Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

It seems to me like yesterday,
The morning when I took my way
On that lone shore—in solitude;
For in that miserable mood
It was relief to quit the ken
And the inquiring looks of men,
The looks of love and gentleness,
And pity, that would fain express
Its only purpose was to know,
That, knowing, it might soothe my woe:
But when I felt that I was free
From searching gaze, it was to me
Like ending of a dreary task,
Or putting off a cumbrous mask.

I wandered forth upon the shore,
Wishing this lie of life was o'er;
What was beyond I could not guess,
I thought it might be quietness,
And now I had no dream of bliss,
No thought, no other hope but this,
To be at rest;—for all that fed
The dream of my proud youth had fled—

My dream of youth that I would be
Happy and glorious, wise and free,
In mine own right, and keep my state,
And would repel the heavy weight,
The load that crushed unto the ground
The servile multitude around.
The purpose of my life had failed,
The heavenly heights I would have scaled
Seemed more than ever out of sight,
Further beyond my feeble flight.
The beauty of the universe
Was lying on me like a curse;
Only the lone surge at my feet
Uttered a soothing murmur sweet,
As every broken weary wave
Sank gently to a quiet grave,
Dying on the bosom of the sea:
And death grew beautiful to me,
Until it seemed a mother mild,
And I like some too happy child—
A happy child, that tired with play,
Through a long summer holiday,
Runs to his mother's arms to weep
His little weariness asleep.
Rest—rest—all passion that once stirred
My heart, had ended in one word—
My one desire to be at rest,
To lay my head on any breast,
Where there was hope that I might keep
A dreamless and unbroken sleep;
And the lulled Ocean seemed to say,
‘With me is quiet—come away.’
There was a tale which oft had stirred
My bosom deeply: you have heard

How that the treacherous sea-maid's art
With song inveigles the lost heart
Of some lone fisher, that has stood
For days beside the glimmering flood;
And when has grown upon him there
The mystery of earth and air,
He cannot find with whom to part
The burden lying at his heart;
So when the mermaid bids him come,
And summons to her peaceful home,
He hears—he leaps into the wave,
To find a home, and not a grave.
It stirred me now; and sweet seemed death;
The ceasing of this painful breath,
The laying down this life of care,
The breathing of a purer air—
Sweet seemed they all—a richer thing
Death, than whatever life could bring.

Anon I said I would not die;
I loathed to live—I feared to die—
So I went forward, till I stood
Amid a marble solitude,
A ruined town of ancient day.
I rested where some steps away
From other work of human hand
Two solitary columns stand,
Two columns on a mild hill-side,
Like sea-marks of a shrunken tide:
Their shafts were by the sea-breeze worn,
Beneath them waved the verdant corn;
But a few paces from the crown
Of that green summit, farther down,

A fallen pillar on the plain,
Slow sinking in the earth again,
Bedding itself in dark black mould,
Lay moveless, where it first had rolled.
It once had been a pillar high,
And pointing to the starry sky;
But now lay prostrate, its own weight
Now serving but to fix its state,
To sink it in its earthy bed.
I gazed, and to myself I said,
‘This pillar lying on the plain
The hand of man might raise again,
And set it as in former days;
But the fall'n spirit who shall raise,
What power on earth? what power in heaven?’
How quickly was an answer given
Unto this voice of my despair!
But now I sat in silence there,
I thought upon the vanished time,
And my irrevocable prime,
My baffled purpose, wasted years,
My sin, my misery—and my tears
Fell thick and fast upon the sands;
I hid my face within my hands,
For tears are strange that find their way
Under the open eye of day,
Under the broad and glorious sun,
Full in the heavens, as mine have done,
And as upon that day they did,
Unnoticed, unrestrained, unchid.
How long I might have let them flow
Without a check, I do not know,
But presently, while yet I kept
That attitude of woe, and wept,

A strange voice sounded in mine ears—
‘You cannot wash your heart with tears!’
I quickly turned, and vexed to be
Seen in my spirit's agony,
In anger had almost replied.
An aged man was at my side;
I think that since my life began,
I never saw an older man
Than he who stood beside me then,
And with mild accents said again:
‘You cannot cleanse your heart with tears,
Though you should weep as many years
As our first Father, when he sat
Uncomforted on Ararat—
This would not help you, and the tear
Which does not heal, will scald and sear.
What is your sorrow?’
Until now
I never had unveiled my woe—
Not that I shunned sweet sympathies,
Man's words, or woman's pitying eyes;
But that I felt they were in vain,
And could not help me; for the pain,
The wound which I was doomed to feel,
Man gave not, and he could not heal.
But in this old man's speech and tone
Was something that allured me on;
I told him all—I did not hide
My sin, my sorrow, or my pride:
I told him how, when I began
First to verge upward to a man,
These thoughts were mine—to dwell alone,
My spirit on its lordly throne,

Hating the vain stir, fierce and loud,
The din of the tumultuous crowd;
And how I thought to arm my soul,
And stablish it in self-control;
And said I would obey the right,
And would be strong in wisdom's might,
And bow unto my own heart's law,
And keep my heart from speck or flaw,
That in its mirror I might find
A reflex of the Eternal mind,
A glass to give me back the truth—
And how before me from my youth
A phantom ever on the wing,
Appearing now, now vanishing,
Had flitted, looking out from shrine,
From painting, or from work divine
Of poet's, or of sculptor's art;
And how I feared it might depart,
That beauty which alone could shed
Light on my life—and then I said,
I would beneath its shadow dwell,
And would all lovely things compel,
All that was beautiful or fair
In art or nature, earth or air,
To be as ministers to me,
To keep me pure, to keep me free
From worldly service, from the chain
Of custom, and from earthly stain;
And how they kept me for awhile,
And did my foolish heart beguile;
Yet all at last did faithless prove,
And, late or soon, betrayed my love;
How they had failed me one by one,
Till now, my youth yet scarcely done,

The heart, which I had thought to steep
In hues of beauty, and to keep
Its consecrated home and fane,
That heart was soiled with many a stain,
Which from without and from within
Had gathered there, till all was sin,
Till now I only drew my breath,
I lived but in the hope of death.

While my last words were giving place
To my heart's anguish, o'er his face
A shadow of displeasure past,
But vanished then again as fast
As the breeze-shadow from the brook;
And with soft words and pitying look
He gently said—

‘Ah me, my son,
A weary course your life has run;
And yet it need not be in vain,
That you have suffered all this pain;
And if my years might make me bold
To speak, methinks I could unfold
Why in such efforts you could meet
But only misery and defeat.
Yet deem not of us as at strife,
Because you set before your life
A purpose and a loftier aim
Than the blind lives of men may claim
For the most part—or that you sought,
By fixed resolve and solemn thought,
To lift your being's calm estate
Out of the range of time and fate.
Glad am I that a thing unseen,
A spiritual Presence, this has been

Your worship, this your young heart stirred.
But yet herein you proudly erred,
Here may the source of woe be found,
You thought to fling, yourself around,
The atmosphere of light and love
In which it was your joy to move;
You thought by efforts of your own
To take at last each jarring tone
Out of your life, till all should meet
In one majestic music sweet;
And deemed that in our own heart's ground
The root of good was to be found,
And that by careful watering
And earnest tendance we might bring
The bud, the blossom, and the fruit
To grow and flourish from that root.
You deemed we needed nothing more
Than skill and courage to explore
Deep down enough in our own heart,
To where the well-head lay apart,
Which must the springs of being feed,
And that these fountains did but need
The soil that choked them moved away,
To bubble in the open day.
But, thanks to heaven, it is not so,
That root a richer soil doth know
Than our poor hearts could e'er supply,
That stream is from a source more high;
From God it came, to God returns,
Not nourished from our scanty urns,
But fed from his unfailing river,
Which runs and will run on for ever.’

When now he came to heavenly things,
And spake of them, his spirit had wings,
His words seemed not his own, but given.
I could have deemed one spake from heaven
Of hope and joy, of life and death,
And immortality through faith,
Of that great change commenced within,
The blood that cleanses from all sin,
That can wash out the inward stain,
And consecrate the heart again,
The voice that clearer and more clear
Speaks ever to the purgëd ear,
The gracious influences given
In a continued stream from heaven,
The balm that can the soul's hurt heal,
The Spirit's witness and its seal.

I listened, for unto mine ear
The word which I had longed to hear,
Was come at last, the lifeful word
Which I had often almost heard
In some deep silence of my breast—
For with a sense of dim unrest
That word unborn had often wrought,
And struggled in the womb of thought,
As from beneath the smothering earth
The seed strives upward to a birth:
And lo! it now was born indeed;
Here was the answer to my need.

But now we parted, never more
To meet upon that lone sea-shore.
We have not met on earth again,
And scarcely shall; there doth remain

A time, a place where we shall meet,
And have the stars beneath our feet.
Since then I many times have sought
Who this might be, and sometimes thought
It must have been an angel sent
To be a special instrument
And minister of grace to me;
Or deemed again it might be he,
Of whom some say he shall not die,
Till he have seen with mortal eye
The glory of his Lord again;
But this is a weak thought and vain
We parted, each upon our way—
I homeward, where my glad course lay
Beside those ruins where I sate
On that same morning—desolate,—
With scarcely strength enough to grieve:
And now it was a marvellous eve;
The waters at my feet were bright,
And breaking into isles of light:
The misty sunset did enfold
A thousand floating motes of gold;
The red light seemed to penetrate
Through the worn stone, and re-create
The old, to glorify anew;
And steeping all things through and through
A rich dissolving splendour poured
Through rent and fissure, and restored
The fall'n, the falling, and decayed,
Filling the rifts which time had made,
Till the rent masses seemed to meet,
The pillar stand upon its feet,

And tower and cornice, roof and stair
Hung self-upheld in the magic air.
Transfigured thus those temples stood
Upon the margin of the flood,
All glorious as they rose of yore;
There standing, as not ever more
They could be harmed by touch of time,
But still, as in that perfect prime,
Must flourish unremoved and free,
Or as they then appeared to me,
A newer and more glorious birth,
A City of that other earth,
That Earth which is to be.

THE MONK AND BIRD.

More than one German poet has dealt with this legend. Thus see in Wolff's Poet. Hausschatz, p. 387.

As he who finds one flower sharp thorns among,
Plucks it, and highly prizes, though before
Careless regard on thousands he has flung,
As fair as this or more;

Not otherwise perhaps this argument
Won from me, where I found it, such regard,
That I esteemed no labour thereon spent
As wearisome or hard.

In huge and antique volume did it lie,
That by two solemn clasps was duly bound,
As neither to be opened nor laid by
But with due thought profound.

There fixëd thought to questions did I lend,
Which hover on the bounds of mortal ken,
And have perplexed, and will unto the end
Perplex the brains of men;

Of what is time, and what eternity,
Of all that seems and is not—forms of things—
Till my tired spirit followed painfully
On flagging weary wings;

So that I welcomed this one resting-place,
Pleased as a bird, which, when its forces fail,
Lights panting in the ocean's middle space
Upon a sunny sail.

And now the grace of fiction, which has power
To render things impossible believed,
And win them with the credence of an hour
To be for truths received—

That grace must help me, as it only can,
Winning such transient credence, while I tell
What to a cloistered solitary man
In distant times befell.

Him little might our earthly grandeur feed,
Who to the uttermost was vowed to be
A follower of his Master's barest need
In holy poverty.

Nor might he know the gentle mutual strife
Of home-affections, which can more or less
Temper with sweet the bitter of our life,
And lighten its distress.

Yet we should err to deem that he was left
To bear alone our being's lonely weight,
Or that his soul was vacant and bereft
Of pomp and inward state:

Morn, when before the sun his orb unshrouds,
Swift as a beacon torch the light has sped,
Kindling the dusky summits of the clouds
Each to a fiery red—

The slanted columns of the noon-day light,
Let down into the bosom of the hills,
Or sunset, that with golden vapour bright
The purple mountains fills—

These made him say,—If God has so arrayed
A fading world that quickly passes by,
Such rich provision of delight has made
For every human eye,

What shall the eyes that wait for Him survey,
Where his own presence gloriously appears
In worlds that were not founded for a day,
But for eternal years?

And if at seasons this world's undelight
Oppressed him, or the hollow at its heart,
One glance at those enduring mansions bright
Made gloomier thoughts depart;

Till many times the sweetness of the thought
Of an eternal country—where it lies
Removed from care and mortal anguish, brought
Sweet tears into his eyes.

Thus, not unsolaced, he longwhile abode,
Filling all dreary melancholy time
And empty spaces of the heart with God,
And with this hope sublime:

Even thus he lived, with little joy or pain
Drawn through the channels whereby men receive—
Most men receive the things which for the main
Make them rejoice or grieve.

But for delight, on spiritual gladness fed,
And obvious to temptations of like kind;
One such, from out his very gladness bred,
It was his lot to find.

When first it came, he lightly put it by,
But it returned again to him ere long,
And ever having got some new ally,
And every time more strong—

A little worm that gnawed the life away
Of a tall plant, the canker of its root,
Or like as when from some small speck decay
Spreads o'er a beauteous fruit.

For still the doubt came back,—Can God provide
For the large heart of man what shall not pall,
Nor through eternal ages' endless tide
On tired spirits fall?

Here but one look tow'rd heaven will oft repress
The crushing weight of undelightful care;
But what were there beyond, if weariness
Should ever enter there?

Yet do not sweetest things here soonest cloy?
Satiety the life of joy would kill,
If sweet with bitter, pleasure with annoy
Were not attempered still.

This mood endured, till every act of love,
Vigils of praise and prayer, and midnight choir,
All shadows of the service done above,
And which, while his desire,

And while his hope was heavenward, he had loved,
As helps to disengage him from the chain
That fastens unto earth—all these now proved
Most burdensome and vain.

What must have been the issue of that mood
It were a thing to fear—but that one day,
Upon the limits of an ancient wood,
His thoughts him led astray.

Darkling he went, nor once applied his ear,
(On a loud sea of agitations thrown,)
Nature's low tones and harmonies to hear,
Heard by the calm alone.

The merry chirrup of the grasshopper,
Sporting among the roots of withered grass,
The dry leaf rustling to the wind's light stir,
Did each unnoted pass:

He, walking in a trance of selfish care,
Not once observed the beauty shed around,
The blue above, the music in the air,
The flowers upon the ground:

Till from the centre of that forest dim
Came to him such sweet singing of a bird,
As, sweet in very truth, then seemed to him
The sweetest ever heard.

That lodestar drew him onward inward still,
Deeper than where the village children stray,
Deeper than where the woodman's glittering bill
Lops the large boughs away—

Into a central space of glimmering shade,
Where hardly might the struggling sunbeams pass,
Which a faint lattice-work of light had made
Upon the long lank grass.

He did not sit, but stood and listened there,
And to him listening the time seemed not long,
While that sweet bird above him filled the air
With its melodious song.

He heard not, saw not, felt not aught beside,
Through the wide worlds of pleasure and of pain,
Save the full flowing and the ample tide
Of that celestial strain.

As though a bird of Paradise should light
A moment on a twig of this bleak earth,
And singing songs of Paradise invite
All hearts to holy mirth,

And then take wing to Paradise again,
Leaving all listening spirits raised above
The toil of earth, the trouble, and the pain,
And melted all in love:

Such hidden might, such power was in the sound;
But when it ceased sweet music to unlock,
The spell that held him sense and spirit-bound
Dissolved with a slight shock.

All things around were as they were before—
The trees, and the blue sky, and sunshine bright,
Painting the pale and leafstrewn forest-floor
With patches of faint light.

But as when music doth no longer thrill,
Light shudderings yet along the chords will run,
Or the heart vibrates tremulously still,
Although its prayer be done,

So his heart fluttered all the way he went,
Listening each moment for the vesper bell;
For a long hour he deemed he must have spent
In that untrodden dell.

And once it seemed that something new or strange
Had passed upon the flowers, the trees, the ground;
Some slight but unintelligible change
On everything around:

Such change, where all things undisturbed remain,
As only to the eye of him appears,
Who absent long, at length returns again—
The silent work of years.

And ever grew upon him more and more
Fresh marvel—for, unrecognized of all,
He stood a stranger at the convent door:
New faces filled the hall.

Yet was it long ere he received the whole
Of that strange wonder—how, while he had stood
Lost in deep gladness of his inmost soul,
Far hidden in that wood,

Three generations had gone down unseen
Under the thin partition that is spread—
The thin partition of thin earth—between
The living and the dead.

Nor did he many days to earth belong,
For like a pent-up stream, released again,
The years arrested by the strength of song
Came down on him amain;

Sudden as a dissolving thaw in spring;
Gentle as when upon the first warm day,
Which sunny April in its train may bring,
The snow melts all away.

They placed him in his former cell, and there
Watched him departing; what few words he said
Were of calm peace and gladness, with one care
Mingled—one only dread—

Lest an eternity should not suffice
To take the measure and the breadth and height
Of what there is reserved in Paradise—
Its ever-new delight.

TO A CHILD PLAYING.

Dear boy, thy momentary laughter rings
Sincerely out, and that spontaneous glee,
Seeming to need no hint from outward things,
Breaks forth in sudden shoutings, loud and free.

From what hid fountains doth thy joyance flow,
That borrows nothing from the world around?
Its springs must deeper lie than we can know,
A well whose springs lie safely underground.

So be it ever—and, thou happy boy,
When time, that takes these wild delights away,
Gives thee a measure of sedater joy,
Which, unlike this, shall ever with thee stay;

Then may that joy, like this, to outward things
Owe nothing, but lie safe beneath the sod,
A hidden fountain fed from unseen springs,
From the glad-making river of our God.

A WALK IN A CHURCHYARD.

We walked within the Churchyard bounds,
My little boy and I—
He laughing, running happy rounds,
I pacing mournfully.

‘Nay, child! it is not well,’ I said,
‘Among the graves to shout,
To laugh and play among the dead,
And make this noisy rout.’

A moment to my side he clung,
Leaving his merry play,
A moment stilled his joyous tongue,
Almost as hushed as they;

Then, quite forgetting the command
In life's exulting burst
Of early glee, let go my hand,
Joyous as at the first.

And now I did not check him more,
For, taught by Nature's face,
I had grown wiser than before
Even in that moment's space:

She spread no funeral pall above
That patch of churchyard ground,
But the same azure vault of love
As hung o'er all around.

And white clouds o'er that spot would pass
As freely as elsewhere;
The sunshine on no other grass
A richer hue might wear.

And formed from out that very mould
In which the dead did lie,
The daisy with its eye of gold
Looked up into the sky.

The rook was wheeling overhead,
Nor hastened to be gone—
The small bird did its glad notes shed,
Perched on a grey head-stone.

And God, I said, would never give
This light upon the earth,
Nor bid in childhood's heart to live
These springs of gushing mirth,

If our one wisdom was to mourn,
And linger with the dead,
To nurse, as wisest, thoughts forlorn
Of worm and earthy bed.

Oh no, the glory earth puts on,
The child's unchecked delight,
Both witness to a triumph won—
(If we but read aright,)

A triumph won o'er sin and death,
From these the Saviour saves;
And, like a happy infant, Faith
Can play among the graves.

TO---

ON THE DAY OF HER BAPTISM

This will we name thy better birth-day, child,
Oh born already to a sin-worn world,
But now unto a kingdom undefiled,
Where over thee love's banner is unfurled.

Lo! on the morning of this holy day
I lay aside the weight of human fears,
Which I had for thee, and without dismay
Look through the avenue of coming years:

I see thee passing without mortal harm
Through ranks of foes against thy safety met;
I see thee passing, thy defence and charm,
The seal of God upon thy forehead set.

From this time forth thou often shalt hear say
Of what immortal City thou wert given
The rights and full immunities to-day,
And of the hope laid up for thee in heaven:

From this time forward thou shalt not believe
That thou art earthly, or that aught of earth
Or aught that hell can threaten, shall receive
Power on the children of the second birth.

Oh risen out of death into the day
Of an immortal life, we bid thee hail,
And will not kiss the waterdrops away,
The dew that rests upon thy forehead pale.

And if the seed of better life lie long,
As in a wintry hiddenness and death,
Then calling back this day, we will be strong
To wait in hope for heaven's reviving breath;

To water, if there should be such sad need,
The undiscernëd germ with sorrowing tears,
To wait until from that undying seed
Out of the earth a heavenly plant appears;

The growth and produce of a fairer land,
And thence transplanted to a barren soil,
It needs the tendance of a careful hand,
Of love, that is not weary with long toil:

And thou, dear child, whose very helplessness
Is as a bond upon us and a claim,
Mayest thou have this of us, as we no less
Have daily from our Father known the same.

TO MY GODCHILD,

ON THE DAY OF HIS BAPTISM.

No harsh transitions Nature knows,
No dreary spaces intervene;
Her work in silence forward goes,
And rather felt than seen:

For where the watcher, who with eye
Turned eastward, yet could ever say
When the faint glooming in the sky
First lightened into day?

Or maiden, by an opening flower
That many a summer morn has stood,
Could fix upon the very hour
It ceased to be a bud?

The rainbow colours mix and blend
Each with the other, until none
Can tell where fainter hues had end,
And deeper tints begun.

But only doth this much appear—
That the pale hues are deeper grown;
The day has broken bright and clear;
The bud is fully blown.

Dear child, and happy shalt thou be,
If from this hour with just increase
All good things shall grow up in thee,
By such unmarked degrees:

If there shall be no dreary space
Between thy present self and past,
No dreary miserable place
With spectral shapes aghast;

But the full graces of thy prime
Shall, in their weak beginnings, be
Lost in an unremembered time
Of holy infancy.

This blessing is the first and best;
Yet has not prayer been made in vain
For them, though not so amply blest,
The lost and found again.

And shouldest thou, alas! forbear
To choose the better, nobler lot,
Yet may we not esteem our prayer
Unheard or heeded not;

If after many a wandering,
And many a devious pathway trod,
If having known that bitter thing,
To leave the Lord thy God;

It yet shall be, that thou at last,
Although thy noon be lost, return
To bind life's eve in union fast
With this, its blessëd morn.

TO AN INFANT SLEEPING.

Oh drinking deep of slumber's holy wine,
Whence may the smile that lights thy countenance be?
We seek in vain the mystery to divine;
For in thy dim unconscious infancy
No games as yet, no playfellows are thine,
To stir in waking hours such thoughts of glee,
As, recollected in thine innocent dream,
Might shed across thy face this happy gleam.

It may be, though small notice thou canst take,
Thou feelest that an atmosphere of love
Is ever round thee, sleeping or awake:
Thou wakest, and kind faces from above
Bend o'er thee; when thou sleepest, for thy sake
All sounds are hushed, and each doth gently move:
And this dim consciousness of tender care
Has caused thy cheek this light of joy to wear.

Or it may be, thoughts deeper than we deem
Visit an infant's slumbers: God is near,
Angels are talking with them in their dream,
Angelic voices whispering sweet and clear:
And round them lies that region's holy gleam,
But newly left, and light which is not here;
And thus has come that smile upon thy face,
At tidings brought thee from thy native place.

But whatsoe'er the causes which beguiled
That dimple on thy countenance, it is gone;
Fair is the lake disturbed by ripple mild,
But not less fair when ripple it has none:
And now what deep repose is thine, dear child,
What smoothness thy unruffled cheek has won!
Oh! who that gazed upon thee could forbear
The silent breathing of a heart-felt prayer!

TO A FRIEND

ENTERING THE MINISTRY.

High thoughts at first, and visions high
Are ours of easy victory;
The word we bear seems so divine,
So framed for Adam's guilty line,
That none, unto ourselves we say,
Of all his sinning suffering race
Will hear that word, so full of grace,
And coldly turn away.

But soon a sadder mood comes round;
High hopes have fallen to the ground,
And the ambassadors of peace
Go weeping, that men will not cease
To strive with Heaven—they inly mourn,
That suffering men will not be blest,
That weary men refuse to rest,
And wanderers to return.

Well is it, if has not ensued
Another, yet unworthier, mood,
When all unfaithful thoughts have way,
When we hang down our hands, and say,
‘Alas! it is a weary pain
To seek with toil and fruitless strife
To chafe the numbed limbs into life,
That will not live again.’

Then if spring odours on the wind
Float by, they bring into our mind
That it were wiser done, to give
Our hearts to Nature, and to live
For her; or in the student's bower
To search into her hidden things,
And seek in books the wondrous springs
Of knowledge and of power.

Or if we dare not thus draw back,
Yet oh! to shun the crowded track
And the rude throng of men! to dwell
In hermitage or lonely cell,
Feeding all longings that aspire
Like incense heavenward, and with care
And lonely vigil nursing there
Faith's solitary pyre.

Oh! let not us this thought allow—
The heat, the dust upon our brow,
Signs of the contest, we may wear:
Yet thus we shall appear more fair
In our Almighty Master's eye,
Than if in fear to lose the bloom,
Or ruffle the soul's lightest plume,
We from the strife should fly.

And for the rest, in weariness,
In disappointment, or distress,
When strength decays, or hope grows dim,
We ever may recur to Him,
Who has the golden oil divine,
Wherewith to feed our failing urns,
Who watches every lamp that burns
Before his sacred shrine.

ANTI-GNOSTICUS.

Who, loving leisure and his studious ease,
And books, and what of noblest lore they bring,
Will not confess that sometimes, called aside
To humbler work and less delightful tasks,
He has been tempted to exclaim in heart—
‘How pleasant were it might we only dwell,
And ever hold sweet converse undisturbed
Thus with the choicest spirits of the world
In council, and in letters, and in arms.
Easy to live with, always at command,
They come at bidding, at our word depart,
Friends whose society not ever cloys.
Glorious it were by intercourse with these
To learn whatever men have thought or done,
And travel the great orb of knowledge round.
But oh! how most unwelcome the constraint,
How harsh the summons bidding us to pause,
And for a season turn from our high toils,
From that serener atmosphere come down,
And grow perforce acquainted with the woe,
The strife, the discord of the actual world,
And all the ignoble work beneath the sun.’

These were my thoughts and words the other day,
And such they oftentimes have been before,
When I have turned reluctantly, and left
The pleasant labours I had found at home,

For ruder and less grateful tasks abroad,
Which duty would not suffer to put by.
But other feelings occupied my heart,
And other words found utterance from my lips,
When that day's work was finished, and my feet
Again turned homeward—alteration strange
Of feeling, with a better humbler mind.
For I was thankful now, and not alone
That I had been brought under the blue sky,
With winds of heaven to blow upon my cheeks,
And flowers of earth to smile about my feet,
And birds of air to sing within my ears—
Though that were something, something to exchange
Continuous study in a lonely room
For the sweet face of nature, sights and sounds
Of earth and air, restoring influences
Of power to cheer;—yet not for this alone,
Nor for this chiefly; but that thus I was
Compelled, as by a gentle violence,
Not in the pages of dead books alone,
Nor merely in the fair page nature shows,
But in the living page of human life
To look and learn—not merely left to spin
Fine webs and woofs around me like the worm,
Till in mine own coil I had hid myself,
And quite shut out the light of common day,
And common air by which men breathe and live—
That being in a world of sin and woe,
Of woe that might in some part be assuaged,
Of sin that might be lessened in some part,
Heaven in its mercy did not suffer me
To live and dwell wholly apart from these;
Knowing no more of them than men who live

At home in ease, by hearsay know of lands
Which the bold pilgrim has with his own eyes
Seen, with his own feet trod: and now I felt,
It was brought home unto my heart of hearts,
That doom is none more pitiable than his,
Who has created a heart-solitude,
Raised a partition wall to separate
Between himself and any of his kind;
There was no doom more pitiable than his,
Who at safe distance hears life's stormy waves,
Which break for ever on a rugged shore,
In which are shipwrecked mariners, for their lives
Contending some, some momently sucked up,
But as a gentle murmur afar off
To soothe his sleep, and lull him in his dreams:
Who, while he boasts he has been building up
A palace for himself, in sooth has reared
What shall be first his prison, then his tomb.

