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I. Part I.

I

Music and Love!—If lovers hear me sing,
I will for them essay the simple tale,
To hold some fair young listeners in a ring
With echoes gathered from an Irish vale,
Where still, methinks, abide my golden years,
Though I not with them,—far discern'd through tears

II

When evening fell upon the village-street
And brother fields, reposing hand in hand,
Unlike where flaring cities scorn to meet
The kiss of dusk that quiets all the land,
'Twas pleasant laziness to loiter by
Houses and cottages, a friendly spy,

III

And hear the frequent fiddle that would glide
Through jovial mazes of a jig or reel,
Or sink from sob to sob with plaintive slide,
Or mount the steps of swift exulting zeal;
For our old village was with music fill'd
Like any grove where thrushes wont to build.
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IV

Mixt with the roar of bellows and of flame,
Perhaps the reed-voice of a clarionet
From forge's open ruddy shutter came;
Or round some hearth were silent people set,
Where the low flute, with plantive quivering, ran
Through tender ‘Colleen Dhas’ or ‘Feilecan.’

V

Or pictured on those bygone, shadowy nights
I see a group of girls at needlework,
Placed round a candle throwing soft half-lights
On the contrasted faces, and the dark
And fair-hair'd heads, a bunch of human flow'rs,
While many a ditty cheers th' industrious hours.

VI

Pianoforte's sound from curtain'd pane
Would join the lofty to the lowly roof
In the sweet links of one harmonious chain;
And often down the street some Glee's old woof,
‘Hope of my heart’—‘Ye Shepherds’—‘Lightly tread,’
Enmesh'd my steps or wrapt me round in bed.

VII

The most delicious chance, if we should hear,
Pour'd from our climbing glen's enfoliaged rocks,
At dusk some solitary bugle, clear,
Remote, and melancholy; echo mocks
The strain delighted, wafting it afar
Up to the threshold of the evening star.
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VIII

And Gerald was our music-master's name;
Young Gerald White; whose mother, not long wed,
Only to make him ours by birthright came.
Her Requiescat I have often redd,
Where thickest ivy hangs its ancient pall
Over the dumb and desolate abbey wall.

IX

The father found a music-pupil rare,
More ready still to learn than he to teach
His art no longer was his only care,
But now young Gerald with it, each for each
And with a secret and assiduous joy
The grave musician taught his happy boy.

X

The boy's whole thought to Music lean'd and sway'd;
He heard a minor in the wind at night,
And many a tune the village noises play'd;
The thunder roar'd like bands before the might
Of marching armies; in deep summer calm
The falling brooklet would intone a psalm.

XI

The Chapel organ-loft, his father's seat,
Was to the child his earthly paradise;
And that celestial one that used to greet
His infant dreams, could take no other guise
Than visions of green curtains and gold pipes,
And angels of whom quire girls were the types.
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XII

Their fresh young voices from the congregation,
Train'd and combined by simple rules of chant,
And lifted on the harmonious modulation
Roll'd from the lofty organ, ministrant
To sacred triumph, well might bring a thought
Of angels there,—perhaps themselves it brought.

XIII

Poor girls the most were: this one had her nest,
A mountain mavis, in the craggy furze;
Another in close lane must toil and rest,
And never cage-bird's song more fine than hers,
Humming at work all through the busy week,
Set free in Sunday chorus, proud and meek.

XIV

And when young Gerald might adventure forth
Through Music-land,—where hope and memory kiss,
And singing fly beyond the bourne of earth,
And the whole spirit full of aching bliss
Would follow as the parting shrouds reveal
Glimpses ineffable, but soon conceal—

XV

While all the hills, mayhap, and distant plain,
Village and brook were shaded, fold on fold,
With the slow dusk, and on the purpling pane
Soft twilight barr'd with crimson and with gold
Lent to that simple little house of prayer
A richly solemn, a cathedral air;
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XVI

His symphonies to suit the dying close
Suffused it with a voice that could not ask
In vain for tears; not ask in vain from those
Who in the dew fulfill'd their pious task,
Kneeling with rosaries beside a grave;
To whom a heavenly comforting it gave.

