Gerard's Monument :: :: University of Virginia Library

Gerard's Monument

And Other Poems. By Emily Pfeiffer: 2nd Ed., Revised and Enlarged

Pfeiffer, Emily (1827-1890)

THE LOVE THAT DARES TO WAIT.

A RHYME FOR THE TIME.

NATHANIEL TO RUTH.

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SONG.

OUT OF THE NIGHT OF HIS SORROW.

LONGING AND ASKING.

LOVE UNREQUITED.

[He that is washed needs but to wash his feet]

[We awake up in the twilight of the dawn; yes]

[subsection]

[Oh Love, on thee a burden has been laid]

[Love, show thine eyes, thy stature infinite]

SIX STUDIES IN EXOTIC FORMS OF VERSE.

II.

III.

IV.

V.—A BALLAD OF THE THUNER-SEE.

VI.

VI.—THE CHANT OF THE CHILDREN OF THE MIST.

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TO I. C. P.

GERARD'S MONUMENT.

Saint Saviour's Church lies buried deep,
It stood on the land, it fell on the shore,
And buried the graves where the dead are asleep,—
The dead who were buried long years before;
And over the marble, and over the turf,
The sand is washed by the moaning surf.

And down beneath both surf and sand,
Over the buried bones of men,
Are labours of many a cunning hand
Passed with the labourer out of ken,—
Sculptured figures that seem to pray,
With up-turned eyes that look for the day.

And fisher-wives that dwell thereby,—
For a hamlet sits on the buried town,
(A town and a storm-beaten keep stood nigh
To the church when together they all went down),
These fisher-wives through the wild dark nights,
Will tell each other of eerie sights.

And telling each other of eerie sights,
Will pause to listen to eerie sounds;—
A sea-bird dazed with its short wild flights,
Flapping the casement, or over the mounds,
And down below in the hollow caves,
The sob of the surf o'er the buried graves.

But when there comes a sound of rapping,
The fisher-wives then hold their breath,
Or whisper: “The goldsmith to-night is tapping
The silver image that lies beneath,
And covers the coffin that shuts in the wife
Was nearer and dearer to him than his life.”

Valery, Valery! thou hast come,—
A name that floats on the waves of time,—
A voice when the voices around thee are dumb,—
A wandering spirit when manhood's prime,
And knightly honour, and wealth and worth
Are buried beside thee in sand and earth.

Valery, Valery! what hast thou done,
What hast thou been that thy name should abide?
Thou hast lived and loved in the light of the sun,—
Lived a little, loved much, and died;—
But thou hast so suffered, that true hearts keep
The print of a sorrow that struck so deep.

In Saviour's Church of a Sabbath day,
Three souls were wont to kneel and pray,—
A woman, a youth, and a maid were they;
God rest those souls wherever they be!
They knelt and prayed among the crowd,
With downcast eyes, and faces bowed;
It was a proper sight to see.

The woman was old, was withered and worn,
And her bearing told of a low degree;
The youth had been stricken before he was born.
Crook'd and stunted and pale was he;
But the maiden glowed like a rosy morn;
Valery of the Vale hight she.

And near to where they knelt and prayed,
Two figures in carven stone were laid;
First came the dame, and then the knight,
Still and stony, rigid and white;

Then Valery with her hands upraised,
Her cheeks as summer blossoms clear,
Her lips more ripe than summer fruit,
Her eyelids dropped in holy fear
Over the eyes too bright to suit
The twilight place; her budding life
That shone so fair, so fresh and rife,
That some in praying there paused amazed,
And sighed unwittingly, “God be praised!”

The ancient woman said in her prayer:
“Mother Mary! take to thy care
Two poor lambs and fold them well,—
Pasture them better than I can tell.
The keep it totters, is empty and cold,
We cling like ivy on a wall;
Remember the young, nor forget the old;—
Hast room enow in thy heart for all.”

The youth with the faded, restless eye,
Writhing, wringing, his long, lean hands,
Prayed thus: “Ye powers of earth and sky,
I ask not a rood of my father's lands;

Never their goodly blood shall flow
In veins whose fountain my heart hath been,
Nor ever that heart may feel the glow
Of another's beating with nought between;
Living unloving, and dying alone,
The blighted shoot of a perishing tree,
Save me from living and dying unknown,
To lift up a name and to make it mine own;
A name so bright that the mole must see,
So high, that the scorner shall bend the knee!”

The blooming maid as she bent in prayer
Beneath her glory of red gold hair,
Had a saintly light on her face so fair.
She prayed as the rich and high should pray,
Giving her prayers like alms away;
She prayed like a fond and favoured child,
Whose winsome pleadings have ever beguiled.
“Maiden sweet, with the mother's heart,
Mary! flower of all the earth!
Canst thou, pitiful as thou art,
Count our sorrows for nothing worth?
Never, no! tho' I wist not well.

Wherefore my mother's son was hurled
Out so poor on the plenteous world,
I do know—thou hast heard me tell,—
Sitting still at his restless feet,—
That love it worketh like a spell;
And I do love thee, Maiden sweet!”

“Holy mother—the heart of a man—
A heart like his, so stormy and wild,—
Think of it, doomed by a cruel ban,
To beat in the feeble breast of a child!
Mother, I would not have thee weep—
Hast wept such tears in days long past—
And so thou see'st I strive to keep
Mine own from falling hot and fast;
But, oh! belike thine heart will bleed
In thinking on my mother's son,
And, flowing out in gracious deed,
Some bounty for his need be won.
And Jesu who hast crowns and thrones
Men cannot see for lust and pride,—
Who rainedst light when men rained stones
On Martyr Stephen ere he died,—

O Lord, if from thy holy place
Thou notest what we have or lack,
Pay Gerard with some inward grace,
Each outward good thou holdest back.”

Uprose the suppliants one and all;
The halting youth of stature small,
And the blooming maiden straight and tall,
Went linked together adown the aisle.
The maiden's hand was lightly pressed
On Gerard's arm, where, unconfessed,
It guided while it seemed to rest;
Oh maiden heart so full of guile!
The maiden's head, no longer bowed,
Was held on high; some called her proud,—
I wis she but defied the throng
To gaze too strangely, or too long.

Oh kindly beauty, to keep the eye
From dwelling on meaner sights near by;
When they passed together, that unmatched pair,
Men only said: “Dear God, how fair!”

Her crispèd locks of ruddy gold
Over her stately shoulders rolled,

And surging downward, by the way
Scattered a mist of gleaming spray.
Her eyes had the tinct of Spanish wine,
Bright as mirror, and deep as mine;
Beneath her kirtle of faded silk,
Was a bosom as white as new-drawn milk;
Of sheen as fresh as the coming rose,
Over a virgin's bower that blows;
But a heart most womanly dwelt within.
God teach them better who count that sin.

A path adown the aisle was cleft,
Where the country folk stood right and left.
It fell on a day in the month of May,
There stood a man alone in the porch;
He was not like to any there,
Unless to the maiden, proud and fair,—
In soothe that twain had made a pair.
He might have looked over her golden head,
But his dark eye fed
On her face instead.
Such burning looks may fairly scorch

A maiden's cheek, if so they be
Not quenched in gentlest courtesy.

The man who stood in the porch alone,
He might have been a man of stone,
Wrought something larger than the life;
But waiting there in seeming rest,
One hand his cap of samite pressed;
Its fellow lay upon his breast
Firm clenched as if to quell its strife.
And e'en his eyes, those orbs of fire,
Now soft, but prone to sudden ire,
Obeyed a motion not their own,
For meeting her as she drew nigh,
She drew them on, and passing by
She left them gazing on the sky,—
Him, standing in the porch alone.

The blooming maiden past him by,
Nor turned on him her steadfast eye;
The youth looked up and his lip grew pale;
Such god-like bearing to him was bale.

The ancient woman muttered low:
“Ye wot that sun still melteth snow!”

So they all past on and out at the door
Meeting the new drawn breath of spring;
And right they saw the glistering shore,
And left they heard the copses ring;—
For sun and waves they shone of yore,
And brooding birds will ever sing.

And the three past on and out of the town,
Through the wicket gate which led to the mead,
Where Valery kilted her faded gown,
And none were near to mark or heed,
Save the humble day's-eye in the grass,
That opened wide to see her pass.

The ancient woman said that night,
Combing the maiden's locks so bright,
Whence many a spark flew out in the dark:
“The goldsmith, saw ye him to-day
As he stood in the porch, so gallant and gay?”
And the maiden coldly answered “Nay.”

“The goldsmith is a man of mark,”
Quoth ancient Margery,—so she hight;—
“He has journeyed far, he has journeyed wide,
His fame is fair as his gold is bright;
He has climbed the mount which upheld the ark,
He has seen the land where Jesus died,
And a cross of stars—a wondrous sight—
Shines over the spot if men say right.”
Said Valery, “Kiss me, and good night.”

Valery, proud and patient maid,
Half in sun and half in shade,
Sitting still in the morning hours,
Sorting, binding meadow flowers,
Laying them three, and two, and one,
On a grey stone slab in the eye of the sun.
The orchard grass was high and green,
The sea a breadth of quivering sheen;

The morning sky was deep and blue,
Where boughs and blossoms let it through;
The apple blooms hung white and red
Over the maiden's burnished head.

The shells lay hot upon the sand;
The cattle slumbered on the lea,
With scarce a sound upon the land,
And scarce a murmur from the sea—
Save where a little wave more rash,
Broke on the shore with a sudden plash;
Or titterels, nesting on the mere,
Quarrelled more loudly or more near.

Gerard stretched out as if asleep,
I' the grassy shade of the ruined keep;
Lying flat upon his breast,
Lying still, but not at rest;
His face uplifted in his palm,
Set and thoughtful, but not calm;
His lean right hand in rapid flight,
Lining a page but lately white;

His brow contracted to a frown,
His eyelids glancing up and down,
Now on the flowers, that three, two, one,
Lay on their shadows in the sun,
And now upon the vellum sheet
Where all those fading posies sweet
Had seemed to breathe their rainbow breath,
And so to conquer coming death.

The youth swept down the vellum sheet,
And started sudden to his feet.
“What boots this puny toil?” quoth he,
“This book may live, but what of me?
My father's sword I cannot wield,
I scarce can lift my father's shield,
But—” pausing then, his hungry eye
Fastened as on some phantom nigh,
His breath came thick, his words fell fast:
“God's life! I could have found at last
That stone which men the wide world o'er
Are seeking, but our failing store
Withheld me;—for a spindle's cost,
Wealth, fame, and power—lost, all lost!”

Then Valery, she too rose upright,
And what if tears bedazed her sight,—
The vaguest vision is most bright:
“Now, holy Mary!”—she was bold,
Her voice it had a ringing tone,—
“I'll gage,” quoth she, “to get the gold,
And haply you will find the stone.”

She gathered up the buds so fair
And bound them with a golden hair,
Then,—pitiful and gracious maid,—
She kissed, and set them in the shade.

He looked her in the tearful eyes
So wonder-deep, so wonder-wise;
Then in the shadow of the keep
He laid him down, and feel asleep.

Old Margery said, as she stood that night
Combing the maiden's locks so bright,
Whence many a spark flew out in the dark:
“The goldsmith will pass at peep of day

To join those gallants in proud array
Who meet to shoot at the Popinjay.”
The maiden's eyes in the dusk shone clear,—
Some eyes would almost seem to hear;—
“And where will they go the morrow?” said she,—
“To Bracklesham Chase,” quoth Margery;
And laughed to herself the while, as tho'
She wist the sun was at work on the snow.

The keep was tottering to its fall,
But ivy clamped the broken wall,—
Granite with amber lichen crusted,—
A tower of steel the damp had rusted.
And they who had dwelt in the ancient place
Had long been held for an unthrift race;
They loved the weak, nor feared the strong;
The rich they helped when in the right,
The poor they served in any case;
And, ready to aid them with their might,
Were eager to shield them with their grace;
And so they came to live in song,
And die from out their ancient place.

Three tall brothers lay in the crypt,
They had gone to fight in a far-off land;
Their bodies from over the sea were shipped,
While the tearless parents stood on the strand.
They held each other by the hand,
And kissed each son upon the cheek;
I wis they hardly looked more grand
As they followed them home within the week,
Borne at the head of a mourning train,
And never to come that way again.

The vane which pointed Saviour's spire
Was hardly tipped with sudden fire,
When Valery, from out the deep
Sweet silence of a maiden's sleep,
Broke, as the morning from the mist
Was breaking even now, and wist
Not well—half-dreaming as she lay,
While yet no nestling was astir—
If she had wakened up the day,
Or if the day had wakened her.

Belike she wakened to a thought
That lay in ambush through the night,
But with the lifted vane had caught
The first faint glimmer of the light,
For springing up as one in haste
No earliest span of time to waste,
She stepped from out her morning bath
And left upon the floor a path,
Such as had made her goings known
Wherever barefoot she had flown:
Two slender heels were printed there,
Ten little toes in order fair;
The arch between them had not pressed
The ground, but might be fondly guessed.
Her beauty then in russet gown
She sheathed, and kneeling humbly down,
Prayed that the Christ, whose crown of thorn
Was placed upon his head in scorn,
Who lowly lived and patient died,
With outcast men on either side,
Would smooth her brother's path of pride.

And then a sweet, grave face she bent

Over a coffer, and undid
The lock, and softly raised the lid;
And diving to its depths she sent
A pliant hand that deftly caught
Its prize, and to the surface brought
A jewel of a rare device,
Of craft most subtle, quaint, and nice;
A thing to clasp the throat and swathe
With broken gleams of light the breast,
With rain of quivering fringe to bathe
In shower of summer gold, the vest
Down to the zone. It might have been
The gorget of a fairy queen.

Alack, it was the only wealth,—
Barring her soul and body's health
And beauty,—of a noble maid
In homespun russet gown arrayed;
Her only wealth, and eke her dower,
All that a mother's love had power
To snatch and save from out the wave
That washed so bare the lonely tower.
And then,—her fortune in her hand,—

The maiden stood, and swept the land
Low-lying in the morning sun,
With eager glance in search of one
She held would now be on his way
To carry off the Popinjay.

And riding slowly from the town,
To tighten rein upon the down,
She spied the goldsmith, and stood still
To see him swiftly lift the hill.
And still, when on the topmost rise,
The firwood closed him from her eyes,
She watched the wood a little space,—
A smiling doubt upon her face.
Ah, little deemed she, smiling there—
That maiden with the lustrous hair—
Of summer sunshine that could smite
A burnished head with living light;
And gather glances from afar,
As surely as a guiding star!

The goldsmith pausing on the height,
Beheld his day-star burning bright,—

A little spark which lit a whole
Sweet perfect picture in his soul.
So gazing till the maiden went
Upon her unknown purpose bent,
He waited till his star glanced out
In darkness;—when he turned about.
Quoth he, “I'd liefer die unshriven
Than have so pure an image driven
Out from my thoughts by churlish play.”
So home again he wore his way;—
Heard Saviour's bells for matins chime,
And breathed the fragrance of the thyme.
“Good luck,” cried he, “to the Popinjay,—
It may shoot itself for me to-day!”

The goldsmith slowly paced the down,
The maiden hurried through the town;
And over the morning dew she flew,
To spurn the street with dainty feet.
When to the goldsmith's she came near,
Her heart so beat for haste and fear,
That lacking breath, she made a stand,
Still with her fortune in her hand;

And pausing, looked within before
She entered at the open door.

The overhanging gables made
A pregnant mystery of shade,
And over the goldsmith's ordered wealth
The daylight crept as if by stealth,—
Save where it broke upon the lid
Of cup, or chafing-dish, or slid
About a vase, or struck a blade
With lightning; or, where many-rayed
And quivering on a golden urn,
A mimic sun would seem to burn.

When Valery of the Vale stood there,
Unhooded by her rebel hair,
That sunbeam left the urn, to smite
Her golden head with dancing light.

The 'prentice lad, he was not one
To blink because he saw the sun;
A flippant answer he had given
Untroubled to the queen of heaven.

