piercingly down through the Fair!
No form material is here unmated;
Here blows no bud, no scent can rise,
No song ring forth, unconsecrated
To meaning or model in Paradise!
Fallen, like man, is elsewhere man's earth;
Human, at best, in her sadness and mirth;
Or if she aspires after something greater,
Lifting her hands from her native dust,
In God she beholds but the Wise, the Just;
The Saviour she sees not in the Creator:

375

But here, like children of Saints who learn
The things above ere the things below,
Who choirs angelic in clouds discern
Ere the butterfly's wing from the moth's they know,
True Nature as ashes all beauty reckons
That claims not hereafter some happier birth;
She calls from the height to the depth; she beckons
From the nomad waste to a heavenly hearth:
‘The Curse is cancelled,’ she cries; ‘thou dreamer,
Earth felt the tread of her great Redeemer!’

II.

Ye who ascend with reverent foot
The warm vale's rocky stairs,
Though lip be mute, in heart salute
With praises and with prayers
The noble hands, now dust, that reared
Long ages since on crag or sward
Those Stations that from their cells revered
Still preach the Saviour-Lord!
Ah! unseductive here the breath
Of the vine-bud that blows in the breast of morn;
That orange bower, yon jasmine wreath,
Hide not the crown of thorn!
Here none can bless the spring, and drink
Those waters from the dark that burst,
Nor see the sponge and reed, and think
Of the Three Hours' unquenchèd thirst.
The Tender, the Beauteous receives its comment
From a truth transcendent, a life divine;
And the coin flung loose of the passing moment
Is stamped with Eternity's sign!

376

III.

Alas those days of yore
When Nature lay vassal to pagan lore!
Baia—what was she? A sorceress still
To brute transforming the human will!
Nor pine could whisper, nor breeze could move
But a breath infected ran o'er the blood
Like gales that whiten the aspen grove
Or gusts that darken the flood.
Beside blue ocean's level
The beauteous base ones held their revel,
Dances on the sea-sand knitting,
With shouts the sleeping shepherd scaring,
Like Oreads o'er the hill-side flitting,
Like Mænads thyrsus-bearing.
The Siren sang from the moonlit bay,
The Siren sang from the redd'ning lawn,
Until in the feastful cup of day
Lay melted the pearl of dawn.
Unspiritual intelligence
Changed Nature's fane to a hall of sense,
That rings with the upstart spoiler's jest,
And the beakers clashed by the drunken guest!

IV.

Hark to that convent bell!
False pagan world, farewell;
From cliff to cliff the challenge vaults rebounded!
Echo, her wanderings done,
Heart-peace at last hath won,

377

The rest of love on Faith not Fancy founded;
‘By the parched fountain let the pale flower die,’
She sings, ‘True Love, true Joy, triumphant reign on high!’

V.

The plains recede; the olives dwindle;
Lleave the chestnut slopes behind;
The skirts of the billowy pine-woods kindle
In the evening lights and wind:
Not here we sigh for the Alpine glory
Of peak primeval and death-pale snow;
For the cold grey mere, and the glacier hoary,
Or blue caves that yawn below:
The landscape here is mature and mellow;
Fruit-like, not flower-like:—hills embrowned;
Ridges of purple and ledges of yellow
From runnel to rock church-crowned:
'Tis a region of mystery, hushed and sainted:
Serene as the pictures of artists old
When Giotto the thoughts of his Dante painted:—
The summit is reached! Behold!
Like a sky condensed lies the lake far down;
Its curves like the orbit of some fair planet;
A fire-wreath falls on the cliffs that frown
Above it, dark walls of granite;
The hill-sides with homesteads and hamlets glow;
With wave-washed villages zoned below:
Down drops by the island's woody shores
The bannered barge with its gleam of oars.
No solitude here, no desert cheerless
Is needed pure thoughts or hearts to guard;
'Tis a ‘populous solitude,’ festal, fearless,
For men of good-will prepared.

378

The hermit may hide in the wood, but o'er it
Three times each day the chimes are rolled:
The black crag woos the cloud, but before it
The procession winds on white-stoled.
Farewell, O Nature! None meets thee here
But his heart goes up to a happier sphere!
He sees, from the blossom of sense unfolded
By the Paraclete's breath, its divine increase,
Rose-leaf on rose-leaf in sanctity moulded,
The flower of Eternal Peace;
The home and the realm of man's race above;
The Vision of Truth, and the Kingdom of Love!

VI.

There shall the features worn and wasted
Let fall the sullen mask of years:
There shall that fruit at last be tasted
Whose seed was sown in tears:
There shall that amaranth bloom for ever
Whose blighted blossom drooped erewhile
In this dim valley of exile,
And by the Babylonian river.
The loved and lost once more shall meet us;
Delights that never were ours shall greet us;
Delights for the love of the Cross foregone
Fullfaced salute us, ashamed of none.
Heroes unnamed the storm that weathered
There shall sceptred stand and crowned;
Apostles the wildered flocks that gathered
Sit, throned with nations round.
There, heavenly sweets from the earthly bitter
Shall rise like odour from herbs down-trod;

379

There, tears of the past like gems shall glitter
On trees that gladden the mount of God.
The deeds of the righteous, on earth despised,
By the lightning of God immortalized
Shall crown like statues the walls sublime
Of all the illuminate, mystic City,
Memorial emblems that conquer Time,
Yet tell his tale. That Pity
Which gave the lost one strength to speak,
That love in guise angelic stooping
O'er the grey old head, or the furrowed cheek,
Or the neck depressed and drooping,
Shall live for aye, at a flash transferred
From the wastes of earth to the courts of the Word;
The Thoughts of the Just, their frustrate schemes,
Shall lack not a place in the wondrous session;
The Prayers of the Saints, their griefs, their dreams,
Shall be manifest there in vision;
For they live in the Mind Divine, their mould,
That Mind Divine the unclouded mirror
Wherein the glorified Spirits behold
All worlds, undimmed by error.

VII.

Fling fire on the earth, O God,
Consuming all things base!
Fling fire upon man, his soul and his blood,
The fire of Thy Love and Grace:
That his heart once more to its natal place
Like a bondsman freed may rise,
Ascending for ever before Thy face
From the altar of Sacrifice!

380

And thou, Love's comrade, Hope,
That yield'st to Wisdom strength, to Virtue scope,
That giv'st to man and nation
The on-rushing plumes of spiritual aspiration,
Van-courier of the ages, Faith's swift guide,
That still the attained foregoest for the descried;
On, Seraph, on, through night and tempest winging!
On heavenward, on, across the void, vast hollow!
And be it ours, to thy wide skirts close clinging
Blindly, like babes, thy conquering flight to follow:
What though the storm of Time roar back beside us?
Though this world mock or chide us?
We shall not faint or fail until at last
The eternal shore is reached, all peril past!

The ‘Ambubajæ.’

A MOTHER'S SONG.

I.

O Time, whose silent foot down treads
The kingly towers and groves,
Who lay'st on loftiest, loveliest heads,
The hand that no man loves,
Take all things else beneath the skies,
But spare one infant's laughing eyes.

II.

