The poetical works of Robert Stephen Hawker Edited from the original manuscripts and annotated copies together with a prefatory notice and bibliography by Alfred Wallis |
The poetical works of Robert Stephen Hawker | ||
THE DEDICATION. TO CHARLOTTE.
Breath'd in meek numbers by our Tamar-side;
Ye towers which rise around me, gray with time!
Ye heaving waves whereby my visions glide!
People this page with thoughts that may abide—
Beneath some living eye when I am gone,
When men shall turn the waving grass aside,
Men of strange garb perchance, and alter'd tone,
And ask whose name is worn from out that ancient stone!
Publish my praises on some distant strand;
Not that the voices of those men be loud
With whom a strange and nameless man I stand:
'Tis the fond vision that some Western hand
Will turn this page—a native lip proclaim
Him who lov'd well and long the Rocky Land.
Hills of Old Cornwall! in your antique fame,
Oh! that a voice unborn might blend my future name!
Link'd to the minstrel by a holy tie:
Thou! to whom grateful memories belong,
Of gentle heart, kind hand, and loving eye;
For Thee I weave these words—if one should sigh
O'er him who in these vallies lov'd and died;
If a recording word be breathed hereby,
Thou shalt with him that homage still divide,
When our warm hearts be hush'd, and withering side by side.
THE SONG OF THE WESTERN MEN.
When Sir Jonathan Trelawney, one of the Seven Bishops, was committed to the Tower, the Cornish men rose, one and all, and marched as far as Exeter in their way to extort his liberation.
I
A good sword and a trusty hand!A merry heart and true!
King James's men shall understand
What Cornish lads can do!
II
And have they fix'd the where and when?And shall Trelawny die?
Here's twenty thousand Cornish men
Will see the reason why!
III
Out spake their Captain brave and bold,A merry wight was he:
“If London Tower were Michael's hold,
“We'll set Trelawny free!”
IV
“We'll cross the Tamar, land to land,The Severn is no stay—
All side by side, and hand to hand,
And who shall bid us nay?
V
“And when we come to London Wall,A pleasant sight to view,
Come forth! Come forth, ye Cowards all,
To better men than you!
VI
“Trelawny he's in keep and hold,Trelawny he may die;
But here's twenty thousand Cornish bold,
Will see the reason why!”
CLOVELLY.
Touched by the soft hues of the dreamy west!
Dim hills afar, and happy vales between,
With the tall corn's deep furrow calmly blest:
Beneath, the sea, by eve's fond gale carest,
'Mid groves of living green that fringe its side;
Dark sails that gleam on Ocean's heaving breast
From the glad fisher-barks that homeward glide,
To make Clovelly's shores at pleasant evening-tide.
The pastoral music of the bleating flock,
Blent with the sea-birds uncouth melody,
The waves' deep murmur to the unheeding rock,
And ever and anon the impatient shock
And hark! the rowers' deep and well-known stroke.
Glad hearts are there, and joyful hands once more
Furrow the whitening wave with their returning oar.
A living wreath for Nature's grateful brow,
Where the lone wanderer's raptur'd footsteps wind
'Mid rock, and glancing stream, and shadowy bough
Where scarce the valley's leafy depths allow
The intruding sunbeam in their shade to dwell,
There doth the seamaid breathe her human vow—
So village maidens in their envy tell—
Won from her dark blue home by that alluring dell.
The moonbeam dwells upon the voiceless wave;
Far off, the night-winds steal away and die,
Or sleep in music in their ocean-cave:
Tall oaks, whose strength the Giant Storm might brave,
Bend in rude fondness o'er the silvery sea;
Nor can yon mountain raun forbear
to lave
Her blushing clusters where the waters be,
Murmuring around her home such touching melody.
When timid Spring her pleasant task hath sped,
Or Summer pours from her redundant breast
All fruits and flowers along thy valley's bed:
Yes! and when Autumn's golden glories spread,
What fairer path shall woo the wanderer's tread,
Soothe wearied hope and worn regret assuage?
Lo! for firm youth a bower—a home for lapsing age,
INSCRIPTION FOR THE WATERFALL AT HAYNE.
And teach the murmuring waters Byron's name.
So shall the soft wings of the coming breeze
People with glowing forms the cloistered trees;
And o'er yon wave beneath the willow shine
The scenes of Leman and the hues of Rhine.
POMPEII.
Flash o'er the wave in glad Sorrento's bay;
Far, far along mild Sarno's glancing stream,
The fruits and flowers of golden summer beam,
And cheer, with bright'ning hues, the lonely gloom,
That shrouds yon silent City of the Tomb!
Yes, sad Pompeii! Time's deep shadows fall
On every ruin'd arch and broken wall;
But Nature smiles as in thy happiest hour,
And decks thy lowly rest with many a flower.
Around, above, in blended beauty shine
The graceful poplar and the clasping vine;
Bears to the lip of Morn her votive dew;
Still the green laurel springs to life the while,
Beneath her own Apollo's golden smile;
And o'er thy fallen beauties beams on high
The glory of the heavens—Italia's sky!
Return the shadowy forms of other days:
Those halls, of old with mirth and music rife,
Those echoing streets that teem'd with joyous life,
The stately towers that look'd along the plain,
And the light barks that swept yon silvery main.
And see! they meet beneath the chestnut shades,
Pompeii's joyous sons and graceful maids,
Weave the light dance—the rosy chaplet twine,
Or snatch the cluster from the weary vine;
Nor think that Death can haunt so fair a scene,
The Heavens' deep blue, the Earth's unsullied green.
When the dark omen told thy fearful tale?
The giant phantom dimly seen to glide,
And the loud voice that shook
the mountain-side,
To seek in happier climes a calmer home?
In vain! they will not break the fatal rest
That woos them to the mountain's treacherous breast:
Fond memory blends with every mossy stone
Some early joy, some tale of pleasure flown;
And they must die where those around will weep,
And sleep for ever where their fathers sleep.
Yes! they must die: behold! yon gathering gloom
Brings on the fearful silence of the tomb;
Along Campania's sky yon murky cloud
Spreads its dark form—a City's funeral shroud.
The sun, unclouded, held his golden way;
Vineyards, in autumn's purple glories drest,
Slept in soft beauty on the mountain's breast;
The gale that wanton'd round his crested brow,
Shook living fragrance from the blossom'd bough;
And many a laughing mead and silvery stream
Drank the deep lustre of the noonday beam:
Then echoing Music rang, and Mirth grew loud
In the glad voices of the festal crowd;
The opening Theatre's wide gates invite,
There breathes the immortal Muse her spell around,
And swelling thousands flood the fated ground.
See! where arise before th' enraptur'd throng,
The fabled scenes, the shadowy forms of Song!
Gods, that with heroes leave their starry bowers,
Their fragrant hair entwin'd with radiant flowers,
Haunt the dim grove, beside the fountain dwell—
Strike the deep lyre, or sound the wreathèd shell—
With forms of heavenly mould, but hearts that glow
With human passion, melt with human woe:
Breathless they gaze, while white-robed priests advance,
And graceful virgins lead the sacred dance;
They listen, mute, while mingling tones prolong
The lofty accent, and the pealing song,
Echo th' unbending Titan's haughty groan,
Or in the Colchian's woes forgot their own!
Why feels each throbbing heart that shuddering chill?
The Music falters, and the Dance is still—
“Is it pale twilight stealing o'er the plain?
“Or starless eve that holds unwonted reign?”
Hark to the thrilling answer! Who shall tell
When thick and fast th' unsparing tempest fell,
And stern Vesuvius pour'd along the vale
His molten cataracts, and his burning hail?
Oh! who shall paint, in that o'erwhelming hour,
Death's varying forms, and Horror's withering power?
Cleaves the firm rock, and swells the beetling main:
Here, yawns the ready grave, and, raging, leap
Earth's secret fountains from their troubled sleep;
There, from the quivering mountain bursts on high
The pillar'd flame that wars along the sky!
On, on they press, and maddening seek in vain
Some soothing refuge from the fiery rain—
Their home? it can but yield a living tomb!
Round the lov'd hearth is brooding deepest gloom.
Yon sea? its angry surges scorching rave,
And death-fires gleam upon the ruddy wave!
Oh! for one breath of that reviving gale,
That swept at dewy morn along the vale!
For one sad glance of their beloved sky,
To soothe, though vain, their parting agony!
Yon mother bows in vain her shuddering form,
Her babe to shield from that relentless storm:
Cold are those limbs her clasping arms constrain,
Even the soft shelter of her breast is vain!
Gaze on that form! 'tis Beauty's softest maid,
The rose's rival in her native shade—
For her had Pleasure reared her fairest bowers,
And Song and Dance had sped the laughing hours:
See! o'er her brow the kindling ashes glow,
And the red shower o'erwhelms her breast of snow;
She seeks that loved one—never false till then—
She calls on him—who answers not again:
Loose o'er her bosom flames her golden hair,
And every thrilling accent breathes despair!
The deathless forms of Heaven's ethereal blue,
Who drank, with glowing ear, the mystic tone,
That clothed his lips with wonders not their own,
Beheld the immortal marble frown in vain,
And fires triumphant grasp the sacred fane,
Forsook at last the unavailing shrine,
And cursed his faithless gods—no more divine!
Though cold the hearts that hail'd its radiance there,
And Evening, crown'd with many a starry gem,
Sent down her softest smile—though not for them!
Where gleam'd afar Pompeii's graceful towers,
Where hill and vale were cloth'd with vintage bowers,
O'er a dark waste the smouldering ashes spread,
A pall above the dying and the dead.
Though the wild waves another Queen obeyed,
And sad Italia, on her angry shore,
Beheld the North its ruthless myriads pour;
And nature scattered all her treasures round,
And graced with fairest hues the blighted ground.
There oft, at glowing noon, the village maid
Sought the deep shelter of the vineyard shade;
Beheld the olive bud—the wild-flower wave,
Nor knew her step was on a people's grave!
But see! once more beneath the smiles of day,
The dreary mist of ages melts away!
Again Pompeii, 'mid the brightening gloom,
Comes forth in beauty from her lonely tomb.
Lovely in ruin—graceful in decay,
The clasping ivy hangs her faithful shade,
As if to hide the wreck that time had made;
The shattered column on the lonely ground
Is glittering still, with fresh acanthus crowned;
And where her Parian rival moulders near,
The drooping lily pours her softest tear!
How sadly sweet with pensive step to roam
Amid the ruin'd wall, the tottering dome!
The path just worn by human feet is here,
Their echoes almost reach the listening ear;
The marble halls with rich mosaic drest;
The portal wide that woos the lingering guest;
Altars, with fresh and living chaplets crown'd,
From those wild flowers that spring fantastic round;
The unfinish'd painting, and the pallet nigh,
Whose added hues must fairer charms supply—
These mingle here, until th' unconscious feet
Roam on, intent some gathering crowd to meet;
And cheated Fancy, in her dreamy mood,
Will half forget that it is solitude!
Through gates unwatch'd, the City of the Dead!
Explore with pausing step th' unpeopled path,
View the proud hall—survey the stately bath,
Where swelling roofs their noblest shelter raise;
Enter! no voice shall check th' intruder's gaze!
See! the dread legion's peaceful home is here,
The signs of martial life are scattered near.
Yon helm, unclasp'd to ease some Warrior's brow,
The sword his weary arm resign'd but now,
Broke by the hoarse Centurion's startling call:
Hark! did their sounding tramp re-echo round?
Or breath'd the hollow gale that fancied sound?
Behold! where 'mid yon fane, so long divine,
Sad Isis mourns her desolated shrine!
Will none the mellow reed's soft music breathe?
Or twine from yonder flowers the victim's wreath?
None to yon altar lead with suppliant strain
The milk-white monarch of the herd again?
All, all is mute! save sadly answering nigh
The night-bird's shriek, the shrill cicada's cry.
Yet may you trace along the furrow'd street,
The chariot's track—the print of frequent feet;
The gate unclosed, as if by recent hand;
The hearth, where yet the guardian Lares stand;
Still on the walls the words of welcome shine,
And ready vases proffer joyous wine:
But where the hum of men? the sounds of life?
The Temple's pageant, and the Forum's strife?
The forms and voices, such as should belong
To that bright clime, the land of Love and Song?
How sadly echoing to the stranger's tread,
These walls respond, like voices from the dead!
And sadder traces—darker scenes are there,
Tales of the Tomb, and records of Despair;
The fatal burden of their cherished gold.
Here, wasted relics, as in mockery, dwell
Beside some treasure loved in life too well;
There, faithful hearts have moulder'd side by side,
And hands are claspt that Death could not divide!
None, none shall tell that hour of fearful strife,
When Death must share the consciousness of Life;
When sullen Famine, slow Despair consume
The living tenants of the massive tomb;
Long could they hear, above th' incumbent plain,
The music of the breeze awake again,
The waves' deep echo on the distant shore,
And murmuring streams, that they should see no more!
Away! dread scene! and o'er the harrowing view
Let Night's dim shadows fling their darkest hue!
By waving weeds and ivy-wreaths o'ergrown,
Lurk the grey spoils of Poet or of Sage,
Tully's deep lore, or Livy's pictured page.
If sweet Menander, where his relics fade,
Mourn the dark refuge of Oblivion's shade;
Oh! may their treasures burst the darkling mine;
Glow in the living voice, the breathing line;
Their vestal fire our midnight lamp illume,
And kindle Learning's torch from sad Pompeii's tomb!
Dio Cassius, lxvi., relates, that previously to the destruction of the city, figures of gigantic size were seen hovering in the air, and that a voice like the sound of a trumpet was often heard. Probably the imagination of the inhabitants invested with human figure the vapours that preceded the eruption.
Ingens; et simulacra modis pallentia miris
Visa sub obscurum noctis.”—
Virg. Georg. i. 476.
Pompeii was destroyed on the 23rd of August, A.D. 79. See Plinii Epist. I, vi. 16, 20; Dio Cassius, lxvi. It remained undiscovered during fifteen centuries.
Eustace and other modern writers have thought it improbable that the inhabitants of Pompeii could have assembled to enjoy the amusement of the theatre after the shocks of the earthquake and other symptoms of danger which preceded the eruption; but as their theatrical representations partook of the nature of religious solemnities, there does not seem sufficient reason to disregard the positive assertion of Dio Cassius to the contrary.
Ivory tickets of admission were found in the vicinity of one of the theatres, inscribed on one side with the name of a play of Æschylus, and on the other with a representation of the theatre itself. One or two of these are preserved in the studio at Naples.
“The amphoræ which contained wine still remain, and the marble slabs are marked with cups and glasses.”—Eustace.
At the door of the court of one of the houses skeletons were found, one with a key, another with a purse.”—Eustace.
MAWGAN OF MELHUACH.
Men shuddered to hear the rolling tide:
The wreckers fled fast from the awful shore,
They had heard strange voices amid the roar.
“Will he never come? we shall lose the tide:
His berth is trim and his cabin stored,
He's a weary long time coming on board.”
He knew the words that the voices said;
Wildly he shriek'd as his eyes grew dim,
“He was dead! he was dead! when I buried him.”
“He was nimbler once with a ship on shore;
“Come! come! old man, 'tis a vain delay,
“We must make the offing by break of day.”
With a stormy pang old Mawgan pass'd,
And away, away, beneath their sight,
Gleam'd the red sail at pitch of night.
Gilbert Mawgan, a noted wrecker, lived in a hut that stood by the sea shore at Mellhuach, or The Vale of the Lark. Among other crimes it is said that he once buried the captain of a vessel, whom he found exhausted on the strand, alive! At the death of the old man, they told me that a vessel came up the Channel, made for Mellhuach bay and lay-to amid a tremendous surf. When Mawgan ceased to breathe she stood-out to sea and disappeared.
FEATHERSTONE'S DOOM.
A spell is on thine hand;
The wind shall be thy changeful loom,
Thy web the shifting sand.
On Blackrock's sullen shore;
Till cordage of the sand shall coil
Where crested surges roar.
Near voices wildly cried;
When thy stern hand no succour gave,
The cable at thy side.
The spell is on thine hand;
The wind shall be thy changeful loom,
Thy web the shifting sand.
The Blackrock is a bold, dark, pillared mass of schist, which rises midway on the shore of Widemouth Bay, near Bude, and is held to be the lair of the troubled spirit of Featherstone the wrecker, imprisoned therein until he shall have accomplished his doom.
THE SILENT TOWER OF BOTTREAUX.
The boy leans on his vessel's side;
He hears that sound, and dreams of home
Soothe the wild orphan of the foam.
“Come to thy God in time!”
Thus saith their pealing chime:
“Youth, manhood, old age past,
“Come to thy God at last.”
Her Tower stands proudly on the hill;
Yet the strange chough that home hath found,
The lamb lies sleeping on the ground.
“Come to thy God in time!”
Should be her answering chime:
“Come to thy God at last!”
Should echo on the blast.
The daughter of a distant sea:
The merry Bottreaux bells on board.
“Come to thy God in time!”
Rung out Tintadgel chime;
“Youth, manhood, old age past,
“Come to thy God at last!”
Hang on the breeze in fitful swells;
“Thank God!” with reverent brow he cried,
“We'll make the shore with evening's tide.”
“Come to thy God in time!”
It was his marriage chime:
“Youth, manhood, old age past,”
His bell must ring at last.
“But thank, at sea, the steersman's hand,”
“The captain's voice above the gale—
“Thank the good ship and ready sail,”
“Come to thy God in time!”
Sad grew the boding chime:
“Come to thy God at last!”
Boom'd heavy on the blast.
The mighty Master's signal-word:
The death-groans of his sinking ship.
“Come to thy God in time!”
Swung deep the funeral chime:
“Grace, mercy, kindness past,
“Come to thy God at last!”
When grey hairs o'er his forehead fell,
While those around would hear and weep—
That fearful judgment of the deep,
“Come to thy God in time!”
He read his native chime:
“Youth, manhood, old age past,”
His bell rang out at last.
Is wakening in his weedy caves:
Those bells, that sullen surges hide,
Peal their deep notes beneath the tide:
“Come to thy God in time!”
Thus saith the ocean chime:
“Storm, billow, whirlwind past,
“Come to thy God at last!”
The rugged heights that line the seashore in the neighbourhood of Tintadgel Castle and Church are crested with towers. Among these, that of Bottreaux, or, as it is now written, Boscastle, is without bells. The silence of this wild and lonely churchyard on festive or solemn occasions is not a little striking. On inquiry I was told that the bells were once shipped for this church, but that when the vessel was within sight of the tower the blasphemy of her captain was punished in the manner related in the Poem. The bells, they told me, still lie in the bay, and announce by strange sounds the approach of a storm.
This wild bird chiefly haunts the coasts of Devon and Cornwall. The common people believe that the soul of King Arthur inhabits one of these birds, and no entreaty or bribe would induce an old Tintadgel quarry-man to kill me one.
The castle mound of the former residence of the Barons of Bottreaux is the sole relic of their race.
THE MONK ROCK.
On Cuthbert's storied ground,
The cloister'd cave all dark above,
The cold waves moaning round.
Far o'er the baffled wave;
“The Monk” is the ancient name it bare
Which our Cornish fathers gave.
Without that rocky shade,
When the print of Crantock's burning hand,
On the maiden's brow was laid—
Therefore what doth she there?
“She loved,” is the answer the legends give,
“She loved too well to fear.”
That deep and distant tone;
'Twas not the voice of the ocean bird
'Twas not the sea-maid's moan.
The dark friar was not there,
Another priest for his cell is shorn—
Her hearth hath a vacant chair.
In that unwonted spot;
The surges war, in fruitless strife,
With a rock that heedeth not.
At moonlight's mystic hour—
They say that sin shall pass therein,
The Fiend will lose his power.
Its cold depths darkly bear
A breast all quick with agony,
Hot with the old despair.
Tales of a former age;
And shapes uncouth, in hues of gold,
Are graven on the page.
On Cuthbert's storied ground;
The cloister'd cave all dark above
The cold waves moaning round.
The Collegiate Church of Saint Crantock, or Carantock, consisted of a Dean and nine Prebendaries. It was conveyed to the Church of Exeter in the year 1236. The college was dissolved in 1534.
THE SPELL OF ST. PENNAH.
The bell hath swung with the midnight chime.
“By thy lost soul and thy tarnished fame,
“Bring me thy lover's unuttered name!”
“From his awful eye the withering look?
“How can I brave that boding tone—
“‘Death to our love when my name is known?’”
“Breathe in his ear Saint Pennah's vow;
“Free thy poor soul from her sinful load—
“False to thy lover, but true to thy God!”
She hath breathed in fierce love Saint Pennah's prayer;
She hath lightened her soul of its sinful load—
False to her lover, but true to her God.
