University of Virginia Library

no previous section My Lyrical Life
next section

FIRST SERIES.

xxxi

Dedication.

Good Friend Of Mine, To Me Unknown,
Save For The Secret Friendship Shown,
Accept, In Your Sequestered Nook,
The Dedication Of My Book.
xxxiii

A GREETING.

Annie Besant, brave and dear,
May some message, uttered here,
Reach you, ringing golden-clear.
Though we stand not side by side
In the front of battle wide,
Oft I think of you with pride,
Fellow-soldier in the fight!
Oft I see you flash by night,
Fiery-hearted for the Right!
You for others sow the Grain:
Yours the tears of ripening rain;
Theirs the smiling harvest-gain.
Fellow-worker! we shall be
Workers for Eternity;
Such my faith. And you shall see
xxxiv

Life's no bubble blown of breath
To delude the sight till death;
Whatsoe'er the Un-Seeing saith.
Love that closes dying eyes,
Wakes them too, in glad surprise:
Love that makes for ever wise.
Soul—whilst murmuring “There's no soul”—
Shall upspring like flame from coal:
Death is not Life's final goal.
Bruno lives! Such Spirits come,
Swords, immortal-tempered, from
Fire and Forge of Martyrdom.
You have Soul enough for seven;
Life enough our earth to leaven,
Love enough to create heaven.
One of God's own faithful Few,
Whilst unknowing it, are you,
Annie Besant, bravely true.
1

PREFATORY POEM.

A singer sang in sleep, and, sleeping, dreamed
He sang divinely, while his spirit seemed
So far in Music's heaven to soar and sing,
They could not follow who stood listening!
For him, the soul of sweetness found a voice.
For them, the Singer only “made a noise.”
Such is the difference in the uttered strain,
From that fine music passing through the brain.
Such sumless treasures we possess in dreams,
To find at waking only mirrored gleams.
No revelation of the written word
Will render all the spirit saw and heard.
So fresh they breathed; so faded now they look;
My few poor withered flowers in a book.
Gone is the glory that once gleamed from them;
The Spirit of Light imprisoned in the gem!
Now the winged life hath settled down in words,
These seem but stuffed instead of Singing Birds.
Feelings brimful of warmth as is a rose
Of its June-red, have lost their perfumed glows;
The heaven-revealing thoughts that star-like shone,
The daily kindlings of eternal dawn,
All darkened down, like Meteors that have birth
In Heaven, to flash and quench them cold in earth.
2

We grasp at diamonds visible in the dew,
And open empty tear-wet hands to you!
We clasp at heart the daughters of the skies,
Their shadow stays with us; the substance flies.
Glimpses divine will peep; pictures will pass,
That leave no likeness in the Seer's glass.
The Poet's best immortally will lurk
In that rare motion of his soul at work.
Bee-like, he brings you one gold honey-drop;
But the full-swing, high on the flower-top,
'Twixt Heaven that rained itself in sweetness down,
And Earth—all bloom for him—is ne'er made known.
MY poem was in the making. These are your
Warmth-needy nurslings, Reader! mine no more.
The life I gave will no more fill my breast
Than the flown birds come back to last year's nest:
And if these live again, 'tis you must give
The reflex thrill to them by which they live.
You must make out the music from the hint
Prelusive: I but tune the instrument.
The glory or the gladness or the grace
Must shine for me re-orient in your face.
The seed, that in my life took secret root,
In yours must bud, and flower, and bear you fruit.
5

BABE CHRISTABEL.

It fell upon a merry May morn,
All in the prime of that sweet time
When daisies whiten, woodbines climb,—
The dear Babe Christabel was born:
When Earth like Danaë bares her charms,
That for the coming God unfold,
Who, in the Sunshine's shower of Gold
Leaps warmly into her amorous arms;
When Beauty dons her daintiest dress,
And, fed with April's mellow showers,
The woods laugh out all leaves and flowers
That flush for very happiness;
And Spider-Puck his wonder weaves
O' nights: and nooks of greening gloom
Grow rich with Violets that bloom
In the cool dusk of dewy leaves;
Green fields transfigure, like a page
Of Fable to the eye of Faith;
Where cowslips and primroses rathe
Bring back a real Golden Age;
6

When Rose-buds drink the fiery wine
Of Dawn, with crimson stains i' the mouth,
All thirstily as yearning Youth
From Love's hand drinks the draught divine;
When fainting hearts forget their fears,
And in the poorest Life's salt cup
Some rare wine runs, and Hope builds up
Her rainbow over Memory's tears,—
It fell upon a merry May morn,
All in the prime of that sweet time
When daisies whiten, woodbines climb,—
The dear Babe Christabel was born.
All night the Stars bright watches kept,
Like Gods that look a golden calm;
The Silence dropped its precious balm,
And the tired world serenely slept.
The birds were darkling in the nest,
Or bosomed in voluptuous trees:
On beds of flowers the happy breeze
Had kissed its fill and sank to rest.
All night beneath the Cottage eaves,
A lonely light, with tremulous Arc,
Surged back a space the sea of dark,
And glanced among the shimmering leaves.
And when the Morn with frolic zest,
Unclosed the curtains of the night,
There was a dearer dawn of light,
A tenderer life the Mother's pressed,
7

And she at all her suffering smiled.
The Star new-kindled in the dark—
Life that had fluttered like a Lark—
Lay in her bosom a sweet Child!
How she had felt it drawing down
Her nesting heart more close and close,—
Her rose-bud ripening to the Rose,
That she should one day see full-blown!
How she had throbbed with hopes and fears,
And strained her inner eyes till dim,
To see the expected glory swim
Through the rich mist of happy tears;
For it, her woman's heart drank up,
And laughed at, Sorrow's darkest dole:
And now Delight's most dainty soul
Was crushed for her in one rich cup!
And then delicious languors crept,
Like nectar, on her pain's hot drouth,
And feeling fingers—kissing mouth—
Being faint with joy, the Mother slept.
Babe Christabel was royally born!
For when the earth was flushed with flowers,
And drenched with beauty in sun-showers,
She came through golden gates of Morn.
No chamber arras-pictured round,
Where sunbeams make a gorgeous gloom,
And touch its glories into bloom,
And footsteps fall withouten sound,
8

Was her Birth-place that merry May-morn;
No gifts were heaped, no bells were rung,
No healths were drunk, no songs were sung
When dear Babe Christabel was born:
But Nature on the darling smiled,
And with her beauty's blessing crowned:
Love brooded o'er the hallowed ground,
And there were Angels with the Child.
And May her kisses of love did bring;
Her Birds made welcoming merriment,
And all her flowers in greeting sent
The secret sweetnesses of Spring.
In glancing light and glimmering shade,
With cheeks that touched and ripelier burned
May-Roses in at the lattice yearned,
A-tiptoe, and Good Morrow bade.
No purple and fine linen might
Be hoarded up for her sweet sake:
But Mother's love will clothe and make
The little wearer bravely dight!
Wide worlds of worship are their eyes,
Their loyal hearts are worlds of love,
Who fondly clasp their cooing Dove,
And read its news from Paradise.
Their looks praise God—souls sing for glee:
They think if this old world had toiled
Through ages to bring forth their child,
It was a glorious destiny.
9

O happy Husband! happy Wife!
The rarest blessing Heaven drops down,
The sweetest blossom in Spring's crown,
Starts in the furrows of your life!
Ah! what a towering height ye win,
Who cry, “Lo, my beloved Child!”
And, life on life sublimely piled,
Ye touch the heavens and peep within.
Look how a star of glory swims
Down aching silences of space,
Flushing the Darkness till its face
With beating heart of light o'erbrims;
So brightening came Babe Christabel,
To touch the earth with fresh romance,
And light a Mother's countenance
With looking on her miracle.
With hands so flower-like soft, and fair,
She caught at life, with words as sweet
As first spring violets, and feet
As faëry-light as feet of air.
The Father, down in Toil's mirk mine,
Turns to his wealthier world above,
Its radiance, and its home of love;
And lights his life like sun-struck wine.
The Mother moves with queenlier tread:
Proud swell the globes of ripe delight
Above her heart, so warm and white
A pillow for the baby-head!
10

Their natures deepen, well-like, clear,
Till God's eternal stars are seen,
For ever shining and serene,
By eyes anointed Beauty's seer.
A sense of glory all things took,—
The red Rose-Heart of Dawn would blow,
And Sundown's sumptuous pictures show
Babe-Cherubs wearing their Babe's look!
And round their peerless one they clung,
Like bees about a flower's wine-cup;
New thoughts and feelings blossomed up,
And hearts for very fulness sung
Of what their budding Babe should grow,
When the Maid crimsoned into Wife,
And crowned the summit of some life,
To bear the morning on her brow!
And they should bless her for a Bride,
Who, like a splendid saint alit
In some heart's seventh heaven, should sit,
As now in theirs, all glorified.
'Twas thus they built their Castles brave
In faëry lands of gorgeous cloud;
They never saw a wee white shroud,
Nor guessed how flowers will mask the grave.
She grew, a sweet and sinless Child,
In shine and shower,—calm and strife;
A Rainbow on our dark of Life,
From Love's own radiant heaven down-smiled!
11

In lonely loveliness she grew,—
A shape all music, light, and love,
With startling looks, so eloquent of
The spirit whitening into view.
At Childhood she could seldom play
With merry heart, whose flashes rise
Like splendour-wingèd butterflies
From honeyed hearts of flowers in May:
The fields in blossom flamed and flushed,
The Roses into crimson yearned,
With cloudy fire the wall-flowers burned,
And blood-red Sunsets bloomed and blushed,—
And still her cheek grew pale as pearl,—
It took no tint of Summer's wealth
Of colour, warmth, and wine of Health:
Death's hand so whitely pressed the Girl!
No blush grew ripe to sun or kiss
Where violet veins ran purple light,
So tenderly through Parian white,
Touching you into tenderness.
A spirit-look was in her face,
That shadowed a miraculous range
Of meanings, ever rich and strange,
Or lightened glory in the place.
Such mystic lore was in her eyes,
And light of other worlds than ours,
She looked as she had gathered flowers,
With little maids of Paradise.
12

And she would talk so weirdly-wild,
And grow upon your wonderings,
As though her stature rose on wings!
And you forgot she was a Child.
Ah! she was one of those who come
With pledge and promise not to stay
Long, ere the Angels let them stray
To nestle down in earthly home:
And, through the windows of her eyes,
We often saw her saintly soul,
Serene, and sad, and beautiful,
Go sorrowing for lost Paradise!
Our Lamb in mystic meadows played:
In some celestial sleep she walked
Her dream of life, and low we talked,
As of her waking heart-afraid.
In Earth she took no lusty root,
Her beauty of promise to disclose,
Or round into the Woman-Rose,
And climb into Life's crowning fruit.
She came,—as comes the light of smiles
O'er earth, and every budding thing
Makes quick with beauty—alive with Spring;
Then goeth to the golden Isles.
She came—like music in the night
Floating as heaven in the brain,
A moment oped, and shut again,
And all is dark where all was light.
13

Midnight was trancèd solemnly
Thinking of dawn: Her Star-thoughts burned;
The Trees like burdened Prophets yearned,
Rapt in a wind of prophecy:
When, like the Night, the shadow of Woe
On all things laid its hand death-dark,
Our last hope went out as a spark,
And a cry smote heaven like a blow.
We sat and watched by Life's dark stream,
Our love-lamp blown about the night,
With hearts that lived as lived its light,
And died as died its precious gleam.
In Death's face hers flashed up and smiled,
As smile the young flowers in their prime,
I' the face of their gray murderer Time,
And Death for true love kissed our child.
She thought our good-night kiss was given,
And like a flower her life did close.
Angels uncurtained that repose,
And the next waking dawned in heaven.
They snatched our little tenderling,
So shyly opening into view,
Delighted, as the Children do
The primrose that is first in Spring.
14

With her white hands clasped she sleepeth; heart is hushed, and lips are cold;
Death shrouds up her heaven of beauty, and a weary way we go,
Like the sheep without a Shepherd on the wintry norland wold,
With the face of Day shut out by blinding snow.
O'er its widowed nest my heart sits moaning for its youngling fled
From this world of wail and weeping, gone to join her starry peers;
And my light of life's o'ershadowed where the dear one lieth dead,
And I'm crying in the dark with many fears.
All last night-tide she seemed near me, like a lost beloved Bird,
Beating at the lattice louder than the sobbing wind and rain;
And I called across the night with tender name and fondling word;
And I yearned out through the darkness, all in vain.
Heart will plead, “Eyes cannot see her: they are blind with tears of pain;”
And it climbeth up and straineth for dear life to look and hark
While I call her once again: but there cometh no refrain,
And it droppeth down, and dieth in the dark.
15

In this dim world of clouding cares,
We rarely know, till wildered eyes
See white wings lessening up the skies,
The Angels with us unawares.
And thou hast stolen a jewel, Death!
Shall light thy dark up like a Star,
A Beacon kindling from afar
Our light of love, and fainting faith.
Through tears it streams perpetually,
And glitters through the thickest glooms,
Till the eternal morning comes
To light us o'er the Jasper Sea.
With our best branch in tenderest leaf,
We've strewn the way our Lord doth come;
And, ready for the harvest-home,
His Reapers bind our ripest sheaf.
Our beautiful Bird of light hath fled:
Awhile she sat with folded wings—
Sang round us a few hoverings—
Then straightway into glory sped.
With sense of Motherhood new-found
Some white-winged Angel nurtures her,
High on the heavenly hills of myrrh,
With all Love's purple glory round.
Through Childhood's morning-land, serene
She walked betwixt us twain, like Love;
While, in a robe of light above,
Her watching Angel walked unseen,
16

Till Life's highway broke bleak and wild;
Then, lest her starry garments trail
In mire, heart bleed, and courage fail,
The Angel's arms caught up the child.
Her wave of life hath backward rolled
To the great ocean; on whose shore
We wander up and down, to store
Some treasures of the times of old:
And aye we seek and hunger on
For precious pearls and relics rare,
Strewn on the sands for us to wear
At heart, for love of her that's gone.
O weep no more! there yet is balm
In Gilead; Love doth ever shed
Rich healing where it nestles,—spread
O'er desert pillows, some green Palm!
God's ichor fills the hearts that bleed;
The best fruit loads the broken bough;
And in the wounds our sufferings plough,
Love sows its own immortal seed.
Strange glory runs down Life's cloud-rents,
And through the open door of Death
We see the hand that beckoneth
To the beloved going hence.
17

COUSIN WINNIE.