O Time, who build'st the coral reef,
Whom dried-up torrents fear,
And rocks far hurled, like storm-blown sheaf,
From peak to glacier drear,
Waste all things else; but spare the while
The lovelight of one infant's smile!

381

III.

Where sunflowers late from Summer's mint
Brought back the age of gold,
Through thee once more the sleet showers dint
The black and bloomless mould:
But harm not, Time, and guard, O Nature,
What is not yours—this living creature!

IV.

From God's great love a Soul forth sprang
That ne'er till then had being:
The courts of heaven with anthems rang:
He blessed it, He the All-seeing!
Nor suns nor moons, nor heaven nor earth,
Can shape a Soul or match in worth.

V.

No thought of thee when o'er the leas
A child I raced delighted;
No thought when under garden trees
A girlish troth I plighted:
We knew not what the church bells said
That giddy morn the girl was wed:
Of thee they babbled, pretty maid!

A GIRL'S SONG.

Unkind was he, the first who sang
The spring-time shamed, the flower's decay!
What woman yet without a pang
Could hear of Beauty's fleeting May?

382

O Beauty! with me bide, and I
A maid will live, a maid will die.

Could I be always fair as now,
And hear, as now, the Poets sing
‘The long-lashed eyes, the lustrous brow,
The hand well worthy kiss and ring,’
Then, then some casual grace were all
That e'er from me on man should fall!

I sailed last night on Ina's stream:
Warm 'mid the wave my fingers lay;
The cold-lipped Naiad in my dream
Kissed them, and sighed, and slipped away—
Ah me! down life's descending tide
Best things, they say, the swiftliest glide.

A SONG OF AGE.

I

Who mourns? Flow on, delicious breeze!
Who mourns, though youth and strength go by?
Fresh leaves invest the vernal trees,
Fresh airs will drown my latest sigh:
This frame is but a part outworn
Of earth's great Whole that lifts more high
A tempest-freshened brow each morn
To meet pure beams and azure sky.

II

Thou world-renewing breath, sweep on,
And waft earth's sweetness o'er the wave!
That earth will circle round the sun
When God takes back the life He gave!

383

To each his turn! Even now I feel
The feet of children press my grave,
And one deep whisper o'er it steal—
‘The Soul is His Who died to save.’

A CHRISTIAN MAID.

Her coral lip a sunbeam smote;
Behind her shapely head
The white veil refluent seemed to float
Like cloud in ether spread:
She looked so noble, sweet and good,
Love clapped his hands for glee,
And cried, ‘This, this is Womanhood—
The rest but female be!’

So modest yet confiding too,
So tender to bestow
On each that loving honour due
To all things, high or low,
Her soft self-reverence part had none
In consciousness or pride,
A reflex of that worship won
From her by all beside.

So creaturely in all her ways,
So humbly great she seemed—
O Grecian lays, O Pagan praise,
Of such ye never dreamed!
Through sunshine on she moved as one
Innocuously possest—
Thy lot reversed, O Babylon!—
By some angelic guest.

384

Buoyant as bird in leafy bower,
As calm she looked as those
Who long have worn the nuptial flower
Upon their matron brows:
Yet ten years hence, when girl and boy
May mount her lap at will,
That virgin grace, that vestal joy
Now hers will haunt her still!

A CHRISTIAN POETESS.

ADELAIDE PROCTOR.

She stooped o'er earth's poor brink, light as a breeze
That bathes, enraptured, in clear morning seas,
And round her, like that wandering Minstrel, sent
Twofold delight—music with freshness blent:
Ere long in night her snowy wings she furled,
Waiting the sunrise of a happier world,
And God's New Song. O Spirit crystalline,
What lips shall better waft it on than thine?

IN MEMORY OF EDWIN, EARL OF DUNRAVEN.

Once more I pace thy pillared halls,
And hear the organ echoes sigh
In blissful death on storied walls:
But where art thou? not here; nor nigh.

Once more the rapt spring-breezes send
A flash o'er yonder winding flood,
And with the garden's fragrance blend
A fresher breath from lawn and wood.

385

Friend! where art thou? Thy works reply;
The lowly School; the high-arched Fane:
Who loves his kind can never die:
Who serves his God, with God shall reign.

Adare, 1873.

EPITAPH.

Great Love, death-humbled, yields awhile to earth
Its Bright One, waiting there the immortal birth:
Rich Love, made poor, can trust one Hope alone,
Its best, its holiest, to the cold grave-stone:
Eternal Easter of that Hope, be born!
The pure make perfect; comfort the forlorn.

AN EPITAPH WITHOUT A NAME.

I had a Name. A wreath of woven air,
A wreath of Letters blended, none knew why,
Floated, a vocal phantom, here and there,
For one brief season, like the dragon-fly
That flecks the noontide beam,
Flickering o'er downward, forest-darkened stream.
What word those Letters shaped I tell you not:
Wherefore should such this maiden marble blot?
Faint echo, last and least, of foolish Fame,
I am a Soul; nor care to have a Name.

386

EPITAPH.

From Youth's soft haunt she passed to Love's fair nest;—
Thence on to larger Love and heavenlier rest:
Four years their sunshine, two their shadows lent
To enrich a heart with either lot content.
Pray well, pure Spirit! and some sad grace accord
To him once more thy suppliant; once thy lord.

AGE.

Old age! The sound is harsh, and grates:
Yet Life's a semblance, not a Truth:
Time binds an hourly changing mask
On Souls in changeless light that bask—
Younger we grow when near the gates
Of everlasting Youth!

GENIUS AND SANCTITY.

“How high he soars!” Few say it when the flight
Is highest. Saints escape the vulgar sight.

DEATH.

Why shrink from Death? In ancient days, we know,
The slave was raised to freedom by a blow:—
Man's prison-house, not man, the hand of Death lays low.

387

FEBRUARY.

What dost thou, laggard Daffodil,
Tarrying so long beneath the sod?
Hesper, thy mate, o'er yonder hill
Looks down and strikes with silver rod
The pools that mirrored thee last year,
Yet cannot find thee far or near.

Pale Primrose! for a smile of thine
Gladly to earth these hands would pour
An ivied urn of purple wine,
Such as at Naxos Bacchus bore
Watching with fixed black eyes the while
That pirate bark draw near his isle!

Shake down, dark Pine, thy scalp of snow:
False witch, stripped bare, grim Ash-tree tall!
Ye ivy masses that now swing slow
Now shudder in spasms on the garden wall,
Shake down your load and the black mould strew;
The rosemary borders and banks of rue.

The Robin, winter's Nightingale,
Hung mute to-day on the blackthorn brake:
We heard but the water-fowl pipe and wail
Fluting aloud on the lake;
Who hears that bell-note so clear and free,
Though inland he stands, beholds the sea.

388

As the moon that rises of saffron hue
Ascending, changes to white,
So the year, with the Daffodil rising new,
On Narcissus will soon alight:
Rise up, thou Daffodil, rise! With thee
The year begins, and the spring-tide glee!

THE MATERIALIST'S RELIGION;

OR, PESSIMISM'S ‘DOWNWARD WAY.’

Ye Twelve Olympians crowned for aye,
Hurl back the Furies and the Fates!
Nightmares of Conscience, hence, away,
Beyond your famed Tartarean Gates!

