Benoni :: :: University of Virginia Library

Thou, whom I know not—knew not; whose mere name
Is secret as all wondrous symbols old,
Wherefrom the gnawing and oblivious years
Have eaten out their meanings; whose sweet lips
Wrought not their marvels of deliciousness
On mine; yea, whose pure eyes were but as drops
Of misty light in some far system pendant,
That might have clear'd and centred into suns
Full of new glory, being moved anear;
Whose voice is but the ebbing of a wind
Along the utmost skirts of forest-glens,
That makes a part of silence, 'tis so still;
Whose life—alas! a legend and a dream
Woven of Fancy from thin threads of truth,
Is all thy life to me: If in thy walks,
Creeping and fluttering back to what thou wert,
In some neglected nook thy wondering ear
Should light upon these voices of the Past,—

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Know, they are all for thee; all uttered
And mooted to the blabbing pitiless winds
That thou mayst hear: so, leave them not to die—
Take up and store them—no, not in thy heart,
But in some meanest corner at the edge
Of thy wide being; there, the while thy soul
Moves like a planet circled in its sphere,
With a faint zone of loves and memories
That worship from afar, O let them rest,—
Prophetic utterances that shall not pass
Without fulfilment in the latter days
Old heir-looms, waiting as in trustfulness
Among the lurking lumber, till there come
A due return of fashion and of times
To make them precious: gazing on them thus,
Not with wet eyes or sobbing voice, or aught
That shakes the firm foundations of control,
And wrests thee from thy duties,—wait, and nurse
Unseen the mute indulgence of that hope
That cannot be a sin; until what time
Our ancient freedom comes again......

.....‘No more!’

PROLOGUE.

It may be there are kindly hearts and pure
Will all receive these crude imaginings,
Above whose chiefest births the reverend year
Keeps watch, with voice of Custom or of Law
Which doth baptize our unexpectant youth
With sudden manhood; feeble they, and weak,
And largely woof'd with error—and, at times,
Some unfelt shadow of another's thought
May brood above; yet haply those true hearts
Will kindly use them, for the sake of all
Dear quiet shrines in Nature's holy fane,
Where chiefly they were born—those sculptured cells
And lonely chapels, all our own and Love's,
Hard by a sheltering aisle, where we may rest
In virgin mood of meditative prayer,
Unheeding all, nor heeded of, the din

And tramplings of the wide thick-peopled nave:
For they have loved them too; have they not loved
Some castled summit, or some lone blear'd crag,
O'er cavern'd roots, all sheeny to the sun
With disks of splinter'd shale, that manifests
A broken bulk against the lucid sky,
Crusted with hoary lichens, whereon Thought
Dwells in a calm and printless paradise,
While from the sweet and melancholy blue
And its faint burstings of luxurious waves
On pebbles far beneath, upswells a soul
Of inexpressive tenderness and peace:—
Or some grey homestead, by its kindred church
Close-nestled, and with creeping flowers embloom'd
And green verandahs, whence fresh coolness breathes
Into the shadow'd rooms, laden by day
With scents of twisted jasmine and of rose,—
By night with low bird-music, and some shreds
Of scatter'd moonlight dappling all the gloom:—
Or last, some antique cloister, deepest loved
By such as they, with lustrous memories
And hallow'd dawns thick-floating round her courts—

Her carven courts, where we have walk'd, and been
Heirs of the unreturning Past, and all
The lucid trail she leaves; and have inform'd,
In stedfast purpose for the after life,
Our patient souls with Wisdom's beautiful
Deep thoughts serene, as knowing that the Past
Is but an elder Future; they are twins,
Each with her bright face bathed in differing glow
Of eve and morning—on the elder's brow
Soft western glories linger, and the flush
Of melting sunset; but clear orient light
Burns on the younger's forehead. These, O friend,
Thou also knewest haply, and didst love
Unspeakably; so may their memories be
Within thee as thou readest, smoothing down
Thy crested soul to loving sympathy,
Or meet forbearance, with a brother's thoughts—
Thoughts not unlike all heartwrung melodies,
Which ever keep some deeper sense below
The graven words, and run like slender clues
But faithful, through the labyrinthine life
Of him who bears them; which all faintest thrills

And gusts of feeling do suffice to move,
That o'er the tense firm heart of manhood pass
Unfelt, or graze some puny nerve and die;
But, in the tender juicy-fibred home
Of younger life, do strike it to the core,
And pierce its very being thro', and warp
Its onward course for evermore. Farewell!

1850.

KOSMOS:

OR, THE LIFTING OF THE VEIL.

Out of the hush'd low valleys, and the dells
Unseen, where we have lived,—out of the sphere
Of calm accustom'd faces—characters
Akin, and smoothen'd to a common type
By intercourse,—out of the household ways
And home delights and habits, which have shut
In warm seclusion thro' their early growths
Our delicate souls,—out of the days when all
Our little thoughts and meagre knowledges
Dwelt as in dreams, unconscious of themselves
And full contented,—we arise, bewitch'd
By the inarticulate voice of circumstance
That will not be withstood, and plant our feet

Upon the dizzy edges of the world.
Knowest thou what we feel?

Didst ever wind
With lazy eyes and unexpectant heart
For many a league along some noiseless path,
Thro' forest-glooms and hanging dark ravines
And cloud-wreaths from the hills,—and suddenly,
Turning some rocky barrier of the path,
Burst on a broad and beautiful champaign,
Swimming in sunlight, rich with waving corn
And towns and farms and rivers,—where a glow
Of balmy breaths steams upward, and beneath
Rings with far music all the twinkling air?
Didst ever climb with vague unheeding feet
Some sloping downs, and where the level brow
Darkens against the sky, look down, and plunge
Thy mazed soul in the blue light of the sea?
Thou knowest what we feel.—A naked fool
Soak'd i' the melting snow! a lean, lost fool!—

We speed again thro' books and men and things—
How! a new consciousness is here—our life

Opaque has grown transparent, self-illumed!
“I have not here a feeling or a thought
That has not been another's,—only work'd
Afresh and kneaded, thro' the diverse souls
Of many generations: I'm a toy
Made by the thousand for a fair, and each
Twin to the other; why, such counterparts
May change and shuffle thro' a thousand deals,
And no one be the wiser!

Other men
Wear large imposing wisdom on their brows—
Walk crown'd and glory'd thro' the land, and seem
To read the faces of all heaven and earth
As easily as a brother's: but I toil
Aye in the slippery shallows, while the sea
Of knowledge rises to my very lips,
Then ebbs for ever.

Nature unto me
Is a veil'd Pythia, from her twilight shrine
Murmuring poetic mysteries; and this
Tho' the small scope of our horizon bounds
My every quest!

The whirlpools of the earth—
Hot seething cities—I walk into them
And curse my understanding: what a maze
Of unintelligible interests,
Unseen connexions, puny facts that stand
Alone and unexplain'd, or sweltering lie
In heaps of rank confusion, heaving up
To blurr and blind the dizzy soul that dares
To keep its Being unabsorb'd, and ask—
What mean these things? A rout of gaudy beads,
Slipt from the string, and sliding up and down,
Shorn of a visible purpose and a home—
A hissing whirl of life, from darkest deeps
In the hill-side that shoots thro' narrow light
To plunge into a darker. Every face
Whose eyes meet mine, is as the nucleus
Of some thick nebulous galaxy of lives,
Wheeling dependent orbits intricate
Beyond, beyond my ken—is as the rise
Of sudden dolphins thro' the tremulous sea,
That in the sunlight curl, and plunge, and leave
That little moment for their history.

Widening my eyes to grasp a larger ken—
How can I track the fierce electric speed
Of such an age as ours? How extricate
From mountainous masses of effect the old
And generative causes, or perceive
Which way and where the Past hath work'd and striven
To bring us up to this,—and in what shape
Its reverend shadows on the fields around
Do lie, and how with swift unconscious ebb
The very Present where I gazing stand
Fails into Memory; and the light how far
Of these our deeds, when we are in the west,
Shall climb the distant zenith; and how long
Our throes and pulses all may linger on,
And shake the sensitive Future as they go
To likeness of ourselves?

And ‘What!’ exclaims
A larger spirit in my ear—‘What! spend
Squander and spill the sum of thy regards
On deeds and interests of one little land?
Thou seest the unequal triad, that divide

The sovereignty of Time—that they provoke
And sorely prove the weak inquiring soul,—
That chiefly, closing round our central place,
The neighbourhoods stupendous on each side
Whelm us in grandeur, like the perplext roar
Of cataracts,—that, winged for escape,
Shoots the frail Present timidly between
Those cloven bergs cyanean, imminent
With bulky heights of Memory and of Hope:—
So too, nor less, the Kosmos that we see—
Expansive space—faints timidly beneath
Her cumulative wonders: ancient homes—
Forlorn encampments of the vagrant Past,
Long tenantless; imperial monuments,
Whose unregarded ruins no wide boons
Nor teachings influential call their home,
And mix for us sweet gratitude with awe,—
Memorials of oblivion; others, which,
In deepest death exuberant with life,
Hail us from far, and with adopting voice
Take half the world for citizens and sons;
About whose odorous fields their pilgrims walk

Knee-deep in legends and high memories,
While every whisper of the current air
Is music to a Pæan: neighbourhoods
Where the meek bosom of the patient Earth
Fierce hoofs of battle wounded; where the free
And dainty steps of Fortune and of Fame
Most oft did visit, and abode most long,
And left with largest tears; wherever men,
Holpen of circumstance, or innate strength
Of race, or high infectious excellence
And heavenward promptings of the age and clime,
'Mid blessings and 'mid sympathies arose
Of woods and waves and mountains and the blue,
And group'd themselves magnificently far
From common times,—with nourishment divine
Of cool nepenthe and fair asphodel
Feeding themselves to heroes. Then the lands
That now i' the wayward bosom of Renown
Lie cradled—mountains by volcanic strength
Shot through blind clifts in some dull plain to shame
The ancient hills—deep-toothed gulfs, wherein

The wandering whirlpool of men's energies,—
The wrestlings of whate'er imperial race
Carves its own name upon the passive age,—
Foams unresisted: what innumerous sounds
And pantings of illimitable life
In these full lands arise! The royal boom
And thunder of the armies of the earth,—
The voice of many workers, smoothing out
Over the craggy barriers of To-day,
A passage for the Morrow,—the wide crash
When tyrants fall, and the crush'd peoples rise,
And make themselves immortal—but how soon,
Gulping deep draughts of hot delirious blood
Out of the foemen's skulls, do gorge themselves
To madness! Next, nor viewless nor apart
In thought if yet in time, unveiling stands
The silent Future, in her own new spheres
And distant climates seeking to be born:
She is unknown by face, and yet how clear
We mark her throes and struggles in the womb,
Till with the moving cycle she emerge
Full-panoplied!’

Concerning this our world,
And her great trinities of Space and Time,
That goading spirit preaches, till my soul
Bursts with distress and eagerness. But more:
For I have seen a vision, that swam in
Thro' the transparent awnings of my eyes
In sleep—a dream of wonder and despair.

I stood among the courses of the worlds,
A shadowing spirit near me, to unfold
Whate'er of lesser mystery might be dwarf'd
To human understanding. All around
Huge suns were driving like gigantic hail
Across the blank of space: and I, though swoln
To an archangel's bulk, was fain to dip
And swerve, when any of the swarming crowd
Shot toward me. Not with restless noise they moved,
Like the swift fierce inventions of the earth,
But calm and silent as the path of souls
Upborne by buoyant angels through the vast
Into our Father's bosom; and I saw

That that old fabled music of the spheres
Was but the cooling of an orb's warm face
Against the gelid ether.

Not for long
We stood in ravishment, deep-plunged amid
That seething hive of planets and thick stars,
Without a special interest; for behold,
Far down a vacant avenue of gloom—
A long deep gorge—out of the purple dark
A point arose, and travell'd up that bare
Black fiord, enlarging ever, till it curved
A rapid arc among the shoals of stars,
And rounded up to me. I felt a thought
From that unseen immortal at my side
Explode within me—‘This is thine own Earth!’
With feelings then as of some voyager
Fresh from grand halls and vasty pyramids
Of the old East, who enters once again
That little chamber of his youth, I stoop'd
Above the puny world as bends some girl
Over an insect in her palm, and scann'd
With shaded eyes the wonder as it pass'd:—

Thick creamy clouds of glowing vapour clung
Round the swift orb, and from the whirling bulk
Curl'd flakes and ribbon'd shreds of showery foam
Spun like a rain of burning blooms, and dash'd
Against my eyes, and lavishly behind
Swept o'er the oblivious vast a billowy breadth
Of lurid bronze: but I, thro' jagged rifts
That slit the wreathing masses as a maid
Parts her bright hair in clusters with the morn,
Beholding, probed to the dark rugged rind
O'the earth, and saw a moving dust of men,
Hot, smoky, drifting ever to and fro
Across the aimless desert; and perceived
A storm of little voices, screaming up
To the great heavens for food and air and rest,
And health and truth and knowledge and for fame;
And heard among that rout low breaths of prayer,
And tender women's voices, and clear men's,
Wandering amazed, like a meek melody
That winds alone amid the crashing chords.

I learnt no more: for the coy vivid Earth

Fled thro' my fingers, plunging eagerly
Among the sheltering worlds, as dives a hind
Into dew-blossom'd thickets of the morn.

Bravely the sparkles of that sheeny trail
Toil'd in her surging wake; until from high
The long unfinish'd slope of her ellipse
Shone like the broken circlet of a god
Falling thro' space: but in the far extreme
That thick bright flood grew shallow, and its blaze
Unknit and shiver'd into many threads
Of tremulous light, that flicker'd like a web
In air, till one by one they snapt, and all
The beaded atoms brilliant were ysprent
Thro' the abyss, and languish'd and grew dim,
And flash'd and fumed and were extinguished;
Like stragglers in the desert, when that huge
Swift choking death is imminent behind
Their fleeter fellows.

So the marvel pass'd,
But not my thoughts: this then is all the scope
And compass of those many million hopes

And loves and longings—this is the one home
Of those long linked lives of lordly men,
From Adam down to us—this is the world
Whereof men preach that only over it
The Father bends, and spreads to its full stretch
The cordon of his everlasting arms
To grasp this mote, and hath encircled it
With hugest spheres innumerous, that they
Might pierce with little points of utmost light
The eyeballs of a man! hath hoarded up
The milk and honey of immortal teats
Only for lips of theirs; and ripens aye
For them alone the unutterable wealth
Of Heaven! Why, this microscopic Earth!
Had I but thought, I might have brush'd it dead
With one sweep of a finger or a nail,
And not have cared to blow the dust away!

A larger vision. For that spirit's will
Enabled me, and made that with bold brow
I breasted the great onset of the spheres,
And clove the downward press as a fork'd barb

The solid clouds, and shook from my wide hair,
Like burrs o' the brake, full many driven lights
And floating spangles of the comets' tails;
Soaring the while, until we gain'd at length
A belt of uninhabitable void—
Lagoon on whose calm edge the surf of stars
Ceased and was still.

Therein thro' time untold
We moved, like those old seamen on the strange
And tenantless Pacific—steep'd at whiles
In currents cold, wherefrom no fragrance bare
Sweet record of their birth—full of moist awe,
In that dread Absence of created things
To feel ourselves alive. Then came a plunge
Into another zone of wheeling suns
Thick-group'd, innumerous, as the last,—wherein
Erratic nameless torrents of keen sparks,
A hurrying crew, career'd most lawlessly
Among the staid old worlds: and then, beyond,
Another breadth of desolated dark,
And then new zones, new deserts,—till that nest
Of distant planets round about our sun

Seem'd like a brood all cold and motherless
Of little wailing worlds, entomb'd within
The black umbrageous ether in some lone
Forgotten corner of the universe.—

Enough! O vast illimitable God—
O solemn weight, enormous aggregate
Of wisdoms inconceivable—superb
Gigantic avalanche of splendid truths
And mysteries of knowledge, drowning us
In fierce amaze—cold, cruel, biting plunge
Of something keener than an adder's tooth
Into our wincing vitals!

But the throes
And intellectual agonies, that raved
From side to side of these impregnable
And desperate crags of knowledge, wet with blood
And blind with dust of battles and with tears,
Are still'd—we are too weak to struggle now:
Let the invincible immortals reign,
And we be brutes! Yea, we grow kneaded up
Among the soulless dumb existences

Around, and consciousness as in a mist
Departs, and self forgets itself—we lie
A very nothing: till, with long abode
In the familiar presence of those spells
That wrought us this, we from our frenzied trance
Come forth like men from sickness, rising up
A crush'd, emaciated thing, and slow
With flaccid foot slink shuddering into—

No!
Not death! There comes a brightness from behind—
We are envelopt in clear, shining showers
Warm'd from the big black clouds; and all above
Large rainbows break and glisten on the dark:
O now we know our places and the time!
We were young angels, offering at heaven
Unfledged and immature,—who in vague dreams
Forgot themselves to madness—dreams that scorn'd
To drink their life from this our fatherland,
And died for lack of moisture. But hurrah!
Now we are men—Promethean men, with brave
And nervous hearts, who grasp the royal flame
That welds those struggling errors into truth:—

Not to be transcendental, crunching out
With savage heel unblest the dearer part
That makes us human; not to be as brutes,
And choke with gross rank gush the purer part
That maketh us divine.

And we do know,
In part, our course and purpose in the world—
Why we are here, and with what differing eyes
'Tis meet to look around us as we move:
For, standing in the Present, bosom-deep
In rushing life, that ancient strong desire
That grasps and clutches at the lordly Past,—
That fever'd and regretful hungering
For lovely things departed, smoothens down
To healthier fondness, wholesome as the dew
To flowers that know not rain: nor less the large
Wild Future spheres her vagrant fiery stars
Into most loyal orbits and serene:
And, working staunchly in the painful round
Of daily tasks that wean us from ourselves
And brace and tone us into manliness,
Those high and dangerous beauties, which to see

Toss'd from its balance the unweighted spirit
And bred conceits that made the elders smile,
Lose the false harm that was not of themselves
But us, and cooling into distance, shine
True and undazzling—shooting from afar
Long level splendours, which the porous heart
Absorbs and is refresh'd.

Thus some strong law
Makes, that thro' resignation and thro' toil
And patient long endurance, we shall grow
In knowledge and in perfectness; that thus
We shall evolve its meanings out of Life,
And, or in nature or the wondrous coil
Of our own being or the press o' the world,
Shall see the purpose growing thro' the act,
And see the clues that wind thro' things, and see
Our lesser wisdom branching into more:
That thus, thro' faith and low communion sweet,
That vague Eternal shall become for us
The Father, and the Spirit, and the Son.”

BEGINNINGS.

Now the cool Night bathes her purple forehead
In the awakening glow that bids her die;
Leaves the bright imaginative Morning
Faintly blushing thro' her native sky:

Morn! tho' yet her baby-glances tremble
Weakly in the yellow glistering haze,
Even now weird Hope and spell-fraught Fancy
Feel the lustre of her cloudless gaze.

Sheering off into the northern heavens,
Cold and shadows leave the Earth awhile;
O'er her time-worn face fair Spring is bending—
Bids her ope her slumbrous eyes and smile.

What tho' buds and twinkling dewdrops tell us
Smiles are but the glitter on a tear?—
Hope and Fancy watch them how they ripen
Into laughter with the ripening year.

Like the morn, and like the tender spring-time,
Dawns the orient Future from the Past;
Gold-grey lights above the girdling mountains
Tell she surely comes, yet comes not fast.

Mutely she and timidly floats upward
O'er the clouded Present where we lie;
But calm Hope and heaven-lit Fancy, gazing,
Catch the splendours of her noonday sky.

WAIT.

Fret not, tho' all cherish'd musings
Trickle from thy soul away,—
Tho' thy thoughts be ever vainly
Struggling upward toward the day:

Fret not, tho' on earth thou wander
Mask'd and muffled half from view,—
Whilst the dear ones closest round thee
Are but mask'd and muffled too:

No; let life's eternal watchword
Nerve thy heart, and guide thy brain—
Action! Let the shout arouse thee
To thy manly work again.

Pore not o'er thy changeful Being—
Ample task it is to Be;
Thoughts that bring no help to labour,
Were not born for earth and thee:

Let them die—no tender blossoms
In the winter frosts appear:
Wait thou till the sunshine wakens
In the spring-time of the year;

Till the time when full communion
Thro' untrammell'd souls shall thrill;
Thought her disembodied music
Flash from heart to heart at will.

HOME.

‘Say what the wisest, worthiest prayer
That buoys its wings with earthward air?’
She looked up thro' her drooping hair—
‘Pray for a home!

‘More sweet than song of moonlight bird,
Or sea-born sounds at sunset heard,
The music of that little word—
The one word, Home!

‘On scatter'd lakes, where'er she move,
The sweet somnambulist above
For all her looks and thoughts of love
Still finds a home:

‘If thus some shining word there be
Which in all heavenward hearts and free
A mirror of itself may see,
That word is Home.

‘For always under bluest skies,
Tho' half a heaven about us lies,
The full heart whispers to the eyes,
“This is not Home!”’

Ah, then, if spot so calm and sweet
Make rest on earth for wearied feet,
Say whither lies that blest retreat—
Say, what is Home?

‘'Twere hard,’ she said, ‘for human kind—
For each, tho' shapelessly and blind,
Spontaneous in his untaught mind
Knows what is Home;

‘And Feeling rules the human sky,
Nor cares to scan with curious eye
The cheering light she feels so nigh—
The light of Home.

‘Each spirit hath a depthless mine
Of buried gems and flowers divine,
That in their own sweet lustre shrine
Its thoughts of Home;

‘Each minds him of some sheltering trees,
Some homestead, deep in billowy leas
Or cheerful haunts of men; and these
To him are Home:

‘Yet such things, tho' in close embrace
They blend each meek attendant grace
With the one thought that fills the place—
The thought of Home;

‘Yet are they but as tangled flowers,
Tended and twined in happiest hours,
That smother with their scented showers
The truth of Home:

‘They are but moons that wax and wane,
And scarcely move the boundless main
Of hallow'd memories that remain
In that word Home.

‘No—wheresoe'er beneath the blue
Some brood of kindred hearts and true
Dwell shelter'd where the stranger's view
May never come,

‘And, folded thus, together feel
Each varying breath of woe or weal—
Together smile, together kneel,
In joy, in gloom;

‘While as they weep, or as they sing,
Slow thro' the Autumn from the Spring
They downward slope on calmest wing
Toward the tomb;

‘Whether in cedar they abide,
Or cottage by the green hill-side,
Or thro' the barren world and wide
For ever roam;

‘Where'er they stray, where'er they dwell,
A wandering heaven is with them still;
And tenderest angels, watching, tell
That this is Home.’

[Life is like a tear]

Life is like a tear
Born in the sad depths of a woman's eyes—
That brims up slowly thro' them, and then lies
And rocks as in a cradle, warmly hid
I' the rich brown shadow of her glossy lid:
And then peeps out beneath it warily,
Quivering in tremulous uncertainty,
And rainbow'd like a bubble in the sun
Upon the twinkling verge,—until with one
Wild leap and gush of ripe intensity,
And quick as random thoughts just born to die,
Its darts away, shooting a dewy streak
Over the fragrant blossoms of her cheek
To the nether edge: wherefrom 'tis loosed, and sheer
Drops in that sweet Unknown.

PENSEROSA.

She walks alone thro' the calm dells of life—
Alone in heart, and loverless, and sere;
And yet a husband's eyes are close to hers,
And prompt to sun the shadow from her cheek,
And brighten her strange sorrow: then she prays
And fondly strives to be a loving wife,
And warms away her memories and her tears
With something like a smile; but when the dark
Brings loneliness and that clear voiceless time
Wherein the freed heart, having toil'd all day
Beneath the exacting Present, turns awhile
Unconsciously to creep her faltering way
Back to some darling Past, and faintly muse
On happier homes that nestled it of yore,—
Oh then comes swimming round her like a dream
The irresistible impulse, late forsworn

But now again triumphant, and sweeps o'er
Her yielding heart all pent-up thoughts, that will,
Will force tumultuous entrance: Shall the night,
The queenly moon, and stars, and full rich blue,
Pregnant with unknown thoughts and hopes and loves
Of wakeful souls in all the thousand years
Since earth was Eden,—these, the gathering-bourne
And far Valhalla of heroic Eld—
Shall these things come, and not to each lone heart
Bring its peculiar spirit in the train
Of the majestic Mother—of the Moon?

And so she wanders backward toward the glen
Where rose the quiet fountain of her life,
And looks upon the drooping flowers once more
That woo'd her then to kiss them and to come
Close—closely—up to them,—they said not why,
But only said, it would be sweet to stay;
And so she stay'd, poor artless trustful thing!
These with her dimm'd but unreproachful eyes
(Ah, too forgiving!) doth she linger o'er,
Nor knows them wither'd now; and slowly treads

Again the joyous seed-time of her years,
And scents again the pure fresh innocent breath
Of the untrodden Earth, when first awoke
By touch of man to other thoughts than those
Of childish, passionless rest: O, sad delight,
To gather up these wrecks of shatter'd bowers,
All with such tears of her own weeping wet,
And cold and clammy with the ooze of Time!
Why doth she so? Why builds a happy night
To embitter all the morrow?—Oh, she feels
Still in her heart that eldest, vastest grief,
And seeks—how fondly seeks!—to stifle it
By soothing; or perhaps these casual bursts
But speak a failing sorrow, nigh to death.
O no! it never, never dies—she glides
Thro' the strange duties of her wedded life
A timid prayerful nun; and ever sings—
“Who truly loves, can love but once a life:”
And as she goes, for ever toward the earth
She turns the dark side of her shadow'd heart,
And keeps the bright for memory and the stars.

CLARE HALL.

A long dim avenue of cloister'd elms,
With lichen'd boles and sere luxuriantly
Shooting their sombre way by glimpses up
Thro' drooping masses sweet of pale spring-green
Unripen'd into summer's: lower down,
Bossing their stems like flowers, quaint curling gnarls
Dotted with tender leaflings: on each hand
Dark fringing lines of laurel evergreens,
Making impervious secrecy between
And silence: and far overhead a dome
Of verdant light—a dreamy depthless glow
Half seen, half felt,—most like to that serene
And pearly clearness sleeping thro' still depths
Of ocean-water: all the pathway lies
In breadths unbroken steep'd of purple shade,

Yet thin and half unreal, for ceaselessly
Some ripe transparent lustre from above
Melts downward thro' the shadow, flushing o'er
With mellow haze of sunshine all the gloom.

