University of Virginia Library

A BOY'S POEM.

INTRODUCTION.

We have been parted now for twenty years;
Oft messages and gratulations kind
Have flown across the sea, and you have felt
A hand from England touch you 'neath the Palm;
At every little gift from you it seemed
As if my senses had been visited
By India's fragrant wind. With love like ours
These things are certain, as that in the spring
The rapture of the lark will fill the air,
The wind-flower light the woods. How strange will be
Our meeting, long expected, ere we die!
Both will be changed. The boat that forty years
Has heaved and laboured in the mounded brine,
Is cracked by sun-fire, bent by rainy squalls,
Eaten by restless foam. We will peruse
Each other's faces, read the matter there,
In our grim northern silence—and all be told
In one long passionate wring of claspèd hands.
The past is very tender at my heart;
Full, as the memory of an ancient friend
When once again we stand beside his grave.
Raking amongst old papers thrown in haste
'Mid useless lumber, unawares I came
On a forgotten poem of my youth.
I went aside and read each faded page
Warm with dead passion, sweet with buried Junes,
Filled with the light of suns that are no more.
I stood like one who finds a golden tress
Given by loving hands no more on earth,
And starts, beholding how the dust of years,
Which dims all else, has never touched its light.
I stood before the grave-door of the past,
And to these eyes my yet unmouldered youth
Came forth like Lazarus. Thou swallow, Love,
Which thus revisit'st thine accustomed eaves,
Return, return to climes beyond the sea!
This ruined nest can never nurse thy young;
Thy twitter, and thy silver-flashing breast,
But mock me with the days that are no more.
I have been bold enough to send you this,
Though little of the Poet's shaping art
Is in these sheets, and nothing more was sought
Than that most sweet relief which dwells in verse
To a new spirit o'er which tyrannized,
Like a musician o'er an instrument,
The sights and sounds of the majestic world.
You knew me when my fond and ignorant youth
Was an unwindowed chamber of delight,
Deaf to all noise, sweet as a rose's heart:
A sudden earthquake rent it to the base,
And through the rifts of ruin sternly gleamed
An apparition of grey windy crag,
Black leagues of forest roaring like a sea,
And far lands dim with rain. There was my world
And place for evermore. When forth I went
I took my gods with me, and set them up
Within my foreign home. What love I had,
What admiration and keen sense of joy,
Unspent in verse, has been to me a stream
Feeding the roots of being; living sap
That dwelt within the myriad boughs of life,
And kept the leaves of feeling fresh and green.
Instead of sounding in the heads of fools,
Like wind within a ruin, it became
A pious benediction and a smile
On all the goings on of human life;
An incommunicable joy in day,
In lone waste places, and the light of stars.
Now as the years wear on, I hunger more
To see your face again before I die.
Last night I dreamed I saw a mighty ship
Through a great sea of moonlight bearing on,
Its coil of smoke dissolving into mist
Beyond its shining track; and in my dream
I felt you on your way. May this be true!
Sometimes, in looking back upon my life,
I fear I have mistaken ill for good.
There are no children's voices in my house.
If I have never ventured from the strand,
Been spared the peril of the storm and rock,
I never have returned with merchandise.
I know that She has melted from your sight,
And that a colony of little graves
Makes that far earth as sacred as the sky.
Alone like me—your solitude is not
Empty like mine: lost faces come and go,
I have but thoughts. It may be that you weep,
But I have not a sorrow worth a tear:
Methinks to-night mine seems the harder fate.
The fire I kindled warmed myself alone,
And now, when it is sinking red and low
Within the solemn gloom, there is no hand
To heap on fuel. Therefore let it sink.
Life cannot bring me more than it has brought.
The oft-repeated tale has lost its charm.
I would not linger on to age, and have
The gold of life beat out to thinnest leaf.
Like winds that in the crimson autumn eves
Pipe of the winter snow, my prescient thoughts
Are touched with sadness. Ay, the leaf must fall
And rot in the long rain. The stage is bare,
The actor and the critic have retired,
And through the empty house a hand I know
Is putting out the lights; 'twill soon be dark.

I. PART I.

There was an awful silence in the house
Where my dead father lay. When years had passed,
That silence lay upon my mother's face,
And mingled with her motions and her speech.
We lived alone,—alone save one stern guest
Who sat beside our hearth and made it cold:
By many a hearth he sits. Yet never came
A murmur or complaint from her thin lips.