Ye Woodgods, Lords of Lawlessness,
That din the dusk with bounding hoof,
Drive back the Olympian Twelve no less:
Their starry stillness means Reproof.

Ye children, scare with cowslip ball
Those Woodgods last! With idle breath
They mock that king who draggeth all
Into his own dread silence—Death.

Faith darkens, Love distempers, life:
The chaplets fade on Fancy's brow:
Come, Iris, with thy painless knife:
The last of Gods, and best, art thou!

389

SONG.

THE FLOWER OF THE TREE.

I

O the flower of the tree is the flower for me,
That life out of life, high-hanging and free,
By the finger of God and the south wind's fan
Drawn from the broad bough, as Eve from Man!
From the rank red earth it never upgrew:
It was woo'd from the bark in the glistening blue.

II

Hail, blossoms green 'mid the limes unseen,
That charm the bees to your honeyed screen,
As like to the green trees that gave you birth
As true tongue's kindness to true heart's worth!
We see you not; but, we scarce know why,
We are glad when the air you have breathed goes by.

III

O flowers of the lime! 'twas a merry time
When under you first we read old rhyme,
And heard the wind roam over pale and park,
We, not I, 'mid the lime-grove dark;
Summer is heavy and sad. Ye bring
With your tardy blossoms a second Spring.

390

EPIGRAMS.

Our new Reformation abhors the “Dogmatical”
As unmeet for an age so enlarged, and exotic:—
Why stop at the Credo, O seers unfanatical?
Don't you think the Commandments a little despotic?

With Clio's aid old Homer sang, 'tis known:—
When Batho sings, the merit's all his own.

Inconstant thou! There ne'er was any
Till now so constant—to so many!

ON A GREAT PLAGIARIST.

Phœbus drew back with just disdain
The wreath: the Delphic Temple frowned:
The suppliant fled to Hermes' fane,
That stood on lower, wealthier ground.

The Thief-God spake, with smile star-bright:
‘Go thou where luckier poets browse
The pastures of the Lord of Light,
And do—what I did with his cows.’

He stole, killed, and ate the whole of Apollo's herd before he was a day old.—See Homer's Hymn to Mercury.

391

THE TRUE HARP.

Soul of the Bard! stand up, like thy harp's majestical pillar!
Heart of the Bard, like its arch in reverence bow thee and bend!
Mind of the Bard, like its strings be manifold, changeful, responsive:
This is the harp God smites, the harp, man's master and friend!

SELF-LOVE.

Light-winged Loves! they come; they flee:
If we were dead they'd never miss us:
Self-Love! with thee is Constancy—
Thine eyes to one were true, Narcissus!

THE SERIOUS ‘VIVE LA BAGATELLE.’

Bright world! you may write on my heart what you will,
But write it with pencil not pen:
Your hand hath its skill: but a hand finer still
Will whiten your tablet again.

To the moment its laugh, and its smile to the flower!
Not niggard we give them: but why?
Old Time must devour the year as the hour:
Our trust is Eternity.

392

TO A FORMALIST.

On paper ruled Nature your virtues writ—
Why not erase the lines? Ah scant of wit!

SONNETS.

I. WORDSWORTH. COMPOSED AT RYDAL.—1.

September, 1860.

The last great man by manlier times bequeathed
To these our noisy and self-boasting days
In this green valley rested, trod these ways,
With deep calm breast this air inspiring breathed:
True bard, because true man, his brow he wreathed
With wild-flowers only, singing Nature's praise;
But Nature turned, and crowned him with her bays,
And said, ‘Be thou my Laureate.’ Wisdom sheathed
In song love-humble; contemplations high,
That built like larks their nests upon the ground;
Insight and vision; sympathies profound
That spanned the total of humanity;
These were the gifts which God poured forth at large
On men through him; and he was faithful to his charge.

393

II. WORDSWORTH, ON VISITING THE DUDDON. —2.

So long as Duddon 'twixt his cloud-girt walls
Thridding the woody chambers of the hills
Warbles from vaulted grot and pebbled halls
Welcome or farewell to the meadow rills;
So long as linnets pipe glad madrigals
Near that brown nook the labourer whistling tills,
Or the late-reddening apple forms and falls
'Mid dewy brakes the autumnal redbreast thrills,
So long, last poet of the great old race,
Shall thy broad song through England's bosom roll,
A river singing anthems in its place,
And be to later England as a soul.
Glory to Him Who made thee, and increase,
To them that hear thy word, of love and peace!

See Wordsworth's Sonnet to the Poet Dyer.

III. WORDSWORTH, ON VISITING THE DUDDON.—3.

When first that precinct sacrosanct I trod
Autumn was there, but Autumn just begun;
Fronting the portals of a sinking sun
The queen of quietude in vapour stood,
Her sceptre o'er the dimly-crimsoned wood
Resting in light. The year's great work was done;
Summer had vanished, and repinings none
Troubled the pulse of thoughtful gratitude.
Wordsworth! the autumn of our English song
Art thou: 'twas thine our vesper psalms to sing:
Chaucer sang matins; sweet his note and strong;
His singing-robe the green, white garb of Spring:
Thou like the dying year art rightly stoled;
Pontific purple and dark harvest gold.

394

IV. SELF-DECEPTION.

Like mist it tracks us wheresoe'er we go,
Like air bends with us ever as we bend;
And, as the shades at noontide darkest grow,
At times with Virtue's growth its snares ascend:
Weakness with wisdom skilled it is to blend,
Breed baser life from buried sins laid low,
Make void our world of God and good, yet lend
The spirit's waste a paradisal glow.
O happy children simple even in wiles!
And ye of single eye, thrice happy Poor!
Practised self-love, that cheat which slays with smiles,
Weaves not for you the inevitable lure.
Men live a lie: specious their latest breath:
Welcome, delusion-slayer, truthful Death!

V. POETIC RESERVE.

Not willingly the Muses sing of love:
But, ere their Songs disperse o'er man's domain,
Through the dark chambers of the poet's brain
They pass, and passing take the stamp thereof:
And, as the wind that sweeps the linden grove
Wafts far its odour, so that sphere-born Strain
Learns from its mortal mould to mourn and plain,
Though the strong Muses sit like Gods above.
True poetry is doubly-dowered—a brightness
Lit from above yet fuelled from below;
A moon that rolls through heaven in vestal whiteness,
Yet, earthward stooping, wears an earthly glow.
Mysteries the Muse would hide the Bards reveal:
They love to wound: her mission is to heal.

395

VI. ON A GREAT FUNERAL.

No more than this? The chief of nations bears
Her chief of sons to his last resting-place:
Through the still city, sad and slow of pace
The sable pageant streams: and as it nears
That dome, to-day a vault funereal, tears
Run down the grey-haired veteran's wintry face;
Deep organs sob; and flags their front abase;
And the snapt wand the rite complete declares.
—Soul, that before thy Judge dost stand this day,
Disrobed of strength and puissance, pomp and power;
O Soul defrauded at thine extreme hour
Of man's sole help from man, and latest stay,
Swells there for thee no prayer from all that host?
Is this blank burial but a Nation's boast?

