The Poetical Works of George Barlow :: :: University of Virginia Library

This poem—which has been much misunderstood—is simply intended as a study of the phases through which an originally religious and devoted spirit passes, who has been driven by a succession of the cruellest shocks from faith in God to pessimism, and from pessimism to sheer madness.

It seems hardly necessary to say—and yet it must be said—that Caleb Smith was utterly wrong in his inferences. He was imbued with the ever-rigid idea of the unity of the world-force which prevailed during the reigns of Huxley, Darwin, Tyndall, and their group, and he failed to discern the vast correlative fact which is now becoming daily more obvious; the fact, namely, that the personal power of God eternally wages war with personal powers of evil. In his scientific madness he attributed Satan's action to God. His agony of doubt was in exact proportion to his previous rapture of belief. When he seems to rail at God, his heart is in reality like the heart of a child, who, having believed with utter abandonment of faith that his father was supreme and omnipotent, weeps for grief and disappointment at seeing that father disregarded and dishonoured.

The poem is, in fact, a cry of love turned into horror, and its true moral is: Shun pessimism as you would a pestilence. Believe in God and good eternally, and fight with and for God against all that is evil and dark and impure. Greater is he that is for you than he that is against you.

I would like to add that I have now come to see that the views which I expressed in the preface to the First Edition of “The Crucifixion of Man” were quite erroneous, and that Laurence Oliphant, whose opinions I there opposed, was, after all, nearer to the truth than I was.

January, 1902. G. B.

What a change from London, drearier as the hot days hotter grew,
To the silent bay in Cornwall, to the calm sea's ceaseless blue,
To the breeze from off the moorlands! What a change for her and me
From the hospital in London to the hospice of the sea!

—Living quietly down in Cornwall with my mother, we alone,
Having nothing of a week-day we could call our very own
(On the Sabbath I was busy with the chapel-service, quite,
Busy from the early morning till the stars shone out at night)—

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Having nothing of a week-day we could care for just as ours,
Save the fuchsias in the window—what to living hearts are flowers?
I had brought away from London a small girlish flower-bud dropt
From some heavenly hand, we fancied, for our lone hearts to adopt.

She was daughter of a teacher—in a village school she had taught,
But some handsome roué from London whom Fate's reckless guidance brought
To her peaceful home in Sussex taught her love, and taught her well,
For he found her safe in heaven, but he left her lost in hell.

That was dark-eyed Annie's mother—through the round of sin and shame
She had passed when he forsook her—to the lowest deep she came
Till the hospital received her, and I found her lying there,
Just a mournful wreck of beauty, once a woman strangely fair.

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I had taken a friend's sad duty, taken his mission for the day,
Just to visit these poor outcasts, and to speak to them, and pray;
So it happened that I saw her,—heard her pale sad lips impart
Just an every-day sad story, merely of one more broken heart.

So it happened, a while later, when the mother's fate was sealed
And the gateways of the darkness at her frail touch 'gan to yield,
That I promised on her death-bed that my mother and I would take
Her small darling child, and rear it with all kindness for her sake.

Down in sunny quiet Cornwall, as the months and years sped on,
First she grew to girlish beauty,—then a tenderer sweetness shone
In her eyes, her figure rounded. Which is loveliest in a rose?
Its coy beauty when it's budding, or its splendour when it blows?

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Hardly tongue of man can answer—hardly tongue of man could tell
Which was loveliest, childish Annie, at whose feet the bright leaves fell
In the autumn, one might fancy, just to hear the laugh that rang
As her childish steps pursued them, or the girl whose sweet voice sang.

Yes: for ever she was singing, with a voice that mocked the birds,
Putting wonderful new sweetness into even the homeliest words;
Singing to the morning breezes, singing to the midday sun,
Singing to the stars that listened when the summer day was done.

Ah: how often have I watching seen some stalwart sailor stand
Silent in the narrow roadway, with his nets in sunburnt hand,
Listening as she sang some love-song, with his dark eyes full of tears:
Leagues away the sweet voice took him, to far other lands and years.

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And I've seen a mother listening, with sad eager eyes and deep,
To a wild song of the storm-wind, and I've seen her turn and weep,
For she thought—her eyes disclosed it—all her heart was plain to me—
Of some sailor-boy, the offering of the storm-wind to the sea.

And the younger women listened, as the girl's pure sweet voice rang,
And I knew their hearts were hanging on each simple word she sang:
They were dreaming of their sweethearts, of the lads they loved so well,
And to each the song spoke gently, with its own strange tale to tell.

So the days and years fled past us, and I rendered thanks and praise
To the good God who had sent us such a help for lonely days.
We should nevermore be lonely. Could one's heart ache when she smiled?
Was she not our own for ever? Was the girl not as the child?

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But a mighty change came o'er me, for one lovely August morn
Off we started, I and Annie, and we walked through fields of corn,
Over many a breezy hill-top, while the sea beneath us shone,
Flashed its sapphires in the sunlight, as it smiled up at the sun.

There the fishing-boats were lying which in winter-time had dashed
Through the blinding whirling snow-storms, while the thunderous great waves crashed
Over gunwale, over bulwark; there they rested like the boats
On some silent summer river, where the untrembling lily floats.

Oh, the splendour of that morning! How it all comes back to me!
The sweet scent from cottage gardens, and the fresh scent from the sea:
Endless perfect radiant sunlight poured on meadow, hill, and plain;
For one hour the calm of Eden seemed to rest on earth again.

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Hard it was, most hard, to fancy that the golden fields of corn
Ever by the winds of autumn had been smitten and lashed and torn:
Hard it was before the vision to call up the breakers white,
Filling all the bay in winter with their thunder day and night.

Perfect peace upon the waters—now the soft breeze sang a psalm;
The old trumpet-throated storm-wind had subsided into calm.
Perfect peace upon the moorland—dark the silent fir-clumps gleamed,
And within them the wood-pigeon murmured gently as she dreamed.

Wondrous light upon the town too; as we clambered up the hill
All the houses down below us seemed asleep, they were so still:
Little quiet whitewashed houses—all was peace in Newlyn town;
Peace and rest and golden sunlight, so it seemed as we looked down.

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Such a sense there was in Nature, past the reach of words or Art,
Of a silent something waiting, of a loving spirit and heart.
I could almost feel the sweetness of a kiss within the air:
Almost catch within the cornfields the quick flash of golden hair.

Never till that very morning had the strange sense come to me
Of a life behind all Nature, of a soul within the sea;
Of a glory past expression, of a rapture to be won
From the silent heart of Nature, of a secret in the sun.

As we passed the cottage gardens where in sunlit soft repose
Gleamed the giant climbing fuchsias, the geranium and the rose,
I could see and love the blossoms, but the blossoms' selves were nought:
There was something hid behind them, even a sweet creative Thought.

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There was then a soul in Nature—all was soulless, dark, no more;
There was woman's silvery laughter in the wave-pulse on the shore:
There was mystic meaning hidden in the dark-blue depth of air;
Far within the being of Nature was a Presence yet more fair.

And this Presence, turning meward, filled the land and filled the sky
With a glory vast and solemn, with a rapture pure and high:
I could reach the sacred Presence, I could worship at its shrine;
More—my very soul could claim it, I could murmur, “Thou art mine!”

There was something, deep in Nature—something sweet to be attained;
Heights of holy love to reach to, sacred friendship to be gained:
Something strange that, ever eluding mortal grasp and touch of hand,
Seemed to whisper, “Yet I love you—yet I smile and understand!”

168

“I am weary of the cornfields, I am weary of the air
Full of scents of radiant summer, I am weary of the fair
Starlit night that follows sunset, I am weary of the tides
Laving lonely coasts of granite and lone coral-islands' sides;

“I am weary of the sunrise over mountains lone and vast,
I am weary of dead ages, I am weary of my past;
I am weary of the worship of the star-hosts as they wheel,
As they dress their ranks obedient to the bugling thunder-peal;

“I am weary: I am eager not for soulless sympathy
Of my soulless white-sailed cloud-ships as they plunge along the sky;
I would see my love reflected in the human soul, my thought
In the brain that I for ages past man's lengthiest dream have wrought.”

So the loving sweet voice whispered—then it changed to mocking mirth,
Saying, “Yet I dwell in dreamland, I am part not of the earth:
Never human soul shall reach me till the course of time is run,
For I dwell beyond the sunset, and I dwell beyond the sun.

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“Mightiest poets all have sought me—they have found me passing fair;
They have sung the glittering radiance of the morning in my hair:
Every soul has thought to claim me—each has seen within my eyes,
When he dreamed that he possessed me, the first virgin teardrops rise.

