The Poetical Works of Walter C. Smith :: :: University of Virginia Library

Evangelist and village smith, a man of good report,
And cunning among cattle, known to all the country near,
Luke could make the bellows snore, and also painfully exhort,
And feared the Lord, and had a new religion once a year.

He had been a Chartist leader in his hot and hopeful youth,
Talking gunpowder and bayonets about the rights of man,
Until he got converted, when he preached about the Truth,
The Blood and the Atonement, the Covenant and Plan.

Tired of his parish kirk, he tried the Baptists for a season,
Tired of them, and turned a Methodist, recanting all the past,
Tired again, and took to shady faiths that shun the ways of reason;
And every change, he vowed, had brought the peace of God at last.

And every change had left a stratum of belief on him,
With fossils here of Presbytery, there of his Baptist time,
Then traces of the Methodist, and now the footprints dim
Of creatures that had sprawled across the later mud and slime.

For partly Antinomian now, and partly Manichee,
He blundered back to Church, and deemed that he was orthodox,
And stormed at modern thinking as the raging of the sea
That cast up mire and dirt upon the everlasting rocks.

And yet his heart was right, although his thought was so confused—
A tangled knot of broken thrums he could not extricate;
All ordered thought of reason and of science he abused,
But he was full of pity, and his love was very great.

And because he was so earnest, and because he spoke good words
Whose meaning none searched nicely, and because he seemed to stir
Serious thoughts in careless hearts, as if he touched their higher chords,
He was sought, and he was looked to as a chosen minister.

A great broad-headed fellow, working hard through all the week,
And thinking hard, the while he worked, upon the fate of man,
He was fain to save the sinner and the erring, and would speak
A world about the chaff and wheat, and sifting with a fan.

There was a thick husk in his voice that weirdly rose and fell,
As with a knotted fist he smote upon a horny palm,
And poured his prophet-burden about sin and death and hell,
Now like tender, pleading Gospel, now like bitter cursing Psalm.

193

The man had power, for certain, for he had a human heart,
Gleams of humour, tender touches, too, of pathos, and throughout
A vein of clear sincerity whose might is more than art,
And the firmness of a soul that had not any wavering doubt.

And when he came about our house, at first, I liked to hear
His pithy words, good-humoured if you did not say him nay;
And stories of himself that were like flotsam drifting near
From tempests of an unknown sea whose storms were far away.

He had a keen shrewd humour, but it mostly had to do
With the meaner part of nature, and was blind to what is best;
He put his finger on a blot that shamed and humbled you,
And thought he read you truest when you showed unworthiest.

Though God was always in his mouth, you did not feel the awe
Which hangs about the Presence when he spoke of the Supreme;
He was more at home with Satan; then he spake as if he saw;
But to me his speech of God was like an echo, or a dream.

And yet I liked him, swinging with long strides at gloaming late,
And stretching his vast limbs beside the blazing winter fire,
With pale, lean face, and lanky hair, and speech deliberate,
That never ceased to flood the house, and never seemed to tire.

Not that it was good to hear him, for it did not raise you higher;
Is showed your baser self, but did not rouse the better part;
He could search the hidden evil, but he never could inspire
Unto any nobler life by his unveiling of the heart.

Man was not lovely to him, not yet lovely was his God;
The cynic thought breeds mostly bitter faith in things divine;
Who sees no beauty in the soul that bears its human load
Shall see but little glory where the gods of glory shine.

There was humour in his sayings, though he meant them not for jest—
Too earnest he for mirth, except a hard and bitter grin;
Yet his shrewdness had an oddness being quaintly oft expressed,
And I laughed with laugh the keener that I had to laugh within.

'Twas something fresh to me, to follow slowly up and down
The windings of his tangled talk, and make the thought complete;
I perused him like a volume whose leaves, dog-eared and brown,
Held bits of the rough poetry that lies about our feet.

