Thought and word :: :: University of Virginia Library

GRAVES AND URNS

IN SHADOW.

Who with set eyelids venturing into years
That are not come, like years of long ago,
Can warm those shadows? Dusk, with steps as slow
As mine, crept through the Graveyard, dropping tears
Like one that mourn'd. I mused and mused: methought
Some months, some years were gone, and evening brought
To linger by these graves a pensive Boy.
Amid the twilight stillness deep and lone
He stoops to read an old half buried stone,
And weeds the mosses that almost destroy
The letters of the name, which is—my own.
The wind about the old gray tower makes moan.
He rises from the grave with sadden'd brow,
Leaving it to the night, and sighs, as I do now.

HIS TOWN.

His Town is one of memory's haunts,—
Shut in by fields of corn and flax,
Like housings gay on elephants
Heaved on the huge hill-backs.

How pleasantly that image came!
As down the zigzag road I press'd,
Blithe, but unable yet to claim
His roof from all the rest.

And I should see my Friend at home,
Be in the little town at last
Those welcome letters dated from,
Gladdening the two years past.

I recollect the summer-light,
The bridge with poplars at its end,
The slow brook turning left and right,
The greeting of my Friend.

I found him; he was mine,—his books,
His home, his day, his favourite walk,
The joy of swift-conceiving looks,
The glow of living talk.

July, no doubt, comes brightly still
On blue-eyed flax and yellowing wheat;
But sorrow shadows vale and hill
Since one heart ceased to beat.

Is not the climate colder there,
Since that Youth died?—it must be so;
A dumb regret is in the air;
The brook repines to flow.

Wing'd thither, fancy only sees
An old church on its rising ground,
And underneath two sycamore trees
A little grassy mound.

THE CRUCIBLE.

I.

Is he shrunk to Name and Date,
Painted on a coffin plate?

II.

With golden talismans bedeck'd,
Deep this single man was sheathed
In atmosphere of soft respect,
Which everyone around him breathed.
Well he was served, well attended,
Well becourted, well befriended;
Many labours stopt or sped
By the turning of his head;
Many lives toil'd like bees
To make the honey of his ease.

III.

And leave you him all alone
Beneath a stone,
Now when comes the twilight cold
Down the bare wold,
And winds are crying to the darken'd foam;
When thoughts of glowing rooms and faces
And the dear domestic graces
Draw all men home?
On this stone the ragged rooks will meet,
The gusty rain-storm rave and beat,

The little grass-mouse will scamper over it
To and from her nest in the bield,
The wide-falling winter snow will cover it,
With other stones of the field.
Black Rook, white Snow, how can they know
This stone has a costly vault below?
Brown Mouse, wild Rain, 'tis too, too plain,
Won't spare this grave from the common disdain.

IV.

Oh, you say it is not he
You are laying by the sea;
Leaving in the graveyard lonely;
'Tis not he—his body only.
Darkness is its dwelling fit,
And a stone to cover it.
He Himself, His Soul, you say,
God has call'd him far away.

V.

Would that men would well discern
What a lesson they might learn
From this natural separation,
Chemist Death's elimination
Of the drossy and the fleeting,
Past all further trick or cheating;
And in the actual be so wise
As to justly analyse
The elements of life, while blended,
Which they rank, when all is ended,
Thus concluded, proved, and past,
In a truer rate at last.
Long his Life: and in the whole
How much worship earn'd his Soul?

THE COLD WEDDING.

But few days gone
Her hand was won
By suitor finely skill'd to woo;
And now come we
In pomp to see
The Church's ceremonials due.

The Bride in white
Is clad aright,
Within her carriage closely hid;
No blush to veil—
For too, too pale
The cheek beneath each downcast lid.

White favours rest
On every breast;
And yet methinks we seem not gay.
The church is cold,
The priest is old,—
But who will give the bride away?

Now delver, stand,
With spade in hand,
All mutely to discharge thy trust:
Priest's words sound forth;
They're—“Earth to earth,
“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”

The groom is Death;
He has no breath;
(The wedding peals, how slow they swing!)
With icy grip
He soon will clip
Her finger with a wormy ring.

A match most fair,
This silent pair,
Now to each other given for ever,
Were lovers long,
Were plighted strong
In oaths and bonds that could not sever.

Ere she was born
That vow was sworn;
And we must lose into the ground
Her face we knew:
As thither you
And I, and all, are swiftly bound.

This Law of Laws
That still withdraws
Each mortal from all mortal ken—
If 'twere not here;
Or we saw clear
Instead of dim as now; what then?
This were not Earth, and we not Men.

PHANTAST.

“The monument woos me.”
Second Maiden's Tragedy.

Everything that seeks to do thee harm
Hearkens to the song that I am singing.
Sly and winding worm is in his hole,
Ruddy shrewmice listen in their burrow;
Wasps are nested by thee, but the charm
Keeps that yellow robber-band from stinging;
In thy bed of clay the howking mole
Bores no tunnel thorough.
Now that day from heaven is gone,
Thou art smoothly dreaming on,—
Not to waken with the dawn.

Only now the moaning of the breeze
Answers to the song that I am singing.
In the moonlit dyke the crouching hare
Raises up her watchful ears to listen;
From the blackness of the ghostly trees
Swift and silent bats like Dreams are winging;
Round the grassy hummocks here and there
Elfin tapers glisten.
Whilst the wind's sad tale is told,
Thou art lapt up from the cold
In a blanket made of mould.

Many nights and many days have heard
Songs of mine like this that I am singing;
By the sun, or by this paler round;
In the dark, when shrouded stars are weeping;
When the old tower shakes his ivy-beard,
When the skiey thunder-bells are ringing;
Hurtful things that live below the ground
From thy pillow keeping.
And when I have leave to die,
Then an Angel from the sky
Comes to watch us where we lie.

