The Poetical Works of Aubrey De Vere

This Tale, written in happier times, was intended to be the first of a series illustrating the Ireland of the latter day, and especially that side of Irish life and character which is too often ignored, and which remains the hope of Ireland's true friends in her darkest days.—January, 1884.

From nine to twelve my guest was eloquent
In anger, mixed with sorrow, at the things
He saw around us; lands half marsh, half weeds,
Gates from the gate-posts miserably divorced,
Hovels ill-thatched, wild fences, fissured roads—
‘Your people never for the future plan;
They live but for the moment.’ Thus he spake,
A youth just entering on his broad domains,
A senator in prorogation time
Travelling for knowledge, Oxford's accurate scholar,
A perfect rider, clean in all his ways,
But by traditions narrowed. As the moon
Turns but one side to earth, so showed that world
Whereon he gazed, for stubborn was his will
And Ireland he had never loved. ‘You err’
I answered, taking in good part his wrath,
‘Our peasant too has prescience; far he sees;
Earth is his foreground only rough or smooth;
In him from seriousness the lightness comes:
Too serious is he to make sacrifice
For fleeting good; the battles of this world

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He with the left hand fights and half in sport;
He has his moment—and eternity.’
‘Ay, ay,’ exclaimed my guest, ‘your Church, she does it!
Your feasts and fasts and wakes and social rites,
With “Sir,” and “Ma'am,” and usages of Court:—
I've seen a hundred men leave plough and spade
To hale a three weeks' infant to its grave,
A cripple pay two shillings for a cart
To bear him to the Holy Well. Sick Land!
Look up! the proof is round you written large!
Your Faith is in the balance wanting found:
Your shipless seas confess it; bridgeless streams;
Your wasted wealth of ore, and moor, and bay!
Beneath the Upas shade of Faith depraved
All things lie dead—wealth, comfort, freedom, power;
All that great Nations boast!’ ‘Such things,’ I answered,
‘The Gentiles seek; and you new tests have found;
“Ecclesiæ stantis vel cadentis,” friend;
“Blessed the rich: blessed whom all men praise:”
New Scriptures, these; the Irish keep the old!
Say, are there not diversities of gifts?
Are there not virtues—Industry is one—
Which reap on earth, whilst others sow for heaven?
Faith, hope, and love, and purity, and patience,
Humility, and self-forgetfulness,
These too are virtues; yet they rear not States.
What then? Of many Nations earth is made:
Each has its function; each its part for others:
If all were hand, where then were ear or eye?
If all were foot, where head? You rail, my friend,
Not at my country only but your own.

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The land that gave us birth our service claims,
The suffering land our love. Yet England, too,
They love, and they the most, who flatter not.
A thousand years of nobleness she lived
Whereof you rob her! In this isle are men
By ancient lineage hers. Such men might say,
“My England was entombed ere yours had birth.”
Dates she from Arkwright only? Rose the Nation
With Alfred, or those Tudor Kings who built
The Golden Gate of England's modern time,
But built it upon liberties annulled,
Old glories quenched, the old Nobles dead or quelled—
Ay, wrecks more sad?’ His host, I could not use
Words rough as his albeit to shield a land
For every shaft a targe; so changed the theme
To her he knew—thence loved.

He loved his country;
An older man than he for things less great
Had loved that land. Yet who could gaze, unmoved,
From Windsor's terraced heights o'er those broad meads
Lit by the pomp of silver-winding Thames
Dropping past templed grove, and hall, and farm,
Toward the great City? Who, unthrilled, could mark
Her Minsters, towering far away, with heads
That stay the sunset of old times; or these,
Oxford and Cambridge, England's anchors twain,
That to her moorings hold her? Fresh from them
Who, who could tread, O Wye, thy watery vale
Where Tintern reigns in ruin; who could rest
Where Bolton finds in Wharf a warbling choir,
Or where the sea-wind fans thy brow discrown'd,
Furness, nor love and wonder? Who untouch'd,

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When evening creeps from Scawfell toward Black Combe,
Could wander by thy darkly gleaming lakes
Embayed 'mid sylvan garniture and isles
From saint or anchoret named, within the embrace
Of rural mountains green, or sound, scent, touch,
Of kine-besprinkled, soft, partitioned vales
Almost domestic? Shadow-haunted land!
By Southey's lake Saint Herbert holds his own!
The knightly armour now by Yew-dale's crag
Rings loud no longer: Grasmere's reddening glass
Reflects no more the on-rushing clan: yet still
Thy Saxon Kings, and ever-virgin Queens
Possess thee with a quiet pathos; still,
Like tarnished path forlorn of moon that sets
Over wide-watered moor and marsh, thy Past
A spiritual sceptre though deposed, extends
From sea to sea—from century-worn St. Bees
To Cuthbert's tomb under those eastern towers
On Durham's bowery steep!

He loved his country:
That love I honoured. Great and strong he called her:
But well I knew that had her greatness waned,
His love had waxed.

As thus we talk'd the sun
Launched through the hurrying clouds a rainy beam
That smote the hills. My guest exclaimed, ‘Come forth:
We waste the day! Yon ridge my fancy takes;
Climb we its crest!’ The wolf-hound at our feet
Our drift divining, bounded sudden on us
In rapture of prospective gratitude.

