Legends of the Morrow :: :: University of Virginia Library

Legends of the Morrow

By Thomas Gordon Hake

Hake, Thomas Gordon (1809-1895)

THE POET'S ALMS-HOUSE.

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THE ANGEL OF NATURE.

I

The year has reached that longest day
Which holds all space in summer's calm;
No leaf upon the laden spray
But shows to heaven its grateful palm;
No bloom upon the wayside bower
But bears the fulness of its flower.

II

Summers as calm have been before;
Myriads of times have come and gone:
What are they now but human lore?
This one is ours, our only one!
Be there a leaf no longer green,
'Tis from the days of what has been.

III

While comes up sunshine from the South
In its still path a Maiden walks,
Not voiceless with that budding mouth
Which to itself for Nature talks,—
Dumb souls unseen within her sing
Who with the air is murmuring.

IV

Upon her face so bathed in light
A love-joy and a sorrow twine:
How these in sweet accord unite
The girl herself doth not divine,
Nor why her eyes, so deeply sad,
Seem to the happy ever glad.

V

With songs that fire and fashion them,
Those eyes, oft perilous and pale,
Can flash, and like the opal-gem
Their many lights in one exhale.
The messenger of joy and sorrow,
She sings the Legends of the Morrow.

VI

Now mourns she with dishevelled hair
Where the mute cypress waves its charm;
Now dances at the village fair
With swaying neck and bended arm:
Unto all hearts is she akin;
She laughs, she grieves, though not within.

VII

On river, sea, and mountain-wood
To where the free horizon turns
She revels, and, in witching mood,
Steps o'er them to the farthest bourns;
Along her wayward path unknown
Whence she hath come or whither gone.

VIII

Where the moon's changing aspects break
Her face looks up, though not to think;
Rays fall on it, as on a lake,
Too buoyant through her soul to sink;
In their clear flood of witchery tossed,
Her dream unfelt; her meaning lost.

IX

No home hath she, all homes are hers:
Her wreathèd gifts she takes in twain;
To one her joy she ministers
To one her ecstasy of pain,
Or maybe drops them twined in one
Until their chequered use is done.

X

Where want has ground the earth to dust
And heart-ache settles on the cheek,
She offers not the needed crust
To feed the hungry and the weak;
Yet with a light of ripening fields
Her smile the thought of plenty yields.

XI

She walks the streets that maidens frail
Have trodden since the nights of old,
But wades not through the miry trail;
Her feet are clean as hidden gold,
They move as o'er the virgin snows:
Yet in her step all passion glows.

XII

The sun writes legends on the seed
As in a book: she stands among
The souls that turn the leaves and read
As she repeats the morrow's song:
But few who hear her legends feel
The dreaded meanings they reveal.

XIII

Some follow her with love-worn eyes,
Like those who look up at a star
That whispers them from unknown skies,
And gaze, adoring from afar;
But she no glance of love returns
Though at the full her passion burns.

XIV

She grieves not where the stony ground
Holds fragments of a fallen power,—
The humbled arch, the gathered mound,
The gateway to the vanished tower:
Though sunset flood with crimson tears
These wrecks of the unburied years.

XV

The lore-lorn from her promise turn,—
Their hope is not the morrow's calm:
Her thoughts perturb the broken urn
And seem the bones to disembalm:
She sifts the dust of days gone by;
Troubling the old eternity.

XVI

No art can with her presence vie!
She shudders o'er the mock cartoon:
The dome but not the changing sky;
The tree-like ghosts, the faded moon.
Breathe these, she asks, her dreamy skies
Her world, her earthly paradise?

XVII

She calls up Nature to our view,—
There the moon rises to its height
And fills a soul-reflecting blue
That deepens with the growth of light:
There stars are fire, and meteor-steams
Are channels for the morrow's dreams.

XVIII

True to herself through patient time,
On her none dare their safety stake:
False seems she almost to a crime,
Yet knew she all her heart would break,
And crave for its eternal sleep;
And shed the tears that mortals weep.

XIX

Then would she feel as poets feel
And never turn her love aside:
They know her and they still appeal
To their exalted virgin bride,
Who till the last her love denies
To the long yearning of their eyes.

XX

They join her in the hymn of morn,
And, 'mid the echoes of a past,
With her call on the day unborn
To come without a night at last,
To deepen from earth's shifting shoal,
Into a harbour for the soul.

XXI

From his dark den of alchemy
In vain shall mortal plot to rob
Her secret heart that beats so high,
That sends so far its mighty throb:
Even though it pulsate at his core
And send its living wave before.

XXII

She sings for one who cannot sing
Nor in her swelling chant rejoice;
She knoweth not the nameless thing
That Nature utters through her voice,
Though her song echo to the day
When she, with us, shall pass away.

XXIII

The worlds are trembling in her notes:
Suns, rampant, to her voice submit;
No hand can gather in their votes;
Their doom is in her volume writ;
She who her sacred message brings,
And Legends of the Morrow sings.

SABA.

I

Death saw the ring with eyes ice cold,
And clasped the wedded maid:
She felt his arms her heart enfold
And in his keeping stayed.
She breathed not and her eyes were dark;
But, while unsouled she lay,
The ring which tranced her left no mark,
So she passed not away.

II

'Twas at her bridal, when the ring
On Saba's finger slid:
The death-touch did it seem to bring
The pending bliss amid.
All dizzy, (not through inward glare
So blinding to a bride),
She fell upon the altar-stair,
And like a martyr died.

III

There was a calm upon her face;
The love seemed from it driven.
Was it the ring whose hard embrace
Had with her passion striven,

And, serpent-like, whose fang-drop gushed
And chilled her blood to ice,
And, serpent-like, whose coil had crushed
Her heart within its vice?