Th' immortal grief of his sullen eye;
And sad was the wild farewell he gave,
As the deep voice of a sounding wave.
“Back to our den, to gibber and coil,
“Where the gliding shadows mourn for rest,
“Each with his hand on his weary breast!”
Was the frailest flower of the Rocky Land;
Hard penance she did for crimes unshriven,
Till the sinner on earth was a saint in heaven.
Which the daughter said who had loved too well—
Thus was lightened her soul of its weary load,
And the sinner was gathered unto God!
“DOWN WITH THE CHURCH.”
AN ELECTIONEERING CRY.
An electioneering song, written when Sir R. Vyvyan and Sir C. Lemon were standing for East Cornwall.
And must the furrow hold your dead?
Our best-belovèd are at rest,
Their cold hands folded on their breast,—
Spring's placid flowers their ashes hide,
And we shall slumber at their side.
Must the babe die with nameless brow?
The unbless'd waters of the spring?
Where will the dove-like spirit rest
When yon old Church shall close her breast?
When the heart thrills within the hand,
And beauty's lip to youth hath given
The vow on Earth that links for Heaven?
Shall no glad peal from churchyard grey
Cheer the young matron's homeward way?
Still beating on the mountain side!
Yes! by the spirit of former men,
That slumbers in each Cornish glen!
The cry of triumph yet shall ring—
The Vyvyan-cry—“Our Church and King!”
Would lift its lisping voice to thee.
Maiden! with fond one at thy side—
Tell! by the holy name of Bride!
Mourner! by that beneath the pall!—
Shall the grey tower in ruin fall?
On each reformer's clammy cheek,
No! though the voice of discord rend
The stately towers that none shall bend,
No! while the Cornish cry can ring—
The Vyvyan-cry—“Our Church and King!”
THE LADY OF THE MOUNT.
Is not to die.”
Where Mount St. Michael guards the Atlantic wave;
A pale brow drooping on a wasted hand,—
The Lady Katherine Gordon —she who gave
All that a bard could hymn or warrior crave
To Warbeck, vaunted heir of York's true line.
She loved him well in life, and o'er his grave,
Hear it, ye misbelievers! as a shrine
She breath'd into his soul a passion all divine!
Pass from her shining cheek, till all is pale;
Tears fall thereon—the unavailing dews
Impearl those leaves that wave beneath the gale.
Fame, worship, wealth! and what could these avail?
He for whom all were dear was far away—
Our bards still call'd her, in their honouring lay,
The White Rose of Old England, unto her dying day.
Our hearts shall burn within us. Tales they tell
Of a grey band of monks that seaward came
From the rich Loire; and where these surges swell
They rear'd, in memory of their native cell,
Walls, where St. Michael still might honour'd be.
At the Eighth Harry's breath their cloister fell:—
Therefore the storied rock and girdling sea,
Thou Lady of the Dead! we consecrate to thee!
A band of monks, from a place of the same name on the Loire, founded a Priory on this rock before the time of Edward the Confessor.
“She loved Warbeck,” says Bacon, “utterly in all his fortunes, and the name of The White Rose, which he gave her in his pride, men continued unto her, because of her beauty.” He left her at St. Michael's Mount on his march to London. Of her fate after his capture and death, there are conflicting legends. Our Cornish dames assert that she died— their husbands, that she married again. I have adopted the more poetical catastrophe.
THE DEATH-SONG OF HAROLD,
Surnamed the Red, Slain at the Battle of Camlan.
She will comb the yellow hair of her eldest-born no more;
And tell the maiden Githa, which should have been my bride,
Thou sawest me kiss this token, it was with me when I died.
And raise a Runic chorus, for him who is not there;
And when they urge the wolf-hound, upon the failing prey,
Charge Ailric that he blow one blast, for the hunter far away.
They spake of me last night, and I heard the words they said;
“Why doth Red Harold loiter? Again must Odin say,
We tarry for an absent guest, the Fame of Norroway!”
THE BURIAL OF HAROLD.
For the Normans have slain him on Hastings' red field;
And William hath sworn in the hour of his pride,
That the raven shall rend him e'en there as he died.
For suff'rance to bury the bones of the dead;
And the hawk from his wrist Ailric Forester gave,
To win for the Lord of his childhood a grave.
So on to the red field of battle they pass'd;
But in vain by the heaps Canon Osgod went by,
And vain the keen glance of the Falconer's eye.
Once named to proud Harold, “the Swan of the Stream).”
She came, and they found her bent low at his side—
Could Death hide the warrior from Edith, his bride?
She shrieked in her anguish and laughed in her scorn—
“See the hand! the red hand that long pillowed my rest!
And the brow, the cold brow, that lay warm on my breast!”
This poem was suggested by the following romantic story, told by the author of the Waltham MS. in the Cottonian Library. . .
“If we may believe him, two of the Canons, Osgod Choppe and Ailric, the childe-maister, were sent to be spectators of the battle. They obtained from William, to whom they presented ten marks of gold, permission to search for the body of their benefactor. Unable to distinguish it among the heaps of the slain, they sent for Harold's mistress, Editha, surnamed The Fair and The Swan's Neck. By her his features were recognised. The corpse was interred at Waltham with regal honours in the presence of several Norman earls and gentlemen.”—Lingard's History of England.
THE SISTERS OF GLEN NECTAN.
The foamy waters flash and leap:
It is where shrinking wild-flowers grow,
They lave the nymph that dwells below.
The reliques of a human cell?
Where the sad stream and lonely wind
Bring man no tidings of his kind.
'Twas told him by his grandsire dead:
“One day two ancient sisters came:
None there could tell their race or name;
Their garb had signs of loftier days;
Slight food they took from hands of men,
They withered slowly in that glen.
Gushed till the fount of tears was dry;
A wild and withering thought had she,
‘I shall have none to weep for me.’
Bent in the shape wherein she passed;
Where her lone seat long used to stand,
Her head upon her shrivelled hand.”
The grandame's tale for winter hearth:
Or some dead bard, by Nectan's stream,
People these banks with such a dream?
To think such wild things here have been:
What spot more meet could grief or sin
Choose, at the last, to wither in?
In a rocky gorge, midway between the castles of Bottreaux and Dundagel, there is a fall of waters into a hollow cauldron of native stone, which has borne for ten centuries the name of St. Nectan's Kieve. He was the brother of St. Morwenna, and like her is one of the storied names along this northern shore. He founded the Stations, now the Churches, of Hartland and Wellcombe; and bequeathed his name to other sacred places by the “Severn Sea,” in the former ages of Cornish faith.
When I first visited his Kieve, in 1830, the outline of an oratory, or the reliques of a cell, stood by the brook, on a knoll, just where the waters took their leap. There is a local legend linked with this ruined abode, which was told me on the spot; and which I expanded at the time into the above ballad. I have recognized the coinage of my brain in the prosaic paraphrases of Wilkie Collins, Walter White, and other subsequent writers; but with regard to any claimant for the original imagination, I must reply, in the language of Jack Cade, “No, no; I invented it myself.”
TETCOTT, 1831;
IN WHICH YEAR SIR WILLIAM MOLESWORTH CAUSED THE OLD HOUSE TO BE TAKEN DOWN, AND A NEW ONE BUILT.
From the dim cloisters of that shadowy home,
Where the far spirits of each severed clime,
The sad and placid, coil and bide their time,
If love survive, or memory endear,
Shade of the Hunter old! thou would'st be here!
Dew from the trees with echo of his horn!
The gathering scene, where Arscott's lightest word
Went like a trumpet to the hearts that heard!
The dogs that knew the meaning of his voice,
From the grim fox-hound to my lady's choice.
The steed that waited till his hand carest,
And old Black John that gave and bare the jest.
Oh, for the scenes of old! the former men!
That hill's far echoes sped the starting cry,
Within yon vale the worn prey rushed to die.
Dashed the wild steed with footsteps like the storm.
Yields the grey dwelling from her sad embrace.
The walls! the walls! that felt his father's breath,
Th' accustomed room he loved so well in death,
Are lowly laid—and in their place will stand
A roof unknown—a stranger in the land.
AN ELECTION SONG.
Written when Sir Salusbury Trelawny contested the county in 1832, against my impulses and judgment, but I was subdued by Lady Trelawny in her peremptory way.—R.S.H.
And shall Trelawny die?
Here's twenty thousand Cornish men
Will know the reason why!
Where Cornish hearts combine,
We bow before the noble dead,
And laud their living line!
Free as your native air;
But honour to the good and brave,
And homage to the fair!
The patriot's lasting fame,
And follow o'er the Rocky Land,
The old Trelawny name!
They bid Trelawny die:
But twenty thousand Cornish men
Will know the reason why!
ANNOT OF BENALLAY.
To summon Annot's clay;
For common eyes must not behold
The griefs of Benallay.
Was Lady Annot born:
That light which was not long to shine,
The sun that set at morn.
They buried her in pall;
And the ring He gave her faith to plight
Shines on her finger small.
The sullen Leech stands by:
The sob of voiceless love is there,
And sorrow's vacant eye.
The churchyard's homeward way:
Farewell! farewell! thou lovely dead:
Thou Flower of Benallay.
Along the chancel floor:
He waits, that old man grey and grim,
To close the narrow door.
The ghastly caitiff said,
“Better that living hands should hold
Than glisten on the dead.”
The pall is rent away:
And lo! beneath the shatter'd lid,
The Flower of Benallay!
Blood thrills that lifted hand!
And awful words are in her cries,
Which none may understand!
Of the city callèd Nain:—
Lo! glad feet throng the sculptur'd floor
To hail their dead again!
A stately feast is spread;
Lord Harold is the bridegroom gay,
The Bride th' arisen dead.
The facts on which the above Ballad is founded are well known in Cornwall. I have only altered the name and place.
DUPATH WELL.
The Leech hath told the woeful bride
'Tis vain: his passing hour is nigh,
And death must quench her warrior's eye.
When Dupath spring was dark with gore,
The spear I raised for Githa's glove,
Those trophies of my wars and love.”
The helm on his unyielding head:
Sternly he lean'd upon his spear,
He knew his passing hour was near.
How fiercely glared his flashing eye;
“Sound! herald!” was his shout of pride:
Hear how the noble Siward died!
Her dying lord's remember'd theme;
A daily vow that lady said
Where glory wreath'd the hero dead.
Time yet hath spar'd that solemn cell—
In memory of old love and pride:
Hear how the noble Siward died.
Dupath Spring gushes at the foot of Hingston Tor. Its waters flow through the arched door of a granite cell; and, like most of the guarded wells of our country, “it hath a meaning,” which I have endeavoured to record. Goetz of the Iron Hand and other warriors imitated in after times the death of Siward.
THE DEATH-RACE.
And bearing down for Trebarra Height,
She folds her wings by that rocky strand:
Watch ye, and ward ye! a boat on land!
To greet these strangers of the wave;
Wait! since they pace the seaward glen
With the measured tread of mourning men.
What corpse is laid on your solemn bier?
Yon minster-ground were a calmer grave
Than the roving bark, or the weedy wave!”
To hew in fair France her narrow bed;
And her angry ghost will win no rest
If your Cornish earth lie on her breast.”
By St. Michael of Carne! 'twas an awful sight!
For those folded hands were meekly laid
On the silent breast of a shrouded maid.
Go, bury your dead where best ye may!
But the Norroway barks are over the deep,
So we watch and ward from our guarded steep.”
Ye may hear far off their clanking speed;
What knight in steel is thundering on?
Ye may know the voice of the grim Sir John.
Borne out for dead at the deep of night?”
“Too late! too late!” cried the warder pale,
“Lo! the full deck, and the rushing sail!”
They have spread their sails to the roaring deep;
Watch ye, and ward ye! with wind and tide,
Fitz-Walter hath won his Cornish bride.
Two strangers, with their followers-at-arms, arrived on a certain night at a village near Trebarra strand. A corpse, carried on a bier and covered with a pall, seemed the chief object of their care. One of these strangers remained by the body while the other watched the sea. At dawn, a ship appeared in sight, neared the shore, and sent off a boat. The strangers hastened to the beach, placed the corpse in the boat, embarked with it and were never heard of more. This legend, a distorted account of an actual occurtence in the twelfth century, is still current in the neighbourhood of Trebarra, and was related to me there.
There are remains of many small buildings on this coast which the people call “Watch and Ward Towers,” as they no doubt were when piracy was common on the coast, in the old times.
DATUR HORA QUIETI.
To the MS. of this Poem is the following note:—“Why do you wish the burial to be at five o'clock?” “Because it was the time at which he used to leave work.”
“To close their brother's narrow bed:”
'Tis at that pleasant hour of day
The labourer treads his homeward way.
And therefore with the set of sun,
To wait the wages of the dead,
We laid our hireling in his bed.
“So when even was come, the Lord of the Vineyard saith unto his steward, call the labourers, and give them their hire.”—Saint Matthew xx. 8.
Among the rural inhabitants of Cornwall the burial of the dead usually takes place in the evening, because the bearers have then “left work.”
A RAPTURE ON THE CORNISH HILLS.
The massive monuments of a vast religion,
Piled by the strength of unknown hands, were there
The everlasting hills, around, afar,
Uplifted their huge fronts, the natural altars
Reared by the Earth to its surrounding God.
I heard a Voice, as the sound of many waters:—
“What do'st thou here, Elijah?” And I said,
“What doth he here, Man that is born of woman?
The clouds may haunt these mountains; the fierce storm
Coiled in his caverned lair—that wild torrent
Leaps from a native land: but Man! O Lord!
What doth he here!”
Did'st thou not fear the Voice?
The Bard.
I could not, at the foot of Rocky Carradon.
There is a wide extent of hilly moorland stretching from Rough Tor to Carradon and heaped with rude structures of various kinds, that would reward the researches of an Antiquary. The cromlech, piled rocks, and unhewn pillar, are commonly referred to the times of Druidical worship. To me, they seem to claim a more ancient origin. A simple structure of stone was the usual altar and monument of the Patriarchal Religion. The same feelings would actuate the heirs of that creed in Cornwall as in Palestine; and the same motives would induce them to rear a pillar there, and to pour oil thereon, and to call it the Place of God.
TREBARROW.
Of old, from yonder lonely mound?
Race of Pendragen! did ye pour
On this dear earth your votive gore?
The loose rank of the roving Dane?
Or Norman charger's sounding tread
Smite the meek daisy's Saxon head?
No legend cometh from beneath
Of chief, with good sword at his side
Or Druid in his tomb of pride.
Her lone nest in the scanty brake;
A nameless flower, a silent fern—
Lo! the dim stranger's storied urn.
The future answereth to the past;
The bird, the flower, may gather still,
Thy voice shall cease upon the hill!
The word tre signifies in the ancient Cornish tongue “the place of abode,” and barrow means “a burial mound.” The word “Trebarrow” implies, therefore, “a dwelling among the graves;” and my house at North Tamerton was so named by me because it was surrounded by these green heaps of the dead. Some of these I opened, and in the centre of one of them I found an urn of baked clay filled with human ashes, and a patera, which I still possess, of the same material. It denotes in all likelihood the entombment of a Keltic priest, and that of pre-Christian times.
“PATER VESTER PASCIT ILLA.”
Our bark is on the waters! wide around,The wandering wave; above, the lonely sky.
Hush! a young sea-bird floats, and that quick cry
Shrieks to the levelled weapon's echoing sound,
Grasps its lank wing, and on, with reckless bound!
Yet, creature of the surf, a sheltering breast
To-night shall haunt in vain thy far-off nest,
A call unanswered, search the rocky ground.
Lord of Leviathan! when Ocean heard,
Thy gathering voice, and sought his native breeze;
When whales first plunged with life, and the proud deep
Felt unborn tempests heave in troubled sleep;
Thou didst provide, e'en for this nameless bird,
Home, and a natural love, amid the surging seas
DEATH SONG.
Down by the rolling sea;
Close up the eyes and straighten the hands,
As a Christian man's should be.
Six feet below the ground;
Let the sexton come and the death-bell toll,
And good men stand around.
Where the priest hath blessed the clay;
I cannot leave the unburied bones,
And I fain would go my way.
THE SEA-BIRD'S CRY.
The cruel cormorant's tuneless shriek;
Fierce songs they chant, in pool or cave,
Dark wanderers of the western wave.
Here will the listening landsman pray
For memory's music, far away;
Soft throats that nestling with the rose,
Soothe the glad rivulet as it flows.
Give eve's hush'd bough to woodland bird:
Let the winged minstrel's valley-note,
'Mid flowers and fragrance, pause and float.
Here must the echoing beak prevail,
To pierce the storm, and cleave the gale;
To call, when warring tides shall foam,
The fledgeling of the waters home.
Stern surges and a haughty strand;
Sea-monsters haunt yon cavern'd lair,
The mermaid wrings her briny hair.
Like native echoes of the ground.
Lo! He did all things well Who gave
The sea-bird's voice to such a wave.
MINSTER CHURCH AND THE CONFIRMATION DAY
But teach thy native echoes one more song
Though fame withhold her sigil from thy brow,
And years half yield thee to the unnoted throng.
Doth not the linnet her meek lay prolong
In the lone depths of some deserted wood?
Springs not the violet coarse weeds among,
Where no fond voice shall praise her solitude?
Happy that bird and flower, though there befew intrude?
Deep with old oaks, and 'mid their quiet shade,
Grey with the moss of years, yon antique cell!
Sad are those walls: The cloister lowly laid
Where pacing monks at solemn evening made
Their chanted orisons; and as the breeze
Came up the vale, by rock and tree delay'd,
Blend with thy pausing hymn—thou Minster of the Trees!
Scenes of the former men my soul surround:
Lo! a dark priest, who bends with solemn ear—
A warrior prostrate on the awful ground,
Hark! by stern promise is Lord Bottreaux bound
To spread for Palestine his contrite sail;
In distant dreams to hear the vesper sound
Of that sweet bell; but never more to hail
Amidst those native trees, the Minster of the Vale!
Glides like a shadow through the cloister'd wood;
'Tis not to breathe Saint Ursula's stony vow
She haunts at eve that dreamy solitude;—
Yon gnarlêd oak was young, when there they stood,
The lady and the priest—they met to sigh:
For who be they with sudden grasp intrude?
They sever them in haste—yet not to die.
Hark! from yon stifled wall a low and frequent cry!
Is leaning there, bent with the weight of days!
His cell was shattered by the reckless ban
Of a hard monarch—hush'd the voice of praise.
He had gone forth—strange faces met his gaze:
Ailric was dead, and cold was Edith's eye;
He had return'd—no sheltering roof to raise,
But 'mid the ruins of his love to die—
To pass from that worn frame into his native sky.
Dwelt in the vale or glided o'er the plain.
Heaven's changeless smile is here—earth's constant face;
The mingling sighs of woodland and the main.
Here, at lone eve, still seek this simple fane
Hearts that would cherish, 'midst their native trees,
A deathless faith—a hope that is not vain;
The tones that gather'd on the ancient breeze;
The Minster's pausing psalm; the chorus of the seas.
Beat joyful hearts; and white-rob'd forms are seen
Peopling with life the leafy solitude;
For He, of aspect mild yet stately mien,
The master-soul of a far loftier scene,
Hath come, beside that low-roof'd wall to stand,
Where the meek minster loves her bowers of green,
To breathe the Blessing on that rural band;
Proudly they hear those tones and see that lifted hand!
Thoughts new and strange, for fancy's future hour?
Shall no glad visions haunt this storied spot,
Glide from those boughs, and rest by yonder tower?
Yes; there shall be a spell of mightiest power
Breath'd o'er that ground—him will these groves recall
Who saw, unbent, the deadly battle lower,
Fair Sion's turrets shake, her bulwarks fall;
And foremost mann'd the breach and latest left the wall.
Henceforth be thine; with added beauty blest!
The presence of this day hath surely wrought
A charm immortal for thy home of rest.
Long may the swallow find her wonted nest
On thy grey walls; long may the breezes bear
The sounds of worship from thy happy breast;
The mind that shook whole senates hath been there;
Strong be the soul of faith, and firm the voice of prayer.
An alien priory to the abbey of St. Sergius, at Angiers, once occupied this glen. When it was dissolved the chapel was suffered to remain. It still preserves a record of the monasteries in its name—“the minster church.”
On an artificial mound in the gorge of a valley, near this church, stood the castle of the Barons of Bottreaux; the name of their place of abode accrued to the surrounding village, which is now abbreviated into Boscastle [Bottreaux' Castle.]
A confirmation was held in this church by the Lord Bishop of the diocese [Bishop Phillpotts.—Ed.], on Wednesday, the 17th day of August, 1836—a day which will long be an era to be remembered by the inhabitants of a secluded district, never before honoured by an episcopal visit.