We passed the offending gate; a plank for bridge

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We passed the offending stream which dashed its spray
Contemptuous on us, proud of liberty.
I laughed; ‘Our passionate Ireland is the stream;
Seven hundred years at will it mocks or chides;
You have not made it turn your English mill?’
We scaled the hills; we pushed through miles of trees
Which, sire and son, had held their own since first
The tall elk trod their ways. Lightning and storm
Had left large wrecks: election wars, not less,
Or hospitalities as fierce, when home
A thousand chiefless clansmen dragged the bride,
Or danced around a cradle,—ah, brave hearts!
Loyal where cause for loyalty was scant!
Vast were those woods and fair; rock, oak, and yew,
Grey, green, and black, in varying measures striking
That three-stringed lyre which charms not ear but eye.
Long climbing, from the woodland we emerged
And paced a rocky neck of pale green pasture
The limit of two counties. Full in face
Rushed, ocean-scented, the harmonic wind:
Round us the sheep-bells chimed; a shower late past
With jewelry had hung the blackberry bush,
And gorse-brake half in gold. On either side
Thin-skinned, ascetic, slippery, the descent
Down slanted toward the creeping mists. Our goal
We reached at last—a broad and rocky mass
Forth leaning lordly unto lands remote
The lion's head of all those feebler hills
That cowering slunk behind it. Far around
Low down, subjected, stretched the sea-like waste
Shade-swept, unbounded, like infinity.

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An hour before his time the sun had dropped
Behind a mountain-wall of barrier cloud
Wide as the world: but five great beams converged
Toward the invisible seat of his eclipse;
And over many a river, bay, and mere
Lay the dull red of ante-dated eve.

That summit was a churchyard. Cross-engraven
Thronged the close tomb-stones. Each one prayed for peace;
And some were raised by men whose heads were white
Ere selfless toil had won the hoarded coins
That honoured thus a parent. In the midst
A tomb-like chapel, thirty feet by ten,
Stood monumental with stone roof and walls
The wrestling centuries slid from. Nigh we sat
While, by the polished angle split, the wind
Hissed like a forkèd serpent. Silent long
My friend remain'd; his sallies all had ceased,
A man of tender nerve though stubborn thought.
The scene weighed on him like a Prophet's scroll
Troubling some unjust City. Far and near
He scanned the desolate region, and at last
Prayed me the hieroglyphic to expound.
‘Yon tower which blurs the lonely lake far off,
What is it?’ And I answered, ‘Know you not?
He built it, he that Norman horsed and mailed,
Who, strong in Henry's might and Adrian's bull,
Rent from the Gaelic monarch half his realm;
The rest came later, dowry of the bride.’

Once more he mused; then, westward pointing, spake:

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‘Yon lovely hills, yet low, with Phidian line
That melts into the horizon:—on their curve
A ruined castle stands; the sky glares through it,
Red, like a conflagration?’ I replied:
‘Four hundred years the Norman held his own:
He spake the people's language; they in turn
His war-cry had resounded far and wide;
Their history he had grown impersonate,
The land rejoiced in him, and of his greatness
Uplifted, glorying, on a neck high held
The beautiful burden, as the wild stag lifts
O'er rocky Torc his antlers! Would you more?
The Desmond was unloved beside the Thames;
The right of the great Palatine was trampled;
His Faith by law proscribed. O'er tombs defaced,
In old Askeaton's Abbey, of his sires
He vowed unwilling war. Long years the realm
Reel'd like a drunken man. Behold the end!
Yon wreck speaks all!’

Thus question after question
Dragged, maimed and mangled, dragged reluctant forth
Time's dread confession! Crime replied to crime:
Whom Tudor planted Cromwell rooted out;
For Charles they fought;—to fight for Kings, their spoilers,
The rebel named rebellion! William next!
Once more the Nobles were down hurled; once more
Nobility as in commission placed
By God among the lowly. Loyalty
To native Princes, or to Norman chiefs
Their lawless conquerors, or to British Kings,
Or her the Mother Church that ne'er betrayed,

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Had met the same reward. The legend spake
Words few but plain, grim rubric traced in blood;
While, like a Fury fleeting through the air,
History from all the octaves of her lyre
Struck but one note! What rifted tower and keep
Witnessed of tyrannous and relentless wars,
That shipless gulfs, that bridgeless streams and moors,
Black as if lightning-scarred, or banned of God,
Proclaimed of laws blacker than brand or blight—
Those Penal Laws. The tale was none of mine;
Stone railed at stone; grey ruins dumbly frowned
Defiance, and the ruin-handled blast
Scattered the fragments of Cassandra's curse
From the far mountains to the tombs close by
Which muttered treason.

That sad scene to me
Had lost by use its pathos as the scent
That thrills us while we pass the garden palls
On one within it tarrying. To my friend
It spake its natural language: and as he
Who, hard through habit, reads with voice unmoved
A ballad that once touched him, if perchance
Some listener weeps, partakes that listener's trouble
Even so the stranger's sorrow struck on mine,
And I believed the things which I beheld,
There sitting silent. When at last he spake
The spirit of the man in part was changed;
The things but heard of he had seen: the truths
Coldly conceded now he realized:
Justice at last with terrible recoil
Leap'd up full-armed, a strong man after sleep,
And dashed itself against the wrong! I answered:

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‘Once more you speak the words you spake this morn,
“Look up, the proof is round you written large:”
But in an altered sense.’

I spake, and left him:
Left him to seek a tomb which three long years
Holds one I honoured. Half an hour went by;
Then he rejoined me. With a knitted brow,
And clear vindictiveness of speech, like him
Who, loving, hates the sin of whom he loves,
He spake against the men who, having won
By right or wrong the mastery of this isle
(For in our annals he was versed, nor ran
In custom's blinkers save on modern roads),
Could make of it, seven hundred years gone by,
No more than this! Then I: ‘No country loved they:
Her least, the imperial realm! 'Tis late to mourn;
Let past be past.’ ‘The Past,’ he said ‘is present;
And o'er the Future stretches far a hand
Shadowy and minatory.’ ‘Come what may,’
I said, ‘no pang to Ireland can be new;
No shadow fail to dew some soul with grace.
The history of a Soul holds in it more
Than doth a Nation's! In its every chance
Eternity lies hid; from every step
Branch forth two paths piercing infinity.
These things look noblest from their spiritual side:
A statesman, on the secular side you see them,
And doubt a future based on such a past.
'Tis true, with wrong dies not the effect of wrong,
Or sense thereof: 'tis true stern Power with time
Changes its modes, not instinct: true it is
That hollow peace is war that wears a mask:

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Yet let us quell to-day unquiet thoughts:
She rests who lies in yonder tomb: sore pains
She suffered: yet within her there was peace:
In God's high Will she rests; and why not we?’

