Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

My heart has choked me through this live-long day—
This day of duties closed. Each act of mine
To-day has been a death-pang: I have died
A former life in each. Our daily work
That we have done for years, O sad to feel
That this time is the last, and that to-morrow
Strange hands will take it up!

I shut the books
Whose each particular folio my hand
Can find without the exercise of thought—
The books that hold no character but mine.—
Now have I kiss'd the inkstand and the desk,
And given up possession of the key.
I look my last on each particular thing,
And see it draped in garments which my soul
Unconsciously has weaved. I did not think
How ivy-like my love had grown on them,
Till now I come to tear myself away.

How will it be with them when I have left?
Ah, shall I take away their mantling green,
And leave them bare and cold till they are clothed
With other verdure by a richer mind?
Will those whose custom 'tis to come and go
Feel desolation when I am not here?
I know there will be many, round whose hearts
My being throws its arms, as their's round mine:

For we, without one word of plighted faith,
Have grown to know ourselves true brother men,
And wear our souls to each other in our eyes.
They will be haunted like an empty house;
My absence, like the passing of a ghost,
Will cross them when they see my accustom'd place.
Our wants, more than our havings, fill the mind,
And oft a thing's not ours till it is lost.

Farewell, old duties that I held as tasks
Not over-willingly perform'd! Now ye
Ascend to Heaven and are angels' work—
The higher, that you were most truly done,
Despite the unwillingness. For I have learn'd
To know how good a thing is tasteless work
When faithfully perform'd. The man transmutes
The meanest office to a golden reign,
Or blasts an angel's work with smoke of hell.
Men grieve their hearts at being out of place,
Unknowing that each man must place himself,
Not vainly fleeing from the post he holds,
But drawing round his feet the charmèd ring
That makes all sacred ground on which he treads.

We have to learn God's uses of the world,
And put our own aside like worn-out clothes.
Most of our business waits yet to be done
To yield the noblest fortunes. It is big
With mines scarce broken on. We have been fool'd
With coin, bright coin, that bears the current stamp,

But is not gold. We have not known the gold:
We have not known that in the ways of trade
The soul might be ennobled and enrich'd—
Yea, that this is God's very use of trade.—
Let us begin our business to this end—
This end so strangely missed; if gained, not prized.—
I go to make my fortune; and the world
Will count me poor, unfortunate. How rich
I may be even then, the Heavens will know.

Farewell, old duties! Wherefore do I leave
Your sweet content—content now that I leave?
Have I drunk all the sweets ye held for me,
And am—not knowing—even at the dregs;
So that my further draughts were bitterness?
Or, with accomplish'd difficulty, did
Your true life pass away, and leave me nought
To garner in my soul when that was gone—
Nought but the soft and soul-corroding ease?
I ask my weeping heart, Why does it leave?
It has no answer: like a drooping girl,
It leans against my breast and points to Fate.
O heart, I see so little of myself
In the beginning of my life's chief acts,
That I begin to think there is a hand,
Behind the scenes, that moves us to the stage,
Then leaves us there to play our parts.

And now
I stand behind the curtain that divides

Two acts in my life's drama. I can hear
The dense hum of the audience that will watch
Each movement of my acting. But I stand
Alone here with my throbbing heart and God.
This interval of pause is like a pool
That breaks the onflow of a brawling stream;
And, gazing deep into the abyss of life,
I see the sands of time o'er which it runs,
With all the purposes of life reveal'd
Like pebbles at the bottom of the pool,
Which in the turbid current are not seen;
And under all the great clear eye of God
Like the blue sky reflected.—O my heart!
Would I might shape thy beating all for God,
That when again I come in the World's gaze,
His eye may be the only one I feel.

The doubts of coming time, the sad and sweet
Regrets of a sublimed and hallow'd past,
Divide my brooding mind as hence I go:
They crush the present out. But if God's light
Abided in my soul and never set,
My present were an all-sufficing Now.
For he that lives for ever in that light
Partakes of all its attributes—regrets
No good outlived, nor dreads the ill unborn,
But in the abundant present breathes full life.