When but a trembling wind-flower of a child,
They set me in a large and crowded school.
The pale preceptor clad in rusty black,
The reading classes, and the murmuring forms
Were torture; and the ringing play-ground, hell.
I shrank from crowds of loud and boisterous boys.
The pain and forfeit of each game was mine;
Contempt, and scorn, and taunts were rained on me;
I wept within my little bed at night,
And wished that I were happy in my grave.
From out this depth of sorrow, slowly grew
A kindred and strange sympathy with eve,
With the unhoused and outcast winds, and with
The rain which I had heard so often weep
Alone, within the middle of the night,
Like a poor, beaten, and despisèd child
That has been thrust forth from its father's door.
And often when the burning sun went down,
I sat and wept unseen. The dark'ning earth,
The void deserted sky, were like myself;
They seemed unhappy, sad, forsaken things;
My childish sorrows made me kin with them;
Orphans we sat together. Sitting there,
What joy, when o'er the huddled chimney-tops
Rose the great yellow moon! Since then I've seen
Her rise o'er mountain brows, droop large with bliss
O'er steaming autumn meads, touch lochs that spread
A hundred branching arms among the hills,
With leagues of throbbing silver—never more
With the delight of these remembered nights.
Tears dried upon my proud and burning cheeks;
When a tormentor struck me, to the soul
I stung him with a taunt. My new-found power
Made the world brighter; and to feel him wince
Was solitary joy—a fresh green turf
On which the caged lark sang. On autumn nights
My school-mates loved to gather at a forge,
And tell their stories round the furnace mouth.
I read strange legends in its crimson heart;
As I rehearsed the secrets of the fire,
I felt them grow toward me, drank the looks
They cast round to the dark and frowning night
That stood back from the glare. And these were they
Who hustled me at school, who drove me mad,
Who pelted me with names! The cowards shook,
And I smiled proudly in my secret heart:
I saw them tremble, and I struck them home.
At length, amid the phantoms of my brain,
A kind white face was mixed. It came and went.
Sometimes it slowly stole across the gloom,
And paused to gaze on me, then died away;
And sometimes it would lean above my couch,
And look into my eyes. As once it came
And hung above me for a silent hour,
I raised my wasted hand and touched its cheek:
It did not frown on me;—next, bolder grown,
I wandered o'er its brow, its mouth, its hair,
And then methought it smiled. I shrunk in fear,
Then touched the cheek again; and, wondering, said,
“Surely this should be my own mother's face!”
And dimly felt as if enclosed in arms,
As if an eager mouth were pressed to mine.
Delirium slid from off me like the flood
From off the world, and slowly I awoke
To the full knowledge of my mother's love,—
“God hath returned thee from the gates of death,
My poor tormented child!” That hour of joy!
That welcome back to life! I was as one
Drawn sorely wounded from his bed of blood
'Mong the war-horse's hoofs; as one redeemed
From the sea's foamy mouth, or arms of fire.
And in the progress of the weary days
My mother sat beside my bed, and told
How the long battle swayed 'tween life and death;
And how she 'tended me, and how, one night,
The life was wavering 'tween my parted lips,
Loose as the film that flutters on the grate;
And how, at twelve, she thought that all was o'er.
I stood within the street one April day,
Wan as a healthless primrose, which a leaf
Had shaded, that it could not drink the sun.
I lay down on a night of stormy rain;
The snow had fallen, and the world was dumb.
Now, showers of melody from unseen larks
Fell the long day upon the golden fields,
And the bare woods were putting on their green.
In those dark days I was surprised with joy
The deepest I have found upon the earth.
One night, when my weak limbs were drawing strength
From meats and drinks, and long delicious sleep,
I raised a book to kill the tedious hours—
The glorious Dreamer's—he, whose walls enclosed
An emperor's state; upon whose lonely sleep
The secret heavens opened, peopled thick
With angels, as the beam with swirling motes.
I was like one who at his girdle wears
An idle key, and with it, purposeless,
In the mere impulse of a wayward mood,
Opes a familiar door, and stands amazed,
Blind with the prisoned splendour which escapes,
Filling his dusky home. From earth's rude noise
I wandered through the quiet land of thought,
Where all was peaceful as the happy fields
Wherein the shades are silent with deep bliss,
And not a sound doth jar the golden air.