There was a rude ideal which he struggled to attain,
A poem floating in his mind, but mangled by the lack
Of ordered thought to shape the hope, the passion and the pain;
And he blundered into broken paths to shun the beaten track.

194

What puzzled me about him was, to see him still so sure,
So changeful, yet so certain that his way was always right;
And that his vision was so dim, although his heart was pure,
And that he could so grossly err, yet be a child of light.

I read his meaning partly, as one reads a palimpsest,
Dimly traced upon the vellum under monkish hymns and prayers
And trumpery tales of wonder; and I understood him best
When I watched his human kindness taking up our human cares.

He fancied I was smitten with his views, when I was only
Making him a curious study for the work I had to do,
Just a theme for long reflection, as I sat in silence lonely,
Shaping out the world around me in the poet's large review.

But I had no right to trifle with the follies of a friend,
Or to play upon his humour to find matter for a book;
I might have known that that would come to some unhappy end,
For to toy with human hearts, is more than human hearts will brook.

'Tis the sin of art's fine passion that it only seeks to know,
Not to perfect, any creature that his lot he may fulfil;
It has charity to bear with any rankest weeds that grow
Unto any picturesqueness, and to leave them growing still.

Priest and prophet try to save, and so their work is blessed; but mine
Strove only just to see, and reproduce the picture true,
Making sacrifice of duty for the trimming of a line,
Heeding not of higher wisdom in the itch for something new.

Oh my heart and its misgivings! I am never wholly sure.
Was the art of Greece so perfect that its life was also high?
Is the heavenly vision only seen what time the heart is pure?
Is the poem but the poet as he dares to live and die?

Could I be a mere onlooker, and yet see what should be seen?
Standing calmly on the outside, could I paint this life aright?
Nay, that could never come to any perfect fruit, I ween,
Could yield but sickly blossom nipt by any frosty night.

Better wield a pick or spade, or drive a furrow in the soil,
Bear a hod, or hurl a barrow among fustian-wearing men,
Win humblest daily bread by daily sweat of honest toil,
Than live to find in life but stuff for scrawling with a pen!

One evening Luke, as usual, held discourse of human ills,
And I turned me somewhat weary from his everlasting bleat,
Monotonous, like sheep among the solitary hills,
As he mooned away to Hilda sitting on the window seat.

195

Something, I know, had fretted me—I cannot now say what,
Only living among dreams, and sitting far into the night,
With none to bid good-speed unto the labour I was at,
And a pained, though dumb suspicion that, perhaps, I did not right

To peril all the tender bliss of home for such an aim,
Bred an irritable temper when I was not all alone,
And so it fevered me to hear—though they were not to blame—
Her weary stitching needle, and his weary preaching drone.

He had, somehow, raised the wonder that begets a woman's faith,
The sense of power and mystery that awes her with belief;
His God was not the Father that giveth life and breath,
Yet she looked to him for guidance, and for comfort in her grief.

Women cling to any spirit that is confident and bold,
Taking doubt to be a sin, the sign of an untrustful mind;
And I was sure of nought; I saw the shadows round me fold,
And felt that life was very dark, and I was very blind.

I was not fit to guide her, for myself I could not guide
Through the valley of the shadow; only groping as I went,
Step by step, and never certain of the shepherd at my side,
And my soul was often troubled, and my heart was often faint.

But he was sure of all things in earth and hell and heaven,
Sure that we were devil's children all, and heirs of wrath to come,
Sure that on the bitter cross a sum of ransom had been given
To purchase men from Satan, or at least to purchase some.

And this so certain dogmatism she took for faith divine,
Infallible, intrenched within a wall of texts and creeds,
And believed in him entirely, while she turned from words of mine
As from henbane, hemlock, nightshade, or other deadly weeds.

That night he went on, ceaseless, in his hortatory tone
Half-saying and half-singing, and I could not choose but hear
Broken snatches of his doctrine, like the melancholy moan
Of the wind that in the crannies sounds so dismal to the ear.