IV

All sojourn with the soul that dies
Till their one day of birth;
They rarely bring the mysteries
Of their old world to earth.
But Saba's land breathed frankincense
Whose balm can death delay;
So in her youth departing thence
Her soul came back to day.

V

She died amid her fields of myrrh
And incense-feeding spice;
So did her soul keep nigh to her
In its own paradise,
Whose balms unto her bosom crept,
Though breathless and unmoved;
Whose odours on her bosom slept
Though it no longer loved.

VI

All watch her till in dizzy haze
They seem to glide along,
Like those who, over-still, forth-gaze
Upon a moving throng.

So seemed the hours while trolling by
To make a sudden stay,
And death within eternity
To move another way.

VII

A form so still, it may be sleep
That neither lives nor dies;
So well doth she her secret keep
Who through her transit hies.
Her life and death in one same glance
Do all beholders see;
Her life and death in one same trance:—
Which shall the victor be?

VIII

What keeps her soul, low-hovering,
Of neither world a part?
They bid the bridegroom move the ring
That presses on her heart:
She breathes; they see her bosom stir;
She rises from the dead:
The spirit has returned to her,
Unshackled and unwed.

IX

As from the wonder of a trance
The bride looks out; so cold,
The bridegroom, even, dares not advance
As in the time of old:

Her gaze such deadly warning gives,
The colour leaves his cheek;
He looks, still doubting if she lives
Until he hears her speak.

X

He lists to her in more alarm;
His cheek grows paler still
As Saba lifts her sceptre-arm
And utters thus her will:
“At my return art thou afraid?
Death is our common lot:
Our past was but the world of shade
So soon by us forgot.

XI

“It is the country whence we hie
And whither still we tend:
Alongside is eternity
Still toiling towards no end;
While shadows, piled in wavy shreds,
Among each other stray;
While souls rest on the downy beds
As on a sunken day.

XII

“There Death, that without rapture knows
The being of the whole,
Seems still; but, ever rushing, flows
Against a mighty Soul;

“And only there my troubled mind
Did reach the false and true:
The fatal ties of love unbind;
The bloom of youth renew.

XIII

“I am the queen of all the land,
And Saba hath her will
While these balm-bearing forests stand
Which frankincense distil;
While these myrrh-valleys drink the sun,
And while the spice-buds grow;
While clear the holy waters run
Whence deathless rivers flow.

XIV

“Here floats the shadow of the palm
Wherein the pilgrims rest;
Here doth the loving air embalm
The bodies of the blest.
But he who hath forsworn the vows
Of love's most wondrous tie,
Now to the final forfeit bows:
It is his turn to die.”

XV

The paleness darkens o'er his face;
The hues of death are there:
She watches him, with queenly grace,
Who breathes the chilly air.

Her beauty is a spirit's shrine,
But hidden from his eyes;
He feasts not on the life divine,
He drinks not of the skies.

XVI

He stirs no more; in darkness cast
His senses are astray:
Through deep myrrh-valleys they have passed,
But Nature is away.
He falls upon the downy bed
Where the old shadows rove,
And sinks among the idle dead
Too poor for Saba's love.

THE LOVER'S DAY.

I

Gorse-plains that flower their gold into the streams
Beneath the open blossom of the sky;
Sea-floods that weave their blue and purple seams;
White sails that lift the billows as they fly:
Not these in their abounding rapture vie
With love's diviner dreams.

II

Those lovers tire not when the sun is pale;
No statelier awning than a bristled tree
With branches cedared by the salten gale,
Stretched back, as if with wings that cannot flee:
They linger, and the sun departs by sea;
He spreads his crimson sail.

III

They watch him as he piles his busy deck
With golden treasure; as his sail expands;
They see him sink; they gaze upon the wreck
Through the still twilight of the silvery sands.
One cloud is left to the deserted lands:
The blue-set moon's cold-fleck.

IV

They linger though the pageant hath gone by:
The opal cloud is lit o'er sea and plain;
The moon is full of one day's memory,
And tells the tale of Nature o'er again,
Its glory mingled in the soul's refrain
Under that lover's sky.

THE PALMIST.

I

Through the tired twilight hour strange meanings stole;
The wanton waves their living loads had tossed
From rock to hollow: towards the sandy shoal
The youthful palmist crossed,
While sterner things than thought from Nature's soul
Were voiced abroad and lost.

II

It was the hour when, balanced in the sky,
Three rival orbs of heaven have burning speech,
And paths that in their rare conjunction lie
To mortal vision reach;
It was the hour when Fate's serene reply
Is branded on the beach.

III

There have the ruthless seas heaped up their sheaves,
But o'er the wasted spoil no longer rave,
All solemn as the pile that earth upheaves
At man's remembered grave;
The curious moon, half rising, interweaves
In heaven a blood-red wave.

IV

“Where falls my lot?” the palmist asks: “I tread
These sands and wait on heaven my only guide,
Whose marvels crowd the sky, and, as they spread,
Man's destiny decide.”
The sunset-glow was dreaming of the dead
While watching out the tide.

V

A star, all fire, in the pale sapphire shines;
Soul-mute the seer rests on the trancèd strand—
And strives to spell the ribbed and gilded lines
Scored on the virgin sand,
As one heart-lone the fretted life divines
On some fair maiden's hand.

VI

A maiden's hand! Why turn his troubled eyes?
Amid his toils of thought a shade has stole
O'er those pale sandy wastes, now seems to rise
Now vanish through his soul.
'Tis there; a shadow-hand before him lies,
And lingers on the shoal.