“Byron thought our wedding-chamber was the palace of the sea;
Wordsworth sought me on the mountains, Shelley sought in Italy,
And the lips of Keats my lover on my own lips seemed to close
So he fancied in the violet, so he felt within the rose.

“What the Christians find in Jesus, other loving souls have found
In the golden light of morning, in the rushing rivers' sound:
Yes, a godhead is in Nature, a divinity in me;
Once God thundered upon Sinai—now he thunders through the sea!

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“Now he thunders on your mountains—when your mighty poet heard
Jura thunder, he was listening just as surely to the word
Of Jehovah as was Moses in the desert lone and grim:
Ever in Nature ye may find me, though to-day ye find not him.

“Though the Jewish God has vanished, though his angry lightnings gleam
Down the rocky heights no longer, though his kingdom was a dream,
I am living, I am with you, there is majesty in me:
In the red rose there is passion—there is love within the sea.”

So the sweet voice seemed to whisper, and I fancied as I heard
That a tenderer soft note sounded from the throat of every bird,—
That the lovely colour deepened in the flowers beside the road,—
That the sea's plain in the distance with a nobler radiance glowed:

171

And a wondrous sense came o'er me that for me that very day
Virgin was the spirit of Nature, that within my arms she lay
Never touched and never fondled, that she cared for me alone;
That she deigned to love a mortal, and to draw him towards her throne.

Though the far primordial hill-tops and the ancient winds and streams
Wrought their passion into music and had brought a million dreams,
Though man's heart throughout the ages had paid homage at her shrine,
Yet that day the spirit of Nature seemed superbly, wholly, mine.

But the loving spirit of Nature had yet further gifts in store:—
Turning homeward, round the cliff-tops, as we gazed on sea and shore
Came the marvel of the sunset—as the sun sank to his grave
Such a flood of golden glory lighted cliff and beach and wave!

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Golden glory—stainless molten glowing wonderful deep gold:
Many a sunset from those cliff-tops had I watched and loved of old,
Never sunset quite so perfect, never sunset so divine,—
All the stars' whole wealth of radiance in its least ray seemed to shine.

This was Nature's bridal raiment, thus was Nature robed for me
In this golden wedding-garment flung across the sky and sea.
All that day had Nature wooed me, but her noblest gift was this;
With her soft voice she had charmed me—now she thrilled me with her kiss.

—That was just one August sunset; but the glories never known!
Wealth of tropical strange sunsets where the weird sun sets alone
Over lonely wastes of water, or by reed-swamps dim and deep,
From his lonely labour passing to his loveless lonelier sleep!

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Glory of prehistoric sunsets, when no man's eye might behold
All the Western far heaven flushing or with rose-tints or with gold:
When no lover whispered gently, “Though the sun beyond the sky
Should depart and dwell for ever, golden love would never die!”

Sunsets it may be in star-land, countless sunsets it may be
Over starry silent oceans, many a dark-blue astral sea;
These the Spirit of Nature painting ever paints alone, apart,
Mocking human pen and pencil, with strange laughter at her heart.

“Would one human artist follow? Can he pass amid the stars?
Can he cross their golden portals? Can he leap their harbourbars?
Lo! I paint ten million sunsets, while he strives to understand
Just one earthly sunset colouring half a mile of sea and land.

174

“While the deep sea drags a vessel down beneath the tossing foam
In the heaven I mix my colours, fiery lake and magic chrome;
In the peaceful heaven above them, while the sailors shriek distraught,
I achieve a feat of sunset Turner's genius never wrought.

‘Painters, poets, all have striven—all have failed to follow me
When my brush sweeps o'er the canvas of the answering sky or sea.
They may struggle, they may marvel—Nay, the flamelit sunset air
That for me breathes only triumph for man's genius breathes despair.”

Then the next day in the chapel, lovely summer still without,
How I preached, with what an unction! Not one single shadow of doubt
Crossed the preacher's mind that morning—all he said, to him was true;
So his passion reached the people and it held them spellbound too.

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I had preached to them of Jesus, I had told them of his grace;
I had drawn them moving pictures of the Saviour's grief-lined face;
I had preached to them of heaven—I had pictured to my fold
Heavenly doorways bright with jewels, heavenly mansions wrought of gold.

I had told them that the Saviour is not dead—that still he stands
With the infinite same pity in his heart and outstretched hands:
That the Father's heart is changeless; that to every soul who wills
Jesus speaks his Father's message, by our Cornish rocks and hills.

“Is there one heart in this chapel full of sadness?” so I had said;
“Let him grasp the fact eternal that the Saviour is not dead:
He is living yet to pity, he is living to redeem—
All of real life is the Christian's, all the world's life is a dream.

176

“As he spake to his disciples by the Galilean sea
So he speaks to-day in Cornwall, so he speaks to you and me:
He is near us, he is with us, and he sees with pitying glance
Every suffering soul in Newlyn, every sorrow in Penzance.

“Though your boats upon the Atlantic, not on any inland lake,
Bury deep their bows in winter when the thundering great waves break,
Tremble not, for he is near you—aye, the tiller is in his hand,
And it has not lost its cunning—he can steer your boat to land.

“Jesus dreads not all the Atlantic; he is just as much at home
On your vessels, when you are blinded with the scudding sleet and foam,
As on boats of humbler fashion on a sea of humbler waves
When he succoured other sailors. Still he watches, still he saves.

“Not the sea alone he conquers, all of Nature he can rule:
By his grace the water-lily buoys its white cup on the pool.
Nature is but as his servant, and beyond the sights we see
There are sights more glorious waiting, waiting in eternity.

177

“Past the blue waves of the ocean there are bluer waves than ours,
And the roses at your windows tell of heavenly fairer flowers:
For each passion that we conquer, for each joy that we disdain,
There are heavenly high gifts waiting, when our Master comes to reign.

“Comes to reign, for he will surely from the highest heaven descend
And all human sins and sorrows, aye the world's whole life, shall end:
There are many—I believe it—even now living who will see
Jesus coming in his glory, in his power and majesty.

“Oh, the flowers of earth are nothing! oh, the loves of earth are nought!
Oh, the joys of earth are trifles, hardly worth a passing thought!
Earthly flowers may dread the winter, mortal sunshine yield to night,
I proclaim the life immortal where the Lord God is the light.”

178

—But that day I preached of Nature, for the spirit of Nature seized
All my soul and chained and held me, and compelled me as she pleased:
I was thinking of the sunlight on the sea the day before—
How it glittered on the ocean, how it gleamed along the shore.

“Heaven is close, aye all around you!” so I cried to them that day;
“It is in the golden sunlight as it flashes on the bay:
Even the highest heaven is sunless when God sends, some summer morn,
All the sunlight he can gather to assist your fields of corn.

“Moonless, starless are the heavens, lampless is God's house on high
Sometimes, when the lamps immortal gleam across a mortal sky,—
And the angels seem less stately, and their gold robes seem less fair,
When the glory of God's sunlight glitters through a woman's hair.

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“Woman was not made to tempt us! Was not Christ, the God-child, born
Of the pure womb of a Virgin? Did the world's Creator scorn
Even the lowly flesh of woman? Was it not the great God's plan
Through the stainless heart of Mary to redeem the race of man?

“Sacred evermore is woman, sacred is this world of ours,
For the fingers of its Maker now have plucked its humble flowers:
Sacred are its fields and valleys, and its mountain-heights sublime,
For eternity has sought us, and has kissed the lips of time.

“Now the heart of God that revelled through the years that baffle thought
Far in heaven 'mid heavenly splendour loves the flowers his earth has brought,
And a fairer light than heavenly is in sunlit Cornish skies.”
Then I stepped down from the pulpit—and my eyes met Annie's eyes.

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Next there came a time of horror, when my soul saw nought of light,
Wildly longed by day for Annie, then yearned heavenward through the night;
Till at last my thought grew clearer—I would seek the friendly sea—
The vast loveless waves should heal me and the winds should set me free.

Round the coast just now was sailing, ere the summer days were spent,
The dark fleet of herring-fishers, on their Northward voyage intent,
From Penzance to Whitby steering: I would join them once again;
Strangle love, the sea's strength helping—stifle love, and deaden pain.

So I sailed with them and struggled, was victorious for awhile,
Dreamed of passionless cold sea-wastes and the white moon's loveless smile—
Dreamed that love had never thrilled me, dreamed my heart was wholly dead—
Till one starlit night we anchored, half the fleet, off Beachy Head.