Luke's Discourse

It is not our sins that send us there:
There are sinners as bad in the heavenly choir,
And souls as sweet as the summer air
Up to their lips in the lake of fire.
Stained with vices, as black as night,
Some shall be found on the narrow way;
For seen by the Lord from His holy height
All your virtues are black as they.
It is our unbelief slams the door,
And rams in the bolt too, right in our face;
But so much the more are our sins, the more
Glory there is to abounding grace.

196

What, if one wronged you, meaning it not?
What, if one hurt you just by a word?
No great credit to wipe that blot,
Or to forget what you need not have heard.
But if I hate you, make you a liar,
Slay your dearest, and mock at his name,
Oh, the mercy that rises higher
The higher the sinner's guilt and blame!

Only believe in the Lamb they slew,
And in the blood that from Him did flow;
Only believe that He died for you,
And it shall wash you as white as the snow.
Oh, but the Blood is the life of Faith!
Even one drop would a world redeem.
Blood on the lintels, and ancient Death
Passed by the door like a hideous dream;
Blood on his raiment made the Priest
Holy to stand where the Lord was seen;
Blood on the altar wrath appeased;
Blood on the sinner, and he is clean.
Science and learning are but snares,
Reason and knowledge they are traps;
Better lie down with wolves and bears
Than with critical principles, books, and maps.
Once I starved in the Hebrides,
Nearly a month, on whelks and clams,
And fishy birds from the grey salt seas,
While I tried to think they were beeves and lambs:
So is the soul that feeds on stuff
Reason gives it instead of bread;
So is the man who is swollen with fluff
Science is fain to put into his head.
These cannot take one sin away,
Bring no peace to the troubled heart;
As well down on your knees and pray
To the graven image of heathen art.
Children make-believe anything, whiles
They have got plenty to eat and drink,
Make a grand feast out of slates and tiles,
And water is wine if you only wink.
Oh how nicely they carve a stone!
Oh how pretty they drink the toast!
This is the shortbread, that the scone,
There are the platters of boiled and roast!
But let the thirst and hunger come,
And give them for bread their slates and stones,
And poor little hearts! all their prattle is dumb,
And make-believe ends in tears and moans.

So is the soul that plays with shams,
So till there comes an hour of need;
So shall it starve on whelks and clams
Of rational thought and virtuous deed.
But let him see the guilt and gloom,
But let him smell the burning lake,
And hear, as it were, the billows boom
Where is no shore for them to break.
Only the Blood then that atones,
Only the Blood can give him rest:
Hence with your make-believe slates and stones,
He must have truth, for truth is best.

Hell and the devil (I thought the words
Came from his lips with a kind of smack,
And round and rich, as the singing birds
Dwell on a choice note, and call it back)—
Hell and the devil will have their due;
Oh, you may rush at a ditch or hedge,
And scramble through with a scratch or two,
And a tattered skirt to the other ledge;
But there's no bottom to yonder pit,
There is no other side to hell,
There is no make-believe in it,
And there for ever the faithless dwell.

197

A terrible picture! aye, and whiles
I have almost thought that it could not be,
As I looked on the bay with its sunny smiles
Glinting over the laughing sea.
There the fishermen trim their boats,
The wives at the door are baiting lines,
Mirth of the children blithely floats
Up from the beach as they touch the spines
Of round sea-urchin under the dulse,
Or hunt the crab in the shady pool,
And the small waves beat like a tranquil pulse,
And the seal comes out of the cavern cool,
Bobbing his head above the sea,
There where the white gulls dive and swim,
And the swift ships pass like clouds that be
Hung on the grey horizon dim.
Then I have thought, till my heart grew faint,
And my head swam with the vision dire:
“O beautiful Earth, is it really meant
Thou shalt be wrapped in the flaming fire?
These happy homes where I oft have sat,
These hands I have held in friendly grip,
Those curly children I love to pat,
Or to press their cheeks with a prayerful lip,
Can they be fated—one of them even—
Yet in the outer dark to lie,
Far away hid from the glory of Heaven,
And gnawed by the worm that cannot die?
Oh, the anguish that thought has sent
Thrilling all through my heart and brain!
And Word and warning and argument
The Spirit has pleaded with me in vain.
I thought it was righteous to rebel,
I thought that it was for God I spoke,
When I wrestled against the pains of hell,
Like Jacob, until the morning broke.
But who am I to reject His word
That tells of the deathless worm and fire?
And where were the mercy of the Lord
If it plucked not brands from the burning pyre?

