Madeline :: :: University of Virginia Library

Beyond the spheres, dwellers in harmony,
To whom the instincts of the heart incline,
A silent ocean inundates the sky,
Choirless the waves, yet not the less divine.
Though suns, the rolling-stock of heaven, may glow,
As well becomes the bearers of the light,
No other music of the spheres they know
Save concert in the work of day and night.
Music belongs to man, its empire here:
It is the living word attuned to love,
And holds the soul of man to be its sphere,
Though only Heaven can all its rapture move.
When mortals sing the worlds above are mute,
They gather in the anthem's mingled shout,
They weave the notes, they shape the stringless lute,
And vibrate softly to the sounds devout.
Then Lyra's constellated embers burn,
And look below on earth with envious eye
As the soul's echoes to sad music turn,
And serenade the ear of Deity.

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III. ON POETRY.

Words let the pedagogue dispute
His logic to express,
Words let the perjurer pollute
His fortunes to redress.
But winnow from the pearls the chaff of thought,
Lest sense and feeling be too lowly wrought.

Words let the bard to fancy fling
And at the peril scoff,
Wild thoughts to catch while on the wing,
The bloom not brushing off.
Then the purblind may look through poet's eyes
And see what things his sight beatifies.

Words in the songster's voice are heard
And rapture hails the shake,
Words in the orator are fear'd
While wonder fills his wake.
But when the voice has dropped its tone
Where are the fitful visions gone?

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More true the sculptor's marble word,
The soul is in the cast:
Though but a feeling to record
It is enough to last.
Strong is the sculptor's marble thought,
To solid life its beauty brought.

Tough is the painter's sunny art
Which brings the tale to light;
And can the poet not impart
Such pictures to the sight;
With silent touch the veil remove
That hides the birthplace of his Love?

IV. ON THE STORM OF LIFE.

The heaving waters, quarried from the Deep,
Are piled above in one Atlantine wave.
Indented, lava-washed, the glairy steep
Hangs doubting o'er its hollow, empty grave.
And now like slimy serpents peak on peak
Erects its crest to strike the creviced dawn,
Then gnashed in foam before the billows break
Scatters the barren valley with its spawn.

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Yet fall not, Soul! thy pure and flaky form
Touched by the briny tumulus were lost.
Better for thee to drift before the storm
And be along the waste of waters tossed.
No aid accept, no aid to others tend:
Through dusk and foam can only such descend.

Myriads with thee across the darkness driven,
Snatch at the phantoms howling in the wind,
To share the crash of storms asunder riven,
And at their lull no further morrow find.
Gust after gust palls on the wretched ear,
The shriek prolongs the whistle of the gale.
Splash after splash, the graves are coming near,
One burial flood the surf-encircled vale.
Dark the horizon, lost its gentle line!
But He who stills the tempest walks the deck.
A like ordeal passed the One divine
To bear a world in safety through the wreck;
To reef the sails of Night, and through its shrouds
Point out the dawn amid dispersing clouds.

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V. ON THE RAINBOW.

Now spangled Iris springs her shaftless bow
And with the soul a covenant unrolls.
Poised in the light above, in storms below,
She opes her book of books, her scroll of scrolls.

Her page, illuminated, spans the sun
In lines red-lettered after ruby suit,
With symbols round it that in clusters run
Of interwoven orange, leaves and fruit.

Now shines her golden tunic amber-bright;
An emerald belt her glossy waist reveals;
And amethyst, divinest of the light,
About her as a blush of ether steals.

Now faint, and mantled in that orient blue,
She dies and sinks into the purple shades,
Her mourning vesture fringed with violet hue,
Which with her in the far horizon fades.

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In every shade an emblem of her love,
Pale be the tint or of the deepest dye:
Saints in her coloured lights are robed above,
And like the bow illumed by Majesty.

Saints in her coloured lights are robed below
Where rival banners in their glory rise,
But to the presence all alike shall flow
Beyond the floral arch of paradise.

EPODE.

The sea-weed proves an easy weather-glass,
And surging tides an angered moon portend,
Yet will the rapt of earth through whirlwinds pass
Nor to prophetic signs and tokens bend.

Hear how she reads her storm-drawn scimitar,
Nought but the splitting up of solar showers,
Yet its untempered blade must point afar
And give safe escort to the blessèd bowers!

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VI. ON THE SANCTUARY.

To play old ruin on a desert's site
The rambling stones their chiselled features spread,
And crumbled walls bestow their daily mite
On sacred earth, the ash-pit of the dead.

Home reared for solitude! the cloister's pride
Is roofless, jaggèd, ivy-cropped, and lone.
No more the gravestones echo to the stride,
The day of shrove and feast alike are gone.

Within each chink the lichen guards its hold
To ripen in the fervour of the moon,
To draw a modest pension from her cold,
And revel in the fulness of her noon.

The pointed arches let her glory pass,
Their faded beauty softened in her ray;
The walls see pity in her orbèd glass,
And hail her as the ghost of ancient day!

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Poised on the moonlit aisle tall columns cast
Their meaning shadows on the floor of death.
Mute is the chant except along the past,
Where silent echo holds the courtly breath.

The voice of monks and mitred abbot hushed,
The table and its waxen lights effaced,
The rich insignia on the altar crushed,
In heaven is yet their holy record placed.

The crucifix no longer is divine,
For centuries adored in worship's stead:
Rent are the naked mullions o'er the shrine;
In dust the painted saint has bowed his head.

The steadfast pines that date religion's birth,
Set by some abbot once to story known;
That stand apart and measure girth to girth,
Have now the stature of the earth outgrown.

In straggling waters still the fishes leap
And low the willow stoops to say its grace,
An hourly service o'er the mouldering heap
That sanctifies to time the honoured place.

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There is the crystal well; a water-grass
Stirs into emerald waves the liquid brink;
There thirst the longing lips of lad and lass,
But never more the living spring to drink.

With arch by buttress stayed the stately bridge
Spans the fast stream, the stranger of the vale
Whose noise enchants the overhearing ridge,
Sole minstrelsy within the sacred pale.

Tower, from all towers that bears aloft the palm!
There better saints poured out a soul of pain,
But now the heavenward chanting of the psalm
Is silence raining back on earth again.

The truant boy, from overwhelming heights,
Awe-struck stands gazing at it with dismay:
He clambers down the thicket and alights,
But dreads the adder's-tongue that guards the way.

The man mature with sadder view admires,
Catched in the wondrous reverie of the hour.
He gives his living grandeur to the spires,
And mourns the downfal of religious pow'r.

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EPODE.

Hut cracked and crazy, open to the blast
That whines a dirge, and makes the sick man sad:
By tumbling towers in ruin not surpassed,
Nor less by slow compassion ivy-clad,
Has it no simple wrong for thee to tell
While the wan abbey works the sleepy spell?

Has he no charm, the poor old man inside?
To humble ruin close akin he stands,
Though down his wrinkled cheek no moonlight glide,
Though ivy cling not to his shrivelled hands?
His body wasted, and his senses dead,
The hum of sorrow still runs in his head.

O life monastic, story of the poor,
The hut holds thy traditionary cells;
The fast is kept alone within the door
Where self-denial through compulsion dwells.
'Tis there eyes open, and again are closed,
Under the vow by poverty imposed.

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VII. ON NATURE.

Cyclopean shelves from out whose granite base
Basaltic columns and red porphyry wind,
What volumes rest their lore within thy case;
What metaphysics of an elder mind!

Of old Silurian times, the rocky age,
What well-kept registers the changes ring:
But search through every cipher of the page,
No plague of life the records say or sing.

And thou Devonian era, and the clime
Where erst the old red waters formed the lands,
The hour-glass set upon a ledge of time
Has piled upon thy tome its pleasant sands.

Ye too, dark ages of the timber-graves,
Now tell again how forests, undeplored,
Went in a minute under half the waves,
And, self-embalmed, for future use were stored.

