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

So he forsook the priesthood just in time,
And only just in time; for there had been
Ominous whispers, here and there, about
Doctrine unsound, unsettling, dangerous,
In rural manses, and at cleric meetings;
In smithies too, and where the shuttle clicked,
Sharp wits discussed him, and the ploughman even
Ceased whistling in the furrow, brooding o'er
The thoughts that came to him, and drove his soul
From its old furrow into a fresh soil.

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Unsettling and alarming! There was peace
While the tea-table gossiped, and the smith
Told his coarse stories to the laughing clowns
(Heard also by the maids that bleached the linen
Upon the green hard by)—peace when the weaver
Talked treason with his thin and blood-less lips,
Starved into revolutionary dreams—
And peace while men grew brutal as the steer
They harnessed to their plough! Then all went well;
There was no danger to alarm the Church!
But thought disturbs the world, and thought of God
Unsettles most of all; for it is life,
And only life can comprehend its force,
Or guide it. 'Tis as lightning in the cloud;
We know not what, or where its bolt may strike,
But fear for the church-steeples, and ourselves,
Nor dream there may be blessing even in it.
Yet there are surely times when there is nought
So needed as unsettling, just to get
Out of old ruts, and seek a nobler life.
Raban forsook the Church, whose service once
Had been his fond ambition. But ere that
There had been meetings of the cardinals
At the headquarters, moved thereto by letters,
Representations, visits, urging them
That something must be done to save the Faith
Which stood in peril from the hand of one
Who should have stayed the ark.

High Cardinals
Bourgeon in all the churches; there red-stockinged,
And crimson-hatted — here in sober black;
Now bald with age, now shaven to look like age
And gravity; and mostly portly men
Of large discourse, and excellent taste in wines.
They cultivate the wisdom of the serpent,
And leave the rest to play the harmless dove,
Fulfilling thus the scripture by division
Of labour, as the modern law requires:—
You do the simple dove, as Christ enjoins,
And I will do the serpent. For the Church,
As a world-kingdom, they are worldly-wise,
Subtle diplomatists, far-seeing schemers
Of crafty policy, yet often men
Who would not sacrifice a dearest friend
For its advantage, sooner than themselves
Would bleed at the same altar; yet alas
They offer sometimes, what is holier still,
That charity which is the Church's life
For the world-kingdom which they call God's Church.

Men of long silence, they will seldom speak
Till they are ready to strike; and so they held
Many a quiet meeting, letting not
A whisper of its purport from their lips,
Only they looked more grave than customary,

246

As they who have grave business on their hands.
In truth, they wist not what they ought to do:
The evil might be great; but then he was
So slight a man, so inconsiderable,
Unbeneficed, unpopular; and to break
A fly upon the wheel was apt to rouse
Unreasonable laughter, and such men
Like not such mirth. And then as to these views—
Who could pin down a shadow to the ground,
And take its measure? Who could try the notes
Of a wild bird by proper rhythmic laws?
Or say if the wind whistled by the gamut?
They understood not what he would be at:
A mystic, vague and unsubstantial, true
To no laws that they knew; but they were sure
That he was vain and foolish, and would melt
Like sugar in the mouth, and be forgot
Save by some sweet-toothed children. Let him be;
Contempt would kill that, like a nipping frost,
Which, grown notorious, might live on a while,
And work some mischief. They were very wise,
The portly cardinals, and yet they knew not
All that the future knew, and how the truth
Works sometimes from without as from within.
Meanwhile, he wist not what they communed of;
None spake to him of trouble in the air,
Of ill reports, of plans to wreck his hopes,
If hope still clung to him; nor any brother
Came in a brother's love to him, and said:
Lo! we will reason it together; then
God will give light perchance, and thou shalt be
Saved from much sorrow, and I shall be blessed.
They looked askance at him; they crossed the road,
And passed on the other side; they lifted up
Their eyes to heaven, and saw him not; or with
Broad, brazen stare they silently wenton.
He noted them, but heeded not, or thought
But how the herd sweep past the stricken deer,
Or how the wild wolves, padding o'er the waste,
Eyeing a wounded comrade, note how soon
The time may come when they shall lap his blood,
Or gnaw his bones. But nothing then he knew
Of their complaints, or of the storm a-brewing;
He only thought that people had not loved
His preaching, and would hear his voice no more;
Else had he stayed it out to fight the fight,
For sound of trumpet and the clash of swords
Roused in him joy of battle, even then
When hope of victory was none in him.
So, wotting not his peril, he forsook
The pulpit where they welcomed him no more—