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Then there came through all the calmness of that starlit night at sea
The full fierce storm of reaction, smiting body and soul of me:
While the stars upon the water in untroubled silence gleamed
Thus my storm-tossed troubled spirit in its starless anguish dreamed:—

“What a peace upon the waters! What a storm within my soul!
Through my heart the giant surges of an endless sorrow roll:
All is calm and still around me, countless stars above me shine,
And the peace of God is in them, but the travail of man is mine.

“Shall I never win God's peace now? must I bid sweet love depart?
Wrench the image of a woman, and for ever, from my heart?
On the land the roses blossom, and God bending from his throne
Sends them love and sends them fragrance: I am loveless, I alone.

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“Star to star sends holiest greeting,—even the sea-bird from the wave
Takes not back the kiss that, passing, with its swift white wing it gave:
But God sends a heart to love me—then he takes that heart from me;
I am lonelier than the lone stars, I am lonelier than the sea.

“In the morning past the green banks in our Cornwall she will go,
Through the lovely Cornish deep lanes draped with fern-fronds loiter slow:
Will she think of me, I wonder? Will the fern-fronds hear her sigh?
Or will all be peace and gladness like the gladness of the sky?

“Bird to bird will softly murmur, ‘This is fairy-land's pure queen
Sent to tarry here with mortals, for a season known and seen:
How the heart of man must love her?’ Then the violet in repose
On the mossy bank will whispher, ‘She is lovelier than the rose!

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“‘Though I love the wild red rosebud, she is lovelier far than this!’
Then the wild red rose will murmur, ‘Though I love the violet's kiss
There's a softer sweet kiss waiting, there's a sweeter mouth than hers;
Aye, a noble kiss more luscious than the flower-kiss of the furze.

“‘I am only a hedgerow blossom—I would die in her embrace
Were I but a man to love her, were I in her lover's place!
I would bring the whole world's emeralds, every ruby I would take;
I would search the depths for diamonds, sack the gold-fields for her sake.

“‘That must be the glory of loving,’ so the rose will murmur low,
‘Not to rest among the hedge-leaves while the days pass, dull and slow,
But to ruin oneself for love's sake—ruin the world, if that may be!
Steal the stars to fill love's coffers, drag lost treasures from the sea.

184

“‘Were I but a man, my violet, were my violet but a maid,
I would lift her into sunlight, I would lift her from the shade:
I would chaffer with the angels, bring their choicest gold robes down;
I would even drive a bargain with Jehovah for his crown!’—

“So the wild red rose will whisper, as it were rebuking me.
Have I torn for her strange treasures from the green depths of the sea?
Have I brought her rubies, sapphires? There are nobler jewels above:
These I craved for, these I sought for—and my heart was closed to love.

“O my Master, have I left you? Is there even a stronger power
In the world than that of Jesus? Is this simple snow-white flower,
Even the flower of love that Jesus in his kingly sternness scorns,
Far more potent through its fragrance than his pale wreath through its thorns?

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“Have I after all been preaching of the life beyond the tomb,
Preaching of the heavenly blossoms, while I loved a lily in bloom
Here on earth? Have I been preaching of sunlight beyond the skies,
Dazzled all the while with starlight, even the light in Annie's eyes?

“Have I only dreamed of Jesus? Have I acted all the while
As if dearer far than Jesus was a girl's quick sudden smile?
Have I been content with fancies of the sinless heavenly land
While to me the heavenliest rapture would have been to kiss her hand?

“All these years have I been traitor—yes, a traitor to my Lord?
When I thought I worshipped Jesus, it was Annie I adored:
When I thought the Spirit of Nature spoke from wave and bush and flower,
It was Annie whom I worshipped,—she was sovereign in that hour.

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“It was not the Spirit of Nature, it was passion after all,
Just the same old pagan passion—what a hideous lapse and fall!
I had sworn to banish passion from my life—to live and die
As a preacher of the gospel, with my home beyond the sky—

“I had preached of self-denial—I was conquered, I was base,
Conquered by a girl's young laughter, by the young pure lovely face:
Venus still alas! was living; I was sin-stained and defiled;
Madly (I see) I loved the woman, while I thought I loved the child!

“While I taught her of the next world, she was slowly teaching me
Just what Venus taught to mortals when she sprang from out the sea.
I was teacher—she was pupil—but the pupil was more wise;
While I taught with pen and pencil, she was teaching with her eyes.”

187

So I reasoned through the night-time, but my spirit reached no goal:
Star to star gave loving answer, but they spake not to my soul.
I was left alone and joyless 'mid the universal peace;
“Love is born,” my heart had whispered—now it whispered “Love must cease.”

But the morning came resplendent—when the summer night was done
All the sea flashed laughing answer to the first kiss of the sun,
And my soul flashed laughing answer to the thought that in it lay:
All my past life had been darkness—Now at last triumphant day!

Now at last sunrise immortal! As I gazed across the waves
Leaping, smiling, snowy-crested, could one dream that they were graves?
Never! Where was thought of shipwreck? Surely shipwreck could be none
In a world where such blue waters laughed beneath so bright a sun!

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All was peace and all was beauty. Could I dream that love was wrong
Listening, as my whole soul listened, to the bright waves' morning song?
Was not passion in the sunlight, was not passion in the sea?
Was not passion too in God's heart, doubtless, from eternity?

Had some souls perchance made shipwreck through their passion, so 'twas said?
Yet behold the flood of sunlight flashing down on Beachy Head!
Beachy Head had seen its wreckage: Beachy Head that summer morn
Laughed the very thought of shipwreck 'neath its high white cliffs to scorn.

No: there never had been shipwreck—it was but a dream of pain,
And there never could be shipwreck on this sapphire sea again;—
Never wreck of any vessel, or of any soul should be,
For God vowed it through the sunlight, and he promised through the sea.

189

All the universe was passion; all the universe proclaimed
The pure glory of love for ever, with a million tongues unshamed:
Every flower on earth proclaimed it, every wave upon the deep;
Would God plant love's golden cornfield, then forbid man's hand to reap?

Annie—yes, my love for Annie was one verse, one radiant line,
Of the universal poem written by the hand divine:
I could add one perfect stanza to the world's vast hymn of praise;
Though the ages' joy was in it, I could add one summer day's!

I could write one passionate lyric, one small song, if heaven should please,
Though the Epics were Jehovah's and the vast Odes were the sea's;
Though the sweetest tenderest poems bore God's signature, 'tis true,
Yet I, loving past expression, could strike out some music too.

190

So my soul won liberation: as the sun climbed higher I saw
All my future stretched before me with a throbbing sense of awe;
All our future—yes, our future—for my life and hers were one,—
So God promised through the bright sea, and he sware it by the sun.

What it many a soul, defeated, down had sunk beside the way?
She and I would be victorious! love at last should have its day!
Were a thousand women traitors, yet one woman (sang the sea)
Would be loyal and true for ever, and bring perfect love to me.

Yes, to-day creation started on its journey quite anew:
For the first time heaven was cloudless, and the sea was stainless blue.
Though a thousand women wavered, yet one woman (said the sun)
Through all life would follow bravely—and my Annie was that one.

191

I would carry out my purpose now my heart had found repose,
Would not quit my sailor comrades till their summer journey's close:
I would watch them at their fishing; I would preach (with what a force!)
I would let all things that summer take their old unaltered course.

Then when they were leaving Whitby, sailing South and sailing West
In the first days of the autumn, I would travel with the rest:
When the summer was quite over, then my summer should begin;
I sailed North to lose a life's love—I would Southward sail to win.

I would Southward sail to win her. Oh, my darling, waiting there,
Far in dear old magic Cornwall, joy is sometimes hard to bear!
I should find her as I left her, hear her sing that old sweet song;
Tell her—tell her how I loved her—though she knew it all along.

192

Why, when hopes of man are fairest, does some dark fate dash them down?
Does it give the Lord God pleasure first to crown us, then discrown?
—When I came again to Cornwall, with the first autumnal leaf,
Love, who had given me lordly pleasure, brought me never-dying grief.

She was gone—to her destruction—so they told me, when I came;
If she had not fallen already, she was on the road to shame:
Dazzled by the foolish glitter of a troop of acting knaves
She had joined the troop of players,—she had left our moors and waves.

She had left Penzance for ever—so the little letter said
That my mother grave-eyed gave me—would we think of her as dead?
She was weary of quiet pleasures—she remembered all we had done—
But the wide sweet world was waiting—there were grand crowns to be won!

193

There were crowns of fame and love-crowns, so the poor sad scrawl went on:
She could never rest contented here to live and die unknown;
I must never never seek her, she would not disgrace us, no—
It was her own choice, her doing; she had freely chosen to go.