IN HIGHGATE CEMETERY.

Far-spread below doth London wear
Its cloud by day, its fire by night;
But scarce with heavenly presence there,
Enshrined in smoke or pallid light.

Incessant troops from that vast throng
Withdraw to silent colonies;
Where houses, lo, are fair and strong,
Though ruins all that dwell in these.

Yet here, too, under boundless sky,
Do children sport, and wild birds sing;
Calm foliage waxes green and high,
And grave-side roses smell of Spring.

THE FUNERAL

Say not we “bury him;” nor talk
Of “sleeping in the tomb.”
With foolish words the soul we baulk,
And shut it round with gloom.

The mystic form whereby we knew
Our parent once, or friend,
Let this, indeed, have reverence due
For life's sake, tho' at end.

But this no more is man at all,
Mere water now and clay,
Fit to be purged by fire, or fall
Apart in slow decay.

Life—Death—are hieroglyphics writ,
By one mysterious hand,
Their meaning passes all our wit,
We may not understand.

Forget men's timid vain pretence,
Forget their babbling speech;
Trust to thy Spirit's highest sense
The truest faith to reach.

URN BURIAL.

Earth is too full of graves,
So is Man's Mind:
Must we be always slaves,
Self-shackled, blind?

Like fierce Mezentius, tie
Living to Dead?
No!—let flame purify
The foul instead,—

Purge quickly soil and air,
Body and soul,
Of base obstruction there,
In man's control,—

Give thus, for horror and pest,
Some ashes, white
As snow or sea-wave's crest
Or still moonlight,
Or thoughts of the loved and blest
Withdrawn from sight.

FORWARD.

I.

Ever streams the living gale
To some forward goal,
Forward, forward bends our sail,
Forward strains our soul.

II.

Grandly of the ways of men,
Guesses childhood. But since then
Master Time has made me free,
Step by step in swift advance,
Of manhood's full freemasonry;
And its mysteries prove to be
Blanker far than ignorance.

III.

Men have a narrow range of sight,
A little peristyle of light,
A world of thought confused and crude,
Where chaos still is unsubdued.
Soothed in daily pain and sorrow,
With nursery promise for to-morrow,
They dream of corners unexplored
Where the wealth of life is stored,
Something to be shown at last,
Something to be known at last,
Beyond these poor toys of the Present;
Moon of hope, for ever crescent,
Seems to grow, is never grown.

IV.

Yet for the weakest one of these,
All the Arabian mysteries
Within the world's most credulous scope,
Afford not space enough for Hope
To build the Future's temple in:
At last they end where those begin,
Who searching with a mountain-view
The old earth-world all round and round,
And nowhere finding open ground,
At once send Hope on strong wings forth
Into a world almost as new as birth,—
Hope saith, almost as new.

V.

And so at last, not much afraid,
Forward, file on file, we march
Into the gloom which takes our breath;
Nay when the Sun with glance divine
Upon that tearful cloud may shine,
Behold a new triumphal arch—
Yea, see the very Door of Death
Out of a Rainbow made!

WOULD I KNEW!

Plays a child in a garden fair
Where the demigods are walking;
Playing unsuspected there
As a bird within the air,
Listens to their wondrous talking:
“Would I knew—would I knew
What it is they say and do!”

Stands a youth at city-gate,
Sees the knights go forth together,
Parleying superb, elate,
Pair by pair in princely state,
Lance and shield and haughty feather:
“Would I knew—would I knew
What it is they say and do!”

Bends a man with trembling knees
By a gulf of cloudy border;
Deaf, he hears no voice from these
Wingèd shades he dimly sees
Passing by in solemn order:
“Would I knew—O would I knew
What it is they say and do!”

DEATH DEPOSED.

I.

Death stately came to a young man, and said
“If thou wert dead,
What matter?” The young man replied,
“See my young bride,
Whose life were all one blackness if I died.
My land requires me; and the world's self, too,
Methinks, would miss some things that I can do.”

II.

Then Death in scorn this only said,
“Be dead,”
And so he was. And soon another's hand
Made rich his land.
The sun, too, of three summers had the might
To bleach the widow's hue, light and more light,
Again to bridal white.
And nothing seem'd to miss beneath that sun
His work undone.

III.

But Death soon met another man, whose eye
Was Nature's spy;
Who said, “Forbear thy too triumphant scorn.
The weakest born
Of all the sons of men, is by his birth
Heir of the Might Eternal; and this Earth
Is subject to him in his place.
Thou leav'st no trace.

IV.

“Thou,—the mock Tyrant that men fear and hate,
Grim fleshless Fate,
Cold, dark, and wormy thing of loss and tears?
Not in the sepulchres
Thou dwellest, but in my own crimson'd heart;
Where while it beats we call thee Life. Depart!
A name, a shadow, into any gulf,
Out of this world, which is not thine,
But mine:
Or stay!—because thou art
Only Myself.”

[No funeral gloom, my dears, when I am gone]

No funeral gloom, my dears, when I am gone,
Corpse-gazings, tears, black raiment, gravey ard grimness;
Think of me as withdrawn into the dimness,
Yours still, you mine; remember all the best
Of our past moments, and forget the rest;
And so, to where I wait, come gently on.

A POET'S EPITAPH.

Body to purifying flame,
Soul to the Great Deep whence it came,
Leaving a song on earth below,
An urn of ashes white as snow.

[What is your Heaven? describe it in a breath.]

What is your Heaven? describe it in a breath.
Pure health, fit work, beyond the gate of death.