XVII

Thus village years went by. Day after day
Flow'd, as a stream unvext with storms or floods
Flows by some islet with a hawthorn gray;
Where circling seasons bring a share of buds,
Nests, blossoms, ruddy fruit; and, in their turn,
Of withering leaves and frosty twigs forlorn.

XVIII

So went the years, that never may abide;
Boyhood to manhood, manly prime to age,
Ceaselessly gliding on, as still they glide;
Until the father yields for heritage
(Joyful, yet with a sigh) the master's place
To Gerald—who could higher fortune grace.

XIX

But the shy youth has yet his hours of leisure:
And now, the Spring upon the emerald hills
Dancing with flying clouds, how keen his pleasure,
Plunged in deep glens or tracking upland rills,
Till lessening light recal him from his roaming
To breathe his gather'd secrets to the gloaming.
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XX

Spring was around him, and within him too.
Delightful season!—life without a spur
Bounds gaily forward, and the heart is new
As the green wand fresh budded on a fir;
And Nature, into jocund chorus waking,
Bids every young voice to her merry-making.

XXI

Gerald, high echoing this delightful Spring,
Pour'd from his finger-tips electric power
In audible creations swift of wing,
Till sunshine glimpsing through an April shower,
And clouds, and delicate glories, and the bound
Of lucid sky came melting into sound.

XXII

Our ear receives in common with our eye
One Beauty, flowing through a different gate,
With melody its form, and harmony
Its hue; one mystic Beauty is the mate
Of Spirit indivisible, one love
Her look, her voice, her memory do move.

XXIII

Yet sometimes in his playing came a tone
Not learn'd of sun or shadow, wind or brook,
But thoughts so much his own he dared not own,
Nor, prizing much, appraise them; dared not look
In fear to lose an image undefined
That brighten'd every vista of his mind.
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XXIV

Two pupils dwelt upon the river-side,
At Cloonamore, a cottage near the rush
Of narrow'd waters breaking from a wide
And pond-like smoothness, brimming green and flush
On dark groves; here for Gerald, truth to say,
His weekly task was more than holiday.

XXV

A quiet home it was; compact and neat
As a wren's nest. A gentle woman's choice
Had built and beautified the green retreat;
But in her labours might she not rejoice,
Being call'd away to other place of rest;
And spent her last breath in a dear behest.

XXVI

That was for her two daughters: she had wed
A plain, rough husband, though a kind and true;
And ‘Dearest Patrick,’ from her dying bed
She whisper'd, ‘Promise me you'll try to do
For Ann and Milly what was at my heart,
If God had spared me to perform my part.’

XXVII

As well as no abundant purse allow'd,
Or as the neighbouring village could supply,
The father kept his promise, and was proud
To see the girls grow up beneath his eye
Two ladies in their culture and their mien;
Though not the less there lay a gulf between.
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XXVIII

A spirit unrefined the elder had,
An envious eye, a tongue of petty scorn.
That women these may own—how true! how sad!
And these, though Ann had been a countess born,
Had mark'd her meaner to the dullest sight
Than stands a yellow lily with a white.

XXIX

White lily,—Milly,—darling little girl!
I think I see as once I saw her stand;
The soft hair waving in a single curl
Behind her ear; a kid licking her hand;
Her fair young face with health and racing warm,
And loose frock blown about her slender form.

XXX

The dizzy lark, a dot on the white cloud,
That sprinkles music to the vernal breeze,
Was not more gay than Milly's joyous mood;
The silent lark that starry twilight sees
Cradled among the braird in closest bower,
Not more quiescent than her tranquil hour.

XXXI

Her mind was open, as a flowery cup
That gathers richness from the sun and dew,
To knowledge, and as easily drew up
The wholesome sap of life; unwatch'd it grew,
A lovely blossom in a shady place;
And like her mind, so was her innocent face.
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XXXII

At all times fair, it never look'd so fair
As when the holy glow of harmonies
Lighted it through; her spirit as it were
An azure heav'n outshining at her eyes;
With Gerald's tenor, while the fountain sprung
Of her contralto, fresh and pure and young.