She had joined the travelling actors for a season, so she said:
That was just as a beginning—soon she would be better paid;
She would send us wondrous presents from great London,—she was told
That her voice alone would bring her fabulous wealth, uncounted gold.

We were not to be too sorry—she would far far happier be
In the midst of wild excitement than by our grey lonely sea;
For she needed wild excitement—it was always rest to dance,
And I knew what dull companions came to see her at Penzance.

194

She did so like jolly people! all the actors were so bright—
Got up late and tired, that's certain, but they sat up half the night
Talking, singing, telling stories—and the acting was great fun;
She liked gaslight, always, better than the ugly glaring sun.

She would like me to be sorry—just a little—for her sake;
Sorry only just a little—did not want my heart to break:
I should doubtless soon find some one who would make me a better wife
(If indeed like that I loved her)—mine was not her view of life.

She was grateful, very grateful—we had always been most kind;
We must try now to forget her, try not overmuch to mind:
When she thought of all our goodness the thought always made her cry,
But then crying made her eyes red—that would never do—Good-bye!

195

So the weary search began then, and for months that search went on:
Half through England I went seeking, silent, grim, forlorn, alone,
Past all human words despairing, with despair that mixed with shame,
For I knew well, if I found her, she would never be the same.

No: the damning step was taken. Fate had tossed her on the sea
Of the great world, given the devil his grand opportunity:
If the devil did not seize it, he was not the devil of old,
Swaying man by lust of woman, woman's heart by lust of gold.

As the dark sad thought flashed through me, I remembered where he reigns,
Satan, chiefliest crowned as monarch, not as king of hills and plains
But as deathless lord of London—king eternal and supreme
Of the city where the gaslights on his countless armies gleam.

196

There, it might be, I should find her. There for some two years I sought
Vainly, vainly, ever vainly—hearing nothing, finding nought;
Till at last, one evening, entering Charing Cross to catch the train
I ran almost up against her—yes, her very self again.

Yes, her very self unaltered—so at first I fondly dreamed:
Nay, the light that through the dark eyes flashed and sparkled, shone and gleamed,
Bright and lovely, was not lovely as it used to be of old;
Now the gaze had grown self-conscious, it might be a trifle bold.

Yet she seemed well pleased to see me and with tears the brown eyes filled
(Ah, for just one rapturous moment all the storm of life seemed stilled!)—
Then we moved away together, out of sound and sight of all;
Much my heart fails to remember, but these wild words I recall:—

197

“Yes, I always loved you dearly, but you would not understand,
You were thinking of your preaching—you were sombre, and so grand!
You were thinking of the next world—I was happy, quite, in this—
And you dreamed of heavenly mansions, while I coveted a kiss.

“You were wrong and I was right, love—I was ready, you were not;
You were writing passion's novel but mismanaging the plot:
Come with me—I want to show you that my life is glad and bright;
I will love you, sad old lover, I will love you for a night.

“I will love you—yes, for nothing—that I never did before;
I will show you all my treasures, you shall be one conquest more:
You look grave and you are solemn, but I know you love me well;
When you travel back to Cornwall you shall have a tale to tell.

198

“You shall see my diamond earrings, and my lovely china jars
With such strange old pictures on them—one of Venus kissing Mars:
You shall see my blue plush curtains and my ostrich-feather fans;
All my room is like a dream, love,—fairer far than dream of man's.

“Oh, you used to tell me stories of the fairies, what they did,
In their palaces immortal or their leafy coverts hid;
But my palace is the richer and my jewels are more grand
Than the jewels of the fairies through the whole of fairy-land!

“There are blossoms everlasting in my room, they never fade;
It is merely a small question of the florist's man well paid:
Did the fairies' blossoms glitter even in wintry hostile hours?
That is nought; in mid-December I can gather hot-house flowers!

199

“I have strawberries—yes, at Christmas—I have peaches when the moon
Dreads her dreary five months' journey to the purple skies of June:
I have everything I wish for; if I craved for one thing more
I should surely in the morning find it set outside my door!

“That is love, you know—to gratify a woman's every whim:
That is better far than preaching of the saints and seraphim;
Those old saints you used to preach of—how I pitied them poor things,
Dragging o'er the heavenly hill-tops their gold harps and heavy wings!

“I'm a saint too—some one thinks me quite a lovely perfect saint:
If you knew how he adores me—and his stories are so quaint;
Oh! the anecdotes he tells me—(let me whisper in your ear,
He's a lord too—but be careful—not a soul must ever hear!)

200

“There was never girl so perfect—and he says a perfect girl
(Shall I trust you even further? yes, I'll tell you—he's an earl!)
Ought to know all sorts of stories, ought to hear all kinds of things;
Yes, I like him all the better for the funny books he brings.

“There are goody-goody stories—there are novels of intrigue,—
And I read the former yawning, but the last without fatigue;
There are wonderful French novels, full of horrors—just like life—
Where the good man dreams of heaven, while the bad man steals his wife.

“I get up at twelve to breakfast, and I go to bed at two;
That seems wonderful, old lover, and disgraceful—yes, to you.
Down in Cornwall you don't labour like us Londoners at night:
When the stars and weak moon fail us, we turn on the electric light.

201

“But we're wasting time—step out now—I will show you where I live,
And I'll give you one night's pleasure—that's a real big boon to give
(All for love too, all for nothing) when the golden youth in town
Pay a brougham for a smile, dear, and a bank-note for a frown!

“For I frown upon them sometimes, and they love me just as well,
Stuff their bank-notes in my pocket—then I laugh and come and tell
My real darling, my brave lover, my kind ducky of an earl,
That he's found a faithful mistress, quite a treasure of a girl.

“Come, come quickly, for to-morrow—so he writes me—he'll return;
There's one night, my friend, still left you—hasten—never look so stern!
Why your whole glad face should brighten with a measureless content
When a girl so tries to please you. You'll come with me?” And I went.

202

Yes, my soul had been too eager; I had raised my hopes too high;
I had dreamed of perfect goodness there beyond the starry sky:
I had thought that over all things reigned a God supremely pure,
That he stooped from heaven to help us—but my faith was premature.

I had dreamed that by his Spirit every noble deed was wrought,
That he bent from heaven inspiring every sweet unselfish thought,
That he bade us seek his counsel and his grace to sanctify,
Breathing round us ghostly comfort, ever watching, ever nigh.

I had dreamed that all our sorrows could be used by him to teach
Holy lessons worth man's learning, mysteries passing thought and speech;
I had loved and I had worshipped—by the wintry Cornish foam
I had dreamed of stormless havens, of a Father and a home.

203

When before the grey-green breakers, plunging wildly through the waves,
Fled the fishing-boats in winter, while the hoarse wind through the caves
And the crags and coigns of granite swept with horror in its roar,
I had dreamed of heavenly sunshine shed along a waveless shore.

I had loved the bearded seamen—I had preached to them of peace
On their tossing boats in winter, when the storm-trumps never cease:
When the surges yearned to swallow man and boat within their graves
I had told them how the Saviour closed the wild mouths of the waves.

I had told them—and they listened, with stern faces very still—
That the raging deep was subject to a Father's loving will;
That the maddest wave was free not from its halter and its chain,
Though it seemed to us unfettered as it coursed along the main.

204

I had said, while all around us streamed the cataracts of the foam,
“God is lord of the wild waters, and of all ye love at home;
Here the waves' throats howl and raven, but on shore the storm is done,
And your children gather blossoms on the cliffs beneath the sun.

“There they pluck the golden trefoil, while our vessel sways and rocks,
With its brave bows never swerving at the rude waves' countless shocks:
There they gather the sea-poppies; God is guarding every one;
Here he rules in mist and darkness, there he smiles within the sun.

“Fathers, mothers, little children—he can shield you one and all;
Aye, without his loving mandate not a sparrow's plume shall fall,
No white feather of a sea-bird, till the course of time is run:
God can lighten the sea's darkness, he is mightier than the sun.”

205

I had comforted the widow, I had soothed the soul bereaved,
I had sought to bring God's comfort to the spirit as it grieved;
I had preached the eternal rapture of the life beyond the grave
While in hearing of my hearers death's voice sobbed within the wave.

In the little whitewashed chapel, with its hideous walls and pews,
I had preached to eager hearers Christ's, the gospel's, great good news;
I had preached of heavenly glories till the hearers' eyes grew dim,
Aye, and preached of hell's red terrors with insistence stern and grim.

I had said to the poor woman, when they brought her darling home
With his yellow hair still dripping with the clammy beads of foam,
“Christ has taken—yield him gently. Still your sweetheart with him waits
Smiling, watching, tarrying for you, just behind the golden gates.”

