Quaterman's Grace and Other Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

Quaterman's Grace and Other Poems

By Emily Pfeiffer

Pfeiffer, Emily (1827-1890)

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QUARTERMAN'S GRACE

I. PART I.

'Twas the hour of four by Quarterman's clock
Of a July day in the afternoon,—
Four of the clock, not yet of the day,
For Quarterman's clock still seemed to say
And prove in face of the sun and moon
That the truth can never be told too soon.

And Quarterman's wife, who ruled the clock
That ruled the day in Quarterman's home,
Sat by the open door as one
Who knows the work of the week well done;

Her toil-worn hands were gently pressed
Each against other and laid to rest,
Whereon, so welcome and complete
Her apron lay like a winding-sheet.

And Quarterman's self with an open book
On his knees, at rest like the mother's hands,
Sat a little aloof from the chimney-nook
Where the fire was asleep in the slumbering brands,
With his children's voices,—the youngest five—
Keeping the drowsy hour alive,
Droning out answers to his demands
Murmuring, wandering in the dark,
Stopping, shooting beside the mark,
As lated bees that have lost the hive.

The sabbath season and sabbath day,
Count them a weariness ye who may;

To the man who labours another man's fields
And reaps but husks for the life he yields,
And the woman whose work beneath the sun
Hath a vanishing goal that may never be won,
A fairer sight is the still, stacked hay
Than the flowering grass where the June winds play;
And the tale of the ten bells silverly
Told from the belfry over the lea,
Is apter to run into Saxon words
Than the wild wood song of the brooding birds.

Dull to the banded pilgrims at play
By the fair wayside, all forgetting the way
The sabbath season and sabbath day:
But the old, the spent and the care-oppressed
Have need to bathe in the sabbath rest,
As the wondering souls of the young to steep
The oe'r-wrought sense in the dew of sleep.

The woman took her quiet breath
And sate there with her sheeted hands
As tasting of the peace of death;
So still, you would have said the sands
Of Timé had ceased to run for her;
She heard the voice of the catechist
And the answering trebles rise and fall,
But no more of the words she wist
Than her own still shadow on the wall;
No softest note of flageolet
Had soothlier to her ear been set.
And gazing out across the way
Her very eyes kept holiday,
Nor carried inward to the brain
The picture of the leafy lane:—
For dark behind the present peace
There lay the shadow of a grief
That gave the hour its full relief.

For rest from labour, overdue,
For work of healing still to do,
That breathing time of care's surcease,—
The silent sabbath afternoon,—
To Martha never came too soon.

Then through Quarterman's house that was frail and small
A flutter past, as a light foot-fall,
Sudden and swift as the unseen breeze
That sends a thrill through the stagnant trees,—
Free as the flight of a bird o' the air—
From an upper chamber swept over the stair.
And lo in the frame of the door there stood
A girl in the flower of her maidenhood;
A flower that seemed to bloom too high
For the walls so straight and the roof so nigh;
A girl who carried a girl's unrest

In her seeking eyes and silent breast;
Lithe of limb and fair of face,
Whose presence seemed to flood the place.

Wild little Madge had turned her head
From the place where the spider swung her thread,
Lengthened and swung it high and higher
To reach the haven of her desire;
Dull little Reuben dropped unheard
From his open mouth the empty word,
And his lingering senses got away
From the kitten at her lonely play;
Two little whispering maids gave o'er
To watch the shadow on the floor
Of two white doves that sat aloof
And sunned themselves on a neighbour's roof;—
One left the embers' failing sparks
To die as ‘Parsons,’ or as ‘Clerks’;

Each by the influence possessed
Its overruling force confessed;
The man turned slowly from his book,
The wife more slowly from her rest,
All bound as by a spell to look
And borrow from the overflow
Of affluent life some vital glow.

The girl who so unwitting came
To stir the slumbering spirits there,
Stood bright within the darkened frame,
And gleamed from off the shadow fair;
With rounded arms uplift she stood
Still pausing on the lowest stair,
All in her budding maidenhood
And bound a blossom in her hair.

When Quarterman a breathing while
Looked the fair vision up and down
With on his lips a father's smile,
If on his brow a prophet's frown,
The mother's wakened gaze betrayed
No lurking pride, no latent joy;
She looked upon the blooming maid,
But thought upon a blighted boy
Without a name, without a place,
Who, fair of promise as of face,
Now wandered wide in secret dread,
A price upon his golden head.

Fair words from Martha's lips came forth
As breathings from the frozen north;
The feelings of her mother's breast
Were all unmotherly expressed,

And should her tenderest cares but pierce
Her deep enough, her cry was fierce.
And now the girl upon the stair
Who bound the blossom in her hair
Had waked in her some mother-pang,
Whereon the sudden answer rang:
‘Take down the rose, and down the pride
That set it flaunting there,’ she said:
‘A rose may grace a lassie's side—
It no but can disgrace her head.’

The girl takes down the blushing rose
But sets it nor in breast or side,
Her slim, lace-making fingers close
Firm on the stalk, and one is died
With crimson drops that if she knows
She nothing recks of, as in scorn,

All wildly as the young blood flows,
She shuts her hand upon the thorn.

Then as the sting had power to raise
Within her thoughts some keen reminder,
She turned her brown, translucent gaze
Full on a curtained shelf behind her,
Where lace and bobbins stowed away
In darkness kept sad holiday.
And then her idle fingers fair
Grown cruel as in sheer despair
She pulled the rose's leaves apart
And sat there eating her own heart.

O' week-a-days it was a sight
To gladden eyes made sore by weeping
To see those hands of touch so light,
Those feat and fluent fingers, leaping

Amongst the dancing bobbins, till—
The slender threads each turned and twisted,
She set them down at her sweet will,
And fresh ones for the dance enlisted.

I said it was a week-day sight
Well made for heart and eyes' delight
To see that maiden o'er the pillow
Bend downward like a weeping willow;
But yet I know not; she was lithe,—
As she was supple, she was blithe—
A restless and a changeful thing
And tuneful as a bird in spring;
That fling of bobinets was lonely;
May be it is not well when only
A maiden's fingers get the chance
To toss her life up in the dance.

But now it was a holy day
Too good alike for work or play,
So she must cross her hands at ease
And hear the busy hum of bees;
The voices from the barn-yard near,
The robin redbreast piping clear,
Or bleatings from the distant fold,
Or summer thunder where it rolled,
And told her as it faintly died
O'er far-off fields, the world was wide.
Then sudden from the bough that swung
In cadence where the robin sung,
She turned away, and o'er her eyes
Let fall the fringèd lids dream-wise;
Then tossed up idle hands and fair
And crowned with them her nut-brown hair:
A summer day seemed all too long
For hearkening to another's song.