VII

With virgin hand held out 'mid things to be,
A maiden cries, “I saw in dreams a seer
Reading the sands beside an awful sea,
Even as I see thee here.
Where is he?—wherefore came I unto thee?—
He knows why dreams appear.”

VIII

So lovely, and her dream within her still
That o'er her eyes its drowsing beauty shed,
Her ominous words through all his senses thrill;
She seems an angel sped
Not in the wistful service of her will
But by a vision led.

IX

“Wake,” said he, “from the wonders of thy sleep,
And hear the things thy vision doth portend.
Doom breaks upon us in its meanings deep,
While these charmed hours impend:
Across thy palm its pure revealings sweep,
And with our future blend.”

X

Is it herself or heaven the virgin fears?
In vain she looks for guidance in his face.
His eyes are turned from hers, his gaze appears
To burn its way in space—
And, lo! a flash from heaven the warning bears,
Thy perilous steps retrace!

XI

Too late; deep passion smoulders in her eyes,
That drooping yet the more her love reveal:
She asks, why bade he, in his reveries,
This passion to her steal?
The heavens reply; behind the distant skies
The thunder-echoes reel.

XII

But he enrapt seeks not through love or fear
The high forbidden portents to divine—
He takes the virgin's hand, he draws her near,
He threads each burning line.
And through her spotless soul, to heaven still dear,
He reads each thrilling sign.

XIII

Why pales the palmist's cheek? what dreads he now?
His lips, unsealed, the cruel doom betray:
“This breath-dimmed coronet awaits thy brow,
And still the symbols say
That heaven records of thee a broken vow
Given on thy bridal day.”

XIV

She stands woe-stricken, but his eyes can see
Only the rifted future ravening nigh,
His lips can only utter the decree
He wrests from power on high,
Which comes with sudden rush of things to be,
And voiceless shudders by.

XV

“I see o'er all thy youth fierce passion break:
Hearts burn for thee, all riches on thee shower;
I see thy love to endless change awake:
To thee belongs the hour!
Here doth no hand thy triumphs overtake,
No shadow on thee lower.

XVI

“A king at last thy slave, all sway is thine.
As votive stars in sinking still adore,
His eyes, whereon first broke thy love divine,
The wave of night rolls o'er;
In memory's hopeless prison doth he pine
And look on thee no more.

XVII

“Thy arms, soft flowing as the sea at eve,
Wind round all hearts, but, like the coiling wave,
Upon the shoal their fated burden leave,
No hand held up to save;
And now these depths of passion cease to heave,
And flood thy early grave.”

XVIII

“O God, what have I done?” she cries aloud;
“As once, am not I ever safe with Thee?
Shame follows shame as waves each other crowd
Upon the ruthless sea!
Sooner, this beauty to the dust be bowed
And the rocks cover me!”

XIX

But he whose maddened brow above her bends,
Heeds not her cry,—hushed in that mournful roar,
The rushing of the hollow wind that rends
Fate's far-off troubled shore;
Heard only where the soul's procession ends
At death's wide open door.

XX

Roused from a trance of grief, as by a brand
That scores upon her palm all woman's pain,
She shrinks in anguish, and withdraws her hand:
He saw the fiery stain—
And, lo! a shadow from the far-off strand
Points while he reads again.

XXI

“He that reveals thy fate this hour is thine,
But loving till all love shall cease to be,
Beneath thy shadow-hand is left to pine
And look no more on thee—
O God!” he cries, “how awful is Thy Sign!
Her first love falls to me!”

THE SIBYL.

I

A maid who mindful of her playful time
Steps to her summer, bearing childhood on
To woman's beauty, heedless of her prime:
The early day but not the pastime gone:
She is the Sibyl, uttering a doom
Out of her spotless bloom.

II

She is the Sibyl; seek not, then, her voice;—
A laugh, a song, a sorrow, but thy share,
With woes at hand for many who rejoice
That she shall utter; that shall many hear;
That warn all hearts who seek of her their fates,
Her love but one awaits.

III

She is the Sibyl; days that distant lie
Bend to the promise that her word shall give;
Already hath she eyes that prophesy,
For of her beauty shall all beauty live:
Unknown to her, in her slow opening bloom,
She turns the leaves of doom.

THE SOUL-PAINTER.

I

The cities with their standard-bearing heights;
The dome of prayer, the sky-allotted spire;
The marble effigies, the fountain-lights,
Kindle in him no spark of Nature's fire.
Save on his art no human love he doles:
He, the rapt painter of immortal souls.

II

He loves not, hates not, takes no human part;
But he has dreams and these, at sleep's return,
Enact their impulse, dragging at his heart:
Then through the dark those mingled colours burn
That he had gathered in the yester-light;
And Nature's soul moves on the face of night.

III

Men know that he for after-days can paint
The glory and the passion of a bride;
The stilled, o'er-brimming rapture of a saint;
They know, for aye, these treasures here abide:
But to his easel few have souls to bring,
And only souls can to his canvas cling.

IV

Where no soul is he shapes the lip's false play,
Gilding the smile: to this he dares not give
The hallowed tincture of the fresh-culled ray,
Though well he knows no other tint can live.
So his true colours breathe, while false ones flit,
Not by the soul but by the senses lit.

V

The Painter of the Soul adds no fresh gem
To woman's face; for, eyes of mercy wove
Draw to themselves the smile that fashions them
From the soul's fathoms; from unfathomed love.
This through the ages is the gem they keep,
Saved from the death of never-dreaming sleep.