247

The wandering life that, weekly, pitched its tent
In some fresh home, where children laughed and sang,
And all the hopes that like the ivy grew
Green about old church towers: and sat him down
In a small garret with a new-made pen.
Once they complained his sermons were like books,
Essays original and quaint, which men
Might read in print, and wisely meditate;
And now they said his books did somewhat smack
Of homely preaching, such as long ago
Spoke to the times. He brought a sacred spirit
Unto the secular task, and called on men
To follow lofty aims and noble deeds.
Even when he laughed at fools, his mirth would be
Pitiful, and when he would edge his tool
Sharper to smite the wooden wit o' the time,
Yet was it in some cause of righteousness,
Or large humanity, that might have been
Theme of a prophet mocking at the devil.
And thus he breathed into our common life,
And round about the church, an atmosphere
That changed them both, and loosed their bonds, and wrought
As none might work within the Temple gate;
For oft the Church must learn from those without
Who paste the prophet-broadside on its wall,
Or sing their burden on the busy street.

SECULAR

Who once has worn the priestly robe, and seen
The upturned faces with their look of awe,
As unto prophet giving forth the law
Amid the hush which, even when thought is lean,
Devoutly listens,—having ere while been
'Mong holy things within the altar rails,
Is fain to hide his head, what time he fails,
And seeks his pulpit in a magazine,
Unfrocked of his own will. He shrinks with fear
From buzzing critics carping at his wit,
And on the buried past he drops a tear,
Until he finds the secular life is knit
And braced by freedom, and is, haply, more
Large and full than his life before.

CONTENT

Howe'er it be with some, the broad highway
Is better than the priestly path for me;
For when it was my task, from day to day,
To do official pieties, and pray,
I think I might have grown a Pharisee,
Pumping my heart, when it was dry as dust,
For words of faith and hope—because I must.

Then are we at our highest, when we touch
The Infinite and Good in worship due,
Bowing in lowly reverence to such
As we deem holiest, and trusting much
Because the holiest is most pitying too:
Nothing so nobly human as the quest
That seeks true man in God, and there finds rest.

248

But he who all day handles sacred tasks,
While his thoughts travail with the world, and he
Nor hopes to get from God the thing he asks,
Nor yet to hide from God the heart he masks
To others—how it wounds his soul to be
Praying-machine, until the day's chief sin
Is the chief duty he has done therein!

I did not turn a Pharisee; I fought
Against the perils that my life beset,
And when I felt no worship, worshipped not,
And when my heart was merry, mirth I sought,
Entangling jests like gay moths in a net,
And laughed, and made laugh, though I saw, the while,
They fancied not a priest so given to smile.

Be the road stormy, be it calm and mild,
Yet snares are spread there, pitfalls too are dug:
The pious mother, longing that her child
May keep his white robe clean and undefiled,
Dreams of a peaceful parsonage and snug,
Where the world comes not, neither any snare;
Yet world and flesh and devil, too, are there.

Just past their teens, we task young souls to do
What needs a large experience deeply-tried;
And oft I marvel they remain so true,
Freshening the old, and bringing forth the new,
And with the growing life still growing wide;
For the cloud-incense of the altar hides
The true form of the God who there abides.

But now I do my work with hand and head,
And do my worship with a separate heart;
With a good conscience earning daily bread,
And by the Heavenly Father duly fed,
I keep the worship and the work apart;
And yet the work has worship in it too,
But willing service, not a task I do.

My heart is more at one, my soul more calm,
My Sunday more a welcome joy to me,
Whose rest is sweetened by the folded palm,
The bended knee, and the uplifted psalm,
While once it was a fretful troubled sea
Vexed by the thought of human praise or blame,
And only partly lit by the Great Name.

DISCONTENT

Sitting apart,
I hear the murmuring tide of life,
Its onward rush, and foaming strife,
Yet bid my heart
String dainty words in fancies quaint,
And be content.

Lying abed,
I dream, with method in my dream,
And catch up any lights that gleam
Into my head,
And fondle a conceit, beguiled
As by a child.

249

Poring o'er books,
Dingy, old volumes, by the hour,
Which only I and moths devour,
My eyes find hooks
In each dim page, and I have peace
In their increase.

What would I more,
Since I have dropt out of the race,
But eddy in a quiet place
Beside the shore,
And make a play of life, and smile
A little while?

Yet now and then,
A something pricks me, canst thou see
The breaking waves that surge by thee;
And has thy pen
No service, but these fancies odd,
For man or God?

Ah! vexing heart,
Rebellious! fain to seek the fight,
Though broken all thy force and might,
Thou hast no part
In life, but with a patient will
See, and be still.