And lending half an eye and ear
The while she made her wishes clear,
He finished toying with his nails
To throw her necklet in the scales.
“Three ounces, seven grains,” quoth he,
“Of gold as pure as gold can be;
And you shall have its worth and weight
In ducats, and I will not bate
A denyer for its cranks and curls,
Its form so fashionless, with whorls,
Like empty sea-shells.” “Let it be
A bargain, and have done,” quoth she.

And speaking thus, adown the street
They heard the clank of horse's feet,
That halted as the gold was flung
Into the scale; and as it rung
Smiting the counter, on the floor
There stole a shadow from the door,
Which darkened her from feet to breast,
But spared the glory of the rest.
And shrinkingly as Valery turned,
She saw the goldsmith's eyes that burned

Right on her through the dim half-light
In which he stood eclipsed; all bright
And glowing where he bore the brunt
Of summer sunshine, but in front
A darkened image, grandly tall,
And nobly beautiful withal.

He doffed his cap and entered in;
To wear it he had deemed a sin;
He thought—“This rare old shop of mine,
Gra'mercy, it has grown a shrine.”
He said: “Bright lady, speak your will,
That knowing it, I may fulfil.”

Then straight she told him how she had
Her necklet to the 'prentice lad
Sold for its weight in coinéd gold.
Whereon he raised it fold on fold;
Its supple chains together caught
By quaintest fancies, deftly wrought,
He eyed an instant, and then glanced
Up at the lady, and stood tranced
One giddy moment in his place,—
So wrought on him that gracious face.

He pressed the vision from his eyes,
And to the 'prentice lad quoth he:
“You serve my customers this wise
When I am not at hand to see?
Lack you the grace that should discern
How dullards such as you might learn
Lessons from this that scarce could reach
The wisest through the port of speech?
See you no worth in loving thought?
As craftsman, do you count for nought
Such perfect craft? Go, ‘dust to dust’
Is still the word; you see the crust
Which life informs, the life you miss.
Begone, sir knave; I'll look to this.
By'r Lady, it is well I came
To free my dealing from such blame
As you had tarnished it withal.”
Again he let the necklet fall
Into the scale, and times twice ten
He weighted it up with gold, and then
He took it in his hands again,
And over it he closed the twain;
Trembling a little as he drew
It in and out, and through and through.

His ringing voice grew strangely soft—
“Say, lady, have you worn it oft?”
“Nay, never a time at all,” quoth she,
“'Tis new as morning light for me.”
He laid it on the counter down
And bent his dazzled eyes above:
“I thought it worth a sovereign crown,—
I find it is not worth your glove.”

Oh, but her blood, a gradual flame,
Neck, cheek, and brow, in turns o'ercame;
All but her eyes, that were so bold
In maidenhood they could behold
With steadfast orb that noon-day light
Which beats upon the soul so bright,
That life's sweet morning in its beam
Shows pallid as a fading dream.
The goldsmith dared not lift his face,
But light of love filled all the place;
It crept from 'neath his sheathèd eyes,
And wrapt her in a golden cloud,
Wherein she could but breathe in sighs,
Wherein her heart beat strong and loud.

She was a maiden of high degree,
And so loved gentle courtesy;
She was a maiden of ancient race,
And so loved honour and knightly grace,
She had a heart to defend the right,
So loved all signs of lordly might;
She was a maiden young and fair,
And saw all courtesy stand there,
All honour, grace, and strength, well shown
Through favour that might match her own.

The goldsmith was a merchant wight,
Had fashioned you a chain or ring;
But his manners had not shamed a knight,
His mien had well become a king.

Oh, moments all too passing sweet,
Moments in passing all too fleet!
She turned to go for maidenhood
Who still for dear delight had stood.
With lowered lids, to hide the glow
Of eyes inept, she turned to go;
Dark was the space about the door,
The goldsmith had been there before,

And kneeling, barred the passage where
She else had met the sunlit air.
This moment from the stores of time
Was his,—he caught it in its prime,
To make of it a crown which he
Might wear through all eternity.

So strong and sweet the words he spake,
When first his passion's torrent brake
The bounds where it had chafed for years,—
So sweet, so strong, it drew sweet tears
From Valery's eyes which, as she bent
Above his face, his cheeks besprent.
He murmured: “Were I black as night,
Such baptism had washed me white.”
He said: “But I do bear a name
Knows no dishonour, nor much blame,
And hold a heart which high endeavour
Shall raise to be your throne for ever.
Of mortal presence—foul or fair—
The spot has been for ever bare,
And still for ever, if you hold
My pleading to be over bold,

'T will be a vision-haunted place,
Barren of every living grace.”

He was a man, and she a maid
To love's appeal first giving ear;
Count it not strange if she essayed
To speak, and failed for joy or fear.
One moment failed, for she was brave,
As brave as she was straight and true;
Her brother's need fresh courage gave,
The old love dared to face the new.

She said: “I am no woman free
To entertain your courtesy,
For like a Nazarite of old
I have a vow upon me, strong
As love and death, which ere I wrong,
I'll lay me 'neath the churchyard mould.
My mother on her dying bed
Bound it upon me, heart and head,
And hand and foot, and limbs and life,
And I must keep it sooth,” she said,
“In single truth; I may not wed:

It is no dowry for a wife;
And I would keep it were I free
Of all but mine own heart,” wept she;
“It is my brother, warped and weak,
That God, no less than she, has laid
So naked on my hands, and bade
Me cover from a world so bleak.”

The goldsmith then he rose upright;
And filled the doorway with his height;
An army's champion so looked he.
“I too will bind me with an oath:
This heart, this hand shall hold ye both,
And hold him no less close than thee!
If aught through me thy brother fail,”
The goldsmith's cheek grew ashen pale,—
“Then may the thing I hold most dear—
Thy gracious self—be turned to stone,
And leave me maddened and alone—
Alone and maddened ever here.”

She raised her eyes and looked at him,—
Her eyes were bright, his eyes were dim,

And rested on her cheek, rose-red,
As though they gazed upon the dead.
She called him softly by his name,
And still no note of answer came;
She laid her hand upon his arm,
And yet he hardly owned the charm;
She bowed her head upon his breast,
And in the act her love confessed.
“Oh, manhood's noble might,” thought she,
“O'erwrought by love, and love of me!”
Then first the darker vision fled,
As back he turned her radiant head,
And in a flash of silent bliss,
Their souls encountered in a kiss.

Rare triumph of the golden gloom,
To witness in its freshest bloom
The flower of these two lives, which first
Thus into joyous being burst.

“God grant my brother like it well,”
She said, and broke the sweet love-spell,
Then murmured: “Howsoe'er it be,
I'll be true wife to none but thee!”

She went, and he upon her track
Had followed, but she waved him back,
And left him in the golden gloom;—
Oh, life and love! Oh, love and doom!

Gerard on the grey door-stone
Waiting watching all alone;
Chafing hands whose trembling hold
Ached to close upon the gold.
Valery, who as she flew,
Scarcely shook the morning dew
Which filled the chalice of the rose
That her passage did oppose.

“Give to me thy hand, good brother,
So I fill it, and the other
Shall be even-weighted; truly
Did I flatter thee unduly?”

Gerard took the gold and weighed it,
Then upon the step he laid it,—

Laid it in a shining heap,
Scattered it with scornful sweep,
Showed it laughing to the day,
And hid it in his pouch away.

Never had she learned to prize
Gold, until in Gerard's eyes
She beheld its worth imputed
Into light of hope transmuted.
Then her face against his knee
She laid, and softly whispered she:
“The gold for you,—a gem for me.”

But e'en the gold as gold no more
In Gerard's thought a semblance bore;
Sublimed in crucible, or smelted,
In airy visions it had melted.

She took his hand so long and lean,
She lightly shook his gaberdine,
And a little louder whispered she:
“The gold for you,—a gem for me.”
But he neither said her yea nor nay,
His thoughts had floated far away.

Then up she starts and firm she stands,
And crowning him with two fair hands:
“Gerard, my brother, times now three—
The gold for you—a gem for me!
The proffer of a heart as great
As sunk and poor is our estate.”
She paused, then added, something loth,—
“A heart for me,—a home for both.”

Keen eyes, keen ears were now intent,
And keenly was the answer spent:
“It is the goldsmith, in his pride,
Would get himself a noble bride.”

“He is a king of men,” quoth she,
“And whatsoever her degree
Who weds with him, she'll count her state
The nobler that she is his mate!”

He turned towards her, warped and weak,
Pale eager lips, pale sunken check:
As she had learnt what gold might be
From Gerard's eyes, so Gerard, he

Saw all of love that he might know
From her's, that were with love a-glow.

His cheek waxed whiter as he gazed
With effluence of light bedazed;
And, as a sickly blossom grown
In twilight withers in the sun,—
Whose mid-day splendours will abase
The growths his early beams made proud,—
His spirit fell before her face,
More than his stricken body bowed.
Two angels fought for him amain,
And he was sore betwixt the twain.

He clutched her wrist; “Whence came the gold!”
She showed him of the necklet sold.
He wept—“Your heart is gone from me.”
She said—“From twain we shall be three,
And stronger so the world to face.”
He moaned—“It is a weary place.”

He groaned: “How happy are the dead,
O had the crypt but been our bed!”

Then laid his hand upon her hair
And blest, and called her good and fair;
When holding down his swelling heart,
He felt the treasure, with a start
He turned, and like a wayward child,
Flashed it before her face, and smiled:

“Here lies what shall our wrongs atone:
God's life! I all but hold the stone.”

The sun shed gold upon the sands,
Dropped jewels in the sea,
The morn that saw them join their hands,
It rose so royallie.
The goldsmith trained his eagle sight
To look upon the sun:
“Mine eyes, ye'll have to face the light
Before the day is done!”

He brought his palfrey to the gate:
“Ho, curve thy neck with pride,
Mine own good steed, for 'tis your fate
This day to bear the bride.

Ho, songs of thrush and nightingale,
Give notice to the skies,
And greet our Valery of the Vale
When she shall bless our eyes.”

The throstle and the nightingale
They raised a merry shout,
And greeted Valery of the Vale
When blushing she came out.
The throstle and the nightingale
They piped so loud and clear,
That no one heard the peewit's wail
That echoed from the mere.

Upon her head the fleur-de-lis
Was plaited for a crown,
And all about her, till her knee,
Her golden hair fell down.
A silken train was vain to seek
In presses old and bare,
So Margery combed, and combed so sleek,
Her lady's silken hair.

Then by the diamond-dancing sea
They go, and if there stir
A breath, deep-laden it will be
With incense from the fir.
And so to Saviour's Church they come,
And enter at the door,
Where the groom had waited sad and dumb
A little month before.

The sun might beat upon the shore,
But Saviour's Church was cold;
The spices float from copse and moor,—
It only smelt of mold.
The sun might break upon the glass,
But Saviour's Church was dim;
And brokenly the sunbeams pass
The carven cherubim.

Where on the altar-steps was split
A pool of purple light,
'Twas there the bride and bridegroom knelt
Their true-love troth to plight.

There on her breast, above her zone,—
He saw it with a start,—
Christ's robe as king and martyr shone
In gules upon her heart.

When hand in hand they stood, the three,
And gazed from out the door,
The rain fell leaden in the sea,
And leaden on the shore.
And silent were the singing birds,
But loud the taunting cry
Of sea-mews,—and, like warning words,
The wind went howling by.

The goldsmith led the frightened steed,
And caught the lily crown,
While dank and dark as water-weed
Her tangled hair fell down.
So stalwart groom, and beauteous bride,
And piteous brother,—three
Who issued forth in joy and pride,—
Returned in dread and dree.

The wind withstood them in the street,
'Gainst forward brow and knees it beat;
The goldsmith even felt its might,
It caught his breath, and blurred his sight,
That Gerard's scarf, which did constrain
His chin as with a curbing rein,
He hardly wrested from the storm
To wrap about him soft and warm.
Quoth he, “No wind shall blow thee harm,”
And compassed Gerard with his arm.

And Valery saw, and Valery heard,—
Beheld the deed, and marked the word,
And through her passion's stately calm,
There broke the gladness of a psalm
Of praise to God, and him who stood
To her God-manifest in good.
And so their struggling way they win,—
All war without, all peace within;
And howling wind, or driving rain,
Now beat against their breasts in vain.

The wind withstood them at the door,
Where shrieking it had rushed before;

Held Valery backward by the hair,—
Laid Gerard helpless on the stair,—
And blinded with a fiercer shock
The goldsmith as he sought the lock;
Then furious turned and rang the bell,—
The turret bell that like a knell
Clanged out,—so wildly that it broke,
And all the slumbering ecohes woke,
Till man and maid came, white as death,
To hail the bride with struggling breath.

“From storm so rude, and sky so dark,
My dove, I bid thee to the ark,”
The goldsmith said, and on his breast
He laid the golden head to rest.
She smiled: “For that your heart is large,
O love, you take a two-fold charge;
Two waifs you save
From out the wave,
Two souls to bless you on the marge.
So lordly strong, my heart's true mate,
He will not feel the double freight.”

Again she laid her head to rest,
Safe on the goldsmith's happy breast,
And—ere the act he could disown—
Drew Gerard's softly to her own.

'Twas ancient Margery, none but she,
Leant on her staff and watched the three
With rheumy eyes that danced with glee.
She laughed: “We shall not freeze, I trow;
The flame, ho, ho! that thawed the snow,
Will keep our household fires a-glow.”
But Gerard frowned: “Darkness and cold
Wait ever on the weak and old.”

Two stars that traverse one same sphere,
Never crossing, if alway near;
Two streams through a mountain chasm led,
Flowing unmixed in one same bed;
Two souls that claim to be friend and brother,
Viewless as phantoms, each for the other:

Two men who are living and working together,
Sharing the fair and the foul of the weather,
Meeting at board and joining in prayer,
Passing in passage and halting on stair,
Closely lodged in one woman's heart,—
For ever near, and for ever apart.

The goldsmith loved to work in the sun,
In the open day, and he worked with a will;
But he loved to laugh when his work was done,
Or he loved to breast a windy hill,
And to spread his thought from its summit hoary,
Over the world and review its story.
The goldsmith's mind was an open book,
And the goldsmith's eye kept a keen out-look,
And he fed his fancy from day to day
While nature and he were together at play.
The crested progress of the wave,
The dog that panting plunges in,
The set of gorget, or turn of glaive,
The dimples that ripple an infant's chin;
The bird that builds, the bird that broods,
And he that shakes with song the woods,

The bee so hot in quest of gain,
That he makes a mart of the lily's fane;
He marked them and he knew their way
So well, that his work was as bold as play.
But, better than all, of a summer eve,
Or by winter fire, he loved to weave
His kindling thought with the thought of one
Who was dearer to him than the world and its sun,—
Than spangled night, or various day,
Than joyous work, or careless play.

In an inner chamber, still and dusk,
Haunted with shadows, heavy with musk,
Gums and spices, and mold withal,
The flames of a furnace flicker and fall,
Flicker and fade on a wan, keen face,
That comes and goes in the ghostly place.
There Gerard bends to his smelting ores,
Feeds his furnace, and silent pores
Over his problems, or questions the sages,
Whose hopes loom large through the gloom of the ages,
For hints of that secret whose fitful gleam
Had baffled many a long day-dream;

The secret of secrets, whereby the length
Of a mortal's days to a mortal's strength
Should be no more timed, and a man might see
His life's fruit ripe on his own life tree.
There he bends when the dew-beads chill
Spangle the vine on his window-sill;
There he leans when its bronze young spray
Faints and falls in the hot noon-day;
There he droops when the day is done,
And all is told 'twixt the vine and the sun;—
Day or night he sees it all
Through the flames of the furnace that flicker and fall.

And many a time, as they sit at meat,
The household, head and hands complete,
And a word or jest will join the rest
For a moment, as beads of a rosary caught
Together and bound by a thread of thought,—
The thread will snap beside his seat.
And many a time would that body spare
Drop fainting in the gloom or glare,

If eyes to see, or ears to hear,
And hands to cherish were not near.
Rarely he tarried on breezy down,
Never he clomb to the windy hill;
Would all the glory on view from its crown,
Could song of bird, or murmur of rill,
Help weakling steps to some bluff of fame
Where the light might brighten a fading name?