Here I broke in, You should have heard your heart, for it was true;
I think it was the voice of God for pity pleading then,
And you have crushed your pity with a text that deadened you,
And texts are surely meant for quickening nobler thoughts in men.

He took no notice of my speech; I wot not if he heard,
Because there rose a gust of wind, shrill-whistling from the sea;
But by and by there came a lull, and with the lull a word
I was not meant to hear, though it was shrewdly meant for me.

Truly you tell me his faith is gone,
Truly I see only doubting in him:
He has buried the Christ, and sealed the stone,
And watches all night 'mid the shadows dim,
That none may quicken his soul again,
That none may quicken his hope anew;
And I have noted the sorrow and pain
Of the great love that was wasting you,
Lady, as slowly the cloud came down,
Slowly and coldly the mist was creeping
Over a soul that is dear as your own;
And angels were watching with you and weeping.

198

Yea, I have grieved for him, and I have prayed
Through the long night, as I watched afar,
Sign of the poor part in life that he played,
The lamp from his window that gleamed like a star;
There he is toiling, I said, for a bubble,
Which when he touches it, shall be no more,
Reaping the harvest of sorrow and trouble,—
Here I will pray till his labour is o'er:
Long as his lamp burns for folly of fame,
So long shall mine that his soul I may win;
Shall he unwearying toil for a name,
And I grow weary to save him from sin?
Thus have I stormed at the gates of heaven
All the more that he laughed at me,
Just that his soul might to me be given
All the more we could never agree.
I see that he mocks me, and flouts me, and jibes
At all the things that I honour most,
And seeks the lore of the clerks and scribes
More than the seal of the Holy Ghost.
He would put me into a book, I know,
That wits might crackle their jests so droll,
And laugh at the preaching smith whose blow
Could smite the iron, and miss the soul.
Yet I have loved him, oh so well!
Yet I have prayed for him, oh how long!
But he would risk all the terrors of hell
For the point of a jest, or the rhyme of a song.
Oh, he is just like a schoolboy that cares
Only to hear his whip go crack
In the dim streets, and the silent squares,
While the echo comes ringing back;
High in the heaven he would sit and brood,
With a flickering smile on his dubious lip;
And down in hell would find some good
In trying how loud he could crack his whip.

You are wroth with me now, for the truth that I speak;
You would have me to smile, and beck, and cringe,
And not let the gate of darkness creak,
But smoothly work on its well-oiled hinge,
And silently close on an erring soul,
With just a snap when the deed is done;
And then I must whimper and condole,
With a lying hope that the goal was won,
Although he never had run the race,
Never so much as made the start.
But I cannot be sweet before your face,
And false to you in my inmost heart.
Tell me not of his love of truth,
Kindly spirit, and thoughtful care,
Or the pure love of his noble youth—
Tell me of faith, if faith be there.
Water the coals, and they will burn,
Sun-dry the faggot, and it will flame;
So virtue or vice will serve your turn,
And make you ready for wrath and shame.
Faith alone is the master-key
To the strait gate and the narrow road;
The others but skeleton picklocks be,
And you never shall pick the locks of God.

But hush! His thunders are in the heaven,
Rumbling low through the clouded sky,
Like the roll of wheels that are swiftly driven
With flames from the whirling tires that fly.