206

I had preached, and striven to comfort—now I knew it was a lie:
Of all hopeless hearts and weary the most hopeless heart was I,
The most hopeless and the weariest—I the preacher of the Lord,
I who trusted in his mercy, had been smitten by his sword.

I had preached of hell's red terrors—now my preaching all was done;
'Tis not hard to preach of darkness in the full light of the sun:
Easy it is to tell hell's captives to break through their prison bars
When oneself is steering heavenward in the full light of the stars!

I had preached, but now I knew it, the eternity of pain;
Heaven was lost, aye lost for ever, or there was no heaven to gain:
Now I knew what I had dreamed of, what the godless void may be—
Hell's fierce breakers stretching onward, and no Christ's foot on the sea.

207

Yes, my noblest dreams were scattered. I had dreamed that God had sent
Annie, my one love, my darling, my one priceless treasure lent
By the Lord to me, to lift me—so I fancied—yet more near
Ever unto him in spirit; a delusion—that was clear.

Oh my darling whom I worshipped, whom I would have died to win
In her pureness, her perfection, safe from weakness, stain, and sin;
Whom my whole soul would have honoured, in her tender girlish bloom;
Whom God gave me—for one moment—in a gaslit London room!

Was it noble, was it worthy of the Lord of heaven to make
Her my destined bride a harlot? was it godlike thus to take
From a weary heart its gladness, from a lonely soul its light,
When I lost her for a lifetime, having won her for a night?

208

Just one night—aye, one night only—and one night in such a place!
There to see her gazing at me with the same sweet girlish face
Little hardened, scarcely altered, that I used to watch at home,
While the moon outside the window lit the pure wild wastes of foam.

She the same—yet not the same one—nevermore the same to me
Who had held my hand in silence by the blue clear Cornish sea;
Who as pure as heaven above us had beheld the stars arise
Over sinless leagues of ocean, with love's starlight in her eyes.

She the very same for ever—with the wealth of raven hair,
Throat whose every curve was perfect, yes if anything more fair;
Yet with something lost for ever—with one jewel on the track
Dropped—and never through all ages shall we win that jewel back!

209

She the same in sinful London—she, with girlish eyes and heart,
Now a sinner, yes a sinner—just a portion, just a part
Of the wanton selfish city, she who might have been my own;
Now all London stood between us—we should never be alone!

I had preached of Christ's redemption. Could his rich blood wash out this?
Could he undo what had happened, and unfasten kiss from kiss?
Could he link by link remove it, sin's once-fashioned deadly chain?
Set before me my lost darling in her whiteness once again?

Could he take the feeling from me—though I found her very fair—
That another hand before me had caressed the raven hair?
That malignant haunting horror, of all poisonous pangs the worst,
That each touch had been discounted, that each kiss had been rehearsed!

210

Such a bridal—such a bride-bed—with the drama played before
And the author's step, it might be, even now close at the door:
Such a bride and such a marriage—just one hour love in the room,
Love's voice singing for one moment, then the silence of the tomb!

Singing—ah! and such a song too—not the song sung by the sea
When the envious throstle clamoured for the copyright from me:
When the gold sun paused to listen, though but half his toil was done;
When the sun forgot the cornfields, and the lark forgot the sun.

This was something like the cadence—still I carry it in my brain:
How the words light up those cornfields with the sun's old glory again!
How the words, though sweet and simple, sum the history up in brief,
For a covert threat lurks in them and a prophecy of grief!

211

The blue sea brings its greeting to the swallow,
Then drives it inland with the wild sea-storm.
The fields are crowned with bloom, but cold winds follow:
Hardly the flowers can keep each other warm.
The sun cries to the sky, “Soon must we part:
I love you—yes—but not with all my heart!”

“We love you, yes, but with a love most fleeting,”
So cry the stars to the eternal night:
“Farewell! farewell! the sun awaits our greeting;
We loved the darkness, now we love the light.
Farewell! farewell! the tenderest souls must part:
'Tis good to love—but not with all the heart.”

“I love you!” cries the vessel to the river:
I love your ripples and their harmless glee;
Yet one day with delicious shock and shiver
My bows will meet the white waves of the sea.
I love you, river, yet we needs must part:
I love you well—but not with all my heart.”

“I love you!” cries the sea's voice to the vessel,
“But I have loved a thousand loves before

212

Then flung them, after one wild amorous wrestle,
Pale and discarded on the loveless shore.
New loves await me, when the old loves depart:
My locks are grey, but youth is in my heart.”

Then her ringing clear voice deepened though the song more cruel grew;
Still I carry it in my memory, for the cadence thrilled me through:
Ah! how well the song expressed her—all her soul through the refrain
Chimed out silver-sweet and girlish, yet so careless of man's pain.

“I love you, friend—I love you, strong and tender,
And full of care for me and kindly thought:
I love the summer morning's golden splendour,
The frosty lacework on our windows wrought:
And yet I love not wholly, only in part;
All things I love—yet not with all my heart.

“There is a something still before me waiting;
I stand and tremble on the wave-washed shore:
I stand in doubt, uncertain, hesitating;
Love it may be has lovelier gifts in store.

213

Love only as yet has given himself in part:
Me Love has loved, but not with all his heart!

“If with your heart you love me, let the swallow
Point out the road to other shores than ours:
I am a bird of passage—I would follow
The blue-winged birds to lands of gayer flowers.
They tarry not—they love us, yet depart;
And I would follow them with all my heart.

“I love you well, but yet the hours are flying;
The summers pass us by—they gaze in scorn:
Yes, hour by hour the golden days are dying;
Life dies, while pleasure hardly yet is born.
Oh give your bright-winged bird leave to depart,
And I will love you then with all my heart.

Where she found the song, I know not—nor if here and there a word
She had altered, lightly singing, like the light heart of a bird:
In some book maybe she found it; he who wrote it knew not then
That on one heart 'twould be written with a dagger, not a pen.

214

I would leave the accursed city—I would take her child with me,
So she begged me, so she wished it—I would seek the old pure sea:
There by stainless wastes of water, by blue wavelets undefiled,
It might be a fairer future might await the sinless child.

It was something—just a little—for the lost sad mother's sake
That I still might do—a little—so my heart not quite might break;
Break not yet at least,—my life's work not as yet was wholly done;
I had yet to preach of darkness, I the prophet of the sun.

How my thoughts flew back remembering how some fifteen years before
I had borne away the mother, then a child, and left the door
Of the hospital in London thanking God that I could give
To a dying woman comfort—then it seemed worth while to live!

215

Annie—little dark-eyed darling—how I proudly bore you away!
How I showed you to my mother! how I watched you at your play!
How I bought you dolls and trinkets, and a hundred wondrous toys,
And tin soldiers—till my mother said that soldiers were for boys.

When the railway journey ended, the long journey to Penzance,
How I watched your bright eyes sparkle, when you saw the white waves dance:
How I thought, “There yet is sunlight, if all other sunlight dies;
This is God's eternal sunlight—even the light in sinless eyes!”

Oh, how well I can remember when the sea flashed on your sight
How you stretched your eyes wide open, with a laugh of pure delight;
How with that same voice which, later, made the throstle's heart despond
With an eager gasp you asked me, “Are there ducks upon that pond?”

216

How you loved to gather sea-weed—red and green and white and pink;
I can see to-day your shudder—I can see your fingers shrink
At their sudden startling contact with that cold flower of the sea,
The bright scarlet turquoise-beaded furtive sea-anemone.

With what pride—I can remember—you once brought me in your hand
A translucent lovely treasure which the sea had tossed on land;
Just a piece of broken bottle—but to us it seemed to be
Surely a priceless emerald stolen from the fairies of the sea!

Then the terror—oh! the terror—when beneath that granite slab
Your poor finger came in contact, cruel contact, with a crab;
How I kissed the poor pinched finger—how I soothed your sobs and sighs—
And we bore the rude crab homeward in a teacup for a prize.

217

Then the rapture, the wild rapture, when we saw the goby gleam
In our net at last, a captive—the fulfilment of a dream
That had lasted the whole summer, for that summer's dearest wish
Was to capture from his rock-pool that swift-darting tiny fish.

Then the glories of the shore too—there were butterflies on land,
Fair to see, but hard to capture. Once you brought me in your hand
(Now a hundred bright wing-cases count for nothing on your fan)
Such a prize—a great rose-beetle—splendid past the speech of man!

Has one jewel in London glittered with as fairylike a gleam
As the spots upon the trout's side which we jerked from out the stream,
Making all the alder-bushes—and our clothes too—wringing wet,
With a happy sudden side-jerk of the diamond-dropping net?