MODRYB MARYA—AUNT MARY.
A CHRISTMAS CHANT.
In old and simple-hearted Cornwall, the household names “Uncle” and “Aunt” were uttered and used as they are to this day in many countries of the East, not only as phrases of kindred, but as words of kindly greeting and tender respect. It was in the spirit, therefore, of this touching and graphic usage, that they were wont on the Tamar side to call the Mother of God in their loyal language Modryb Marya, or Aunt Mary.
Which do you love the best?
O! the one that is green upon Christmas Day,
The bush with the bleeding breast.
Now the holly with her drops of blood for me:
For that is our dear Aunt Mary's tree.
'Tis a plant that loves the poor:
Summer and winter it shines the same,
Beside the cottage door.
O! the holly with her drops of blood for me:
For that is our kind Aunt Mary's tree.
They sing in it all day long;
But sweetest of all upon Christmas Eve,
Is to hear the robin's song.
'Tis the merriest sound upon earth and sea:
For it comes from our own Aunt Mary's tree.
I love that tree the best;
'Tis a bower for the birds upon Christmas Day,
The bush of the bleeding breast.
O! the holly with her drops of blood for me:
For that is our sweet Aunt Mary's tree.
MORWENNA STATIO.
The Stow, or the place, of St. Morwenna; hence the Breviate, hodie, Morwenstow.
Wherein this weary heart hath rest:
What years the birds of God have found
Along thy walls their sacred nest!
The storm—the blast—the tempest shock,
Have beat upon those walls in vain;
She stands—a daughter of the rock—
The changeless God's eternal fane.
The wise of heart in wood and stone;
Who reared, with stern and trusting hands,
These dark grey towers of days unknown:
They fill'd these aisles with many a thought,
They bade each nook some truth reveal:
The pillar'd arch its legends brought,
A doctrine came with roof and wall.
Were the choice stones they lifted then:
The vision of their hope was long,
They knew their God, those faithful men.
They pitch'd no tent for change or death,
No home to last man's shadowy day;
There! there! the everlasting breath,
Would breathe whole centuries away.
The graven arches, firm and fair:
They bend their shoulders to the toil,
And lift the hollow roof in air.
A sign! beneath the ship we stand,
The inverted vessel's arching side;
Forsaken—when the fisher-band
Went forth to sweep a mightier tide.
A cross—the builder's holiest form:
That awful couch, where once was shed
The blood, with man's forgiveness warm.
And here, just where His mighty breast
Throb'd the last agony away,
They bade the voice of worship rest,
And white-robed Levites pause and pray.
Curves in the paten's mystic mould:
The lily, lady of the flowers,
Her shape must yonder chalice hold.
The twain in this dim chancel stand;
The badge of Norman banners, one
And one a crest of English land.
Where'er our faithful fathers trod!
The very ground with speech is fraught,
The air is eloquent of God.
In vain would doubt or mockery hide
The buried echoes of the past;
A voice of strength, a voice of pride,
Here dwells amid the storm and blast.
The solemn arches breathe in stone;
Window and wall have lips to tell
The mighty faith of days unknown.
Yea! flood, and breeze, and battle-shock
Shall beat upon this church in vain:
She stands, a daughter of the rock,
The changeless God's eternal fane.
1 The rose and the fleur-de-lys, adopted from Song of Solomon ii. I, were used as ecclesiastical emblems some centuries before they were assumed into the shields of Normandy and England.
THE SAINTLY NAMES.
Sisters were they, the fair and holy twain,Marveena and Morwenna; and the vales
And mountains of their birth were in wild Wales;
Thence came they in their youth across the main.
King Breachan was their sire, and his sweet wife,
Gladwise, their mother, gave them love and life.
Virgins they lived and died—Oh not in vain!
One meekly built a solitary cell,
Where still her lingering memory loves to dwell,
In the old arches of grey Marham's fane.
The other sought the sea: her pleasant place
The pilgrim of the waters still may trace,
Where rock and headland watch the ocean-plain.
Mark how their blended names in music flow,
The Church of Marham, and Morwenna's Stow!
Let not the Dreamer-of-the-Past complain—
The Saints, the Sanctuaries, the Creed, this very day remain!
THE VINE.
Hearken! There is in old Morwenna's shrine,(A lonely sanctuary of the Saxon days,
Rear'd by the Severn sea for prayer and praise,)
Amid the carved work of the roof, a vine;
Its root is where the eastern sunbeams fall,
First in the chancel, then along the wall
Slowly it travels on, a leafy line,
With here and there a cluster, and anon
More and more grapes, until the growth hath gone
Through arch and aisle. Hearken! and heed the sign.
See! at the altar-side the steadfast root,
Mark well the branches, count the summer fruit:
So let a meek and faithful heart be thine,
And gather from that tree a parable divine.
THE WELL OF ST MORWENNA.
Holy Morwenna, guardian of this well.
Here, on the foreheads of our fathers, poured,
From this lone spring, the laver of the Lord.
That awful Fount whence living waters flow,
Then hither come to draw: thy feet have found
Amidst these rocks a place of holy ground.
The grain of mustard-seed was meekly cast,
Till grew and multiplied that goodly tree—
Shrines in the vale and towers along the sea.
O'er the fond labour of departed days;
Tell the glad waters of the former fame,
And teach the joyful winds Morwenna's name.
“I AM THE RESURRECTION AND THE LIFE? SAITH THE LORD!”
By fair Morwenna's walls of grey:
Our hearts were hush'd—the God who gave
Had called a sister-soul away.
Hark! what wild tones around us float:
The chaunting cuckoo's double note!
“Man that is born from flesh of Eve,
The banished flower of Eden's ground,
Hath but a little time to live;”—
And still, amid each pausing word,
The strange cry of that secret bird.
The last farewell we sadly said.
Our mighty hope—our certain trust—
The resurrection of the dead.
Again, all air, it glides around,
A voice!—the spirit of a sound.
A truth is borne on yonder wing;
Long years! long years! the note is known—
The blessèd messenger of spring!
Thus saith that pilgrim of the skies:
“Lo! all which dieth shall arise!”
Love's sepulchre and sorrow's night,
The sun shall visit depth and tomb
A season of eternal light!
Like the glad bosom of the rose,
The mound shall burst—the grave unclose!
What generations here have trod!
What winds have breathed that sound along,
Fit signal of the changeless God!
Hark! yet again the echoes float,
The chaunting cuckoo's double note!
THE WESTERN SHORE.
Scenes that should breathe the soul of song;
Home of high hopes that once were mine
Of loftier verse and nobler line!
Sleeps well within the mountain-side;
Henceforth shall time's cold touch control
The warring Hecla of my soul.
Where round my days dark seas shall roar;
And thy gray fane, Morwenna, stand
The beacon of the Eternal Land!
My glebe occupies a position of wild and singular beauty: its western boundary is the sea, skirted by tall and tremendous cliffs, and near their brink, with the exquisite taste of Ecclesiastical antiquity, is placed the church. The original and proper designation of the parish is Morwenstow—that is, Morwenna's Stow or Station—but it has been corrupted by recent usage, like many other local names. Halfway down a precipitous cliff near the church there still survives, with its perpetual water but ruined walls, the Well of Morwenna, an old baptismal fount; and another, the vicarage Well of St. John, is used in the church in regeneration to this day.
THE EXILE'S TEXT
In hallowed slumbers, calm and deep;
Their bed, the scenery of their birth,
The dust around them, Hebrew earth!
Their tombs are in the blessèd spot
Where hearth, and home, and altar stand,
With Aaron's shrine and Judah's land!
Where rivers of the stranger flow,
And Gentile winds must bear along
The Lord's—the God of Jacob's song!
To die, in cities not our own;
False feet our sepulchres will tread,
A breathing nation of the dead.
Our flesh will shudder where we lie;—
Bone to his bone will cleave and creep
From the vile earth around our sleep.
They hear those waters where they dream:
The floods that fall by Abraham's cave,
And Rachel's tomb, and Isaac's grave!
Is pure and blessed, calm and deep;
But grieve, yea, grieve for us: we go
Where rivers of the stranger flow!
The hills, the trees, the ocean-shore!
Ah! Salem, Gilead, Lebanon,
The Lord, the Lord your God, is gone!
HOME ONCE MORE!
Looks with familiar face on me:
A smile comes o'er the accustomed hill,
A voice of welcome from the rill.
The bounding breast and brightening brow,
The footstep firm, the bearing bold,
Wherewith I trod these scenes of old?
Thought thickens all things into gloom;
Along this path the listener hears
Feet heavy with the toil of years.
The old remembrance lives again,
The scene sighs with its former breath,
Like that old Ridley loved in death.
The themes of God's eternal mind;
While the deep stream and thrilling birds
Made music 'mid those mighty words.
Breathed, far away on Syrian ground,
By prophet-bards to whom were given
The lore and poetry of Heaven.
Gesture and tone of saintly Paul,
Till fancy heard the iron bands
That shook upon his lifted hands.
Vision and dream around my soul:
But, in their stead, float down the wind
These fragments of a broken mind.
The dust of love will fondly dwell;
And scenes so dear in life shall hide
The hearts that death could not divide.
1 Who can read without emotion the last words of Ridley, written in his prison-house in Oxford, in memory of the “scenes that he had loved the best” during the life that he was about to forego for Jesus Christ his sake? Who that loves old Oxford can fail to be touched by the passage to which these lines refer:—“Farewell sweet Magdalen-walks in Oxford, where I did learn Saint Paul's Epistles by heart.”
THE POOR MAN AND HIS PARISH CHURCH.
A TRUE TALE.
Flesh, and a feeling mind:
They breathe the breath of mortal sighs,
They are of human kind.
They weep such tears as others shed,
And now and then they smile:—
For sweet to them is that poor bread,
They win with honest toil.
And children climb their knee:
They have not many friends, for they
Are in such misery.
They sell their youth, their skill, their pains,
For hire in hill and glen:
The very blood within their veins,
It flows for other men.
When they grow old and bent:
Meek houses built of dark grey stone,
Worn labour's monument.
There should they dwell, beneath the thatch,
With threshold calm and free:
No stranger's hand should lift the latch,
To mark their poverty.
Her aisles in youth they trod:—
They have no home in all the land,
Like that old House of God.
There, there, the Sacrament was shed,
That gave them heavenly birth;
And lifted up the poor man's head
With princes of the earth.
Their simple vows were poured;
And angels looked with equal gaze
On Lazarus and his Lord.
There, too, at last, they calmly sleep,
Where hallow'd blossoms bloom;
And eyes as fond and faithful weep
As o'er the rich man's tomb.
Beside a churchyard wall,
Where roses round the porch would roam,
And gentle jasmines fall:
There dwelt an old man, worn and blind,
Poor, and of lowliest birth;
He seemed the last of all his kind—
He had no friend on earth.
At morn and evening tide
Pass, 'mid the graves, with tottering limb,
To the grey chancel's side:
The prayers his youth had known:
Words by the old Apostles made,
In tongues of ancient tone.
He bent with reverent knee:
The dial carved upon the tower
Was not more true than he.
This lasted till the blindness fell
In shadows round his bed;
And on those walls he loved so well,
He looked, and they were fled.
If feet of men were there,
To tell them how his soul would yearn
For the old place of prayer;
And some would lead him on to stand,
While fast their tears would fall,
Until he felt beneath his hand
The long-accustomed wall.
Faith found the former tone;
His heart within his bosom felt
The touch of every stone.
He died—he slept beneath the dew,
In his own grassy mound:
The corpse, within the coffin, knew
That calm, that holy ground.
Of houses fair and wide,
Where troops of poor men go to dwell
In chambers side by side:—
I dream of that old cottage door,
With garlands overgrown,
And wish the children of the poor
Had flowers to call their own.
They have their worship-day,
Where the stern signal coldly calls
The prisoned poor to pray,—
I think upon that ancient home
Beside the churchyard wall,
Where roses round the porch would roam,
And gentle jasmines fall.
His grey head bowed and bare;
He kneels by one dear wall to pray,
The sunlight in his hair.
Well! they may strive, as wise men will,
To work with wit and gold:
I think my own dear Cornwall still
Was happier of old.
With one roof over all;
Where the true hearts of Cornish men
Might beat beside the wall:
Our fathers were forgiven,
Who went, with meek and faithful ways,
Through the old aisles to heaven.
THE SONG OF THE SCHOOL:
ST. MARK'S, MORWENSTOW.
His gentle love declare,
Who bends amid the seraphim,
To hear the children's prayer.
Though God's own Son was He;
He learnt the first small words He said
At a meek mother's knee.
The children of the earth;
He lifted up His hands and blessed
The babes of human birth.
Our gracious Saviour too;
The scenes we tread His footsteps trod,
The paths of youth He knew.
On us with glances mild:
The angels of His presence yearn
To bless the little child.
That so, by Thy dear grace,
We, children of the font, may see
Our heavenly Father's face.
His tender love declare,
Who bends amid the seraphim,
To hear the children's prayer.
ON THE GRAVE OF A CHILD IN MORWENSTOW CHURCHYARD.
They see no evil days;
No falsehood taints their tongue,
No wickedness their ways.
To win their safe abode;
What could we pray for more?
They die, and are with God.
THE TAMAR SPRING.
The source of this storied river of the West is on a rushy knoll, in a moorland of this parish. The Torridge also flows from the self-same mound.
The home where thy first waters sunlight claim;
The lark sits hushed beside thee, while I breathe,
Sweet Tamar spring! the music of thy name.
Pass amid heathery vale, tall rock, fair bough:
But never more with footsteps pure and free,
Or face so meek with happiness as now.
Thy course domestic, and thy paths of pride:
Depths that give back the soft-eyed violet's gaze,
Shores where tall navies march to meet the tide.
Noble Northumberland's embowered domain;
Thine, Cartha Martha, Morwell's rocky falls,
Storied Cotehele, and Ocean's loveliest plain.
That lures thee from thy native wilds to stray:
A thousand griefs will mingle with that stream,
Unnumbered hearts shall sigh those waves away.
Harsh multitudes will throng thy gentle brink;
Back! with the grieving concourse of thy waves,
Home! to the waters of thy childhood shrink!
Thy heart is quick with life; On! to the sea!
How will the voice of thy far streams implore
Again amid these peaceful weeds to be!
Thine the hushed valley, and the lonely sod;
False dreams, far vision, hollow hope resign,
Fast by our Tamar spring, alone with God!
THE STORM.
The battle-field, Morwenna's strand,
Where rock and ridge the bulwark keep,
The giant-warders of the deep.
The seething surge, the gathering gale?
They fling their wild flag to the breeze,
The banner of a thousand seas.
Thus far, incalculable main!
No more! thine hosts have not o'erthrown
The lichen on the barrier stone.
Unmoved, a grim and stately band,
And look, like warriors tried and brave,
Stern, silent, reckless, o'er the wave?
To feel the glory of the strife;
And trust, one day, in battle bold,
To win the foeman's haughty hold?
Fierce valour, and the zeal of fame!
Hear how their din of madness raves,
The baffled army of the waves!
Thy paths, where awful waters be;
Thy spirit thrills the conscious stone:
O Lord, thy footsteps are not known!
THE CELL BY THE SEA.
The thrilling voice of prayer:
A seraph, from his cloudy bower,
Might lean to listen there.
To that great fane have given
Hues that might win an angel's gaze,
'Mid scenery of heaven.
With footsteps firm and free:
Around—the mountains guard the deep,
Beneath—the wide, wide sea.
Like vessels on the shore;
Inverted, when the fisher-band
Might tread their planks no more
Lest faithless hearts forget
The men that braved the ancient storm,
And hauled the early net.
Still weaves the chancel screen:
And tombs, with many a broken rhyme,
Suit well this simple scene.
The womb of mystic birth,
An altar, where, in angels' sight,
Their Lord descends to earth.
Here breathes the soul of prayer:
The awful church—so hushed—so calm—
Ah! surely God is there.
No theme of former men?
A shape to rise at fancy's call,
And sink in graves again?
With whisper'd words they tell,
How once the monk, with name unknown,
Prepared that silent cell.
With vows long breathed in vain:
Those arches heard, at dead of night,
The lash, the shriek, the pain;
The sob, the bursting sigh:
Till woke, with agony of years,
The exceeding bitter cry.
E'en though in anguish nurs'd—
Few think what human hearts can bear
Before their sinews burst.
The hour of freedom came:
In that dim niche the stranger lay
A cold and silent frame.
What guilt was rankling there,
We know not: time may not unroll
The page of his despair.
A cross hath marked the stone;
Pray ye, his soul in death hath found
The peace to life unknown.
Take heed, lest ye too fall;
A day may mar the rest, that years
Shall seek but not recall.
Or shame in cells is screen'd;
For Thought, the demon, will be there,
And Memory, the fiend.
Breathe it in hall and bower,
Till reckless hearts grow hushed to hear,
The Monk of Hartland Tower.
EPHPHATHA.
It is the Baptist's festival:
What showers of gold the sunbeams rain,
Through the tall window's purple pane!
What rich hues on the pavement lie,
A molten rainbow from the sky!
Yonder, along the southward wall,
Where ceased, e'en now, the chaunted hymn
Of that grey man whose eyes are dim:
'Twas an old legend, quaintly sung,
Caught from some far barbaric tongue.
He thirsts for water from the spring
Which flowed of old and still flows on,
With name and memory of St. John:
So fares the pilgrim in that hall,
E'en on the Baptist's festival.
Thus said the lady's youthful page:
“He eats, but sees not on that bread
What glorious radiance there is shed;
He drinks from out that chalice fair,
Nor marks the sunlight glancing there.”
And hear once more an old man's lay:
Ruddy and rich on this gay board;
I may not trace the noonday light,
Wherewith my bread and bowl are bright:
That brightness falls on this fair bread;
Thou sayest—and thy tones be true—
This cup is tinged with heaven's own hue:
I trust thy voice; I know from thee
That which I cannot hear nor see.
It is the Baptist's holy day!
Go, where in old Morwenna's shrine,
They break the bread and bless the wine;
There meekly bend thy trusting knee,
And touch what sight can never see.
All that the cup and paten bear;
But life unseen moves o'er that bread,
A glory on that wine is shed;
A light comes down to breathe and be,
Though hid, like summer suns, from me.
Day oft is night and night is day:
The arrowy glance of lady fair
Beholds not things that throng the air;
The clear bright eye of youthful page
Hath duller ken than blind old age.”
On the bold Baptist's festival;
The harp is husht and mute the hymn,
The guest is gone whose eyes are dim,
But evermore to Ronald clung
That mystic measure, quaintly sung.
“I have sought in these verses, to suggest a shadow of that beautiful instruction to Christian men, the actual and spiritual presence of our Lord in the second Sacrament of his Church; a primal and perpetual doctrine in the faith once delivered to the Saints. How sadly the simplicity of this hath and has been distorted and disturbed by the gross and sensuous notion of a carnal presence introduced by the Romish innovation of the eleventh century!”—Note in Ecclesia. 1841.
“I have sought in these verses, to suggest the manner of that miraculous event, the actual and etherial Presence of Our Lord in the Second Sacrament of His Church.”—Note in Echoes from Old Cornwall, 1846.
THE SIGNALS OF LEVI.
The Rabbins have ruled that the daily oblation was never to begin until the Signal of Levi was heard, and the time was thus to be known: A Levite was placed, before cockcrow, on the roof of the Temple, to watch the sky; and when the day had so far dawned that he could see Hebron, a city on the heights where John the Baptizer was afterwards born, then he blew with his trumpet an appointed sound, and the sacrifice began.
Signal the First
Hark to the trumpet din!
Day dawns on Hebron's brow,
Let the sacrifice begin.
How the lute and harp rejoice,
'Mid the roar of oxen bound,
And the lamb's beseeching voice.
Will hold at Salem's shrine
A high and haughty feast
Of flesh and the ruddy wine.
And the fear is vain at last,
Though foretold by sages dead,
And sworn by the Prophets past.
E'en now would a Name unfold
That should rule the wide, wide earth,
And quench the thrones of old.
The tale of travail brings;
Not an infant cry is heard
In the palaces of kings.
On Jesse's stately stem:
So they bid swart Edom wear
Fallen Israel's diadem.
'Mid Judah's shame and sin:
Hark to the trumpet-sound!
Let the sacrifice begin.
Signal the Second
Day dawns o'er Jordan's stream,
And it floats where Bethlehem's bowers
Of the blessèd morning dream.
It cleaves no purple room;
The soft, calm radiance falls
On a cavern's vaulted gloom.
When the weary day is done,
How that maiden-mother's breast
Thrills with her Awful Son!