SUCCESS

I have done well, I said, for I have found
My place in life, the work that I can do,
And in my garret, spurning the low ground,
I can, at least, be manful, free, and true.

Nameless, I go about, and sometimes hear
The whisper of a fame that is to come;
They wot not who I am, and I appear
All unconcerned with that low-gathering hum.

It is like being dead, and hearing what
Verdict of history may one day speak;
And now I laugh, and now I wonder at
Myself, that I can be so vain and weak.

But when I think, here will I make my nest,
Ah me! the nest unfeathered is and cold,
But sticks and thorns whereon there is no rest,
And never love its weary wings could fold.

There is a little islet that I know,
Blue with forget-me-nots—a lonely spot,
And no bird nestles where their gold eyes grow:
'Tis just a home of long forget-me-not.

So lonely and so barren is my lot,
Still dreaming, where the quiet water sleeps,
To win a name that shall not be forgot;
And that is all it either sows or reaps.

A WALK

A clear, crisp, Autumn day. Autumn is Scotch
And lingers lovingly among the hills,
Knee-deep in golden bracken, and golden grass
That tints the moor, what time the purple heather
Withers to brown, and golden pendants hang
On the slim, drooping birch — the golden time
Of all the Northern year.

You shall find spring,
Joyous with bursting life, in English lanes
Where the May-blossom wafts from straggling hedge
Its incense like a white-robed Thurifer,

250

While the meek violet, like a saintly soul,
Hid in a green obscurity, breathes out
Its sweets, unseen, and the pale primrose woos
The shadow at the foot of lush blue-bells.
Green are the meadows there, and green the leaves
Opening, with various shade, in chestnut whorls,
And feathery birch, and plane and beech and lime,
And late ash-bud and oak—the many tints
Like many colours, yet one flush of green
From the young life o' the year.

But Autumn loves
The ferny braes, the brown heath on the hills,
The lichened rocks, orange and grey and black,
The harebell and the foxglove in the shaws,
The brisk and nimble air upon the moor,
The flying cloud that scuds across the blue,
Its shadow hurrying o'er the sunlight brow
Of the still mountain, and the sleepy loch
Quivering as in a dream of coot and heron,
Or leaping trout; thither the antlered stag
Leads forth his hinds to water at the dawn:
And life is at full pitch of beauty then,
When verging to its close.

That Autumn day,
I wandered forth alone, in sober ways
While yet the shadow of the houses fell
Around me, and the window-eyes looked on;
Yet I was glad, for I had found my work.
And when I reached the country, and beheld
The loaded wains with the last harvest-sheaves
Led homeward, and the reapers blithe and brown,
And felt my feet among the rustling leaves
By the wayside, and watched the shining spikes
Of frost in shady nooks beside the burn,
I could not walk, but leaped, and laughed at nothings
In very joy of life; for anything
Serves for a jest what time the heart is gay.

So on and up I went, with tireless feet,
And fertile mind suggesting victories
My pen should win for me, as the slow years
Ripened the powers which circumstance disclosed,
And critics now approved. I had the trick
Of hoping to the full, and building up
Dream-palaces, creative, out of nothing,
Collapsing into nothing at a touch
Of adverse fact; and that day I was in
The mood to make whole worlds, with suns and stars,
And flowers and birds, and homes by love made glad.

But crossing a waste moor, where hills of slag
Rose bare, and sluggish pools were at their feet,
Where no fish swam, but red lights ever glowed,
I came upon a village mean and poor,

251

Which no one cared for, save to draw much wealth
From seams of coal, and veins of ironstone
That undermined it; one long string of huts,
Ugly and dirty and monotonous;
And no bell rang there on the Sabbath morn,
And only Death e'er spoke to them of God.
Swart, stunted men were plodding from the pits,
Weary, with little lamps stuck in their caps
Instead of flower or feather; savage children
Were skulking at the doors, but none of them
Did run to meet their fathers, and be kissed
And borne home shoulder-high; the mothers, too,
Were fierce, and smiled not when the men came home,
For they were weary, and not with woman's work.
Oft had I seen the peasant from his plough
Plod slowly home, but gladdened by his girl,
Curly and sunny, chattering at his side,
And by the baby nestling on his breast,
And by the mother smiling at the door
With the milk-pail; and often watched the fisher,
Hard-faced and weather-beaten, leave his boat,
At early morn with children gambolling,
Barefooted, on the sand, or leading him
Home in the pride of love, with the fresh spoils
Of the old sea; but such a sight as this,
So without hope or heart or any joy
I had not seen before: a place so dreary,
So God-forsaken in its ugliness,
Each house alike, the people too alike
Dismal and brutal; and the only spot
With any brightness was a drinking house
Shining with glass and brass and painted barrels.