218

Oh those were our golden moments, though more golden were to come
When I read you in the quiet and the silence of our home
Tales of giants, dwarfs, and ogres, tales of knights and ladies fair
—Thinking all the time “no lady ever had my Annie's hair!”

How you loved the marvellous stories—nothing as you older grew
Was too marvellous, too fantastic, too miraculous for you:
Yes—I sometimes even think that our old readings' very charm
Turned your mind from life's real duties, did your dawning spirit harm.

Take for instance that grand story which would move you even to tears
Of the wondrous Fairy Palace which no mortal footstep nears,
Magic Palace of the Seasons where the seasons four are one,
Where the white snow gleams for ever, yet it melts not at the sun.

219

How your fancy seized the notion of the mingled seasons there,
Of the scents of summer mixing with the snow-flakes in the air,
Of the measureless bright Palace where eternal summer gleamed,
Where the nightingale for ever sang and loved, and loved and dreamed.

How you revelled in the notion of the fragrant summer room
Where for ever all the roses of the fay-land were in bloom:
Where the leafage of a summer that no mortal might behold
Lit the deep trees with a splendour mortal tongue has never told.

Summer—yes, eternal summer—in that fragrant central room
Nought of darkness, nought of horror, nought of sorrow, nought of gloom:
That is how your life, my darling (so I murmured!) ought to be;
Perfect happiness proceeding from unsullied purity.

But the Palace—the bright Palace—oh! my fancy lingers there;
If a mortal could but find it, and could breathe its sinless air—

220

If again we could but find it, how contented we should be
Even its solemn winter chamber, not the summer room, to see!

For within the winter chamber endless hoary winter reigned;
Whitest snows of earthly mountains would seem muddy, blurred and stained,
By the pure unsullied whiteness of the eternal snows within
That far-off enchanted Palace, where no heart had dreamed of sin.

Yes, the keen eyes of the fairies might with reason view with scorn
Even the bluest ice that glitters on our lordly Matterhorn:
Not from noblest Alpine summit was there ever view so grand
As from even the humblest summit of the hills of fairy-land.

And the night, the wondrous night there, when upon the peaks sublime
Fell a silence, such a silence; on the shadowy hills of time
That our Wordsworth made immortal, when the moon breathed down her spell
And the stars shed forth their glamour, never such a silence fell:

221

Silence perfect, strange, unearthly—silence as of utmost peace—
Such as when the trumpet clamours of the warring wild winds cease
On a sudden in mid-ocean, and the sea with gentle lips
Whispers, “I was only playing,” to the sea-birds and the ships:

Silent peace—I used to fancy—such as Jesus might have known
When he murmured “It is finished,” when he stood at last alone
Face to face with labour ended; peace no mortal sorrow mars:
Such the calm was when those ice-peaks glittered underneath the stars!

Sinless calm and peace most holy, so the dear old fable ran,
Brooded o'er those stainless summits never soiled by foot of man:
Calm divine and rapture perfect—through the crags no thunder rolled;
There the sun rose storm-defiant, there he sank in cloudless gold.

222

That was far too grand for mortals—we could breathe with easier breath
In that Palace of the Seasons where life mocks the sword of death
When we entered the bright chamber where rich autumn reigned superb,
Crowned with fiery leaves and sunshine, and with glowing corn and herb.

(That was just what took your fancy—to have all good gifts in one—
Noble whiteness of the winter, nobler glory of the sun;
Spring's soft colours never dreading, with a pang of sudden grief,
Death that turns the green leaf living to the golden dying leaf.)

For within the fairy palace the rich woods of autumn shone,
Forest after forest flaming into distances unknown:
No such colours in the far-famed Indian summer of the West
Ever burned on leafy banners, ever flashed from leafy crest.

223

Fairy oaks and fairy beeches, scarlet maples, glittered there
And such radiance gleamed along them from the magic heights of air
That, had mortal vision seen them, mortal tongue could never tell
How the tossing waves of colour on the light wind rose and fell.

Even here was contradiction. What would fairy landscapes be
Without wizard feats of colour, glorious incongruity?
There were roses, there were snow-drifts, there were yellow autumn leaves—
There were dahlias by the ice-ponds, there was frost upon the sheaves.

But the loveliest of the chambers in the Palace was the one
Where the green leaves gave a softness to the full flame of the sun:
Where the may-bloom ever glistened, but more fragrant far than ours;
Where the children of the fairies gathered never-dying flowers.

224

There was spring-time everlasting—not a spring that fades away
Leaving littered in the foot-paths trodden blossoms of the may,
Not a spring that shrinks from summer, but a spring that still will last
When the earthly flowers and foliage of a million springs are past.

You with sunlight in your glances, and with spring-time in your heart,
Seemed yet fuller fairer meaning to the story to impart:
When the fairy queen came singing through her palace, every word
Seemed to suit you, to express you—it was Annie that I heard.

Ours is the unfading pleasure
That never can grow old;
A joy beyond man's measure,
Delight no tongue has told.
No death within our palace
For ever will there be,—
No wild storm's wrath or malice,
No terror of the sea.

225

If man with all his sorrow
Could reach us where we dwell
There would be no to-morrow
For fairy mount or fell;
If man with all his sadness
Within our gates could stand
There would be no more gladness
Then left for fairy-land.

For man would bring his yearning,
His hopes and fears and sighs,
His passions fierce and burning,
His feverish enterprise:—
We post our keen-eyed warders
Along the frontier line;
Upon the magic borders
Their fairy sabres shine.

If man could ever enter
The fairy-land, what grief
Would thrill its very centre,
A horror past belief.

226

For all our flowers are stainless
And all our fields are fair:
The life we live is painless,
But man's life means despair.

Never the fairy warders
Will let one mortal pass:
Imperative their orders—
Were they to yield alas!
What thunderous change of weather
Upon our hills would loom,
For man and sin together
Would bring about our doom.

But man with heart infernal
Will never trespass here;
His sentence is eternal,
His destiny is clear:
He sees the golden portal
Through silent slumber gleam,—
He cries “I am immortal!”
He wakes—It is a dream.

227

I was dreaming of the Palace—I was in the railway train
Bearing Annie, ever Annie, to the old lost home again:
I was dreaming of the fairies, but my fairy queen was gone;
I was only alas! a mortal, broken-hearted and alone.

No, the pure-eyed child was with me, with her hand within my hand,
Just a stray gold blossom-petal drifted here from fairy-land!
But the mother, my lost fairy—she would never, nevermore,
See the fairy legions mustering all along the mystic shore!

She would never hear the bugles of the fairy squadrons sound,
See the fairies line the frontier, guard the old enchanted ground:
She would never see the gateways at her coming open wide
And the fairy guards saluting, straight, erect, on either side.

Day by day the guards would wonder that her chariot never rolled,
Drawn by milk-white noble prancers, through the glittering gates of gold:
Day by day the keen-eyed watchers, peering out, would peer in vain;
Never trumpet in the distance! never dust upon the plain!

228

There the guards will wait for ever—there the sentinels will stand—
All will still go on for ever as of old in fairy-land:
As of old, with one thing wanting—not at evening nor at morn
Through the gates with shouts of triumph will the fairy queen be borne.

Though the fairy soldiers know not, though the sinless peaks of snow
In the wondrous winter chamber smiling on the meads below,
Though these know not, I could tell them where their mourned-for mistress dwells—
In a land remote for ever from their stormless fields and fells.

Well the years sped on in Cornwall, but I'll pass those swift years by;
Nothing varied the vast calmness of the expanse of sea and sky.
All the love in me was softened into fatherhood again:
Ah, the love in man enables Fate to inflict the endless pain!

229

All went on in steady sequence—that is how the days depart
When Fate lurks behind the sunshine with new dark deeds in his heart:
Just the same they seem to pass us, smiling, sun-kissed, every one;
But Fate, black-browed, thunder-wielding, stands alert behind the sun.

—So in summer when the ocean with its soft voice to the land
Sings its love-song, sings so gently, he whose heart can understand,
Versed in all the ways of Nature, still within the sound can hear
Something of its wintry storm-voice, when its wild wrath stuns the ear.

For the one same sea in summer to the listening sunlit shore
Says with voice as of a lover, “Lo, I love you, I adore!”
And in winter to the cliff-sides, ribbed with granite though they be,
“Lo, I hate you—ye shall perish from the pathway of the sea!”

230

Fate arose at last: a letter in the old handwriting came—
How the light of coming evil flashed across my eyes like flame!
Half I broke it open—waited—tore the envelope once more—
Trembled then again and waited—till I read it on the shore.