For me no more existed space or time,
Nor in my narrow being did I live;
That miser Death, whose lean and covetous hand
Hoards up the pomps and glories of the world,
Gave up his treasures, and Experience
Was like a fenceless common over which
I ranged at will. And so I have the noise
Of armies round me, wear the monarch's crown,
Die in the martyr's fire. Whatever joy
Or sorrow man has tasted, that I share;
Nor can my life be measured by my years.
“Oh, nothing, nothing; but I know you will.
Now won't you say you'll come?”
“And my reward?”

II. PART II.

The morn rose blue and glorious o'er the world;
The steamer left the black and oozy wharves,
And floated down between dark ranks of masts.
We heard the swarming streets, the noisy mills;
Saw sooty foundries full of glare and gloom,
Great bellied chimneys tipped by tongues of flame,
Quiver in smoky heat. We slowly passed
Loud building-yards, where every slip contained
A mighty vessel with a hundred men
Battering its iron sides. A cheer! a ship
In a gay flutter of innumerous flags
Slid gaily to her home. At length the stream
Broadened 'tween banks of daisies, and afar
The shadows flew upon the sunny hills;
And down the river, 'gainst the pale blue sky,
A town sat in its smoke. Look backward now!
Distance has stilled three hundred thousand hearts,
Drowned the loud roar of commerce, changed the proud
Metropolis which turns all things to gold,
To a thick vapour o'er which stands a staff
With smoky pennon streaming on the air.
Blotting the azure too, we floated on,
Leaving a long and weltering wake behind.
And now the grand and solitary hills
That never knew the toil and stress of man,
Dappled with sun and cloud, rose far away.
My heart stood up to greet the distant land
Within the hollows of whose mountains lochs
Moan in their restless sleep; around whose peaks,
And craggy islands ever dim with rain,
The lonely eagle flies. The ample stream
Widened into a sea. The boundless day
Was full of sunshine and divinest light,
And far above the region of the wind
The barred and rippled cirrus slept serene,
With combed and winnowed streaks of faintest cloud
Melting into the blue. A sudden veil
Of rain dimmed all; and when the shade drew off,
Before us, out toward the mighty sun,
The firth was throbbing with glad flakes of light.
The mountains from their solitary pines
Ran down in bleating pastures to the sea;
And round and round the yellow coasts I saw
Each curve and bend of the delightful shore
Hemmed with a line of villas white as foam.
Far off, the village smiled amid the light;
And on the level sands, the merriest troops
Of children sported with the laughing waves,
The sunshine glancing on their naked limbs.
White cottages, half smothered in rose blooms,
Peeped at us as we passed. We reached the pier,
Whence girls in fluttering dresses, shady hats,
Smiled rosy welcome. An impatient roar
Of hasty steam; from the broad paddles rushed
A flood of pale green foam, that hissed and freathed
Ere it subsided in the quiet sea.
With a glad foot I leapt upon the shore,
And, as I went, the frank and lavish winds
Told me about the lilac's mass of bloom,
The slim laburnum showering golden tears,
The roses of the gardens where they played.
At eve I lay in utter indolence
Upon a crag's high heather-purpled head.
The sun hung o'er a sea of wrinkled gold,
And o'er him fleecy vapour, rack of cloud,
And thin suspended mists hung tremulous
In fiery ecstasy; while high in heaven,
Discerned afar between the crimson streaks,
And melting away toward the lucid east,
Like clouds of cherubs tiny cloudlets slept
In soft and tender rose. When I returned,
The air was heavy with the breath of flowers,
And from the houses of the rich there came
Low-breathing music through the balmy gloom:
Linked lovers passed me, lost in murmurous talk:
That fragrant night of happiness and love
My soul closed o'er its secret like a rose
That sates itself with its own heart of bliss.
That fragrant night of happiness and love
She seemed to lie within my heart and smile.
The village lights were sprinkled on the hill;
And on the dim and solitary loch,
Our oar-blades stirred the sea to phantom light,
A hoary track ran glimmering from the keel.
Like scattered embers of a dying fire,
The village lights had burnt out one by one;
I lay awake, and heard at intervals
A drowsy wave break helpless on the shore,
Trailing the rattling pebbles as it washed
Back to the heaving gloom. “Come, blessed Sleep,
And with thy fingers of forgetfulness
Tie up my senses till the day we meet,
And kill this gap of time.” By sweet degrees
My slumberous being closed its weary leaves
In drowsy bliss, and slowly sank in dream,
As sinks the water-lily 'neath the wave.
