University of Virginia Library

SONNETS.

SONNET.

AUGUSTINE.

Augustine, Scholar, Father, holy Saint,
Walked by the sounding ocean on the shore,
Turning in thought grave problems o'er and o'er,
To which he gave his soul without restraint,
Until it grew with musing sick and faint.
And as his baffled heart felt sad and sore,
A child he saw that rose-lipped sea-shell bore,
And fill'd it from the sea with motion quaint,—
Then taking it when full into his hand,
He carried it in happy childish bliss,
And emptied it in hole scoop'd in the sand.
“I mean,” he said, “to pour the deep in this”—
“Thus,” thought the Saint, “God infinite and grand,
My finite mind would hold and understand.”

SONNET.

THE SAME.

So stand we on the shore and brink of time,
Close to the borders of eternity,
Across whose vast illimitable sea
Sweep echoes of the everlasting chime,—
Voices from that mysterious awful clime
No foot of man hath trod, no eye can see,
Home of the Three in One, the One in Three,
To which, if any creature dared to climb,
The blaze of splendour there would strike him blind.
And yet vain man the Godhead would explore,
His essence,—future, present, and behind,—
Into his shell he would this Ocean pour.
But can we hold Him in our narrow mind,
Who Was, and Is, and Is for evermore?

SONNET.

A PICTURE.

Calm is the evening of the orient day,
A golden glory flushes all the sky,
And cross the heavens bright rosy cloudlets hie,
Steeped in the lustre of his parting ray.
King David, aged, sorrowful, and grey,
Sits on his palace-roof, and just close by
His jewelled crown neglected now doth lie.
He heeds it not. His thoughts are far away;
They follow with his wistful, straining sight,
A flock of milk-white doves, with glistering breast,
That fly into the liquid sea of light;
And cries he, as they haste toward the west,
“Oh, that I had the dove's swift wings of flight,
Then would I flee away and be at rest!”

SONNET.

TO MY MOCKING-BIRD.

Dear bird, in plumage sober, soft, and grey!
Poets have sung in honour of the lark,
Have hymned the nightingale, which, when the dark
Falls on the woods, pours forth her thrilling lay
Of sweet delicious pain; or hurried, gay;
Exhausting praises on her passionate song
Which floats in liquid sounds the night along.
To me thou art more wonderful than they.
Music has made her home within thy throat.
Now swell thy strains as from a full-voiced quire,
Now sinking low, in rapture they expire.
But ere the ear has lost the long-drawn note
Another harmony thou hast begun,
My lark, my thrush, my nightingale in one!

SONNET.

THE SAME.

Art musing on thy dear and native woods
Far in the West? The fragrant forests fair,
The gorgeous flowers, and the balmier air,
When in these rapturous, ecstatic moods
Thou pourest song in such harmonious floods
That other songsters, hearing, may despair?
Ne'er heard I bird that could with thee compare,
So rich thy thrilling strains, so oft renewed.
What moveth thee, a captive as thou art,
To perch here, bold, familiar at my feet,
Or on my hand to make thyself a seat;
And tho' from country, kindred, home apart,
To send forth streams of music clear and sweet,
With lifted, quivering wings, and swelling heart?

SONNET.

HASTINGS.

Hastings, dear Hastings, I do love thee well;
Shame on this thankless heart were there not still
Within thy name a power to move and thrill.
It comes upon me like a happy spell,
To summon up, from Time's dark silent cell,
Thoughts that with brimming tears the eye can fill.
God knows how dear to me each street, each hill,
More dear than I in any words can tell.
I love the beach, washed by the emerald wave,
Green fields, and shady dells, and glades that lie
Under a bright, almost Italian sky.
Nor is there spot that doth not gently blend
With memories of dead or living friend;
But, most of all, I love one little grave.

SONNET.

HASTINGS.

O brother, say, does memory ever bring
Across thy mind dear memories, that rise
In mine, of times when in the balmy spring
We wandered often 'neath the deep-sphered skies,
When the grey twilight had begun to fling
O'er earth and heav'n steep'd in soft rosy dyes,
The dusk of her far over-shadowing wing,
Veiling the woods in tender mysteries?
Oh, how we used to creep from bush to bush,
Or sometimes stretch us on the fragrant ground,
As the sweet nightingale poured all around
A flood of melody, now soft and low,
Now quick and joyous as a torrent's rush,
Anon in piercing pipe of passionate woe!

SONNET.

THE SAME.

No sound save tremulous music of the sea,
Came swelling up the glades and meadows fair,
Borne to our ears across the upland lea,
Green with the rippling wheat, and where
The thymy fragrance lured the yellow bee
To revel oft in hours of sweetness there;
The happy thief! with none to cry, “Forbear!”
Gone those dear days, forgot they cannot be.
Our life was in its fair and golden prime,
And from all things bright augury we drew;
Our joys were many, and our sorrows few;
Bravely we looked into the coming time,
The silver hours held hope in every chime,
And not a fear, of what might be, we knew.