The Poetical Works of (Richard Monckton Milnes) Lord Houghton ::

I saw two children intertwine
Their arms about each other,
Like the young tendrils of a vine
About its nearest brother:
And ever and anon,
As gaily they ran on,
They looked into each other's face
Anticipating an embrace.

I saw these two when they were men,
I watched them meet one day,
They touched each other's hands—and then
Each went on his own way.

There did not seem a tie
Of love—a bond or chain,
To make them turn the lingering eye,
Or grasp the hand again.

This is a page in our life's book
We all of us turn over:
The web is rent,
The hour-glass spent,
And, oh! the paths we once forsook
How seldom we recover.

Our days are broken into parts,
And every remnant has a tale
Of the abandonment of hearts,
Which make our freshest hopes grow pale;
And when we talk of Friendship mutter,
We know not what it is we utter.

I weep not that our fate is dark,
I quail not that the wild winds hark
About our heads, and miseries mark
Their victories on our brows:—
But though the dynasty of Fate
Doth make our words a feather's weight,
Doth mark our pledges with derision,
And force us into indecision,
And feigning of our vows—

I care not that our lore may be
Deep as the everlasting sea;
When will the falling of a star,
The darting of a sun-born beam,
Compare with what our spirits are?
And what unto ourselves we seem,
Is tinctured with a life so small,
So wretchedly ephemeral,
As thrills our phantom-like communions—
No fellow-soul's fraternal unions.

TO A CHILD WITH BLACK EYES AND GOLDEN HAIR.

When first, on that fair morn of May,
Thou cam'st across my pilgrim way,
My joy was shaded by much fear;
Thy hair, all made of very light,
Seemed almost too supremely bright
For earth,—I asked Why wert Thou here?

But when I watched those eyes below,
So clear, yet darkling like the flow
Of waters in a silent cave;
I felt they were of human birth,
Of Earth, though of the best of Earth;
Quietly lucid, sweetly grave.

Dear child! by Nature double-dowered,
Thee I would surely deem empowered
A great ensample-work to do;
To show that Man, however crowned
With rays of Heavenly Love, is bound
To Earth's serene Affections too.

1832.

CARPE DIEM.

Youth, that pursuest with such eager pace
Thy even way,
Thou pantest on to win a mournful race:
Then stay! oh, stay!

Pause and luxuriate in thy sunny plain;
Loiter,—enjoy:
Once past, Thou never wilt come back again,
A second Boy.

The hills of Manhood wear a noble face,
When seen from far;
The mist of light from which they take their grace
Hides what they are.

The dark and weary path those cliffs between
Thou canst not know,
And how it leads to regions never-green,
Dead fields of snow.

Pause, while thou mayst, nor deem that fate thy gain,
Which, all too fast,
Will drive thee forth from this delicious plain,
A Man at last.

1833.

THE FLIGHT OF YOUTH.

No, though all the winds that lie
In the circle of the sky
Trace him out, and pray and moan,
Each in its most plaintive tone,—
No, though Earth be split with sighs,
And all the Kings that reign
Over Nature's mysteries
Be our faithfullest allies,—
All—all is vain:
They may follow on his track,
But He never will come back—
Never again!

Youth is gone away,
Cruel, cruel youth,
Full of gentleness and ruth
Did we think him all his stay;
How had he the heart to wreak
Such a woe on us so weak,
He that was so tender-meek?
How could he be made to learn
To find pleasure in our pain?

Could he leave us to return
Never again!

Bow your heads very low,
Solemn-measured be your paces,
Gathered up in grief your faces,
Sing sad music as ye go;
In disordered handfuls strew
Strips of cypress, sprigs of rue;
In your hands be borne the bloom,
Whose long petals once and only
Look from their pale-leavèd tomb
In the midnight lonely;
Let the nightshade's beaded coral
Fall in melancholy moral
Your wan brows around,
While in very scorn ye fling
The amaranth upon the ground
As an unbelievèd thing;
What care we for its fair tale
Of beauties that can never fail,
Glories that can never wane?
No such blooms are on the track
He has past, who will come back
Never again!

Alas! we know not how he went,
We knew not he was going,

For had our tears once found a vent,
We' had stayed him with their flowing.
It was as an earthquake, when
We awoke and found him gone,
We were miserable men,
We were hopeless, every one!
Yes, he must have gone away
In his guise of every day,
In his common dress, the same
Perfect face and perfect frame;
For in feature, for in limb,
Who could be compared to him?
Firm his step, as one who knows
He is free where'er he goes,
And withal as light of spring
As the arrow from the string;
His impassioned eye had got
Fire which the sun has not;
Silk to feel, and gold to see,
Fell his tresses full and free,
Like the morning mists that glide
Soft adown the mountain's side;
Most delicious 'twas to hear
When his voice was trilling clear
As a silver-hearted bell,
Or to follow its low swell,
When, as dreamy winds that stray
Fainting 'mid Æolian chords,

Inner music seemed to play
Symphony to all his words;
In his hand was poised a spear,
Deftly poised, as to appear
Resting of its proper will,—
Thus a merry hunter still,
And engarlanded with bay,
Must our Youth have gone away,
Though we half remember now,
He had borne some little while
Something mournful in his smile—
Something serious on his brow:
Gentle Heart, perhaps he knew
The cruel deed he was about to do!

Now, between us all and Him
There are rising mountains dim,
Forests of uncounted trees,
Spaces of unmeasured seas:
Think of Him how gay of yore
We made sunshine out of shade,—
Think with Him how light we bore
All the burden sorrow laid;
All went happily about Him,—
How shall we toil on without Him?
How without his cheering eye
Constant strength enbreathing ever?
How without Him standing by

Aiding every hard endeavour?
For when faintness or disease
Had usurped upon our knees,
If he deigned our lips to kiss
With those living lips of his,
We were lightened of our pain,
We were up and hale again:—
Now, without one blessing glance
From his rose-lit countenance,
We shall die, deserted men,—
And not see him, even then!

We are cold, very cold,—
All our blood is drying old,
And a terrible heart-dearth
Reigns for us in heaven and earth:
Forth we stretch our chilly fingers
In poor effort to attain
Tepid embers, where still lingers
Some preserving warmth, in vain.
Oh! if Love, the Sister dear
Of Youth that we have lost,
Come not in swift pity here,
Come not, with a host
Of Affections, strong and kind,
To hold up our sinking mind,
If She will not, of her grace,
Take her Brother's holy place,

And be to us, at least, a part
Of what he was, in Life and Heart,
The faintness that is on our breath
Can have no other end but Death.

1833.

ON LEAVING A PLACE WHERE ONE HAD DWELT MANY YEARS.

There are some moments in each life
With strange and wayward feelings rife,
When certain words and certain things
Strike on the heart unwonted strings,
And waken forth some solemn tone
Their nature yet has never known:
And it is thus—when from some place,
As from a long familiar face,
Though you may wish the chain to sever,
Still are you sad to part for ever.

Perchance 'twas an unlovely spot,
Perchance too that you loved it not,—
Perchance that in that place had been
Dramas of many a cloudy scene,—
That there the first fresh tear was wept,
Or youth's impatient vigil kept,
That not a day you there had spent
Held its unchequered merriment
Marked by the free heart's earliest throes,
And chronicled by childhood's woes,—

Though soulless men may wonder why
You heaved the involuntary sigh,
And how the loss your soul oppress'd
Of that ill-cherish'd when possess'd,—
Yet when the twinkling eye has cast
One look, and knows it is the last,
And while that look is fixed behind,
In every melancholy wind
A myriad sorrowing voices come,
The sighs of a remembered home,
A long and terrible farewell
Pronounced by lips invisible:
When many an eye with rapture gleaming,
And many a smile with joyance teeming,
That may have saved you from despair,
Or lightened up your sojourn there,
By after-misery sorely tried,
In death embalmed and sanctified,
Have a new life within your brain,
And seem to gaze and beat again.—
Then thoughts of pain are all forgot,
But pleasure's memory passes not:
Yet this by some distrotion strange
Its very being fain must change
Using a stern reflective power,
To dim with gloom that parting hour,
As the low trembling spirit strays
Amid the smiles of other days.

These are the eras of Existence,
The seasons these when all resistance
To time and fate must ever seem
A futile unconsoling dream.
So much of life, we feel, is past,
Whene'er we murmur forth “the last,”—
So nearer are we to the shore,
Where time and things of time are o'er,
Where all is Present, and the Past
Of aught can never be the Last.

1829.

YOUTH'S FAIR RESOLVE.

Dear friend, I would that our free life should be
Like the red blood that bounding from the heart
Speeds onward through each ministering artery,
Bearing fresh force to each remotest part,
And stagnates never,
Till Death's uncouth and wintry mastery
Dams up the river.

Is it because our fellows are depraved
That we should leave our work and be like them?
No,—if the laws of love and truth are braved,
From peasant's cap to jewelled diadem,—
The more's the pity;
“Ten righteous men,” the Patriarch says, “had saved
The heaven-cursed city.”

The hermit sage an ancient anchorite,
Who went to wilds and made the wolves their friends,
Even they perchance had fought a better fight,
And served more righteously their being's ends,

Had they remained
In the world's pale, and kept, with perilous might,
Their faith unstained:

Had they abandoned ev'n the commune high
Which oft in solitude they held with God,—
The lonely prayer, the speechless ecstasy
In which the angel-paths of Heaven they trod,
And sacrificed
Upon that altar which saw Jesus die,
What best they prized.

And I—oh! think you not I too have known
'Tis sweet to muse beneath the old elm tree,
While night lets loose her drapery's spangled zone,
Or watch the sun-god woo the western sea,
With rich parade,
And send my thoughts, to brave adventure prone,
On strange crusade?

Or else with you a' strolling hand in hand
Break lances in a tournament of rhyme,—
Dispute about the tints of faery-land,—
Or, by some heritage which olden Time
Has left the wise,
Bid wondrous pageants, as by sorcerer's wand,
Before us rise.

If life were all like this to you and me,
How would it matter to be young or old?
Where is the privilege of youth's buoyancy,
Could we thus turn Time's iron scythe to gold?
The pleasures given
To man were all too great, and there would be
No want of heaven.

Let us go forth, and resolutely dare,
With sweat of brow, to toil our little day,—
And if a tear fall on the task of care,
In memory of those spring-hours past away,
Brush it not by!
Our hearts to God! to brother-men
Aid, labor, blessing, prayer, and then
To these a sigh!

1832.

THE LAY OF THE HUMBLE.

Le bon Dieu me dit—“Chante,
Chante, pauvre petit.”—
Beranger.

I have no comeliness of frame,
No pleasant range of feature.
I'm feeble, as when first I came
To earth, a weeping creature;
My voice is low whene'er I speak,
And singing faint my song;
But though thus cast among the weak,
I envy not the strong.

The trivial part in life I play
Can have so light a bearing
On other men, who, night or day,
For me are never caring;
That, though I find not much to bless,
Nor food for exaltation,
I know that I am tempted less,—
And that is consolation.

The beautiful! the noble blood!
I shrink as they pass by,—
Such power for evil or for good
Is flashing from each eye;

They are indeed the stewards of Heaven,
High-headed and strong-handed:
From those, to whom so much is given,
How much may be demanded!

'Tis true, I am hard buffeted,
Though few can be my foes,
Harsh words fall heavy on my head,
And unresisted blows;
But then I think, “Had I been born,—
Hot spirit—sturdy frame—
And passion prompt to follow scorn,—
I might have done the same.”

To me men are for what they are,
They wear no masks with me;
I never sicken'd at the jar
Of ill-tuned flattery;
I never mourned affections lent
In folly or in blindness;—
The kindness that on me is spent
Is pure, unasking, kindness.

And most of all, I never felt
The agonizing sense
Of seeing love from passion melt
Into indifference;

The fearful shame, that day by day
Burns onward, still to burn,
To'have thrown your precious heart away,
And met this black return.

I almost fancy that the more
I am cast out from men,
Nature has made me of her store
A worthier denizen;
As if it pleased her to caress
A plant grown up so wild,
As if the being parentless
Made me the more her child.

Athwart my face when blushes pass
To be so poor and weak,
I fall into the dewy grass,
And cool my fevered cheek;
And hear a music strangely made,
That you have never heard,
A sprite in every rustling blade,
That sings like any bird.

My dreams are dreams of pleasantness,—
But yet I always run,
As to a father's morning kiss,
When rises the round sun;

I see the flowers on stalk and stem,
Light shrubs, and poplars tall,
Enjoy the breeze,—I rock with them,—
We're merry brothers all.

I do remember well, when first
I saw the great blue sea,—
It was no stranger-face, that burst
In terror upon me;
My heart began, from the first glance,
His solemn pulse to follow,
I danced with every billow's dance,
And shouted to their hollo.

The Lamb that at its mother's side
Reclines, a tremulous thing,
The Robin in cold winter-tide,
The Linnet in the spring,
All seem to be of kin to me,
And love my slender hand,—
For we are bound, by God's decree,
In one defensive band.

And children, who the worldly mind
And ways have not put on,
Are ever glad in me to find
A blithe companion:

And when for play they leave their homes,
Left to their own sweet glee,
They hear my step, and cry, “He comes,
“Our little friend,—'tis he.”

Have you been out some starry night,
And found it joy to bend
Your eyes to one particular light,
Till it became a friend?
And then, so loved that glistening spot,
That, whether it were far
Or more or less, it mattered not,—
It still was your own star.

Thus, and thus only, can you know,
How I, even scornèd I,
Can live in love, tho' set so low,
And'my ladie-love so high;
Thus learn, that on this varied ball,
Whate'er can breathe and move,
The meanest, lornest, thing of all—
Still owns its right to love.

With no fair round of household cares
Will my lone hearth be blest,
Never the snow of my old hairs
Will touch a loving breast;

No darling pledge of spousal faith
Shall I be found possessing,
To whom a blessing with my breath
Would be a double blessing:

But yet my love with sweets is rife,
With happiness it teems,
It beautifies my waking life,
And waits upon my dreams;
A shape that floats upon the night,
Like foam upon the sea,—
A voice of seraphim,—a light
Of present Deity!

I hide me in the dark arcade,
When she walks forth alone,—
I feast upon her hair's rich braid,—
Her half unclaspèd zone:
I watch the flittings of her dress,
The bending boughs between,—
I trace her footsteps' faery press
On' the scarcely ruffled green.

Oh deep delight! the frail guitar
Trembles beneath her hand,
She sings a song she brought from far,
I cannot understand;

Her voice is always as from heaven,
But yet I seem to hear
Its music best, when thus 'tis given
All music to my ear.

She' has turned her tender eyes around,
And seen me crouching there,
And smiles, just as that last full sound
Is fainting on the air;
And now, I can go forth so proud,
And raise my head so tall.—
My heart within me beats so loud,
And musical withal:—

And there is summer all the while,
Mid-winter tho' it be,—
How should the universe not smile,
When she has smiled on me?
For tho' that smile can nothing more
Than merest pity prove,
Yet pity, it was sung of yore,
Is not so far from love.

From what a crowd of lovers' woes
My weakness is exempt!
How far more fortunate than those
Who mark me for contempt!

No fear of rival happiness
My fervent glory smothers,
The zephyr fans me none the less
That it is bland to others.