XXXIII

In years a child when lessons thus began,
Child is she still, yet nearly woman grown;
For childhood stays with woman more than man,
In voice and cheek and mouth, nor these alone;
And up the sky with no intense revealing
May the great dawn of womanhood come stealing.

XXXIV

Now must the moon of childhood, trembling white,
Faint in the promise of the flushing heaven;
Looks are turn'd eastward, where new orient light
Suffuses all the air with subtle leaven;
And shadowy mountain-paths begin to show
Their unsuspected windings 'mid the glow.

XXXV

Her silky locks have ripen'd into brown,
Her soft blue eyes grown deeper and more shy,
And lightly on her lifted head the crown
Of queenly maidenhood sits meek and high;
Her frank soul lives in her ingenuous voice,
Most purely tuned to sorrow or rejoice.
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XXXVI

Within the chapel on a Sunday morn
She bows her mild head near the altar-rail,
And raises up that mild full voice unworn
Into the singing;—should a Sunday fail,
There's one would often mark her empty seat,
There's one would find the anthem incomplete.

XXXVII

Few her companions are, and few her books;
And in a ruin'd convent's circling shade,
The loveliest of tranquil river-nooks,
Where trailing birch, fit bow'r for gentle maid,
And feather'd fir-tree half shut out the stream,
She often sits alone to read or dream.

XXXVIII

Sometimes through leafy lattice she espies
A flitting figure on the other shore;
But ever past th' enchanted precinct hies
That wanderer, and where the rapids roar
Through verdured crags, shelters his beating heart,
Foolishly bent to seek, yet stay apart.

XXXIX

Then Milly can resume her reverie,
About a friend, a friend that she could love;
But finds her broken thought is apt to flee
To what seem other musings; slowly move
The days, and counted days move ever slowest:
Milly! how long ere thy own heart thou knowest?
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XL

Sooner than Gerald his. His path-side birds
Are scarcely more unconscious or more shrinking.
Yet would he tell his love in simple words
Did love stand clearly in his simple thinking.
High the discovery, and too high for one
Who counts his life as though not yet begun.

XLI

For all the rest seem sage and busy men;
And he alone despised, and justly too,
Or borne with merely;—could he venture then
To deem this rich inheritance his due?
Slowly the fine and tender soul discerns
Its rareness, and its lofty station learns.

XLII

And now, 'tis on a royal eventide
When the ripe month sets glowing earth and air,
And summer by a stream or thicket side
Twists amber honeysuckles in her hair,—
Gerald and Milly meet by trembling chance,
And step for step are moving, in a trance,

XLIII

Their pathway foliage-curtain'd and moss-grown;
Behind the trees the white flood flashing swift,
Through many moist and ferny rocks flung down,
Roars steadily, where sunlights play and shift.
How oft they stop, how long, they nothing know,
Nor how the pulses of the evening go.
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XLIV

Their talk?—the dappled hyacinthine glade
Lit up in points of blue,—the curious treble
That sometimes by the kine's deep throat is made,—
The quail's ‘twit-wit-wit,’ like a hopping pebble
Thrown along ice,—the dragonflies, the birds,
The rustling twig,—all noticed in few words.

XLV

A level pond, inlaid with lucid shadows
Of groves and crannied cliffs and evening sky,
And rural domes of hay, where the green meadows
Slope to embrace its margin peacefully,
The slumb'ring river to the rapid draws;
And here, upon a grassy jut, they pause.

XLVI

How shy a strength is Love's, that so much fears
Its darling secret to itself to own!
Their rapt, illimitable mood appears
A beauteous miracle for each alone;
Exalted high above all range of hope
By the pure soul's eternity of scope.

XLVII

Yet in both hearts a prophecy is breathed
Of how this evening's phantom may arise,
In richer hues than ever sunlight wreathed
On hill or wood or wave: in brimming eyes
The glowing landscape melts away from each;
And full their bosoms swell, too full for speech.
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XLVIII

Is it a dream? The countless happy stars
Stand silently into the deepening blue;
In slow procession all the molten bars
Of cloud move down; the air is dim with dew;
Eve scatters roses on the shroud of day;
The common world sinks far and far away.