Soon the big drops of summer rain
Sonorous beat the window-pane,
And widening circles of pure sound
Lost each in each, and round on round,
In rings of harmony intense
Enchained the maiden's watchful sense,
Till idle dreams, grown clear to sight,
Took form and colour of delight.
Some faint half hope of glad surprise
Drew back the curtains of her eyes;—
But when a shadow in the lane
Showed through the sun-smit window-pane,
Whereon the glittering drops were streaming,—
A shadow that she knew was not
The shadow of her dream, but only
One of the shadows of her lot,—
She sighed that summer days were lonely;
And long for waking as for dreaming.

But hist, that rising breath of sound,
As fresh as is the morning breeze,—
Of singing children, clustered round
Or leaning on the father's knees;
A wholesome breath that seems to sweep
The day of shadows, and to banish
Dreams to the unknown realm of sleep,
To cheer its twilight ways, and vanish.

The maiden stood upon her feet
And answered to the children's call;
Her answer rang so shrill and sweet
It drowned their wavering pipes and small,
Her answer rose so bright and clear
It swelled through window, door and wall,
And set the house as in a sphere
Of music, roof and floor and all.

And as she sang she seemed to grow,
To rise up joyous, spread out strong,
And all her life to overflow
Enlarging on the waves of song;
The summer day was no more long,
The birds were not more glad or free,
No haunting shade could do her wrong,
Still ‘Omnia, benedicite!’

She sang: ‘O all ye works of God,
His angels of the day and night,
The starry heaven, and fragrant sod,
Praise Him for darkness and for light.

‘Ye living things that creep or fly,
Ye beasts and cattle, great and small,
Sing forth the praises, low and high,
Of Him who made and mindeth all.

‘Ye blessed dews and cooling showers,
Ye winds of God that work His ways,
His secret ministers and powers,
Stand forth and magnify His praise!

‘O winter snows and summer heat,
Earth's fiery heart and frozen breath,
O thunder, lightning, storm and sleet,
Praise Him for life, praise Him for death!

‘Ye holy and ye humble men
Who know the God of your desire;
Ye Daniels of the lion's den
And scathless children of the fire;

‘Ye souls and spirits of the pure
Who in the dark have learnt to see
And in the mist to feel secure,
Sing “Omnia, benedicite!”’

A white-haired man, a spent and old,
Whose knees in the summer's sun were cold,
Sat basking in that radiant sphere
Of sound, and the accents ringing clear
Pierced the dull cavern of his ear.
He chafed his palsied hands and slow,
And the knees that would no more creep or go,
And laughed to himself: ‘It were making free
To say that the church comes now to me;
But 'tis more than a sermon to sit in your place
And list to the singing of Quarterman's Grace.’

In an outer ring of the music, where
It came and went on the sabbath air,—
Swept as a wave round the green hill-side,
Or refluent turned, fell back and died,—
A mother watched the failing breath
Of an infant fighting hard with death;

And when—the cruel conflict done—
The babe had lost what death had won,
When with the hands which could not save,
His mother dressed him for the grave,
Smoothed from the wreck of her delight
The tokens of death's last despite,
Unclosed his tender little knuckles
And spread his tortured limbs out fair,
Then gently through the sabbath air
And flutings of the honeysuckles
The woman at her work was 'ware
Of a pure sound beyond compare,—
And evermore when from the ground
He seems to cry to her, that sound
Of angels' voices singing soft,
Will bear her sinking heart aloft.

O God of love, if God there be
To heed our woe, to know or care,

Still let us feel, or hear, or see
Some sign of angels or of Thee
To tide us over our despair
Until of love the world be bare!

The wave of music circled round,
And in a dearer bondage wound
A youth and maiden who had strayed
From out the sunshine to the shade
A flowering lime shed broad and sweet
And cool upon the earing wheat.
And suddenly the jesting word
Died on their lips, their meeting eyes
Grew tender, and their hearts were stirred,
Struck by the passionate surprise
Of souls, the poorest in account,
Who meet one moment on the mount.

As Grace's voice went north and south
And bore a message east and west,
With meanings foreign to her mouth
And dormant in her maiden breast;
As Grace's silver notes rung clear
And welled through window, door and wall,
And set the house as in a sphere
Of music, roof, and floor and all;
What time she seemed to grow, to rise
And kindle with her kindling song,
The shadow that had vexed her eyes—
As shaken by a breath too strong—
Slunk wavering down the leafy lane
No more to cross her path again.

When Grace had sent her last high note
Abroad upon the winds to float,

Straight to the slumbering hearth she came
And blew the embers into flame;
Then turned about, and from the shelf
Reached down the cups and plates of delf;
Silent she set them in their places,
Then, pressed upon by eager faces,
She cut the bread and made the tea,
And closed her household ministry
By sending children twain to bring
The man and wife to join the ring.
The housewife's eyes were soft with tears,
The ploughman reaped in other spheres;
The echoes of their psalmody
About the precincts seemed to cling
And put in every empty thing
A heart of praise, a voice of glee,—
Still ‘Omnia, benedicite!’

II. PART II.

The fields and lanes show fresh and fain
Pranked in the jewels of the rain;
And the scent that breathes from the grateful earth
At rest and faint from the after-birth
Of the yet green year, is a breath more meet
Than the roses own in the languorous heat.
The wayside freshets gaily glance
And twisting in and out the rushes
Over the sun-lit pebbles dance,
Or sing from underneath the bushes
A song of triumph that the rain
Has helped them to their own again.

The iron gates of the Great House rise,
You may stand beneath them and see the skies
Through the round of the gilded coronet
Over the woven letters set.

The iron gates of the Great House rise,
They seem to shut in Paradise;
The line of the beechen avenue
Slopes up the hill through the rich domain
Till, shadowed and softened to eyes profane,
The old stone peristyled house breaks through.

Here slant above the branching fern
The sprouting antlers of the deer,
And here, declined beside an urn,
The peacock finds a fitting sphere;
Swans preen themselves upon the lake,
And yearling colts their pleasure take

In sheltered pastures;—all is fair
And stately, calm and debonnair.

Through the whispering leaves of the ancient trees
The tale of the ten bells floats on the breeze,
Soft and muffled, as is meet,
Low and broken, and discreet.
The peacock lends an ear supine
And turns about his haughty crest,
Then thrills through every feather fine,
And slow descending from his rest,
Flings open all his hundred eyes
To dazzle with the gay surprise
The blue orbs of a lady bright,
The keen grey glances of her knight,
Who, looking o'er its crested head,
Descend the steps with careless tread

To saunter through the sweep away
Where the beeches keep the sun at bay.

Haply a beechen avenue
May pall upon too frequent view,
And a park may seem a frame too large
To fairly fill from marge to marge.
The twain looked neither east nor west
Till they past the iron gates, beneath
The mouldering Phœnix on his nest;
Then, fanned as by a fresher breath,
They came into the light of day
And stood upon the broad highway.