She was dying, said the letter, dying in London all alone—
Would I come once more and see her? (Would a mother leave her own?)
So once more I journeyed townward, took the route I knew so well;
Left the quiet sea behind me, entered London—entered hell.

Not the same as when I left it was the once well-furnished room:
All to-day was desolation, all was emptiness and gloom.
No silk curtains to the bed-posts, not a picture now was there;
Just a bed—a dying woman—a white ghost with raven hair!

231

Yes, the fairy guards were waiting, far away in fairy-land,
But the fairy queen lay dying in a bed-room off the Strand.
Not again in fairy regions would her golden sceptre wave:
She was just a poor lost woman, five days' journey from her grave!

He had left her in man's fashion, wearied when the prize was gained:
Of the wedding-robes of passion not a worn-out shred remained!
—Left her all alone in London, with the one vile bitter word
“Earn your living, you are young yet;” was there any Christ who heard?

Was there any Christ, I wonder, who had seen the whole thing done,
Seen the girl's heart grow to woman's, seen the woman lightly won,
Watched at night within the bed-room, seen the man come, then depart,
Any Christ—we'll grant his godhead—but with manhood in his heart?

232

Was there any Christ who knew it, all the lies the man had told,
All the lying talk of marriage—who had seen the ring of gold,
Just the saddest of all tokens, worn to shirk the social ban,
Worn to link her to her sisters, not to link her to the man?

Was there any Christ who knew it and whose pure true heart contained
All a strong man's mightiest passion, all a strong God's anger chained?
Any Christ whose deep love blended in its vast and complex whole
All the pity in man's deep nature, all the love in woman's soul?

Was his pity quite exhausted? Was his healing power outworn?
Did he wear just for one season one ephemeral crown of thorn?
In Jerusalem he triumphed? When he rose from out the grave
Did he deem his work was over, that no souls were left to save?

233

Did he deem when man betrayed him that no Judas would arise
In the ages that he saw not, under Western sunless skies?
Did his soul foresee the horror that the years to come would bring?
Was he only for one moment just a pale apparent King?

Was his kingship wholly vested in the moments that he spent
Here on earth with men and women, ere the Temple's veil was rent?
Could he face the sin of London? Could he see our streets by night
Yet retain his stormless splendour, and his crown's imperial light?

Could he bear to see our city—could he know the evil done
Every hour, yes every moment, when the gaslights drown the sun?
Every night some woman ruined, every night some base seeds sown
For whose harvests of fierce evil not God's whole blood could atone!

234

Had he seen this woman ruined? Had he followed Annie's life?
Would he not now track the villain, hunt him down with dagger or knife?
Would he not proclaim God's justice—if a God indeed there be—
God's eternal hate of evil, God's unsullied majesty?

—So the thoughts in swift wild sequence flew with frenzy through my brain
As I saw the dying woman, heard her speak yet once again,
Heard her tell with broken accents all her story of despair;
Then my whole soul cried out Godward as I watched her lying there,

Cried out heavenward: “If the mountains or the lurid storm-clouds hold
Any strong God, a Jehovah, as the peoples deemed of old,
If there be a God of anger, past the anger of the sea,
And behind the love of Jesus, noble wrath's intensity;

235

“If there be within the thunder still a living God more strong,
If the lightning's sword be his sword, if his soul detests the wrong,
If the righteous power of judgment yet within some God remains,
If he be not blind for ever, if his sceptre he retains;

“If he be not weak or slothful, be not sunk in lethargy,
Let him mark this London death-bed, let him gaze from heaven and see:
Let him stay no longer dallying with his minor toils on high,
Let him stoop to us in London, let him quit the starry sky;

“Let him rise up in his anger—as they say of old he rose—
Let his sword leap from the scabbard, on the hilt his fingers close;
Let him carry out my curse now, carry it out by day, by night,
Let the living God do justice, let the Lord God hear and smite;

“Let the living God do justice, let the living God proclaim
Once again his deathless glory, and the greatness of his name;

236

Let him follow with his vengeance this one man, where'er he be—
Let my soul's curse light upon him, let it traverse land and sea;

“If he scale the lofty mountains, let my curse, God, still be there;
Let it peal within the thunder, let it sound through sunlit air;
Let it follow him all his lifetime, let it ring his earthly knell,
Let it follow him to the graveyard, let it haunt his steps in hell.”

Then my whole soul changed to pity. Now the storm of wrath was dead:
Very tenderly I raised her, and I kissed the raven head,
Kissed it gently, oh so gently—and I kissed the pale sad brow,
Thinking, “Though past words I loved her, yet I never loved till now!”

All the fieriest early passion had not half the strength or power
Of the sense of deathless pity that transfused my soul that hour;

237

I was conscious now of nothing save a love so deep, so strong,
That the sense of horror vanished, and the deadly sense of wrong.

Here was death to make atonement for the vast wrong done to me:
Here was sin's whole end, commencement of a pure eternity.
Sin had done its violent utmost to degrade and to defile;
Life had strangled her young laughter—death had given her back her smile.

Yes, her smile—for as she lay there such a sweetness through her eyes
Came with lovely radiance gleaming as through stormiest sunset skies
When an autumn wild day closes and the sullen vapours part
And we know the sun is living and that love lives at his heart.

Just the very same old sweetness, only sweeter so it seemed,
That I worshipped when that sunset on the far-off cliff-sides gleamed—
When she gave the waves their laughter, gave its lustre to the sky,
Gave the evening star its splendour, even her girlish purity.

238

Then I thought, “Whatever happens in the land to which she goes,
Whether life or love be waiting, or profound and sweet repose,
One thing surely is not waiting, surely it is not in God's plan
When the grave's past to confront her with the lies and lust of man.

“Whether angels group around her, or the friends of former years,
Some with outstretched hands of welcome, some with grave eyes full of tears,
Whether Jesus there be waiting, this at least I know right well,
That the villain who betrayed her will be leagues away in hell.

“God will turn hell's keys upon him, God will keep him safe within
The dark region he exults in, even the land of lust and sin:
If in God's heart or in Christ's heart any noble anger be
The destroyer is damned for ever, but the victim shall go free!”

239

Then she signed to me to listen, and I stooped above the bed:
“I know better now, forgive me,” with the same sweet voice she said,
Yes the same, but sadly weak now, that had won my heart of old;
Then she grasped my hand so firmly in a tight strange childlike hold—

“Guard my darling, guard my daughter, save her from this world of sin;
There's another Annie left you, there's a victory left to win:
If you see her heart misguided, if you see her going wrong,
Kill her...kill her—that way save her—you can save, if you are strong.

“If you see her copy her mother, if you see her growing too like,
Be more merciful than God is, call on pure-souled death to strike!
Swear to me, whatever happens, you will never let her be
Any rich man's sport and plaything, never let her grow like me.

240

“Do not speak to her of her mother—or, if you must speak at all,
Only speak of early days, dear, long before the mother's fall:
If she wants to know my ending, asks you what became of me,
Say my death was strange and lonely...say that I was drowned at sea....

“Don't forget me, for I loved you—though I did not know it then—
You were grave and I light-hearted, and I could not fathom men:
When they told me that they loved me, I believed it, till I knew
That the grave love was the true love—till at last I fathomed you.

“Till at last I understood, dear, wholly learned and not in part
How my folly had made you suffer, how my sin had wrecked your heart:
Yes, at last I understood you, but the knowledge came in vain;
Now it could not bring atonement—it could only deepen pain.

241

“Why, I wonder, is it—always—that a woman's soul must win
Perfect knowledge of what love is through the trial first of sin?
Perfect knowledge of the noblest through experience of the worst?
When she's on the road to Jesus, why must Judas win her first?

“Ah! I cannot understand it—nothing now to me is clear
Save this one thing, that I love you and I like to feel you near:
Come yet closer, come quite close now, for I cannot see you well;
Tell me, is God very angry? will he send my soul to hell?

“I don't fear him—I can face him, if there's love within his mind;
If he loves me as you love me, he will never be unkind:
If he loves me as you love me, I could love him in the end;
And the next world seems so lonely—I want some one for a friend!

242

“Shall I have to be alone there? I was frightened long ago
In that dark strange cave in Cornwall—when I went alone, you know,
Seeking ferns within the cavern. When you found me, all was right,
For the sunshine came in with you, and that gloomy cave grew bright.

“Put your hand beneath the pillow—I have still some seaweed there,
Dried, in that small sealed-up packet, and a tuft of maiden-hair
That we gathered—you've forgotten?—in remembrance of the cave
And my grand deliverance from it: I should like them in my grave.