The glad spring-green grows luminous
With coming Summer's golden glow;
Merry Birds sing as they sang to us
In far-off seasons, long ago:
The old place brings the young Dawn back,
That moist eyes mirror in their dew;
My heart goes forth along the track
Where oft it danced, dear Winnie, with you.
A world of Time, a sea of change,
Have rolled between the paths we tread,
Since you were my “Cousin Winnie,” and I
Was your “own little, good little Ned.”
There's where I nearly broke my neck,
Climbing for nests! and hid my pain:
And then I thought your heart would break,
To have the Birds put back again!
Yonder, with lordliest tenderness,
I carried you across the Brook;
So happy in my arms to press
You, triumphing in your timid look:
So lovingly you leaned to mine
Your cheek of sweet and dusky red:
You were my “Cousin Winnie,” and I
Was your “own little, good little Ned.”
My Being in your presence basked,
And kitten-like for pleasure purred;
A higher heaven I never asked
Than watching, wistful as a bird,
18

To hear that voice so rich and low;
Or sun me in the rosy rise
Of some soul-ripening smile, and know
The thrill of opening paradise.
The Boy might look too tenderly,
All lightly 'twas interpreted:
You were my “Cousin Winnie,” and I
Was your “own little, good little Ned.”
Ay me, but I remember how
I felt the heart-break, bitterly,
When the Well-handle smote your brow,
Because the blow fell not on me!
Such holy longing filled my life,
I could have died, Sweet, for your sake;
But never thought of you as Wife;
A cure to clasp for love's heart-ache.
You entered my soul's temple, Dear,
Something to worship, not to wed:
You were my “Cousin Winnie,” and I
Was your “own little, good little Ned.”
I saw you, heaven on heaven higher,
Grow into stately womanhood;
Your beauty kindling with the fire
That swims in proud old English blood:
Away from me,—a radiant Joy!—
You soared; fit for a Hero's bride:
While I, a Man in soul, a Boy
In stature, nestled at your side!
You saw not how the poor wee Love
Pined dumbly, and thus doubly pled:
You were my “Cousin Winnie,” and I
Was your “own little, good little Ned.”
19

And then that other voice came in!
There my Life's music suddenly stopped.
Silence and darkness fell between
Us, and my Star from heaven dropped.
I led Him by the hand to you—
He was my Friend—whose name you bear:
I had prayed for some great task to do,
To prove my love. I did it, Dear!
He was not jealous of poor me;
Nor saw my life bleed under his tread:
You were my “Cousin Winnie,” and I
Was your “own little, good little Ned.”
I smiled, Dear, at your happiness—
So Martyrs smile upon the spears—
The smile of your reflected bliss
Flashed from my heart's dark tarn of tears!
In love, that made the suffering sweet,
My blessing with the rest was given—
“God's softest flowers kiss her feet
On Earth, and crown Her head in Heaven!”
And lest the heart should leap to tell
Its tale i' the eyes, I bowed the head:
You were my “Cousin Winnie,” and I
Was your “own little, good little Ned.”
I do not blame you, Darling mine;
You could not know the love that lurked
To make my life so intertwine
With yours, and with mute mystery worked.
And, had you known, how distantly
Your calm eyes would have looked it down,
Darkling with all the majesty
Of Midnight wearing her star-crown!
20

Into its virgin veil of cloud,
The startled dearness would have fled.
You were my “Cousin Winnie,” and I
Was your “own little, good little Ned.”
I stretch my hand across the years;
Feel, Dear, the heart still pulses true:
I have often dropped internal tears,
Thinking the kindest thoughts of you.
I have fought like one in iron, they said,
Who through the battle followed me.
I struck the blows for you, and bled
Within my armour secretly.
Not caring for the cheers, my heart
Far into the golden time had fled:
You were my “Cousin Winnie,” and I
Was your “own little, good little Ned.”
I sometimes see you in my dreams,
Asking for aid I may not give:
Down from your eyes the sorrow streams,
And helplessly I look and grieve
At arms that toss with wild heart-ache,
And secrets writhing to be told:
I start to hear your voice, I wake—
There's nothing but the moaning cold!
Sometimes I pillow in mine arms
The darling little rosy head.
You are my “Cousin Winnie,” and I
Am your “own little, good little Ned.”
I bear the name of Hero now,
And flowers at my feet are cast;
I feel the crown upon my brow—
So keen the thorns that hold it fast!
21

Ay me, and I would rather wear
The cooling green and luminous glow
Of one you made with Cowslips, Dear,
A many golden Springs ago.
Your gentle fingers did not give
This ache of heart, this throb of head,
When you were my “Cousin Winnie,” and I
Was your “own little, good little Ned.”
Alone, unwearying, year by year,
I go on laying up my love.
I think God makes no promise here
But it shall be fulfilled above;
I think my wild weed of the waste
Will one day prove a flower most sweet;
My love shall bear its fruit at last—
'Twill all be righted when we meet;
And I shall find them gathered up
In pearls for you—the tears I've shed
Since you were my “Cousin Winnie,” and I
Was your “own little, good little Ned.”
22

HESPER.

We called her Hesper; for it seemed
Our Star of Eve had on us beamed,
Like Hesper, from the Heaven above,
To latest life a Lamp of love.
But for a little while withdrawn
She heralds an Eternal Dawn,
Above these mists of mortal breath,
Our Hesper in the dark of death!
Beyond the Shadow of the night
That parted us, she lifts her light
To beacon us the Homeward way,
Where we shall meet again by day.
The Star of Eve may set, but how
It shines, the Star of Morning now,
And smiles with look of love that dries
All tears from our uplifted eyes!
23

APOLOGUES.

25

THE YOUTH AND THE ANGEL.

Once on a time, when Immortals
To earth came visibly down,
There went a Youth with an Angel
Through the gates of an Eastern Town:
They passed a Dog by the roadside,
Where dead and rotting it lay,
And the Youth, at the sickening odour,
Shuddered and turned away:
He gathered his robes about him
And hastily hurried thence;
But nought annoyed the Angel's
Clear, pure, immortal sense.
By came a Lady, lip-luscious,
On delicate tinkling feet:
All the place grew glad with her presence;
The air about her sweet;
For she came in fragrance floating;
Her voice most silverly rang;
And the Youth, to embrace her beauty,
With all his being sprang.
A sweet, delightsome Lady!
And yet, the Legend saith,
The Angel, while he passed her,
Shuddered and held his breath.
26

SUNBEAM AND ROSE.

“ Pretty Rosebud, are thy emerald
Curtains still undrawn?
Odalisque of Flowers,—
Tender soul o' the fervid South!
I am dainty of thy beauty,
All this dewy dawn;
I am fainting for the ruddy
Kisses of thy mouth.”
Sweetly sang the Sunbeam,
With a voice made low to win;
Round the Rose-heart playing,
Till it touched the tenderest strings;
“Pretty Rose-bud, ope thy lattice,
Let thy true love in.”
And for Heaven down-wavering warm,
She waved her leafy wings!
Listen, Maidens, to my Legend of the Sunbeam and the Rose.
Out she sprang, kiss-coloured,
In her eyes the dews of bliss;
All her beauty glowing
With a blush of bridal light;
Gave her balm and bloom for banquet
To the Tempter's kiss;
Proudly oped each chamber
For a princelier delight.
Soon the Snake of Sweetness,
Sated, could no longer stay;
27

And away he went, a-wooing
Every flower that blows!
'Twas the reign of Roses
When her Lover passed to-day:
Lonely in her rifled ruin
Drooped the dying Rose!
Listen, Maidens, to my Legend of the Sunbeam and the Rose.

LOVE-LONGING.

Like a tree beside the river
Of her life that runs from me,
Do I lean me, murmuring ever
In my love's idolatry:
Lo, I reach out hands of blessing;
Lo, I stretch out hands of prayer;
And, with passionate caressing,
Pour my life upon the air.
In my ears the siren river
Sings, and smiles up in my face;
But for ever and for ever
Runs from my embrace.
Spring by Spring the branches duly
Clothe themselves in tender flower;
And for her sweet sake as truly
All their fruit and fragrance shower:
But the stream, with careless laughter,
Fleets in merry beauty by,
And it leaves me yearning after,
Lorn to droop, and lone to die.
28

In my ears the siren river
Sings, and smiles up in my face;
But for ever and for ever
Runs from my embrace.
I stand mazèd in the moonlight,
O'er its happy face to dream;
I am parchèd in the noonlight
By that cool and brimming stream:
I am dying by the river
Of her life that runs from me,
And it sparkles past me ever,
With its cool felicity.
In my ears the siren river
Sings, and smiles up in my face;
But for ever and for ever
Runs from my embrace.

THE NEST.

I built my Nest by a pleasant stream,
That glided along with a smile in its gleam,
Bringing me gold that was sumless;
Ah me! but the floods came drowning one day,
Swept my Nest with its wealth away,
And I in the world was homeless!
I built my Nest in a gay green tree,
And the summer of life went merrily
With us—we were Birds of a feather!
But the leaves soon fell, and my pretty ones flew,
And through my Nest the bitter winds blew;
'Twas bare in the wildest weather.
29

I built my Nest under Heaven's high eaves;
No rising of floods, no falling of leaves,
Can mock my heart's endeavour.
Waters may wash, breezes may blow,
In the bosom of Rest I shall smile, I shall know
My Nest is safe for ever.

HUNT THE SQUIRREL.

It was Atle of Vermeland
In Winter used to go
A-hunting up in the pine-forest,
With snow-shoes, sledge, and bow.
Soon his sledge with the soft fine furs
Was heaped up heavily,
Enough to warm old Winter with,
And a wealthy man was he.
When just as he was going back home,
He looked up into a Tree;
There sat a merry brown Squirrel, that seemed
To say—“You can't shoot me!”
And he twinkled all over temptingly,
To the tip of his tail a-curl!
His humour was arch as the look may be
Of a would-be-wooed sweet Girl,
That makes the Lover follow her, follow her,
All his life up-caught,
A-dreaming on with sleeping wings,
High in the heaven of thought.
30

Atle he left his sledge and furs;
All day his arrows rung,—
The Squirrel went leaping from bough to bough,—
Only himself they stung.
He hunted far in the dark forest,
Till died the last day-gleams;
Then wearily laid him down to rest,
And hunted it through his dreams.
All night long the snow fell fast,
And covered his snug fur-store;
Long, long did he strain his eyes,
But never found it more.
Home came Atle of Vermeland,
No Squirrel! No furs for the mart!
Empty head brought empty hand;
Both a very full heart.
Ah, many a one hunts the Squirrel,
In merry or mournful truth;
Until the gathering snows of age
Cover the treasures of Youth.
Deeper into the forest dark
The Squirrel will dance all day;
'Till eyes go blind and miss their mark,
And hearts will lose their way.
My Boy! if you should ever espy
This Squirrel up in the tree,
With a dancing devil in its eye,
Just let the Squirrel be!
31

THE GLOW-WORM.

The Apes found a Glow-worm,
Smiling in the night,—
A little drop of radiance
Tenderly alight.
“Ho! ho!” shivered the Apes,
Grinning all together,
“We'll make a fire to warm us;
'Tis jolly cold weather.”
With dry sticks and dead leaves,
All the Apes came;
Piled a heap and squatted round
To blow it into flame!
But fire would not kindle so—
Vain their wasted breath!
Only they blew out the glow,
And put the worm to death!
Glow-worms were meant to shine,—
Apes can't blow them hot,
Just to warm their foolish paws,
Or boil their own flesh-pot.
So the world would serve the Poet,
With his light of love:
Probably his use may be
Better known above.
32

THE SUNKEN CITY.

By day it lies hidden, and lurks beneath
The ripples that laugh with light;
But calmly and clearly and coldly as death
It looms into shape by night,
When—the awful Heavens alone with me!—
I look on the City that's sunk in the sea.
Many a Castle I built in the air;
Towers that gleamed in the sun;
Spires that soared up stately and fair,
Till they touched heaven, every one,
Lie under the waters that mournfully
Closed over the City that's sunk in the sea.
Many fine houses, but never a home;
Windows, and no live face!
Doors set wide where no beating hearts come;
No voice is heard in the place;
It sleeps in the arms of Eternity—
The silent City that's sunk in the sea.
There the face of a dead love lies,
Embalmed in the bitterest tears;
No breath on the lips! no smile in the eyes,
Though you watched for years and years:
And the dear drowned eyes never close from me,
Looking up from the City that's sunk in the sea.
Two of the bonniest birds of God
That ever warmed human heart
For a nest, till they fluttered their wings abroad,
Lie in their chambers apart—
33

Dead! yet pleading most piteously
In the lonesome City that's sunk in the sea.
Oh, the brave Ventures there lying a wreck,
Dark on the shore of the Lost!
Gone down with every hope on deck,
When all-sail for a glorious Coast!
And the waves go sparkling splendidly
Over the City that's sunk in the sea.
Then I look from my City that's sunk in the sea,
To that Star-Chamber overhead;
And torturingly they question me—
“What of this world of the Dead
That lies out of sight? and how will it be
With the City and thee, when there's no more sea?”

HOW IT SEEMS.

Stars in the Midnight's blue abyss
So closely shine, they seem to kiss;
But, Darling, they are far apart;
They close not beating heart to heart:
And high in glory many a Star
Glows, lighting other worlds afar,
Whilst hiding in its breast the dearth
And darkness of a fireless hearth.
All happy to the listener seems
The singer, with his gracious gleams;
His music rings, his ardours glow
Divinely: ah, we know, we know!
34

For all the beauty he sheds, we see
How bare his own poor life may be;
He gives Ambrosia, wanting bread;
Makes balm for Hearts, with ache of head.
He finds the Laurel budding yet,
From Love transfigured and tear-wet;
They are his life-drops turned to Flowers,
That make so sweet this world of ours!

THE WILD-FLOWER.