Next morning I rose early and looked forth:
The quiet sky was veiled with dewy haze;
Beneath it slept the dull and beamless sea;
The flowers hung dim and sodden in the dew;
Strange birds fed in the walks, and one unseen
Sang from the apple-tree. I dressed in haste;
And when the proud sun fired the dripping pines,
I wandered forth, and drank with thirsty eyes
The coolness of the sun-illumined brooks
In which the quick trout played. The speckless light,
The beauty of the morning, drew me on
Into a gloomy glen. The heavy mists
Crept up the mountain sides; I heard the streams;
The place was saddened with the bleat of sheep.
“'Tis surely in such lonely scenes as these,
Mythologies are bred. The rolling storms—
The mountains standing black in mist and rain,
With long white lines of torrents down their sides—
The ominous thunder creeping up the sky—
The homeless voices at the dead of night
Wandering among the glens—the ghost-like clouds
Stealing beneath the moon—are but as stuff
Whence the awe-stricken herdsman could create
Gods for his worship.” Then, as from a cup,
Morn spilt warm sunshine down the mountain-side.
Cuckoo! cuckoo! woke somewhere in the light;
I started at the sound, and cried, “O Voice!
I've heard you often in the poet's page—
Now, in your stony wilds—and I have read
Of white arms clinging round a sentenced neck
Upon a morn of death; of bitter wrong
Freezing sweet love to hate; of fond ambition
Which plaits and wears a wretched crown of straw,
And dreams itself a king; of inward shame,
To which a lingering and long-drawn death
Were bed of roses, incense, and a smile.
With anxious heart I hear my distant hours
Gather like far-off thunder. Canst thou tell
What things await me on my road of life
As did your floating voice?” Behold the sea!
Far flash its glittering leagues, and 'neath the sun
There gleams from coast to coast a narrow line
Of blinding and intolerable light.
I lay beneath a glimmering sycamore
Drowsy with murmuring bees.—As o'er my limbs
There palpitated countless lights and shades,
I heard the quiet music of the waves,
And saw the great hills standing dim in heat.
At height of noon a gloomy fleece of rain
Was hanging o'er the zenith. On it crept,
Drinking the sunlight from a hundred glens;
Blackening hill by hill; smiting the sea's
Bright face to deadly pallor; till at last
It drowned the world from verge to verge in gloom.
A sky-wide blinding glare—the thunder burst—
Again heaven opened in a gape of flame;
Heavy as lead came down the loosened rain—
I heard it hissing in the smoking sea;
It slackened soon, the sun blazed through, and then
The fragment of a rainbow in the gloom
Burned on the rainy sea—a full-sail'd ship
Apparent stood within the glorious light
From hull to highest spar. The tempest trailed
His shadowy length across the distant hills:
The birds from hiding-places came and sang,
And ocean laughed for miles beneath the sun.
I and my cousins started in the morn
To wander o'er the mountains and the moors.
How different from the hot and stony streets!
The dark red springy turf was 'neath our feet,
Our walls the blue horizon, and our roof
The boundless sky; a perfect summer-day
We walked 'mid unaccustomed sights and sounds;
Fair apparitions of the elements
That lived a moment on the air, then passed
To the eternal world of memory.
O'er rude unthrifty wastes we held our way
Whence never lark rose upward with a song,
Where no flower lit the marsh: the only sights,
The passage of a cloud—a thin blue smoke
Far on the idle heath—now caught, now lost,
The pink road wavering to the distant sky.
At noon we rested near a mighty hill,
That from our morning hut slept far away
Azure and soft as air. Upon its sides
The shepherds shouted 'mid a noise of dogs;
A stream of sheep came slowly trickling down,
Spread to a pool, then poured itself in haste.
The sun sunk o'er a crimson fringe of hills:
The violet evening filled the lower plain,
From which it upward crept and quenched the lights—
Awhile the last peak burned in lingering rose,
And then went out. We toiled at dead of night
Through a deep glen, the while the lonely stars
Trembled above the ridges of the hills;
And in the utter hush the ear was filled
With low sweet voices of a thousand streams,
Some near, some far remote—faint trickling sounds
That dwelt in the great solitude of night
Upon the edge of silence. A sinking moon
Hung on one side and filled the shattered place
With gulfs of gloom, with floating shades, and threw
A ghostly glimmer on wet rock and pool.