Thus do I walk, alone with loneliness,
Almost alone with silence and repose;—
But in the broad hush some sweet things are left
To keep alive the memory of sound:
The rippling roll of old monastic bells,
That Nature loves, for kindliest with her own,
Of all Art's studied voices, do they blend:
The songs of timid birdlings in the brake—
The laurel brake—trilling low quivering sounds
In no unhappy mood, but such as, raised
Out of the safe serene of common joys,
Trembles and shudders at its own delight:
And the long whisper of soft fruitful rain
Among the tree-tops, roofing in our hearts
With shower of beaded tinklings, a cascade
And we beneath its arch,—making us full
Of moist cool thoughts, and a pure grateful sense

Of nameless odours; buoyant with it come
Strange gusts of airy freshness, born of Spring.
These, and but these,—enough of sound nor more
To make the silence sweeter,—linger near;
All else is Sabbath—slumber—and the grave.

THE SHADOW OF DEATH.

Where is the God of holiness and glory,
The God of love and steadfast hope serene,
Whose grace still threads our earth's dark-woven story
With clear primæval tints of lucid green?

Where is the peace that passeth understanding—
The blue deep shadow of eternity
Sleeping on godlike hearts—the sure up-standing
Of some calm islet in the wildest sea?

They do not come to us, though o'er us nightly
The holy moon makes Sabbath in the sky;
Though thro' the faint grey-blue for ever brightly
Unruffled morrows move with dewless eye:

Yet, some divine significance reposes
In all we see without, or feel within:
Some secret vivid life, that ever closes
Its charmed essence to the touch of sin:

Some mellower flush in all the dawning splendour
Floats its sweet presence unto souls forgiven;
Some fragrant coolness, more intensely tender,
Dreams thro' the twilight o'er the child of Heaven;

Some spell lives in the Book of all the ages—
Deep truths arise and precious wisdoms start,
And hope and sunshine, from its pregnant pages,
Seen thro' the glistering dew-drops of the heart:

And each chance mood hath some unthought-of meanings,—
Some rippling voice all fitful thrills that stir
The soul's dark waters; scant yet worthy gleanings,
Making self-knowledge deeper unto her.

But wakes for us no clearer sound or crisper
Than Sin's dull moan, or Folly's dissonant cries;
Save when, at pauses, some dear mocking whisper
Creeps thro' the far-off range where hearing dies.

O Father, still them, these unhallowed noises!
Give us the inner grace that maketh whole;
That we may hear those holy mystic voices—
Twin gospels of the senses and the soul:

That we may feel, the Eternal Spirit aiding,
Thy Bible's charm, and Nature's quiet arts;
And read, sun-traced in instant hues unfading,
The leaden landscape of our own strange hearts.

THE POET.

I see it now by what I read—
The Poet's office in the world:
For common men, with toil and greed
So strongly round about them curl'd,—

With lives too full of wants and work
To spare one silent nook for thought,
With lips too rude, and souls too murk,
To breed clear fancies, e'en if sought,—

These yet within their spirits keep,
At times, some huge delights and dim
Of feeling or of thought, that sweep
Serenely over them, and brim

Their minds with sweet but formless haze—
Then vanish undistill'd away:
A melting sunset cloud—a maze
Of dizzy tints among the grey—

A vagrant dreaminess, that plays
With the dumb soul beneath its sway,
Then slips behind unseen, nor stays
To make a record for the day:

'Tis these for whom the Poet writes—
Not for himself alone he builds
His vocal bower of calm delights;
Not for himself alone he gilds

His changeful sea of outer life
With answering colours from within:
These too he champions in the strife—
The holy strife—with wrongs and sin;

For these he culls with faultless ear
The wild yet meaning harmonies
Of things, which all who list may hear,—
Born of the earth, and sea, and skies,—

And sets them in deep luscious chords,
So full, so simple, and so true,
So deftly sounded forth in words,
That who had heard, now know them too:

For these his leader-spirit thinks
The thoughts they felt but could not frame;
His eye burns clear o'er orient brinks
With light from some unrisen flame:

And all emotions undescribed,
And indistinct and spectral things
That graze our meaner minds, unbribed
To shed the fragrance from their wings,

All these he gathers in his wreath,
And gives them shape and gives them hue
So well, that some broad name beneath
Each kens the several phase he knew:

And while his ripening lips distil
New truths, new fancies, evermore,
Our listening hearts in wonder still
Seem full of sounds they knew before;

Till some remember'd note of bliss
Shoots thro' us with a special stir—
“'Tis ours,” we cry, “to feel, but his
To be the heart's interpreter!”

Such is the Poet's work: and now,
What hath the God of Wisdom given
Of speech and thought, for earth to know,
So like the speech and thought of heaven?

How rich with hope and calm to thee,
In all thy changeful moods, must come
Thine own pure spirit's songs, when we,
The stranger-bosoms, call them Home!

How dear to find, where'er thou art,
Cool sacred Edens for thy feet!
How rare the music at thy heart,
Which, e'en at distance, is so sweet!

Then speak to us thro' days and nights
The muffled things we only feel;
Move with thy clarion on the heights,
And all their tuneful spells reveal.

And Thou, who gavest the music, give
The docile grace of heart to hear:
That scents in every sigh may live,
And glints of light on every tear:

And let the still prophetic flow
From torrent-whirls our souls reclaim,
And teach us wisdom, till we grow
All of a Poet but the name.

PASSING AWAY.

Thou shalt not die, sweet poet of the heart,
Most gentle wife, whose days are as a sound
Of endless music round about my hearth;
But thou shalt brighten upward evermore,
And still be with us—as the heavenward lark
Dies into space, but leaves her voice behind.

AN OFFERING.

As, when the silver chain of song
Thy sweet voice weaves, at every tone
Yon harp with sympathetic thrill
Sighs forth spontaneous unison;

So all thy sorrows pierce my heart
With some electric pang divine;
So every breath that stirs thy soul
An answering ripple wakes in mine.

VAGARIES.

The crocus dwells in sunset skies,
The harebell on the sea;
The violet lives in Amy's eyes,—
And all for love of me!

The linnet hath a pleasant trill
Of soft and sober glee;
A long sweet note the nightingale
Of changeless melody;

And low and sad the cushat's moan
Within the old yew tree:
Our angel gather'd up to heaven
The soul of all the three,

Till, lapt in sound of spirit-harps,
They grew to harmony,—
Then breathed them into Amy's voice—
And all for love of me!

The stars of heaven are suns, the stars
Of earth are drops of dew;
These glow on cool and shadowy green,
And those in liquid blue:

But stars shrink into heaven by day,
And dew dies on the earth:
Only her eyes survive, because
They are of nobler birth.

Yet there's a soul about the world,
If only we could see,
That lends their light to stars and dew—
But that is not for me;

For shadows vex my filmy sight,
And damps infect my breath:
Are those the ghosts of Amy's eyes,
Lighting the road to death?

Ah, Memory! In the days of old,
How bright they used to be—
When I was all to Amy's heart,
And she was all to me!

THE EREMITES.

“It boots not thus to pace the shingly marge
Of Life's great ocean, dungeon'd in by cliffs
Behind, and forward, the strong restless surge
Booming about us—deafening all the soul
To those still strains of holy thought she loves:
We'll float our worn and batter'd hearts away
Over the billows to yon central sea,
Grand and deep-shadow'd, where no eye o' the world
Intrudes, but only on its face for aye
Broods the clear gaze of heaven, enchanting it
To sympathetic beauty; every one
Of all its changeful sheens and flickering hues
Hath had a mother in the sky, and keeps
Close to her delicate image, unalloy'd
By aught of earth, save filmy transient things
That rarely flit between, as if to enhance

The blue monotony of loveliness
By shades of contrast, and the sweet suspense
Of discords in such harmony of light:
There, with rich-scented incense-drops of prayer
One holiest spot in that lone paradise
We'll smoothen for ourselves—a hallow'd ring
Of calm lagoon, to muse in and be still!”

Dear exquisite seductions! How intense
And poignant is the sorrow of our souls,
From such a voice when Reason all severe
This only lesson draws—How far from twins
On the crude Earth are Loveliness and Truth!
Truth? She is wrought with Permanence and Repose,
To make a whole in Beauty: of such trine,
Beloved, in the music of your strain,
Alas! there is but one. Yet men's dull ears
Have echoed that, and with the doubling sound
Peopled the mute chords of the absent twain,
And thought 'twas harmony: or haply thought,—
Pacing a false and foul and restless world—

That truthful Beauty, sure, was all Repose.
And who shall blame them, tenants of a time
When good was but a lesser evil,—when
The trembling heart, cross'd in her arrowy path
Of purity by lust and passionate sin,
Plunged wildly down some cool chance-proffer'd glade
For quiet, and a nearer path to Heaven:
A time when weary men, in the hot glare
Of bustling toilsome noon distracted, heard
Among the half-seen woodlands far away
Soft whisper'd sidelong notes, that wooingly
Stole o'er their fever'd spirits like a dew;—
They did not pause, nor listen if it were
Only a Siren's song, or the echoing trail
Of melodies by lonely beings made
In differing worlds, and floated down to ours
Like wondrous aërolites; but all at once,
Reckless, and mad with hope and the deep hate
Of all behind, they darted on to track
Those sweet sounds, saying in their simple hearts
“They must be true, because they sing of Peace!”

DESPAIR.

All the earth is full of sorrow—
All the earth is full of fears:
Never doth a golden morrow
Dawn upon the night of tears!

“Doth the morning bring no sunshine?
Doth the evening bring no stars?
Doth the tender moonlight never
Peep between the window-bars?”

No—the moonlight hath been dying
Long upon the cold blue sea,
And the sunlight fiercely flying
O'er the dim deserted lea:

No—the haggard cheek is ever
Moist with sorrow, paled with fears:
No—the golden morning never
Dawns upon the night of tears!

HOPE.

No! the stars are not for ever
Lost behind the darkening sky;
They may pause awhile, but never
Cease to light us till we die.

Are they not sweet signals, twinkling
In the windows of our Home,
Thro' the waste around us sprinkling
Hopeful thoughts of things to come?

What if they be quench'd from o'er thee?
Deep within thy closed eyes
Faith shall woo them back before thee,
Sparkling in unshadow'd skies.

What tho' noon's deep blaze be clouded,
And the orient splendours gone?
Only shall the heavens be shrouded
Till the rising of the moon:

Then, the glare of day departed,
Shall a calm still light be born
Dearer to the brokenhearted
Than the richest blush of morn.

What if thou art worn and weeping?
Golden germs of peace and love
In thine anguish'd breast are sleeping,
Watch'd and water'd from above:

E'en tho' yet the harvest lingers,
Scarce the tender blades unfold,—
Sown by more than angel-fingers,
Who shall doubt the ripening gold?

Who—while gloom and sin-born sorrow
Fade before the unveiling years,
Till that clear Eternal Morrow
Dawn upon the night of tears.

ALMA MATER.

Once again within the grey old college,
Pillow'd in the mateless student's nest—
Nest, where ever broods maternal Knowledge,
Best beloved of them that know her best.

Thy great children I behold, O Mother,
Soaring grandly in the distant skies;
Single, yet to thee and one another
Bound for aye in closest kindred-ties:

They are not departed altogether—
They have left a glowing track behind;
Light and odours from each dewy feather
Of their pinions linger on the wind,

Melt into a halo and a glory
That above us holds eternal sway,
Tinting these time-hallowed courts and hoary
With the splendours of a younger day,—

Day of pure and heavenward aspirations—
Day of clearest sunniest thoughts sublime
Wakening all the brotherhood of nations,
Gilding e'en the farthest peaks of Time.

I am shrined beneath this day of splendour,
Hid within this gorgeous noon awhile;
Brilliant are its rays—but ah, more tender
Is the moonlight of a human smile!

Still, for Love there is no mortal heaven—
She on Sorrow's thorny pallet lies;
For her own soft cradle-nest was riven
When the wind first blear'd her opening eyes.

Therefore thou art blest, O calm and lonely
Wooer of the great Pierian Nine;
Spirits mute and gentle, striving only
Which shall bring thee rapture most divine:

They, their eager hands for ever joining,
Fondly cluster round thee and above;
In thy hair their varied flowers are twining,
In thine eyes their countless looks of love.

Therefore 'tis a good thing thus to linger
By the crystal fount of light a space,
Tracing round its brim with reverent finger
All high names that sanctify the place;

And from those immortals gone before us
Gathering ever hallow'd thoughts and sage,
While their spirits' shadows hovering o'er us
Flush with riper tints the mellow'd page.

Yea—she is a true majestic Mother,
And her cloister'd mansions are a home:
Search and look—thou shalt not find another
Warm as hers in all the days to come:

Very sweet her short and tented unions
Of the nomad spirits as they rove;
Very pleasant her uncheck'd communions,
Passing all except a woman's love!

Very dear to drink her lonely waters
Underneath an oasis of palms,
While as yet no sudden fierce avatars
Soil our moonlit dews, our fragrant calms;

Waters, welling thro' the soft and porous
Edge where sward and desert are at strife:
Young green years behind—and oh! before us,
Scorch'd and bare, the boundless breadth of Life!

THE POET'S BRIDE.

Thou, so gravely sweet, so mutely tender,
Calm with cloudless eyes and brow serene—
Thou shalt share with me my throne of splendour,
Thou alone shalt be my spirit's queen!

Bridal airs shall waft thee up beside me,
Woo thee close within my sacred spell:
What if all the erring world deride me?
Thou shalt view the hermit in his cell—

Cell? Believe me, 'tis an amaranth bower
Wreathed and woven thicker every day
With each freshest moss, each dewiest flower,
All to keep the jars of earth away:

But toward heaven 'tis open—not enshrouded
'Neath a roof that shuts out all but sin;
No, to it the stars are aye unclouded,
And the brooding angels aye come in.

Such the home I bring thee: not from Fashion
Seek I chilling lessons how to woo—
Ever for itself each varied passion
Moulds afresh the forms of Right and True.

Only in my own wild way I'll love thee—
All my thoughts and hopes around thee weave—
Fold my close and sheltering soul above thee
Like a warm transparent cloud of eve.

Leaning fondly o'er the inner sluices
Whence these lonely rills of thought arise,
Thou shalt make their wayward jets and juices
Purer with the gazing of thine eyes:

Shadows of the Poet's unborn fancies
Lengthen forward o'er the Poet's wife;
Sweet results of reveries and trances
She alone hears whispering into life.

But not thus alone—such lofty wooing
Suits me only in an hour of song;
Human eyes and fingers are undoing
All the fancies I had feign'd so long.

Teach me then, sweet Bride, what rich employing
Love provides for them that use her well;
How she flies all transcendental toying—
How she spurns each coarse and vulgar spell;

How she blesses, if our warp'd hearts let her,
All true twins that meet within her shrine—
Minds expand and cold reserves unfetter,
Life looks larger, Heaven more divine.

They may know her best who feel most lonely,
Asking help from her as from a star
Not for what they do and suffer only,
But for that chief secret—what they are;

But she is no high and special guerdon
Seal'd and shut for such rare souls to prove;
Her sweet breast declines no common burden,
And the simplest is the truest love.

VALENTINE.

Alas! for sombre spirits, on whose gaze
From that dark Eld loom upward endlessly
Huge clouds of sad regretful memories
Not yet dissolved by weeping—on whose brows
The deep-wrung tears fall scaldingly for aye
From wounded hearts in tender mute reproach,
And filtering inward soak the shrinking brain,
And seethe it into madness—sure for them
No lovers' saint from out his vernal shrine
Scatters sweet missives; nor, when circles round
His festal day of freedom, gives them leave
To twine their thoughts in airy phantasies
And passionate dreams of blithest mimic love,
Such as gay youths and merry maidens wreathe—
Like twinkling films of frailest gossamer,
Rich with dense dew and rainbow'd thick with light,
That sheet the lawn at daybreak—wildly round
Each other's hearts, till clearest laughter comes

With morn, to chase the shadowy spells away:
And if for them some bird of purest wing
Should haply on the trellis'd window-sill
Alight, and startle the dull moveless air
Into strange life, warbling delicious notes
Strung by some fair-brow'd stranger far away,—
Speak—for thy woman's heart shall tell thee true—
Should not such spirits to that lingering bird
(Else being bard of such a strain, 'twere caught
And clasp'd too near the heart) in whispers say,
‘Fly! and when next above her fragrant bower
Who sent thee thou shalt droop thy homeward wing,
And half in mute love, half in weariness,
Nestle thy panting bosom close to hers,—
Then, ere its even swell have hush'd thee quite
To slumber, oh, bid Memory sweetly stir
The stillness in thy breast and waken thence
These notes I give to silence and to thee:—

‘The lake is smooth and glass'd with light—
And from thy shallop's side
Thou mayst not ken the frequent life
That throbs beneath the tide:

‘The mountain-slopes are green and fair—
Thou never wouldst believe
There dwells a molten flood within
Shall drown them all at eve:

‘The ruddy morn breaks cloudlessly
Upon thine early eyes;
Ah! strange, that storms and gloom should lurk
Behind such virgin skies!

‘Half melting into light, half lost
Amid the gorgeous west,
Lies a rich chaos of sweet hues,
All lovely, and at rest:

‘Who thinks, till 'mid the ebbing glow
Dark lurid masses rise,
E'en eve could bathe the storm-cloud's breast
In such a fair disguise?

‘So, tho' on quiet cheek and eye
There live no trace of tears,
Nor outward throes or heavings mark
The uneventful years,—

‘I rede thee trust not such a calm—
There may be more of woe
And more of horror underneath
Than saints like thee can know.’

SCENT AND JEWELS.

Lady, why blend these dying sweets
With that immortal sweetness all thine own?
Why ask of Art her counterfeits—
Her languid cloying odours—but to crown
That ever-deepening, ever-mellowing bloom
Whose very presence is perfume?

Dost thou mistrust thine ardent eyes
And that deep glow of soul indwelling there,
That with these rival galaxies
Of glimmering gems thou hast bedew'd thy hair?
Or dost thou stoop to those who equal deem
The innate lustre and the surface-gleam?

The clear starr'd purple overhead
Brooks not her virgin trueness should be soil'd
With false and fever'd glare and red
Of mocking meteors; of their thrones despoiled
She shoots them down in scorn, to find i' the Earth
Some miry home more level with their birth:

So do thou ever prize, like her,
The simple majesty of maidenhood;
And in calm wrath the odours tear
And soulless jewels from thee: upstart brood
Unblest! and only let thy cool white brow
For ever wear the light of its own stainless snow.

FADING STARS.

Stars, that have blest our slumbers, and are rapt
Into your native silence lovingly,
Now that the fresh full-waken'd Morn hath lapt
The Earth's moist brow in light and living glee,—

Go not alone, but take my heart with you
To that divine seclusion into which
I see you sinking through the alter'd blue—
To depths entranced in soundless calm, or rich

With immaterial music; or to where,
Past the thick orbing of the worlds, may lie
Some sweet and sacred pause, inform'd with prayer
And the deep solemn sense that Heaven is nigh:

There may I dwell, self-poised on awful wing,
Till this ungenial glare of day decrease;
Till you, O fading stars, return, and bring
The still blue Night, whose other name is Peace!

LONELINESS.

Were it not well, that 'mid the racking sense
Of fierce impatience whilst the uncertain chords
Of thought are framing—in the acute suspense
Of fancies fluttering still from grasp of words,

We should not leave the quivering soul to bear
Its quick delirious throbbings all alone,
But have some sister-breast, to bosom there—
Some other fairer arm beside our own

To prop the dizzy brow—some heart to make
A softness for us and sweet canopies
Of rich transparent hair, and ever slake
Our inner thirst with fond down-gazing eyes?

Yes: but perhaps the one true breast that kept
Thy cheek's cold impress, is not with thee now;
Perhaps the brooding eyes that would have wept
All warm affection into thine, can know

No more, how close the shivering heart doth cling
And cluster by the memory of their tears;
How many thoughts with unforgetful wing
Seek their old nests amid the vernal years:

Therefore, whoe'er thou art, thou still shalt wear
The outer man that hides the man within;
Memory's alike and Fancy's throes shalt bear
Alone and unsuspected; and thro' sin

And thine accustomed follies move by day,
Whilst that eternal sorrow comes with even;
Till from the life on earth thou pass away
(Grant it, O Saviour!) to the life in Heaven.

PACHYS:

OR, THE MAN OF SUBSTANCE.

You, that, in deepest and prolific beds
Of spawning weed, among the sodden floors
And shifting miry bottoms of our state
Engender'd, like a dream with none to mark
Or map the channel of its birth,—do yet,
By change of time advanced and urging aids
Of science and a freed instructed mind,
Edge thro' the striving waters buoyantly,
And bubble out at top; to whose unworn
And brilliant blazonries of modern dyes,
The ancient pennons rotting unawares
Thro' centuries along our fretted aisles
Yield at a touch, and crumble like a corpse
In the strange air; who build majestic homes

Far from the poor, of massive jewels glued
With golden gums, and having chambers ceil'd
And canopied with fragrance, and great halls
Faint with all heap'd barbaric loveliness
Of carvings and of looms, and sheeny roofs
That slope in sheets of silver to the sun;
Who stride across an age full half your own
With gestures of magnificence, as heirs
Of all the days to come, and rich with seeds
Of influence and homage and renown
Unfolding for you in the future: You,
Great Men of Substance! my untutor'd song
Assails—for you, O sleek luxurious kings,
I have a word of wisdom.

Know ye not,
Nor ever heard from reverend lips, or voice
Of aught that still is noble in yourselves,
The excellence of Woman?—how she rules
A hemisphere of our humanity,
And that the fairer? how i'the very dregs
And leavings of her kind there quickens still
A spirit which is likest the divine

Of all on earth, and bears unfelt results
Of influence upon us, and hath grace
To sweeten Nature's music,—nor should fail
To make an angel purer?

Do not all
Her low and common ones, which yet abide
Unsinning by the cataracts of sin,—
Tho' thro' all time they ne'er bethink themselves
Of such a mission,—bear upon their brows
A living jewel that along the gloom
Around them shines for ever, being dropt
Out of some saintly coronal above?
Do not the ruddy daughters of the field—
Tanned village-girls, agape with boisterous glee
At haytime or at harvest,—do not they
'Mid labours rude, and ruder joys, and strange
Unshrinking love, still thro' the hamlet fling
Somewhat of grace and tenderness—of all
That marks the peasant from the boor?

The wet
Wild fisher, with her clotted hair, and cheeks
Wind-flush'd to coarsest hues, and all uncouth

In hybrid garb, who fills her slimy creel
Among the sea-worn rocks, or occupies
Her business in the waters,—doth not she
About her father's, husband's, spirit shed
A sweet unconscious something, all unknown
Without her?

And the women of the farm—
Rough creatures skill'd in each ungentle craft,
And moulded for their labour,—or those hordes
Of manlike workers, strong and huge, who tread
Deep in the miry glebe thro' Autumn rains
And blasts of early Spring,—do not all these,
And whatsoe'er of womankind is born
To sweat i'the sloughs of Life, altho' to us
Debased they seem and most unlovely, still
Look gentle to their fellows? Do they not
Breathe o'er the waste low places of the land
A purer air, and thro' the poor man's hut
Move like fair spirits, humbled to the place
And homely, yet unwittingly divine,
Who with low-voiced vesper breezes cool
His workday life, and by blind spells, alike

To her who wields and him who feels unknown,
Thro' dullest throngs of village or of town
Some gentler ways inspire, some chaster speech,
Some rude but earnest chivalry of soul?

And more than these, as with imbruting toil
Less stain'd than they—wearing her native grace
Scarce dimm'd, the tender maiden all unsoil'd
In squalor, pure in thick of swarming sin,
Who bears her sorrows all alone, or brings
A daughter's, sister's heart to breast the load
Of utter want, and still the reeling brain,
And buoy the sinking spirit up, and nerve
The thin weak hand for work,—doth she not make
For those about her and her own clear self
An alien presence in that fetid life,—
And only less than Heaven's? Is not she,
And such as she, the white redeeming thread
Wound thro' dark mazes of the people's life,
Yea, the chief clue that leads us up to why
They are not ruffians yet?......

All this ye know—

Ye own it all,—own that the flow or ebb
Of Woman marks the better or the worse
In social being: how then do ye dare
To plant your griping talons in her neck
And force her down to bondage? How coop up
To unrelenting tasks her young fond soul
That should evangelize the world,—until
The sensitive spirit and the slender frame
Pine to the death together?—Or if Heaven
And the rude winds have made her coarse, how grind
Her honest roughness down to the level flint
Of brutish apathy, whilst some obscene
Unsexing influence, born of you and gold,
(Haply the maddening mill's barbaric horde,
Or—no not now—the harness and the yoke,)
Doth bravely mould her, till to wedded life
She pass—meet spouse for England's present day,
Meet mother for her future!......

But perchance
'Tis that our eyes may mark some hidden phase
Of the soul's truth, and read intensely clear
That not romance makes up the loveliness

Of Woman's sorrow: not the oft-told tale
Of nursed and petted grace unsphered, and sunk
To bitter memory of her rightful state,
Doth glorify affliction, and give light
To all her weeping; ye would teach us how—
Stript of such tawdry aids, and standing bare
And all unkempt, a woman's woe doth still
Make e'en uncleanness loveable, and crown
With sanctity the vilest lot, and give
An agonizing beauty to the sight
Of grief, for him who hides not from his heart
All that should make a man.

We give you thanks,
O Men of Substance, for the lesson—for
The unconscious voice, that bids us purge our hearts
And look on Woman by the zenith-light
Of that great catholic spirit, whose broad wings
Are over us. Our fathers did not so—
Theirs was a narrow sympathy; what else
Of her might grieve they heeded not, but kept
Their maudlin lays for “Beauty in distress,”
And called that pity! Thanks to you and gold,

We read her better now: we know from you
That she may sound each depth of suffering
And degradation—may sob out her heart
To pitiless Fashion—tend the grim machine
An unregarded slave—or toil with brutes
I' the oozy mine, and still be Woman, still
Be a true daughter of the ideal Eve.

O men of true-born blood and hearts as true!
Can ye then look around, nor cease to mourn
As if the days of chivalry, and all
That stalwart age of knighthood, were no more?
They are not dead—the men of substance, they
Who twine their tinsel chaplets mockingly
Round the helm'd forehead of the Middle Age,—
Whose tread is in your feudal halls, to scare
The spirits of your fathers,—who have torn
From the mail'd steed his housings, and where once
The lawful rider sat serenely, now
Climb awkward to the saddle, prompt to rush
Presumptuous thro' the future (may they spare
Our children on the pathway!)—these have kept,

Spite of themselves, the old heroic times
Enshrined within the Present, changeless all
In spirit, but in significance, and scope,
And purpose, broaden'd with the broadening souls
And wisdom of the ages.

Therefore come,
Whose fathers in the caverns of the Past
Gleam from high niches like the bearded saints
Grooved in cathedral aisles—whose lavish blood
To bards is dear, and antique chroniclers,
And pilgrims to the father-lands of Eld;—
Behold, the day of chivalry is here,
And we are champions still! Fair ministers—
Fair ladies which are loving to your kind—
Be near, and gird us for our high emprise;
Snatch from their nooks the old crusader-shields,
Unloop the massy sword, the vizor'd casque
Fit with its idle plume, and tenderly
Sling o'er blood-blazon'd tunic and swart mail
The jewell'd baldric, and the impatient heel
Wing with bright barbs of speed!

