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

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.

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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.

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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,

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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!

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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.

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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.