A slight, pale thing, but hard to move,
Was Gerald buried in his groove;
Yet one soft voice still found its way
To soothe and hearten as he lay,—
One smile lit up his gruesome day;—
His sister reached him with her love.,

The Goldsmith took a lump of ore
And filed away some golden grains:
Quoth he: “He'll want it all, and more,
And he shall have it: if my store
Grow less, I'll double it with pains.

I'll point my fancy subtle-fine,
And hand with thought shall so combine
To permeate a grain of earth,
That they shall multiply its worth.”
He gathered in his strong right hand
The fragments, to the last gold sand,
And pointing to the mass, the whole
Whence he had taken that slight toll:
“This for your brother, sweet my life,”
He said, and gave it to his wife.

Oh, happy goldsmith! had the work
You made yourself been toil and irk,
A man had done it for such prize,—
Such worship of a woman's eyes.

She took it, but she never stirred,
Her eyes that blessed him, still demurred;
“You wrong yourself,” she said aloud.
She loved her brother and was proud.

“She would deny him—he so near
Her heart, for I am still more dear!”

The goldsmith thought; and all day long
His hammer rung it out in song;
It rung so joyous and so clear,
The neighbours stopped their work to hear;
“So near to thee, my life, so dear;”
“So dear,” it echoed, “and so near!”

When all the land lay dark around,
Extinguished at the curfew's sound,
And men would test what they had done
Within the compass of the sun,
The goldsmith thought: “That goodly blade
Suits well the hilt that I have made,
And silver takes a light more fair,
And shows the artist's cunning where
It oft lies hidden in the gold—
Which of itself is over-bold.
Those twisted mermaids,—rounded-flesh
Subsiding into scale,—with mesh
Of woven or upon the tail,
Shine forth more precious, being pale.”
The goldsmith turned him to his rest,
No man on all that coast so blest;

Nor less so, for a sword-hilt planned
To guard and grace a hero's hand.

And Gerard at the turn of eve
His cloudy thoughts alone would weave.
“My smelting fire has served me well;
My tests have secrets still to tell;
Anon, if mine alembic hold,
That which a while ago was gold,
May pass from out the realm of sense;
What subtle thing will issue thence,—
How to be questioned, proved or caught,
I know not yet; nor, when its hold
Is loosed from grosser elements,
What awful form it may unfold;
But I do know that I am bold,
Nor likely shaken with portents.
Come I as victor from this strife,
I grasp the matter of all life!”

The goldsmith took a lump of ore
And filed as he had filed before.

Then gathered up his slender toll,
And straightway on a silver bowl
He fell to work—to wreathe the rim
With flowers; careless as a whim
Of infancy to eyes unskilled,
The twisted branches played around
The pouting lip their blossoms crowned;
But one who knew, had felt beneath
The softness of that flower wreath,
How strongly, with a purpose filled,
The artist thought, the man had willed.

And eyes that watched him turn about
The gold, and strike his meaning out,
With child-like eagerness were wide,
And tender with a woman's pride.
And catching of the breath, or word
Most like the cooing of a bird
Unconscious of itself, would tell
The goldsmith when he had done well.
“O love, that tendril—how it clings,—
How folds its neighbour in its rings!
Ah! limpet-flower, so frail, so fair,—
Limpet that sucks but sun and air.

Ay, so its leaflets lick the ground—
Poor cloven tongues that make no sound,
And cannot cry for loss or want;
I marvel, will ye ever teach
The little prince your golden speech?
(That silver basin was a font.)
Then, when the craftsman's eager touch
Had haply made a stroke too much;
“Love, stay thy hand, nor all impart
The secret of the rose's heart!”

When summoned thence by call or beck,
She hung a moment on his neck,
And looked him straightly in the eyes,—
She said; “I hold you for a God
To summon creatures at your nod,—
Call them from nothing, and they rise!”
Her passion paled her cheek like flame,
But sombre in her eyes there came
A glow from out her deepest heart;
She said no more; but all her soul
Was dispossessed,—she laid the whole
Wealth of her love,—her woman's dower—
Low at his feet, and from that hour—

Love's pensioner—if she might live
Through ages she no more could give
The man beside her, for he held
Her wholly, and no thought rebelled;—
She kept no secret to impart.

She went out softly;—at the door
She turned and saw the lump of ore,
Which smiling in her hand she took:
“Jesu, forgive me, who have wealth
So great, with soul and body's health,
And still the poor can overlook!”

Jesu, forgive her, if she eyed
The treasure in her hand with pride;
Her conscious meekness when she bore
The lump to add to Gerard's store,
And fain with clinging hand had quelled
The heart that still too proudly swelled;
Forgive the woman who put trust
So deep in any child of dust.

“She loves him so that she would take
The mines of India for his sake,”

The goldsmith thought, and through the night
And in his sleep, in grim despite,
His hammer rung it: “For his sake;”
And, did he sleep or did he wake,
Still echoed—“For his sake, his sake!”

The goldsmith took a lump of ore,
And filed as he had filed before,—
Only he longer filed, and more.
And gathering up the golden sands,
He laid them in her open hands.
“The larger share I shall use up
To-day, for I must shape a cup;
Since Jesus' blood it is to hold,
The cup will need to be of gold.”
And speaking slowly on this wise,
The goldsmith fixed her with his eyes.

She answered him: “My brother's store
Is full, and when he needeth more
I'll come to thee, my life. I pray
This thing will proven be to-day—
'Twere best determined yea or nay;

The worst were that he still should grope
With marsh-fire light in lieu of hope.”
She paused; her eyes with tears were dim.
He thought: “She suffers, and through him!”
And all that day in fear and doubt
His hammer slowly rang it out:
“The heart that I would guard from loss,
Hide,—might it be,—from Christ's own cross,
Must suffer for a weakling's whim,
Must bleed, and bleed for him,—for him!' ”

And all that day a wan keen face
Whitened and sharpened in its place;
With eyes a-gaze as if to spring,
With still locked hands that fain would cling,
With chastened breath, and ears that heard
The falling of the lightest sherd,
Gerard bent watching,—all his soul
Turned guardian of an empty bowl,

Whence there exhaled a thin, white steam,—
The dying breath of Gerard's dream.
With risks and science manifold,
To this he had reduced the gold,—
And waited at this final hour
The further triumph of his power.
He waited while a breath went up
That would have dimmed a crystal cup,
The pupils of his hollow eyes
Contracting on the wished-for prize.
A moment more, and he will beat
Brute matter from its last retreat,—
Unhouse it wholly. Will it take
Some form unknown, or will it break
The stagnant silence with a word
By man in mortal shape unheard
Till now? The spirit of the gold
Thus driven from its latest hold—
Will it appear to him, reveal
A soul wherewith a man may deal,
Fall down to him and make appeal:
To him who holds, or blind, or seeing,
The secret of its homeless being?

The breath had failed,
The day had paled,
And Gerard in his white despair,
Still watched the place, now cold and bare,—
The ruthless spot
Where IT was not.
Night slowly falls; from Gerard's soul
The mists of proud delusion roll;
IT lingers mocking here and there,
IT comes, he breathes it in the air,
IT may his body's loss repair:—
But the freed captive, mute through all,
Will come no more at human call.

Still while thick darkness wrapped him round,
With silence whole of any sound,
And Gerard, fallen in the strife,
Lay all unconscious of his life,
The spirit's unknown tongue might break
Its patient silence for his sake:
Sharpening some inner sense to feel
A truth no tongue might yet reveal;

Some secret from the deep to bring,—
A germ of light for some day-spring
Remote from him, and yet by him
Fore-felt,—a phantom hovering dim
Athwart the pathless night the soul
Has still to traverse to its goal.
So might the dreamer, dreaming, hold
Communion with his vanished gold.

And Valery sought him in the night
And found him lying stark and white,
Where, through the lattice of the vine,
The moonbeams shake and hardly shine.
She was a woman strong and bold,
But night is drear, and night is cold;
And, as she raised him up and drew
Him near her heart, she shivered too.
What battle had he lonely waged,
In what forbidden arts engaged,
That she should find him stark and white,
Stricken and beaten in the fight,
Thus lying in the dead of night?

She was a woman strong and bold,
And closer still her arms enfold
The weakly form the powers defied
Could punish for its heart of pride.
She traced a circle all around,
She made four crosses on the ground;
Her heart might quake, but still she drew
The circle and the crosses true.
When on his brow she makes the sign,
The moonbeams shake no more, but shine
Clear on her hand, and on her face,
That seems to exorcise the place.
“Jesu, forgive him—hold him free
From hatred of Thy cross and Thee!
What strength has he wherewith to rob
Thee of Thy glory?”—then a sob
Took all her breath and closed her prayer.
A presence newly stirred the air;—
She looked, and saw the goldsmith there.

Alack, the goldsmith's brow was dark,
A gloomy fire that had no spark

Burned in his eye; his helpful hand
Seemed lifted with a stern command.
He carried Gerard up the stair,
He fetched him water, gave him air;
Then left him sleeping on his bed,
With not a word betwixt them said.

For days and days his hammer rung
Out loud and fierce; but what it sung
None could have told. Its angry beat
Seemed now to strike out only heat.

So daily as the goldsmith wrought,
His words of speech were few or nought;
While all he made his tongue withhold
Was poured out hotly on the gold.
And Gerard, like a wounded knight,
Valiant, if worsted in the fight,
Bided his time till strength came back,
To conquer on another tack.
Which-while the patient woman-heart
That lodged them both, was rent apart,—

Held in slow torture with the strain
That forced the rift betwixt the twain.
And ancient Margery, muttering low,
Went up and down, and to and fro,
And wandering in her restless woe,
Splashed holy water on each floor,
And signed a cross on every door.
“O weak and tempted one,” she sighed;
“And holy Wilfred!” still she cried;
“And Gestus, thou, the crucified,
Who rose in glory, being shriven
Of Christus' self—a thief forgiven—
Pray for his soul, that in its pride
For knowledge held from man has striven,—
Has turned a thief more black than thou,
And snatched the crown from Jesus' brow.”
And rising warely in the night
She blew the smouldering embers bright,
And melted wax and moulded it
As such poor cunning might befit,
Into the semblance of a man.
“Christus! Maria! be your ban
Upon this image that I make

In Gerard's likeness, and will take
To-morrow ere the world shall wake,
And set, or be it wet or fine,
With seven tall candles on thy shrine.”

And so she went at peep of day
To Saviour's shrine to kneel and pray,
That He who spares the smoking flax
Would sate His fury on the wax.

The sins that bar the gates of heaven
From erring mortals, number seven.
And cruel as the grave is lust,
Baser than hell is broken trust;
But blacker is the sin of pride
Than all the deadly seven beside.
And deadliest is the pride that dares
To filch a secret unawares,
Which God and holy mother Church
Have holden from their children's search.
And thus it was the faithful came
To cross themselves at Gerard's name;
And tongues which once in passing near

Were ready with a ribald jeer,
Now couched at rest in pious fear.
And men who met him at the fall
Of eve, would let him take the wall,
And women, nimbly facing round,
Leave him lone master of the ground;
While children at their wildest play
Would drop their toys and steal away.
And on the house there fell a weight
Of silence, so that any word
Spoken to lift it, only stirred
The gloom it could not dissipate.
And prying glances would, when found
In covert question, seek the ground,
And corner whisperings sudden cease,
Or settle in laborious peace,
What time the master's voice, or face,
Or presence came to clear the place.

For seven long days the goldsmith broke
His wrath in lifting stroke on stroke;
But daily thinking on his oath,
His heart waxed gentler towards them both;—

Though love is fire as fierce as hate;
And jealousy is stern as fate;
Still a man's will at work through all
Must save him, or must break his fall.

And so for seven long days he wrought
To strike out truer shapes of thought;
And on the seventh day at eve
He seemed his purpose to achieve;
And on the eighth he spoke his mind,—
His words were clear, his purpose kind,—
They ended, “Brother, pray you cease
These arts which mar our household peace.”

The ocean that has churned the storm
May lie at ease when all is done,—
A burnished mirror, spreading warm,
And smooth, beneath the changeless sun;
But turbid waters that have caught
A trick of trouble at their source,
And still are pressed and overwrought
With stony griefs throughout their course,

Will fret and murmur, unallayed
By balmy sun, or cooling shade.

So Gerard, stricken at the source
Of life, retorted sharp and hoarse;
And rising, stood with eye more haught
Than had his brothers,—they who fought
The “Standard of the King” to shield
From heathens on a bloody field.

“The light your voice would fain suppress
Is nature's truth,—no more, no less;—
The ‘arts which mar your household peace,’
Are strivings for the soul's release;
To ignorance and fabled fears
In durance she has lain long years.”
Quoth he; “You bondsmen fain would bind
Your own gross fetters on the wind;
You herd with churls who fear the light,
With jealous guardians of the night,
And side with knaves who skulk and pry;
You live on other planes than I;—
Your thoughts are broad,—they are not high—

I think I hold them not too cheap
If I should say they are not deep.”

The hero-blood so proudly flowed
In Gerard's veins, its poor abode
Seemed lifted from its own disgrace
To meet the goldsmith face to face,
And make the man of might forget
That such unequal forces met.
He too held blood of fighting men
Within, to surge up hotly when,
As now, the steel of cutting words
Drew sparks more keen than angry swords.

And so he thrust again; “The truth
You seek, is centred in a youth,—
Gerard de Tyldesley, by your leave;—
Vain-glorious, and of stomach high,
He lacks the seer's—the single eye—
Which can discover or achieve.
He would refine a mine of gold
Only his image to behold

Clear at its heart; when that was done,
He'd count the battle nobly won
With nature, and proclaim a truce;
But, lest the gold should fall to use
Less worthy, he by some weird art
Which men call black, must rend apart
Its elements, till that which stood
Among us as the type of good,—
Which might have taken shape as fair
As dream of Solomon,—waxed rare
And rarer till it lapsed in air.”
And speaking thus, each from his place
Could hear a voice, could see a face,
But neither through the fleshly sheath
Reached the high-tempered soul beneath.

Nor did the goldsmith dream how pale
Waxed Gerard, or how near to fail,
The while his voice was ringing still,
O'ermastered by his valiant will.

“I said your thoughts were broad, I find
Them straitened as might fit a hind;

I see that if they had been deep,
You lack the courage for a leap
Sheer to the unknown heart of things;—
Your spirit it hath hands,—not wings,—
So cannot soar, but climbs and clings.
You have no faith to tempt the hell
Of failure, and survive to tell
How still in failure—all is well.”
He hardly spoke the words, but sighed
Them from his lips; was it mere pride
That sped them, or some inner light
Of vision flashed upon his sight?

Oh, goldsmith! did no accent here
Strike as a warning on thine ear?
Those boyish words, all flame and fire,
Did ye not hear them sink, expire
On lips that quivered with a throe
Half mortal weakness, and half woe?

No, no! the voice through all the years
That beats the time like falling tears,—

The sad refain that sounds again
For each new ear, and sounds in vain,—
Words sure as death's unyielding gate,—
“Too late”—we answer still—“Too late.”

And if upon a soil unkind
Ye drop some words, ye sow the wind—
To reap, full-bearded on your path,
The whirlwind of concentred wrath.
And windy words enough had blown
Between them ere he stood alone,—
The goldsmith,—master of the field;
Nay, rather knight who had been thrown,
And worsted,—had been forced to yield
That which in honour he had kept.
Heroes in such a strait have wept.

Gerard was gone. Proud to the last,
He gathered up each misty dream,
Each dreamy hope in faith supreme,
To nurture and to see them cast
New wreaths of glory, where the past

Had mouldered from the lonely tower
Which once had been a place of power.
Quoth he; “Such blazon was not meant
To grace your portal.” So he went.

The man who left the goldsmith's side,
Was quick with ire, and stiff with pride;
The form that snatched a moment's rest,
Held to a wildly beating breast,
Was feeble as an infant's hurled
In painful struggle on the world;
The shape that from the goldsmith's went
For good and aye, was shrunk and bent;
God give that they who would beguile
Life's weary uplands with a smile,
May never meet upon its way
A look like that which Valery sent
On Gerard's lonely path that day!