By the ruddy heifer trod,
Yea! the mountain's rifted home
Is the birthplace of a God!
By the sign and voice foretold;
He shall rule the wide, wide earth,
And quench the thrones of old.
The son of Abraham's fame:
Arise, ye lands! and shine
With the blessèd Jesu's name.
So fades the night of sin;
Lo! the gloom of death is gone,
Let the sacrifice begin.
Signal the Third
Tell, Christian soldier, tell:
Are Hebron's towers in sight?
Hast thou watched and warded well?”
Till the day-star's glimmering birth;
And we breathed our trumpet-call
When the sunlight waked the earth.”
Say, Christian warder, say:
When the mists of night were gone,
And the hills grew soft with day?”
Bright o'er the eastern sea;
Till the rushing sunbeams fell
Where the westward waters be.
Rich with the orient blaze,
And rocks, at the touch of day,
Gave out a sound of praise.
There lurked no darkling glen;
And the voice of God was loud
Upon every tongue of men.
With this eternal sun;
There be Hebrons many in sight,
And the sacrifice is done!”
THE CHILD JESUS.
A CORNISH CAROL.
That voice o'er Bethlehem's palmy glen:
The lamp, far sages hailed on high,
The tones that thrill'd the shepherd men:
Glory to God in highest heaven!
Thus Angels smote the echoing chord;
Glad tidings unto man forgiven!
Peace from the presence of the Lord!
The Wise Men traced their guided way;
There by strange light and mystic sign,
The God they came to worship lay.
A human Babe in beauty smiled,
Where lowing oxen round Him trod:
A maiden clasped her Awful Child,
Pure offspring of the breath of God.
The Star the Wise Men saw is dim;
But Hope still guides the wanderer's foot,
And Faith renews the angel-hymn:
Glory to God in loftiest heaven!
Touch with glad hand the ancient chord;
Good tidings unto man forgiven,
Peace from the presence of the Lord!
THE WAIL OF THE CORNISH MOTHER.
That what God doth is best:
But 'tis only a month to-morrow,
I buried it from my breast.
Your child to God to send;
But mine was a precious treasure
To me and to my poor friend.
The very first words it said;
Oh! I never can love another
Like the blessèd babe that's dead.
It was carried to church and blessed:
And our Saviour's arms will gather
Such children to their rest.
That my sins may be forgiven;
I will serve God more than ever,
To meet my child in heaven.
For what God does is best;
But Oh! 'tis a month to-morrow,
I buried it from my breast.
TO HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS THE PRINCE ALBERT OF SAXE-COBURG AND GOTHA.
Mightier than warrior's sword in monarch's hand;
He comes! to claim the Lady of his soul—
A fearless knight from the old German land!
The sound of love in earth and air and sea!
A nation's heart, thy name, Prince Albert! fills
With prayer and blessing for thy Bride and thee!
A land of graceful dames and stately men:
Be proud! on thee will England's Daughter smile,
And thou on England's Queen look love again.
'Tis thine the awful couch of kings to share;
The hope of many a land thine arm must shield,
The Beauty of our Isles shall slumber there!
Lo, round the chaste form of thy noble mate
The future spirits of a shadowy line,
The souls of kings unborn, in silence wait!
Another city, hearth, or native home:
This is thy country, this thy natural shore,
Thine eagle-nest amid the ocean-foam.
Take, from our ancient priest, thy chosen bride!
Breathe, in the language of thy Lady's land,
The eternal vows—the pledge of love and pride!
One worship and one creed ye twain will share;
How many a solemn arch and cloistered shrine
Shall hail your blended names in English prayer!
Thy Lady's isle—the pride of earth and sea;
Her fanes will greet thee with their holiest voice,
Her towers among the trees shall thrill for thee!
Where passion shudders at the feet of pride;
No selfish bridegroom at yon altar stands,
Nor glitters there a cold and reckless bride!
Are met to blend the tones of love and truth.
Joy to that fane! an English lady there
Binds to her soul the husband of her youth.
The men of bounding steed and belted brand;
That which his vows have won his arm shall hold—
A fearless knight from the old German land!
Far from the glare of courts, from cities free,
A lowly name, on Cornwall's rocky shore,
I breathe this blessing for thy Bride and thee!
THE SECOND BIRTH OF THE PRINCESS ROYAL OF ENGLAND—VICTORIA ADELAIDE MARY LOUISA.
With silver from the mine—
The gems of price are glorious there,
And costly vessels shine;
And storied walls are nobly spread
With fair forms of the living dead!
The guests of bower and hall—
They come to watch a sacred scene,
The solemn festival—
The kingly blood of English land.
With voice of ancient tone,
And agèd arms, that fain must hold
The offspring of a throne;
That voice shall greet, those hands will bless
The flower of England's loveliness.
The mystic waters poured:
And lo! the child of earthly line
Is daughter of the Lord!
What glories fill—what wonders haunt
The rich breast of that silvery font!—
Though beautiful they be—
From no glad river, as it gleams,
A pilgrim to the sea:
They will not lave from English springs
The daughter of a thousand kings.
Thine was the chosen bed;
The glory of thy waters ran
Around that infant head;
'Twas thou! with life, and breath, and fame,
Proud memories, and a mighty name.
Didst hear the voice of God,
The hosts of Israel trod.
Thy gentle waters, pure and mild,
Fell softly on that happy child!
The Maiden's Awful Birth
Even He that made thy Syrian wave
The glory of the earth!—
See! o'er her brow thy fountains glide—
Her own dear Saviour's blessèd tide!
The blessing and the vow:
The mighty thought, what waters came
To touch thine infant brow:
Lo! Jordan rolls beyond the sea,
Bright babe, with memory of thee!
Gems 'mid thy beauty shine,
Around that form rich robes be twined
With silver from the mine:
But fairer fall, and lovelier gleam
The starry dews of Syria's stream!
DUTY DONE.
Wild is the vale of Tidna; bleak and bareThe rugged rocks that stand in silence there;
And one small brook, with meek and quiet song,
Glides, like a dream, those nameless banks along;
Yet might those waters if their tale were told
A doctrine teach—a mystery unfold!
Far, far away that river's place of birth,
Mid weeds and waving flowers, its native earth;
Onward it came, and gathering as it passed,
Grew from a fountain to a stream at last;
Until, to strength increas'd—to manhood grown,
It turn'd the upper and the nether stone!
A duteous course the faithful water ran,
The vassal of the mighty master, Man.
Their aim achieved—their lowly duty done,
Thenceforward, on the rushing waters run,
And at the last with patient lapse they glide
To Ocean's shore and mingle with the tide.
Be this, my soul, a parable to thee,
Thus make thy courses, and so meet the sea!
THE TOKEN STREAM OF TIDNA COMBE.
A few calm reeds around the sedgy brink,
The loneliest bird, that flees to waste or wild,
Might fold its feathers here in peace to drink.
Far in the depths of memory's glimmering hour,
When earth looked e'en on me with tranquil mien,
And life gushed, like this fountain in her bower.
Fed with fresh rills from fields before unknown,
Where the glad roses on its banks may dream
The watery mirror spreads for them alone.
A gleaming glimpse of Time's departed shore,
Where now no dews descend, no sunbeams fall,
And leaf and blossom burst, no more, no more!
Through Tidna's vale the river leaps along;
The strength of many trees shall guard its course,
Birds in the branches soothe it with their song.
Where youth wins many a friend, and I had one;
Still do thy bulwarks, dear old Oxford, stand?
Yet, Isis, do thy thoughtful waters run?
Pause and move onward with obedient tread;
At yonder wheel they bind thee for their slave,
Hireling of man, they use thy toil for bread.
At duty's loneliest labour meekly bound;
The foot of joy is hush'd, the voice of praise,
We twain have reached the stern and anxious ground.
Thou tamed and chastened wanderer, for thee?
A rocky path, a solitary plain
Must be thy broken channel to the sea.
Onward, by silent bank, and nameless stone:
Our years began alike, so let them end,—
We live with many men, we die alone.
As loth to leave e'en this most joyless shore?
Doth thy heart fail thee? do thy waters yearn
For the far fields of memory once more?
Linked to this fatal flesh, a fettered thrall:
The sin, the sorrow, why would'st thou renew?
The past, the perish'd, vain and idle all!
Glad, glad to mingle with yon foamy brine;
Free and unmourn'd, the cataract cleaves the steep—
O river of the rocks, thy fate is mine!
THE BUTTERFLY.
Hath borne thee from thine earthly lair;
Thou revellest on the breath of spring,
A graceful shape of woven air!
The joyful breeze, the balmy sky;
For thee the starry roses shine,
And violets in their valleys sigh.
When thou wert low in wormy rest:
The skies of summer gushed with light,
The blossoms breathed on Nature's breast.
A cave restrained that shadowy form;
In vain did fragrance fill the air,
Dew soften and the sunbeams warm.
Till the great change in glory came,
And thou, a thing of life and breath,
Didst cleave the air with quivering frame!
This parable of summer skies,
Until thy trusting spirit yearn,
Like the bright moth, to rush and rise.
With hues that flesh may not behold!
There all things glow with loveliest mien,
And earthly forms have heavenly mould!
By the freed soul in rapture trod;
The upper air, the fields that shine,
For ever in the Light of God!
“The earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God.”—Romans viii. 19.
CONFIRMATION
That none but Apostolic lips may own;
Yea! in yon fane by hallowing footsteps trod,
He claims and binds the eternal troth of God!
Heaven's chosen touch hath blest thy happy brow;
E'en as the coal from off the altar came,
To wake on prophet lips the kindling flame!
Firm be the onward path and pure the way;
Long let the banners bear the conquering sign,
March, Christian soldier, march! the ranks of God are thine!
“ARE THEY NOT ALL MINISTERING SPIRITS?”
The music of their wing—
Yet know we that they sojourn near,
The Angels of the spring!
When the first violet grows;
Their graceful hands have just unbound
The zone of yonder rose!
From stain and shadow free,
That which an Angel's touch hath blest
Is meet, my love, for thee!
THE FONT.
The rain of God upon the mortal flower!
Lo! One unseen shall in those waters blend,
And with a breathing dove's fond wing descend.
Shall yield no happier hour for heavenly birth;
What fairer shrine can woo the God to rest
Than the meek altar of that infant breast?
THE NUN OF CARMEL'S LAMENT
AT THE CONQUEST OF ST. JEAN D'ACRE.
Dark-eyed daughter of the Syrian sun!
Where Carmel, a conqueror, cleaves the sky,
With the turban'd palm for his crest on high.
And the red, red cross hath prevail'd in fight,
And swarthy Misraim's doom is done,
And Syria is safe, and Acco won!
Nor the victor's foot on my fathers' earth,
Nor the rushing rivers of Gentile gore,
That darken the floods upon Jewry's shore.
With the Moslem banner should wave and shine;
I blush for the battle that blends in fame
Mohammed's and Isa Ben Mariam's name
Shame to the Crescent beside the Cross!
Trouble and dread to the pledge that gave
A Christian arm to a Pagan glaive!
The warriors that wielded the beamy blade,
And waved to the winds yon blessèd sign,
In war for their God and his tarnished shrine.
When the souls of England came sternly on,
To sweep from the lands the accursèd horde
That mock'd at the Cross and blasphemed its Lord.
The armies of Christ—they are side by side!
And I hear, in the city's funeral knell,
Old England's shout and the Islam yell.
With victory gained and with Acco won.
Oh! pride will be shame and triumph loss
Till the Crescent shiver beneath the Cross!
THE RINGERS OF LANCELL'S TOWERS.
These ancient men rang at the accession of George the Third and all again at his jubilee. Three of them lived on to ring in George the Fourth; and two survived to celebrate, in their native tower, the coronation of King William the Fourth.
With furrow'd cheek and failing hand;
One peal to-day they fain would ring,
The jubilee of England's king!
The sinewy arm, the laughing brow,
The strength that hailed, in happier times,
King George the Third with lusty chimes?
No goodlier sight hath hall or bower;
Meekly they strive—and closing day
Gilds with soft light their locks of grey.
They welcomed him to land and throne;
So ere they die they fain would ring
The jubilee of England's king.
Fast fade such scenes from field and dell;
How wilt thou lack, my own dear land,
Those trusty arms, that faithful band!
THE KISS OF JUDAS.
When, with false fang and stealthy crawl, he came
And scorched Messiah's cheek with that vile kiss
He deemed would sojourn there—a brand of shame.
With his world-shouldering Cross, Lord Jesu stood.
All hail! He said; and, with a proud embrace,
Fastened the traitor's kiss to that forgiving wood!
THE LOST SHIP: “THE PRESIDENT.”
She sailed from New York for England on the 11th of March, 1841, with many passengers, among whom were Lord William Lennox and Tyrone Power, the Comedian, and was never heard of more.
Lift up thy surges with some signal-word:
Show where the pilgrims of the waters be,
For whom a nation's thrilling heart is stirred.
They trod with steadfast feet thy billowy way:
The eyes of wondering men beheld them glide
Swift in the arrowy distance: where are they?
Mad, that the strength of man with thee should strive?
And proud, thy rival element to tame,
Didst swallow them in conscious depths, alive?
Their stately ship, a carcase of the foam:
Where still they watch the ocean and the sky,
And fondly dream that they have yet a home?
To some far-off immeasurable plain,
'Mid all things wild and wonderful, and where
The magnet woos her iron mate in vain.
Is peace amid those wanderers of the foam?
Say! is the old affection yearning still,
With all the blessèd memories of home?
The living feature, and the breathing form?
Is the strong man become a thing of nought,
And the red blood of rank no longer warm?
There is no sound in earth, or wave, or air.
Roll on, ye tears! Oh, what shall solace be
To hearts that pant for hope, but breathe despair?
A gentle rainbow on the darkling cloud:
A voice more mighty than the storms shall sweep
The shore of tempests when the storm is loud.
Or roused the tempest from some Eastern lair?
Or clave the cloud with thunder in its breast?
Lord of the awful waters! Thou wert there!
Thou didst surround them on the seething sea;
Thy love too deep, Thy mercy too divine,
To quench them in an hour unmeet for Thee.
If their feet failed them, in Thy midst they trod!
Storms could not urge the bark, or force the sail,
Or rend the quivering helm—away from God.
THE FIRST PRINCE OF WALES. A.D. 1284.
At the death of Llewellyn, the Welsh demanded a native Prince: so King Edward I. of England, who was then in Wales, sent for Eleanor his Queen, and she, soon after her arrival at Caernarvon Castle, was delivered of a son whom the King presented to the Welsh chieftains, and whom they acknowledged as their native Prince. Llwyd.
The woman's joy is won:
Fear not! thy time of grief is o'er,
And thou hast borne a son.”
And as she sweetly smiled,
The tears stood still within her eye,
The mother saw her child.
Thus did the King command;
There, stern and stately all, they wait,
The warriors of the land.
And loud their voices rung:
“We will not brook the stranger's name,
Nor serve a Saxon tongue.”
And speak with native voice;
He shall be famous in the earth,
The chieftain of our choice.”
And echoing footsteps nigh:
And hearken! by yon haughty wall
A low and infant cry,
“Your wayward wish is won:
Behold him from his mother's bed,
My child—my firstborn son!”
His future feet shall stand,
And rule the children of your race
In language of the land.”
Those warriors grey and grim.
How little thought King Edward's child
Who thus would welcome him!
They taught their native vales;
The sound whole nations lived to own—
“God save the Prince of Wales!”
THE FIGURE-HEAD OF THE CALEDONIA AT HER CAPTAIN'S GRAVE.
The strangers of a distant shore;
We smoothed the green turf on their breast,
'Mid baffled Ocean's angry roar;
And there, the relique of the storm,
We fixed fair Scotland's figured form.
Her shield towards the fatal sea:
Their cherished lady of the wave
Is guardian of their memory.
Stern is her look, but calm, for there
No gale can rend or billow bear.
Where sighs shall breathe and tears be shed,
And many a heart of Cornish land,
Will soften for the stranger dead.
They came in paths of storm; they found
This quiet home in Christian ground.
QUEEN GUENNIVAR'S ROUND.
Nymph for the fountain-side!
But old Cornwall's bounding daughters
For grey Dundagel's tide.
Round the ladies of the land;
And the blue wave of their fathers
Is joyful where they stand.
Nymph for the fountain-side!
But old Cornwall's bounding daughters
For grey Dundagel's tide.
In her long belovèd theme,
Fair forms and thrilling voices
Will mingle with my dream.
Nymph for the fountain-side
But old Cornwall's bounding daughters
For grey Dundagel's tide.
ISHA CHERIOTH.
Men shudder at his name—
They spurn at me because I weep,
They call my sorrow, shame.
Our city's native street,
The path—the olive trees—the dell
Where Cherioth's daughters meet:
And palms look forth above,
He kindled in my maiden-breast
The glory of his love!
Bound for a mightier scene;
In proud Capernaum's path he sought
The noble Nazarene!
Perchance their words be truth—
I only see the scenes of old;
I hear his voice in youth.
Where life and hope are fled,
I sought him not in happier state,
I will not leave my dead!
Be hatred and despair;
One sigh shall soothe this fatal ground,
A Cherioth maiden's prayer!
A BALLAD FOR A COTTAGE WALL.
A tender girl and young;
With many a tear her eyes were wet,
And thus she sate and sung:—
Nor goodness as I ought;
I never shall go to the happy place,
And 'tis all my parents' fault.
A place where all must grieve;
With flesh of misery and sin,
From Adam and from Eve.
Where holy angels haunt;
They would not bear their child of wrath
To yonder blessèd font.
Which God to baptism gave;
And now I have no hope on earth,
Nor peace beyond the grave.
It came I know not how:
I will go to the font at church, and say
I seek my baptism now.
And goodness as I ought.
For oh! if I lose the happy place
'Twill be my poor parents' fault.”
A tender girl and young;
And angels put into her mind
The solemn words she sung.
A LEGEND OF THE HIVE.
Bound for their evening bowers:
They are the nation of the bees,
Born from the breath of flowers.
Strange people they! a mystic race,
In life, in food, and dwelling-place.
When the rose breathes in spring:
Men thought her blushing bosom shed
These children of the wing.
But lo! their hosts went down the wind,
Filled with the thoughts of God's own mind.
And there alone they dwell:
No man to this day understands
The mystery of their cell.
Your mighty sages cannot see
The deep foundations of the bee.
For treasured food they sink;
They know the flowers that hold the dew,
For their small race to drink.
They glide—King Solomon might gaze
With wonder on their awful ways.
Yet filled with secret lore—
There dwelt within a woodland vale,
Fast by old Cornwall's shore,
An ancient woman, worn and bent,
Fallen nature's mournful monument.
Beside her garden wall:
All blossoms breathed around the place,
And sunbeams fain would fall.
Of all the valleys of the west.
When summer built her bowers,
The waxen wanderers ceased to play
Around the cottage flowers.
No hum was heard, no wing would roam:
They dwelt within their cloister'd home.
Their pastime or their toil;
What binds the soldier to his cell?
Who should divide the spoil?
It lasted long—it fain would last,
Till autumn rustled on the blast.
She sought the chancel floor,
And there, with purpose bad and bold,
Knelt down amid the poor.
She took-she hid—that blessèd bread,
Whereon the Invisible is shed.
She laid it by the hive:
To lure the wanderers forth to roam,
That so her store might thrive.
'Twas a wild wish, a thought unblest,
Some evil legend of the west.
For wondering eyes to trace:
They found above that bread, a shrine
Reared by the harmless race.
They brought their walls from bud and flower,
They built bright roof and beamy tower.
Float from those golden cells,
A sound as of some psaltery near,
Or soft and silvery bells;
A low sweet psalm that grieved within,
In mournful memory of the sin.
Set not the vision free,
Long let the lingering legend bless
The nation of the bee.
So shall they bear upon their wings
A parable of sacred things.
Or sacrament or shrine,
That humbler things may fondly dream
Of mysteries divine;
And holier hearts than his may beat
Beneath the bold blasphemer's feet.
GENOVEVA.
Part the First. MORNING.
And ye shall understand
The wonders of a legend-lay,
From the old German land!
She, of my song, in Eden's bowers,
A sainted lady lies;
And wears a chaplet of the flowers
That grow in Paradise.
That daughter of his fame;
The sweetest sound he knew on earth
Was Genoveva's name.
She dwelt, a fair and holy child,
Beside her mother's knee:
She grew, a maiden meek and mild,
And pure as pure could be.
Fulfilled her childhood's vow,
Saint Hildorf's lifted hands were laid
Upon no lovelier brow.
And said they, as along the aisle
The lords and ladies poured,
“How will she gladden with her smile
The castle of her lord!”