From citadels
And bastion'd keeps, wherein the manly soul
Broods like a pillar'd prophet o'er his age,
We will sweep down, as from the polar gulfs
Those old invaders, thro' all bubbling sloughs
And steamy stiff morasses, where at ease
The gorged luxurious Mammon in his den
Rolls royally, while thickest selfish stench
Pants thro' his unctuous carcase. Suddenly,
Scented afar and storm'd as soon as seen,
A thousand furious lances shall find rest,
Cushion'd in him; and the slow dribbling blood
Oozing thro' gash and puncture like a slime,
And fat delicious layers of rich flesh
That cased him in from his humanity,
Shall feed a world of poor.

And chiefly them,
His helpless herds of weak imbruted slaves
That moving gently thro' a native sphere
Might have been women,—and each toiling girl
Who in bare garret centres thro' her eyes
The sad remainder of a bruised heart

On some smear'd shrivell'd flower, from her fair
Fresh home among the mountains brought to die
Upon the blacken'd sill, and likens it
(How truly!) to herself,—and most of all,
Such tender spirits in rude villages
Or crowded lanes by that impartial Hand
Sown for a seed of beauty—to stand out
Like stars upon the dull dark atmosphere
Of vulgar life, and hallow it with good—
To stay and blind the brute assault of sin
And degradation, like those messengers
For that old saint in Sodom,—yet whom he,
The vile seducer, marring with foul touch
Love's work—defying, as in blasphemy,
The purposes of God—and killing all
That blessed growth of influence in the world
With pestilent spume of lust, did mutilate
And strike from their high orbits and decoy
And drag and drive unutterably down
Thro' long remorse, to wallow far below
All hope, all comfort, blasted into fiends;—
These, O true friends, and every sisterhood

Of sorrow such as they, and whatsoe'er
Is soil'd and sprent with rank offensive mire
Foam'd from the wheels of Death, we will arouse
To new existence, and from their dry hearts
Strike sounds melodious,—as the steps of Spring
Crunch a crisp music out of all dead leaves
Of Autumn: tender knightly wanderers,
Each with a rescued maiden in his arms,
We thro' thick mists will bear them lovingly,
And soaking marishes, by many a gorge
Into the Orient—a brave pageantry,
Whereof the van is moving even now
Across the Atlantic waters,—and behold!
Their leader is a woman.

Not ungirt,
Crusaders of the Future, we will move,
With minstrels high and troubadours, to keep
The electric glow still vivid at our hearts
And catch from far upon expectant harps
Some earnest of an unborn chorus-burst,
Hymning the fall of Wrong. And haply then
Shall some more gentle warbler and more young

Rouse his meek lyre, and with no heedless hand
Set in sad song the wailings of the poor,—
Shaking the troubled music from his strings
In tearful dews of passion such as these:—

“Is it no more, O Masters of the Earth,
That Woman is a saint? No more she cools
Her thoughtful temples, gathers up no more
The thick ripe clusters of her fragrant curls
With wreaths of moist valerian, nor hath leave
To tint the wavy glosses of her hair
With orange glows of lustrous marigolds,
And steep and hallow her sweet eyes at will
In the full blessings of the mountain-glens?
Is she a joy of nations—a delight
To them that know their manhood's excellence—
A mother of all greatness—a true nurse
Of all that is not sinful in the world?—
Yea—she shall not be damn'd: she shall not lie
And wince beneath your grinding Juggernaut,
Like Indian serfs, for ever: she shall rise
Into the throne appointed her of God,
Into the throne of Love.

O Men of Wealth,
This is your truest peace—to purify
And brighten her into a very type
Of that great sea of crystal nigh the Throne:
For us,—behold, our manhood and our might
Each in her hand—the colours of our life
Are wooft with hers for ever. Crush us then
Out of the rank of brothers; set the staunch
Serene endurance of an English heart
To stubborn hate; array our very loves
And pure affections and humanities
Like tempting fiends against us; let the teeth
Of famine gnaw at all true tendrils old
That bind us to our nation and to you,
And eat the lingering heaven out of our souls
With utterest affliction: but beware—
Degrade not Woman from the silver car
Whereon she sits, a lunar queen of love,
And moves abreast of sorrow as it comes
To blink or all eclipse it; be afraid
At least of this, if ye would have us still
Be men and Christians, or would keep the sick
And reeling Earth from being more of hell.”

ST. MARY'S.

The glory of the ancient days
Hath crept thro' darkness, but we feel
Its soft reviving bloom:
Again the rich bewilder'd blaze
Of tints is o'er you as ye kneel
Within your Sabbath-home.

The crust of sloth is gone, the vile
Excrescences, and all that told
A dull, neglectful age;
Serenely down each shadow'd aisle
Ye worship as your sires of old,
And woo the prayerful page,

And list perennial teachings dear,
And trace, O steadfast souls and true,
The ancient praises' chime:
All the old charms are here, but bear
Their freshest youth again for you—
“Light at the evening-time.”

O nest where hallow'd thoughts and prayers
Have garner'd, from the days of old,—
Still in thy newer guise
Be thou a home for all that wears
The look of heaven—a crowded fold
Of saintly memories!

O temple of the Changeless One,
Who, with thy sister fanes, dost preach
Stability in change,—
Still stand, and see the Gospel sun
Grow brighter toward the west, and teach
Our hearts a nobler range:

Stand thro' the veering times—the crash
And hurry, as the thickening years
Throng upward to the goal;
And see baptizing billows wash
The nations into hope from tears,
And see the scared mist roll.

And when the giant morn that grows
Thro' paling dusk from day to day
Shall bring unclouded Truth,
Be thou too there, thy reverend brows
Flush'd with a mother's pride, and say
With accents as in youth—

“The rich grass of my children's graves
Slopes thick between me and the sea,—
And each beloved name
I knew, has floated o'er the waves
Within that better Home to be—
But I am still the same.”

LETHE.

Not always with the summer air
Blend the faint whispers of the birds:
Not always the pure soul of Prayer
Incarnate grows in words:

Not always doth fair Music give
Her inspirations unto sound—
Her sweetest lays within her live,
All voiceless and profound.

So thro' the soul not always march
The serried thoughts in dense array,
Nor echoes ring thro' Memory's arch
When they have pass'd away;

But oft the yielding spirit sleeps
Entranced in some unconscious bliss—
Swooning within ecstatic deeps
Where only silence is:

Or if there ripple o'er the lake
Dim shades of things once thought or spoken,
The outer calm may thrill and break—
The inner is unbroken.

Sometimes too, colourless and blind,
And almost to itself unknown,
Dwells the dull chaos of the mind
All silent and alone;

And in that vacant gloom, untaught
To watch its heavings or reveal,
Forgets the quiet pulse of thought,
And what it is to feel.

Is this, O holy Mournfulness—
Companion of the falling leaves
And all that wears an Autumn dress—
The state of one who grieves?

Perhaps thy timid sorrowing heart
The dimness of thine eyes would hide,
And e'en the knowledge that thou art,
Beneath that ‘sullen void:’

Ah, let us feel that this is so,
By some deep sigh, or sob, or tear,
Which to the doubting heart may show
She is not insincere!

IRENE.

Dark is her spirit—dark, and strangely sweet—
Most like the clear bronze twilight of the sea;
And stirless all and smooth, without a beat
In the calm tide that flows for only me.

There no swift-rippling phantasies of light
With fleeting films the quiet surface wreathe;
No splendid dazzling sheens, opaquely bright,
Veil the pure shadow'd stillness underneath:

And all the inner with the outer blends—
Melts thro' it as the sunshine thro' the skies;
And lends the clear white to her brow, and lends
The deep transparent richness to her eyes.

Silence is with her—silence full of prayer
And thoughts that slowly make her more divine;
The while she sits alone, serenely fair,
And dreams her tender spirit into mine.

[From month to month I come, from year]

From month to month I come, from year
To darken'd year I come and go;
And still I ask if thou be here,
And none doth answer Yes or No:

The house doth stand unchanged, and hear
Its wonted tread of thronging men:
So little doth our outward gear
Reck of the fretful change within!

Still slides the water, slow and sere,
And, eddying onward to the foss,
Breaks o'er it foaming—but I hear
No sound therein of change or loss:

All things their ancient semblance wear—
But faint misgivings at my heart
Do thro' the husk the kernel tear,
And ask impassion'd where thou art;

For that unconscious presence dear
That tints and flushes all we see—
The sense that something loved is near—
Doth haunt the place no more for me:

And where above the blind thy clear
Deep eyes did nurse their sweets unseen
Till I should pass, strange myrtles rear
Their shade, with mocking flowers between.

Oh, if one keener stroke doth shear
And shred their blossoms from the hours,
'Tis, that I feel thou art not here,
And that the thought is born of flowers.

AN APOLOGY.

Whoso pollutes the sacred stream of song
With sullied rills from fountains less divine
Than hers, or slakes her lucid waters pure
To the red hue of lust, himself hath torn
The white crest from his dinted helm, and nail'd
The baton to his shield: but yet 'tis meet
That in these latter days the virgin Muse
Should not for ever keep those imaged stars
On her clear face, and bosom'd 'neath the moon
Unveil her beauties to the kindred blue
Above; nor alway glide by hamlets green
And rims of beaded flowers: 'tis meet that she
Through giant homes of men should sweep at times—
Thick towns and teeming cities—nor denay
That stir and splash should mar her deep repose;
With crowds around and mists above should lose

All but herself of heaven; herself, the one
Bright clue that threads the damp, dark maze of life:
'Tis meet that she from blooming banks descend
At times, to gush with full resistless flood
Thro' some Augean den—not made less pure
By that foul channel, but transmuting it
To purity: 'tis meet the maiden-muse
Should from her secret fathomless home descend
At times, and with her own sweet thoughts awhile
Forget to commune; sailing meekly down
In humbler guise, as one who knows to tread
The earth, tho' rear'd in heaven; should thro' blind haunts
And hovels where the reeking human swarm
Fret out scant lives of sorrow or of sin,
Untended, move; yet not without a train
Of ministering angels, to redeem
With incense and a spirit-glow the rout
Of horrid sights and sounds, that so unscathed
She thro' the fetid air may glide, and mark
With tears, and learn, and in her burning heart
Digest the knowledge into some full tide

Of strong indignant verse,—not floating smooth
O'er her foul theme, nor drowning with soft plash
The roar of sin, but with the fever'd wrath
And deep prophetic daring in her breast
Of innocence, still dashing up to the light
All nauseous weeds and loathsome slimy things
That rot beneath the surface; gallantly
She sweeps them bubbling up into the full
Stern glare of sunshine, till her royal soul
Flood the stark world with fury, kindling it
To purer life by shame.

Who faints at this,
Or scorns to quit the cool seductive shade
At times, where gentlest Music dwells with Love,—
His is no queenly muse Pierian, sphered
On deathless throne sublime, but some thin shade
Of timid Echo, who i' the shelter'd glen
Crouching, pipes out her maudlin strains, unfit
For gods to sing, or godlike men to hear.

SIMILES.

Sweet is the rose-flush melting thro' the blue
At early evening—first and tenderest hue
Of that bright brood that in the dazzling deeps
Of utter light is born, and fluttering creeps
Into a bolder being, till its nest
Warms to the cluster'd ripeness of the West:
Sweet is the mellow coolness underived
That swims about the Earth ere she hath hived
Her scatter'd fragrance for the night, and fills
The little sleepy glens between the hills,
And lingers by all whispering brooks unseen,
And dreams o'er grey-blue downs, that towards it lean
So wooingly aslope; and alway lends
Its solemn hush to every heart that blends
With Nature's in true love,—what time the grand

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Wide reach of throbbing blue on every hand
Deepens and darkens upward endlessly
Thro' zones of lessening stars, and when they die
I' the unimagin'd depths, still, onward driven
Into the soul of space, soars purpling up to heaven:
Sweet is the chasten'd amber dusk that lies,
With silence in its bosom, o'er the eyes
Of Nature, when her vivid flush of praise
Hath ceased with sunset; thickening thro' the blaze
Dim hues of prayer her shadow'd features steep
Unfelt, and stilly lead her down toward sleep
Dew-benison'd of Heaven, wherein clear streams
Of fostering moonlight hallow all her dreams:
Sweet is the first faint rising of a star
Between the dying sunlight and the far
Thick-dazzled blue beyond; in all the blind
Unconscious dimness round, a one defined
Sure spot for Thought to grasp, and gazing watch
It brighten, till all darken'd glories catch
Outline and substance from the chaos-gloom
Again, and slowly, singly disentomb

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And concentrate their special selves, and stand
In individual clearness—a fair band
Of crowded loveliness, not fused, nor quite
Distinct and edged with sharp unquivering light,
But 'mid soft breadths of holy vagueness borne
Into the bosom of the expectant Morn:—
These things, O tender placid nun, all these
For thy calm eyes make choicest similes;
But chiefly this—for how serenely sweet
The lifting of thine eyelids when we meet
(If we should meet again as erst)—their slow
And mute upraising, till the artless glow
Dawns of soft-shaded blue, brimm'd full and clear
With some rich fluid, that had seemed a tear
But that thy lips belie it (Ah not now,
Forgive me!)—with no laughing joy, for thou
Dost seldom bask in the wild glare of mirth,—
But with a trembling grace, a faint half-birth,
A nameless presence, born i' the depths of love
And as its home etherial, which doth move
And blindly skim about thy lips awhile,
Nor deign to grow incarnate in a smile!

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Oh that no darker, rainier clouds did swim
Over the sunset blue, and make it dim
With alien gloom! Oh that no winds uncouth
Did sweep her unborn kisses from the mouth
Of brooding Eve, which for the eager Earth
Were ripening! That no tints of coarser birth
Darken'd the crystal twilight, nor the stars
Did rise unseen, or let the cold grey bars
Of weltering mist their sweetest looks absorb!
Oh that thine eyes of light did ceaseless orb
In the moist coolness of their own calm spheres,
Nor ever feel the scorching glow of tears!

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EOS.

Ken'st thou how the elder ages
Loved the fresh poetic Morn,
Learnt from priests and poet-sages
How divinely she is born?

Still to us the ancient warning
Speaks, as once it spoke to them—
“Let the forehead of the Morning
Wear thy spirit's grandest gem.”

Meetest brow is hers to glisten
Jewell'd with the mind's clear prime;
Meetest ear is hers to listen
Unto Thought's deep manly chime.

Noon?—Not softest breeze and tender
Lives beneath her royal sway;
In her lucid dazzling splendour
Dies thy jewel's fainter ray.

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Eve?—Thy warblings may not greet her;
She must sing, and only she:
Let no gem, but something sweeter
On her brow thy signet be.

Night?—The bulbul's voice around her
Threads the silence all alone:
She with beaded worlds hath crown'd her—
Shut thy tiny casket down!

But the Morn, tho' brighter, bluer
Be her sister-hours, for thee
Loving studious calm, a truer
Partner of thy thoughts shall be:

She, ungirt with stars, or zoned
Sunset, or the noonday sheen,
Well shall wear thy jewel, throned
On her moist pale brow serene:

She, with no rude voice to grieve her,
Blends thy spirit's nobler lays
With the songs that never leave her—
With the lavrock's voice of praise.

105

Therefore thou art wise, in choosing
Morn thy bloom of thought to prove;
Noon for rest, and Eve for musing,
And the Night of stars for love.

106

LIKE TO LIKE.

Thou canst not fill my better self with love,
Nor be to my true heart of hearts a bride—
Woman, who bearest all thou hast of grace
And loveliness and womanhood about
Thy palpable exterior, nor dost leave
To him who wooes thee with inquiring eyes
And something more than lust, the mystery
And sweet suspense of search—the long-drawn thrill
Of joy, as ever by the mazy path
Some glad assurance brightens out of hope,
Up to the glorious bourne: joy such as waits
On stainless hearts alone and wise, who know
Because they love, and love because they know.

Whether, in cottage or in kitchen bred,
Thy spirit be but fashion'd to thy lot

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And to thy frame made coarse, by Him who fits
The worker to the work, and from the hand
Of Labour hides its own unseemliness:
Or whether on the uplands, where pure Thought
Blows fresh and full upon thee, and thy place
Doth force thee from the sun of Intellect
To catch some surface-brightness,—whether here
Thou still be stolid, sensuous, and obese
Of spirit, lengthening o'er the zenith-blaze
Great morning-shadows—making part of that
Insipid mass that gives to every taste
A rarer sweetness,—if there be, in whom
Some purer craving yet abides, unchoked
By drifting avalanche, and gusts of sin,
And noisy commerce with the thick high-roads,
How can such love suffice?—Go, spend on souls
Abreast of thine thy tenderness, and leave
Me to my truer knowledge (knowledge oft,
Alas! unblossom'd into act) of how
Contemptible thy deepest worth,—how vile
When thou, immortal Woman, with vain toys
And transient shows of sense canst thus decoy

108

And cheat the sovereign spirit, and, unshamed
Making thine outer than thine inner self
More winsome, so canst charm the guerdon-crown
Of love and honour from immortal Man!

What tho' my fingers thro' rich ravell'd hair
Wander deliciously, and lose themselves
'Mid softest clusters of thick curls,—what tho'
My hot lips skim the bloom from some sweet face,
And sip bewildering kisses as they go,—
What tho' I fondly move my lingering touch
Down lovesome arms, and secret bosoms warm
With love and throbbing with delight,—what tho'
I wheel around the edge of wantonness,
And boldly brush the darkening skirts of sin?—
An hour of pleasures such as these, and I
Have learnt thy charms by heart: what then? They know
No fair dissolving changes, like the mind's;
But—tho' the artistic skill to shape and wreathe
And set anew, and weave transforming guise

109

Be thine—for ever dwell in sameness, till
They droop toward worse; and who would stay to watch
The ebbing tide, who mark'd it at the full?

110

ADELPHE.

O tender youngling of the flock, 'twixt whom
And me no bright entrancing bonds may live
Of mutual thought and close fraternal love,
Ripening thro' happy interchange of deep
Large secrets, and the intimate communing
Of equal spirits; who to me dost prove
Only a petted plaything, to be kiss'd
And fondled with quaint pranks of babyhood;
Who windest sunny flowers about my heart,
But where no warmth for the cold winter-time
Nor comfort dwells: how can I choose but wish
That thee some earlier birth and near my own
Had lighted up from the other life to this!
So hadst thou been to me a nest for all
My timid speechless thoughts, which from thy fond
Discourse and that dear fostering neighbourhood

111

Had caught expressive voicefulness unknown
Before; so hadst thou been a quiet tarn
Where pent-up feelings had gush'd forth and slept
Themselves to peace in its sweet sympathy;
My crown of joys hadst been, and in all grief
The oblivious poppy over aching brows,
Moist with cool-dropping kisses, thou hadst twined.

O chiefly blest—whether in ingle nook
Or banner'd hall or warm luxurious room—
Who find around the loved paternal hearth
Some one twin-spirit, dearer than the rest
As likest to their own,—with whom apart,
Nursing her trusted face, to sit and feel
Each other's thoughts, till from the silence grow
Low earnest whispers, deepening thro' long eves
Of twilight intercourse and loving talk
Most unreserved and holy! Surely this
Is Love's delight indeed,—by thought of self
Or passion'd touch unstain'd.

O once there came
Near me a gentle girl,—a child in years,

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But with the golden earnest of her prime
Most rich about her—looking like the dream
Of a fair Future, all the more divine
As yet unmoulded into shape and free
For Fancy's ripening touch to dash new tints
And graces o'er the undevelop'd whole:
She, being at rest, did dwell apart from thought,
Possess'd of passive beauty and a vague
Large heaven of unexerted love—a crude
Chaotic Eden, where no creature was,
But all fair things were just about to be,
And holy thoughts and good were evermore
In motion to be born; but, when she spoke,
The silent light within her honied eyes
Grew speechful, kindling upward as it felt
A quickening soul, and, looking out between
Long dimpling waves of rich untrammell'd hair,
Awoke the slumbering sweetness of her mouth
To some expressive meaning sweeter still.

Her by the craggy margin of the sea
My mated steps did lead; a gentle thing,

113

And most refreshing to the weary sense
Cloy'd with thick glut of creatures all untrue
And erring, who, in fairest excellent guise
Boasting to train their fragrant womanhood
And feed its large capacities to life
Most full, most pure, most delicate, do yet
For not a part in all their complex selves
Owe suit to Nature! Not with eyes like theirs
She look'd across my face into the blue,
And watch'd the pleasant lights arise and move
Along its waters, rippling to the shore,
And smiled to see how beautiful the Earth
Did make herself, smoothing and silencing
Her ruffled charms, and rising thro' her soil'd
Hot robes against the coming of the Night,—
And wonder'd if there could be any joys
That lived away from these and dared not come
To shame their bliss beside them. Thus with blithe
And girlish talk we shorten'd the sweet length
Of sward upon the cliff; and evermore
By conscious slides inwoven stealthily,

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She in the rounded hollow of my arm
Was half enwrapt, nor sought to move away.

Then did I probe more deep toward the core
Of her dear nature, trenching bold and far
On the grim bounds of common intercourse;
And spake of sisters and a sister's love,
And spake of brothers and a brother's needs,
And how the young affections and the fond
Instinctive bias of their unripe souls
Centre in her; and upward, how the large
Fair workings out and due developments
Of all within them lives of good and pure,
From opening childhood to the dawn of Love—
Yea and beyond—are minister'd of her.
Thus I—nor more; for then I did perceive
Within the artless meek simplicity
Of her sweet acts a new existence rise,—
An inner strange reluctance—a decline,
Faint and most vague, from that close confidence
Wherein we revell'd. Ah, I saw it born—
Not yet a thought, but only like the pause

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'Ere Feeling changes,—saw it rise, and soon
Over the fair horizon of her brows
Blush into consciousness.

It was the voice
Of one that cried in the rich wilderness
Of her young heart concerning things to come:
Strange things, that made her shudder with delight,
And quake with doubt and dread: 'twas the thick breath
Of tropic airs, or shreds of wondrous things
That floated on the waves about her soul
And prophesied new worlds: it was a range
Of busy shadows in the lively clouds,
Telling of deeds that in some far-off zone
The round earth hides. Oh, she nor knew the voice,
Nor kenn'd the warm exotic gusts, nor read
The meaning of those spectres in the clouds:
But I knew—thro' her green full-foliaged life,
Twinkling with starry fruit to the quick winds
And promise ever-new, I saw it glide—
The lean lithe snake—and in her glowing ear
Hiss the new knowledge which in this our land,

116

Like a mad mother, leaves its proper child
The foundling Modesty, and slinks away
To suckle broods of stiff Proprieties,—
A sickly spawn and heated into life
Apart from nature: hiss thro' her hot ear
The first faint thought of coming Womanhood.

She knew that she was naked—she perceived
That like a veilless Venus she had stood,
Not unadored, before me. The black truth
Was rousing all that never woke before—
All false refinement, all remember'd rules
Till then unknown, and kneading all things up
To shame within her; But with stern resolve,
Ere she had wove the near obsequious words
To a scant garment, and array'd herself
In tatters of convention, I swept off
My clinging soul from hers, and rising up
Like a young storm upon the mountains, crush'd
My bruised hopes into atoms at a stroke:
And with no pitiless eyes, but full of mute
Indignant sorrow, and strong self-reproach

117

That any yearnings should have hoisted sail
I' the teeth of prudence, silent moved away
Toward mine ancient dwelling in the tombs.

O little sister, not unlike to her
Thou shalt arise—but lovelier unto me,
In that thou art for evermore a friend:
Thee from the chaos of thy babyhood
And this blind feeble working to and fro
Of undevelopt natures, our strong hands
Shall lift with odours and blithe minstrelsy
Into the zones of order and repose;
Not soulless order, stagnant dull repose,
But such wherein the patient faculties,
Woo'd of congenial atmosphere serene,
May grow to symmetry. Thy spirit thus
Shall fructify and prosper, like a thought
Within a human soul, that hath its birth
Upon the godlike hills, and is wrought out

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By meditation and intent desire
To something heavenlier still. All lovelinesses
That dwell upon the face and on the limbs
Shall come and cluster round thee like a hive
Of vernal bees; in light and elegance
And pure nobility, the fair Greek forms
Repeat themselves in thee; nor only thus,
But all the secret sculptors from within
Shall shape thy lucid features and thine eyes
To more intelligent beauty; and untaught,
I' the growth of understanding, shalt thou be,
And slow unconscious budding of the mind,
To clasp the feet of patronising gods
And send thy helpless soul incessant up
In steams of adulation; nor allow
The bulk of Knowledge to o'ershadow thee
And in the warm and hissing vase of Life
Foam out her frigid fountains without stint
Method or law: Beloved, thou shalt learn
To think—to give a reason of all loves
And young opinions cooling o'er thy soul;
To cull with wisest fingers and discreet

119

The scatter'd worth of books and scenes and men,
And range them round a Central Principle,
Elect and precious, lasting, sure, divine,—
And spread them softly under thee, until
In every nook and corner of thy heart
Pillow'd on some sweet truth thou mayst abide,
And be at rest for ever.

Having grown
Thus patiently and pure, until thy face,
Coming and wooing for the nightly kiss,
Ask scarce a bend, nor need our loving lips
Stoop far to melt and soften against thine,—
Thou shalt discourse at quiet times with me
Concerning things of old—the excellence
And fair proportion of thine upward course—
The truths thou knowest, or wouldst know—the glints
Of glory that have shot across thy soul
Out of the early dark, which doth evolve
New orbs and sudden comets evermore
Upon thy keener gaze; shalt touch again
The blithe quick bells of childhood, and with joy

120

Rain the sweet memories from thy soul like tears
Into the lap of mine; unfolding too
Whate'er thou hast of purpose and of hope—
Fair seedlings of that unborn coronal
The years do string for thee. And 'ere we cease
And part, perchance with silverest voice serene
Of girlish gratitude thou shalt declare
‘I knew not then, but now I dearly know
The meaning of thy love—how tenderly
We two have grown inwoven, till at length
Thou art a best of brothers to my heart,
And I a perfect sister unto thee.’

‘Like a thought
Within a poet's soul.’

Alex. Smith.

121

THE PRISONERS OF HOPE.