To Saviour's Church two hearts forlorn
Went forth to pray on a Christmas morn;

'Neath the beetling houses, out of the town,
By the windy shore, o'er the windy down,
Kirtle of russet, and cloak of grey,
Blown of the breeze, dashed by the spray,
Sparsely set as with jewels of snow,
The old limbs stiffened, the young a-glow,—
Dumb by the loud-voiced sea they go.

The snow-stars on the wintry hair
Shone crystal-cold as they lighted there,
But they lost themselves in the sunny mesh
Of Valery's tangled curl and braid,
And, melting to tears on her cheek so fresh,
Struck into the track which her tears had made.

So they gained the harbour of Saviour's door,
And, as wind-worn mariners kneel on the shore,
They knelt in the aisle, leaving empty and lone
To the knight and the lady who prayed in stone,
The silent place, where the very moth
Had left for a season to fret the cloth,
Where the dust lay white
In the pallid light

And the spider's-web forbad the way,
Where many a Tyldesley, now no more,
Had bent his pride in the days of yore,
And three sad souls on a morn of May
Had prayed vain prayers each one in his way.

The old wife holding by book and bead,
Told of her Paters and Aves a score;
Then paused in the pang of a newer need,
Started and told off a dozen more;
Craved God's grace for a heart too sore;
And maundered again in her dull despair,
Nor dreamed that her bleatings went up as prayer.

But Valery set her fair young face
Keen with sorrow, to front the place;
And she thought as she looked on the vacant spot,
Of him who was, and of those who were not;
And she seemed to see where, five of a row,
The coffins lay in the crypt below,
With a space betwixt them for just that other:
And “Patience,” she said in her heart, “good mother!”

Then fell upon Saviour's stones again
And poured out to heaven the heart of her pain.

“O Thou who boundest souls of men
In walls of clay, with word divine!
Who lookest through the darkest den,
And seëst where Thou canst not shine:
Thou who canst quicken with the heat
Of living love, the dullest parts
Of earth, until we see thee beat,
And feel thee glow in human hearts:
O light that smilest over all—
O sun that warmest great and small—
O Love still watching evermore
With Jesu at each sinner's door—
I—mortal woman—love but twain;
And the, O God of Love, in vain!”

“I love in vain, and worse than vain,
My love hath been a froward fate,
My love hath let in strife and pain,
My love hath op'd the door to hate:
O Lord, what sorrowful employ
For love that would be dealing joy!”

“What hast Thou seen in me to chide,
Or is it pity, lord, or pride?
One love,—a mother's dying gift,—
Was nursed of sorrow, was it ill
If faint of heart, I sought to lift
A weight which bent him to Thy will?”

“One love broke forth,—a sudden flower
Clear through the mystery of life;
God! first I knew Thee in that hour
He held me to his heart—his wife!
I saw the flower, I judged the fruit,
I said ‘great love is at the root!’
I sought the end of life no more,
I knew Thy love was at its core;
But still mine own was glorified.
And haply I have err'd through pride.”

“He was too rich for pity,—he,—
And I too poor for lowly love;
My spirit yearned to bend the knee,
My downcast eyes to look above;

I never questioned of the state
Of one who in himself was great;
A crown had seemed a sorry sheath
For that great brow to rise beneath;—
The prouder I that could divine
The worth that had no counter-sign.”

“Mother not straightened, no, nor cold
The heart that melts mine own with love!
But only, cast in mightier mould,
He looks beyond us, or above:
And, centred in a soul so fair,
The freëst thought would hardly care
To wander forth on idle wings,
Or fit itself to meaner things.
Sweet Christ! whatever be my state,
So hold him high,—so keep him great!”

Her folded hands fell faint and meek,
Her knees on foot-worn stones were bowed,—
Tears dried unheeded on her cheek,—
And still the woman's heart was proud.

She pressed the stones but prayed no more,
Her lapsëd thought was fluttering o'er
That grove of paradise where glows
The lamp of flowers, the wilding rose,
Whose vermeil skreen though shyly furled
Reveals the flame that lights the world.
But when there past a mouldy breath,—
A summons as from life to death,—
Before her face,—she turned again
O'ertaken by a ghostly pain.

“Can mothers taste of heaven's peace?
From love can death afford release?
I seek thee with the ransomed dead,—
I find thee in thy narrow bed!
The hands so fain to linger still
About his brow, or work his will,
Lie idle in the crypt below
While mine I ring in helpless woe!
The heart beneath their weight opprest,
That so we thought must sink to rest,
I see it bleeding in the grave,—
Its love all-powerless to save!

The hymns which tell of Jesus' birth
Send up their jubilant “All hail!”
But through the quires of heaven and earth
I hear but one despairing wail;
I seek to end thy work in vain,
Love cleaves my stedfast heart in twain;
Dear Christ assoil me of my oath,
Help Thou the son and mother both!”

As old and young returned from mass
The goldsmith stood to see them pass;
But he set his ear to the turn in the street
For the measured cadence of Valery's feet.

“For all the prayers you have prayed, you three,
Hath any one prayed a prayer for me?”
These words as light as the ocean froth
Seemed borne to the ear on a blast from the north.

“Sweetheart we were but twain, not three,
If I bore not thy spirit along with me;
And never,” she faltered, “O nevermore
Will the three ye wot of see Saviour's door.”

Doubting and angered he turned man-wise,
From the pleading sorrow of Valery's eyes:—
For more than death if love is strong,
So more than death it may us wrong,
And shadows of its morning light
Are blacker than the dunnest night.

A golden missal-cover lay
Nigh finished 'neath the goldsmith's hand;
His thoughts had drifted far away;
His latest touch was on the brand—
The fiery sword the angel held
Before the gates of paradise—
Blinding with utter light the eyes
Of two lone wanderers, sin-expelled.
A touch dropped tender as the breast
Of brooding bird upon its nest
Into the goldsmith's palm; his cheek
Was fanned by one who bent to speak:
“Man's passion is a sword as dire
As this, God's awful love, such fire.”

The goldsmith put the touch aside,
And scarcely checked a rising oath;—
“She loves him so that she would chide
Me only for the sin of both.”
And thinking thus, the goldsmith broke
With work, nor made another stroke.

A bitter, moody man was he
Who leant against the tulip tree,
Or in the twilight round and round
Still paced the narrow garden bound.
A darkened spirit, vexed and sore
Had he who nightly at the door
Eyed Valery, perchance to win
Some tidings as she entered in.
And still her answer was the same
At mention of her brother's name:
“Gerard is sick;” at which reply
He muttered, “So would God were I.”

The keep was tottering to its fall,
But Ivy clamped the failing wall;

And on the side that faced the down
The ivy had a berry crown;
And where the ocean's bitter breath
Had caught it, still it clung in death,
And over cracks and weather-stains
It started out like swollen veins.
And every day at the turn of the tide,
The ancient tower had grown to be
More and more a thing of the sea.
For every day the sea would hide
Some ocean gift in the dinted side
Of the rock whereon it grew, and take
Some earthly product for keep-sake.
And every day at the set of the sun
The earth had lost and the ocean won
By the soft exchange, and had grown to be
More and more the prize of the sea.

And every day at early dawn,
When Gerard looked from his turret high,
A little more of light had gone
From land, and sea, and sky.

And every day his tale of work
Was rendered under greater irk;
And every eve the twilight stole
A little sooner o'er the whole;
And every night he lay awake
And thought the day would never break,
And heard the sobbing of the waves
At work within the lonely caves
That mined the turret where he lay
Wishing like Paulus, for the day.

And sometimes forth the moon would come
And gaze upon him white and dumb;
And sometimes he would choose a star
And send his curious thought afar
To meet it at its awful source,
Or follow on its lonely course.
But oft to him his kinsfolk came
From out the past and stood around;
He knew each one by sight and name,
He knew their voices' various sound,
And stalwart warriors, armour clad,
Would look on him with eyes so sad,

That his, which had been dry for years,
Were wetted with self-pitying tears.
And sometimes when his sister came
Bringing the morning in her hair,
And in her eyes the pure soft flame
Of human love, and cleared the air
Of thick night-fancies with her breath,
And with her hands' cool pressure chased
The vagrant thoughts which burn to waste,—
So with quick life abashing death,—
Those tears of lonely anguish yet
On Gerard's wasted cheek were wet.
And Gerard, risen in his bed,
Would sit and wander with his eyes
About her brows, her cheek, her head,
And hold her hand on such a wise
As they who drown will clutch and clasp
The one thing steady to their grasp.

And loosing of his hold at length,
When he had won a little strength,
Gerard would say: “Now let us put
The time to profit; hand and foot

We two must work to mark the place
Where I was baffled in the chase;
Great God! if any step were lost
Of those I conquered at such cost!
Through issues that were blind to me,
Some future thought may wander free,
And men will bless me when they say:
“So far he came upon the way.”
And then they noted in a book,
Step upon step, the path he took,
To lose at last in empty air
All shows however strong or fair;
Leaving for souls unborn to find
The hidden path beyond the wind.

And when the day was half-way done,
And she from household tasks had won
Some further salvage, she would come
Again, and would resume the sum
Of work, that finished, should release
A spirit to its final peace.

The sun was sinking, round and red,
When Valery to Gerard said:

“Beseech you, brother, now give o'er.”
And Gerard thought awhile, and took
A deeper breath; then closed the book,
Smiling: “I've measured work and strength,
And find them fairly of a length;
The record is so nearly done,
To-night I may behold the sun.”
So Gerard Tyldesley worked no more.

He worked no more, but for a space
Sat gazing westward from his place,
His hand upon her lifted head,
She sitting at his feet; so fled
The moments with the flitting sun;
But there are moments, dearly won
From time, so precious with the deep
Things of the soul, that they will keep
Fresh amid chance, and change, and strife;
Pure samples of our vanished life.
And such an hour was this; had they
Two lingered earth-bound till to-day,
They could at will have felt again
That rare keen breath of bliss and pain

That held them silent, with their eyes
Drinking in light from other skies,
The while they watched the orb descend,
And waited for the seeming end.

The sun was dropping, red and round,
And still with rays of glory crowned,
Into a royal purple cloud,
A fringéd mantle, or a shroud;
And dotterels circling down to land
Upon the barren isles of sand,
With dusky backs and breasts of snow
Seemed in mid-air to come and go;
While on the bosom of the beach,
That soon they might no longer reach,
The little wavelets broke in plaint
O'ertaken by the soft constraint,
Which, howsoever they might chide,
Still drew them with the ebbing tide.

A step upon the turret stair,—
No wandering of the prisoned air,—

A wafting step which seemed to bring
A man before you, as the wing
Will bear the bird where it would be:
It was the goldsmith,—none but he.

He paused a moment, for the hour
Was weighted with an unseen power.
He paused, and sobbing on the beach
They three could hear the waves beseech
The steadfast shore to hold them back,
Or else to follow on their track.

Of all the mighty warrior band
That nightly at his couch would stand,
Gerard had seen no form, no face,
More noble or of manlier grace
Than that which rose before him then,—
From head to heel a man of men.
The faded walls, the sunken floor,
The broken pictures in the glass,
Seemed each to shrink and pale before
The goldsmith as they saw him pass.

So bright upon him was the sheen
Of youth, so rich the flush of health,
That low things grew to look more mean,
And poor things poorer for his wealth.

He spoke: “I come not here as one
Claiming a wife who fain would shun
His presence, but as faithful groom
To guard a lady through the gloom.”

And Gerard answered, keen and shrill:
“Be husband, groom, or what you will;
My need is sorest now, and she
Will stay and watch this hour with me.”

Whereon his sister bent her head:
“Gerard is sick,” was all she said.

“I would that I had such a hold
Upon your love; but I am bold
To think your brother somewhat strains
The means that are so rich in gains.”

“It is the sun that burns so red,
For he is ashen pale,” she said.
And he was pale as pale could be;
But paler than the pale was she.

The goldsmith gauging of her fears,
Grew mad, and madder at her tears.
“I call to wit the God above,
You wrong him by your too-much love!
With mien so fierce, so bright of eye,
How think you that a man should die?”

“That light,” she moaned beneath her breath,
“Is wrath, and wrath for him means death.”

A man encircled in his ire
Is closed as in a wall of fire,—
An inner hell beyond the reach
Of woman's tears, or woman's speech.
For all he knew of spoken word,
For all he felt of touch, or tone,
For all he heard of sigh, or moan,—
The goldsmith might have stood alone.

And words of passion, long-repressed,
Now fell like blows upon a breast
So soft with pity, and dismay,
That as they smote they seemed to slay.
He charged them with his broken oath,
His honest purpose, wronged by both;
His fury like a tempest drave
His thought before it; as the wave
Is breasted by the straining bark,
So Valery in the loveless dark
Wrestled for more than life, wailed, wept,
Clung to his hands, then desperate swept
Her tears away and knelt distraught,
Abjured him by their love, besought
His ear in many a word or tone
Coined, tuned for him, and him alone.
In vain; she beat against the wind
Which thundered at her deaf and blind;
He cast her off; his soul at strife
Thronged all the issues of his life.

Then Gerard rose with sobbing breath,
Wrath wrestling hand to hand with death;

Hard, struggling words of pride and scorn
Pressed to his lips, and fell still-born;
The shadows of the final ill,
The last defeat, were on him, still
With crippled frame and stature low
Upreared to meet his stalwart foe,
One faint protecting hand he spread
Before his sister's prostrate head.

O wall of fire! O burning night
Of sin, that blinds with lying light!
The goldsmith felt his wrath defied
By those sad eyes from which there shone,
High in unconquerable pride,
A spirit tameless as his own,
And saw a man who forced a shield
Betwixt two hearts by love annealed.

“No more,” he thundered, “hold your hand!
The thing you seem to claim is mine;
But death or hell I will withstand
The greed that overleaps that line!
I grudge you not my wasted store,
Glut your fell fires, then beg for more,—

But I defy you and the arts
Would lure from me, or rive in parts,
My proper prize, my treasure-trove,—
My whole, my perfect pearl of love!”

His voice, which like a trumpet stirred
The shuddering air, was felt as heard;
As Gerald reeled before the blast
Back in his place to gasp his last,
The frail, offending hand, swept down,
Lit on his sister's golden crown.

The goldsmith turned and made a stand,
Faced round, and saw the lingering hand,
And met the soul which seemed to rise
In flaming scorn from Gerard's eyes.

His madness spoke: “You fret in vain,
This chafing can but clinch your chain;
Fume as you may, writhe as you will,—
A debtor is a bondman still?”

Brute passion in its fierce revolt
Mastered him wholly. As a bolt

Is thrown from out a cloud, so fell
These words to break like light from hell
On Valery's heart. Base words which told
Her brother of the chain of gold
Which bound him; light accurst which shone
Upon an image overthrown,—
The god-like image of her knight,—
The man who overmatching men
Had spared to gild his name in fight
Because no dragon had been found
That dared dispute with him the ground.
That image, flawless, undefiled,
Virgin of fame,—which won the child
Of dead Crusaders from her dream
Of maidenhood,—showed in that gleam
A craven foe, with arm unknown
To knighthood, striking at the lone
And fallen. So her god was hurled
From heaven, and falling, shook the world.

“Godfrey!” She wailed the goldsmith's name,
As from her heart there leaped the flame

And sentence of a fiery shame:
Shame, ruthless shame, that wastes and sears,
Shame, hot incendiary, that clears
Love's vernal groves, and quells its tears.
The cry that broke from Valery's lips
Was heard on board the out-bound ships,
Where hearts of men who scoffed at fear
Stopped beating for their ears to hear.

Yet none of all those sails in sight
But safely came to port again;
If wreck there were that summer night
It was not on the summer main.

But wreck there was; o'er one white soul
The billows of the tempest roll;
With that wild cry, that voice of doom,
A life had foundered in the gloom,—
Gone down and down amongst the waves
That yawned as in a hundred graves
Around her, and lay buried there
Past rescue in her love's despair.