And now how different my request and prayer:
Give me, I said, give me a heart that beats
In all its pulses with the common heart
Of humankind, which the same things make glad,
The same make sorry; give me grace enough
Even in their first beginnings to detect
Endeavours which the proud heart still is making
To cut itself from off the common root,
To set itself upon a private base,
To have wherein to glory of its own,
Beside the common glory of the kind;
Each such attempt in all its hateful pride
And meanness, give me to detect and loathe,—
A man, and claiming fellowship with men.

I said—Oh! lead me oftentimes to huts
Where poor men lie, that I may learn the stuff
Which life is made of, its true joys and griefs,
What things are daily bringing grief or joy
Unto the hearts of millions of my race.
Oh! lead me oft to huts where poor men lie,
Not in the hope fantastical to find
That Innocence, from palaces exiled,
Has taken refuge under sordid roofs;
But knowing what of evil, what of good
Is to be looked for there, and with firm faith,
That for the eye made wise by charity,
Much good will there as everywhere be found—
Patience by lengthened suffering not outworn,
Promptness to aid in one another's needs,
With self-denial, yea, heroic acts,
The more heroic, as not knowing themselves
For such at all,—and there not seldom too
Such thankfulness for small things, such content
Under the absence of most earthly good,
As might rebuke the pining discontent
That haunts too often rich men's palaces.
These schools of wisdom make me to frequent,
That I may learn what is not learned elsewhere;
What is not to be learned by haunting long
The shady spaces of philosophy;
Lore which even he will fail of, who beside
The streams of heavenly wisdom evermore
Is lingering, if he have no purpose there,
Except to gather for his own delight
The bright and beauteous flowers which there are found.

LOVE.

Seemeth not Love at times so occupied
For thee, as though it cared for none beside?

To great and small things Love alike can reach,
And cares for each as all, and all as each.

Love of my bonds partook, that I might be
In turn partaker of its liberty.

Love found me in the wilderness, at cost
Of painful quests, when I myself had lost.

Love on its shoulders joyfully did lay
Me, weary with the greatness of my way.

Love lit the lamp and swept the house all round,
Till the lost money in the end was found.

Love the King's image there would stamp again,
Effaced in part, and soiled with rust and stain.

'Twas Love, whose quick and ever-watchful eye
The wanderer's first step homeward did espy.

From its own wardrobe Love gave word to bring
What things I needed—shoes, and robe, and ring.

Love threatens that it may not strike; and still
Unheeded, strikes, that so it may not kill.

Love set me up on high; when I grew vain
Of that my height, Love brought me down again.

Love often draws good for us from our ill,
Skilful to bless us even against our will.

The bond-servant of Love alone is free;
All other freedom is but slavery.

How far above all price Love's costly wine,
Which can the meanest chalice make divine!

Fear this effects, that I do not the ill,
Love more—that I thereunto have no will.

Seeds burst not their dark cells without a throe;
All birth is effort; shall not Love's be so?

Love weeps, but from its eyes these two things win
The largest tears—its own, its brother's sin.

The sweetness of the trodden camomile
Is Love's, which, injured, yields more sweets the while.

The heart of Love is with a thousand woes
Pierced, which secure indifference never knows.

The rose aye wears the silent thorn at heart,
And never yet might pain from Love depart.

Once o'er this painful earth a man did move,
The Man of griefs, because the Man of Love.

Hope, Faith, and Love at God's high altar shine,
Lamp triple-branched, and fed with oil divine.

Two of these triple-lights shall once grow pale,
They burn without, but Love within the veil.

Nothing is true but Love, nor aught of worth;
Love is the incense which doth sweeten earth.

O merchant at heaven's mart for heavenly ware,
Love is the only coin which passes there.

The wine of Love can be obtained of none,
Save Him who trod the winepress all alone.

‘REJOICE EVERMORE.’

But how shall we be glad?
We that are journeying through a vale of tears,
Encompassed with a thousand woes and fears,
How should we not be sad?

Angels, that ever stand
Within the presence-chamber, and there raise
The never-interrupted hymn of praise,
May welcome this command:

Or they whose strife is o'er,
Who all their weary length of life have trod,
As pillars now within the temple' of God,
That shall go out no more.

But we who wander here,
We who are exiled in this gloomy place,
Still doomed to water earth's unthankful face
With many a bitter tear—

Bid us lament and mourn,
Bid us that we go mourning all the day,
And we will find it easy to obey,
Of our best things forlorn;

But not that we be glad;
If it be true the mourners are the blest,
Oh leave us in a world of sin, unrest,
And trouble, to be sad.

I spake, and thought to weep,—
For sin and sorrow, suffering and crime,
That fill the world, all mine appointed time
A settled grief to keep.

When lo! as day from night,
As day from out the womb of night forlorn,
So from that sorrow was that gladness born,
Even in mine own despite.

Yet was not that by this
Excluded; at the coming of that joy
Fled not that grief, nor did that grief destroy
The newly-risen bliss:

But side by side they flow,
Two fountains flowing from one smitten heart,
And ofttimes scarcely to be known apart—
That gladness and that woe;

Two fountains from one source,
Or which from two such neighbouring sources run,
That aye for him who shall unseal the one,
The other flows perforce.

And both are sweet and calm,
Fair flowers upon the banks of either blow,
Both fertilize the soil, and where they flow
Shed round them holy balm.

SONNET.

[Our course is onward, onward into light]

Our course is onward, onward into light:
What though the darkness gathereth amain,
Yet to return or tarry, both are vain.
How tarry, when around us is thick night?
Whither return? what flower yet ever might,
In days of gloom and cold and stormy rain,
Enfold itself in its green bud again,
Hiding from wrath of tempest out of sight?
Courage—we travel through a darksome cave;
But still as nearer to the light we draw,
Fresh gales will reach us from the upper air,
And wholesome dews of heaven our foreheads lave,
The darkness lighten more, till full of awe
We stand in the open sunshine unaware.

SONNET.

[Thou cam'st not to thy place by accident]

Thou cam'st not to thy place by accident,
It is the very place God meant for thee;
And shouldst thou there small scope for action see,
Do not for this give room to discontent;
Nor let the time thou owest to God be spent
In idly dreaming how thou mightest be,
In what concerns thy spiritual life, more free
From outward hindrance or impediment.
For presently this hindrance thou shalt find
That without which all goodness were a task
So slight, that virtue never could grow strong:
And wouldst thou do one duty to his mind,
The Imposer's—over-burdened thou shalt ask,
And own the need of grace to help, ere long.

SONNET.

[What good soever in thy heart or mind]

What good soever in thy heart or mind
Doth yet no higher source nor fountain own
Than thine own self, nor bow to other throne,
Suspect and fear; although therein thou find
High purpose to go forth and bless thy kind,
Or in the awful temple of thy soul
To worship what is loveliest, and control
The ill within, and by strong laws to bind.
Good is of God—no good is therefore sure,
Which has dared wander from its source away:
Laws without sanction will not long endure,
Love will grow faint and fainter day by day,
And Beauty from the straight path will allure,
And weakening first, will afterwards betray.

SONNET.

[A wretched thing it were, to have our heart]

A wretched thing it were, to have our heart
Like a thronged highway or a populous street,
Where every idle thought has leave to meet,
Pause, or pass on as in an open mart;
Or like some road-side pool, which no nice art
Has guarded that the cattle may not beat
And foul it with a multitude of feet,
Till of the heavens it can give back no part.
But keep thou thine a holy solitude,
For He who would walk there, would walk alone;
He who would drink there, must be first endued
With single right to call that stream his own;
Keep thou thine heart, close-fastened, unrevealed,
A fencèd garden and a fountain sealed.

SONNET.

[What is the greatness of a fallen king?]

What is the greatness of a fallen king?
This—that his fall avails not to abate
His spirit to a level with his fate,
Or inward fall along with it to bring;
That he disdains to stoop his former wing,
But keeps in exile and in want the law
Of kingship yet, and counts it scorn to draw
Comfort indign from any meaner thing.
Soul, thou art fallen from thine ancient place,
May'st thou in this mean world find nothing great,
Nor aught that shall the memories efface
Of that true greatness which was once thine own,
As knowing thou must keep thy kingly state,
If thou wouldst reascend thy kingly throne.

SONNET.

[To feel that we are homeless exiles here]

To feel that we are homeless exiles here,
To listen to the world's discordant tone,
As to a private discord of our own,
To know that we are fallen from a sphere
Of higher being, pure, serene, and clear,
Into the darkness of this dim estate—
This thought may sometimes make us desolate,
For this we may shed many a secret tear.
But to mistake our dungeon for a throne,
Our place of exile for our native land,
To hear no discords in the universe,
To find no matter over which to groan,
This (oh! that men would rightly understand!)
This, seeming better, were indeed far worse.

THE HERRING-FISHERS OF LOCHFYNE.

Deem not these fishers idle, though by day
You hear the snatches of their lazy song,
And see them listlessly the sunlight long
Strew the curved beach of this indented bay:
So deemed I, till I viewed their trim array
Of boats last night,—a busy armament,
With sails as dark as that Athenian bent
Upon his fatal rigging, take their way.
Rising betimes, I could not choose but look
For their return; and when along the lake
The morning mists were curling, saw them make
Homeward, returning toward their quiet nook,
With draggled nets down hanging to the tide,
Weary, and leaning o'er their vessels' side.

IN THE ISLE OF MULL.

The clouds are gathering in their western dome,
Deep-drenched with sunlight, as a fleece with dew,
While I with baffled effort still pursue
And track these waters toward their mountain home,—
In vain—though cataract, and mimic foam,
And island-spots, round which the streamlet threw
Its sister arms, which joyed to meet anew,
Have lured me on, and won me still to roam;
Till now, coy nymph, unseen thy waters pass,
Or faintly struggle through the twinkling grass,—
And I, thy springs unvisited, return.
Is it that thou art revelling with thy peers?
Or dost thou feed a solitary urn,
Else unreplenished, with thy own sad tears?

THE SAME.

Sweet Water-nymph, more shy than Arethuse,
Why wilt thou hide from me thy green retreat,
Where duly thou with silver-sandalled feet,
And every Naiad, her green locks profuse,
Welcome with dance sad evening, or unloose,
To share your revel, an oak-cinctured throng,
Oread and Dryad, who the daylight long
By rock, or cave, or antique forest, use
To shun the wood-god and his rabble bold?
Such comes not now, or who with impious strife
Would seek to untenant meadow, stream, and plain
Of that indwelling power, which is the life
And which sustaineth each; which poets old
As god and goddess thus have loved to feign?

AT SEA.

The sea is like a mirror far and near,
And ours a prosperous voyage, safe from harms;
Yet may the thought that everlasting arms
Are round us and about us, be as dear
Now when no sight of danger doth appear,
As though our vessel did its blind way urge
'Mid the long weltering of the dreariest surge,
Through which a perishing bark did ever steer.
Lord of the calm and tempest, be it ours,
Poor mariners! to pay due vows to Thee,
Though not a cloud on all the horizon lowers
Of all our life; for even this way shall we
Have greater boldness toward Thee, when indeed
The storm is up, and there is earnest need.

AN EVENING IN FRANCE.

See S. Augustine, Confessions, ix. IO.

One star is shining in the crimson eve,
And the thin texture of the faint blue sky
Above is like a veil intensely drawn;
Upon the spirit with a solemn weight
The marvel and the mystery of eve
Is lying, as all holy thoughts and calm,
By the vain stir and tumult of the day
Chased far away, come back on tranquil wing,
Like doves returning to their noted haunts.
It is the solemn even-tide—the hour
Of holy musings, and to us no less
Of sweet refreshment for the bodily frame
Than for the spirit, harassed both and worn
With a long day of travel; and methinks
It must have been an evening such as this,
After a day of toilsome journeyings o'er,
When looking out on Tiber, as we now
Look out on this fair river flowing by,
Together sat the saintly Monica,
And with her, given unto her prayers, that son,
The turbid stream of whose tumultuous youth
Now first was running smooth and bright and clear:
And solitary sitting in the niche
Of a deep window held delightful talk,
Such as they never could have known before,
Of what must be the glorious life in heaven;

And looking forth on meadow, stream, and sky,
And on the golden west, that richest glow
Of sunset to the uncreated light,
Which must invest for ever those bright worlds,
Did unto them seem darkness; and earth's best,
Its dearest pleasures, they with one consent
Counted as vile, nor once to be compared,
Oh! rather say not worthy to be named,
With what is to be looked for there; and thus
Leaving behind them all things which are seen,
By many a stately stair they did ascend
Above the earth and all created things,
The sun and starry heavens—yea, and above
The mind of man, until they did attain
Where light no shadow has, and life no death,
Where past or future are not, nor can be,
But an eternal present, and the Lamb
His people feeds from indeficient streams.
Then pausing for a moment, to drink in
That river of delights, at length they cried—
‘Oh! to be thus for ever, and to hear
Thus in the silence of the lower world,
And in the silence of all thoughts that keep
Vain stir within, unutterable words,
And with the splendour of his majesty,
Whose seat is in the middle of the throne,
Thus to be fed for ever—this must be
The beatific vision, the third heaven.
What we have for these passing moments known,
To know the same for ever—this would be
That life whereof even now we held debate:
When will it be? oh when?’

These things they said,
And for a season breathed immortal air,

But then perforce returned to earth again,
To this inferior region, while the air
In that empyreal climate is too fine
For our long breathing, who still bear about us
Our gross investiture of mortal weeds.
Yet not for nothing had their spirits flown
To those high regions, bringing back at once
A reconcilement with the mean things here,
And a more earnest longing for what there
Of nobler is by partial glimpses thus
Seen through the crannies of the prison house.
And she, that mother—such entire content
Possessed her bosom, and her Lord had filled
The orb of her desires so round and full,
Had answered all her prayers for her lost son
With such an overmeasure of his grace,—
She had no more to ask, and did not know
Why she should tarry any longer here,
Nor what she did on earth. Thus then she felt,
And to these thoughts which overflowed her heart
Gave thankful utterance meet; nor many days
After this vision and foretaste of joy,
Inherited the substance of the things
Which she had seen, and entered into peace.

THE DESCENT OF THE RHONE.

Often when my thought has been
Pondering on what sight once seen,
What of all the glorious shows
Nature can at will disclose,
Once beholden, would supply
To the spirit's inward eye
Most unfailing treasures, which
Would the memory most enrich
With its spectacles of power—
It has seemed no ampler dower
Of her sights and solemn shows
She to any would disclose
Than to one, who night and day,
An illimitable way,
Should sail down some mighty river,
Sailing as to sail for ever.

Lo! my wish is partly won;
Swiftly flows the stately Rhone;
And we loosen from the shore
Our light pinnace, long before
The young East in gorgeous state
Has unlocked his ruby gate,
And our voyage is not done
At the sinking of the sun;
But for us the azure Night
Feeds her golden flocks with light:

All the changeful hues of heaven,
Sights and sounds of morn and even,
All unto our eyes are given.
In our view the day is born;
First the stars of lustre shorn,
Then o'er heaven faint bloom is spread,
And the clouds blush deeper red,
Till from them the stream below
Catches the same roseate glow;
Lightens the pale east to gold,
And the west is with the fold
Of the mantle of dim night
Scarcely darkened or less bright—
Till, his way prepared, at length
Rising giantlike in strength,
Tramples the victorious sun
The dying stars out, one by one.

Fairer scene the opening eye
Of the day can scarce descry,
Fairer sight he looks not on
Than the pleasant banks of Rhone;
Where in terraces and ranks,
On those undulating banks,
Rise by many a hilly stair
Sloping tiers of vines, where'er
From the steep and stony soil
Has been won by careful toil,
And with long laborious pains
Fenced against the washing rains,
Fenced and anxiously walled round,
Some small patch of garden ground.
Higher still some place of power,
Or a solitary tower,

Ruined now, is looking down
On the quiet little town
In a sheltered glen beneath,
Where the smoke's unbroken wreath
Mounting in the windless air,
Rests, dissolving slowly there,
O'er the housetops like a cloud,
Or a thinnest vaporous shroud.

Morn has been, and lo! how soon
Has arrived the middle noon,
And the broad sun's rays do rest
On some naked mountain's breast,
Where alone relieve the eye
Massive shadows, as they lie
In the hollows motionless;
Still our boat doth onward press:
Now a peaceful current wide
Bears it on an ample tide,
Now the hills retire, and then
Their broad fronts advance again,
Till the rocks have closed us round,
And would seem our course to bound,
But anon a path appears,
And our vessel onward steers,
Darting rapidly between
Narrow walls of a ravine.

Morn has been and noon—and now
Evening falls about our prow:
'Mid the clouds that kindling won
Light and fire from him, the Sun
For a moment's space was lying,
Phœnix in his own flames dying!

And a sunken splendour still
Glows behind the western hill;
Lo! the starry troop again
Gather on the ethereal plain;
Even now and there were none,
And a moment since but one;
And anon we lift our head,
And all heaven is overspread
With a still assembling crowd,
With a silent multitude—
Vesper, first and brightest set
In the night's fair coronet,
Armed Orion's belted pride,
And the Seven that by the side
Of the Titan nightly weave
Dances in the mystic eve,
Sisters linked in love and light.
'Twere in truth a solemn sight,
Were we sailing now as they,
Who upon their western way
To the isles of spice and gold,
Nightly watching, might behold
These our constellations dip,
And the great sign of the Ship
Rise upon the other hand,
With the Cross, aye seen to stand
In the vault of heaven upright,
At the middle hour of night—
Or with them whose keels first prest
The huge rivers of the west,
Who the first with bold intent
Down the Orellana went,
Or a dangerous progress won
On the mighty Amazon,

By whose ocean-streams they told
Of the warrior-maidens bold.

But the fancy may not roam;
Thou wilt keep it nearer home,
Friend, of earthly friends the best,
Who on this fair river's breast
Sailest with me fleet and fast,
As the unremitting blast
With a steady breath and strong
Urges our light bark along.
We this day have found delight
In each pleasant sound and sight
Of this river bright and fair,
And in things which flowing are
Like a stream; yet without blame
These my passing song may claim,
Or thy hearing may beguile,
If we not forget the while,
That we are from childhood's morn
On a mightier river borne,
Which is rolling evermore
To a sea without a shore,
Life the river, and the sea
That we seek—eternity.
We may sometimes sport and play,
And in thought keep holiday,
So we ever own a law,
Living in habitual awe,
And beneath the constant stress
Of a solemn thoughtfulness,
Weighing whither this life tends,
For what high and holy ends

It was lent us, whence it flows,
And its current whither goes.

There is ample matter here
For as much of thought and fear
As will solemnize our souls—
Thought of how this river rolls
Over millions wrecked before
They could reach that happy shore,
Where we have not anchored yet;
Of the dangers which beset
Our own way, of hidden shoal,
Waters smoothest where they roll
Over point of sunken rock,
Treacherous calm, and sudden shock
Of the storm, which can assail
No boat than ours more weak or frail—
Matter not alone of sadness,
But no less of thankful gladness,
That, whichever way we turn,
There are steady lights that burn
On the shore, and lamps of love
In the gloomiest sky above,
Which will guide our bark aright
Through the darkness of our night—
Many a fixed unblinking star
Unto them that wandering are
Through this blindly-weltering sea—
Themes of high and thoughtful glee,
When we think we are not left,
Of all solaces bereft,
Each to hold, companionless,
Through a pathless wilderness,

Unaccompanied our way,
All forlorn; this I may say,
Whatsoever else betide,
With thee sitting at my side,
And this happy infant sweet,
Playing, laughing at my feet.

LINES

[_]

WRITTEN AT THE VILLAGE OF PASSIGNANO, ON THE LAKE OF THRASYMENE.

The mountains stand about the quiet lake,
That not a breath its azure calm may break
No leaf of these sere olive-leaves is stirred;
In the near silence far-off sounds are heard;
The tiny bat is flitting over-head,
The hawthorn doth its richest odours shed
Into the dewy air; and over all,
Veil after veil, the evening shadows fall,
Withdrawing one by one each glimmering height,
The far, and then the nearer, from our sight—
No sign surviving in this tranquil scene,
That strife and savage tumult here have been.

But if the pilgrim to the latest plain
Of carnage, where the blood like summer rain
Fell but the other day—if in his mind
He marvels much and oftentimes to find
With what rare art has Nature each sad trace
Of Man's red footmarks laboured to efface—
What wonder, if this spot we tread appears
Guiltless of strife, when now two thousand years
Of daily reparation have gone by,
Since it resumed its own tranquillity!
This calm has nothing strange; yet not the less
This holy evening's solemn quietness,

The perfect beauty of this windless lake,
This stillness which no louder murmurs break
Than the frogs croaking from the distant sedge,
These vineyards drest unto the water's edge,
This hind that homeward driving the slow steer
Tells how man's daily work goes forward here,
Have each a power upon me, while I drink
The influence of the placid time, and think
How gladly that sweet Mother once again
Resumes her sceptre and benignant reign,
But for a few short instants scared away
By the mad game, the cruel impious fray
Of her distempered children—how comes back,
And leads them in the customary track
Of blessing once again; to order brings
Anew the dislocated frame of things,
And covers up, and out of sight conceals
What they have wrought of ill, or gently heals.

TO ENGLAND.

WRITTEN AFTER A VISIT TO SORRENTO.

They are but selfish visions at the best,
Which tempt us to desire that we were free
From the dear ties that bind us unto thee,
That so we might take up our lasting rest,
Where some delightful spot, some hidden nest
In brighter lands has pleased our phantasy:
And might such vows at once accomplished be,
We should not in the accomplishment be blest,
But oh! most miserable, if it be true
Peace only waits upon us, while we do
Heaven's work and will: for what is it we ask,
When we would fain have leave to linger here,
But to abandon our appointed task,
Our place of duty and our natural sphere?

SORRENTO.

A FRAGMENT.

Fair fountains of man's art were there,
Streams trickling down from stair to stair
And as, with lapse just audible,
From font to font the waters fell,
Around the lighted bubbles flew,
Starring the leaves with points like dew:
For tender myrtles near were set,
That in this happy clime had met
Unhoused the winter's deadliest air;
And the pale lemon-flower was there,
And the dark glittering leaves behind
The fruit with its discoloured rind:
While the long groves of orange made
A screen sun-proof, an ample shade,
With spacious avenues below,
Where one might wander to and fro,
Watching the little runnels creep
Round every root, and duly steep
With freshness all the thirsty soil;
Or lift a hand for easiest spoil,
And of the golden fruitage share,
Cool-hanging in the morning air.

VESUVIUS.

(AS SEEN FROM CAPRI.)

A wreath of light blue vapour, pure and rare,
Mounts, scarcely seen against the bluer sky,
In quiet adoration, silently—
Till the faint currents of the upper air
Dislimn it, and it forms, dissolving there,
The dome, as of a palace, hung on high
Over the mountain; underneath it lie
Vineyards and bays and cities white and fair.
Might we not think this beauty would engage
All living things unto one pure delight?
Oh vain belief! for here our records tell,
Rome's understanding tyrant from men's sight
Hid, as within a guilty citadel,
The shame of his dishonourable age.

THE SAME.

As when unto a mother, having chid
Her child in anger, there have straight ensued
Repentings for her quick and angry mood,
Till she would fain see all its traces hid
Quite out of sight—even so has Nature bid
Fair flowers, that on the scarred earth she has strewed,
To blossom, and called up the taller wood
To cover what she ruined and undid.
Oh! and her mood of anger did not last
More than an instant; but her work of peace,
Restoring and repairing, comforting
The earth, her stricken child, will never cease;
For that was her strange work, and quickly past,
To this her genial toil no end the years shall bring.

THE SAME.

CONTINUED.

That her destroying fury was with noise
And sudden uproar; but far otherwise,
With silent and with secret ministries,
Her skill of renovation she employs:
For Nature, only loud when she destroys,
Is silent when she fashions: she will crowd
The work of her destruction, transient, loud,
Into an hour, and then long peace enjoys.
Yea, every power that fashions and upholds
Works silently; all things whose life is sure,
Their life is calm; silent the light that moulds
And colours all things; and without debate
The stars, which are for ever to endure,
Assume their thrones and their unquestioned state.

ON THE PERSEUS AND MEDUSA

OF BENVENUTO CELLINI, AT FLORENCE.

In what fierce spasms upgathered, on the plain
Medusa's headless corpse has quivering sunk,
While all the limbs of that undying trunk
To their extremest joint with torture strain;
But the calm visage has resumed again
Its beauty,—the orbed eyelids are let down,
As though a living sleep might once more crown
Their placid circlets, guiltless of all pain.
And thou—is thine the spirit's swift recoil,
Which follows every deed of acted wrath,
That, holding in thine hand this loveliest spoil,
Thou dost not triumph, feeling that the breath
Of life is sacred, whether it inform,
Loathly or beauteous, man or beast or worm?

LINES

WRITTEN AFTER HEARING SOME BEAUTIFUL SINGING IN A CONVENT CHURCH AT ROME

Sweet voices! seldom mortal ear
Strains of such potency might hear;
My soul that listened seemed quite gone,
Dissolved in sweetness, and anon
I was borne upward, till I trod
Among the hierarchy of God.
And when they ceased, as time must bring
An end to every sweetest thing,
With what reluctancy came back
My spirits to their wonted track,
And how I loathed the common life,
The daily and recurring strife
With petty sins, the lowly road,
And being's ordinary load.
—Why, after such a solemn mood
Should any meaner thought intrude?
Why will not Heaven hereafter give,
That we for evermore may live
Thus at our spirit's topmost bent?
So asked I in my discontent.

But give me, Lord, a wiser heart;
These seasons come, and they depart,

These seasons, and those higher still,
When we are given to have our fill
Of strength and life and joy with Thee,
And brightness of thy face to see.
They come, or we could never guess
Of heaven's sublimer blessedness;
They come, to be our strength and cheer
In other times, in doubt or fear,
Or should our solitary way
Lie through the desert many a day.
They go, they leave us blank and dead,
That we may learn, when they are fled,
We are but vapours which have won
A moment's brightness from the sun,
And which it may at pleasure fill
With splendour, or unclothe at will.
Well for us they do not abide,
Or we should lose ourselves in pride,
And be as angels—but as they
Who on the battlements of day
Walked, gazing on their power and might,
Till they grew giddy in their height.

Then welcome every nobler time,
When out of reach of earth's dull chime
'Tis ours to drink with purgëd ears
The music of the solemn spheres,
Or in the desert to have sight
Of those enchanted cities bright,
Which sensual eye can never see:
Thrice welcome may such seasons be:
But welcome too the common way,
The lowly duties of the day,

And all which makes and keeps us low,
Which teaches us ourselves to know,
That we who do our lineage high
Draw from beyond the starry sky,
Are yet upon the other side
To earth and to its dust allied.

A VISIT TO TUSCULUM.

A solemn thing it is, and full of awe,
Wandering long time among the lonely hills,
To issue on a sudden 'mid the wrecks
Of some fall'n city, as might seem a coast
From which the tide of life has ebbed away,
Leaving bare sea-marks only. Such there lie
Among the Alban mountains—Tusculum,
Or Palestrina with Cyclopean walls
Enormous: and this solemn awe we felt
And knew this morning, when we stood among
What of that first-named City yet survives.

For we had wandered long among those hills,
Watching the white goats on precipitous heights,
Half-hid among the bushes, or their young
Tending new-yeaned: and we had paused to hear
The deep-toned music of the convent bells,
And wound through many a verdant forest path,
Gathering the crocus and anemone,
With that fresh gladness, which when flowers are new
In the first spring, they bring us; till at last
We issued out upon an eminence,
Commanding prospect large on every side,—
But largest where the world's great City lay,
Whose features, undistinguishable now,
Allowed no recognition, save where the eye

Could mark the white front of the Lateran
Facing this way, or rested on the dome,
The broad stupendous dome, high over all.
And as a sea around an island's roots
Spreads, so the level champaign every way
Stretched round the City, level all, and green
With the new vegetation of the spring;
Nor by the summer ardours scorched as yet,
Which shot from southern suns, too soon dry up
The beauty and the freshness of the plains;
While to the right the ridge of Apennine,
Its higher farther summits all snow-crowned,
Rose, with white clouds above them, as might seem
Another range of more aërial hills.