Thus we conversed till twilight, thickening, crept
Compassionate, o'er a scene to which we said
Twilight seemed native, day a garish vest
Worn by a slave. Returning, oft my friend
Cast loose in wrath the arch-rebel Truth; I answered:
‘She rests; and why not we? O suffering land!
Thee, too, God shields; and only for this cause
Can they that love thee sleep.’—
Holy were all as she, the wrongs long past
Would rack our age no longer: for that cause
The blinder they who mock her country's Faith.
Thousands are like her! Ireland's undergrowths—
Her hope is there, and not in cloud or sunshine
That beat her mountain-tops. The maiden's tale
He sought with instance. 'Twas not marvellous,
I told him: yet to calm his thoughts perturbed,
Thus, while the broad moon o'er the lonely moor
Rose, blanching as she soared, till pools, at first
With trembling light o'erlaid, gave back her face,
And all the woodland waves as eve advanced
Shone bright o'er sombre hollows, I recounted
The fragments of a noteless Irish life,
Not strange esteemed among us. Such a theme
I sought not. Ill it were to forge for friend
A providence, or snare him though to Truth.
Yet I was pleased he sought that tale. 'Twas sad
But in its dusky glass—and this I hid not—

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Shadowed a phantom image of my country,
Vanquished yet victor, in her Weal and Woe.

The father in the prime of manhood died;
The mother followed soon; their children twain,
Margaret Mac Carthy, and her sister Mary,
The eldest scarcely ten years old, survived
To spread cold hands upon a close-sealed grave,
And cry to those who answered not. The man
Who, in that narrow spot to them the world,
Stood up and seemed as God; that gentler one
Who overhung like Heaven their earliest thought,
And in the bosom of whose sleepless love
Reborn they seemed each morning, both were dead.
In grief's bewilderment the orphans stood
Like one by fraud betrayed: nor moon, nor sun,
Nor trees, nor grass, nor herds, nor hills appeared
To them what they had been. In saddened eyes,
Frightened yet dull, in voice subdued, and feet
That moved as though they feared to wake the dead,
Men saw that nowhere loneliness more lives
Than in the breasts of children. Time went by;
The farm was lost; and to her own small home
Their father's mother led them. 'Twas not far;
They still could see the orchard they had loved;
Behind the hedge could hear the robin sing,
And the bees murmur. Slowly, as the trance
Of grief dissolved, the present lived once more;
The past became a dream!

I see them still!
Softly the beauty-making years on went,
And each one as he passed our planet's verge
Looked back, and left a gift. A darker shade

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Dropped on the deepening hair; a brighter gleam
Forth flashed from sea-blue eyes with darkness fringed.
Like, each to each, their stature growing kept
Unchanged gradation. To her grandmother
A quick eye and a serviceable hand
Endeared the elder most; she kept the house;
Hers was the rosier cheek, the livelier mind,
The smile of readier cheer. In Mary lived
A visionary and pathetic grace
Through all her form diffused, from those small feet
Up to that beauteous-shaped and netted head,
Which from the slender shoulders and slight bust
Rose like a queen's. Alone, not solitary,
Full often half an autumn day she sat
On the high grass-banks, foot with foot enclasped,
Now twisting osiers, watching cloud-shades now,
Or rushing vapours through whose chasms there shone
Far off an alien race of clouds like Alps
O'er Courmayeur white-gleaming, and like them
To stillness frozen. Well that orphan knew them,
Those marvellous clouds that roof our Irish wastes;
Spring's lightsome veil outblown, sad Autumn's bier,
And Winter's pillar of electric light
Slanted from heaven. A spirit-world, so seemed it,
In them was imaged forth to her.

With us
The childish heart betroths itself full oft
In vehement friendship. Mary's was of these;
And thus her fancy found that counterweight
Which kept her feet on earth. With her there walked
Two years a little maiden of the place,
Her comrade, as men called her. Eve by eve

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Homeward from school we saw them as they passed,
One arm of each about the other's neck,
Above both heads a single cloak. She died,
To Mary leaving what she valued most,
A rosary strung with beads from Olivet.
Daily did Mary count those beads; from each
The picture of some Christian Truth ascending,
Till all the radiant Mysteries shone on high
Like constellations, and man's gloomy life
For her to music rolled on poles of love
Through realms of glory. Hope makes Love immortal!
That friend she ne'er forgot. In later years
Working with other maidens equal-aged,
(A lady of the land instructed them,)
In circle on the grass, not them she saw,
Heard not the song they sang: alone she sat,
And heard 'mid sighing pines and murmuring streams
The voice of the departed.

Smoothly flowed
Till Margaret had attained her eighteenth year
The tenor of their lives; and they became,
Those sisters twain, a name in all the vale
For beauty, kindness, truth, for modest grace,
And all that makes that fairest flower of all
Earth bears, heaven fosters—peasant nobleness:—
For industry the elder. Mary failed
In this, a dreamer; indolence her fault,
And self-indulgence, not that coarser sort
Which seeks delight, but that which shuns annoy.
And yet she did her best. The dull red morn
Shone, beamless, through the wintry hedge while passed
That pair with panniers, or, on whitest brows

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The balanced milk-pails. Margaret ruled serene
A wire-fenced empire smiling through soft glooms,
The pure, health-breathing dairy. Softer hand
Than Mary's ne'er let loose the wool; no eye
Finer pursued the on-flowing line: her wheel
Murmured complacent joy like kitten pleased:
With us such days abide not.