VII.
TO CHARLES ELIOT NORTON.—1.

On reading his ‘Vita Nuova’ of Dante, March 28, 1860.

Norton! I would that oft in years to come
The destined bard of that brave land of thine
Sole-seated 'neath the tempest-roughened pine,
In boyhood's spring when genius first doth plume
Her wing, 'mid forest scents and insects' hum
And murmurs from the far sea crystalline
May smell this blossom from the Tuscan vine,
May hear this voice from antique Christendom;
For thus from love and purity and might
Shall he receive his armour, and forth fare
Champion elect in song, that country's knight
Who early burst the chain weak nations bear
Weeping. 'Mid trumpet-blasts and standards torn
To manhood, with loud cries, thy land was born!

America.

396

VIII. TO THE SAME.—2. June 12, 1861.

‘To manhood with loud cries thy land was born’—
Was born! is born! Her trumpets peal this hour
The authentic voice of Nationhood and Power!
The iron in her soul indignant worn
This day she tramples down. Her lips have sworn
To lift the dusky race in chains that cower;
And if once more the tempests round her lour
Her smile goes through them like the smile of morn!
Great Realm! The men that in thy sunnier day
Looked on thee dubious or with brow averse,
Now thou hast put the evil thing away,
Our sin and thine, Time's dread transmitted curse,
Send up their prayers to prop that lifted hand
Which gives to God a liberated Land!

IX.
THE AMERICAN STRUGGLE.—1.

The Principle. February 20, 1865.

Sword! ere the sheath that hid thy light so long
That splendour quench, go thou like lightning forth,
High Bride of Justice, not of South or North,
And raise, as now the weak, and quell the strong!
Advance, till from the black man's hearth the song
Rises to God, and by the black man's hearth
Humanity hath leave in godly mirth
To sit, forgetful of her ancient wrong.
Then rest for ever; for to work like thine
While the world lasts no other can succeed
Equal, or second. Hang in heaven, a Sign,
But stoop no more to earth or earthly need,
Nor ever leave thy starry home august,
Vassal of vulgar wars, and prone Ambition's lust.

397

X.
THE AMERICAN STRUGGLE.—2.

PRINCIPLE A POWER; OR, LOGIC IN HISTORY, FEBRUARY 21, 1865.

Lo! as an eagle battling through a cloud
That from his neck all night the vapour flings,
And ploughs the dark, till downward from his wings
Sunrise, long waited, smites some shipwrecked crowd
Beneath a blind sea-cavern bent and bowed;—
Thus through the storm of Men, the night of Things,
That Principle to which the issue clings
Makes fateful way, and spurns at last its shroud.
There were that saw it with a sceptic ken:
There were that saw it not through hate or pride:
But, conquering and to conquer, on it came,
No tool of man but making tools of men,
Till Nations shook beneath its advent wide,
And they that loosed the Portent rued the same.

XI. THE CENTENARY OF AMERICAN LIBERTY.

A century of sunrises hath bowed
Its fulgent forehead 'neath the ocean-floor
Since first upon the West's astonished shore,
Like some huge Alp, forth struggling through the cloud,
A new-born nation stood, to Freedom vowed:
Within that time how many an Empire hoar
And young Republic, flushed with wealth and war,
Alike have changed the ermine for the shroud!
O ‘sprung from earth's first blood,’ O tempest-nursed,
For thee what Fates? I know not. This I know,
The Soul's great freedom, gift, of gifts the first,
Thou first on man in fulness didst bestow;
Hunted elsewhere, God's Church with thee found rest:
Thy future's Hope is she—that queenly Guest.

398

XII. ROBERT ISAAC WILBERFORCE.

‘No way but this.’ There where the pleasant shade
Dropped from the ledges of the Alban hill
Creeps to the vast Campagna and is still,
The mightier shadow reached him! Prayer was made:
But he to God his tribute just had paid,
And earned his rest. The deep recalled the rill:
A long life's labour with a perfect will
He on the altar of the Church had laid.
Child of the old English Learning sage and pure,
Authentic, manly, grave, without pretence,
From this poor stage of changeful time and sense
Released, sleep well, of thy reward secure:
Beside the Apostles' threshold thou dost lie,
Waiting, well-pleased, thy great eternity.

Rome, 1857.

XIII. ‘LE RÉCIT D'UNE SŒUR.’—1.

Whence is the music? minstrel see we none;
Yet soft as waves that, surge succeeding surge,
Roll forward, now subside, anon emerge,
Upheaved in glory o'er a setting sun,
Those beatific harmonies sweep on!
O'er earth they sweep from heaven's remotest verge
Triumphant hymeneal, hymn, and dirge,
Blending in everlasting unison.
Whence is the music? Stranger! these were they
That, great in love, by love unvanquished proved:
These were true lovers, for in God they loved:
With God, these Spirits rest in endless day,
Yet still for Love's behoof, on wings outspread
Float on o'er earth, betwixt the Angels and the Dead!

399

XIV. ‘LE RÉCIT D'UNE SŒUR.’—2.

ALEXANDRINE.

Between two graves, a sister's grave and one
Wherein the husband of her youth was laid,
In countenance half a Spirit, half a Nun,
She stood: a breeze that branch of jasmine swayed
In her slight hand upholden: ‘Peace!’ she said:—
A smile all gold to meet the sinking sun
Came forth: the pale, worn face transfigured shone
Sun-like beneath the sorrowing widow-braid.
She raised that branch, away her tears to wipe—
‘How happy seemed our life twelve years ago!
I weep him still, but gaily weep at last!
Like some sweet day-dream looks that earthly past:
Of genuine joy the pledge it was, the type:
Now, now alone the joy itself I know!’

XV. A WINTER NIGHT IN THE WOODS.

When first the Spring her glimmering chaplets wove
This way and that way 'mid the boughs high hung,
We watched the hourly work, while thrushes sung
A song that shook with joy their bowered alcove:
Summer came next: she roofed with green the grove,
And deepening shades to flower-sweet alleys clung:
Then last—one dirge from many a golden tongue—
The chiding leaves with chiding Autumn strove.
These were but Nature's preludes. Last is first!
Winter, uplifting high both flail and fan,
With the great forests dealt as Death with man;
And therefore through their desolate roofs hath burst
This splendour veiled no more by earthly bars;
Infinite heaven, and the fire-breathing stars!

400

XVI. POLAND AND RUSSIA.—1.

When, fixed in righteous wrath, a Nation's eye
Torments some crowned Tormentor with just hate,
Nor threat nor flattery may that gaze abate:
Unshriven the unatoning years go by:
For, as that starry Archer in the sky
Unbends not his bright bow, though early and late
The Siren sings, and folly weds with fate,
Even so that sure though silent Destiny
Which keeps fire-vigil in God's judgment-heaven
Upon the countenance of the Doomed looks forth
Consentient with a Nation's gaze on earth:
To those twinned Powers a single gaze is given:
The earthly Fate reveals the Fate on high—
A Brazen Serpent raised, that says not, ‘live,’ but ‘die!’

Sagittarius.