O, there are blessed lives on which God show'rs
His spirit down like rain; more blessed ones

Through which He is a never failing stream;
And both are rich and bounteous as green meads.
With me the springs are buried deep in earth;
And would I drink the spirit, I must dig,
And oft be disappointed. For the most,
My life's an arid waste, panting with thirst,
Which nothing but the living stream may quench.

Farewell, aunt England! I have been caress'd
In thy kind lap of Lancashire so long,
That now I'll scarcely know the Doric voice
Of my old mother Scotland, and shall feel
That going home is going most from home.
Thou art my heart's home, England. When I look
Into the camera within my brain,
I see the moving picture of thy woods,
With all their sylvan glades, rich waste of fields
That give free crossing to th' exploring foot;
Thy warm green lanes, and hedges thickly laced
With bramble, honeysuckle, and sweet dog-rose;
Thy wandering streams, that lead through bosky dells
And meads of rarest green.—But most of all
The Ribble winds herself about my heart;
For, from her cradle in the hills of York
Down to her green grave in the Irish Sea,
I know her every winding, and can tell
Where be her fords and bridges. That last bridge,
That spans near where her meady lips grow salt
With immemorial courtship of the tides—
O, memory! the river of my heart

That bridge will span until it cease to flow;
And those black eyes that lighted me like lamps,
Night after night, across it—still will dash
Their light athwart the dark nights of my soul,
And strike a fitful glare when memory's cloud
Obscures my present and diviner light.

Ah, was it vain to woo and not to win?
And, after dreaming years of love, to wake
And count my object better lost than won?

It was not vain: my object was not lost;
But rather gained by loss, since still for me
She is the gorgeous picture that love drew,
Undimm'd by the possession. Those dream'd years
Stand rounded in my past, not broken up
By dire reality. I can go back
Into them as a temple, and bow down
Before the image love has glorified,
And drink the joy of worship.

Dost thou think
She was not worthy of a bended knee?
Love sanctifies a thing of little worth;
And he that worships the recipient
Of his most sacred passion, worships well.
The cup that holds the precious wine of love
Is even to be prized for that it holds.—
O, I have pour'd my love into her heart!
As in a fount, it well'd up in her eyes;

But all came back again to her own breast,
And but the beggar's portion came to me:
Yet am I richer for it to this day.

Our errors seem all purposeless as weeds;
But they are weeds from which the quiet soul
Distils a balm that medicines our lives.—
There is a wise assimilating power
Within the mortal frame, that works and builds
Without decree of ours, and from the wide,
The universal bosom, draws the store
That makes the individual—not alone
From that we bring to it, as daily bread,
But air, light, heat, and things we know not of:
So in the mind there is a kindred power—
By us unwill'd as that which moves the heart—
And years that we think lost have been work'd in
Most richly through our natures. Who can say
What serves our Being most? Oft, like the beasts,
'Twill turn away from dainty things we give,
And crop a thistle.—I have labour'd much
To bring unto my soul the richest food,
Laid up great store of books, have sought wise friends,
And hanker'd after churches. Yet when done,
I find me nibbling at life's poison'd weeds,
Or battening on barrenness; my books
Shelved and not open'd yet; wise friends, when found,
Deserted; and the church door never cross'd.—
Our nature is above us; we may think

We educate ourselves; but we forget
This higher nature educates the we.

Farewell again, sweet land—my second home!
Within thy beds of roses I have known
The thorn more than the rose, but could not see
How bee-like I have been in gathering
These loads of honey'd love that clog my flight.—
My heaven was dull and leaden till I near'd
The margin of my setting:—I am gone,
And scarcely can I think yon golden sky
Is that which I have left. Shine on my back;
For I have turn'd me to another day;
And though I look through mist into the dawn,
The day will brighten, and the larks will sing.