Sudden fell
Famine, the Terror never absent long,
Upon our land. It shrank—the daily dole;
The oatmeal trickled from a tighter grasp;
Hunger grew wild through panic; infant cries
Maddened at times the gentle into wrong:
Death's gentleness more oft for death made way;
And like a lamb that openeth not its mouth
The sacrificial People, fillet-bound,
Stood up to die. Amid inviolate herds
Not few the sacraments of death received,
Then waited God's decree. These things are known:
Strangers have witness'd to them; strangers writ
The epitaph again and yet again:
The nettles and the weeds by the way-side
Men ate: from sharpening features and sunk eyes
Hunger glared forth, a wolf more lean each hour;
Children seemed pigmies shrivelled to sudden age;
And the deserted babe too weak to wail
But shook if hands, pitying or curious, raised
The rag across him thrown. In England alms
From many a private hearth were largely sent,
As ofttimes they have been. 'Twas vain. The land
Wept while her sons sank back into her graves
Like drowners 'mid still seas. Who could escaped:
And on a ghost-thronged deck, amid such cries
As from the battle-field ascend at night

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When stumbling widows grope o'er heaps of slain,
Amid such cries stood Mary, when the ship
Its cable slipped and, on the populous quays
Grating, without a wind, on the slow tide,
Dropped downward to the main.

For western shores
Those emigrants were bound. At Liverpool,
Fann'd by the ocean breeze the smouldering fire
Of fever burst into a sudden flame;
The stricken there were left; among them Mary.
How long she knew not in an hospital,
A Babel of confused distress, she lay,
Dinned with delirious strife. But o'er her brow
God shook the dew of dreams wherein she trod
The shadowed wood-walks of old days once more,
And dabbled in old streams. Ere long, still weak,
Abroad she roamed, a basket on her arm,
With violets heaped. The watchman of the city
Laid his strong hand upon her drooping head
Banning the impostor. 'Twas her rags, she thought,
Incensed him, and in meekness moved she on.
When one with lubrique smile toyed with her flowers,
And spake of violet eyes and easier life,
She understood not, but misliked, and passed.
In Liverpool an aged priest she found,
A kinsman of her mother's. Much to her
Of emigrants he spake, and of their trials,
Old ties annull'd, and 'mid temptations strange
Lacking full oft the Bread of Life. She wept;
Before the tabernacle's lamp she prayed
Freshly-absolved and heavenliest, with prayer
That showered God's blessing o'er the wanderers down:
But dead was her desire to cross the main.

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Her strength restored, beyond the city-bound
With others of her nation she abode,
Amid the gardens labouring. A rough clan
Those outcasts seemed: not like their race at home:
Nor chapel theirs, nor school. Their strength was prized;
Themselves were so esteemed as that sad tribe
Beside the Babylonian streams that wept,
By those that loved not Sion.

Weeks grew months;
And, with the strength to suffer, sorrow came.
Hard by their nomad camp a youth there lived
Of wealthier sort, who looked upon this maid:
Her country was his own: he loved it not:
Had rooted quickly in the stranger's land;
And versatile, cordial, specious, seeming-frank,
Contracting for himself a separate peace,
Had prosper'd, but had prospered in such sort
As they that starve within. Her confidence
He gained. To love unworthy, still he loved her:
Loved with the love of an unloving heart,
That love which either is in shallows lost,
Or in its black depth breeds the poison weed.
She knew him not; how could she? He himself
Knew scantly. Near her what was best within him
Her golden smile sunned forth; but, dark and cold,
Like a benighted hemisphere abode
A moiety of his being which she saw not.
His was a superficial nature, vain,
And hard, to good impressions sensitive,
And most admiring virtues least his own;
A mirror that took in a seeming world,
And yet remained blank surface. He was crafty,
Followed the plough with diplomatic heart;

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His acts were still like the knight's move at chess,
Each a surprise; not less, to nature's self
Who heard him still referr'd them. ‘What!’ men said,
‘Marry the portionless!’ Strange are fortune's freaks!
The wedding-day was fixed, the ring brought home,
When from a distant uncle tidings came:
His latest son was dead. ‘Take thou my farm,
And share my house’—So spake the stern old man—
‘And wed the wife whom I for thee have found.’
He showed the maid that letter. Slowly the weeds
Made way adown the thick and stifled stream,
And others followed; slowly sailed the cloud
Through the dull sky, and others followed slowly:
At last he spake. Low were his words and thin,
Many, but scarcely heard. He asked—her counsel!
Her cheek one moment burned. Death-cold, once more
A little while she sat; then rose and said;
‘You would be free; I free you; go in peace.’
'Twas the good angel in his heart that loved her;
'Twas not the man himself! He wept, but went.
The woman of the house that night was sure
The girl had loved him not. She thought not so
When, four months past, she mark'd her mouth, aside,
Tremble, his name but uttered.

Sharp the wrong!
Yet they on Life's bewildered book would force
A partial gloss it bears not who assume
The injured wholly free from blame. The world
Is not a board in squares of black and white,
Or else the judgment-executing tongue
Would lack probation. Wronged men are not angels;

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Wrong's chiefest sin is this—it genders wrong;
So stands the offender in his own esteem
Exculpate; while the feebly-judging starve
The just cause, babbling ‘mutual was the offence!’
The man was weak; not wholly vile. 'Twas well,
Doubtless, to free him; yet in after years,
When early blight had struck his radiant head,
The girl bewailed the pride that left thus tempted
The man she loved; arraigned the wrath that left him
Almost without farewell. His letter too,
Unopen'd she returned. 'Twas strange! so sweet—
Not less there lived within her, down, far down,
A fire-spring seldom wakened! When a child,
At times, by some strange jealousy disturbed
From her still dream she flashed in passion quelled
Ere from her staider sister's large blue eyes
The astonishment had passed. Such moods remained
Though rare—that wrath of tender hearts, which scorns
Revenge, which scarcely utters its complaint,
And yet forgives but slowly.