The scent of stocks and southernwood
On the moistened summer air is good;
The gillyflower aflame in the sun
Is welcome to eyes that are overdone

With flaring midnights, and the rose
Most sweet in the cottage garden shows
When the passing storm has bent its head,
And of the rose-leaves some are shed
To glorify, to raise, and bless
Its neighbours in their homeliness.

So stood and looked the young Lord Claud,
So looked the blue-eyed Lady Maud,
On a half-drowned rose that had not disdained
To rest on a leaf all ivory-veined,
Touched with a bloom as soft and deep
As if the infant Night in sleep
Had breathed upon its native gloss
And left it fairer for the loss.

And over the bloom and the ivory hung
The diamond tears of the rain, unstrung

As a broken rosary: was it strange
That eyes, well weary of beauty and change,
Should brighten as they gazed on such;
That listless hands should pass the bars
As greedy for a cooling touch,
With a nearer view of the liquid stars
Melting like quicksilver each in each
Or falling, lost beyond hope or reach?

In fine they dallied, and he gazed—
An artist, proud of his content,
As, if he made not that he praised,
He more than half its sweetness lent;
And when he dropped it, something grazed,
Its tears all shed, its beauty shent;
He thought how he one while had raised
It o'er its peers, and smiling went;

And had it chanced that some recoil
Of sentiment had asked assoil
Of calmer judgment, that relief
Was easy to be found,—in brief
He knew the thing a cabbage-leaf.

As the Lady Maud went shimmering
In her laces, gauzes, and gossamers
Adown the road, and the silver ring
Of the ten bells entered her jewelled ears,
Quelling the sound of the bangles that break
With a cadence like to the rattle-snake
As she glode on her way, and the fierce sun smote
Her brazen hair to a fiery mote;
As the young lord, athlete and idealist,
With his mighty limbs and his sauntering pace,
His champion's thews, and his languid grace,
Strode by his sister's side, he wist

Of a cheek that would blossom beneath his gaze
As a flower i' the morning's eye; of a brow
That was bent with the weight of the heavy days
Of a pensionless soldier of the plough;
Of a pair who had come from over the lea
At the call of the bells, and lingeringly
Their way by the green to the churchyard take
In my lord and my lady's shining wake.

The iron gates of the Great House rise,
And the girl looks in with her wondering eyes;—
If the gates are the gates of Paradise,
They sometimes let the glory through;
So thought the girl with the great brown eyes,
With the lord and lady well in view.

The lady lived in a sphere so bright,
It haply somewhat troubled her sight;

Her gaze had past through Quarterman's Grace
As it might have passed through empty space;
But the eyes of the young Lord Claud were keen,
And of Lord Claud's eyes she was not unseen,
Though he rode in scarlet, or drove in lace
And bullion, as once had been the casè
To a gathering of his glittering peers
Somewhere beneath the starry spheres.

The eyes of the young Lord Claud were keen,
They seemed to brighten her with their sheen
As they looked her over, and made her 'ware
That she was a woman young and fair.

And now to the sound of the bells she went
With her eyelids dropped on her new content;
And lo, on her path there lay a flower
That never was freshened by falling shower

Or sunned by the sun of our naked skies—
A flower that seemed of Paradise.

No ghost of a blossom wan and white,
But its waxen corpse it seemed to sight
As it lay on the fresh brown earth from whence
She raised it, and knew of the strange, intense,
Of the subtle-sweet and fragrant breath
Of its prodigal life that had mocked at death.

She carried the blossom superfine
In her gloveless clasp, withdrawn from view,
And underneath the swinging sign
Of the village ale-house past the two;
The blazon on the sign was new,
And much had tasked the craftsman's powers:
A hand with tulips, fierce of hue,—
Its legend was ‘The Hand and Flowers.’

The man, whose eyes were brown and clear,
Patient withal as the eyes of a steer,
Looked on the sign as he past below;
And into the gaze, so quiet and slow,
Came a sombre flame, and the words he said
Were touched with its fire, tho' his meek, bowed head
Let fall his speech on the stony earth,
Where it seemed to perish as nothing worth.

‘Accurst for ever the poisoned root
That bears these flowers of deadly fruit!—
These flowers that are the devil's gage,—
shose fruits of death that are his wage.’

Grace heard, and pressed in vague affright
Her fallen blossom of Paradise,
With trembling fingers twined so tight
The air grew heavy with its sighs.

But the bells were pealing overhead
And scattered the sighs as they were shed,
Sweeping them off on the clamorous waves
Of sound, to faint among nameless graves,
As the pair past on through the ranks of the dead.

In the church is many a sculptured tomb
With a long device 'neath the canopied gloom;
And those slumbering shapes of belted knight
And of pallëd lady are all stone-white.
But the graves of the poor,—of the rank and file
Of the soldiers of life,—of the poor who fight
With the spade and the plough,—still catch the smile
Of the blessed sun; and the breast so hard
Of the foster-mother who sold their right
To her commonest good so dear erewhile,
Now covers their dust with her greenest sward.

Ay, the graves of the poor are green, Great God!
So let them be, for green is still
The colour of hope, and they who have trod
As in evil dream in the world's harsh mill,
Who have died, and are buried as we have seen,
But who never have lived—let their graves be green!

As Quarterman, true to his daughter Grace,
Followed her into the ancient place,
He turned to look on the Bethel, where
His voice had oftentimes risen in prayer,
While the chant of the choristers, low and sweet,
From over the way came to break at his feet.

The organ burst with a fuller tone,
The organ made a tenderer moan,
Had a tearfuller stop and a nobler strain,
More rapture of hope, more hope in pain,—

A voice for the heart of man more fit
Then ever before had been heard of it,
That evensong when against the font
The silent Quarterman found his place,
And—sweetest singer and fairest face—
Behind the harping angels in front
Of the organ-loft sat Quarterman's Grace.

That evensong when the organ throbbed
Touched by a hand of rarer art—
When below the voices it wailed or sobbed
Or broke of itself like a bursting heart;—
When the dark battalions of gathering cloud
Pressed on the rear of the westering sun
Till its lines were cleft by his chariot wheels
And the glorious field of light was won;—
And his conquering beams flowed in through the west
Ere the conqueror took himself to rest,

And the organ-loft, and aisle, and nave
Were drowned in the rainbow-coloured wave;—
While fainter and fainter the thunder roll
Died like a troubled organ-soul,
And they who stood in that radiance bright,
They who the deep vibrations heard,
Were touched by music and by light,
Were lightly touched and deeply stirred,—
Many a heart that was then made soft
Had loved in keen sweet song to melt,
But only the girl in the organ-loft
Had grace to render the touch she felt.