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Then comes the monster-folio, engraved
On stone, the text of life to illustrate;
To show that no gigantic form was saved,
By order of a then fastidious fate.

Great Permian epoch, thou whose earthworks tell
Such rack and ruin of thy middle age,
With what a future does thy volume swell!
Now ended like unto thy heritage.

Still the deep voices sound upon the beach,
In waves that tread the golden sands of time,
And to the passing soul a sermon preach
Interpreted by none, to all sublime.

Nor, high above, the burning lava posed
With its volcanic torch these shelves shall light
Until by Nature's hand the work is closed:
Those flames the oldest record of her might.

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VIII. ON TIME.

Time immemorial, ever-thoughtless dream,
Failure of all alike from first to last,
That swamps with desolating stream
The long-enduring Past!
Who the lost tidings of thy day shall tell,
Whose only welcome was to say farewell?

What of thy old endeavour yet survives,
Told but on stone, shall also drift away:
And so thy reliquary takes and gives
To lead the foremost minds of man astray!
Better had all that yet escapes from rust
Not ever been, or been restored to dust.

Yet well perhaps thy deep devices fare,
Since all thy works co-partners with the dead,
May show the anxious mind how vain is care;
And disabuse the future of its dread;
May warn the hopeful of their scanty lot:
The last to yield, the first to be forgot.

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IX. ON THE FUTURE.

And thou too, Future, sure and slow
Com'st daily forth anew,
With equal blessings to bestow
And curses to bestrew;
Thy gifts the half-expired remains
That breast the passing hour;
Baubles that death awhile disdains
The later to devour!
Thy wiles acquire thee man's belief,
The credit of the wise.
Who thinks of thee in time of grief
Thy promise to despise?
For hope is thine; scarce fledged, she springs
From out her native east,
Beats off the darkness with her wings,
And nestles in thy breast.
She mounts on the unrisen orb,
Breathes its auspicious flame,
Dreams how ere long she may absorb
The riches of thy name.

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Real seems the vision for a day,
But ere she ends her round
The sun has shed its early ray,
And autumn holds the ground.
Eclipsed is thence her polar star,
And distant is her dream;
Not as of late in heaven afar,
But with receding gleam.
Now from her eyes the scales are cast;
She throws her glance behind,
And sees her image in the past
As of another mind!

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X. ON THE SOUL.

Free as the soul, the spire ascends,
Heaven lets it in her presence sit;
Yet ever back to earth it tends:
The tranquil waters echo it.
So falls the future to the past;
So the high soul to earth is cast.

But though the soul thus nobly fails,
Not long it borders on despair;
It still the fallen glory hails,
Though lost its conquests in the air.
While truth is yet above, its good
Is measured in the spirit's flood.

Though not its first, its holy light
Is figured in that mirror's face,
It scarce returns a form less bright
Than fills above a higher place.
The one was loved though little known,
The other is the spirit's own.

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XI. ON THE SOUL.

Suitor of Heaven, then take of earth thy fill!
Like languid waters in the path of shades,
Reverse within thy depths the hanging hill,
Beatify the harsh, the wild cascades.
Look on and listen till thy breath be gone;
Be thou the place, the place be thou, alone.

Stream and its hanging bough in whispers meet
To gather kisses from the wreaths of foam;
Clouds find out pools their fleeting forms to greet,
Or with their shadows over pastures roam.
All join thee in the strolling players' mood,
Soul of the fond, the lone old neighbourhood!

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EPODE.

Like smoke arising from its smouldering fires,
The love of Nature draws up discontent,
And to the gangway of the clouds aspires,
As if the world to it were banishment.

To triumph and attain all earth can give
Is proper for the gifted, it is less
Than to the vulgar it may be to live.
But solitude has not the power to bless.

Then shun the love of glory, save to lift
A needy world, and give it all the gain!
Set little store on Nature's feathery gift
Lest falling it shall eddy back amain.

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XII. ON GLORY.

To what new land has Glory gone?
Her radiance, not less lovely, still invites
The heart on which her presence shone,
To mingle in her rites.
But now with golden vase her arm outpours
Along the crimson bank a yellow stream,
And she behind the far horizon low'rs
To shape the sorcerer's dream.
With tears of light she pledged the mutual vow,
In dewy lustre robed, at dawn of day;
A guilty hand she only offers now,
Steeped in the bleeding, ruby-tinctured ray.
A passion of the soul her likeness took,
Only to watch her and to be forsook.

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XIII. ON PEACE.

Peace, let us keep thy natal day!
In us fulfil thy promised way.
Yield to our suit, thy suppliants hear,
O holy being, ever dear!
Be ours in silence, ours in death;
The solace of our parting breath!
Calm passion of the glassy deep,
More than the lull that covers sleep,
More than the still, uncancelled light,
That tints the starry wake of night;
Known best in absence, like the one
So loved when near but most when gone:
Are we to ask of thee no sign,
No vision of thy gift benign,
And by thy memory overcast,
To ply our sorrows in the past?

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XIV. ON THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW.

There comes a breeze, not from the pole,
Nor from the burning sand;
It comes as if its whiffs had stole
Across a sunny land;
It has a softness in its dole,
As if the deep when calm
Had gust on gust with sea-weeds fann'd
To give it up their balm.

Though Nature's wily voice be glad,
Playful the curling gale,
And for the asking may be had
her most romantic tale,
She sees the heart of man too sad,
With sorrows overlaid,
To rush again within her pale;
And triumphs like a maid.

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She seeks it in the Cedrus-glades
At musings to connive;
She stirs the shrinking bough, whose shades
Seem trodden on alive.
As grief the eye of man pervades
And makes the lashes wave,
She bids the boughs and breezes strive,
And earth with sadness pave.

EPODE.

Finds man no rest? Not lofty is his love:
At most a lunar span above the ground!
Far statelier forms in higher orbits move
Nor jar on Nature through their silent round,
And act, these strolling monads, longer plays,
Nor utter murmurs louder than their rays.

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XV. ON GENIUS.

Thou one and inextinguishable spark
That simmerest on the mossy swamp,
Bright though the earth be dark,
And smothered be the sleeper's lamp:
Genius, thou refuse of divinest light,
Infatuate fire, self-burning amethyst,
Whose visage beams when dingy night
Calls up thy phantom through the mist:
Star of the marsh and fen,
Favoured of Nature, not of men;
How is thy place below so little known,
With but the quagmire for thine own?

The earth its early course has run:
No more an infant cradled in the air,
Nursed at the bosom of the sun
With taintless lips, or thou, O Spirit fair,
Might'st, like thy ever-glorious kin of old,
Have called it thine to dandle in thy arms!
But now the world is cold,
Or man is sated with its charms.

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It may revive thy claims, may yet impart
The secret of thy choicest art;
Then, though the stamp of hoofs may mark the mire,
Thou shalt emerge and earth still feed thy fire!

Star of the swamp, thy day the night
Where heaven vain wealth displays,
And the waste drippings of her light
Encrust thee round with rays,
Thou shalt adjourn into the dawn,
With it thy musings blend,
And on the azure of its lawn
Thy dreamy being end!
Meantime grieve on where Nature grieves;
Heed not the blessings man achieves.
Thou hast a shout far other lands to hail
When his poor heart has ceased its wail.

To fellow-suffering give an ear,
In sorrow, thou, and not in glory, trained;
The spring, exuding ever, dwell'st thou near,
Where breathless immortality is gained.
Glory within a film of colour glows;
The bubble is its wreath;
But sorrow in an endless river flows,
Not startled into death.

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Cling to thy mire, O Genius bright;
Catch the waste drippings of the light;
Burn 'neath the hoof's unharming tramp;
From the morass renew thy lamp!

