Life and Phantasy :: :: University of Virginia Library

“Friend Edward, from this turn remark
The sweep of woodland. ‘Bridegroom's Park’
We call it, shut while you were here
By selfish Cupid, who allows
A sunny glimpse through beechen boughs
Of dells of grass with fallow deer,
And one white corner of the house
Built for the young Heir's wedding-day,
The dull old walls being swept away.
Wide and low, its eaves are laid
Over a slender colonnade,
Partly hiding, partly seen,
Amid redundant veils of green,
Which garland pillars into bowers,
And top them with a frieze of flowers;
The slight fence of a crystal door
(Like air enslaved by magic lore)
Or window reaching to the floor,
Divides the richly furnish'd rooms
From terraces of emerald sward,
Vases full of many blooms,
And little gates of rose to guard
The sidelong steps of easy flight;
Or, with a touch, they all unite.
All's perfect for a Bride's delight,
And She most worthy of it all;
Gold-hair'd (I've seen her), slim and tall;

With—O! a true celestial face
Of tender gravity and grace,
And gentle eyes that look you through,
Eyes of softly solemn blue.

Serene the wealthy mortal's fate,
Whose last wild-oats is duly sown!
Observe his Paradise's gate,
With two heraldic brutes in stone
For sentries.

Did the coppice move?
A straggling deer perhaps. By Jove!
A woman brushing through: she's gone.
Now what the deuce can bring her there?
Jog, lad; it's none of our affair.

Well—you're to voyage, and I'm to stay.
Will Lucy kiss you, some other day,
When you carry your nuggets back this way?
You must not grow so rich and wise
That friends shall fail to recognise
The schoolboy twinkle in your eyes.
Each his own track. I'll mind my farm,
And keep the old folks' chimney warm.
But however we strive, and chance to thrive,
We shall scarcely overtake this Youth,
Who has all to his wish, and seems in truth
The very luckiest man alive.”

II.—BY THE POND.

“These walls of green, my guarded Queen!
A labyrinth of shade and sheen,
Bar out the world a thousand miles,
Helping the pathway's winding wiles
To pose you to the end. Now think,

What thanks might one deserve for this—
Which lately was a swamp, and is
An elfin lake, its curving brink
Embost with rhododendron bloom,
Azaleas, lilies, jewelries,
(Ruby and amethyst grow like these
Under our feet) on fire to dress,
Round every little glassy bay,
The sloping turf with gorgeousness?
As right, we look our best to-day;
No petal dropt, no speck of gloom.

Emmeline, this faery lake
Rose to its margins for your sake;
As yet without a name, it sues
Your best invention; think and choose.
Its flood is gather'd on the fells,
(Whose foldings you and I shall trace)
Hid in many a hollow place;
But through Himalayan dells,
Where the silvery pinnacles
Hanging faint in furthest heaven
Catch the flames of morn and even,
Round their lowest rampart swells
The surge of rhododendron flow'rs,
Indian ancestry of ours:
And the tropic woods luxuriantly
By Oronooko's river-sea
Nurtured the germs of this and this;
And there's a blossom first was seen
In dragon-vase of white and green
By the sweetheart of a mandarin,
Winking her little eyes for bliss.

Look, how these merry insects go
In rippling meshes to and fro,
Waltzing over the liquid glass,
Dropping their shadows to cross and travel
Like ghosts, on the pavement of sunny gravel.

Maybe to music, whose thrills outpass
Our finest ear,—yes, even yours,
Whom the mystery of sound allures
From star to star. In this gulf beyond,
Silent people of the pond
Slip from noonday glare, to win
Their crystal twilights far within.
See the creatures glance and hide,
Turn, and waver, and glimmer, and glide,
Jerk away, ascend, and poise,
Come and vanish without noise,
Mope, with mouth of drowsy drinking,
Waving fins and eyes unwinking,
Flirt a tail, and shoot below.
How little of their life we know!
Or these birds' life that twittering dart
To the shrubbery's woven heart.
Which is happier, bird or fish?
Have they memory, hope, and wish?
Various temper? perverse will—
That secret source of boundless ill?
Why should not human creatures run
A careless course through shadow and sun?
Ah, Love, that may never be!
We are of a different birth,
Of deeper sphere than the fishes' home,
Higher than bird's wings may roam,
Greater than ocean, air, and earth.