For that bright damsel's hand;
The sound of County Siegfried's fame
Was sung in many a land.
He came, he knelt, he woo'd, he won,
As warriors win the bride;
Duke Pfalz hath hailed him as his son,
At Genoveva's side.
With echoes low and sweet,
Where at Saint Hildorf's sacred cell
The youth and maiden meet.
And hark! they plight the mystic vow,
The troth that time shall try,
When years have worn the beamy brow,
And quenched the laughing eye.
Wreathed with the peaceful vine,
Where County Siegfried holds his state,
Beside the Rhine! the Rhine!
They bring white blossoms from the bowers,
The rose-leaves hide the ground;
Ah! gentle dame, beneath the flowers
The coiling worm is found!
Nor would the warrior roam:
The brightness of his lady shone
Throughout Lord Siegfried's home.
His blessing and his fame:
His happy hearth hath won the praise
Of Genoveva's name.
Along the castle wall:
It shook the echo from the ground,
That startling trumpet-call.
“To arms! To horse! The Moor! The Moor!
His pagan banners fly:
The Spaniard and the Frank implore
Thy German chivalry.”
The stately Siegfried stand:
Harnessed, and in his old array,
His good sword in his hand.
“And fare-thee-well!” the soldier said,
“My lady bright and dear:”
He spake, and bent his haughty head,
To hide a warrior's tear.
My liege-man true and tried,
Shield, till thy lord shall turn again,
My lady and my bride.
And ye, good Saints, with unseen eyes,
Watch her in solemn care;
An angel well might leave the skies
At Genoveva's prayer.”
Part the Second. EVENING.
What scenes of sorrow rise;
And hark! the music of my lay
Must breathe the breath of sighs.
That guardian—he of trusty fame,
He seeks a deed abhorred;
He woos to sorrow and to shame,
The lady of his lord.
A pure and peerless bride;
Her angel lifts his sheltering hands,
For ever at her side.
She kneels, she breathes some simple verse,
Taught by her mother's care;
And the good Saints in Heaven rehearse
The gentle lady's prayer.
Till he—that fiendish man,
The anger of his sin was strong,
And thus his fury ran:—
“Bind ye this foul and wanton dame,
False to my master's bed;
Hide in the earth both sin and shame,
Her blood be on her head.”
Two vassals fierce and rude;
They bare her to a nameless grave,
Far in a distant wood.
There knelt she down and meekly prayed,
In language soft and mild:
“I bear beneath my breast,” she said,
“Your lord, Count Siegfried's child.
Far, far, from earthly eye,
That I may see my infant smile,
And lay me down and die.
Nay, spare me, in sweet Mary's name,
Who stood by Jesu's cross;
He from a mother's bosom came,
That He might die for us.”
They left her lonely there!
The holy angels helped her word—
There is such force in prayer.
Then wandered she, where that wild wood
A tangled pathway gave,
Till, lo! in secret solitude,
A deep and mossy cave.
Along a shadowy glade;
And branches, fair to look upon,
A dreamy shelter gave.
She bends, but not to pray;
Thrilled with the throes that mothers weep,
The lonely lady lay.
A soft, fair form is nigh:
She hears—sweet Lord, what doth she hear?
A low and infant cry.
It is her son! her son! the child,
The first-born of her vow:
See, in his face his father smiled,
He bears Lord Siegfried's brow.
That cavern dark and wild;
The nameless stream—the silent tree,
The mother and her child.
And hark! he weeps—that voice of tears
Proclaims a child of earth;
O, what shall soothe for holier years
The sorrow of his birth!
No servant of the Lord;
The waters of the mystic sign
A mother's hand hath poured.
She breathed on him a word of woes,
His life in tears begun;
The name a Hebrew mother chose,
Ben-oni—Sorrow's son.
A mother and her pains!
Her child must die, for famine dried
The fountain of her veins.
She saw the anguish of his face,
She heard his bitter cry,
And went forth from that woeful place,
She could not see him die.
Back to that cavern wild:
Yea! even in death, she fain would yearn
Once more upon her child.
What doth she see? A fair young doe
A mother's task hath done,
Bent at his side: her milk must flow
To soothe the lady's son.
Tears sweet and grateful ran;
The mute thing of the wilderness
Hath softer heart than man.
She came, that wild deer of the herd,
Moved by some strange control,
There was a mystic touch that stirred
The yearnings of her soul.
In peace, if not in joy,
Until he stood beside her knee,
A fair and thoughtful boy.
Seven long and weary years,
Their calm and patient life; in sooth
It was a sight for tears.
That summer branches gave;
She gathered wild and wholesome roots,
To cheer their wintry cave:
They drank from that fair fountain's bed
Whose faithful waters run
Bright as when first his name they shed,
Ben-oni—Sorrow's son.
A simple cross of wood;
And taught the lad his childhood's vows,
To Jesu, mild and good.
He learned the legend of the Cross,
How Mary's blessèd Son
Came down from heaven to die for us,
And peace and pardon won.
Along the woodland dell,
To lead the blessèd to a home
Where saints and martyrs dwell.
So, when the lady wept and prayed,
He soothed her secret sighs:
“Sweet mother, let us die,” he said,
“And rest in Paradise.”
What wilt thou do,” she sighed,
“When I thy mother shall be gone?—
Thou hast no friend beside.
There is thy Sire of Heavenly birth,
His love is strong and sure:
But he, thy father of the earth,
He spurns thee from his door.”
“I pray thee tell to me,
Are they not, all men, gone and dead,
Except thy son and thee?”
“Ah! no, there be, my gentle child,
Whole multitudes afar;
Yet is it happier in this wild,
Than where their dwellings are.
Here in this den to hide:
They blighted Genoveva's name,
Lord Siegfried's chosen bride.
But soon the weary will have rest,
I breathe with failing breath;
There is within thy mother's breast,
The bitterness of death.”
Alone, thou shalt not lie:
Before our Cross, here in this grave,
Together let us die.
Since such stern hearts there be:
But here, in this our lonely place,
Here will I die with thee.”
I breathe their sound again:
Better to pass away in youth,
Than live with bearded men.”
And thou! the Lady of his birth,
Farewell! a calm farewell!
Thou wert not meant for this vile earth,
But with the saints to dwell.
Part the Third. ANOTHER DAY.
And red-cross banners shine,
While thrilling trumpets cleave the air
Along the Rhine! the Rhine!
Count Siegfried from the wars is come,
And gathering vassals wait
To welcome the stern warrior home
To his own castle gate.
The garland of his fame?
Away! away! her image hide,
He cannot brook her name.
And faithful lips declare
How a vile serpent's folds were wreathed
Around their lady fair.
The bow his malice bent,
Till Genoveva, in her prime,
Had perished, innocent.
Alas! what torrent tears must roll
In fierce and angry shower!
O! what shall soothe Count Siegfried's soul
In that o'erwhelming hour?
Far from the light of day;
He will not look on beauty's bloom,
Nor hear the minstrel's lay.
They try him with the trumpet sound
On many an echoing morn;
They tempt him forth with hawk and hound,
And breathe the hunter's horn.
They bring both steed and spear,
Lord Siegfried's hand must rule the rein,
And rouse the ruddy deer.
On! through the wild, the war-horse bounds
Beneath his stately form,
He charges 'mid those rushing hounds
With footsteps like the storm.
What is yon sight of fear?
A strange wild youth, a maiden bold
That guard yon panting deer!”
A fleecy skin was folded round
Her breast, with woman's pride,
And some dead fawn the youth hath found,
He wears its dappled hide.
“That haunt this secret cave?
Ha! is it so? and do the dead
Come from their hollow grave?”
“I live, I breathe the breath of life,
No evil have I done;
I am thy true, thy chosen wife,
And this is Siegfried's son!”
At first, when forth they fare,
And shadowy forms—a stranger-band—
Will greet them in the air.
He bounds, he binds her to his heart,
His own, his rescued bride:
No more! O! never more to part,
E'en death shall not divide.
With solemn feet and slow,
The warrior and his graceful child,
The lady and the doe.
Rich with the clustering vine,
Again shall Siegfried hold his state,
Beside the Rhine! the Rhine!
For fast the tidings spread,
And there doth Genoveva stand,
Bright as the arisen dead.
Her mother weeps, by God's dear grace,
Glad tears are in her eye;
Duke Pfalz has seen his daughter's face,
And now—now let him die.
The sainted Hildorf came,
His spirit bowed beneath the spell
Of Genoveva's name.
He came, he sought that solemn cave,
The lady's patient home,
He measured it with aisle and nave,
He shaped a shadowy dome.
He fixed both saint and sign,
And bade them build, in that lone wood,
A fair and stately shrine.
There might you read for many an age,
In the rich window's ray,
Traced, as along some pictured page,
The legend of my lay.
The bridegroom and the bride;
The porch, where Genoveva fair
Knelt at her Siegfried's side.
There, through the storied glass, the scene
In molten beauty falls,
When she, with mild and matron mien,
Shone in her husband's halls.
In radiance soft and warm,
And evermore the noon-day beam
Came through some angel's form.
The youth was shown in that wild dress,
His mother's cross he bare;
Saint John in the old wilderness
Was not more strangely fair.
And eastern sunbeams fall,
A simple cross, of woodland boughs,
Stands by the chancel wall.
It is the lady's lonely sign,
By mournful fingers made,
That self-same symbol decks the shrine
That soothed the cavern's shade.
A lady breathes in stone;
A sculptured deer is crouching nigh,
An infant weeps alone.
One voice, a prayer to claim,
Beneath the lady and the doe
Is Genoveva's name.
But old, and full of days;
Ask ye how time and truth have tried
The legend of her praise?
She of my song, in Eden's bowers
A sainted lady lies,
And wears a garland of the flowers
That grow in Paradise.
THE LADY'S WELL.
Silent, and calm, and fair;
It shone where the child and the parent trod,
In the soft and evening air.
Where the white blossoms fell:
Why is it always bright and clear?
And why the Lady's Well?”
There dwelt across the sea
A lovely Mother, meek and mild,
From blame and blemish free.
Though not by men ador'd:
Its sound some thoughts of love should claim
From all who love their Lord.
As pure as pure could be:
He had no father of the earth,
The Son of God was He.
He died upon the Cross:
We never can do for Him, my love,
What He hath done for us.
Because of Jesu's fame,
Our fathers called things bright and pure
By His fair Mother's name.
Her memory was meant
With lily and with rose to dwell,
By waters innocent.”
WORDS BY THE WATERS.
Where the rocks darken and the surges roar,—
While down the steep the foamy cataract raves,
And rolls dissolved amid the wilderness of waves?
Where the glad waters glisten as they glide:
The ocean-plains! how beautiful they be—
Lo! Heaven itself comes down to sojourn on the sea!
That scene is touched with all too gentle light;
Fair visions haunt those waves—sweet dreams arise—
And billows bathed in glory, bound to meet the skies!
The shore of tempests when the storm is loud,
Where wild winds rush, and broken waters roll,
And all is dark and stern, like my own wintry soul!
Mirror of Heaven! thou glad and glorious sea,
Thou dost but mock thy wave-worn wanderer's gaze
With that smooth prophecy of far-off lovelier days!
THE TWAIN.
Which only hath Immortality.
Two sunny children wandered, hand in hand,By the blue waves of far Gennesaret,
For there their Syrian father drew the net,
With multitudes of fishes, to the land.
One was the twin, even he whose blessèd name
Hath in ten thousand shrines this day a fame—
Thomas the Apostle, one of the ethereal band.
But he, his Hebrew brother, who can trace
His name, the city where he dwelt, his place,
Or grave? We know not, none may understand.
There were two brethren in the field: the one
Shall have no memory underneath the sun;
The other shines, beacon of many a strand,
A star upon the brow of night, here in the rocky land.
“I inserted in my sermon an account of the discovery of St. Thomas the Apostle's death and burial in India. Thus the sole question ever was, Is it apostolic? Then it must endure. Was it from one of the Twelve? Then it will never pass away. A small company of Christian men found in Upper India among the mountains, origin unknown; afterwards a tomb, with a staff and cross, a legend that there lived, laboured, and was slain, St. Thomas the Apostle. St. Thomas the Twain, even in his ashes, survived the apostolic fire, and whole ages after he was dust virtue went out of the dust of St. Thomas of India.”—Letter from Mr. Hawker, dated June 15, 1856.
THE NIGHT COMETH.
And sleep, the twin of death, is nigh,
What soothes the soul at set of sun?
The pleasant thought of duty done.
The shepherd's by the eastern tree,
Broken and brief—with dreams that tell
Of ravaged flock and poisoned well!
Soon shall day dawn in holier light:
Old faces—ancient hearts—be there,
And well known voices thrill the air!
THE DIRGE.
“The first line of these verses haunted the memory and the lips of a good and blameless young farmer who died in my parish some years ago. It was, as I conceive, a fragment of some forgotten dirge, of which he could remember no more. But it was his strong desire that “the words” should be “put upon his headstone,” and he wished me also to write “some other words, to make it complete.” I fulfilled his entreaty, and the stranger who visits my churchyard will find this dirge carven in stone, “in sweet remembrance of the just,” and to the praise of the dead, Richard Cann, whose soul was carried by the angels into Paradise on the 15th of February, 1842.”
Thus did the dead man say:
“A sound of melody I crave,
Upon my burial-day.
And let your voices rise:
My spirit listened, as it went,
To music of the skies.
And keep the funeral slow:—
The angels sing where I am gone,
And you should sing below.
Until you hear the bell;
And sing you loudly in the church,
The Psalms I love so well.
And as you pass along,
Remember, 'twas my wish to have
A pleasant funeral song.
And though my flesh decay,
My soul shall sing among the just
Until the Judgment-day.”
A THOUGHT AT MATINS.
On Maitland's christening-day,
And lighted up his father's halls
With autumn's loveliest ray:
The Angel of his Baptism trod
A path bright from the home of God!
A parable of joy—
That radiance from above will shine
Around our gentle boy?
Since such the sun that greets his gaze,
This first-born of his Christian-days!
THE BAPTISM OF THE PEASANT AND THE PRINCE.
The prince's christening day;
I sought a cottage bed, for there
A travail'd woman lay.
Her babe was on her arm:
It was the strong love in her breast
That kept that infant warm.
A servant of the Lord;
To bless that mother's child for her,
With Water and the Word.
Scarce reached the lowly bed:
And thus 'mid woe, and want, and gloom,
The Sacrament was shed.
As she took back her son—
“Be glad! for lo! that little child,
Is 'mong God's children, one.
Where blessèd angels shine:
Nay, one will leave his native sky,
To watch this babe of thine.
In a far loftier scene,
With blessing and with vow to greet
The offspring of a Queen.
Around the noble boy:
And princes teach the echoing walls
The glory of their joy.
Our lips have utter'd now;
And water, such as here we shed,
Must bless that princely brow.
An equal grace be poured:
One Faith, one Church, one Heaven, will join
The labourer and his lord.”
The humble woman said:
“Who sends such kindness to my child,
Here in its mother's bed:
Her's is a happy reign:
O! one smile of her baby's face
Pays her for all her pain.”
THE WOLF.
Long centuries agone—this very day,In a far wilderness of Syrian sand,
Urging his steed amid an armèd band,
The wolf of Benjamin was on the prey.
But lo! a light, a voice, a thrilling sound,
And where was Saul of Tarsus? Sternly bound,
A fettered thrall, in darkness there he lay!
Shall he arise and conquer? can he toil
Once more in war and yet divide the spoil?
For thus dim Jacob traced the wanderer's way.
Soft Ephesus, and thou, the populous home
Of many a city, old Galatia! say,—
Did not the warrior win and wear a conqueror's array?
HYMN FOR HOLY INNOCENTS' DAY.
Born with the blush of day,
Blossoms for Eden's bowers,
To grace Lord Jesu's way!
Lambs of a tender fold,
Around the altar shine,
And palmy garlands hold.
Child of a mother's love.
With Him the Father, God,
And that Eternal Dove.
THE WELL OF ST. JOHN.
“The well of St. John in the Wilderness stands and flows softly in the eastern boundary of Morwenstow Glebe. In the old Latin Endowment, still preserved in Bishop Brentingham's Register in the Archives of Exeter, a.d. 1296, the Church land is said to extend eastward, ad quendam fontem Fohannis. Water wherewithal to fill the font for baptism is always drawn from this well by the Sacristan in pitchers set apart for this purpose.”
Went through the city, that the promised son
Was born to Zachary, and his name was John;
They little thought, that here in this far ground,
Beside the Severn sea, that Hebrew child
Would be a cherished memory of the wild;
Here, where the pulses of the ocean bound
Whole centuries away, while one meek cell,
Built by the fathers o'er a lonely well,
Still breathes the Baptist's sweet remembrance round.
A spring of silent waters with his name,
That from the angel's voice in music came,
Here in the wilderness so faithful found,
It freshens to this day the Levite's grassy mound.
THE OBLATION.
Ruddy and rich in hue, like Syrian wine;
With golden leaves inlaid on that dark ground,
That seemed just shed from some o'ershadowing vine:
Such was the lady's offering at Morwenna's shrine.
Lingered in echoes o'er the unconscious wall;
The voice that prophesied our God had heard
The sound of alms, and would remember all;
'Twas the Child Jesu's day, the Bethlehem Festival.
Ye proud and stately magnates of the land;
Grudge not the poor their pence, nor God His praise,
Though as our simple fathers stood, we stand,
And render thus our gifts with meek and votive hand.
And boughs that blossom'd like old Aaron's rod;
For faithful hands had built them leafy bowers
Along our aisles, such as the angels trod
When Moses saw the bush, and Abraham talked with God.
ABSALOM'S PILLAR.
Like some grim god revealed in awful stone;
There build my place, and bid my memory stand,
Throned in mid air, to rule along the land.
To weave their shadowy dance at evening-tide;
Lo! their soft voices thrill the stony shade—
“Here the Prince Absalom, who died in youth, is laid.”
To breathe, 'mid future hearts, their father's name;
I live with many men, I die alone;
I go into the ground—Rear the surviving stone!
A CHRIST-CROSS RHYME.
Teach me, Father John, to read:
That in church on holy day,
I may chant the psalm and pray.
What the shining windows show:
Where the lovely Lady stands,
With that bright Child in her hands.
Till that I shall able be
Signs to know and words to frame,
And to spell sweet Jesus' Name.
Day and night in that fair book,
Where the tales of saints are told,
With their pictures, all in gold.
Vesper-verse and matin-lay:
So when I to God shall plead,
Christ His Cross shall be my speed.
ONE IS NOT.
There is a cross in Oxford, built of stone,They call it there “The Martyrs' Monument;”
Wise-hearted workmen rear'd it, and they spent
In that proud toil, labour and gold unknown.
And deep device, whereby the fathers wrought
Doctrines in walls, and gave dumb roofs a tone.
Yet, hearken! in yon cloister dim and old,
They show a simple casket fram'd to hold
An ancient staff. Ye walls of stern Saint John!
Watch well that relic of the days gone by—
Thereon Laud lean'd when he went forth to die.
Ha! stout old man, thy fame is still our own,
Though banish'd be thy memory from the graven stone!
A VOICE FROM THE PLACE OF ST. MORWENNA IN THE ROCKY LAND;
UTTERED TO THE SISTERS OF MERCY AT THE TAMAR MOUTH.
Rolls its stern waters, wild and free,
And mark, above yon chancel-side,
The Cross! whereon Lord Jesu died!
What memories meet—what visions blend,
On that dear Death-bed of a Friend!
With mystic lore and rule and line—
That wall that looks along the wave,
And stately Cross to breathe in stone
Mount Calvary's deed to days unknown.
Who from that sight can coldly turn?
And, like some loathsome shape, would hide
The last couch of the Crucified?
The latest thing His fingers held
When Heaven was won, and Satan quelled!
Alas! they heed not what they do;
Heaven's light in them is dim and cold,
They know not what Thy saints behold:
They see not as Thine angels see:
Dark Plym! I wail for them and thee!
How art thou fallen amid the lands!
Thy daughters bold—thy sons unblest—
A withered Salem of the West!
Hark! from yon hill what tones arise—
“Thy peace is hidden from thine eyes!”
All women true, and trusty men—
A faithful band, like angels given,
To plead the Patriarch's prayer with Heaven;
Whose voice might rescue sentenced lands!
Here, by the lonely Severn sea,
I, too, have borne, years fierce and long,
All hatred, and rebuke, and wrong:
And now thy truth shall soothe the sigh—
The life I live—the death I die;
And hark! 'mid sounds of hope and fear,
They call, from countries far and wide,
The wood whereon Messias died!
They bear it forth to bless or ban—
The signal of the Son of Man!