Thus without share in coin or land,
But well content to hold
The wealth of Nature in my hand,
One flail of virgin gold,—
My Love above me like a sun,—
My own bright thoughts my wings,—
Thro' life I trust to flutter on,
As gay as aught that sings.

One hour I own I dread,—to die
Alone and unbefriended,—
No soothing voice, no tearful eye,—
But that must soon be ended;
And then I shall receive my part
Of everlasting treasure,
In that just world where each man's heart
Will be his only measure.

1833.

THE VIOLET-GIRL.

When Fancy will continually rehearse
Some painful scene once present to the eye,
'Tis well to mould it into gentle verse,
That it may lighter on the spirit lie.

Home yester-eve I wearily returned,
Though bright my morning mood and short my way,
But sad experience in one moment earned
Can crush the heaped enjoyments of the day.

Passing the corner of a populous street,
I marked a girl whose wont it was to stand,
With pallid cheek, torn gown, and naked feet,
And bunches of fresh Violets in each hand.

There her small commerce in the chill March weather
She plied with accents miserably mild;
It was a frightful thought to set together
Those healthy blossoms and that fading child :—

—Those luxuries and largess of the earth,
Beauty and pleasure to the sense of man,
And this poor sorry weed cast loosely forth
On Life's wild waste to struggle as it can!

To me that odorous purple ministers
Hope-bearing memories and inspiring glee,
While meanest images alone are hers,
The sordid wants of base humanity.

Think after all this lapse of hungry hours,
In the disfurnished chamber of dim cold,
How she must loathe the very scented flowers
That on the squalid table lie unsold!

Rest on your woodland banks and wither there,
Sweet preluders of Spring! far better so,
Than live misused to fill the grasp of care,
And serve the piteous purposes of woe.

Ye are no longer Nature's gracious gift,
Yourselves so much and harbingers of more,
But a most bitter irony to lift
The veil that hides our vilest mortal sore.

1837.

ON MY YOUTHFUL LETTERS.

Look at the leaves I gather up in trembling,—
Little to see, and sere, and time-bewasted,
But they are other than the tree can bear now,
For they are mine!

Deep as the tumult in an archèd sea-cave,
Out of the Past these antiquated voices
Fall on my heart's ear; I must listen to them,
For they are mine!

Whose is this hand that wheresoe'er it wanders,
Traces in light words thoughts that come as lightly?
Who was the king of all this soul-dominion?
I? Was it mine?

With what a healthful appetite of spirit,
Sits he at Life's inevitable banquet,
Tasting delight in every thing before him!
Could this be mine?

See! how he twists his coronals of fancy,
Out of all blossoms, knowing not the poison,—
How his young eye is meshed in the enchantment!
And it was mine!

What, is this I?—this miserable complex,
Losing and gaining, only knit together
By the ever-bursting fibres of remembrance,—
What is this mine?

Surely we are by feeling as by knowing,—
Changing our hearts our being changes with them;
Take them away,—these spectres of my boyhood,
They are not mine.

1838.

Set to music by Mrs. Sartoris.

FRIENDSHIP AND LOVE.

If I could coldly sum the love
That we each other bear,
My heart would to itself disprove
The truth of what was there;—
Its willing utterance should express
Nothing but joy and thankfulness.

Yet Friendship is so blurred a name,
A good so ill-discerned,
That if the nature of the flame
That in our bosoms burned
Were treasured in becoming rhymes,
It might have worth in after-times.

The Lover is a God,—the ground
He treads on is not ours;
His soul by other laws is bound,
Sustained by other powers;
We, children of a lowlier lot,
Listen and understand him not.

Liver of a diviner life,
He turns a vacant gaze
Towards the theatre of strife,
Where we consume our days;
His own and that one other heart
Form for himself a world apart:

A sphere, whose sympathies are wings,
On which he rests sublime,
Above the shifts of casual things,
Above the flow of time;
How should he feel, how can he know
The sense of what goes on below?

Reprove him not,—no selfish aim
Here leads to selfish ends;
You might as well the infant blame
That smiles to grieving friends:
Could all thus love, and love endure,
Our world would want no other cure.

But few are the elect, for whom
This fruit is on the stem,—
And for that few an early tomb
Is open,—not for them,
But for their love; for they live on,
Sorrow and shame! when Love is gone:

They who have dwelt at Heaven's own gate,
And felt the light within,
Come down to our poor mortal state,
Indifference, care, and sin;
And their dimmed spirits hardly bear
A trace to tell what once they were.

Fever and Health their thirst may slake
At one and the same stream;
The dreamer knows not till he wake
The falsehood of his dream:
How, while I love thee, can I prove
The surer nature of our love?

It is, that while our choicest hours
Are closed from vulgar ken,
We daily use our active powers,—
Are men to brother men,—
It is, that, with our hands in one,
We do the work that should be done.

Our hands in one, we will not shrink
From life's severest due,—
Our hands in one, we will not blink
The terrible and true;
What each would feel a heavy blow
Falls on us both as autumn snow.

The simple unpresumptuous sway,
By which our hearts are ruled,
Contains no seed of self-decay;
Too temperate to be cooled,
Our Passion fears no blast of ill,
No winter, till the one last chill.

And even then no frantic grief
Shall shake the mourner's mind,—
He will reject no small relief
Kind Heaven may leave behind,
Nor set at nought his bliss enjoyed,
When now by human fate alloyed.

1838.

THE FRIENDSHIP-FLOWER.

When first the Friendship-flower is planted
Within the garden of your soul,
Little of care or thought is wanted
To guard its beauty fresh and whole;
But when the full empassioned age
Has well revealed the magic bloom,
A wise and holy tutelage
Alone avoids the open tomb.

It is not Absence you should dread,—
For absence is the very air
In which, if sound at root, the head
Shall wave most wonderful and fair:
With sympathies of joy and sorrow
Fed, as with morn and even dews,
Ideal colouring it may borrow
Richer than ever earthly hues.

But oft the plant, whose leaves unsere
Refresh the desert, hardly brooks
The common-peopled atmosphere
Of daily thoughts and words and looks;

It trembles at the brushing wings
Of many a careless fashion-fly,
And strange suspicions aim their stings
To taint it as they wanton by.

Rare is the heart to bear a flower,
That must not wholly fall and fade,
Where alien feelings, hour by hour,
Spring up, beset, and overshade;
Better, a child of care and toil,
To glorify some needy spot,
Than in a glad redundant soil
To pine neglected and forgot.

Yet when, at last, by human slight,
Or close of their permitted day,
From the bright world of life and light
Such fine creations lapse away,—
Bury the relics that retain
Sick odours of departed pride,—
Hoard, as ye will, your memory's gain,
But leave the blossoms where they died.

1838.

FAIR-WEATHER FRIEND.

Because I mourned to see thee fall
From where I mounted thee,
Because I did not find thee all
I feigned a friend should be;
Because things are not what they seem,
And this our world is full of dream,—
Because thou lovest sunny weather,
Am I to lose thee altogether?

I know harsh words have found their way,
Which I would fain recall;
And angry passions had their day,
But now—forget them all;
Now that I only ask to share
Thy presence, like some pleasant air,
Now that my gravest thoughts will bend
To thy light mind, fair-weather friend!

See! I am careful to atone
My spirit's voice to thine;
My talk shall be of mirth alone,
Of music, flowers, and wine!

I will not breathe an earnest breath,
I will not think of life or death,
I will not dream of any end,
While thou art here, fair-weather friend!

Delusion brought me only woe,
I take thee as thou art;
Let thy gay verdure overgrow
My deep and serious heart!
Let me enjoy thy laugh, and sit
Within the radiance of thy wit,
And lean where'er thy humours tend,
Taking fair weather from my friend.

Or, if I see my doom is traced
By fortune's sterner pen,
And pain and sorrow must be faced,—
Well, thou canst leave me then;
And fear not lest some faint reproach
Should on thy happy hours encroach;
Nay, blessings on thy steps attend,
Where'er they turn, fair-weather friend!

1843.

LONELY MATURITY.

When from the key-stone of the arch of life
Man his ascent with earnest eyes surveys,
Sums and divides the steps of peace and strife,
And numbers o'er his good and evil days,—

If then, as well may be, he stand alone,
How will his heart recall the youthful throng,
Who leapt with helping hands from stone to stone,
And cheered the progress with their choral song!

How will sad memory point where, here and there,
Friend after friend, by falsehood or by fate,
From him or from each other parted were,
And love sometimes become the nurse of hate!

Yet at this hour no feelings dark or fierce,
No harsh desire to punish or condemn,
Through the grave silence of the past can pierce,
Reproach, if such there be, is not for them.

Rather, he thinks, he held not duly dear
Love, the best gift that man on man bestows,
While round his downward path, recluse and drear,
He feels the chill indifferent shadows close.

Old limbs, once broken, hardly knit together,—
Seldom old hearts with other hearts combine;
Suspicion coarsely weighs the fancy's feather,
Experience tests and mars the sense divine;

Thus now, though ever loth to underprize
Youth's sacred passions and delicious tears,
Still worthier seems to his reflective eyes
The Friendship that sustains maturer years.

“Why did I not,” his spirit murmurs deep,
“At every cost of momentary pride
Preserve the love for which in vain I weep;
Why had I wish, or hope, or sense beside?

“O cruel issue of some selfish thought!
O long, long, echo of some angry tone!
O fruitless lesson, mercilessly taught,
Alone to linger and to die alone!

“No one again upon my breast to fall,
To name me by my common Christian name,—
No one in mutual banter to recall
Some youthful folly or some boyish game;

“No one with whom to reckon and compare
The good we won or missed; no one to draw
Excuses from past circumstance or care,
And mitigate the world's unreasoning law!

“Were I one moment with that presence blest,
I would o'erwhelm him with my humble pain,
I would invade the soul I once possest,
And once for all my ancient love regain!”

1844.

PAST FRIENDSHIP.

We that were friends, yet are not now,
We that must daily meet
With ready words and courteous bow,
Acquaintance of the street;
We must not scorn the holy past,
We must remember still
To honour feelings that outlast
The reason and the will.

I might reprove thy broken faith,
I might recall the time
When thou wert chartered mine till death,
Through every fate and clime;
When every letter was a vow,
And fancy was not free
To dream of ended love; and thou
Wouldst say the same of me.

No, no, 'tis not for us to trim
The balance of our wrongs,
Enough to leave remorse to him
To whom remorse belongs!

Let our dead friendship be to us
A desecrated name,
Unutterable, mysterious,
A sorrow and a shame.

A sorrow that two souls which grew
Encased in mutual bliss,
Should wander, callous strangers, through
So cold a world as this!
A shame that we, whose hearts had earned
For life an early heaven,
Should be like angels self-returned
To Death, when once forgiven!

Let us remain as living signs,
Where they that run may read
Pain and disgrace in many lines,
As of a loss indeed;
That of our fellows any who
The prize of love have won
May tremble at the thought to do
The thing that we have done!

1844.

THE MEMORY OF LOVE.

Religious Love! it is most sure and true,
That Man, before he felt the dank night-air
Of this our nether birth, thy kingdom knew,
And bathed his Spirit in the day-spring there.

Else could world-withered age and flippant youth,
Minds of unloving and unlovely mould,
Who hold the “ancient lie” for solid truth,
And prize its wretched life-dross all as gold,—

Could these, the minions of the dust,—even these,
Descant of thee as a familiar name,—
Detect thy signs, revere thy mysteries,
And, godless else, adore thy altar-flame?

And Poets too have been, who boldly own
They never felt thy influence o'er them shine,
But whose high Art has built thee many a throne,
Where thou canst fitly sit, confessed divine.

Remember then, oh Pilgrim! and beware,—
Thou, with that Memory for a master-key,
Wilt open Heaven, and be no alien there,—
For as thou honourest Love—so will Love honour thee.

1839.

LOVE AND NATURE.

I.

“Thou, that wert wont at Nature's shrine
To worship all the year,
Say are her features less divine,
Her attitudes less dear?
Or if her beauty's still the same,
Then thou art dull and slow:
She must be sooth a gentle dame
To let thee woo her so.”

“'Tis not, sweet friend! that I forget
The charms of vale and hill:
Sunset and dawn are lovely yet,—
But thou art lovelier still:
I prize the talk of summer brooks,
The mountain's graver tone;
But can I give them thoughts and looks
That are of right thine own?”

II.

The Sun came through the frosty mist
Most like a dead-white moon;
Thy soothing tones I seemed to list,
As voices in a swoon.

Still as an island stood our ship,
The waters gave no sound,
But when I touched thy quivering lip,
I felt the world go round.

We seemed the only sentient things
Upon that silent sea:
Our hearts the only living springs
Of all that yet could be!

III.

Till death the tide of thought may stem,
There's little chance of our forgetting
The highland tarn, the water-gem,
With all its rugged mountain-setting.

Our spirits followed every cloud
That o'er it, and within it, floated;
Our joy in all the scene was loud,
Yet one thing silently we noted:

That, though the glorious summer hue
That steep'd the heav'ns could scarce be brighter,
The blue below was still more blue,
The very light itself was lighter.

And each the other's fancy caught
By one instinctive glance directed:
How doubly glows the Poet's thought
In the belov'd one's breast reflected!

IV.

There is a beechen tree,
To whose thick crown a boy I clomb,
And made me there a birdlike home
To sing or ponder free.

There is a jasmine bower,
Whence you did see me trembling tear
One spray to mingle with your hair,
And loved me from that hour.

Nature has odours none
Like these to me: let some of each,
Of jasmine flowers and leaves of beech,
Adorn our house alone.

V.

Where'er about the world we roam,
With heart on heart, and hand in hand,
Each dwelling has the face of home,
Each country is my native land.—

With glad familiar looks I greet
Places and sights unseen before:
And wandering brook, and winding street,
I follow as if passed of yore.

But if some chance or duty calls
Thee from me; then how great the change!
I hardly know my father's halls,
My mother's very smile is strange.

Dead word become the books I read
With most delight while thou art near;
I seem thy present love to need,
My dearest friendships to endear.

VI.

When long upon the scales of fate
The issue of my passion hung,
And on your eyes I laid in wait,
And on your brow, and on your tongue,

High-frowning Nature pleased me most,
Strange pleasure was it to discern
Sharp rocks and mountains peaked with frost,
Through gorges thick with fir and fern.

The flowerless walk, the vapoury shrouds,
Could comfort me; though best of all,
I loved the daughter of the clouds,—
The wild, capricious, waterfall.—

But now that you and I repose
On one affection's certain store,
Serener charms take place of those,—
Plenty and Peace, and little more.

The hill that tends its mother-breast,
To patient flocks and gentle kine,—
The value that spreads its royal vest
Of golden corn and purple vine;

The streams that bubble out their mirth
In humble nooks, or calmly flow,
The crystal life-blood of our earth,
Are now the dearest sights I know.

LOVE-THOUGHTS.

I.

All down the linden-alley's morning shade
Thy form with childly rapture I pursue;
No hazel-bowered brook can seek the glade
With steps more joyous and with course more true.

But when all haste and hope I reach my goal,
And Thou at once thy full and earnest eyes
Turnest upon me, my encumbered soul
Bows down in shame and trembles with surprise.

I rise exalted on thy moving grace,
Peace and good-will in all thy voice I hear;
Yet if the sudden wonders of thy face
Fall on me, joy is weak and turns to fear.

II.