VI

Thence rumours oft reveal to greedy ears
That many live and see their portraits fade;
But that the pure, who die, for length of years
Bloom fresh within the image he hath made,
As if the grave itself saw no decay
While in its rest their precious bodies lay.

VII

He whose surpassing art all souls obeyed!
Lured by the love of immortality
These left their earthly tenements and strayed
Into the pictures that could never die.
Their bodies wasted, but their souls had flight
Into life-forms as lasting as the light.

VIII

He bears his easel to the silent place;
At the sea-rim now skimming with his eyes
The lilac surf upon the water's face;
Now the rose-blue upon the bolder skies,
Till the robbed heaven a gusty shadow lifts
And its chilled lustre o'er the sun-blaze drifts.

IX

He haunts the moors; his thirsty stare he slakes
On the gorse-lightnings, till their golden blaze
Flows to his spirit and the flowers forsakes;
The purple heath is ravished by his gaze,
Till tender tints, too subtle for a name,
Seem the dark track of soul-devouring flame.

X

Where flows a stream, now peaceful as in sleep
That gurgles on through meads of evening dew,
Or rushes louder and with hasty leap,
Stained by bank flowers with many a spirit-hue;
The water-gardens, rich with flower-topped grass,
And trilling voices, to his spirit pass.

XI

There comes a maid in light, half-playful pace
Whose dimples dazzle as along she skips:
They hide as in a veil her sunny face,
Even as a bubble o'er a bubble slips.
She does not turn her eyes, though little coy;
And the brook follows, frisking in its joy.

XII

Bright soul! he strives to shape its fleeting charm
In rosy lights, but they refuse to snare
The dimples that about her beauty swarm
And quicken as they vanish into air.
'Tis vain; his once unfailing art is gone;
A soul has passed, and not upon him shone.

XIII

Madly he ponders: What avails yon crest
Of sunset-blaze whereat his eyes had drunk?
Her soul eludes him, fleeing from her rest,
And Nature's sun for him hath ever sunk!
If in its fondest light her soul is cold
Let him seek darkness; there her soul behold!

XIV

That sun returns; the anguish of his breast
But asks it now to blind his vacant eyes;
And they out-stare its beams, and sightless rest
Beneath the burning ocean as he lies.
All lovely things are one dispersing crowd;
The world one blur of gold and crimson cloud.

XV

A spectre-orb pursues him: when he turns
His vision to the east, he sees it rise;
When to the west in gold and red it burns,
And, over all, it masks the upper skies.
Athirst he gazes on its rainbow-streams,
And his soul ebbs, still drinking of the beams.

XVI

His body scarce awake, the slow-heaved breath,
Damping the fire of life's expiring glow,
Seeks yet to lengthen out the hour of death
While those orbed ruby flashes come and go.
The storm of light so ends, and sinks away
Into dark calm; the ash of burnt-out day.

XVII

Now crosses his dim path the same bright maid,
Who, as she looks upon him blind and pale,
Helpless a moment stands and is afraid.
She hurries to her father with her tale,
Who bears him thence to where that pity dwells
Which ever from the maiden bosom wells.

XVIII

The maid in loving duty watcheth long;
She gives his lips the water, and his head
The pillow's peace: interprets thoughts that throng
Ill-uttered, and rejoins them thread to thread.
His eyes pursue the way her footsteps wind;
They brighten at her voice, though they are blind.

XIX

Her tones are sweet as waters when they sing,
Yet pierce they deep as through a wilderness
The wild bird's scream, that doth the spirit wring;
Deeply they pierce the deeper to caress.
There doth she watch his love, her watch unknown,
And there, unseen, doth marvel at her own.

XX

Her voice to him in phantom forms appears:
Now as a lonely soul it seems to seek
His olden vision while it thrills his ears;
Now thither brings the shapely lips that speak.
A spirit floats where'er her music flows
And in love's mould to maiden likeness grows.

XXI

Thralled by his visions, perfect as when sleep
Reveals to closèd eyes the soul's cartoon,
His colours mingle to the music's sweep,
And with its silence into shadow swoon.
Her voice to her more speaking face akin,
His hand depicts the form he sees within.

XXII

Her soul that breathes from those devoted lips
Tremblings of speech, smiles dimpling into sighs,
Has passed to his and guides the hand that dips
His brush into the sky-tint of her eyes.
Entranced in light he limns the burning thought,
As one who only wrote the words he caught.

XXIII

The work is done,—and in an evening sky
The holy face is lit: he faints for breath
Into the dazing swoon of ecstasy,
His heart's last rapture while it covets death.
For he hath seen her, seen with vision sealed:
Her voice the soul, her soul the face revealed.

XXIV

So hath that soul passed to him like a brook
Into a fretted pool; akin to him,
Hath she for love her lonely course forsook,
And with her beauty lit his vision dim.
Her soul is his: one flood of being breaks
Into one rapture and one love awakes.

XXV

But when she breathes on him and her low scream
Flutters across his heart, his eyes are free!
They look into her face but only dream
As in some joy of being not to be.
Yet the bliss stays; he holds her with his eyes
And all illusion from that vision flies.

XXVI

They look upon the picture, 'tis her face;
Hers who now rests within his tangling arm.
Blind he beheld, and felt his pencil trace
The soul whose power had broken up his charm.
That charm returned sublimed all art above:
Though blind, her soul he painted through his love.

FLOWERS ON THE BANK.

I

Flowers on the bank,—we pass and call them gay:
The primroses throw pictures to the mind,
The buttercups lag dazzlingly behind,
And daisy-friends we spy but do not say
A word of joy;—thoughts of them follow not,
And soon are they forgot.