The forkèd lustre of the ray unveil,
And through the dismal swamp thy fetters drag:
A creeping glowworm lingers in thy trail,
For those set fast within the troubled quag.
Then, yet again the crutchless wanderers save:
In vain to quit the sedgy waste they strive,
But flounder through a water-venomed grave
To touch no more its vanished bank alive.
Be it the outlaw asks of thee his way,
The devious torch shall take him not astray:
Fateful thy lot, but mercy in thy gleam,
Fulfil in others thy unfinished dream!

EPODE.

But genius is not sought in every mart:
One is not wise in lyrics to descant
When once the wit of man rejects his art,
And warns him coldly to desist from rant.
The pleasant world would thus express its will:
Let science march and poesy stand still.

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XVI. ON DEPARTING PEACE.

STROPHE.

O Peace, why art thou ever on the wing
With plumes that wave like branches to the sky,
Thy bosom panting out the breeze of spring!
Make answer, tell me why?

ANTISTROPHE.

To take kind Nature to my fond embrace,
And share my lot with all,
For this my way I trace.
By thee repulsed, I disregard thy call.

STROPHE.

And never to restrain thy wayward flight,
Dear exile from this aching heart opprest?
Wilt thou no more alight
And set the weary soul of man at rest?

ANTISTROPHE.

I quit the earth and all the cares below,
But leaving, tap it gently with my wand;
That those who love me, and sustain the blow,
May follow to the distant land.

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STROPHE.

Is not the heart, the stricken heart, thy home?
Bear not thy plumage from it to the skies!
Hither, relenting in thy anger, come,
Nor tear-like float before our longing eyes.

XVII. ON NATURE.

Thou too, fair Nature, hast thy cloud,
Peace is not ever thine.
Thy plaintive cry is heard aloud
As from some holy shrine.
Thy murmurs, rocked upon the gale,
Tell of immortal life a doleful tale.

Thy chant alarms the troubled sky,
Where late the sun has set,
And the repining heavens reply
In murmurs of regret.
The prowling sun, though it return,
Is tangled up in cloud;
Fierce flies the dust as from an urn
Burst open with its shroud.
The trees bend down to shed their leaves,
Whose drifting circle thee a chaplet weaves.

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XVIII. ON LIFE.

Who would to early life return,
Recount the days of youth in vain,
The burnt-out fire once more to burn,
To border on the tomb again?
Once is enough to be a slave;
Once is enough to touch the grave.

A lease of seventy years at most
Can Nature grant to dust;
The soul is fashioned at her cost,
And back to darkness thrust.
But, still, the universe is lent
To it while seventy suns are spent.

Meantime the soul attempts to learn
How Nature first began,
And thence immortal fame to earn
Within the race of man,
And, Nature's tenure to reverse,
Claims to itself the universe.

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XIX. ON HOPE.

Like waters from a sandy well,
Hope bubbles through the mind:
Her springs to troubled fountains well,
Ere scattered in the wind.
The young draw rapture as she flows
And all that dreams afford bestows.

Why, as the waters run away
Eloping with the hours,
Has every bubble burst in spray?
So, Hope her own devours!
Thermal her spring in days of old,
Nor now the kindly flow is cold.

But, once fond youth no longer sports
Save in the vale of years,
Nor with a warmer spring comports
Than wets the vale of tears.
There when the fount its bubble throws,
The licensed jet through marble flows.

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XX. ON THOUGHT.

Clad in a robe of snow, the Earth
Proclaims herself a bride;
But scathing blasts and sounds of dearth
Her nuptial feast deride.
Stripped of the snow her limbs of clay
And wintry breasts lay bared in day.

No bridegroom enters at her gate,
No handmaids are at hand,
So solitary is her state,
The festal hour so grand.
Upon the bridal hearth a fire
As from an altar lifts its spire.

One is at hand who feeds the flame,
And fans it with the hopeless sigh;
While thought consumes without a name,
Though wedded once to one as high.
But mindful of her brighter days
The thought not faithless with her stays.

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Made fast to Nature, as a heart
That throbs within her depths concealed,
The thought must still subserve its part,
The sigh, a breath, must be congealed,
And in the inhospitable soil
Be unrequited all their toil.

Once did that thought for Nature live;
Once did that breath to fame aspire!
Shall not their memory revive,
Though black the altar, dead the pyre?
Stripped but of their mortality,
Thus offered up they cannot die.

EPODE.

Is not reality the surest friend?
Its solid hopes and aspirations please,
And to the mental torment put an end:
In it alone the world goes at its ease.
Play with the young, their artlessness retain;
From whence they start a firmer footing gain.
Pass on thy troubles to the curate's care;
His profits have their source in man's mischance.
This life is at the best but meagre fare;
Let sadness not its poverty enhance.
When death itself salutes thee, look away;
If it persists, take all it does in play.

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XXI. ON THE SEASONS OF LIFE.

A trembling compass points to age,
The winter's shortest day;
Four seasons all our heritage;
Worn-out the beaten way.

Though long the spring-tide, short its hours;
The years alone are slow;
For joy an endless torrent pours
Upon the soul below.
And lesser floods bring forth their joys,
Which nothing clogs, and nothing cloys.

A season swelled with many springs,
A bud-time free from blight,
That flies without the fabled wings
Which help the angels' flight.
To thee, fair youth, all this is sent,
Pastime scarce changed in changing spent.

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To thee the burning heavens are cool,
The faded forests green;
The blast that furrows up the pool
Not to thy senses keen.
To thee the iceberg is a sun
Reflecting days but just begun.

On happy hours thou look'st not back
As never to return,
Drawn in the meteor's hurried track,
Thy onward light to burn,
To waste on summer's coming gleam
The fancy of a truant dream.

Nature, to thee scarce human yet!
The winter in her rear,
Where on the soul the ice must set
So hard that it will bear!
Where, as the ploughed-up flood congeals
A gelid wind its slumber seals.

Unlike thy days, lascivious Spring,
That give the bud its scope;
That suns, and showers, and rainbows bring,
But not as once to hope.
Season of many springs in one
That seemed eternal, and was gone.

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EPODE.

Let man through every stage of being wend,
Like empty barges down the river's slope,
Untimely must his tour of pleasure end—
With rock and shoal alternately to cope.

Deem life a battle-field as pampas gay,
Whose hues break lances with the laughing sun:
A game of chess which god and demon play,
To both of lucky moves an equal run.

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XXII. ON PASSION.

O favoured man, with glance above,
To thee the heavens are bared;
They hold an atmosphere of love
By every being shared.
Then is he poor, is he alone
To whom all heaven is nude?
He lives within a holy zone,
Though else a solitude.

Friends whom one half the globe divides,
With seas upon its face,
Feel what a balm between them glides
To warm the old embrace.
Their newer griefs they still compare;
Mourn for each other's sake;
Borne down with burdens of self-care,
Each other's load partake.

But love thus pure scarce feels its might
The tempest to engage:
An ocean's roll, a meteor's flight,
The passion in its rage.

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Turn to the rapture of the sun,
And read the lover's dream:
There has the orb in heaven begun
To wear a redder beam.

A torrid orb is on its way,
And, kindled in its glow,
Two souls burst into mutual day;
Each other's passion know.
Fear holds them back, enchanted fear;
Invisible its arm.
A soft impulsion draws them near,
But impotent its charm.

In sorrow's melancholy stare
A fever slowly burns,
The eye emits a poisonous glare,
Its gaze to phrensy turns.
Meantime what clinging hopes sustain
The lashing of the tides,
And in their tender shells remain
Unhurt till it subsides!

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EPODE.

And is not love a boon to all alike,
Be it of stranger or of kith and kin?
When fail the clinging roots to burst and strike
Or draw the nurture to the heart within?

Though man desert, though want the exile face,
Some tender spirit stands in stead between;
In times of worst disaster and disgrace
There is a nest yet warm where love has been.

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XXIII. ON THE NUPTIALS.

Thrice-happy, now, in silken cords
The flowing knot is tied:
A promise in the dream of words
By scripture sanctified,
The lovers in each other's sight
Feel not as yet the cord drawn tight.