Then came a day of deep and blissful peace,
In which familiar thoughts and images
By which we know and recognise ourselves
Fell from me, and I felt as new and strange
As a free spirit which has shaken off
The wrappings of this life. Upon a stair,
The remnant of the tower, I sat and watched
Tumultuous piles of cloud upon the hills,
The sea-mew sweeping silent as a dream,
The black rocks ringed with white, the creeping sail.
The wandering greens and purples of the sea.
We heard the people singing in the hay,
A single girl-voice leading, all the field
Bursting in chorus; a little off, the Laird,
Upon his shaggy pony of the isles,
Drew rein and heard the legend of his house.
At eventime the mighty barn was cleared,
The torches lit, the lads and lasses came,
And to the yelling pipes, in loop and chain,
And whirling circles, spun the maddened reels.
Next morning we came early 'cross the moors,
And reached again the village by the sea.
“To-day I chanced to pass
A churchyard covered with forgetful grass;
And as one puts the hair from off a face,
I put aside the grass; and, on the stones,
Saw roses wreathing bones:
And, in the rankest corner of the place,
Set in a ghastly scroll of skulls and flowers,
And belts of serpents twined and curled,
I traced a crowned and mantled Death,
Asleep upon a World.
How grim the carver's style—
The tarnished coffins, rotten palls,
The weeping of the charnel walls,—
When one is lord of happy hours,
When one is breathing priceless breath—
Made happy by a smile!
“The sheep they leap in golden parks;
My blood is bliss, my heart is pleasure;
Then let my song flow like a lark's
Above his nested treasure.
What care I for the circling cup?
What care I for applausive breath?
For the stern secret folded up
In the closed hand of Death?
Bring me Love's honied nightshade; fill it high;
I know its madness, all its wild deceit;
I know the anguish of the morning sky
When brain and eyeballs beat.
I cannot throw it down and fly—
The poison is so sweet
That I must drink and drink, although I die.”
The thought of the to-morrow was a goad
That urged me forth along the lonely shore:
Alone I wandered through the breathless gloom,
Feeding upon the honey of my heart
With a strange thrill of fear. While on I walked,
As if the sea would fain delay my steps,
Out of the darkness rushed a ghostly fringe
Wailing, and licked my feet, and then withdrew.
What wouldst thou with me, melancholy one?
What prophecy is in thy voice to-night?
What evil dost thou 'bode? Then, o'er my head,
To a low breathing wind the darkness cracked,
Rolled to a crescent shore of vapour, washed
By a blue bay of midnight keen with stars.
The moon came late, and quivered on the waves;
And, far away, 'tween dim horizons, beds
Of restless silver shifted on the sea.
Home by the margin of the deep I went,
And sought repose; and all the night a surge
Mourned bodefully around the shores of sleep.
“Let us slip in.”
Hope's door closed with a clang.—I rose up calm,
Calm as a country when the storm is o'er,
And broken boughs are hanging from the trees,
And swollen streams have crept within their banks,
Leaving a mighty marge of wreck and sand
Along the soppy fields. When I went home,
My mother dwelling in the empty house
With sorrow for a husband, like reproach
Struck through my selfish rage. She crept to bed,
And, from the barren desert of the night,
Prayer, like a choir of angels, bore her up
To heaven, where she talked alone with God.
I ground between my teeth, “The day has come
That progressed like a monarch with his court;
Of whose approach each courier hour that passed,
Brought sweetest tidings, like gay winds that sing
In the delighted ears of sunny May,
Sitting among the golden buttercups.
‘June, drowned with roses, comes;’ to which my thoughts
Arose, as from the earth a thousand larks,
In salutation to the dawn. And now
I sit degraded. Palaces of dream
Shivered around; uncounted wealth that stuffed,
This morn, the coffers of my heart, all false
And base as forgers' coin.
“As a wild mother, when her child is dead,
Flings herself down on the unheeding face,
And pours more passionate kisses on the lips
Than when they kissed again, and then starts up,
And, in a dreamy luxury of grief,
Strews the white corse with flowers:—‘I'll lay thee out,
My poor dead love, and fondlier gaze on thee,
Than when thou smiled amid thy golden hair,
And sang more sweet than Hope. No tears; for Death
Saw thee when loveliest, and his icy touch
Preserves thy look for ever. It is well:
The only things that change not are the dead.