A vagrant Wild-Flower sown by God,
Out in the waste was born;
It sprang up as a Corn-flower
In the golden fields of Corn:
The Corn all strong and stately
In its bearded bravery grew—
Gathered the gold for harvest
From earth and sun and dew;
And when it bowed the head,—as Wind
And Shadow ran their race,
Like influences from Heaven
Come to Earth, for playing place,—
It seemed to look down on the Flower
All in a smiling scorn,
“Poor thing! you grow no grain for food,
Or garner,” said the Corn.
The bonny Flower felt lonely,
Its look grew tearful-sad;
But there came a smile of sunshine
And its beauty grew so glad!
35

Ah, bonny Flower! it bloomed its best
Contented with its place;
A blessing fell upon it
As it looked up in Heaven's face;
And there they grew together
Till the Reapers white-winged came—
All their Sickles shining!
All their faces were a-flame;
The Corn they reaped for earthly use,
But an Angel fell in love
With that Wild Flower, and wore it
At the Harvest-Home above!

THE BIRD OF MORN.

Up out of the Corn the Lark carolled in light,
Like a new splendour sprung from the dark hush of Night;
Green light shimmered laughing o'er forest and sod;
The rich sky was full of the presence of God.
A fountain of rapture he lavished around
His wealth of bird-fancies in blithest of sound:
All through the Morn's sun-city, sea-like his psalm,
With melodious waves dashed the bright world of calm:
But heavily hung the drooped ears of the Corn:
Gathering gold in the dewy morn.
And he sang, as on heaven's fire-grains he had fed,
Till his heart's merry wine had made drunken his head.
36

How he sang! as his honey in Life's cells ne'er dwindled,
And bonfires of Joy on all Life's hills were kindled:
He sang, as he felt that to singing was given
The magic to build rainbow-stairways to heaven!
And he could not have sung with more lusty cheer,
Had all the world listened a-tiptoe to hear!
All the while heavily hung the Corn,
Its drowsy ears heard not the minstrel of Morn.

A BIRD OF NIGHT.

Sing, Birdie, concealed in your Bower,
Sing, Birdie, for this is the hour,
Shake round you the musical shower,
Like Larks from their cloud in the Spring:
The Star of the twilight is twinkling,
The bicycle bells are a-tinkling,
And I have a prescient inkling
That Birdie is going to sing.
She sings not for laud or for Lover;
She sings all unseen as the Dove, or
The Nightingale hid in her cover;
She sings—her delight is to sing!
I seek not my supper or pillow,
My bosom will heave like a billow,
I hang up my harp on the Willow,
And listen like anything.
37

Sing, Birdie, when days have been dreary,
Sing, Birdie, when hearts are a-weary,
Sing, Birdie, till spirits grow cheery,
Sing, Birdie, that never takes wing!
Sing, Birdie, in Spring or September,
From New Year to last of December;
Sing, Birdie, and never remember,
That any one's listening!

THE LADY OF LIGHT.

Star of the Day and the Night!
Star of the Dark that is dying;
Star of the Dawn that is nighing,
Lucifer, Lady of Light!
Still with the purest in white,
Still art thou Queen of the Seven;
Thou hast not fallen from Heaven,
Lucifer, Lady of Light!
How large in thy lustre, how bright
The beauty of promise thou wearest!
The message of Morning thou bearest,
Lucifer, Lady of Light!
Aid us in putting to flight
The Shadows that darken about us,
Illumine within, as without, us,
Lucifer, Lady of Light!
38

Shine through the thick of our fight;
Open the eyes of the sleeping;
Dry up the tears of the weeping,
Lucifer, Lady of Light!
Purge with thy pureness our sight,
Thou light of the lost ones who love us,
Thou lamp of the Leader above us,
Lucifer, Lady of Light!
Shine with transfiguring might,
Till earth shall reflect back as human
Thy Likeness, Celestial Woman,
Lucifer, Lady of Light!
With the flame of thy radiance smite
The clouds that are veiling the vision
Of Woman's millennial mission,
Lucifer, Lady of Light!
Shine in the Depth and the Height,
And show us the treasuries olden
Of Wisdom, the hidden, the golden,
Lucifer, Lady of Light!
39

LITTLE PEARL.

“ Poor little Pearl, good little Pearl!”
Sighed every kindly neighbour;
It was so sad to see a girl
So tender, doomed to labour.
A wee bird fluttered from its nest
Too soon, was that meek creature;
Just fit to rest in mother's breast,
The darling of fond Nature.
God shield poor little ones, where all
Must help to be bread-bringers!
For once afoot, there's none too small
To ply their tiny fingers.
Poor Pearl, she had no time to play
The merry game of childhood;
From dawn to dark she went all day,
A-wooding in the wild-wood.
When others played she stole apart
In pale and shadowy quiet;
Too full of care was her child-heart
For laughter running riot.
Hard lot for such a tender life,
And miserable guerdon;
But, like a womanly wee wife,
She bravely bore her burden.
One wintry day they wanted wood,
When need was at the sorest;
Wee Pearl, without a bit of food
Must up and to the forest.
40

But there she sank down in the snow,
All over numbed and aching;
Poor little Pearl, she cried as though
Her very heart was breaking.
The blinding snow shut out the house
From little Pearl so weary;
The lonesome wind among the boughs
Moaned with its warnings eerie.
A Spirit-Child to wee Pearl came,
With footfall light as Fairy;
He took her hand, he called her name,
The voice was sweet and airy.
His gentle eyes filled tenderly
With mystical wet brightness:
“And would you like to come with me,
And wear the robe of whiteness?”
He bore her bundle to the door,
Gave her a flower when going;
“My darling, I shall come once more,
When the little bud is blowing.”
Home very wan came little Pearl,
But on her face strange glory;
They only thought, “What ails the girl?”
And laughed to hear her story.
Next morn the Mother sought her child,
And clasped it to her bosom;
Poor little Pearl, in death she smiled,
And the rose was full in blossom.
41

THE MAIDEN MARRIAGE.

She sat in her virgin bower,
Half sad with fancies sweet,
And wist not Love drew softly nigh,
Till she nestled at his feet.
“Arise, arise, thou fair Maiden;
And adieu, adieu, thou dear!
But meet me, meet me at the Kirk,
In the May-time of the year.”
Up in her face of holy grace
The startled splendour broke;
Her smile was as a dream of heaven
Fulfilled whene'er she spoke.
She felt such bliss in her beauty,
Such pleasure in her power
To richly clothe her perfect love
For a peerless marriage dower.
“Now kiss me, kiss me, Mother dear;
He calls me, I must go!”
She went to the Kirk at tryste-time,
In raiment like the snow.
But he who clasped her there was Death;
And he hath led her where
No voice is heard, there is no breath
Upon the frosty air.
42

THOU SHALT LOVE THY NEIGHBOUR AS THYSELF.

To love our neighbour, we are told,
“Even as thyself.” That Creed I hold;
But love her more, a thousand-fold!
My lovely Neighbour; oft we meet
In lonely lane, or crowded street;
I know the music of her feet.
She little thinks how, on a day,
She must have missed her usual way,
And walked into my heart for aye.
Or how the rustle of her dress
Thrills through me like a soft caress,
With trembles of deliciousness.
Wee woman, with her smiling mien,
And soul celestially serene,
She passes me, unconscious Queen!
Her face most innocently good,
Where shyly peeps the sweet red blood:
Her form a nest of Womanhood!
Like Raleigh—for her dainty tread,
When ways are miry—I could spread
My cloak, but, there's my heart instead.
43

Ah, Neighbour, you will never know
Why 'tis my step is quickened so;
Nor what the prayer I murmur low!
I see you 'mid your flowers at morn,
Fresh as the rosebud newly born;
I marvel, can you have a thorn?
If so, 'twere sweet to lean one's breast
Against it, and, the more it pressed,
Sing like the Bird that sorrow hath blessed.
I hear you sing! And through me Spring
Doth musically ripple and ring;
Little you think I'm listening!
You know not, dear, how dear you be;
All dearer for the secrecy:
Nothing, and yet a world to me.
So near, too! you could hear me sigh,
Or see my case with half an eye;
But must not. There are reasons why.
44

AN APOLOGUE.

It was a goodly Apple,
The topmost on the Tree,
That golden grew, and sweet all through,
As Fruit that few could see.
Soft in God's smile it glistened,
A Crown that might be given,
To man, if he would soar and win
The Woman nighest Heaven.
Ah! many sighed with longing,
To see the fruitage drop,
But no one climbed to gather it
From off the tall tree-top!
And many ran for Apples
That were rolled along the sod;
But this, which did but tempt toward Heaven,
Was left alone for God.
45

IN MEMORIAM.

The dear ones who are worthiest of our love
Below, are also worthiest above.
Too lofty is his place in glory now,
For hands like ours to reach and wreathe his brow:
A few poor flowers we plant upon his tomb,
Watered with tears to make them breathe and bloom.
The gentle soul that was so long thy ward,
Now hovers over thee, thine Angel-Guard:
And, as thou mourn'st above his dust so dear,
Thy happy Comforter draws smiling near.
Look up, dear friend, our Doves of Earth but rise,
Transfigured into Birds of Paradise.

Apparelled richly in presence of the Gods,
With crown upon his brow, the old Greek stood,
And offered up his soul at Sacrifice.
Even then the tidings came,—“Thy son is dead.”
They saw the sharp words pierce him through and through,
The firm lip quiver, and the face grow white;
They saw the strong man tremble to the knees:
Slowly the big drops gathered in his eyes:
Slowly he took the crown from off his head,
And let it fall to the ground, as one who feels
Heart-broke all over,—for his pride of life
Hath faded; all his strength spilled in the dust.
46

But, when the Messenger went on to tell
The exulting story—how the valiant youth
Had lost a life to win a country's love;
How bravely he had borne him in the battle;
How well he fought, how gloriously he fell;
The weeping Father put his war-look on,
And rose up with the stature of his soul—
All his life listening at the hungry ear—
Eyes burning with the splendour of quenched tears—
His pillared chin firm-set, his brave mouth clenched
In calm resolve to bear, and on his face
A smile as if of Sword-light!
Then he stooped,
And gently took the crown up from the ground;
Softly replaced it on his brow, and wore
It proudly, as the visible symbol of
That other awful crown which darkened down.
So, when the word came that our friend was dead,
We bowed beneath the burden of our loss,
And could have grovelled straightway, prone in dust.
But looking on the happy death he died,
And thinking of the holy life he lived,
And knowing he was one of those that soon
Attain their starry stature, and are crown'd,
We could not linger in the dust to weep,
But were upborne from earth as if on wings;
A sunbeam in the soul dried up the tears,
In which the sorrow trembled to be gone;
For his dear sake we could afford to smile.
47

Why should we weep, when 'tis so well with him?
Our loss even cannot measure his great gain!
Why should we weep when death is but a mask
Through which we know the face of Life beyond?
Grief did but bow us at his grave to show
Far more of Heaven in the landscape round!
For such a vestal soul as his,—so pure,
So crystal-clear, so filled with light, we looked
As at some window of the other world,
And almost saw the Angel smiling through—
'Twas but a step from out our muddy street
Of earth, on to the pavement all of pearl.
Why should we weep? We do not bury love;
The dust of earth but claims its kindred dust;
We do not drop our jewels in the grave,
And have no need to seek our treasures there.
We do not bury life, and cannot feel
The grave-grass grow betwixt our warmth and him;
Death emptieth the House, but not the Heart:
That keeps its darlings safe though out of sight.
Let us uplift the eyelids of the Mind,
And see the living Love who dwelt awhile
In that frail body, now a spirit of Light,
All jubilant upon the hills of God.
This gloom we feel, this mourning that we wear,
Is but the Shadow of his lordlier height.
Why should they weep who have another friend
In death; another thread to guide them through
Life's maze; another tie to draw them home;
A firmer foothold in the infinite;
48

Another kinsman on the spiritual side;
Another grasp to greet them through the Void;
Another face to kindle with its life
The pale impersonality of God?
The dearest souls, you know, must part in sleep,
Though lying hand in hand, or side by side,
And death is but a little longer night.
A little while, and we shall wake to find
The clasp unbroken by the dark, and see
Our lost ones with us face to face, and feel
All years of yearning summed up in a kiss.
Why should we fear the Grave? It is the bed
Where the Kings lay in State with Angels round,
And hallowed it for evermore to us.
Why should we fear the Grave? It is the way
The Conquerors went, and made the very dust
Grow starry with the sparkle of their splendour,
And left the darkness conscious of their presence.
We can look down upon the Grave now they
Have plumbed it, spanned it, one foot on each side.
Through their dear love who have abolished death,
We may shut up our Graveyards of the heart,
That looked so grim of old, and plant anew
This garden of our God to smile with flowers.
Why do we shrink so from Eternity?
We are in Eternity from Birth, not Death!
Eternity is not beyond the stars—
Some far Hereafter—it is Here, and Now!
The Kingdom of Heaven is within, so near
We do not see it save by spirit-sight.
49

We shut our eyes in prayer, and we are There
In thought, and Thoughts are spirit-things—
Realities upon the other side.
In death we close our eyelids once for all
To pass for ever, and seem far away.
And yet the distance does not lie in death;
No distance, save in dissimilitude!
Death's not the only door of spirit-world,
Nor visibility sole presence-sign:
The Near or Far is in our depth of love
And height of life: We look Without, to learn
Our lost ones are beyond all human reach:
We feel Within, and find them nestling near.
Flow soft, ye tears, adown my Lady's face,
And bathe the broken spirit with your balm,
And melt the cloud about her into drops
That glister with the light of Heaven's own smile.
And thou, God, whisper as the tears do fall,
No cloud would rise to rain but for Thy Sun!
She sorroweth not as those who have no hope,
Nor is her House left wholly desolate.
O Grief, lie lightly on my Lady's brow:
She gave her best of life in love for him!
A crown of glory wears the dear bowed head
That hath grown gray in noble sacrifice.
Ah me, I know the heart must have its way.
I know the ache of utter loneliness;
The severance between those that were so near:
The silence never broken by a sound
We still keep listening for; the spirit's loss
Of its old clinging-place, that makes our life
A dead leaf drifting desolately free:
50

