The professor and other poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

O subtle and secret change, that over the world art sped,
Wafted out of the South on the warm wind's delicate wing;
See, my metallic worm uplifts his elated head,
Crawls in his glassy prison, and throbs with the pulse of spring.

Ay, there is something more than the metrical march of days!
Life, like a drowsy sleeper, is restless and fain would wake;

And the shy heart leans and listens to hear what the spring wind says,
When the low-hung mist dissolves, and the infinite glories break.

So to my garden I creep, like a truant boy to his game,
Snatching a heightened joy from duty that waits to be done;
And a sudden hope is born, and leaps in my heart like flame,
Watching my springing bulbs, and telling them one by one.

Hooded and muffled close, they creep, like ghosts, to the day,
Parting the wind-dried crust, their desolate winter bed,

And lo, in the shattered urn, so weathered and old and grey,
A delicate snowdrop pushes, and droops her serious head.

7
SURRENDER

I, in my chill and celibate content,
Have little claim to murmur: but I pine
To feel a warm hand tremble into mine,
And loving lips above my forehead bent;
And yet my dreams are charged with high intent
To do, to be, to suffer; to refine
My troubled thought, till these thin strains combine
With larger themes, in airy concord blent.

Ah, but I miss the human utterance,
That yearning, as the magnet for the pole,
Still wavers, till the secret current set
Towards its true home: in indolent regret
I linger: could I break the sickly trance!
And in one fierce surrender, find my soul!

11
AT WORK

O fickle hand, how indolent thou art!
O vacant eyes, how idly ye observe!
What thoughts are these that make my foolish heart
From its dry purpose swerve?

Shall I, who hardly reached the rugged heights
Which others only dream of, shall I lend
This hoarded strength to transient delights,
Delay, return, descend?

Shall I, the first to tread this silent land,
Whose glimmering paths lead upwards unexplored,

Shall I abjure the conquests I had planned,
Let fall the flashing sword?

Within what shameless horrors have I pried,
In cells where law from conscience sits apart!
Only, it seems, I have not classified
The secrets of the heart.

A woman's heart;—I know, in grim array,
Each delicate vein, each ordered ligament,
But ne'er descried the dim and secret way
The rapturous message went.

I seem, methinks, untimely lingering here,
Too tender-hearted, touched with vague surmise;
Shall I grow mild and maidenly, and fear
My victim's piteous eyes?

Nay, more relentless! Could I wrest from life
One secret more that should my purpose serve,
A thousand brutes should feel my icy knife
Prick through each tingling nerve.

My purpose? Ah! the shame! I care not now
For chill humanity, its loss and gain,
I only dream to spare one gentle brow
The lightest touch of pain.

15
THE ROSEBUD

I think the rosebush shyly pressed
Her fragrant head against my breast;
It jarred across my busy mood,
My grim and serious solitude;
And yet so sweet and soft it seemed,
Such tender incense towards me streamed,
I plucked and wore it; while I plied
My task, alone and heavy-eyed,
It seemed to nestle, soft and warm,
Above my heart, beside my arm,
And now, this morning, languid grown,
These sorry petals must be thrown

To some sad heap of tumbled things,
With sightless eyes and shattered wings,
To moulder into dust, beneath
The rich and fervid hands of death.
That is your story! now to sleep!
Yet some unslumbering memory keep
Of him whose spirit, rude and sour,
You sweetened through one patient hour.
For, Rose, to suffer, and to share
The heritage of man's despair,
Gives eyes, and souls, and almost wings
To lifeless dust and soulless things.
Enough! the fatal hour is sped
Above your pure and drooping head;
The secret of the dark who knows?
You know it, may not tell it, Rose.

16
AFTER THE INTERVIEW

A gracious and tender spirit
Has bent from her starry sphere.
What was there in me to merit
A gift so daring and dear?

Did she pity me, dark and lonely—
So rich, did she yearn to bless
A heart that aspired not, only
Was fainting for weariness?

I seemed, as I sat beside her,
So angular, harsh, and grim,
As lean as a dusty spider
That swings in his cordage dim.

Tenderness or compassion?
Whichever it was, 'twas sweet,
As I flung, in my awkward fashion,
A dreary heart at her feet.

Glory and grace attend her,
Worship and hope most dear,
That spirit, gracious and tender,
Who bent from her starry sphere.

18
THE REWARD

Love unashamed, divine, O, hidden from peering eyes,
Blindly I traced thy course, and heedlessly touched thy hand,
Slowly the mist rolls back from the infinite centuries,
Back to the secret of God, and the door of the silent land.

Twain in the ancient garden together, a man with a maid,
Pace in the field, waist-deep in aster and golden-rod;

And lo, One walks in the cool, in the immemorial shade;—
Hushing their eager talk they hear the footfall of God.

I too have heard him pass, but out in the desolate wild,
Crushing the ancient bones that rattle about his feet,
Under the dark ravines where the horrible crags are piled,
Out in the hissing surges that under the precipice beat.

There, in a silent horror, I stumbled along his track,
Down to his desperate den, with frenzy and raging shame,

And the toppling ice-crags roared, and the loud caves thundered back,
When in the awestruck silence I shuddered, and cried his name.

Courage, O timorous heart! too long hast thou made complaint,
Crying in desolate places and under the heedless night,
Crying, importunate, shrill,—but only an echo faint
Rang on the black-ribbed ledge, and under the hollow height.