II

What care we for wild flowers except their name?
Bright maidens at the sight in rapture start,
Which, as our smiles say, comes not from the heart:
Flowers dance not, sing not, all their ways are tame;
They love not neither love in us inspire;
Nor blush when we admire.

III

Yet stay, the fingers of that panting child
Have culled for us the choice ones,—many a gem,—
Have set their lovely colours stem to stem;
In her fond hands they are not tame or wild,
Nestled in fringy fern so changed appears
The little gift she bears!

IV

She gives herself, and she can dance and sing,
And she can love inspire and blush at praise;
The flowers are part of her, have caught her ways;
She gives herself who gives so sweet a thing.
And she is gone, with other thoughts than ours
Gathering fresh love and flowers.

THE LOST FUTURE.

I

Here in the isles of Araby, sun-stained,
Where ashen waters scorch in paler skies,—
A marble heaven by the red lightnings veined
Till the cool stars in the blue night arise,—
Man is the lord of all, the seer
Of summer's ceaseless year.

II

Here the wise watch the sunbeams as they spot
The flowers, the fruit-pods as they suck the dew;
And all is seen, for Nature clotheth not,
As in cold climes; her secrets all may view;
The stars throw open to the gaze
The course of coming days.

III

Nature wears no disguise; the heavy air
Reeks with her waste of lore; the seer may pry
Into her heart, may pluck out wisdom there,
And learn her warnings never to defy.
For those who war against her will
Time stops; their souls stand still.

IV

Her magic lights, that flush to over-flow,
Blind not the seer, though gossamers they weave
For foolish eyes, that they may nothing know,
And all things, 'mid all wonders, disbelieve.
So with a chief whose lawless love
For him this dim veil wove.

V

He calls into his silken tent a seer:
To-day, he cries, the mountain-bride I wed:
Let men the good or ill it bodeth hear
Ere the few moments, yet unpast, have sped.
You are the watcher and foresee
The things that are to be.

VI

The seer replies: She tarries on our isle:
And you will rob a brother of his bride:
Be warned in time, and suffer for awhile,
That in your faith we may again confide;
Or blindly the swift moments go
Into your hour of woe.

VII

Hold not your purpose, or within your soul
Time will collapse; a shrinking year set in:
An hourless day without a morrow's goal;
A memory stopping where its woes begin;
A still-born future like the past
Into the time-grave cast.

VIII

Love's load without its object on your breast!
No change; as when the thought doth not appear
On things that give the eye a transient rest:
One vacant hour, not gone, but always near;
A soul that severed from its springs
To the void body clings.

IX

The chief smiles at the seer's prophetic speech;
He takes the bride; the moments swiftly run,
The passing days to deeper blisses reach;
Love, sleep-renewed, and life anew begun:
A sky's blue folds still hung above
The even-tide of love.

X

What thinks she of her plight, the mountain-maid?
She hath her fears, for well she loves her chief;
And musing on the morrow is afraid.
A mother's joy then sweeps away her grief:
A crowing child is on her arm
And silences alarm.

XI

With sunset comes and goes a golden sail:
Where is the seer, where is the vessel gone?
No wind sprang up, no ripple marked the trail;
The purple waters flashed and were alone.
Did not a cloud its sail unfold?
Was it a cloud of gold?

XII

The chief is resting 'neath a broad-leaved tree,
Shaded by deep-green boughs and blood-red flowers,
And sitting with his love beside the sea
Where but a rosy wave-plush tells the hours.
Her arm so fair, its infant-stem—
His heart o'ershadows them!

XIII

Change threats; the air breaks into purple glow;
Its moving mist dyes blue the grassy ground;
The gum-trees split and give their juices flow;
The full-hatched pods burst with a crackling sound.
These signs upon his dozings creep,
But only turn to sleep.

XIV

The golden sail that folded round the seer,
He, drowsing, now recalls with sudden flash
That sweeps across his heart, and in his fear
He feels a throb that seems a tempest's crash:
So loud the thought of thunder's roll
Sounds to the sleepy soul.

XV

A golden sail, that seems at first a speck,
Upon the mid-sea flutters; now is nigh:
Two forms stand up, then vanish on the deck;
The sail appears a phantom in the sky.
All purple are the waves; one cloud—
Not ship, nor mast, nor shroud.

XVI

But while he dozes there with half-closed eyes,
The mother open-mouthed beholds the seer:
If to her soul she screams, her piercing cries
Glide noiseless past the chief's enchanted ear;
Though straightway to his spirit go
Those looks of woman's woe.

XVII

He sees, unstirred, his brother's angry wrist
Upon the mother; o'er the deck they move;
The child with her has flitted through the mist:
On the chief lies the heavy load of love!
Lost is his power the shout to raise
The load so heavy weighs.

XVIII

She and her child, charmed to the purple deck,
Seem sky-tinged shadows fast departing hence;
Far off from land the sail is now a speck.
True things act dreams on his bewildered sense.
When he awakes a golden sail
Swells vast before the gale.

XIX

“The hourless day without a morrow's goal,”
Is come: he lisps the words, he bows his head.
To stone is turned the outlook of his soul;
He lives, but changes places with the dead.
The past is now a purple blot,
The morrow cometh not.

XX

The golden sail that child and mother bore
Comes ever to his sight; and ever flies;
Still starting, still on the horizon's shore:
The woeful scene is shipwrecked on his eyes.
He watches, frighted from his tears
Into his old, grey years.

XXI

His soul set fast, it has no outer range,
As when a moment flew, another crept;
As when he took a sorrow in exchange;
As when at morn he laughed, at sundown wept.
Time stops before his eyes to show
The man his hour of woe.