The many thousand things we had to say;
And on the dear still face that hushing look,
As though it bade us listen and be still;
As though the sweet life-music still went on,
Though too far off for hearing—(as it doth).
Thrice have I wrestled and been thrown by Death,
Thrice have I given my dear ones to the grave;
And yet I know—see it in spite of tears:
Say it, even while the heart breaks in the voice:
These are His ways to draw us nearer Him.
We climb our heavens by pathways of the cloud.
He breaks the image to reveal Himself!
He takes our dearest things to woo us with;
Takes, for a little while, the gift He gave
For ever: but to better still our best.
Feeling for that which fled, our finite love
Is caught up in the clasp o' the Infinite,
Palpably as though God did press the hand
And make the heart well up and flood the eyes
With that proud overflow of fuller Heaven!
O Lady, let mine be the songbird's part,
That singeth after rain, and shakes the drops
Down, with his thrillings from the drooping spray,
And sets it softly springing nigher Heaven
That 'twixt the blown-clouds smiles with gladdest blue,
As with the eye of bliss that is to be.
Your love-ties have but lengthened to release
The shadowed soul that needed far more sun.
So the fair Valisneria down the dark
Beside his lover, yearneth towards the light,
51

And lives up faster, till he springs afloat,
To sun him on the surface of the stream:
And now he draws up, even by the root,
His Love left pining on the earth below,
Lifting her to his side again, full flower;
And 'tis her Heaven to die and get to him!
What did we ask for him, with all our love,
But just a little breath of fuller life,
To float the labouring lungs? And God hath given
Him Life itself; full, everlasting Life.
What did we pray for? Rest, even for a night,
That he might rise with Sleep's most cooling dews
Refreshed, to feel the morning in his soul?
And God hath given him His Eternal Rest.
We could not offer freedom for one hour
From that dread weight of weariness they bear
Who try for years to shake Death's Shadow off:
And God hath made him free for Evermore.
Before me hangs his Picture on the wall,
Alive still, with the loving, cordial eyes.—
How tenderly their winsome lustre laughed!—
The fine pale face, pathetically sweet,
So thin with suffering that it seemed a soul:
We feared the Angels might be kissing it
Too often, and too wooingly for us:
The hands, so delicate and woman-white,
That day by day were gliding from our grasp,
They used to make my heart ache many a time.
I see another picture now. The form
Ye sowed in weakness hath been raised in power;
52

A palace of pleasure for a prison of pain.
The beauty of his nature that we felt
Is featured in the shape he weareth now!
The same kind face, but changed and glorified;
From Life's unclouded summit it turns back,
And sweetly smiles at all the sorrows past,
With such a look as taketh away grief:
No longer pale, and there is no more pain.
His face is rosed with Heaven's immortal bloom,
For he hath found the land of Health at last;
The One Physician who can cure all ills:
And he hath eaten of the Tree of Life,
And felt the Eternal Spring in brain and breast
Make lusty life that lightens forth in love.
Indeed, indeed, as the old Poet saith,
He was a very perfect, gentle Knight!
A natural Noble, by the grace of God:
Affection in the dearest human form.
Yet, gentle as he was, how gallantly
He bore his sufferings, kept the worst from sight.
Having the heroic flash of English blood.
How freely would he spend his little hoard
Of saved-up strength with spirit lordly and blithe,
To enrich a welcome and make gladder cheer!
And to the Poor he was all tender heart.
The very last time that he talked with me
His trouble was to know how poor folk lived
Upon so small a pittance, and he sighed
For life, for strength to do more than he might,
And in his kingly eyes great sorrow reigned.
No sighs, no weakness now, in that glad world
Where yearning avails more than working here,
53

And to desire is to accomplish good:
For Wishes get them Wings of power, and range
Rejoicing through illimitable life;
And we shall find some Castles built in Air
Stand good; are habitable after all!
To me, his life is like the innocent Flower
That springs up for the light and spreads for love;
Breathes fragrantly in gratitude to God,
And in sweet odours passes from our sight.
But there's no jot of all his promise lost:—
Each golden hint shall have fulfilment yet—
All that was heavenliest perfected in heaven.
All the shy modesties of secret soul
That breathed like violets hidden in the dusk;
The folded sweetness, the unfingered bloom;
The unsunned riches of his rarer self;
With all the Manhood, coyly unconfessed;
Are shut up softly to be saved by Him
Who gave us of the Flower, but keeps the fruit.
The best his life could grow on earth is given;
The rest can ripen till ye meet in heaven.
And, dear my Lady, little can we guess
What God hath planned for those He loves so much
And beckons home so early to Himself!
May some full foretaste of His perfect peace
Fall on you, solacing with solemn joy.
Of such as he was, there be few on Earth;
Of such as he is, there are many in Heaven;
And Life is all the sweeter that he lived,
And all he loved more sacred for his sake:
54

And Death is all the brighter that he died,
And Heaven is all the happier that he's there.
So, one by one the dear old faces fade.
Hands wave their far farewell while beckoning us
Across the river all must pass alone.
We stand at gaze upon their shining track,
Until the two worlds mingle in a mist,
And the two lives are molten into one;
Familiar things grow phantom-like remote;
Things visionary draw familiar-near;
The pictures that we gaze on seem the Real
Looking at us; and we the Shadows that pass.
And yet 'tis sweet to feel—as underfoot,
Our path slopes for the quiet place apart;
Day darkens in the Valley of Death's shade—
Our best half landed in the better life;
The balance leaning to the other side;
The peaceful evening comes that brings all home,
And we are weaning kindly to leave go
Our hold of earth; the Home-sigh of the soul
Is daily deepening; and as the gloom
Gathers, and things are growing all a-dusk,
We know our Stars are smiling overhead,
In their eternal setting high and safe
Where they can look down on our passing night,
Glad in the loftier lustre of a sun
We may not see, with steadfast gaze of love
Unfathomable as Eternity:
Dear memories of Hesper gentleness
That are the Phosphor hopes of coming day,
And death grows radiant with our Shining Ones.
55

Blessed are they whose treasures are in Heaven!
Their grief's too rich for our poor comforting.
Let us put on the robe of readiness,
The golden trumpet will be sounding soon,
That calls us to the gathering in the Heavens!
Let us press forward to their summit of life
Who have ceased to pant for breath and won their Rest,
And there is no more parting, no more pain!
56

CARMINA NUPTIALIA.

The Story of all stories, sweet and old;
Sweetest to Lovers the last time 'tis told.

WEDDED LOVE.

This little spring of life, that feeds the root
Of England's greatness, giveth, underground,
Bloom to the Flower, and freshness to the Fruit;
Then wells and spreads, with golden ripples round,
In circling glory to a sea of might,
Embracing Home and Country of our love:
Half-mirroring the beauty beyond sight,
To take some likeness of the abode above.
57

THE WEDDING.

All Women love a Wedding! old
Or youthful; Mother, Widow, or Wife:
It lights with precious gleam of gold
The river of poorest life:
For one, the gold is far and dim;
For one, a glimpse of things to be;
But here it sparkles, at the brim
Of full felicity!
And they will cluster by the way;
Crowd at this Eden-gate, with eyes
That run, and pray that this Pair may
Keep their new Paradise.
Green is the garden, as at first;
As smiling-blue the happy skies,
Where float the bubble-worlds that burst,
And leave us smarting eyes.
They seem to think that these must clasp
The jewel turned to dew or mist:
The glamour they could never grasp,
Though wedded lips have kissed;
That this gold Apple of promise, crowned
With redness on the sunny side,
Will gradually grow ripe all round;
That this new Lover and Bride
58

Must reach the breathing Magic Rose
Such cunning spirits hold in air,
On which our fingers could not close,
Even when we knew 'twas there!
This nest of hopes will bring forth young
Unto the brooding heart's low call—
Not merely pretty birds'-eggs, strung
To hide a naked wall!
So many start thus, hand-in-hand—
Few only reach the blessed goal;
But these shall surely see the land
Hid somewhere in the soul.
And delicate airs creep sweetly through
Old bridal-chambers dusty and dim:
Down from a far heaven warm and blue,
The mellow splendours swim.
The Woman's eyes grow loving wet;
They dazzle with the morning ray:
The Woman's longing will beget
Her own dear wedding-day!
In his network of wrinkles, Age
May veil their virgin beauties now;
Faces be furrowed—a strange page
Of writing on the brow:
The smiling soul cannot erase
The sad life-lines it shines above;
Yet, imaged in the dear old face,
You see their own young love!
59

The sleeping Beauty wakes anew
Beneath the drops of tender tears;
The Flower unfolds, to drink the dew,
That seemèd dead for years.
All hearts are as a grove of birds
Spring-touched and chirruping every one;
And each will set the Wedding-Words
To a music of her own.
Some withered remnant of old bliss
Flushing on faded cheeks they bring,
Telling of times when Love's young kiss
Was a fire-offering;
And spirits walk in white, as starts
This bridal-tint that blooms anew;
And so, with all their Woman-hearts,
They fling Good Luck's old shoe!

SERENADE.

“ Awake , sweet Love, for Heaven is awake,
And waiting to be gracious for thy sake!
All night I saw thy fairness gleam afar
With fresh, pure sparkle of the Morning-Star:
Awake, my Love, and be the veil withdrawn
From Beauty bathèd at the springs of Dawn.
“Awake, sweet Love, for Heaven is awake
And waiting to be gracious for thy sake.
60

A touch upon some silver-sounding string,
As all the harps of heaven were vibrating
Within me, woke me, bade me rise and say,
‘Awake, my Love, this is our Wedding-day.’
“Awake, sweet Love, for Heaven is awake,
And waiting to be gracious for thy sake.
It is the tender time when turtle-doves
Begin to murmur of their vernal loves:
Spirits that all night nestled in the flowers
Shake perfume from their wings this hour of hours.
“Awake, sweet Love, for Heaven is awake,
And waiting to be gracious for thy sake.
Thy presence sets my cloudland round about
Glowing as heaven were turning inside out:
And all the mists that darkened me erewhile
Are smitten into splendours at thy smile.
‘Awake, sweet Love, for Heaven is awake
And waiting to be gracious for thy sake.
To feel thee mine my faith is large enough,
And yet the miracle needs continual proof!
One minute satisfied, the next I pine
For just one more assurance thou art mine.
“Awake, sweet Love, for Heaven is awake,
And waiting to be gracious for thy sake.
Our great sunrise of life begins to glow,
And all the buds of love are ripe to blow;
And all the Birds of Bliss are gaily singing,
And all the Bells of Heaven for bridal ringing.”
61

ARGUING IN A CIRCLE.

“ When first my true Love crowned me with her smile,
Methought that heaven encircled me the while!
When first my true Love to mine arms was given,
Ah, then methought that I encircled Heaven.”

AN APRIL WEDDING.

O April Wedding,
Sad-smiling, shadowy-bright;
The Grave at foot, and overhead
The merry Bird of Light!
O April Wedding,
The conscious ear at times
Detects the Bell that tolled the knell
Among the Marriage-Chimes!
O April Wedding,
Thy hues together run,—
Through wet eyes seen,—as Red and Green
Will dazzle and grow one!
O April Wedding,
Where Love is crowned in tears,
And on a ground of deepest gloom,
Hope's brightest Bow appears!
62

O April Wedding,
Thy clouds go all in white;
Those that darkliest wept are now
Most glorified in light!
O April Wedding,
Glittering in sun and showers
The very grave looks glad To-day,
And dead hands offer flowers!

LEAVE-TAKING.

When the wings are feathered,
The birds forsake their nest;
So the Bride will leave her Home
Leaning to her Lover's breast.
The tear was in her eye,
But the soul was smiling through,
Brimful of sunshine
As a drop of summer dew.

AS THEY PASSED.

Within Love's chariot, side by side,
Sweetness and Strength did never ride
More perfectly personified:
One of the dearest Angels out
Of Heaven, the Bride was, beyond doubt;
And his a Manhood fit to be
The mortal Mansion of some deity.
63

All eyes, like jewels, on them hung
Glowing with precious life,
As at her Husband's side she clung,
The nestled, new-made Wife!
Glad were they in the happiness they gave,
But in their own proud pleasure they were grave.

EVOË.

In the presence of Spring, our beautiful Spring,
Blithe bird of the bosom! the heart will sing.
A Spirit of Joy in the oldest breast
Is stirring, and making it young as the rest:
Quickens new life to leap in each limb,
And laugh out of eyes that were wintry and dim;
So the old Wine stirs in his winter gloom,
And wants to waken, and climb, and bloom,
As he used to do in the world outside,
When the grapes grew big in their purple of pride.
He would laugh in the light, he would flush in the foam;
In a care-drowning wave he would rosily roam;
For his blood is so mellow, so merry, so warm,
Into spirit of joy it would fain transform,
Rioting ruddily, ripple and play,
And in human life keep holiday—
Break on the brain in a luminous spray,
Tinting with heaven our earthiest clay;
In a fiery chariot mount on his way,
With spirit-company, lordly and gay,
And pass like a soul that is lost in day.
64

So the Spirit of Joy in the oldest breast
Is stirring, and making it young as the rest;
Wakes a new life to leap in each limb,
And laugh out of eyes that were wintry and dim.
Blithe bird of the bosom! the heart will sing
In the presence of Spring, our beautiful Spring.

[English John Talbot, Shakspeare's terribly brave]

English John Talbot, Shakspeare's terribly brave,
Great Fighter, lay in his forgotten grave.
It was but yesterday they found his dust,
The sheath of that old Sword long gone to rust
In English earth; his burial-place recover
In lands owned by a certain Lordly Lover.
And, lo! a Rose had sprung from out his tomb,
And climbed about the Lover's life to bloom:
A peerless flower of the old Hero's stock—
The tenderest gush from that heroic rock.
Not oft doth Fate vouchsafe so plain a sign,
Prefiguring the lives that are to twine.
All sweetness to this wedded life be given;
Its root so deep in earth, its perfect flower in heaven.

A WAYSIDE WHISPER.

