University of Virginia Library

THE SOUL'S DEPARTURE

EARLY DAWN

—LOVE AND HOPE

SONG

[Make bright thy locks and seek the sun]

SONG

[Vow no more: I did not think]

TO LEUCONOE

FROM HORACE

RETROSPECTION

IN THE NIGHT

Many bells are tolling slow,
Midnight past two hours ago.
Lightly echoing drips the rain;
Ghostly lies the window-pane
Slanting on the shadowy walls
Where the street lamp's radiance falls.
Sleepless, I am staring wide,
Thought and Silence at my side.
Wave the hand but close the lip,
And in floating fellowship
Lead my spirit here and there,
Wavering like a gossamer
Over London dim and vast,
Lengthened street and ample square,
Park and garden, tower and stair,
Spire and dome and creaking mast.
Dreadful London, vast and dim,
What thou art no man can tell,
Brain and sense and reason swim,
Scarcely dare my spirit dwell
On thy mingled heaven and hell—
Scarcely watch
That dark river's quivering lamps
Struggling through its folded damps.

OBLIVION

ASPIRATION

THE LITTLE POOL

There is a little pool in fields remote
(Not many seek it, or admire when found),
Thick set with rushes and broad-bladed flags
In all its creeks among the twisted roots
Of gray old willow-trees; and half-creamed o'er
With pulpy weed, and five-leaved water-flowers;
And in its opening centre, deepening down
Into the fathomless inverted heaven,
Small dwarf-oaks, and the crimpy hazel, shake
On breezy days beside the fragrant thorn
That hems it in; and many a little bird—
Still robin, timorous wren, coquetting finch,
Shy blackbird—in among their trembling boughs
Have sung and loved for twenty summers past.
The oxen's lowing is the loudest sound
Heard by this brink, save when, with sudden roar,
The thunder stoops and bellows on the ground
Among the pastures, and its fiery breath
One ghastly instant shows the startled trees
Nodding with terror o'er the blackened wave.
All other sounds are soft and sweet and low;
Light winds pass flute-like all the afternoon
Among the reeds; and wild bees, as they pass
To neighbouring clover, bring their soothing hum
To vibrate in the airs that fan its breast;
The cuckoo, when the days are warm and still,
Comes quietly above, and satisfied
With two plain notes, repeats them o'er and o'er;
While stock-doves, hidden in the dusky firs
Of belting thickets, tremulous reply.
The coot has made her nest within a cove
Guarded by tangled roots and hanging grass,
And he, who in the hot midday will come
Slily across the thistles, there may see
The fleet of four black chicks securely sail
Into that harbour at her bagpipe call—
One plaintive anxious note—herself unseen;
Or, sitting for awhile upon the bank,
May watch the little world of happy life
Beneath and on the surface; down below
The glossy velvet tadpoles wriggle round
The entangled water-weeds, while on the top
Flies, numerous, dart along, or steer across,—
Some in a coat of green and purple mail,
The roving corsairs of their little sea;
Some trembling on their long, tenacious legs,
Swaying like tiny chariots hung with springs,—
Or spiral troops of ever restless gnats
Whirl round and tease the eye to dizziness.
So full and vital is this nameless pool,
And yet so quiet, that its life might be
Made to portray the tranquil life of thought
Where glittering images sport noiselessly,
And fancies, chased by reason, flutter o'er
The depths through which the heaven of the heart
Lies, the calm reflex of the eternal heaven.

PARAPHRASE—PSALM XVI.

PARAPHRASE—PSALM XLV.

PARAPHRASE—JOB XXXVIII.