In those days
Within the maiden's bosom there arose
Sea-longings, and desire to sail away
She knew not whither; and her arms she spread,
Weeping, to winds and waves, and shores unknown,
Lighted by other skies; and inly thus
She reasoned self-deceived. ‘What keeps thee here?
'Twas for a farther bourne thou bad'st farewell
To those at home, and here thou art as one
That hangs between two callings.’ In her heart
Tempests low-toned to ocean-tempests yearned,
And ever when she marked the shipmast forest
That on the smoky river swayed far off,

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Her wish became a craving. Soon once more
Alone 'mid hundreds on a rain-washed deck
She stood, and saw the billows heave around
And all the passions of that headlong world.
Dark-visaged ocean frowned with hoary brows
Against dark skies; huge, lumbering water-weights
Went shouldering through the abysses: streaming clouds
Ran on the lower levels of the wind;
And in the universe of things she seemed
An atom random blown. Full many a morn
Rose red through mists, like babe that weeps to rise;
Full many an evening died from wave to wave;
Then gradual peace possessed her. Love may wound
But 'tis self-love exasperates that wound;
A noble nature casts out bitterness,
And o'er the scar, like pine-tree incorrupt,
Weeps healing gums. Heart-whole she gazed at last,
On the great city chiefest of that realm
Which wears the Future's glory. Landed, soon
Back to old duties with a mightier zest
Her heart, its weakening sadness passed, returned:
Kindness made service easier, and the tasks
At first distasteful smiled on her ere long:
There she was loved once more; there all went well
And there in peace she might have lived and died;
Yet in that region she abode not long:
In part a wayward instinct drave her forth;
In part a will that from the accomplished end
Unstable swerved; in part a hope forlorn:
She sought a site their sojourn who had left
Long since her native village. Thence old names,
Faces unknown, yet recognized, thronged round her
In unconsummate union, (hearts still like,

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Yet all beside so different,) not like Souls
Re-met in heaven—more like those Shades antique
That, 'mid the empurpled fields, of other airs
Mindful, in silence trod the Elysian land,
Or flocked around the latest guest of Death
With question sad of home. Imperfect ties
Rub severance into soreness. Mary passed,
Thus urged, ere long to lonelier climes: she tracked
Companioned sometimes, sometimes without friend,
The boundless prairie, sailed the sea-like lake,
Descended the broad river as it rushed
Through immemorial forests: lastly stood
Sole, 'mid that city by the southern sea.

There sickness fell upon her: there her hand
Dropt, heavier daily, on her task half done;
Her feet wore chains unseen. The end, she thought,
Was coming. Ofttimes, in her happier days,
She wished to die and be with God: yet now,
Wearied by many griefs, to life she clung,
Upbraiding things foregone and inly sighing
‘None loves to die.’ Sorrow, earth-born, in some
Breeds first the Earth-infection; in them works,
Like those pomegranate seeds that barred from light
For aye sad Ceres' child! Alas! how many,
The ill-honoured ecstasies of youth surceased,
Exchange its clear spring for the mire! Hope sick,
How oft Faith dies! How few are they in whom
Virgin but yields to Vestal; casual pureness
Merged in essential; childhood's matin dew
Fixed, ere exhaled, in the Soul's adamant!
Mary with these had part; to her help came,
That help the proud despise. One eve it chanced
Upon the vast and dusking quays she stood
Alone and weeping. She that morn had sent

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Her latest hoardings to her grandmother,
And half was sorry she had naught retained:
The warm rain wet her hair: she heard within
The silver ringing of its drops commingling
With that still mere beside her childhood's home,
And with the tawny sedge that girt it round,
And with its winter dogwood far away
Reddening the faint, still gleam. As thus she stood
Upon her shoulder sank a hand. She turned:
It was a noble lady clothed in black,
And veiled. That veil thrown back, she recognized
At once the luminous stillness and the calm
Ethereal which the sacred cloister breeds.
A voice as pure and sweet as if from heaven,
Toned as friend speaks to friend, addressed her thus:
‘You lack a home: our convent is hard by.’

The lady, Spanish half, and Irish half,
No answer sought, but with compulsion soft
Drew her, magnetic, as the tree hard by
Draws the poor creeper on the ground diffused,
And lifts it into light. The child's cold hand
Lurked soon in hers: and in that home which seemed
An isle of heaven she lived a meek lay sister,
Ere long by healthier airs to strength restored,
A rapturous life of Christian freedom masked
In what but servitude had been to one
Lacking vocation true. The Life Divine,
‘Hidden with God,’ is hidden from the world
Lest Virtue should be dimmed by Virtue's praise.
Heroic Virtue least by men is prized:
The hero in the Saint the crowd can honour,
The Saint at best forgive. To this world's ken
Convents, of sanctity chief citadels,

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Though sanctity in every place is found,
The snowy banners and bright oriflambs
Of that resplendent realm by Counsels ruled
Not Precept only, spread in vain, despised
Or for their earthly good alone revered
Not for their claims celestial. Different far
The lesson Mary learned. The poor were fed,
The orphan nursed; around the sick man's couch
Gentle as light hovered the healing hand;
And beautiful seemed on mountain-tops of Truth,
The foot that brought good tidings! Times of trial
To Sabbaths changed; and many a rude, rough girl,
Waiting another service, found a home
Where that which years had marred returned once more
Like infant flesh clothing the leprous limb.
Yet these things Mary found were blossoms only:
The tree's deep root was secret. From the Vow
Which bound the Will's infinitude to God
Upwelled that peaceful strength whose fount was God:
From Him behind His sacramental veil
In holy passion for long hours adored
Came that great Love which made the bonds of earth
Needless, thence irksome. Wondering, there she learned
The creature was not for the creature made
But for the sole Creator; that His kingdom,
Glorious hereafter, lies around us here,
Its visible splendour painfully suppressing,
And waiting its transfigurance. Was it strange
If while those Brides of Christ around her moved
Her heart sang hymns to God? Much had she suffered:

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Much of her suffering gladly there she learned
Came of her fault; and much had kindliest ends
Not yet in her fulfilled. A light o'ershone her
Which slays Illusion, that white snake which slimes
The labyrinth of self-love's more tender ways
Virtue's most specious mimic. She was loosed:
The actual by the seeming thraldom slain;
Her life was from within and from above;
And as, when Winter dies and Spring new-born
Her whisper breathes o'er earth, the earlier flowers—
Unlike the wine-dark growths of Autumn dipped
In the year's sunset—rise in lightest hues
An astral gleam, white, green, or delicate yellow
More light than colour, so the maiden's thoughts
Flashed with a radiance that permitted scarce
Human affections tragic. Oft, she told me,
As faithless to old friends she blamed herself:
One hand touched Calvary, one the Eternal Gates;
The present nothing seemed. The years passed on:
The honeymoon of this heart-bridal waned;
But nothing of its spousal truth was lost,
Nor of its serious joy. If failures came—
And much she marvelled at her slow advance,
And for the first time, pierced by that stern grace
Wherein no sin looks trivial, feared;—what then?
Failures that deepened humbleness but sank
Foundations deeper for a loftier pile
Of virtue: transports homeward heavenward summoned
For more disinterested love made way,
More perfect made Obedience.

If a Soul,
Half-way to heaven, death past, once more to earth
Were sent, it could but feel as Mary felt
When on the convent grates a letter smote

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Loud, harsh, with summons from the outward world.
Her sister, such its tidings, was a wife,
(That matron whom you praised:—ay, comely is she,
And good; laborious, kindly, faithful, true;
Yet Time has done Time's work, her spiritual beauty
Transposing gently to a lower key;)
Her grandmother bereft, and weak through age,
Needed her tendance. Would the younger come?
Alas! what could she? Duty stretched from far
An iron hand that stayed her mounting steps;
The little novices wept loud, ‘Abide!’
Long on her neck the saintly sisterhood
Hung ere they blessed her: then she turned and went.

And so once more she trod this rocky vale,
And scarcely older looked at twenty-six
Than at sixteen. Before so gentle, now
A humbler gentleness was o'er her thrown;
Nor ruffled was she ever as of yore
With gusts of flying spleen: nor feared she now
Hindrance unlovely, or the word that jarred.
The sadness hers at first dispers'd ere long,
And such strange sweetness came to her, men said
A mad dog would not bite her. Lowliest toils
Were by her hand ennobled: Labour's staff
Beneath it burst in blossom. In the garden,
'Mid earliest birds, and singing like a bird,
She moved, her grandmother asleep. She mixed
The reverence due to years with tenderness
The infant's claim. 'Twas hers to bring the crutch,
Nor mark the lameness; hers with question apt
To prompt, not task, the memory. Tales twice-told
Wearied not her, nor orders each with each
At odds, nor causeless blame. Wiles she had many

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To anticipate harsh moods, lest one rash word
Might draw a cloud 'twixt helpless eld and heaven,
Blotting the Eternal Vision felt not seen
By hearts in grace. With works of gay caprice
Needless—yet prized—she made the spectre Want
Seem farther off. Thus love in narrow space
Built a great world. The grandmother preferred
To her, that dreamful girl of old, the woman
Who from the mystic precinct first had learned
Humanity, yet seemed a human creature
O'erruled by some angelic guest. At heart
Ever a nun, she ministered with looks
That healed the sick. The newly-widowed door
Its gloom remitted when she passed; grey foes
Downtrod their legend of old wrongs. To her
Sacred were those that grieved;—those tearless yet
Sacred scarce less because they smiled nor knew
The ambushed fate before them. When a child,
Grey-haired companionship or solitude
Had pleased her more than childish mates; but now
All the long eves of summer in the porch
The children of her sister and the neighbours
A spotless flock, sat round her. From her smiles
The sluggish mind caught light, the timid heart
Courage and strength. Unconscious thus, each day
Her soft and blithesome feet one letter traced
In God's gold Book above. So passed her life;—
Sorrow had o'er it hung a gentle cloud;
But, like an autumn-mocking day in Spring
Dewy and dim yet ending in pure glory,
The sweets were sweeter for the rain, the growth
Stronger for shadow.

You have seen her tomb!
Upon the young and beautiful it closed:

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Her grandmother yet lingers! What is Time?
Shut out the sun, and all the summer long
The fruit-tree stands as barren as the rock;
May's offering March can bring us. Of the twain
The younger doubtless in the eyes of God
Had inly lived the longest. She had learned
From action much, from suffering more, far more,
For Earth-experience is a sword whose point
Makes way for Truth. Her trials, great and little,
And trials ever keep proportion just
With high vocations and the spirit's growth,
Had done their work till all her inner being,
Freed from asperities, in the light of God
Shone like the feet of some old crucifix
Kissed into smoothness. Here I fain would end,
Leaving her harboured; but her stern, kind fates
Not thus forewent her. Like her life her death,
Not negative or neutral; great in pains,
In consolations greater. Many a week
Much ailed her; what the cause remained in doubt;
When certainty had come she trembled not:
Fixed was her heart. Those pangs that shook her frame
Like tempests roaring round a mountain church
Shook not that peace within her! She was thankful;
‘More pain if such Thy Will, and patience more,’
This was her prayer; or wiping from moist eyes
The trembling tear, she whispered, ‘Give me, Lord,
On earth Thy cleansing fire that I may see
Sooner Thy Face, death past!’