These things were at a distance, but more near
And at our feet signs of the tide of life,
That once was here, and now had ebbed away—
Pavements entire, without one stone displaced,
Where yet there had not rolled a chariot wheel
For many hundred years; rich cornices,
Elaborate friezes of rare workmanship,
And broken shafts of columns, that along
This highway side lay prone; vaults that were rooms
And hollowed from the turf, and cased in stone,
Seats and gradations of a theatre,
Which, emptied of its population now,
Shall never be refilled: and all these things,
Memorials of the busy life of man,
Or of his ample means for pomp and pride,
Scattered among the solitary hills,
And lying open to the sun and showers,
And only visited at intervals
By wandering herds, or pilgrims like ourselves

From distant lands; with now no signs of life,
Save where the goldfinch built his shallow nest
'Mid the low bushes, or where timidly
The rapid lizard glanced between the stones—
All saying that the fashion of this world
Passes away: that not Philosophy
Nor Eloquence can guard their dearest haunts
From the rude touch of desecrating time.
What marvel, when the very fanes of God,
The visible temples of the Holy One,
Claim no exemption from the general doom,
But lie in ruinous heaps; when nothing stands,
Nor may endure to the end, except alone
The spiritual temple built with living stones?

GIBRALTAR.

England, we love thee better than we know—
And this I learned, when after wanderings long
'Mid people of another stock and tongue,
I heard again thy martial music blow,
And saw thy gallant children to and fro
Pace, keeping ward at one of those huge gates,
Twin giants watching the Herculean Straits.
When first I came in sight of that brave show,
It made my very heart within me dance,
To think that thou thy proud foot shouldst advance
Forward so far into the mighty sea;
Joy was it and exultation to behold
Thine ancient standard's rich emblazonry,
A glorious picture by the wind unrolled.

ON A PICTURE AT MADRID.

BY MURILLO.

With what calm power thou risest on the wind;
Mak'st thou a pinion of those locks unshorn?
Or of that dark blue robe which floats behind
In ample folds? or art thou cloud-upborne?

A crescent moon is bent beneath thy feet,
Above the heavens expand, and tier o'er tier
With heavenly garlands thy advance to greet,
The cloudy throng of cherubim appear.

There is a glory round thee, and mine eyes
Are dazzled, for I know not whence it came,
Since never in the light of western skies
The island-clouds burned with so pure a flame:

Nor were those flowers of our dull common mould,
But nurtured on some amaranthine bed,
Nearer the sun, remote from storms and cold,
By purer dews and warmer breezes fed.

Well may we be perplexed and sadly wrought,
That we can guess so ill what dreams were thine
Ere from the chambers of thy silent thought
That face looked out on thee, Painter divine.

What innocence, what love, what loveliness,
What purity must have familiar been
Unto thy soul, before it could express
The holy beauty in that visage seen!

And so, if we would understand thee right,
And the diviner portion of thine art,
We must exalt our spirits to thine height,
Nor wilt thou else the mystery impart.

A LEGEND OF ALHAMBRA.

O hymned in many a poet's strain,
Alhambra, by enchanter's hand
Exalted on this throne of Spain,
A marvel of the land;

The last of thy imperial race,
Alhambra, when he overstept
Thy portal's threshold, turned his face,
He turned his face and wept.

In sooth it was a thing to weep,
If then, as now, the level plain
Beneath was spreading like the deep,
The broad unruffled main:

If, like a watch-tower of the sun,
Above the Alpujarras rose,
Streaked, when the dying day was done,
With evening's roseate snows.

Thy founts yet make a pleasant sound,
And the twelve lions, couchant yet,
Sustain their ponderous burden, round
The marble basin set.

But never, when the moon is bright
O'er hill and golden-sanded stream,
And thy square turrets in the light
And taper columns gleam,

Will village maiden dare to fill
Her pitcher from that basin wide,
But rather seeks a niggard rill
Far down the steep hill-side!

It was an Andalusian maid,
With rose and pink-enwoven hair,
Who told me what the fear that stayed
Their footsteps from that stair:

How, rising from that watery floor,
A Moorish maiden, in the gleam
Of the wan moonlight, stands before
The stirrer of the stream:

And mournfully she begs the grace,
That they would speak the words divine,
And, sprinkling water in her face,
Would make the sacred sign.

And whosoe'er will grant this boon,
Returning with the morrow's light,
Shall find the fountain-pavement strewn
With gold and jewels bright:

A regal gift! for once, they say,
Her father ruled this broad domain,
The last who kept beneath his sway
This pleasant place of Spain.

It surely is a fearful doom,
That one so beautiful should have
No present quiet in her tomb,
No hope beyond the grave.

It must be that some amulet
Doth make all human pity vain,
Or that upon her brow is set
The silent seal of pain,

Which none can meet—else long ago,
Since many gentle hearts are there,
Some spirit, touched by joy or woe,
Had answered to her prayer.

But so it is, that till this hour
That mournful child beneath the moon
Still rises from her watery bower,
To urge this simple boon—

To beg, as all have need of grace,
That they would speak the words divine,
And, sprinkling water in her face,
Would make the sacred sign.

SONNET.

[It may be that our homeward longings made]

It may be that our homeward longings made
That other lands were judged with partial eyes;
But fairer in my sight the mottled skies,
With pleasant interchange of sun and shade,
And more desired the meadow and deep glade
Of sylvan England, green with frequent showers,
Than all the beauty which the vaunted bowers
Of the parched South have in mine eyes displayed;
Fairer and more desired!—this well might be,
For let the South have beauty's utmost dower,
And yet my heart might well have turned to thee,
My home, my country, when a delicate flower
Within thy pleasant borders was for me
Tended, and growing up through sun and shower.

RECOLLECTIONS OF BURGOS.

Most like some agëd king it seemed to me,
Who had survived his old regality,
Poor and deposed, but keeping still his state
In all he had before of truly great;
With no vain wishes and no vain lament,
But his enforcëd leisure well content
To soothe with meditation, books and prayer:
For all was sober and majestic there—
The old Castilian, with close finger tips
Pressing his folded mantle to his lips;
The dim cathedral's cross-surmounted pile,
With carved recess, and cool and shadowy aisle,
The walks of poplar by the river's side,
That wound by many a straggling channel wide;
And seats of stone, where one might sit and weave
Visions, till well-nigh tempted to believe
That life had few things better to be done,
And many worse, than sitting in the sun
To lose the hours, and wilfully to dim
Our half-shut eyes, and veil them till might swim
The pageant by us, smoothly as the stream
And unremembered pageant of a dream.

A castle crowned a neighbouring hillock's crest,
But now the moat was level with the rest;

And all was fallen of this place of power,
All heaped with formless stone, save one round tower
And here and there a gateway low and old,
Figured with antique shape of warrior bold.
And then behind this eminence the sun
Would drop serenely, long ere day was done;
And one who climbed that height, might see again
A second setting o'er the fertile plain
Beyond the town, and glittering in his beam,
Wind far away that poplar-skirted stream.

A LEGEND OF TOLEDO.

Far down below the Christian captives pine
In dungeon depths, and whoso dares to bring
Assuagements for their wounds, or food, or wine,
Must brave the fiercest vengeance of the king.

Richly is spread above the royal board,
The palace windows blaze with festal light,
And many a lady, many a Moorish lord,
The morning's triumph celebrate at night.

But could they all without remorse or fear
Feast, as although on earth were to be found
No hunger to appease, no want to cheer,
No dark and hopeless places underground?

Neither of knight or captain is it told
That he was shamed at heart to do this thing;
One only was there, pitiful and bold—
A maiden, daughter of this impious king.

Three times the beauteous messenger of grace
She, passing to the dungeon from the hall,
Shone like an angel in that gloomy place,
And brought relief to some, and hope to all.

But envious eyes were on her, and her sire,
Upon her way encountering unawares
Her passing thither the fourth time, in ire
Bid show what hidden in her lap she bears.

Thus, willing to condemn her in the sight
Of all, he spake: she tremblingly obeyed,
When, if old legends speak the truth aright,
Flowers filled her lap,—these only it displayed:

Roses and pinks and lilies there were found,
Marvel to her and them who saw the same;
All sweetest flowers that grow from earthly ground,
But nothing that might bring rebuke or blame.

Whate'er is sown in love—the lowliest deed—
Shall bloom and be a flower in Paradise;
Yet springs not often from that precious seed
Harvest so prompt as this before our eyes.

But afterward how rescued from the court,
And from a faith which cannot save or bless,
To far-off hermitage she made resort,
A saintly dweller in the wilderness,

Her story, pictured on a cloister wall
In old Toledo, gives us not to know:
This only there appears, and this is all
We need to ask, whether of weal or woe—

That unto her who was in mercy bold,
Was given the knowledge of a faith divine:
For there in death we see her, and her hold
Is on the Cross, salvation's blessëd sign.

AN INCIDENT VERSIFIED.

Far in the south there is a jutting ledge
Of rocks, scarce peering o'er the water's edge,
Where earliest come the fresh Atlantic gales,
That in their course have filled a thousand sails,
And brushed for leagues and leagues the Atlantic deep,
Till now they make the nimble spirit leap
Beneath their lifeful and renewing breath,
And stir it like the ocean depths beneath.
Two that were strangers to that sunny land,
And to each other, met upon this strand;
One seemed to keep so slight a hold of life,
That when he willed, without the spirit's strife,
He might let go—not as sometimes we see
Lean o'er a precipice an agëd tree,
Whose gnarlëd roots grow barer day by day,
For aye the strong rains falling wash away
Some portion of the black and scanty mould
That clung around them; yet they keep their hold,
And like a dead man's fingers seem to clasp
The bare earth with an agonizing grasp—
He rather was a flower upon a ledge
Of verdant meadow by a river's edge,
Which softly loosens with its treacherous flow
In gradual lapse the moistened soil below;
While to the last in beauty and in bloom
That flower is scattering incense o'er its tomb,

And with the dews upon it, and the breath
Of the fresh morning round it, sinks to death.

They met the following day, and many more
They paced together this low ridge of shore,
Till one fair eve, the other with intent
To lure him out, unto his chamber went;
But straight retired again with noiseless pace,
For with a subtle gauze flung o'er his face
Upon his bed he lay, serene and still
And quiet, even as one who takes his fill
Of a delight he does not fear to lose.
So blest he seemed, the other could not choose
To wake him, but went down the narrow stair;
And when he met an aged attendant there,
She ceased her work to tell him, when he said,
Her patient then on happy slumber fed,
But that anon he would return once more,—
Her inmate had expired an hour before.

I know not by what chance he thus was thrown
On a far shore, untended and alone,
To live or die; for as I after learned,
There were in England many hearts that yearned
To know his safety, and such tears were shed
For him as grace the living and the dead.

SONNET.

[The commonest spot we cannot without pain]

The commonest spot we cannot without pain
Relinquish, where we tarried but a day,
And struck no roots, when to our hearts we say,
We ne'er shall look upon this spot again;
What wonder then if I can not restrain
Some sadness, turning from these haunts away,
Where we have many a month been free to stray
By verdant stream, o'er hill or pleasant plain—
A momentary sadness, yet which brings
Thanksgiving with it, gratitude for this,
That where we live, we cannot choose but love;
We make a friend of nature, until bliss
(Few guess how much), we daily, hourly prove
From the known aspect of familiar things.

ON LEAVING ROME.

ADDRESSED TO A FRIEND RESIDING IN THAT CITY.

O lately written in the roll of friends,
O written late, not last, three happy months
Under the shadow of the Capitol,
A pleasant time, made pleasanter by thee,
It has been mine to live—three months of spring,
Which pleasant in themselves and for thy sake,
Had yet this higher, that they stirred in the heart
The motions of continual thankfulness
For me, considering by what gracious paths
I had been guided, by what paths of love,
Since I was last a dweller in these gates.
That meditation could not prove to me
But as a spring that ever bubbles up,
Sparkling in the face of heaven, while every day
Reminded me how little of delight
I gathered from this wondrous city then,
But what a rare and ample gladness now.

For though not then indifferent to me
Nature or Art, yea rather though from these
I drew whatever lightened for a while
Life's burden and intolerable load;
Yet seldom could I gather heart enough,
With all their marvels round me, to go forth

In quest of any. But some lonely spot,
Some ridge of ruin fringed with cypresses,
Such as have everywhere so loved to make
Their chosen home, more than all other trees,
'Mid the fall'n structures of imperial Rome,
Me did such haunt please better; or I loved,
With others whom a like disquietude,
At the like crisis of their lives, now kept
Restless, with them to question to and fro
And to debate the evil of the world,
As though we bore no portion of that ill,
As though with subtle phrases we could spin
A woof to screen us from life's undelight:
Sometimes prolonging far into the night
Such talk, as loth to separate, and find
Each in his solitude how vain are words,
When that which is opposed to them is more.

I would not live that time again for worlds,
Full of rebellious askings, for what end,
And by what power, without our own consent,
Caught in this snare of life we knew not how,
We were placed here, to suffer and to sin,
To be in misery and know not why.
Yet so it fared with me, a sojourner,
Five years ago, beneath these mouldering walls,
As I am now; and, trusted friend, to thee
I have not doubted to reveal my soul,
For thou hast known, if I may read aright
The pages of thy past existence, thou
Hast known the dreary sickness of the soul,
Which falls upon us in our lonely youth,
The fear of all bright visions leaving us,
The sense of emptiness, without the sense

Of an abiding fulness anywhere;
When all the generations of mankind,
With all their purposes, their hopes and fears,
Seem nothing truer than those wandering shapes
Cast by a trick of light upon a wall,
And nothing different from these, except
In their capacity for suffering;—
That fearful moment of our youth, when first
We have the sense of sin, and none as yet
Of expiation. Our own life seemed then
But as an arrow flying in the dark
Without an aim; a most unwelcome gift,
Which we might not put by.

But now, what God
Intended as a blessing and a boon
We have received as such; and we can say
A solemn yet a joyful thing is life,
Which, being full of duties, is for this
Of gladness full, and full of lofty hopes.
And He has taught us what reply to make
Or secretly in spirit, or in words,
If there be need, when sorrowing men complain
The fair illusions of their youth depart,
All things are going from them, and to-day
Is emptier of delights than yesterday,
Even as to-morrow will be barer yet;
We have been taught to feel this need not be,
This is not life's inevitable law,—
But that the gladness we are called to know,
Is an increasing gladness; that the soil
Of the human heart, tilled rightly, will become
Richer and deeper, fitter to bear fruit
Of an immortal growth, from day to day,
Fruit of love, life, and indeficient joy.

Oh! not for baneful self-complacency,
Not for the setting up our present selves
To triumph o'er our past (worst pride of all),
May we compare this present with that past;
But to provoke renewed acknowledgments,
But to incite unto an earnest hope
For all our brethren. And how should I fear
To own to thee that this is in my heart,
This longing—that it leads me home to-day,
Glad even while I turn my back on Rome,
Yet half unseen—its arts, its memories,
Its glorious fellowship of living men;
Glad in the hope to tread the soil again
Of England, where our place of duty lies:—
Yet not as though we deemed we could do much,
Or claimed large sphere of action for ourselves;
Not in this thought—since rather be it ours,
Both thine and mine, to ask for that calm frame
Of spirit, in which we know and deeply feel
How little is the most which we can do,
Yet leave not so that little unfulfilled.

RETURNING HOME.

To leave unseen so many a glorious sight,
To leave so many lands unvisited,
To leave so many worthiest books unread,
Unrealized so many visions bright;—
Oh! wretched yet inevitable spite
Of our brief span, that we must yield our breath,
And wrap us in the unfeeling coil of death,
So much remaining of unproved delight.
But hush, my soul, and vain regrets, be stilled;
Find rest in Him who is the complement
Of whatsoe'er transcends our mortal doom,
Of baffled hope and unfulfilled intent;
In the clear vision and aspèct of whom
All longings and all hopes shall be fulfilled.

LINES

SUGGESTED BY A PICTURE OF THE ADORATION OF THE MAGIANS.

Little pomp or earthly state
On his lowly steps might wait;
Few the homages and small,
That the guilty earth at all
Was permitted to accord
To her King and hidden Lord:
Therefore do we set more store
On these few, and prize them more:
Dear to us for this account
Is the glory of the Mount,
When bright beams of light did spring
Through the sackcloth covering,
Rays of glory forced their way
Through the vesture of decay,
With which, as with a cloak, He had
His divinest splendour clad:
Dear the lavish ointment shed
On his feet and sacred head;
And the high-raised hopes sublime,
And the triumph of the time,
When through Zion's streets the way
Of her peaceful conqueror lay,
Who, fulfilling ancient fame,
Meek and with salvation came.

But of all this scanty state
That upon his steps might wait,
Dearest are these Eastern Kings,
With their far-brought offerings.
From what region of the morn
Are ye come, thus travel-worn,
With those boxes pearl-embossed,
Caskets rare and gifts of cost?
While your swart attendants wait
At the stable's outer gate,
And the camels lift their head
High above the lowly shed;
Or are seen a long-drawn train,
Winding down into the plain,
From beyond the light-blue line
Of the hills in distance fine.
Dear for your own sake, whence are ye
Dearer for the mystery
That is round you?—on what skies
Gazing, saw you first arise
Through the darkness that clear star
Which has marshalled you so far,
Even unto this strawy tent,
Dancing up the Orient?
Shall we name you Kings indeed,
Or is this an idle creed?—
Kings of Seba, with the gold
And the incense long foretold?
Would the Gentile world by you
First-fruits pay of tribute due;
Or have Israel's scattered race,
From their unknown hiding-place,
Sent to claim their part and right
In the Child new-born to-night?

But although we may not guess
Of your lineage, not the less
We the self-same gifts would bring,
For a spiritual offering.
May the frankincense, in air
As it climbs, instruct our prayer,
That it ever upward tend,
Ever struggle to ascend,
Leaving earth, yet ere it go
Fragrance rich diffuse below.
As the myrrh is bitter-sweet,
So in us may such things meet,
As unto the mortal taste
Bitter seeming, yet at last
Shall to them who try be known
To have sweetness of their own—
Tears for sin, which sweeter far
Than the world's mad laughters are;
Desires, that in their dying give
Pain, but die that we may live.
And the gold from Araby—
Fitter symbol who could see
Of the love, which, thrice refined,
Love to God and to our kind,
Duly tendered, He will call
Choicest sacrifice of all?

Thus so soon as, far apart
From the proud world, in our heart,
As in stable dark defiled,
There is born the Eternal Child,
May to Him the spirit's kings
Yield their choicest offerings;

May Affections, Reason, Will
Wait upon Him to fulfil
His behests, and early pay
Homage to his natal day.

TO SILVIO PELLICO.

ON READING THE STORY OF HIS IMPRISONMENT.

Ah! who may guess, that yet was never tried,
How fearful the temptation to reply
With wrong for wrong, yea fiercely to defy
In spirit, even though action is denied?
Therefore praise waits on thee, not drawn aside
By this strong lure of hell—on thee, whose eye
Being formed by love, could everywhere descry
Love, or some workings unto love allied.
And benediction on the grace that dealt
So with thy soul—and prayer, more earnest prayer,
Intenser longing than before we felt
For all that in dark places lying are,
For captives in strange lands, for them who pine
In depth of dungeon, or in sunless mine.

TO THE SAME.

Songs of deliverance compassed thee about,
Long ere thy prison doors were backward flung;
When first thy heart to gentle thoughts was strung,
A song arose in heaven, an angel shout
For one delivered from the hideous rout,
Who with defiance and fierce mutual hate
Do each the other's griefs exasperate.
Thou, loving, from thy grief hadst taken out
Its worst—for who is captive or a slave
But he, who from that dungeon and foul grave,
His own dark soul, refuses to come forth
Into the light and liberty above?
Or whom may we call wretched on this earth
Save only him who has left off to love?

100

TASSO'S DUNGEON, FERRARA.

How might the goaded sufferer in this cell,
With nothing upon which his eyes might fall,
Except this vacant court, that dreary wall,
How might he live? I asked. Here doomed to dwell,
I marvel how at all he could repel
Thoughts which to madness and despair would call.
Enter this vault—the bare sight will appal
Thy spirit, even as mine within me fell,—
Until I learned that wall not always there
Had stood—'twas something that this iron grate
Had once looked out upon a garden fair.
There must have been then here, to calm his brain,
Green leaves, and flowers, and sunshine;—and a weight
Fell from me, and my heart revived again.

101

IN THE TYROL.

No village here so lowly, but hard by
With its green cupola or tapering spire,
Which sunset touches with innocuous fire,
The little church appears, to sanctify
The precincts duly where men live and die—
A middle point, a link connecting well
The earthly habitations where men dwell
With ever-during mansions in the sky.
Why must this fair sight aught but gladness breed?
Why must we ask, the while well satisfied
Both eye and heart upon this prospect feed,—
When shall we see arise on every side
In our great cities populous and wide,
Temples among us, answering our new need?

102

AT BRUNECKEN, IN THE TYROL.

The men who for this earthly life would claim
Well nigh the whole, and if the work of heaven
Be relegated to one day in seven,
Account the other six may without blame,
Unsanctified by one diviner aim,
To self, to mammon, and the world be given,
They with their scanty worship might be driven,
Were they but here, to profitable shame.
This eve, the closing of no festal day,
This common work-day eve, in the open street
Seen have we groups of happy people meet,
Putting for this their toil and tasks away,
Men, women, boys, at one rude shrine to pray,
And there their fervent litanies repeat.

103

TO THE TYROLESE.

Not merely that in you was proved the might
Of men, who standing on their native soil,
Resolve it shall not be an easy spoil,
Do I with triumph and with heart's delight
Recall your deeds here done in hardy fight—
Nor that ye caught the hunter in the toil,
A miserable prey! and made recoil
The hosts of France with loss and hideous flight:
But that ye teach a holier lesson still,
But that in you and in your foe were showed
The strength, the courage, the enduring will,
The glory of the men who lean on God;
The blindness, the defeat, the panic fear
Of them whose only trust is in their sword and spear.

104

A RECOLLECTION OF THE TYROL.

TO---.

A little chapel by a dusty way,
A holy precinct yielding silently
Due admonition to each passer by,
That in all times and places men should pray,
And hallow like a sabbath every day—
Even such an one now haunts my memory,
One of the many that once pleased our eye,
When those Tyrolian mountains round us lay.
Companion of that journey and of life,
If I forgot to make it then my prayer
I make it now, that many such a shrine,
Not far withdrawn, yet separate from the strife,
The turmoil of the world, the haste, the care,
Upon life's longer journey may be thine.

105

SONNET.

IN A PASS OF BAVARIA BETWEEN THE WALCHEN AND THE WALDENSEE.

‘His voice was as the sound of many waters.’

A sound of many waters!—now I know
To what was likened the large utterance sent
By Him who 'mid the golden lampads went:
Innumerable streams, above, below,
Some seen, some heard alone, with headlong flow
Come rushing; some with smooth and sheer descent,
Some dashed to foam and whiteness, but all blent
Into one mighty music. As I go,
The tumult of a boundless gladness fills
My bosom, and my spirit leaps and sings:
Sounds and sights are there of the ancient hills,
The eagle's cry, the mountain when it flings
Mists from its brow; but none of all these things
Like the one voice of multitudinous rills.

106

TO A LADY SINGING.

I

How like a swan, cleaving the azure sky,
The voice upsoars of thy triumphant song,
That whirled awhile resistlessly along
By the great sweep of threatening harmony,
Seemed, overmatched, to struggle helplessly
With that impetuous music; yet ere long
Escaping from the current fierce and strong,
Pierces the clear crystalline vault on high.
And I too am upborne with thee together
In circles ever narrowing, round and round,
Over the clouds and sunshine—who erewhile,
Like a blest bird of charmëd summer weather
In the blue shadow of some foamless isle,
Was floating on the billows of sweet sound.

II

When the mute voice returns from whence it came.
The silence of a momentary awe,
A brief submission to the eternal law
Of beauty doth to every heart proclaim
A Spirit has been summoned; yea, the same
Whose dwelling is the inmost human heart,
Which will not from that home and haunt depart,
Which nothing can quite vanquish or make tame.

107

It is the noblest gift beneath the moon,
The power this awful presence to compel
Out of the lurking places where it lies
Deep hidden and removed from mortal eyes:
Oh reverence thou in fear and cherish well
This privilege of few, this rarest boon.

III

Look! for a season (ah, too brief a space),
While yet the spell is strong upon the rout,
With something of still fear all move about,
As though a breath or motion might displace
The Spirit which had come of heavenly grace
Among them, for a moment to redeem
Their thoughts and passions from the selfish dream
Of earthly life, and its inglorious race.
If we might keep this awe upon us still,
If we might walk for ever in the power
And in the shadow of the mystery,
Which has been spread around us at this hour,
This might suffice to guard us from much ill,
This might go far to keep us pure and free.

IV

But the spell fails, and of the many here,
Who have been won to brief forgetfulness
Of all that would degrade them and oppress,
Who have been carried out of their dim sphere
Of being to realms brighter and more clear,
How few to-morrow will retain a trace,
Which the world's business shall not soon efface,
Of this high mood, this time of reverent fear.

108

In these high raptures there is nothing sure,
Nothing which we can rest on, to sustain
The spirit long, or arm it to endure
Against temptation, weariness, or pain;
And if they promise to preserve it pure
From earthly taint, the promise is in vain.

V

Yet proof is here of men's unquenched desire
That the procession of their lives might be
More equable, majestic, pure and free;
That there are times when all would fain aspire,
And gladly use the helps, to lift them higher,
Which music, poesy, or nature brings,
And think to mount upon these waxen wings,
Not deeming that their strength shall ever tire.
But who indeed shall his high flights sustain,
Who soar aloft and sink not? He alone
Who has laid hold upon that golden chain
Of love, fast linked to God's eternal throne,—
The golden chain from heaven to earth let down
That we might rise by it, nor fear to sink again.

109

[Not Thou from us, O Lord, but we]

Not Thou from us, O Lord, but we
Withdraw ourselves from Thee.

When we are dark and dead,
And Thou art covered with a cloud,
Hanging before Thee, like a shroud,
So that our prayer can find no way,
Oh! teach us that we do not say,
‘Where is thy brightness fled?’

But that we search and try
What in ourselves has wrought this blame,
For Thou remainest still the same,
But earth's own vapours earth may fill
With darkness and thick clouds, while still
The sun is in the sky.

110

SONNET.

[A counsellor well fitted to advise]

A counsellor well fitted to advise
In daily life, and at whose lips no less
Men may inquire or nations, when distress
Of sudden doubtful danger may arise,
Who, though his head be hidden in the skies,
Plants his firm foot upon our common earth,
Dealing with thoughts which everywhere have birth,—
This is the poet, true of heart and wise:
No dweller in a baseless world of dream,
Which is not earth nor heaven: his words have past
Into man's common thought and week-day phrase;
This is the poet, and his verse will last.
Such was our Shakespeare once, and such doth seem
One who redeems our later gloomier days.

111

SONNET.

[Me rather may to tears unbidden move]

Me rather may to tears unbidden move
The meanest print that on a cottage wall
Some ancient deed heroic doth recall,
Or loving act of His, whose life was love,
Than that my heart should be too proud to prove
Emotions and sweet sympathies, until
The magic of some mighty master's skill
Calls hues and shapes of wonder from above
Since if we do no idle homage pay
To what in art most beautiful is found,
We shall have learned to feel in that same hour
With man's most rude and most unskilled essay
To win the beauty that is floating round,
Into abiding forms of grace and power.

112

SONNET,

CONNECTED WITH THE FOREGOING.

[Yes, and not otherwise, if we in deed]

Yes, and not otherwise, if we in deed
And with pure hearts are seeking what is fair
In Nature, then, believe, we shall not need
Long anxious quests, exploring earth and air,
Ere we shall find wherewith our hearts to feed:
The beauty that is scattered everywhere
Will in our souls such deep contentment breed,
We shall not pine for aught remote or rare.
We shall not ask from some transcendent height
To gaze on such rare scenes as may surpass
Earth's common shows, ere we will own delight.
We shall not need in quest of these to roam,
While sunshine lies upon our English grass,
And dewdrops glitter on green fields at home.