Therewith the thought again knocked at my heart,
Urgent and loud: Was thy life given to thee
For making pretty sentences, and play
Of dainty humour for the mirthful heart
To be more merry; or to serve thy kind,
Redressing wrong? And all the long way home
That thought kept ever knocking at my heart.

LOST

Sick, sick at heart and in despair,
Through crowded street, and quiet square
I seek my lost Love everywhere.

A while, with shamed and broken mind,
I hid from her, content to find
Her shadow nightly on the blind;

Content to hear her even-song
Go up with tremulous note or strong,
Go up the angels' hymns among,

Meanwhile I stood beneath the lamp,
And fretted on the pavement damp
At the slow Watchman's patient tramp,

Or noted where the shadows flit
On quaint old gables, or a bit
Of carving by the moonbeams lit.

252

The shame of failure on me lay,
And led me on a lonely way,
Hoping for dawn of a new day.

Yet now the day has come, and lo!
It is like morning creeping slow
Into a blinded house of woe.

Gone! and she has not left a trace!
And while I haunt the silent place,
Oh! I am haunted by her face.

O fool and coward! not to see
That love, which would have trusted thee,
Must die if it distrusted be!

CHANGE

Ah! to have lived at Love's high pitch,
And then fall back on level lines
Of commonplace! to have been rich,
As one who ventures deep in mines,
And then to toil at hedge or ditch,
And dream of costly fares and wines!

Gone from my life the impassioned strain
That gave it all its tender grace,
And now its gladness is the pain
That draws deep furrows on my face;
But I can never stoop again
To the dull round of commonplace.

Another passion must knit up
These flagging energies of mine;
No muddy water for my cup!
But fill it full with generous wine;
Who knows what Love is, may not sup
On that which is not still divine.

He who was caught up, as he said,
To the third heavens, and heard and saw
Unutterable things, would tread
Earth, after, in a trance of awe,
Nor might he ever bow his head
To bear the yoke of meaner law.

I saw the people sad and dumb,
With none to utter their complaints,
But preached to of a world to come,
And damned because they were not saints:
And there, I said, is work for some
Whose heart with hunger in them faints.

BAD TIMES

An evil time! a time of deep unrest,
And thoughts that reached out for a larger life,
When bread was dear, the poor were sore distressed
And work was scanty, and the taxes rife.

Often, at night, I walked about the town,
When the broad moon was silvering street and square,
And all the loathsome now was lovely grown,
For only light and shadow brooded there.

Stately and fair the gabled houses rose,
And hazy legend, or historic light
Clung to each winding stair, or murky close,
And with the past day filled the present night.

And in a dream of history I went
Along the centuries of pride and sin
That me o'ershadowed, till my heart was rent
With pity of the sights I saw therein.

253

For often from the gloom and from the cold
Where they lay shivering in a dusky nook,
Gaunt faces glared at me, and children told
Their misery in a wan and wasted look.

And pest and hunger there went hand in hand,
Invisible but strong, and some went mad,
While good men licked their lips, and looking bland
Over their port, allowed the times were bad.

NOW AND THEN

One rode amid a rabble throng,
And laid about him with a sword;
His heart was high, his hand was strong,
Nor did he stint an angry word;
“Ho! lurdanes, earth is full of bread,
An ye will work for its increase,
But an ye idle here, instead,
'Twere better that your breath should cease.
Get to the mattock and the hoe,
The distaff and the spinning-wheel;
Ods life! who will not work, shall know
The bitter taste of cord or steel.
Away! with crutch and beggar's whine!
Away with balled-singing rogues!
And lo! ye shall have flesh and wine,
And hosen warm and leathern brogues;
And there shall not be rags or debt,
Or hunger in the land, or cold,
If ye will only dig and sweat”—
But that was in the days of old.

One looked upon a wrathful crowd
That surged about the market square,
And with hoarse clamour cried aloud
The spawn of Tyrants not to spare;
And from the throng he took his way
Into a waste and desert land,
In loneliness to brood and pray,
And bring back order and command.
Then coming from the desert place,
Again the market square he trod,
With shining glories in his face,
And laws that had the seal of God:
“Behold,” he said, “the gods command
That ye shall keep these statutes good,
And they will give you fruitful land
To dwell in, and ye shall have food.”
And they had faith, and writ the laws
In letters large of gleaming gold,
To order every plea and cause—
But that was in the days of old.