Think not because I walk in power,
While Thou art by my side,
That I could keep the path one hour
Without my guard and guide.

The keeper left me once alone
Within a madhouse hall,
With gibber, shriek, and fixèd smile
About me,—madmen all!

The horrid sense which then I felt
Is what my life would be,
If in this world of pain and guilt
I once lost sight of Thee.

III.

Oh! let not words, the callous shell of Thought,
Intrude betwixt thy silent soul and mine;—
Try not the choicest ever Poet wrought,
They all are discord in our life divine.

Smile not thine unbelief. But hear and say
All that Thou will'st, and then upon my breast
Thy gracious head in silent passion lay
One little hour, and tell me which is best.

Now let us live our love; in after-hours
Words shall fit handmaids to sweet Memory be,
But let them not disturb these holier bowers,
The voiceless depths of perfect sympathy.

IV.

Dream no more that grief and pain
Could such hearts as ours enchain,
Safe from loss and safe from gain,
Free, as Love makes free.

When false friends pass coldly by,
Sigh, in earnest pity, sigh,
Turning thine unclouded eye
Up from them to me.

Hear not danger's trampling feet,
Feel not sorrow's wintry sleet,
Trust that life is just and meet,
With mine arm round Thee.

Lip on lip, and eye to eye,
Love to love, we live, we die;
No more Thou, and no more I,
We, and only We!

V.

I would be calm,—I would be free
From thoughts and images of Thee;
But Nature and thy will conspire
To bar me from my fair desire.

The trees are moving with thy grace,
The water will reflect thy face;
The very flowers are plotting deep,
And in thy breath their odours steep.

The breezes, when mine eyes I close,
With sighs, just like mine own, impose;
The nightingale then takes her part,
And plays thy voice against my heart.

If Thou then in one golden chain
Canst bind the world, I strive in vain;
Perchance my wisest scheme would be
To join this great conspiracy.

VI.

I will not say my life was sad
Before it stood fulfilled in Thee;
The happy need not scorn the glad,
Thy subjects need not mock the free:
Mine was the moment's natural boon
Lighting at will on these or those,
Pleasures as constant as the moon,
And Loves eternal as the rose.

I prize the humblest ancient hour,
When winged with light my spirit flew

For honey's sake from flower to flower,
Nor even asked where amaranth grew;
Each creature's simple Providence
Sufficed me well, until one day
Thy presence roused in me the sense,
How sure wert Thou, how frail were They!

That instant Nature seemed a dream,—
Thou waking in the midst alone,—
And life her fast unpausing stream
Contrasted with thine island-throne.
Ah, why to me of all was given
That only step of conscious pain,
From joyous Earth to glorious Heaven,
Scarce dead before I rose again!

VII.

All fair things have soft approaches,
Quiet steps are still the sure;
It were hard to point aright
At what instant morning light,
Shy and solemn-paced, encroaches
On the desolate obscure;—
Who can read the growth of flowers
Syllable by syllable?
Who has sight or ear to tell,

Or by moments or by hours,
At what rate the sappy tree,
Full of life, and life in spring,
Every sleekest limb embosses
With the buds its vigour glosses,—
At what rate the buds with glee
Burst, and show the tender wing
Of the leaf that hardly dares
Trust to inexperienced airs?
Who can measure out the pace
Of the smiles on Nature's face?

Thou loveliest of the thoughts of God,
Creation's antitype and end!
Thou treadest so the vernal sod
That slimmest grasses hardly bend;—
I feel thy presence sensible
On my ideal supervene,
Yet just the moment cannot tell
That lies those two bright states between:—
No memory has an arm to reach
The morning-twilight of our thought,—
The infant's use of sight and speech
Is all unchallenged and unsought;
And yet thou askest, winning one,
That I should now unriddler be,
To tell thee when I first begun
To love and honour Thee!

VIII. WRITTEN AT THE BATHS OF LUCCA.

The fireflies, pulsing forth their rapid gleams,
Are the only light
That breaks the night;
A stream, that has the voice of many streams,
Is the only sound
All around:
And we have found our way to the rude stone,
Where many a twilight we have sat alone,
Though in this summer-darkness never yet:
We have had happy, happy moments here,
We have had thoughts we never can forget,
Which will go on with us beyond the bier.

The very lineaments of thy dear face
I do not see, but yet its influence
I feel, even as my outward sense perceives
The freshening presence of the chestnut leaves,
Whose vaguest forms my eye can only trace,
By following where the darkness seems most dense.
What light, what sight, what form, can be to us
Beautiful as this gloom?
We have come down, alive and consciöus,
Into a blessèd tomb:

We have left the world behind us,
Her vexations cannot find us,
We are too far away;
There is something to gainsay
In the life of every day;
But in this delicious death
We let go our mortal breath,
Nought to feel and hear and see,
But our heart's felicity;
Nought with which to be at war,
Nought to fret our shame or pride,
Knowing only that we are,
Caring not what is beside.

FAMILIAR LOVE.

We read together, reading the same book,
Our heads bent forward in a half embrace,
So that each shade that either spirit took
Was straight reflected in the other's face:
We read, not silent, nor aloud,—but each
Followed the eye that past the page along,
With a low murmuring sound that was not speech,
Yet with so much monotony,
In its half-slumbering harmony,
You might not call it song;
More like a bee, that in the noon rejoices,
Than any customed mood of human voices.
Then if some wayward or disputed sense
Made cease awhile that music, and brought on
A strife of gracious-worded difference,
Too light to hurt our soul's dear unison,
We had experience of a blissful state,
In which our powers of thought stood separate,
Each in its own high freedom, set apart,
But both close folded in one loving heart;

So that we seemed, without conceit, to be
Both one and two in our identity.

We prayed together, praying the same prayer,
But each that prayed did seem to be alone,
And saw the other, in a golden air
Poised far away, beneath a vacant throne,
Beckoning the kneeler to arise and sit
Within the glory which encompassed it:
And when obeyed, the Vision stood beside,
And led the way through the upper hyaline,
Smiling in beauty tenfold glorified,
Which, while on earth, had seemed enough divine,
The beauty of the Spirit-Bride,
Who guided the rapt Florentine.
The depth of human reason must become
As deep as is the holy human heart,
Ere aught in written phrases can impart
The might and meaning of that extasy
To those low souls, who hold the mystery
Of the unseen universe for dark and dumb.

But we were mortal still, and when again
We raised our bended knees, I do not say
That our descending spirits felt no pain
To meet the dimness of an earthly day;
Yet not as those disheartened, and the more
Debased, the higher that they rose before,

But, from the exaltation of that hour,
Out of God's choicest treasury, bringing down
New virtue to sustain all ill,—new power
To braid Life's thorns into a regal crown,
We past into the outer world, to prove
The strength miraculous of united Love.

1835.

POETRY AND THE POET.

When, in a frame of liquid verse,
I read you how pure Love's delight
Is turned to Life's consummate curse,
By woman's pride and hard despite,—
Full many a sympathising chord
Vibrated all your soul along;
You trembled at each poignant word,
And wept ere I had closed the song.

But when, in rude and broken prose,
I laid my heart before you bare,—
Dared the deep misery to disclose,
Which you had long awakened there;
A trivial laugh, a pitying look
(Yet half of scorn) was all you gave,—
You bent before the lifeless Book,
Though loth a living Heart to save.

My Art is not a vulgar craft
To work some passing Pleasure-spell,—
There is no virtue in the draught
For those who desecrate the well:

Proud Loveliness! retain your sway,—
Leave me to suffer as I can,
But do not seem to love the Lay,
And mock the Poet and the Man.

1836.

PARTED AND MET.

I.

I know not, whether such great power
Is in despair,—it may be so,—
But, Myrrha, ere this ebbing hour
Is over, I will try to go:
Once more the glory of your form
Shall fall upon my path,—once more!
And fear not lest the inner storm
Should burst the bounds it kept before.

I have one last, light boon to pray—
Do not be mercilessly kind;
Hold back your hand, and turn away
Those splendours I must leave behind;
Or arm your eyes with chilly glare,
(Though wont to be so burning-bright)
Like their far sisters of the air,
Which light, but cannot warm, the night.

But most of all, I could not bear
From you that mocking word, “Farewell!”—
How well my riven heart will fare,
I think I have not now to tell.

Be silent, passionless—the ghost
Of your own self—a solemn shade,
Whose form, to others wholly lost,
In my deep soul, as in a grave, is laid.

II.

My spirit staggered at the sight,
So painful and so strange,
I could not think that years had might
To work such fearful change;
And ere I ceased from wondering,
My tears fell fast and free,
That wretched, stricken, hopeless thing,—
I dared not call it Thee.

If I had heard that thou wert dead,
I hastily had cried,
“She was so richly favourèd,
God must forgive her pride;
My heart lay withered, while the crown
Of life was fresh upon her,—
I linger still, she has gone down
In beauty and in honour.”

But now, to see thy living death,—
Power, glory, arts, all gone,—

Thy empire lost, and thy poor breath
Still vainly struggling on!
Alas! a thought of saddest weight
Presses and will have vent:
“Had she not scorned my love,—her fate
Had been so different!

“Had her heart bent its haughty will
To take me for its lord,
She had been proudly happy still,
Still honoured, still adored;
The weak love-ties of face and frame
Time easily may sever,
But I had thought her still the same,
As beautiful as ever.

“She had then felt no shame or sorrow,
At seeing fall away
The slaves who mock the god to-morrow,
They worshipped all to-day;
While I preserved, with honest truth,
Through every varying stage,
Her image which adorned my youth,
To glorify my age.”

And do not treat this thought as light,
Nor ask with taunting sign,

“Has then thy life-course been so bright
That thou canst scorn at mine?”
Myrrha,—the name of Misery
Is clear upon my brow,
Yet am I not, nor e'er can be,
So lorn a thing as Thou.

He, who for Love has undergone
The worst that can befall,
Is happier thousand-fold than one
Who never loved at all;
A grace within his soul has reigned,
Which nothing else can bring—
Thank God for all that I have gained,
By that high suffering!

1830.

UNSPOKEN DIALOGUE.

Above the trailing mignonette
That dressed the window-sill,
A Lady watched, with lips firm-set,
And looks of earnest will:
Four decades o'er her life had met,
And left her lovely still.

Not to the radiant firmament,
Not to the garden's grace,
The courses of her mind were bent,—
But where, with sweetest face,
Forth from the other window leant,
The Daughter of the place.

Thus ran her thoughts: “O, wretched day!
When She was born so fair;
Well could I let my charms decay,
If she were not their heir:
I loathe the sunbeams as they play
About her golden hair.

“Yet why? She is too good—too mild—
So madly to aspire—
He is no Boy to be beguiled
By sparks of coloured fire;
I will not dream a pretty child
Can mar my deep desire.

“Her fatherless and lonely days
Are sere before their time;
In scenes of gaiety and praise
She will regain her prime,
And cease to haunt these wooded ways,
With sentimental rhyme.”

On to the conscious maiden past
Those words without the tongue;
Half-petulantly back she cast
The glistening curls that hung
About her neck, and answered fast,
“Yes, I am young—too young.

“Yet am I graver than my wont,
Graver when He is here;
Beneath the glory of his front
I tremble—not with fear,
But, as I read, Bethesda's font
Felt with the Angel near.

“Must I mate only with my kind,
With something as unwise
As my poor self, and never find
Affection I can prize
At once with an adoring mind,
And with admiring eyes?

“My mother trusts to drag me down
To some low range of life,
By pleasures of the clamo'rous town,
And vanity's mean strife;
And in such selfish tumult drown
My hope to be his wife.”

Then darker round the Lady grew
The meditative cloud,—
And stormy thoughts began to brew
She dared not speak aloud,
For then, without disguise, she knew
That rivalry avowed.

“What is my being, if I lose
My love's last stake? while She
Has the fair future where to choose
Her woman's destiny,
Free scope those means and powers to use
Which Time denies to me.

“Was it for this her baby arms
About my neck were flung?
Was it for this I found such charms
In her uncertain tongue?
Was it for this those vain alarms
My mother-soul unstrung?

“O horrible! to wish my child—
My sole one left—unborn,
And, seeing her so meek and mild,
To hold such gifts in scorn:
My nature is grown waste and wild,
My heart with fury torn.”

Speechless—enchanted to the spot—
The girl could scarce divine
The whole disaster of her lot;
But, without sound or sign,
She cried, “O, mother! Love him not—
O, let his love be mine!

“You have had years of full delight—
Your girlhood's passion-dream
Was realized to touch and sight,
As bright as it could seem;
And now you interpose, like night,
Before my life's first gleam.

“Yet You were once what I am now,
You won your maiden prize—
You told me of my Father—how
You lived but in his eyes:
You spoke of the perpetual vow,
The troth that never dies.

“Dear mother! dearer, kinder, far,
If by my childhood's bed
Your care had never strove to bar
Misfortune from my head,
But laid me where my brothers are,
Among the quiet dead.

“Ah! why not die? This cruel strife
Can thus—thus only—cease.
Dear Lord! take home this erring life,
This struggling soul release;
From Heaven, perchance, upon his wife,
I might look down in peace.”

That prayer, like some electric flame,
Struck with resistless force
The Lady's agitated frame;
Nor halted in its course
Till her hard pride was turned to shame,
Her passion to remorse.

She spoke—her words were very low—
But resolute in tone;
“Dear child!—He comes—nay, blush not so
To have your secret known,
'Tis best—'tis best that I should go—
And leave you here alone.”

Then, as his steps grew near and fast,
Her hand was on the door,
Her heart, by holy grace, had cast
The demon from its core,—
And on the threshold calm she past
The Man she loved no more.

1850.

NEVER RETURN!

It was a meeting, such as on this earth
The bonds of time and circumstances permit
Rarely to those who feel and think as one:
A small but “sacred band” wholly made up
Of lovers—of old friends who had not met
For many weary years—of some whose names
Had to each other been familiar sounds,
And who now felt their spirits meet and join
At once, like waters—and of four who formed
Two complete beings, man and woman blent,
Ensamples of connubial unity.

This wondrous concert of internal life
Went on beneath the open infinite
Of an Italian sky, that varied not
More than the peace that dwelt within their souls;
So that when, all at once, before their eyes
The lake grew less transparent, and the leaves
Of the pale olive less distinguishable,
And the hills glow'd like metal, while the snow
First turn'd to gold, then red, then deadly white,
They were astonished at the flight of time
That had not struck one hour within their hearts;

And amid all the riches of that South
They grudged the North its solitary charm
Of long, long twilight, mourning bitterly
That here the day was ravished from their eyes
And bore a world of bliss along with it.
At last one rose, one younger than the rest,
One before whom life lay a glorious stream
Flowing, by right divine, through pleasant lands,
Unconscious of the fatal final sea.
He stood irradiate with that rosy light,
The funeral banner of the fallen sun,
Most like an image of incarnate Hope,
From whom no night can hide the coming morn.

Raising one arm in ecstacy, he cried,—
“Before we leave this consecrated spot,
Before this Day of Days is wholly dead,
Before the dew obliterates all our steps
From this light earth, let us record a vow!
Let us, in presence of these lasting hills,
In presence of this day's delicious thoughts,
That yet are hardly memory,—let us pledge
Our hearts together, that on this same day
Each rolling year shall see us meet again
In this same place, as far as Fate allows.
Some may be held away by cruel chance,
Some by the great divorcer, none by choice;
And thus, at least for a large lapse of time,
One Day shall stand apart from other days,

Birth-day of inward Life—Love's Holyday—
The Wedding-day, not of one single pair,
But of a thousand thoughts, and hopes, and joys,—
The Saint's-day, in whose fair recurrent round
Each year will circle all its blessedness.”