That Resurrection of the Cross!
The sign they mocked, by angels borne,
The banner of the Eternal Morn!
Once more beside its Lord to stand,
The Trophy Tree of Holy Land!
Seek not a tent beneath the Palm,
Like Isha Lapidoth the wise:—
As Jael, Heber's wife—arise—
Up! spare not! wield thy noble name!
The Lord hath sold thee foes and fame!
The chancel of Morwenstow has just been nobly restored by the piety of Rodolph, Baron Clinton, and the Lady Elizabeth Georgiana, his wife.
NOTES.
The Forefathers.
They rear'd their lodges in the wilderness,Or built them cells beside the shadowy sea,
And there they dwelt with angels, like a dream!
So they unroll'd the Volume of the Book
And fill'd the fields of the Evangelist
With thoughts as sweet as flowers.
The prophecy of the Resurrection of the Real Cross to be borne by Angels in the Judgment, as the Sign of the Son of Man, was a lovely legend of the first fathers, and beautifully “bodied forth.” It would be a noble trophy, and, as they also said, a Memorial Pillar, worthy to stand in Paradise among the trees. They held, too, that every bishop and martyr of the Church would be caught up first to meet the Lord in the air, before the resurrection of the general dead, and so to follow the banner to the judgment, as men who are deemed worthy to “sit on thrones,” and “to judge angels and the world,” and to wait upon the Lord in that day, “as his ancients gloriously.” So aforetime they were laid in the ground—these men of noble name—not in the usual posture of the patient dead, who look towards the Orient to watch for the morning, but with their heads to the east and their faces to the west—for so the path of their Lord will be—in an attitude wherein they will be ready to bound from their biers like soldiers from their sleep, and to gather in immediate array around the Son of Man, to pour forth the buried music of their voices in psalms of thanksgiving, suddenly!
I recommend the slanderers of God's servants, before they again presume to revile the imaged death-bed of the Lord, to read, carefully and thoroughly, the works of Gretser, published in Latin, in seventeen folio volumes, at Ratisbon, 1734-41.
R. S. H., Vicar of Morwenstow.“BE OF GOOD CHEER!”
Come, stand upon the deck, and fish for men!Let down and haul, it is Saint Andrew's Day;
Take we the allotted side, and watch for prey!
We toil all night for nought!—we cast again:
They who are fain a multitude to hold,
Break their smooth gear, and not a fish enfold!
The meek and patient catch not: tell me then
What is our vision?—what the crafty toil
Whereby to win the draught and share the spoil?
It was on such a day—the where and when—
Empty the basket—desolate and bare
The ship of Galilee—yet, faithful there,
The brethren watch'd the deep with patient ken—
Simon and Andrew sate, and calm on board
Mended their nets—and waited for the Lord!
BAAL ZEPHON.
The rush of many a whirlwind from its lair?
Or be the fierce Maozzim loose on high?—
The old Gods of the North: the Demons of the Air!
That yelling Euxine! throttled with her dead:
The quivering air, as thick with ghosts as when
The severed souls of Syrian
armies fled!
Where be the hosts of God?—that ancient band;
Michael the Prince! and Uriel!—where
are ye,
That once did valiantly for English land?
The circumcisèd hordes of vile Mahound:
Or is the Red-Cross banner loath to shine
Where Scythian fiends beset the shuddering ground?
The harnessed fires, with footsteps like the storm!
Where is your vaunt, and what your strength among
Those riders of the cloud, with battle warm?
Clothe many a steed with thunder for the war!—
An angel, standing at a cottage door
To guard a peasant's child, is mightier far!
The pentacle that Demons know and dread!—
So should Maozzim flee, with baffled yell,
And the lulled Euxine smooth its billowy bed.
Smite the strong Dragon and his Scythian lair!
God visible! among the nations stand
And bid the traitor Russ thy banished Name declare!
The phrase, “And the Son,” in the Nicene Creed, is abjured by the Greek Church, with the doctrine which those words contain.
THE DOOM-WELL OF ST. MADRON.
If true to its troth be the palm you bring:
But if a false sigil thy fingers bear,
Lay them the rather on the burning share.”
That solemn friar his boding word:
And blithely he sware as a king he may
“We tryst for St. Madron's at break of day.”
Was the cry at Lauds, with Dundagel men;
And forth they pricked upon Routorr side,
As goodly a raid as a king could ride.
With page and with squire at her bridle hand;
And the twice six knights of the stony ring,
They girded and guarded their Cornish king.
And they stood by the monk of the cloistered well;
“Now off with your gauntlets,” King Arthur he cried
“And glory or shame for our Tamar side.”
When he grasped the waters so soft and mild;
How Sir Lancelot dashed the glistening spray
O'er the rugged beard of the rough Sir Kay.
'Twas a bénitée stoup to Sir Belvidere,
How the fountain flashed o'er King Arthur's Queen
Say, Cornish dames, for ye guess the scene.
My kinsman, mine ancient, my bien-aimé;
Now rede me my riddle, and rede it aright,
Art thou traitorous knave or my trusty knight?”
It bubbled and boiled like a cauldron of hell:
He drew and he lifted his quivering limb,
Ha! Sir Judas, how Madron had sodden him!
Still the Tamar river will run as it ran:
Let King or let Kaiser be fond or be fell,
Ye may harowe their troth in St. Madron's well.
THE CORNISH BOY IN ITALY.
The Lady land these eyes behold!
Olive valleys—vines on the hill—
Heart in my bosom! why art thou still?
But not the scenes I used to love;
Shining the stream, stately the tree,
Home for fair flowers—but not for me.
Nest o' the young storm, wayward and loud,
Where the warm prey bounded to die
And awe hath hushed the hunter's cry!
One ancient hut and stunted tree,
The dame come forth with looks of care,
And sunset fall on my father's hair!
ARSCOTT OF TETCOTT.
Three jolly foxhunters, all sons of true blue,
They rode from Pencarrow, not fearing a wet coat,
To take their diversion with Arscott of Tetcott.
“On Monday,” said Arscott, “our joys shall begin.
Both horses and hounds, how they pant to be gone!
How they'll follow afoot, not forgetting Black John!”
John Arscott arose, and he took down his horn;
He gave it a flourish so loud, in the hall,
Each heard the glad summons and came at the call.
Resolving to give a cold pig to the rest;
they hastened down stairs—
It was generally suppos'd they neglected their prayers.
But Webb was impatient that time should be lost;
So old Cheyney was ordered to bring to the door
Both horses and hounds, and away to the moor.
“I look to old Black Cap, for he'll hit the drag!”
The drag it was hit, but they said it was old,
For a drag in the morning could not be so cold.
And there the old dogs they set out, I'll be sworn;
'Twas Ringwood and Rally, with capital scent,
Bold Princess and Madcap—good God! how they went!
How far did they make it?” said Simon the Son;
“O'er the moors,” said Joe Goodman, “hark to Bacchus, the word!”
“Hark to Vulcan,” cried Arscott, “that's it, by the Lord!”
The dogs they soon caught it, and how they did go!
'Twas Princess and Madcap, and Ringwood and Rally,
They charmed every hill and they echoed each valley.
To Swannacott Wood, without break or delay;
And when they came there, how they sounded again!
“What music it is!” cried the glad Whitstone Men.
“They are off to the cliffs,” then said Simon the Son;
Through Wike, and through Poundstock, St. Genys, they went,
And when Reynard came there, he gave up by consent.
With joy in our hearts that we made him to yield;
And when he came home he toasted the health
Of a man who ne'er varied for places or wealth!
In gay flowing bumpers and social delight;
With mirth and good humour did cheerfully sing,
A health to John Arscott! and God save the King!
This is the venerable name of an ancestor of the present Sir Wm. Molesworth, and of the last of the Western Squires who kept open house and open hand. Many a legend and record of his times and deeds still floats unembodied around the oaks of old Tetcott on the Tamar side.
The last of the Jesters. He lived with the hounds, and ran with the hounds, and rare was the run when Jack was not in at the death. His office it was by many a practical joke to amuse Mr. Arscott's guests; among them swallowing living mice and sparrow-mumbling had frequent place. “There they go,” shouted John when the fox was found and the dogs went off in full cry—“there they go, like our madam at home!”
THE LEGEND OF SAINT CECILY.
Uprose her gentle forehead, wreathed with day!
The mountain-top—the wood—the river's flow,
Gleamed softly—and aloud the matin-lay
Of singing birds, their leafy bowers below,
Swelled into song to greet the Orient ray;
While yet the sun, full-quivered, paused on high,
To launch his arrowy beams along the sky.
A young man listened to a sweeter song;
Fair Cecily's—of all her race the pride—
What eye could greet a lovelier in the throng?
To win her vows how many a knight had sighed,
With mortal love her virgin life to wrong:
But what was earth with all its golden glare?
Her eyes were heavenward, and her soul was there.
Her harp is mingled with that thrilling sound;
The music trembles on the quivering string,
Like some sweet sorcery of enchanted ground.
Well might an Angel-hand the magic bring,
That first in sainted Cecily was found—
The spell that bade the awful organ roll
The storm of music o'er the shuddering soul.
“It is the day,” he said, “the morning beams!
Friends wait with anxious ears our uttered vow—
See! on the temple-dome the sunlight gleams;
The wreath, the sacrifice are ready now;
The multitude along the pathway streams—
Lo! the priests beckon, and the guests are loud,
And the wide gates enfold a gathering crowd.”
The vassal of the Lord, become thy slave,
To live a common life beneath the sky!
I, that my vows to Jesu-Master gave?
He, the good Shepherd, rules me with His eye,
My God to follow, and thy wrath to brave!
Would that thou durst at yon true altar stand,
Where I am safe, amid the Angel-band.”
Away! away! a sad and last adieu!
And yet, fond hope, his lingering feet return,
Once more the sorrow of her eye to view:
He smiled, to hide the love that yet would yearn;
“Hast thou,” he said, “an angel tried and true?
Show me thy friend! let me but see him shine!
My heart shall bend to thee! thy God be mine.”
“The Lord will yield His trusting handmaid grace;”
The bridegroom went, with slow and mournful tread,
Once more, at evening-tide, that path to trace.
The maiden at the altar bowed her face;
Her starry eyes were rapt in trusting prayer,
And o'er that brow an Angel stood, on air!
He laid a rose upon the young man's breast.
The maiden took a lily of the land—
Those flowers, the symbols of a martyr's rest;
Thereby the twain could meekly understand
That life would fleetly fade and death was best.
Both fell for God! and now in every tongue
Valerien lives, and Cecily is sung.
THE LEGEND OF SAINT THEKLA.
When her first blush is o'er the mossy ground:
Her brow is bent where many a blossom grows:
She gazes on the flowers that shine around
Till with the breath of spring her spirit glows,
And her young branch with lifted leaves is crowned
Then must her eyes be raised from that low sod,
She bares her breast to heaven and yields her hues to God.
She hid her beauty in her father's halls:
He who had wooed her with the words of truth,
Like moonlight on the snow, his image falls
Upon her vestal spirit:—yet in sooth
No nobler knight in the high festivals
Of his own city sought a chosen bride:
He was her father's choice, her own dear mother's pride.
Castled Iconium was the city's name:
He came—he taught—how Thekla's bosom beats:
How his deep language shook her silent frame!
She stood—she listened—till her soul entreats
The birth of baptism, and its hallowing name:
The words are uttered and the waters poured,
She breathes the virgin-troth that binds her to the Lord.
In the sweet bondage of the faith to share;
Her high resolves a father may not bow,
She will not soften at a mother's prayer;
Till, with revolted heart and quivering brow,
The youth will wreak on her his mad despair;
On, to the judgment-seat, with reckless breath,
And there reveals her creed whose doom is angry death.
The threat—the promise—all are urged in vain;
That calmness in her eye is half-disdain!
She hears the mandate to the soldier-bands,
“To the wild beasts!” nor will she then complain,
Though Gentile hearts were moved, and many an eye
Wept to behold her led, all innocent, to die!
When they had loosed the lions on their prey:
But lo! the fierce and famished creatures shook,
And crouching at her feet in fondness lay;
There will they rest, though none beside may brook
Their furious fangs nor soothe their angry way:
“The fire! the flame!” Hark, what fierce accents rise!
“Yea! scorch her to the gods! there shall be sacrifice.”
The unseen Angel of the Lord was there;
They saw the flames, subdued, around her shine,
And mingle harmless with her waving hair:
And lo! a starry Cross, as on a shrine,
Beamed on the forehead of that maiden fair,
The first bright daughter of the Church, whose fame
Hath won in many a land the martyr's sainted name.
MIRIAM: STAR OF THE SEA.
And ebbs and flows with one unceasing stream!
Thou art the Star, whose radiance faileth never,
Calm o'er the billows waves its faithful beam!
Moved to and fro by every sigh of night;
Thou art the Star! thy shining eyes resemble
The orb that 'mid the storms is hushed and bright!
Kindle me hope and bravery in my soul;
Let care's dark shadows from my spirit vanish,
As mountain-clouds before the Orient roll!
Shed on this heart of mine its soothing ray!
Yea, in the War of Death thy light shall soften
The last stern foeman, and his battle-day!
Sorrow and joy, that vain and idle be—
The deep hath swallowed up the golden treasure:
Soothe thou the tempest, and subdue the sea!
Age cannot tame th' unconquerable tide!
Yon visible surge is but the stately pillow
Where the wild storms of ancient waters died!
Here as we lowly kneel, look love on high;
Hail, blessèd orb! alive with light, descending,
A lamp to lead us to our native sky!
THE BIER OF MARY, MOTHER OF GOD.
A LEGEND.
The shadows gather round the dreams of night;
With woeful psalms Jerusalem is loud,
And far and near the funeral torch is bright;
Even the dull feet of age have sought the crowd,
To watch with anxious eyes a shuddering sight;
From yonder home a silent corpse they bear,
The dead, the beautiful, the cold, the fair!
For Mary, maiden Mother of the Lord;
The name that, graven in stars, the angels trace,
Hallowed in Heaven, and on earth adored,
What eyes shall yet be lifted to that face!
What voices at those feet one day be poured,
When Angel-harps the Queen of Heaven declare,
And the Son listens to his Mother's prayer!
Her soul made haste to meet her glorious Child;
He, when the rest had fled, besought Saint John
To choose for his own Mother Mary mild.
Yea, His last thought was hers, when the sad sun
Grew dark, and earthquake, fierce and wild,
Rent shuddering Calvary, and air and sky
Shook to behold the Hosts of Heaven pass by.
Kinsfolk and strangers throng the peopled street;
Forth at the gate the minstrel leads the wail,
And on the mourners move with lingering feet.
Hark! what stern voices rise! what sounds prevail!
A cry, as when in battle, foemen meet;
A circumciséd Jew! O, deed of fear,
Foamed at the dead, and smote that Awful Bier;
Fell, quivering fell, severed by touch unseen,
The multitude are mute; they understand
That girded Angels guard the sacred scene;
But he, the wretch, clings to that funeral band,
With jabbering cry, and rent and tortured mien;
Low, at the rested bier he bends, and there
Shrieks to the Merciful a loud and penitent prayer.
His heart was visible to the Eyes divine;
The deep thoughts of his quivering soul were clear
As jewels, 'mid the earthquake, in the mine;
And clothed with flesh from Heaven, new fingers shine;
He knelt a Hebrew foe in deed and word,
He rose a Christian man, disciple of the Lord.
For a set time they laid their blessèd dead;
There lilies love to bloom and boughs to wave,
And many a murmured orison was said.
There burned the nightly star, whose radiance gave
Sign of the sepulchre to Christian tread;
There, too, the chanted psalm was heard at eve,
When harps of heaven were touched and Angels came to grieve.
LINES OF DEDICATION TO H.R.H. THE PRINCE OF WALES,
IN BLIGHT'S “ANCIENT CROSSES AND OTHER ANTIQUITIES IN EAST AND SOUTH CORNWALL.”
Than thine amid our hills can stand,
To blend Old England's antique fame
With castled Cornwall's rocky land!
Thy Plume, our banner of the West,
The blind Bohemia's faithful crest!
Of warrior-deed and minstrel-song:
The unknown rivers sought the shore,
The nameless billows rolled along:—
Till Arthur, and the Table-round,
Made stern Tintadgel storied ground;
When Cornwall's Duke was England's pride!
He won, on Creci's distant field,
The spurs that gleamed on Tamar-side:
The wreath at dark Poictiers he wore
Was heather from our Cornish shore!
May well the thrilling days recall
When heroes fought their fields of fame
And minstrels chanted in the hall
Till the last trophy stood, alone,
Yon Syrian Cross in Cornish stone!
The valleys flow with rippling corn:
Tall cliffs that guard the couch of night,
Greet with calm smile the lip of morn:
And, revelling in his summer caves,
Old Ocean laughs with all his waves!
We bend, where once our fathers bent:
And gather, with a shadowy toil,
Stones for a nation's monument!
Our kindling spell for Hope and Fame,
Duke of the West! thy native name!
ανηριθμον γελασμα.
Is not all the imagery of this striking passage drawn from the ear?
TO ALFRED TENNYSON, LAUREATE, D.C.L.
ON HIS “IDYLLS OF THE KING.”
Caught from a tale gone by,
That Arthur, King of Cornish praise,
Died not, and would not die!
Their living warrior lies;
Or wears a garland of the flowers
That grow in Paradise!
And thus the myth I trace:—
A bard should rise, mid future men,
The mightiest of his race.
On grey Dundagel's shore;
And so, the King, in laurelled verse,
Shall live, and die no more!
AISHAH SCHECHINAH.
Yet wreath'd with flesh and warm;
All that of heaven is feminine and fair,
Moulded in visible form.
A chancel for the sky;
Where woke, to breath and beauty, God's own birth,
For men to see Him by.
Light, that was life, abode;
Folded within her fibres meekly lay
The link of boundless God.
Moved but that infant hand,
Far, far away, His conscious Godhead thrill'd,
And stars might understand.
The Threefold and the One!
And lo! He binds them to her orient breast,
His Manhood girded on.
Beneath that bosom ran:
Deep in that womb, the conquering Paraclete
Smote Godhead on to man!
The Threefold and The One:
Her God upon her lap, the Virgin-Bride,
Her Awful Child, her Son.
This was the happy name of Eve in the days of her innocence. When she stood before Adam in her blameless beauty, he said, being inspired, “She shall be called Aishah,” that is to say, man's, or man's own, because she is taken out of Aish, “man.” It was afterwards, when she had shuddered into sin, that the man called the name of his wife Eve. Now the household word for the sinless Mother in the cottage at Nazareth, and on the lips of her Son, was also Aishah; it was in memory of the former phrase of Eden, a sound of mingled endearment and respect. It was not, in that native language, as it is in our own mean and meagre speech, a mere appellative of sex, “woman,” but Aishah, the tender and the graphic title of the twain: the bride of the garden, man's own, all innocent: and of Mary, maiden-Mother of God. So at Cana, and on Calvary, Jesus made chosen utterance of that only name, Aishah. At the marriage, when, with her woman's zeal for the honour of the feast, the Mother made haste to her Son, and said suddenly, “They have no wine,” Jesus answered, and with the long-accustomed smile, “What have we, Aishah?” He said in the exact letter, “What is to Me, and to thee, Aishah?” He signified, with a very usual idiom, “What have I, and what hast thou, Aishah?” He meant in the spirit of His voice and smile, “What have we not, Aishah? Are not all things under our feet? Mine hour, the hour that thou wottest of, is not yet come; but still”—and the well-known look of Nazareth and home revealed the rest. So she turned to the servants and said, “Whatsoever He shall say unto you, do.”
This, the cloudy signal of the Presence, is the most majestic symbol of Our Lady throughout the oracles. The sacramental element of the Schechinah, which I have named “Numyne,” was called by the Rabbins, “Mater et Filia Dei,” and was always a feminine noun. They say it was a stately pillar, or column of soft and fleecy cloud, which took ever and anon, as to Elias upon Carmel, the outline of a human shape or form, “Vestigium hominis.” Within its breast sojourned the glory of the Presence. as in a tent. Therefore I claim, with all reverence, the right to use the title “Aishah Schechinah.” The sound of this latter word is a dactyle.
THE SOUTHERN CROSS.
With awful wonder stand:
A voice had called them from their grave,
In some far Eastern land.
When the old waters swelled,
The Ark, that womb of second birth,
Their house and lineage held.
Bright Sem sweet incense brings,
And Cham the myrrh his fingers hold:
Lo! the three Orient Kings.
The signal's starry frame;
Shuddering with second life, they quailed
At the Child Jesu's Name.
And this their parting sigh:
“Our eyes have seen the living God,
And now—once more to die.”