Dry, gasping lips, that still are dumb,
Nor speak the words within them lie,—
And crude and wayward thoughts, that come
Up to the birth, and mocking die,—
Strong consciousness of self, and yet
Wild plungings thro' the deeps below
To seek self-knowledge, which but fret
Still more the fruitless itch to know;—
And oft a faint and twilight time
When the dull whirling round of things
Distracts, and o'er the mental prime
Lethargic dimness creeps, while sings
The one fierce thought that lurks behind—
‘How stagnant all thy spirit is!
When shall it feel the freshening wind?’
This is their life, and such as this

122

The vague unrest wherein they dwell:
And Love is hid—or if he dare
In happier mood to leave his cell,
Some face with fixt reproachful stare
Doth freeze him back to self again:
And Friendship is an after-bloom,
A voice that speaks too late, in vain,
When mute response can only come
From palsied lip and speechless eye:
‘Oh that some woman's heart might prove
For us’—their thoughtless yearnings sigh—
‘The sweets without the sin of Love!
Oh that some gentler sympathy
And more profound than man's, might bring
Our mateless thoughts at home to be
Under the shadow of its wing!’
But Woman knows no middle state
Betwixt the stranger and the wife,—
She moves with swift and conscious gait
From coldness to the partner-life
That Passion breeds; and all unseen
Meanwhile, the fruitful fallow lies

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Of calm and sexless love between:
Alas, what tender harmonies
And strengthening converse might have grown
Where Fashion's senseless dribblings fall
And case the listening heart in stone!
Thus these strange hopes are vain, and all
Have bourgeon'd to ungenial air—
Some heart too young, too blithe, too crude
To read aright, or reading, share
Each riper phase of thought and mood
That lies beyond it or above:—
They shrink into themselves, to deem
That Friendship with the face of Love
Is but the angel of a dream,
Whereby no godlike charm is rife
(As thro' that statue moved of old)
To crown the dumb idea with life,
And 'neath a kindred guise enfold
Within their longing arms the joys of yore—
Which in their own sweet name 'tis theirs to feel no more.

124

SYMPATHY.

Now the summer deepens into autumn,
Now the night creeps forward thro' the day,
Blots her freshness from the tender twilight,
Dulls her burning orange into grey:

Now the morn, and now the untimely sunset
Nestles closer towards a faded noon;
Swathed in lengths of mist the sad earth vainly
Lies awake and hearkens for the moon:

And the eastern hails the western darkness
O'er that slender space of light between;
And chill Nature weeps alone, and nurses
Ailing flowers that on her breast do lean:

Still the ancient sea is near us moving,
Changing ever as our spirits change:
Dimmer lights it wears, and colder shadows,
And our hearts too take a sadder range:

125

Ceaseless heave and burst the fretful billows,
Ceaseless knead the blank and sandy shore;
So new thoughts and moods within me working
All my soul are kneading evermore.

Oh, the autumnal earth is dark and wondrous—
Changeful as the mystic life within;
Life, or flush'd with shallow glee, with sorrow
Stunn'd, or reeling, drunk with lawless sin!

Crush'd between the dead joys and the dying,
We may well be dizzy, faint, and sere:
But a far light belts the blue horizon,
And a spring looks upward thro' the year.

126

THE DANCERS.

Beneath a serried firmament of light
And floods of ceaseless music, they swept on
In luxury of wreathed motions, free
And most bewitching to the sense of those
Who weave them; and the while they moved, a glaze
Of stedfast smiles was on their faces, born
Of complaisance, or shallow if sincere:
And their skill'd lips did not refrain to speak
Of tender things, and make unblushingly
Bold dalliance with the sacred name of Love,
And swing upon her golden gates, and peer
Thro' the bright portal of her mysteries,—
Nor mean to enter in.

I too with girls
Of that fair throng did mate me and strike out

127

In wild erratic orbits like the rest;
And all my brain was full of fiery sounds
And inspiration of the thickening rout
Wherein I circled, breeding staunch resolve
To do and dare among the best—to be
The gayest bubble on the waves of mirth,
The blithest mask in all her carnival;
Yet in some secret calmness did my soul
Unruffled muse, and even in the mid-heat
And core o' the whirlwind, gather'd leave to think
On all she felt and saw, and sorrowing ask—
E'en of the fulness of her own delight—
If this were joy, or aught akin to Heaven?

Thou too, she said, who cleavest unto me
So close that all thy bosom's pantings feel
For nearness like my own,—on whose white brow
And fragrant tresses doth my hot breath rove
And wander freely down to mix with thine,—
Thou who dost yield thy being to my grasp,
And shape thine every motion unto mine,
And let me steer and whirl thee as I list

128

Among the seething crowd,—Are these things fraught
With joy for thee—such joy as woman's heart
May feel still mounting upward till it brim
Her total Being, and take rank with those
Great calm delights of senses or of soul
That make a spirit's bliss?—Ah, some still voice
From thy own woods and lawns, and from the blue
And quiet water, and that old grey church,
And all home-sweets, shall sadly whisper No!

Thou hast no portion in my heart, and I
Have less in thine: then wherefore do I fold
My stranger-arms about thee,—wherefore feel
This thrilling touch so close? For why should I
Drink the full fragrance of thy loveliness,
Be nestled at its very heart, and shrined
Hard by the sacred presence of thy charms?
Why ope thy lavish treasures thus so wide
To all, and keep so few peculiar gems
Within thy casket for the grasp of Love?
Where is the cavern'd well-spring at thy soul's

129

Most central depths, whereto none else but one
Should wind his way by lonesome alleys sweet,
And there abide, and drink his fill for aye?
Ah, it is choked—else thou hadst spared to make
These happy guerdons of a life of love
The playthings of an hour.

Howbeit, 'tis well:
Ye mean it not; and also unto me
These martial bursts that launch your wizard feet
Upon the dance, and float them there at will,
Do oft strike inward to the heart, and find
Some echo there that tells them it is home.
For I should scorn to hold (as most unmatch'd
With the pure catholic spirit, that expands
In broadest love intelligent, yet keeps
Unsoil'd the holy blazon on its breast)
That these things fit not with the child of God—
That it is meet i' the bubbling heart of youth
To shut these tiny valves, and seal it down
To mawkish dulness and the stiff constraint
Of soulless tasks, breeding disgust which thence
Indignant swelling, bursts in stormy sin.

130

Who knows not, 'tis the inner spirit, the quick
Conceiving impulse, and the prime intent,
That lifts to right, or forces down to wrong,
These level deeds,—that fills these faint cartoons
With sunniest lights, or shadows of the grave?

Yea, and 'tis well that we should rise at times
From the dark crypts of what we are, and thus
Live on the surface of ourselves awhile,
Forgetting all beneath. Ah chiefly blest,
Who dwell for ever there, or lightly rise
Unclogg'd by tangling weeds below, and swim
Their buoyant souls aloft most gallantly,
Nor have forgotten how they may forget.

131

BE STILL.

Peace, ruffled soul! Though shadows o'er thy brain
Pass dark and frequent, of all changeful ills
We know—though deep indignant sorrows stain
Thine eyes in secret—though for ever thrills
Along the skirts and shallows of thy mind
A lengthen'd sound of lighter griefs, a moan
Of chafed and fretted feelings or of blind
Vague thoughts of Life, that haunt us when alone:
Yet art thou blest, yet is thy fortress sure,
O craven warder! One strong matchless key
Locks thy vext heart to royal peace secure,—
For who shall wrest thine own sweet thoughts from thee?

132

THE MOURNER.

She dwelt deep-cloister'd in her heart,
And moved not lightly out from thence,
But ever trode the perfect part
Of mute and holy penitence:

Some fleeting sorrows faint may freeze
Their vulgar essence into words—
Some griefs may lull themselves to ease
In song, and die upon the chords,—

But hers was vaguely great and rare,
Within no narrow phase defined;
Was too intense and deep to bear
The thrall of limit or of kind:

So wept she, as she did not weep,—
So spake, as though she had not spoken:
Only the bed where she did sleep
Knew that her heart was broken!

133

ONE OF TWO.

There is an outward life of act and speech,
A palpable existence, which doth find
Its home upon the highways of the land,
And works with men and things, amid the throng
Who keep the great world moving: from the first
It grasps at knowledge everywise, and wrings
From Science and her thousand sprites, and from
The army of the Ancients, worthy boons
Of light and learning: why? ‘They are most fair,
And shall be useful:’ thus advantaged
It ripens up to act, and ever sets
And cools its massive spirit to the mould
It should assume: then, on its chosen track
O'er the great waters (chosen with a prompt
Undoubting fiat) bears its treasures forth
Of crude material, ready for the touch

134

Of Need to perfect,—with skill'd steps and sure
From phase to phase of changeful circumstance
Moving; and slowly gathers as it goes
A household round it, in the which it stands
A noble centre,—not untinged with love,
But knit and braced for nervous deeds: and thus
Wheel round its fruitful periods, and it dies.

This is the life, which having largest kin
Among the people,—being like to theirs
Save in degree—a hedge-row flower, but changed
By fuller bloom and richness of the soil,
Bears on its forehead all clear gems of praise,
And on its breast the cordons of renown;
And marches grandly up to the topmost ridge
Where queened Glory sits and portions out
Her motley guerdons to the sons of men;
And carves immortal letters of its own
Deep in the soft young Future, with herself
To grow, and widen into fame; and wears
The sombre splendours of the schools, and wins
To fairer seeming and to nobler ends

135

The Majesty of Law,—or where the old
Dark pulpit by some frosted pillar clings
Among the serried aisles, doth stand and preach
God's great perennial gospel to the poor;
Or loftier strains, and settled nigh the helm,
Doth float the nation into better times
And broader schemes, and sunnier zones of Thought—
Doth sweep the dead leaves from the path of Truth,
And scoop a niche for Freedom and for Love
In all degraded souls; doth point its eyes
To track imperial Knowledge as she moves;
And from the electric index of men's thoughts
And widening opinions, learns the laws
Of happy change; but chiefly looks above,
And scans the white undying stars, and makes
Its lightest motions twin to them,—for they
If seen, are ever true.

Thus amid praise
Of all beside it and above, and awe
Of those below, it walks: and women gaze
Enrapt, or melt through reverence into love;
And the hoar ancients of the people speak—
‘Behold, oh youths, and follow as ye may!’

136

THE CONFESSIONAL.

How do we drone and shuffle languidly
Thro' the dull round of blank unvaried days,
Only some shallow self awake, to be
Our pilot through life's common outward ways!

The while, our truer selves, sleep-walking, crush
The proffer'd bloom of sweet reproachful flowers,
Or idly see, without a start or blush,
Their glories waning with the waning hours.

The fretful thoughts shoot up and die, or cowed
By rude neglect and sloth, forget to be;
And all the changeful wisdoms, that do crowd
Life's passing periods, make them wings and flee.

Each paltry act, each little scene, hath force
To hold the total of our souls in thrall:—
'Tis crush'd at birth—'tis frozen at its source—
The master-power to wield and scan them all.

137

How should we sweep the broad expanse of life,
Who listless lounge along the level strand,
Nor, mounting o'er the billows and the strife,
Watch the great waters widening from the land?

Ah, fiends do drag our struggling spirits down
Along the vulgar ways of vulgar men,—
From our vext foreheads pluck the silver crown
Of pensive thought, and whirl us on, as when

They pass'd from Eden to the outer earth,
Those felon-lovers: cringing to the yoke,
We pant and writhe, and to the puny girth
Of theirs, compress our spirits at a stroke.

What skills it, that along the central deep
Yon vivid maze of sheeted lights doth make
A pleasance for itself,—doth fade in sleep
'Neath brooding clouds, and when they pass, awake?

What boots it, that this tender blue is full
Of most familiar stars—oh, all but kist
For love, in nightly musings, when we cull
And tend our spirits' darlings as we list?

138

Yea—though all glories of the Earth be here,
And we ensphered among them,—gazing far
Upon chaotic loveliness most dear
And grand of all the wondrous things that are?—

We cannot read them—keen imperial minds
Who live to the core of all things,—whose bright souls
Are microcosms of all the many worlds
Wherein they sojourn,—whose strong clench controls

The slippery orb of thought, and grasps at once
All vague impressions as they come,—who trace
The netted veins of secret influence
That blush through all,—may see them face to face;

But how, for us, should this exuberant life
Press from its swoln bulk the aromatic showers,
Or these fair things translate themselves in full
Into the rude raw speech of hearts like ours?

139

ISOLA BELLA.

Cool, delicious break i' the domed waters,
Lying soft and still i' thy own green glory,
Gazing calmly up at the kindred heavens,—
Isola Bella!

Once, th' enfolding waves, coming in from ocean,
Brimm'd thy shelly marge with a wet and dazzling
Glaze, and girt thee round with a zone of splendour,
Isola Bella!

Once, the level winds, full of love and quiet,
Woo'd thy terraced lawns in a maze of eddies,
Skimming fuller scents fro' the lazy flowers,
Isola Bella!

Once, between the grass and the rustling tree-tops
Somewhere slid unseen fro' the cooing turtle
Whisper'd lullabies of a drowsy sweetness,
Isola Bella!

140

Once, thy woods were laced wi' the briony-bunches,
Thro' thick-matted ferns were the violets sending
Tender breaths of love to the meadow'd cowslips,
Isola Bella!

Woodruffe too was there, and the elfin blue-bell;
All the homely gems o' the earth were with thee,
Over all the hush o' the cool grey morning,
Isola Bella!

Ah! no more the breadths of enamell'd waters
Bathe thy winking sands; never now bright glimpses
Fret their glossy grass i' the sloping woodlands,
Isola Bella!

Wanes the cushat's plaint in a vacant silence,—
No new broods are born to the dying flowers,—
Fades the fostering glow o' thy cloudness sunrise,
Isola Bella!

Oh, so stript and shorn, while an alien darkness
Blots thy bare cold breast, and untimely autumns
Cloud thy beauty,—what shall be done to ease thee,
Isola Bella?

141

Storms shall track the ebb o' the gurgling waters,—
Every breeze absorb in a burst of thunder,—
Choke the hollow coo o' the treacherous turtle,—
Isola Bella!

Ah, thy gentle soul never ask'd for vengeance!
Nestling sere and lorn by thy wither'd Edens
Thou wouldst fain forgive, and be sad for ever,
Isola Bella!

Therefore, all the years, or in cloud or sun-gleams,
Sweet and certain charms shall be rife about thee,
Build a new for thee and a holier spring-time,
Isola Bella!

Therefore, all calm hues shall abide within thee—
Thou and perfect Peace shall have kiss'd each other
'Ere thy mellowing soul be dissolved in Heaven,
Isola Bella!

142

LIFE IN THE HEART.

Sometimes, amid fierce roarings of the night,
And driving windy gusts that blow and clash
From morn to eve about a bitter day,
The lull'd heart wakes, unconscious and alone,
Mazed with cross-flashes from her dying dreams—
And scared with fears, and horrors of the things
Around—and with a shivering tremulous sense
Of being more and other than them all;
And hates, and doubts, and tosses to and fro,
Feeling so strange—so little understood—
So prison'd—so forlorn! And then her old
Instinctive craving rises, and grows up
To impulse, blindly snatching at the dark
With fever'd hands, and gasps and cries out ‘Love—
Oh Love—oh more than sister, mother, friend!’

143

‘What means that strange wild burst of passionate want?
Back, idiot—puling baby—this is Life!
Life, the great battle of confused noise
And dizzy strokes and thrusts—the clang and jar
Of man with man—thou hast no place here: die!’

She strives to die: she rushes thro' the rout
With stamp and scream and lunge, and woo's the din
To thicken o'er her, hoping so to drown
The gush of her own throbs, and kill all sense
And consciousness of Being, and grow in time
Insensate, or be smother'd in the moil—

She dare not, cannot die: but, sweeping back
Her scatter'd self, draws shuddering in, and like
Lean, pucker'd kernels in the hazel-nut
Mouldering unseen,—till some rude sudden force
Shake them and hear the hollow rattling sound
And guess the truth—shrinks shrivelling up around
Her inmost centre, growing more distinct
And sever'd from the fair bright face she wears:

144

And stunted all and frost-nipt, when the whirl
Of things apart from self hath pass'd away,
Chattering with cold, and iced with freezing tears,
Sits crouching by her secret hearth at night,
And sighs and looks and saddens for the morn,—
The tender morn—the rich unearthly morn—
The holy morn—the morn that shall not be!

145

THE BRIDE TO COME.

A RHYME FOR HIM WHO NEEDS IT.

O, stranger spirit—if indeed there live
Aloof, some dear nor conscious part of me,
Self-ripening till her virgin soul conceive
The love yet uncreated, but to be—

My peace be on thee wheresoe'er thou art,—
Beneath grey roofs or under starry dome;
My blessing on thy pure unshadow'd heart,
And on the quiet portals of thy home!

I know thee not; yet ever in my soul
Some strange prophetic dearness eddies round
A vacant centre, whirling to their goal
Whate'er of love or hope in me is found:

And some day, haply, in the march of life,
That dark, unquicken'd void instinct shall be
With sudden Being, and the ideal wife
Warm into shape, and mould itself to thee.

146

So cleanse and cherish I my heart, to make
A worthy home for that expected morn
When with the dawning orient as I wake
Thy forward shadow o'er me shall be born;

Or when, unbosom'd to the sun and thee,
Thy potent presence strike an instant day
On my train'd heart, whence sure and silently
Comes out thy faithful transcript, fixt for aye.

For self is not a full-orb'd whole: the range
Of loves and hopes and joys are less divine
Being single; but their embryo state shall change
To fuller life, my sweetheart, blent with thine.

So may my aimless words go forth and shoot
Thee, lightly floating thro' thy girlish ways,
To the heart's core; that thus with golden fruit
Myself may reap them after many days!

Set thou (and I have done the like in hope)
My unknown face before thee in the way;
A far and formless light, whereto the scope
Of thy sweet life shall centre thro' the grey.

147

Think on the darker stream, that lower down
Shall half absorb thine own; so where it sleeps
Sullen and thick, thy happier gush may drown
In vivid clearness all its cloudy deeps:

Live as thou wert the nucleus of a wife,
Whom fair accretions, cloying from without,
And from within, its own elastic life
Enlarge, and swell the full perfections out.

Thy soul is full of germs and seedling-shoots
Not born for growth unaided, but to wind
Their brilliant creeper-blooms and clinging fruits
Thro' the dark foliage of a stronger mind:

Yea, thou art but a germ—so, not untaught
How all thou wilt be grows from what thou art,
Let bard and sage inform with richer thought
And set the wavering music of thy heart.

So make thyself a woman—fair and vast
Of soul, whose crown all Christian graces weave;
Pure as the sainted maidens of the past,
And grand and queenly as another Eve:

148

With me, erect in clear intelligence,
Most meet to tread the wondrous days that are;
Spell out the secrets of the times, and thence
Give help to woo the better Morn from far:

A fair and graceful spouse, whose deep true eyes
Make half my soul's imaginings of Heaven,
A mother blest of the age unborn, that cries
‘She to our lives their holiest hues hath given!’—

So, O twin lives that blindly move apart
Yet not apart,—from wishes to belief
Her wants have led the strange divining heart,
And thro' her budding fancy peeps relief—

Melt towards each other thro' the yielding years,
Which, yielding, press you toward your mutual place;
That we may know each other's smiles and tears,
And how the soul doth fashion out the face.

Come—and as viewless rustlings in the growth
Of leaves above, faint earnests of the wind,—
So let the nearing future thro' us both
Thrill sweet foreknowledge of the bliss behind:

149

Till, rising from the lover to the wife,
Thy fairer self shall grow instinct with mine,
And I shall share the secret of thy life,
And light my inmost Being up with thine.

150

THE BETROTHED.

They say that thou shalt not for long
Be free to list a nameless song—
That thou hast ceased to be alone,
And even now about thine own

Dost knit another's heart: the strange,
The wondrous-sweet, the eternal change
Is coming o'er thee; soon or late
Thou glidest toward the marriage-state.

Henceforth, thro' special converse, he
Brightens and softens into thee,
And thou with fuller strength dost brim
Thy soul, enlarging up to him.

Two voices, thro' the long dear days
To come, are mixt in one sweet maze
Of sound: two lucid veins and clear
Of twisted light begin from here

151

And merge in heaven: two kindred stars
Do weave and melt their fretted spars
Of sheen above thy marriage-bed:
Thy life is double—thou art wed!

Ah queenliest of delights on earth,
And rich with yet a deeper worth
As promise of the years unborn—
The years beyond thy bridal morn!

Ah joys of spirit—thy partial soul,
And his, concentring to a whole—
Ah joys of sense—by Love refined,
But saved: pledge of her human kind!

For he doth clasp thee round, and thou
Dost feel his breath upon thy brow,
And feel his kisses warm thine eyes;
The while he whispers lullabies

Of tender dreams and thoughts of good:
Then, with the cooling of the blood
And nurture in the sober school
Of life, your passion too shall cool,—

152

But cool in clearest crystals, set
For ever, like an amulet
Upon the whiteness of thine arm,
Fending from sorrow and from harm.—

I too have known thee: known thee young,
And blithe of heart and sweet of tongue;
Have watch'd thee, fair among thy peers,
Along the ever-brightening years

Till now: I know thee what thou art—
A woman with a woman's heart,
A heart of love, a face of calm,
And hallow'd, like a silent psalm.

Therefore, O Lady,—whether thou
Have lisp'd that sacramental vow
That seals thee for a part of him,
Or whether, thy dark eyelids dim

With earnest tears, thou waitest till
That bright melodious morn fulfil
Thy soul with joy, and from its nest
Unloose the circlet of thy breast,—

153

I wish thee well: I would the year
Of life, whose vernal carols clear
Burst brilliant from thy marriage-bells,
May lightly leave the frosted cells,

With softest sunniest kisses woo
And warm the crisp cold spars to dew,
And drown the snows in happy showers
Of myrtle and of orange-flowers,

And lead thee thro' a ruddy prime
Of summer, to the far-off time
Of darkening floods and mellowing leaves:
Ah, Lady, who but half believes

That Autumn, for thy soul and his,
Hath germs of fuller sympathies
And richer love-blooms, ever new,
In that fair Spring within the blue?

And now, O tender one, no more
To shred thy darling blossoms o'er
Our paths, whene'er some wandering wind
Hath touch'd thy heart or swept thy mind,—

154

Who centrest all those winning wiles—
That girlish growth of tears and smiles,
And all that made our fixt eyes swim,—
To one sweet kernel, all for him;

Think not, when quite absorb'd within
That warmer atmosphere, wherein
True love doth burst her buds, and swells
Into the perfect flower, and bells

And fairy bugles shoot, and gem
The smoothness of the central stem,—
That the set smile, the courteous grace,
The undying sunshine of the face,

That make round Woman as she moves
A motive neighbourhood of loves—
That lit, as clear spring-dews the swathes
Of juicy grass, thy maiden paths,—

Is all of Man: chivalrous souls
Do love the forms whereout there rolls
A truth—that all things cold and stern
Should melt and sweeten when they turn

155

Toward Woman; but the rest? They hire
Thrills of galvanic life to fire
Their dead shrunk veins when she is by;
And, wotting not the mystery

And grace of her great womanhood,
Starve her on sops and pulp, the food
Of idiots,—till she haply learns
To love the taste,—yet inly burns

With hatred of the thing she loves:—
Know thou, where'er the white moon moves
She looks on some who dwell alone—
Whose hearts not yet are chill'd to stone,

Tho' Fashion with her gorgon-face
Doth hound them up the breezy chace,
And in the deep warm dells of life:
They live, and woo the ideal wife.

I see thy spirit through thine eyes—
I read thee gentle, true, and wise;
I hear thy heart's clear mellow chimes
Above the riot of the times;—

156

So haply, if, the while I pray
For blessings on thy wedding-day,
And crowd about thy future life
The full fruition of a wife,

Thou wilt forgive me if I dare
To speak or sigh another prayer:—
What time in love thou garnerest
Thy tresses on thy husband's breast,

Without a wish, or hope, or care,
Beyond the arms that fold thee there,—
That even then may sweetly rise
Some wandering moonlight from thine eyes,

And rest on others—yea, on me:
That thro' our spirits silently
A friendship calm and pure may move
And holy, like a lesser love.

157

[O sweet sad face, so ghastly dim]

O sweet sad face, so ghastly dim,
So pale, so much in love with tears,—
Which makest all my brain to swim
With memories of the former years—

Which broodest like a pictured dome
Above me ever as I move,
And will not let my spirit roam
From thee and mournfulness and love,—

Pass not away: for these—the strife
Of diverse sorrows in thine eyes,—
The feeling of another's life
Ravell'd in strangest sympathies

About our own,—the stings of crime,
The unburied ghosts of what we were
Still wandering on abreast of Time,
To keep our hearts from growing sere,—

158

Are well; they make us grieve, and Grief
Is Wisdom's mother in her pangs;
And wisdom, strong in firm belief,
Grinds to their gums the poison'd fangs

Of old remorse, and leaves us calm;
And sorrow, mellow'd thro' the past,
Comes o'er us like a bitter balm,
And grafts our sober'd spirits fast

Upon the Tree of Life, and gives
A holier purpose, that doth frame
The after manhood of our lives
To deeds more worthy of its name:

And, tracking thy heart's woe or weal
With shade or sunshine of my own,
There comes a touch of joy, to feel
Not wholly selfish nor alone.

Pass not away: but oh, no more
Be so unreal, so vague, so far—
The mirage of a moonlit shore,
The unsettled reflex of a star:

159

Dawn on the range of Time and Space,
Dawn clear and cloudless on my heart;
And give me, of thy tender grace,
To see and know thee where thou art.

Thy place is empty by the hearth—
Thy home is silent, lacking thee—
Thy steps are elsewhere on the earth—
Thy face remains behind with me.

Sweet face! let happier thoughts begin
To brighten thro' thee, which for me
May bathe awhile in sleep the sin
That was, and is, and is to be.

160

VULCAN VICTORIOUS.

Behold, he comes: a staid prosaic Life,—
Manly, and grave, and grand,—but of most gaunt
And icy presence—with a cold small eye
Level and unperceiving, like a stream
Of aimless light shot thro' the chinks—with grim
And austere footsteps crunching as he moves
The crisp starr'd frost-blooms from the unkiss'd snow
Of morning—treading all unhappy flowers
Into their shadows on the path: ah me!
I feel his coming, and my heart begins
To thicken with fat brawn, rank and obese,
Impervious—or wrinkles shrivelling up
For lack of moisture, like strain'd sodden pulp
Of some discarded fruit, juicy and plump
With yielding ripeness once, but now thrown by
For ever—or it stiffens, whilst thin flakes

161

Of callous bone freeze horribly along
The surface, hardening inwards into one.

Now Heaven be with thee, tender jewell'd thing,
Shut in the fossil-rock for evermore!—
But is there such a thing? Is there aught left
To gasp a choking life i' the solid mass
I grow to?

O sweet nurse and cherisher
Of young spring-nests in the dry leaves of eld,—
Whether thou hearkenest at the name of Love—
Whatever blessings between parted lips
Fall at the mention of thine excellence—
Who whisperest dreaming buds to wake and bloom
Far out of season, somewhere in the snows—
Who sprinklest the green shadows delicate
Of moist angelic flowers endearingly
On some soil'd coverlet—or dost prepare
Love-wreaths to twine about the sacred cross
Hallowing a grave:—May there not haply be
'Mid curdling juices and thick-clotted gums

162

And clammy festering ooze, that seem at first
To have soak'd the whole spirit up, to be in-wrought
And kneaded with its essence utterly,—
May there not still, thro' timid viewless veins
Bursting at times, in scanty jets but pure
As erst, be some dear remnant, keeping fresh
The very kernel of its better self,—
Some sweet poetic spirit, at the core?