XLIX

With goodnight kiss the zephyr, half asleep,
Sinks to its cradle in the dusk of trees,
Where river-chimings tolling sweet and deep
Make lullaby, and all field-scents that please
The summer's children float into the gloom
Dream-interwoven in a viewless loom.

L

Clothed with an earnest paleness, not a blush,
And with th' angelic gravity of love,
Each lover's face amid the twilight hush
Is like a saint's whose thoughts are all above
In perfect gratitude for heavenly boon;
And o'er them for a halo comes the moon.

LI

Thus through the leaves and the dim dewy croft
They linger homeward. Flowers around their feet
Bless them, and in the firmament aloft
Night's silent ardours. And an hour too fleet,
Tho' stretching years from all the life before,
Conducts their footsteps to her cottage door.
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LII

Thenceforth they meet more timidly?—in truth,
Some lovers might, but all are not the same;
In the clear ether of their simple youth
Steady and white ascends the sacred flame.
They do not shrink hereafter; rather seek
More converse, but with graver voices speak.

LIII

One theme at last preferred to every other,
Joying to talk of that mysterious land
Where each enshrines the image of a mother,
Best of all watchers in the guardian band;
To highest, tenderest thought is freedom given
Amid this unembarrass'd air of Heaven.

LIV

For when a hymn has wing'd itself away
On Palestrina's full-resounding chords,
And at the trellis'd window loiter they,
Deferring their good-night with happy words,
Almost they know, without a throb of fear,
Of spirits in the twilight standing near.

LV

And day by day and week by week pass by,
And Love still poised upon a trembling plume
Floats on the very verge of sovereignty,
Where ev'n a look may call him to assume
The rich apparel and the shining throne,
And claim two loyal subjects for his own.
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LVI

Wondrous, that first, full, mutual look of love
Coming ere either looker is aware;
Unbounded trust, a tenderness above
All tenderness; mute music, speechless pray'r;
Life's mystery, reality, and might,
Soft-swimming in a single ray of light!

LVII

When shall it fly, this talismanic gleam,
Which melts like lightning every prison-bar,
Which penetrates the mist with keener beam
Than flows from sun or moon or any star?
Love waits; like vulgar pebble of the ground
Th' imperial gem lies willing to be found.

LVIII

One evening, Gerald came before his hour,
Distrustful of the oft-consulted clock;
And waits, with no companion, till his flow'r—
Keeping the time as one of Flora's flock,
Whose shepherdess, the Sunset Star, doth fold
Each in its leaves—he may again behold,

LIX

Nor thinks it long. Familiar all, and dear,
A sanctity pervades the silent room.
Autumnal is the season of the year;
A mystic softness and love-weighty gloom
Gather with twilight. In a dream he lays
His hand on the piano, dreaming plays.
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LX

Most faint and broken sounds at first are stealing
Into the shadowy stillness; wild and slow
Imperfect cadences of captive feeling,
Gathering its strength, and yet afraid to know
Its chance of freedom,—till on murmuring chords
Th' unguarded thought strays forth in passionate words.

LXI

Angel of Music! when our finest speech
Is all too coarse to give the heart relief,
The inmost fountains lie within thy reach,
Soother of every joy and every grief;
And to the stumbling words thou lendest wings
On which aloft th' enfranchised spirit springs.

LXII

Much love may in not many words be told;
And on the sudden love can speak the best.
These mystical melodious buds unfold,
On every petal showing clear imprest
The name of Love. So Gerald sung and play'd
Unconscious of himself, in twilight shade.

LXIII

He has not overheard (O might it be!)
This stifled sobbing at the open door,
Where Milly stands arrested tremblingly
By that which in an instant tells her more
Than all the dumb months mused of; tells it plain
To joy that cannot comprehend its gain.
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LXIV

One moment, and they shall be face to face,
Free in the gift of this great confidence,
Wrapt in the throbbing calm of its embrace,
No more to disunite their spirits thence.
The myrtle crown stoops close to either brow,—
But ah! what alien voice distracts them now?