She stood at the head of the village quire,
She glowed in a shaft of the westering sun,
Her song was alive with his strengthening fire
Which smote on her heart's unknown desire;
Her words were of battles lost or won,—

The words of the kingly Israelite,—
Of a hope consumed, of a life undone,
Of the cry of a soul for the quenchëd light;
And her voice as it rose on the resonant air
Seemed all fulfilled with the dumb despair
Of the mourners inept who for ages long
Had sheltered their silence in David's song.

There was many a sorrow to-day in that place
More sore than the sorrow of Quarterman's Grace,
Yet the church o'erflowed with the vague unrest,
The passion and pain of her untamed breast;
And her soul as it rose in melodious strife
Beating the bars of her narrow life,
Of the deeper mourners who bowed the head
Told the voiceless woe in their own heart's stead.

There were angels harping too on the screen
Of the organ-loft; with eyes serene

And patient hands they sat on a row
And seemed to harp both high and low.
But the girl who stood at the head of the quire
Aglow in a shaft of the westering fire,
Though her voice was true, and her face as fair
As any, the youngest angel there,
Was far and away in her soul's young might,
Far and away from an angel of light.

No angel then, but an instrument
So fair to hand, so rare to learn,
Good angels had played her with content,
Though bad, alas! had ta'en their turn
If the keys had been left without care or touch
In the dark and the silence overmuch;—
Safe at the last to be caught and driven
Away by some wandering wind of heaven.

And to-day there were wandering spirits many
Who played on her soul unseen of any:
Spirits that rode on the golden light,
Shame-faced spirits that shrank from sight,
Some that spoke in a voice unknown,
One that seemed to use her own,
And another that owned so sweet a breath
It might have balmed a chamber of death—
The waxen flower that shook in her hand
At the organ's resolute command;
With the thunder afar, and the voices near,
And the western window shining clear,—
As a blazoned banner the conquering sun
Had glorified when the fight was won.

When the many-throated music ceased,
And the quavering pipe of the ancient priest

In the empty field whence the sounds had flown
Troubled the vaulted echoes alone,—
Then worn with passion and weary with song
And the early days that seemed all too long,
Silent and sad in her shining place
Back in her corner sank Quarterman's Grace.

For the great ones near the chancel wall
They had felt the radiance not at all;
They sat so still mid the gathering glooms
Over against the place of tombs,
That my lady's head on her cushion reclined,
Cold and pale and clearly-defined,
From the organ-loft you had hardly known
From the lady who lay at her side in stone,
With the clinquant coronet and crest
Over the head of her marble rest:—

The Phœnix ripe for the quickening heat
Of the flames, and the hound at her marble feet.

The sun that was lingering golden-rayed
And warm on the untaught singing-maid,
Had no single gleam of his light to spare
For the languid lady with too-bright hair,—
For her or her marble effigy,—
For the sun knows nothing of degree.

But Grace was lost to the sunshine too
Though it played about her, and through and through;
For her the light as the darkness was not,
She knew no cloud, she the sun forgot;
Passion and wearihead all foregone,
She slept the sleep of a soul indrawn,
While the strong, calm forces, the angels of rest,
The courts of the house of her life possessed,

And set them in order, all fair and fain
For the time she should come to illume them again.

The girls anigh her beheld her cast
I' the face of the world, and the eye of the sun,
With the carven doors of her lips made fast,
And the fringëd blinds of her eyes let down;
And they motioned and whispered each other aghast,
Then with furtive touch and with warning frown
They had brought her back ere the angels had done
From the still Nirvâna her soul had won—
If the hand that had held discourse so fit
With the organ-keys had not hindered it.

That hand was the hand of a white-haired man
Whose life had measured the wonted span,

But whose gaze had the love, the trust, and truth
That make up the triune soul of youth.
With ravishment and glad surprise
As Grace had sung so angel-wise,—
So like a soul that pled with God
For all men fallen beneath His rod,—
That man had listened, and had felt
She was a God-made instrument
Of compass rare; and his the part
To ope for her the doors of art,
And show her of its inner shrine
The worship and the love divine.

But the girl was lost to art and life
As lost to weariness and strife;
She lay back in her youthful grace
So seemly that upon her face
You would have dared to fix a gaze

As lingering and as unrebuked
By fear of wrong, as if you looked
Upon an infant breathing deep
In sweet abandonment of sleep.

With softer beam and mellower glow,
As the sun sank lower and more low,
The light through the western window came
In purple azure, gold and flame.
The vision it floated through was all
Of a fair sweet woman dressed in pall;
Her golden hair loosed from its braid,
She sate at her organ-board and played
With melting touch and listening eyes
Uplifted to the veilëd skies,
Playing sweetly, playing soft
In fear to drown the voices aloft

Of singers the saint could sometimes see
In the light of her lucid ecstasy.

Through a window at Saint Cécilia's side
The heaven looked in uncanopied;
And beneath the open heaven, a high
Fair mountain kissing the bended sky,—
Its paths all clear at the rugged base
But lost at the crown in the cloud's embrace.

An angel behind the organ knelt
Blowing his breath in the instrument
Whereto the woman lent her soul,
While God, who listened, received the whole
Pure stream in the hollow of His hand
And sprinkled therewith the thirsty land.

The girl whose spirit had lain so deep
In the dim recesses of holy sleep

Moved and sighed in the vague sweet pain
Of returning sense, as she heard again
The organ's breath, though its chastened throes
Like a murmurous hymn to sleep now rose,
And only half her life set free
In the border-land, the fair countrie
Of dreams, whereto she had declined,—
To dreams so golden all resigned,—
Saint Cécile's roses, red and white,
Bathing her brow with various light.

She thought that lady with golden hair
Had led her out in that landscape fair,
The landscape fair, the landscape wide
That showed through the window by her side;
And her heart was so lifted with content
She knew not whether they flew or went

Over the thorns and among the bowers
Dusting their skirts with the pollen of flowers,
Until they stopped a breathing space,
And she looked on the lady's saintly face.
The lady's face was as freshly fair
As the faces of happy childhood are;
But the dreamer knew that such beauty burst
Not so from the sheathëd bud at first;
So much she learned, for things are shown
In dream that waking are unknown,
But knew not that the face moon-white,
The eyes of hyacinthine blue,
The burnished locks, the garments bright,
Were like those flowers of deepest hue
That flourish but at Alpine height;
Only she saw her kindling eyes,
And knew her place was near the light,
As within hearing of the skies;—

That all that sovereign grace and might
Had not been won by airy flight,
And that within some highest zone
Of thought the woman dwelt alone.

Some light of vision like to this,
But wordless as a vision is,
Stole o'er the untaught mind of Grace
Irradiate from that saintly face.
And when the lady from her crown
Of roses, reared in Paradise,
Took one, full-hearted though half-blown,
And smiling on her with her eyes
Twined it with gentle hands as fair
Firm in her bands of nut-brown hair,
Though happy only in a dream,
The blessed tears, a grateful stream,

Came trickling o'er the fair, flushed face
And drooping hands of sleeping Grace;
While the waxen flower her feet anigh,
So like to death, seemed like to die.