199

Who knows? They are maybe sent for him,
To clothe his spirit with awe and fear:
Close we the windows and sing a hymn,
And pray while the Lord is plainly here.
Well to improve the solemn hour,
Well to smite while the bar is hot;
Surely the Lord is great in power,
Woe to him that believeth not.

He had been speaking low to her, and wist not I could hear;
And though I heard I heeded not, my thoughts were so intent
Watching the signs of coming storm that darkled far and near,
And all his words fell off from me, like arrows blunt and spent.

From every part of heaven the clouds crept, slow, across the sky,
Black clouds, with lurid edges, and rifts of leaden grey,
And earth lay still and breathless as they mustered there on high,
Nor lark nor throstle noting the dimly dying day.

Now, all was wrapt in darkness, without twinkling of a star,
And the big thunder-rain came down in sullen warning drops;
Beneath the silent trees the silent kine were grouped, and far
The sea moaned, and a shiver passed along the tall tree-tops.

And then it burst in fury—rain and hailstones mixed with fire,
And sudden gusts of wind that howled across the stony moor,
With awful lulls, and shattering peals that nearer grew and higher;
And one great ball of hissing fire fell almost at the door.

A wild, black night of tempest, such as men remember long
In the dull undated life of a sleepy country town,
When forests fell before the wind, streams swept off bridges strong,
And church-towers, lightning-shivered, reeled, and then came crashing down.

Awe-stricken, yet entranced, I watched, with tremulous joy, each phrase
And movement as it registered itself upon the mind,
While the strained sense, exulting in the wonder and amaze,
Jarred at a common sound amid the thunder and the wind.

Thus when I heard his husky voice 'mid nature's grandest tones
Of so transcendent harmony, for harmony was there
In all the roll of thunder, that awethrilled my joints and bones,
It smote me like an insult—that suggestion of a prayer.

I did not speak at first; I did but grip his bony wrist,
And whisper to be silent, and led him to his seat,
Imperious in a wrath whose stern resolve was only hissed
Into his ear; and he was cowed, and sat in silence meet.

Silent only for a little; by and by there came a lull,
And coughing, he spake something about the wrath of heaven;
Then I said, When God was preaching other sermons sounded dull,
And I wanted no “improvement” of the lesson He had given.

200

I said that, for myself, I did not wish to be improved,
And doubted if he could at all improve the work of God;
But if he thought the wrath of heaven against himself was moved,
He might pray there like a worm on whom his Deity had trod.

I added that the tempest was a mercy clear to me,
The very thing I needed for the volume that I wrote;
It came in time precisely, and my book was sure to be
A great success, with such a glorious picture in the plot.

I had just come to a point where I required a thunderstorm,
And heaven was kind to send it in the very nick of time;
And I was very grateful not to be a trampled worm,
But a favourite of the gods who gave me matter for my rhyme.

If the Father cares for sparrows, He may surely care for books,
And send a troubled author storm or sunshine which he needs;
If winds were sent to farmers for the winnowing of their stooks,
Surely poets might get weather for recording of His deeds.

And why should men be grateful for a fine potato crop,
Or sunshine for the oats, or rain to make the turnips grow,
And thankless for the wholesome books that fruitful authors drop
For a publisher's good season up in Paternoster Row.

And God was good to me, I said, in gathering His cloud,
I saw a special providence in letting loose the wind;
That He cared to feed the hungry every pious heart allowed,
But He must doubly care to feed the hunger of the mind.

The more he stared and gasped at me, the more I pushed him hard;
Saying, Surely the book-harvest was heaven's peculiar care;
The Church might be God's vineyard, but the verses of the bard
Were the ripe fruits of His orchard, and the flowers that made it fair;

And novels were the poppies, red and sunny in the field,
And histories were wholesome oats, and essays were the rich
Clover-fields that fed His kine, and made the butter that they yield,
While sermons were the small weeds growing in the hedge or ditch;

And tracts were for his horses, like the vetches and the tares
To be munched up by the bushel, being savourless and dry;
But songs were his ripe apples; and his apricots and pears
Were ballads and the lyric strains of love, that never die.

