Christ's Company and Other Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

Oh, that remote and lonely shore,
Between the river and the sea,
Towards which my boat was drifting me.
Never again, oh, nevermore
Let me behold it: 'tis the grave
Of a cast nature; yet I have
Dream times to think of it, and feel
How sweet beneath its cirque of trees
The islet lay! The sunbeams stole
Downwards, and strove to uncongeal
The voiceless magic which did weave
The lonely island to my soul.
The sunset crowned its cirque of trees,
Upon its limbs did shadow cleave,
And round its sloping terraces
The mists curled like a lawny frieze.

II.

My shallop parted the tall rushes,
The boat's head rustled through the flags;
I was alone,
All, all were gone;
Dead ere its prime,
The morning time;
Strange bearded men
Were out of ken;
I had rowed with them
Up the river amain;
I had fled from them
Down the river again.
I grasped the overhanging bushes,
And drew myself upon the crags.

III.

I came beside a still lagoon
Of inky blackness, whereupon,
Like a lake-lily, lay the moon,
White, ere her reign of gold begun.

IV.

I came through vales of level flowers,
Sunstruck with glory o'er the grass,
Clipped by the winds and the mists in a mass,
And silkily, sulkily, hued for the showers.

V.

I looked upon the wildness blooming,
At thronging stems to distance looming,
Dim-outlined shadows nearer coming,
Dark foliage, more darkly glooming.

VI.

Then said I, “Every day will bring
From the wide rolling of the waves,
From the warm breathing of the winds,
Some fresh delight, some newer thing,
And nature will increase in kinds,
And I will be her king.
Yes; field, and rock, and flower, and tree,
Shall with my presence peopled be,
As with a deeper entity.

VII.

I had been passion-seared, and tost
On the blind waves of accident;
Had played with chance and always lost,
Had loved, and been heart-shent;
Had tasted pleasure's after-pain,
Had looked for sweet, and found but gall,
Had wrestled with my fellow-men,
And risen baffled from the fall:
I said, I here will have abode,
Where never foot of man hath trod.

VIII.

And I will love all beauty here,
But beauty shall be everywhere;
And over all my love shall change,
Shall flit and hover ceaselessly,
And broaden with its wider range,
Always intense, but wildly free;
But never will I seek return
For equal love so widely spent,
Oh, never, never let me burn
With special passion in me pent!

IX.

I had fled away, ere my heart should change,
From the men who hated me more and more;
They toiled afloat
In their labouring boat,
In their solemn copes,
With their arms like ropes:
They sat in their ranks
On the rowing planks,
And they rose and fell
To the time of the oar;
Black eyes and curt hair;
Black eyes watched me well
On wave and on shore,
Everywhere!

I had fled away that my heart might range,
From the unendurable sorrow it bore.
Now very stilly
Lay the lake lily,
And not so chilly
The covert hilly;
The meadow rilly
Was not so chilly.
I had fled away with the presage strange,
Of rest to be won on a secret shore.

X.

Through forests wide I wandered,
Where large-leaved flowers had grown to head,
Where fluctuated endless shade.

XI.

And everywhere my human sense,
Fraught with its dread intelligence,
Worked with the power reflected thence.

XII.

I said, “These rocks, and trees, and flowers
Have grown and changed, but still remained
Mere daughters of the suns and showers,
Most beautiful, but ne'er have gained
The presence of a human soul,

They know not pity, they know not dole,
They know not passion's mystery.
Lo! I am here a human soul,
And I will clothe them in human stole,
Will give to each most subtle reach
Of sorrow and of sympathy.”

XIII.

So day by day I wrought my will
Upon wide nature's open face;
My thought informed each particle
Of being throughout all the place;
For day by day, when the great sun
Was greatest, would I keep the shade
Of rocky hollows in the dun
And sleepy light by lichen made,
And there my thoughts would truant run,
While wreaths of fancy round me played.

XIV.

But when the dews had fallen soft,
And night had fallen on the dews;
And when the moon was far aloft,
Then forth I wandered, not to lose
The thoughtfulness of brooding rest,
For still emotive power would ooze
From the full feelings of my breast;
But forth I went through dell and croft,
Through all the gloom from east to west.

XV.

Oft by the marsh's quaggy edge
I heard the wind-swept rushes fall;
Where through an overgrowth of sedge
Rolled the slow mere funereal:
I heard the music of the leaves
Unto the night wind's fingering,
I saw the dropping forest eaves
Make in the mere their water-ring.

XVI.

And so I fared, until, upstaying
My thoughts on richer blooms, that gained
My eyes, and thence no further straying,
Whole solemn hours have I remained,
Wreaths of fine fancies round me playing,
With advents strange and vanishings;
Half in my inmost soul delaying,
Half bodied upon outer things.

XVII.

But day by day about the marge
Of this slow-brooding dreaminess,
The shadow of the past lay large,
And brooded low and lustreless;
Then vanished as I looked on it,
Yet back returned with wider sweep,
And broad upon my soul would sit,
Like a storm-cloud above the deep.

XVIII.

Yea, subtle, word-banned memories,
Heart-surges of black bitterness,
Untouched by sorrow's softer dyes,
About my brain would throng and press:
I found I could not alchemize
And purge away the dross of facts,
And I was mad for human cries,
For human sorrows, human acts.

XIX.

“I see,” I cried, “the waste of waves,
That shifts from out the western tracts;
I see the sun that ever laves
With liquid gold their cataracts;
And night by night I see the moon
Career and thwart the waves of cloud;
I see great nature burgeon
Through all her seasons, laughter-browed.
But what are these things unto me?
They lack not me, they are full-planned.
I must have love in my degree,
A human heart, a human hand;
For oh ! 'tis better far to share,
Though life all dark, all bitter be,
With human bosoms human care:”
I launched my boat upon the sea.