A THOUGHT OF GOD

QUIET HEARTS

IMMORTAL LOVE

THE HUNDREDFOLD REWARD

Joses the Levite paced his acres wide,
Like Isaac in the fields at eventide:
He sowed, he reaped, his long fleeced sheep he sheared,
His ox he watered, or his lambs he reared,
And thought, perhaps, to end his simple days
Where cool trees whispered o'er his silent ways.
Time changes all things: other footsteps trod
Those dear possessions of the man of God;
His heart he gave, and then his land he sold
For Him who pays in coin more rich than gold;
Through many unknown lands he strayed and taught
Of treasures hidden in a field unbought;
The broken heart he healed, the lost he found,
Opened blind eyes, and stanched the mortal wound,
Cast forth fierce devils, ushered angels in,
Cleared out bright spaces in the wilds of sin:
Then rested in the fields of Asphodel,
Where saints have all, and neither buy nor sell;
And through all Time's long hours high fame he won,
God's prophet pure, and Consolation's Son.

AN ANTIDOTE TO CARE

Think that the grass upon thy grave is green;
Think that thou seest thine own empty chair;
The empty garments thou wast wont to wear;
The empty room where long thy haunt hath been:
Think that the lane, the meadow, and the wood
And mountain summit feel thy foot no more,
Nor the loud thoroughfare, nor sounding shore:
All mere blank space where thou thyself hast stood.
Amid this thought-created silence say
To thy stripped soul, what am I now and where?
Then turn and face the petty narrowing care
Which has been gnawing thee for many a day,
And it will die as dies a wailing breeze
Lost in the solemn roar of boundless seas.

THE SERIOUSNESS OF LIFE

Seeing that life is but the Argument
To the great Book of Immortality;
That heaven's divine sufficiencies must be
The expanse of that on which our life is spent,—
But of such only as is finished well;
How what is well requires both care and pain;
Of what grave wisdom we have need to spell
That which is true, since only truth can gain
The meed of wisdom—it should give to thought
The cast of reverent fear: for mirth looks strange
In watchful eyes that mark how being's range
Widens and fills and blooms, as seeds are brought
From least to greatest by the omnific power
Which wraps Eternity within an hour.

THE SINGLE WISH

MACHPELAH

This small green field, these ancient shadowy trees,
This dim o'er-arching cave, are like a nest
To which my aged senses flee for calm:
Though I have gloried in the open plains,
With boundless distances and mountain bourns;
And I remember, how in Haran's vales,
When the red evening lay along the west,
We wandered through the palm grove hand in hand;
I strong, she beauteous, the desire of kings,
We in the summer morns sat by the wells
While the young lambs were bleating, and the air
Was cleft by swallows, and the camel chewed
The cud with musing eye and smiling lip,
While the spouts gurgled, and the troughs were filled,
And brown, black-bearded herdsmen sang their songs:
For I, too, once was young, and she, my bride,
Went in and out among the milky flocks;
I heard her weave and sing among her maids.
In the bright oasis we pitched our tents,
And when those three strong angels, through the heat
Of the white midday came, she seethed the calf,
And bore her seemly till the heavenly voice
Foretold the birth of Isaac; then she laughed—
The doubtful laugh of unbelieving joy:
Yet Isaac laughed upon her aged knees
Whom afterward I raised my knife to slay.
Then princes knew me, and in active years
Life flamed so high within me that I loved
The bright strong intercourse of human things:
But now the unsteady fire of extreme age
Is like a taper held above a cliff
When the loud sea-wind moves toward the land:
Now many voices and tumultuous things
Sore vex my tottering thought and dimming eye.
Therefore, thou Ephron and ye men of Heth,
Give me for gold this many-shadowed cave,
Where, when the stars come out into the heaven,
And the white villages and dusky trees
Send forth no sound upon the brooding night,
I may sit still, and in mid-silence muse,
Waiting the revelations yet unseen;
For now I walk by faith, and though my eye
Hath seen the sons of God, they come not now.
I seek a country farther than the hills,
Where is their dwelling-place, and look beyond
This complex obscuration of my flesh,
And see the shining of the City of God;
Or else beholding all that I have lost,
Her who through many, many years was mine,
My heart were like Gomorrah's ghastly stones
Or the blank streets of Admah. Let me rest:
And with a distant gaze your youths and maids
Shall softly say: There sits old Abraham
Beside his dead, and there he soon will lie.