I wot not why I chattered so amid the sullen lull,
While the tempest took its breath, and gathered for another burst;
It was his face that tempted me, it looked so blank and dull;
And partly I revenged me for his talk with Hilda, first.

201

Because he was a preacher, she had let him say to her
What no one else had dared to say without her proud rebuke;
But any thing that called itself a Christian minister
She heard as she would hearken to the Volume of the Book.

Low in my heart I laughed then to see him stare and gasp
At that imagined book for which the thunder had been sent,
And at his puzzled horror as I buzzed like stinging wasp,
Too swift for his slow movements, in my wanton merriment.

No book then was I writing that needed storm or calm,
Nor could I copy Nature in that hard and soulless way,
Barely cataloguing facts, although I heard, as 'twere a Psalm
Of awe-inspiring joy, the grand orchestral thunder play.

And truth may lie in laughter too, and wisdom in a jest,
And wit may lend its sparkle to the reverential thought;
And solemn fools shall talk to you their wisest and their best,
And leave you very weary with the nothing you have got.

At length he rose in anger, would not stay beneath a roof
That might be smote with judgment for the blasphemies I said:
Would I jest at the Eternal, while His thunders rolled aloof,
And His awful sword was flashing in the lightning overhead?

The world was blind and faithless, and full of vain conceit
Of wisdom which was foolishness, and would not know the Lord;
And I might write brisk words that, one day, I would fain delete
When He came in His glory, whom the Universe adored.

I did not bid him stay, although the storm burst forth anew,
And snapt a grand old pine as if it had been but a reed;
There were five behind our cottage, and I loved them, and I knew
Their features and their voices, for they spoke to me, indeed.

They were like living things to me, with thoughts and memories
And passions of the women in the untamed Druid times;
I heard them sing their skalds at night unto the raving seas,
And moan their rugged lyke-wakes in the ancient Runic rhymes.

I called them Druid sisters, for I wist that they had seen
The black priests in the forest, and the altars, and the smoke;
And in the evening still they talked to me of what had been
Ere the Roman smote the savage, or the Christian morning broke.

Now, startled by the sudden crash, I did not think of him,
But of the tall grey sister who was growing bald atop,
And grey with clinging lichen that had feathered every limb,
And in my mind I saw her bow her lofty head, and drop,

202

While o'er their fallen sister all the others scream and moan
In unrestrained anguish; so I did not bid him stay;
The night was wild and fearful, and the road was dark and lone,
But he had the wild-beast instinct to surely find his way.

And so I let him go, and then I thought that I did right;
Could any soul have sat there to be drenched with commonplace,
Slushed with dull ditch-water preachments, when the awe of that great night
Had strung the mind to highest pitch, and touched the heart with grace?

My being was at white heat, and he would have plunged it so,
Hissing, into his cold water; and I did rebel at that;
And there are times when silence, if the preacher did but know,
Shall preach to better purpose than a sermon stale and flat.

Thus he went forth in wrath, and I had no regretful thought
Hearing him bang the door, and stride into the stormy night;
I sat in silence, ordering all the pictures I had got,
Or glancing now at Hilda through the glimmering candle-light.

By and by, the storm abated, and the moon came forth, at length,
In a clear breadth of heaven, with all the countless host of stars,
And nature did assert the calm tranquillity of strength,
And bridled with the Pleiades the wrath of angry Mars.

I looked out from my window to Orion and his belt;
She looked out from her window to the lone star near the Pole;
And not a word we spake as yet, but in my heart I felt
A shadow creeping coldly, like eclipse, across my soul.