“ Seven years I served for you,
To Love, our lord of life,
Ere he made me a Master
And I won you for my wife,—
65

So faithfully, so fondly,
Through a world of doubts and fears,
Seven long years, Belovèd!
Seven long years.
“Seven years you beaconed me—
My leading, crowning star,
To climb the Mount of Manhood,
As you drew me from afar:
You made my gray hours golden,
You glistened through my tears,
Seven long years, Belovèd!
Seven long years.
“Sometimes you shined so near me—
Wide as we dwelt apart—
I hardly sought you with my arms,
You were so safe at heart!
Sometimes you dwined so distant,
I bowed with solemn fears;
Seven long years, Belovèd!
Seven long years.
“I built my Arch of Triumph
For you to ride through;
I kept my lamps all lighted
That the warring winds outblew:
I worked and I waited,
And I fought down my fears,
Seven long years, Belovèd!
Seven long years.
“Now the perils are all over,
And the pains all past,
66

My fortune's wheel full-circle comes
In your dear eyes at last!
For such a prize the winning
Most brief and poor appears,
Yet, 'twas seven long years, Belovèd!
Seven long years.”

THE WELCOME HOME.

Warm is the Welcome! 'tis our way to grasp
The hand in love or greeting till it ache;
But to a tender heart our love doth take
The happy pair it doth so proudly clasp.
And very tender in its love To-day
Is every heart touched with a thought of Him
Low-lying in the Cypress-shadow dim,
From which we came to waft you on your way,
And the still face, that looks from Ashridge towers
With smile more regnant in its touching ruth,
And sad hoar-frost upon the dews of youth,
And Widow's weeds to mix with bridal-flowers.
Through Him we lost, we have more love to give.
As some fond Mother yearningly hath breathed
Her life out in the new life she bequeathed,
Our dearest died that this great love might live.
These darling Violets eloquently mute,
Are rich in sadder bloom and sweeter breath,
And that pathetic sanctity of death,
Because our buried joy was at their root.
67

These Roses blush with a more vital glow
Of crimson—like pale buds, whose tips are red,
As though the flower's heart, in breaking, bled—
Because of looks so lately wan with woe.
These are our Jewels! tears that purged our sight
Like Euphrasy; they lay above the Dead
All drear and dim; but the sad drops we shed
Now live with twinkling lustres in Your light!
The love that darkly wept at heart hath risen
Transfigured. See its sunburst in each face!
As Earth, with all her flowers, smiles embrace
To Spring, rejoicing from her wintry prison.
These Voices, mounting merry as Larks up-spring,
But now were praying on the low, cold sod:
The night is past—they soar in praise to God;
They make the old English greeting rarely ring.
We lean and look to You, thinking of Him.
Warm welcome for the sake of One that's gone;
Warm welcome for your own! Pass on, pass on;
We wave our hands, and shout till sight grows dim:
And, ere the shouts cease ringing in your ears,
We drink a health—all standing—drink to you,
While in our eyes the tears are standing too:
Old tears, that wanted to be wept for years:
But keep a holy hush 'mid all the noise,
To match the silent music your hearts make:
Pass on into your faëry heaven, and take
Our gentlest blessing on your wedding joys.
68

The dawn will rise, though golden days be set;
The birds sing merrily, in spite of Death;
Young hearts will love while lasts this human breath;
Rainbows bridge Earth and Heaven for eyes tear-wet.
Pass gaily on in glory through the gate
Of your new life, beneath this Bridal-Dawn;
And when from future days the veil is drawn
All happy fortunes for you lie in wait!
And, looking on your bliss, with proudest flush
May the dear Mother's face be glorified.
We, now the sound hath ceased, will stand outside
Your Portals—all hearts praying 'mid the hush.

THE BONNY BRIDELAND FLOWER.

In the Brideland sleeping,
Nestled Beauty's Flower;
Came the Lover peeping
Into her green bower;
On her face hung tender
As a drop of dew;
With her virgin splendour
Thrilling through and through.
Now, the shy, sweet maiden
Softly droops her head:
All her heart is laden
With his coming tread!
69

Now the new dawn breaketh
In a blush of bliss;
The Belovèd waketh
At her Troth-love's kiss.
In our dull gray weather
We have seen her bloom;
Fain as Exiles gather
Round some flower from Home;
Seen the face that never
Fades away, but gleams,
With its still smile, ever
Through the land of Dreams.
Fair befall the bonny,
Bonny Brideland flower!
All things dear and sunny
Bless her bridal bower!
Truest love e'er given
Feed her new life-root;
And thou God in heaven,
Crown the flower with fruit.

A LOVER'S SONG.

“ One so fair—none so fair.
In her eyes so true
Love's most inner Heaven bare
To the balmiest blue!
“One so fair—none so fair.
In the skies no Star
Like my Star of Earth so near—
They but shine afar.
70

“One so fair—none so fair.
All too sweet it seems:
Wake me not, O world of care,
If I walk in dreams.
“One so fair—none so fair.
O my bosom-guest,
Love ne'er smiled a happier pair
To the bridal-nest.
“One so fair—none so fair.
Lean to me, sweet Wife:
Light will be the load we bear:
Two hearts in one life.”

THE MARRIED LIFE.

O happy love of weans and Wife,
Ye make a man's heart dance;
Kindle the desert face of life
With colours of romance:
A Land of Promise sparkles where
Your rosier light hath shone;
Too distant to attain, but near
Enough to tempt us on.
'Tis here that Heaven striketh root
To give the Immortal birth,
Man tastes the unforbidden fruit
That deifies on earth.
71

All ye that such a Garden own,
Of wingèd thieves beware,
And trifles, light as thistle-down,
That sow the seeds of care.
Only in singleness of heart,
Ye keep the heaven ye win!
When Wife and Husband pull apart
The Serpent glideth in.

VIA CRUCIS VIA LUCIS.

Spite of the Mask Eternal Love doth wear
At times, that makes us shrink from it in fear,
Because the Father's face we cannot find,
Nor feel the presence of His love behind,
Nature at heart is very pitiful.
How gentle is the hand doth kindly pull
The coverlet of flowers o'er the face
Of Death, and light up his dark dwelling-place!
With fingers and with foot-fall soft and low
She comes to make the quiet mosses grow:
Safe-smiling, draws the Snowdrop through the snow.
Busy in sun and rain, she strives to heal,
Doing her best to comfort or conceal:
With tenderest grass makes green the saddest grave,
And over death her flags of life will wave.
She is the Angel, waiting by the prison,
That saith, “He is not here, he is arisen,”
72

When lorn in soul we seek the face we knew,
And dream of buried sweetness coming through
The earth in spring-time, every flower a smile
Of that dear Presence we have lost awhile.
Thus, on our old Crimean battle-ground,
A poor, unknown, dead Soldier's bones were found—
(Known with those noble Englishmen of ours!)
When the next May came with her sweet Wild Flowers,
Nestled they lay above-ground in a grave
Of tall, plumed grass, funereally a-wave
In the West wind that breathed of Home: and tender
There rose from earth a dawn of such spring-splendour,
As if the heavens were breaking through the tomb:
The Wild Flowers had so buried them in bloom.
And, if we lift our eyes up from the ground,
We see how surely life is compassed round
With the Divine, that doth so kindly bound
The pitiless blaze of fires that soon would scorch
To ashes and put out our tiny torch
Of being; veil the vastness of the Whole,
As with drooped eyelids for the naked soul.
The silent Ministers of Healing crowd
About the broken heart and spirit bowed,
To stay the bleeding with immortal balm,
And still the cries with lips of blessèd calm;
Out of the old death make the new life spring,
Our earthly-buried hopes take heavenward wing;
And to each blinding tear that dimmed our sight,
They give a starrier self; a Spirit of Light.
73

No matter in what separate lives we range,
We feel a rootage deeper than all change.
We know the roses flower to fade: We know
The roses also fade again to blow.
Death is Life's Shadow!
Mute the music looks,
And dark and dead when shadowed forth in books:
Do but interpret it, all heaven will roll
The Life of Music through the echoing soul.
So we grow friends, familiar friends, with Death;
Can look up in his face with firmer faith,
To see the frowning brows shade tender eyes,
Like sunny openings into Paradise.
Through all the gloom and stillness of distress,
With life all muffled up in silentness,
We voyage on—ice-locked, snow-blind, frost-bound—
Like Sailors with the Arctic winter round,
Who thought they stranded in the dark, and found
The solid water all one floating ground;
And drifted through the night, divinely drawn,
Out to the open sea, where daylight shone.
The Shadow of Death is changed into the Dawn,
That radiant Angel of Eternity!
The mourners look up from the grave to see
The dark, that bowed them by its awfulness,
Fell from the Father's hands, spread out to bless.
So, in His own good season, God hath given
This beautiful Joy-Bringer from His Heaven,
To bear His benediction from above,
And be the smiling Presence of His love!
74

Though heaviness endureth for a night,
Joy cometh with the morning. Lo! the Light.
Gone is the winter from our spirit-clime;
This is the herald of our golden time.
In all the beauty of promise, Spring is here—
Our Spring—that will be with us all the year.
O, beautiful Joy-Bringer! everywhere
Happiness smiles around you, like an air
Of glory, which you dwell in—Starrily-fair!
The lives that have in mourning darkling lain
Now gather colour; sun them once again.
The tender shine that cometh after rain
Illumes the eyes of old heart-ache: the pain
Of loss transmuted to all-golden gain.
Just now we are in the shadow of great change,
And faces darken, and old things grow strange;
And from the new Unknown a many shrink.
Our world is getting tilted, Sages think.
“The wine of life is drawn, and the mere lees”
All that is left us. Shame on fears like these!
Whate'er Eclipse may come, storm-signals threat,
We are English yet, my friends, true English yet.
We are standing in the shadow of some sublime
Wide-wingèd Angel of the coming time.
No need to wring our own hands. Let us clasp
Each other's strongly with a manlier grasp.
No fear the pillars of the house will fall
Because we brush our cobwebs from the wall.
Exultingly, O storm-winds, rise and roll
All misty blight from off the stagnant soul,
And lift its trailing wing to winnow through
The cloudy heaven, and bare it to the blue.
75

As in the very heart of Hope we'll ride,
Borne on the ninth wave of our triumph's tide,
That with its new life heaves Old England's breast,
To lift the lowly, succour the oppressed;
Only be loyal to the Loftiest.
Arise and crown old sanctities anew,
By nobler conquest make your lordship true;
Awake the spirit in our English blood,
That slowly brightens to the fervid flood,
And does not flash till the leap comes that shows
Power all the lustier for its long repose.
And if the proudest Nobles have to bow,
Then let it be as Rowers bend to row
A sturdier stroke; and faint not, though ye know
Not under what dark arch we have to go:
But win the nod of an approving soul,
Even though ye never reach your chosen goal.
O! young hearts, dancing to the rise and fall
Of life's most winsome tune at festival,
Looking on your new world wherein ye move
With all the large, sweet wonder of young love,
The moments thronging with the life of years;
Crowded with happiness and quick to tears;
New smiles of greeting in each minute's face;
New worlds of pleasure brimming every space;
This is no winter-withered earth to you.
Love comes, and life is deified anew!
And hearts grow larger than their fortunes are.
The horizon lifts around, sublime and far,
With god-like breathing-space—an ample scope
For loftier life, and glorious ground for hope.
76

Turn, happy Lovers, turn on those below
A little of the light in which ye glow;
A little of your sunshine round you shed,
And make our old world blossom where ye tread.
Bring back a little seed from Eden-bowers
To sow our fallows with immortal flowers.
Ah! Nobles, what a chance is yours to be
The founders of a lordlier Chivalry!
And, with the proud old fire this people lead.
When they were weak, I threatened; now I plead,
Give eyes to their blind strength, for great the need.
The Word of Life is well-nigh preached to death;
The Flower of all sweetness withereth,
Crushed in the grip of many that handle it,
As though they thought Life would but yield its sweet
In giving up the breath; shut the live flower
In a dead Book, and kill it every hour
By reason of their clasp:
We want the Book
Translated into life, not the mere look
Of Life embalmed and shrouded in the Book.
We want the life indeed, quick in the lives
Of Fathers, Mothers, Children, Husbands, Wives.
We need the life itself—lived in the Home
On Week-days, ere, the Sabbath-rest will come
To many a homeless hungerer for home.
We pray “Thy Kingdom Come.” But not by prayer
Can it be ever built of breath in air.
In life through labour, must be brought to birth
The Kingdom; as it is in heaven, on Earth.
77

The light that left Heaven centuries ago
Hath not yet reached dark myriads here below:
Your lives should be the lamp that bears this light,
Still burning, as the stars through all the night.
Because ye are looked up to, they would mark
Your shining!
O, the spirits lying dark
To-day, as jewels waiting but the spark
Of splendour that to Love's dear smile is given,
To brighten with the best that brighten Heaven!
Look down, you Shining Ones, look kindly down,
And save them, set as jewels in your crown.
How beautiful upon the mountain height,
The feet of them that bring the Lowly light—
O'ershadowing, on wings of gentle Love,
The faults and failings that they soar above!
How beautiful the face of those whose smile
Doth make rare sunshine in the heart of Toil;
In low, sick rooms a presence as of Health;
The true Rich folk, in whom the Poor have wealth!
A beautiful life begets itself anew
In other lives, as perfume stealing through
The sense creates the flower to live again;
Its spirit re-embodied in the brain.
Heartfull of shining love and singing hopes,
Come down where life, blind-folded, gnome-like gropes.
We house the Poor to lie and die. But give
Them room to stand in; house the Poor to live;
A little touch of clasping hands might prove
Mightiest of all the languages of Love.
78

Give them a glimpse of kindlier, sweeter grace,
And be the model of a nobler race—
The living Poem that we may not write;
The Picture that we cannot paint to sight;
The Music that we dream but do not get;
The Statue marble never mirrored yet.
Now while the Thrush upon the barest bough
Stands piping high in azure, telling how
The Spring-wind wanders where the Children go
A-violeting by the warm hedge-row;
Daily more rich the Sallow-palms unfold
And change their silver-gray for sunny gold;
“Good-bye, Old Winter,” the blue heavens laugh;
“The flowers shall write you a kindly epitaph,”
Far on a sea of Light the twinkling Lark
Is launched, and floating like a heaven-bound bark,
In which some happy spirit sails and sings,
And stirs us in a dream of waking wings,
With homeward yearnings, heavenward flutterings,
As all about the inner life there plays
A breath of bliss from out old innocent days,—
Now, while the Spring mounts somewhere up the blue,
We bring our firstling flowers to offer you!
Violets, dim and tender; glad Primroses,
That promise, ere the happy prospect closes,
Ye, hand in hand, through rosier days shall tread
Green earth, with richer glories garlanded;
Where the wild Hyacinths, all a-dreaming, lean,
In peeps of deep sea-azure through the green;
And Summer sets that Golden Age of hers
A-bloom, in mellow miles of yellow Furze;
79

