University of Virginia Library

Kinsmen and friends and neighbours, all of you
Giving me the sad honour of your presence,
I thank you, as I surely ought to do,
For judged by looks, you are not here for pleasance:
I see each face shaded by doleful gloom,
I hear but dismal whispers round the room;
And therefore the good custom of our land
Offers you wine and cake and potent spirit,
Which the sad heart, by scriptural command,
Should take upon occasion fit to cheer it:
Drink, then, and stint not whisky good or wine,
Your souls are heavy, and the cost is mine.
Friends, I am young; I wot not how the chief
Mourner should act on such occasions solemn,—
Whether to bury my face in handkerchief,
Or stand up silent as a marble column.
I ne'er was at a funeral before,
I never saw such faces as I see,
I never heard such creaking of a door,
And no one swearing at it furiously;
Perhaps I should be silent, or should groan—
All of you did it when our Pastor here
Spake of the crown which had become her own
The moment that she left our lower sphere;
Forgive me, friends; I am not used to these
Appropriate moans, appointed agonies,
Which sigh the weary to their place of rest,
And groan the saints to mansions of the blest.
The Pastor spoke good words and excellent—
I hope his name is mentioned in the Will;
It will be hard to have canonised a saint,
Yet find no church or cleric codicil
For all the charity that did by her
Handsomely, as became her minister—
Yet everybody groaned, and looked as sad
As if the glorious crown were something bad.
Now, for myself, when once the wick is crushed,
I ask not where the light is, which is not,
Nor where the music, when the harp is hushed,
Nor where the memory which is soon forgot.
Death comes to all; that's certain; heaven and hell
Are just as you believe, or don't believe:
But Faith is hard, and therefore we will leave
That matter, if you please, for time to tell:
But come or life or death, we all must dine,
And come or joy or sorrow, wine is good;
And be her gathered savings yours or mine,
The Will must needs be read and understood;
And therefore when we've laid her in the ground,
And smoothed the turf upon the lowly mound,
We'll dine here, if you please, and read the Will—
And by my Faith it will be rare to see
How sinks the glass of most sweet charity
At this bequest and that odd codicil.
Pray come; I've killed my beeves and broached my wine,
The living die, but living, they must dine;
The dead depart, but then their goods remain,
To soothe our sorrow, and relieve our pain.

Some murmured “Shameful!” “Shocking!” “Bad, too bad!”
“His mother's funeral too!” and “Drink, I fear!”
“Enough to call down judgments on us all”;
And others hinted that he must be mad;
Yet all came back to feast, who bore the bier.
And seated at the head of that full board,
Outstretching his great limbs, his eye on fire,
Young Austen quaffed the brimming ale, and laughed
A scornful laugh, and bade his guests accord
Good heed to duty ere they fed desire.

We'll take the Will first, as a tooth-some whet;
It's hanging o'er us like a pending debt,
Spoiling all appetite, forbidding rest
With hopes uncertain of a rich bequest:
Lo! here are cousins thrice-removed, but blood,
Thicker than water, sticks to one like mud.
When poor, they wounded not my mother's soul
With humbling gifts of money or of dress;
But if they shrank with sorrow to condole,
They failed not to congratulate success,
But when she needed nothing, nought they spared
In costly tokens of their fond regard.
The Will, the Will, then! she was good and wise;
Their blushing virtues, no doubt, they forgot,
And did all this as though they did it not;
And so the Will will be a glad surprise.
And you, her Pastor, faithful to your charge,
You scrupled not to tell her, round and large,
How hard the rich do find the way to heaven,
As camels through a needle's eye are driven.
She liked not sermons much, I must confess,
Even slighted them as marrowless dry-bones,
And wanting bread, she said they gave her stones,
But she could not forget your faithfulness.
Nor yours, good doctor, ever at her call,
But never called, because she physic hated,
Moreover she was never sick at all;
But still the yearly fee was ne'er abated,
Though powder, pill, or potion, great or small,
Blister or clyster, never knew in her
What healing virtues they might minister.

But where is she to whom the place belongs,
The bonnie May, so dear to all the glen,
Prankt with her flowers, and tripping to her songs
In those white robes that witched the hearts of men?
Old neighbours, ye whose lives are memories
Of better days, when all was sunny and blithe,
And in the wet grass ye would stay the scythe
To catch her greeting smile at sweet sunrise;
She came and went 'mong you a gleam of light,
That warmed the heart, and made the old Hall bright;
There was no mate seemed good enough for her,
Nor any fate but that she would confer
Honour upon it, as religion brings
Glory and beauty to the highest things.
Of course, you're here to see how wrong is righted,
And justice to the orphan is requited.
The Will, the Will, then; let us have the Will;—
For all our hopes it surely must fulfil.