All hearts have burst their icy shell
And cast it like a skin,
To revel in affection's spell
And feel to love akin.
Though not for them the torch was brought,
The flame of love a thaw has wrought.

Not to return, that day has shone
A lifetime to bestow:
Yet how unlike to pleasures gone
Its yearly ebb and flow!
Balm for all ills that day should prove:
Keep then the wedding gift of love!

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EPODE.

The great intent, the beautiful decree
A woman's love, is law divine to thee,
To rule perhaps while wistful eyes express
In full intensity the first caress.
But let the bloom of youth be brushed aside
And slower lips the languid passion guide,
Can she the charm that once encircled her
With power, to fickle man still minister?

210

XXIV. ON THE SIREN.

Her voice, so clear, in measured time
Still pours its touching thrill,
Joy of her childhood to her prime
To modulate its trill.

The song-bird warbles to its mate
At early burst of spring;
In changeful tune and gurgling prate
The loving couples sing.

But she whose trembling note so long
Has echoed love's refrain,
Is moved by no responsive song
That mingles in the strain.

Yet when her warble fills the air
All hearts its keeping crave,
And all like song-birds with her pair
To float on rapture's wave.

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Silence returns not as before,
The echo is not laid;
The melody that speaks no more
Within the heart has stay'd.

Oh, not in vain her days have sped,
Sweet sounds around them throng,
For she to harmony is wed,
And lives in endless song.

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XXV. ON THE IMAGE.

Once she was seen, and now is seen no more;
Once was she found, and now is ever lost;
Her beauty known not since, and not before;
Of all loved forms her image loved the most.

Where is she now? her image tarries here:
Can two so like, so good, not meet again?
Is one of earth, one of a higher sphere?
A moment one, and then for ever twain?

Now in conjunction's ever-sweet delight,
Her beauty vanishing her image left,
One ever moving from the other's sight;
So happy one, the other so bereft.

She lives, her image else had also slept.
But is death catching, save as sad and lone?
Alive by her the image was not kept,
And dead the image is not with her gone.

213

EPODE.

All women are alike, though not in type:
All taste the same, at divers seasons ripe.
A first affection, though on record kept,
Falls out of date, is set aside unwept.
No leisure for remorse, the pang postponed,
The unkind parting felt but unatoned.
To this account some penance still is laid,
A debt that to the close is never paid.

A second love this sacrifice requires:
The first to bury ere it quite expires.
A hundredfold the gain for every loss
Should you once more the witches' circle cross.
Still smiles usurp the seat of the caress
And issue invitations to the lip;
Still sapid fruits each other's dimples press,
And courtly flowers each other's nectar sip.

214

XXVI. ON THE INFANT AT THE BREAST.

Dot of humanity, thy rosy cheek
Tints with its flush the breast to which it clings;
Thy lips by industry a living seek,
And pick up drink at virtue's famous springs.

Nature the store provided for thy gain,
It else within the frothy well had soured;
Then still thy mother of her goods distrain,
By thee the font be looted and devoured.

It will convey no poison to thy mind,
It is thy booty won in honest strife;
No ratsbane with it shall a passage find,
Churn it between thy lips, it saves thy life.

215

XXVII. ON THE WIDOW.

O widow-woman, mourn the dead
Whom still your homestead needs,
Be crimped the muslin on your head,
And watered be your weeds.

All else, not only he, is gone;
Your life lay in his wake.
All will return, though one by one,
For old acquaintance sake.

A babe its thoughtless prattle brings,
Nor can it come amiss;
A child to every finger clings
And asks of you a kiss.

Smile at the little ones who say
Is father coming back?
Explain his death another day,
And take another tack.

216

Ere then how little did you know
What meant this pilgrimage!
Then own it vain the way to show
To those of tender age.

All will return, though not apace,
And God among the rest;
He can supply the husband's place,
The widow-woman's Guest.

The thoughts of the departed one
As models still are rife,
And bid you act as he had done
Ere he gave up his life.

Then all he did was not in vain
Should you its purpose find;
The words he used will do again
To speak your inner mind.

EPODE.

The orphans claim her; if a younger dame
She might in time have shared another name.
The world is careless where no harm can come,
But it is partial to the widow's home.
It finds the boy the means to use his head,
And shows the girl how best to earn her bread.

217

XXVIII. ON PITY.

From whose estate does pity flow?
That ever-winding stream,
Too gentle for the scenes below,
And yet not all a dream!

Though of its healing dew deprived
The thorny wild grows rank,
The broken reed is soon revived
That stands upon its bank.

Is it a spring of human love,
Its way by sorrow worn,
Or flows its bounty from above
To succour the forlorn?

218

XXIX. ON THE BEREAVED.

STROPHE.

Why was this blooming spray entwin'd
In fresh festoons of grace,
Around this inmost heart to wind
And all its love embrace?
O that upon my troubled head
Had come this mighty blow
That numbers her among the dead,
Thou Author of my woe!

ANTISTROPHE.

Link not another's fate to thine
Beyond the hour allowed,
Nor in thy troubled heart repine
Though low by sorrow bowed:
Look only in thy chamber lone
To emulate the grace
That led her to the heavenly throne,
The spirit's trysting-place.

219

STROPHE.

O that my loaded heart had sunk
At anchor on her breast;
That both the glacial stream had drunk
At Nature's poisoned feast;
That both the horn of bitterness
Had tasted to the lee,
In icy rapture's last caress
At liberty to flee!

ANTISTROPHE.

Vain man, thy fate to thus upbraid,
Can it be less than just?
What if thus low thou hadst been laid
And numbered with the dust!
Hadst thou been fit to take thy place
Before the judgment-seat,
Who thus devoid of heavenly grace
These ravings canst repeat?

STROPHE.

O that my body had been cast
Into the common grave;
Thee, O my soul, thy trial past,
I had not cared to save!

220

Can it be justice thus to rend
The ties of holy love;
Can I to this affliction bend,
And the harsh will approve?

ANTISTROPHE.

She was in heaven before she died,
Confess it in thy love.
She in her parting anguish cried:
I am with Him above!
Then, over her a look of grace
Stole like a ray of light;
A shadow only crossed thy face,
Succeeding like the night.

STROPHE.

Was it the will Divine to see
Her image in the child?
If thus fulfilled be his decree,
My soul be reconciled!
It was ordained for her to give
An infant being breath,
To wait and see the helpless live,
Then sink away in death!

221

ANTISTROPHE.

Few shun in life a rapid rise,
An empty rank to gain;
A vacant place in paradise
She suffered to obtain!
Thence keeps she watch on this abyss,
And guards thee with a shield,
Whilst thou art raving at the bliss
It was not thine to yield.

STROPHE.

O Mother Earth, be desolate,
All teeming Nature fail,
And hear the orphan's voice narrate
A father's bitter wail.
To tell, perchance, how the bereaved
Were taught to bear their lot;
The heart grief-stricken not aggrieved;
The lone deserted not!

ANTISTROPHE.

In bloody concert fools engage,
And struggle hand to hand;
But thou a sadder war shalt wage
On this unholy strand.

222

Then on the grave thy gauntlet cast;
With threats thy Maker greet;
And perish in the trumpet's blast,
Thy loved no more to meet!

STROPHE.

To take her in my arms and rise
To scenes of heavenly peace;
To be with her in paradise
Where human sorrows cease.
To meet my Maker face to face;
His holy service hear;
And at the fountain of His grace,
To wash away the tear.

EPODE.

What Heaven has planned, her means have blessed,
Herself takes charge of the distressed;
She for their trial earth began,
Where tribulation is for man.
She, more than all, a mourner loves,
For broken heart her pity moves.
He who best bears affliction's blow
Shall more and more the giver know,
To her resigned his tears shall cease,
And Nature envy him his peace.