Then away from the dreamer the lady turned
And set her steps to the rude ascent,
As she left her alone, with a heart that yearned
To follow,—alone with the discontent
Which wrapped her again as an evil cloud;
When she lifted her voice and called aloud
The radiant lady looked back as she went;
When her pleading knees on the rock were bowed,
The bright one beckoned and smiled consent.

So she who had sighed in the morn of her days
For the end of the world and its level ways,

She who had felt that the day was long
For dreams and waiting, and mere bird's song;
Long to be rooting herself in her place
Fair as a lily and weaving lace,—
She who had seen love's shadow fall
Where love might reach her never at all,—
Strained with her gladly-toiling feet
Up the mountain path, and was 'ware how fleet
Were the morning hours and full-pulsed day
For the strong delight of the rugged way
To those uplands fair that were lost to sight
In the sweep of the fringëd skirts of light.

Wider and wider the prospect spread
Beneath her steps; and over her head
High and higher, for ever higher,
The goal of her unappeased desire.

Her feet are chafed with the burning sands,
She stumbles over the rolling stones,
Sharp thorns and briars abuse her hands,
She is faint and weary, blood and bones;
But the mountain winds in her unbound hair,
Swept from the viewless summit down,
Purge her brow and bosom of care,
While the blossom from Saint Cecilia's crown
They softly kiss, or sweetly spare;
And she knows in the hottest moment of strife
That her path lies upward,—and this is life.

She falls, as faint with a breath too rare,
Falls from the height with a wildered gasp,
Stretches her hands for a drowning clasp
Of the thorns, and finds the mountain bare,
Herself at the mountain's foot, awake

With the angel beside her, who seems to take
Her hand in his; and her father near.

If their whispered speech is low for her ear,
Its mirrored meaning clearly lies
Before her thought in their glistening eyes.

The angel who wears the gentle face—
Touched with a pale and lunar grace—
Of him who had blown such tender breath
In the organ-pipes of the crownëd saint,
She knows will save her soul from death.
And as she gazes, glad and faint
A little, o'ercome with the too-much light
Of joyful vision, her sense grows clear:
The angel with hair all silver-white,
Talking of her deliverance near,

Has come through those gates of Paradise
That held such wonders from her eyes:

A Doctor of musical degree,
Eager and pure as a child is he,
With a heart to will, and a will that can,—
The will of a woman and ways of a man,—
And the hand that is holding her hand will guide
Her unused feet on the mountain side.

From this true song of Grace it well may seem
That there is hope for maids that fall in dream.

MADONNA DŪNYA.

Three long days o'er the barren steppe
Where the earth lay dead in her winding-sheet
She measured the hours from dawn to down,
And trod out the seconds with ceaseless feet.

'Neath the floor of God that is pierced by the stars,
And swept by the tongues of the northern lights
The wanderer lay with a load on her heart
Which kept out the cold of the northern nights.

White, all white as she walked by day,
From the print of her foot to the shining mist
Where the earth rose up and the heaven came down,
And, glad in each other, they met and kist;

White at night as the face of a corpse,
With the dead-locked secret beneath its smile,
The mask of the earth lay calm and mute,
And the candles of heaven burned bright the while.

Broad day-light in the frozen noon,—
An hour before her the village spire,
Its roofs and fountain, all rainbow-drawn,—
Traced on the white as with festal fire.

Slower her steps with the dwindling hour,
And her failing hope is a growing fear,
When she bears her load through the empty street
Where the seven green cupolas stand out clear.

Still at length are the weary feet
As she stands with her head o'er her burthen bowed,
Watching a door like a vagrant dog,—
She whom the neighbours had called ‘the proud.’

And the door falls back on the skirling hinge,
In answer as if to her silent prayer,
And Grunya, the stern Bolshūka, looks out,
Barring her way with a stony stare.

Like a withered leaf in the stress of the storm,
The wanderer sped through the guarded door,
Kneeled to the Icon, the Mother of God,
Then stood on her feet on the old house floor.

Fair to her greeting the Icon smiled,
Holding her babe to her mother's breast,
Smiled in the flickering light of her lamp,
Telling of comfort, and eke of rest.

Straight she turned to that ancient one
Who ruled the house as to her seemed good:
‘We crave your grace by the yielding breast,
And the pitiful heart of motherhood!’

What brings you, Dūnya, the homeward way?
Our bread and our work are as hard as of yore,’
Then the wanderer looked in her face and drew
The sheepskin back from the burthen she bore:

A three-months' child in its rosy sleep,
A child as the Christ of the Icon fair,
Was the load which had lain on the wanderer's heart,
And stood revealed to the woman there.

‘What mean you, Dūnya, to lay the child
On my hands that are weary, as hard, and old?’
‘If you feel but a moment his breathing warmth,
You will hold him safe from the peril of cold.’

At a break in the infant's sleep his hand
Round the woman's knotted finger twined,
As a flower whose tendrils grasp a stake
To keep it firm in the rock of the wind.

‘Fair and soft I will keep the babe
From the peril of winter's cold,’ quoth she;
‘But go your way till St. George's day,
There is nothing to bind betwixt thee and me.’

‘God save you for pity, my father's wife!
But tie not your hands with a babe to wean;
Though your heart o'er his tender head should bleed,
Your breasts would be dry as they ever have been.

‘The Don in its banks is a wedge of ice,
And the heel rings hard on the snow new snowed,
With my frozen drink and my frozen tears,
His fountain failed not, but flowed, still flowed.

‘I will beat your hemp, I will hew your wood,
I will do your bidding both high and low,
And then in the spring, if you need me not,
On St. George's day I will rise and go;

‘An you bid me stay, I will drive your plough,
Drive or draw, if your beasts are spare;
My heart is stout as my hands are strong,
And my face—it is nothing now too fair.’

Then the vanquished woman gave back the babe,
And the door with the skirling hinge made fast:
The Icon brightened behind her flame,—
The mother and child were housed at last.

When the other two women came home i' the dusk,
They saw, 'neath the Virgin in gold and sheen,
A tattered pilgrim who bore a child
As fair as the living Christ had been.

Sleep is good to the working brain,
And sleep for the weary body is meet,
But the broken sleep of the nursling babe,
And the nursing mother, is sweet, how sweet!

The day for the many, for trouble and care,
For thankless labour and empty noise;
The night alone with the one beloved,
Spent in golden dreams and in silent joys;

By day, the dull, cold service within,
And without, the featureless mask of death;
By night, the coverlet warm and sweet
With the milk and honey of infant's breath.