Now thou art safe from Time's defacing hand,
From staling custom, and, sadder far than all,
From human fickleness. In after years,
It might be, I would scarce have followed thee,
A mourner to thy grave. Thou art so fair,
That, gazing on thee, clamorous grief becomes
For very reverence, mute. If mighty Death
Made our rude human faces by his touch
Divinely fair as thine, O, never more
Would strong hearts break o'er biers. There sleeps to-night
A sacred sweetness on thy silent lips,
A solemn light upon thine ample brow,
That I can never, never hope to find
Upon a living face. Within thy grave
I'll lay thee; and above will memory hang
An ever-mourning willow!’”

III. PART III.

A dark hour came, and left us desolate:
Then, as a beggar thrust by menial hands
From comfortable doors, doth wrap his rags
Around him, ere he face the whistling wind
And flying showers that travel through the night,
We gathered what we had; and she and I
Went forth together to the cruel world.
O we were bare and naked as the trees
That stand up silent in the freezing air,
With black boughs motionless against the sky,
While midnight holds her lonely starry sway.
We crept into a half-forgotten street
Of frail and tumbling houses propt by beams,
And ruined courts which, centuries before,
Rung oft to iron heels,—which palfreys pawed,
As down the mighty steps the Lady came
Bright as the summer morning,—peopled now
By outcasts, sullen men, bold girls who sat
Pounding sand in the sun. The day we came
The windows from which beauty leant and smiled,
Were stuffed with rags, or held a withered stick
Whence foul clothes hung to dry. Beneath an arch
Two long-haired women fought; while high above,
Heads thrust through broken panes, two shrill-voiced crones
Scolded each other. Hell-fire burst at night
Through the thin rind of earth; the place was loud
With drunken strife, hoarse curses; then the cry
Of a lost woman by a ruffian felled
Made the blood stop. Ah! different from the dream
That keeps my memory fragrant—sunny air,
Stirred into drowsy music by the bees;
Hollyhocks glowing at the open door;
A dark, grave, loving face; a step and voice
That faded in that time! We dwelt alone:
Red Autumn died unseen along the waste,
The soundless snow came down in thickening flakes,
And Poverty, who sat beside our hearth,
Blew out the feeble fire, and all was dark.
It was the closing evening of the year,
The night that I was born. I laughed, and said,
“The old year brought me in his dying arms,
And laid me in your breast; his last task done,
He went away through whirls of blinding snow.”
She murmured, “'Tis the first time in these years
We cannot hold your birth-night as our wont,
With feast, and smiling friends, and quiet mirth
O'er-shadowed by the memory of the dead
Until 'tis almost sad. 'Tis sixteen years,
And every night I've looked upon your sleep
Although you knew it not. Of those who were
Dear to me on the night that you were born,
You only now remain.” I knew her thoughts,
“He wearies for us in the happy fields;
His bliss is incomplete till we are there.”
My mother spoke with heart far, far away.
“I count the years, as eagerly as one
Long separated from the friends he loves
Counts the slow milestones as he travels home.
Your life is all before you with its joy;
The only thing I covet is the grave.”
She kissed me, put her withered hand in mine.
Its touch brought tears. I thought of all the pain,
The sorrow which had grown up in her life
Through her long years of widowhood, like grass
In a deserted street. Then all at once
A hundred church-bells struck the hour of twelve;
A mighty shout went up, “The year is dead!”
There were glad footsteps on a thousand stairs,
And happy greetings in a thousand homes;
None said, God bless us. Bitterly I cried,
“What great unpardoned sin is on our race
That we are so accursed? Where'er we go,
Calamity glides ever in our track,
A ghost implacable. Were I to die
On this great night when Christendom is glad,
I would be all unpitied and unknown,
As a forgotten captive, or a worm
That dies unheard of underneath the ground.”
But she reproached me with her silent eyes.
The sun burst forth; 'neath sheltering cliff and bank
Lay melting wreaths, which, in its swift retreat,
The army of the snow had left. Whene'er
The gloomy Winter round him called his showers,
Legions of howling winds, and with a cry
Fled to the icy north, the timid Spring
Arose in snowdrops, and the days grew long.