223

XXX. ON EARLY DEATH.

Age takes its turn to quit the ground;
Its life no further gain:
But why are little children found
To throng the funeral train?
Love they the company of years,
Unmindful of their parents' tears?

Behold their tiny coffins set
Alongside in the tomb,
As if like twins again they met
Within a mother's womb.
Bears holiness such scanty fruit
As thus midst sucklings to recruit?

Chilled by the winter's nipping snow
The rose has cast its flower,
And buds that shoot too late to blow
Drop with it from the bower.

224

The starving earth denies a home
To orphans of the world to come.

EPODE.

Some deem it best the young should early die,
They travel, then, but in advance of fate:
They run away from schools of misery,
And holidays in heaven anticipate.

225

XXXI. ON THE DESERTED.

O lovely base-born, earthly child,
Drop of the olden blood,
Whose glorious soul the virtues wild
And heathen graces flood;
From the bright roll of Honour's name
No sponsors brave the font to bear thy shame.

O lovely base-born, heavenly girl
Whose mimic arts the dance inspire,
To be its sad melodious whirl,
And prompter of its lyre;
Thy feet are holy, not astray;
The world their path, but heaven their way.

O lovely base-born, saintly maid
Whose voice calls up the sudden tear;
On all alike that penance laid,
For sanctity is near;
Thy song is sacred as thy love,
Its pathway to the choir above.

226

O lovely base-born, lowly one,
Thy kin in court and camp abide;
Thou trudgest through the earth alone,
No trappings and no tramp of pride.
They speak in whispers of thy fame,
For it brings blushes on their name.

O lovely base-born, chosen saint,
Death looks out naked from thine eyes!
They send thee wine now thou art faint;
They send thee bread that with thee dies.
Thy parted lips in pardon move;
Thy soul departs in perfect love.

Hark! the glad shout, and mighty crush;
How angels cheering come!
Through miles of holy land they rush
To bid thee welcome home!
They snatch thee up, in rapture wild
They kiss, they kiss the heavenly child!

227

XXXII. ON DISSIPATED YOUTH.

O Time, to whom the sands a temple raise
To sink as fast as they build up the spire,
The matin and the vesper tell thy praise,
Thou who dost bless all rational desire.

The wise adore thy chimes, the quarter's din,
A melody that to the conscience pleads;
That moves an echo in the ears of sin,
And warns it of the gulf to which it leads.

Earth goes on slowly through the sacred way;
With steps exact it gains the purposed end:
Man stakes eternity to win a day,
Soon to a heavier weight than life to bend.

The young are hastened from their brightest days
To scenes beyond their puny powers to scan,
And led to revel in dead pleasure's ways
That ill befit the riper years of man.

Too soon pale youth plays less than childhood's part:
He scarce can to the bed of sickness creep,
Thence early doomed to take his final start
And poise no more his blooming limbs in sleep.

228

The heir-presumptive to eternal grace
Has not an hour of mercy at his claim,
Too late a single mortgage to efface.
Yet tell not youth that death is taking aim!

The dying look, a spectacle sublime,
Is still on health restored and pleasure bent.
Shall he not live and mourn thy loss, O Time?
The sands descend, the vail in twain is rent.

EPODE.

Why not in simple terms describe the school
Where tutors strive to stultify the fool,
To train the germs of self-conceit in grace,
To polish up the faults but none efface;
To foster mockery in place of wit;
To teach false judgment on the world to sit?
Take him to court, give him his golden lace,
His noble birth in all his follies trace;
Take him to church the common prayer to say
And with a lisp the nearest beauty slay;
Then the last supper let him undergo,
Since it is meet to do as others do:
Thence into orgies he shall fondly glide,
And through the sot attain the suicide.

229

XXXIII. ON CONSCIENCE.

Harsh is the crown thy brow around,
Thou hapless beggar's child!
Why is thy head with prickles bound?
To make thy name revil'd?
Thy voice shall whisper why in vain,
So feeble is its force:
Can stony heart its beat regain
And melt into remorse?

Pass on, poor child; for thy name's sake
Leave this infected place,
Lest soon thy peace of mind partake
The qualms it would efface.
Nor in the crowd attempt a breach,
Though more than warrior bold;
But to the babe thy lessons teach
Before it is too old.

230

XXXIV. ON SLUMBER.

The lamp goes out, the eyelids close:
Are angels then at hand
To guard the spirit in repose,
And at the pillow stand;
With curtained wing the watch to keep,
And cast a shadow over sleep?

Is thence the wicked one less bold
Who seeks his prey by night?
His eyes, to love and pity cold,
Fear they the angels' light?

The peace of conscience, with its smile,
Works it on man a charm
To keep the spirit safe from wile,
But not the soul from harm?
To hold the sleep in their embrace,
Is this the guardian angel's grace?

231

XXXV. ON THE PILLOW OF THE WRETCHED.

Weary of life, in mind deprest,
The eyelids droop but crave in vain;
The thinking part denies them rest,
For it must cling to pain.
The griefs of old as waters come
That gather in a brook;
The thinking part has there no home,
By every ripple shook.
How like a dream! and yet no sleep
Assigns to it a resting-place;
It has a course that it must keep:
The pillow shares the race.

EPODE.

The wide affections which a world assail,
Not man's vocation be it to bewail!
Weep for a sister, for a brother grieve,
A child bemoan, for time is a reprieve.

232

Regret a neighbour even as a friend,
In silence mourn a parent to the end.
Lament a benefactor, oft deplore
The early friend whom thou canst see no more.
But, though the losses quickly may betide,
Be prompt the mental conflict to decide.
Divert the thoughts into a lively strain;
To dwell too long on trouble turns the brain.

233

XXXVI. ON A MOTHER.

The soul must not repine!
Not when a parent, perhaps the last
In old affection's line
Shall bear away the past?
She who once left us not a day,
And now is loth to close her sight
On those who yet may stay
To fill the void with sorrow day and night?

The eye no more shall weep!
Not for a mother, though she wept
Beside us in our sleep,
And ghostly vigil kept
When Sickness in pale garments lay
Upon the pillow at our head
To mark her quiet way
Between us and the dead?

Not shed a tear to soothe the brain,
Not yield the heavy sob?
The inward agony restrain,
Despite the bursting throb?

234

Her dear and silent lips not press,
Not kneel by her again;
Not utter in our last distress
A prayer that she remain?

Let then the wounded spirit heal
Ere it has time to smart;
Let law the memory repeal
When those we love depart;
Then may the heart its load defy,
And with no muffled beat
Strike up the note of victory
At Nature's great defeat.

EPODE.

Whether the son be doomed to stay
A mother's parting words to hear,
Or by unlooked-for, sad delay
She stops his obsequies to bear;
The mourner yet to themes shall wake
In which no sorrow need partake.

Nature confirms in all the right
To dissipate the cloudy past,
Lest when a blossom falls its blight
The ills of death on others cast.
Not all is lost while power divine
Allows the day again to shine.

235

From human depths must suffering rise,
Till it a burnt-out ember leave,
Then shall its former peace surprise
The home where old affections cleave:
Then sleep the reddened eyes shall bind,
And force the tears to lag behind.

So love itself, not lost to thought,
Its clinging is constrained to cease,
And, not through vain repinings sought,
Is with the past ere long at peace.
Then with the dead, in memory blest,
The heart shall be at perfect rest.

EPODE.

How beautiful is laughter's ring,
It is the spirit's bell;
The siren's witching strain can bring
No such ecstatic swell,
The harp's delirious cord can fling
No such assuring spell.
Let not the ears to sorrow cling
The spirit's single knell;
Let not the hands each other wring
To bid the long farewell.

236

XXXVII. ON THE OUTCAST.

O misery, whose sorry way
All steps must tread at last,
Thy part alone how many play,
With thee their portion cast:
From morn to night on the check-mated board
Theirs the lost game, its teachings theirs to hoard.