XVII. POLAND AND RUSSIA.—2.

The Strong One with the Weak One reasons thus:
‘Through sin of thine our eagle wings are clipt:
Through frost of thine our summer branch is nipt:
Thy wounds accuse: thy rags are mutinous:
The nations note thine aspect dolorous
Like some starved shape that cowers in charnel crypt,
Or landscape in eclipse perpetual dipt,
And, ignorant, cavil, not at thee but us!’
Then answer makes that worn voice, stern and slow:
‘Am I a dog the scourger's hand that licks,
And fattens? Blind reproof but spurns the pricks.
That which I am thou mad'st me! long ago
My face thou grav'dst to be a face of woe,
Fixed as the fixed face of a Crucifix.’

401

XVIII. GALATEA AND URANIA; OR, ART AND FAITH.

‘Dread Venerable Goddess, whom I fear,
Gaze not upon me from thy starry height!
I fear thy levelled shafts of ruthless light,
Thine unfamiliar radiance and severe:
Thy sceptre bends not! stern, defined, and clear
Thy Laws: thy face intolerantly bright:
Thine is the empire of the Ruled and Right:
Never hadst thou a part in smile or tear!
I love the curving of the wind-arched billow;
The dying flute tone, sweeter for its dying:
To me less dear the Pine tree than the Willow,
The mountain than the shadows o'er it flying.’
Thus Galatea sang, whilst o'er the waters
Urania leant; and cowered 'mid Ocean's foam-white daughters.

XIX. COMMON LIFE.

Onward between two mountain warders lies
The field that man must till. Upon the right,
Church-thronged, with summit hid by its own height,
Swells the vast range of the Theologies:
Upon the left the hills of Science rise
Lustrous but cold: nor flower is there, nor blight:
Between those ranges twain through shade and light
Winds the low vale wherein the meek and wise
Repose. The knowledge that excludes not doubt
Is there; the arts that beautify man's life:
There rings the choral psalm, the civic shout,
The genial revel, and the manly strife:
There by the bridal rose the cypress waves:
And theretheall-blest sunshine softest falls on graves.

402

XX. TO KEATS.

[_]

Written in early youth.

Peace, peace, or mourn the living! Ye but hold
A shadow to your bosoms. He hath quaffed
Glory and Death in one immortal draught;
Surely among the undying men of old
Numbered art thou, great Heart; in heaven enrolled
Among the eternal Splendours that rain forth
Love, light, and peace on our unquiet earth,
O latest radiance of the starry fold.
Below, thou liv'st, a consecrated name;
Above, with naked feet unscorched and hair
Unsinged thou walkest through that fierce white fire
Which mantles like a robe of golden air
Homer and Shakespeare, and the burning choir,
Rejoicing in the fullness of thy fame.

XXI. MODERN DESPONDENCY.

[_]

Written in Devonshire.

Soft land, and gracious as some nectarous fruit
In whose warm bosom Autumn's heart is glad,
Thou hadst of old thy bards, whose lyre and lute
Well praised thy joyous woodlands blossom-clad:
Thou hadst thy blithesome days! If ours be sad,
May thy blue bays and orchards never mute
That sadness charm—slay causeless sorrow's root—
Loveless self-will, the pride that maketh mad!
Wed, blameless nature, wed with grace divine
Once more, like sweet harps blent with sweeter voices,
Thy powers: then sing, till child and man rejoices
Betwixt those ‘Double Seas’ of England! Shine,
Sun of past years! Disperse those modern glooms
At least from golden Devon's Tors and Coombes!

Brown, Herrick, and others.

403

XXII. PONTEFRACT CASTLE; OR, TREASON'S TWOFOLD BEQUEST.

Wind-wasted castle without crown of towers!
Dread dungeon keep, watching the dying day!
A crownless king, great Edward's grandson, lay
Wasting in thee, and counting prisoned hours:
A century passed: the Faith's embattled Powers
Thus far advanced; here stood, a stag at bay:
The eighth Henry trembled in his blood-stained bowers;—
Thou saw'st that ‘Pilgrimage of Grace’ decay!
Two Woes thou saw'st; the fall of England's Crown,
That drowned in blood her old Nobility;
Then, baser plague, the old Temples trampled down
By Despots new! Twice-doomed! the fount in thee
I mark of that Red Sea which rolls between
England that is, and England that hath been!

Richard II.

The Wars of the Roses.

XXIII. INDUSTRY.

Virtue defamed for sordid, rough, and coarse,
Unworthy of the glimpses of the moon,
Praise of the clown alone whose heavy shoon
Kneads the moist clay, nor spares the pure stream's source,
In thee how strong is grace! how fair is force!
How generous art thou, and to man how boon!
Not thine the boastful plain with carnage strewn,
Nor chambers, wassail-shamed, where late Remorse
Sits, the last guest! From ocean on to ocean,
From citied shore to hills far-forested,
The increase of earth is thine, in rest or motion;
The crown is thine on every Sage's head;
The ship, the scythe, the rainbow among flowers:
Thine too the song of girls exulting 'mid their bowers.

404

XXIV. TO THE MOST FAIR.

Fair, noble, young! Of thee I thought to sing,
(If so Love willed, and the ever-virgin Muse
Who cannot grace accord unless Love choose,
Were pleased from Love's first bath, Castalia's Spring,
One flower or sparkling drop on me to fling)
For ofttimes thus some clan barbaric strews
Their earth and wood, the little island's dues,
Before his feet whom conquest made its king:
So dreamed I, when, a mourner sad and stern,
The Muses' Mother fixed on me her eyes—
Memory—nor slow their meaning to discern
Like a child stung I dropped the forfeit prize:
Some holier hand from out the immortal river
The destined reed must draw, and hymn thy praise for ever!

XXV. IN MEMORY OF THE LATE SIR JOHN SIMEON.—1.

Feast of the Purification, 1873.

This day we keep our Candlemas in snow:
Wan is the sky; a bitter wind and drear
Wrinkles the bosom of yon blackening mere:
Of these I reck not, but of thee, and O!
Of that bright Roman morn, so long ago,
When, children new of her, that Church more dear
To liegeful hearts with each injurious year,
We watched the famed Procession circling slow.
Once more I see it wind with lights upholden
On through the Sistine, on and far away:
Once more I mark beneath its radiance golden
Thy forehead shine, and, with it kindling, say,
‘Rehearsals dim were those, O friend: this hour
Surely God's light it is that on thee rests in power!’

405

XXVI. IN MEMORY OF THE LATE SIR JOHN SIMEON.—2.

Again we met. We trod the fields and farms
Of that fair isle, thy happy English home;
We gazed upon blue sea, and snowy foam
Clipt in the jutting headland's woody arms:
The year had reached the fulness of her charms:
The Church's year, from strength to strength increased,
Its zenith held, that great Assumption feast
Whose sun with annual joy the whole earth warms.
That day how swiftly rushed from thy full heart
Hope's glorying flood! How high thy fancy soared,
Kenning, though far, once more thine England's crest
A light to Christendom's old heaven restored!
‘In a large room’ thy heart its home had found:
The land we trod that day to thee was holy ground.