When Valery rose again, she rose
As rise the fragments of a wreck,
Moved in new courses by the throes
Of a past passion, but no more
To put to sea, or steer to shore
With new-born purpose strong or weak.
So, guided as a body dead
By impulse of a spirit fled,
She—gathering in one glance the two
Before her—to the goldsmith threw
A gesture of the hand:
“Farewell!”
More lorn than wildest words could tell.

And then she turned from him and knelt
Again, and then the goldsmith felt
The deepening silence of the room,—
And lonely in the gathering gloom;
And weary eyes, no longer bright,
Were hardly lifted to the height
Of his; and then a voice which still
Bore witness to a tyrant will,

Pierced through the silence: “I must go,—
My work unfinished,—but I trow
This graceless body, frail and bent,
Will lie beneath a monument
More rich and fair
Beyond compare
Than any in the chapel there;
And I shall owe it to your hand,
Good Goldsmith!” So the weird command
Died out on Gerard's dying breath,—
And then the silence was of death.

And Valery knelt, the while a soul
Took stormy passage to its goal.
And then she knelt beside the dead,
And loud the “Miserere” said;
Turning a blank white face above,
That caught no light from heaven or love.

His fiery wrath had passed as smoke;
To outward sense the goldsmith woke;
And saw the ruins of his life,—
The silent corpse,—the praying wife.

That kneeling woman—from his stand
He could have touched her with the hand
But she was gone from him, as he
One while from her; the moaning sea,
Had lain between them, and less far
Had they been sundered. As a star
Removed to coldest depths of space,
He yearned towards her from his place
In utter loss; for she was fled—
Her spirit following with the dead.

He wept and called upon her name;
She held on praying all the same.
He tried to win her to his heart—
Her chosen home;—but wide apart
From him, and severed from his love,
She set her stony eyes above.

At last she rose up in her place,
And turned to meet him face to face.
The goldsmith was a man to win
A woman in the teeth of sin;
And in his eyes were love and shame

Enough to burn out foulest blame;
But now upon this woman's sight
His beauty fell a thing to blight;
She turned from it in haste, and spread
A face-cloth to shut off the dead.
For days and nights she sat alone,
And listened dumbly to the moan
Of winds and waves, beside a bier;—
And sat and never shed a tear,
But kept the candles burning clear;
And 'twixt the day and candlelight—
The watching angels saw the sight—
Her face that waked, and his that slept
Became so like, the angels wept.

And so she followed, as they bore
The body all along the shore
To Saviour's Church with chaunt and prayer,
And left it in the chapel there.
And so she came and took her place
At table, and pronounced the grace,
And carved the meat, and never said
A word to mind them of the dead.

But pining as the days grew long,
And dwindling as she sat and spun,
And growing sadder in the sun,
And waxing whiter in the breeze,
And stiller 'neath the happy trees
That opened to a burst of song,
No mortal ever saw her weep,
No angel ever watched her sleep.

Oh, Jesu! she that was so bright,
How came she now to wax so white?—
The gold from out her hair to fail,—
Her tearless eyes to grow so pale?
And she who used to grandly sweep,
About the house to feebly creep?

Howl through the woods, when days are dark
And cold, ye stormy winds at will!
Break the dry boughs, and lash the bark,
Your wintry angers will not kill:
The blossom's withered,—stored the fruit,—
The fallen leaves renew the root.

100

But when the year's fresh fountain rises,
And every branch with sap is rife,
When nature trembles into crises,
And every twig is quick with life,—
'Ware winds of March! your cruel sting
Can blast the promise of a spring.

The goldsmith in these eerie days
Would steal behind, and stand a-gaze
Upon his waning wife, or he
Would serve her on his bended knee,
Or seek with arts of moving speech
The frozen source of tears to reach;—
Or pray her to appoint some pain,
Some mighty strain for heart and brain,
Some penance that would hold a dim,
Faint hope that she would smile again,
Though haply never more for him.

She was compliant, soft, and meek,
She let his kisses press her cheek;

101

But still in answer to his moan,
She said: “My heart is turned to stone.”

But sometimes when she little wist
Would come sweet kisses still unkist,
Left over from the plenteous past—
To die upon her lips unblest,
To mock them from their marble rest.—
Mock them for they had kissed their last.
Then she alone would make her moan:
“Oh God, my heart is turned to stone!”

And then, his arm with fever strung,
Quick through the house his hammer rung
With nervous beat that did convulse
Its silence like a throbbing pulse.
And so a silver coffin rose
To sight,—a shrine that should enclose
A wasted body, wildly rent
Asunder from a soul that went
Unshriven to a doubtful goal.
And thus was Gerard's monument
Upreared in penitence and dole.

102

The goldsmith was not one to count
His work too costly, or to mount
The worth of gems or precious ores
With purpose to enlarge his stores;
But working on the monument,
He reckoned every moment spent;
And working on it for a year,
He prized each hour, and prized it dear.
He measured and he sounded it:
“'T is solid silver every whit,—
Of fashion and device most rare,—
And I have sought to make it fair.”
But still he added work and stuff,
Nor ever felt it fair enough.
Yet when that silver coffer went
To Saviour's Church, beyond compare,
It was the fairest monument
Of any in the chapel there.
And there were masses daily said
In church for the unshriven dead;
But one there was who never wept,
Who seldom spoke, nor ever slept;
Who never had been seen to pray

103

For soul or body since that day
When she had knelt in direst need,
Nor God nor man had seemed to heed.

The goldsmith woke one night alone,—
He sought his love, but she was flown.
He sought her through the house and town,
And out upon the dreary down.
The snow lay like a winding-sheet
Upon the down; the sea was black;
And on the snow two naked feet,
Two little feet, had left a track,—
A line that inwards from the shore
Converged towards St Saviour's door.
Two slender heels were printed there,
Ten little toes in order fair;
The arch between them had not pressed
The sheeted earth, but all was guessed.

The snow lay like a winding-sheet,
The sea looked like a maiden's pall;

104

The goldsmith tracked those naked feet;
The stars looked coldly down on all.
The wind through bones and body blew;
The clock of Saviour's Church struck two.

It was a star and moon-lit night,
And Saviour's Church lay black and white
Betwixt the shadow and the shine;
The shadow fell on Saviour's shrine
And Tyldesley Chapel, but the tomb
Of Gerard rose from out the gloom,—
A burnished pyre whereon there lay
A saintly form that seemed to pray.

Oh, Christ! it was a moving sight,
That face so beautiful, and white
Of its own pallor, and the beam
That smote it with a silvery gleam!
The lids half closed upon the eyes,
The orbs uplifted to the skies
As in an ecstasy of prayer,—
But on the lips a dumb despair.

105

The linen flutings of her gown
From breast to frozen feet swept down;
The slender hands that joined in prayer
Rose upward from the bosom bare.
Her perfect limbs the coffer prest,
As in an agony of rest.
There Valery lay all cold and meek,
With icy tear-drops on her cheek;
So having learnt to pray and weep,
She may attain to holy sleep.

Fair as she left the goldsmith's bed,
She lay on Gerard's tomb—stone dead.

The goldsmith sat and watched that white
Still loveliness throughout the night.
And when the monks came in with morn
For matins, still he gazed forlorn.
And when they chaunted noon-day prayer,
The silent worshipper was there.
So,—when in trembling awe they said
The solemn masses for the dead;
And when they wailed the vespers out,

106

That broke in undertones about,—
They left him there; no heart, no hand
Had strength his purpose to withstand.

But when they came one murky night,
And hid his love away from sight,
He spoke: “Good people, I have spent
My heart upon this monument,
And I do think that none will dare
Deny me that my work is fair.”

He watched that night; and when the dawn
Crept in, he found his treasure gone.
The monument stood hard and bare,
And blank and dull, as his despair;
Till, to ling through the lonely years,
With touches tender as his tears,
He shaped an image of his love,
And laid it in her place above.
And still he works—the fishers say—
At that fair likeness to this day.
And so beneath the restless waves,
That murmur through the hollow caves,

107

Where Saviour's Church and Tyldesley town
Strangled by sand and sea went down,
You hear that dull persistent sound,
By wildest tempest hardly drowned,—
The goldsmith perfecting some grace
Of memory on the imaged face.

Pray that such weary work may cease;
God give all vexëd spirits peace!

MARTHA MARY MELVILLE

[_]

[In the literature and art of the middle ages, Martha and Mary are taken as representatives—the one of the practical, the other of the contemplative life.]

Anent the Scottish border stands a house,
A shady house and fair, whose moss-grown towers
Look out upon a moor, where dappled grouse
Lurk 'mid the autumn heather's dappled flowers,—
Kind nature's bowers.

Betwixt the house and moor the landscape swells
In waves of verdure; where the grass lies green,
Earth's heart has sometimes quaked; those bosky dells
Are channels of her tears;—more high her mien
For what hath been.

112

And all within the copses and the dells,
And up the slopes, and out upon the moor,
A jubilant and ceaseless music tells
Of nature's life, which breaks out and runs o'er
At every pore.

Here laugh the shaded brooks, and here the birds
Contend as though the loudest must have right;
Till Philomel flings forth his shrill last words
Far out upon the silence of the night,
And ends the fight.

Here on the blushing clover-blossom clings
The bee, till drunk with joy you see him rise,
To wander homeward on unsteady wings,
And fill the air with murmurs, or with sighs
Drawn murmur-wise.

Here be the falls so turbulent, with rains
Of autumn swollen; here the moor-cock crows;
Here furtive pheasants glance across the lanes,
And—where the ruffled grasses softly close—
The covey rose.

113

The wind which shakes the poplars never brings
The groan of engines; nature here holds sway,
And peoples all her haunts with living things;
While in their midst—with other life than they—
Lives May, young May.

She is at home within that house so shady,
At home amid its bowers and turfy walks;
At home to-day, the cherished queen and lady,
But listening to the grey old rook who stalks
On high and talks,

She dreams he tells of Melvilles past away,
Of heroes, wits, and beauties of her line,
Who fought their lives out ere the rook was grey,—
For Melville blood had been in auld lang syne
Hot as new wine.

And listening thus, she sees herself to be
A link or coil of that long line,—no more;
A coil, as of a cable 'neath the sea
Of time, which guards a message through the roar
From shore to shore.

114

But young and happy May! she barely sees
Herself at all; not young alone in years,
Still younger in the large, high-hearted ease
With which she takes her life as it appears,—
Joy, toil or tears;

Keeping no hard count current with her fate,
Nor gazing all the colour from the weft
Of being, but to certify its state,—
Until of strength, sap, liberty bereft,
Scant life is left.

Nay, not so she. The Melvilles of the “Place”
Were made of such rare stuff that this, the last
Fresh blossom of the tree, bore not a trace
Of languor from the seven ages past—
All used so fast.

You ask me was she fair, as she was fresh,
And hearty; nay, I know not well indeed;
I never saw May Melville in the flesh,
But those who have are very well agreed;
Rede you their rede.

115

“Bonny? I think so,—bonny as the morn
And winsome as the lilac flowers in May;
She'd dimple into smiles like standing corn,
Blown on by idle July winds at play
At peep of day.

“And then her step, when she had aught to bear,
Scarce rung the heather-bells, it was so light;
I doubt the lark e'en knew that she was there,
I'll gage the nestlings never took to flight,—
So free, so light!

“I mind that when she came and spread her hand
Cool on a sick man's brow, like fallen snow,
It might ha' been a fairy with a wand
Had bade the ugly fever-fancies go;—
Bonny? I trow

“In sooth, that she was bonny! Gaffer Graeme,
When for all others he had lost his sight,
Would say that he could see her when she came,—
She seemed to bear about with her a light
By day or night.”

116

May had a cousin; I had said a brother,
So close of old had been their interchange,
But some time parted, when they met each other
Again, if still as fond, they seemed more strange;
He at the ‘Grange,’

She at the ‘Place’ abode; a winter's walk
Divided them,—they sometimes met half way;
On one or other roof, I think, a hawk
Poised midway on the wing in broad noon-day,
Had marked his prey.

May had a father; he was erudite,
Loved books, and garnered fleeting Border lore;
But never from his mildewed folios blight
Had reached his heart; than all his musty store
He loved May more.

May had a friend; a little pale-faced child,
That stress of weather in its early fate
Had driven to the harbour safe and mild
Of Melville Place, still tarried there to wait
Death or a mate.

117

Thrice happy May! a father, cousin, friend,—
What wanted she in all the wide world more?
A mother? Who shall say where love must end?
Her mother was that bright one gone before,
Who held the door

Of heaven ajar to catch her upward gaze,
And left a trail of light from out the tomb,
Had guided May through all the tangled maze
Of a child's thoughts, and from our common doom
Still chased the gloom.

When May and Cissy, clasping hand in hand,
Flew o'er the moor beneath the driving spray
Of Autumn clouds, or made a breathless stand,—
One rosy face still met the wind at bay,—
One shrunk away.

May gave her tresses freely to the wind
To do his pleasure with, in sport or rage;
To make of them a silken lattice blind,
Or carry them behind her as a page
Courtly and sage.

118

But Cissy made a sheath of two slight hands,
And clasped her head when ruder breezes drave
Incontinent against its gleaming bands;
Then pressed on May—on May so strong and brave
To stand or save.

May kilted up her flowing skirts, and set
Her foot's firm arch beyond the burn or brake;
While Cissy on each branching thorn would fret
Her fringes, and her homeward course might take,
In her own wake.

Oh, happy rambles! when the light limbs bore
Still lighter hearts,—so full, so free, so gay!
With that long walk of life spread out before,
And ending—nowhere,—or far, far away
Where—none could say.

And sometimes there were three of such young hearts
Thus borne across the bracken of the moor;
'Twas Walter then who calmed the timid starts
Of Cissy; while to gather and explore
May went before.

119

To him she turned when some importunate
Bold bramble held her back against her will,
And on his hands she pressed her own,—her weight,—
Her whole slight weight, within the clasp, until
She clomb the hill.

Then they would sit together on the crown,
Walter betwixt the twain,—so fond, so blest!
And each young heart would feel in looking down—
That of the world around them each possessed
The nearest, best.

Can three so feel together, and not err
Where erring has been madness, yea, slow death,
Yea, life more hard than death, as they aver
Who look but on the seeming? Love and faith
The leal heart saith

May conquer death, but what shall conquer life?—
Life which is only felt in throes of pain,
Is known but as some blind and deadly strife,
Some labour never-ceasing, tho' in vain
The throb and strain!

120

“Love, love and faith,” again the leal heart saith,
“There is no other cure for mortal pain,
They conquer life as they have conquered death,
And win from anguish spoils which shall remain
The martyr's gain.”

Walter, with many fashions of quaint speech,
With many quips of dress, of tone, and bearing,
With some new modes for those old thoughts, which each
New generation gives a separate airing,
Never out-wearing,—

With these and other fancies, quickly caught
In youth, and worked up in the mind like straws
Which bind our tale of wisdom, Walter brought
From England much ripe knowledge of the laws,
Much frank applause

121

For skilful boating; learnt upon the Isis
And practised on the Tweed, where Walter flings
A glittering fringe from off his oars, and rises
From out the stream, which trembles into rings
As cleft by wings.

For sitting, when he passes, on the bank,
You only see a man with feathered oars,
And nothing of the skiff so low and lank,
Which glances stealthily between the shores
Bordered by moors.

And standing looking on in sweet surprise,
Would May and Cissy watch him as he flew,
And catch the smile flashed up from Walter's eyes;
Then take their way in silence, smiling too,—
Why, neither knew.

But Walter rowing was a goodly sight,
With floating chesnut hair, and face a-glow
From hot and eager use of youthful might,
And flux of youthful life; and they, I trow,
Had thought him so.

122

There came a day of spring,—of quick, warm spring,
The violet breathed new wine upon the air,
The happy song-birds made the copses ring,
The swollen Tweed danced by as if to dare
The old sunk weir.

In youth we all have known some days like this,
When Nature's tides and pulses seem to rise;
When, if each wandering breeze had borne a kiss,
Our frequent blushes could no otherwise
Suffuse our eyes.