Not loud alarum or matin bell
From her happy dreams made Dūnya start,
But the gentle suasion of longing lips,
Feeling their way to her mother's heart.

You may say that she dreamed by her one beloved,
When the morning light broke sad and wan,
Of another belovëd who once had been—
Of a man who had come, a man who had gone;

I tell you no,—that not Mary's self,
The Virgin Mother, the vestal soul,
That of mortal passion had known no throb,
Had a heart for her first-born son more whole;

That the smile which went and the tear which came,
Having nothing to do with a foregone past,
Were the tremulous shapes of a boding love
On the ground of her own dark fate fore-cast.

But they melted away with the urgent day,
And his image, e'en as the village spire,
Rose from the colourless field of life,
Traced on the blank as with festal fire.

So passed the days, so passed the nights;
The sun rose early, and late went down;
A change came over the earth's dead face;
The smell of death rose rank from the town.

Then the new-born year broke sudden and sweet,
From the same dark womb that had swallowed up death,
And out of the silence, the jubilant birds,
And out of the foulness, the violets' breath.

As the beasts came forth from their winter stalls,
Said Dūnya: ‘Now is St. George's day,
All the winter through you have housed us two,—
Is it now your will we should go or stay?’

And the women spake: ‘We are frail and spent,
And our men from the homestead are wandering free
We bid you to stay for your own young strength,
And the sake of the child who is frailer than we.’

So she stayed and wroght; she ploughed their ground,
And sowed the seed in their plot of the Mir,
Till, sweet in the shade of the flowering rye,
She laid the flower of all the year.

Laid and left it at play with itself,
As she worked her way in the fiery June,
To wear it fain on her breast again
At morn, at eve, at night, and noon.

And her little lover grew jealous and coy,
And learned in all love's tender wiles;
He wreathed her neck with his silken arms,
And gave her back her kisses and smiles.

One eve when behind them the sun went down,
And his beams got tangled in Dūnya's hair,
Three mowers looked on through the golden haze,
And they crossed themselves all unaware.

St. Peter's day had come and gone;
Oh the heavy heads of the ripening rye!
Oh the brazen heaven, and the breathless earth,
And the sun that glowered as an angry eye.

They sat again as the sun went down,
But the air was choked with the new-mown hay,
And she felt his weight on her weary arm,
And he fell asleep in the midst of his play.

And the beasts were lowing as if in pain,
And sad over all came the feeble bleat
Of a motherless lamb; as she rose to go,
A bird from the sky dropt dead at her feet.

She stumbled and fell by the dead bird's side;—
Oh the bleating lamb in the distant fold!
With the fierce red sun in the coppery sky,
What meant that shudder of deathly cold?

What meant that deadly grip at the heart,
The livid flesh, and the fiery breath?
She was 'ware of the fiend that was haunting the Don;
She had felt the touch of the fierce black death.

No parting kiss, no cry, no word,—
She held the babe at her full arms' length,
Then laid him asleep by the way-side cross,
And fled from the sight with a desperate strength.

Three men,—the mowers who late had been,—
That evening were setting their reaping hooks,
When a woman who seemed to rise out of the ground
Chilled the blood in their veins with her frozen looks.

She spoke: ‘For love of the Mother of God,
Take the child who lies by the cross asleep,
And bear him to Grunya; so God the Son
Shall bless you whether you mow or reap.’

Then one of the three from the foot of the cross
Took the babe, and he handled him tenderly;
She saw him carried by meadow and mere;
Then she cried her cry: ‘He is safe from me!

‘He is safe from the kiss of the foul black death
I will fight with alone 'neath the drooping rye,
I will fight for our lives in my own young strength,
With an open way to God's pitying eye.’

That night with the lowing of stricken herds
Was mingled the voice of a woman's moan;
And, drowning the bleat of the motherless lamb,
Came an infant's cry from a cradle alone;

That dawn the voice of a woman who prayed,
Of a woman who sobbed in the drooping rye;
‘Oh Mother of God! feed a motherless lamb
If his poisoned fountain should soon be dry!’

In the night of that dawn the weanling child,
Who had wearied the day with his cry forlorn,
Was breathing deep in his balmy sleep,
And he sighed and slept till the morrow's morn.

So night after night in his cradle alone,
He gurgled, and sighed, and sweetly slept,
And day after day, passed from hand to hand,
Upon alien bosoms he lay and wept.

And the wondering women peered into the dark,
And listened with senses keenly bent,
For a sigh, for a word, but no sound they heard,
Save the sighs of the infant's deep content.

Then wondering, whispering, Grunya arose
From her bed as the night and the morning met,
And she found the babe, with his wide, bright eyes,
Awake with the milk on his lip still wet.

Then she signed the sign of the cross and said,—
Said half in wonder and half in fear:
‘His mother, the wandering Dūnya, is dead,
And the Mother of God has been with him here.

‘She has come and gone in the dead o' the night,
And the babe has sucked from her sacred breast,
If by day or night we beheld that sight,
Our eyes would for ever and ever be blest;

‘The wandering woman came back again,
Grown brave and patient, loving and mild;
Her body was claimed by the fierce black death,
But the Virgin's self has been good to her child.

‘We will take the Virgin's lamp,’ she said,
‘From before the Icon and set it alight,
We will cover it close in an earthen jar,
And break the jar in the dead o' the night.’

They took the Virgin's lamp, and trimmed,
And they set it alight in the earthen jar;
Then they lay and watched, but they heard no sound
For Elijah's chariot rumbling afar.

Then they thought it stopped, for there fell a lull;
The dog in the yard gave a quick low bark;
The clock told one,—their hearts beat hard;
The infant gurgled and crowed in the dark.

Then up rose Grunya and broke the jar;
The pent-up light leapt forth and clung
To the sheen of the Virgin's golden stole,
And her breast where the laughing baby hung.

The women fell on their knees in prayer,
And slowly, fearfully, from her place
The mother, stoled in jewels and gold,
On the kneeling wives turned her sorrowful face;

Not the Icon's face in its passionless peace,
But the face of the wandering Dūnya glowed
On the trembling women, with mild reproach
In the eyes which the sudden tears o'erflowed.

They drooped, they turned from the vision away,
For sorrow and pity they saw no more,
Till they heard the fall of reluctant feet,
As the gold-stoled woman swept out of the door.

Then dawn and day in the cradle alone
The baby waited with wide bright eyes;
He would none of their food, he would none of their drink,
He had tasted the milk of paradise.

When the clock struck one of the gloomy night,
As they watched again they held their breath,—
And they heard the child laugh out in the dark,
Ere a silence fell as the silence of death.

When the women arose in the still small hours,—
In the light of the dawning day more bold,—
The babe lay dead with his arms outspread,
And the laugh on his parted lips grown cold.

Then they saw the flash of Elijah's steeds,
And they heard the wheels of his chariot roll,—
And within was a babe in his mother's arms
Made safe for the night in her golden stole.