Spring touched the black pots on my window-sill,
And, though begrimed and foul with dust and soot,
The blind plants felt it in their withered veins,
And smiled a sickly green. One Sabbath day,
I left my mother's dwelling in the morn
Behind; the pleading and the scolding bells
Disturbed the peaceful air. “'Tis ever so—
Religion's pure serene is vexed and torn
By raging sectaries. In every street
The brave streams of the proud and gaudy world
Flow to the house of God.—My mother sits
With vanished shapes, and faces of the dead,
And little pattering footsteps: why should she,
A broken heart wrapt up in faded silk,
Mix with the prosperous? 'Tis very well;
Let the white faces creep into their graves,
And leave pomp in the sun.” The shining day
Spread out before me, and I wandered on
Free as those vagrant children of the waste,
Shadow and sunshine. By the sandy banks
Of a shrunk stream, that in unnumbered rills
Tinkled 'tween pebbles and hot glistening stones,
Two green kingfishers played. A travelling shower
O'ertook me on my way; I stood and heard
The skylarks singing in the sunny rain,
With a dim recognition in my heart
As if I knew the meaning of the song
In some forgotten life. I reached a height
Which lay from fairy fern to stately tree
Asleep in sunshine. From its crown I saw
The country fade into the distant sky,
With happy hamlets drowned in apple-bloom,
And ivy-muffled churches still with graves,
And restless fires subdued and tamed by day,
And scattered towns whence came at intervals
Upon the wind, a sweet clear sound of bells;
Through all, a river, like a stream of haze,
Drew its slow length until 'twas lost in woods.
Still as a lichened stone I lay and watched
The lights and shadows on the landscape's face,
The moving cloud that quenched the shining fields,
The gliding sunbeam, the grey trailing shower,
And all the commerce of the earth and sky.
With weary limbs at sunset I returned;
And in the dingy fringes of the town,
The helpless languor of the Sabbath-eve,
The listless groups that stood around the doors,
The silent children, and the smoke that rose
Lazy and spiritless into the air,
Told the world's sinews had been overwrought
And now hung lax and loose. My spirits fell,
Sheer as a skylark when his song is o'er;
I crept into my little twilight room,
And there my day of glory set in tears.
Next morn the bells awoke me to my toil,
And what a pageant of divinest sights
Passed by me on my daily round of life!
I bore a message, and upon my way
The streets were swept by the impetuous rain,
The lightning fluttered in my dazzled eyes,
And thunder like a sea broke overhead.
A fleece of thunder hung before the sun
With a wild blazing fringe, while scattered shreds
Burned on the marble sky. Black strings of ships
Sat on the angry mirror of the stream
Keen with the splendour, till the gusty rain
Drowned the red sunset and the winds were loud.
For years and years continually were mine
The long dull roar of traffic, and at night
The mighty pathos of the empty streets.
I leant at midnight o'er the lonely bridge,
And heard the water slipping 'neath the arch:
“Man flies from solitude and dwells in noise,
Like one who has a pale wronged face at home
On which he dares not look; to calm his heart
The world must roar with traffic, brawl with war.
What need to strive for wealth, opinion, praise,
Wherewith to drug our spirits and forget?
Thou bearest in thy heart, black glittering stream,
A deeper rest for the unfortunate
Than Pluto's gold can buy. Ah! Pleasure, Fame,
But crown pale mortals with an envied pain;
Death pities, and gives sleep. A thousand years
This river wandered through an empty waste
Where no man's voice was heard, and mournful winds
Shook sighing sedges as they swept along,
And blurred the silver of the lonely moon.
Huts rose upon its banks, then sank in flame,
And rose from ashes. Slow the city grew,
Like coral reef on which the builders die
Until it stands complete in pain and death.
Great bridges with their coronets of lamps
Light the black stream beneath; rude ocean's flock,
Ships from all climes, are folded in its docks;
And every heart from its great central dome
To farthest suburb is a darkened stage
On which Grief walks alone. A thousand years!
The idle Summer will amuse herself
Dressing the front where merchants congregate,
And where the mighty war-horse snorts in bronze,
With clasping flowers; where now the evening street
Rolls gay with life,—in silence and the dew
The hamadryad issues from the tree,
Like music from an instrument.” How strange
When the chill morn was breaking in the east
Looked the familiar streets! In pallid squares
I stood awe-struck, like a bewildered soul
In the great dawn of death. Each house was blind,
Closed 'gainst the light, and slow it filled the street,
Unsoiled by smoke, unscared by any sound;
It entered trembling rude and haggard lanes
Where riot but an hour before had brawled
Himself to rest. St. Stephen's golden vane
Burned in the early beam, which glimmered down,
Making the old spire gay. The swallows woke,
And jerked and twittered in the shining air;
Broad Labour turned and muttered in his sleep;
And the first morning cart began to roll.