So with my pride outworn, my stubbornness over-thrown,
Humble in hope, I learn what the pure in spirit see,

Guessing from one soft heart that nestles against my own,
All the desire of the world, and the hope of the years to be.

Wherefore I stretch my hand, as a child in a darkened room
Clutches affrighted, and laughs to feel the encircling arm;
So I bend to the night, and smile in the starlit gloom,
Smile as the stars fade out, and the dawn comes tender and calm.

22
PERPLEXITY

Nay, there is something, something! she was sad
And silent; 'twas to pleasure me she smiled,
More like a child that suffers, a brave child,
Than one whose heart was virginal and glad.

It seems as though there were some secret shrine
She dares not yet surrender: “Here, and here,”
She saith, “He shall be welcome; he is dear
And honoured;—yet my inmost heart is mine.”

So one may linger by a minster-door,
When lawn and glaring roadway swim with heat,

And through the barred gate see the glimmering vault,
Cool marble tombs, and dim sepulchral floor,
And read he may not enter, may not halt
A moment there, where all is still and sweet.

23
THE DOUBT

A sudden traitorous terror leaps
Out of the darkness on my heart,
And stabs it through and through, and creeps
Some space apart,
That should the helpless fallen thing
Stir hand, or moan to feel its pain,
With frenzied passion it may spring,
And smite again:—
Is then this heart of mine too weak
To bear the wilful rush of joy,
Sharp ardours, such as pale the cheek
Of girl and boy?

I know not;—faint and shuddering
I from my dreams of bliss am hurled,
As that barbaric reckless king,
Who swayed the world,
Yet saw, beyond the riotous band,
Across the rich uproarious room,
The crawling shadow of the Hand
That wrote his doom.

24
SILENCE

Grave, indifferent, slow,
Over the sodden sand,
Wave after wave, as I go,
Flounces and arches stiff,
Then, like a hollowed hand,
Flaps, and the thin tides run
In a blanket of foam to the cliff,
Under a shrouded sun.

Wearily on as I go,
Day upon tedious day

Beats on the jaded nerve,
Morning and noon and night,
Swells in a sluggish curve;
Crimson to crimson light
Flares, and the sick hours flow,
Dull, monotonous, gray.

26
COURAGE

I have been brave in my way,
Though men did not call me brave;
They deem that I creep away,
If ever a pennon wave
Over the flashing fray.

Yet I have lain through the night
Shuddering, open-eyed,
Straining my aching sight
To see what leant at my side,
Angel or sullen sprite.

Then in the haggard day,—
Cruel and cold it shone,—
Sighing in sad dismay,
I bind my armour on;
I have been brave, I say.

27
FAREWELL

Let me say one latest word,
Let me touch but once your hand,—
It seems that I have erred;—
Ah! I understand.
My darling, 'tis not you
That I blame, the dream you dreamed,
Those eyes of tearful blue,
That were mine, it seemed:
You were dazzled by the praise
I had won, by the fame
That decks my dreary days,
As the gilded frame

That girds a haggard face,
And a withered hand,
Lending a hollow grace:—
Ah! I understand.
But the sudden radiance flits,
And you see across the gloom
The dry old soul that sits
In his dusty room.
I have lived so long with death,
With hereafter and before,
That I breathe the icy breath
Of the further shore.
A ray of gracious light
On my tubes and phials played,
On the lancets keen and bright
Of my savage trade.

Would I prison it? Not I!
Let it wander hence afar;
Let it seek the happy sky,
And its native star.
This is my answer, this:
See, I loose your pitying hand,
I ask no word, no kiss,
And I understand.

28
PATIENCE

The flower must sicken on the tree
Before it change;
The doom that seems so strange to thee
Is not so strange;
Hearts before thine have felt their thrill
Grow faint and thin,
Have deemed the blackening wave too chill
To venture in.
Eyes, sad as thine, have wondered why
They wondered not,

When elders whitened, and on high
Clear suns were hot.
In thy sick veins no more the air
Runs sharp as wine?
Look round thee: thou wilt find despair
More dark than thine.

29
THE LETTER

Nay, nay, my sweet; it is not well
That thou should'st sorrow: ah, be free!
I did but loose the piteous spell,
And gave thee back thy liberty,
And thou shalt find some gracious mate
To worship thee, to bend above,
More apt than I to dedicate
His gallant prowess to thy love;
And when some tender voice shall name
Thee “Mother,” from thy guarded nest,

I too will come, and softly frame
A blessing on the trebly-blest;
And thou shalt think of me as one
Whose soul, in days far-off yet dear,
Thou didst irradiate, as the sun
Who, circling in his statelier sphere,
Awakes, by some sequestered stream,
A flower, that in his narrow tomb
Had slept in blind despair, to dream
Of sweetness, and be crowned with bloom.
It blooms, it flushes; though the dew
Upon its tender leaves be wet,
It knows the source from whence it drew
Its sweetness, and shall draw it yet.

30
THE DIARY

I wander in dark ways
Of hope and strength bereft,
Yet I give my Lord the praise
For the little that is left.
I have set a thorny fence
Betwixt me and the light:
Outside are innocence
And all things free and bright;
Sweet face that smiled on me,
Hands that my path might guide!

Will they not let me be?
They are all outside, outside.
It is Thy pleasure then
That the heart of flesh should fail?
Thou didst engender men
To be desolate and frail.
Merge into rapturous pain
This dreary, desperate woe,
Break, break, uncertain chain,
Let the tortured spirit go!