The Southern Cross. It is chronicled in an old Armenian myth, that the Wise Men of the East were none other than the three sons of Noe, and that they were raised from the dead to represent, and to do homage for all mankind, in the cave of Bethlehem. Other legends are also told: one that these patriarch princes of the flood did not ever die, but were rapt away alive into Enoch's paradise, and were then recalled to begin the solemn gesture of world-wide worship to the King-born Child. Another saying holds, that when their days were full, these Arkite fathers fell asleep, and were laid at rest in a cavern of Ararat, until Messias was born, and that then an angel aroused them from the slumber of ages to bow down and to hail as the heralds of many nations the Awful Child. Be this as it may, whether the Mystic Magi were Sem, Cham, and Japhet, in their first or second existence, under their own names, or those of other men; or whether they were three long-descended and royal sages from the loins or the land of Balaam—one thing has been delivered for very record, that supernatural shape of clustering orbs, which was embodied suddenly from surrounding light, and framed to be the beacon of their westward way, was and is the Southern Cross. It was not a solitary signal-fire, but a miraculous constellation: a pentacle of stars whereof two shone for the Transome, and three for the Stock, and which went above and before the travellers day and night radiantly, until it came and stood over where the young Child lay. And then! what then? must these faithful orbs dissolve and die? shall the gleaming trophy fall? Nay—not so. When it had fulfilled the piety of its first-born office, it arose, and amid the vassalage of every stellar and material law, it moved onward and on, obedient to the impulse of God the Trinity, journeying evermore towards the South, until that starry image arrived in the predestined sphere of future and perpetual abode: to bend, as to this day it bends, above the Peaceful Sea, in everlasting memorial of the Child Jesus—The Southern Cross.
KING ARTHUR'S WAES-HAEL.
THE RUBRIC.
When the brown bowl is filled for yule, let the dome or upper half be set on; then let the waes-haelers kneel one by one and draw up the wine with their reeds through the two bosses at the rim. Let one breath only be drawn by each of the morice for his waeshael. (Waes in this word is sounded Waze.)
O! merry be their dole;
Drink-hael! in Jesu's name
We fill the tawny bowl;
But cover down the curving crest,
Mould of the Orient Lady's breast.
Drain ye the reeds for wine.
Drink-hael! the milk was hid
That soothed that Babe divine;
Hushed, as this hollow channel flows,
He drew the balsam from the rose.
Where a God yearned to cling;
Drink-hael! so Jesu pressed
Life from its mystic spring;
Then hush, and bend in reverent sign,
And breathe the thrilling reeds for wine.
Lo! Christmas children we;
Drink-hael! behold we lean
At a far Mother's knee;
To dream, that thus her bosom smiled,
And learn the lip of Bethlehem's Child.
The rounded shape of the bowl for waes-hael was intended to recall the image of a mother's breast; and thus it was meant, with a touching simplicity, to blend the thought of our Christmas gladness with the earliest nurture of the child Jesus.
SIR BEVILLE.—THE GATE SONG OF STOWE.
Farewell to the couch and the pillow:
With spear in the rest, and with rein in the hand,
Let us rush on the foe like a billow.
Bid the wassailer cease from his revel:
And ride for old Stowe, where the banner's unrolled,
For the cause of King Charles and Sir Beville.
And Harris of Hayne's o'er the river;
From Lundy to Looe, “One and all!” is the cry,
And the King and Sir Beville for ever!
'Mid the names and the nobles of Devon;
But if truth to the King be a signal, why then
Ye can find out the Granville in heaven.
'Tis a race for dear life with the devil;
If dark Cromwell prevail, and the King must give way,
This earth is no place for Sir Beville.
But vain were the visions he cherished:
For the great Cornish heart, that the King loved so well,
In the grave of the Granville it perished.
THE COMET OF 1861.
In what far depths of God thine orient place?
Whence hath thy world of light such radiance won
To gleam and curve along the cone of space?
What is thine oracle for shuddering eyes?
Wilt thou some myth of crownless kings declare,
Scathed by thy fatal banner of the skies?
Bristling with penal fires, and thick with souls—
The severed ghosts that throng thy peopled womb,
Whom Azrael, warder of the dead, controls?
After long battle, on that conquering height?
Vaunt of a victory that is still despair,
A trophied horror on the arch of night?
Art thou the mystic seedsman of the sky?
To shed new worlds along thy radiant road,
That flow in floods of billowy hair on high?
Thou bendest like a vassal to his king;
Thou darest not o'erstep thy graven path,
Nor yet one wanton smile of brightness fling.
A parable of night, in radiance poured:
Amid thy haughtiest courses, what art thou?
A lamp to lead some pathway of the Lord!
Space is that measured part of God's presence which is inhabited by the planets and the sun. The boundary of space is the outline of a cone, and the pathway of every planet is one of the sections of that figured form.
A CROON ON HENNACLIFF.
Unto his hungry mate:
“Ho! gossip! for Bude Haven:
There be corpses six or eight.
Cawk! cawk! the crew and skipper
Are wallowing in the sea:
So there's a savoury supper
For my old dame and me.”
The shore hath wreckers bold;
Would rend the yelling seamen,
From the clutching billows' hold.
Cawk! cawk! they'd bound for booty
Into the dragon's den:
And shout, for ‘death or duty,’
If the prey were drowning men.”
At the guess our grandame gave:
You might call them Boanerges,
From the thunder of their wave.
And mockery followed after
The sea-bird's jeering brood:
That filled the skies with laughter,
From Lundy Light to Bude.
“I am fourscore years and ten:
Yet never in Bude Haven
Did I croak for rescued men.—
They will save the Captain's girdle,
And shirt, if shirt there be:
But leave their blood to curdle,
For my old dame and me.”
Unto his hungry mate:
“Ho! gossip! for Bude Haven:
There be corpses six or eight.
Cawk! cawk! the crew and skipper
Are wallowing in the sea:
O what a savoury supper
For my old dame and me.”
THE QUEST OF THE SANGRAAL.
The name Sangraal is derived from San, the breviate of Sanctus, or Saint, Holy, and Graal, the Keltic word for Vessel or Vase. All that is known of the Origin and History of this mysterious Relique will be rehearsed in the Poem itself. As in the title, so in the Knightly Names, I have preferred the Keltic to other sources of spelling and sound.—R. S. H.
That held, like Christ's own heart, an hin of blood!
Ho! for the Sangraal! . . .
Of reckless riders on their rushing steeds,
Smote the loose echo from the drowsy rock
Of grim Dundagel, thron'd along the sea!
Keep from the wholesome touch of human-kind:
But stretch not forth the hand for holy thing,—
Unclean, as Egypt at the ebb of Nile!”
Thus said the monk, a lean and gnarlèd man;
That floods, in cataract, Saint Nectan's Kieve:
One of the choir, whose life is Orison.
They had their lodges in the wilderness,
Or built them cells beside the shadowy sea,
And there they dwelt with angels, like a dream:
So they unroll'd the volume of the Book,
And fill'd the fields of the Evangelist
With antique thoughts, that breath'd of Paradise.
Of the siege perilous, and the granite ring—
They gathered at the rock, yon ruddy tor;
The stony depth where lurked the demon-god,
Till Christ, the mighty Master, drave him forth.
Tristan, and Perceval, Sir Galahad,
And he, the sad Sir Lancelot of the lay:
Ah me! that logan of the rocky hills,
Shook, at the light touch of his lady's hand!
Massive in mould, but graceful: thorough men:
Built in the mystic measure of the Cross:—
Their lifted arms the transome: and their bulk,
The Tree, where Jesu stately stood to die—
Thence came their mastery in the field of war:—
Ha! one might drive battalions—one, alone!
Arthur, the Son of Uter, and the Night,
Helm'd with Pendragon, with the crested Crown,
And belted with the sheath'd Excalibur,
That gnash'd his iron teeth, and yearn'd for war!
Stern was that look (high natures seldom smile)
And in those pulses beat a thousand kings.
A glance! and they were husht: a lifted hand!
And his eye ruled them like a throne of light.
Then, with a voice that rang along the moor,
Like the Archangel's trumpet for the dead,
He spake—while Tamar sounded to the sea.
Fair Sirs, my fellows in the bannered ring,
Ours is a lofty tryst! this day we meet,
Not under shield, with scarf and knightly gage,
To quench our thirst of love in ladies' eyes:
We shall not mount to-day that goodly throne,
To launch along the field the arrowy spear:
Nay, but a holier theme, a mightier Quest—
‘Ho! for the Sangraal, vanish'd Vase of God!’
Accursèd Herod; and the earth-wide judge,
Pilate the Roman—doomster for all lands,
Or else the Judgment had not been for all,—
Bound Jesu-Master to the world's tall tree,
Slowly to die. . . .
They durst not have assayed their felon deed,
Excalibur had cleft them to the spine!
Until the hard centurion's cruel spear
Smote His high heart: and from that severed side,
Rush'd the red stream that quencht the wrath of Heaven!
Bearing that awful Vase, the Sangraal!
The Vessel of the Pasch, Shere Thursday night,
The selfsame Cup, wherein the faithful Wine
Heard God, and was obedient unto Blood.
Therewith he knelt and gathered blessèd drops
From his dear Master's Side that sadly fell,
The ruddy dews from the great tree of life:
Sweet Lord! what treasures! like the priceless gems
Hid in the tawny casket of a king,—
A ransom for an army, one by one!
Around his ark: bent as before a shrine!
The ladder foot of heaven—where shadowy shapes
In white apparel glided up and down.
His home was like a garner, full of corn,
And wine and oil; a granary of God!
Young men, that no one knew, went in and out,
With a far look in their eternal eyes!
All things were strange and rare: the Sangraal,
As though it clung to some ethereal chain,
Brought down high Heaven to earth at Arimathèe
A girded pilgrim ever and anon,
Cross-staff in hand, and, folded at his side,
The mystic marvel of the feast of blood.
Once, in old time, he stood in this dear land,
Enthrall'd—for lo! a sign! his grounded staff
Tookroot, and branch'd, and bloom'd, like Aaron's rod:
Thence came the shrine, the cell; therefore he dwelt,
The vassal of the Vase, at Avalon!
And evil men: the garbage of their sin
Tainted this land, and all things holy fled.
The Sangraal was not: on a summer eve,
The silence of the sky brake up in sound!
The tree of Joseph glowed with ruddy light:
A harmless fire, curved like a molten vase,
Thus hewn by Merlin on a runic stone:—
Kirioth: el: Zannah: aulohee: pedah:
The unutterable words that glide in Heaven,
Without a breath or tongue, from soul to soul—
The link that bound it to the silent grasp
Of thrilling worlds is gathered up and gone:
The glory is departed; and the disk
So full of radiance from the touch of God!
This orb is darkened to the distant watch
Of Saturn and his reapers, when they pause,
Amid their sheaves, to count the nightly stars.
There shall arise a king from Keltic loins,
Of mystic birth and name, tender and true;
His vassals shall be noble, to a man:
Knights strong in battle till the war is won:
Then while the land is husht on Tamar side,
So that the warder upon Carradon
Shall hear at once the river and the sea—
That king shall call a Quest: a kindling cry:
‘Ho! for the Sangraal! vanish'd Vase of God!’
The ninth from Joseph in the line of blood,
Clean as a maid from guile and fleshly sin—
the lance,
Ruddy and moisten'd with a freshening stain,
As from a sever'd wound of yesterday—
He shall achieve the Graal: he alone!’”
Of a slain deer: rolled in an aumry chest.
His belt for travel in the perilous ways?
This thing must be fulfilled:—in vain our land
Of noble name, high deed, and famous men;
Vain the proud homage of our thrall, the sea,
If we be shorn of God. Ah! loathsome shame!
To hurl in battle for the pride of arms:
To ride in native tournay, foreign war:
To count the stars; to ponder pictured runes,
And grasp great knowledge, as the demons do,
If we be shorn of God:—we must assay
The myth and meaning of this marvellous bowl:
It shall be sought and found:—”
When Ocean, bounding, shouts with all his waves.
High-hearted men! the purpose and the theme,
Smote the fine chord that thrills the warrior's soul
A man of Pentecost for words that burn:—
Our Table Round is earth's most honoured stone;
Thereon two worlds of life and glory blend,
The boss upon the shield of many a land,
The midway link with light beyond the stars!
This is our fount of fame! Let us arise,
And cleave the earth like rivers; like the streams
That win from Paradise their immortal name:
To the four winds of God, casting the lot.
So shall we share the regions, and unfold
The shrouded mystery of those fields of air.
Thence came, and thither went, the rush of worlds,
When the great cone of space was sown with stars.
There rolled the gateway of the double dawn,
When the mere God shone down, a breathing man.
There, up from Bethany, the Syrian Twelve
Watched their dear Master darken into day.
Ah, shuddering sign, one day, of terrible doom!
Therefore the Orient is the home of God.
The symbol and the scene of populous life:
Full Japhet journeyed thither, Noe's son,
The prophecy of increase in his loins.
Westward Lord Jesu looked His latest love,
His yearning Cross along the peopled sea,
The innumerable nations in His soul.
Thus came that type and token of our kind,
The realm and region of the set of sun,
The wide, wide West; the imaged zone of man.
And bound, and glide, and travel to and fro:
Their gulph, the underworld, this hollow orb,
Where vaulted columns curve beneath the hills,
And shoulder us on their arches: there they throng;
The portal of their pit, the polar gate,
Their fiery dungeon mocked with northern snow:
There, doom and demon haunt a native land,
Where dreamy thunder mutters in the cloud,
Storm broods, and battle breathes, and baleful fires
Shed a fierce horror o'er the shuddering North.
We follow on thy perfume, breath of heaven!
Myriads, in girded albs, for ever young,
Their stately semblance of embodied air,
Troop round the footstool of the Southern Cross,
That pentacle of stars :
the very sign
That led the Wise Men towards the Awful Child,
Then came and stood to rule the peaceful sea.
So, too, Lord Jesu from His mighty tomb
Cast the dear shadow of his red right hand,
To soothe the happy South—the angels' home.
And pluck this Sangraal from its cloudy cave.”
Shrouded from sight within a quiver'd sheath,
For choice and guidance in the perilous path,
That so the travellers might divide the lands.
They met at Lauds, in good Saint Nectan's cell,
For fast, and vigil, and their knightly vow:
Then knelt, and prayed, and all received their God.
Where fleshly man must brook the airy fiend—
Ho! stout Saint Michael shield them, knight and knave!
Some shadowy angel breathed a silent sign,
That so that blameless man, that courteous knight,
Might mount and mingle with the happy host
Of God's white army in their native land.
Yea! they shall woo and soothe him, like the dove.
Among the multitudes, his watchful way,
The billowy hordes beside the seething sea;
But will the glory gleam in loathsome lands?
Will the lost pearl shine out among the swine?
Woe, father Adam, to thy loins and thee!
His chosen hand unbars the gate of day;
There glows that heart, fill'd with his mother's blood,
That rules in every pulse, the world of man;
Link of the awful Three, with many a star.
O! blessèd East! 'mid visions such as thine,
'Twere well to grasp the Sangraal, and die.
Hark! stern Dundagel softens into song!
They meet for solemn severance, knight and king,
Where gate and bulwark darken o'er the sea.
Strong men for meat, and warriors at the wine,
They wreak the wrath of hunger on the beeves,
And quench the flagon like Brun-guillie dew!
Hear! how the minstrels prophesy in sound,
Shout the King's Waes-hael, and Drink-hael the Queen!
Then said Sir Kay, he of the arrowy tongue,
“Joseph and Pharaoh! how they build their bones!
Happier the boar were quick than dead to-day.”
The sunset tangled in her golden hair:
A dove amid the eagles—Gwennivar!
Aishah! what
might is in that glorious eye!
Couched on the granite like a captive king!
A word—a gesture—or a mute caress—
How fiercely fond he droops his billowy mane,
And wooes, with tawny lip, his lady's hand!
The hooting cairn is husht—that fiendish noise,
When the fierce dog of Cain barks from the moon.
The billows laugh a welcome to the day,
And Camlan ripples, seaward, with a smile.
And thou, Sir Herald, blazon as they pass!
Foremost sad Lancelot, throned upon his steed,
His yellow banner, northward, lapping light:
The crest, a lily, with a broken stem,
The legend, Stately once and ever fair;
It hath a meaning, seek it not, O King!
A turbaned Syrian, underneath a palm,
Wrestled for mastery with a stately foe,
Robed in a Levite's raiment, white as wool:
His touch o'er whelmed the Hebrew, and his word,
Whoso is strong with God shall conquer man,
Coil'd in rich tracery round the knightly shield.
Did Ysolt's delicate fingers weave the web,
That gleamed in silken radiance o'er her lord?
A molten rainbow, bent, that arch in heaven,
Which leads straightway to Paradise and God;
Beneath, came up a gloved and sigilled hand,
Amid this cunning needlework of words,
When toil and tears have worn the westering day,
Behold the smile of fame! so brief: so bright.
Mid-breast, and lifted high, an Orient cruse,
Full filled, and running o'er with Numynous light,
As though it held and shed the visible God;
Then shone this utterance as in graven fire,
I thirst! O Jesu! let me drink and die!
Like stout quaternions of the Maccabee:
They halt, and form at craggy Carradon;
Fit scene for haughty hope and stern farewell.
Lo! the rude altar, and the rough-hewn rock,
The grim and ghastly semblance of the fiend,
His haunt and coil within that pillar'd home.
Hark! the wild echo! Did the demon breathe
That yell of vengeance from the conscious stone?
Above the bones of some dead Gentile's soul:
All husht—and calm—and cold—until anon
Gleams the old dawn—the well-remembered day—
Then may you hear, beneath that hollow cairn,
The clash of arms: the muffled shout of war;
Blent with the rustle of the kindling dead!
Around his soul, Dundagel and the sea—
To win and wear the starry Sangraal,
The link that binds to God a lonely land.
Would that my arm went with you, like my heart!
But the true shepherd must not shun the fold:
For in this flock are crouching grievous wolves,
And chief among them all, my own false kin.
Therefore I tarry by the cruel sea,
To hear at eve the treacherous mermaid's song,
And watch the wallowing monsters of the wave,—
'Mid all things fierce, and wild, and strange, alone!
The churl may clip his mate beneath the thatch,
While his brown urchins nestle at his knees:
The soldier give and grasp a mutual palm,
Knit to his flesh in sinewy bonds of war:
The knight may seek at eve his castle-gate,
Mount the old stair, and lift the accustom'd latch,
To find, for throbbing brow and weary limb,
That paradise of pillows, one true breast:
But he, the lofty ruler of the land,
Like yonder Tor, first greeted by the dawn,
And wooed the latest by the lingering day,
With happy homes and hearths beneath his breast,
Must soar and gleam in solitary snow.
The lonely one is, evermore, the King.
So now farewell, my lieges, fare ye well,
Since by grey Merlin's gloss, this wondrous cup
Is, like the golden vase in Aaron's ark,
A fount of manha for a yearning world,
As full as it can hold of God and heaven,
Search the four winds until the balsam breathe,
Then grasp, and fold it in your very soul!
To breathe, 'mid future men, their father's name:
My blood will perish when these veins are dry;
Yet am I fain some deeds of mine should live—
I would not be forgotten in this land:
I yearn that men I know not, men unborn,
Should find, amid these fields, King Arthur's fame!
Here let them say, by proud Dundagel's walls—
‘They brought the Sangraal back by his command,
They touched these rugged rocks with hues of God:’
So shall my name have worship, and my land.
Thy moorland pathways worn by Angel feet,
Thy streams that march in music to the sea
'Mid Ocean's merry noise, his billowy laugh!
Ah me! a gloom falls heavy on my soul—
The birds that sung to me in youth are dead;
I think, in dreamy vigils of the night,
It may be God is angry with my land,
Too much athirst for fame, too fond of blood;
And all for earth, for shadows, and the dream
To glean an echo from the winds of song!
A tournay with the fiend on Abarim,
And good Saint Michael won his dragon-crest!
If bevies of foul fiends withstand your path,
Nay! if strong angels hold the watch and ward,
Plunge in their midst, and shout, ‘A Sangraal!’”
And touched, with kiss and sign, Excalibur;
Then turned, and mounted for their perilous way!
The deep foundations shook beneath the sea:
Yet there they stood, beneath the murky moon,
Above the bastion, Merlin and the King.
Thrice waved the sage his staff, and thrice they saw
A peopled vision throng the rocky moor.
A pall that hid whole armies; and beneath
Stormed the wild tide of war; until on high
Gleamed red the dragon, and the Keltic glaive
Smote the loose battle of the roving Dane!
Then yelled a fiercer fight: for brother blood
Rushed mingling, and twin dragons fought the field!