With more than ready welcome, with loud glee,
Was hailed this happy fancy; each was prompt
To press the other's hand, and, joining round
The founder of this mighty festival,
To seal the sudden contract—all save One.

This one had gazed on the impassioned youth
With tender looks, that to the rest had seemed
Fond sympathy,—but had far other sense.
And now he spoke, at first with trem'lous voice,
Softened, as if it passed through inner tears.
“O Friends! dear Friends! do anything but this:
This is a deed to wake the jealous gods
Into a cruel vengeance. We are Men:
We live from hour to hour, and have no right,
Holding no power, to fetter future years.
We may, if Heaven so please, preserve our loves,
We may enjoy our interchange of souls
Long, and in many shapes of time and fate;
But to this spot, the scene of this To-day,
Let us, whate'er befall, never return!

“Never return! If hitherward your path
Should chance to lie, when seeking other lands,
Spare not the time it takes to circuit round

This scene, and gaze upon its face no more.
Say, if you will, ‘It lies amid the gold
The sunset spreads beyond that purple ridge;’
Say, if you will, ‘The atoms of this stream
Flow through the place I value most on earth,
And bear my yearning heart along with them;’
Say, if you will, ‘There rests my Paradise;’
But there, whate'er befall, never return!

“Never return! Should we come back, dear Friend!
As you implore us, we should not return:
Came we all back, as Heaven would hardly grant,
There must be faded cheeks and sunken eyes,
And minds enfeebled with the rack of time,
And hearts grown colder, and, it may be, cold.
The sun might shine as gorgeous as this noon,
And yet find clouds between it and our souls;
The lake might rest like light upon the earth,
And but reflect to us sweet faces gone
And pictures mournful as the dead below;
The very flowers might breathe a poisonous breath
Should we, led by false hope, ever return!

“Trust not the dear palladium of the Past
Upon the Future's breast. The Past is ours,
And we can build a temple of rare thoughts,
Adorned with all affection's tracery,
In which to keep from contact vile and rude
The grace of this incomparable Day.
We may, by heart, go through it all again;

We may, with it, give colour, warmth, and form
To the black, shapeless mountains far away—
Calm down the seething, hyperborean, waves
To the pure sapphire of this lake, and spread
Rose-trellises across the gloomy front
Of blank old dwellings in the distant town;
But we must keep the vision fresh as morn,—
We must not risk that it should ever lose
One of its features of staid loveliness,
One of its sweet associated thoughts.—
Therefore, whate'er befall, never return!

“Never return! Time writes these little words
On palace and on hamlet; strife is vain;
First-love returns not,—friendship comes not back,—
Glory revives not. Things are given us once,
And only once; yet we may keep them ours,
If, like this day, we take them out of time,
And make them portions of the constant peace
Which is the shadow of eternity!”

So ended the serene Philosopher;
And to all minds the sad persuasive truth
Found an immediate access: the poor youth
Whose spirit was but now a-fire with hope,
Cast down his quenched enthusiastic eyes.
“Never return!” in many various tones,
All grave, yet none wholly disconsolate,
Was echoed, amid parting signs of love,
As they went on their common homeward way.

Silent above, the multitudinous stars
Said, “We are steadfast,—we are not as Ye.”
Silent the fields, up to the phantom hills,
Said, “We are dreaming of the vanished days
Which we shall see again, but Ye no more.”
So heavy pressed the meditative calm
On those full hearts, that all rejoiced to hear
The shrill cicala, clittering from below,
Call on the fire-flies dancing through the vines.

1847.

NOT TO-MORROW!

O terrible To-morrow! that will come
On me, alone and far away from Her,
Who was my day, to-day, and every day:
To-morrow she will not be by my side,
And not to-morrow is as never more.

As the poor Soul, that images itself
Parted from God, its Father, and its Cause,
Finds in that very parting all its sin,
And in that very parting knows itself
Evil and reprobate, and will not hear
A single utterance of intrinsic hope:
So to my heart the world to-come is blank,
And not to-morrow is as never more.

I will not sound the possibilities:
I will not ask whether in some far time,
In some far order of the Universe,
In some far destination of myself,
We may not meet again? I only know
The burden of one thought that bears me down:
And that to-morrow is as never more.

Ever and Never—foolish play of words—
Dancing before the finite mind of man:
Our Ever is a sweet successive dream
Of wavelets, over which the bounding heart
Goes forward 'mid the shoals and rocks of Time,
Until it crashes on the fronting shore:
Our Never is the Present without Hope,
And my next moment is as never more.

Let the serene Philosopher sit down,
Knowing that sorrow is the gift of God,
And bid the streams of consolation flow
Through the dim arid future: so have I
Striven in my time, and conquered in the end.
But how can it be good for me to lose
My better self, my moral sustenance,
One whom I followed in a heaven-ward path,
To which I now can see no other clue?
How can it make me better to be shorn
Of that within me that can claim to be
More than the crystal shining in the rock,
More than the blossom withering at my feet?
How can a man be wiser, if he lose
All sense that makes the difference between
This place and that, this circumstance and that,
Between to-morrow's life and never more?

I know to-morrow will be as to-day,—

Sun-rise—bird's chirp—the stolid hours roll on,
Careless of what they crush—without a thought
That in the world there is a man the less,
A mind the less t' engender noble deeds,
A heart the less to beat for other men,
A soul the less to claim eternal life,—
For whom to-morrow is as never more.

What is the presence of continuous pain,
Some sharper and some better to be borne,
Calling out courage in the patient man,
Matched with this absence of the power to love,
This loss of that within which can stand up
In the broad face of Heaven, and say, “'Tis I,
Living and suffering for some secret end
Of the mysterious Master of us all:”
Is it that I have given away Myself,
And know not where to look for it again
In any corner of the field of Time,
While Not to-morrow is as Never more?

1860.

HALF-TRUTH.

The words that trembled on your lips
Were uttered not—I know it well;
The tears that would your eyes eclipse
Were checked and smothered, ere they fell:
The looks and smiles I gained from you
Were little more than others won,
And yet you are not wholly true,
Nor wholly just what you have done.

You know, at least you might have known,
That every little grace you gave,—
Your voice's somewhat lowered tone,—
Your hand's faint shake or parting wave,—
Your every sympathetic look
At words that chanced your soul to touch,
While reading from some favourite book,
Were much to me—alas, how much!

You might have seen—perhaps you saw—
How all of these were steps of hope
On which I rose, in joy and awe,
Up to my passion's lofty scope;

How after each, a firmer tread
I planted on the slippery ground,
And higher raised my ventur'ous head,
And ever new assurance found.

May be, without a further thought,
It only pleased you thus to please,
And thus to kindly feelings wrought
You measured not the sweet degrees;
Yet, though you hardly understood
Where I was following at your call,
You might—I dare to say you should—
Have thought how far I had to fall.

And thus when fallen, faint, and bruised,
I see another's glad success,
I may have wrongfully accused
Your heart of vulgar fickleness:
But even now, in calm review
Of all I lost and all I won,
I cannot deem you wholly true,
Nor wholly just what you have done.

1840.

ONE-SIDED TROTH.

It is not for what He would be to me now,
If he still were here, that I mourn him so:
It is for the thought of a broken vow,
And for what he was to me long ago.

Strange, while he lived and moved upon earth,
Though I would not, and could not, have seen him again,
His being to me had an infinite worth,
And the void of his loss is an infinite pain.

I had but to utter his name, and my youth
Rose up in my soul, and my blood grew warm;
And I hardly remembered the broken truth,
And I wholly remembered the ancient charm.

I watched the' unfolding scenes of his life,
From' the lonely retreat where my heart reposed;
'Twas a magical drama—a fabulous strife;
Now' the curtain has fallen, the volume is closed.

The sense of my very self grows dim,
With nothing but Self either here or beyond;
That Self which would have been lost in him,
Had he only died ere he broke the bond.

1860.

STRANGERS YET.

Strangers yet!
After years of life together,
After fair and stormy weather,
After travel in far lands,
After touch of wedded hands,—
Why thus joined? Why ever met,
If they must be strangers yet?

Strangers yet!
After childhood's winning ways,
After care and blame and praise,
Counsel asked and wisdom given,
After mutual prayers to Heaven,
Child and parent scarce regret
When they part—are strangers yet.

Strangers yet!
After strife for common ends—
After title of “old friends,”
After passions fierce and tender,
After cheerful self-surrender,
Hearts may beat and eyes be met,
And the souls be strangers yet.

Strangers yet!
Oh! the bitter thought to scan
All the loneliness of man:—
Nature, by magnetic laws,
Circle unto circle draws,
But they only touch when met,
Never mingle—strangers yet.

Strangers yet!
Will it evermore be thus—
Spirits still impervious?
Shall we never fairly stand
Soul to soul as hand to hand?
Are the bounds eternal set
To retain us—strangers yet?

Strangers yet!
Tell not Love it must aspire
Unto something other—higher:
God himself were loved the best
Were our sympathies at rest,
Rest above the strain and fret
Of the world of—strangers yet!
Strangers yet!

1865.

[_]

Set to music by Mrs. Bernard. (Claribel.)

A RECOLLECTION.

I knew that I should be his bride,
And to my tearful eyes
Lay that fair future, half descried
Through a divine surprise:
I knew that I should be his wife,
And that his arm would bend
Around me down the walks of life,
As friend sustaining friend:

And yet when I beheld him there,
Amid a joyous throng,
Amid the witty and the fair,
Who knew and prized him long,—
Amid the comrades of his youth,
The kinsmen of his line,
I almost faltered at the truth
With which I called him mine.

I saw they thought that I was proud
To claim him as mine own,
While all my being inly bowed
As with a weight unknown.

For if I dared my heart to place
Above its own just meed,
I might be distanced in a race
In which the strong succeed!

But now that years have rolled away,
A variegated stream,
And, one by one, that bright array
Has vanished like a dream;
Now that the very name of wife
Has higher titles earned,
I smile to ponder on that strife
Of feelings undiscerned.

Ah! had I known him but as they,
How weary might have been
The intercourse of every day,
The rarely-changing scene,—
The life that over-long may prove
For passion or for power,
But too, too, short for that still love
Which blesses every hour.

1864.

[_]

Set to music by Madame Sainton Dolby.

RAPTURE.

Because, from all that round Thee move,
Planets of Beauty, Strength, and Grace,
I am elected to Thy love,
And have my home in Thy embrace;
I wonder all men do not see
The crown that Thou hast set on me.

Because, when, prostrate at Thy feet,
Thou didst emparadise my pain,—
Because Thy heart on mine has beat,
Thy head within my hands has lain,
I am transfigured, by that sign,
Into a being like to Thine.

The mirror from its glossy plain
Receiving still returns the light,
And, being generous of its gain,
Augments the very solar might:
What unreflected light would be,
Is just Thy spirit without me.

Thou art the flame, whose rising spire
In the dark air sublimely sways,
And I the tempest that swift fire
Gathers at first and then obeys:
All that was Thine ere we were wed
Have I by right inherited.

Is life a stream? Then from Thy hair
One rosebud on the current fell,
And straight it turned to crystal there,
As adamant immovable:
Its steadfast place shall know no more
The sense of after and before.

Is life a plant? The King of years
To mine nor good nor ill can bring;—
Mine grows no more; no more it fears
Even the brushing of his wing:
With sheathèd scythe I see him go,—
I have no flowers that he can mow.

1839.

THE TREASURE-SHIP

My heart is freighted full of love,
As full as any argosy,
With gems below and gems above,
And ready for the open sea;
For the wind is blowing summerly.

Full strings of nature's beaded pearl,
Sweet tears! composed in amorous ties
And turkis-lockets, that no churl
Hath fashioned out mechanic-wise,
But all made up of thy blue eyes.

And girdles wove of subtle sound,
And thoughts not trusted to the air,
Of antique mould,—the same as bound,
In Paradise, the primal pair,
Before Love's arts and niceness were.

And carcanets of living sighs;
Gums that have dropped from Love's own stem,
And one small jewel most I prize—
The darling gaud of all of them—

I wot, so rare and fine a gem
Ne'er glowed on Eastern anadem.

I've cased the rubies of thy smiles,
In rich and triply-plated gold;
But this no other wealth defiles,
Itself itself can only hold—
The stealthy kiss on Maple-wold.

1839.

SHADOWS.

I.

They owned their passion without shame or fear,
And every household duty counted less
Than that one spiritual bond, and men severe
Said they should sorrow for their wilfulness.

And truth the world went ill with them: he knew
That he had broken up her maiden life,
Where only pleasures and affections grew,
And sowed it thick with labour, pain, and strife.

What her unpractis'd weakness was to her
The presence of her suffering was to him;
Thus at Love's feast did Misery minister,
And fill their cups together to the brim.

They asked their kind for hope, but there was none,
Till Death came by and gave them that and more;
Then men lamented,—but the earth rolls on,
And lovers love and perish as before.

II.

They seemed to those who saw them meet
The casual friends of every day,
Her smile was undisturbed and sweet,
His courtesy was free and gay.

But yet if one the other's name
In some unguarded moment heard,
The heart, you thought so calm and tame,
Would struggle like a captured bird:

And letters of mere formal phrase
Were blistered with repeated tears,—
And this was not the work of days,
But had gone on for years and years!

Alas! that Love was not too strong
For maiden shame and manly pride!
Alas! that they delayed so long
The goal of mutual bliss beside.

Yet what no chance could then reveal,
And neither would be first to own,
Let fate and courage now conceal,
When truth could bring remorse alone.

III.

Beneath an Indian palm a girl
Of other blood reposes,
Her cheek is clear and pale as pearl,
Amid that wild of roses.

Beside a northern pine a boy
Is leaning fancy-bound,
Nor listens where with noisy joy
Awaits the impatient hound.

Cool grows the sick and feverish calm,—
Relaxed the frosty twine,—
The pine-tree dreameth of the palm,
The palm-tree of the pine.

As soon shall nature interlace
Those dimly-visioned boughs,
As these young lovers face to face
Renew their early vows!

IV.

She had left all on earth for him,
Her home of wealth, her name of pride,
And now his lamp of love was dim,
And, sad to tell, she had not died.

She watched the crimson sun's decline,
From some lone rock that fronts the sea,—
“I would, O burning heart of mine,
There were an ocean-rest for thee.

“The thoughtful moon awaits her turn,
The stars compose their choral crown,
But those soft lights can never burn,
Till once the fiery sun is down.”

V.

'Twould seem the world were large enough to hold
Both me and thee:
But now I find in space by thee controlled
No room for me.

We portioned all between us, as was fair;
That time is past;
And now I would recover my lost share,
Which still thou hast.

For that old love on which we both did live,—
Keep it who can!
Yet give me back the love I used to give
To God and man.

Give me my young ambition,—my fresh fire
Of high emprize;
Give me the sweet indefinite desire
That lit mine eyes:—

Give me my sense of pleasure;—give me all
My range of dreams;
Give me my power at sunset to recall
The noontide's beams;

If not my smiles, at least give back my tears,
And leave me free
To weep that all which man and nature cheers
Is lost with thee!