163

CLOUDLAND.

Our walk through the progressive years
Is as we rose along strange tiers
Of telescopic stars, where lies
A mist upon our upward eyes
That shape and size and substance hides
Of all; but being near, there glides
A glory through them, and they grow
And centre to a special glow
Of light, and broaden and expand
And look divinely fair and grand
As high Selene: but when Time
And we have reached a loftier clime,
They darken downward dismally,
And sink into a lower sky,
And smoulder to our startled ken

164

The rancid marsh-lights of the fen;
And largest loveliest orbs and clear,
Behind a lesser light, but near,
Passing, grow dark in strange eclipse,
Or suck'd between the inky lips
Of darkness, die; the crowded light
Of systems all but infinite
Shrinks up into a single star—
A little glimmer faint and far
Upon the utmost verge of seeing;
The wonders of expected Being,
Risen to the keen meridian, glide
Forgotten down the further side;
Our stately planets, fair and full,
August, immortal, beautiful,
Shoot from their orbits and are gone;
The gorgeous comets one by one
That set the forward heaven ablaze,
Die in a dull mephitic haze
For ever: from her loftier land
If, looking down, the growing mind
Forget to spurn the things behind,

165

From that deep dark a vivid hand
Burns out, and writes upon the gloom
In liquid lightnings this their doom—
‘Upharsin!’

166

[Thou wert a timid girl in those wild days—]

Thou wert a timid girl in those wild days—
‘Too young to love!’ But now, whatever eyes
Grow brighter in thy presence must behold
A woman, full proportion'd into shape
Luxuriant, and of soul no longer vague,
But knit and sphered for life: Howbeit, to me
Thou art a girl—yet no, a phantom pale,
A memory growing sadder and more sere
With deepening distance. Oh that something more
Of thee than this were always near me!

Yet
I know not if I love thee—scarcely know
If this be sorrow, or a subtle sense
That gathers pleasure out of mournfulness,
And decking with grave-garlands, kept from death
By a forced rain of tears, its quiet bower,

167

Doth dwell therein, drench'd in delicious grief!
It may be—there is guile as deep as this
Within us: yet I deem the traitorous heart
Not utterly untrue—not quite so black
To suck a sweet elixir from the dregs
Of old misdoings,—make its very sin
Bear fruit to fancy and send up a growth
Of pleasant thoughts, in guise of penitence,
For self-deceiving greed to batten on.
O hard mistrust, and timid trembling tread
E'en on the stoutest seemings!

Can it be,
Whatever bursts of bitterness at night
Or earnest hearkenings for some step afar
Upon the waste, are ours, that they are false?
They are not false—I know it: therefore come,
O far-off soul! I would thou mightest come
And sit within the moonlight—so,—and I
Would wholly doff the grandeur of the man,
The strong supporting nature, as unfit
And most abhorrent, then; I would be low
Beside thee, wailing penetrative words

168

Such as thy lot demanded and my heart
Gave from its core; then would I look and see
If any wandering ripples did disturb
The smoothness of thy forehead,—if the course
Of mellowing tears, that, like an unseen brook
In the deep meadows, bless the yielding cheek
With richer bloom, were moist upon thy face;
Then waiting, watching, I might haply see
Thy sorrow fading inwards, and behind
Its dying darkness a clear lovely light
Emerge into thine eyes, not all unmixt
With tenderer glows and dewdrops of the dawn;
Oh, that would bring a morning to my soul,
A golden morning! Then my hand should go
A seeking thine; and having found it, feel,
In mad suspense, if any circlet wound
About that mystic finger: if there were,
I would arise and see thy face no more,
Only in dreams and pictures, till I die:
But if there were not—

169

SELENE.

She laid her down in peace to sleep, and soon
She felt the vivid day-life dying down,—
And sleep arose and prosper'd, and engulf'd
Her as she gazed, absorbing from her spirit
The knowledge of his coming: thought and sense
Darken'd and sank within her; the firm frame
Of her set mind was loosen'd, and dissolved
Its special treasures one by one, as pearls
In nectar'd wine, into the ambrosial soul:
And indistinctness flicker'd,—and a mist
Came o'er the rims of memories,—and all fancy
Grew faint and vague and distant; and at length
She pass'd the secret bounds of self, and slid
Into unconsciousness. Then did all fair
Sweet things and quaint make ready to immerge
Themselves within her halcyon soul, and bid

170

The land of sleep grow quick with shadowy life
Ætherial; lighting up her quiet heart
With moonlight of dear dreams: thus evermore
Swathed in creative heavens of her own
She lay and slept; and always as she slept
The calm grey hours pass'd smoothly o'er her eyes,
From midnight unto morning, till the dawn
Had brighten'd out of twilight; then she woke.

171

ICARUS;

OR, THE WAXEN WINGS.

Gazing far up into the expressive blue,
Steeping my feverish soul enchantingly
Under its keenest coolest deeps, there come
Sweet prophecies that tell me of a dawn
Of happy thought just brightening to emerge
Within me. Oh, I knew it would be so;
We are not brutes or senseless surfaces
Of wind-rockt woods, to look on things like these
Without a secret sympathy—a half
Intelligent and half unconscious love,
Absorbing, passionate, intense, and yet
Craving to understand—importunate
To know the meaning of its own delight—
To read the deep mysterious loveliness

172

With intellectual eyes, and not alone
Reap joy, but strength and wisdom infinite
By gazing; Therefore, O expected thought—
Formless, profound, lying so dark and dumb
Somewhere in these lone caverns, far below
The bidding of the will, and only stirr'd
Thence by some wayward impulse of thine own—
Arise! Roll upward like the morning mist
From sombre clefts and valleys of the mind
Up the wet hills, and settle into shape
Along the clear bold Alps of intellect!
O half-created music, brighten out
Upon the maker's soul, and frame thyself
To some sweet symphony, whose clinging tides
Eddy and whirl for fondness all about
A little song of passion or of grief
Half smother'd in the midst,—or some great psalm,
Whose serried chords move royally, and crush
All other voices of the echoing heart
Into their own! O dewy water-drops,
From this moist roof o' the heart drip stilly down
Into the cavernous mind, and thence again

173

Freeze beautifully upward, till you touch
And prop your elder home—a crystal cool
Stalactite, in whose calm transparency
The filtering moonlight finds no flaw nor aught
That came not from above!

Thus do I seem
To liken thee, O sweet interpreter
Of what I see. Be not beyond my reach,
As now, nor like fantastic shapes and quaint
Of sedge and blossoming reed, in the dark heart
Of running waters bedded, that dip down
And rise again, and glimmer and grow dark,
And flickering swerve thro' many an elfin guise
To hide their own, till the strain'd aching sight
Forgets to follow. O, slide perfectly
Into the due constraint of human speech,
That so in phrase of this dear mother-tongue
I may embosom thee, and go to rest
With the warm glow under my throbbing lids
Of some delicious fancy—some new truth
Cull'd to my little hoard from that immense
And fallow Eden of uncropt delights

174

And wisdoms infinite, where through all time
Pastor and bard and sage their stalwart arms
Immerse, and pluck rich fragrant armfulls home
Unto their panting bosoms of wet leaves
Luxuriant, and bold brilliant meadow-flowers
And shy full-dropping tufts of vagrant corn—
And shed them o'er the people in sweet showers
Imperishable, startling back to them
A breath of glory; while for such as me,
Gazing full sadly betwixt closed bars,
Some stray and seldom wind may chance to enrich
Into a bloom of twinkling tints awhile
The broad and dull savannah, or may blow
Against the wicket-rails some sorry flowers
For me to gather and be gone—in grief
How soon some stronger spirit shall burst in,
And revel at his ease.

O envious thought!
The food is garner'd, and the eater's lips
Have tasted and are thankful: now who cares
What reaper in the folds of his broad breast
Did store it at the first? He hath small claim

175

To be a Poet, who in the great field
Thinks scorn to bear the burden of the day,
And labour for his kind—who dares to pluck
All day, and wreathe, pet flowers for his delight
Like a fond child; nor searches evermore
From that rich boundless prairie of his thought
To grasp and harvest for his brother's heart
The holiest and the loveliest and the best.

Come then—come now! Or only let me feel
The shadow of thy coming—feel that thou
In the deep quiet shalt be born and make
This dumb distracting pleasure grow serene
And most intelligent, worthy the ken
Of thinking man. For ofttimes the full flood
Of passionate feeling, by whatever name
It do approve itself to the searching sense
Inquisitive of names, being drawn off,
Encrusts the vapid hollow of the heart
With rich rank lees,—opaque and scummy dregs
Of what was lucid as the wet rose-hues
Gushing thro' some high oriel, whose clear panes

176

In light of eve are blazon'd to the full;
Acrid and harsh of taste—the coarse remains
Of an evanish'd flavour; and yet fraught
In grosser substance with the very same
Transparent spiritual thing, that sank
And shed this slough in sinking.

Such is verse—
A range of lovely faces darkling out
Of dwarfish mirrors—the scant aftermath
Of some full crop new-mown from the ripe heart
Into memorial-garners. Be thou born
Within such sphere, O rising thought—slide out
On this sweet stainless sluice to light: or float
On weediest pools prosaic—only come!
Hush!

'Twas some soft susurrus of those strange
Close-curtain'd sounds, apart from hearing, which
Do make a presence for themselves i' the heart
At this still hour: and now there is no hope!
That large ‘dumb swell’ of spirit, heaving up
To burst in creamy floods of fresh clear foam,

177

Brilliant, and speechful with a gradual stir
Of small innumerous whispers seething out
Of a wide undistinguish'd murmur—this
Dies idly down upon the level sea;
The level sea, but shuddering thro' itself
Eternally, while in its secret heart
Old dreamy deaths, and shapes whose better half
Is clean oblivion, toss and plunge and die.

And now, that blank bare passionless moon, and those
Small shrinking stars, that should be something more
Than a rime-frost upon the lawny blue,
If we had eyes to read them,—that intense
Exuberant blue itself, cradle and home
Of all sweet iris-colours—viewless now
And quite absorbed, but soon with touch of morn,
Or inspirations of most witching eve,
To blush into full vivid life—which now
Is vacant utterly, disrobed and pure
Of its own wild creations, like a soul

178

Slid down thro' thought and feeling into calm
More beautiful than either,—these delights,
And all the weird mysterious earth, by gaze
And neighbourhood of heaven grown spiritual,
Soothed into feminine beauty more divine
Than her strong sunborn splendours—these, and all
Fair bournes beside, wherein scorch'd fever'd eyes
Do rest at midnight, having quite benumb'd
My spirit to a laxer gaze, grow faint,
Uncertain, tremulous; and, cloak'd and cowl'd
Like those lean Northern witches, silently
Shut up their secrets and their loveliness,
And with smart strain and shock, as of a growth
Of little heart-strings breaking, pass away:
And sleep and silence darken into me.

179

THE EVE OF CHANGE.

Still they are scatheless—lock'd in such a deep
And central calm secure as might have seem'd
Immortal: O, let no rude gust invade
The latticed window, startling them to feel
How very near is ruin!

Still the old
Dear ivy clasps the mullion—clusters still
Up the green trellis, and against the panes
Still droops and flickers in the sun: the flowers
Not yet are orphan'd, which upon the sill
Breast the cool air delighted, uttering
Sweet thanks into the room.

Beyond the broad
Bright court, tall elm-trees of the avenue
Slope out into the west; and over head,
Out of the zenith-blue, a consciousness
Of other hues is born,—uncertain things
And faint, which do entreat all wary eyes

180

To disbelieve them; but, more daring, soon
Blush thro' each other—splendid phantasies
Inextricably weaving of wild lights
Rose-mellow'd into fusion,—which, behind
Quaint antique gables dip transparently
Into a rich unknown.

What time the tides
Of evening light are at the full, and swim
A level flood through all enchanted homes
That open to the west, they also here
Sweep in, and slanting to a cool recess—
Where student-lamps, and songs, and pleasant aids
For leisure lie, not innocent of use,—
Strike on a Belvidere—not instinct
With Memnon's voice thereat, but glistening
More bright and godlike—gazing from his nook
At a coy Venus, whose wet shrinking limbs
Hide in the shade: beneath them, in an arch,
The eloquent Roman gathers up his gown,
Intent to speak. That large delightful home
Of unborn sounds, wherefrom, at whispering eve,
All quick creative fingers lightly draw

181

Rich births of intricate harmonies, confused,
But most instinct with meaning,—this anear
Stands like a sleeping human countenance,
Suggestive—making in the inanimate room
A sense of life. Around are many songs
Of wordless bards, whose speechful music strikes
Swifter and surer into all men's hearts
Than poets' speech most musical: beside,
Across the entering airs, the sofa lies—
Immortal ‘Sofa’! where, with crude discourse
Possess'd but earnest, friends have used to sit
In gentle idlesse half a summer's night.
Hard by, the central slab is thick with books
Diverse, but which the true eclectic mind
Knows how to group, and gather out of each
Their frequent wisdoms: the great Book of God,
Mother of blessings; and the thoughts of him,
That one columnar spirit, whose great soul
Did antedate the larger growth of life
For which we look—who moves among us yet,

182

The Baptist of the future; lesser bards
Lie round, and thinkers, whose melodious lips
Yet glow with life; severe philosophies,
Romances, legends of the grand old Greeks—
What skills to speak of more? For in the midst,
Shedding a snowy silence over all,
Stands the white-throated bulbul of the North—
Incarnate music: loveliest she in soul,
And sweetest of the Syrens.

Close beside,
That nest of cushion'd ease, where musing Thought
Oft sits at eve, and ponders with fix'd eyes
The quiet embers; embers whence anon
Some brilliant blaze, waking a kindred hope,
Bursts on the startled room, as from the dark
Springs a white wave against some sleeping shore.
And o'er the shelving lintel of that hearth
Behold a fretted wall, fretted with groups
Of wreathen shafts and flowers, whereon sweet forms
Of moulded grace are throned,—and hanging disks,
Boss'd with wild scenes of that strange alchymist,
And Margaret in his bosom. Also thou,

183

Melpomene of saints! with buoyant wings
And lucid robe and coronal of stars,
Art domed in the midst.

But chief above
Leans the one pictured angel of the place,—
Unutterable beauty: most austere
And pensive is her silence—one faint shade
Of sadness more, and she had been in tears;
But O, how sweet! Her mute unfailing eyes
Watch me for ever—they are on me now;
And to absorb the fulness of their boons
Asks but an upward look. She hath no heart
That men may wound: and surely eyes like those
Can drink a world of loves and sorrows in
From him that gazes, and give back them all
In blessings, like a god. What tho' she hath
No being? Tho' no child of loveliness
Call this sweet face her own? Sometimes 'tis well
To love a thing that is not; so all wants
That must be fed, feed harmless: and, i' faith,
Our souls may well be joyous, holding up
Betwixt themselves and that nonentity

184

So fair a mask as this. Not all in skill,
But wisdom too, Pygmalion was a god.

Enough: I, leaning by the studious desk,
Look on these things,—like him, the friend of God,
What time he pondered from his eastern crag
The loveliness of Sodom. Thus laments
Vague expectation in the place of thought:
“To-morrow, with the setting of the sun,
This tent is struck for ever, and its spoils
Flung through a ruthless future into death:
To-morrow, with the darkening of yon blue
And advent of the deathless moon, I gird
My scatter'd self about me, and compress
All love, all friendship, all remember'd sweets
And vivid contrast of this excellence
With that dull mist beyond—all gratitude,
And all frail joys that cannot bear to leave
Their home, but choose to stay behind and die,—
Into that strain'd elastic word—Farewell!”

‘Columnar hills’—Reverberations.

185

ELD:

A SCRAP OF LYRICS.

What thinkest thou of the days of yore,
Maiden, whose starlit eyes between
The silken meshes of thy wandering curls
Look upwards, like sweet dew-besprinkled flowers
Deep in cool shadows of the long dark ferns?
Is thine a backward-gazing heart, that yearns
For the golden days, and the night of pearls,
And the wonder-crested hours,
That the men of other times have seen,
Ere the Earth was old and hoar?

She looked up through her waving hair
With a gaze of earnest love
To the pearly stars above,
And she shook the curls from her bosom bare,

186

And clasp'd her hands, and faintly said:
“O, to have lived when the earth was young!
When sorrow's plaintive harp was yet unstrung—
When the sun sprang eagerly every morn
From his nest i' the shadowy trees—
And the wild unfathom'd seas
Danced lightly round the blessed moon
When she rose at night upon the verge
Of the far-off surge,
And her fleet smile—not sad as now, and lorn,
But sweet as is the first dew-dropping kiss
Of two young artless roses, newly wed,
And making all the summer's noon
One long caress—
Went sliding smoothly o'er the onward waves,
Waking a dimpled laugh upon the lip
Of every rosy ripple on the deep,
Or in the branching caves,
Where shells, like flowers, in the waters dip,
And wily mermaids sleep!”

187

O then
One circling smile lived on the sun's clear face;
And all his glances bright
Flow'd into one wide look of light:
But as it glided down to earth,
Merrily twinkling,
The lovesome airs that near it had their birth
Came dancing all around
With ever-changing sound,
And in their mazy madness clove
The breadth descending from above,—
Breaking the long continuous stream
Of that full beam,
And as a shatter'd mirror sprinkling
The innumerous fragments—little wandering smiles—
Like starry crystals fair, across all space:
Over the mountains, and over the floods—
Over the marshes and over the woods—
Skimming abreast o' the coral-isles—
Fringing all the bubbling billows—
Peeping thro' the silver willows—

188

Dotting as with beads of gold
All the little lisping leaves
In the dingle, on the wold—
Steeping all the purple eves
In shiny seas of honey'd light—
Dropping tender ruby tips
Of sheen upon the pouting lips
Of every blossom, every shell,
And every dancing flower-bell—
Sowing tiny seedling-stars
And diamond-tinted spangles
On jutting frets and rugged angles
Of all crystal cavern spars—
Wreathing in bright festoons the gnarled rafters
Under their trellis-roofs of forest-green—
And oft with passing glitter scarcely seen
Darting like meteors over liquid orbs
And glowing bulbs of dew upon the feather'd sward,
And in frail webs of linked laughters
Weaving around the buoyant earth
A playful network of fantastic mirth—
Till jealous night absorbs
All merry moods that erst more loving hours afford.

189

I would be ever bathed in tears,
And live a lonely nun for years,
To kiss
The faded earth again to that old loveliness;
For it was then, when youngest Time
Slept on the calm knees of Eternity,
Uncursed with sorrow, unsear'd with crime,
That keenest witchery
Thrill'd thro' the glistening eye
Of every baby-star
That slept away
The glaring day
And from afar,
When russet morn stole o'er the sober sky,
More faintly twinkled, more feebly smiled,
Like a drowsy child
Deep in the down of her cradle of ether,
Humming and droning a low sweet song—
An airy lullaby,
Half sound, half silence, herald of repose—
Or, waked at evening, rose

190

And threaded the deeps of infinity,
With an angel above, and an angel beneath her,
Guiding her heedless steps along
The circled walks of the flowery sky;
Or with her sisters play'd—
Like winged glowworms fluttering through the shade
In western isles—
Hiding and seeking among the crowds
Of the windy cluster'd clouds,—
Stealthily peeping
And timidly creeping
Over the edges and out at the chinks,
Or, with little wanton winks,
Sparkling a moment in some deep clear break,
That bares the blue profound—
Like a sunny isle in a purple lake
With misty mountains bound!’

191

FAREWELL.

At midnight thro' the reverend courts
I wander forth before I go;
And in me the great stir of change
Is moving blindly to and fro:

And joys and blessings never more
To meet in this calm nest again,
And shadows such as haunt the rear
Of happy periods on the wane;

And thin transparent memories
That thro' each other peep and gaze,
Quickening the place with thought, and mists
Of doubt, that hide the coming days,

These, closing, clash with jar and whirl,
Make a wild vortex of my soul—
Drive the scared feelings up and down,
Like splinters of a ruin'd whole:

192

These, arching o'er my heart, as arch
The leaves above a summer glade,
Their webs of differing darkness weave,
Till all my spirit is drown'd in shade.

So, void and gloom are black within:
Is there no solace in the time
For such a sad farewell?—Above,
The fair white hermit in her prime,

Who smooths the shifting sward, and smiles
Immortal calm thro' all she sees,
Hath kiss'd a promise from the air
To let her shadows rest in peace.

Not mute her silence, nor unheard—
“This is not all; for wheresoe'er
Thou walk abroad into the night,
I and my Eden still are there.”

So it was weak to mourn; and life
Is something more than death and change:
Abiding presences are ours—
Broad beauties, which no length of range

193

Can keep from being o'er us: now!
It is a thing of light and love,
That distance takes not from the eyes
That blue eternity above

Which sets the scatter'd shreds of Time
As starr'd mosaics, in one dome;
Which makes, that spots of strangest earth
Are sweeten'd with a touch of home.

194

[O full of all delicious dews]

O full of all delicious dews
Of sorrow, born of shadow'd springs,
Keeping the love-blooms in thy heart
Fresh to their morning hues:

O thro' whose life creeps many a grade
Of darkness from thy central gloom,
Making the light within thy face
Only a lesser shade:

O in whose eyes, thro' changeless years,
The sweet sad waters, curtain'd in
By drooping lids, unshed, unseen,
Yet not the less are tears:

I would thou didst not always dream—
Like fair wing-folded angel, bathed
Full bosom-deep in rosy clouds,
Chanting a requiem—

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I would thou didst not dream for aye
Thus on the threshold of my heart,
Mute and impalpable and grave,
Keeping all else away!...

O no! I never wish'd thee hence:
I close my blurr'd mimosa-leaves
To any breath but thine: I pray,
‘O hush this wailing sense

Of doubt, and from the lintel-tree
Move wholly inwards, love, and there
Abide for ever in the light
That burns, awaiting thee!’

196

LINUS.

Not unregarded drop the silver leaves
Of hoary willows into the dark brooks;
Moist pensive eyes are on them as they fall,
Prophetic of the future: not unseen

Sails the lone hern above her marshy mere,
Far out into the darkness; many tears,
And thoughts akin to tears, and mournful things
That love the night, are with her as she goes:

Nor all unheeded, in the wither'd copse,
The last sere berry trickles thro' the sprays
To earth; some cold forgotten bird looks on,
And thrills another sorrow thro' its song:

So not unmark'd we pass into the whirl
Of life; all tender thoughts do wake and rise
To weep and sing a dirge; but something else
With brighter eyes looks on us from above.

197

GLAUCUS.

Thought is away—I will not try to think:
I'll slide from sounding slopes of wakefulness,
Down down unconscious to the sedgy marge
Of sleep, where never one poor leaf shall thrill
Its feeble circles o'er the sensitive smooth
Blank of my spirit—not one weak memory
Or whisper'd wandering remnant of a sound
Ceased long ago, shall drone a doubtful life
Thro' the utter silence: As young bathers plunge
Their warm, impassion'd limbs intently down
Full thro' the clear cold sluice, and, pressing up,
Fresh lucid water lays awhile the bloom
Of their soft faces, and upbursting round
In cool still gush thro' their wet hair, above
Gurgles and eddies bubbling to the top—
The while with fix'd yet quivering eyes they dart

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Thro' waves of lazy light, slow ebbing far
Into the deep opaque: so will I pierce
Far thro' the shallow monarchy of waves
And sifting tempests—whether of the world
Or our own spirits—and sink, and sink, and soon
Right in the stirless centre of all calm
Faint into dreams: as sunken jewels, shook
Between the chinks of labouring argosies,
Glance down like shooting stars, and couch themselves
In the white sockets of primæval bones,—
All in the opal twilights and green glooms
Of moonlike beauty, rich in native growths
Of grandeur and memorial-wealth, that sleep
There in the nether hollows of the sea.

199

THE BRIDEGROOM'S SONG.

Arise, O tender beauties of the morning,—
Over the far blue hills arise and come!
Fair eyelets, brighten thro' the dim cloud-curtains,
And lead the faltering sunshine to our home!

Awake, my bride, and leave the warm white pillows,—
Arise, my love, my fair one—come away!
There is no shade upon the quiet mountains—
There is no thought of sorrow in the day:

The joys to come have sent their bliss before them—
The joys around we make our own at will;
The joys departed, from still graves arising,
Crowd to our hearts and make us happier still.

Lie here and rest—O rest as if for ever
Nothing but thou should be so near to me;
And look not far, but look a little moment
Out of my arms; and ask of all we see—

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Ask of the days when thro' impetuous kisses
Young passion, wild and crude in every sign,
Led us by windings sweet of close communion
To something calmer, something more divine,—

Ask of thy love—the love of thine espousals,
That blush'd and blanch'd beneath the orange-flowers—
Ask of all bliss that was indeed delicious,
How more intense is this that now is ours!

And ask of me, how many a grace unconscious
Enfolds thee always like a saintly stole;
Yea, ask of me if aught that is not lovely
Can live within the compass of thy soul.

201

THE VISIONARY.

She is not here: but where all flowering rushes
And broad marshmallows the cold sluice embalm,
O'er her white feet the sobbing water gushes,
And chills her into consciousness and calm.

Let her alone: such bath will never hurt her;
This is the place whereto she loves to come
And sit and weep,—poor sorrowful deserter,
For such a nook who wanders from her home!

Unto his rest the red sun is departed—
A brilliant brede is wrought of many dyes
Upon the level gold, where all true-hearted
And stainless spirits cleave with loving eyes;

As ebbing breakers, when the tides are failing,
Slide slowly down around a rocky spar,
Bright foamy clouds into the far west paling,
Lone in the clearness leave a central star.

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She heeds them not, nor how the hawthorn-hedges
Unfold a richer odour to the May;
Nor o'er the woods how many golden edges
Of dark leaves flicker in the wake of day:

She watches till from that forgotten quarter,
Cloy'd with thick stars or lonely as the grave,
A risen moon shall tremble on the water,
Like new-lit sea-bird dancing on a wave:

‘There is the moon,’ she cries, ‘I love her dearly—
Apostle sweet, to weary mariners
That preaches peace: O, searching late and early,
I find no other face so fair as hers!’

And if we go to comfort and to soothe her,
Where, propp'd in reedy blooms, she doth abide
Whispering and singing softlier and smoother
Than flows the stirless current at her side,—

She from her brow sweeps back the dripping curtain
Of tangled hair, and lifting up her eyes
Scans our near faces with sad looks uncertain,
And thrills a little voice thro' many sighs—

203

‘Ah, there's no calm nor stillness in your breathing—
Dark cloudy glooms about your forehead move—
Hot thoughts and restless in your eyes are seething—
Yours is no face that I could bear to love!’