But now this pinched and sunk-eyed mob,
'Tis work they ask the Powers to give,
Hating to filch or steal or rob,
Ashamed to beg that they may live.
But silent is the clicking loom,
And silent too the birring wheel,
The flaming forge is quenched in gloom,
The mill is grinding little meal.
The ships are rotting in the dock,
The cage hangs listless o'er the mine,
The hammer rings not on the rock,
The spade rusts on the unfinished line,
And gladly would they toil and sweat,
Without the taste of cord or steel,
And gladly keep the order set
By any law the gods could seal.
But I have only tongue and pen,
And neither force nor faith to hold
My way among the sons of men
As they did in the days of old.

254

HOW WE DID IT

Erewhile our forefathers, hating oppression,
Sware a great oath that their blood they would spill,
New-hefted scythe, issued plea and Confession,
Scoured the old musket, and took to the hill.

Loomed in the front of them scaffold and halter,
Hunger and weariness, battle and death,
Only the mists of the mountain for shelter,
Only the raven to watch their last breath.

Times were heroic then; e'en the slow peasant
Felt his heart swell 'mid the trumpets and spears;
And if our commonplace way is more pleasant,
Yet we have lost the great soul of those years.

We held monster-meetings, signed tons of petitions,
And snowed all the country with leaflets and tracts,
Setting forth all our desires and conditions,
And bristling with arguments, figures, and facts.

With weekly pennies, and working committees,
And secretaries, and printing large,
We knit together the towns and cities,
And rallied the battle, and made our charge.

Heroes we were not; they were not wanted;
Power now must yield what the people demand;
But sometimes I laughed as our doings we vaunted,
The work was so common, the words were so grand.

Yet what have the ages been slowly achieving,
By slings, bows and arrows, and muskets and swords,
But just that we now should be peacefully weaving
Far mightier spells by the virtue of words?

STORM-BIRDS

O creatures of the storm!
Shrill birds that scream but when the shrill winds blow,
And fish of monstrous form
Which the long rollers on the sandbeach throw,
And with the tangled wrack drift to and fro—
You well I know.

O creatures of the storm!
That creep out of your holes to meet the rain,
Foul toad and slug and worm,
And to your proper dark return again,
When the sun shines, and merry birds are fain
To sing amain!

Yet the storm also brings
The Master to the helm the ship to guide,
And deftly trim her wings,
And shape her course amid the wind and tide,
And so the best and worst are side by side,
While storms abide.

255

RUMOUR

Open-mouthed Rumour ran from street to street,
Telling of flour devoured by rats and mice;
Telling of old stacked corn by wet and heat
Wasted, while waiting for a famine-price;

Telling of fortunes speculators made
Out of the miseries of the hapless poor;
Telling of mothers starved and lying dead,
While babies gnawed their breasts upon the floor;

Telling of men devouring grass and hay
To stay the hunger that devoured their bones;
Telling how gamesome children now would play
At funerals only on the paving stones;

Telling how soldiers did their sabres whet,
And kept their horses saddled day and night,
And primed their muskets, when the people met,
Ready to quench in blood the cause of right;

Telling of speakers threatened for true words;
Telling of lawyers framing treason-pleas;
Telling of harsh things done by angry lords;
Telling of statesmen who were ill at ease.

Many-tongued Rumour had a busy time,
And men were greedy for the tales she bore,
And when she told of madness, sin, or crime,
The worse the story they believed the more!

O foolish world, be-rumoured of they wits!
How had a spark then set thee in a blaze
Amid thy heats and chills and trembling fits,
And turned to grief the glory of those days!

TRIUMPH

Upon a day of triumph some will shout,
And set the bells a-ringing in the steeple,
And fountains spouting wine for all the people,
And lights in all the windows round about.

They must have noise of cracker, squib, and gun,
And at the market-cross with loud hurrahing,
And shaking hands, and bands of music playing,
They will proclaim that now the day is won.

For me, I went home with a quaint old book,
And shut me in to have a long night's reading;
That was my payment, for my soul was needing
Still waters in a restful, quiet nook.

Well; each man has his way, and this was mine;
I could not care for fizzing squibs and crackers,
Hallooing crowds, and empty boastful talkers
Made eloquent by vanity and wine.

256

Tramp, tramp, I heard them marching here and there,
With strutting bagpipe, or with noisy drumming;
And when I hoped that surely calm was coming,
Fresh clamours rose with rockets in the air.

And at my door they paused a while, and gave
A ringing cheer that set my heart a-beating,
And flung their caps on high with kindly greeting,
And slowly ebbed back like a broken wave.

As they were glad, I let them have their way;
As I was glad, I took my own good pleasure;
And while they bawled and shouted without measure,
I read old chronicles till break of day.