Well, May and Cissy trod on violets,
And took their way in laughing haste, to see
How it should fare with Walter, and the bets
They'd wagered on the match that was to be,
The match where he,

He and some college comrades, should rehearse
Their battles of the Isis. Hist! what loud
Sharp voices,—what wild voices shout and curse
Up yonder! and what is't that moving crowd
Is over-bowed?

123

'Tis Walter, white as foam, with dripping hair,
Which hangs like brown sea-tangle, dank and chill,
With not a breath to heave the breast made bare;—
Walter, but with no voice, no pulse, no will,—
Dead and still.

Weak Cissy shut the vision out, and stopped
Her wounded ears; but May—would she too fail?
With one scared look, one panting sigh, May dropped
Slanting to earth as slants the summer hail,—
As cold, as pale.

Stricken as if by lightning, when each breath
Had seemed so charged with life, that any thought
Too quick with passion, had been passing death,—
Smiting her with a heart so over-wrought,—
So tempest-fraught.

When May came back again, and bent above
The sunny bank where Walter had been laid,
I think she must have warmed him with the love
Which trembled from her eyes as she essayed
To give him aid

124

And underneath the open, cloudless sky,
Beside the road,—by all the breezes blown,—
To many a heedful ear and curious eye,
A secret was laid bare which had been known
To God alone.

And underneath that sky too bright, too clear,—
Beside the bank with violets all a-bloom,
A murmured word was caught by one—too near,
Which made a glowing Paradise a tomb,
And sealed a doom.

But what of Cissy's name on Walter's lips
Just launched upon a half-unconscious sigh?
What? What of breakers seen a-head of ships—
Those foam-writ lines betwixt the sea and sky—
But danger nigh?

125

At times the current of our fate is strong
While we are weak; then, faltering, we advance
Guided by other hands, or float along,
Caught in the high trade winds of circumstance
Which we call chance.

Just so it fared with May when Walter came
With open hand to pay her as he could
The price of priceless love;—his gracious name,
His youth, his strength, himself as there he stood
Gallant and good.

Why did such meanings kindle in their eyes—
Her father's and their uncle's?—and what made
Them speak so low? what caused her to surprise
Their furtive smiles if she in some sweet shade
With Walter stayed?

Why did the household faces look so glad?
Why did the outside greeting ring so deep?
Was she alone of all the blythe world sad?
And that because a name still made her leap
Up from her sleep.

126

Oh, Walter! Walter! could he sit alone,
Safe from the tumult of a heart which beat
Too high, and in the silence hear his own—
Would it then say that life became more sweet
Laid at her feet?

She knew not yet; but soon her strong love gave
Strength to her soul; then said she: “Cousin Walter,
I know you true, and truth alone can save
Us now, so speak it for God's love, and alter
No word, nor falter;—

“If I should share your life, your home, your heart,
Would it appear at all that you had less?—
Or would the whole seem doubled by the part
I had in it, for ever to possess—
To blight or bless?”

And Walter, with a voice less passion thrilled
Than hers had been, made answer: “I should know
The wealth I owned, but young men's hearts are chilled
With early wanderings, and cold streams which flow,
Cold thoughts which blow

127

“Too keenly down the open fields of life
Where we must strive, the while you sit and nurse
The golden dreams with which all youth is rife,
Beside the hearth; 'tis knowledge with its curse,—
No more, no worse;

“I would to God that I could pay you back
Your heart with one more buoyant than my own;
That cannot be,—but mine shall never lack
The loyal faith that can its wrongs alone
In part atone.”

May gathered up his words and looks to keep,
Think, weep, and act upon when she was free.
Some glean as much and more than others reap,—
So May knew more than Walter knew,—yet she
Loved more than he.

And talking with her heart alone, she said:
“My love—the key which should unlock his fate—
But shows to him a chamber of the dead;
True love when not conjoined with its true mate,
Is dull as hate.

128

“Mine still would leave the banquet of his life
Unwarmed and dim, altho' its quenchless flame
Consumed me where I sate,—the phantom wife
Who made the love the he could not share, a claim,
And thought no shame.”

It fell out ere the two again had speech,—
Next day, when all were met at Melville Place—
That Walter's uncle took a hand of each,
While wishes into words flowed out a-pace,
And May's white face

Flushed with a sudden tempest of her blood,
Grew white again, and whiter as she held
Her own against the strong retreating flood,
And all the faint, sweet memories she compelled
To lie there quelled.

She was so earnest in her love and woe,
That no false shames arose to complicate
Her meaning, as she spoke it sad and low,
But still as one whose word had all the weight
Of solemn fate.

129

“We two are cousins, and we never knew
A time each did not hold the other dear;
Forgive me now—my words are over due—
We never can on earth be brought more near
Than we stand here.”

What sound was that? 'Twas Cissy who let slip
A book she held; she raised it and again
Read on oblivious of companionship,
And deaf to voices by surprise and pain
Sharpened in vain.

Yes, all in vain they spread before the sun
The vision of two lives in concert led,—
Of two whose lands, hopes, memories should be one;—
“I pray you spare me,” still was all May said,
“I will not wed.”

What cared she, having trampled down the fond
Vain hope that had assailed her heart so long,
For all that could be said or urged beyond?
It swooned within her ears, and, right or wrong,
Died like a song.

130

But once she hearkened; 'twas when Walter's voice
Had spoken; then, her white and fluttering soul
Crept to her ears;—but nothing said “Rejoice!”
No gust of feeling through her purpose stole,
Swamping the whole.

His pleading was so calm, and when she turned
And looked him in the eyes, they were so true,—
Ay, true as death,—no fond impatience burned
Within them as she sounded them, and drew
His secret through.

Young hope tries hard for life, with May it died—
Died out but now; she pressed his offered hand,—
Pressed it and laid it gently at his side;
Then stepped before him pale, and calm, and grand
As champions stand.

She waved him into silence, and then smote
Her hands together: “I will die before
I marry cousin Walter! God take note
Of this my vow!” They heard her and forbore
To urge her more.

131

How could it happen that a girl like May,
So loved, so watched, and tended, could be pressed
With busy cares from dawn till close of day,
And, sick or weary, like a soul possessed
Still find no rest?

How could it happen that so fond a heart
At once laid down its burthen of young joy,
To bear in others' lives its busy part?
Had love to her been like a painted toy
Tears could destroy!

Her father in his lettered ease content
Would smile to hear the light, the eager tread
With which she fluttered passed him, came and went;
But Cissy watched her, and “'Twere well,” she said,
“That May were dead.”

132

When all was smooth to sight at Melville Place,
Its master looked from off his books one day;
“You run your life as one who runs a race,”
He said, “and we will call you no more May
In love or play;

“But Martha, as your first name lies in state
Down in the register; since you, like her
Of Bethany, are cumbered with the weight
Of ‘many things,’ and to your peace prefer
This noise and stir.”

So she was Martha who had once been May;
A habit grew in time from out the jest;
We often drop our natures by the way,
And why not of our names be dispossessed
With all the rest?

Well, Martha Melville, many loved the sound,
So homely as it fell upon the ear,
And people learnt through all the country round
To speak betwixt a blessing and a tear
The name so dear.

133

But ere this followed, Martha rose one night,
And, goaded by the spirit of her mind,
Looked out to see if that pale thread of light,
It often had been grief to her to find
So late, now shined.

Yes, there it was,—her father at his work
Deep in the night,—he was a Melville too,
Who never felt the stress, the strain, or irk
Of aught he did, while aught remained to do
Or struggle through.

And, goaded by the spirit, she went on
And came to where he was, and drew a chair,
And sate herself beside him. May was gone,—
Sure, Martha's was that brow so crown'd with care,
That wistful air.

Viewed in the flicker of the lamp, she seemed
Strange and unreal to one who knew her best
When full upon her face the day-light streamed,
Or some late dawn rose blushing from its rest,
To find her dressed.

134

She took no note at all of his surprise,
But said quite simply: “Father, have you thought
How Cissy should be dowered? Is it wise
To leave it? Maybe one her hand had sought
Had it held aught.”

He answered her: “And would you have it so—
That Cissy's hand were sought for that it held?”
And she returned: “How many must forego
The thing they love, for while their hearts rebelled,
Poortith compelled.”

He said: “I see that, true;” and she again
Broke in: “I pray you grant me one request,—
I think I never sued you yet in vain;—
If she but take my sponsor's late bequest,
I shall have rest.”

He looked up sternly: “Spoken like a child,
Who holds too light the labour and the pain
Of those such wealth is gathered by, and piled
Coin upon coin,—who risk their souls to gain
What you disdain.”

135

She bowed: “I know that well, and feel so sad
The labour and the soil of lives like these,
That I would have it go to make hearts glad
That now are troubled,—not to nurse the less
Of selfish ease.”

Then he again: “And if you could make good
Your venture,—if your paper or your gold
Did work the wonders that you think they could,—
What would they say—men, wiser or more cold,—
When they were told?”

She smiled: “I had not thought of them at all,
But only of two Melvilles,—you and me,—
Content by their award to stand or fall,—
And then of these,—what think you their decree
Might haply be?”

She paused and looked upon the faded faces
Which glimmered from the wall: “By worldly rules
Those warrior-saints, who now have found their places,
Would count for little better than blind tools,—
Madmen or fools!”

136

Her voice sunk lower: “Thus 't will ever be,
The base ones of the earth—the men of delf,—
Will scoff, as once they scoffed at Calvary;
And call to those who lay down life, or pelf,
‘Look—save thyself.’”

He listened and was silent; then replied:
“Still—noble deed in noble cause be done!
These for their country sacrificed or died,
And for all countries underneath the sun
That blessed One.”

She rose up robed in one rich, purple blush,—
The mocking garment of her humbled pride;
You might have heard her heart, so deep the hush
And stillness of the night,—so high the tide
Which struck her side.

“Only for love,” she said, “such deeds are done,—
For love of one, of many, or of all;
I do beseech you for the love of one;
No griefs but those on Walter's head that fall
My heart appal.

137

“Walter loves Cissy, whom he cannot wed
Undowered as she is,—what need of more!
If I love Walter, must my love lie dead
Because I cannot as his wife outpour
The whole vast store?”

The cry within her heart, so long suppressed,
Found utterance then, and issued not in vain;
Her father caught her weeping to his breast,
And in the sorrow of that tender strain,
Bore half her pain.

And Cissy should be portioned at her will,
Walter made happy! Would he could have died
For her—the child who never would fulfil
Her woman's destiny, but at his side
Through life abide.

Oh, sacred moments! Love had need be fond,
Well placed, and true, that would not look in vain
The blessedness of such to go beyond!
And joy had need be pure that could disdain
Such noble pain!

138

When many days had passed, and Martha lay
Wakeful in bed, and thought of two who went
From Melville Place, and blest her by the way,—
I think in something richer than content
That night was spent.

Yet sometimes there arose dark days, when all
Her love and faith scarce served her bitter need;
Then she would turn her face against the wall,
Or strike her wounded heart, and let it bleed
In some good deed.

But striving, hoping, thinking for the mass,
And working for the few beneath her hand,
Short time in tears she could afford to pass,—
Nor much in looking from a higher stand
At sky or land.

A working woman's wholesome life she led;
Long live the flowers we gather in the rain!
She who fed others never went unfed,
And, loving much, she never loved again—
As once,—in vain!

139

But then the passing years,—they took from her
What they must take from all,—familiar faces,
To leave her lonely with the vacant stir
Of life about her, and the empty places,
And silent traces

At last of only one, whose heart had been
The anchor of her rest. Lord, who shall dare
To think what they may suffer, all unseen,
Who sit and watch athwart an empty chair
The firelight glare?

The brave heart suffered, but it failed not yet;
Her heaven waxed full the while her earth grew bare;
She thought of how her kindred's seats were set
On high, and one left vacant even there—
Just one to spare!

Earth's fountains troubled, wasted, or dried up,
She took the life that dies not for her own;
And living waters from a golden cup
Would reach her, with glad flutterings all unknown
Since youth had flown.

140

No more she sought to still her grieving heart
With labour only; she had goodlier balm;
And having found withal the better “part,”
Her whole life breathed in one harmonious, calm,
Concluding psalm.

When worldly mothers rached with care went by,
And looked upon the “Place,” in trees deep-seated,
They turned and clasped their burthens with a sigh;—
To them a life so mournfully completed
Was life defeated.

But angels, even they who loved her best,
Their tender watch about the old “Place” keeping,
The while she did her work or took her rest,
Would see the golden harvest she was reaping,
And cease their weeping.

And when the fulness of her time was come,
And loving eyes no longer saw her face,
The only words they set upon her tomb
Were: “Martha Mary Melville, of the ‘Place;’
Such—by God's grace!”

143

THE WATCHERS.

The moonlight fell down calm and clear, and sheeted
The summer night in silver, and the moon—
A pale resemblance of the sun—repeated
His glories to the earth, and was a boon
To her like that which gentle memory
Supplies to loving hearts that sundered be.

And in this hour of calm and consolation,
Of sweet regrets and toil-fulfilling rest,
Back to the earth returned the day's oblation
Of passionate outpouring; on her breast
It fell in silent tears, which did renew
Her weary, loving heart with their mild dew.

144

Silent was all, as the deep hush of night
Could make it; and the moonbeam's shimmering track
Along the lake, though changing in the light
Like glittering scales on some sea-monster's back,
Had scarcely more of motion than the reeds
Which slept among the margin's water-beads.

Silent was all, while sleep and rest, restoring
The waste of life, were softly at their work;—
All but one wakeful bird his song out-pouring,
And one poor human heart, which toil and irk
And stress of busy life, had vainly pressed;—
The nightingale, and poet, could not rest.

The bird had sprung from out his leafy lair,
Where jealous watch he kept upon the rose,
And scattering silence round him, thrilled the air,
And made night musical with lyric woes;
While all unheeding, cold, yet fair to view,
The rose lay slumbering in her veil of dew.

145

The poet at his casement, gazed afar
To where, across the lake, fair Lilian lay;
She was the magnet of his heart, his star,—
An idol which his fancy wrought in clay.
There in her chamber, careless of his throes,
She slept as dreamless as the slumbering rose.

Poor poet heart! Wake through the livelong hours,
Mark with thy fevered beat, the langorous time;
Weave thy wild thought with rhetoric's ordered flowers,
And make a “posie” for thy love, of rhyme:
She may not value it, but there are others
Alive upon the earth—sisters and brothers.

So on through many a night these watches twain
Poured out their burning hearts in streams of song;
And who shall say they sung or loved in vain,
Though sleeplessly, and wearily, and long,
And fruitlessly they waited for some token
That the dull sleep of the beloved was broken?

146

Nay, erring, blind, misguided, but not vain,
One single throb of love can ever be.
The poet in these nights of sleepless pain
Is sitting on his student's form, where he,
With toil, and eke with tears, must get by heart
The lesson which shall fit him for his part.

He learns to love; the heart fair Lilian entered
Will soon be open as a royal hall,
In which her image still is throned and centred,
But where he entertains the claims of all.
So, like a beacon which the torch divine
Of love has kindled, shall is genius shine.

And that poor bird, whose wakeful soul finds vent
In such sweet plainings that his life has been
Fabled as one adoring discontent
Hereditary to his race, I ween
He is the poet of his kind, whose strain
Interprets to each heart its own fond pain.

147

THE LOVE THAT DARES TO WAIT.

A maiden of a race that heralds glory in, loved one
Whose single arm had wrought more deeds than on their blazon shone;
Loved him as none can love but once, and few can love at all;
But these lovers they must part, must part, whatever may befall.

Now Mortimer's fair Helen waits the hour when she must say
Farewell to love, and Walter Graeme, for ever and a day;
She sits amongst her people, in a groined and vaulted room,
Where portraits of a lordly line make phantoms in the gloom.

148

He comes, he greets her silently, and not so much as names
Her name to those cold Mortimers beneath the picture frames,
Who quit them in the measure that befits their haughty state;—
And the numbered minutes drop like threads from off the woof of fate.

The fitting moment now is come, and he with formal speech
Just moves before the gathered clan, and bids adieu to each;
Then stops awhile before his love, who rises up with haste;—
But not one word of idle breath does either true-love waste.