XXVII. IN MEMORY OF THE LATE SIR JOHN SIMEON.—3.

The world external knew thee but in part:
It saw and honoured what was least in thee;
The loyal trust, the inborn courtesy;
The ways so winning, yet so pure from art;
The cordial reverence, keen to all desert,
All save thine own; the accost so frank and free;
The public zeal that toiled, but not for fee,
And shunned alike base praise and hireling's mart:
These things men saw; but deeper far than these
The under-current of thy soul worked on
Unvexed by surface-ripple, beam, or breeze,
And unbeheld its way to ocean won:
Life of thy life was still that Christian Faith
The sophist scorns. It failed thee not in death.

406

XXVIII. THE POETRY OF THE FUTURE.

[_]

An anticipation addressed to a young authoress.

Go forth, fair Book! Go, countenanced like that Man
Upon whose brow all Eden's light was stayed;
Beauteous as Truth, go forth to cheer and aid,
Breathing of greatness ours ere sin began;
With angel-wing from eyes earth-wearied fan
Convention's mist; revive great hopes that fade;
Bid nature rule where reigned but masquerade;
Bear witness to that joy divine which ran
Down to creation's heart, while, bending o'er it,
The great Creator saw that all was good,
That mightier joy, when, dying to restore it,
He rose Who washed it in His conquering Blood:
Go forth, a seer in minstrel raiment clad;
Say to the meek, ‘Be strong;’ the pure, ‘Be glad!’

XXIX. THE RUINS OF EMANIA, NEAR ARMAGH.

Why seek ye thus the living 'mid the dead?
Beneath that mound, within yon circle wide,
Emania's palace, festive as a bride
For centuries six, had found its wormy bed
When here Saint Patrick raised his royal head
And round him gazed. Perhaps the Apostle sighed
Even then, to note the fall of mortal pride:
Full fourteen hundred years since then have fled!
Then, too, old Ulster's hundred kings were clay;
Then, too, the Red Branch warriors slept forlorn;
Autumn, perhaps as now a pilgrim grey,
Counted her red beads on the berried thorn,
Making her rounds; while from the daisied sod
The undiscountenanced lark upsoared, and praised her God.

407

XXX. DUNLUCE CASTLE, COUNTY OF ANTRIM.

O! of the fallen, most fallen, yet of the proud
Proudest; sole-seated on thy tower-girt rock;
Breasting for ever reboant ocean's shock;
With blind sea-caves for ever dinned and loud;
Now sunset-gilt; now wrapt in vapoury shroud
Till distant ships—so well thy bastions mock
Primeval nature's style in joint and block—
Misdeem her ramparts, round thee bent and bowed,
For thine, and on her walls, men say, have hurled
The red artillery store designed for thee:
Thy wars are done! Henceforth perpetually
Thou restest, like some judged, impassive world
Whose sons, their probatory period past,
Have left that planet void amid the vast.

XXXI. HORN HEAD, COUNTY OF DONEGAL.

Sister of Earth, her sister eldest-born,
Huge world of waters, how unlike are ye!
Thy thoughts are not as her thoughts: unto thee
Her pastoral fancies are as things to scorn:
Thy heart is still with that old hoary morn
When on the formless deep, the procreant sea,
God moved alone: of that Infinity,
Thy portion then, thou art not wholly shorn.
Scant love hast thou for dells where every leaf
Boasts its own life, and every brook its song;
Thy massive floods down stream from reef to reef
With one wide pressure; thy worn cliffs along
The one insatiate Hunger moans and raves,
Hollowing its sunless crypts and sanguine caves.

408

XXXII. FOUNTAINS ABBEY.

The hand of Time is heavy; yet how soft
Its touch can be, yon mouldering chancel knows!
The ruin too can ‘blossom like the rose;’
Nor e'er from orchard bower, or garth, or croft,
More sweetly sang the linnet than aloft
She sings from that green tower! The sunset glows
Behind it; and yon stream that, darkling, flows
From arch to arch, reflects it oft and oft,
Humbly consenting 'mid the gloom to smile
And take what pensive gladness may befall:
Rejoice thou, too, O venerable Pile,
With loftier heart answering a holier call:
Like those, thy buried saints, make strong thy trust,
Waiting the Resurrection of the Just.

XXXIII. ON READING AN UNTRUE CHARGE.

Beautiful Land! They said, ‘He loves thee not!’
But in a churchyard 'mid thy meadows lie
The bones of no disloyal ancestry
To whom in me disloyal were the thought
Which wronged thee. For my youth thy Shakspeare wrought;
For me thy minsters raised their towers on high;
Thou gav'st me friends whose memory cannot die:—
I love thee, and for that cause left unsought
Thy praise. Thy ruined cloisters, forests green,
Thy moors where still the branching wild deer roves,
Dear haunts of mine by sun and moon have been
From Cumbrian peaks to Devon's laughing coves.
They love thee less, fair Land, who ne'er had heart
To take, for truth's sake, 'gainst thyself thy part.

409

ON VISITING A HAUNT OF COLERIDGE'S.

From Lynton, where the double streams
Through forest-hung ravines made way,
And bounded into seas late grey
That shook with morning's earliest beams,
I wandered on to Porlock bay;

And thence, for love of him who sang
His happiest songs beside their rills,
To ‘seaward Quantock's heathy hills’
Advanced, while lane and hedge-grove rang,
And all the song-birds ‘had their wills.’

There, like a sweet face dimmed with pain,
The scene grew dark with mist and shower:
Its yellow leaf the autumnal bower
Moulted full fast; and as the rain
Washed the last fragrance from the flower

I heard the blue-robed schoolboy's tongue
Thrilling Christ's Hospital once more
With mythic chant and antique lore,
While round their Bard his playmates hung,
Wondering, and sighed, the witchery o'er.

I saw him tread soft Devon's coombes—
Ah! thence he drew that southern grace
Which in his songs held happy place
Amid their mystic northland glooms,
Like some strange flower of alien race;—

410

That Bard who like a gleam, or strain
Of music, crossed at morn and eve
Those hills; who sang of Genevieve
And that weird Pilgrim from the main;
Nor less at Truth's command could leave

Song's sheltered haunt the steeps to climb
Where, high o'er cloud and precipice,
Mind, throned among the seas of ice,
Watches from specular tower sublime
Far visions kenned through freezing skies,

Outlines of Thought, like hills through mist
That stretch athwart the Infinite
In dread mathesis lines of light—
Such Thoughts the Muse's spell resist;
Above her mark they wing their flight!

The songs he gave us, what were they
But preludes to some loftier rhyme
That would not leave the spheral chime,
The concords of eternal day,
And speak itself in words of Time?

O ever-famished Heart! O hands
That still ‘drew nectar in a sieve!’
At birth of thine what witch had leave
To bind such strength in willow bands,
The web half-woven still to unweave?

O for those Orphic songs unheard
That lived but in the Singer's thought!
Who sinned? Whose hand frustration wrought?
Unworthy was the world or Bard
To clasp those Splendours all but caught?

411

What Bard of all who e'er have sung
Since that lark sang when Eve had birth,
Song's inmost soul had attered forth
Like thee? from Song's asperge had flung
Her lesser baptism o'er the earth?