While, smiling down the distance, Autumn stands,
The ripened fruitage glowing in his hands.
And, if among the flowers some few appear
Sacred to woe, and leaning with the tear
Still in the eyes, I did but seek the leaf
Of Healing—gather Heartsease for the grief:
Nor are they tears, but rather drops of dew
From heaven, that hidden Love is looking through.
As, after death, our Lost Ones grow our Dearest,
So, after death, our Lost Ones come the nearest:
They are not lost in distant worlds above;
They are our nearest link in God's own love—
The human hand-clasps of the Infinite,
That life to life, spirit to spirit knit!
They fill the rift they made, like veins of gold
In fire-rent fissures torture-torn of old;
With sweetness store the empty place they left,
As of wild honey in the rock's bare cleft.
In hidden ways they aid this life of ours,
As Sunshine lends a finger to the flowers,
Shadowed and shrouded in the Wood's dim heart,
To climb by while they push their grave apart.
They think of us at Sea, who are safe on Shore;
Light up the cloudy coast we struggle for!
The ancient terror of Eternity—
The dark destroyer, crouching in Life's sea
To wreck us—is thus Beaconed, and doth stand
As our Deliverer, with a lamp in hand.
We would not put them from us when we are sad;
We will not shut them from us when we are glad;
80

Nor thrust our Angel from the Marriage Feast,
Although he comes, not clothèd like the rest
In visible garment of a Wedding-Guest.
Now pray we.
Lord of Life, look smiling down
Upon this Pair; with choicest blessings crown
Their love; the beauty of the Flower bring
Back to the bud again in some new spring!
Long may they walk the blessèd life together
With wedded hearts that still make golden weather,
And keep the chill of winter far aloof
With inward warmth when snow is on the roof;
Wed in that sweet for-ever of Love's kiss,
Like two rich notes made one in bridal bliss.
We would not pray that sorrow ne'er may shed
Her dews along the pathway they must tread:
The sweetest flowers would never bloom at all
If no least rain of tears did ever fall.
In joy the soul is bearing human fruit;
In grief it may be taking divine root.
Come joy or grief, nestle them near to Thee
In happy love twin for eternity!
They take our Darling's place; long may they be
As glad and beautiful a hope as he
Hath left a bright and blessèd memory:
Their day fulfil the promise of his dawn—
That, as with Thee, he may with us live on.
81

ANCIENT EGYPT.

Egypt! how I have dwelt with you in dreams,
So long, so intimately, that it seems
As if you had borne me; though I could not know,
It was so many thousand years ago!
And in my gropings darkly underground
The long-lost memory at last is found
Of Motherhood—you Mother of us all!
And to my fellow-men I must recall
The memory too; that common Motherhood
May help to make the common brotherhood.
Egypt! it lies there in the far-off past,
Opening with depths profound and growths as vast
As the great valley of Yosemité;
The birthplace out of darkness into day;
The shaping matrix of the human mind;
The Cradle and the Nursery of our kind.
This was the land created from the flood,
The land of Atum, made of the red mud,
Where Num sat in his Teba throned on high,
And saw the deluge once a year go by,
Each brimming with the blessing that it brought,
And by that water-way, in Egypt's thought,
The Gods descended; but they never hurled
A Deluge that should desolate the world.
There the vast Hewers of the early time
Built, as if that way they would surely climb
82

The heavens; and left their labours without name—
Colossal as their carelessness of fame—
Sole likeness of themselves—that heavenward
For ever look with statuesque regard,
As if some Vision of the Eternal grown
Petrific, was for ever fixed in stone!
They watched the Moon re-orb, the Stars go round,
And drew the Circle; Thought's primordial bound.
The Heavens looked into them with living eyes,
To kindle starry thoughts in other skies,
For us reflected in the image-scroll
That night by night the stars for aye unroll.
The Royal Heads of Language bow them down
To lay in Egypt's lap each borrowed crown.
The light of Asia was of Afric born;
Africa, dusky Mother of the Morn;
She bore the Babe-Messiah meek and mild,
The Good Lord Horus, the Eternal child:
The unhistoric Saviour,—hence divine—
Buddha in India; Christ in Palestine!
The glory of Greece was but the After-glow
Of her forgotten greatness lying low.
Her Hieroglyphics buried dark as night,
Or coal-deposits filled with future light,
Are mines of meaning; by their light we see
Through many an overshadowing mystery.
The nursing Nile is living Egypt still,
And as her lowlands with its freshness fill,
And heave with double-breasted bounteousness,
So doth the old Hidden Source of Wisdom bless
The nations; secretly she brought to birth,
And Egypt yet enriches all the earth.
83

EGYPTIAN ELYSIUM.

Who ploughed and sowed as Mortals, and their furrows straightly drew,
They are Gods that reap, says Horus, in the Aah-en-Ru.
The bark of Khepr bears us, with the good fruits that we grew;
Let them sweat who have to tow it to the Aah-en-Ru!
The Gods at rest are hailing the endeavours of our Crew,
As the Solar Bark goes sailing for the Aah-en-Ru.
Strike the Ap-Ap monster breathless; break his bones, in pieces hew
The coils he rings them with who voyage to the Aah-en-Ru!
We can never die again; we shall soar as spirits do;
No more turning into Reptiles in the Aah-en-Ru.
We shall make our Transformations, and in linen pure of hue,
We shall work in white for ever in the Aah-en-Ru.
84

We shall find the old lost faces and the nestling young that flew
Like Hawks divine, gold-feathered, to the Aah-en-Ru.
We shall see the good Osiris and his son the Word-made-True,
Who died and rose—the Karest!—in the Aah-en-Ru.—
He who daily dies to save us, passing Earth and Hades through;
Lays his life down for a pathway to the Aah-en-Ru.
Lo! the Cross of life uplifted in the region of Tattu,
With its arms outstretched for welcome to the Aah-en-Ru!
We shall follow in the Gateways that our God hath travelled through:
He will meet us, he will greet us, in the Aah-en-Ru.
Here we talk of all the glory that each morning doth renew,
We shall share it, we shall wear it, in the Aah-en-Ru.
Here we filled the Eye of Horus, here we fed the Eye of Shu,
To be luminous for ever in the Aah-en-Ru.
85

THE KRONIAN GODS.

Aye keeping their eternal track,
The Deities of old
Went to and fro, and there and back,
In boats of starry gold.
For ever true, they cycled round
The Heavens, sink or climb;
To boundless dark a radiant bound,
And, to the timeless, Time:
Till mortals looking forth in death
Across the deluge dark,
Besought the Gods to save their breath
In Light's Celestial Ark.
To the revolving Stars they prayed,
While sinking back to Earth;
“In passing through the world of Shade,
Oh, give us thy re-birth!”
And ever a Sun beyond the Sun
Quickened the human root
With longings after life, that run
And spring with heavenward shoot.
Their yearnings kindled such a light
Within them, so divine,
That Death encompassed them with night,
To show the starrier shine.
86

PROTOPLASM.

(PROFESSOR OF PHYSICS LOQUITUR.)

The marvel of it is that when you have
Your Protoplasm perfect, Life is there
Already with its spontaneities,
Its secret primal powers all at work;
Currents of force unfollowably swift;
Unceasing gleams of glory ungraspable;
Pulses of pleasure and sharp stings of pain;
Flashes of lightning fastened up in knots,
And passion-fires bound down in prison cells.
All's there, when we can say 'tis Protoplasm.
Lymph, serum, semen, blood, or nettle-juice,
Are worlds of life, and glassy seas of life,
That heave with life, and spawn and swarm with life;
A universe of life that lurks behind
The infinitely little as the large;
Life-giving and life-taking; fierce with life
As though the hive of life rushed forth on wings,
Or some life-furnace shed its fire in sparks;
Moving to harmonies unutterable
Through the surrounding dark, and beautiful
As planetary wheelings in the heavens.
87

Nor can you have your Matter unmixed with Mind;
The Consciousness it comes from, with the intent
That is fulfilled in Consciousness to be!
For there's no particle of Protoplasm
Panting with life, like a bird newly caught,
As with a heart-beat out of the Unseen,
But comes with all its secret orders sealed
Within it, safe as crumpled fronds of fern,
To be unfolded in due season; all
Potentialities of tendency,
Initial forces of diversity
And modes of motion which are forms of thought;
Likings, dislikings, all are there at work
When we can say life is in Protoplasm.
And that's creation seen; caught in the act,
Although the Actor be invisible.
'Tis no use thrusting in the earth one's head
To be annihilated from behind.
Here is the fact that must be faced in front.
'Tis no use varnishing the face of things
Merely to see one's own reflected there!
This Matter of life will not make Life itself,
No more than Matter of thought will make the Thinker.
We have more Matter of thought than Shakspeare had,
But no more Shakspeares in our mental world.
Life is the unfathomable miracle
That mocks us mutely, while we prate of Law,
At just that distance from the surface where
Its features loom the largest as it lurks.
88

Form is but fossil: life's the running spring.
We see the rhythmic thrills that come and go,
But Life itself is always just beyond—
Is not precipitated, as the pearl,
Within our grasp, however deep we dive.
'Tis like the first star in the twilight heaven
You lie in wait for, never see it coming,
Catch the first twinkle; suddenly 'tis there,
As though it watched you while you winked, and was
There, had been, busy, from eternity.
In vain you look for life beginning; 'tis
But known to us in its becoming! 'tis
Illimitable continuity!
In vain you try to untwist it to the end
That snaps off like the Periwinkle's tail.
We feel through all the universe to touch
The physical, and find it all alike,
Here underfoot the same as overhead,
Dust of the earth or glory of the star,
The Matter yields no closer clasp of Life.
We build our Babels higher than of old
Firmer, but get no nearer Heaven that way:
On the outside of things we stand to rear
Our scaffolding, while Life works from within.
Life haunts me like a Ghost that's never laid,
Yet wavering ever as a face in water.
I shift my ground, I quit my premises,
I seek an undisturbed abiding-place,
As the poor Peasant left his haunted house
To flee from its old ghostly visitant
89

For peace of mind; and mid-way on the road
To his new dwelling heard the Ghost's wee voice,
From out the middle of a feather-bed,
Or God knows where, cry, “And I'm flitting too!”
No sooner do I set my world on wheels,
Atom revolving round its fellow mite,
The universe in little grasped by Law,
Than there's a living face within the wheels,
As in the Prophet's vision. I'm no prophet,
And had no wish to see a spirit; wheels
Were made to run and carry, not to dazzle
And dizzy us until our eyes strike spirits—
That puts a new face on the matter, or
The Soul of things must make a face at me!
I get a good grip-hold of things themselves,
And then am lost in their relationships.
No sooner have I pitched my tent in Matter,
And feel it firm to rest on, palpable,
Tangible as a tombstone underfoot,
Than 'tis a sieve that lets the quick life through;
There is a general rising from the Dead,
And rending of the veil; the grave's astir
As though each atom were the womb of Life;
Twixt each two atoms there's a gulf of God;
My atom is afloat, adrift with me;
It rocks and quakes like any modern throne;
No anchorage in all Immensity!
O'erhead I draw the cloud of darkness round
About me, proof against the common light,
When lo! the gloom begins to laugh at me;
The life breaks in and out, darts through and through,
90

Like Lightning playing at hide-and-seek with me;
Darkness is freaked and shattered with that laugh
Zig-zagged upon the face of the Unknown.
This light within, that will break through the seen,
Cannot be phosphorescence from the dead
And luminosity of mere decay,
A corpse-light of the Grave, or else the Soul
Of all were but a gleam through a dead skull,
Lit up to show the eyeless emptiness,
And Death would be sole quickener of Life.
'Tis in the shadow of the Sepulchre
Perchance I sit to watch and wait in vain
For that which must arise within myself
To lighten through me and illuminate
My seeing; touch mine ear to hear the voice—
“I am the resurrection and the life;
Presence that lives in light and looks through form;”
And he who hides without must bring to light
The meaning by his presence in the soul.
Perchance God speaks to us in parable,
And Matter is but symbol used by Mind,
The visible show that needs interpreting
By second-sight to read the eternal thought;
And I am as a blind man, one who feels
The letters raised, shaped to the sense of touch,
But have not learned to read what they reveal,
So miss the letter-link from soul to soul.
He breathed the breath of life and man became
A living soul—with power to propagate
The spark His breath yet kindles into soul?
And is He breathing yet, as at the first,
91

This breath of life through all things? Is his breath
Our motion—wave of the Eternal Will
In Evolution welling, warm with love?
Are laws that fold us arms of His embrace?
And is life visible breathing of His being?
Matter but so much breath made visible—
The cloud-mask shifting on the Protean face;
And is it need of Him that makes us breathe?
And so we live and have our life in Him
Who is the life indeed for evermore;
The heart of Life whose throbs are visible worlds
Of men and women and immortal souls?
So the voice murmurs when I shut my eyes
And lean and listen on some crumbling verge,
And hear the waters in the well of life
Sing, as they bubble with an eye to heaven,
And might know more could I but drink, but have
Nothing to draw with, and the well's so deep!
92

A POET'S LOVE-LETTER.