And well may such the doubt address
Why they were put to life for only pain,
Their infant features modelled to express
What others act for gain!
But, pledged the pleasant world and all its charms,
No place to them remained except thy arms.

The refuse of the sunny breeze
Thou gatherest for thy poor;
The cutting hail in gusts that freeze
Their limbs outside the door.
Heaven's roof lets in the rain and wind,
Where then can they a shelter find?

237

Ask Heaven to bid the famine cease,
With plenty at her beck;
Ask her to lend a hand to ease
The millstone round the neck;
Relentless, she no help to such can tend
Whose shaking limbs in worship never bend!

They laugh, but penury the more
Is on their pointed cheek;
They sleep, and golden visions score:
The windfalls of the weak.
They, waking, clutch them in their hold,
But with the dream departs the gold.

Their sleep the riot of the dead
Whose sins deny them rest;
A world with terror overspread,
The soul by hell-hounds prest,
The wave of dream heaves up and down,
The floating sense in lava-floods to drown.

Now to the rotten, herbless bank
They drift and strike the shoal;
The stream is thick, the sedge is lank;
It is the common goal.
All thence afresh their start shall take
To run for the eternal stake.

238

EPODE.

The city of the poor, by fancy built,
Stands on the mind that such a scene unfolds:
Though growing wealth draws poverty and guilt,
Suffering so massed no faithful eye beholds.
To labour is a right, to beg a wrong;
They both are freely at the choice of all;
The sick and lame to their own mansions throng;
The public purse is open to their call.

239

XXXVIII. ON CHARITY.

Charity, thou whose maiden name
Was never changed for mortal love,
Now as of old who art the same,
To sorrow's home the holy dove;
Is all thy beauty dim and worn,
Veiled since the hour when woe was born?

Charity, who with unshut ear
Hast tended at the cripple's door,
Thou art content to ask and bear
The one-toned story of the poor!
Still the same tale, so often told,
Creeps to thy bosom from the cold.

Art thou perchance the long-lost star
Not fallen but immortal still,
Which missed and mourned by all afar
Art here with souls who suffer ill?
Charity, hast thou left yon sphere
To do the work of pity here?

240

EPODE.

What, murmur still and still devoutly strain
The feeling element from pain to pain?
If charity began at home, how few
Were called upon its tributes to renew!

241

XXXIX. ON THE SAINT.

Saint, now in paths of light,
Let drop awhile thy newly grafted wings,
And, in the dead of night,
Devote a leisure hour to earthly things;
Bear witness, once, how ill thy fellows thrive
In haunts thou didst not visit when alive.

Champions to hunger trained, these scenes engage;
The boards unlicensed, unapproved the play:
One look of sorrow on the blackened stage
Would break upon it like the invading day,
Would show to thee how low is laid the plot,
And from what depths is tragedy begot!

Invest with memory the lyric verse
Whose accents stun the air;
The menace and the look rehearse;
And laugh the loud despair!
Fail not the thought and gesture to acquire,
Then light up heaven itself with tragic fire!

242

Yes, on thy way to bliss,
Mimic these graceless acts before the blessed:
Repeat the howl of hunger, and the hiss;
Perform a benefit for the distressed!
Then shall kind eyes be turned to earth below,
And, on the wretched, looks like thine bestow.

EPODE.

Is pity all in all; whose then the hand
That speeds its almoners by sea and land?

243

XL. ON THE SISTER OF MERCY.

Of those whose turn comes round to weep
Shall Pity shed the tear;
The drip puts weary grief to sleep
Though no relief be near.

The kindred soul of thoughtless days,
To pleasure only known,
The word of sympathy delays
For sorrow not its own.

But she a stranger at the gate
Where none besides attend,
Asks leave to see the desolate
And enters as a friend.

244

XLI. ON THE STATESMAN.

Ruler of men, for whom the place
Of forethought was devised,
Thy noble destiny embrace,
For honour thou hast prized!
Thou, thy loved country's willing hack,
Wouldst lift this earthly dome!
The world itself is on thy back,
The weight of every home.

Thy share of life is not its joys;
Thou dreadest their excess:
Thine is a task which half alloys
The round of happiness.
Thy presence is the Future's page;
Between our hour and thine
The world has run another stage,
To prosper or decline.

Yet from the annals of the dead
Are thy forewarnings brought;
Historic lore is daily bread
To thy prophetic thought.

245

The else neglected paths maintained
By signals on the road,
The gateway to thy rest is gained
Under the heavy load.
Thus travelling sweetly to thy sleep,
As once to study's grove,
Dreams not untrue thy senses steep
In man's immortal love.

EPODE.

'Tis thus the young draw profit from the old:
Their works inherit, mines of wealth untold!

246

XLII. ON OLD AGE.

The young despise the old;
To them wise saws are as a musty book;
A wisdom dead and cold,
A marble urn and nook.

The old despise the dead
Whose fading memory they put away,
Among the tomes shelved never to be read,
Up to the dying day.

The old, do they despise
The last view through the avenue of strife;
The setting to the rise;
The backward view of life?

EPODE.

The natural laws are sworn upon the sun;
The lips that spoke them kissed the sacred orb;
But man's long story only has a run
That nobler fictions may its thread absorb.

247

XLIII. ON PENITENCE.

If second sight could look askance
And with the morrow chime,
If second thought could steal a glance
Into the book of time,
Thou, O repentance, second pain,
Hadst lived not hourly to complain.

Repentance more than second pain,
So many times recast;
Corrected and revised again,
The last time not the last!
So would the feeble will of man
Its thread resume where life began.

O vain regret, the yester-pang
That festers in the mind;
The rankling and envenomed fang
That envy leaves behind;
Seek not the days for ever gone;
Recal not deeds to be undone!

248

For thee, vexed soul, by early fate
The fond regret was meant,
To warn the conscience, when too late,
Its errors to repent.
Then stay the wheel, insert the spoke,
The project of the past revoke!

O after thought, with siren's voice
The conscience cease to fret,
Whispering to it thy second choice,
Step-mother of regret!
She, O how well we know is nigh
Who pastures on the human sigh!

Repentance, second pain, what hour
Escapes thy web of grief,
What sense of fate eludes thy pow'r,
Though firm in its belief?
By thee the scarry soul is rent,
And life through life made penitent.

Had we not done what we had done,
The crown had been attained;
Had we but pleasure let alone
The glory had been gained!
So in the past the timepiece beats:
And what has struck, its strike repeats.

249

No shade its fostering light can blind
While summer yet is here,
But dark the desert is behind;
Another hemisphere;
A side apart for penance set
To dwell on thee, O vain regret.

250

XLIV. ON MADNESS.

Now, torch of reason, dark and fierce thy fire!
Thy ruby flambeau thickens in the sight;
An angel wields it in his touching ire,
And drops its molten tears along his light.
In no disguise he puts on horror's shape,
And like the moon he rises in the night
Beyond the sun's asylum to escape;
While birds of prey are silenced in his flight;
Courier too dread their instincts to mislead,
He who pursues a spirit to the dead.

Is she of woman who in gentler moods
Now melancholy saps for past excess?
Is she of man, who tiger-like now broods,
And is a mourner at her own distress?
For vain it is that drooping head to cheer,
That cheek of dull affection to caress.
There hangs upon the eye a sullen fear
Which proffered love not only fails to bless,
But wakes the dreadful look that seeks to know
Why heaven is sinking into depths below!

251

Behold a second angel true to all,
Welcome to her, the harbinger of change!
He comes the clouds of anger to recal;
The wondering sense from madness to estrange.
O lest the blinking sun its curtain drop,
And the bright interval once more derange,
The refluent reason and affection stop!
For death the dregs of memory exchange,
That she the house of mockery may spurn,
And in a lucid hour to God return.