113

ENGLAND.

Peace, Freedom, Happiness, have loved to wait
On the fair islands, fenced by circling seas;
And ever of such favoured spots as these
Have the wise dreamers dreamed, who would create
That perfect model of a happy state,
Which the world never saw. Oceana,
Utopia such, and Plato's isle that lay
Westward of Gades and the Great Sea's gate.
Dreams are they all, which yet have helped to make
That underneath fair polities we dwell,
Though marred in part by envy, faction, hate—
Dreams which are dear, dear England, for thy sake,
Who art indeed that sea-girt citadel,
And nearest image of that perfect state.

114

THE ISLAND OF MADEIRA.

Though never axe until a later day
Assailed thy forests' huge antiquity,
Yet elder Fame had many tales of thee—
Whether Phœnician shipman, far astray,
Had brought uncertain notices away
Of islands dreaming in the middle sea;
Or that man's heart, which struggles to be free
From the old worn-out world, had never stay,
Till, for a place to rest on, it had found
A region out of ken, that happier isle,
Which the mild ocean-breezes blow around;
Where they who thrice upon this mortal stage
Had kept their hands from wrong, their hearts from guile,
Should come at length, and live a tearless age.

115

POLAND, 1831.

The nations may not be trod out, and quite
Obliterated from the world's great page—
The nations that have filled from age to age
Their place in story. They who in despite
Of this, a people's first and holiest right,
In lust of unchecked power, or brutal rage,
Against a people's life such warfare wage,
With man no more, but with the Eternal fight.
They who break down the barriers He hath set,
Break down what would another time defend
And shelter their own selves; they who forget
(For the indulgence of the present will)
The lasting ordinances, in the end
Will rue their work, when ill shall sanction ill.

116

TO NICHOLAS, EMPEROR OF RUSSIA.

ON HIS REPORTED CONDUCT TOWARDS THE POLES.

What would it help to call thee what thou art?
When all is spoken, thou remainest still
With the same power and the same evil will
To crush a nation's life out, to dispart
All holiest ties, to turn awry and thwart
All courses that kind nature keeps, to spill
The blood of noblest veins, to maim, or kill
With torture of slow pain the aching heart.
When our weak hands hang useless, and we feel
Deeds cannot be, who then would ease his breast
With the impotence of words? But our appeal
Is unto Him who counts a nation's tears,
With whom are the oppressor and opprest,
And vengeance, and the recompensing years.

117

FRANCE, 1834.

How long shall weary nations toil in blood,
How often roll the still returning stone
Up the sharp painful height, ere they will own
That on the base of individual good,
Of virtue, manners, and pure homes endued
With household graces—that on this alone
Shall social freedom stand—where these are gone
There is a nation doomed to servitude?
O suffering, toiling France, thy toil is vain!
The irreversible decree stands sure,
Where men are selfish, covetous of gain,
Heady and fierce, unholy and impure,
Their toil is lost, and fruitless all their pain;
They cannot build a work which shall endure.

118

ODE TO SLEEP.

I cannot veil mine eyelids from the light;
I cannot turn away
From this insulting and importunate day,
That momently grows fiercer and more bright,
And wakes the hideous hum of monstrous flies
In my vexed ear, and beats
On the broad panes, and like a furnace heats
The chamber of my rest, and bids me rise.

I cannot follow thy departing track,
Nor tell in what far meadows, gentle Sleep,
Thou art delaying. I would win thee back,
Were mine some drowsy potion, or dull spell,
Or charmëd girdle, mighty to compel
Thy heavy grace; for I have heard it said,
Thou art no flatterer, thou dost only keep
In kingly haunts, leaving unvisited
The poor man's lowlier shed;
And when the day is joyless, and its task
Unprofitable, I were fain to ask,
Why thou wilt give it such an ample space,
Why thou wilt leave us such a weary scope
For memory, and for that which men call hope;
Nor wind in one embrace
Sad eve and night forlorn
And undelightful morn.

119

If with the joyous were thine only home,
I would not so far wrong thee, as to ask
This boon, or summon thee from happier task.
But no,—for then thou wouldst too often roam,
And find no rest; for me, I cannot tell
What tearless lids there are, where thou mightst dwell:
I know not any unenthralled of sorrow,
I know not one, to whom this joyous morrow,
So full of living motion new and bright,
Will be a summons to secure delight.
And thus I shall not wrong thee, though I claim
Awhile thy presence.—O mysterious Sleep,
Some call thee shadow of a mightier Name,
And whisper how that nightly thou dost keep
A roll and count for Him.—
Then be thou on my spirit like his presence dim.

Yet if my limbs were heavy with sweet toil,
I had not needed to have wooed thy might,
But till thy timely flight
Had lain securely in thy peaceful coil;
Or if my heart were lighter, long ago
Had crushed the dewy morn upon the sod,
That darkened where I trod,
As was my pleasure once, but now it is not so.

And therefore am I seeking to entwine
A coronal of poppies for my head,
Or wreathe it with a wreath engarlanded
By Lethe's slumberous waters. Oh! that mine
Were some dim chamber turning to the north,
With latticed casement bedded deep in leaves,
That opening with sweet murmur might look forth

120

On quiet fields from broad o'erhanging eaves;
And ever when the Spring its garland weaves,
Were darkened with encroaching ivy-trail
And jaggëd vine-leaves' shade;
And all its pavement starred with blossoms pale
Of jasmine, when the wind's least stir was made;
Where the sunbeam was verdurous-cool, before
It wound into that quiet nook, to paint
With interspace of light and colour faint
That tessellated floor.

How pleasant were it there in dim recess,
In some close-curtained haunt of quietness,
To hear no tones of human pain and care,
Our own or others'; little heeding there,
If morn, or noon, or night
Pursued their weary flight,
But musing what an easy thing it were
To mix our opiates in a larger cup,
And drink, and not perceive
Sleep deepening lead his truer kinsman up,
Like undistinguished Night, darkening the skirts of Eve.

121

SONNET.

[What is thy worship but a vain pretence]

What is thy worship but a vain pretence,
Spirit of beauty, and a servile trade,
A poor and an unworthy traffic made
With the most sacred gifts of soul and sense;
If they who tend thine altars, gathering thence
No strength, no purity, may still remain
Selfish and dark, and from life's sordid stain
Find in their ministrations no defence?
—Thus many times I ask, when aught of mean
Or sensual has been brought unto mine ear,
Of them whose calling high is to insphere
Eternal beauty in forms of human art—
Vexed that my soul should ever moved have been
By that which had such falsehood at the heart.

122

ATLANTIS.

I could loose my boat
And could bid it float
Where the idlest wind should pilot,
So its glad course lay
From this earth away,
Toward any untrodden islet.

For this earth is old,
And its heart is cold,
And the palsy of age has bound it;
And my spirit frets
For the viewless nets
Which are hourly clinging round it.

And with joyful glee
We have heard of thee,
Thou Isle in mid-ocean sleeping;
And thy records old,
Which the Sage has told
How the Memphian tombs are keeping.

But we know not where,
'Neath the desert air,
To look for the pleasant places
Of the youth of Time,
Whose austerer prime
The haunts of his childhood effaces.

123

Like the golden flowers
Of the western bowers,
Have waned their immortal shadows;
And no harp may tell
Where the asphodel
Clad in light those Elysian meadows.

And thou, fairest Isle
In the daylight's smile,
Hast thou sunk in the boiling ocean,
While beyond thy strand
Rose a mightier land
From the wave in alternate motion?

Are the isles that stud
The Atlantic flood,
But the peaks of thy tallest mountains,
While repose below
The great waters' flow
Thy towns and thy towers and fountains

Have the Ocean powers
Made their quiet bowers
In thy fanes and thy dim recesses?
Or in haunts of thine
Do the sea-maids twine
Coral wreaths for their dewy tresses?

Or does foot not fall
In deserted hall,
Choked with wrecks that ne'er won their haven
By the ebb trailed o'er
Thy untrampled floor,
Which their sunken wealth has paven?

124

Oh, appear! appear!
Not as when thy spear
Ruled as far as the broad Egean,
But in Love's own might,
And in Freedom's right,
Till the nations uplift their pæan;

Who now watch and weep,
And their vigil keep,
Till they faint for expectation;
Till their dim eyes shape
Temple, tower, and cape,
From the cloud and the exhalation.

125

SONNET.

[I stood beside a pool, from whence ascended]

I stood beside a pool, from whence ascended,
Mounting the cloudy platforms of the wind,
A stately heron; its soaring I attended,
Till it grew dim, and I with watching blind—
When lo! a shaft of arrowy light descended
Upon its darkness and its dim attire;
It straightway kindled then, and was afire,
And with the unconsuming radiance blended.
And bird, a cloud, flecking the sunny air,
It had its golden dwelling 'mid the lightning
Of those empyreal domes, and it might there
Have dwelt for ever, glorified and bright'ning,
But that its wings were weak—so it became
A dusky speck again, that was a wingëd flame.

126

TO A FRIEND.

Thou that hast travelled far away,
In lands beyond the sea,
Wilt understand me, when I say
What there has come to me.

In chambers dim thou wilt have wrought,
With no one by to cheer,
And trod the downward paths of thought
In solitude and fear;

Nor till the weary day was o'er,
Into the air have fled
From thought, which could delight no more,
From books, whose power was dead;

What time perchance the drooping day
With burning vapours fills
The deep recesses far away
Of all the golden hills:

Or later, when the twilight blends
All hues, or when the moon
Into the ocean depths descends,
A wavering column, down.

127

Then hast not thou in spirit leapt,
Emerging from thy gloom,
Like one who unawares o'erstept
The barriers of a tomb:

And in thine exultation cried—
Of gladness having fill,
And in it being glorified—
‘The world is beauteous still!’

128

THE CONSTITUTIONAL EXILES OF 1823.

Wise are ye in a wisdom vainly sought
Through all the records of the historic page;
It is not to be learned by lengthened age,
Scarce by deep musings of unaided thought.
By suffering and endurance ye have bought
A knowledge of the thousand links that bind
The highest with the lowest of our kind,
And how the indissoluble chain is wrought.
Ye fell by your own mercy once:—beware,
When your lots leap again from fortune's urn,
A heavier error—to be pardoned less:
Yours be it to the nations to declare
That years of pain and disappointment turn
Weak hearts to gall, but wise to gentleness.

1829.

129

TO THE SAME.

Like nightly watchers from a palace tower,
In hope and faith and patience strong to wait
The beacons on the heights, which should relate
How some fenced city of deceit and power
Had fallen—ye have stood for many an hour,
Till your first hope's high movements must be dead,
And if with new ye have not cheered and fed
Your bosoms, dim despair may be your dower.
Yet not for all—though yet no fire may crest
The mountains, or light up their beacons sere—
Your eminent commission so far wrong,
Nor so much flatter the oppressors' rest,
As to give o'er your watching, for so long
As ye shall hope, 'tis reason they must fear.

1829.

130

DESPONDENCY.

It is a weary hill
Of moving sand that still
Shifts, struggle as we will,
Beneath our tread:
Of those who went before,
And tracked the desert o'er,
The footmarks are no more,
But gone and fled.

We stray to either side,
We wander far and wide,
We fall to sleep and slide
Far down again:
As through the sand we wade,
We do not seek to aid
Our fellows, but upbraid
Each other's pain.

I gaze on that bright band,
Who on the summit stand,
To order and command,
Like stars on high:
Yet with despairing pace
My way I could retrace,
Or on this desert place
Sink down and die.

131

As we who toil and weep,
And with our weeping steep
The path o'er which we creep,
They had not striven;
They must have taken flight
To that serenest height,
And won it by the might
Of wings from heaven.

Alack! I have no wing,
My spirit lacks that spring,
And Nature will not bring
Her help to me.
From her I have no aid,
But light-enwoven shade.
And stream and star upbraid
Our misery.

132

SAIS.

An awful statue, by a veil half-hid,
At Sais stands. One came, to whom was known
All lore committed to Etruscan stone,
And all strange voices which dull time has chid
To silence now, by antique pyramid,
Skirting the desert, heard; and what the deep
May in its dimly-lighted chambers keep,
Where Genii groan beneath the seal-bound lid.
He dared to raise that yet unlifted veil
With hands not pure, but never might unfold
What there he saw; madness, the shadow, fell
On his few days, ere yet he went to dwell
With night's eternal people, and his tale
Has thus remained, and will remain, untold.

133

THE SPIRIT OF BEAUTY.

[_]

[FROM JUVENILIA.]

Spirit of Beauty, that wast sought of old,
And won to incarnations manifold,
By such as knew that, though like life and fair
The forms they wrought, yet wert thou wanting there,
All were but corpses, doomed to fall away
From their first shape to formless swift decay;
Who therefore with strong prayer and earnest spell
Strove to enforce thee in the shrines to dwell
Which they were rearing, and built up before
A heart's high altar, from all fields of lore
Neglected or untrodden thereon heaping
Rich odorous sweets, and patient vigil keeping
With undiminished faith that in the end
A quickening spark would on that heap descend—
'Tis thou that giv'st whatever is its worth,
Thou art the incense that doth sweeten earth,
And thy outpouring, as of chancel wine,
Can make the meanest goblet most divine;
And though from marshy grounds low mists arise,
And we ourselves would sometimes veil our eyes
Against thee, still upon our fear and doubt
And darkness thou persistest to look out,

134

And smilest on our solitary need,
Till we are reassured, and onward speed.

Yet looking out upon this life of ours,
And all that would lay waste our pleasant bowers,
Times are there when I could stand still in fear,
Mute and almost expecting I should hear
From hill and meadow, spring and waterfall,
Oracular cave and forest, and from all
Of thine wherein we glory and rejoice
And have our life, an universal voice
As of departing Pan; and thence this earth
Should be as drear as some extinguished hearth,
And we should wonder that the old delight,
The triumph and traditionary might,
Had passed from story and from ancient song,
Which moved no more than some forgotten tongue,
And from the face and from the voice of woman,
And all things which are beautiful and human;
Not understanding that ourselves had wrought
This desolation, this bereavement brought
On us and ours. But oh! if this belief
Be but the mournful shaping of our grief,
If in our heart of hearts thou yet dost dwell,
Though in a foe-encompassed citadel,
And from that fortress issuing wilt regain
One day the limits of thine old domain,
Gathering e'en now high hopes, which undefeated
To their last ark of refuge have retreated,
Oh let them bear thy banner, those who feel
That only in thy service lies their weal,
And that to flee thee is despair and woe,
Though 'tis most hard to follow; and who know

135

That thee once seen we evermore must seek
With love untiring, or thou else wilt wreak
Worse than Diana's wrath on him who sees
Thy beauty unattired, and after flees;
Nor wots he can be only at thy side
And in thy recognition glorified.

136

YOUNG POETS.

[_]

[FROM THE SAME.]

I could believe that unto such the world
Is like an antique scroll, newly unfurled,
And all o'erwrit with charactery strange,
Whose very letters wax and wane and change;
And as by painful toil 'tis understood,
Much evil is decyphered, little good,
Strange dooms and destinies; and for what is told
In symbol mute and hieroglyphic old,
They look abroad, and seek the counterpart
Vainly in nature, man, and their own heart,
And are as lutes untuned; yet meanwhile wake,
As might a lute, though string by string should break,
Tones of strange potency o'er all who know
Or understand a shadow of their woe.
But this must end; and they their resting have
In the secure sleep of the quiet grave,
Or time interprets what was strange before,
And Nature teaches them her holiest lore,
And shows them in their art a golden key
Unto the temple of her mystery;
Till, like magicians potent to compel
The ministers that hate them to their spell,
They reinvoke and subject to their strain
Even their own past disquietude and pain,

137

Wresting from these the secret of their power,
Till their own woe and weakness is a dower
Of strength to others, and themselves have made
Even of the loads which on their spirits weighed
And bowed to earth, and would have crushed them there,
Steps to ascend, and a majestic stair,
Leading to platforms of intenser seeing,
More ample prospect, and serener being.

138

THE HEALING OF THE WATERS.

[_]

2 KINGS II. 19—22.

A bitter barren-making stream
The tears that flowed for sin,
Till the great Prophet came, and cast
Salt from the new cruise in.

Yet staunched he not the waters so—
That they should flow no more:
He healed their springs, then bid them run
As freely as before:

He healed their source, and well has proved
His word not given in vain,
That now they never should bring death
Nor barrenness again.

139

SONNET.

[The moments which we rescue and redeem]

The moments which we rescue and redeem
From the bare desert and the waste of years,
To fertilize, it may be with our tears,
Yet so that for time after they shall teem
With better than rank weeds, and wear a gleam
Of visionary light, and on the wind
Shed odours from the fields long left behind,
These and their fruit to us can never seem
Indifferent things; and therefore do I look
Not without gentle sadness upon thee,
And liken thy outgoing, O my Book,
To the impatience of a little brook,
Which might with flowers have lingered pleasantly,
Yet toils to perish in the mighty sea.

140

THE KINGDOM OF GOD.

I say to thee, do thou repeat
To the first man thou mayest meet
In lane, highway, or open street—

That he and we and all men move
Under a canopy of love,
As broad as the blue sky above;

That doubt and trouble, fear and pain
And anguish, all are shadows vain,
That death itself shall not remain;

That weary deserts we may tread,
A dreary labyrinth may thread,
Through dark ways underground be led;

Yet, if we will one Guide obey,
The dreariest path, the darkest way
Shall issue out in heavenly day;

And we, on divers shores now cast,
Shall meet, our perilous voyage past,
All in our Father's house at last.

And ere thou leave him, say thou this
Yet one word more—they only miss
The winning of that final bliss

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Who will not count it true, that Love,
Blessing, not cursing, rules above,
And that in it we live and move.

And one thing further make him know,
That to believe these things are so,
This firm faith never to forego,

Despite of all which seems at strife
With blessing, all with curses rife,
That this is blessing, this is life.

142

[Some murmur, when their sky is clear]

Some murmur, when their sky is clear
And wholly bright to view,
If one small speck of dark appear
In their great heaven of blue:
And some with thankful love are filled,
If but one streak of light,
One ray of God's good mercy gild
The darkness of their night.

In palaces are hearts that ask,
In discontent and pride,
Why life is such a dreary task,
And all good things denied:
And hearts in poorest huts admire
How Love has in their aid,
Love that not ever seems to tire,
Such rich provision made.

143

ON AN EARLY DEATH.

Ah me! of them from whom the good have hope,
Of them whom Virtue for her liegemen claims
How many the world tames,
That with its evil they quite cease to cope,
And their first fealty sworn to beauty and truth
Break early; and amid their sinful youth
Make shipwreck of all high and glorious aims.
How few the fierce and fiery trial stand,
To be as weapons tempered and approved
For an Almighty hand;
How few of all the streamlets that were moved,
Do ever unto clearness run again;
And therefore is it marvellous to us,
When of these weapons one is broken thus,
When of these fountains one would seem in vain
Renewed in clearness, and is staunched before
It has had leave to spread fresh streams the desert o'er

Ah me! that by so frail and slight a thread
Our life is holden—that not life alone,
But all that life has won
May in one hour be gathered to the dead;
The slow additions that build up the mind,
The skill that through temptation we have bought
And suffering, and whatever has been taught

144

By lengthened years and converse with our kind,
That all may cease together; and the tree
Reared to its height by many a slow degree,
And by the dews, the sunshine, and the showers
Of many springs, an instant may lay low,
With all its living towers,
And all the fruit mature of growth and slow,
Which on the trees of wisdom leisurely must grow
Alas! it is another thing to wail,
That when the foremost runners sink and fail,
They cannot pass their torch or forward place
To them that are behind them in the race;
But their extinguished torches must be laid
Together with them in the dust of death:
That when the wise and the true-hearted fade,
So little of themselves they can bequeath
To us, who yet are in the race of life,
For travail and for toil, for weariness and strife.

—But from behind the veil,
Where they are entered who have gone before,
A solemn voice arrests my feeble wail—
And has thy life such worthier aims, O man,
That thou shouldst grudge to give its little span
To truth and knowledge, and faith's holy lore,
Because the places for the exercise
Of these may be withdrawn from mortal eyes?
Win truth, win goodness—for which man was made,
And fear not thou of these to be bereft,
Fear not that these shall in the dust be laid,
Or in corruption left,
Or be the grave-worm's food.
Nothing is left or lost, nothing of good
Or lovely; but whatever its first springs

145

Has drawn from God, returns to Him again;
That only which 'twere misery to retain
Is taken from you, which to keep were loss;
Only the scum, the refuse, and the dross
Are borne away unto the grave of things;
Meanwhile whatever gifts from heaven descend,
Thither again have flowed,
To the receptacle of all things good,
From whom they come, and unto whom they tend,
Who is the First and Last, the Author and the End.
Nor dare to sorrow with increase of grief,
When they who go before
Go furnished; or because their span was brief,
When in the acquist of what is life's true gage,
Truth, knowledge, and that other worthiest lore,
They had fulfilled already a long age.
For doubt not but that in the worlds above
There must be other offices of love,
That other tasks and ministries there are,
Since it is promised that his servants, there
Shall serve Him still. Therefore be strong, be strong,
Ye that remain, nor fruitlessly revolve,
Darkling, the riddles which ye cannot solve,
But do the works that unto you belong;
Believing that for every mystery,
For all the death, the darkness, and the curse
Of this dim universe,
Needs a solution full of love must be:
And that the way whereby ye may attain
Nearest to this, is not through broodings vain,
And half-rebellious questionings of God,
But by a patient seeking to fulfil
The purpose of his everlasting will,

146

Treading the path which lowly men have trod;
Since it is ever they who are too proud
For this, that are the foremost and most loud
To judge his hidden judgments, these are still
The most perplexed and lost at his mysterious will.

147

SABBATION.

A JEWISH LEGEND.

By the dark mountains guarded well, and on the other side
Of Havila, for gold renowned, a land lies broad and wide.
Four-square it lies—a man at speed might travel every way,
And would not pass from end to end until the ninetieth day.
The mountains with their barriers dark upon three sides enclose
This goodly land, but on the fourth a wondrous river flows;
Between whose banks no water rolls, but rush and roar along
Rocks, stones, and sand, together mixed, with tumult loud and strong;
And higher than the houses' tops huge fragments leap and fly—
But on the holy seventh day it sleepeth quietly.
Sabbation is it therefore named, for on the Sabbath day,
From eve till eve again comes back, the river sleeps alway;
Without a sound or slightest stir that day it doth remain,
But then, the Sabbath done, returns unto its strength again—

148

So fierce that if in middle stream were set an adamant rock,
It would be shattered presently before the furious shock.
By night a two days' journey off its rushing heard may be,
Like thunder, like a mighty wind, or like the roaring sea.

Behind this river dwell secure the children of the race,
Which had on Israel's mountains once their quiet restingplace;
Till to the Assyrian for their sins delivered for a prey,
Who from their soil uprooted them, and planted far away.
But they, when in that foreign land awhile they had remained,
Said,—‘Let us rise and seek some place by idols unprofaned,
Where we, by sore affliction taught, at length may understand,
And keep the law we never kept while in our former land.’
This counsel taking with themselves, and caring not for foes,
And caring not for length of way, nor danger, they arose;
They rose together, and dryshod the great Euphrates passed,
And ever journeying northward reached this goodly land at last—
A goodly land, with all good things their old land knew, supplied,
And all the plagues that vexed them there, for ever turned aside:

149

A land of streams that fear no drought, that never fail to flow,
Of wells not fed by scanty rains, but springing from below;
Where never upon sounding wing advance the locust swarm,
To hide the noon-day sun, and bring to every green thing harm;
Where never from the desert blows the scorching fiery wind,
That breathes o'er fields of flowers, and leaves a wilderness behind:
The early and the latter rain their heavens ne'er refuse,
And what the day burns up, the night repairs with copious dews.
With their own hands they till the ground, and have of nothing lack;
The grain upon their furrows cast a hundredfold gives back,
And twice the cattle on their hills yield increase every year,
And trees that in no other land bear fruit, are laden here.
Not readier on Engedi's steeps the wounded balsam sheds
Its life's blood, and the Indian nard lifts here its spiky heads.
And gardens of delight are theirs; and what is strange elsewhere
Of costly gum or fragrant spice, is counted common there;
No snake or scorpion, fox or dog, nor any beast unclean,
Nor aught that can bring harm to man, through all the land is seen.

150

A little child will feed the flocks in forests far away,
Not fearing man, nor evil beast, nor demon of noon-day.
And theirs the ancient Hebrew tongue, the speech which angels love;
And their true prayers in that are made, and always heard above—
Heard too in doleful worlds below, where at their hours of prayer
The anguish intermits awhile, the hopeless misery there.
And often when a man goes forth in lonely wilds to pray,
An angel then will meet him there, and—Grace be with thee!—say;
No child before his parents' eyes is laid on funeral bier,
And none departs that has not reached his happy hundredth year;
That has not at the least beheld his children's children rise
About his knees, to glad his heart and cheer his failing eyes.
Nor is the life then torn away by rude and painful death,
But Gabriel with a gentle kiss draws out the flitting breath:
And when the soul arrives at last in Paradise, there wait
A crowd of ministering spirits there around its ruby gate;
They put the sordid grave-clothes off, in raiment pure and white
They clothe him, glistening garments spun from glorious clouds of light;
They set two crowns upon his head, of purest gold is one,
The other diadem is wrought of pearl and precious stone:
And giving myrtle in his hand, they praise him, and they say,
‘Go in and eat thy bread henceforth with gladness every day.’

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The day before a child is born, the angel, that is given
To be his guide and guard through life, and lead him safe to heaven,
In spirit takes him where the Blest with light divine are fed,
Each sitting on his golden throne, his crown upon his head;
‘And these,’ he says, ‘are they who loved the law of the Most High,
And such by his eternal grace come hither when they die:
Live thou and be an heir at length through mercy of this grace,
Since thou must for thy warning know there is another place.’
The angel carries then that soul at eventide to hell,
Where the ungodly evermore in painful prison dwell.
‘These wretched once, as thou wilt soon, the breath of life did draw,
And therefore be thou wise betimes, and keep and love the law.’

And if one see his brother sin, or hear him speaking vain
Or evil words, he leaves him not unchidden to remain,
But in just anger says to him, ‘My brother, wilt thou know
That sin upon our fathers brought God's wrath and all their woe?’
And thus doth each one each exhort, in righteousness and fear,
And with true hearts the righteous Lord to honour and revere.

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And them, a people honouring Him, He honours in the sight
Of all their foes, exalting them to power and glorious might.
While they fear none, the fear of them on every land is shed,
That none of all the neighbouring folks dare stir them up for dread—
Well pleased if only they by them may unassailed remain,
And princes far and near send gifts for their goodwill to gain;
And five-and-twenty kings to them appointed tribute pay,
And hands of strength upon the necks of all their foes they lay.
And when their Patriarch rideth forth for pleasure or for state,
A hundred thousand men or more on his outgoing wait;
A hundred thousand horsemen, all in glittering steel arrayed,
Whose trappings all are scarlet dyed, whose banners wide displayed.

At break of morning every day, the noblest of the land
In pomp and solemn state ride forth, a high exulting band,
As though to welcome and to greet and lead in triumph home
Some Royal Stranger, looked-for long, who now at length should come.
With some dejection on their brows at evening they return—
‘Why comes He not? why tarries He until another morn?’

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But soon the shadow from their brows, the gloom has passed away;
And that rejoicing troop goes forth upon the following day—
As high of hope, in all their state, they issue forth again,
Sure that their high-raised hope will not prove evermore in vain;
That He will one day come indeed, and with a mighty hand
Will lead them back to repossess their old, their glorious land.

See the apocryphal 2 Esdras iii. 13, 40-47.

154

TO THE EVENING STAR.

