 | Benedicite and Other Poems |  |
35
Sonnets.
37
Castle Campbell,
ON THE OCHILS.
The sunlit castle flashed upon our ken,Topping the trees which crown the steep ravine,
And in an instant all we sought was seen,
We grasped our long day's pleasure there and then —
The secret windings of the shadowy glen,
The awful fissure severed by the sheen
Of steely water, open spaces green,
And heathery vales remote from feet of men.
Imagination in a moment's space
Filled up a gladsome picture to the mind,
Such as revolving hours would slowly trace:
And oh, what peace prophetic we may find
In one brief glimpse of heart-assuring Grace
Which holds, as in a bud, Heaven's joys entwined
40
Flowers for the Holy Table.
The God of Nature is the God of Grace;And so with reverent fingers we entwine
Garlands of blossoms for the Bread and Wine,
Which on the Table of the Lord we place—
As lilies once looked up into His Face
And won a smile from Him in Palestine;
A benediction they will ne'er resign
While cares on human brows their furrows trace.
But if before the Lord 'tis right and meet
To spread the beauty of the fresh-culled flowers,
Nature's own offering at the Saviour's feet;
Let answering thoughts of Grace, in busy hours,
Circle our footsteps in the field or street,
And deck our pathway to the Eternal bowers!
41
Eucharists.
“Extensions of the Incarnation”—this,Yea nothing less in Eucharists we see:
Before Thy Table, Lord, we bow the knee,
To wait Thy coming, and to feel Thy kiss.
We mourn for sin and straight its burden miss:
Thy spotless Body sets us sweetly free:
Thy Blood is wine of immortality;
We take the cup and taste angelic bliss.
Lord, give us grace Thy Body to discern,
And through the lattice of the broken Bread
To see the loving Face for which we yearn:
And on our hearts Thy precious Blood be shed,
Like drops of fiery dew, to make them burn
With loyal love to Thee, our glorious Head.
42
The Veiled Waterfall,
GLENCRIPISDALE.
In front of falling waters we reclined,Which down a chasm tore their thund'rous way:
Birches before them hung, with emerald spray
Screening the silvery foam which shone behind.
With every fitful wafting of the wind
The leafy veil was lifted, to display
The crystal splendour in its white array—
The changing drops in changeless form confined.
Thus earth's fair dreams and fancies intervene
And veil Heaven's glory from our mortal eye,
Dimming things hoped for by things felt and seen:
O for God's breath—the Spirit from on high—
To flash upon us through the sundered screen
The living waters of Eternity!
43
Arran.
My happy days in Arran's beauteous isle!Like pages of a book I turn them o'er:
Glen Sannox, with its grandeur and its roar;
Glen Rosa, with its greenness and its smile;
Glencloy, whose tinkling burn a little while
The sense delights, the memory evermore;
The perfect curve of Brodick's silvery shore:
Fair pictures, how the mind's eye they beguile!
The Holy Isle, whose heights and caverns speak
Of piety which sought these coasts of yore,
Casting o'er ages dark one gracious streak:
Goatfell, cloud-piercing and sublime, which bore
My joyful footsteps on its loftiest peak,
And bade me through infinitude to soar!
45
A Garden by the Sea.
A little garden leaning to the bay,And bounded by low trees, a shadowy screen,—
With children's voices from the sloping green,
Happy and careless at their innocent play:
Beyond—the ocean stretching far away,
A vast circumference of azure sheen,
With glistening sails in the dim distance seen,
And tidal music murmuring all the day.
Such is Life's story, with its narrow bound
Of hopes and joys that fill our fleeting years,
And mortal shadows closing us around:
While, looming nigh, Eternity appears,
That mighty sea, that mystery profound,
Whose voice e'en now breaks on our wondering ears.
47
The Writing on the Ground.
“Jesus stooped down and wrote upon the ground:”Lost are the words traced by His finger there;
But still His characters divinely fair
About our feet, in lines of light, are found.
He stoops, and snowdrops start to life all round;
His finger wakes the violets everywhere;
The lilies of the field His message bear,
And primrose banks with thoughts of peace are crowned.
Ah, Lord, stoop lower still, and on the floor
Of my dim way-worn heart Thy blessing write;
The Spirit is Thy finger evermore,
Oh may I feel its touch, like rays of light,
Awaking me to trust Thee and adore,
And bud and blossom always in Thy sight!
50
“The Priest's Craig.”