Let her alone: so beautiful a folly
Hath Reason's charm—yea, and her wisdom too:
Better some loved ideal to cherish wholly,
Than grasp a real love,—but not the true.

204

BE WITH US.

O Christ, be with us in the day of toil,—
The weary day, the unrelenting hours,
When we are choked and stunn'd in fetid rooms,
Or flay'd in scorching suns, or drench'd in showers:

Be with us when we leave the happy calm
Wherein creative fancy is not bound,
And thought reflective in the sober air
No discord finds, no unpropitious sound;

When some bleak knowledge, courted not for love,
O'er the pale sunless spirit holdeth sway,
And every mark whereby she is herself
And not another, smoothens quite away,—

The while there thickens round her and above
A dusty cloud of trivial utterings,
Hiding all law, coherence, grandeur,—all
Relations and all principles of things:

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Be with us in the darkness of our grief—
Darkness, wherein the starry light of tears
Alone is ours,—where only some poor sighs
Do make a lesser silence in our ears:

Be with us in the howlings of despair—
The day of famine, when the children's cries
Are thronging up to heaven, and sweet life
Ebbs mutely in the mother's fading eyes:

Amen! and chiefly when impetuous sin
Throbs sudden thro' all pulses of the soul,
Be near, O Lord, and nerve us then to prove
The strong fierce joy of struggling self-control.

206

THE SEXES.

O, you are fair—you have soft turtle-eyes,
Not flush'd with vulgar passion, clouded not
With stains of folly,—whose transparent lymph
No shadows dull, no fretful eddies blot:

Your souls are precious oratories, closed
And curtain'd in from all things not divine;
Where smoothest sounds enrich the loving air,
And moons alone and silver cressets shine.

You dwell in peace among your pleasant hours—
You hear no echoes from the far-off strife;
You lift your shining eyes, and all the place
Feels happier—feels the magic of your life.

But we—for us in the thick thronging days
No shrine, no bower, no oasis appears;
No path is left whereby we might have climb'd
Back for a moment to the better years:

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We have forgotten all—we hear not now
Our mothers' teachings,—see not in the land
Its ancient beauties,—look on you as dreams
Too fair to love, too high to understand:

We are uncover'd—the rank, stagnant air
Infects our breath—our curdled souls endure
A press of crawling horrors—and vile sounds
Hiss in our dull ears: how can we be pure?

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RUS IN URBE.

Cool, shadow'd water-deeps,
Where by the glassy sweeps
Flowers in fragrant heaps
Cluster and hive:

Where, like a glancing shark,
Thro' the rich lucid dark
Oft doth some sunny spark
Shudder and dive:

And the thick-braided coil
Of fretful hues that boil
In the red west, and foil
Thy searching gaze:

And the black war of storms—
Grandeurs and flashing forms,
Born when the quick cloud warms
Into a blaze:

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And the keen-edged moons
Sprinkling their starry boons
Over the dark lagoons,
Over the trees:

And the still silence, fraught
Only with peace, where nought
Comes 'twixt the soul and thought:—
Lovest thou these?

Lovest thou these, O man
Who since thy days began
Ever wast used to scan
Nature apart;—

Whom in the very core
Of her ripe joys she bore,
And hath for evermore
Nourish'd thy heart?

Yea, if thou givest heed
Duly her face to read,
Then is its light indeed
Dotingly dear;

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But thou art haply cloy'd
With the sweets long enjoy'd,—
Careless hast grown and void,
Callous and sere.

Lovest thou these, O heart
Which in the stirring mart,
Circled with things of art,
Dwellest from birth?

Yea, thou mayst sigh and think
How it were bliss to drink
With thy scorch'd eyes a blink
Of the cool earth;

But with no lagging beat
Ever thy busy feet
Press the hot whirling street—
This is thy home.

Thou, then, by some strong law
Plunged in the city's maw,
Whom from thy woods I saw
Mourning to come;

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Lovest thou these? The strange
World of thine alter'd range,
Leaves it without a change
Nature beneath?

Yea—the old love doth flood
Ever thy vivid blood,—
Purer than maidenhood,
Stronger than death!

212

PATIENCE.

Be not so fierce and ardent in thy love,
Nor strain and batter at the pitiless doors
That shut thee from thy future; nor remove
Thy restless tent from the low quiet shores

Of resolute endurance: they have spells
To work fair wonders in their own good time.
What if thou hear not always her sweet bells,
Nor catch the silver trueness of their chime?

Know that she loves thee also in her sleep:
She lies in her calm breathing, and the while
Strong thoughts of thee full often from the deep
Of her meek heart blush out into a smile.

Therefore have patience, like to her: go dip
Thy soul in healthful darkness for a space:
Soon comes the morn—and thou with thirsty lip
Shalt drain the early sweetness of her face.

213

THE CITY OF GOD.

Who art thou, jostling thro' the dreary crowd
Of stern lean-visaged men, and from thy youth
Perceiving in the wealthy and the proud
No thought of brotherhood, no touch of ruth?

Who art thou, with the bare unshelter'd head,
With the glued lips, and sinews tense, and strong
Brave heart but sad, that for thy daily bread
'Mid the swart gnomes of labour wrestlest long?

Who art thou, that, with purpose to be whole,
Tramplest thy partial natures down, and bidst
The unseemly scaffolds round about thy soul
Collapse, and leave thee settled in the midst?

Yea, who, that strivest sorrowest unto death,—
Not wholly bound for interest or for love
Unto the things that are, but underneath
Intent to gaze beyond them and above?

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There is a city set upon an hill—
There is a somewhere that is more than home—
There is a source where thou shalt drink thy fill—
Approach: the Spirit and the Bride say, Come!

215

FLOWERS.

Do you wonder we are not degraded?
That some light yet flickers in our souls—
Some stray heaven is left upon our faces?
We are fond of flowers.

How could folk help sinking in the squalor,
Growing callous to the loathsome things
All around them, if they did not always
Scent their hearts with flowers?

Could we keep from being discontented,
When we catch across the dingy roofs
Little glints of something blue beyond them,
If we had no flowers?

Could we keep from hating our existence,
Hating more this else unsweeten'd toil—
Keep from curses foul, and wild blasphemings,
If we loved not flowers?

216

Hark! he calls us—‘Pay me what thou owest!’
Oh, have patience—we will pay thee all
But a moment—surely you can never
Rob us of our flowers!

Take the scanty store that still is left us—
Strip and spoil until the wan room lies
Cold and bare and cheerless as our spirits—
Only leave the flowers!

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[If I should see thee where perhaps in peace]

If I should see thee where perhaps in peace
Thou dwellest, sooth'd in sweetest shade beneath
The cool wide brim o' the eaves—shouldst light on thee
In far-off spots, whereof I never learnt
Their secret ties and linked lovelinesses,
And that associative mystery
Divine, that shows them beautiful indeed,
And makes that none, whose life is not inwove
And blent with theirs, shall read them to the full;—
In silent places, where no influence,
Impress, or thought, is redolent of thee—
Where not a voice in all the murmurous air
Tells of thy presence;—if I should discern
Thee thro' the home of strangers, and amid
Its busy range of household cares and dues,
Moving at ease, with queenly looks, that tell

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Thou art no stranger there;—if I should watch
Unseen the yearning of thine alter'd eyes
Toward another's face,—should see thee press
With arms of love to thy white juicy orbs
A babe that is not mine,—of whose pure soul
Thou gavest the better half, but some one else
Than I did build it up into a whole:
If I should see thee thus, with unaware
And misty eyes—

219

A SURPRISE.

If ever in the range of sudden joys,
That at rare moments, when we never thought
They were anear, do snatch us from ourselves
Into a keener life, thro' that acute
And half-delirious clearness uttering
A burst of bliss more exquisite, to die
Full soon into remembrance—there be aught
Most penetrative, most intense, of rank
Peerless, divine; it is when some young bard
From secret dusk beholding where she sits
In the deep-bosom'd rich recess, a fair
And pensive girl, whose fixt absorbing eyes
From a wide volume drink its beauties up
And make them purer,—having fed awhile
Upon her face—creeps stealthily near, and bends
Expectant from above,—and she, with scared
And changeful cheek, looks mutely up at him,
But looks not long, for blushes and for tears:—
Behold, the thoughts she loveth are his own!

220

TRUTH.

Arise and shine, serenest star! for we,—
Like as the bridegroom joyeth o'er the bride,
Like as the mother claspeth to her side
Her firstling babe,—do take delight in thee:

Delight, because thine advent is not far,
Nor dimm'd thy face behind these misty wraiths;
Delight, tho' all the clashing bitter faiths
Marshal their set battalions for the war.

'Tis but the war of each peculiar soul—
Thro' ravell'd doctrines to think out a creed
That shall be pure and catholic indeed,
Nor warp nor crush the great symmetric whole

Our God did give. The skies are and the brine
Vext with grey gloom, and dark with thundrous blue;
And fitful stripes of rainy light imbrue
The shivering earth: sweet star, arise and shine!

221

CONVENT THOUGHTS.

SUGGESTED BY A PRE-RAPHAELITE PICTURE.

No—nothing more—forgive me if there be,
Sweet Mary-mother! but I do believe
There is no remnant left of what I was,
Nor any coward corner of my being
But feels the biting caustic gnaw and burn
And blister out its black obdurate stains
Of self unmortified; Oh, I have grown
The bride of Christ indeed!

Why have I not
Squeezed out and crush'd the scanty dribbling dregs
Of feminine nature that were yet unwrung,
And plunged in poison every yearning impulse,
And wholly drown'd the woman in the saint?
Have I been timid? Have I spared to drive
Right thro' the cankrous centre of my heart
Full many a hissing iron, that should kill

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That venom'd core of feeling utterly?
Have I not choked the foul, unchasten'd will—
Lash'd with due stripes the elemental sin
Out of my wincing body, and tamed down
With hungry fastings oft the rank and gross
Unsanctified luxuriance of my flesh
In the bad days of girlhood,—and am clothed
With holy leanness like a child of God?
Do I not murder every wish and thought
That stirs beyond these walls, and quite abjure
And—and—yes, hate the presage horrible
That tells me such are coming? Do I not
Unwearied scour the circle of my soul
Lest any leavings of the world be there,—
And with delirious fury persecute
And hound thro' nook and crevice as they fly
Those wilful obstinate memories of home,
And things more dear, that used, O fatal sin!
To lie like mists upon my breviary,—
Till they are—almost—dead?....

It must be right;
'Tis not for women who are rich in faith,

223

Zealous in love, baptized with special grace
To follow Him along the path of Life,—
'Tis not for them to thread the lowly track
That Nature marks, to let the—Kyrie!
What means this quiver?—let the name of Love
Be whisper'd in their ears, nor waste their smiles
Upon a husband's face—their prayers profane
Over a household's welfare; nor descend
To soil the exquisite tissue of their lives
With common occupations: how should she,
Who should aye touch her beaded orisons
To listening saints, imbrue herself for ever
In loathsome coil of coarse domestic dues
Most alien to a woman, and consent,
Making a duty of a hideous sin,
To gird herself with children as a curse,
And all forsake the excellent reward
Of isolated virtue, to make one
Of those weak hearts who stoop to be the bridge
That links the generations? or how choose
To think them aught but false, who feign to see
E'en from her cradle the unveiling years

224

Mapp'd out for work and action in the world,—
Who prate of use, and purpose, and an end,—
And talk how she is queen of all that's fair,
And should with tide unfailing and sincere
Set the pure current of her influence
Thro' human hearts,—and should be full of nerve,
And quiet modest strength, to labour on
Beside the hearth, and in her several sphere
Teach the great things to flourish, or the small;
A mission'd spirit, having it at heart
Not less than man, to beautify and bless
And move to higher paths her native age.—
Oh, errors false and damnable! yet once—
But I have pruned those vagrant sympathies
As our good mother bade—“This is thy home;
Leave the blind age to swelter in its pools
Of reeking sin, and drift—and drift”—alas,
I must believe it!—“hopelessly to Hell.”
Oh, that some voice of penitence and prayer
Might reach those doom'd ones! That from every side
And sloping surface of the domed earth,

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Perplex'd with clotted sweets—which, if I dared
Skim from its breast the leprous crust of sin
That once I saw not, I should call most fair—
That hence all forms of Woman, all that looks
Thro' feminine eyes and wears the sex of Eve,
Were banded up in one great sisterhood
Of pure and resolute virgins; then indeed
The human world would be divine!

But hush!
Saints are not human; their refined and rare
And immaterial natures are buoy'd up
From touch defiling of the vulgar soil,
And rais'd to meditative height supreme
Above the herd of sinners. And they say
I am in steady growth to be a saint:
Yet have I felt as if our woman's heart
Did need a something human, on the which
To lean, and prop your panting bosom up,
And bare yourself to the core, awakening
Thro' that close pressure dear responsive throbs
Born of your own—a something more than these
Creations evanescent of the brain,

226

And far abstractions of a differing world,
That do support us here. But, O forgive—
I have long striven and battled with the thought,—
Jesu-Maria, save me!

Yes, 'tis well;
I think I'm happy—penance does me good:
And Father Simon is a holy man:
And contemplation is a blessed thing:
And not a maiden ever loved her God
But school'd herself as I do, to the quick:—
Yes, I am—very—happy. Is it long
This method takes to make one ripe for Heaven?

227

FAITH AND FANCY.

Once, the Muse was most punctilious
On poetic etiquette—
‘Vulgar’ scenes and phrases never
Could her jealous wrath forget:

Dainty Muse! She with fierce laughter
Curl'd her Grecian lip in scorn—
‘Leave thy place beside the fountain—
Themes like these must not be borne!

What, shall Fancy's depths, so lucid,
With such starry pureness rife,
Clouded be with turbid gushes
From the foulest wells of life?’

So she spawn'd her cheap ideals—
Left the warm and wedded hearth—
Would not learn the large and loving
Language of our mother-earth;

228

Told us that the heart of Nature
Yearns but o'er an idle few—
Throned the selfish fond Stylites
On his pinnacle anew:—

Well might such be blind and erring
When she spake of things above;
Well beyond the marriage-music
Fear to lead her songs of Love!—

She hath suffer'd, and repented—
She is chasten'd, and revives
Truer to herself, and claiming
Larger kindred with men's lives;

Yet she is not better'd wholly,—
Impulses of other days
Warp the feeble, and the stronger
Wind thro' strange unfruitful ways:

For her child, the Poet, idly
Lulls him in an airy nest
Throned amid some gorgeous cloudland
In the ‘palpitating’ west;

229

There, with strange and formless fancies
Reeling thro' his heart and brain,
Twines gay chaplets for the angels
To a wild enamour'd strain,—

Woo's the countless stars their secrets
In his little breast to hoard,
Crowding it with twinkling glories
As the dewdrops crowd the sward;

And, thro' tiny crevice peeping,
Takes a comprehensive view
Of the Home of the Eternal—
Of the Heavens beyond the blue!

Scantly, in the Christian Bible,
Are her flowers to Fancy given;
Solemn clouds, mysterious grandeurs,
Dimly veil the Christian Heaven;

But the daring bard hath revell'd
On the wings of spirit-cars,—
He hath mated with the angels—
He hath couch'd among the stars;—

230

He hath grasp'd a brighter Gospel—
Won for Earth a richer boon—
Sunn'd the twilight of the Bible
To a clear enchanting noon!

Blessed bard! But shall he never
Hear these voices at his door—
Voices of the great wise-hearted,
Voices of the meek and poor—

‘Give us back the ancient dimness—
Once again the mists of morn
And the trusting faith of childhood
In our weary souls be born!

‘Who art thou, a fellow-pilgrim
Faring to the self-same shrine,
That our hopes should wane and sicken
In the garish glow of thine?

‘'Tis the glory of the twilight,
'Tis the blessedness of eve,
That no envious lights estrange us
From the visions we believe;

231

‘Sorrow with her heart in heaven—
Love that blossoms on the Earth—
Young imaginative Manhood—
Prophets of a soberer birth—

‘Humble souls whom Fancy never
Lured beyond the life they knew—
Each doth shape his proper heaven:
Who shall say he shapes not true?

‘Cease then, nor thy labour'd landscape
Trace with freedoms half profane;
Vain the brilliant baths of colour,
All the meaning touches vain:

‘Dearer that suggestive outline
Faint, but with unerring rod,
Sketch'd upon the haze of morning
By the wisdom of our God.’

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EGERIA.

O mine Immortal, my sweet nourisher,
Thro' whose transparent beauties I discern
Thy spirit in the midst, a tender Psyche
Bedded in richest amber,—upon whom
I look and am at peace,—whose influence
At times doth make it less than truth to say
‘Thine eyes are full of morning, and they break
Thro' dewy lids as breaks the blessed morn
Between her cradle-clouds:’ but otherwhiles
Leads my near lips to whisper unto thine,
‘Surely no more such plenteousness of tears
Thy soul should drink; O let the rainbow-light
Shine in thine eyes, that cometh after rain!’—
Lo, we have loved each other with a love
Abiding, boundless, ever since the time
When first thou walkedst lovelily among
The daughters of thy people, and the winds—

233

The very winds—that made themselves a home
In this rich wilderness of curls, or peep'd
Under these lids, did tell that thou wert fair:
And we have trod together many paths,
Luxuriant some, some barren,—leading all
Into the moveless mist, but not without
A glimpse of blue above; have minister'd
To contrasts sharp and strange—now tremblingly
Held the vain mirror to the lips of death,
Now train'd their bridal-flowers thro' the hair
Of laughing girls; nor ever did our steps
Swerve from their close instinctive harmony
Of tread, nor ceased affectionate touch to feel
In lengthen'd claspings of each other's hands
Content, nor I refrain'd to steep my soul
In thine infectious beauty, whom to know
Is to become as thou art.

Tell me, then—
We, who have wander'd on luxuriously
Breast-deep in all bewilder'd ravishments
Of this fair world, and bubbling momently
To effervescence of delirious joy

234

With every rarer and more pungent draught
Of bliss—whose aye-fermenting hearts leapt up
At the bare name of Beauty—who have loved
The pure Hellenic face of Poesy,
And loved her most because we seem'd to hear
In her full voice the hoarse low utterances
And pregnant silence of the human heart
Translated into music—who have clasp'd
Nude Nature deep in our enamour'd arms,
And kiss'd her to the quick—who strove to pierce
The arcana of intelligent delights,
And half intoxicate the expanding mind
With speculations wild, and theories
Whose rapturous madness darkens for a time
The truth of God, and fond mysterious hopes
That lie all night upon the ground to hear
The far-off footsteps of the time to come:
We who have drain'd the nectarous vases deep
Proffer'd of all true spirits which do tend
A joy, from lowliest wood-nymph to the Nine—
Have trod the fresh and teeming vats of life,
Kneading with foam-dipt feet the rosy cream

235

Seething from half-crusht bulbs, whose bursting juice
Spirted delight o'er all our glowing limbs,—
Yea till the inspiring fluid pass'd, and we
Stood soak'd and cloy'd knee-deep in sodden lees:—
Say, in all wildest gushes, all unstemm'd
And most elastic pleasures, did we not—
O love, we did! perceive in our full hearts
Bloated with fierce or flush'd with calmer bliss
A hollow gurgling deep below the deeps,
Whereto they did not come?

It might not be:
The stormy rush of largest avalanche
That ever startled on his far-off crag
Some fleeting chamois, could not drown the whole;
Could not instil itself thro' all, nor worm
Its white cool beauties thro' each fibrous vein
Of the o'ermaster'd spirit. They were vain—
They could not, these things, in the 'mid spring-tide
And torrent of their passionate influence, dive
To flood the depth of our capacities,
And whirl and scoop around the fathomless roots
Of our dread Being; could not rise above,

236

And swell themselves to the gauge of our untamed
Titanic aspirations; nor with strong
Impulsive jets, transcendently supreme
Of height, bedew the distant azure dome
Roofing our templed spirits; nor fulfil
With perfect food our inborn consciousness
Of what is beautiful and what divine.

O hear! There be who struggle to the end,
And mourn, and bleed, because they will not grasp
The truth that would have saved them, and have changed
The burden of life's dirge: An if thou seek
To hold communion with the things of peace—
To be sincere and whole, and have delights
That leave no nook of Being unexplored,—
Rest not in things created, nor in minds:
Be not afraid—strike home—and let thy soul
Pierce thro' the Godlike inward unto God.

237

THE SEA.

It was not much I ask'd of thee,
O Sea!
Only to let me see thee as thou art,
And gather in as jewels to my heart
The fulness of thy beauty and thy power:
Couldst thou not grant it for one little hour?

Thou art too grand and catholic,
Too quick
With delicate life and tender influence rare,
For our rude partial souls to reach and share:
We are like eyeballs nurtured in deep night,
That shrink and quiver, drown'd in sudden light.

So half the beauties of our earth
The dearth
Of timely grasp within us doth allow
To pass unseen; or they with cruel brow,
When our strain'd eyes are toward them in deep love,
Frown us away, and far out of our ken remove.

238

COMFORT.

Thou wakest in the darkness, O poor soul,
Even in thy sleep,—and moanest with the moan
Of doves beside their windows, when they grieve
To be alone:

I know thee that thou mournest—I perceive
Thou art in sorrow, even unto death;
My heart doth hear thy great and bitter cry,
And wondereth.

“Depart, O stranger! I am full of tears—
The music ceaseth from my stricken hand;
How shall I sing my sweet memorial-song
In a strange land?

“How shall I walk these cloister'd corridors,
Chilling my naked feet against the stone?
Let me alone, that I may die in peace—
Let me alone!”

239

O thou afflicted, which art far from rest,
Toss'd with strong storms, and comforted in vain,
Doest thou well to gather to thy heart
So much of pain?

Thee doth the land of shadows evermore
Possess? Nor one victorious minister
Snatch from the deep black waters of the proud?
Dost thou not err?

Lift up thine eyes, and look unto the hills,
Whence all sweet airs flow down upon the sea;
And hearken thither for a voice that sings
‘Come unto me!’

“It is enough—I will arise and go:
Blessed be thou that spakest such a word,
Rocking thyself upon the wavy thorn,
Most loving bird!

“Blessed be He that all before the time
Thrones our fleet hearts within the far-off bourne,
And breatheth balsams on the throbbing eyes
Of them that mourn!”

240

PSYCHE AND HER TRIALS.

Die, strong delusion! die, foul hooded fiends,
From secret rents whose livid jaws protrude
Their fangs of blood to gnaw us into fury!
Will you not die? Nor help us at the least
To foist a thin belief upon our hearts,
Making awhile fair seemings to be dead?

Tush, we are fools to speak it: they but prove
Their nature in the attack—and we, alas!
Keep ours in yielding. Ay, and if their arms
Shrank at full clutch to stiffness—if their rank
And poisonous breath did suddenly vacate
The unexpectant air, and leave it free—
His were an idiotic birth indeed,
And such whereon no passing flakes might stick
Of common wisdom, who would stake his soul
On calms like this, and trust for total death

241

To such a trance, and imp his airy wings
For stedfast voyage upward thro' the clouds,
On such faint promise of a coming breeze:
Yet such are we, who willingly to-day
Die in the floods that only did not drown
Yestre'en.

I know not what your sermons mean,
You with smooth stagnant spirits, where no trace
Of wrong can come but which is sluiced away
In one short prayer—who dwell among your days
In passionless impenetrable peace,
Or well distinguish in your inner strifes
The marshall'd foes, and fleetly, nor in vain,
Help the sweet Heaven against invading Hell:
You have no knowledge, men—you never probed
The awful depths of Being further in
Than your own shallows; you translate to us
The Book of God with small peculiar eyes,
And from the sample of your puny selves
Make bold to teach us what we are, and how
We may emerge to better!

Come and see:

242

Oh, we will drive you thro' imprison'd deeps
And wonderful in horror—thro' black dens
Where one's feet crunch among the gory lairs
Blancht heaps of purposed excellence destroy'd,—
Thro' whirlpools where the restless raving surge
Dashes its wrecks into forgetfulness
And dizzy dim confusion—thro' a scene
Where all the diverse complicated Man
Is rent and torn and shiver'd utterly
To countless fragments, full of frightful hate
And strife against each other, knowing not
Each other nor themselves, and only sure
Of that dread doom which makes their cup of frenzy
Foam o'er the brim—that they must unto death
Writhe on, and bleed, and wrestle, without hope
Of peace, or hope that any stronger part
Shall crush the rest to silence; and all this—
This huge wild chaos—evermore immured
Within one essence,—essence that at times
Is lost to itself, and shatter'd to the core
With partial shocks unceasing: oh, my soul,
This, this, is agony!

243

Then will we gloat
With rabid looks upon you when aroused
To spasms of terror, with clench'd fists and wide
Expanding eyeballs—then we will unfold
Our knitted features to a bitter grin,
And shriek into your tingling ears that this
Is human life!.....

O brothers, have you heard
Of One who all the workings of such storm
Watcheth, not heedless, and being sought, hath power
To blench the lightnings with his eye, and speak
The uncontrolled thunders into peace?

244

THE PREACHER.

Hast thou considered thy soul,
And all that is therein—
The throes that shake the unsettled whole,
The sorrow and the sin?

Gigantic mysteries are rife,
And fairy wonders small—
But unto thee thy proper life
Is stranger than them all.

So many natures intermix—
Such diverse threads are spun—
That none avail to fuse and fix
Its elements to one:

Such doubts distract, such strifes deform,
And toward some unknown bourne
Such longings lead it thro' the storm,
And leave it there to mourn!

245

And yet it is a tender thing,
And often o'er the leas
Will stoop and hearken on the wing
To him that speaks of peace:

And yet it is a thing of faith,
And willeth to believe;
A noble thing to cope with scathe,
To struggle, and to grieve:

And yet it is a kindly thing,
And often in the tent
Of gay Gitana joys doth sing
Its spirit to content:

And yet it hath a royal mind,
And strength of nerve and eye
To hail new knowledge on the wind,
And grasp it, and apply:

And yet it is a thing of love,
And yearning as a bride;
And plaineth like an errant dove
That hath not where to hide.

246

O, yes—the soul is large and deep;
There are lone alleys there,
Where always Hope may walk, nor weep,
Nor faint into despair:

For echoes somewhere in the woods
Shall carol back to her;
And in the granite cliffs their floods
Of future waters stir.

Therefore, put strength into thy heart,
And leave the stranded shore;
The Christ that makes thee what thou art
Shall mould thee into more.

247

HOUSEHOLD TEACHINGS.

This is the place, and this the month and hour,
But all beside is little else than new:
Who shall the unseen hollows of the air
Fill up, and to its vacant niche restore
Each native life and due accustom'd face
With welcomes of delight?

Oh, it is true
That not their proper influence alone,
Or beauty, binds us to the things we see,—
But chiefly, if some sweet peculiar voice
Flow from them unto us; so places, blank
With barren silence to the souls of some,
Are populous to others with all dense
And varied forms of vision and of sound;
So not with briny unadhesive track
Our swift existence moves—but everywhere,
At halts and pauses, leaveth of itself

248

Some portion unawares, the which, again
By chance returning thitherward, shall speak
Reproach or triumph to the alter'd soul;
So not for me alone, nor all for thee,
The worth and dearness of a place abides,
But every heart that passeth by that way
To death, with separate shadows of his own
Shall store it for the time; poor tenantry,
That flee or perish when their lord departs,
Yet, failing, keep aye ready to revive
What time he comes again.