You ask me, Friend, to tell you of my Wife!
And on what stair or landing-place of life
I met, as 'twere, God's Angel coming down,
Or mine ascending, for her marriage crown.
I say you sooth, however strange it seem,
The first time that I saw her was in dream:
A vision of the night did clearly glass
Her living lineaments. I saw her pass
Smiling, as those may smile who feel they hold
At heart safe-hidden, secret fold on fold,
The sweetest love that ever was untold.
And as it went the Vision flashed on me
A moment's look; a lifetime's memory.
But little could I dream that this should prove
The whole wide world's one lady of my love.
I had never seen that face or form, and yet
I knew them both by daylight when we met.
Blind World! to pass, and pass my darling by,
My lily of the vale, where she did lie
Sheathed in her own green leaves, and never see
The flower hid-in-waiting there for me,
With cloudy fragrance all about her curled;
And yet my blessings on thee, O blind World!
93

It is so sweet to find with one's own eyes,
Led by divine good-hap, to her surprise,
Our Perdita, our Princess in disguise!
The eye that finds must bring the power to see;
(Says Goëthe's doctrine, comforting to me!)
And now she's found, the world would give me much
Could I but tell it of another such.
Is she an Angel?
Let us not forget,
My friend, that we are scarcely Angels yet.
At least my modest soul would not be pledged
To call itself an Angel fully fledged:
Flesh is so frail, nor am I very sure
Of being, in spirit, altogether pure!
Snags of old broken sins torment me still
With pains that Death itself will hardly kill.
If not an Angel, let the truth be told,
I have not grasped the glitter—missed the Gold.
And lucky is the man who gets the gold,
Refined and fitted for the marriage mould!
Still happier who can keep it pure to bear
The final features of immortal wear.
She is of Angel-stuff; but I'm afraid
The Angels are not given us ready-made:
In other worlds, this Wife of mine may be
The perfect public Angel all may see;
At present she's a private one for me—
My household deity of Common Things,
That into lowly ways a beauty brings,
Just as the grass comes creeping, making bright
And blessèd, with its ripples of delight
And quiet smiles, all pathways dim and bare.
94

Is she a Beauty?
Well, I will not swear
A thousand beauties with her beauty blend;
A thousand graces on her Grace attend;
Or that she is so pitilessly fair
Each passer-by must turn, or stop, or stare,
And he on whom she looks feels instantly
As one that springs from dust to deity.
Nor can I sing of outer symbols now—
The swan-white stately neck; the snow-white brow;
The lip's live rose; the head superbly crowned;
Eyes, that when fathomed, farthest heaven is found!
I chose for worth, not show, nor chose for them
Who want the casket richer than the gem.
That Wife is poor, whate'er her dower may be,
Who hath no beauty save what all may see:
No mystery of the human and divine;
No other face to unveil within the shrine,
Up-lighted only for one worshipper,
And to one love alone familiar:
No veil to lift from her familiar face
Daily, and show the unfamiliar grace.
Eyes shine for others, but divinely dim
And dewy do they grow alone for him!
And her dear face transfigured he doth find
All mirror to the marvel in his mind!
The beauty worn by Bird and Butterfly
Lives on the outside, lustrous to the eye:
But still as nobler grow hue, form, and face,
More inward is shy Beauty's dwelling-place.
And there's a beauty fashioned in the mould
Transmitted from the Beautiful of old,
95

That from some family-face its best doth win:
But my love's dawneth daily from within;
The loveliness of love made visible,
To feature which the sculptor Form is dull:
Not the mere charms of cheek, or chin, or lip,
That vanish on a week's acquaintanceship;
But that crown-beauty which we cannot clasp,
The beauty that eludes Death's own grave-grasp.
At forty, what we seek for in a Wife
Is a calm haven amid seas of strife:
One fresh green summit in the waste of life,
That gathers dew of heaven and tenderly
Turns it to healing drops for you or me;
A spring of freshness in the desert sand;
A palm for shadow in a weary land;
A being that doth not dwell so far apart
That we can find no entrance save at heart;
One that at equal step with us may walk,
And kiss at equal stature in our talk;
To scale the loftiest life, still arm-in-arm,
As well as nestle in the valleys warm.
And here's my Rest, where sheen and shadow meet
O'erhead, the small flowers budding at my feet;
Green picnic places peeping from the wood,
Where you may meet the spirit of Robin Hood
Crossing the moonlight at the old deer-chase;
A brooding Dove the Spirit of the place;
Gleams of the Graces at their bath of dew;
An earthly pleasaunce; heaven trembling through;
My Darling sitting with her hand in mine,
Here, where amid lush grass the large-eyed kine
96

Ruminant, stolid, statelily behold
The milky plenty and the mellowing gold:
And with glad laugh the tiny buttercup
Its beaker of delight brimful holds up;
And prodigally glorified, the mead
Is all aglow with red-ripe sorrel-seed,
And quick with smells that make one long to be
A-gathering sweets, bloom-buried utterly.
The sylvan world's old royalties around
With all their Summer beauty newly crowned:
Broad beeches, that have caught alive the swirl
O' the wind-wave—shaped it in their branches' curl;
Proud oaks, from head to foot all feudal yet;
And whispering pines, that have in worship met,—
Their delicate Gothic sharp against the shine
Of sunset heaven's honeyed hyaline—
Black-plumed and hushed as though they were the Hearse
Of day's departed glory, are those Firs
When Venus, glowing in the lift above,
Laughs down on lovers with the eye of Love,
And such a pulse of pleasure as is given
To those who reach the promise of her heaven,
Luminous in her loveliness, as though
The Goddess' self were coming from the glow.
I brought my Love here happy months ago,
Her winter prison, amid miles of snow.
Poor bird! she felt that she was caged at last,
Her forest far away, its freedom past:
Her eyes made mournful search, mine laughed to see,
She would have flown, and knew not where to flee.
97

The little wedding-ring had grown a round
Large hoop about our lives, and we were bound!
Useless was all petitionary quest,
No outlet!—so she nestled in my breast;
And may we always be as wise, my dear,
When things look dark around, or foes are near.
Peep in at window now and you may see
Her leading captive my captivity:
Contented with her prison, polishing
The grating round her in a shining ring.
And now the fragrant summer-tide hath come
And isled us in a sea of leaf and bloom.
And now the tremulous sweetness, restless grace,
Have settled down to brood in her dear face
That lightens by me, fair and privet-pale,
Soft in the shadow of the bridal-veil:
The sunny sparkle of Southern radiance
That in her English blood doth bicker and dance,
Hath steadied to the still and sacred glow
Which hath more inner life than outer show.
So many are the mishaps and the griefs
In marriage, like Beau Brummel's Neckerchiefs;
Armfuls of failure for one perfect tie!
And have we hit it, do you say or sigh?
Time was when life in triumph would have run,
And faster than the fields catch fire o' the sun,
Or light takes form and feature in the flowers,
My answer would have blossomed with the hours
I should have felt the buds begin to blow
With my love-warmth, another life-dawn glow;
98

Heard all the bells in heaven ring quite plain
Because young blood went singing through my brain:
Like vernal impulses the verses came;
With soul on tiptoe and my words a-flame,
I should have sung that we had reached the land
Where milk and honey flow o'er golden sand,
And that far El Dorado we had found
Where nothing less than nuggets gild the ground.
But 'tis no more the lyric life of youth,
When fancy seemèd truer than all truth,
And standing in that dawn, the sun of love
Hung dewy rainbows on each web we wove,
And to the leap o' the blood we felt it given
To scale the tallest battlements of heaven;
Poor was the prize of wisdom's proudest dower
Beside that glory of the flesh in flower!
And now I cannot sing my ladye's praise,
Lark-like, as in the morning of those days
When at a touch the song would upward start,
And, half in heaven, empty all the heart.
'Tis August with me now and harvest-heat,
And in the nest the silence is so sweet;
Moreover, love is such a bosom thing,
In words its nestling nearnesses take wing;
No flower of speech could ever yet express
The married sweetness or the homeliness;
We cannot fable the ineffable;
The tongue is tied too, with the heart at full:
Music may hint it with her latest breath,
But fails;—her heaven is only reached through Death.
99

The stirring of the sap in bole and bough—
Mere feeling—will not set me singing now!
I thank my God for all that He hath given
And ope the windows of my soul to heaven;
I think, in bowed and very humble mood,
I must be better, He hath been so good.
So would I journey to the land above,
Clothed with humility and crowned with love.
I look no more Without, and think to win
The treasures that are only found Within;
And, after many years, have grown too wise
To search our world for some Lost Paradise;
Or feel unhappy should we chance to miss
The next life's possibilities in this.
'Tis here we follow—but hereafter find
The goal all-golden miraged in the mind.
That Age of Gold behind us, and the Isles
Where dwell the Blessèd are but as the smiles
Reflected from a heaven that onward lies,
The Gold of sundown caught in Orient skies.
And yet, if any bit of Eden bloom
In this old world, 'tis in the Wedded Home.
And, what a wonder-world of novel life
Do these two range through, hand-in-hand, as Wife
And Husband; in one flesh two spirits paired;
Their joys all doubled, all their sorrows shared:
Two spirits blending in one heavenward spire,
That soars up fragrant from an altar fire;
Two halves in one perfection wed to prove
The perfect Oneness of immortal love!
We cannot see Love with our mortal sight,
But lo! the singing Angels come some night
100

To bring His tiny image in the Child
Wherewith from out the darkness He hath smiled;
The tender voice whereby the All-loving breaks
His silence, and in human fashion speaks;
The gentle hand put forth to draw us near
The heart of life whose pulse is beating here.
Though seldom do we guess, so dim our eyes,
That God comes down in such a simple guise,
And yet of such the kingdom of Heaven is;
Through them the next world is revealed in this!
And how they come to us to bring us back
What we have lost along the dusty track:
The sweetness of the dawn, the early dew,
The tender green, and heaven's unclouded blue;
The treasures that we dropped upon the ground,
And they, in following after us, have found!
Ah, Love, my life is not so bare of leaf
But we can find a nest for shelter if
The bounteous heavens should bless us from above
And in our branches nestle some wee dove.
Nor will my darling lack a touch still warm
To finish that fine sculpture of her form;
For if Love dwell in me, the Angel-Elf
Shall kiss her to some likeness of himself,
And little arms shall bow the pride they deck
With other bridal fetters for her neck.
At the hill-top I reach my resting-place,
To find clear heaven—feel it face to face;
Firm footing after all the weary slips,
To hold the cup unshaken at the lips.
The meaning of my life grows clear at last,
And all my troubles smile back now they're past:
101

The clouds put on a glory to mine eyes,
My sorrows were my saviour in disguise:
And I have walked with angels unawares,
And upward mounted, climbing over cares,
A little nearer to the home above.
Here let me rest in the good Father's love
Embodied in these arms embracing me,
Serenely as the sea-flowers in deep sea.
'Tis true, just as we feel our foreheads crowned,
And all so glorious grows the prospect round,
It seems one stride might launch us on heaven's wave,
Thenceforth our steps go downward to the grave.
What then? I would not rest till spirit rust,
And I am undistinguishable dust:
And if Love bring no second Spring to me,
This is the fore-feel of a Spring to be;
If no new Dawn, yet in the evening hours,
Freshly bedewed, more sweetly smell the flowers;
And round my path the glow of love hath made
Illumination for the evening shade.
Something, dear Lord, Thou hast for me to say,
Or wherefore draw me toward the springs of day,
And make my face with happiness to shine
By softly placing this dear hand in mine
Even while I stretched it to Thee through the dark:
A something that shall shine aloft and mark
Thy goodness and my gratitude upon
This Mount Transfiguration when I'm gone?
If Thou hast set my foot on firmer ground,
Lord, let me show what helper I have found;
102

If Thou hast touched me with thy loftier light,
Lord, let me turn to those that walk in night
And climb with more at heart than they can bear,
Though but a twinkle through their cloud of care.
Only a grain of sand my life may be,
But let it sparkle, Lord, with light of Thee!
I ask not that my Verse should break in bloom
With flowers, to crown my love or wreathe my tomb;
Nor do I seek the laurel for my brow,
But only that above my grave may grow
Some sunny grains of Thine immortal seed
That may be garnered up for human need
In Bread of Life on which poor souls can feed!
Of late my life hath gathered more at root,
Making new sap, I trust, for future fruit:
Lord, sun my harvest, set it ripening
With sheaves in autumn thick as leaves in spring!
It is my prayer at night, my dream by day,
To make some conquest for the Poor. I pray
Thee let me have my one supreme desire,
To fill some earthly facts with heavenly fire;
Give voice to their dumb world before I die;
Their patient pain more piteous than a cry!
Let me work now, while all eternity
With its large-seeming leisure waits for me.
103

A LETTER IN BLACK.

A-floating on the fragrant flood
Of Summer—fuller hour by hour;
All the Spring-sweetness of the bud
Crowned by the glory of the flower,—
My spirits with the season flowed,
The air was all a breathing balm;
The lake a flame of sapphire glowed;
The mountains lay in cloudless calm:
Green leaves were lusty; roses blushed
For pleasure in the golden time;
The birds through all their feathers flushed
For gladness of their marriage-prime:
Listless among the lilies I threw
Me down, for coolness, 'mid the sheen:
Heaven, one large smile of brooding blue;
Earth, one large smile of basking green.
A rich suspended shower of gold
Laburnum o'er me hung its crown:
You look up heavenward and behold
It glowing, coming in glory down!
There, as my thoughts of greenness grew
To fruitage of a leafy dream,—
There, friend, your letter thrilled me through,
And all the summer lost its gleam.
The world, so pleasant to the sight,
So full of voices blithe and brave,
And all her lamps of beauty alight
With life! I had forgot the Grave;
104

And there it opened at my feet,
Revealing a familiar face
Upturned, my whitened look to meet,
And very patient in its place.
My poor bereaven friend! I know
Not how to word it, but would bring
A little solace for your woe,—
A little love for comforting:
And yet the best that I can say
Will only help to sum your loss;
I can but look and long, and pray
God help my friend to bear his Cross.
I have felt something of your smart,
And lost the dearest things e'er wound
In love about a human heart:
I, too, have life-roots underground.
From out my soul hath leaped a cry
For help! Nor God Himself could save:
And tears yet start that naught will dry
Save Death's hand with the dust o' the grave.
God knows, and we may one day know,
These hidden secrets of His love;
But now the stillness stuns us so;
Darkly, as in a dream, we move.
The glad life-pulses come and go,
Over our head and at our feet;
Soft airs are sighing something low;
The flowers are saying something sweet;
And 'tis a merry world. The lark
Is singing over the green corn;
105

Only the house and heart are dark,—
Only the human world forlorn.
There, in the bridal-chamber, lies
A dear bedfellow all in white;
That purple shadow under the eyes,
Where star-fire swam in liquid night.
Sweet, slippery silver of her talk;
The music of her laugh so dear,
Heard in home-ways, and wedded walk,
For many and many a golden year;
The singing soul and shining face,
Daisy-like glad by roughest road;
Gone! with a thousand dearnesses
That hid themselves for us and glowed.
The waiting Angel, patient Wife,
All through the battle at our side,
That smiled her sweetness on our strife
For gain, and it was sanctified!
When waves of trouble beat breast-high
And the heart sank, she poured a balm
That stilled them; and the saddest sky
Made clear and starry with her calm.
And when the world with harvest ripe
In all its golden fulness lay;
And God, it seemed, saw fit to wipe,
Even on earth, all tears away;
The good true heart that bravely won,
Must smile up in our face and fall;
And all our happy days are done,
And this the end. And is this all?
106