This poem is founded on a Russian legend which, if somewhat unique in its tender grace, may yet be taken as typical of that love of children, and reverence for the maternal relation, which would seem, in these rudely conditioned lives, to be the solitary hold of sentiment. While few if any of the Russian sagas turn upon the love between man and woman, many are instinct with this passionate love of offspring. It is noteworthy that this one of the two primary aspects of love viewed as a great natural force,—the aspect under which it is the moving cause and vital principle of all morality,—should be strongly represented in the nation lately at war with that other in which the corresponding aspect of the passion has long reached the ultimate limit of possible degradation. Not to interrupt the progress of the narrative with unnecessary foot-notes, it may be as well to state in this place, that the allusion in the fifth couplet to the rainbow-drawn fountain, roofs, and spire, is based upon a natural fact: that the eye, revolted by the insufferable unity of light upon the snowy wastes, makes for itself a sort of mirage of colour, surrounding the rare objects of the scene with iridescent lines. Further, that the Russ peasant expresses the poetical notion that the storms of thunder and lightning, very frequent about St. Elijah's Day, are the result of the flash and rumbling of the prophet's fiery car and steeds. It is perhaps superfluous to mention that Icon (Ikona) is a holy picture.

Head of the House: literally, Female Big One; Big One being the title common in the days of serfage to the men or women who ruled over the large combined households.

A VISION OF DAWN.

I awoke at a breath, and looked out on the world's wan face
While the dew like a death-damp hung upon leaves and lawn;
As a corpse—the agony over—lies still in its place,
So still was the earth that I asked: ‘Is it death or dawn?’

Then the night's last sigh, or the first drawn breath of the day,
Became as a wind to my thought, and the out-spread shears

Of its brooding wings cut the clouds; I was wafted away,
I had cast off the flesh, I had no more to do with the years.

I arose with the wind, I arose to the rhythmic beat
Of those questing wings, still on through the blue, and up,
While the world in its dawn or its death as it slipped from my feet
Grew hollow and guarded my flight as a graven cup.

Through the tremulous air, straight on through the ether pure
To that midmost heaven whence nothing can rise or fall,

I flew with my thought; there it hung as an eagle secure,
And the cup of the earth grew to sight as a burnished ball.

I was set in the midst of the spheres, and they came and went,
As they wove wide circles around me of music and light,
But my gaze on the earth, still the home of my heart, was bent,
And it loomed more large through the tears that perturbed my sight.

For the earth I had quitted I left not for sun or for star,
Of the quiring legions its psalm in my ears was clearest,

No, I left it for love's sake, the better to see it from far,
And its paling image was still to mine eyes the nearest.

Alway before me wherever I turned my face
The waning light of the world, with its sorrowful freight,
And deep in its shade, as it circled its path in space,
The weary Titan who reeled with its growing weight.

As a bark that is blown on its way by an unseen wind,
As a swimmer helpless and stark on the torrent of change,
The world and its world-worn bearer, grown deaf and blind,
Wheeled on the beaten path that for ever seemed strange.

And I cried in my heart: ‘O Earth, that art left forlorn,
As a questionless beast fast bound to a ruthless mill,
As an ox that is muzzled thou treadest untasted corn,
And workest the unknown work of an unknown will.

‘Thou workest ever, and lo, of thy toil the fruit:
The gathering burthen of doubt and of lost desire,
The famine of faith, and of knowledge the empty bruit,
The senile caution of age, and its burnt-out fire.’

And I saw in the coming time, when the bodily need
Had lost yet further its sting, how the rack of the mind
Would break the spirit the languorous flesh had freed
Or drive it in wildering quest i’ the wake of the wind:

Yea, I saw men groan in the lap of their opulent ease,
And I saw them droop in the arms of a lust supine,
And sigh for the time when they drank new wine from the lees,
When man's life as his lot was low, but his hope divine.

For the world he could span with his breath, or could girdle with light,
The world whose rising and setting were both in Time,
Was a home too straight for that thought which the Infinite
Drew to its fathomless depths with a madness sublime.

And I said: ‘O Earth, thou art dear as the welcome grave
Of the cherished ones I have loved with a love inept.

Of the suffering ones whom my love was not gifted to save,
Tho' it rested never till safe on thy bosom they slept;

‘O Earth, sad Earth, where the love which has conquered Time,
And has purged the place where it dwelt with its own white flame,
Still loses the sanction of beauty which gladdened its prime,
And goes on its luminous way in the silence of shame.’

Then I wept for love: ‘What tho’ barren and bitter you be,
Shorn of your glory and pride in the thick of the strife,
Barren and bitter and deep as the fathomless sea,
Your restless heart is the ocean and cradle of life!

‘Deep sea, wild sea, with your waves and your stormy breath,
You have rocked the cradle of life till the high emprise
Of your pathless ways nursed the spirit which wrung from death
Wings which should cleave you a way through the pathless skies.

‘Will the feebler hearts of the elder time that shall be
Embark with the best of their store on your wayward tides?
Will they dare, O love, to put out on your barren sea
When the stars of your heaven have proved to be lying guides?’

Then I cried to the Earth: ‘How when love shall be seen no more,
And the work he hath done betwixt heaven and thee proved vain,

When no heart shall follow his flight as he forces the door
To the presence of God, and he drops down among us self-slain?

‘How will it be with the world when of love bereft,—
With the hungry deep of the heart where his sea hath been?
Or its sinking waters cut off from their source, and left
To the shapeless horrors that brood on a calm unclean?’

Then a voice more sad than the sough of the sad west wind
Returning lonely from bidding farewell to the sun,
Made answer for love: ‘Let him vanish, nor look behind
On the seedless fallows of life when his day is done.’

‘Let him vanish for ever, or rise on the younger spheres,
To live and reign, or to die with his twin-born Faith,
To paint with the hues of heaven new bridges of tears
That shall span for the infants of time new gulphs of death.

‘Let him go who of old was a king as a king should be,
Who with faith and hope was to lead us to storm the skies;
Let him go ere a lonely tyrant and thief of the sea
He seize on the wealth of our souls making mock of our cries.

‘For love without faith and hope is a foeman dire,
Who softens the hearts of his victims the better to rend,
As hungry and stronger than death, and more cruel than fire.
But should he be light of our life to the desolate end,

How would he mourn for the hearts that could only be fed
With the food of the gods in the days of the coming dearth?’—
Then I lifted a psalm of thanksgiving for love that was dead,
Hid deep in the bosom of God or the bosom of earth.

And I heard the Titan who staggered beneath his load
Groan in the depths of the darkness that covered his face,
As he cursed the obdurate will that had power to goad
To barren endeavour the weakness it spurned through space.

And I rose in a passion of pity and mad revolt
And cried to the Titan: ‘Away with the love-lorn world.