Alleviations,
Many and great, God granted her. Once more
Her sister was her sister! Unlike fortunes

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Had placed at angles those two lives that once
Basked side by side; and love that could not die
Had seemed to sleep. It woke: and, as from mist,
Once more shone out their childhood! Laughed and flashed
Once more the garden-beds whose bright accost
Had cheered them for their parents mourning. Tears
Remembered stayed the course of later tears;
The prosperous from the unprosperous sister sought
Heart-peace; nor wealth nor care could part them more;
And sometimes Margaret's children seemed to her
As children of another! Greetings sweet
Cheered her from distant regions. Once it chanced
The nuns a relic sent her ne'er before
Seen in our vales, a fragment of that Cross
Whereon the world's Redeemer hung three hours:
The neighbours entering knelt and wept, and smote
Their breasts; her hands she raised in prayer; and straight
Such Love, such Reverence in her heart, there rose
Her anguish, like a fiend exorcised, fled;
And for an hour at peace she lay as one
Imparadised. A solace too was hers
Known but to babes. Her body, not her mind,
Was racked; the pang to come she little feared,
Nor lengthened out morose the pang foregone;
Once o'er, to sleep she sank in thankful prayer.

A week ere Mary died all suffering left her;
And from the realms of glory beams, as though
Further restraint they brooked not, fell on her
Yet militant below, as there she lay
In monumental whiteness, spirit-lit.

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The anthems of her convent charmed once more
Her dreams; and scents from woods where she had sat
In tears. Oft spake she of her wandering days;
Herself she scarcely seemed to see in them;
Plainly thus much I saw: When all went well,
Danger stood nigh; but soon as sorrow came
Within that darkness nearer by her side
Walked her good Angel. In that latest week
Some treasures hidden ever near her heart
She showed me—faded flowers; her mother's hair;
Gold pieces that have raised our chapel's Cross;
A riband by her youthful comrade worn:
Upon its cover some few words I found
There traced when first beyond the western main
She heard the homeless cuckoo's cry well-known:
‘When will my People to their land return?’

From the first hour her grandchild sank, once more
She that for years bed-ridden lay had risen,
And, autumn past, put forth a wintry strength,
Ministering. Her frame was stronger than her mind;
O'er that at times a dimness hung, like cloud
That creeps from pine to pine. Inly she missed
Her wonted place of homage lost; she mused
Sadly upon the solitary future;
But in her there abode a rock-like will,
And from her tearless service night or day
No man might push her. Seldom spake the woman:
She called her grandchild by her daughter's name,
Her daughter buried thirty years and more,
And once she said in wrath, ‘Why toil they thus
Nora is dead.’ She laboured till the end:
It came—that mortal close! 'Twas Christmas Eve;

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Far, far away were heard the city bells:
The sufferer slept. At midnight I went forth;
Along the ice-filmed road a dull gleam lay,
And a sepulchral wind in woods far off
Sang dirges deep. Upon her crutches bent
The aged woman stood beside the door,
With that long gaze intense which is an act
Silently looking toward that hill of graves
We trod this day; a sinking moon shone o'er it:
Then whispered she—the light of buried years
Edging once more her eyes—‘Each Saturday,
Of those that in that churchyard sleep three Souls,
Their penance done, ascend, and are with God.’

Thus as she spake a cry was heard within,
And many voices raised the Litany
For a departing Soul. Long time—too long—
Had seemed that dying! Now the hour was come
And change ineffable announced that Death
At last was standing on the floor. O hour!
When in brief space our life is lived again!
Down cast its latest stake! when fiends ascend,
Beckoning the phantoms of forgotten wrong
Conscience to scare, or launching as from slings
Temptations new; while Angels hold before us
The Cross unshaken as the sun in heaven,
And whisper, ‘Christ.’ O hour! when prayer is all;
And they that clasp the hand are drawn apart
By the world's breadth from that they love! The act
Sin's dread bequest that makes an end of sinning,
Long lasted, while the heart-strings snapt, and all
The elements of the wondrous sensuous world
Slid from the fading sense, and those poor fingers,
As the loose precipice of life down crumbled,

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Plucked as at roots. Storm-winged the hours rushed by;
There lay she like some bark on midnight seas
Now toiling through the windless vale, anon
Hurled on and up to meet the implacable blast
Upon the rolling ridge, when not a foot
Can tread the decks, and all the sobbing planks
Tremble o'erspent. The morning dawned at last
Whitening the frosty pane; the lights removed,
Save that tall candle in her hand sustained
By others, she descried it: ‘Ah!’ she said,
‘Thank God! another day!’ Then, noting one
Who near her knelt, she said ‘The night is sped
And you have had no sleep; alas! I thought
Ere midnight I should die.’ Her eyelids closed;
Into a sleep as quiet as a babe's
Gradual she sank; and while the ascending sun
Shot 'gainst the western hill his earliest beam,
In sleep, without a sigh, her spirit passed.

I would you could have seen her face in death!
I would you could have heard that last dread rite,
The mighty Mother's, o'er the stormy gulf
And all the moanings of the unknown abyss
Flinging victorious anthems or the strength
Of piercing prayer: ‘Oh! ye at least, my friends,
Have pity on me! plead for me with God!’
That Rite complete, the dark procession wound
Interminably through the fields and farms,
While wailing like a midnight wind, the keen
Expired o'er moor and heath. At eve we reached
The graveyard; slowly, as to-day, the sun
Behind a tomb-like bank of leaden cloud
Dropt while the coffin sank, and died away
The latest Miserere—

217

More than once
I would have ceased; but he, my friend and guest,
Or touched or courteous, willed me to proceed.
Perhaps that tale the wild scene harmonized
By sympathy occult; perhaps it touched him,
Contrasting with his recent life—with England,
With Oxford, long his home; its ordered pomp;
Its intermingled groves, and fields, and spires,
Its bridges spanning waters calm and clear;
The frequentation of its courts; its chimes;
Its sunset towers, and strangely youthful gardens
That breathe the ardours of the budding year
On the hoar breadth of grove-like cloisters old,
Chapels, and libraries, and statued halls,
England's still saintly City! Time has there
A stone tradition built like that all round
Woven by the inviolate hedges, where the bird
Her nest has made and warbled to her young,
May after May secure, since the third Edward
Held his last tournament, and Chaucer sang
To Blanche and to Philippa lays of love—
Not like Iernian records. Sad we rose,
That tale complete; and, after silence long,
As homeward through the braided forest-skirt
We trod the moonlight-spotted rocks, my friend
Resumed, with pregnant matter oft more just
In thought than application; yet his voice
Was softer than it wont to be. At last,
After our home attained, we turned, and lo!
With festal fires the hills were lit! Thine eve,
Saint John, had come once more; and for thy sake,
As though but yesterday thy crown was won,
Amid their ruinous realm uncomforted

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The Irish people triumphed. Gloomy lay
The intermediate space: thence brightlier burned
The circling fires beyond it. ‘Lo!’ said I,
‘Man's life as viewed by Ireland's sons; a vale
With many a pitfall throng'd, and shade, and briar,
Yet over-blown by angel-haunted airs,
And by the Light Eternal girdled round.’