The bloom of bliss, the secret glow,
That clothed without, and inly curled,
All gone. We are left shivering now,
Naked to the wide open world!
A shrivelled, withered world it is,
So sad and miserably cold;
Where be its vaunted braveries?
'Tis gray, and miserably old.
Our joy was all a drunken dream;
This is the truth at waking! we
Are swept out rootless by the stream
And current of calamity—
Out on some lone and shoreless sea
Of solitude so vast and deep,
As 'twere the wrong Eternity,
Where God is not, or gone to sleep.
It seems as though our darling dead,
Startled at Death's so sudden call,
With falling hands and dear bowed head
Had, like a flower-filled lap, let fall
A hoard of treasures we have found
Too late! so slow doth wisdom come!
We for the first time look around
Remembering this is not our Home.
My friend, I see you with your cup
Of tears and trembling—see you sit;
And long to help you drink it up,
With useless longings infinite!—
Sit rocking the old mournful thought,
That on the heart's-blood will be nursed,
Unless the blessed tears be brought;
Unless the cloudy sorrows burst.
107

The little ones are gone to rest,
And for a while they will not miss
The Mother-wings above the nest;
But through their slumber slides her kiss,
And, dreaming she has come, they start,
And toss wild arms for her caress,
With moanings that must thrill a heart
In heaven with divine distress.
And Sorrow on your threshold stands,
The Dark Ladye in glooming pall:
I see her take you by the hands;
I feel her shadow over all.
Hers is no warm and tender clasp;
With silence solemn as the Night's,
And veilèd face, and spirit-grasp,
She leads her Chosen up the heights:
The cloudy crags are cold and gray,
You cannot scale them without scars:
So many Martyrs by the way,
Who never reached her tower of stars;
But there her beauty shall be seen,
Her glittering face so proudly pure;
And all her majesty of mien;
And all her guerdon shall be sure.
Well. 'Tis not written, God will give
To His Beloved only rest!
The hard life of the cross they live,
They strive, and suffer, and are blest.
The feet must bleed to reach their throne,
The brow must burn before it bear
One of the crowns that may be won,
By workers for immortal wear.
108

Dear friend, life beats though buried 'neath
A vast black vault of night! and see
There trembles through this dark of death,
Starlight of immortality!
And yet shall dawn the eternal day
To kiss the eyes of them that sleep;
And He shall wipe all tears away
From tired eyes of them that weep.
'Tis something for the poor bereaven,
In such a weary world of care,
To think that we have friends in heaven;
Who helped us here, may aid us there.
These yearnings for them set our Arc
Of being widening more and more,
In circling sweep through outer dark
To day more perfect than before.
So much was left unsaid. The soul
Must live in other worlds to be;
On earth we cannot grasp the whole,
For that Love has eternity.
Love deep as death, and rich as rest;
Love that was love with all Love's might;
Level to needs the lowliest!
Cannot be less Love at full-height.
Though earthly forms be far apart,
Spirit to spirit nestles nigher;
The music chords the same at heart,
Though one voice range an octave higher.
Eyes watch us that we cannot see;
Lips warn us which we may not kiss;
They wait for us, and starrily,
Lean toward us from heaven's lattices.
109

We cannot see them face to face,
But love is nearness; and they love
Us yet, nor change, with change of place,
In more than human worlds above,
Where love, once leal, hath never ceased,
And dear eyes never lose their shine,
And there shall be a marriage feast,
That turns Earth's water to Heaven's Wine.

WIDOW MARGARET.

Poor Margaret's window is alight;
The Widow sits alone;
Though long into the silent night,
And far, the world is gone.
She lives in shadow till her blood
Grows bitter and blackened all;
Upon her head a mourning hood;
Upon her heart a pall.
The stars come nightly out of heaven,
Old Darkness to beguile;
For her there is no healing given
To their sweet spirit-smile.
That honey-dew of sleep the skies
In blessed balm let fall,
Drops not on her poor tired eyes,
Though it be sent for all.
At some dead flower, with fragrance faint,
Her life opes like a book;
The old sweet music makes its plaint,
And, from the grave's dim nook,
110

The buried bud of hopes laid low,
Flowers in the night full-blown;
And little things of Long-Ago
Come back to her full-grown.
Her heart is wandering in a whirl,
And she must seek the tomb
Where lies her long-lost little girl.
O, well with them for whom
Love's Morning-Star comes round so fair
As Evening Star of Faith,
Already up and shining, ere
The dark of coming death.
But Margaret cannot reach a hand,
Beyond the dark of death;
Her spirit swoons in that high land
Where breathes no human breath;
She cannot look upon the grave
As one eternal shore;
From which a soul may take the wave,
For heaven, to sail or soar.
Across that Deep no sail unfurled,
For her; no wings put forth;
She tries to reach the other world
By groping down through earth.
'Twas there the Child went underground;
They parted in that place;
And ever since, the Mother found
The door shut in her face.
Though many effacing springs have wrapped
With green the dark grave-bed;
111

'Twas there, the breaking heart-strings snapped
As she let down her dead;
And there she gropes with wild heart yet,
For years, and years, and years;
Poor Margaret! there will she let
Her sorrow loose in tears.
All the young mother in her old voice
Its waking moan will make!
A young aurora light her eyes
With radiance gone to wreck:
And then at dawn she will return,
To her old self again;
Eyes dim and dry; heart gray and dern;
And querulous in her pain.—
“We never loved each other much,
I and my poor good-man;
But on the Child we lavished such
A love as overran
All boundaries, loving her the more
Because our love was pent;
Striving as two seas try to pour
Their strength through one small rent.
“For children come to still link hands,
When lives have ebbed apart;
And hide the rift, when either stands
At distance heart from heart.
So on our little one we'd look;
Press hands with fonder grasp;
As though we closed some holy book,
Softly, with golden clasp.
112

“And as the dark earth offers up
Her little Winterling,
The Crocus, pleading with its cup
Of hoarded gold, to bring
Down all the gray heaven's quickening shower
Of Spring to warm the sod;
So did we lift the winsome flower
That sprang from our dark clod.
“Our little Golden-heart, her name!
And all things sweet and calm,
And pure and fragrant, round her came
With gifts of bloom and balm.
And there she grew, my flower of all,
Pure gold and pearly white;
Just as at Summer's smiling call
The lily stands alight.
“To knee or nipple, was the goal
Of her wee stately walk;
The voice of my own silent soul
Her darling baby-talk;
Then darklingly she dwined and failed;
And looking on our dead,
The father wailed awhile and ailed,
Turned to the wall and said—
“‘'Tis dark and still, our house of life,
The fire is burning low;
Our pretty one is gone, old Wife,
'Tis time for me to go:
Our Golden-heart has gone to sleep;
She's happed in for the night;
And so to bed I'll quietly creep,
And sleep till morning light.’”
113

Once more the Widow Margaret rose
And through the night passed on.
Long shadows weird of tree and house
Made ghosts in moonlight wan!
She passed into the churchyard, where
The many glad life-waves
That leapt of old, have stood still there,
In green and grassy graves.
“O would my body were at rest
Beneath this cool grave-sward:
O would my soul were with the Blest,
That slumber in the Lord!
They sleep so sweetly underground;
For Death hath shut the door,
And all the world of sorrow and sound
Can trouble them no more.”
A spirit-feel is in the place,
That makes the poor heart gasp;
Her soul stands white up in her face
For one warm human clasp!
To-night she sees the Grave astir;
And as in prayer she kneels,
The mystery opens unto her:
She for the first time feels
The spirit-world may be as near
Us moving silent round,
As are the dead that sleep a mere
Short fathom underground;
And there be eyes that see the sight
Of lorn ones wandering, vexed
Through some long, sad, and shadowy night
Betwixt this world and next.
114

Doorways of fear, are eye and ear,
Through which the wonders go;
And through the night with glow-worm light,
The Church is all aglow!
There comes a waft of Sabbath hymn;
She enters; all the air
With faces fills divine and dim,
The Blessed Dead are there.
One came and bade poor Margaret sit,
Seemed to her as it smiled,
A great white Bird of God alit
In a forest marble-aisled.
“Look to the Altar!” there a spell
Fixed her; she saw upstart,
A Woman, like a soul in hell,
'Twas her own Golden-heart.
“It would have been thus, Mother dear,
And so God took her, from
All trials and temptations here,
To His eternal home;
And you shall see her in a place
Where death can never part.”
She looked up, and in that pure face
Found her own Golden-heart.
The lofty music rose again
From all those happy souls,
Till all the windows thrilled, as when
The organ-thunder rolls;
And all her life was like a light
Weak weed the stream doth sway,
Until it reaches the full-height,
Breaks, and is borne away.
115

Her life stood still a-listening to
The music! then a hand
Took hers, and she was floated through
A mystic border-land.
'Twas Golden-heart! from that eclipse
She drew her into bliss:
Two spirits closed at dying lips,
In one immortal kiss.
Next day an early worshipper
Was kneeling in the Aisle;
A statue of life that did not stir,
But knelt on with a smile
Upon the face that smiled with light,
As though, when left behind,
It smiled on with some glorious sight
Long after the eyes were blind.

PICTURES IN THE FIRE.

Old Winter blows, and whistles hard,
To keep his fingers warm, while I
Shut out the cold night, frosty-starred,
Bleak earth and bitter sky;
And to the Fireplace nestle nigher,
To pore on pictures in the Fire.
It has a soft, blithe, murmuring glow,
As if it crooned a cradle-song;
Yet whispers of some awful woe
Are on each flaming tongue
That may have licked up human life,
Quick, ruddy as a murderer's knife!
116

I see the Dead Men underground,
Just as they found them rank on rank;
Old Mothers—Young Wives—red-eyed round
The Corpses brought to bank;
I see the mournful phantoms flit
About the mouth of Hartley Pit;
And that poor Widow above the rest
All eminent in Suffering's crown,
Who wearing sorrow's loftiest crest
Is bowed the lowliest down;
Poor Widow with her Coffins seven,
Look down on Her, dear God in Heaven!
I hear that crash with sinking heart—
Eternity has broken through!
I see him play his Hero part,
A leader tried and true,
Who faithful stood to his last breath,
And fell betwixt them and their death.
I hear him bid them trim their lamps—
For Light hath not gone out in Heaven!
And through the dark, above the damps,
He beacons them to haven:
Long in his eyes had lived the light
That should make starry such a Night.
I see the strong man's agony,
That seeks to rend his ghastly shroud;
The touch of solemn radiancy
That kindles through the cloud;
The trust that earned a nobler doom
Than such a death in such a tomb;
117

The valour that invisibly
Lifted the bosom like a targe;
The hidden forces that must be,
Ready for Life's last charge!
And all the bravery brave in vain,
And all the majesty of pain:
Visions of the old Home that flash
With all the mind's last mortal power;
The tears that burn their way, to wash
A soul white in an hour,
When thoughts of God go deeper than
The Devil at his utmost can.
I hear the poor faint heart's low cry
That sickens at the sight of Doom;
The prayer of those that feel it nigh,
And groping through the gloom!
They cower together hand-in-hand
At the dark door of the dark land.
Ghostly and far away life seems
To one returning from a swound;
And sharp the sorrow comes in dreams
When we are helpless bound;
But deathliest swoons, or ghastliest nights,
Have no such sounds, or spirit-sights.
The waiting human world is near,
Yet farther off than Heaven for them
Who bow the doomèd head, to bear
Death's cruel diadem,
With farewell words of solemn cheer
And love for those who cannot hear:
118

Old heads with hair like spray above
A tossed and troubled sea of life;
Young hearts, just kissed to the quick by Love,
That leave a one-day wife.
O pathos of a hopeless fate!
O pain of those left desolate!
'Tis brave to die in Battle's flash,
For the dear country we adore—
Struck breathless 'mid the glorious crash,
When banners wave before
The fading eyes, and at the ears
We are caught by following Victory's cheers!
And sailor-blood that on the waves
Can feel the Mother's heaving breast—
True sailor-blood no wailing craves
Over its place of rest,
When souls first taste eternity
In those last kisses of the Sea:
And Death oft comes with kind release
To win a smile from those that lie
Where they may feel the blessèd breeze,
And look up at the sky,
And drink in, with their latest sigh,
A little air for strength to die:
But 'tis a fearful thing to be
Instantly buried alive; fast-bound
In cold arms of Eternity
That clasp the breathing round,
And hold them though their Comrades call
And dig with efforts useless all.
119

A tear for those who, in that night,
Went down so unavailingly;
A cheer for those who fought our fight,
And missed the victory!
Peace to the good true hearts that gave
A moral glory to that grave!
We know not how amid the gloom
Some jewel of the just outshone;
With precious sparkle lit the tomb
And led the hopeless on
To hope, and showed the only way
To find God's hand and reach His day.
We know not how in that quick hour
Some poor uncultured human clod
May have put forth its one sweet flower,
Acceptable to God:
Or how the touch of Death revealed
Some buried beauty life concealed:
We know now how the Dove of peace
Came brooding on the fluttering breast,
To make the fond life-yearnings cease,
And fold them up for rest;
And into shining shape the soul
Burst, like the flame from out the coal:
We only know the watch-fires burned
Long in their eyes for human aid,
And failed, and then to God they turned,
And altogether prayed,
And that the deepest Mine may be,
For prayer, God's whispering Gallery!
120

Dear God, be very pitiful
To these poor toiling slaves of men;
Be gracious if their hearts be dull
With darkness of their den:
'Tis hard for flowers of Heaven to grow
Down where the earth-flowers cannot blow!
Their lives are as the Candle-snuff,
Black in the midst of its own light!
Let hard hands plead for spirits rough—
They work so much in night.
Be merciful, they breathe their breath
So close to danger, pain, and death.
The love-mist in a Father's eye
Must rise, and soften much that's rude
In his poor children—magnify
The least faint gleam of good!
O, find some place for human worth
In Heaven, when it has failed on Earth.
no previous section My Lyrical Life
next section