THE REFUGE

Let thought on thought reveal my Lord in me;
Thou last, best, only, everlasting Rest,
Open Thy loving arms and take me in.
O do not send me unrefreshed away,
Weary and bleeding from my mountain toil—
From the dark hills scared down by howling beasts,
Chased by thin ghosts and doubtful phantasies;
By dreadful whispers on the lonely height;
By great abysses full of wavering shade;
By giant footfalls of my unseen foes.
To Thee, at length, my frighted spirit flies:
Not all the spaces of the Universe,
Whether of matter or immortal Thought,
Hold any hope, or any rest, but Thee:
And Thou art all things to my spacious hope:
Full man unto my weak humanity;
Full Godhead to my yearning deathless soul.

ON A GREAT DELIVERANCE

SORROW ON THE SEA

The moon-drawn Deep, sad, endless font of tears,
Rests never—rests not under mildest suns,
And under softest moonbeams never sleeps.
She sorrowed at her birth, she sorrows still:
Her eyes weep ever, and her quivering lip,
Restless with sorrow, whitens round the world:
Now loud, now low, now silent is her voice;
But still she mourns. In mute midwinter's frost
Where spiked Auroras crackle in the air,
Sullen and dumb, with white unfooted snows
Wrapt over her, she lies and waits till suns
Of the brief summer crack the icebergs' roots,
While unsealed straits explode, and breaking floes
Heave on black wakening waters round the ship
Whose ribs were clasped all winter in the arms
Of tightening glaciers; then she swells and pants,
And struggles with her weight of turbulent woe,
And welters round the narwhale's wounded sides,
Joining her voice to that loud-sounding horn
Through which his heart's blood spouts into the air;
Or moans, or thunders as the toppling spires
And breaking arches of the ice temples fall.

BLANK VERSE

THE PAINTER AND THE POET

AN EVENING LANDSCAPE

The heavy thunderous clouds trail through the sky
With shattered edges, and a smoking shower,
That sends the labourer from the open field
To shed or barn, spins in the curling dust
And passes, drawing forth wide freshening smells
From holt and orchard; while the sun, blood-red,
Sinks in the wet horizon, through long rifts
Of cold, blue cloud and hazy woods, to rest.
Cuckoo to cuckoo calls from field to field,
And half-grown geese with guttural sibilance
Lie waiting to be housed. The thrushes' song
Gurgles within the quaint old apple-trees.
Over yon yellow patch of turnip bloom
Stands the white windmill with its resting sail.
The lapwing cries among the tender corn,
And mocks the querulous bleat of tottering lambs
Heard through the hedges. The white nettle-flower
And the light kex look whiter in the dusk.
The fern-owl twists its note in neighbouring field.
Small night moths have begun their wanderings,
And cross the course of humming cockchafers.
And the late robin at the willow's top
Pipes to its fellow on the poplar bough;
While mellow thunders, crushing far away
The gathering night-clouds, reach us faintly borne.
And now the hearts of men are stirred with prayer,
The pensive mother lays her babe to rest,
And while the shadowy stillness deepens o'er
The walks and plets seen through the open pane,
Deep wishes crowd upon her, wondering hopes,
Fond recollections, softly trembling fears,
In this hour's pause from labour; and her heart,
Tossing awhile in its own deeps, looks up
And sees a chasm opening into heaven,
With one high star that glitters on her soul.
Sweet, holy influences descend like dew,
And draw forth incense from her kindling thought;
Her cares are hushed, her spirit talks with God,
And, in His heavenly place, with Christ she sits.

THE ROTIFER

AFTER READING TENNYSON'S “IN MEMORIAM”

Then came the grand cessation of the song,
As of an autumn gale which long has blown,
Bowing the woods and tossing all the streams;
A last majestic gust that leaves the land,
And passes, with deep silence close behind,
Out o'er the seas, and onward to the stars.

THE REST