Sole star that glitterest in the crimson west,
‘Fair child of beauty, glorious lamp of love
How cheerfully thou lookest from above,’
With what unblinking eye and jocund crest.
Yet grief from thee has passed into my breast,
For all surpassing glory needs must be
Full unto us of sad perplexity,
Seen from this place of sin and sin's unrest.
Yea, all things which such perfect beauty own
As this of thine is, tempt us unto tears;
For whether thou sole-sittest on thy throne,
Or leadest choral dances of thy peers,
Thou and all nature, saving man alone,
Fulfil with music sweet your Maker's ears.

155

HONOR NEALE.

A grievous wrong it were, and treason done
Unto the common heart of human kind,
By which all live and love, to yield this thought
Place for an instant, that because the griefs
We tell of, are not high and stately woes,
But simple sorrows, pangs of every day,—
Or that because the hearts that owned those griefs
Beat underneath low roofs of cottages,
We therefore shall not win a listening ear;
And in this faith bold am I to relate
The lowly history of a common grief,
A sorrow in which high and low alike
Have equal share, a mother's grief—and this
In words as nearly as may be her own;
For while invention barren proves and old,
Nature is rich and manifold and new.

But this much needful preface to her tale
Let first find place. A little cottage girl
Was Honor Neale; and in the further west
Of Ireland stood her parents' lowly hut:
And there she was a learner for a while,
As God's good hand had ordered, at a school
Where the pure doctrine and the lore of Christ
Were truly taught; and there this little child,
Though slow to learn, yet rendered earnest heed

156

To all she heard; but after some short time,
Before it could be known if that good seed
Sown in her heart would put forth blade and ear,
Her parents, whether of their own accord,
Or urged by some suggestion from without,
Withdrew her, and she laboured in the fields
Beside her father. 'Twas a late wet spring,
And she, of weakly frame, could ill endure
To carry heavy burdens on her back,
As she was tasked to do, till many times
She left her labour, and returning home
Sat down and cried for weariness and pain;
But still her mother, thinking that she made
More of her pains than need was, in the hope
She might be suffered to return to school,
Would sometimes ask her, had she then no mind
To lend her father what small help she could,
On whom the burden of a family
Of many daughters with one only boy
Pressed heavily—and then without a word
She would return unto her work again.
But soon she evidently grew too weak
For toil, and soon too weak to leave the house.
Three years her sickness lasted; in which while,
In a dark corner of the cottage sitting,
Much in her reading she improved herself,
And of her own accord she learnt by heart
Some hymns, with which she solaced lonely hours;
But chiefly was delighted when they came
To visit her, as now they often did,
Who with a lively interest kept in mind
This child, somewhile a pupil in their care.
But if through gracious teaching from on high,
And through that lengthened discipline of pain,

157

In spirit she grew fitter for her change,
In body she grew weaker day by day;
And by degrees her pains had so increased,
That when the tidings came that she was gone,
What could they do, who knew what she endured,
But render hearty thanks for her release?

Willing to speak some comfort if they might
Unto the sorrowing, willing too to learn
How at the last it fared with this poor child,
The friends of whom I speak, not many days
After the tidings reached them of her death,
Knocked at the cottage door yet once again.
Much was the mother at their entrance moved;
For all the past, associated with them,
Came to her mind; but presently she spoke,
And seemed to find much comfort and relief
In talking freely of her child, and all
Her sorrow into sympathizing ears
Outpouring, and abruptly thus began—
‘For months before she died she slept with me,
For I had pains and troubles of my own,
Which would have kept me waking anyhow,
And I was glad the others in the house,
Who had been toiling hard the whole day long,
And could enjoy sound sleep, should have their rest
Unbroken. Often in the dark dark night,
When all the house was quiet, she would say,
If I had risen to move her in the bed
More times than common, or to give her drink,
“Oh, mother, when you used to bid me do
Things which I did not like, how many times
I disobeyed you—I am much afraid
I often vexed and grieved you at the heart.”

158

“No, Honor, you were always a good child,”
I answered, and 'twas nothing more than truth.
Ah, Sir, if she were sitting by my side,
I should not now be praising her this way;
And it is rather I should grieve to think
I did not show more tenderness to her.
For, Honor, had I thought that you and I
Would have to part so soon, I would have been
Much kinder to you. She has lain awake
For hours together, then as if a thought
Suddenly struck her,—“This is not the way
I should be praying. Mother, lift me up,
And set the pillow under my sore knee.”
And then she has continued so, until
Her head grew heavy, and she asked again
To be set down. How often in the night,
When all is quiet in the lonesome house,
I now stretch out my hands and feel about,
Betwixt awake and sleeping, round the bed—
For this now comes of course, and when my hands
Find nothing, feeling round in emptiness,
Oh then it is, or when the dreary light
Of morning comes, my grief sits heaviest on me,
As though my loss were but of yesterday,
So that I scarce have strength to lift my hand,
Or go about the needful work o' the house.
But as the day gets forward, what with tasks
That must be done, and neighbours coming in,
And pleasant light of the sun, and cheerful sounds,
My heart grows somewhat lighter, till the weight
Of all comes back at evening again.

The very day before she died, she said,
“Dear mother, would you lift me in your arms,

159

And carry me this once over the door,
That I might look on the green fields again?”
The day was cold and raw—and I refused,
Till seeing that her mind was set on this,
I wrapped the blanket round her safe and warm;
But when I took her in my arms, it went
Unto my heart—I raised her with such ease!
She had so pined and wasted, that her weight
Was even as nothing; but I bore her out
Into the air, and carried her all round
The clover field, and showed her everything;
And as I brought her back she only said,
Supposing I was wearied with her weight,
“I never shall be asking this again.”

And the last day, the morning that she died,
She was as usual reading in the book
Which had been given her when she quitted school:
Ah! Sir, I have forgotten most of what
Was in that book; but when I call to mind
Its beautiful words, it makes me sad to think
That there was no such learning in my time,
For so I might be reading now myself
The very words that I have heard her read,
And maybe might find comfort for my grief;
I know at least that she found comfort there,
'Twas that which made her happy at the last.
For at the first, when first her pains began,
She could not bear to think that she was dying,
And would grow angry if a neighbour spoke
As though her end was near: and the first time
She was persuaded she could not recover,
“Oh mother,” she cried out in agony,
“Where am I going? Am I going where

160

I never can come back to you again,
And shall I not talk to you any more,
And never sit beside you and look up
Into your face, when you are suffering pain,
And ask what ails you?” Then she would at first
Be at some times impatient in her pains,
And then I could do nothing to her mind.
But for the last months of her life she seemed
To count that each thing was too good for her;
And any little service done to her,
And every little present which was brought
By a kind neighbour, was enough to make
The thankful tears to come into her eyes.
In all your life you never could have seen
One young or old so willing to depart,
Nor yet so ready; 'tis not I alone
Say this, but one who had more right to know.

For 'twas about three weeks before the last,
We saw that there was something on her mind,
And questioning her, she answered that she wished
To see the Priest, and to confess herself
Once more before she died. He came at once,
And was alone with her for near an hour:
And when he just was standing at the door
Ready to mount his horse, I heard him say
Unto some neighbours that were standing by—
“I never saw a happier holier child
Than that is, ready to depart this world.”
But then as he was taking his last leave,
She fixed her eyes upon him with a look
As though she had left something still unsaid.
He asked her,—“Is there anything, dear child,
You have forgotten which you wish to tell?

161

You need not fear to speak before them all.”
“Well, Sir,” she answered, “I was thinking then
'Tis now about three years ago there lived
A little orphan here, and she and I
Were often sent into the fields together
To tend the cows; and when 'twas cold and wet
I many times would run into the house,
That I might ask my mother for some food,
Or warm myself awhile, and did not care
To leave her out alone in all the cold:
I hoped I might have seen her before this,
And have her pardon asked before she died,
For that has ever since been on my mind,
And during all my illness troubling me;
For had she had a mother of her own,
She would have gone to her as stout and bold
As I to mine, and boldly asked of her
All that she wanted.” “You are a happy child,
Dying this way, and grieving so your heart
For such a little sin;” and then he said,
The Priest in all our hearing said, “I wish
That I had died when I was of your age,
So not to have more sin on me than yours
To answer for:”—these were his very words.

But I was saying that the day she died
She had been reading for some little time,
And then complained her eyes were growing dim,
And bade me wipe them. I was just then sweeping
The hearth, and had made up our little fire;
But when I heard her speak this way, I knew
What now was coming; but I wiped her eyes
As she desired—I knew it was no use,
And presently she gave me back the book;

162

“For, mother dear,” she said, “I cannot see
To read a single word;” and just as though
She felt she would not want it any more,
Bade me to place it carefully aside,
And putting on the cover, set it by
In the hand-basket. There was no one else
In all the house, excepting she and me—
The others all were gone unto their work.
And now I knew the time was close at hand,
Which had been drawing on for near three years.
And presently I spoke to her again,
And now she made no answer—only stretched
Her hand out to me. I took hold of it,
But in a moment let it go again,
And lighting the twelve tapers held them there—
It was a custom that my mother had,
When one was dying—so I lighted them,
And being lighted, held them all myself,
For there were none beside me in the house.
But when I saw the breath was leaving her,
I dropped them all, and by her side fell down,
But soon recovering picked them up again,
And held them there till they were all burned down,
And as the last of them was going out
She breathed at the same moment her last breath.

And she is gone, Sir,—but what matter now,
What matter? She was but a little child,
Yet Nature cannot choose but sometimes grieve,
And must have way: why had it only been
A stranger's child I had been rearing thus,
And tending for now nearly fourteen years,
My heart would needs be sad to let her go.
But my own child, my darling Honoreen—

163

Though when I think on all things, I believe
That I am glad He took her to Himself;
It may be I shall follow before long,
For I am a poor weak creature that have seen
Much toil and trouble. Blessed be His Name
That took her first: if I had gone the first,
And left her a poor cripple in the world,
No doubt they would have all been kind to her;
But who is like a mother?—even if they
Had wished it most, they never could have done
What I have done for her; and then at last
She might have wearied all their patience out.
Then blessings be upon His holy Name,
Who called her out of this poor sinful world,
And took her to Himself.

They buried her
Down in the valley in the old churchyard,
Beside the ruined church. I wished to go
And see her laid within her little grave;
'Twould have been better for me, I believe,
If they had suffered me to go with them;
But they were all against it, and that time
They might have had their way in anything.
But when I saw the little funeral
Wind down the field, I turned and shut the door,
And sitting on a stool I hid my face;
I know not what it was came over me,
But I grew giddy, and fell down, and struck
My head against the corner of a chair,
And there has been a noise there ever since.

And now I thank you. Many a journey long
You took through wet and cold to see my child,
And she found much of comfort in your words;

164

And at the last I think was better pleased
To go than stay. Then why should I so grieve?
And why should I not rather feel and say,
'Twas the best nursing that I ever did,
To nurse her and to bring her up for Him,
Who called her to the knowledge of Himself,
Then took her out of this poor sinful world?’

165

A CENTURY OF COUPLETS.

To halls of heavenly truth admission wouldst thou win,
Oft Knowledge stands without, while Love may enter in.

Who praises God the most, what says he more than he
Who silent is? yet who would therefore silent be?

Thy treasures lodged so low, earth's damps will soon consume:
While time is, lift them up into a higher room.

Lovingly to each other sun and moon give place,
Else were the mighty heaven for them too narrow space.

Lodged in a ruinous hut, thou loathest to depart:
Were thine a prouder house, 'twould prove a bitterer smart.

Only the waters which in perfect stillness lie,
Give back an undistorted image of the sky.

Despise not little sins; for mountain-high may stand
The pilëd heap made up of smallest grains of sand.

Despise not little sins; the gallant ship may sink,
Though only drop by drop the watery tide it drink.

166

Thy soul is that fair bride which hell and Heaven woo,
And one perforce must win, to make or to undo.

Merely thyself, O man, thou canst not long abide,
But presently for less or greater must decide.

God many a spiritual house has reared, but never one
Where lowliness was not laid first, the corner stone.

Owe no man aught save love; but that esteem a debt,
Which thou must ever pay, well pleased to owe it yet.

Rear highly as thou wilt thy branches in the air,
But that thy roots descend as deep in earth have care.

Sin, not till it is left, will duly sinful seem;
A man must waken first, ere he can tell his dream.

Glad news were it to hear that thou shouldst never die?
Glad news that pain and sin should last eternally!

When thou art fain to trace a map of thine own heart,
As undiscovered land set down the largest part.

Wouldst thou do harm, and still unharmed thyself abide?
None struck another yet, except through his own side.

God's dealings still are love; his chastenings are alone
Love now compelled to take an altered sterner tone.

From our ill-ordered hearts we oft are fain to roam,
As men go forth who find unquietness at home.

167

Oh misery! that man will not man's words receive,
Nor, that the serpent stings, till stung himself, believe

Why furnish with such care thy lodging of a night,
And leave thy lasting home in such a naked plight?

Loved wilt thou be? then love by thee must first be given;
No purchase-money else avails beneath the heaven.

When thou hast thanked thy God for every blessing sent,
What time will then remain for plaint or discontent?

Envy detects the spots in the clear orb of light,
And Love the little stars in gloomiest saddest night.

Thou canst not choose but serve; man's lot is servitude
But this of choice thou hast, a bad lord or a good.

As from mine own sin more and farther I depart,
Ah me! my brother's sin will grow a bitterer smart.

One foe we have, who, cherished, rages with worse ire,
Whom to give place to is like oil upon the fire.

Before the eyes of men let duly shine thy light,
But ever let thy life's best part be out of sight.

My proud foe at my hands to take no boon will choose—
—Thy prayers are that one gift which he cannot refuse.

Plead guilty at man's bar, and go to judgment straight;
At God's no other way remains to shun that fate.

168

As fish with poisoned baits, so pleasures soon are caught;
'Tis pity both should prove, so taken, good for nought.

We children are from earth weaned hardly, so Heaven strews
Some wormwood on earth's breasts, as tenderest mothers use.

Wouldst thou go forth to bless, be sure of thine own ground;
Fix well thy centre first, then draw thy circles round.

Sin may be clasped so close we cannot see her face,
Nor seen nor loathed until held from us a small space.

Win lowliness of heart, and having won beware,
And that thou grow not proud of lowliness have care.

Man is a star of heaven cast down upon the earth,
A prince in beggar's weeds, half conscious of his birth.

The sun is in the heavens, on earth the sunshine bright,
And we may close our eyes, but not put out the light.

Who plays a part, from shame shall not keep always clear;
Hard is it to be good, but harder to appear.

Their windows and their doors some close, and murmuring say,
The light of heaven ne'er found into my house a way.

How fearful is his case whom now God does not chide,
When sinning worst; to whom even chastening is denied!

169

When man against the powers above him dared rebel,
His subjects learned from him the rebel's art as well.

God often would enrich, but finds not where to place
His treasure, nor in hand nor heart a vacant space.

The man is happy, Lord, who love like this doth owe,
Loves Thee, his friend in Thee, and for thy sake his foe.

If thou wouldst know sin's strength, thy lusts how hard to tame,
Against them take up arms, and earnest war proclaim.

A dreamer do not wake, if, when his dream is fled,
Thou canst not give him aught of better in its stead.

The oyster sickens while the pearl doth substance win:
Thank God for pains that prove a noble growth within.

Some are resigned to go: might we such grace attain,
That we should need our resignation to remain.

God's loudest threatenings speak of love and tenderest care,
For who, that meant his blow to light, would cry, Beware?

What is our work when God a blessing would impart?
To bring the empty vessel of a needy heart.

Can ever the true prayer of faith unheard remain?
Must not what came from God to Him return again?

Oh leave to God at sight of sin incensed to be;
If thou art grieved, O man, that is enough for thee.

170

Till life is coming back, our death we do not feel;
Light must be entering in, our darkness to reveal.

Use thou, but love not things, given only with intent
To be alleviations of thy banishment.

To lay thy soul's worst sins before thy Lord endure:
Who will not show his hurts, can he expect a cure?

Ill fares the child of heaven, who will not entertain
On earth the stranger's grief, the exile's sense of pain.

Mark how there still has run, enwoven from above,
Through thy life's darkest woof the golden thread of love.

Sin, like a serpent, where her head an entrance finds,
Easily her whole length of body after winds.

What is thy fear, O soul? the fear of that dark place,
Or fear to lose the light of thy Creator's face?

Call not this goodly world a place of harsh restraint:
Such prison-house it were not, but for thy complaint.

Captain and King thou art, and canst command and fight;
Yet summon first the Chancellor, and learn the right.

The jailer of himself, he keeps the keys of hell
In his own hands, who yet must there for ever dwell.

Acknowledge present good, or thou wilt need to learn,
And by its loss, thy good, thy mercies to discern.

171

Some say man has no hurts; some seek them to reveal
And to exasperate more; and some to hide and heal.

Ashes and dust thou art—confess it so to be,
And from that moment forth it is not true for thee.

Whence is it if the Lord, the mighty God, is high,
That, lifting up myself, I find Him not more nigh?

Truth, knowledge, wisdom, love, oh lay up these in store,
True wealth which we may share, and yet ourselves have more.

Things earthly we must know ere love them: 'tis alone
Things heavenly that must be first loved and after known.

To see the face of God, this makes the joy of Heaven;
The purer then the eye, the more joy will be given.

Who claims thy praise, because the visions of his youth
He now has learned to mock, deserves thy saddest ruth.

The sinews of Love's arm use makes more firm and strong,
Which, being left unused, will fade and fail ere long.

When God afflicts thee, think He hews a rugged stone,
Which must be shaped, or else aside as useless thrown.

'Tis ill with man when this is all he cares to know
Of his own self, to wit, his vileness and his woe.

With patience to endure our griefs we learn not soon,
But how much later still to take them as a boon?

172

I heard a man proclaim, all men were wholly base:
One such at once I knew there stood before my face.

God loves to work in wax, not marble; let Him find,
When He would mould thine heart, material to his mind.

The same rains rain from heaven on all the forest-trees,
Yet those bring forth sweet fruits, and poisonous berries these.

A thousand blessings, Lord, to us Thou dost impart:
We ask one blessing more, O Lord—a thankful heart.

Wouldst thou abolish quite strongholds of self and sin?
Fear can but make the breach for Love to enter in.

To cure thee of thy pride, that deepest-seated ill,
God humbled his own self—wilt thou thy pride keep still?

God humble and man proud! do angels, when they range
This earth, see any sight at once so sad and strange?

Each dark unloving thought that mirror helps to stain,
Which should God's image true give back to thee again.

What thing thou lovest most, thou mak'st its nature thine,
Earthly, if that be earth—if that be God, divine.

Who showed me that my wound was deadly, made me note,
And at the self-same time, the healing antidote.

173

Earth waits for sunshine, dew, and rain from heaven above;
So man should wait from God for pity, grace, and love.

Evil, like a rolling stone upon a mountain top,
A child may first impel, a giant cannot stop.

He knew who healed our wounds, we quickly should be fain
Our old hurts to forget—so let the scars remain.

All noblest things are still the commonest; every place
Has water, light, and air, and God's abounding grace.

He is not wholly lost, retaining love for aught;
Large fire from smallest spark has many times been brought.

God asks not what, but whence, thy work is: from the fruit
He turns his eye away, to prove the inmost root.

Oh work thy works in God; He can rejoice in nought
Save only in Himself, and what Himself has wrought.

When will the din of earth grate harshly on our ears?
When we have once heard plain the music of the spheres.

All nature has a voice, and this the sunflower's word,
I look unto the light; look thou unto the Lord.

The magnet cries, We both must to our pole incline,
Restless, till that be found, and God, O man, is thine.

174

Why win we not at once what we in prayer require?
That we may learn great things as greatly to desire.

To schools of wisdom men with such small profit go,
Because they can but learn what they already know.

One furnace many times will good and evil hold;
Yet what consumes the dross will only cleanse the gold.

God, being great, great gifts most willingly imparts,
But we continue poor, that have such narrow hearts.

The tasks, the joys of earth, the same in heaven will be;
Only the little brook has widened to a sea.

Who hunt this world's delight, too late their hunting rue,
When it a lion proves, the hunter to pursue.

Oh wherefore in such haste in men's sight to appear?
The cedar yields no fruit until its fiftieth year.

175

SONNET.

[All beautiful things bring sadness, nor alone]

All beautiful things bring sadness, nor alone
Sweet music, as our wisest Poet spake,
Because in us keen longings they awake
After the good for which we pine and groan,
From which exiled we make continual moan,
Till once again we may our spirits slake
At those clear streams, which man did first forsake,
When he would dig for fountains of his own.
All beauty makes us sad, yet not in vain,—
For who would be ungracious to refuse,
Or not to use, this sadness without pain,
Whether it flows upon us from the hues
Of sunset, from the time of stars and dews,
From the clear sky, or waters pure of stain?

‘I am never merry when I hear sweet music.’ Shakespeare.

176

A BALLAD.

[_]

FROM THE SPANISH.

Who ever such adventure yet,
Or a like delight has known,
To that which Count Arnaldo met
On the morning of St. John?

The knight was riding by the sea,
With his falcon in his hand,
And saw a pinnace fast and free,
That was making to the land.

And he that by the rudder stood
As he went was singing still,
‘My galley, O my galley good,
Heaven protect thee from all ill;

‘From all the dangers and the woe
That on ocean's waters wait,
Almeira's reefs and shallows low,
And Gibraltar's stormy strait;

‘From Venice and its shallow way,
From the shoals of Flanders' coast,
And from the gulf of broad Biscay,
Where the dangers are the most.’

177

Then Count Arnaldo spoke aloud,
You might hear his accents well—
‘Those words, thou mariner, I would
Unto me that thou wouldst tell.’

To him that mariner replied
In a courteous tone, but free—
‘I never sing that song,’ he cried,
‘Save to one who sails with me.’

178

XERXES AT THE HELLESPONT.

‘Calm is now that stormy water; it has learned to fear my wrath:
Lashed and fettered now it yields me for my hosts an easy path:’
Seven long days did Persia's monarch on the Hellespontine shore,
Throned in state, behold his armies without pause defiling o'er;
Only on the eighth the rearward to the further side were past;
Then one haughty glance of triumph far as eye could reach he cast:
Far as eye could reach he saw them, multitudes equipped for war,
Medians with their bows and quivers, linkëd armour and tiar:
From beneath the suns of Afric, from the snowy hills of Thrace,
And from India's utmost borders, nations gathered in one place:
At a single mortal's bidding all this pomp of war unfurled,
All in league against the freedom and the one hope of the world.

179

‘What though once some petty trophies from my captains thou hast won,
Think not, Greece, to see another such a day as Marathon:
Wilt thou dare await the conflict, or in battle hope to stand,
When the Lord of sixty nations takes himself his cause in hand?
Lo! they come, and mighty rivers, which they drink of once, are dried,
And the wealthiest cities beggared, that for them one meal provide.
Powers of number by their numbers numberless are overborne,
So I measure men by measure, as a husbandman his corn.
Mine are all—this sceptre sways them; mine is all in every part:’
And he named himself most happy, and he blessed himself in heart—
Blessed himself, but on that blessing tears abundant followed straight,
For that moment thoughts came o'er him of man's painful brief estate:
Ere a hundred years were finished, where would all those myriads be?
Hellespont would still be rolling his blue waters to the sea;
But of all those countless numbers not one living would be found,
A dead host with their dead monarch, silent in the silent ground.

180

CHARLES V. BEFORE THE CONVENT OF YUSTE, 1556.

[_]

FROM THE GERMAN OF COUNT PLATEN.

'Tis night, and storms continually roar,
Ye monks of Spain, unbar for me the door.

Here in unbroken quiet let me fare,
Save when the loud bell startles me to prayer.

Make ready for me what your house has meet,
A friar's habit and a winding-sheet.

A little cell unto my use assign:
More than the half of all this world was mine.

The head that stoops unto the scissors now,
Under the weight of many crowns did bow.

The shoulders on which now the cowl is flung,
On them the ermine of the Cæsars hung.

I living now as dead myself behold,
And fall in ruins like this kingdom old.

181

ON A YEW-TREE

IN HOUND CHURCHYARD, HANTS.

Polled from this ancient yew-tree may have been
The branch, with which some English archer sped
His arrow, when the bravest stooped their head,
The boldest chivalry of France were seen
A moment's while beneath that tempest keen
To bow their mailëd fronts at Azincour.
Such age is thine, who yet dost still endure,
Unto thy topmost branches fresh and green.

I said—it was a moment in my thought—
In thy continuance thou must see in scorn
Man's feeble generations, that are born
And die, and then unto thy feet are brought.
But no—for they who are of Nature taught,
And Nature's self, are evermore too wise
For barren scorn—her truer sympathies
Grieve with us o'er the ruin death has wrought.

Thou too, thy many hundred summers past,
Thy many hundred winters that have seen
Thee in thy dark robe of unfailing green,
Once and for all must lay it off at last:
While that which at thy feet was sown, and cast
To darkness and dishonour, that weak thing
Shall live again, and in continual spring
Hold ever its immortal beauty fast.

182

TO A ROBIN REDBREAST,

SINGING IN WINTER.

Oh light of heart and wing,
Light-hearted and light-wingëd, that dost cheer
With song of sprightliest note the waning year,
Thou canst so blithely sing,
That we must only chide our own dull heart,
If in thy music we can bear no part.

Thy haunts are winter-bare,
The leaves in which thou didst so lately keep
Are being trodden to a miry heap;
But thou art void of care,
And singest not the less, or rather thou
Hast kept thy best and boldest notes till now.

Thou art so bold to sing
Thy sweetest music in the saddest hour,
Because thy trust is in the love and power,
Which can bring back the spring,
Which can array the naked groves again,
And paint with seasonable flowers the plain.

But we are merely sad,
Whenas for us this earthly life has shed
The leaves that once arrayed it; and instead
Of rich boughs, foliage-clad,
A few bare sticks and twigs stand nakedly,
Fronting against the cold and angry sky.

183

Yet would we only see
That hope and joy, the growth of lower earth,
Fall from us, that another truer birth
Of the same things may be;
That the new buds are travelling up behind,
Though hid as yet beneath the naked rind,

We should not then resign
All gladness, when spring promises depart,
But 'mid our wintriest bareness should find heart
To join our songs with thine,
Strong to fulfil, in spirit and in voice,
That hardest of all precepts—to rejoice.

184

RETRIBUTION.

I sent to Frederick Rückert a little volume containing translations from some of his poems, and also these verses. I print his reply :—

‘Hochgeehrter Herr,—Ich danke Ihnen für die Uebersendung Ihres Büchleins, das mir eine ungemeine Freude gemacht hat, durch seinen so reichen sittlichen Gehalt in so schönen dichterischen Formen, so wie durch die liebevolle Nachbildung emiger Stücke von mir. Ich wünsche mir Glück zu einem solchen Vermittler für meine Dichtungen bei Ihren edlen Landsleuten, die nunmehr auch nach uns sich umsehen wie wir so lange schon nach ihnen. Das fabrikmässige Uebersetzen von Dichterwerken, wie es unter uns betrieben wird, liebe ich nicht, ja halte es für verderblich; aber eine solche freie und innige, gegenseitige Aneignung ist erfreulich und erspriesslich. Auch von Ihren Versen haben mich manche zur Nachbildung angereizt, doch bis jetzt habe ich nur ‘Retribution,’ S. 133, für mein Tagebuch so in Trimeter zusammengefasst:

‘Gerechter Himmel, der du dies geordnet hast:
Wer Freude sucht als eignes Ziel verfehlt sie nur;
Wer im Berufe wandelt von der Pflicht geführt,
Die Freude findet er überall am Wege blühn.’

Nun hoffe ich auch einigen meiner hiesigen Bekannten, die mit Vorhebe

290

das Englische lesen, durch Mittheilung Ihres Werkes einen Genuss zu bereiten.

‘Ihr ergebenster, ‘Erlangen, d. 19. Funi 1840.’ ‘Friedr. Rückert.’

Oh righteous doom, that they who make
Pleasure their only end,
Ordering the whole life for its sake,
Miss that whereto they tend.

While they who bid stern duty lead,
Content to follow, they,
Of duty only taking heed,
Find pleasure by the way.