XXII

For years his sight can find no other rest
Than on his absent bride, who ever young
Holds up her child between her arms and breast:
They still depart; his heart afresh is wrung.
They vanished at the vessel's prow,
And there they vanish now.

XXIII

In time the child seeks out her father's home:
She seems the bride—he knows her not apart;
All things have changed; o'er him no change has come:
She left him, she returns unto his heart.
Young as the bride of other years,
Her mother's face she bears.

XXIV

His heart is turned to her, he meets the maid
Not in surprise but with his olden smile;
As though on some late errand she had stayed;
Then after fondly gazing a brief while,
Where is the child? he asks and this
She answers with her kiss.

XXV

Lent to his spirit is a joy of yore,
The child in her forgotten, at his side
The mother seems she, and he sees no more
The golden sail upon the purple tide.
But on the void before her breast
His eyes uneasy rest.

XXVI

His child soon wedded to an honoured sheik,
She tells him her own love; he listens well;
Though strange her words, he loves to hear her speak:
His joy he knows; but hers 'tis vain to tell.
The olden hour is in his mind;
The new he cannot find.

XXVII

Within his tent, his daughter's hand on his,
Silent he sits; but there a longing thought
Still stays, else happy in divided bliss;
As if through clouded consciousness he sought
One he beheld not; the lost child
That once upon him smiled.

XXVIII

Where is my child, he asks at times; and sinks
Back to his olden hour; for no reply
Can touch the yearning soul that never thinks:
His life too weak to move in reverie.
So his head bows, the longing stops,
And like a shadow drops.

XXIX

A child is born; the old chief's spirit warms;
He deems that his beloved one proudly stands
Before him, with her infant in her arms.
To her, as if to Heaven, he lifts his hands:
The blest delusion of that day
Was not to pass away.

UNREST.

Is this a remnant of old Paradise
Where now a shivering, dimpled river creeps,
Driven out from bliss, between these desert steeps,
Pine-armed and bristling to the loveless skies,
No heaven above but where the wild flocks rise,
No world below but where the torrent leaps
And down green steps of dripping foliage sweeps
The writhing gulph that ever rest denies

To those lost waters? Rather here were driven
From Paradise the once offending pair,
To find a peaceful sky by rough winds riven,
And look above through the mist-threaded air,
That wanders 'twixt the mountain-tops and Heaven
To weave for evermore a world's despair.

NEW SOULS.

I

The world was weary of the way:
All saw the bloom of youth pass by
And trembled for the coming day—
The soul's long-told eternity.
Men dragged their limbs from pain to pain
And, dying, never rose again.

II

All had grown weary of old hope;
Only a present hour came round:
Within the future's viewless scope
As yet no soul had broken ground:
'Twas a lapsed heaven; no further stir;
And helpless was the sepulchre.

III

All pulses heaved with new desire;
There was a troubling of all souls;
As when above earth's secret fire
Some giddy, high-domed mountain rolls.
Was it an hour with bloodshed fraught,
Or came the war of thought with thought?

IV

O'er many a soul deep furrows cracked;
The soil was ripe for wheat or weed,
And not the cunning hand was lacked
To sow it with prolific seed.
A grain gives forth a field of tares;
So, too, the tree of knowledge bears.

V

The burr that only drops a grain
Amid its native thistles, goes
Lap-full of seed o'er hill and plain,—
The cornfield, mead, and vineyard sows:
Even for the graves it has a thread
That yields a harvest to the dead.

VI

A voice ascends in accents clear
Of one who has “New Souls” to sell.
'Tis music to the startled ear;
Like ringings of a parish bell.
He shambles on till every home
Echoes the cry, “No World to Come!”

VII

So travels he from land to land,
No baggage save an empty sack,
Which, grasping in his bony hand,
He slings across his bended back;
And mending not his easy pace
Scatters “New Souls,” like tracts of grace.

VIII

He enters at the convent gate
Where the veiled nuns their virtue hide;
His words, “New Souls,” “No future state,”
Into their hearts like passion slide.
They think, and to each other sigh—
“Is Heaven then, too, sterility?”

IX

His aspect on their memory dwells;
His sayings leave a load of care,
That through their vespers heavenward wells
And hangs about them in the air;
As though their eyes for once had seen,
They listen, still, where he had been.

X

The wider spread his welcome words
In that he shuns not timid eyes:
Their earnest burden well accords
With the sad truth, that scripture lies:
New Souls,—the undiscovered creed,—
In this shall pious nations bleed.

XI

He lags not at the cottage door,
But leaves the stirring cry in trust:
“New Souls;” 'tis incense to the poor;
They breathe it while they turn to dust.
The cry seems food to famished bones;
As though 'twere bread instead of stones.

XII

New Souls to sell—it sounds divine;
To cast out old from sluggish brain
And drive them to the herd of swine!
The last hope left to human gain:
All pass their days in sweat and toil;
Who sows the seed reaps not the soil.

XIII

Some turn and in their wrath declare
The scriptures true, whose lessons tell
That Heaven shall be the poor man's share
And that the rich inherit Hell.
New Souls! a voice of pity cries,
And in the words all promise lies.

XIV

Another says: My homely dame
Shall rise in glory from the pit.
Her soul was old but without shame:
I saw her hopeful spirit flit—
If ever soul hath broke the sward
She's in the bosom of her Lord!

XV

One rages, crying: Shall the squire
Whose soul departed yesterday,
Not burn in everlasting fire?
His soul is only dead, you say?
This hour, I swear, he burns in Hell.
The teacher cries, “New Souls to sell!”

XVI

His catch-cry the great city hears;
“New Souls,” from mouth to mouth has spread:
“No world to come!” on hoarding stares;
'Tis posted up in letters red,
That priests lay by their uniform,
Uneasy at the gathering storm.