But as for these—
This idle room—this foolish garniture
And mere convenience of our common life—
These are unscath'd, nor fiery breath of ill
Hath pass'd on them; they, stedfast and secure,
And heedless to all comings and farewells
Of such as hold them dear, do still abide:
While we, the lords and slaves of circumstance,
Thro' varied action move and brisk event
Unfather'd of the Past, nor care to turn
And face the tracks of change—and on our heads

249

Strong stormy gusts of unseen providence
And full bewildering cataracts of harm
Burst booming from above; and (but to tread
One step beyond the timid walks of Thought,
And force our mute self-stifling consciousness
To speak) full soon the lean and clammy worm
Feeds on our dusty blood, and obscene maws
On rotting shreds of what we hold for self
Do gorge themselves in peace: aye, thou dost well,
Gaunt ban-dog, spitting thro' thy slimy fangs
Bits of the brain that helps me now to thought!

Yet, O strong man of heart—O clear-eyed youth—
O virgin fair—O precious wife serene—
Shall we then yield all true stability
Without a blow, and dwindling into death
Gnash at the vain and lazy permanence
Of creatures such as these?—Nay but, O man,
If thou art man indeed, and wieldest well
The birthright of the soul—to generate
Immortal life, even at the stroke of doom—,

250

Thou shalt defy the unconscious rivalry
Of stabler things inanimate, and rise
Like a fair city builded of To-day
With energies and wealth,—whose massy feet
Hide their deep prints with deeper as they grow;
Whose deeds eclipse the thin decrepit fame,
Long undeserved, which old historic mouths
Rain still upon the languid scanty sward
Of modern dulness withering on the place
Where heroes bloom'd; whose firm majestic march
Chills the weak blood and wrinkles up with spleen
The cold hard eyes of snarling burghers—men
Who howl to see Pretension spoil'd, and see
The tatter'd poltroon back before a thrust
Of honest effort brave,—who bid us weep,
As if the great Past in most swift decline
Or full prostration of her bastard brood
Did sympathise and suffer!

So shalt thou,
Holding sweet useful commerce with thy kind,—
Commerce of thought, whereof thou shalt dispense
No selfish largess,—commerce of good deeds

251

That bind thee to thy fellows,—opening out
Thy powers of life, and seeking most of all
To atone thy spirit with the mind of Him—
So 'mid decaying follies thy wise soul
Shall build a proper immortality,
That shall outlast the stony senseless front
Of temples made with hands, and fructify
With many a grateful memory among
The children of thy people; and shalt learn
How better than the vain eternity
That means but lack of death,—how more in tune
With Nature's music and the laws of God,
It is, to tread with no unheeding feet
Nor witless eyes nor profitless dull soul,
The fruitful paths of due progressive change.

252

AUTUMN.

The harvest is past and the summer is ending,
And the glooms that betoken the tempest appear;
And fast from their lairs the marauders are wending
That harass and prey on the desolate year:

Nor less, in the heart, is her loveliness perish'd
And her hopes are in tears at the voice of the storm;
Nor less, of the toys that her folly hath cherish'd,
The sorrow disheartens, the evils deform.

There is corn yet untouch'd on the slopes of the highlands—
The warm woods are green in their nests by the hill—
There are flowers and ferns on the bright little islands—
For the autumn of Nature is beautiful still:

253

But who shall break open our weed-ridden fallows,
And who shall restore us our excellence whole?
And where is the chrysom that cleanses and hallows
The stains that ferment in the breast of the soul?

Ah well for the hearts that have ever been fair, and
Have cool'd into forms that owe nothing to sin—
With scarcely a speck in the mellow transparent
To tell that contagion has trespass'd within!

254

OUR FATHER.

Thou sayest, that the night is dark,
And that the wolves are near,—
That loathly taunts and malisons
Wax hot within thine ear;

That in the thickets of thy heart
They die for lack of food
Or stiffen 'neath the serpent's eyes—
Thy callow broods of good;

That massy darkness groups the sky,
And in the frowning west
The fierce sun dies a bloody death:—
But who can tell the rest?

Who, in the unsuspecting gloom
What pleasant gourds have grown,
What starry seeds of future light
Are in thy furrows sown?—

255

Thou sayest, that He will not hear;
That thro' thy weary wards
There is no voice, nor stir, nor sign,
Nor any that regards.

Yet what if Hope be tranced or die?
Her very corpse is sweet—
Thou shalt embalm it in thy tears
And lay it at His feet;

And ere they put it in the grave
Once more I bid thee pray:
Pray with no errant voice unblest,
But as thou know'st the Way;

Pray with the voice of dying things
That agonize to live;
And He shall hear thee from his Throne,
And when he hears, forgive.

256

DEATH.

Animula vagula blandula.....
Quæ nunc abibis in loca?
Marcus Aurelius.

Thou diest as the elders died—
As we are dying now;
The sister with the brother's kiss
Yet moist upon her brow—

The father with his stalwart sons—
The bridegroom with the bride—
The true meek wife with that frail thing
That throbs beneath her side—

The mother with her little child,
Her dear, her only one—
The lover in the lover's arms—
The pale recluse, alone.

Like these thou diest—many friends,
Some far unrisen day,
Shall come and look upon thy place,—
But thou shalt be away:

257

Like these thou diest, and like all:
Then wherefore do I care
To trouble with vain thoughts of thee
The dull regardless air?

Why vex again the wearied words
That minister to woe,
Or shed the precious balms of song
For such a common blow?

Because the ancient marvel still
Is wondrous in our eyes,—
Thy single Being, tense and warm,
Chills into twain, and dies;

They cleave and part, thyself and thou,
And one, the bright and brave,
Becomes a memory and a ghost,
And one is in the grave:

Because no spirit of the earth,—
For all the dusky wings
That grate across his heart and sweep
Shrill sorrow from the strings,

258

And tho' to us the starkest corpse
A sleeping beauty seems,
And steep'd is all its slumbrous state
In the rich dew of dreams—

Hath yet avail'd to speak or solve
The mystery of Death;
Or lessen to our grasp of thought
The secret of our breath,—

The ‘daily miracle’ of Life,
And whence its workings wend;
The mystery of mysteries—
The Purpose, and the End.

259

THE BITTER LESSON.

Hear, O thou Shepherd of the people's souls—
Hear, O true angels, if when not as gods
But as most needful ministers and helps
To lead us upward, it be well to link
Your lesser names with His—hear, O serene
Good influences, curiously inwrought
Into the complex world, whether in kind
Ye manly be and chivalrous and strong,
Or, being feminine, are soft and pure
And beautiful in weakness—hear and save!
For unto us some sudden strange eclipse
Hath blotted the clear heavens, and all stars
Forget to comfort, which we knew before.

What! in the very inmost neighbourhood
And chiefest intercourse of things most fair,—
At such a time when Nature in the blaze

260

Of Art's adorning triumphs as a queen,—
When nightly splendours, not of moon or star
Crown her white brow harmoniously and aid
Her native orbs to shine,—when the full scene
And the odorous airs with fertile breath do rear
Out of our sleek serenity of soul
Quick blossomings of delight, and the wide zone
Of spirit that lies along the edge of sense
Is fed with sunshine—gorged with brilliancies
Of motive light, and bashful colours rare,
All intermellowing, as the peasant's cheek
Feels her rich blushes melting thro' the bronze,—
And crowded touches, swift, innumerous,
Of elegant lithe forms, which pass not by
Without stray showers of lispings undertoned
Shed on our sweeten'd ears,—and cataracts
And daring bursts of music large and clear,
Bubbling cool shocks thro' our chill'd quivering hearts
Like waters of the morning,—fed with these;
Nor this alone, but the inner sensitive core
Of intimate Being finds its proper food,
And choosing some more calm delicious face

261

Moves with her thro' the music and the throng
Link'd in no profitless companionship,
But, crunching bravely the ineffectual briars
Of sere convention, treads itself a smooth
Walk of intelligent converse, and aspires
On tiptoe towards her, grasping eagerly
The ripe o'erhanging fruitage of her soul:—

O love, O purity, O high delights
Of our high nature! Was it not most foul,
Moving from joys and benefits like these,
To light on comrades crown'd with the new crown
Of manhood like as we—vaunting themselves
True knights of courtesy and of gentillesse,—
In whose unworthy arms linger'd e'en yet
The warmth and throbbing of a circled heart
And that a woman's,—to see men like these
Stagger upon the threshold, soak'd in sin
Which e'en the meanest reasonable boor
Beholds with scorn; to see them all unrobe
Their traitorous selves of that high atmosphere
Serene, to plunge and sputter greedily down
Thro' rank and oily mists and fiery breaths,

262

Likest themselves; and, having so befoul'd
The face of Beauty, from their loathly lips
With words of evil, blasphemous, obscene,
Wipe out the memory of all pure discourse,—
And thus—for whoso ravishes the one
Leaves not the other stainless—thus defile
Her sister Holiness: O that men knew
What very twins they are!

Then did I set
My rigid teeth, and muse in sore amaze
If this were but the native brutishness
Of single few intruders, whose disgrace
Suggests no secret law of ill, or if
'Twere not indeed the damnable result
Of erring rules; of intercourse forbid,
Or warp'd and check'd, with Woman; of the flow
Of our twin vials kept studiously apart,
Whose happy union wise would effervesce
In brilliant blessings over the parch'd world,
But which, alone or mixt with awkward skill,
Grow flat, stale, rancid—doing each his best
To infect the innocent air and make it meet

263

For fiendish throats to breathe in. Hear and judge,
O men of thought—and for the love of Heaven
Act on your true convictions!

How I joy'd
To feel immaculate and hold those men
In hate and scorn,—till vile discoveries
Throng'd into me like ghosts, and throve and spread
The virulent degradation till my soul
Bow'd from her upright posture, and I grew
To loathe the sense of life and thro' white lips
To think and murmur “O strong agony
And bitter bitter ruin of all hopes
That told us we were gods, and that the world,
And all her broods, was excellent and fair!”

Yea, it was true: we are Promethean gods,
Warm-blooded, full of large humanities,
And loving kindness as the law of life;
And to our souls the very noblest Heaven
Approves itself a mother; but below,
How are we spoil'd and centaur'd utterly
To something less than Man! Nor this alone,

264

But that small ceaseless devil at the core
Thrills fierce distress thro' all the brutish half,
And up into the godlike. O that thus
The secret of our nature should ooze out,—
That in soft glossy shadows of the hills
The loathsome ore should lie, and with rude lumps
Break the smooth current of sequester'd streams,
And streak with odious veins the hoar serene
Of most majestic mountains! O that thus
Out of the damps that sicken at its base
All toothless chuckling hags should soar at will
Up to the crowning peaks o' the soul, and there
Encamp at ease—lean mothers of despair!

Hush—thou hast heard that never out of thee
Thy stains depart, nor shalt thou wholly snatch
The precious from the vile, nor skim the tares
From off the whitening billows of the corn,
Until the harvest. Let the harvest come!

265

ELEGIACS.

Why is thy heart so sad, O sensitive child of the morning?
Why do thy lone eyes gaze timidly over the sea?
Why with a circlet of tears are the rims of thine eyelids enamell'd,
Why with an exquisite ear, quivering nostril of dread,
Standest thou thus as a roe or a hart on the mountains of Bether,
Searching the pregnant wind, proving the echoes afar?

Do I not well to be sad? and is it not meet to bewail me,
Seeing the day is come—seeing the spoilers are here?

266

Have I not dwelt i' the stars, and have walk'd with the lovely immortals,
Learnt from the hallows of night secrets of beauty and love?
Have they not told me their hearts and pour'd out their beings before me,
Taught me the lore of gods—taught me the language of Heaven?
Yea, I have steep'd my limbs in juices of myrrh and of almonds—
Plunged my exulting feet deep in the sluices of spring,—
Yea, I have buried my heart in showers of blossoming roses—
Fed in the lilies alone—slept on the breasts of the flowers;
Yea, I am filled with dew, and my locks with the drops of the evening,—
Yea, I am ravish'd with bliss—drunk with the beauties of thought!
How then shall I come down, come down from my nest in the cedars,

267

Into the swarming world, into the Babel of sin?
How shall I leave thee for aye, who hast lain as a bride in my bosom,—
Fancy and all her brood—how shall I bid thee remove?
Why do the archers appear and plunder my substance before me—
Tenderest ewes with young—tenderest lambs of the fold?
Why have they taken away my own little lodge in the desert?
Why may I bathe no more in the still waters of peace?

O that mine eyes were tears, and my head were a fountain of sorrows!
Then would I wail as a dove—mourn as a turtle alone;
Mourn that my jewels are dim, and the crown of my glory is fallen,—
Mourn that the odour of dreams passeth for ever away!

268

Brother, thou doest not well—thy voice is the voice of a fledgling,
Under his mother's wings lying awake i' the nest:
Him doth his prison of leaves and the shreds of far azure between them
Hide from the larger world, hide from the sight of himself.
Lo, we have gather'd a spar, and have treasured it up for a diamond—
Grasp'd but a part of thought—seen but the shadow of life;
Why should we stroll any more by the whispering shores of the ocean?
Why should we only emerge out of our own little eyes?
Not to a single soul doth the Universe open her wonders—
Not in the self-same speech tells she her marvels to all:
Shall we not list then abroad for all other innumerous voices

269

Teaching us what are her looks, what is her language to them?

Come to the men of the world—to the men of unknown occupations,
Strange in their every pursuit, alien of nature to us;
Ask them their thoughts, and stand like a sentinel-spirit around them,
Watching their soul in act, watching its workings within:
So shalt thou be as a man who adown some new glade of the forest
Sudden beholds once more scenes he had studied of old;
Had he not grasp'd them at large, and translated their uttermost meanings?
See, at the voice of change, beauties unthought-of appear!
So shall the elastic soul expand; and the young understanding
Learn new phases of truth, new revelations of life;

270

So shall all vanity cease, and the knowledge that maketh us humble
Pour in astounding floods over the shallows of self;
Errors that lay as a dream in the brain of the sick and afflicted—
Sympathies narrow and low, mists on the eyelids of Love—
All that was childish and vague—shall the royal reformer abolish,—
Catholic thoughts shall reign—Wisdom shall triumph alone!

Turn thee again to thy rest then—the waters shall not overflow thee;
Out of the floods arise—flee as a bird to the hill!
Thou art no wanderer always—the slippery ways of the darkness
Vex not thy feet for long; 'tis but the passage to light—
'Tis but the hanging ravine that leads from thy gorgeous old highlands

271

Into the land of streams, into the plains of the south:
There shalt thou pasture at ease, and the comforting sons of the angels
Soon with the voice of a psalm gather thee into the fold.

Turn thee again to thy rest—for excellence is not departed:
Not with the dreams of youth dieth the glory of life;
Beauty is large as the world, and pure in the depths of the city
Sits the creative soul, fashioning splendours at will;
Large is the wardrobe of Peace, and Joy like a vivid chameleon
Aye to the wise in heart changeth from better to best:
So, whether manhood allow that our life shall be wedded to Nature's,
Or from the passionate eyes snatches their darling away,

272

Warm in the light of Heaven and the inner stars of enjoyment
We shall abide and work, hearty and healthy and hale;
And from the calm of the morn, from the beautiful blush of the Orient,
Rise in our might, and stand firm in the raging of noon.

273

THE MOURNING MOTHER.

It was the time when the passage-birds
Come to us over the sea;
When the stiff roots moisten in the quick earth,
And the sap thaws in the tree;

When out of the core of all living things
A lovelier self doth rise,
Like the smiles that come up from her fathomless heart
Into a woman's eyes.—

She saw the thick dews come back again
To their homes in the bell-flowers,
While she sat by the lattice like a queen
Among the fragrant hours.

She was not alone, but silently
She circled her slender arm
Over the heart of a little child
That nestled in her barm:

274

And aye when that little child awoke
'Twixt the old dreams and the new,
He smiled the full and meaning smile
That only dumb things do.

'Twas half like the glow of his mother's face
Shed on him from above;
But underneath another light
And other memories move.

‘O little child—O happy child—
My own and not my own!
Does every mother love her babe
But for itself alone?

‘Across the still prophetic face,
And in the eyen clear,
She sees the steps of his father's soul—
She sees, and holds him dear.

‘It is her truelove's child that feeds
At her sweet breast alway:
Lo, this is why they love, and why
I cannot love as they.

275

‘I fondle him, for he is my own,—
But his warm limbs never knew
That closest press o' the heart, that tells
He is another's too.

‘O mute remembrancer of grief,
Forgive that these things be;
The man that should have been thy sire
He hath no part in thee!’

276

HOLY EYES.

Keep thine eyes calm, my little one, my dove!
The deeps above
Will not for aye all fretful colours drown
Within their own:

Keep thine eyes cool, my love, as melon-juice
Or the deep sluice;
Full oft shall they be heated into tears
In the far years:

Keep thine eyes pure, my darling, as a slice
O' the polar ice;
Soon the bad winds shall bead them with a rime
Of loathliest slime:

Keep thine eyes clear, my sweet, as the bright rim
Of waves at brim;
Nor let them deaden with the common dues
That matrons use:

277

Keep thine eyes loving, dearest, if thou'dst be
A heaven to me;
O my one lake of love, let no shade quiver
On thee, for ever!

278

WHICH?

I.

Refrain thy voice from weeping, and keep thine eyes from tears—
There are fair crystals bedded deep within the central years:
Descend, and bind the little star of Hope upon thy brow,
And clench with manly gripe the tools that lie beside thee now;
Dig down into the solid gloom, till somewhere at the core
Thou smite the carbon to a blaze, and of its jewell'd store
Shell out the yearning light that throbs within each secret gem,
And string the shining bosses up into a diadem.

279

II.

O yield thine eyes to weeping, and steep thy heart in tears—
It is not far, the voice that makes a tingling in thine ears
Of doubt and dread, of want and woe, of sickness and of death:
Smother thy foolish songs, and nurse the fragrance of thy breath
To lift and buoy such mournful things as load the autumn airs—
The scatter'd wealth of sighs, the weight of unavailing prayers:
Yea, hearken what the rushes wail along the sobbing mere—
‘Thou art a stranger on the earth, as all thy fathers were!’

280

MISERERE.

Turn us again, O God of our salvation,
And bid once more these thirsty spirits and prone
Suck the full fragrant breasts of Consolation,
Where as she sitteth fast beside the Throne!

Turn us again, O strong divine upholder
Of the pure soul that doth not yet depart;
Deep in the everlasting arms enfold her,
And warm the chill blood quicker to her heart.

Turn us again—the brave young stars are sinking,—
A lustier health the foil'd endeavours crave;
Nor Fancy's flight nor the strong mind's deep thinking
Can keep our fair Immortals from the grave.

Therefore our hearts are sad—and therefore only
Seek help from thence, where the calm Futures be;
Nor seek in vain—how were we weak or lonely,
O God of comfort, being stay'd on Thee?

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THE PROGRESS OF POETRY.

Hurrah! at length the ancient lie is dead—
The bloated blear'd bombastic bigotry
Of soul, that swept inflated Genius up
Like a thin bubble dancing in hot air
Fantastic measures to the varied breaths
Of praise and humour gushing from below;
That prison'd in a cage of woven flowers—
Sacred to self and faint with labour'd scents
Of musk and almond, cassia, and of rose—
The unresisting Bard, alas! himself
Nor blind nor innocent; and like a ghost
Stood up between him and his proper aims.

“He is a god, the Poet—he was born
To wanton at his will, and glorify
In song the frail conventions of his age,

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And float sweet transformation o'er the face
Of worthless themes, caressing without care
His vain imaginings, and making glad
All pleasant follies with the shadows warm
And flashes of his momentary wings.
'Tis his to speak of Nature unto us—
Nature, not horrid and unkempt in wild
Barbaric lawlessness, but sleek and smooth
And train'd to regular beauty like the neat
Trim gardens of the Tudors: how divine
His purling streamlets and his verdant meads!
How bright the lacquer'd lustre of his woods!
How rich his varnish'd sunsets—and how fair
The oil'd effulgence of his summer seas!—
Yes, she is lovely, Nature, when we know,
Creation's Lords, to wield our high behest
And teach her how to bloom.

‘And it is his
To haunt the cedar'd chambers of the great,—
To suck nutritious moisture from the skirts
Of their long robes, and cool his joyous lips
Among the happy dust wherein they tread:

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Ah, well he knows the birthright of the Muse—
He leads her deftly thro' congenial paths
That she was born to move in;—is it not
Her truest home, to roost beneath the wings
Of some great Patron, huddling soft and warm
In that high nest, nor need to taste again
Degrading commerce with the men of toil,
Their vulgar sympathies, their clownish ways,—
But hymn with odes and heartfelt heartfelt lays
Of adoration and deep gratitude
The man that made her famous?

And 'tis he
Who paints with truth the manners of the age;
When courtly damsels, sick of routs awhile,
Long for the cooler legends of the fields,
'Tis he who sketches with familiar hand
The peasant life of England,—gathering up
In ruddy groups the people as they are
With all their simple feelings and pure loves;
Smoothing alone whate'er unseemly crust
Their rustic speech may wear. He bids us learn
How tender Strephon in the northern dales

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Follows his sheep at morn, in modest garb
Of Arcady, and moans a lovesick soul
Unto his lute thro' all the languid day;
How Phillis, loveliest born of rural maids,
Lithe-limb'd and slender, rich with native grace,
Moves with white fingers stainless all and pure
Among the household toils, or wanders forth
With crook in hand, to tell to the kind grove
Of cruel Damon's harsh delays, and all
The moist abundance of her tender woes.
Still, still, I hear the soft pathetic tale!
How should we learn the customs of the poor
Without a bard like him?

And chiefly his,
Delightful task! to chronicle and mark
For praise, the precious doings of the fair:
Who knows not this the grand imperial aim
Of Poesy—to celebrate and sing
Not Woman, but the fair? Haply the eye
Of sportive Lust may melt its fever'd light
On some poor maid, whereon impulsively
Her humble life is lifted into song;

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But 'tis the nobler woman,—moulded out
By Art and Fashion, rich enchantingly
In most angelic falsities and cheats,
And wean'd and widow'd from heart-fellowship
With man, that she may perfect her sweet soul
Untainted and in peace,—'tis only her
Whose scented bosom the melodious winds
Seek to for ever, savouring themselves
Therein with odours: her, whose charms afford,
And all the varied outline of her life,
Full many a shelter to the drifting Muse
From God and Nature; her, whose soft intrigues,
Whose luscious languid loveliness of form,
Whose gait, whose mien, whose vapid speech, and all
Her round of fruitless ways, and every gem
Of grace and splendour that exalts her state,
Are rich materials for the soaring bard,
To make his verse divine.

Oh, how he joys
To crouch beside the arras, in that warm
Luxurious chamber where the secret gnomes
Of Art are moulding Celia for the ball!

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How gleams weird inspiration in his eyes
The while profusest ministering aids—
Patches, rich unguents, scents, cosmetics rare,
Thick lustrous oils, exotic washes, wreaths
Not of coarse Nature's flowers, convolving groups
Of sympathetic ribbons, kerchiefs too—
Transparent films of gossamer, that prove
Celia no mortal,—while such charms as these
Ferment and fuse about the anxious fair
Till from the chaos of her changing self
New worlds of beauty rise!—Who would not strive
To set such noble story to the voice
Of fair Harmonia's daughters, when they sang
By smooth Cephisus in the silent noons?

A theme! a theme! Her practised orbs are closed,
And ducal Chloe sinks into the grave!
See, Tomkins wakes the lyre—See, pensive Jones
Floods the swoln gullet of a raptured age
With elegiacs.—Once again, behold
The sire of song, impassion'd Hymen, comes!
Tomkins, arise! With classic touch dispel

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The Christian manners of a modern muse—
Forget the Church, forget the solemn words
And meek responses of the man and wife—
Let the white-cinctured pastor be to thee
A priest of Venus—and, for those still aisles
And sombre groined arches of the Past,
Raze them, O Tomkins! Let the plaster'd frieze,
The stunted column and the thin volute,—
Poor shivering exiles, beautiful and just
In that far country and that native time,
Doing forced service to a foreign faith
Here in a foreign land,—let fanes like these,
Their smoke, their victims, deck thy nuptial lay.

Thou too, great Jones, for thousand ears prepare
The terse trim sonnet and vivacious ode!
Doth not Miranda in fair deshabille
Dance the fat babies on her joyous knee?
Doth not e'en now full many a sprouting tooth
Blanch young Alonzo's gums?—Behold, 'tis thine
To mould a glowing casket of rich thoughts
For Delia's brooch; and hover on starr'd wings

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Of delicate fancy round Olivia's fan;
With eager grasp to gather as they fall
The precious shreds of her luxuriant hair,
And make them famous: thine the blessed task
To canonize canaries, drone the dirge
Of sainted pet-lambs, and lament in song
O'er truant monkeys and departed dogs;
Weaving as thus, perchance, the cypress-leaves—
‘From crystal fountains where thy sisters use
To hide their charms at eve, immortal Muse!
Descend, and teach my labouring soul to sing
The worth and beauties of the lapdog Spring!’”

So rang the chorus, in that vanish'd age,
Of worshippers; such foul defiling jets
Of inspiration and bad influence
Drench'd every lesser bard, nor spared to stain
The garments of the greater.

After this
There came a day of change, a transit time,
When the weak Muse with steps of gradual health
Moved thro' an eastern gorge but thick with mists
Of morn, and all beset with serried rain.

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Then rose that royal spirit, in whom a crowd
Of untamed natures strove for mastery,
Each like a god's: of whose large soul the gloom
And tempest was more beautiful to men
Than clearest noon of others'. Like a cloud
He hung in the mid vast, too high to trust
Men's little measurement of things divine,
Or feed his yearnings with the scant beliefs
That sate their easy souls: but right above
The shadow of the solid throne of God
Fell on him—so his grand erratic soul
Sway'd through thick darkness, while the light of Heaven
Sloped off to fall diffusely on meek eyes
Far down from his: Poised thus upon the wing
Proudly alone, his hot and pitiless
Imagination, as with tongues of fire,
Lick'd his scorch'd frame to madness: also he,
As with a morbid relish of fierce pain,
Hugged his great tortures, and upon the keen
Excruciating barb of his own thoughts
Impaled himself; nor this as hermits might,

290

In silence,—but invoked all heaven and earth
To hear him howl, and bared his agonies
And writhings to a sympathetic world.
Wildly, and deaf to wisdom, he explored
The mountainous creations of his mind
Without a guide, till o'er the sheeny edge
Of some ice-chasm whose chill transparent blue
Grows dusk and thickens down the awful slope
To unimagin'd night, he slipp'd and fell
Into the dread Unknown; but left behind
His voice—a beacon and a monument
Of aimless grandeur, and how terrible
Is that great tyranny of Intellect
Apart from God, and how unclean a thing
And pitiful is Genius with her eyes
Soak'd in foul scums of an unholy life.