252

XLV. ON DESPAIR.

The moon is up, a haze is in the air,
Dull looks the way to all beyond the spot;
No eye can scale the mist to regions fair,
Though oft beyond has flight of fancy shot.
The mind is up, but hazy is the brain;
Its choked-up passion lingers at its source,
Hope stretches out her wings with obvious pain,
And knows scarce whither to direct her course.
The sun, the vaulting stars, are wondrous bright,
But not the path of mortals to disclose;
The spirit strives to rush into the light,
But feels the tomb its burden interpose.

253

XLVI. ON THE STRUGGLE FOR IMMORTALITY.

Perturbed, storm-ridden Uranus! how far
Art thou from those who look to thee for rest,
And in the track of elemental war
Would trench the heavens thy stronghold to invest!
Though many try, not facile is the task;
Slow the progression to the good they ask.

The wish and thought, man's double star, allured
Into a common circle rise and fall,
To glory's clime and trial not inured;
Yet would they take the one deep plunge of all!
To spirits orbit-bound, hard is the way
Through gusty shadows to the unknown day.

EPODE.

Faith walks by night, she, safest guide of all,
The great somnambulist, can never fall!
She dreams her way, and constant in her rise
Wakes up to find herself in paradise.

254

XLVII. ON MAN.

What is the earth to thee, thy heaven of yore,
Poor vessel of its breath?
It can sustain thy soul no more,
And gives thee up to death.
Undying youth the lot that Nature drew,
Be thou content her beauty to renew.

Earth still may be thy hiding-place,
To have and hold in peace;
Thou mayst complete the tour of space,
Though thy frail being cease.
The ages but await their own;
Thou to their dawn shalt be a thing unknown.

Yes, beauteous, ever fair is Nature's fate;
Untutored and uncurbed is her controul;
She bids thee be the witness of her state,
And sops thy wondering spirit in her soul;
She sports with thee in the competing game,
To be in turn her glory and her shame.

255

She loves in thy discourse to laugh and weep,
In all she prompts an equal part to bear,
Thy fasts and festivals alike to keep
To speed an old, to greet a coming year.
True to the moment, false to all beyond
Her pledge she only gives to break the bond.

Beware her winning ways, resistless wiles;
She charms the heart that it may better yield:
She who can mourn the dead while she enfiles
The youth of nations on the bloody field!
She sets a crown upon the victor's head,
While vultures scream the service of the dead.

Repel her when with thine her counsel chimes;
Heaven for a nobler destiny beseech;
Be armed religion-wise against her crimes
Taught thee in whispers sweet as woman's speech.
Be not in hands like hers the feeble sport:
She grants no passports to a higher court.

256

XLVIII. ON FATE.

One moving power the world pervades,
To good and evil blind:
It elevates and it degrades
Its shadow called the mind.
A hidden power, that now impels
The martyr to his crown,
Now in the base assassin dwells
To strike his brother down.

Fate who alone this system plann'd
Has yet herself outbid:
Unconscious her all-mighty hand
In which the power she hid.
To selfless glory ever tends
Her impulse to create,
While in her likeness man ascends
To consciousness of fate.

Owl-like midst highest destinies
Is she seen far away,
With film before her stony eyes
Which nictates night and day:

257

A film so dense, that it conceals
All deity behind.
She nothing to herself reveals;
Her love and justice blind.

Her realms man looks on in her stead,
But in the bold survise
His vision forfeits to the dead:
A self-borne sacrifice.

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XLIX. ON DESPOTISM.

Not those who thirst can drink the despot's blood;
Too many crave, 'twere little to divide.
His days are numbered for some secret good;
Their term can Providence alone decide.
At her own time, and free of our controul,
She from the body shall pluck out the soul.

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L. ON PRIDE.

Say not all pride is false! the most beloved
Are those who scorn their spirit to repress,
Their hearts not less by kindred pity moved
Amid the world's distress.

Perchance the knave may cross his way
With canting, easy prate;
May not the proud keep him at bay,
Nor care how much he hate?

Pride is a shield by wisdom's hand
With social law engraved;
With emblems ever pure and grand
From elder epochs saved.

Pride is a shield of whose defence
All virtue claims the right;
Pride is a shield without pretence
For all who nobly fight:

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The honoured who resist the lie,
And turn it from their door;
The strong who for the weaker die;
The rich who serve the poor.

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LI. ON THE PRISONER.

O prisoner in thy cell,
Thy roving meditations yet uncurbed,
Why, like a saint in hell,
Is thy lone soul perturbed?
Hast thou been wronged by all outside thy grate?
Why care they not,
But stand below the arch to laugh and prate;
Thyself by all forgot.

O prisoner, law be thine;
And it can hang or set thy virtue free.
Then why repine?
Heed not the chances, all abandon thee.
O prisoner, in thy cell,
Cease thus to commune with thyself alone;
Thou art a saint in hell;
Thou art some holy one!

Mind not thy virtue, it may be;
But mount the scaffold nobly, look above;
Thus set thy virtue free,
And give thy carcass up to human love.

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LII. ON REMORSE.

Unholy ghost, in thee remorse
Acts leisurely its part;
By steady unremitting force
It makes thee what thou art.
The coil of life shall it unwind,
The days it has to last;
Let loose the torments of the mind,
And bind them to the past.
The hour of death, the hour of doom,
These from thy presence flit;
No morrow's thought can break the gloom
Where sharp remorse has bit.

Shallow the crime thy heart decreed,
And easy to embark;
But to thy eyes, that saw the deed,
Inscrutable and dark.

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Thy hand, which set the blood to flow,
Did not a moment wince:
Thy hand which aimed the cruel blow
Has struck it ever since.
Thy soul no novel pang can brand;
No other threads thy sight:
Scarce hell itself is seen at hand
A passage to invite.

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LIII. ON HYPOCRISY.

Emblem of guilt, ensconced within
The margin of thy crimes,
Who thy memorial, steeped in sin,
Hast spelled a thousand times;
Who when the last dark line is read
Beginn'st the page again;
Who, still, when the last pang hath sped,
Art on the track of pain;
Behind those laboured looks of good
A clouded conscience hides,
Though it besmears the hands with blood
That dangle at thy sides!
Although the crime on conscience press,
To this thou are inured;
But sore the brand of guiltlessness,
Henceforth to be endured!
Hast thou no service for thy voice
Except the truth to spurn;
Is there no being of thy choice
On whom thy heart to turn?

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The self-preached sermon of the cell
Has voices still and clear;
Canst thou not force the horrid spell,
And trust another ear?
Truth is the vizor of the good;
And scorching to thy sight;
Why dost thou wear its polished hood,
And brave its racking blight?

EPODE.

In prison, Church and State go hand in hand;
Chaplains for truth, and advocates for lies:
These cleanse the sinner, these the sinner brand,
So lost between the two the captive dies.

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LIV. ON THE MASK.

Here temples cheer the solitude,
There overlap the haunts of weal;
Here are the tenants wild and rude,
There in the ermine of their zeal.
Yet join thou in the stirring rite,
Nor mark the saintly hypocrite.

Wouldst thou condemn his mellow face
Or sort the hidden signs within,
And not discern a mark of grace
Among the spots upon his skin?
Is such a form of worship done
To meet the eye of man alone?

Pious thyself, and so he deems,
Approve another's saintly make;
All that thou seem'st to be he seems;
Applaud him for thy honour's sake.
His hood thy mask, his mask thy hood,
Ye are the same in flesh and blood.

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LV. ON SELF-RIGHTEOUSNESS.

Who shuffles, cuts, and deals the cards of grace,
Who plays at faith, hope, charity, to win?
Who, not of poor and self-debasing race,
Sits at the ladder's summit safe from sin?
How comes it he forgets the rule of Three;
Counts not its losses, and its winnings grave,
The holy, blessed, and glorious Trinity!
To play with it is not the soul to save.
What if with him a game of chance it play,
And shape its rule by what the Scriptures say?

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LVI. ON CUNNING.