185

EVENING HYMN.

To the sound of evening bells
All that lives to rest repairs,
Birds unto their leafy dells,
Beasts unto their forest lairs.

All things wear a home-bound look,
From the weary hind that plods
Through the corn-fields, to the rook
Sailing tow'rd the glimmering woods.

'Tis the time with power to bring
Tearful memories of home
To the sailor wandering
On the far-off barren foam.

What a still and holy time!
Yonder glowing sunset seems
Like the pathway to a clime
Only seen till now in dreams.

Pilgrim, here compelled to roam,
Nor allowed that path to tread;
Now when sweetest sense of home
On all living hearts is shed,

186

Doth not yearning sad, sublime,
At this season stir thy breast,
That thou canst not at this time
Seek thy home and happy rest?

187

TO---

Look what a glory from the setting sun
Has fringed that cloud with silver edges bright,
And how it seems to drink the golden light
Of evening: you would think that it had won
A splendour of its own: but lo! anon
You shall behold a dark mass float away,
Emptied of light and radiance, from the day,
Its glory faded utterly and gone.
And doubt not we should suffer the same loss
As this weak vapour, which awhile did seem
Transfigured and made pure of all its dross,
If, having shared the light, we should misdeem
That light our own, or count we hold in fee
That which we must receive continually.

188

TO THE SAME.

We live not in our moments or our years:
The present we fling from us like the rind
Of some sweet Future, which we after find
Bitter to taste, or bind that in with fears,
And water it beforehand with our tears—
Vain tears for that which never may arrive:
Meanwhile the joy whereby we ought to live,
Neglected or unheeded, disappears.
Wiser it were to welcome and make ours
Whate'er of good, though small, the present brings—
Kind greetings, sunshine, song of birds, and flowers,
With a child's pure delight in little things;
And of the griefs unborn to rest secure,
Knowing that mercy ever will endure.

189

TO THE SAME.

If sorrow came not near us, and the lore
Which wisdom-working sorrow best imparts,
Found never time of entrance to our hearts,
If we had won already a safe shore,
Or if our changes were already o'er,
Our pilgrim being we might quite forget,
Our hearts but faintly on those mansions set,
Where there shall be no sorrow any more.
Therefore we will not be unwise to ask
This, nor secure exemption from our share
Of mortal suffering, and life's drearier task—
Not this, but grace our portion so to bear,
That we may rest, when grief and pain are over,
With the meek Son of our Almighty Lover.

190

TO THE SAME.

O dowered with a searching glance to see
Quite through the hollow masks, wherewith the bare
And worthless shows of greatness vizored are,
This lore thou hast, because all things to thee
Are proven by the absolute decree
Of duty, and whatever will not square
With that prime wisdom, though of seeming fair
Or stately, thou rejectest faithfully:
Till chidden in thy strength, each random aim
Of good, whose aspect heavenward does not turn,
Shrinks self-rebuked—thou looking kindliest blame
From the calm region of thine eyes that burn
With tempered but continuous flashes bright,
Like the mild lightnings of a tropic night.

191

TO THE SAME.

How thick the wild-flowers blow about our feet,
Thick-strewn and unregarded, which, if rare,
We should take note how beautiful they were,
How delicately wrought, of scent how sweet.
And mercies which on every path we meet,
Whose very commonness should win more praise,
Do for that very cause less wonder raise,
And these with slighter thankfulness we greet.
Yet pause thou often on life's onward way,
Pause time enough to stoop and gather one
Of these sweet wild-flowers—time enough to tell
Its beauty over; this when thou hast done,
And marked it duly, then if thou canst lay
It wet with thankful tears into thy bosom, well!

192

TO MY CHILD.

Thy gladness makes me thankful every way,
To look upon thy gladness makes me glad;
While yet in part it well might render sad
Us thinking that we too might sport and play,
And keep like thee continual holiday,
If we retained the things which once we had,
If we like happy neophytes were clad
Still in baptismal stoles of white array.
And yet the gladness of the innocent child
Has not more matter for our thankful glee
Than the dim sorrows of the man defiled;
Since both in sealing one blest truth agree—
Joy is of God, but heaviness and care
Of our own hearts and what has harboured there.

193

SONNET.

[An open wound which has been healed anew]

An open wound which has been healed anew;
A stream dried up, that once again is fed
With waters making green its grassy bed;
A tree that withered was, but to the dew
Puts forth young leaves and blossoms fresh of hue
Even from the branches which had seemed most dead;
A sea which having been disquieted,
Now stretches like a mirror calm and blue,—
Our hearts to each of these were likened well.
But Thou wert the physician and the balm;
Thou, Lord, the fountain, whence anew was filled
Their parchëd channel; Thou the dew that fell
On their dead branches; 'twas thy voice that stilled
The storm within; Thou didst command the calm.

194

NEW YEAR'S EVE.

The strong in spiritual action need not look
Upon the new-found year as on a scroll,
The which their hands lack cunning to unroll,
But in it read, as in an open book,
All they are seeking—high resolve unshook
By circumstance's unforeseen control,
Successful striving, and whate'er the soul
Has recognized for duty, not forsook.
But they whom many failures have made tame,
Question the future with that reverent fear,
Which best their need of heavenly aid may show,
Will it have purer thought, and loftier aim
Pursued more loftily? That a man might know
What thou wilt bring him, thou advancing year!

195

ON THE CONSECRATION OF A NEW CHURCHYARD.

That we may here securely lay our dead,
In peace to rest till that great trumpet call,
This spot henceforth we hedge around from all
Offence of careless or injurious tread;
And from henceforth this mould is hallowëd,
That so not merely by an outward law,
But through a secret and invisible awe
They may be guarded in their narrow bed.
Ye reverential fears lest aught offend
The unfeeling trunk, or outrage the dry dust,
Fears by this work attested, hail! all hail!
Sure pledge and proof that this is not the end;
Till faith, and piety, and Christian trust
Fail from among us, ye shall never fail.

196

SONNET.

[Lord, what a change within us one short hour]

Lord, what a change within us one short hour
Spent in thy presence will prevail to make,
What heavy burdens from our bosoms take,
What parchëd grounds refresh, as with a shower!
We kneel, and all around us seems to lower;
We rise, and all, the distant and the near,
Stands forth in sunny outline, brave and clear;
We kneel how weak, we rise how full of power.
Why therefore should we do ourselves this wrong
Or others—that we are not always strong,
That we are ever overborne with care,
That we should ever weak or heartless be,
Anxious or troubled, when with us is prayer,
And joy and strength and courage are with Thee?

197

SONNET.

[A garden so well watered before morn]

A garden so well watered before morn
Is hotly up, that not the swart sun's blaze,
Down beating with unmitigated rays,
Nor scorching winds from fiery deserts borne,
Shall quite prevail to leave it bare and shorn
Of its green beauty, shall not quite prevail
That all its morning freshness shall exhale,
Till evening and the evening dews return—
A blessing such as this our hearts might reap,
The freshness of the garden they might share,
Through the long day a heavenly freshness keep,
If knowing how the day and the day's glare
Must beat upon them, we would largely steep
And water them betimes with dews of prayer.

198

SONNET.

[When hearts are full of yearning tenderness]

When hearts are full of yearning tenderness
For the loved absent, whom we cannot reach,
By deed or token, gesture or kind speech,
The spirit's true affection to express;
When hearts are full of innermost distress,
And we are doomed to stand inactive by,
Watching the soul's or body's agony,
Which human effort helps not to make less—
Then like a cup capacious to receive
The overflowings of the heart, is prayer;
The longing of the soul is satisfied,
The keenest darts of anguish blunted are;
And though we cannot cease to yearn or grieve,
We yet have learned in patience to abide.

199

SONNET.

[If we with earnest effort could succeed]

If we with earnest effort could succeed
To make our life one long connected prayer,
As lives of some perhaps have been and are,
If never leaving Thee, we had no need
Our wandering spirits back again to lead
Into thy presence, but continued there,
Like angels standing on the highest stair
Of the sapphire throne, this were to pray indeed.
But if distractions manifold prevail,
And if in this we must confess we fail,
Grant us to keep at least a prompt desire,
Continual readiness for prayer and praise,
An altar heaped and waiting to take fire
With the least spark, and leap into a blaze.

200

THE TEMPTATION.

When man was foiled in Paradise, he fell
From that fair spot, thenceforward to confess
The barren and the thorny wilderness
Was the one place where he had right to dwell:
And therefore in the wilderness as well
Our second Head did that dread strife decide
And those closed gates again set open wide,
Victorious o'er the frauds and strength of hell.
Thou wentest to the proof, O fearless Lord,
Even to the desert, as thy battle field,
A champion going of his free accord;
We had no fears, for unlike him of old
Who lost that battle for us, Thou didst wield
Arms of unearthly temper, heavenly mould.

201

SONNET.

[When we have failed to chasten and restrain]

When we have failed to chasten and restrain
Our wandering thoughts, and in return they cheat
And mock us with some poor yet proud conceit,
And fondest fancies in procession vain
(Ourselves their centre), flock through heart and brain,
Each tendering amplest homage at our feet,
Till loathing of each humbler task we meet
Has grown upon us, scorn and sick disdain—
What then will make our guilty pride to sink,
Or what the spirit's temper will restore,—
Where in the world of healing is there spell
So mighty, as at times like these to think
Of Jesus sitting by Samarian well,
Or teaching some poor fishers on the shore?

202

SONNET.

[He might have reared a palace at a word]

He might have reared a palace at a word,
Who sometimes had not where to lay his head:
Time was, and He who nourished crowds with bread
Would not one meal unto Himself afford:
Twelve legions girded with angelic sword
Were at his beck, the scorned and buffeted:
He healed another's scratch, his own side bled,
Side, feet, and hands, with cruel piercings gored.
Oh wonderful the wonders left undone!
And scarce less wonderful than those He wrought;
Oh self-restraint, passing all human thought,
To have all power, and be as having none;
Oh self-denying Love, which felt alone
For needs of others, never for its own!

203

SONNET.

[Ulysses, sailing by the Sirens' isle]

Ulysses, sailing by the Sirens' isle,
Sealed first his comrades' ears, then bade them fast
Bind him with many a fetter to the mast,
Lest those sweet voices should their souls beguile,
And to their ruin flatter them, the while
Their homeward bark was sailing swiftly past;
And thus the peril they behind them cast,
Though chased by those weird voices many a mile.
But yet a nobler cunning Orpheus used:
No fetter he put on, nor stopped his ear,
But ever, as he passed, sang high and clear
The blisses of the Gods, their holy joys,
And with diviner melody confused
And marred earth's sweetest music to a noise.

204

SONNET.

[Were the sad tablets of our hearts alone]

Were the sad tablets of our hearts alone
A dreary blank, for Thee the task were slight,
To draw fair letters there and lines of light:
But while far other spectacle is shown
By them, with dismal traceries overdrawn,
Oh! task it seems, transcending highest might,
Ever again to make them clean and white,
Effacing the sad secrets they have known.
And then what heaven were better than a name,
If there must haunt and cling unto us there
Abiding memories of sin and shame?
Dread doubt! which finds no answer anywhere
Except in Him, who with Him power did bring
To make us feel our sin an alien thing.

205

SONNET.

[In the mid garden doth a fountain stand]

In the mid garden doth a fountain stand;
From font to font its waters fall alway,
Freshening the leaves by their continual play:—
Such often have I seen in southern land,
While every leaf, as though by light winds fanned,
Has quivered underneath the dazzling spray,
Keeping its greenness all the sultry day,
While others pine aloof, a parchëd band.
And in the mystic garden of the soul
A fountain, nourished from the upper springs,
Sends ever its clear waters up on high,
Which while a dewy freshness round it flings,
All plants which there acknowledge its control
Show fair and green, else drooping, pale, and dry.

206

ST. CHRYSOSTOM.

'Tis not by action only, not by deed,
Though that be just and holy, pure and wise,
That man may to his last perfection rise;
Of suffering as of doing he has need:
Thus prospers with due change the heavenly seed,
While stormy night succeeds to sunny day:
Thus the good metal, proven every way,
From the last dross that clung to it is freed.
And thus for thee, O glorious man, on whom
Love well-deserved, and honour waited long,
In thy last years, in place of timely ease,
There did remain another loftier doom,
Pain, travail, exile, peril, scorn and wrong—
Glorious before, but glorified by these.

207

[Lord, weary of a painful way]

‘Into whatever city or town ye shall enter, inquire who in it is worthy; and there abide till ye go thence.’—Matt. x. ii.

Lord, weary of a painful way,
All night our heads we would not lay
Under the naked sky;
But ask who worthiest? who will best
Entreat a tired and lowly guest
With promptest courtesy?

And Thou art worthiest; there will not
One loving usage be forgot
By Thee; thy kiss will greet
Us entering; Thou wilt not disdain
To wash away each guilty stain
From off our soilëd feet.

We enter, from this time to prove
Thy hospitality and love
Shown tow'rd thy meanest guest:
From house to house we would not stray
For whither should we go away?
With Thee is perfect rest.

208

[Weep not for broad lands lost]

Weep not for broad lands lost;
Weep not for fair hopes crost;
Weep not when limbs wax old;
Weep not when friends grow cold
Weep not that Death must part
Thine and the best-loved heart;
Yet weep, weep all thou can—
Weep, weep, because thou art
A sin-defilëd man.

209

[This did not once so trouble me]

This did not once so trouble me,
That better I could not love Thee;
But now I feel and know
That only when we love, we find
How far our hearts remain behind
The love they should bestow.

While we had little care to call
On Thee, and scarcely prayed at all,
We seemed enough to pray:
But now we only think with shame,
How seldom to thy glorious Name
Our lips their offerings pay.

And when we gave yet slighter heed
Unto our brother's suffering need,
Our hearts reproached us then
Not half so much as now, that we
With such a careless eye can see
The woes and wants of men.

In doing is this knowledge won,
To see what yet remains undone;
With this our pride repress,
And give us grace, a growing store,
That day by day we may do more,
And may esteem it less.

210

COMPENSATION.

Wouldst thou from each man's coronal select
The choicest leaf wherewith his brows are deckt;

That all into one chaplet for thy head
Entwined, thou might'st be proudly garlanded?

Look round thee—is not each thing else content,
Having a share, not all the ornament?

The sweet-voiced nightingale is dusky brown,
While golden-plumaged birds no music own.

The ruby long outlives the scented rose;
But then the ruby no such fragrance knows.

From Egypt Moses did the people lead;
To plant in Canaan must be Joshua's deed.

If David laid all rich materials by,
His son first reared the gorgeous fane on high.

It did but once and unto One compete,
All rays of glory round his head should meet.

211

[Lord, many times I am aweary quite]

Lord, many times I am aweary quite
Of mine own self, my sin, my vanity—
Yet be not Thou, or I am lost outright,
Weary of me.

And hate against myself I often bear,
And enter with myself in fierce debate:
Take Thou my part against myself, nor share
In that just hate.

Best friends might loathe us, if what things perverse
We know of our own selves, they also knew:
Lord, Holy One! if Thou who knowest worse
Shouldst loathe us too!

212

[If that in sight of God is great]

‘And Moses wist not that the skin of his face shone.’—Exod. xxxiv, 29.

If that in sight of God is great
Which counts itself for small,
We by that law humility
The chiefest grace must call;
Which being such, not knows itself
To be a grace at all.

How glorious was that meekest man
In all eyes save his own,
When from his splendid countenance
On all the people shone
A glory insupportable,
Unto himself unknown.

213

THE DAY OF DEATH.

Thou inevitable day,
When a voice to me shall say—
‘Thou must rise and come away;

All thine other journeys past,
Gird thee, and make ready fast
For thy longest and thy last’—

Day deep-hidden from our sight
In impenetrable night,
Who may guess of thee aright?

Art thou distant, art thou near?
Wilt thou seem more dark or clear?
Day with more of hope or fear?

Wilt thou come, unseen before
Thou art standing at the door,
Saying, light and life are o'er?

Or with such a gradual pace,
As shall leave me largest space
To regard thee face to face?

214

Shall I lay my drooping head
On some loved lap, round my bed
Prayer be made and tears be shed?

Or at distance from mine own,
Name and kin alike unknown,
Make my solitary moan?

Will there yet be things to leave,
Hearts to which this heart must cleave,
From which parting it must grieve?

Or shall life's best ties be o'er,
And all loved ones gone before
To that other happier shore?

Shall I gently fall on sleep,
Death, like slumber, o'er me creep,
Like a slumber sweet and deep?

Or the soul long strive in vain,
To escape, with toil and pain,
From its half-divided chain?

Little skills it where or how,
If thou comest then or now,
With a smooth or angry brow;

Come thou must, and we must die—
Jesus, Saviour, stand Thou by,
When that last sleep seals our eye.

215

THE LAW OF LOVE.

[_]

See 2 Kings iv. 1-6.

Pour forth the oil, pour boldly forth,
It will not fail until
Thou failest vessels to provide,
Which it may freely fill.

But then, when such are found no more,
Though flowing broad and free
Till then, and nourished from on high,
It straightway staunched will be.

Dig channels for the streams of Love,
Where they may broadly run;
And Love has overflowing streams
To fill them every one.

But if at any time thou cease
Such channels to provide,
The very springs of Love for thee
Will soon be parched and dried.

For we must share, if we would keep,
That good thing from above;
Ceasing to give, we cease to have—
Such is the law of Love.

216

[A genial moment oft has given]

A genial moment oft has given
What years of toil and pain,
Of long industrious toil, have striven
To win, and all in vain.

Yet count not, when thine end is won,
That labour merely lost;
Nor say it had been wiser done
To spare the painful cost.

When heaped upon the altar lie
All things to feed the fire—
One spark alighting from on high—
The flames at once aspire;

But those sweet gums and fragrant woods,
Its rich materials rare,
By tedious quest o'er lands and floods
Had first been gathered there.

217

[If there had anywhere appeared in space]

If there had anywhere appeared in space
Another place of refuge, where to flee,
Our hearts had taken refuge in that place,
And not with Thee.

For we against creation's bars had beat
Like prisoned eagles, through great worlds had sought
Though but a foot of ground to plant our feet,
Where Thou wert not.

And only when we found in earth and air,
In heaven or hell, that such might nowhere be—
That we could not flee from Thee anywhere,
We fled to Thee.

218

‘DUST TO DUST.’

Oh blessing wearing semblance of a curse,
We fear thee, thou stern sentence—yet to be
Linked to immortal bodies were far worse
Than thus to be set free.

For mingling with the life-blood through each vein
The poison of the serpent's bite has run,
And only thus might be expelled again—
Thus only health be won.

Shall we not then a gracious sentence own,
Now since the leprosy has fretted through
The entire house, that Thou wilt take it down,
And build it all anew?

Build it this time (since Thou wilt build again),
A holy house, where righteousness may dwell;
And we, though in the unbuilding there be pain,
Will still affirm,—'tis well.

219

FROM THE GREEK ANTHOLOGY.

How without dying to flee thee, O life? for thine are a thousand
Ills, and those most hard either to shun or to bear.
Pleasant is all which to nature thou owest, the land and the ocean,
Pleasant the stars and sun and the fair cirque of the moon.
All things else are sorrows and fears; and if any good thing
Fall to a man, then a sure penalty waits him anon.

220

TO A FRIEND.

The courses of our lives, which side by side
Ran for some little while, are sundered now;
We meet not now, as once, day after day,
In pleasant intercourse to change our thoughts:
Yet I remember often that past time,
And all the thoughts which filled it; for just then
We were as merchants seeking goodly pearls,
Seeking one pearl of price; and when we read
In books of some, or met on life's highway,
Who had returned as from a fruitless quest,
Bringing these tidings only, that all lands
They had gone through, had searched the furthest coasts,
Wherever fame reported that such pearl
Was to be won, but still had nothing found,
And now believed not there was aught to find,
Our hearts would die within us, loath to leave
Their hope, which yet grew weaker day by day,
That somewhere was a key which should unlock
The many chambers of this human life,
A law harmoniously to reconcile
All the perplexed appearances of things,
A treasure which should make for ever rich
The finder: for slight profit then to us,
And little comfort might we draw from things
Wherein some found, or fancied that they found,
The immortal longings of their spirits slaked,

221

And all life's mystery lightened. What at best
The beautiful creations of man's art,
If resting not on some diviner ground
Than man's own mind that formed them,—at their best
What but the singing of a mournful dirge,
What but the scattering flowers upon the grave
Of his abandoned hopes and buried joys?
Oh miserable comfort! loss is loss,
And death is death; and after all is done,
After the flowers are scattered on the tomb,
After the singing of the sweetest dirge,
The mourner with his heart uncomforted,
Returning to his solitary home,
Thinks with himself, if any one had aught
Of stronger consolation, he should speak;
If not, 'twere best for ever to hold peace.
Such, and no more, to us contemplating
The life of man, such, and no truer, seemed
The alleviations to be won from these,
Poor withering garlands flung upon a grave,
The mournful beauty of a couchant Sphinx,
Watching by some half-buried pyramid,
Or fallen column in the wilderness.

And Nature's self, our foster-mother dear,
What could she do for us? what help impart?
Or when we mourned as lonely orphans here,
Or fled unto her bosom, there to find
Pity and love, there were no beatings there,
There were no pulses in her cold cold heart;
She had no happy family of love
In which to adopt us. Beauty without love,
How should it cherish or make less forlorn,
Yea, how should it not leave forlorner still,

222

The forlorn heart of man? so left it us,
Who gazed upon the incense-breathing flowers,
Trees and rejoicing rivers, suns and stars,
Keeping their courses in untroubled joy,
By sin unstained, by longings undisturbed;
While we, the first-fruits of creation, we,
For whose dear sake all lower things were made,
Mourned evermore. How often then they seemed
Like the hired servants whom the Prodigal
Bethought him of, as satisfied with bread,
While we, the children of our Father's house,
Were perishing with hunger far away.
What longing had we then to be as these,
To be as trees or flowers, as rocks or stones,
Glad might we have relinquished and put by
The burden of our immortality,
And all the drear prerogatives of man.

Or sometimes finding little nearer home,
That we should care to dwell with our own hearts,
We looked abroad, and spake of some bright dawn
Of happiness and freedom, peace and love,
Day long desired, and now about to break
On all the nations; yet the while we felt
That we were speaking false and hollow words,—
For how should one, despairing of himself,
Find hope for others? where no centre is,
Centre established sure of life and joy,
What is it but an idle thing to draw
The widest circle of imagined good
At distance round us? where 'tis ill with each,
How vain to hope it should be well with all!

But now, though not to outward change we look
For the fulfilling of that glorious hope,

223

Have we renounced that hope?—or is it grown
A less substantial vision, because now
No fabled world, imagined isles beyond
The limitary ocean, such as never
Have been but in the longing of man's heart,
Not these now occupy our hearts and hopes;
But Eden and the New Jerusalem,
The Garden and the City of our God,
The things which have been and shall be again,
Fill up the prospect upon either side,
Before us and behind? or have we left
Our love for Nature, now to love her less,
Since we have learned that all we so admire
Is only as her soiled and weekday dress,
And nothing to the glory she shall wear,
When for the coming sabbath of the world
She shall put on her festival attire—
Or closed our hearts to what of beautiful
Man by strong spell and earnest toil has won
To take intelligible forms of art,
Now that all these are recognized to be
Desires and yearnings, feeling after Him,
And by Him only to be satisfied,
Who is Himself the eternal Loveliness?

224

A PASSAGE FROM ST. AUGUSTINE.

Wert thou a wanderer on a foreign strand,
Who yet couldst only in thy native land
Find peace or joy or any blessëd thing—
And, thy sore travail to an end to bring,
Shouldst thither now determine to return,
Since in all other places doomed to mourn—
But having need of carriages for this,
To bring thee to thy country and true bliss,
What if the pleasant motion which they made,
With the fair prospects on each side displayed,
Should so attract thee, thou at last wert fain
The things for use lent only, to retain;
Entangled so with their perverse delight,
That from thy country alienated quite,
And its true joys whereto thou first didst tend,
And loathing to approach thy journey's end,
Thou shouldst be now a pilgrim with the fear
Lest thy long pilgrimage's close were near—
If this way it fared with thee, we might say,
Thou didst man's life unto the life pourtray.

225

TO POETRY.

In my life's youth, while yet the deeper needs
Of the inmost spirit unawakened were,
Thou couldst recount of high heroic deeds,
Couldst add a glory unto earth and air,
A crowning glory, making fair more fair:
So that my soul was pleased and satisfied,
Which had as yet no higher, deeper care,
And said that thou shouldst evermore abide
With me, and make my bliss, and be my spirit's bride.

But years went on, and thoughts which slept before,
O'er the horizon of my soul arose—
Thoughts which perplexed me ever more and more;
As though a Sphinx should meet one, and propose
Enigmas hard, and which whoso not knows
To interpret, must her prey and victim be;
And I, round whom thick darkness seemed to close,
Knew only this one thing, that misery
Remained, if none could solve this riddle unto me.

Then I remembered that from thy lips fell
Large words of promise, how thou couldst succeed
All darkest mysteries of life to spell;
Therefore I pleaded with thee now to read

226

The riddle that was baffling me, with speed,
To yield some answer to the questioning.
Something thou spak'st, but nothing to my need,
So that I counted thee an idle thing,
Who, having promised much, couldst no true succour bring.

And I turned from thee, and I left thee quite,
And of thy name to hear had little care:
For I was only seeking if by flight
I might shun her, who else would rend and tear
Me, who could not her riddle dark declare:—
This toil, the anguish of this flight was mine,
Until at last, enquiring everywhere,
I won an answer from another shrine,
A holier oracle, a temple more divine.

But when no longer without hope I mourned,
When peace and joy revived in me anew,
Even from that moment my old love returned,
My former love, yet wiser and more true,
As seeing what for us thy power can do,
And what thy skill can make us understand
And know—and where that skill attained not to;
How far thou canst sustain us by thy hand,
And what things shall in us a holier care demand—

My love of thee and thine; for earth and air,
And every common sight of sea and plain,
Then put new robes of glory on, and wear
The same till now; and things which dead had lain

227

Revived, as flowers that smell the dew and rain:
I was a man again of hopes and fears,
The fountains of my heart flowed forth again,
Whose sources had seemed dry for many years,
And there was given me back the sacred gift of tears.

And that old hope, which never quite had perished,
A longing which had stirred me from a boy,
And which in darkest seasons I had cherished,
Which nothing could quite vanquish or destroy,
This with all other things of life and joy
Revived within me—and I too would seek
The power, that moved my own heart, to employ
On others, who perchance would hear me speak,
If but the tones were true, although the voice were weak.

Though now there seems one only worthy aim
For poet,—that my strength were as my will!—
And which renounce he cannot without blame—
To make men feel the presence by his skill
Of an eternal loveliness, until
All souls are faint with longing for their home,
Yet the same while are strengthened to fulfil
Their task on earth, that they may surely come
Unto the land of life, who here as exiles roam.

And what though loftiest fancies are not mine,
Nor words of chiefest power, yet unto me
Some voices reach out of the inner shrine,
Heard in mine heart of hearts, and I can see

228

At times some glimpses of the majesty,
Some prints and footsteps of the glory trace,
Which have been left on earth, that we might be
By them led forward to the secret place,
Where we perchance might see that glory face to face.

If in this quest, O power of sacred song,
Thou canst assist,—oh, never take thy flight!
If thou canst make us gladder or more strong,
If thou canst fling glimpses of glorious light
Upon life's deepest depth and highest height,
Or pour upon its low and level plain
A gleam of mellower gladness, if this might
Thou hast—(and it is thine)—then not in vain
Are we henceforth prepared to follow in thy train.

229

GENOVEVA.

I

As the finest crystal still
Bides the most exposed to ill,
As the finest crystal ever,
Brittlest, may the soonest shiver,
So in this world fares no less
With some rarer happiness:
Such a happiness was thine,
Siegfried, Count and Palatine,
When thou leddest home thy bride,
When thou watchedst her in pride,
As all eyes did on her wait,
Moving in her queenly state—
Genoveva, loveliest flower
Blooming in Brabantine bower
Once, and now transferred to dwell
On the banks of fair Moselle.
'Twas in sooth a golden time,
And the world was in its prime
For them two;—the sun stood high
Of their rare felicity—
Standing right above their head,
Did no way a shadow shed.