VI.

They tell me I have won thy love,—
That if there be
One man most blest all men above,
Then I am he;
I answer not, resolved no more
To linger here,
And they have bitter words in store
To taint thine ear.

Did they not mark me dread to speak
When thou wert by?
Did they not watch my quivering cheek,
My streaming eye?
And can they fable none the less
That I disdain
A gift, whose very preciousness
Is all my pain?

'Tis true, that when that fatal hour
Did first disclose

The mystery of my willess power
O'er thy repose,
I felt it was the ordainèd one
That tie to sever,
That only then it could be done,
For once and ever!

I shall not see thy motive grace
Before me play,
I shall not look upon thy face
One other day!
And yet I swear that I am free
From bond or vow;
What stands betwixt my soul and thee?
Oh! ask not Thou.

Time was, when I too had my part
Of wealth divine,
A simple, free, and plastic heart,
Almost like thine,
When lightened sorrow floated up
And died in tears,
And easy joy o'erflowed the cup
Of eighteen years.

If fate had then let cross our ways,
Thou wouldst have been

The Una of my nights and days,—
My spirit's Queen;—
Thou wouldst have led me glad and pure
As thy white lamb;
How dare I match this portraiture
With what I am?

It seems to me, as if that time,
And I who wore
Its aspect of delight sublime,
Were nothing more
Than visions, which poetic sloth
So oft enjoys,—
As if the Scene and Man were both
Mere Fancy's toys.

It may be that some help may come
To my soul's need,
My pilgrim thoughts may find a home
In some new creed;
But Thou, whose mind has never gone
One dream astray,—
Couldst thou be my companion,
That perilous way?

But I must check my words that flow
Too fast and far;

100

For worlds I would not thou shouldst know
How such things are!
Thou wilt not change, Thou wilt remain
Serene and sure,—
The touch of Time may well refrain
From things so pure.

And now that I have closed the strife,
And view once more
My future of ungenial life
Spread out before,—
To have found favour in thy sight
Will still remain
A river of thought, that full of light
Divides the plain.

My friend Lord Lyttelton has permitted me to insert his Latin translation of these lines.

Olim virgineum perdiderat decus
Et laudem patriæ (jussit amor) domûs:
Jam tædæ periit gratia mutuæ,
Eheu! nec poterat mori!

At solo in scopulo procubuit gemens,
In fluctus roseum dum caderet jubar,
Tunc “Ah! si, tacito sub pelagi sinu,
Cordis flamma quiesceret!

“Sic lenis solitam Luna manet vicem,
Innectuntque chorum sidera lucidum,
Sed nox ut placidas instituat faces,
Sol componitur igneus.”

101

ANIMA MUNDI.

“Anima Mundi”—of thyself existing,
Without diversity or change to fear,
Say, has this Life to which we cling persisting,
Part or communion with thy steadfast sphere?
Does thy serene eternity sublime
Embrace the slaves of Circumstance and Time?

Could we remain continually content
To heap fresh pleasure on the coming day,
Could we rest happy in the sole intent
To make the hours more graceful or more gay;
Then must the essence of our nature be
That of the beasts that perish, not of Thee.

But if we mourn, not because time is fleeting,
Not because life is short and some die young,
But because parting ever follows meeting,
And, while our hearts with constant loss are wrung,
Our minds are tossed in doubt from sea to sea,
Then may we claim community with thee.

We cannot live by instincts—forced to let
To-morrow's wave obliterate our to-day—

102

See faces only once—read and forget—
Behold Truth's rays prismatically play
About our mortal eye, and never shine
In one white daylight, simple and divine.

We would erect some Thought the world above,
And dwell in it for ever—we would make
Some moment of young Friendship or First-love
Into a dream, from which we would not wake;
We would contrast our Action with Repose,
Like the deep stream that widens as it flows.

We would, indeed, be somewise as Thou art,
Not spring and bud and flower and fade and fall,—
Not fix our intellects on some scant part
Of Nature, but enjoy or feel it all:
We would assert the privilege of a soul,
In that it knows—to understand the Whole.

If such things are within us—God is good—
And flight is destined for the callow wing,
And the high appetite implies the food,
And souls must reach the level whence they spring;
O Life of very Life! set free our Powers,
Hasten the travail of the yearning hours.

Thou! to whom old Philosophy bent low,
To the wise few mysteriously revealed;

103

Thou! whom each humble Christian worships now,
In the poor hamlet and the open field;
Once an Idea—now Comforter and Friend,
Hope of the human Heart! Descend! Descend!

1846.

104

THE VOICES OF HISTORY.

The Poet in his vigil hears
Time flowing through the night,—
A mighty stream, absorbing tears,
And bearing down delight:
There resting on his bank of thought
He listens, till his soul
The Voices of the waves has caught,—
The meaning of their roll.

First, wild and wildering as the strife
Of earthly winds and seas,
Resounds the long historic life
Of warring dynasties:—
Uncertain right and certain wrong
In onward conflict driven,
The threats and tramplings of the strong
Beneath a brazen heaven.

The cavernous unsounded East
Outpours an evil tide,
Drowning the hymn of patriarch priest,
The chant of shepherd bride:

105

How can we catch the angel-word,
How mark the prophet-sound,
'Mid thunders like Niagara's heard
An hundred miles around?

From two small springs that rise and blend,
And leave their Latin home,
The waters East and West extend,—
The ocean-power of Rome:
Voices of Victories ever-won,
Of Pride that will not stay,
Billows that burst and perish on
The shores they wear away.

Till, in a race of fierce delight
Tumultuous battle forth,
The snows amassed on many a height,
The cataracts of the North:
What can we hear beside the roar,
What see beneath the foam,
What but the wrecks that strew the shore,
And cries of falling Rome?

Nor, when a purer Faith had traced
Safe channels for the tide,
Did streams with Eden-lilies graced
In Eden-sweetness glide;

106

While the deluded gaze admires
The smooth and shining flow,
Vile interests and insane desires
Gurgle and rage below.

If History has no other sounds,
Why should we listen more?
Spirit! despise terrestrial bounds,
And seek a happier shore;
Yet pause! for on thine inner ear
A mystic music grows,—
And mortal man shall never hear
That diapason's close.

Nature awakes! a rapturous tone,
Still different, still the same,—
Eternal effluence from the throne
Of Him without a name;
A symphony of worlds begun,
Ere sin the glory mars,
The cymbals of the new-born sun,
The trumpets of the stars.

Then Beauty all her subtlest chords
Dissolves and knits again,
And Law composes jarring words
In one harmonious chain:

107

And Loyalty's enchanting notes
Outswelling fade away,
While Knowledge, from ten thousand throats,
Proclaims a graver sway.—

Well, if, by senses unbefooled,
Attentive souls may scan
These great Ideas that have ruled
The total mind of man;
Yet is there music deeper still,
Of fine and holy woof,
Comfort and joy to all that will
Keep ruder noise aloof.

A music simple as the sky,
Monotonous as the sea,
Recurrent as the flowers that die
And rise again in glee:
A melody that childhood sings
Without a thought of art,
Drawn from a few familiar strings,
The fibres of the Heart.

Through tent and cot and proud saloon
This audible delight
Of nightingales that love the noon,
Of larks that court the night,—

108

We feel it all,—the hopes and fears
That language faintly tells,
The spreading smiles,—the passing tears,—
The meetings and farewells.

These harmonies that all can share,
When chronicled by one,
Enclose us like the living air,
Unending, unbegun;—
Poet! esteem thy noble part,
Still listen, still record,
Sacred Historian of the heart,
And moral nature's Lord!

109

THE BARREN HILL.

Before my Home, a long straight Hill
Extends its barren bound,
And all who that way travel will
Must travel miles around;
Yet not the loveliest face of earth
To living man can be
A treasury of more precious worth
Than that bare Hill to me.

That Hill-side rose a wall between
This world of ears and eyes
And every shining shifty scene
That fancy forms and dyes:
First Babyhood engaged its use,
To plant a good-child's land,
Where all the streams were orange-juice,
And sugar all the sand.

A playground of unending sward
There blest the growing Boy,
A dream of labourless reward,
Whole holidays of joy;

110

A book of Nature, whose bright leaves
No other care should need
Than life that happily receives
What he that runs may read.

Nor lacked there skies for onward youth
With wayward will to tinge,
Sweet sunshine overcast by ruth,
And storms of golden fringe:
Nor vales that darkling might evoke
Mysterious fellowship
Of names that still to Fancy woke,
But slumbered on the lip.

The hour when first that hill I crost,
Can yet my memory sting,
The dear self-trust that moment lost
No lore again can bring:
It seemed a foully broken bond
Of Nature and my kind,
That I should find the world beyond
The world I left behind.

But not in vain that hill-side stood,
On many an after-day,
When with returning steps I wooed
Revival of its sway;

111

It could not give me Truth where doubt
And sin had ample range,
But it was powerful to shut out
The ill it could not change.

And still performs a sacred part,
To my experienced eye,
This Pisgah which my virgin heart
Ascended but to die;
What was Reality before
In symbol now may live,
Endowed with right to promise more
Than ever it could give.

1839.

112

THE CHRONICLE OF HOPES.

I would not chronicle my life
By dynasties of joy or pain,
By reigns of peace or times of strife,
By accidents of loss or gain:
The Hopes that nurtured in my breast
Have been the very wings to me
On which existence floats or rests,—
These only shall my eras be.

Whether they rose to utmost height
And glistened in the noonday sun,
Descending with as full delight
When all was realised and won;
Or whether mercilessly checked
By adverse airs and lowering skies,
They sunk to earth confused and wrecked
Almost before they dared to rise;

With equal love I love them all
For their own special sakes, nor care
What sequence here or there might fall,
Each has its sweet memorial share:

113

Let but my Hopes, in coming years,
Preserve their long unbroken line,
And smiles will shine through any tears,
And grief itself be half-divine.

For not to man on earth is given
The ripe fulfilment of desire;—
Desire of Heaven itself is Heaven,
Unless the passion faint and tire:
So upward still, from hope to hope,
From faith to faith, the soul ascends,
And who has scaled the ethereal cope,
Where that sublime succession ends?

1842.

114

THE WORTH OF HOURS.

Believe not that your inner eye
Can ever in just measure try
The worth of Hours as they go by:

For every man's weak self, alas!
Makes him to see them, while they pass,
As through a dim or tinted glass:

But if in earnest care you would
Mete out to each its part of good,
Trust rather to your after-mood.

Those surely are not fairly spent,
That leave your spirit bowed and bent
In sad unrest and ill-content:

And more,—though free from seeming harm,
You rest from toil of mind or arm,
Or slow retire from Pleasure's charm,—

If then a painful sense comes on
Of something wholly lost and gone,
Vainly enjoyed, or vainly done,—

115

Of something from your being's chain
Broke off, nor to be linked again
By all mere Memory can retain,—

Upon your heart this truth may rise,—
Nothing that altogether dies
Suffices man's just destinies:

So should we live, that every Hour
May die as dies the natural flower,—
A self-reviving thing of power;

That every Thought and every Deed
May hold within itself the seed
Of future good and future meed;

Esteeming Sorrow, whose employ
Is to develope not destroy,
Far better than a barren Joy.

1835.

116

THE LONG-AGO.

Eyes which can but ill define
Shapes that rise about and near,
Through the far horizon's line
Stretch a vision free and clear:
Memories feeble to retrace
Yesterday's immediate flow,
Find a dear familiar face
In each hour of Long-ago.

Follow you majestic train
Down the slopes of old renown,
Knightly forms without disdain,
Sainted heads without a frown;
Emperors of thought and hand
Congregate, a glorious show,
Met from every age and land
In the plains of Long-ago.

As the heart of childhood brings
Something of eternal joy,
From its own unsounded springs,
Such as life can scarce destroy:

117

So, remindful of the prime
Spirits, wand'ring to and fro,
Rest upon the resting time
In the peace of Long-ago.

Youthful Hope's religious fire,
When it burns no longer, leaves
Ashes of impure Desire
On the altars it bereaves;
But the light that fills the Past
Sheds a still diviner glow,
Ever farther it is cast
O'er the scenes of Long-ago.

Many a growth of pain and care,
Cumbering all the present hour,
Yields, when once transplanted there,
Healthy fruit or pleasant flower;
Thoughts that hardly flourish here,
Feelings long have ceased to blow,
Breathe a native atmosphere
In the world of Long-ago.

On that deep-retiring shore
Frequent pearls of beauty lie,
Where the passion-waves of yore
Fiercely beat and mounted high:

118

Sorrows that are sorrows still
Lose the bitter taste of woe;
Nothing's altogether ill
In the griefs of Long-ago.

Tombs where lonely love repines,
Ghastly tenements of tears,
Wear the look of happy shrines
Through the golden mist of years:
Death, to those who trust in good,
Vindicates his hardest blow;
Oh! we would not, if we could,
Wake the sleep of Long-ago!

Though the doom of swift decay
Shocks the soul where life is strong,
Though for frailer hearts the day
Lingers sad and overlong,—
Still the weight will find a leaven,
Still the spoiler's hand is slow,
While the Future has its Heaven,
And the Past its Long-ago.

1834.

119

SIMPLE SOUNDS.

O Power! whose organ is the tremulous air,
Thou that not only to the accordant sense
Unfoldest all a world of harsh and fair,
But hast a far diviner influence,
Submitting to inscrutable controul
The finest elements of human soul;

O mystic Sound! what heart can keep aloof,
If summoned to acknowledge thy bland sway,
As thou approachest in the golden woof
Of luscious harmonies serene or gay?
But thou hast moods I would not honor less,
Thy simplest forms of moral kingliness.

How did my childish ecstasy burst out,
When first I found thy Echoes at my call!
What blithe caprice of whisper, song, and shout,
Woke the steep hill and challenged the long wall!
How we did laugh! I needed from that day
Nor other playfellows nor other play.

120

Further in life, when thoughts and feelings slept
In my heart's tomb, some one particular tone
Of common bells has stung me till I wept,
And rushed away, oppressed by things foregone;
For though the hours recalled be bright and glad,
Still earnest memory ever will be sad.

When late I changed the still unpeopled air
Of the clear South for this my mother clime,
I quivered with delight, as everywhere
Sweet birds in happy snatches hailed the prime;
A throstle's twitter made old walks arise,
With lilac-bunches dancing in my eyes.

What love we, about those we love the best,
Better than their dear voices? At what cost
Would one not gather to an aching breast
Each little word of some whom we have lost?
And oh! how blank to hear, in some far place,
A voice we know, and see a stranger's face.

I never hold my truth to God more leal
Than when it thunders; that monotonous roll
Has after-lightning potent to reveal
Many dark words on Faith's sin-shaded scroll:
Talk with a stormy sky, man! prone to deem
That nothing is, because of thine own Dream.

121

And now within the hush of evening waves,
Cast by light force upon a shingly shore,
My Spirit rests; the ruins and fresh graves
That strewed its earthly path here vex no more:
Rocked on the soothing surge, its life is all
One soft attraction and one mellow fall.

1835.

122

A PRAYER.

Evil, every living hour,
Holds us in its wilful hand,
Save as thou, essential Power,
May'st be gracious to withstand:
Pain within the subtle flesh,
Heavy lids that cannot close,
Hearts that Hope will not refresh,—
Hand of healing! interpose.