The Summer's youth is now at prime.
Swiftly a season whirls away.
Two days past, the bladed corn
Whisper'd nothing of harvest-time;
Already a tinge of brown is born
On the barley-spears that lightly sway;
The plumes of purple-seeded grass,
Bowing and bending as you pass,

Our mowers at the break of day
Shall sweep them into swaths of hay.
So the season whirls away.
And every aspect we must learn,
Every changing mood discern;
All sides, over the country speed,
‘She upon her milk-white steed,
And he upon his gray,’ to roam
Gladly, turn more gladly home;
Plan, improve, and see our tenants;
Visit neighbours, for pleasure or penance;
Excellent people some, no doubt,
And the rest will do to talk about.
June, July, and August: next
September comes; and here we stand
To watch those swallows some clear day
In a birdish trouble, half perplex'd,
Bidding adieu their tribe's old way,
Tho' the sunbeam coaxes them yet to stay;
Swinging through the populous air,
Dipping, every bird, in play,
To kiss its flying image there.
And when Autumn's wealthy heavy hand
Paints with brown gold the beechen leaves,
And the wind comes cool, and the latest sheaves,
Quivers fill'd with bounty, rest
On stubble-slope,—then we shall say
Adieu for a time our fading bow'rs,
Pictures within and out-of-doors,
And all the petted greenhouse flow'rs.
But, though your harp remains behind
To keep the piano company,
Your light-strung Sprite of Serenades
Shall watch with us how daylight fades
Where sea and air enhance their dyes
A thousand-fold for lovers' eyes.
And we shall fancy on far-off coast

The chill pavilions of the frost,
And landscapes in a snow-wreath lost.
—You, the well-fended nun like child,
I, the bold youth, left loose and wild,
Join'd together for evermore,
To wander at will by sea and shore,—
Strange and very strange it seems!
More like the shifting world of dreams.

Choose at will your path, my Queen,
Through this labyrinth of green,
As tho' 'twere life's perplexing scene.
To go in search of your missing book,
You careless girl? one other search?
Wood or garden, which do you say?
'Twere only toil in vain; for, look—
I found it, free of spot or smirch,
On a pillow of wood-sorrel sleeping
Under the Fox's Cliff to-day.
Not so much as your place is lost,
Given to this delicate warden's keeping,—
Jasmin that deserves to stay
Enshrined there henceforth, never toss'd
Like other dying blooms away.

Summer, autumn, winter—yes,
And much will come that we cannot guess;
Every minute brings its chance.

Bend we now a parting glance
Down through the peaceful purity,
The shadow and the mystery,
As old saints look into their grave.
Water-elves may peep at me;
Only my own wife's face I see,
Like sunny light within the wave,
Dearer to me than sunny light.
It rose, and look'd away my night;
Whose phantoms, of desire or dread,
Like fogs and shades and dreams are fled.”

III.—THROUGH THE WOOD.

“A fire keeps burning in this breast.
The smoke ascending to my brain
Sometimes stupefies the pain.
Sometimes my senses drop, no doubt.
I do not always feel the pain:
But my head is a weary, weary load.

What place is this?—I sit at rest,
With grass and bushes round about;
No dust, no noise, no endless road,
No torturing light. Stay, let me think,
Is this the place where I knelt to drink,
And all my hair broke loose and fell,
And floated in the cold, clear well
Hung with rock-weeds? two children came
With pitchers, but they scream'd and ran;
The woman stared, the cursèd man
Laugh'd—no, no, this is not the same.
I now remember. Dragging through
The thorny fence has torn my gown.
These boots are very nearly done.
What matter? so's my journey, too.

Nearly done . . . A quiet spot!
Flowers touch my hand. It's summer now.
What summer meant I had forgot;
Except that it was glaring hot
Through tedious days, and heavy hot
Through dreadful nights.

The drooping bough
Is elm; its shadow lies below.
Gathering flowers we used to creep
Along the hedgerows, where the sun
Came through like this; then, everyone,
Find out some arbour close and cool,

To weave them in our rushy caps,
Primroses, bluebells, such a heap,
Stay, now!—the girls are hid perhaps—
It may be all a dream—

You fool!
Was it for this you tramp'd your way
And begg'd your way by night and day
To find this place? . . . It's his domain:
Each tree is his, each blade of grass
Under my feet. How dare I pass,
A tatter'd vagrant, half insane,
Scarce fit to slink by the roadside,
These lordly bounds, where, with his Bride—
I tell you, kneeling on this sod,
He is, before the face of God,
My husband!