But this might not always last;
Happy months too soon have past:

230

Charles has called from east and west
All who own his high behest;
Charles has bid from far and near
All his liegemen to appear.
For must now at length be met,
Now must have its limits set,
That wild tide of Moslem war,
Which has rolled so fierce and far,
Issuing from Arabian sands,
Overflowing mightiest lands,
Till it reached to western Spain,
And has burst o'er Aquitaine,
And is panting to advance
To the very heart of France.
At the gate are trumpets sounding,
And impatient chargers bounding,
And a numerous proud array
Only for their chieftain stay;
And he comes; in lady's bowers
'Tis no time to waste the hours.
Who this precious time would choose
In ignoble ease to lose,
While by others fields are fought,
Glorious deeds by others wrought,
While by other hearts and hands
France is freed from miscreant bands?
Nor would she her lord detain,
Though her arms are like a chain,
That will scarce relax again;
Though when now the latest note
Of the trump in air doth float,
By her maidens she is found
Without motion on the ground,

231

In a deep and heavy swoon;
But from thence reviving soon
Doth her widowed state beguile,
Cheers the sad and lonely while,
Not with shows or pageantries,
Not with pomps or revelries,
But with prayer and vigil long,
With the Church's solemn song,
Stirring so the malice fell
And the deepest hate of hell.

II

Well thou farest, gallant Count,
Foremost in the battle brunt,
Foremost on that famous field,
When to heaven two faiths appealed,
When seven times uprose the sun,
And the battle was not done,
And six times went down the day
On an undecided fray;
Well thou speedest; to thy king
No mean help thy hand did bring
On that last day, when he smote
Many a Moslem's mailëd coat,
When his ponderous blows so well
Like on ringing anvil fell,
That to him henceforth the name
Of ‘The Hammer’ justly came.
Well thou farest—better far
Than that sadly-gleaming star,
Thou didst leave to shine alone
In thy sphere, when thou wert gone—

232

Better than that lonely dove,
Fond of heart, and true of love,
Who within her widowed bowers
Counts the tardy-pacing hours.
What a mist of hell obscure
Gathers round thy planet pure!
What a serpent coils and clings
Round thy fair dove's silver wings!
What of hellish wiles are met
Round about her, to beset
First the honour, then the life
Of that ever-faithful wife!

Ill didst thou, O Count, provide,
Setting at thy lady's side,
For thine holy home to guard
And to keep due watch and ward,
One who there such watch doth keep
As the wolf on silly sheep:
Such a guard the kite would prove
To the weakness of the dove.
Evil man! who when there fell
On his bosom sparks of hell,
Did not, as alone was meet,
Stamp them underneath his feet,
With an indignation keen
That such thoughts should once have been;
But those sparks of foul desire
Left to kindle to a fire,
Fed and fanned them, till they grew
Such a mighty flame unto,
As will not be quenched, before
One it has consumed, or more.
—He has dared to tell his tale;
She, with fear and anger pale,

233

Twice must heart, but when the third
Time this suit of shame she heard,
Then exclaimed, ‘Thy lord shall know
Whom he has entrusted so:
Evil meed wilt thou have earned,
When thy lord has back returned;
Twice forgiven—but twice in vain —
Hence! nor see my face again.’
Forth the caitiff went, and told
To his mother, weird and old,
Full of evil plots and wiles,
Full of treacheries and guiles,
All his danger and his fear—
—‘Help me, or my death is near;
Give me counsel, or I die:
One must perish—she or I.’

III

Innocence is fearless still;
Means not and suspects not ill.
Of the band that waited near
Genoveva, one was dear,
For his piety beloved,
And with many signs approved
Of her grace: his tender age
Did he unto God engage,
Who, before her kneeling, read
From an open scroll outspread,
Where were written records high
Of the Christian chivalry;
Of young Agnes, tender flower,
Gathered in her childhood's hour;

234

And of patient Laurence, spread
Calmly on his fiery bed;
Of Eulalia, whose fair corse,
Flung abroad without remorse,
From the care of heaven must know
Its pure winding-sheet of snow;
And of them that bore so well
All the spite of earth and hell,
Whose dear ashes forth were thrown
To make rich her neighbouring Rhone;
And of many more beside,
In extremest tortures tried;
Names that never shall grow old,
Hearts to servile fear unsold,
Holy Virgins, Martyrs bold,
Lilies those of dazzling white,
Roses these with red hues dight,
In the garden of the Lord;—
With a pensive ear she heard,
With a spirit inly wrought,
Marvelling in secret thought,
How the holiest and most pure
Most were given to endure;
How it still was theirs to drain
Deepest cups of mortal pain.

But these musings must have end,
Must reveal what they portend.
Hark! a noise is heard without,
Then a rude inrushing rout,
Led of him who should no more
Dare to stand her face before.
Up she started in surprise;
All the coming on her eyes

235

Flashing in a moment rose—
The long order of her woes,
The foul tale, the hateful lie,
And the deep-laid villany.
Knew she now what cup of pain
Unto her was given to drain;
Her as well that cup had found,
Had unto her lips come round.
‘Ha!’ that faithless guardian cried,
When the wondering twain he spied,
‘It was this, even this I thought,
And my fears to proof are brought.
Have we not endured this wrong
Done against our lord too long?
Hence, away with both! away!
Hence, nor heed them, what they say;
Mine the charge, that without stain
My lord's honour should remain:
If this may not be, at least
Shall the rank offence have ceased.
Bear him to his death—her doom
She shall wait in dungeon gloom.’

IV

Such a mist of hell obscure
Gathers round that planet pure,
Such a serpent coils and clings
Round that fair dove's silver wings,
Such of hellish wiles are met,
And such treacheries to beset
First the honour, then the life
Of that ever-faithful wife;

236

While the Count do spaces wide,
Streams and mountains, still divide
From his perilled lady's side.
For with slow and sullen pace,
Turning oftentimes the face,
Afric's swarthy hosts retreat
From the field of their defeat;—
As with many a pause of pride
Ebbeth a reluctant tide,
Slowly on its refluent track,
Is with many a pause drawn back,
Oft with new-awakened roar
Winning ground again, before
It has quite left bare the shore—
As a lion from his prey
By the hunters scared away,
Who though now no more remaining,
Yet the show of flight disdaining,
Often turns, and makes his stand,
Glares on the pursuing band,
Till the shepherds back recoil,
Winning no unbloody spoil.
And the gallant Count of Treves,
Though by night and day he weaves
Visions of his happy home,
Though full oft his fancies roam
From the camp's tumultuous noise,
From the battle's heady joys,
To the banks of fair Moselle,
Where for him all good things dwell,
Though he yearns for quick release
Unto scenes of holy peace,
Yet will faithfully abide
By his noble captain's side,

237

Till into the western seas,
Or beyond the Pyrenees,
Is the latest foeman urged,
And the land is throughly purged.

Joy to him! for tidings come,
Letters from his distant home.
Joy it is not; he doth stand,
Those crushed letters in his hand,
And men speak, but meaning none
From their speech his ear has won;
O'er the world doth blackness pass,
Black the sunlight on the grass,
Black the sun itself—on all
Blackness falls, a murky pall.
The firm heavens are round him wheeling,
The fixed earth beneath him reeling;
Oh, the cunning web of hell:
Oh, the treachery woven too well!
—‘Genoveva! oh no, no—
Yet it is, it must be so.
Oh 'twas well and bravely done,
Thou thy master's praise hast won,
Who didst boldly use thy power
And didst cast her in that hour
To a dungeon out of sight.
Would that she had died outright,
Died with him, and shared his fate,
In this sin her guilty mate.
Better so—but let her die
With the child of infamy,
Child of infamy and scorn
That was in the dungeon born.’
With this message he in part
The wild tumult of his heart

238

Has assuaged—some ease has won:
—Yet, oh think, was this well done,
Was it with thine own heart well,
When in it such thoughts could dwell?
If thy spirit had drawn breath
In the worlds of loftiest faith,
Couldst thou have been so deceived?—
Wouldst thou not have then believed
Everything on earth, a lie
Ere thy lady's purity?

V

Lo! a woman strangely fair,
With her wildly-streaming hair,
All alone, companionless,
In a savage wilderness:—
Now she kneels with arms stretched out,
Now she strangely roams about;
Underneath a thorn-tree's shade
Wailing infant she has laid,
Like another Hagar flying,
That she may not see him dying.
—‘From that cry—that cry of pain—
Still I flee, but still in vain:
Whither, whither shall I fly?
All the fountains are drawn dry
Of my bosom utterly;
With its milk my child at first,
Till that wholly failed, I nursed:
Then the blood away it drew,
And now that has failed me too.
Oh! what helps it that the twain,
Who were charged to end my pain,

239

Have withheld the murderous knife
From my own and infant's life,
(While I promised never more
To appear men's eyes before,)
If they leave us here to die
With a longer agony?
—O my husband, other thought
Was it that within me wrought,
Then when from my height of place
Fell I to that strange disgrace,
And that scorn extreme must prove:
In thy faith and in thy love
Found I still a refuge strong
From that uttermost of wrong.
'Twas enough the hours were flowing,
'Twas enough the days were going,
That would bring thee to my side,
All that dark mist scattering wide.
—God and Saviour! and thine ear
Doth it not our crying hear?
God and Saviour! is thine eye
Closëd on our misery?
Are the springs of love divine
Dry as are these breasts of mine?
When my little one has died,
What have I on earth beside?’

Round she gazed, if anywhere
Dawned a glimpse of comfort there:
Not a human step was near,
Not a human voice to cheer,
And no Angel-comforter
In her anguish spake to her.
Oh! how darkly desolate,
Oh! how full of scorn and hate

240

At that moment seemed all nature—
Every mute and senseless creature;
All upon her misery
Gazing with unpitying eye.
Danced the light leaves in the air,
As deriding her despair;
Echoes came in idle mocks,
Tossed from the unfeeling rocks;
Merrily the stream tripped on,
Gloriously the gay sun shone,
Stretched the breadth of azure sky
Like a banner upon high:
But no pity anywhere
Might she find, no love, no care:
Dark the earth, forlorn of love,
But, oh! darker heaven above—
God's own heaven seemed darker yet.
But this deadliest thought is met:
She hath prayed, and doth repel
This the deadliest shaft of hell;
She hath prayed, and not in vain;
Faint returns to her again;
And when now the feeble crying,
The faint moanings of the dying,
Faint and fainter, wholly cease,
God she thanks that all is peace;
That her infant findeth rest
On a loving Saviour's breast.
She with all is reconciled;
Once will look upon her child,
Then its little body lay
In the deepest grave she may.

Near she draws, and yet more near,
Not a stirring may she hear:

241

But what other sight her eyes
Welcomed with a glad surprise!
Near the boy a gentle doe
Knelt, as white as mountain snow,
And with eager lips the child
From that loving creature mild
Drew the sweetest nourishment,
Which, for its own offspring sent,
Now to him it freely lent.
When the mother from above
Bent on him her looks of love,
He at length began to stir,
Did his little hands to her
Stretch, and turn in gladsome wise
On her face his laughing eyes;
What sweet tears from hers were shed!
What new faith in her was bred!
Here will she abide, until
Life shall finish, and life's ill.
Housing in a hollow cave,
Shelter when the wild winds rave;
Here, where God this grace did send,
She will calmly wait the end.

VI

Blindly, blindly, in the dark
Welters now his spirit's bark,
Who has blotted from his heaven
All the lights to guide him given,
So that now there doth endure
Unto him no good, no pure,
And no virtue seemeth sure;

242

While the fairest form wherein
Goodness did a body win,
Leprous all have showed with sin;
While the Star which he well nigh
Worshipped, where it shone on high,
Suddenly has left its height,
Treacherous meteor of the night.
Round his path is darkness spread;
But what thicker night is shed
Then, when he is undeceived,
And has all the web unweaved
Of that hateful treachery,
Of that foul and hideous lie;
When the traitor owns his guilt
And his blood is justly spilt—
And a murderer thou dost stand,
With her blood upon thy hand!
Oh! what profits now the force
Of thy measureless remorse?
What thy soul's strong agonies?
What thy tears of blood, thy cries
Underneath the midnight skies?
What a thousand anguished years,
An eternity of tears?
All were profitless to rue
What a single hour could do.
Wilt thou call her from the tomb?
Wilt thou bid her from the gloom
Of that forest, where she lies
Hidden deep from human eyes?

Faithful mother! truest wife!
Hardly she sustains her life
In that wasteful wilderness:
Oh unparalleled distress!

243

Who that paints it to his thought,
Would not unto tears be brought?
She, a child of Flanders’ Earl,
Lacking what the meanest churl,
Poorest beggar that did wait
At her sire's or husband's gate,
Had not lacked,—of which bereft
She had not the meanest left.
Changed she has her palace dome
For a cave of damp and gloom;
Maidens wait not her about,
But wild beasts go in and out;
And no other music more
Knows she than their sullen roar;
For a soft and downy bed
Sticks are underneath her spread;
She has left her dainty food
For the harsh roots of the wood;
Pearls she has not; in their place
Tears are on her woe-worn face:
Only jewels now she knew
Were the drops of chilly dew,
Hanging on the pointed thorn:
This is now her state forlorn.

While the days are summer-long
Then her pains are not so strong;
While the days are summer-warm,
She may shield her child from harm.
Oh! but when the leaves now sere
Told of pitiless winter near,
How she shuddered then to know
What she soon must undergo!
Ill with her it then did fare,
Then her pains were hard to bear.

244

She must melt within her mouth
Ice, when she would slake her drouth;
When her hunger would allay,
Must the hard snow scrape away,
Till the roots at length she found,
Buried deep in frozen ground.
How amid the long nights dark,
When the cold was stiff and stark,
When the icy north-wind blew,
Keen sword, piercing through and through,
Searching, as it fiercely drave,
Every corner of the cave,
Oh! how then that mother pressed
Her poor shiverer to her breast.
Though no moisture that could give,
Warmth not any there did live;
And herself forgetting quite,
Wailed for that poor shuddering wight;
Who, beholding her to weep,
And that long low wail to keep,
Wailed and wept himself as well,
Though his grief he could not tell.

Yet amid her keenest ill,
She in God found comfort still;
And when day by day the doe
Through the ice and through the snow
Came—a constant visitant,
To that poor child ministrant,—
Blest assurance, token clear
Of his grace she welcomed here:—
It may be, now thanked Him more
Than she ever thanked before,
Could his wondrous guidance praise,
That had from the world's vain ways,

245

From its flatteries and its wiles,
From its heart-deluding smiles
Her delivered, and had brought,
By rough paths she had not sought
But which now she could discern,
And their gracious meaning learn—
To this shelter safe, though stern.

VII

Mourned this painful hermitess
Of the lonely wilderness,—
Lowly kneeling, mourned one day,
Did with eyes uplifted pray,
In a trance-like agony
Sunken, when she seemed to see,
From that bright superior coast,
One of its angelic host
Stooping toward her;—awful fear
In his visage did appear,
And his front was bent before
That which in his hand he bore:
Only hands of Angels aught
Lovely as that cross had wrought,
With the image there suspended,
In which Love and Death contended:
And this cross he reached to her,—
This angelic comforter;
And her agony beguiled
With these soothing words and mild:
‘Genoveva, take thou this,
Take it for the boon it is.
Choicest blessing, costliest boon,
That God's treasure-house doth own,

246

Gift He keepeth for his friends,
And to thee at this time sends.
Hither be thy glances sent,
When thy soul with pangs is rent;
Set on this thine eyes and heart,
When impatient movements start;
This shall as a shield repel
All the fiery darts of hell;
This shall prove a golden key,
Heaven unlocking unto thee.’

Was it vision? was it truth?
Dream, or very waking sooth?
Did a heavenly Messenger,
Did an Angel talk with her?
She hath started from her trance,
Round she flings a timorous glance;
There doth no one now appear
By her side, far off or near:
Yet in rocky niche upright,
Plain before her waking sight,
Lo! a crucifix—it stands
Beauteous, as if angel hands
Had that ivory work divine
Wrought into salvation's sign.
This in summer she alway
Did adorn with flowery may,
Ever decked it as she could
With the wild flowers of the wood;
Nor in barest winter left
Of all ornament bereft,
But with mosses would entwine,
Or with dark unfading pine.
Here her solace found she still
In extremities of ill,

247

In her Saviour's five wounds laid
All her griefs, her anguish stayed:
Here, when once she did complain,
Uttering words of hasty pain,
‘Jesu, Saviour, what is this?
What have I so much amiss
Wrought, how sinnëd against Thee
More than all, that I should be
For a vile adulteress
Driven into this wilderness,
To this anguish and this shame?’
Seemed it then that accents came
From that cross, and named her name!
‘Genoveva, is it well
At my chastening to rebel?
Are thy sufferings more than mine?
Or had I more guilt than thine?
Yet was I put forth from heaven,
By my Father I was given
To my cross and mortal woe:
Look on Me, and looking, so
Learn to bear thy present ill,
And what thou must suffer still.’
This her Saviour's mild rebuke
To her heart with shame she took,
And no word of discontent,
Whatsoever griefs He sent,
Did she ever speak again,
But her passion and her pain
Did with meekest heart sustain,
Yea, did welcome and approve
For the gifts of highest love.

Then she found how wildest creatures—
How the wild wood's savage natures

248

At Heaven's bidding could be made
Ministers to yield her aid;
Came the wolf, yet not to harm,
But a shaggy sheepskin warm
In his teeth one day he bore:
This he cast the child before,
In its woolly folds henceforth
Shielded from the bitterest north;
And the beasts to him grew tame,
Round him without fear they came;
Came the gentle creatures near,
Without fierceness, without fear;
As he wandered through the wood,
With their speaking gestures showed
What were harmful herbs and good,—
With the boy made pastime; he
Of the wilderness was free—
Rode upon the wolf, and played
With the swift hare on the glade;
Round his head the birds would flit,
On his hand the birds alit;
And the mother and the child
Of their misery oft beguiled
With melodious descants wild.
And as he to more years grew
Lacked she not some comfort new;
Sweetest words with him she changed,
Whence her heart was oft estranged
From the grief which on it lay,—
Taught him in what words to pray,
How he should ‘Our Father’ say,
And his little hands above
Lift unto a God of love,

249

Who was watching for them still,
Who, in midst of all their ill,
For the desolate had cared:—
Thus with them long while it fared.

VIII

But the Count, whom prosperous hours
Back to his ancestral towers
Bring, and to his widowed bowers,
How shall he, this lone man, bear
The approach and entrance there?
Lonely man! though at his side
Troops of friends and vassals ride;
Lonely man! though at his gate
Him ten thousand welcomes wait;
Heart unwelcomed home, although
Thousand voices skyward go;
Thousand voices fill the air,
But the one is lacking there.
How shall he endure to pace
Those long echoing halls, and trace
Each remembered happy place,
Haunted each with its own ghost
Of some ancient splendour lost,
Each with its own vision bright
Of some forfeited delight
Rising clear upon his sight?
How beside a cold hearth stand,
Quenched by his own reckless hand?
He has borne it, man forlorn!
Borne—for all things may be borne;

250

And he lives, nor freedom asks
From life's ordinary tasks,
Him though oft the crowded hall,
And the thronging festival,
With that dreariest sense oppress
Of a peopled wilderness;
Though the crowds that to and fro
On their busy errands go,
Ofttimes seem with all their tasks
But so many gibbering masks;
Though he oft must contemplate
The strange mockeries of fate,
Which with hand profuse had shed
Gifts so many on his head,
Which had lent him splendour, fame,
And a glory round his name,
Honour, due to him whose hand
Helped to free his native land,
Yet withdrew the single thing
Which to all a worth would bring.—

And the years give no relief,
Mellowing an austerer grief:
But a melancholy dim,
Darker and darker, fell on him.
Round him, when his state they knew,
Friends and faithful kinsmen drew
With consoling words and speech,
Which his heart's wound cannot reach:
Yet he strives not, when the morn
They will greet with hawk and horn;
Still he yields a sad consent,
Is with everything content,
Feast, or chase, or tournament.
‘Brother,’ so to him one day
Did his faithful kinsman say—

251

‘Oft a milk-white hind is seen
On that belt of tender green,
Skirting the dark forest vast
We so many times have past;
Seen it flieth, but with flight
As it would pursuit invite;
Though remaining unpursued
In that deep and haunted wood
To this hour;—with hound and horn
We will rouse to-morrow morn:
And methinks we shall not there
Fail to find some quarry rare,
That or other, which shall greet
Friends that here to-morrow meet.

IX

It is day;—with hound and horn
They have roused that morrow morn—
Have the milk-white creature found
On that edge of grassy ground—
And with eager steps pursued
Far into the gloomy wood;
Till the hunters, one by one,
By the length of way foredone,
Rein their steeds—but onward still,
Thorough brake and over hill,
Down steep glen, through foaming river,
Doth Count Siegfried follow ever.
Wild and wilder grows the scene,
Seems it step of man hath been
Never in this savage place:
He too now foregoes the chase,
For he sees another sight

252

Which hath shook him with the might,
Brave albeit, of strange affright.
—‘Who art thou, by none befriended,
Only of that hind attended,
Which has fled with steps so fleet
To the refuge of thy feet—
Housing in the desert's heart,
From all Christian souls apart?
Who art thou? come forth and tell
If a sprite of heaven or hell?’
—‘Shall I in thy sight appear,
Cast me in thy mantle here,
Else I cannot without blame
Stand before thee;’ forth she came
Wrapt in it; there stood also
By her side the fearless doe;
—‘Here of free choice dwell I not,
But have still my God besought
He would guide of his good grace
Human steps to this drear place.
He has heard those prayers of mine,
And has guided even thine.
What of me thou fain wouldst know,
I too willingly will show—
I this wretched and forlorn
Woman, in Brabant was born;
No ignoble stock was mine,
For I came of princely line;
But must find in worst distress
Shelter in this wilderness,
When my husband erringly
Of my truth misdeemed, and me
With my infant would have then
Slain by hands of evil men.’

253

Then exceeding tremblings came
Over all Count Siegfried's frame.
On her face a fixed regard
Turned he—that was all so marred
He could read no history there—
‘But thy name and his declare:’
—‘If my own self I have not,
As the world has me, forgot,
I am Genoveva hight.’
From his steed he fell outright
On the moment when she came
To the syllabling that name,
Down upon his face he fell,
As by stroke invisible
Earthward smitten—there lay long,
And his sobs were thick and strong,
Choking utterance—till his head
He a little raising, said:
‘Genoveva, can it be
That I now should look on thee.
Thee, my own, my murdered wife,
Genevieve, my love, my life?
Oh how wan! how worn! how weak!
Oh that eye! that sunken cheek!
Oh the utter misery
That my guilt has brought on thee!
Canst thou, Genevieve, forgive?
Wilt thou bid this wretch to live?
Low before thy feet I lie;
Thousand deaths if I should die,
And in each a thousand years,—
Drain my heart's blood out in tears,
All were nothing to my sin—
Then free pardon let me win:

254

Pardon for his sake I crave,
Who upon his cross forgave.’
—‘O my husband, all is past,
God is good, and He at last
Of his grace has brought this day.
If thou wishest, I will say
That I pardon—rise, oh rise!
With these sobs and agonies
Thou wilt kill my heart outright;
See too who appears in sight—
O my sweet child, come, you may
Fling those herbs and roots away.
Fear not, sweetest, you will find
That the man is good and kind.’
—‘Cause too just he has to fear;
Oh to think ye two were here
All this while, and I so near!
Thou, and he whom I am bold
To a father's heart to fold.’

But enough, what words can tell
Of a joy unspeakable?—
Of the trancëd long embrace,
(In his bosom hid her face,)
With its gush of mingling tears,
Worth a thousand torturing years.

Others have arrived, to share
In the holy gladness there;
Through the forest tidings fly,
And all draw in wonder nigh.
Near her timidly they draw,
And they kiss her feet in awe,
While to them she doth appear
Creature of another sphere.

255

Faith they scarcely will afford
To the assurance of the lord,
'Tis their mistress lost so long,
Overliving all her wrong.
Now a litter is in haste
Of green branches interlaced,
And on it their lady borne,
By her grief and joy outworn.
Yet or ever from that spot,
From that stern and rugged grot,
Genoveva turned away,
Lowly kneeling will she pay
Thankful vows from grateful heart,
Ere she from that cave depart,
For the mercy and the grace
Which had found her in that place,
Kissed with tears the holy rood,
Where in rocky niche it stood—
—‘Fare thee well!—I leave thee here,
For so many memories dear,
Thou a shield that didst repel
All the fiery darts of hell,
Thou that wast a golden key,
Heaven unlocking unto me.
With these tears once more I say,
Fare thee well—I go away,
But what here has been my gain
May it with me still remain!’

To the castle now doth hie
A rejoicing company,
While from village and from town
Others stream to meet them soon;
As in triumph one doth bear
High in arms the new-found heir;

256

Round his head the glad birds flit,
Singing on his hand they sit,
Glad farewells they seem to sing,
His new fortunes welcoming.
Nor doth not the fearless doe
In the glad procession go,
Has its own peculiar dower
In the glory of this hour:
Round it shouting children press,
Smooth its sides with fond caress,
Kiss its face, and slender neck
With their flowery garlands deck,
While all praise the gentle hind,
And its ministrations kind.

X

Joy is in Count Siegfried's bowers,
Joy upon those ancient towers,
Festal gladness in the room
Of that weight of brooding gloom;
Nor doth she whose presence bright
Chased the darkness of that night,
Bringing back return of light,
In this joy refuse her share:—
Yet another, holier care
Fills her heart—how best to keep
Those heights difficult and steep,
Which her spirit did attain
In its years of desert pain—
Him her pattern still to own,
Wearer of the thorny crown.
To the Count, as more he knows,
Ever loftier wonder grows

257

At her saintly virtues high—
Aye a sadder certainty,
That he will not long retain
His new-won and glorious gain.
She doth meekly undertake
All life's tasks for his dear sake;
Yet she evermore doth seem
Like one moving in a dream,
Or as one called back from death,
Strangely drawing vital breath;
All so wondrous does the stir
Of our life appear to her;
All so little to her mind
Can she now its pageants find.
And not many months have been,
Ere of every eye 'tis seen
That the hour is nearly come,
When the weary one will home;
Ere too plain the work appears
Of those cruel wasting years.
Every day her pale pale face
Wears a more unearthly grace:
Angel wings are o'er her head,
Angel feet about her bed:
She doth catch in trances high
Heaven's transcending harmony;
Enters by heaven's golden doors,
Treads upon heaven's sapphire floors,
And clear voices do not cease
Warning her of near release—
Sounds she may interpret well,
Wherefore sent, and what they tell;
Yet to him will not impart,
That she may not rend his heart:

258

For what anguish had they brought
To his soul, who well had thought
To atone that mighty wrong
By a life of service long,
By long years of service true
And devotion ever new—
But must now see torn and scattered,
By this stroke for ever shattered,
That fond vision, by whose art
He had many times in part
Spoken peace unto his heart.

XI

Gently speak and lightly tread,
'Tis the chamber of the dead:
Now thine earthly course is run,
Now thy weary day is done,
Genoveva, sainted one!
Happy flight thy sprite has taken,
From its plumes earth's last dust shaken;
On the earth is passionate weeping,
Round thy bier lone vigils keeping,—
In the heaven triumphant songs,
Welcome of angelic throngs,
As thou enterest on that day,
Which no tears nor fears allay,
No regrets nor pangs affray,
Hemmed not in by yesterday,
By to-morrow hemmed not in.
Weep not for her—she doth win
What we long for; now is she
That which all desire to be.