Between Saddleyoke and Hartfell, near Moffat.
Where steep-ridged Saddleyoke's twin summits rise,And, facing them, huge Hartfell's bulk is seen,
A grassy hollow intermediate lies
And fronts the shadowy glen that yawns between;
From whence all access to that upland green
A sudden precipice sternly denies:
Its name for ages “The Priest's Craig” has been,
The meaning of the name a vague surmise.
Was it some holy man in far off days
Wrestled in prayer upon this lonely height?
Or, tending his sparse sheep in these dim ways,
Fell o'er the cliff, misled by mist or night?
Vainly we ask, and strive Time's veil to raise,
The visionary Priest eludes our sight!
51
The Interleaved Prayer Book.
To the Countess of Londesborough at the Restoration of Londesborough Church.
The new East Window, in Londesborough Church, designed by Mr. Temple Moore, and filled with stained glass by Messrs. Burlison and Grylls of London, was intended to commemorate the coming of age of the only son of Lord and Lady Londesborough, the Honourable Francis Denison, now Lord Raincliffe, Dec. 1885. The subject is the Crucifixion.
On each alternate page the distant springs
Of inspiration, whence it sweetly brings
The stream of holy thought that through it flows.
Antiquity in every Collect glows;
To every Canticle a memory clings:
These words, through all the ages, have lent wings
To praise and hope amid life's joys or woes.
This ancient Book befits that ancient Shrine
By centuries of worship sanctified,
And now made beautiful by Thee and Thine;
Where softest colours blend their radiant pride
To glorify the Cross of Love divine,
At whose dear Feet true rest and peace abide.
53
The Soldier-Artist.
Major-General G. F. Moore, a brave soldier, an upright man, a sincere Christian, and a great lover of Nature and Art. He was wounded severely at the siege of Moultan. He died September 8, 1884. To a friend who asked him shortly before his death if he felt comfort and confidence in the Cross of Christ, he answered, “I have got beyond the Cross; I am in the Presence.”
And of the misty hills to bathe his sight;
The calmness, the expansion, and the height
Allured his ardent soul and artist eye:
Once more his skilful pencil he would ply
To catch from Nature's face a transcript bright;
But ah, there fell a dimness as of night:
He looked, he sighed, and but returned to die.
Now sword alike and palette gather dust,
The noble heart and cunning hand are still:
But in the Presence, he had learnt to trust,
Of beauty and of peace he takes his fill,
And uncorrupt and righteous, true and just,
He rests for ever on God's holy hill.
55
Two Cambridge Students.
Frederick R. Wilton, B.A., Scholar of St. John's College, and one of the masters of the City of London School, killed on Snowdon, in 1874. Robert C. Wilton, Scholar of Christ's College, drowned at Tenby in 1884—a youth of great promise—both sons of Mr. Robert Wilton of Doncaster. See a sonnet in the author's “Lyrics, Sylvan and Sacred,” p. 92, on the death of the first-named student, ending
“O favoured youth, to whom the bliss was givenTo climb a mountain and to find it—Heaven!”
On his way up the mountain he met with a gentleman, to whom among other things he said, “I never felt so near to Christ as I do on this mountain to-day.”
Sheer down the misty slope—one brother lies;
Facing the sea where, under sunny skies,
Sudden he sank, the other sleepeth well:
Both pleasant in their lives—ah, who can tell
What light of hope was lit in loving eyes
That watched them, in earth's wisdom growing wise;
And Christward drawn as by a Heavenly spell.
Yes, they sleep well, since in the Lord they sleep!
And now, from lowly duties soon set free,
The glory of a higher life they reap;
Resting with Him where there is no more sea,
But many a secret grove, and valley deep,
And mountain-nook of sweet security!
56
St. James the Just.
The first Bishop of Jerusalem, and the author of the Epistle of St. James—whose words in chapter v., verse 9, correspond with and illustrate the question put to the martyr by his Jewish enemies.
That rent the ears of James surnamed the Just,
The brother of the Lord; ere yet they thrust—
Those miscreant Jews—their victim from on high.
Down from that battlement against the sky
The Saint was dashed upon the pavement-dust;
While his last breath reiterates his trust,—
“Before the door He stands—the Lord is nigh:”
Never so nigh as when with loving hand
He lifts the latch of that mysterious door,
Which softly opens to His sole command—
Showing the glory of the golden floor,
The beauty of the unimagined land,
Where with His own He walks for evermore!
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