I was innocent
The day I first set eyes on him,
Eyes that no tears had yet made dim,
Nor fever wild. The day he went,
(That day, O God of Heaven!) I found,
In the sick brain slow turning round,
Dreadful forebodings of my fate.
A week was not so long to wait:
Another pass'd,—and then a third.
My face grew thin—eyes fix'd—I heard
And started if a feather stirr'd.
Each night ‘to-morrow!’ heard me say,
Each morning ‘he will come to-day.’
Who taps upon the chamber door?
A letter—he will come no more.
Then stupor. Then a horrid strife
Trampling my brain and soul and life,—
Hunting me out as with a knife
From home—from home—

And I was young,
And happy. May his heart be wrung

As mine is! learn that even I
Was something, and at least can die
Of such a wound. In any case
He'll see the death that's in my face.
To die is still within the power
Of girls with neither rank nor dower.

This his place, and I am here.
The house lay that side as one came.
How sick and deadly tired I am!
Time has been lost: O this new fear,
That I may fall and never rise!
Clouds come and go within my eyes.
I'm hot and cold, my limbs all slack,
My swollen feet the same as dead;
A weight like lead draws down my head,
The boughs and brambles pull me back.
Stay: the wood opens to the hill.
A moment now. The house is near.
But one may view it closer still
From these thick laurels on the right,
. . . What is this? Who come in sight?
He, with his Bride. It sends new might
Through all my feeble body. Hush!
Which way? which way? which way? that bush
Hides them—they're coming—do they pause?
He points, almost to me!—he draws
Her tow'rds him, and I know the smile
That's on his face—O heart of guile!
No, 'twas the selfish gaiety
And arrogance of wealth. I see
Your Bride is tall, and graceful too.
That arch of leaves invites you through.
I follow. Why should I be loth
To hurt her? . . . Ha! I'll find them both.
Six words suffice to make her know.
Both, both shall hear—it must be so!”

IV.—MOSSGROWN.

“Seven years gone, and we together
Ramble as before, old Ned!
Not a brown curl on your head
Soil'd with touch of time or weather.
Yet no wonder if you fear'd,
With that broad chest and bushy beard,
Lucy might scarce remember you.
My letters, had they painted true
The child grown woman?

Here's our way.
Autumn in its last decay;
The hills have misty solitude
And silence; dead leaves drop in the wood;
And free across the Park we stray,
Where only the too-much freedom baulks.
These half-obliterated walks,
The tangling grass, the shrubberies choked
With briars, the runnel which has soak'd
Its lawn-foot to a marsh, between
The treacherous tufts of brighter green,
The garden, plann'd with costly care,
Now wilder'd as a maniac's hair,
The blinded mansion's constant gloom,
Winter and summer, night and day,
Save when the stealthy hours let fall
A sunbeam, or more pallid ray,
Creeping across the floor and wall
From solitary room to room,
To pry and vanish, like the rest,
Weary of a useless quest,
The sombre face of hill and grove,
The very clouds which seem to move
Sadly, be it swift or slow,—
How unlike this you scarcely know,
Was “Bridegroom's Park” seven years ago.

Human Spirits, line by line,
Have left hereon their visible trace;
As may, methinks, to Eye Divine,
Human history and each one's share
Be closely written everywhere
Over the solid planet's face.
A sour old Witch,—a surly Youth,
Her grandson,—three great dogs, uncouth
To strangers (I'm on terms with all),
Are household now. Sometimes, at fall
Of dusk, a Shape is said to move
Amid the drear entangled grove,
Or seems lamentingly to stand
Beside a pool that's close at hand.
Rare are the human steps that pass
On mossy walk or tufted grass.

Let's force the brushwood barrier,
No path remaining. Here's a chair!
Once a cool delightful seat,
Now the warty toad's retreat,
Cushion'd with fungus, sprouting rank,
Smear'd with the lazy gluey dank.
No doubt the Ghost sits often there—
A Female Shadow with wide eyes
And dripping garments. This way lies
The pool, the little pleasure-lake,
Which cost a pretty sum to make;
Stoop for this bough, and see it now
A dismal solitary slough,
Scummy, weedy, ragged, rotten,
Shut in jail, forsook, forgotten.

Most of the story you have heard:
The bower of bliss at length prepared
To the last blossom, line of gilding,
(Never such a dainty building)
One day, Bride and Bridegroom came;
The hills at dusk with merry flame

Crowning their welcome: they had June,
Grand weather—and a honeymoon!
Came, to go away too soon,
And never come again.