Brief supper passed, within the porch we sat
As fire by fire burned low. We spake; were mute;
Resumed; but our discourse was gently toned,
Touched by a spirit from that wind-beaten grave,
Which breathed among its pauses, as of old
That converse Bede records, when by the sea,
'Twixt Tyne and Wear, facing towards Lindisfarne,
Saxon Ceolfrid and his Irish guest,
Evangelist from old Iona's isle,
'Mid the half Pagan land in cloisters dim
Discuss'd the Tonsure, and the Paschal time,
Sole themes whereon, in sacred doctrine one,
They differed; but discussed them in such sort
That mutual reverence deeper grew. We heard
The bridgeless brook that sang far off, and sang
Alone: for not among us builds that bird
Which changes light to music, haply ill-pleased
That Ireland bears not yet, in song's domain
To Spenser worthy fruit. Our beds at last,
Wearied, yet glad, we sought. Ere long the wind,
Gathering its manifold voices and the might
Of all its wills in valleys far, and rolled
From wood to wood o'er ridge and ravine, woke
Those Spectres which o'erhang my sleep in storm,
A hundred hills to me by sound well known,
That stand dark clustered in the night, and bend
With rainy skirt o'er lake and prone morass,

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Or by sea-bays lean out procumbent brows,
Waiting the rising sun.

At morn we met
Once more, my friend and I. The evening's glow
Had from his feelings passed: in their old channels
They flowed, scarce tinged. But still his thoughts retained
The trace of late impressions quaintly linked
With kindred thought-notes earlier. Half his mind
Scholastic was; his fancy deep: the age
Alone had stamped him modern. Much he spake
Of England wise and wealthy—now no more,
He said, ‘a haughty nation proud in arms,’
Nor, as in Saxon times, a crownèd child
Propped 'gainst the Church's knee; but Ocean's Queen,
Spanning the world with golden zone twin-clasped
By Commerce and by Freedom! But no less
Of pride and suffering spake he, and that frown
Sun-pressed on brows once pure. Of Ireland next:
‘How strange a race, more apt to fly than walk;
Soaring yet slight; missing the good things round them,
Yet ever out of ashes raking gems;
In instincts loyal, yet respecting law
Far less than usage: changeful, yet unchanged!
Timid, yet enterprising: frank, yet secret:
Untruthful oft in speech, yet living truth,
And Truth in things divine to life preferring:—
Scarce men; yet possible angels! “Isle of Saints!”
Such doubtless was your land—again it might be—
Strong, prosperous, manly never! ye are Greeks
In intellect, and Hebrews in the soul:
The solid Roman heart, the corporate strength

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Is England's dower!’ ‘Unequally if so,’
I said, ‘in your esteem the Isles are matched:—
They live in distant ages, alien climes;
Native they are to diverse elements:
Our swan walks awkwardly upon dry land;
Your boasted strength in spiritual needs so helps you
As armour helps the knight who swims a flood.’
He laughed. ‘At least nor siren streams for us,
Nor holy wells! We love “the fat of the land,”
Meads such as Rubens painted! Strange our fates!
Our feast is still the feast of fox and stork,
The platter broad, and amphora long-necked;—
Ill-sorted yoke-mates truly. Strength, meanwhile,
Lords it o'er weakness!’ ‘Never yet,’ I answered,
‘Was husband vassal to an intricate wife
But roared he ruled her;’ ere his smile had ceased,
Continuing thus:—‘Ay! strength o'er weakness rules!
Strength hath in this no choice. But what is Strength?
Two Strengths there are. Club-lifting Hercules,
A mountained mass of gnarled and knotted sinews,
How shows he near the intense, Phœbean Might
That, godlike, spurns the ostent of thews o'ergrown;
That sees far off the victory fixed and sure,
And, without effort, wings the divine death
Like light, into the Python's heart? My friend,
Justice is strength; union on justice built:—
Good-will is strength—kind words—silence—that truth
Which hurls no random charge. Your scribes long time

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Blow on our island like a scythèd wind:
The good they see not, nor the cause of ill;
They tear the bandage from the wound half-healed:—
Is not such onset weakness? Were it better,
Tell me, free-trader staunch, for sister Nations
To make exchange for aye of scorn for scorn,
Or blend the nobler powers and aims of each,
Diverse, and for that cause correlative,
True commerce, noblest, holiest, frankest, best,
And breed at last some destiny to God
Glorious, and kind to man?—If torn apart
One must her empire lose, and one her all.’

Thus as we spake, the hall clock vast and old,
A waif from Spain's Armada chimed eleven:
And from the stables drew a long-hair'd boy
Who led a horse as shaggy as a dog,
A splenetic child of thistles and hill-blast,
Rock-ribbed, and rich in craft of every race
From weasel to the beast that feigns to die.
Mounting—alas! that friends should ever part,—
My guest bade thus adieu: ‘For good or ill
Our lands are linked.’ And I rejoined, ‘For which?
This shall you answer when, your pledge fulfilled,
Before the swallow you return, and meet
The unblown Spring in our barbaric vale.’

University of Virginia Library

“THE IRISH SISTERS.”

THE SISTERS; OR, WEAL IN WOE.