They understood him not, but felt the tone
Of irony that hardened all his speech,
And mocking laughter that, coming quickly after,
Crept fast, and tingled keen through flesh and bone.
With shock of shame as deep as words might reach.

But when the Will was read which all bequeathed,
Monies and lands, unto her only son,
Nor other name named, but with mark of shame
Or bitter taunt, a biting scorn that breathed—
A scorn she never hid, and spared to none;

Straightway they rose in wrath, and left untasted
The ample viands, scowling as they went;
And silent long, remembered now the wrong
Done to the heir, nor heeded, as they hasted,
His urgent pleas that they were weak and faint.

Surely they needed food, and must not go
Till they had tried his beeves, and drunk his wine;
Would not the priest say grace for them at least?
And might not some strong waters break the blow?
But only the cool lawyer stayed to dine.
He stayed to dine, and yet he did not dine;
For lo! the heir must have the village poor
To eat the feast, unblessed by Christian priest;
And he too high and dainty was, and fine,
And flouncing forth, indignant, banged the door.

So, with the lame and halt and maimed and blind,
And all the pauper world for miles about,
The feast was high, and noisy revelry,
And with their songs they startled the night wind,
And shook their tattered duds with drunken shout.

For he, with strange, wild recklessness would stir
All weird and eerie thoughts to feed his mood,
And nought too grim or gruesome seemed for him;
Maddened, that night, by memory of her,
He shrank from all pure springs of bright or good.

So it went on until the morning broke;
And when the morning broke he was alone,
The household all had vanished from the Hall
At the strange coming of the beggar folk,
And now again he felt his heart like stone.

One only word he spake: “O misery!
Never to see her, hear her nevermore,
No hope of change—oh pitiful and strange!
And she went drifting on that sunless sea,
And she lies wrecked upon that silent shore!
“Dead! and this wrong unrighted, unrepented!
Dead! and to me this horrible bequest!
Dead! and my faith, too, dying in her death!
Mother, O mother!—if you had relented!
But now there is no joy for me or rest!”

And at the morning's dawn he rose and went
All through the house, and every window barred,
And every door he locked on every floor,
And with the keys his weary way he bent
Along the mountain pathway, rough and hard.

Faintly the sunshine tipped the clouds with red,
Faintly the spring-birds fluttered into song,
The mountain stream rippled as in a dream,
And dream-like in the mist the sleek kine fed
On the low meadows, moving slow along.

And slow and weary up the glen he passed,
Weary and slow amid the dim, slant light,
Until he stood beside the old pine-wood
Above the red crag which its shadow cast
O'er the dark pool, and water-lilies white.

All round the rim still rustled the tall sedge,
Broad leaves of lily paved the pool within,
The water-hen, unconscious now of men,
Oared herself, rippling outward from the edge.
And with her young brood paddled out and in.

And standing in the pine-wood's darkling shade,
He hurled the keys down, with a mighty curse
Upon his lips! his soul in dark eclipse,
And with the keys, the Will that she had made,
And strode in gloom across the moor and furze.

But as he sped along that trackless way,
Stumbling o'er snake-like roots that twisted white
On the black peat, and caught his hurrying feet,
The strong-knit moral fibre claimed its sway,
And kindlier feelings brought a sweeter light:—

A sweeter light that humbled him, and shed
Upon his jagged nature calm rebuke,
And made him hate his anger passionate;
And by and by he lifted up his head,
Knitting his forehead with a resolute look.

Lord God, to whom the hidden things belong,
Pardon my burdened, darkened spirit, long
Prying at every crevice of this wrong.

Burdened and darkened, mad to find some light,
And in my madness making deeper night;
Calm Thou my heart, and help me to do right.

I do remember her, the gentle May,
Like a soft morning star whose melting ray
Hung, lingering, dewy o'er mine early day;

Faint as a dream of something white and pure,
A shapeless form that search would not endure,
Which ever changing, ever seemed unsure;

Yet ever in its wavering loveliness,
It brought to me a sense of tender bliss,
Like lips that from the past clung with a kiss

A downy cheek that warmly lay on mine,
And eyes that shined on me a light divine;—
A shadow, and its voice an echo fine!

One task remains to me; let me but find
The secret of those children left behind;
No oath that binds to wrong can ever bind.

Or if it do, better the curse I bore
Than bind upon a mother evermore
This bitter wrong, and bolt her prison door.

Too late? I know not, for He changeth not;
Too late? Our hearts change, and they change our lot;
Who ever changed, and yet no mercy got?

But be it fruitful of a curse on me;
And be it fruitless, mother, now to thee;
It is the right, and that is all we see.