Tyranny's strong breath is tainting
Nature's sweet and vivid air,
Nations silently are fainting
Or up-gather in despair:
Not to those distracted wills
Trust the judgment of their woes;
While the cup of anguish fills,
Arm of Justice! interpose.

Pleasures night and day are hovering
Round their prey of weary hours,
Weakness and unrest discovering
In the best of human powers:

123

Ere the fond delusions tire,
Ere envenomed passion grows
From the root of vain desire,—
Mind of Wisdom! interpose.

Now no more in tuneful motion
Life with love and duty glides;
Reason's meteor-lighted ocean
Bears us down its mazy tides;
Head is clear and hand is strong,
But our heart no haven knows;
Sun of Truth! the night is long,—
Let thy radiance interpose!

1841.

124

THE PAST.

The Past—the Past!—it has a tolling sound,
That solemn syllable, which calls to mind
The prison of the Present rising round,
And all the bonds that Time has power to bind.

Sounds, sights,—all else the means of sense impart,—
Seem to arouse to grief or joy in vain,
While still it clanks upon the captive heart,
That ever-moving, never lengthening, chain.

Is there no art that can an echo make,
To mock the splendid harmonies gone by?
No charm that can the long-dead hours awake,
In ghost-like silence and solemnity?

Alas! though Memory, with her wilful wand,
Can shadow forth a faint and vapid show,
What boots the colourless unmeaning band?
'Tis but a dream,—we know it to be so.

Of all our spiritual elements—of all
Those powers by which we feel ourselves to be—
Is there not one that can elude the thrall,
True to itself, and as its Author free?

125

Have we no heritage of Father-land?
No ray immortal as the Parent Sun?
No heaven-armed force, that can undaunted stand
Guarding its own eternal garrison?

Yes, we have that which lives a deathless life,
No meagre phantom, spawned by human will,
But strong to meet the Tyrant in the strife;
Time has no rule o'er what he cannot kill.

The feelings which the Heart has raised to birth,
That holy mother never will disclaim;
She is no hireling minister of earth;
They are no bastard forgers of her name.

Memorial flashes, transient as intense,
A spirit darting through material night,
Like lightning felt within the vivid sense,
Yet seeming all too rapid for the sight.

How we have joyed, when all our mind was joy,
How we have loved, when love was all our law,
Looked with half envy on the rising boy,
And thought of manhood with religious awe.

How we delighted in a thrice-sung song,
A wilding's blossom, or a speckled stone,
And how we numbered o'er the starry throng,
And chose the brightest to be called our own.

126

Or, when young Passion to excess had ranged,
How conscience met it with her sacred string,
And how we marvelled, what to frowns had changed
The red-rose smiles that tinted every thing.

How, when at first upon the fatal shore,
Listening the murmurings of the waves of sin,
A shivering chill came over us, before
We bared our tender limbs and glided in.

And when perchance some random bird obscene
Flew screaming by, and warned us where we stood,
With palsied feet, we turned us back to lean
Resisting those who urged us to the flood.

—Such thoughts can never die; the fire once kindled
Lies smouldering in the ashes' dusty cove;
Though one by one the tremulous sparks have dwindled,
A flame will burst in times we wot not of.

1833.

127

THE PALSY OF THE HEART.

I see the worlds of earth and sky
With beauty filled to overflow;
My spirit lags behind the eye—
I know, but feel not as I know:
Those miracles of form and hue
I can dissect with artist skill,
But more than this I cannot do,—
Enjoyment rests beyond the will.

Round me in rich profusion lie
Nectareous fruits of ancient mind,
The thoughts that have no power to die
In golden poesy enshrined:
And near me hang, of later birth,
Ripe clusters from the living tree,
But what the pleasure, what the worth,
If all is savourless to me!

I hear the subtle chords of sound,
Entangled, loosed, and knit anew;
The music floats without—around—
But will not enter and imbue:

128

While harmonies diviner still,
Sweet greetings, appellations dear,
That used through every nerve to thrill
I often hear, and only hear.

O dreadful thought! if by God's grace
To souls like mine there should be given
That perfect presence of his face,
Which we, for want of words, call Heaven,—
And unresponsive even there
This heart of mine could still remain,
And its intrinsic evil bear
To realms that know no other pain.

Better down nature's scale to roll,
Far as the base unbreathing clod,
Than rest a conscious reasoning soul,
Impervious to the light of God;—
Hateful the powers that but divine
What we have lost beyond recall,
The intellectual plummet-line
That sounds the depths to which we fall.

1841.

129

THE WORLD TO THE SOUL.

Soul! that may'st have been divine,
Now I claim and take thee mine;
Now thy own true bliss will be
In thy loyalty to me.

Though thou seemest without stain,
There is evil in thy grain;
Thou hast tasted of the fruit
Of which Knowledge is the root.

So I must not let thee rest,
Lull'd on Faith's maternal breast;
Faith and Fancy mar the plan
Of the making of a man.

So thy tender heart I bare
To Ambition's frosty air;
So I plunge thee deep in doubt,
That thou may'st grow hard and stout.

So I bid the eager Boy
Sense in every form enjoy;
Stinting not the moment's pleasure,
Save to gain some fuller measure.

130

Thou wilt lose at last the zest,
Thou wilt need some higher quest;
Then I bid thee rise a Man,
And I aid thee all I can.

Fix thee on some worthy aim,
Proving danger, fronting shame;
Knowing only friends or foes,
As they speed thee or oppose:

Trampling with thy rapid feet
Feelings fond and pleas discreet;
Only for excuses sue
In the great things thou canst do.

If what shone afar so grand,
Turn to nothing in thy hand,
On, again—the virtue lies
In the struggle, not the prize;

Only rest not: failure-curst
Turn to Pleasure at the worst;
That may calm thy conscience-cry—
Death may give thee peace, not I.

131

MOMENTS.

I lie in a heavy trance,
With' a world of dream without me,
Shapes of shadow dance,
In wavering bands about me;
But, at times, some mystic things
Appear in this phantom lair,
That almost seem to me visitings
Of Truth known elsewhere:
The world is wide,—these things are small,
They may be nothing, but they are All.

A prayer in an hour of pain,
Begun in an undertone,
Then lowered, as it would fain
Be heard by the heart alone;
A throb, when the soul is entered
By a light that is lit above,
Where the God of Nature has centered
The Beauty of Love.—
The world is wide,—these things are small,
They may be nothing, but they are All.

132

A look that is telling a tale,
Which looks alone dare tell,—
When' a cheek is no longer pale,
That has caught the glance, as it fell;
A touch, which seems to unlock
Treasures unknown as yet,
And the bitter-sweet first shock,
One can never forget;
The world is wide,—these things are small,
They may be nothing, but they are All.

A sense of an earnest Will
To help the lowly-living,—
And a terrible heart-thrill,
If you' have no power of giving;
An arm of aid to the weak,
A friendly hand to the friendless,
Kind words, so short to speak,
But whose echo is endless:
The world is wide,—these things are small,
They may be nothing, but they are All.

The moment we think we have learnt
The lore of the all-wise One,
By which we could stand unburnt,
On the ridge of the seething sun:
The moment we grasp at the clue,
Long-lost and strangely riven,

133

Which guides our soul to the True,
And, the Poet to Heaven.
The world is wide,—these things are small,—
If they be nothing, what is there at all?

134

THE MEN OF OLD.

I know not that the men of old
Were better than men now,
Of heart more kind, of hand more bold,
Of more ingenuous brow:
I heed not those who pine for force
A ghost of Time to raise,
As if they thus could check the course
Of these appointed days.

Still it is true, and over true,
That I delight to close
This book of life self-wise and new,
And let my thoughts repose
On all that humble happiness,
The world has since foregone,—
The daylight of contentedness
That on those faces shone!

With rights, tho' not too closely scanned,
Enjoyed, as far as known,—
With will by no reverse unmanned,—
With pulse of even tone,—

135

They from to-day and from to-night
Expected nothing more,
Than yesterday and yesternight
Had proffered them before.

To them was life a simple art
Of duties to be done,
A game where each man took his part,
A race where all must run;
A battle whose great scheme and scope
They little cared to know,
Content, as men at arms, to cope
Each with his fronting foe.

Man now his Virtue's diadem
Puts on and proudly wears,
Great thoughts, great feelings, came to them,
Like instincts, unawares:
Blending their souls' sublimest needs
With tasks of every day,
They went about their gravest deeds,
As noble boys at play.—

And what if Nature's fearful wound
They did not probe and bare,
For that their spirits never swooned
To watch the misery there,—

136

For that their love but flowed more fast,
Their charities more free,
Not conscious what mere drops they cast
Into the evil sea.

A man's best things are nearest him,
Lie close about his feet,
It is the distant and the dim
That we are sick to greet:
For flowers that grow our hands beneath
We struggle and aspire,—
Our hearts must die, except they breathe
The air of fresh Desire.

Yet, Brothers, who up Reason's hill
Advance with hopeful cheer,—
O! loiter not, those heights are chill,
As chill as they are clear;
And still restrain your haughty gaze,
The loftier that ye go,
Remembering distance leaves a haze
On all that lies below.

137

THE COMBAT OF LIFE.

Ce n'est pas la victoire qui fait le bonheur des nobles cœurs,—c'est le combat. Montalembert.

We have come out upon the field of Life,
To war with Evil; by some mightier power
Than Memory can embrace, or Reason know,
We were enlisted into this great strife,
And led to meet that unknown Enemy:
Yet not like men brought blinded to a wood,
Who, looking round them, where a hundred paths
All undistinguished lead a hundred ways,
Tormented by that blank indifference,
Rather sit down and die than wander on,—
Not thus, but with a tablet clear and sure,
(Obscure in this alone, that it is graven
On mortal hearts by an eternal hand,)
An ever-present Law, within our Being,
Which we must read whether we will or no,
We are placed here and told the way to go.
The Boy, who feels his foot upon the plain,
And his young fingers clinging to the sword,
For the first time—how loudly he proclaims

138

The faith of his ingenuous chivalry!
“What is to me that proudly-fronting force?
Am I not brave and strong? Am I not here
To fight and conquer? Have I not around
A world of comrades, bound to the same cause,
All brave as I—all led by the same chief,
All pledged to Victory? Who dares to fear?
Who dares to doubt? Is not the very pulse,
That drives my spirit onward, as a Voice
Hailing my glory?—Yes, the Power of Ill
Shall quail before the virtue of my arm,
And hostile darts fall pointless from my shield.”

Poor youthful Heart! poor noble Self-deceit!
Weak-winged Aspirant!—Step with me aside,
'Tis for a moment, mount this little hill,—
Tell me and tell thyself what see'st Thou now.
Look East and West, and mark how far extends
This vainly mocked, this haughtily defied,
This Might so easily to be laid low!
There is no eminence on this wide space,
So high that thou from it canst e'er behold
A clear horizon: dark is all the space,
Black with the masses of that Enemy;
There is no point where Light can penetrate
Those densely-banded Legions,—the green plain
Shines through no interval. Brave though thou art,
My Boy, where is thy trust in Victory now!

139

Then gaze below, gaze on that waving crowd,
The marshalled army of Humanity,
From which thou art come out.—Loyal thou art,
My Boy! but what avails thy feeble Truth,
When, as thou see'st, of that huge multitude,
Those still succeeding myriads there arrayed
For fight, how few, how miserably few,
Not only do not fervently work out
Their Soldier-duty, but whose craven souls
Do not pass over to the very Foe,
And, mingling with his numbers numberless,
Against their brethren turn unnatural arms,—
Or else of honest wills, at first, like thine,
After the faint resistance of an hour,
Yield themselves up half-willing prisoners,
Soon to be won by golden-guileful tongues,
To do blithe service in the cause of Sin?
Surely amid this general faithlessness,
This common treason, where Desertion takes
So sure a method, so distinct a form,
That it may rather seem itself a Law
Than the infraction, where the wonder is
That those are loyal, not that these rebel,—
Surely if we, who have our hearts awake
To this most dreadful Truth, we who have learnt
That Evil is a force, which when we meet
In open battle, we are as a rush
Before the whirlwind, cautiously retire

140

To some deep-hidden cleft where'er we deem
We are best sheltered from his poisoned touch
And there in calm but tearful hopelessness,
Mourning the cureless Agony of our world,
Crouch in the dust and wait until the end,
It were a bitter judgment and untrue,
To brand us cowards, and our deeds a crime.

But though the weakness of our human heart
May thus be made more safe and innocent,
Yet there are some to whom a strength is given,
A Will, a self-constraining Energy,
A Faith which feeds upon no earthly hope,
Which never thinks of Victory, but content
In its own consummation, combating
Because it ought to combat (even as Love
Is its own cause and cannot have another),
And conscious that to find in martyrdom
The stamp and signet of most perfect life
Is all the science that mankind can reach,
Rejoicing fights, and still rejoicing falls.
It may be that to Spirits high-toned as these
A revelation of the end of Time
Is also granted; that they feel a sense
Giving them firm assurance that the foe
By which they must be crushed (in Death well-won
Alone to find their freedom) in his turn
Will be subdued, though not by such as They.

141

Evil, which is the King of Time, in Time
Cannot be overcome, but who has said
That Time shall be for ever? Who can lay
The limits of Creation? Who can know
That Realm and Monarch shall not sink together
Into the deep of blest Eternity,
And Love and Peace be all the Universe?

142

RETURNING DREAMS.

In the lone silence of my later nights,
The dreams I dreamt in youth come back to me
Not a returning presence that affrights,—
Nor a mere play of hard-forced memory,—
But there is no reality which seems
To me so real as those repeated dreams.

I find, in such revivals of old joys,
An earnest of the unity that reigns
In this our inner life, an equipoise
To all our vacillating outward pains;
A constant well, from which our souls updraw
Continuous Truth and undisturbèd Law.

If few to us, and far between, appear
The favoured hours at which reverberate
These spiritual echoes, that from sphere
To sphere are sped by Power compassionate,
In Life's short pass, how rarely are we found
Just at the point where strikes the heavenly sound!

143

But unlike echoes among natural things,
That live in faintness and are breathed away,—
To ends most distant their reflection brings
Glories and bliss impervious to decay,
Fresh and refreshing as when first they come
From the Eternal Thought, which is their home.

As in that World of Dream, whose mystic shades
Are cast by still more mystic substances,
We ofttimes have an unreflecting sense,
A silent consciousness, of some things past,
So clear, that we can wholly comprehend
Others of which they are a part, and even
Continue them in action, though no stretch
Of after-memory can recognise
That we have had experience of those things,
Or sleeping or awake;—

Thus in the dream,
Our Universal Dream, of Mortal Life,
The incidents of an anterior Dream,
Or, it may be, Existence (for the Sun
Of Being, seen thro' the deep dreamy mist,
Itself is dream-like), noiselessly intrude
Into the daily flow of earthly things;
Instincts of Good,—immediate sympathies,
Places come at by chance, that claim at once

144

An old acquaintance,—single, random, looks,
That bare a stranger's bosom to our eyes;
We know these things are so, we ask not why,
But act and follow as the Dream goes on.

Happy the many to whom Life displays
Only the flaunting of its Tulip-flower,
Whose minds have never bent to scrutinize
Into the maddening riddle of the Root,—
Shell within shell,—dream folded over dream,—
No heart, no kernel of essential Being,
For us to find, and feel that Truth is there!