Cast the sorrowful burthen from off thee,—a deadly bolt
To hurl through the orderly spheres.’ And the Titan hurled.

The Titan hurled as I guarded mine ears and eyes
From the crash of the falling spheres that hailed fiery death
Each against each,—from the flames as of hell, and the cries
Of a universe lost in the storm of my passionate breath.

But lo, the music and measure were alway the same,
The symphony weaving for ever its circles of sound,
As the stars on the floor of the universe guarded their flame,
Or yielded it, fairer for use, when they left the round.

And the earth sped on, though the Titan had failed from sight,
It was gold on the sun-side, silver anent the moon,
And it spun to the tapering point of its garment of light
As a weaving worm that is closing its own cocoon.

Then I knew that the thing which had perished had reached its mark,
That the weary light upon death as the bird on the nest,
That on eyes that are heavy with sleep falls the lid of the dark,
That the Titan was eased of his burthen and taking his rest.

And I lighted down on the outspread wings of my thought,
Through the clanging chords at the crossing paths of the spheres,

Till again in the clouds of the earth I was tangled and caught,
Ere I breasted the tide of the swift-running stream of the years.

Then I lay on my bed, and a flutter past over the night,
As the curtains of darkness were shaken before they were drawn;
And the spokes of the wheels of the sun cleft the clouds with new light,
So I saw that the season was spring—that the day was at dawn.

It may not be universally known that to aëronauts the apparent rise of the horizon of the earth causes it to present something of the aspect of an empty bowl at a certain distance above urface.

VILLANELLE.

When the brow of June is crowned by the rose
And the air is faint and fain with her breath,
Then the Earth hath rest from her long birth-throes;

The Earth hath rest and forgetteth her woes
As she watcheth the cradle of Love and Death,
When the brow of June is crowned by the rose.

O Love and Death, who are counted for foes,
She sees you twins of one mind and faith—
The Earth at rest from her long birth-throes.

You are twins to the mother who sees and knows;
‘Let them strive and thrive together,’ she saith,—
When the brow of June is crowned by the rose.

They strive, and Love his brother outgrows,
But for strength and beauty he travaileth
On the Earth at rest from her long birth-throes.

And still when his passionate heart o'erflows
Death winds about him a bridal wreath,—
As the brow of June is crowned by the rose!

So the bands of Death true lovers enclose,
For Love and Death are as Sword and Sheath,
When the Earth hath rest from her long birth-throes.

They are Sword and Sheath, they are Life and its Shows
Which lovers have grace to see beneath,
When the brow of June is crowned by the rose
And the Earth hath rest from her long birth-throes.

A SONG OF THE EARLY AND THE LATTER SPRING.

O prophet bird, on the leafless bough,
Singing of love to the cold young spring;
It will come, it will come, but it is not now,
The young year heeds not the news you bring.

Ye merry builders beneath the eaves,
Would ye still work on if your work were vain?
Must the old tree travail with fresh young leaves,
And the sad heart break into song again?

If the year is young and fulfils its round,
If the hopes of the old earth quicken anew
Till the brow of June with the rose is crowned,
And the woods are faint for the evening dew,

Must the heart that is weary and taking its rest,
And the cheek that is wan as the waning moon,
Again in the service of love be prest
For the poorer wage of his afternoon?

Yes, sing, blithe prophet, and waken the spring,
For the day of love is fleet as fain;
Sing, sing of longing and love's keen sting
To the wintry sun, i' the wind and the rain;

Yes, sing, dear bird, till you can no more;
Sing, sing, young leaves, to the leafless tree,
And thou, my heart,—no, heart, give o'er;
Poor fool, he has no word for thee.

A SONG OF WINTER.

Barbed blossom of the guarded gorse,
I love thee where I see thee shine:
Thou sweetener of our common-ways,
And brightener of our wintry days.

Flower of the gorse, the rose is dead,
Thou art undying, O be mine!
Be mine with all thy thorns, and prest
Close on a heart that asks not rest.

I pluck thee and thy stigma set
Upon my breast and on my brow,
Blow, buds, and plenish so my wreath
That none may know the wounds beneath.

O thorny crown of burning gold,
No festal coronal art thou;
Thy honeyed blossoms are but hives
That guard the growth of wingëd lives.

I saw thee in the time of flowers
As sunshine spilled upon the land,
Or burning bushes all ablaze
With sacred fire; but went my ways;

I went my ways, and as I went
Plucked kindlier blooms on either hand;
Now of those blooms so passing sweet
None lives to stay my passing feet.

And yet thy lamp upon the hill
Feeds on the autumn's dying sigh,
And from thy midst comes murmuring
A music sweeter than in spring.

Barbed blossom of the guarded gorse,
Be mine to wear until I die,
And mine the wounds of love which still
Bear witness to his human will.

100

IN EXTREMIS.

I love to feel your hand, beloved,
I love to feel your hand;
Then hold me fast until we part
Upon the gloomy strand,
And I upon the silent sea
Go forth alone from love and thee!

I love to see your smile, which says
What else you dare not say:
It gilds for me the gloomy shore,
It seems to light my way.

101

Brave love, keep back your tears awhile
That parting I may see you smile!

Oh, let me hear your voice, beloved,—
Your face I see no more!
That tender voice still sounds above
The breakers of the shore;
And for a space may follow me
Out, out upon the silent sea!

One kiss upon my lips, sad lips
That cannot kiss thee back,
Let love proclaim his bitter truth—
Bear witness on the rack!
One kiss, the longest and the last,
Resuming all the sacred past!

Oh love that seems to rise as rise
The waters of that sea,

102

To rise and overflow, and float
My soul, O God, to thee!
Thy voice, thy smile, thy kiss, thy breath,
Beloved, have rapt my soul from death!

103

ROSE-SONG.

The bloom is falling from the May,
The rose, the rose is on the way!
Now let us think before she blows
What we may do to greet the rose.

We'll lie beneath the aspen trees
And gaze upon her all day long,
And gaze and gaze, but never speak
What may not be uplift in song.

104

And all our song shall be of love,
The fainter for her passing breath.
But, O take heed! Before the rose
We must not breathe a word of death.

117

ENVOY TO TRANSLATIONS FROM HEINE.

O shade of Heine, if I dare
Apostrophise that spirit bright,
That lucent spirit, keen and rare,
By other name than that of Light!

Forgive that from your amber verse
I take your tears and make them mine,
And in my ruder speech rehearse
What in your own is so divine.

118

Your thoughts I folded to my breast,
I took your words upon my tongue;
Your thoughts rose up in sweet unrest,
Your words were clamorous to be sung;

I caught your breath and gave them forth,
But wintry currents changed to sleet
Your burning sighs, your airy mirth;—
And thus I rain them at your feet.

December 1878.