LXV

Her sister comes. And Milly turns away;
Hurriedly bearing to some quiet spot
Her tears and her full heart, longing to lay
On a dim pillow cheeks so moist and hot.
When midnight stars between her curtains gleam
Fair Milly sleeps, and dreams a happy dream.

LXVI

Dream on, poor child! beneath the midnight stars;
O slumber through the kindling of the dawn;
The shadow's on its way; the storm that mars
The lily even now is hurrying on.
All has been long fulfill'd; yet I could weep
At thought of thee so quietly asleep.

LXVII

But Gerald, through the night serenely spread,
Walks quickly home, intoxicate with bliss
Not named and not examined; overhead
The clustering lights of worlds are full of this
New element; the soft wind's dusky wings
Grow warmer on his cheeks, with whisperings.
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LXVIII

And yet to-night he has not seen his Love.
His Love—in that one word all comfort dwells;
Reaching from earth to those clear flames above,
And making common food of miracles.
Kind pulsing Nature, touch of Deity,
Sure thou art full of love, which lovers see!

LXIX

Most cruel Nature, so unmoved, so hard,
The while thy children shake with joy or pain!
Thou wilt not forward Love, nor Death retard
One finger-push, for mortal's dearest gain.
Our Gerald, through the night serenely spread,
Walks quickly home, and finds his father dead.

LXX

Great awe must be when the last blow comes down,
Tho' but the ending of a weary strife,
Tho' years on years weigh low the hoary crown
Or sickness tenant all the house of life;
Stupendous ever is the great event,
The frozen form most strangely different!

LXXI

To Gerald follow'd many doleful days,
Like wet clouds moving through a sullen sky.
A vast unlook'd-for change the mind dismays,
And smites its world with instability;
Rocks appear quaking, towers and treasures vain,
Peace foolish, Joy disgusting, Hope insane.
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LXXII

For even Cloonamore, that image dear,
Returns to Gerald's mind like its own ghost,
In melancholy garments, drench'd and sere,
Its joy, its colour, and its welcome lost.
Wanting one token sure to lean upon,
(How almost gained!) his happy dream is gone.

LXXIII

Distracted purposes, a homeless band,
Throng in his meditation; now he flies
To rest his soul on Milly's cheek and hand,—
Now he makes outcry on his fantasies
For busy cheats: the lesson not yet learn'd
How Life's true coast from vapour is discern'd.

LXXIV

Ah me! 'tis like the tolling of a bell
To hear it—“Past is past, and gone is gone;”
With looking back afar to see how well
We could have 'scaped our losses, and have won
High fortune. Ever greatest turns on least,
Like Earth's own whirl to atom poles decreased.

LXXV

For in the gloomiest hour a letter came,
Shot arrow-like across the Western sea,
Praising the West; its message was the same
As many a time ere now had languidly
Dropp'd at his feet, but this the rude gale bore
To heart,—Gerald will quit our Irish shore.
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LXXVI

And quit his Love whom he completely loves;
Who loves him just as much? Nay, downcast youth!
Nay, dear mild maiden!—Surely it behoves
That somewhere in the day there should be ruth
For innocent blindness?—lead, oh, lead them now
One step, but one!—Their fates do not allow.

LXXVII

The parting scene is brief and frosty dumb.
The unlike sisters stand alike unmoved;
For Milly's soul is wilder'd, weak, and numb,
That reft away which seem'd so dearly proved.
While thought and speech she struggles to recover
Her hand is prest—and he is gone for ever.

LXXVIII

Time speeds: on an October afternoon
Across the well-known view he looks his last;
The valley clothed with peace and fruitful boon,
The chapel where such happy hours were pass'd,
With rainbow-colour'd foliage round its eaves,
And windows all a-glitter through the leaves.

LXXIX

The cottage-smokes, the river;—gaze no more,
Sad heart! although thou canst not, wouldst not shun
The vision future years will oft restore,
Whereon the light of many a summer sun,
The stars of many a winter night shall be
Mingled in one strange sighing memory.
END OF PART I.
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