The world's base Poets have not kept
Song's vigil on her vestal height,
Nor scorned false pride and foul delight,
Nor with the weepers rightly wept,
Nor seen God's visions in the night!

Profane to enthrone the Sense, and add
A gleam that lies to shapes that pass,
Ah me! in song as in a glass
They might have shown us glory-clad
His Face Who ever is and was!

They might have shown us cloud and leaf
Lit with the radiance uncreate;
Love, throned o'er vanquished Lust and Hate;
Joy, gem-distilled through rocks of Grief;
And Justice conquering Time and Fate!

But they immodest brows have crowned
With violated bud and flower:
Courting the high Muse ‘par amour,’
Upon her suppliants she hath frowned,
And sent them darkness for a dower.

Better half-sight and tear-dimmed day
Than dust-defiled, o'er-sated Touch!
Better the torn wing than the crutch!
Better who hide their gift than they
Who give so basely and so much!

412

Thy song was pure: thy heart was high:
Thy genius through its strength was chaste:
And if that genius ran to waste,
Unblemished as its native sky
O'er diamond rocks the river raced!

Great Bard! To thee in youth my heart
Rushed as the maiden's to the boy,
When love, too blithesome to be coy,
No want forebodes and feels no smart,
A selfless love self-brimmed with joy!

Still sporting with those amaranth leaves
That shape for others coronals,
I ask not on whose head it falls
That crown the Fame Pandemian weaves—
Thee, thee the Fame Uranian calls!

For wildered feet point thou the path
Which mounts to where triumphant sit
The Assumed of Earth, all human yet,
From sun-glare safe and tempest's wrath,
Who sing for love; nor those forget,

The Elders crowned that, singing, fling
Their crowns upon the Temple floor;
Those Elders ever young, though hoar,
Who count all praise an idle thing
Save His who lives for evermore!

See Coleridge's ‘Recollections of Love.’

413

LINES TO AN OLD LARCH-TREE AT CURRAGH CHASE.

What secret charm hath bound me to this spot
Thus long? All-beauteous canopy of boughs
That hang'st on air suspense, the spell is thine!
A cloud thou seem'dst, condensed into a tree,
Yet keeping somewhat of its cloud-like softness,
When seen at distance; nearer as I draw,
Thou seem'st a billowy sea, with such a grace
Those undulant limbs on ether swell and bask,
Now surgent, sinking now. A Greek had deemed
That 'mid the innocuous tempest round thee stayed,
Thy blissful playmate thine unshared possession,
For in it scarce yon tapering cypress sways,
'Mid all that rich and exquisite confusion
The Nereids, and the Nephelìad race,
Forsaking azure waves and sailing rack,
Were sporting with thy Dryads!

Nearer yet
I draw to thee, and nearer. Is it joy
That brightens thus thy mien? The groves that fence
This pleasaunce, youthful when with thee compared
Are dark with thee contrasted! Old thou art;
Thy trunk is old; but every year those sprays,
Waving dependent in the golden gleam—
In them thy seat of gladness dwells—are young
As in thine earliest April. Laughs from out them
The crystal clearness of that green unknown
Save to thy race at springtide; laughs in light;
Laughs like the emerald brine, that, glimpsed far off,

414

Ascends those “Diamond Rocks” of famed Kilkee!
Yet, where the evening shade has reached thy branches,
O'er them, in place of simple joy, there spreads
That pathos seen alone upon a face
Where joy with sadness mingles. Vision-tranced
Thy countless boughs stretch forth, pointing one way,
Eastward, still eastward. Eastward, too, that stem,
Bent by sea-scented gales of many a year,
Inclines for aye; those gales that o'er thy brow,
So gracious are the adversities of Time,
Have wov'n that softly-stormy crown of boughs,
And changed the strength aspiring of thy kind
To humbler, tenderer grace.

The sun descends,
Screened by the western slopes; and, far below,
Creeping from foot to knee, from knee to breast,
The shadow slowly mounts those woods remote
Girdling yon lake there where that keep-like Rock
Gleams in its glass—those woods whose crest still bright
Must soon in turn be darksome. Ancient Tree,
That from thine eminence on them look'st down,
Dost thou, prescient like them of coming night,
Forecast the dawn beyond it as the Just
Discern beyond death's cloud their heaven? 'Tis so!
Once more I see that forehead eastward bowed;
I see thee stretching forth once more thy hands
In eastward adoration; and, with sighs
Unutterable, and yearnings ne'er to cease,
Courting the embrace of some perpetual morn;
I see, and half believe, that when that sun,
Now sunk, anon uprising full in face

415

O'er Galtymore—ah, me! how oft the eyes
Of Spenser must have kenned its southern steeps,
How oft my Father's watched it from the west!—
Levels his beam against thy dewy lips,
Memnonian melodies will breathe response.

April 27, 1883.

AUTUMNAL ODE.

DEDICATED TO MY SISTER.

CURRAGH CHASE, OCTOBER, 1867.

I.

Minstrel and Genius, to whose songs or sighs
The round earth modulates her changeful sphere,
That bend'st in shadow from yon western skies,
And lean'st, cloud-hid, along the woodlands sere,
Too deep thy notes too pure for mortal ear!
Yet Nature hears them: without aid of thine
How sad were her decline!
From thee she learns with just and soft gradation
Her dying hues in death to harmonize;
Through thee her obsequies
A glory wear that conquers desolation.
Through thee she singeth, ‘Faithless were the sighing
Breathed o'er a beauty only born to fleet:
A holy thing and precious is the dying
Of that whose life was innocent and sweet.’
From many a dim retreat
Lodged on high-bosomed, echoing mountain lawn,
Or chiming convent 'mid dark vale withdrawn,

416

From cloudy shrine or rapt oracular seat
Voices of loftier worlds that saintly strain repeat.

II.

It is the Autumnal Epode of the year:
The Nymphs that urge the seasons on their round,
They to whose green lap flies the startled deer
When bays the far-off hound,
They that drag April by the rain-bright hair,
Though sun-showers daze her and the rude winds scare,
O'er March's frosty bound,
They by whose warm and furtive hand unwound
The cestus falls from May's new-wedded breast,
Silent they stand beside dead Summer's bier,
With folded palms, and faces to the West,
And their loose tresses sweep the dewy ground.

III.

A sacred stillness hangs upon the air,
A sacred clearness. Distant shapes draw nigh:
Glistens yon Elm grove, to its heart laid bare,
And all articulate in its symmetry,
With here and there a branch that from on high
Far flashes washed in wan and watery gleam:
Beyond, the glossy lake lies calm—a beam
Upheaved, as if in sleep, from its slow central stream.

IV.

This quiet, is it Truth, or some fair mask?
Is pain no more? Shall Sleep be lord, not Death?
Shall sickness cease to afflict and overtask
The spent and labouring breath?

417

Is there 'mid all yon farms and fields, this day,
No grey old head that drops? No darkening eye?
Spirits of Pity, lift your hands and pray—
Each hour, alas, men die!

V.