Pray on, poor idiot, preach thy bill of fare,
With gaping mouth and hollow moan!
Thine eyes have cunning in their stare;
Thy voice the beggar's groan.
Can it be true that grace divine
Sits on a soul so false as thine?

For, idiot, in thy grace attired,
Thy features speak it not,
As if, with all thou hadst acquired,
Thy visage were forgot.
Eyes with a stealth that wins a bet,
Lips to a form of worship set.

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LVII. ON BELIEF.

O reasonable soul, thy range
Else checked by bounds of clay,
Who but desires his place to change
For some celestial way?
Say in what hopes, what fears to die;
What unction to receive:
Faith, poor must be thy ministry,
To think what men believe!

The classic regions sink below,
There heroes meet again
In lofty pride and converse slow;
A hell devoid of pain.
In paradise by genius scored
Upon the starry chart,
The intellect is still adored,
And art still worships art.

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Between two worlds, the last but one,
Of hell and heaven the mean,
The leper's soul is kept alone
Till he for heaven is clean.
The grave forgot, that home of old
Nor front nor aft a door;
The velvet turf by ages roll'd;
The garden of the poor!

EPODE.

Mind not the ancients, they are dead at best,
Be it beneath us, midway, or above;
Mind not the moderns, such as are at rest;
But give the living races all the love.

Turn to the heathen with a softening care;
Call him to join the small and chosen sect;
His soul for more than common news prepare;
Mid lurid warnings name him thy elect.

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LVIII. ON THE DEATH-BED OF THE WISE.

Respect the death-bed of the wise,
Count not their coming end, in quiet past,
The prelude to a sad surprise,
The soul in torments cast.

Thou art a saint as often told
From thy dear lips; and thou art sure
The crown of holiness to hold;
The birthright of the pure.

Yet deem not those who see outside
The limits of thy sphere,
Unfit thy profits to divide
In heaven, as well as here.

If all their work be sin, forgive;
They toiled for thy estate;
They smoothed the way for thee to live;
Such was their happy fate.

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Long since with Heaven they signed a peace:
The treaty neither broke;
Nor shall its obligations cease,
For neither can revoke.

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LIX. ON THE PHILOSOPHER.

Thou genius of the stars whose glass
Points to the fields on high,
To gauge the glories as they pass,
Remote, yet looking nigh;
Know'st thou that living thus in light,
Thy way is dark, thy soul is night?

The gleams of thy arched palace throw
A shadow in thy way;
Gleams that from a Creator flow,
Yet blind thee to his day.
Philosophy, though born above,
Curdles the milky-way of love.

O genius, sin no more, but pray;
A whirlwind marks thy place,
The stars to scatter in dismay,
And hurl thee into space.
Not thus thy thirst for lore assuage:
Is it not sin the heavens to gauge?

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LX. ON DELIRIUM.

Before thy time is up, by warnings scared,
Worse than the landlord's call to quit or pay,
Thou, puzzled soul, shouldst hold thyself prepared
To leave the body; soon is judgment-day.

Not yet immortal, as from mortal clove,
Be like the virgin wise with lamp in hand;
Put on thy lightest garment for thy move,
Thy passport ready for a better land.

Life is a dream, be death no less a dream;
'Tis meet that thou who seek'st a better sort
Shouldst flash thy magic lantern up the stream,
And with the slides of paradise disport.

The spirits give thee concerts in the air;
Lute-strings and voices mimic rapture's strain!
Though not a sound and not a figure fair
May be outside the circle of thy brain.

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Yet to thy vision those translucid arms
And loving chords invite, they bid thee come.
Before, not harmony's united charms
Could run thee up the gamut to thy home.

The pallid cloud, a cumulus divine,
Draws on thy footrise to its step of gold;
To other eyes it may or may not shine;
To thee its signs of bliss are manifold.

And though a mild delirium only wakes
This blest finale of a rental day,
O what a happy turn thy phrensy takes
For thee, poor soul, ejected from the clay.

Life is no truer dream, then shall not death
The dream of dreams ascend its leaden sky?
It has a strange reality beneath,
Has it above no like reality?

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LXI. ON THE CLOSE OF LIFE.

Be it the world as many deem
Should founder in the past,
Or, as to many more may seem,
Is in a frame to last,
There is an hour that comes to all
When sun must cease to rise and fall.

The pulse of thought must stop its beat
At Nature's bright array,
The look of thought must cease to greet
The bursting of the day.
That evening fades or morning shines,
The glazing eye no more divines.

Whose the blank night that crowds the dome
When mortal strives for breath;
Whose the blank day which in that home
Lights up the face of death,
A day whose lovely sunrise wreaks
Its glory on the heart it breaks!

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EPODE.

O candid spirit who look'st on below
At human nature with a pitying love,
Unto all blame imparting sorrow's glow,
Which the shrill note that mocks thee cannot move;
Thy message is divine, its trembling voice
With thee inclines us longer to converse.
High-born, immortal being of our choice,
While with regret we gather to disperse,
Our ringing ears still listen to thy chant,
Its words escort us to one common bourn,
In us the long-enduring lesson plant,
And at thy coming silence bid us mourn.

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LXII. ON THE CHURCHYARD.

Old dormitory, last of parish bounds,
How men come sleeping here, with shutters closed,
To add a remnant to the other mounds,
Those cast-up sums, in line on line disposed.

On happy Sunday when the moving crowd,
To show thee flush of life, turns out of church,
Who but amid the old discerns a shroud,
As if the maw of death had made a lurch?

Wondrous thy threshold they can dare to cross,
Mined as it is, and into tunnels scraped;
Its every quake to human life a loss,
Its every step a spot where it has gaped.

Yet, such the confidence that use begets,
Men set their dwellings on volcanic soil,
Nor once a thought of death or danger frets,
Oft as the flames below their pyre uncoil.

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If there prevails in men a wholesome dread
To walk, however lightly, on the grave,
Lest it disturb the slumbers of the dead;
Far worse a danger to themselves why brave?

Why fail they to recal that every place
Is mined by busy worms at work beneath?
Though they be safe at the volcano's base,
Let all who tread the churchyard count on death.

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LXIII. ON THE TOMBS.

Here mother Earth sepultured lies,
Here with the buried sleeps.
But whence the crop of effigies
Which from her quarry creeps?

Turned into stone are the elect;
They muse beside the walk,
Like living orators erect;
But never more to talk.

The honoured name to memory dear
An epitaph reveals;
In more than mourner's heart could bear
The sharp-cut letter deals.

The yew-tree's sad deploring mass
Droops like surviving grief,
Whether it grows upon the grass,
Or on the bas-relief.

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LXIV. ON DEATH.

O spectre, waning form of man,
Frail image of his sleep;
Now stony is the nostril's span;
The spirit's ancient keep.

So too those cheeks of sallow hue,
Veined by the marble's dye;
So too those lips of pallid blue
That chime mortality.

On a dead sea recumbent lies
Thy figure, as a wave:
Afloat are now the open eyes,
Turned upward from the grave.

That one last look on heaven remains,
Her equal in its peace;
Not as of late when aches and pains
Were working thy decease.

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And now in terror lies thy skill,
All shrinking from thy sight;
The reptile's touch imparts a thrill
Less deadly in its blight.

No sympathy adorns thy face;
No horror of the tomb;
A stoic heart to thus erase
All knowledge of its doom.

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LXV. ON THE RESURGAM.

I shall arise in Thee, O God,
And claim Thee from the dust;
I shall arise and bless the sod
That proves Thee more than just!
What, O my soul, thou lonely one,
Refuse thy only friend,
Whose presence at thy birth had shone,
Who watched thee to thy end?
I shall arise and look for Thee,
O Saviour of the race!
What, O my soul refuse to be
A chosen heir of grace;
Thou who hadst else to dust returned
And famished in the tomb;
Thou whom the universe had spurned
Despite the Virgin's womb?

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I shall arise, and with my breath
The Holy Ghost receive!
What, O my soul, prefer thy death
To this divine reprieve?