XVII

The man who first the catch-cry gave
Used modest whispers, scarce aloud:
His hot disciples, strong and brave,
Shout out, “New Souls!” before the crowd:
Recalling him whose blood was shed,
To the re-burial of the Dead.

XVIII

The teacher wore a simple sack,
But his disciples beard the throng
With doctor's gown upon their back.
Their tones are rich, their reasons strong;
And they all creeds save one deny,—
No demon and no deity.

XIX

The flame of metaphysics plays
Through bible, testament, and prayer;
And in the light of latter days
The sky explodes; no Heaven is there;
Strange fire, as fierce as fire of Hell,
Envelops God's mock Citadel.

XX

That cry, “New Souls!” sweet women make:
They reason not but feel aright;
And cling to church for comfort's sake,
To see the truth by candlelight:
So potent is the waxen spell,
They almost think there is a hell.

XXI

O life the shoal, O time the waste!
The cry has all its early zest;
Books breathe it still, though read in haste:
God is the staple of their jest,—
For when old thrones are tumbled down
Man mocks the last that wears the crown.

XXII

There yet are balanced minds that see,
Perhaps here and there, some cunning hand;
But, who may the life-builder be
'Twas not for them to understand:
Some say, he ill-administers
His laws; and judgment long defers.

XXIII

The harvest moon comes round in turn;
Into their barns men gather tares,
And bundle up the wheat to burn:
The wisdom of the latter years.
But all is well; so man hath willed
That scripture may not be fulfilled.

XXIV

The priests whose duty is to wait
When the torch-bearers burn the bread,
Rest on their glebes and hybernate
With open ears but seeming dead,
Or for the truth by twilight plead
Like shadows of a broken creed.

XXV

They hold their dogmas lest Heaven lose
The vested right in every tenth,
The sweet in-flowing Easter-dues:
Of such is an Almighty's strength
Whose plans in endless time were laid,
Though in six days all things he made.

XXVI

Mortals, say they, work double time;
Then shall not He, through Nature's hand,
With fossil-bone, and shells and lime,
In six days stratify the land?
Old as this little earth may look,
'Tis but a bible picture-book.

XXVII

God fell; with him that devil fell
Who scared the ages in our rear.
Heaven was a power, a dread was Hell:
They had their day—a grand career,
But greater epochs, since set in,
Released the suffering virtue, Sin.

XXVIII

The farewell cry is heard afar;
New Souls! so true, so passing mild,
It comes upon us without jar:—
The voice of one who never smiled,—
Yet has a shudder of the rack
For those who hold the beaten track.

XXIX

That kindly voice, out-spoken, plain,—
Rich in emotion of desire;—
Who heard, still pine to hear again,
With longings of a smouldering fire.
New souls for old, thoughts ever new,
That all the deeds of time undo.

XXX

The hollow of the cuckoo's throat
Is in all hearts as he recedes;
All seem to echo the far note,
And linger o'er his timely deeds;
His second coming is at hand;
For well he loves this barren strand.

XXXI

New Souls! they spread to overflow;
The law proclaims that thought is free:
Be it a thing of mirth or woe,—
Lopped down is the forbidden tree.
New Souls! not stale shall be that cry
To man's remote posterity.

XXXII

Where hath he gone who gave it breath?
To him our souls we crucify
Down to the hopeless hour of death:
All other names do we deny.
Never did he man's longings spurn;
With his blest cry will he return.

XXXIII

He is the proud, the noble one
Who on his shoulders bore a sack;
His work has flourished, he is gone
Where brimstone mountains bar his track;
Extinct volcanoes of a Hell
Whereof doth scripture-fable tell.

THE INSCRUTABLE.

I

Dread under-life of dreams,
Within whose midnight show
Souls drink at cavern-streams
That through the darkness flow:
To thee one hastes unconscious of his fate
To slake his thirst in hate.

II

He that hath swum the heaven
Of woman's loving eyes—
To him a dream is given;
The maiden's father dies;
A dream that never to his thought had passed,
Till in the night-hell cast.

III

He loves her and she loves,
But stern that father's heart
Whom every passion moves
Their holy hope to thwart.
Can they, meek sleepers, the dream-demons call
To burst the iron thrall?

IV

That night in dreams that sway
The soul to shedding blood,
One hears his own voice say
In sleep's half-weary mood,
“Take down your father's sword and quickly slide
The blade into his side.

V

“Disguise the seeming guilt,
And bend his fingers round,
And put them on the hilt,
And leave him to his wound.”
In that strange dream until the break of day,
Asleep the lover lay.

VI

He wakes, aghast; he strives
To get the vision hence,
That into morning lives,
And fastens on his sense.
'Tis but a dream, but should her hand fulfil
His will within her will!

VII

She comes up wild and pale,
She wrings her hands in pain,
She utters with a wail—
Who hath my father slain!
My anguished heart sobbed all night in its sleep;
I felt it sob and weep.

VIII

I saw you while I slept,
And to my dream you spoke;
All night the words I kept,
I heard them when I woke:
“Take down your father's sword and quickly slide
The blade into his side.

IX

“Disguise the seeming guilt,
And bend his fingers round,
And put them on the hilt,
And leave him to his wound.”
O the false voice, that it so true should seem
In that unthought-of dream!

X

I hurried to the bed,
I saw that he was slain,
I saw the blood was shed,
I saw the deep,—deep stain.
His sword was through his side,—thrust,—on the hilt
His fingers took the guilt.

VENUS ANADYOMENE.

(PRAXITELES.)