A joining of their loyal hands, a meeting of true eyes,—
A moment's meeting, calm and firm—they parted on this wise,

149

And he went forth to do more deeds which, blazoned on a shield,
Had won for him the fair true hand he now is forced to yield.

She stands there still when he is gone, she neither speaks, nor stirs,
She stands there still—a Mortimer amongst the Mortimers;—
They know her true, and tender, and they turn their eyes aside
To let her struggle with her woe, and conquer by her pride.

She stands there still; they know her true, and tender, and they fear
That she will falter now, but no, she drops nor word nor tear;
Defying with a patient scorn the anguish of the hour,
She stands there still—a Mortimer in passion's guarded power.

150

Her father comes,—the stern old lord,—and looks her in the face,—
That smiling patient face,—quoth he: “Go to, my friends, give place,
Her we may blight, but never bend,—Soh! stop him at the gate;
What might have we to match a love, that smiling dares to wait?”

And so they stopped and brought him in,—thrice noble Walter Graeme,
No hand could show more fair than his from carving of a name;
And Mortimer's true Helen he at Candlemas will wed,
In the teeth of all the Mortimers,—the living and the dead.

151

A RHYME FOR THE TIME.

What is to say, had best be said,
So, Lilian, look another way;
Just droop your eyes or turn your head,—
Let reason have due course to-day.
Well, well, this giddy time just past,
It has been, yes, it has been worth
The life we've spent on it so fast
That we seem beggars now on earth.
But let me argue out our case,—
My case,—since yours is all too plain,
So many press to fill my place
That, faith! my loss may be your gain.
Nay, do not look or speak just now,—
Man's reason is a thing so fine
The lightest touch may overthrow
The strongest chain he can combine;

152

And eyes there are, which meeting mine,
Mislead me like a marsh-fire light;—
Eyes with the glow and hue of wine
Like yours, can daze a man outright.
And deadlier peril when you speak
Awaits my boasted self-control,
For then there comes upon your cheek
An eddy which sucks in my soul!
How is it that I could behold
Your image better made in wax,
And—do not judge me over bold—
Could coldly gaze on it, and tax
The maker that he had not given
Some easy grace which should fulfil
My whole ideal? while now, oh heaven!
I see you perfect at your will.

But this is scarce the way to come
At any reasonable end;
Before I take you in the sum
I will resolve you, and so mend

153

My notion of you by a stern
Analysis of your pretensions;
By isolating facts we learn
To see them in their true dimensions.

A little woman, five feet two;
(Nay, love, I marked it on the wall,
And what the wall says must be true,
Though truly I had called you tall);
A maze of tawny hair, with eyes
That lurk beneath at whiles to daunt
With wicked brightness, but for size
And form, what are they? Eyes avaunt
Of dimples, would they keep but still,
One soon would weary, and then time
Turns them to wrinkles; he does ill,
I count it for his heaviest crime;
Still they are worse than nought, you see;
And for your waist,—band or no bands,—
No waist so slender ought to be,
It can be crushed between two hands.
Thus I withstand you when I dole
You out in parts, but—heart of youth,

154

Fire, folly, madness, on the whole
Are ye more far from sober truth
Than these and such-like ways men have
To put in doubt the thing they know,
And make their pathway to the grave
Decently dull with hollow show?

Pardon my earnestness; I smile,
Now seeing you so slight and small,
To think that it should take a mile
Of silk to cover you withal!
I would it were not so, and I
Might hope to win with honest toil
The vestments which should over-lie
Your beauty as its simple foil.
See, love, I smile again, I think
How in the happy days just passed
Your dainty share of meat and drink
Had made a hermit's lenten fast;
I would that I might take you home
And keep you as we keep a bird;
But there are laws that where you come—
You women—there must come a herd

155

That we must feast at periods,
That we must dress for, live for, die for;—
I dare not hope against such odds
To win the modest ends I sigh for.

Now, sweet, I listen. What? You say
You do not care for all this throng?
That you and I might take our way,
Nor think we did our neighbour wrong
If we should only strive to feed,
To house, and clothe our happy selves,
With, now and then, for some great need,
A morsel from our frugal shelves?
You social Titan! would you dare
The world's exactions thus to flout?
But what if silk fail everywhere,
And cotton may not eke it out?
Ah! how is this? I hear you laugh,—
I will not see;—how say you then,—
That women never yet were half
So eager for their toys as men?
That in your wildest fancy-flights
There is more measure than in ours;

156

That you would lie on thorns for nights
About an unpaid bill for flowers;
That all that marks the maddest she,
Who wanders thriftless out of bounds
In matters of finance, will be
A difference of some few poor pounds,—
Tens to our hundreds? Then you joke
About our love of bygone things:
Old pictures, grim with priceless smoke,
Old wines, their cob-webs and bees'-wings;
Till pressing harder, you declare
That, like the gondolas of Venice,
The dusky garb which now we wear,
Saves us from dangers that would menace
Our sightlier persons through the clashing
Of rival suits; that in our case
'Tis well, for swords were always flashing
When men wore silks and Flanders lace!
Then, almost breathless, you sum up:
Antiques, plate, clubs, the opera stall,
The horse that is to win the cup,
The coup that is to pay for all,

157

Cigars and yachting, needy friends,
And building manias;—he who searches,
You say, will find 'tis man who spends—
Save in the luxury of churches!

No more? You've done? Why, child, so pale?
Nay, not “with counting up men's crimes;”
Lilian, throw down this idle veil,
Jesting is bitter work at times.
Do I but dream I can discern
A secret hid with female art?
Speak, and God's truth! By heaven, I burn
To strain you with it to my heart.
“No more than this,” you say, “the hold
Your feeble woman's will can take
On such things, is so slight, so cold,
You could release them for love's sake.”

Now let me pause upon that word,
I feel as one before whose eyes
A mist, whereby his life seemed blurred,
Had parted and revealed the skies.

158

Nay, turn not now away, I must,
Yes, must, will, read your face, and know
Whether this wild new hope and trust
Will bear the light; one moment, so;
Now veil your eyes, as best you may,
I've seen the thing I wished to see,
My soul retires within, I pray
That what your love divines in me,
Mine may accomplish; I shall prize
Myself less meanly, having found
My humble image throned in eyes
That frame it with a glory round;
For there I show, so brave, so strong,
A true man conquering the place
Which shall be ours amid the throng,
The hurtling crowd of fortune's race;
And there I show as wise and pure
As I shall be when we have trod
That path which some way hence is sure
To land us at the feet of God.
I take it that the only seer
Possessed of true divining powers,
Is this same love, who, trumpet-clear,
Now speaks in these two hearts of ours.

159

He tells me you are brave and true,
And fond, yes,—spite your fierce denial!—
And if he say as much to you
Of me—Oh, put me on my trial!
I would not be the fool to shrink
From danger to your outward fate,
While hurling back your love to sink
Your life beneath its costly freight.

I see, I see, that panther gaze,
It could deceive me once, but now
I know your little winsome ways,
They shall not fright me more, I vow.
The hand that would not feel its sting,
'Tis said, should boldly grasp the nettle.
Lie still, you little prickly thing,
You only put me on my mettle.
But, child, I fain would serve alone,
And keep you queen-like at my side;
I feel your burthen, not my own;
It presses on my love, and pride.
Still, God be praised! the woman's fate,
Who serves her turn for love, is finer,

160

More noble than the idle state
To which we blindly would consign her.
And so again, again I seal
Our contract, and thus nerved, thus blest,
I'll labour stoutly for your weal,
And trust your Maker for the rest.

161

NATHANIEL TO RUTH.

I know not how, dear heart, I came to love you as I do,—
Too much, I fear, for one who feels the value of his soul;
And mother's choice, you know, was set on Hannah, not on you,—
And mother had a calm, wise way of judging, on the whole.

Though Hannah is by some few years my elder, that they say
Gives promise of a prudent home; and Hannah is no doubt
A rare God-fearing woman, one who treads the narrow way,
And cares not what the heathen world are striving for without.

162

You have a great example in your sister, and indeed,
I give you justice, you have tried to profit by that light,
But then you love, and where you love, you cling like any weed,—
I fear it is to pleasure me you chiefly do the right.

You've tried to keep in check the wayward nature of your hair,
Which fain would wanton into curl for other eyes than mine;
But, smoothing it away, have laid the blue-veined temples bare,
Whereon some naughty golden rings still break away and shine.

And so the master's son must stop to tell you as you pass,
You put it back to show your ear of rosy-tinted pearl;
I told him that his weapon was the jaw-bone of an ass—
Not used upon the Philistines, but turned against a girl!

163

The kerchief that on Hannah's neck sets down without a fold,
Takes quite another curve on yours, but you are not to blame
If beauty in its nature has a something almost bold;—
I would you were more homely, while I loved you still the same!

And now I'm on the subject, Ruth, I'll speak out all my mind:
Two months ago, when Janet Byrne lay dying on her bed,
And Hannah (such a gift of prayer as her's where shall you find?)
Improved on the occasion till the dying child was dead.

Then in the midst,—when Hannah urged that each one should put up
A cry that in this death his soul should hear a special call,—

164

I saw you rise and steal towards Jane (not dead yet) with a cup,
Her feeble call for water you had heard above it all.

My spirit was so lifted up with Hannah's fervent prayer,
I thought you were an angel come to take the child away;
You sat there, with your tender eyes and glory of bright hair,
Which fell upon your shoulders,—as an angel's haply may.

Jane's head upon your bosom, and her little hands in yours,
Your living sigh gone forth to meet the infant's dying breath,—
A trance of bliss came over me,—such blessedness ensures
The narrow way we walk in,—that I envied her her death!

165

But you, my Ruth, what thoughts were yours as low you laid her head?
Your eyes were dry, but in your smile a watery radiance shone:
I fear that in that moment—by that orphan child's death-bed—
It was her crown you thought of, all too heedless of your own.

I would not blame a loving heart nor yet an angel face,
I only say that one like you 'tis hard to judge aright;
The work I take for nature's is too like the work of grace;—
The darker ground of Hannah's mind throws up a clearer light.

Her words so gracious when in prayer, are only gracious then,
And faith in her is strong enough without a prop to stand;

166

She owns no carnal bonds, and only loves the souls of men;—
Such shining lights as Hannah are the saving of the land!

It is not safe for Christian folk to be too good or fair;
A spirit like a blood-stained sword, just hidden by a sheath—
A sheath like that you wot of—is less like to be a snare;
The thoughts must still be humbled by the filthiness beneath.

My own awakening, too, I own was never of the best;
The roots of this vile will of mine were set so deep in love;
I loved the stars, the creeping things, and God with all the rest,
And long before I turned within, I dared to look above.

So much the more it did behove the sharer of my life
To show a clearer calling. Were it better we should part?

167

No! there's a feeling here with which to call another wife
Were breaking of a law—far worse than breaking of a heart.

Well, well, some needs must walk in light, some follow in the shade;
Some hold their course triumphant, others totter to the goal;
I humbly sue for guidance, but, dear Ruth, I am afraid
I could not break your tender heart,—no, not to save my soul.

168

SONG.

[Eye, hast thou seen the sun]

Eye, hast thou seen the sun,
That thou carryest thus away
What thou hast looked upon,
As a dazzling mote or ray?
“The sun, or the glittering spangles
Of Natalie's mazy hair,—
The sun, or its golden tangles,
Follow me everywhere.”

Ear, hast thou drunk so deep
Of the gurgling sounds on the shore,
That thou hearest them still in thy sleep,
And their echoes will not give o'er?
“The waves that sob on the beech,
Or Natalie's laugh so low,—
The waves, or her rippling speech,
Still haunt me, wherever I go.”

169

Heart, that hast beat so high,
Where is thy shame, thy pride
Why, as if guilty, lie
Trembling at Natalie's side?
“I kneel there to bear the sin
Of an eye and an ear too deft;
Would God she would take me in—
A prisoner—though for theft!”

170

SONG.

[Oh, little heart, how close you cling]

Oh, little heart, how close you cling,
How close you cling! when I am fain
To put you back as some light thing,
I find you in your place again.

Your voice is silent when we meet,
But still, while others talk aloud,
I seem to hear your pulses beat,
And see you only in the crowd.

And shall I scorn you that you were
So little in yourself before,
That love, which found you only fair,
Has made you all that you are more?

A wiser man ere this had ceased
To yearn for some far distant good,

171

And sat contented at the feast
Which thus beneath his doorway stood;

For God's wide universe were dull
And vacant for the blind of heart,
While seeing eyes find dew-drops full
And earth alive in every part.

What should it matter, sweet, if eyes
That never saw that tender gleam
In yours, should gaze with dull surprise
On spells whose depths they could not dream?

I cannot leave you, little heart,
I cannot tear you from the breast
Of which your life but seems a part,—
So lie there evermore and rest.

172

SONG.

[The brooding birds are singing, love]

The brooding birds are singing, love,
And waking up the morn,
And me they wake from troubled sleep
To weep and pray,—to pray and weep.

A little thrush that tried her wings
A year agone to-day,
Now sits beside her mate, who sings
While you are far away.

A lithe green bough was rocking then
Beneath her trembling feet;
Now all the old year's leaves are dead,
But three are spread to make her bed.

Oh, withered hopes! Oh, leaves of life!
Ye none again may find,—

173

Ye all are trampled in the strife,
Or blown upon the wind.

How strange, my heart, that singing birds
Should only know one song:
Of heaven and earth in one green glade,
Within its shade—one youth, one maid!

The birds remind me, singing thus,
Of one sweet summer's dawn
That never should have come for us,
Or never should have gone.

So loud the copse was ringing love
That day, we could not speak;
But there is utterance far more sweet
In lips that meet when hearts so beat!

And still the birds are singing, love,—
Oh, happy birds, give o'er!
I listen like the mourning dove,—
I cannot hear them more.

174

I wander, like the lonely dove
To find an empty nest;
And if your spirit linger there,
Still, love, I dare to find all bare!

They mock me now, those singing birds
That twitter overhead,—
They mock me with the very words
That then were left unsaid.

The air grows heavy with their song,
Too thick with sound to breathe.
I weep, I weep, but cannot pray,—
Oh, birds, ye sing my soul away!

175

SONG.

[Love came knocking at my door in the flowery month of May]

Love came knocking at my door in the flowery month of May,
'Twas the morning of the year, and the morning of the day;
He was a winsome boy,
And I a maiden coy,
But I followed him, I followed! for he drew me with the wile
Of his eyes, his words, and whispers, and the glamour of his smile.

Oh the merry laughing moments, oh the soft, the shining hours,
When I followed as he led me through his gardens and his bowers!
Love was a thing divine,
I was his, and he was mine;

176

So I followed him, I followed, could have followed till I died,
In the wake of his young glory, and the fulness of my pride.

Now the merry days are over, with the joy and pride and show;
Love has grown to his full stature; I am weary as I go.
Shamed is the golden head,
And the magic smile is fled;
For the dust and soil of earth
Mock the greatness of Love's birth;
But I follow, and if weeping I, though weeping, follow still,
With no magic and no glamour, but a faithful human will.

Ay, I follow still, I follow, though no longer through the May,
Though the lingering dreams of morning with the morn have past away.

177

Now Love is no more glad,
Nay, his very smile is sad;
But he needs me even more
Than I needed him before;
So I follow, still I follow, and through all the darker seeming,
Love's true need of me is sweeter than his smile that held me dreaming.

And when one day hand in hand we before God's gate shall stand,
And the gate shall open wide that we enter side byside,
We may gaze in glad surprise
Into one another's eyes,
Not to find a winsome boy,
Or a maiden vain and coy;
But two creatures shining bright
In the pure and keen love-light,
Of the patience and the faith
That have conquered more than death.
Then I follow love no longer, but I sink upon thy breast
To abide there hushed for ever in the joy of utter rest.

178

OUT OF THE NIGHT OF HIS SORROW.

Out of the night of his sorrow,
Why does the poet cry?
What poor help would he borrow?
Who at that hour goes by?
Wherefore the night as a pall
Rend with that plaintive wail
When they who had come at his call
Are holden within the veil?