There she sat, pale and anxious, with a wistful frightened look
That seemed to shrink from me, although she neither spoke nor stirred;
There I sat, dull and listless, with my eyes upon a book
Whereof, although I read and read, I knew not e'er a word.

Very silent were we both; but how I yearned for her I loved!
As gazing through the candle-light, I saw her quivering lip,
And how the great tears gathered, and how the loose ring moved,
Unconscious, from the knuckle to the slender finger-tip.

I thought I had done right; but I was not so sure next day;—
Morning thoughts are sweet and tender—and I whispered my regret;
I had been vexed and angry; and I might have bid him stay;
But hinted that his head would be the cooler for the wet.

Ah me! ah me! that thoughtless itch for saying clever things!
Ah me! ah me! that little sense of what a word may do!
Ah me! the woeful echo from the weary past that rings
Words that are very old now, but the grief is always new!

203

That day was full of rumours sad, of boats swamped out at sea,
Guns booming in the offing, and wrecks strewn along the shore,
And the fierce-rushing river had flooded all the lea,
And left but stones and gravel where the clover grew before.

Weary and sad, at evening I hasted home, with all
My budget of ill news, to find yet worse awaiting there,
For Hilda, with a face that did my very heart appal,
Sat, white and chill, beside the fire, with fixed and stony stare.

A fixed and stony stare at me! I think she knew me not,
But shivered when I spoke, and seemed to shrink from me in dread;
And but for that long shudder my unwelcome presence brought,
I hardly could have known if she were living then or dead.

O misery! to think the only sign of life should be
A chill and shrinking quiver at the tender words I spake!
What was it? what had done it? who will tell the truth to me?
And now I thought my head would reel, and now my heart would break.

But bit by bit, I gathered that she had gone out at noon
To walk across the moor, and see the shepherd's sickly wife,
And nurse her sickly babe a while, and sing a quiet tune
To still its ceaseless wailing, for it had faint hold of life.

And what she saw, or what she heard, or what had touched her wits,
Our handmaid wist not—only, she came home so ghastly pale,
And spoke not any word to her, but fell in swooning fits,
And then sat with a stony look, or wailed a piteous wail.

Just then I heard a trampling and a shuffling at the door,
And men came in thereafter with heavy, clumsy tread,
And laid a wet, lank burden there beside me on the floor,
And every face that looked at me was ghastly as the dead.

They had been going home, and turned to look at the old pine
Thunder-blasted in the tempest, when they saw him lying there;
Poor Luke! he was a godly man, and eloquent divine,
And also shod the horses well, and acted just and fair!

So clumsily they told the tale, lowspeaking, sad at heart,
Losing a faithful friend in days of weary grief and care;
And now the truth flashed on me as I looked, and saw a part
Of his hard features through the fell of moist and matted hair.

Scarce had he left my door, or but a score of paces gone,
That evening, when a sudden fate had laid him with the tree,
And Hilda, coming home, had seen the dead man lying lone
Among the pools of water, with reproach of her and me.

204

And that had driven her from her wits, and now she sat and stared,
And shivered when I spake to her, and was distraught and wild;
And as I held her hand, and prayed, I vowed, too, that I shared
Her sorrow and her faith and hope, and would be as a child.

Yea, I would be a child of God, if she would only look,
I would believe whate'er she said, if she would only speak,
I would not care for fame or power, for glory or for book,
If she would only kiss me with the kiss that I did seek.

A weary, woeful night it was, unbroken night to her,
Through all the dismal hours, and oh the anguish unto me!
But with the morning light, the day began to faintly stir
With faint gleams of returning thought as lights upon the sea.

But from that day we were estranged: she spoke no word of blame,
Or only blamed herself, but she was silent and apart;
We never spake about him, and we never named his name,
But yet his shadow coldly lay between me and her heart.

It was as if my fate had been to drive her God away,
To part her from all emblems and helps of things Divine;
And she must walk without me now along the narrow way,
And she must make atonement for the guilt that had been mine.