Strange mournful man, who floated like a dark
Gigantic moon athwart the sun of truth,
Eclipsing half his age! Whose majesty
Of spirit, and those melodious utterings
Of rank inhuman hate, and bitter boasts

291

Of loneliness, and moans of coward grief
And weak unmanly whinings of despair,
Made selfishness divine, and brotherhood
And loving help among the human souls
A thing forgotten, or a word of scorn.

Then did each vilest imitative worm
Writhe in its slough with envy, and in hope
Wrought long to burst its puny chrysalis
A Psyche fair as he: and those unripe
And brainsick younglings, o'er whose yielding souls
The lauded crown'd Apollo of the time
Rides royally and crushes out of them
All free and vigorous manhood—all but prone
Blind rivalry and homage,—such as these,
Who felt a twitch of hunger at their hearts
For fame, or winced with sorrow or neglect,
Went out into the wilderness,—like him
Forsooth! to snarl and gibber at their kind
And belch the reeking torrent of their woes
Into the lap of Nature.

292

Like as when
Above the silver bosom of the Nile,
Feather'd with ripples, in the porous rocks
Those sainted idlers swarm'd,—so also now
Men blubber'd to the chafed impatient sea,
And bay'd their sorrows to the scared white moon,
And bellow'd in the affronted woods, and pierced
With sentimental shrieks the indignant ears
Of a fair helpless world.

Was it not foul
To clutch the broad unstinted loveliness
Of Nature thus for little ends of self,—
To insult the peaceful Immortalities
Of earth and heaven, cheating them aside
Each from her proper work, wherein they stand,
Most Catholic impartial ministers,
To comfort every sorrowful sweet soul
Still true to love, and solace and arouse
To joy the weary workers, and to woo
All human spirits upward—yea, beyond
These delicate tissues of created charms
Into the world of spirits? As if the vast

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Imperial sea, and this warm vigorous earth,
And those serenest meditative stars,
Would stoop and falter from their high behests
Of love, to cloy with special sympathies
And close regards the weak fainthearted groans
And moody murmurs of ungrateful man!

That age is past: and, speaking thus, behold
I am no graceless son, who in the reek
Of drunken folly leads his beardless friends
Down the old pictured corridor, to mock
The faces of his fathers: Is she not
Most precious, Truth? And may not every soul
Who burns to see unclean Convention gripe
The stalwart arms of gods,—who dares believe
(Seeing what nearest neighbours unto heaven
Were those great Nine) in queened Poetry—
Her sacred sovereign mission on the earth—
Her heritage in every soul of man—
Her portion in the morning stars—her due
To own no wild caprice of self, but rule,
Like faithful satraps on their utmost thrones

294

The staunch vicegerent of a central King;—
Who trusts in this, may smile in his true heart,
And turn with waxing fondness and delight
His lunar eyes from the fair mother's face
Upon the fairer daughter, while she grows
To stand in awe of her great self, and learns
The method and the manners of a queen.

For now no more the cold yet cringing Muse—
Full of rank scorn for all below, and prompt
To spout her slimy scents on those above—
Faints her base life in heated rooms of art
A colourless exotic, nor abides
In cells apart from the unimproving Earth
An isolated saint, nor walks abroad
Hooded and muffled, with such diadems
And coils of jewels round about her ears
That not an odour from the common soil
Nor whisper'd wail of miserable things
May reach her—and all thick with listed shoon,
Lest unawares in some black pulpy mass

295

Of human bodies steaming in a slough
Of unregarded wretchedness and sin
She tread, or use her high prerogative,
Sowing with fertile foot the thankful waste
With islets of young flowers.

Brother men!
She is our sister, and our sovereign she:
Behold her how she travels even now
Out of those errors, girding up herself
To seek again her old melodious home
And birthplace in the everlasting hills;
How thro' low cots and hamlets of the poor
She ministering moves, and in her clear
And eloquent voice rings out to common men
The truths unthought and folded mysteries
That live in common things; or, having scaled
Her native heights, on slopes and cloudy crags,
The curtain'd doors of Heaven, holds intercourse
With a most present Father; and anon,
Her lucid features melting through the mist,
Scans with cleansed eye the wide subjected world,

296

And reads the rolls of Nature, and unweaves
The ravell'd voices of the time, and reads
The thoughts of nations, and maps out in song
The thousand lives and doings of her kind.

297

BETHESDA.

Get thee a thing to love, thou man of sin
That prowlest thro' the sweet unfearful earth
In act of crime: Feelest thou not within
The squatted ghoul, that hatches into birth
Thy frequent broods of evil? Stifle her—
Whirl up the reeking nest and that foul dam
Into due death together! A strong stir
Of heaven-born winds, if thou but say ‘I am
Astray—O help!’ shall do it; shall denude
Thy spirit of its selfishness, and wake
That drooping dull and listless lassitude
To matin freshness, for Another's sake.

Get thee whereon to lean—eternities
Of blessed hope, for which our spirits yearn,
And a meek resting-place for thy sear'd eyes
In this world: such a pillow thou shalt earn
Wooing as man should woo; thy throbbing head
Half sunk between the tender yielding globes

298

Of her warm breasts shall lie, replenished
With odours; he that cradles there disrobes
His muffled soul, and sleeps unveil'd and pure
Of secrecy, within that nest of peace.

Get thee a soul to doat on—'tis the cure
For vagrant follies and the sins of ease:
Gather great store of fuel unto thee,—
Red burning blocks of Passion, under which
Bury thy cold black heart, and let them be
Profuse above and cleave into a rich
Clear mass that with intensest lucid heat
Throbs to the core. Then, while thou wonderest
At such a flame, the viewless Paraclete
Shows thee thy heart all molten in the midst,
Or charr'd to snowy softness. Yea, my friend,
This is the furnace that shall purify
Thy nature into nobler: here shall end
The struggles of thy youth. O, when thine eye
Seeks first the love of God, not far behind
With airier step the glad affections move
And fuller pulse; while softly thro' the wind
Comes the fresh fragrant breath of Human Love.

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THE BRIDGE OF SIGHS.

Last winter, on the New Year's Eve,
When thro' the silent lips of Night
A cry as of a quickening babe
Shot thro' our waiting hearts, and white

Among the ruins of her throne
Sat Conscience, while the sad and true
Recorder of a dying year
Gave up her tablets to the new,—

Hope had not died—a ruddy burst
Show'd sometimes that she still was there;
Nor yet had frozen into life
The black assurance of Despair.

Twelve martial months, deform'd and dead,
Lie heap'd against the doors of Time
Since then: they thunder'd like a band
Of rash assailants in their prime

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Of heart, against the bastion'd walls
Where Knowledge lies and Peace; but lo!
Those walls are smiling huge and calm
Above a crush'd dishonour'd foe.

Yet thou, Siberian year, whose team
Of reckless days begin to move
And whirl us o'er the frozen steppes
More far from boyhood and from love,—

Proceed—these ice-drops are not tears,
But chill'd effusions of the air;
Proceed—this exile shall not jar
One murmur thro' the voice of Prayer,

If o'er the pillow of our dreams
We see the slope that angels trod—
See the link'd bars of cloudy pearl
Dissolving upwards into God.

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NEW YEAR'S EVE.

Mute, mute as death! There comes no messenger—
No shy low-lisping herald—no uncouth
Intrusive Sybil—no clear sudden change
And vivid contrast, such as breaks of hue
To wanderers floating from the blue Moselle
Into the differing waters of the Rhine—
There comes not aught, to teach the unthinking hours
How soon, how swift, they in another sphere
Are plunging,—where the breath of alter'd Time
Pants to new measures, and all works and ways
Of life move awkward, clothed with novel names,
And all the annual crowd of purposes
And hopes and high responsibilities
Are wrench'd from this, festoon'd and gather'd up
To a new centre.

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Yet, tho' the dumb moon
And all still births of yon star-nourishing blue
Are clear above—things which do keep alive
The sense of silence in a noisy earth,
And tho' the utmost frontiers of the time
Exhausted are of sound,—the ringing heart
Takes so awry the impress of Repose,
So scantly grasps the thought of Rest, so far
Is exiled from the calm Eternity,
That this serenest vacant lull to her
Is populous with motion, and she deems
The virgin void of Night was only hush'd
To bring the tramp of years more close anigh
Her fever'd expectation, and to make
The snorting of the wayward teams of Change
More palpable and clear.

Alas, that men
Will scoop the petty periods of this Life
Out of their native dust, and take them up
Within their mouths like pearls of eloquence,
And roll them thro' their solemn lips as tho'
They were great oracles and words of power

303

Most meet to be an heritage for us,
The sons of the Eternal!

O, 'tis false:
Hours, years, days, moments—they are but as chains
That prison like a fair Andromeda
The struggling naked soul, and bind her fast
Betwixt the stedfast bald obdurate rocks
And a vext surge, for ever.

How unlike
THEE, which hast brought us thro' another year
Down the smooth paths of pleasantness and peace—
Our Father and our God! In that crude age
Of nameless hours, when first the suckling Time,
Shaken from the breast of great Eternity,
Totter'd alone,—when silent centuries
Stole trackless o'er the molten bubbling earth,
And skimm'd the ruddy surge a ‘cooling crust’
That hiss'd with vapours horrible,—Thou ART;
And now i' this dubious hour, that swerves and sways
Betwixt the battling currents of two years,—
Thou ART; and in the far grey formless dawn
Beyond the hills,—that grey which is to us

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Only the utmost bandage and the rind
Which, being unwrapt, shall strip and sweetly bare
In turn the deepening colours of the morn—
A nest of hyacinths—till 'mid her own
Transparent hueless glow the Future stands
Awful in beauty,—not the less Thou ART:
But we ------!

Thou heard'st the clank of iron rings;
Look down as in a vision, and behold
Full many sherds of the fresh-fallen year
Sprent on the floor of Heaven. Therefore this
Is a new link of imperfection gone—
The chain whereby each spirit like a gem
Swings in the vast, whose topmost loops do cling
About the roots of Eden, with this hour
Contracts again: so, with each patient term
More buoyant thro' this atmosphere of Time
We rise toward the holy and the pure
Eternity, which is the Home of God.

305

WORK AND REST.

‘Yea, blessed is the silence of the dead:
Cool on their breasts all deep rich mosses lie—
A more than music in the stillness lives
About their graves—O Father, let us die!’

Brothers, the day of action is not past—
Not yet the sunset sweetness doth appear,
Nor, steep'd in luscious balms, comes up the wind
The plump full-fruited autumn of the year:

There is a work before us in our prime—
To stretch our lives out to the widest girth
Of circumstance,—to be as much as God
And our own souls can make us; from the Earth

To drain her lavish largess of delights
And quiet wisdoms, reverently; to brood
Over our day with large impartial eyes,
And mark the shining evil from the good;

306

To woo both Past and Present and To-come,
Nor wholly cleave to either; to discern
Which be the true immortals of the age—
The massive beauties, that with every turn

And wrench of Fashion in the loamy deeps
Of Truth are rooted firmer,—and for these
To battle bravely, clearing them a range
Of fairer breadth, that they may grow in peace;

To work the hearts of others, and our own,
Thro' bracing doubts (when doubts are haply rife)
To faith; and bid for weary souls and poor
Fair eyotts blossom on the surge of Life;

To make the tender women of our love
Be more of Woman—more sincere, more wise
To hate convention, looking into life
With deeper, yet with modest household eyes;

To help the training of all bright-hair'd boys
So late our fellows,—help to disenthrall
From oozy sloughs the footsteps of the child,
And lift the star of knowledge over all.

307

Shall we not work, O brothers, in our youth?
Shall we not march into the heats of June
Erect and self-commanding,—seeking not
For cool siestas in an English noon?

‘Yea, but there is no peace! In calmest dells—
By moss-lipp'd brooks—'mid quiet flowers and ferns—
Beneath old solemn elms—by yon rich marsh
Where stand at eve the grey majestic herns—

In the most utter secrets of the land,
Where every glance around us doth disclose
A brotherhood of beauties all devote
To ministrations holy of repose—

E'en here, ere yet our spent knees have sunk down
In fragrant cushions, comes a sudden whirr
Uncouth and horrid, which in the chill'd air
And our wan hearts maketh most piteous stir;

And that blind Titan, whose impetuous life
Breeds half the strength and grandeur of the age,
Sweeps shuddering by, and thunders thro' our hearts
All, all the storms we panted to assuage!’

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Alas, I know it—how can I reprove?
Yet is it well, methinks, that even thus,
In the deep hallow'd centre of our joy,
Such stern remembrance should flash over us

Of what and where we are,—and that to nurse
Our own scant beings only, is a crime;
That toil and passion cease not in the world—
We may not flee, nor rest before our time.

Yet mourn not: take it for a truth divine—
The husk reveals not what the kernels are;
Calm pensive Thought is cloister'd in a crowd,
And Music dies not in the rout of war.

Think, when alone the shivering landscape shows
A clotted wreck of roots and sodden leaves,
How soft and still those whitest purest snows
Fall fresh from heaven on the soil'd dark eaves:

When the chief surge has burst in crashing foam,
How sweet, while smooth the hissing flood withdraws
And the spent wave slides simmering down the shore,
The stillness of that momentary pause:

309

Deep in cleft hollows of the stormy drifts
How dear for Love amid her frozen hours
To find some nested verdure underneath,
And thick with broods of meek white-blossom'd flowers!

Think on these things—for, brother, so shalt thou
Pass from the troubled into the serene:
And be not bitter toward the days that are,
Nor ask impatient what these struggles mean:

For thus, within the furious clashing clouds,
She keeps her quiet light, thy future moon;
And thus, beyond the roaring reefs of Life
There sleeps for thee an inner calm lagoon;

And thus, when thou art chafed and worn, shall Death—
Calm mother of the persecuted brave—
Ope her white lips and suck thee sweetly down
Into the hopeful silence of the grave.

310

COMMUNION.

It is not good to be alone—
The very closest heart
At moments grieves, as one by one
Its selfish joys depart:

Like shrunk sea-flowers that pine and crave,
Slow withering on the strand,
Once more within some kindred wave
To freshen and expand,

So yearns the moodiest of us all,
And strangest to his kind,
For some sweet fellowship to call
Her secrets from his mind.

But what strong influence shall absorb
Thy quick magnetic soul,
Or where the lost imperfect orb
That spheres thee to a whole?

311

Communion with our God is good—
Yea, excellent indeed;
Nurse of high faith and brotherhood
And a large loving creed:

Yet even hence the spirit sinks
Down to her proper state;
And well—for fast our Father links
The creature to his mate;

And thou with private Heavens afar
Kept sleek from present dearth,
Ask for thy home some desert star,
And leave to us our Earth.

Communion with thine own strange soul?
Ah, wonderful and wild
The storms that fretful Past can roll
On thee, her alter'd child!

'Tis well within thy heart's lone tarn,
O pensive mountaineer,
To search for truths that teach and warn,
That comfort, and that cheer:

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For thus self-knowledge shoots and grows;
Thus thro' all leafy din
Unruffled sits the central rose;
Thus shalt thou find within,

What time elastic friendship ends
And the full sorrows come,
A band of counsellors and friends,
A calm consoling home;

Thus, sloping from the great and whole
To the weak little ones,
Shall the thick beauties of thy soul
Encircle thee like sons;

And if no loving lips may share
Thy wormwood and thy gall,
Yet shall no strange and serpent-stare
Thine inner joys appal.

Yes; but not he of fewest needs
Doth in himself comprise
The love whereon his fancy feeds,
The lore that makes him wise;

313

Nor e'en to fairest maiden, fraught
With many pearls of price,
The silent music of her thought
Can utterly suffice.

Communion with the lore of books—
Rich birds melodious
Who, building in another's nooks,
Are caught and caged for us?

We love their grand generic truths
And large philosophies,—
We sift and glean, most patient Ruths,
Their wisdom as it lies;

Old aspirations of the mind—
Familiar wants and large—
All that is common to our kind—
Such friends may hold in charge;

But these are little of each whole:
The quick, the ever new,
The secret yearnings of the soul,—
What shall such wanderers do?

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Then they are strange, the souls that move
Thro' each nutritious line;
I look'd not on their face with love,
Nor they with love on mine:

Yea, tho' their thoughts should on me fall
Like music on the sea,
There runs a discord thro' them all—
They were not meant for me.

Communion with thy mother's eyes—
With Nature? Surely she
Among her thousand sympathies
Hath one caress for thee!

Behold, in all thy varied moods,
In passion and in grief,
She sets her answering attitudes
Of comfort and relief:

She is a ripe vine-cluster, rich
With fat delicious ooze;
A bending bulb of juices, which
All thirsty lips may bruise.

315

Old shaggy gnarls the lichen frets—
Steep banks of mountain lanes—
Moss-cushion'd arms of rivulets—
The hush of woodland rains—

Faint sighs of rushes in the fens—
Faint lispings of the tide—
Faint splashes down the gloomy glens
Of waters undescried—

Thin throbbing films of mellow light
Wide-woven in the west,
And cool star-crystals, which the Night
Breeds on her purple breast—

Long bars of creeping cloud, and sheets
Of wild electric flame—
And all the unregarded sweets
That melt in Nature's name,—

Behold, they are not only fair;
Each in its fruitful barm
Hath truths and wisdoms everywhere,
To comfort, and to charm.—

316

Yea, Nature is a tender nurse,
And speaks a soothing speech
To all—but can she too disperse
A special love to each?

Can she a mother's bosom bare
To each fond milking mouth,
And tend with conscious human care
Each spirit in its growth?

No: for she lacks one crowning grace—
The sympathy of kind:
Hers is a sweet suggestive face,
Loving and fair, but—blind!

Then is there nought thy soul can trust—
No friendship it may know—
No touch to thaw its gelid crust
And let the fulness flow?—

There is an only fellowship
To which the soul replies
Instinctive as the quivering lip
Unto the melting eyes:

317

Its voice is like his mother-tongue
Within an exile's ears;
Perhaps he half forgets the song,
But all his spirit hears:

‘Its voice is very sweet and low,’
Our longing manhood cries:
‘'Tis bold and deep as torrents' flow,’
Expectant Woman sighs.

Ask but its name, and there shall roll
Unnumber'd wailings by—
‘Communion with a human soul:
O grant it, 'ere we die!’

318

MAGDALEN.

Speak to her heart, my brother! Take no thought
Of this vain show of lying circumstance
That makes her presence hateful: underneath
I know there is a heart—my very lips
Suck'd thro' the tainted rind its sweetness out
What time I led her by those moonlit elms
And spake of innocence. Her fallen eyes
Are glazed with gladness; but beneath, how far
The dense accumulations of despair
Do writhe and darken! Yet she shall not die:
How could we lift against a woman's gaze
The fulness of our own, or think it pride
To wear the front of men, unless some slow
And delicate work did struggle to atone
The madness of our fellows? Chiefly thou,
Favour'd of place and blessedly exempt

319

From odious stains of false opinion,—thou,
Fenced with the sombre magic of the priest,
Shalt do what others dare not. Thou hast leave
To minister in peace; therefore approach—
Most pure of purpose, saintliest in act—
The self-despising slave, and sweeping off
Those thin delusive gawds and each false clue
That proffers to thy search and would decoy
Thy spirit from the truth, do thou—like Him
Whose potent finger wither'd up the loins
That else had grace to conquer—feel at once
Straight to the core, and cushion thy soft touch
On the young nerve whose keen vitality
Lives all unsear'd within her.

O the chasm
That instant cleaves her ragged rottenness
Of life, and fierce burns blasting to the roots
Of her scarr'd nature! Most unconsciously
Thro' that great fissure thou shalt enter in,
And o'er the blighted Eden of her soul
Move like a spring—soon, soon, drench'd deep and long

320

With sudden rains of penitential tears
Loosed sobbing from their source: till, in the cool
Of her wild day of sinning, shall be heard
Among reviving thickets of green palms
Immortal footsteps—and anon, with shame
Lifting her meek wet eyelids, she beholds
The calm forgiving presence of her God.

321

EPILOGUE.

Is thy heart right, as my heart is with thine,
Brother which movest thus from page to page
Thy keen clear eyes in pleasure or in blame?

Thou art not dabbled with the old deceits
Concerning Genius; thou wouldst never dare
Lay a cold finger on the lips of Thought,
Unless she spake of sin,—or bitterly
E'en the youngest minstrel and most mean
Stamp the mail'd foot of pride.

There were who held
Parnassus slopes not, but is steep and smooth
Like a storm-riven spar; that whom the top
Receives not in imperishable heavens,
Must wallow at the roots—in foolish slime
Sputtering their lives away, or grovelling
In odious filth of imitative rage

322

And adulation of those supreme bards
Unspeakably above. But are there not
Slow gentle grades among the sons of song
As in the men of action? There are some,—
Great prophet-chiefs, girt with nobility
And wisdom as a robe,—ambassadors
Sent forth to preach of excellence and God
To the total world—whose full impassion'd eyes
Blaze thro' a stormy cataract of hair
Like suns behind a shower—whose ardent lips
Part round their uttering music like warm clouds
About those suns at eve—whose master-souls
Stand like huge organs in the vaulted aisles
Of this cathedral-world, and royally
Roll their rich anthems to the rumbling roofs
And shake the carven columns into awe:
These are most catholic; each stammering soul
And hoarse gives heed to them, and joys to hear
The mute chaotic meaning of its thought
Sublimely shaped in words. As down the slope
Of that huge crag the broad black fathomless bulk
Of waters rolls stupendous, and anon

323

Over the horrid edge a fretful dome
Of boiling billows shoots amazed and booms
Down thro' the far dim gulfs of shuddering mist
A shock of solid thunder,—with such voice
They to the Earth appeal, and all the Earth
Gives answer; and how much of Heaven besides
We know not yet: they thro' their several age
Bursting, like manhood thro' the garb of youth,
Do make the plastic Future populous
With likeness of themselves; nor only fill
With their sweet floods the narrow gorge of Time,
But haply brim its jealous lips and sweep
Expansive floods adventurous o'er the fields
And broad savannahs of Eternity.

And there are some whose lesser spirits meek
Hang like lone harps among the groves of Thought,
Untended and untuned; whose flaccid chords—
Or bristled with a rime of frozen tears,
Or moist with vernal juices—the vague winds
Usurp at moments, and fro' the clotted strings
Clash out some shrill imperfect utterance

324

Of gusty music. Not without a use,
If yet unselfish, these sequester'd bards
Unknown to splendid influence and to fame:
Not unevoked of that one Providence
Who slopes the ascent of things, their inner sweets
Soak thro' the thin crust of the soul, and melt
In dews upon the surface; for behold,
Born like instinctive frosts along the sway'd
And rustling mere, their starry flakes arise,
Each in his unknown origin apart,
And freeze and strengthen thro' the long blue night
More thickly and more near, until they fuse
And sheet the smooth'd circumference of Life
With beauty and with good.

If in that film
And galaxy of sheeny points, obscure
And sombre when alone, thou think of me
As most minute, I pray thee from the halls
Of thy shut soul come forth to meet my words
With looks of brotherhood; nor take it ill
If in the ardent morning of this life
The shadow of my spirit reach to thee.

325

I have no friend nor counsellor—I stand
Alone amid the crude results of thought,
And know not where to turn: but this I know—
If it have aught of pardon or excuse
To be of earnest purpose and sincere—
With Pythian voice to utter out the things
We feel and know; if, just about to be,
The young perplexities of Being seem
A tale for others' ears: if it be well
The brotherly communicative Man
Should love his country and his age, and strive
To scent the air about him—strive to keep
Unsoil'd, unshred, the blessed flower-cup
That makes a casket for the mourner's tears,
The paradise of comfort unto which
All human hearts do yearn, all intellects
Unclouded soar and seek to as a bourne—
The glory of the Bible; if to tell
How fond a Father to the childlike Earth,
How grand and lovely is the God of grace:
If there be aught of excellent desire
Or old ennobling chivalry of aim

326

In this, thou wilt not mock me nor despise.
For I am but as thou art, being young—
A nude and vagrant soul, whereon the grasp
Of vigilant Life hath scarcely laid as yet
Her prison-garments; hath not laced her up
In prejudice of place, or galling coil
Of prim Convention; nor hath graced with strength
And concentration, which all special ways
Give to the men that walk them: a crude soul,
That could not stand beneath the beetling Past,
Nor watch the wondrous doings of To-day,
Nor hear the thunder of the workmen's tools
Developing the Future, without keen
And glowing eyes, and something like a wish
To let the little pitcher from her arm
And give to drink, if any at his work
Do choose to sip refreshment such as this.
Behold, the time is short—the failing stars
Move but a little way before they die
Into the blazing hours of the dawn:
We are not poets long; the stubborn thews
And sinewy muscles of the perfect man

327

Begin to thicken thro' our frame, and weave
Under the changed complexion of fresh youth
A knotted web of tough and brawny strength
Thro' all our supple limbs: so let us speak
Before the clear soprano of our voice
Breaks into bass, and buoyant Poesy
Is merged and kneaded with the coarser stuff
That feeds us in our struggle thro' the world.

Take then, O brother! with a brother's heart
The little flowers I give: and if for thee
They bear a worth—if ever to thine eyes
They bring the smile that hails a kindred thought
Or chronicles a new, O leave them not
Without a meed of blessing or of prayer
For me, which from the spirit of the just
Availeth much: And thou, strange sister-soul,—
Woman unknown—if thou at all from me
Dost learn to shut the odorous doors of self
About thee, musing in that paradise
Of thy high nature, and the prophecies
That went before on thee, and what large dues

328

Do lie upon thy glorious Womanhood,
And by what workings thou shalt best become
A mated help for Man,—if this be so,
Gather my cluster'd thoughts, and take them up
Like fruit between thine argent fingers moist,
And drop them thro' sweet juicy lips, to melt
(Holpen of thine appreciative sense
And fertile spirit) thro' thy healthful being
And texture of thy daily life, and be
A homely wisdom to thee, and a joy.

So from afar should I in venturous thought
See small effects, and beautiful as small,
Even from these rude lays; and dignify
My life by hope, with blind inquiring touch
Fingering the faces of all unknown friends:
So may for you all highest excellence
Of knowledge—all imaginative joys—
All household bliss—all pure intelligent love,
Woman's or man's, which is most heavenly
Being most human—all desires that cling
To Nature's breast as to a mother's—all

329

True hallow'd faith, all boundless charity
And strong resolves to weed the stifled world
Of sins and sorrows—yea, all inner grace
And holiest boons and benisons of God,
Be with your souls for evermore—Farewell!

1851–52.

ΧΑΡΙΣ ΚΑΙ ΕΙΡΗΝΗ.

THE END.