The Bride
Was in her old home when she died,
On a winter's day in the time of snow,
(She never saw that year to an end),
And he has wander'd far and wide,
And look'd on many a distant hill,
But not on these he used to know
Round his park that wave and bend,
And people think he never will.

Who can probe a spirit's pain?
Who tell that man's loss, or gain?
How far he sinn'd, how far he loved,
How much by what befell was moved,
If there his real happiness
Began, or ended, who shall guess?
Trivial the biographic scroll
Save as a history of the soul,
Perhaps whose mightiest events
Are dumb and secret incidents.
A man's true life and history
Is like the bottom of the sea,
Where mountains and huge valleys hide
Below the wrinkles of the tide,
Under the peaceful mirror, under
Billowy foam and tempest-thunder.

Rude the flow'r-shrubs' overgrowth;
Dark frowns the clump of firs beyond;
At twilight one might well be loth
To linger here alone, and find
The story vivid in one's mind.
A Young Girl, gently bred and fair,
A widow's daughter, whom the Heir
Met somewhere westward on a time,

Came down to this secluded pond,
That's now a mat of weeds and slime,
One summer-day seven years ago,
Sunshine above and flowers below.
Neglect had driven her to despair.
And, poor thing, in her frenzied mood
Bursting upon their solitude,
She drown'd herself, before the face
Of Bride and Bridegroom. Here's the place.

Now mark—that very summer day
You, Ned, and I look'd down this way,
And saw the girl herself—yes, we!
Skirting the coppice—that was She.

Imagine (this at least is known)
The frantic creature's plunge; the Bride
Swooning by her husband's side;
And him, alone, and not alone,
Turning aghast from each to each,
Shouting for help, but none in reach.
He sees the drowning woman sink,
Twice—thrice—then, headlong from the brink,
He drags her to the grass—too late.
There by his servants was he found,
Bewilder'd by the stroke of fate;
With two pale figures on the ground,
One in the chill of watery death,
One with long-drawn painful breath
Reviving. Sudden was the blow,
Dreadful and deep the change. We'll go
And find the house.

Suspicion pries
From wrinkled mouth and peering eyes,
You old deaf Dame! but friends are we.
Else should I never grasp this key,
Or tread this broad and lonely stair,
Or let this unexpected glare
Of outdoor world insult the gloom

That lives in each forsaken room,
Through which the gammer daily creeps,
And all from dust and mildew keeps.
Few hands may slide this veil aside,
To show—a picture of the Bride.
Is she not gently dignified?
Her curving neck, how smooth and long;
Her eyes, that softly look you through,
To think of violets were to wrong
Their lucency of living blue.

The new hope of that fair young wife,
The sacred and mysterious life
Which counts as yet no separate hours,
Yielding to sorrow's hurtful powers,
Quench'd its faint gleam before a morn;
And when her breathless babe was born
Almost as still the mother lay,
Almost as dumb, day after day,
Till on the fifth she pass'd away;
And (far too soon) her marriage-bell
Must now begin to ring her knell.
Old man, and child, and village lass,
Who stood to see her wedding pass—
No further stoops the hoary head,
The merry maid is still unwed,
The child is yet a child, no more,
Watching her hearse go by their door.
Her bridal wreath one summer gave,
The next, a garland for her grave.

Close the shutter. Bright and sharp
The ray falls on those shrouded things,—
A grand piano and a harp,
Where no one ever plays or sings.

No, truly,—He will not forget.
But things go on; he's a young man yet;
His life has many a turn to take;

He may fell this wood, fill up the lake,
Throw down the house (so should not I),
Or sell it to you, Ned, if you'll buy;
Or, perhaps, come thoughtfully back some day,
With humble heart and head grown gray.
Homeward now, as quick as you will;
These afternoons are short and chill.
There's my haggart, under the hill;
Through evening's fog the cornstacks rise
Like domes of a little Arab city
Girt by its wall, with a bunch of trees
At a corner—palms, for aught one sees.
Sister Lucy is there alone;
The good old father and mother gone;
And I'm not married—more is the pity!
Seem I old bachelor in your eyes?
—Well, Ned, after dinner to-night,
When a ruddy hearth gives just the light
We used to think best, you'll spread your sail
And carry us far, without wave or gale!
And we'll talk of the old years, and the new,
Of what we have done, and mean to do.”