145

THE MARVEL OF LIFE.

O Life! how like the common-breathèd air,
Which is thy outward instrument, thou liest
Ever about us, with sustaining force,
In the calm current of our usual days
Unfelt, unthought of; nay, how dense a crowd
Float on upborne by the prolific stream,
Even to the ridges of the eternal sea,
Spending profuse the passion of their mind
On every flower that gleams on either bank,
On every rock that bends its rugged brow,
Conscious of all things, only not of thee.

Yet some there are, who in their greenest youth,
At some rare hours, have known the dazzling light
Intolerable, that glares upon the soul,
In the mere sense of Being, and grown faint
With awe, and striven to press their folded hands
Upon their inner eyes, and bowed their heads,
As in the presence of a mighty Ghost,
Which they must feel, but cannot dare to see.

146

It is before me now, that fearful truth,
That single solitary truth, which hangs
In the dark heaven of our uncertainties,
Seen by no other light than its own fire,
Self-balanced, like the Arab Magian's tomb,
Between the inner and the outer World;—
How utterly the wretched shred of Time,
Which in our blindness we call Human Life,
Is lost with all its train of circumstance,
And appanage of after and before,
In this eternal present; that we Are!
No When,—no Where,—no How,—but that we Are,—
And nought besides.

Nor when our dazèd sight,
Weaned from its first keen wonder, learns to fix
The surer and more reasonable gaze
Of calm concentrated philosophy
On this intense idea, have we gained
One instant's raising of the sacred veil,
One briefest glimpse into the sanctuary.—
We grasp at words, and find them meaningless,
Bind thoughts together that will not be bound,
But burst asunder at the very time
We hold them closest,—find we are awake
The while we seem to dream, and find we dream
The while we seem to be the most awake;
And thus we are thrown on from sea to sea.

147

Can we take up the sparkles of choice light.
That dance upon the ruffled summer waters,
And make them up to one coherent sun?
Can we transform the charred and molten dust
Into its elemental diamond?
And, tho' thus impotent, we yet dare hope,
From this embasèd form, half earth, half heaven,
Of most imperfect fragmentary nature,
These scant materials of dethronèd power,
This tarnished Beauty, marred Divinity,
To fabricate a comprehensive scheme
Of absolute Existence—to lay open
The knowledge of a clear concordant Whole
And penetrate, with foully-scalèd eyes,
The total scope, and utmost distances,
Of the Creations of the Living God.

He was a bitter Mocker, that old Man
Who bade us “know ourselves,” yet not unwise;
For though the science of our Life and Being
Be unattained and unattainable
By these weak organs, though the athlete mind,
Hardened by practice of unpausing toil,
And fed to manhood with robustest meats,
Never can train its sinews strong enough
To raise itself from off the solid ground,
To which the mandate of creating Will

148

Has bound it; though we all must patient stand,
Like statues on appointed pedestals,
Yet we may choose (since choice is given) to shun
Servile contentment or ignoble fear,
In the expression of our attitude;
And with far-straining eyes, and hands upcast,
And feet half raised, declare our painful state,
Yearning for wings to reach the fields of Truth,
Mourning for wisdom, panting to be free.

149

THE EXHAUSTION OF LIFE.

The Life of man is made of many lives,
His heart and mind of many minds and hearts,
And he in inward growth most surely thrives
Who lets wise Nature order all the parts:

To each disposing what befits their scope,
To boyhood pleasures without care or plan,
To youth affections bright and light as hope,
Deep-seated passions to the ripened man.

Oh! well to say, and well if done as said:
But who himself can keep each separate stage?
Stand 'twixt the living feelings and the dead,
And give its special life to every age?

Who can forbid the present to encroach
On what should rest the future's free domain,
Holding the past undimmed by self-reproach,
Nor borrow joy at usury of pain?

Boyhood invades the phantasies of youth,
Rocked in imagination's golden arms,
And leaves its own delights of healthy truth
For premature and visionary charms.

150

Youth, to whom Poesy by right belongs
And every creature of the fairy race,
Turns a deaf ear to those enchanting songs,
And sees no beauty in that dreamy face,

But will, though by experience uninured,
Plunge into deepest gulfs of mental fire,
Trying what angels have in vain endured—
The toils of Thought—the struggles of Desire:

So that when Manhood in its place at last
Comes and demands its labours and its powers,
The Spirit's energies are worn and past,
And Life remains a lapse of feeble hours.

151

THE SOLITUDE OF LIFE.

When Fancy's exhalations rise
From youth's delicious morn,
Our eyes seem made for others' eyes,
Spirit for spirit born:
But time the truthful faith controuls,—
We learn too soon, alas!
How wide the gulf between two souls,
How difficult to pass!

In twilight and in fearfulness
We feel our path along
From heart to heart, yet none the less
Our way is often wrong.
And then new dangers must be faced,
New doubts must be dispelled,—
For not one step can be retraced
That once the Past has held.

To some 'tis given to walk awhile
In Love's unshaded noon,
But clouds are gathering while they smile,
And night is coming soon!

152

Most happy he whose journey lies
Beneath the starlight sheen
Of unregretful memories
Of glory that has been.

We live together years and years,
And leave unsounded still
Each other's springs of hopes and fears,
Each other's depths of will:
We live together day by day,
And some chance look or tone
Lights up with instantaneous ray
An inner world unknown.

Then wonder not that they who love
The longest and the best,
Are parted by some sudden move
Of passion or unrest:
Nor marvel that the wise and good
Should oft apart remain,
Nor dare, when once misunderstood,
To sympathise again.

Come, Death! and match thy quiet gloom
With being's darkling strife,
Come set beside the lonely Tomb
The Solitude of Life;

153

And henceforth none who see can fear
Thy hour, which some will crave,
Who feel their hearts, though beating here,
Already in the grave.

154

THE WEARY SOUL.

My soul is wasted with trouble and toil,
The evening of Life is damp and chill,—
She would go back and rest awhile,
She can go back whene'er she will,—
For' the Poet holds the Past in fee,
That shadowy land is all his own,
And he, not led by Memory,
But as a man that walks alone
In gardens long familiar, knows
What spots afford the best repose.

Surely she will not wander far,—
Twilight is coming with never a star;
Why may she not return where stands,
Broadly towards the westering sun,
That proud building of hearts and hands,
Castle and Palace all in one,
Over the portal named at length,
“Successful Manhood's place of strength?”
There she may traverse court and hall,
Up to her favourite turret tall;

155

She may recline her aching head
On her ancestral purple bed,
There, where at eve so oft she lay,
I' the deep-embrasured window-bay,
Giving her vision open reign
Over the chequered world of plain—
Of hues that rest and hues that pass,
Sunset and autumn and tinted glass;
While the buck's clear bell and the cattle's low,
And every sound that is heard below,
Were melted into one murmur soft
Ere they could reach that couch aloft.

Witness of that triumphant scene!
Little you know what doom has been:—
How at a blow the heavens were split,
Words on the wall spontaneous writ,
As with a pen of burning brass,
“Vanitas, omnia Vanitas:”—
How disappointment bared her hand,
Vivid and red as the levin brand,
Struck on the tower's sublimest crown,
Shattered the sturdiest buttress down,—
Till the poor Soul would fain have died
'Mid her annihilated pride.
Speed her along, tho' night be drear,—
Night be her cover, for none is here;

156

Seek her a rest where'er you may,
Not in this shelterless decay!

There is a bower, a way-side bower,
Rich with brede of berry' and flower,—
Fair to dwell in and behold
How the green is turning gold,
Till the leafy screen repeat
All the life without the heat:
Music comes not here and there,
Does not fill, but is, the air:
Perfumes delicate and fine,
Flower of orange, flower of vine,
Take their place, without pretence,
In the harmony of sense;
Where the floating spirit dreams,
Fed by odours, sounds, and gleams,
Of this royal region hight,
“Youth's dominion of delight.”
Why then farther? why not here?
Soul of sorrow, Mind of fear!
Rest, as thou wert wont to rest,
On the swell of Nature's breast.
Hear that voice in angel's frame,
Singing, “Youth is still the same;
Cheery faces glimpsing round,—
Limber feet on mossy ground
Circumstance, the God of clay,

157

We have fairly laughed away,
And a power of other face,
Hope, is seated in his place.
Enter, all that come from far,
Poor and naked as ye are;
Very breath is here divine,—
Bacchus has no need of wine!”

“Friends!” the tearful soul replies,
“Keep, oh! keep your Paradise!
Once I gained your happy place,
Ardent in the healthy race,
One of many braced together,
Comrades of the way and weather;
Now alone I falter by,—
Youth's the same,—but what am I?
Just as sweet, as free from cares,
Are your smiles,—but are not theirs:
When the lips I pressed of old
Lie beneath the sullen mould:
When the voices I have known
In hosannas like your own
Answer to my yearning call,
Thin and feeble, if at all;
When the golden locks are grey,
That made sunshine all my day;
When my fibres fall together
In your genial summer-weather;—

158

How can I repose an hour
In the graces of your bower?
How should I take up my rest,
As a strange unnatural guest,
In this home of truth, in this
My retreat of ancient bliss?
Blasts of death-impregnate air
Would, with all the flowers, be there,—
Storms thro' all the blue be spread
In thick battalia o'er my head;
Pallid looks of friendships broken,
Phantom words unwisely spoken,
Thoughts of love and self-reproof
Mingled in a fearful woof,—
Wishes, when not wished in vain,
Only realised for pain,—
Things ye could not hear or see
Would be all my company!”

Disheartened spirit! thou art then
In vain distinct from common men,
If all thy weary quest of mind
No true abiding-place can find,
Whose charms the busy life subdue,
And lure it from the outer view!
No region of thy mortal lot
Where Peace is native to the spot,

159

Ready to greet, when care-begone,
Imagination's pilgrim son.

Yet onward;—it is well to stray
Along this bleak and homeless way,
Till thou canst raise thy conscious eyes
Where Childhood's Atalantis lies,
And recognise that idyl scene,
Where all mild creatures, void of awe,
Amid field-flowers and mountains green,
Fulfil their being's gentle law.

They will not fear thee; safe they dwell
Within this armless citadel,
Embastioned in the self-defence
Of self-regardless innocence:
On Sin or Sorrow's bosom lingers
Each infant head in slumbers bland,—
Secure the tender tiny fingers
Enclasp the dark and withered hand.

Abysms of thought and sense must be
Between those simple souls and thee;
But as the parent is beguiled
Into the nature of the child,
So mayst thou, tho' an alien here,
By careful duty take thy part

160

In all the feelings that endear
The kingdom of the virgin heart.

And thou wilt taste once more the rills
Fresh gushing from the eternal hills,
And feel delight in living air
Without research of when and where;
And hear the birds their song dispense
With free descant, on branch and wing,
Careless of other audience
Than God who made and bade them sing.

Till haply pausing some noon-day
Amid the fairy-people's play,
Along thy limbs the stony sleep
That rounds our life shall calmly creep,
And thou from Present and from Past,
And things to come at once be freed,
To rest for aye, or wake at last
In God's own arms, a child indeed.

161

THE MARTYRS OF THE MIND.

Honour to the sacred Past!
Reverence to the ancient days!
Yet believe them not the last
That demand your love and praise:
Think not that the olden story
Can within its depth enfold
All the beauty and the glory
That the heart of Man can hold.

Think not rashly that, because
Modern life is smooth and fine,
'Tis not subject to the laws
Of the Master's high design:
That we less require endurance
Than in days of coarser plan,—
That we less demand assurance
Of the Godhead hid in Man.

Trust me, Truth is still at war,
Just as in the hard old time,
With a thousand things that are—
Births of woe and food for crime:

162

Still to vindicate the right
Is a rough and thankless game;
Still the leader in the fight
Is the hindmost in the fame.

True, the penal fires are out—
True, the rack in rust has lain—
But the secret burning Doubt
And the pangs of Thought remain:
True, the mind of Man is free—
Free to speak and write at will,
But a power you cannot see
Still can plague, and waste, and kill.

Very tame our passions nestle,
Very even seem our brows,
Outward forces rarely wrestle,
Soft the words the age allows:
Incommunicable sadness
Yet is haunting all the while—
Yet one day the crouching madness
Leaps from under all the smile.

Ours is not the early Faith
Which our fathers gazed upon,
Till the iron gates of Death
With a golden splendour shone;

163

We must rest content with Hope,
Fair to aid, but frail to rule:
Gentle Hope! too weak to cope
With the villain and the fool.

Ours the shame to understand
That the World prefers the lie
That, with medicine in her hand,
She will sink and choose to die;
Ours the agonising sense
Of the Heaven this Earth might be,
If, from their blank indifference,
Men woke one hour and felt as we!

Heroes of the inward strife,
Whom your spirit cannot prize;
Saints of the mysterious life,
Whom no Church can canonize;
Unremembered—unrecorded—
They are passing by you now;
Other gifts are here rewarded,
To far other names you bow.

Yet the Power appears to-morrow,
That to-day seems wholly lost,
And the reproductive sorrow
Is a treasure worth the cost:

164

Fate permits no break or suture
In the' Ideal of Mankind,
Weaving out its brightest Future
From the Martyrs of the Mind.

165

SORROWS.

I.

Sister Sorrow! sit beside me,
Or, if I must wander, guide me;
Let me take thy hand in mine,
Cold alike are mine and thine.

Think not, Sorrow, that I hate thee,—
Think not I am frightened at thee,—
Thou art come for some good end,
I will treat thee as a friend.

I will say that thou art bound
My unshielded soul to wound
By some force without thy will
And art tender-minded still.

I will say thou givest scope
To the breath and light of hope;
That thy gentle tears have weight
Hardest hearts to penetrate:

That thy shadow brings together
Friends long lost in sunny weather,
With an hundred offices
Beautiful and blest as these.

166

Softly takest Thou the crown
From my haughty temples down;
Place it on thine own pale brow,
Pleasure wears one,—why not Thou?

Let the blossoms glisten there
On thy long unbanded hair,
And, when I have borne my pain,
Thou wilt give them me again.

If Thou goest, sister Sorrow!
I shall look for Thee to-morrow,—
I shall often see Thee drest
As a masquerading guest:

And howe'er Thou hid'st the name,
I shall know Thee still the same
As Thou sitt'st beside me now,
With my garland on thy brow.

II.

O! mournful sequence of self-drunken days,
When jovial youth had range of Nature's store!
With fever-thirst for pleasure and for praise,
I nauseate every draught, and ask for more.

167

Look on me well, and early steep thy soul
In one pure Love, and it will last thee long;
Fresh airs shall breathe while sweltering thunders roll,
And summer noons shall leave thee cool and strong.

Across the desert, 'mid thy thirsty kind,
Thy healthy heart shall move apace and calm,
Nor yearning trace the horizon far behind,
Where rests the fountain and the lonely palm.

III.

I had a home wherein the weariest feet
Found sure repose;
And Hope led on laborious day to meet
Delightful close!
A cottage with broad eaves and a thick vine,
A crystal stream,
Whose mountain-language was the same as mine:
—It was a dream!

I had a home to make the gloomiest heart
Alight with joy,—
A temple of chaste love, a place apart
From Time's annoy;

168

A moonlight scene of life, where all things rude
And harsh did seem
With pity rounded and by grace subdued:
—It was a dream!