The love songs of the Blackbird now are done:
Upon the o'er-grown, loose, red-berried cover
The latest of late warblers sings as one
That trolls at random when the feast is over:
From bush to bush the dusk-bright cobwebs hover,
Silvering the dried-up rill's exhausted urn;
No breeze is fluting o'er the green morass:
Nor falls the thistle-down: in deep-drenched grass,
Now blue now red the shifting dew-gems burn.

VI.

Mine ear thus torpid held, methinks mine eye
Is armed the more with visionary power:
As with a magnet's force each redd'ning bower
Compels me through the woodland pageantry:
Slowly I track the forest's skirt: emerging,
Slowly I climb from pastoral steep to steep:
I see far mists from reedy valleys surging:
I follow the procession of white sheep
That fringe with wool old stock and ruined rath,
How staid to-day, how eager when the lambs
Went bleating round their dams!
I cross the leaf-choked stream from stone to stone,
Pass the hoar ash-tree, trace the upland path,
The furze-brake that in March all golden shone
Reflected in the shy kingfisher's bath.

418

VII.

No more from full-leaved woods that music swells
Which in the summer filled the satiate ear:
A fostering sweetness still from bosky dells
Murmurs; but I can hear
A harsher sound when down, at intervals,
The dry leaf rattling falls.
Dark as those spots which herald swift disease
The death-blot marks for death the leaf yet firm:
Beside the leaf down-trodden trails the worm:
In forest depths the haggard, whitening grass
Repines at youth departed. Half-stripped trees
Reveal, as one who says, ‘Thou too must pass,’
Plainlier each day their quaint anatomies.
Yon Poplar grove is troubled! Bright and bold
Babbled his cold leaves in the July breeze
As though above our heads a runnel rolled:
His mirth is o'er; subdued by old October
He counts his lessening wealth, and, sadly sober,
Tinkles his minute tablets of wan gold.

VIII.

Be still, ye sighs of the expiring year!
A sword there is: ye play but with the sheath!
Whispers there are more piercing yet more dear
Than yours, that come to me those boughs beneath;
And well-remembered footsteps known of old
Tread soft the mildewed mould.
O magic memory of the things that were:
Of those whose hands our childish locks carest,
Of one so angel-like in tender care,
Of one in majesty so god-like drest;

419

O phantom faces painted on the air
Of friend or sudden guest:—
I plead in vain:
The woods revere, but cannot heal my pain:
Ye sheddings from the Yew-tree and the Pine,
If on your rich and aromatic dust
I laid my forehead, and my hands put forth
In the last beam that warms the forest floor,
No answer to my yearnings would be mine;
To me no answer through those branches hoar
Would reach in noontide trance or moony gust!
Her secret Heaven would keep, and mother Earth
Speak from her deep heart—‘Where thou know'st not, trust!’

IX.

That pang is past. Once more my pulses keep
A tenor calm that knows nor grief nor joy;
Once more I move as one that died in sleep,
And treads, a Spirit, the haunts he trod, a boy,
And sees them like-unlike, and sees beyond:
Then earthly life comes back, and I despond.
Ah life, not life! Dim woods of crimsoned beech
That swathe the hills in sacerdotal stoles,
Burn on, burn on! the year ere long will reach
That day made holy to Departed Souls,
That day whereon man's heart, itself a priest,
Descending to that Empire pale wherein
Beauty and Sorrow dwell but pure from Sin,
Holds with God's Church at once its fast and feast.
Dim woods, they, they alone your vaults should tread,
The sad and saintly Dead!

420

Your pathos those alone ungrieved could meet
Who fit them for the Beatific Vision:
The things which, as they pass us, seem to cheat
To them would be a music-winged fruition,
A cadence sweetest in its soft subsiding:
Transience to them were dear;—for theirs the abiding—
Dear as that Pain which clears from fleshly film
The spirit's eye, matures each spirit-germ,
Frost-bound on earth, but at the appointed term
Mirror of Godhead in the immortal realm.

X.

Lo there the regal Exiles!—under shades
Deeper than ours, yet in a finer air—
Climbing, successive, elders, youths, and maids,
The penitential mountain's ebon stair:
The earth-shadow clips that halo round their hair:
And as lone outcasts watch a moon that wanes
Receding slowly o'er their native plains,
Thus watch they, wistful, something far but fair.
Serene they stand, and wait,
Self-banished, by the ever-open gate,
Awhile self-banished from the All-pitying Eyes,
Lest mortal stain should blot their Paradise.
Silent they pace, ascending high and higher
The hills of God, a hand on every heart
That willing burns, a vase of cleansing fire
Fed by God's love in souls from God apart:
Each lifted face with thirst of long desire
Is pale; but o'er it grows a mystic sheen,
Because on them God's face, by them unseen,
Is turned, through narrowing darkness hourly nigher.

421

XI.

Sad thoughts, why roam ye thus in your unrest
The bourne unseen? Why scorn our mortal bound?
Is it not kindly, Earth's maternal breast?
Is it not fair, her head with vine-wreaths crowned?
Farm-yard and barn are heaped with golden store;
High piled the sheaves illume the russet plain;
Hedges and hedge-row trees are yellowed o'er
With waifs and trophies of the labouring wain:
Why murmur, ‘Change is change, when downward ranging;
Spring's upward change but pointed to the unchanging?’
Yet, O how just your sorrow, if ye knew
The true grief's sanction true!
'Tis not the thought of parting youth that moves us;
'Tis not alone the pang for friends departed:
The Autumnal pain that raises while it proves us
Wells from a holier source and deeper-hearted!
For this a sadness swells above our mirth;
For this a bitter runs beneath the sweetness;
The throne that shakes not is the Spirit's right;
The heart and hope of Man are infinite;
Heaven is his home, and, exiled here on earth,
Completion most betrays the incompleteness!

XII.

Heaven is his home.—But hark! the breeze increases:
The sunset forests, catching sudden fire,
Flash, swell, and sing, a million-organed choir:
Roofing the West, rich clouds in glittering fleeces

422

O'erarch ethereal spaces and divine
Of heaven's clear hyaline.
No dream is this! Beyond that radiance golden
God's Sons I see, His armies bright and strong,
The ensanguined Martyrs here with palms high holden,
The virgins there, a lily-lifting throng!
The Splendours nearer draw. In choral blending
The Prophets' and the Apostles' chant I hear;
I see the Salem of the Just descending
With gates of pearl and diamond bastions sheer.
The walls are agate and chalcedony:
On jacinth street and jasper parapet
The unwaning light is light of Deity,
‘Not beam of lessening moon or suns that set.
That indeciduous forestry of spires
Lets fall no leaf! those lights can never range:
Saintly fruitions and divine desires
Are blended there in rapture without change.
—Man was not made for things that leave us,
For that which goeth and returneth,
For hopes that lift us yet deceive us,
For love that wears a smile yet mourneth;
Not for fresh forests from the dead leaves springing,
The cyclic re-creation which, at best,
Yields us—betrayal still to promise clinging—
But tremulous shadows of the realm of rest:
For things immortal Man was made,
God's Image, latest from His hand,
Co-heir with Him Who in Man's flesh arrayed
Holds o'er the worlds the Heavenly-Human wand:
His portion this—sublime
To stand where access none hath Space or Time,
Above the starry host, the Cherub band,
To stand—to advance—and after all to stand!