Why, poor passionate heart,
Seek to awake the sleepers,
Who scorn, for their drowsy part,
To be reckoned their “brother's keepers”?
Rather against the wall
Turn thy face, when the rod
Cuts thee deepest, and call
Only in prayer to God.

179

Ah! thou lovest thy brother,
And God alone by that token!
Thou wilt acknowledge none other
Sign than the word He has spoken.
And loving, thou feelest around
All through the darkness and night,
Sharp'ning thine ear for a sound,
Straining thine eye for a sight.

The sound may be cry or moan,
Embalmed in a measure of rhyme,
And borne to thine ear alone,
All down the river of time;
The sight may arise as a thought,
Quickened and growing like seed,
When to its bed has been brought
The soil of a brother's need.

Loving,—these tokens, as such,
Thrill thee with pleasure most high;
Thy lips are aglow with the touch
Of the spirits of ages gone by;

180

And loving, thou carriest on
The cry, and the hope, and the kiss,
Which shall bind all the wide world in one
Linked chain, of love, sorrow, and bliss.

Lift up thy voice then, poet,
Cry, cry aloud in the night;
Few will awaken to know it—
Fewer have heard the aright.
Yet will thy plaint not return
Echoless back to thine ear;
Hearts at thy sorrow will burn,
When it is heard not too near;

Glad that there stir in the air
Sounds which to music can change
The note of their dull despair,
Rising all lonely, and strange.
Lift up thy voice then, poet,
Let it be heard still above;
Take of thy sorrow and sow it
Broadcast, in faith, as in love.

181

LONGING AND ASKING.

Mother, when we meet upon that shore,
Where I too may hope to be at rest,
Shall mine eyes behold thee evermore,
As my heart must ever love thee best?
Wilt thou claim me as I stand amazed,
While the veil still clogs my spirit-feet—
Claim me with the mother-love that gazed
From thy mortal eyes with such mild heat?
Shall I owe thee sweet obedience then?
Shall I pay thee back each foregone due?
Shall I grow a child beneath thy ken?
Or appear such haply in thy view?

There are bonds which we call bonds of flesh,
That do enter deep into the soul;
Or surround it closely, as a mesh
That must leave its impress on the whole;

182

So our human loves, which at their birth
Lowliest human faculties enfold,
Grow beyond the limits of this earth,
In the spirits they have helped to mould.
Spirit that has heard the call of spirit
Ever that same spirit voice should know
But I would our future might inherit
All that keeps our present life a-glow:
Not the substance only, but the form
Of the dear affections that now bind us,
That our bright eternal home be warm
As the mouldering hearths we leave behind us.

So I pray that when upon that shore
I may land and enter into rest,
I shall see thee, mother, evermore,
As my heart must ever love thee best.
All thy being, bore it not the sign
Shadowed in the woman's name—Eve, Life?
Life that she in sharing dares resign,—
Mortal weakness worsted in the strife.
Mother, shall thy children dare to doubt
That the end of perfect womanhood

183

Endlessly shall compass thee about,
In the reign of all things true and good?

When we stood on that white winter day,
And the sunlight, filtered through the snow,
Lighted on that white and frozen clay,
With the crown of peace upon its brow;
Who had deemed the woman pale and worn,
Gazing as they will who look their last,
Could have been a child left there to mourn,
One who seemed so early to have past.
Finely moulded, with the hair's dark sweep,
Straightly parted from the fair, still face;
Calm and grand as some diviner sleep
Held the wearied one in close embrace;
Smooth and firm, and all untouched with care,
Men had deemed that little children's cries
Should bewail thee, not the long despair
Looking from a full-grown woman's eyes.
Yet I think not that to outward ken,
In thy day of youth thou could'st have been
All complete as that I looked on then—
Awful, tender, beautiful, serene!

184

Fades the blossom here before the fruit
Forms upon the bough; our withered leaves—
Strength and beauty—go to feed our root;
In the dusk we gather in our sheaves.
Souls that into fuller beauty break,
Ripen on the body's slow decay;
Thus in perfect likeness none can wake,
But to look upon the perfect day.

But as such may we on high behold
Thee, the mother of our thoughts, hopes, lives;
Not as one whose clinging arms should fold
Infant forms, but when as women, wives,
Happy in ourselves and in one other,
From thyself thou badest us go free;
Then in angels' eyes thou wert a Mother,
In the highest, last, supreme degree!

Oh, how short a time he thus possessed thee—
He, the widowed! Growing great beneath
All the sore temptations that oppressed thee,
With the last thy spirit broke its sheath.
Gone the little one as went the rest,
Scattered wide, and wider over space;

185

Could the heart within the mother's breast
Keep on beating still in one fixed place?
All day long she hears her children's voices,—
Day or night they will not let her sleep;
Far away with this one she rejoices,—
Farther still with that one she must weep.
Surely it were better she should go,
Than live on with such divided life;
Ah, we too much wronged thee with our woe,
Standing by, sweet mother, and true wife,
When the struggle which so rent thy frame,
God, in pity, made at last to cease:
And the angel of His mercy came
With the order for thy soul's release!

Thus I wander on,—my thoughts are drawn
Blindly by the current which will set
Ever to that past which is not gone—
But alive with hope, not vain regret.
Here I pause, still praying as before,
That when I shall enter into rest,
I may see thee, mother, evermore,
At thy noblest, fullest, latest, best.

186

LOVE UNREQUITED.

Lord, I am old; the life that was so sweet
Will soon be breathed out darkly at Thy feet;
No more for me the sudden joys, or tears,
The keen pursuits and longings of young years;
Life's gloaming is about me calm, and still,
Here in the deepening shadow of the hill.

Lord, I am old; I see no form, or face,
Of any that began with me life's race;
I step from out the serried ranks of time,
To see the runners in their eager prime
Rush past me, and I greet them with a cheer;
In vain,—they are too far away to hear.

The youths and maidens—all their life in flower—
Sit by the ingle where I coldly cower;
I, inly blessing them as thus they sit,
Love the fresh souls that are so fondly knit;

187

But from their eyes, if they should meet with mine,
No answering light is ever seen to shine.

I love to catch the children in their flight,
And take a toll of kisses, in despite
Their laughing struggles. Upward glancing eyes,
And saucy lips, and breathless curt replies,—
I love them all; but in what cold degree,
These laughing loves, can they in turn love me?

Lord, I am old; and, wearing to life's goal,
Closed are the issues of my captive soul;
Dim eyes, dull ears, faint touch, and failing speech,—
A memory which too far out-spans the reach
Of any left to listen,—still and lone
I sit as in a monument of stone.

I hear my household name, and looking round,
I see another answer to the sound.
No wealth have I wherewith I may requite
The charities which make my burthen light;—
What hand still loves to linger clasped in mine?
What eye my thoughts unspoken would divine?

188

Lord, I am old; but, soul of love and ruth,
In Thee I find again my vanished youth;
For Thee I am a child,—more dear, may be,
Than when I lisped beside my mother's knee.
To others worn and wasted, spent, and old,—
To Thee a lamb returning to the fold.

Oh, heart too young! Oh, soul too clear and deep!
Sleep for the weary flesh,—for thee no sleep.
God's child—I keep my courses in His school,
Learn to life's end, and feel how high his rule.
Lord, let my coward heart no more complain:
Like Thee, I love, and am not loved again?

189

[He that is washed needs but to wash his feet]

“He that is washed needeth not save to wash his feet, but is clean every whit.”—John xiii. 10.

He that is washed needs but to wash his feet,
And he is wholly clean. What words are these?
So hard, so dark, they warn us from the beat
Of outward sense, and bid us rise to seize
Some ray of light flashed downwards from the sun
Of truth, eternal as the truthful One.

He that is washed needs but to wash his feet;
His comings and his goings must be clean,
His path still pure adown life's crowded street,
His track upon its mire and slime unseen.
Few are too weak or vile to purge their walk;
Our Master did not mock us in His talk.

He bade us do the thing we could—no more;
Be heedful of our outward ways and deeds.
Watch well our feet—that so He might outpour
His spirit for our spirits' inward needs:
Till we in Sabbath rest and peace should sit,
And hear His words, “Clean are ye every whit.”

190

[We awake up in the twilight of the dawn; yes]

“And the evening and the morning were the first day.”— Genesis i. 5.

We awake up in the twilight of the dawn; yes,
The soul looks on the twilight from its sleep,
And we slowly, as the vapours are withdrawn, guess
The wonders of the land and of the deep.
And the morning and the evening are the first day—
And morning when we run, and when we leap;
And the evening, when our times are at their worst, ay,
'Tis a view of human life to make us weep.

When the lower life rejoices in its noon, when
The pulses keep glad motion in our clay,
May the midnight of the spirit have its moon then,
And stars to light it safely on its way!
When the beauty of our earthly day is gone, where
The mortal frame is sinking to decay,
May the spirit light the body with its dawn, ere
It brighten all our being with its day.

191

For the spirit to the twilight of the eve wakes,—
The twilight and the perils of the night,—
And is nurtured in the darkness till it leave takes,
To rise up in its glory to the light.
So the evening and the morning are the first day—
The evening that but ushers in the fight;
And the morning when the bonds of flesh are burst, ay,
We feel that we are reading it aright.

192

[Oh Love, on thee a burden has been laid]

Oh Love, on thee a burden has been laid,
Now in this latter day of doubt and dread!
Be pure, that thou be strong, and unafraid
To meet the hosts wherewith thou are bested.
Thou only champion of the soul blasphemed
By arrogant young science! Show thine eyes
Immortal, and thy pledges unredeemed,—
Then challenge them to shut thee from the skies!
Oh Love, with thee we fall, with thee we rise,
Be pure that thou be strong in death's despite;
Then creeds may wax or wane 'mid tears and sighs,
But never shall the world be lost in night.
Thine is the one evangel, through all forms
Of change surviving, riding out all storms.

195

[Love, show thine eyes, thy stature infinite]

Love, show thine eyes, thy stature infinite;
Thou child of dust? Thou slave of breathing clay?
Remorseless mocker then, why blast with light
The dwarfs of time—the failures of a day?
Why lead them to the rifts within the veil
Where life with life communes, and where a kiss
Can open vistas of eternal bliss?
Is it to make the sharpened senses quail
Before that reeling blank, that sheer abyss
Of nothingness that waits us? Vindicate
Thy Godhead, and our trust in thee,—our fate
Is linked with thine, O Love, as bent and pale
Thou stand'st arraigned, and in man's latest plan
Art shown the true arch-enemy of man.

211

SIX STUDIES IN EXOTIC FORMS OF VERSE.

I.—TRIOLET.

Warm from the wall she chose a peach,
She took the wasps for councillors;
She said: ‘such little things can teach:’
Warm from the wall she chose a peach;
She waved the fruit within my reach,
Then passed it to a friend of hers:—
Warm from the wall she chose a peach,
She took the wasps for councillors.

212

II.—RONDEAU.

I go my gait, and if my way
Is cheered by song and roundelay,
Or if I bear upon my road,
Like Issacher, a double load,
I sing and bear as best I may.
But lo a rondeau! Can I say
While halting thus my toll to pay
Before a stile now a la mode,
I go my gate?

Ay truly; if for once I stray
Into the treadmill,—'tis in play;
I will not own its narrow code,
It shall not be my cramped abode,
Free of the fields, in open day
I go my gait!

213

III.—RONDEL.

Oh modern singers, ye who vote
Our times for song unfit,
Your Pegasus is smooth of coat
And patient of the bit;

But lost the freedom of his throat
And dulled his prairie wit,
Oh modern singers, ye who vote
Our times for song unfit!

If kin, fame, critics, age, you quote
As fain to thwart and twit,
Just try to feel your wings, and float
Above the scornful kit:—
Oh modern singers, ye who vote
Our times for song unfit?

214

IV.—VILLANELLE.

O summer time so passing sweet,
But heavy with the breath of flowers,
But languid with the fervent heat.

They chide amiss who call thee fleet,
Thee with thy weight of daylight hours,
O summer time so passing sweet!

Young summer thou art too replete,
Too rich in choice of joys and powers,
But languid with the fervent heat.

Adieu! my face is set to meet
Bleak winter with his pallid showers,
O summer time so passing sweet!

Old winter steps with swifter feet
He lingers not in wayside bowers,
He is not languid with the heat;

His rounded day, a pearl complete,
Gleams on the unknown night that lowers;
O summer time so passing sweet,
But languid with the fervent heat!

215

V.—A BALLAD OF THE THUNER-SEE.

[_]

(Ballade.)

Soft on the lake's soft bosom, we twain
Float in the haze of a dim delight,
While the wavelets cradle the sleepless brain,
And the eyes are glad of the lessening light,
And the east with a fading glory is bright—
The lingering smile of a sun that is set,—
And the earth in its tender sorrow is dight,
And the shadow that falleth hath spared us yet!

Oh the mellow beam of the suns that wane,
Of the joys, ah me! that are taking flight,
Oh the sting of a rapture too near to pain,
And of love that loveth in death's despite!
But the hour is ours, and its beauty's might
Subdues our souls to a still regret,
While the Blumlis'-alp unveils to the night
And the shadow that falleth hath spared us yet.

216

Now we set our prow to the land again,
And our backs to those splendours ghostly white,
But a mirrored star with a watery train
We hold in our wake as a golden kite;
When we near the shore with its darkening height,
And its darker shade on the waters set,
Lo! the dim shade fleeth before our sight,
And the shadow that falleth hath spared us yet.

ENVOY:
From the jewelled circles where I indite
This song which my faithless tears make wet,
We trail the light till its gemmed rings smite
The shadow—that falleth! and spares us yet.

217

VI.—THE CHANT OF THE CHILDREN OF THE MIST.

[_]

(Chant Royal.)

I waited on a mountain's midmost side,
The lifting of a cloud, and standing there
Keeping my soul in patience, far and wide
Beheld faint shadows wandering, felt the air
Stirred as with voices which in passing by
Still dulled its weary weight with many a sigh.
No band of pilgrims or of soldiers they—
Those children of the mist—who took their way,
Each one aloof, perplexed or pondering,
With steps untimed to music, grave or gay;—
This was a people who had lost their king.

In happier days of old, it was their pride
To serve him on their knees, and some were 'ware
E'en of his voice and presence, as they plied
Their daily task, or ate their simple fare.
Now in new glory shrouded, far and nigh
He had withdrawn himself from ear and eye;

218

Scorning such service as they knew to pay,
His ministers were as the golden ray
Shot from the sun when he would wake the spring
Swift to perform and plaint to obey;
This was a people, who had lost their king.

Single as beasts, or if allied, allied
But as the wolf who leaves his dusky lair
To hound for common need, which scarce supplied,
He lone returns with his disputed share,—
Even so sole, so scornful, or so shy,
Each man of these pursued his way on high,
But high and higher, seeking through the grey
Gloom of the mist, the lord of yesterday.
Dim, serviceless, bereft, and sorrowing,—
Shadows continuing never in one stay;—
This was a people who had lost their king.

Then as the day wore on, and none descried,
The longed-for presence, as the way grew bare,
As strength declined, and hope within them died,
A sad new birth,—the fruit of their despair,—
Stirred in their midst, and with a human cry
Awoke a human love, and flushed a dry

219

Sweet spring of tears, whose fertilising play
Broke up the hard, cold barriers of their clay,
Till hands were stretched in help, or seen to cling
In fealty, that had only joined to pray:
This was a people who had lost their king.

So blent in heart and hand, so myriad-eyed,
With gathering power, and ever-lessening care,
The veiled beguilements of the way defied,
They cleave the cloud, and climb that mountain fair;
Till lo upon its crown at last they vie
In songs of rapture as they hail the sky,
And track their lost one through the vast array
Of tuneful suns, which keep not now at bay
Their questing love, but help to waft and wing;
And over all a voice which seems to say:
This was a people who had lost their king!

ENVOY:
Lord of our lives! Thou scornedst us that day
When at thy feet a scattered host we lay,
Behold us one! One mighty heart we bring
Strong for thy tasks, and level to thy sway:
This was a people who had lost their king!