IV.

To search for lore in spacious libraries,
And find it hid in tongues to you unknown;
To wait deaf-eared near swelling minstrelsies,
Watch every action, but not catch one tone;—
Amid a thousand breathless votaries,
To feel yourself dry-hearted as a stone,—
Are images of that, which, hour by hour,
Consumes my heart, the strife of Will and Power.

The Beauty of the Past before my eyes
Stands ever in each fable-haunted place,
I know her form in every dark disguise,
But never look upon her open face;
O'er every limb a veil thick-folded lies,
Showing poor outline of a perfect grace,
Yet just enough to make the sickened mind
Grieve doubly for the treasures hid behind.

Through great memorials wandering to and fro,
Waves of old Time about me seem to roll,

169

Most like a tune heard somewhere long ago,
Whose separate notes have left upon my soul
Some footmarks as they past, and though I know
That memory's hardest toil can raise the whole
Into continuous being, never again,
I still strive on as one in love with pain.—

O Thou! to whom the wearisome disease
Of Past and Present is an alien thing,
Thou pure Existence! whose severe decrees
Forbid a living man his soul to bring
Into a timeless Eden of sweet ease,
Clear-eyed, clear-hearted,—lay thy loving wing
In Death upon me,—if that way alone
Thy great Creation-thought thou wilt to me make known.

Rome. 1834.

V.

Her heart is sick with thinking
Of the misery of her kind,
Her mind is almost sinking,
That once so buoyant mind;—
She cannot look before her
On the evil-haunted way,—
Uphold her, oh! restore her
Thou Lord of Night and Day!—

170

She cries, “These things confound me,
They settle on my brain,
The very air around me
Is universal Pain.
The earth is damp with weeping,
Rarely the sun shines clear
On any but those sleeping
Upon the quiet bier.
I envy not hard hearts, but yet
I would I could sometimes forget;
I would, though but for moments, look
With comfort into Nature's book,
Nor read that everlasting frown,
Whose terror bows me wholly down.
I cannot meet each pang I see
With gratefulness that not on me
Has fallen that rod,
And make my fellow's agony
The measure of my love to God.
I bear an earnest Christian faith;
I never shrunk at thought of death;
I know the rapturous light of Heaven,
To man's unscalèd vision given;—
My spirit is not blind; but when
The tortures of my brother men,
The famine of gray hairs,
The sick-beds of the poor,
Life's daily stinging cares

171

That crowd the proudest door,
The tombs of the long-loved,
The slowly-broken heart,
Self-gloated power unmoved
By Pity's tenderest art,
Come thronging thick about me,
Close in the world without me,—
How should I not despond?
How can I stretch my sight so far
As where things blest and holy are?
My mortal nature is too frail
To penetrate the sable veil,—
I cannot see beyond!”

VI.

Ye Roses of November,
Ye are no joy to me;
The roses I remember
Are other than ye be!
Your cordial kindred summer
Has gone by long before,
And Winter, the new-comer,
Is a Lover fierce and frore.

At sight of ye I tremble,
As ye in this bleak air;

172

I read a fearful symbol
In what ye are and were;
How all that's best and fairest,
When past a petty reign,
To those, who hold them dearest,
Are Pain and only Pain.

Beauty is always Beauty,
Her essences divine
The Poet, in his duty,
May labor to combine;
But Beauty wed to sorrow
Is sad, whate'er we say,—
Sad thinking for to-morrow,
Sad presence for to-day!

VII.

Why wilt Thou ever thus before me stand,
Thou ghostly Past?
Always between me and the happy land
Thy shade is cast.

Thou art no midnight phantom of remorse,
That I would lay:—
My life has run a plain unnoted course,
In open day.

173

I would enjoy the Present, I would live
Like one new-born:
I value not the gifts Thou hast to give—
Knowledge and Scorn.

I would, for some short moments, cease to judge-
Reckon—compare:
And this small bliss Thou wilt persist to grudge,
Still haunting there.

Thou makest all things heavy with regrets;
Too late—too soon:
My mind is like a sun that ever sets,
And knows no noon:

I am become the very fool of time,—
The world for me
Has no sure test of innocence or crime;
All things may be:

For every notion that has filled my brain
Leaves such a trace
That every instant it may rise again
And claim its place.

Faces and fancies I have cursed or cherished
Throng round my head;
In vain I call on thee to leave the perished—
To hide the dead.

174

Confused and tost on this ideal sea,
I hardly keep
A sense of weak and maimed identity,
More than in sleep:

Save when the Future wins my yearning gaze,
That shore where still
Imagination resolutely stays
The tide of ill.

175

THE CURSE OF LIFE.

All that flesh doth cover,
Souls of source sublime,
Are but slaves sold over
To the Master Time,
To work out their ransom for the ancient crime.

Some go meet the morrow
With industrious will,—
Others toil in sorrow,
Though their hands be still;
Man must toil for good or he shall toil for ill.

Grasping at one pleasure,
We let others fall:
Yet how scant the measure
If we sum them all,—
Honey-drops scarce tasted in a sea of gall.

Did but tears and sighs
Teach our minds to see,
With clear-piercing eyes,
Into Heaven's decree,
By this time, how wise this world of ours would be!

176

Knowledge worn by sadness
Grows too faint to rise,—
Anguish fathers madness,—
Labour brutifies:
If high feelings live, the Man a Martyr dies.

Sleep of freshest childhood
Hears the voice of doom;—
Rambling in the wild wood,
Culling every bloom,
Tender brows are chilled by mist from out the tomb.

Gazing on Creation
With a first love's eye,
Panting exaltation
Sinks into a sigh,—
For we learn so soon that what we love must die.

Then we try to smother
The Love-fire in our heart;
Nature, our sweet Mother,
Can no balm impart,
For she too is sick with all the self-same smart.

She would fain relieve us,
Fain our grief beguile,—
She cannot deceive us
By her outward smile,
For we know that Death torments her all the while.

177

In the green bud's bosom
There is secret pain,
Bees to the same blossom
Come not back again,—
Waters weep, that seem to sing a happy strain.

The Gem of Love was shattered
Long before our birth,
Sparkles still are scattered
Over the broad Earth,—
Which some seek in vain, tho' some know not their worth.

Some may find and hold them,
Never to let go,
Hearts that would enfold them
In their vital glow,—
When Circumstance comes in and works them double woe:

Circumstance that ever
Uses wicked skill
All fond ties to sever,
Bind them as we will,
Till our broken being in Death is hushed and still.

“We know that the whole Creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.”—St. Paul.

178

DOMESTIC FAME.

Why is the Grave so silent? Why is the Tomb so dead?
Wherefore this gloomy secret on each departed head?

Why do we name them seldom, and then with voices low,
As if some shame were on them, or superhuman woe?

Were Death the sleep eternal that some despairing feign,
Had never Faith engendered the hope to meet again,—

Still why should this great absence obliterate with it tears
The happiest recollections and sympathies of years?

Oh, no! Death could not banish the love that lived complete,
And passed away untarnished to its celestial seat!

Oh, no! 'tis not the living that we should harshly blame,
But that men lightly cherish their pure domestic fame.

179

How few leave not behind them some cause to bless the tomb,
That mercifully closes, and pardons in its gloom!

How few go from us, leaving the thoughts of them so dear,
That aye the prayer besets us, “O God! that they were here!”

So that in distant evenings, when joyous faces glow
About the Christmas fire-light and laughter melts the snow,—

In pauses of the revel, some heart without a fear,
Will passionately murmur—“Ah! why are they not here?”

Or that in weary seasons, when sickness racks the brain,
And lordly Reason falters, and Will is only pain,—

Those whom they loved to counsel may mystically hear
Their voices leading onwards the path they trod when here:

Or that in awful moments, when evil seems set free
To tempt mankind to question what God of Truth there be,—

180

The sense how they, too, strove and conquered, serves to cheer
The struggler, dimly conscious of spirits watching near.

Not, then, to Heroes only, to Poet, Statesman, King,
Let care of future glory its anxious duties bring;

There is no name so lowly, that may not raise a shrine
Of living hearts, to honour its memory as Divine!

181

TO A MOURNER.

Sleep not—you whose hope is dust,
Love-deserted man!
Or, if feeble body must,
Seldom as it can.
Sleep is kin to Death they tell,
You for this might love it well,
But it is a kinsman poor,
Hardly gets beyond the door,—
Never fairly dwells within
Where they rest and weep not
Who are safe from Pain and Sin;
Sleep not, Mourner, sleep not.

Misery spent revives in Sleep,
Will has no resistance,
Anguish delves abysses deep
In that dream-existence.
Then we wake and half-believe,
That we may ourselves deceive,
That the loss our souls deplore
May be but a dream the more;—

182

Till, at one sharp start, we know,
Though we shriek and weep not,
Our reality of woe,—
Therefore, brother, sleep not!

But let Sleep some wayward change
Bring upon our being,
Let sweet fancies freely range
With calm thoughts agreeing:
Let sad memory be abused
By the pleasure circumfused,
And dear forms no more below
Softly round us come and go;
Or let time be buried quite,
And the moments creep not,—
Though oblivion be delight,
Still, poor mourner, sleep not!

For an Agony will come,
In the instant waking,
Like a dagger driven home,
Like a nerve in breaking;
Consciousness recovering life
But confounds us in the strife,
Wholly yielded up to Pain,
As when drowned men feel again;

183

In that rush of gasping thought,
Wo for them that weep not!
Too, too, dearly may be bought
Such repose—oh! sleep not!

Rather think the Evil down,
Rather weep it out;
Certain grief remits its frown
Easier than doubt.
There are strong yet gentle powers
In the growth of many hours;
Sorrow longer-lived will gain
Something more of peace than pain,
Such as God's still works possess,
Things that sow or reap not
In the world of more and less,
Live and die, but sleep not.

184

REQUIESCAT IN PACE.

We have watched him to the last
We have seen the dreaded'king
Smile pacific, as he past
By that couch of suffering:
Wrinkles of aggressive years,
Channels of recondite tears,
Furrows on the anxious brow
All are smooth as childhood's now.—
Death, as seen by men in dreams,
Something stern and cruel seems,
But his face is not the same,
When he comes into the room,
Takes the hand, and names the name,
Seals the eyes with tender gloom,
Saying, “Blessed are the laws
To which all God's creatures bend:
Mortal! fear me not, because
Thine inevitable friend!”

So when all the limbs were still,
Moved no more by sense or will,
Reve'rent hands the body laid
In the Church's pitying shade,

185

With the pious rites that fall,
Like the rain-drops, upon all.
What could man refuse or grant
The spiritual inhabitant,
Who so long had ruled within
With power to sin or not to sin?
Nothing. Hope, and hope alone,
Mates with death. Upon a stone
Let the simple name be writ,
Traced upon the infant's front
Years ago: and under it,
As with Christian folk is wont,
“Requiescat” or, may be,
Symbol letters, R. I. P.

Rest is happy—rest is right,
Rest is precious in God's sight.
But if He, who lies below,
Out of an abundant heart
Drawing remedies for woe,
Never wearied to impart
Blessings to his fellow-men
If he never rested then,
But each harvest gathered seed
For the future word and deed,—
And the darkness of his kind
Filled him with such endless ruth,
That the very light of truth

186

Pained him walking 'mid the blind,—
How, when some transcendant change
Gives his being boundless range,—
When he knows not time or space,
In the nearness of God's face,—
In the world of spirits how
Shall that soul be resting now?
While one creature is unblest,
How can such as he have rest?

“Rest in Peace,” the legend runs,
Rest is sweet to Adam's sons.
But can he whose busy brain
Worked within this hollow skull,
Now his zeal for truth restrain,
Now his subtle fancy dull,
When he wanders spirit-free
In his young immortality!
While on earth he only bore
Life, as it was linked with lore,
And the infinite increase
Of, knowledge was his only peace;
Till that knowledge be possest
How can such a mind have rest?

Rest is happy—rest is meet
For well-worn and weary feet,

187

Surely not for him, on whom
Ponderous stands the pompous tomb,
Prompt to blind the Future's eyes
With gilt deceit, and blazoned lies:
Him, who never used his powers
To speed for good the waiting hours,
Made none wiser for his seeing,
Made none better for his being;
Closed his eyes, lest others' woes
Should disturb his base repose;
Catching at each selfish zest;
How can he have right to rest?
Rather we would deem him driven
Anywhere in search of heaven,
Failing ever in the quest,
Till he learns it is not given
That man should by himself be blest.

Here we struggle with the light,
And when comes the fated night,
Into Nature's lap we fall,
Like tired children, one and all.
Day and Labour, Night and Rest,
Come together in our mind,
And we image forth the blest
To eternal calm resigned:
Yet it may be that the' abyss
Of the lost is only this,

188

That for them all things to come
Are inanimate and dumb,
And immortal life they steep
In dishonourable sleep:
While no power of pause is given
To the inheritors of Heaven;
And the holiest still are those
Who are furthest from repose,
And yet onward, onward, press
To a loftier godliness;
Still becoming, more than being,
Apprehending, more than seeing,
Feeling, as from orb to orb
In their awful course they run,
How their souls new light absorb
From the self-existing One,—
Demiurgos, throned above,
Mind of Mind, and Love of Love.

University of Virginia Library

POEMS OF SENTIMENT AND REFLECTION.

MUTABILITY.

TO A CHILD WITH BLACK EYES AND GOLDEN HAIR.

CARPE DIEM.

THE FLIGHT OF YOUTH.

ON LEAVING A PLACE WHERE ONE HAD DWELT MANY YEARS.

YOUTH'S FAIR RESOLVE.

THE LAY OF THE HUMBLE.

THE VIOLET-GIRL.

ON MY YOUTHFUL LETTERS.

FRIENDSHIP AND LOVE.

THE FRIENDSHIP-FLOWER.

FAIR-WEATHER FRIEND.

LONELY MATURITY.

PAST FRIENDSHIP.

THE MEMORY OF LOVE.

LOVE AND NATURE.

I.

II.

III.

IV.

V.

VI.

LOVE-THOUGHTS.

I.

II.

III.

IV.

V.

VI.

VII.

VIII. WRITTEN AT THE BATHS OF LUCCA.

FAMILIAR LOVE.

POETRY AND THE POET.

PARTED AND MET.

I.

II.

UNSPOKEN DIALOGUE.

NEVER RETURN!

NOT TO-MORROW!

HALF-TRUTH.

ONE-SIDED TROTH.

STRANGERS YET.

A RECOLLECTION.

RAPTURE.

THE TREASURE-SHIP

SHADOWS.

I.

II.

III.

IV.

V.

VI.

ANIMA MUNDI.

THE VOICES OF HISTORY.

THE BARREN HILL.

THE CHRONICLE OF HOPES.

THE WORTH OF HOURS.

THE LONG-AGO.

SIMPLE SOUNDS.

A PRAYER.

THE PAST.

THE PALSY OF THE HEART.

THE WORLD TO THE SOUL.

MOMENTS.

THE MEN OF OLD.

THE COMBAT OF LIFE.

RETURNING DREAMS.

THE MARVEL OF LIFE.

THE EXHAUSTION OF LIFE.

THE SOLITUDE OF LIFE.

THE WEARY SOUL.

THE MARTYRS OF THE MIND.

SORROWS.

I.

II.

III.

IV.

V.