His hand must yet achieve his spirit's aim,
Must yet embody forms that oft-times fade
Oft float before his gaze; that hang between
His eyes and sleep, and ever unappeased
In marble's luring paleness covet rest.
The soul's wan creditors! Urge they a debt
His genius owes to Heaven, that he repays
A hundred-fold, he, the Praxiteles

Who moves the weary aspect of the world
To youthful passion? Yes, for he adores
Her, always pure; in his far-searching dreams
Beseeching the chaste Venus to reveal
A vision of the form that never dies.
Time drags the load of prayer, but does not pause
At the immortal hour when he may see
That bosom heave in the blue light of heaven,
The kindred marble budding at his touch
With orbs of love whose pantings perish not.
Full-dawns the morning on him when his eyes
Drawn from those dreams are on the shore outside
Where Phryné bathes and all the vivid bay
Shines in her glory. She, who sees him watch,
Hides in the crystal waters which betray
Her beauty's trust; there laughing, at his beck
She follows to his hall across the sands,
And careless as sea-nymphs are, leaves her robe

To crimson the void shore.

“Methought I saw
The goddess,” said he; “you have all her youth,
Be like her in the pureness of her soul:
You only, Phryné, can reveal to me
How Venus looks in Heaven.”

The flush of pride
That pales back to the lips flows over her
At his heart-searching praise and at her eyes
Pours out beatitude. Thoughtful she leans
Upon the unwrought marble that awaits
Her image, in the moments of a dream
Her hands and cheeks sweetening each other's hues.
Then while self-stirred from such light reverie,
Her gorgeous hair crisping in ocean-foam,
She seems to shiver in some fragile wave
Fresh-broken o'er her bosom. In his hall
She stands as he beheld her by the sea.

100

She flings her hair aside; one arm she leaves
To share her bosom's bed, then, in her play
She dips behind the marble that would melt
To bear her likeness, thrilling in her spell,
While to the roof her simple laugh resounds;
The music of her smile made audible.
From her escapes into the trancèd air
Grace after grace that fills its empty glow
With rosy spectres, lovely all, not lost
But vanishing to haunt a coming dream.
Yet is not one of these the one he craves.
Must then the immortal hour again pass by
In barren flight? Where is the modest pride
That swayed her when at love's first sacrifice,
Pale as a fountain tremulous in its strength,
She wept? Not here, where to his soul's great depths
Her bright, impassioned gambols sorrow him.

101

“Recall,” he said, “how first you came to love:
How your soul's wonder gave a sudden throb
And the new life burst forth, and in the pangs
Of over-joy asked its young tenement
If love were wrong; how answered doubtingly
Those eyes that drooped and hid the golden tear
Before it fell; those arms that artless hung
As if in penance to confess a guilt:
Phryné, remembering all, be so again,
That I may know how Venus looks in Heaven.”
Too hard the task: she feigns the shame in play
Steeped in whose virgin dye love-tinted airs
Once fanned her cheeks to flame; but not so now;
She is the Venus of the world: she bends
As o'er a foamy rock, laughs like the waves
Till the pleased waters seem to splash at her
In wantonness: then skips as o'er the sands
In dance so sense-entangling, the bright floor

102

Is burning in the shadow of her feet,
And earth dissolves in her absorbing spell.

Praxiteles, with fond reproachful gaze,
Speaks not a word: she loves him, and is fain
If not to feel to mimic modesty.
Her lips meet closer to rebuke her smile,
But the rich laugh rings forth and while she strives
To stifle it, her hands pressed to her sides,
Piteous she moans, sinks to the welcome floor,
And suffers on the rack of merriment.
His mind has drifted to the past and sees
Her standing mute in youth's first coy attire;
Then at her mother's side. All there is vague,
Cloud-hidden; when by distant shouts aroused,
And drums, and martial fifes, from his vain dreams
He starts: lo! Phryné, self-reliant towers
In maiden pride which heightens as the roar
Grows louder and the sheltering solitude

103

Dissolves around. Held in strange ecstasy
By her whose presence turns the glance of men
With lightning-flash, she hears the conqueror's troops
Approach; perchance the conqueror of the world:
And shielded by a modesty divine
There stands to awe beholders, one bent arm
Laid on her breast, the other as a belt
Shading her lower waist; her head aside
In virgin fear.

“The Venus is revealed!”
He cries: “yes, this is the immortal hour.”

104

REST.

She leans across the castle-parapet
Trolling for visions where swift waters flow
Through wooded pools to narrow straits below;
Where scythe-seamed fields and shade-trees singly set
The forest under dim blue hills have met,
Where clouds have lifted up the sunny snow,
And all appear the river's voice to know
While there she listens to its playful fret,

105

Her soul held captive in the bliss around,
The full-leaved boughs that rustle in the glare
Her fellow prisoners in the witching sound,
Stretching and purring in the sunny air:
So her fixed look is in the vision bound
That with unwary eyes she sought to snare.

106

THE POET'S ALMS-HOUSE.

I

Outside is life: the garden on the wall
Whose roses round the attic window sweep;
The vine above the door whose clusters weep;
Ripe to the stem; but both together fall;
No hand the climbing garden shapes,
Or gathers in the grapes.

107

II

Yet is there life, though not to strangers' eyes;
No voice of welcome here the comer greets;
No hand held out, no pleasant face he meets;
An alms-house once, untenanted it lies.
Words heard afar once spoken here,
He heareth not when near.

III

Yet is there life; the pilgrim-friends of old
Here feel a hand that on the page has wrought
For distant times the messages of thought,
Which spoken once remain for ever told:
An alms-house he but leaves behind
Who pensioned all mankind.