The grisly shadows of his faithful knights
Perplext their lord: and in their midst, behold!
His own stern semblance waved a phantom brand,
Drooped, and went down the war. Then cried the King,
Excalibur; but sank, and fell entranced.
He, of the billowy beard and awful eye,
The ashes of whole ages on his brow—
Merlin the bard, son of a demon-sire!
High, like Ben Amram at the thirsty rock,
He raised his prophet staff: that runic rod,
The stem of Igdrasil —the crutch of Raun—
And wrote strange words along the conscious air.
A white and glowing horse outrode the dawn;
A youthful rider ruled the bounding rein,
And he, in semblance of Sir Galahad shone:
A vase he held on high; one molten gem,
Like massive ruby or the chrysolite:
Thence gushed the light in flakes; and flowing, fell
As though the pavement of the sky brake up,
And stars were shed to sojourn on the hills,
From grey Morwenna's stone
to Michael's tor,
Until the rocky land was like a heaven.
The Sangraal swoon'd along the golden air:
The sea breathed balsam, like Gennesaret:
The streams were touched with supernatural light:
Altars arose, each like a kingly throne,
Where the royal chalice, with its lineal blood,
The Glory of the Presence, ruled and reigned.
This lasted long: until the white horse fled,
The fierce fangs of the libbard in his loins:
Whole ages glided in that blink of time,
While Merlin and the King, looked, wondering, on.
To cleave the air with signals, and a scene.
The sickly hue of vile Iscariot's hair,
Mingle with men, in unseen multitudes!
Unscared, they throng the valley and the hill;
The shrines were darkened and the chalice void:
That which held God was gone: Maran-atha!
The awful shadows of the Sangraal, fled!
Yet giant-men arose, that seemed as gods,
Such might they gathered from the swarthy kind:
The myths were rendered up: and one by one,
The Fire—the Light—the Air—were tamed and bound
Like votive vassals at their chariot-wheel.
Then learnt they War: yet not that noble wrath,
That brings the generous champion face to face
With equal shield, and with a measured brand,
To peril life for life, and do or die;
But the false valour of the lurking fiend
To hurl a distant death from some deep den:
To wing with flame the metal of the mine:
And, so they rend God's image, reck not who!
Thus said pale Merlin to the listening King,
“What is thy glory in the world of stars?
To scorch and slay: to win demoniac fame,
In arts and arms; and then to flash and die!
Thou art the diamond of the demon-crown,
Smitten by Michael upon Abarim,
That fell; and glared, an island of the sea.
Ah! native England! wake thine ancient cry;
Ho! for the Sangraal! vanish'd Vase of Heaven,
That held, like Christ's own heart, an hin of blood!”
There stood Dundagel, throned: and the great sea
Lay, a strong vassal at his master's gate,
And, like a drunken giant, sobb'd in sleep!
Logan, or shuddering stone. A rock of augury found in all lands, a relic of the patriarchal era of belief. A child or an innocent person could move it, as Pliny records, with a stalk of asphodel; but a strong man, if guilty, could not shake it with all his force.
The city of “Sarras in the spiritual place” is the scene of many a legend of mediæval times. In all likelihood it was identical with Charras or Charran of Holy Writ. There was treasured up the shield, the sure shelter of the Knight of the Quest. The lance which pierced our blessed Saviour's side was also there preserved.
Space is a created thing, material and defined. As time is mensura motus, so is space mensura loci; and it signifies that part of God's presence which is measured out to enfold the planetary universe. The tracery of its outline is a cone. Every path of a planet is a curve of that conic figure: and as motion is the life of matter, the whirl of space in its allotted courses is the cause of that visible movement of the sun and the solar system towards the star Alcyone as the fixed centre in the cone of space.
The “Sign of the Son of Man,” the signal of the last day, was understood, in the early ages, to denote the actual Cross of Calvary; which was to be miraculously recalled into existence, and, angelborne, to announce the advent of the Lord in the sky.
Our Lord was crucified with His back towards the east: His face therefore was turned towards the west, which is always, in sacred symbolism, the region of the people.
Our Lord was laid in His sepulchre with His head towards the west: His right hand therefore gave symbolic greeting to the region of the south: as His left hand reproached and gave a fatal aspect to the north.
The golden-hill, from brun, “a hill,” and guillie, “golden:” so called from the yellow gorse with which it is clothed. (It is called “Brown Willy” in these latter days.—Ed.)
This appropriate fondling of the knights of Dundagel moves Villemarque to write, “qui me plaise et me charme quand je le trouve couché aux pieds d'Ivan, le mufle allongé sur ses deux pattes croisées, les yeux à demi-ouvert et revant.”
See Borlase, bk. iii., ch. iii. for “Karn-idzek:” touched by the moon at some weird hour of the night, it hooted with oracular sound.
Cain and his dog: Dante's version of the man in the moon was a thought of the old simplicity of primeval days.
When the cone of space had been traced out and defined, the next act of creation was to replenish it with that first and supernatural element which I have named ‘Numyne.’ The forefathers called it the spiritual or ethereal element, cœlum; from Genesis i. 2. Within its texture the other and grosser elements of light and air ebb and flow, cling and glide. Therein dwell the forces, and thereof Angels and all spiritual things receive their substance and form.
Igdrasil, the mystic tree, the ash of the Keltic ritual. The Raun or Rowan is also the ash of the mountain, another magic wood of the northern nations.
TO EVA VALENTINE,
ON HER SIXTH BIRTHDAY, MAY 16, 1864.
Floods with glad hues our Cornish combe;
Thy birds are loud with heaven's own mirth—
Hast thou no song for Eva's birth?
To greet thy dawn, my gentle child;
But first in summer's loveliest bowers
Thy voice was heard amid the flowers.
Thrilled at its sound with joy and pride:
Her Eden held one fatal tree:
Be earth all paradise to thee!
At once in noon-day womanhood;
In her full eyes there could not shine
The simple witchery of thine.
The war that won her vassal, man:
He saw his freedom in the skies,
And lost it for his lady's eyes.
The pulses of thy thrilling from,
Unfold, for one dear thrall to rest,
The paradise of Eva's breast.
TO MATILDA VALENTINE,
ON HER BIRTHDAY, JULY 17TH, 1864.
Kindled with light thy large dark eye;
And now within its glances rest
The soft beams of our glowing West.
Smiles on Matilda's native day;
And, lo! to soothe her path are given
The happiest hues of earth and heaven.
When Maud shall hear her marriage-chime,
And light and music, blended, greet
The pausing matron's homeward feet.
Whereon thy noon of life shall gaze;
So may a cloudless sunset shine,
Maid of the North, for thee and thine.
“BLUE EYES MELT; DARK EYES BURN.”
The lips that make a lover yearn,
These flashed on my bewildered sight,
Like meteors of the northern night.
“What stars be they that greet my gaze?
Where shall my shivering rudder turn?—
To eyes that melt, or eyes that burn?
Than where such perilous signals be;
To rock, and storm, and whirlwind turn
From eyes that melt, and eyes that burn.”
WRITTEN IN MY LADY'S DANTE.
Is dim and cold: 'tis midnight's weary time—
Why am I doomed, as if by some deep spell,
With the lone bard his spectral hill to climb?
Her eye hath shone this storied page along;
Tones have been here soft as the summer birds,
When echoes of the eve were deep with song!
The Florentine was blended with thy name;
His dreams have thronged my slumbers, but for aye
Thy shining brow amid those visions came.
These antique legends of the dreamy South;
Ah! no! too oft my wayward lips would turn
To mar the music of that thrilling mouth!
TO SOPHIE GRANVILLE THYNNE,
ON HER FIFTH BIRTHDAY.
We hail thy native morning, fairy princess of the West!
For thy father's blood is thrilling in the daughter of his race,
And thy mother's eyes are drooping in thy soft and gentle face.
For the western life of Granville is bounding in thy veins;
As a queen upon the dais shall thy future footsteps stand,
Thou shalt rule our Tamar side, a born lady of the land.
Where the heavens come down to rest, on the storied hills of Stowe;
And the billowy laugh of waters along thy native shore
Shall chant thy bridal morning with the sea's exulting roar.
The old ancestral features, how they haunt thy matron-face;
For the self-same smile shall beam upon thine own, thy chosen knight,
That wooed the proud Sir Beville home from Stamford's gory fight.
God shield thee from such tears as fell at Lansdown's fatal time!
For her innocence and loveliness were prophecies of thee.
To pray in votive numbers for thy happy years and long;
Till thy father's ancient line shall revive beneath thy breast,
And thy mother's living eyes on thine own sweet babe shall rest.
'Mid other bards that greet thee, when I am hushed and gone:
For loftier tones shall waken, and happier voices flow,
To teach thy children's children the glories of old Stowe.
ICHABOD.
A noble name hath set along the sea!
An eye that flashed with heaven no more is bright!
The brow that ruled the islands—where is he?
Cast in the goodliest metal of his kind:
The semblance of a soul in breathing gold,
A visible image of God's glorious mind.
On him the balsam of a prince was shed;
Myriads of lowlier men, the sons of earth,
Bent with prone neck to greet his conquering tread.
Smote the dull dreamers with his prophet-rod;
He called on earth and sea to chant of heaven,
And made the stars rehearse the truth of God!
And roused the nations with their fiendish mock,
Unmoved he met the Gadarenes, and gave
A lordly echo from the Eternal Rock!
Amid the nine-fold armies of the sky?
Waves he the burning sword of Seraphim?
Or dwells a calm Archangel, crowned on high?
He bears an English heart before God's throne;
In heaven he yearns o'er this his chosen land;
His zeal—his vows—his prayers—are yet our own!
SIR RALPH DE BLANC-MINSTER, OF BIEN-AIME.
The Vow.
Caught from an old barbaric rhyme—
How the fierce Sir Ralph, of the haughty hand,
Harnessed him for our Saviour's land.
“And a warrior must rest in Bertha's bed.
Three years let the severing seas divide,
And strike thou for Christ and thy trusting bride.”
That Gaspar of Spanish Leon made;
Whose hilted cross is the awful sign,
It must burn for the Lord and His tarnished shrine.
The Adieu.
Dark Bude! thy fatal sea;
And God thee speed in hall and bower,
My manor of Bien-aimé.
Thou Rose of Rou-tor land;
Though all on earth were false beside,
I trust thy plighted hand.
And surging billows foam:
The cresset of thy bridal bower
Shall guide the wanderer home,
When Syrian armies flee:
One thought shall thrill my lifted hand—
I strike for God and thee.”
The Battle.
Lo! the red banners flaunt the air!
And see! his good sword girded on,
The stern Sir Ralph to the wars is gone!
Charge! charge! ye Western chivalry!
Sweet is the strife for God's renown—
The Cross is up, and the Crescent down!
For the good Sir Ralph is pale and spent;
Five wounds he reap'd in the field of fame—
Five, in his blessèd Master's name.
As he binds and soothes each gory limb;
And the solemn Priest must chant and pray,
Lest the soul unhouseled pass away.
The Treachery.
And lo! a page from Cornish land.
“Tidings,” he said, as he bent the knee,
“Tidings, my lord, from Bien-aimé.”
The crown-rose withered in her bower;
The good grey foal, at evening fed,
Lay in the sunrise stark and dead.”
“Say on the woe thy looks betide.”
“Master! at bold Sir Rupert's call,
Thy Lady Bertha fled the Hall.”
The Scroll.
Symeon el Siddekah his name:
With parchment skin, and pen in hand,
I would devise my Cornish land.
Stretch from the sea to Tamar side;
And Bien-aimé, my hall and bower,
Nestles beneath tall Stratton Tower.
By seal and signet, knife and sod:
I give and grant to Church and poor,
In franc-almoign, for evermore.
And bid them hold my lands in trust;
On Michael's morn, and Mary's day,
To deal the dole, and watch and pray.
'Mid my own people I would sleep:
Their hearts shall melt, their prayers will breathe,
Where he who loved them rests beneath.
My face upturned to Syria's sky;
Carve ye this good sword at my side,
And write the legend, ‘True and Tried.’
And that sweet chime I loved be rung;
Those sounds along the northern wall
Shall thrill me like a trumpet-call.”
The bold Crusader's race was run.—
Seek ye his ruined hall and bower?
Then stand beneath tall Stratton Tower.
The Mort-Main.
'Mid the din of war where blood-streams roll;
He had waited long on the dabbled sand,
Ere the Priest had cleansed the gory hand.
Wherewith Sir Ralph had soothed his soul,
The unclean spirit turned away
With a baffled glare of grim dismay.
That sevenfold choice among the just,
“Ho! ho!” cried the fiend, with a mock at Heaven,
“I have lost but one: I shall win my seven.”
A THOUGHT.
Touched by the ruddy sunsets of the West;
Where, meek and molten, eve's soft radiance falls
Like golden feathers in the ringdove's nest.
A wavy wilderness of sand between;
Such pavement, in the Syrian deserts, trod
Bright forms, in girded albs, of heavenly mien.
Three severed shapes that glided in the sun,
Till lo! they cling, and, interfused and blent,
A lovely semblance gleams—the Three in One!
This leafy tent amid the wilderness:
Fair skies above, the breath of Angels round,
And God the Trinity to beam and bless!
A CORNISH FOLK SONG.
Which is the wittiest fowl?
Oh, the Cuckoo—the Cuckoo's the one!—for he
Is wiser than the owl!
And they never have rent to pay;
For she folds her feathers in a neighbour's nest,
And thither she goes to lay!
When the breeding time began;
For he'd put his children out to nurse
In the house of another man!
Is his own true father's son;
For he gobbles the lawful children's bread,
And he starves them one by one!
This is the wittiest fowl!
Oh, the Cuckoo—the Cuckoo's the one!—for he
Is wiser than the owl!
THE SMUGGLER'S SONG.
Light on the larboard bow!
There's a nine-knot breeze above,
And a sucking tide below.
The skulking gauger's by;
Down with your studding-sails,
Let jib and fore-sail fly!
Point her for Shark's-nose Head;
Our friends can keep the shore;
Or the skulking gauger's dead!
Light on the larboard bow!
There's a nine-knot breeze above
And a sucking tide below!
THE FATAL SHIP.
An iron vault hath clutched five hundred men!
They died not, like the nations, one by one:
A thrill! a bounding pulse! a shout! and then
Five hundred hearts stood still, at once, nor beat again!
A vast battalion of the gliding dead:
Souls that came up where seething surges quelled
Their stately ship—their throne—and now the bed
Where they shall wait, in shrouded sleep, the Morn of Dread!
Soften'd his brow with smiles—his mother's face
Droops over him—and her soft kisses seem
Warm on his cheek: what severs that embrace?
Death! strangling death!—alive—a conscious burialplace!
That lordly bastion of the world of wave?
And now a thing of nought, where ocean raves
Above his shuddering sepulchre in the weedy caves!
Baffled Leviathan shall roar in vain:
The Sea Kings of the Isles are castled there:
They man that silent fortress of the main:
Yea! in the realms of death their dust shall rule and reign!
Thy presence shone throughout that dark abode:
Thy mighty touch assuaged the last despair:
Their pulses paused in the calm midst of God:
Their souls, amid surrounding Angels, went abroad!
PARAPHRASE ON THE INSCRIPTION UPON THE STATUE OF SIR T. D. ACLAND, BART.
ERECTED IN HIS HONOUR DURING HIS LIFETIME, UPON THE NORTHERNHAY, AT EXETER.
The Inscription.
“Præsenti tibi maturos largimur honores.”But make no offering till the day is done:
Who knows what gloom may touch the warrior's name—
What gathering clouds may quench his burning fame?
While yet he breathes, a living sacrifice:
Make the full memory of his manhood known,
And its firm Christian mould survive in stone!
ON READING LORD DERBY'S TRANSLATION OF HOMER.
Seven ancient cities strove for Homer's birth:Let no such rivalry divide the earth:
Hark how the bard in Stanley's audience sung,
And claimed our language for his native tongue!
THE CORNISH EMIGRANT'S SONG.
The breezes seem to say,
“We are going, we are going,
To North Americay.
Around the poor man's hive;
Parson Kingdon is not coming
To take away their tithe.
Free as the king's highway;
So, we're going, we are going,
To North Americay.
And Dick shall be the squire,
And Jem, that lived at Norton,
Shall be leader of the quire;
And preach three times a day
To every living creature
In North Americay.”
AURORA.
A molten rainbow flakes the northern sky!
The Polar gates unclose! and, gleaming forth,
Troop the wild flames that glide and glare on high,
Tinged in their vaulted home with that deep ruddy dye!
Where the red rivers find their founts of flame?
Far, far away, where icy bulwarks lean
Along the deep, in seas without a name:
Where the vast porch of Hades rears its giant frame!
One, the fell North, perplexed and thick with gloom;
And one, the South, that calm and glad domain,
Where asphodel and lotus lightly bloom
'Neath God's own Starry Cross, the shield of peaceful doom.
Cleave the dark waters to their awful bourne;
None shall the living sepulchre reveal
Where separate souls must throng, and pause; and yearn
For their far dust, the signal, and their glad return.
When whole battalions yield their sudden breath;
And ghosts in armies gather as they glide,
Still fierce and vengeful, from the field of death.
Lo! lightnings lead their hosts, and meteors glare beneath.
A FRAGMENT.
He hammers at the quivering door;
The forest bends beneath the rain,
The harsh hail crackles on the pane.
A wilder weapon beats the sky;
A deadlier echo cleaves the vale,
Than crackling roof or pattering hail.
That shout was Battle's warrior-tone!
The voice that shook yon stormy sky
Was haughty England's signal-cry!
THE CAROL OF THE PRUSS.
Hurrah for the words they say!—
“Here's a Merry Christmas to every one,
And a Happy New Year's Day!”
Thus saith the King to the echoing ball:
“With the blessing of God we shall slay them all!”
'Tis a kindly signal given:
However happy on earth be they,
They'll be happier in heaven.
Tell them, as soon as their souls are free,
They'll sing like birds on a Christmas tree!
They will munch our beef and bread;
War there must be with the living men,
There'll be peace when all are dead!
This earth shall be our wide, wide home,
Our foes shall have the world to come!
You may count each hungry bone:
Tap! tap their veins till the blood runs thin
And their sinful flesh is gone;
While life is strong in the German sky,
What matters it who beside may die!
No music like the gun!
Here's a Merry Christmas to War and Death,
And a Happy New Year to none!”
Thus saith the King to the echoing ball:
“With the blessing of God we shall slay them all!”
IMPROMPTU LINES
Written in a copy of The Cornish Ballads, given to Mary, eldest daughter of the Rev. and Hon. Thomas Edwardes, on her ninth birthday, September 15, 1873.
In tones of earth, to breathe of heaven.
Hallowed by Her, the sinless Child,
The Maiden Mother, undefiled.
Oh! with her name, her nature take,
And keep thee pure, for Mary's sake.
A CANTICLE FOR CHRISTMAS, 1874.
Yearns to embrace an awful Child!
Those limbs, her tenderest touch might win:
Yet thrill they with the God within!
A gleaming Infant on her knee!
She pauses: can she dare to press
That Glory with a fond caress?
Her very blood is bounding there!
The mother's heart the victory won:
It is her God! it is her Son!
Without a thrill, without a throe;
And Mary—Mary undefiled,
Claims for her breast that awful Child!
THE CHRISTMAS TREE.
A lonely poor man's child;
The hardest heart would pity
That face so sad and mild.
For they kept their Christmas-tide;
But o'er that girl rejoices
Her God and none beside.
Her parents to their rest;
Her mother and her father,
And all who loved her best.
Gifts for the Christmas-tree;
She heard sweet children singing,
But lone and sad was she!
Am shut out from their mirth;
O! why am I so lonely?
Thou Saviour of the Earth!”
With wonder and affright;
On a fair strange Child she gazes,
Clothed as in robes of light!
A solitary birth;
I have gone through childhood's danger,
And sorrows of the earth.”
Those starry branches see;
No longer, lonely, wander,
It is thy Christmas-tree!”
Forth from the silvery leaves;
Down where the maiden sadly,
Among the joyful, grieves.
Thou wanderer of the wild;
Thy father and thy mother
Is Jesus, Mary's child!”
A DOXOLOGY.
The Father, Holy Ghost, and Son!
Other in person and in name:
In life and nature, God, the same.
The Spirit, mingling Three-in-One;
All, gathered in their sole abode,
The very and eternal God.
Throned in their midst, Behold the Man!
Jesu! the God who died, was he—
The Second of the awful Three.
In heaven, to God, the Trinity!
On earth, let equal praise be done,
And worship we the Three and One.
The poetical works of Robert Stephen Hawker | ||