259

Bear her forth with solemn cheer,
Bear her forth on open bier,
That the wonder which hath been
May of every eye be seen.
Wonderful! that pale worn brow
Death hath scarcely sealed, and now
All the beauty that she wore
In the youthful years before,
All the freshness and the grace,
And the bloom upon her face,
Ere that seven-yeared distress
In the painful wilderness,
Ere that wasting sickness came,
Undermining quite her frame,
All come back—the light, the hue
Tinge her cheek and lip anew:
Far from her, oh! far away,
All that is so quick to say,
‘Man returneth to his clay:’
All that to our creeping fear
Whispers of corruption near.
Seems it as she would illume
With her radiance and her bloom
The dark spaces of the tomb.

XII

Once again thou art alone,
From that other sorrow thrown
All too quickly upon this:
Oh, few days of fleeting bliss!
Where shall they who fain would speak
Comfort now, the mourner seek?

260

'Mid his old ancestral towers,
His twice-desolated bowers?
On the battle-fields of Spain,
Where the hardy Goths maintain
Their Asturian mountains well,
Thrusting back the infidel?
Rather in the deep recess
Of a pathless wilderness,
Out of knowledge, out of sight,
Seek a lonely eremite.
Him has good Hidulphus blest,
Praised his purpose, and his quest
(Even before this life shall close)
Of a place of sure repose.
So a church in that wild wood
Rises, where that cross had stood:
Underneath the altar high
Genoveva's relics lie:
And that cross, of Angel hands
Wrought, above the altar stands.
He, within a rugged grot,
In the very self-same spot
Where she saw those cruel years,
Where she wept those many tears,
Dwells—where Genoveva knelt,
Kneels—where Genoveva knelt;
From the self-same spring doth take
Water for his thirst to slake,
Often knows no other food
Than the wild roots of the wood;
Well content to undergo
Some small portion of the woe,
Which so long he made her know,

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There he waits for his release,
There in God finds perfect peace:—
Till the long years end at last,
And he too at length has past
From the sorrow and the fears,
From the anguish and the tears,
From the desolate distress
Of this world's great loneliness,
From the withering and the blight,
From the shadow of its night,
Into God's pure sunshine bright.

262

THE STEADFAST PRINCE.

The subject and name of this poem were suggested by Calderon's noble drama, El Principe Constante, admirably translated into German by Schlegel. But I owe much more to a Life of the Prince, Berlin, 1827, which gives many original documents connected with the unfortunate expedition to Africa, and details of the captivity, sufferings, and death of the Prince;—a little volume which well exemplifies how far richer and deeper will oftentimes be the simple truth than any fiction; since all that even so great a poet as Calderon has imagined to shed a glory round his Christian hero is weak and poor, compared with the simple reality. This prince was on one side Englih, his mother, Philippa, who married John the First of Portugal, being sister to our fourth Henry.

‘Only the best composed and worthiest hearts
God sets to act the hard'st and constant'st parts.’—
Daniel.

PART I.

Of all the princes that in lofty place
With lowly virtues did adornëd stand,
Whom better did these lowly virtues grace
Than all their worldly state, might none demand
A nobler meed of praise than Ferdinand,
Brother of him whose sceptre ruled of old,
Where Tagus pours its waves o'er sands of gold.

He knew no higher gladness than to tend
The poor, the needy, whom uncomforted
Not ever from his portals he would send,
Whom sick he watched beside contagious bed,
And whom an-hungered his large bounty fed;
While loving words made ever doubly prized
The gracious acts which he for all devised.

And only was he rigid and severe
With his own self, his weak frame chastening still
With long-drawn fasts and discipline austere,
With vigils which the long night-watches fill:
Yet leaving not to gain all knightly skill
In lists of arms, arrayed in knightly weeds,
Against some coming day of martial deeds.

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For like a clear flame in his bosom burned,
As on a holy altar, fiery zeal,
Though not for meeds of earthly fame he yearned,
Nor willingly for these had bared his steel;
But greatly longed some land that now might feel
The yoke of misbelieving men, once more
To his Redeemer's kingdom to restore.

He, long restricted to unwelcome ease,
To see renewed his Father's glories yearned,
Who with two hundred vessels crossed the seas,
And for himself a noble title earned,
As first who to the infidels returned
The wrongs they wrought on Spain, and with high hand
Made Ceuta his, the key of all their land.

Oh day, when many a heart beat high and fast,
When his exultingly did bound and leap,
For that, despaired of long, was come at last;
Once more a gallant host was on the deep,
And every vessel did its due course keep
For Afric, and at each prow unconfined
A red-cross banner fluttered in the wind.

Far off, that fleet might seem a wandering troop
Of huge sea-monsters, gambolling at will
Upon the tompost surge; or clouds that stoop
And lean on ocean's breast, themselves to fill
With water which they back in rain distil;
Or flock of snow-white sea-birds, that expand
Huge never-wearied pinions, far from land.

264

Or now he might that goodly sight compare,
Who saw it from afar, to forest vast
In motion, that did all its pines upbear—
They tossing their tall heads, as every mast
Now rose, now yielded to the unsteady blast;
Or might have deemed them, proudly thus advancing,
A city on the inconstant billows dancing.

Oh joy, when they, by tempests unassailed,
Set their firm feet upon the Libyan shore,
While loud and clear the holy hymn prevailed,
Which ofttimes heard in Palestine before,—
‘The standards of the King advance,’—once more
Filled now the air, and seemed the prelude high
Of near success and certain victory.

—Long were it and a mournful task to tell
How this fair dawn of triumph was defaced
With wrack of envious clouds, and how befell,
And by whose fault, that with untimely haste
They were entangled in the desert waste;
Wherein they deeper day by day were led,
Still deeming that the foe before them fled:

Till when the scorching heat of Afric's sun,
With alternating dews of chilly night,
And pain and travail had their office done,
And theirs already was an evil plight,
A dawning morning showed them every height
Crowned with innumerous hosts, that hemmed their way,
Then rushed to seize an unresisting prey.

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Yet did not then that instant peril tame
The courage of that high heroic band:
The bold Crusaders, worthy that high name,
With dauntless front from morn to evening stand;
Although when darkness did at length command
Brief truce from arms, the boldest needs must own
That to retrace their steps remained alone.

Back to their ships they wound in sad retreat,
Enveloped ever in a fiery cloud
Of dust and burning sand, which by their feet
Stirred, hung around them like a dismal shroud:
And choked by agony of thirst, they crowd
Round scanty desert wells, and thence in vain
Strive to assuage their fierce and torturing pain.

The hopes of triumph now had quite departed,
But an austerer glory still remained,—
Still to abide 'mid failing hearts high-hearted;
And though the light that lit their path had waned,
And by no hope of victory sustained,
Still to do well what still was to be done;—
The Prince amid defeat this glory won.

But ever as they drew the shore more near,
And as each ship received its living freight,
The Moorish squadrons on their feeble rear
And their diminishing ranks with added weight,
With louder cries and more tumultuous hate,
Thronged, pressing on more fiercely and more fast:
He who had been the first, was now the last.

266

He fain the last would quit the hostile shore,
Who leaped the foremost on its fatal strand:
Around him throng the Moors, behind, before:
Of those true-hearted that beside him stand
Some fall in death—the noble Ferdinand,
(Skill, courage, and despair alike in vain,)
In the foe's hands a captive must remain.

—‘Not in ignoble bondage, nor for long,
If Christian hearts can worth or valour prize,
O gallant Prince, shalt thou endure this wrong,
This unbeseeming yoke, which on thee lies;’
With such well-sounding gentle courtesies
The Mauritanian king him greeted fair,
When of his prisoner's high estate aware.

‘To-morrow a swift ship shall cleave the main,
Bearing this message to the Tagus' shore,
That freedom shall to thee be given again,
If Ceuta will thy brother hold no more,
But unto us its rightful lords restore;
This for a brother will not be denied:
Meanwhile with me, my guest thou shalt abide.’

Frank recognition of his grace the Prince
Rendered again—yet did not, when he heard
Of that so near deliverance, joy evince,
Nor of that ransom answered he a word:
Only it seemed some thought within him stirred,
That some large thought was stirring in his breast,
Which he had well-nigh spoke and then represt.

267

But now there waned not many moons, before
By favouring breezes wafted o'er the sea
They came, the prompt ambassadors that bore
Large powers to set the princely captive free;
Whom at this cost did ransom willingly
His loving brother, and did only yearn
That he should hasten his desired return.

And all seemed finished now, when ‘Hear me,’ cried
The Prince—‘hear me, although a captive thrall:
Ye know that if my brother childless died,
Mine would be then the throne of Portugal:
While this is so, no power has he at all
Aught of its state to alienate or lose,
Unless with my consent, which I refuse.

‘Shall that fair city, on whose walls my sire
With his own hands first planted the five shields
Of Portugal—shall Ceuta, glorious hire
Of labours long on stormy battle-fields,
Which o'er this land such broad dominion wields,
Be in a moment bartered for one poor
And worthless life? who would such thought endure?

‘Its golden crosses glittering in the air,
Shall they give place to crescents foul and pale?
And for glad bells that call to Christian prayer,
The muezzin's melancholy voice prevail,
Bidding to impious rites? and at the tail
Of horses shall our images divine
Be dragged?—to stables turned each sacred shrine?

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‘No—rather if just ransom thou for me,
Such as a faithful man can pay, refuse,
And for my partners in captivity,—
For I not any liberty will use,
In which they share not,—then I rather choose
Of this poor life whatever may remain,
Till death release, to spend in captive pain.’

More he had said, but him the Moorish king
Not suffered to proceed—‘And dost thou ween
To find captivity that easy thing,
Which by my grace it hitherto has been?
While thou in me this grace hast only seen,
Without thine harm thou thinkest to despoil
Us of the just reward of all our toil.

‘O fool, to think I have no power nor will
To make thy bondage bitter unto thee!
That I with gall and wormwood cannot fill
Brimming the cup of thy captivity!
Thou art my slave; a slave's lot thine shall be,
Labour and pains—and, harder to be borne,
Insult and ignominy, stripes and scorn.

‘But when, sore laden with thy shameful task,
Of thy long bondage thou shalt weary be,
And when 'mid basest labours thou shalt ask
For pity, ask it of thyself—not me:
For thou dost in thine own hands hold the key
Of thine own prison: yield to me that place,
Else shalt thou vainly crave the poorest grace.

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‘And ye, that did your bootless message bring,
Go back and say what sight these lands afford—
A Christian prince, the brother of your king,
Tending the horses of his Moorish lord.
Come and redeem him with the spear and sword
If ye are minded once again to try
The welcome of our Moslem chivalry.’

By this from off his shoulders rudest men
Had torn his decent robes, and garmented
In prison-dress of coarsest serge, and then
Him to his task dishonourable led,
He nought resisting—only this he said,
‘If that herein there be dishonour, thine
Is the dishonour and the shame, not mine.’

And his companions each and all were borne
One way or other to some servile toil,
'Mid blows and curses and tumultuous scorn,—
Whom all were free to buffet and to spoil,
Until they wet that cruel Afric soil
With mingled blood and tears, and scarcely thought
They would with life to that day's end be brought:

So that when they were thrust in harshest wise
Into a noisome vault at that day's close,
That noisome vault appeared a paradise,
Because it gave some shelter from the blows,
The taunts and insults of their cruel foes—
Because its bars and iron-strengthened gate
Rose strong between them and that clamorous hate

270

But when there lacked not of their number one,
The Prince so joyed, as though he found reward
For all the suffering he that day had known:
Yet when a light permitted to regard
Their garments rent, swoln hands, and faces marred,
He, strong before all weakness to restrain,
Not any longer might from tears refrain.

—‘Dear friends, that I have dragged you down with me
Into this gulf of woe, this makes my smart;
That of this suffering and captivity
I may not for myself claim every part:
Oh this it is that causes my weak heart
To die within me;—tell me you forgive
Only this wrong, and I again shall live.’

Nothing they spake; but of that faithful band
One after other rising from his place,
Drew near, and knelt, and kissed the Prince's hand,
As though that hand dispersed all gifts and grace:
He raised and wound them in a strict embrace
One after other—‘Brothers of my heart,
Henceforth for good or ill we never part.’

—‘Oh, wish us not then any more away,
Our dear dear lord; nor grudge to us our share
In this high suffering’—so they all did say—
‘What could we ask more goodly or more fair,
Than that when men hereafter shall declare
Thy noble patience, they should then as well
Of us thy servants and true comrades tell?’

271

But he to them—‘We know not what shall be,
Nor whither these things tend; if that we bore
To-day of outrage and indignity
Be but the first and least, and far, far more,
Yea, mortal suffering be for us in store;
Or if, when God awhile our faith has proved,
All suffering shall from us be then removed.

‘But He who knoweth that we hither came
Not in the lust of spoil, nor heat of pride,
Nor with the hope to win ourselves a name,
But the dear faith of Christ to spread more wide,
Can give us strength in patience to abide,
Till one way or another grief has end;
Then let us unto Him our cause commend.’

What of the night remained, when thus the smart
Of their new bleeding wounds had been allayed
With the sweet balm of loving words, in part
Was spent in prayer; they lowly kneeling made
Their supplications unto God for aid;
And then they did their weary eyelids close
In brief oblivion of all earthly woes.

In dreams they wandered by familiar places
In their own land, unto their childhood dear;
And some were locked in loving fond embraces,
And sweet the voices of their home and clear
Came to them;—pain was gone, and doubt and fear;
And all the dreary and the dread between
Was gone, like something which had never been.

272

What happy dreams, blest visions without number,
Were scattered by their rude tormentors' tone,
Snapping in twain the golden links of slumber!
Then each poor captive staggering rose, as one
From off whose heart there had been rolled a stone
A little moment—to return again
With added weight, a sense of hopeless pain.

And this their mournful life continued long
Without a change, unless when some new day
Brought with it some new insult or new wrong,
Sharp taunt or scorn, which they might not gainsay,
Nor seem to feel; which if one did repay
With but an angry look, he then would find
That there was worse and keener still behind.

But oh! what gladness was it when they met,
The long day's miserable task-work o'er,
In their dank vault, and shared the black bread set,
With water from dank pools drawn, them before:
Then made they of that coarse and scanty store
A glorious meal, for love makes all things sweet,
And it is always joy when brethren meet.

Yet oft the wantonness of fell despite
Would grudge them this poor respite of their woes;
And then harsh voices in the middle night,
Just as their leaden eyelids 'gan to close,
And their tired limbs were sinking to repose,
Would bid them forth, and task them to renew
The past day's work, or merely to undo.

273

Yet amid all still kept his constant mind,
Not to be wearied out by toil or pain,
Or all which malice could of outrage find,
The Steadfast Prince; on him were spent in vain
All shafts of malice—able to sustain
Not his own heart alone, but aye to speak
Strength to the fainting, courage to the weak.

But if they cursed their foes, or wished them dead,
With gentle words, but firm, he would put down
Such evil thoughts:—‘Shall we be angerëd
With them that help us to a martyr's crown?
Shall we not rather our tormentors own
As scourges with which God doth scourge our sin,
And far unhappier than are we therein?

‘Your curses cannot harm them, but can make
Of your own hearts a hell instead of heaven;
The healing virtue from affliction take,
And mar all gracious ends for which ’twas given.
With mortal men ye gloriously have striven;
A harder task remains you—to oppose
Revenge and scorn and hate, far deadlier foes.’

Yet once, what time the others sleeping lay,
To one, an aged and faithful servant true,
Who, though he 'scaped that last disastrous day,
Yet when his lord's captivity he knew,
To share his bondage and his sufferings flew,—
He once unto this faithful servant old
More of his inmost bosom did unfold:

274

‘To these, my poor companions, seem I strong,
And at some times such am I, as a rock
That has upstood in middle ocean long,
And braved the winds' and waters' angriest shock,
Counting their fury but an idle mock:
Yet sometimes weaker than the weakest wave
That dies about its base, when storms forget to rave.

‘I from my God such strength have sometimes won,
That all the dark dark future I am bold
To face;—but oh! far otherwise anon,
When my heart sinks and sinks to depths untold,
Till being seems no deeper depth to hold,
Unfathomed by the line of my despair;
And with my spirit so it now doth fare.

‘O God, that I had fall'n with them who fell
In that disastrous conflict by Tangiers!
O happy you, my brethren, ending well!
O not to be lamented with such tears
As we, condemned to waste inglorious years
In this captivity, which shall extend,
Without release, unto life's utmost end!

‘Yet is not here the answer to my prayer?
For I remember when upon my nod
Men waited, and the world did speak me fair,
Then thinking on my Saviour and my God,
And on the thorny path of life He trod
With bleeding feet, deep shame would fill my heart,
That I should in his sufferings bear no part.

275

‘And then in secret prayed I earnestly
That I might to some likeness with my Lord
Be brought—not courted, praised, and honoured be,
While He was scorned, and buffeted, and gored
With cruel wounds; I knew my prayer was heard,
Though on what side affliction would appear,
I strove in vain to guess;—now all is clear.’

276

PART II.

What man shall say that he the deepest deep
Has reached, whereto misfortune may him bring?
That never from her fatal urn may leap
A lot inscribed with heavier suffering
Than that he knows? that now of everything
Which sweetens life his life is stripped so bare,
That worse with him henceforth it cannot fare?

Not he, who had been hurled with impulse rude
Down from the honourable high estate
Wherein observed and reverenced once he stood;
He yet must be misfortune's trustier mate—
Must lie exposed to keener shafts of fate:
He, knowing much of ill, must find that more,
Bitterer and sharper, is for him in store.

For now his foes, by malice partly moved,
Because they saw it solaced him to share
All griefs and labours which the others proved;
And how that all, though oft they threatened were,
And punished for their deed, yet still would bear
To him all reverence and respect, and bring
Homage to him as to a crownëd king;—

277

And partly, for they dreaded lest his frame,
Which had been ever tender, weak, and frail,
And evidently weaker now became
With each succeeding day, should wholly fail,
Nor longer to sustain itself avail;—
Lest it should sink beneath its cruel toil,
And them of all their promised gain despoil;—

They now denied him the sad liberty
To share whatever pains the others knew:
Shut in a narrow dungeon must he lie,
Shut from their fellowship and service true;
There he his resolution high may rue,
If ever ruth on high and noble deeds,
Whatever consequence they bring, succeeds.

Oh dreary months! months growing into years,
Which o'er their heads, bringing no respite, passed;
And they must mingle still their drink with tears,
While fell upon them thicker and more fast
The shafts of anguish;—yet for him at last,
The noblest sufferer of this suffering band,
The hour of his deliverance was at hand.

For once, when they as usual passed before
His vault, and softly called him, no reply
Might they obtain;—but listening at the door,
They only heard him breathing heavily,
And caught at intervals a long-drawn sigh;
Till, more times called, he faintly did desire
Who called to know, and what they might require.

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—‘Oh! fares it, dearest lord, so ill with thee,
That now thou dost no more our voices know,
Who once couldst tell us each from each, if we
Did but so much as near thy dungeon go,
Bound on our weary errands to and fro?’
—‘Oh, pardon me, my friends,—my extreme pain
Hath robbed me of all sense and dulled my brain.

‘But go and say in what an evil case
I find me now;—perchance they will relent
So far that I may in this noisome place,
For my short time remaining, not be pent;
Or at my prayer they will at least consent
That one of you may now continue nigh,
And watch beside me—for, dear friends, I die.’

To the king's presence straight they forced their way,
Regardless of what dangers they might meet:
Before him prone upon the earth they lay;
They kissed the very ground beneath his feet,
Laying the dust with tears, and did entreat
In anguish that their lord might not be left
Unhelped to perish, of all aid bereft.

But little might they find of pity there;
New insults and new taunts were all they won;
These, with rude blows, their only answer were:
—‘Back to your tasks, ye Christian dogs—begone—
Away! from me compassion finds he none:
Let him upon himself compassion show;
I swear, by heaven, he shall no other know!

279

‘What, shall ye come in arms to waste our land,
God's people to extirpate shall ye come,
And then, when it fares ill with you, demand
Our pity?—no; accept your righteous doom,
O fools! that in your own land had not room
To dwell—that had not strength to conquer ours;
Fools, whose desires so far outstrip your powers!

‘Where are they now, that with the fire and sword
Our land to harry were so free of old?
Can they no pity to your Prince afford?
Where is your King, and where your captains bold?
Or has it not in Portugal been told
What here is done, and what by him is borne
Of shame and outrage, and of extreme scorn?’

It seemed that from those votaries of Mahound
All love, all mercy quite had fled away;
Yet in one heart this much of grace they found,
That when their tasks were ended of the day,
He who the dungeon where the sufferer lay
Kept, unto them consented to afford
A brief communion with their dying lord.

Admitted there, from cries and loud lament,
Untimely now, they scarcely could refrain;
Fain would they with their shrieks the vault have rent;
They knelt beside him, kissed his hands, the chain
That on his wasted limbs did still remain;
They cast themselves the dungeon-floor along,
And tore their beards, and did their faces wrong.

280

Sobs choked their utterance wholly, to behold
The lineaments so marred and so defaced,
Which they had loved and reverenced so of old.
He too was deeply moved, but sooner chased
The weakness from him, and with calm replaced:
Then from the strawen pallet where he lay
Himself a little raising, thus did say:—

‘If I sometimes an earnest hope have fed,
That I might breathe again my native air,
And tread my native soil, this wish was bred
By the desire I cherished to prepare
For you such honourable shelter there,
As could none other do, who did not know
How truly you have served me in my woe.

‘For had I sate a king upon my throne,
All wealth, all honour waiting on mine eye,
You never could have truer service shown
Than you have shown me in my misery—
Nor I from any found more loyalty,
Than that which I have found upon your parts,
O children dear, O true and faithful hearts.

‘And now that I am hastening to my rest,
One only thought of trouble doth employ
My soul, that I am leaving you opprest
With this huge weight of woe;—the perfect joy
My bosom feels, knows only this alloy,
That many, when my lips are sealed in death,
Will seek to draw you from you holy faith.

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‘But oh! whatever of worst ill betide,
Choose not this manner to evade your woe:
Be true to God; on Him in faith abide,
And sure deliverance you at length shall know;
It may be that some path his hand will show
To your dear earthly homes; or He will shape
For you at length my way of glad escape.

‘Be true to God; forsake not Him, and you
In all your griefs forsake He never will;
The true of heart have found Him ever true;
And this I say, who having known much ill,
Do now affirm Him faithful to fulfil
All promises—and boldly say that He
In all my griefs hath not forsaken me.’

No more he spake; but speechless sank, oppressed
With the fierce fever that within him burned;
But oh! what anguish then the hearts possessed
Of that poor captive band, who weeping turned,
And their dear lord, as now departed, mourned,—
Forth filing from that vault a weeping train,
Who had beheld him now, and should not see again.

Now seemed they desolate; for he, although
Helpless his dearest to defend with power
From the least insult of the meanest foe,
Had seemed to them a shelter and a tower
Of refuge in affliction's fiercest hour,
From his lone dungeon spreading broad above
Their heads the buckler of his faith and love.

282

And still the tears flowed faster from their eyes,
As each his fellow weeping did remind
Of all his loving gentle courtesies,
And gracious acts—how oft, as one that pined,
Even ere that sickness took him, he declined
His scanty portion of the food prepared,
Which among them with this pretext he shared.

—‘He knew our fetters’ clank, and with quick ear
One from another by that mournful sound
He could discern, nor ever passed we near
His dungeon, on our weary labour bound,
But he for us some words of comfort found,
And still he begged us pardon him, as though
Himself he owned the cause of all our woe.

‘And what most grieved him, more than all he bore
In his own person of injurious wrong,
Piercing his very bosom's inmost core,
Was, if the tale was brought him that among
Us, his dear children, there had strife upsprung,
As sometimes did—for grief is quick and wild,—
Then left he not, till we were reconciled.’

—Beside the Prince might only one remain
In that unlighted vault the livelong night:
Its earlier watches seemed of restless pain,
Nothing he spake, but tossed from left to right,
Like one who vainly did some ease invite;
Till when it verged toward morning, he that kept
That anxious vigil deemed the sufferer slept:

283

Or sometimes feared he was already dead,
So noiseless now that chamber's silence deep;
Yet ventured not to speak or stir, for dread
Lest he should chase away that sweetest sleep
Of morning, which comes over them that keep
Pained watches through the night;—till tardily
The grey dawn broke, and he drew gently nigh.

When lo! with folded palms the martyr lay,
His eyes unclosed—and stood in each a tear,
And round his mouth a sweeter smile did play
Than ever might on mortal lips appear:
No mortal joy could ever have come near
The joy that bred that smile; with waking eye
He seemed to mark some vision streaming by.

Then feared to rouse him from that blessëd trance,
And back again with noiseless step retired
That good old man—nor nearer would advance
Though of his weal he gladly had inquired.
He waited, and a long long hour expired,
And it was silence still—when to his bed
Him beckoning soft, the princely sufferer said:

‘What I shall speak, now promise that to none
Of all my fellow captives shall be told;
That not till this poor body shall have gone
The way of all the earth, thou wilt unfold
My words, yea, evermore in silence hold,
Unless hereafter should a time betide,
When by the telling God were glorified.

284

‘Two hours or more before the spring of day,
As I within me mused how poor and leer
This world, and as in pain I waking lay,
Thought upon all the happy souls, that here
Once suffered, but are now exempt from fear
And pain and wrong, there woke within my breast
A speechless longing for that heavenly rest.

‘Mine eyes were steadfastly towàrd the wall
Turned, when I saw a wondrous vision there;
I saw a vision bright, majestical,
One seated on a throne—and many fair
And dazzling shapes before Him gathered were,
With palms in hand; such glory from his face
Was shed, as lightened all this dismal place.

‘This dismal vault, this dungeon of deep gloom,
This sunless dwelling of eternal night,
Which I have felt so long my living tomb,
Showed like the court of heaven—so clear, so bright,
So full of odours, harmonies and light:
And music filled the air—a heavenly strain,
That rose awhile, and then was hushed again.

‘Then one came forward from that blessëd throng,
And kneeled to Him, and said—“Compassion take
On this thy servant, who has suffered long
Such great and heavy troubles for thy sake.
We thank Thee, Lord, that Thou so soon wilt make
Thy servant's many woes to end, that he
Into our choir admitted now will be.”

285

‘When thus I heard him speak, I marked him well,
And by his banner and his scales, I knew
It was the great Archangel Michaël:
And by his side there knelt another too,
Who in one hand a chalice held in view,
The other clasped a book, and there was writ,
“In the beginning was the Word,” in it.

‘But then my Lord, my Saviour, turned to me,
And with sweet smile ineffable He said,
“To-day thou comest hence, and shalt be free!”
With music, as it came, then vanishëd
The vision; but within me it has bred
Sweet comfort that remains, and now I know
To-day I leave the world, and end my woe.

‘My Lord, my God, what wondrous grace is this,
That Thou hast not disdained to visit me,
And give me tidings of my coming bliss?
Who am I, sinful man, so graced to be?
Oh, gladly will I bear whate'er by Thee
May be appointed, ere my race be run,
Of pain or travail—Lord, thy will be done.’

In calmest quiet, waiting his release,
When he had finished thus his prayer, he lay:
‘Lord, now Thou lettest me depart in peace,’
Were the last words which he was heard to say,
Upon his left side turning, as the day,
Slow sinking now with more than usual pride,
Streamed through the prison bars, a splendour deep and wide.

286

When the last flush had faded from the west,
When the last streak of golden light was gone,
They looked, but he had entered on his rest;
He too his haven of repose had won;—
Leaving this truth to be gainsaid by none,
That what the legend on his shield did say,
That well his life had proved—Le bien me plaît.

287

THE CROSS.

[_]

FROM CALDERON.

Tree, which Heaven has willed to dower
With that true fruit whence we live,
As that other, death did give;
Of new Eden loveliest flower;
Bow of light, that in worst hour
Of the worst flood signal true
O'er the world, of mercy threw;
Fair plant, yielding sweetest wine;
Of our David harp divine;
Of our Moses tables new;
Sinner am I, therefore I
Claim upon thy mercies make,
Since alone for sinners' sake
God on thee endured to die.

290

END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.