“They may serve there to remind me—who can tell us?—it may be—
That you saved me from that darkness and the hoarse threats of the sea:
They may serve to give me hope there”—then the voice failed—then she said,
“It is dark again, dear—kiss me...” as I kissed her she was dead.

243

Soon I passed into the darkness of the quiet street outside,
Just to seek the last sad tendance for a woman who had died;
That was all in outward seeming—just to send a human frame
Living help in its last journey to the dust from whence it came.

That was all in outward seeming: as I turned into the Strand
What a rage and crush of people, what a crowd on either hand!
Life was hurrying on for ever in its immemorial stream;
Which was truth, my whole soul wondered—which, I wondered, was the dream?

Which was life in very truth now, which was after all most sweet?
Were they living, these lost women, as they pressed along the street,
Coarse, with coarser men companions—were they living, or was she
Rather living? Had the dead soul won life's genuine victory?

244

“Where is right and where is justice? All is accident and chance.
As I passed just now that woman I saw deep within her glance
All the latent power of loving that in happier sisters leads
Their own souls to heights of virtue, those they love to noble deeds.

“Must one woman be degraded, while another woman soars
Clad in rustling silks and satin towards the heavenly golden doors?
Why must all the stars, obsequious, lend one honeymoon their light
While another woman in darkness changes husbands every night?

“Why must one display with rapture, happy, wifely, pure and sweet,
All her gifts and wedding presents, with the whole world at her feet,
While another, just as noble, had her life's chance been the same,
Dips her soul each night more deeply in the nameless mire of shame?

245

“Why must one parade in Venice, with her husband by her side,
While another walks in London, all the town's promiscuous bride?
Analyse them when they started, eyes and lips and mind and heart—
It may be you'd hardly have known them, after all, at first, apart?

“Why must one child in the cradle by a mother rocked to sleep
Rest, while through the foggy darkness other weary footsteps creep,—
Weary footsteps of some mother, in her madness carrying down
Her first baby to the river, for the cradling waves to drown?”

So I thought, and through my spirit a wild sense of godship ran,
But a godship fierce, nefarious, not a godship good for man.
I had grown in strength of being, but my faith in God was gone:
I was standing silent, self-poised—loving truth and that alone.

246

As I watched the crowded pavement and the sad lost faces there
All my soul was rent and tortured by a measureless despair;
Yet a living force within me seemed to meet the sense of wrong,
Living, holy, deathless, godlike, inextinguishably strong.

“Death is peace and life is anguish; death's the end, the perfect goal;”
This I'll preach in tones of triumph to each listening suffering soul:
I shall win, maybe, more hearers—talk of joy, you seem to jest!—
But all mortal souls have suffered, and all sufferers long for rest.

“Other souls have loved before you, they have suffered, they have passed:
Now they call you from the sea-waves, now they summon from the blast.
Through a thousand storms they wrestled, through all stormy days but one—
That day bore them, wild with rapture, down to darkness from the sun.

247

“And our hope is just to join them, those old ancestors of ours,
Stalwart ghosts of brave old Vikings in the deep sea's crystal bowers;
There they wait, the staunch old Norsemen—we shall join them, we shall be
Welcomed with a shout of triumph through the gateways of the sea.

“Though a million ships have safely sailed along the ocean way
Little heeded by the waters, not caressed of wind or spray,
Yet a chance is left for each one, for the ocean's heart is large;
‘Still it loves you’ the wind whispers, as it sings along its marge.

“Still the mighty ocean loves you—yes, the ocean's heart is grand.
Has life failed to apprehend you? Still the sea can understand.
Are you weary of the pleasures and the loves of every day?
There's a kiss fatigueless waiting on the white lips of the spray!

248

“Not in quiet gardens lighted by the soft light of the sun,
Nor in heavenly golden palace, shall your final bliss be won;
Nay, beneath a stormier moonlight than the light that filled the sky
When the sea to the Armada spake one sweet wild hoarse word: ‘Die!’

“Sweet and wild and hoarse and loving—life was waiting them in Spain,
Life with all its feeble pleasures, its vast loss, its little gain;
Then the infinite sea had mercy—while it baulked the Spaniards' plan,
To its bosom's cold pure sweetness it clasped every vessel and man.”

So I preached awhile in London, and I found that I could win
Hearers—not perhaps save sinners from the ways of wrath and sin
As I once (I thought) could save them; now I saved them by the cry
“Life is failure, life is torture—lay firm hold on death, and die!”

249

Yes, I found I reached the people: they were ripe and ready there
In dark cruel evil London for the gospel of despair.
Many sufferers crowded round me, and I gave them of my best;
Even the hope of rest from suffering, deep unconscious painless rest.

But I wearied of the city, and I longed to hear once more
The old angry white waves beating on the stedfast Cornish shore;
Longed to see how time was dealing with the bright-eyed girl to whom
Life was still a fairy palace, not a dungeon or a tomb.

So I came, and when I saw her lo! the budding rose had blown;
While I toiled and preached in London, the swift sunny days had flown
Down in Cornwall: very lovely was the Annie whom I saw—
Yet a thrill of pain ran through me, and I watched her half in awe.

250

She had grown so like her mother! all the past came storming back;
Far away my mind went roaming on the old sad trodden track:
I was busy while in London—here my mind was void and free,
Open to the wind's weird whisper, and the wild voice of the sea.

Is there one pure maid, one virgin, in this universe at all?
Did not all fair women totter at the first fair woman's fall?
—Pure she seems and very tender on the sacred nuptial night,
Yet in ages past with passion the same eyes, maybe, waxed bright.

Is there one sure sign to show you that she has not lived before,
Watched the sunlit blue waves rippling on some quiet Eastern shore?
Here i' the North to-day she loves you. Yet her eyes, it may be, gleamed
Ages since with Southern passion, as in ancient Rome she dreamed.

251

Your fair bride, maybe, was harlot in some Babylonian street:
Many ages she has traversed, and her lips were always sweet
And her laugh was always tender—she was dark-eyed, even the same,
When the towers of Carthage reddened into violent spires of flame.

You to-day may deem you hold her. Not one soul is ever held
Safe, securely, by another! By love's laws we are compelled
On from passion unto passion, on from wild hope to despair:
Maybe through a thousand ages she will still be here and fair.

Virgin!—let the weak dream perish, for God laughs the dream to scorn.
Is one life of any moment, is it of value to be born
Pure just for one single lifetime? Every woman pure to-day
In some past life has been wanton, and has flung her soul away.

252

Flung her soul away—as Annie now will fling away her soul,
For I see the horror coming, past a man's or God's control;
Clearly I feel the horror coming—in her beauty and her pride
She will pass into the darkness, like her mother, my lost bride.

Surely soon her fate will seize her, for last week I saw her play
With a diamond on her finger—when I tore the ring away
Such a fierceness flashed upon me from her eyes that it was plain
Here was just the mother's nature, reproduced on earth again.

Reproduced—for good or evil? Could I doubt which when she said,
“I would sell my soul for diamonds”—(how I thought of some one dead!
How a desolate room in London flashed upon my sight once more!
How I seemed to see men carry a black coffin from the door!)

253

Lovely is she, very lovely, and the donor of the ring
Doubtless covets her young beauty, full of sweetness as of spring:
Doubtless, eager to possess her, he who gave the child the toy
Will proceed—in man's sure manner—first to flatter, then destroy.

All the horror will return then. Must I live to see her sink
Down hell's fiery seething centre, after gathering on the brink
Tender blossoms many-scented, flowers she finds exceeding fair?
Must the old mad pain redouble and the speechless old despair?

Doubtless all her heart is changing—as her mother's changed before;
Now she hears no simple music in the waves' beat on the shore:
Now her longing when she watches the moon soar across the sky
Is the longing to escape us, and to revel in liberty!

Doubtless she too dreams of passion, when we think she dreams of prayer:
When her form is in the chapel, her swift spirit is not there;

254

It is far away with some one—who can hold her or retain?
God can chain the winged wild ocean, but a girl he cannot chain.

Neither man nor God can chain her, nor can strong life hold her fast:
Only death can ever hold her, when life's efforts all are past.
When life fails and when the Lord fails, man and death may sometimes win;
When the sun fails, then the darkness puts an end to love and sin.

The eternal darkness closes, and the woman no more sees
Silvery moonlight on the waters, golden sunlight on the trees:
The eternal darkness saves her, whom nor God nor man could save.
Was she wanton on the green earth? She is chaste within the grave.

Therefore seeing ever clearlier that the time has come at last
For one frail man's giant protest, I have summoned up the past
—I have written, since I saw the fatal ring upon her hand,
Plainly all our strange sad story, that the world may understand.

255

In the long week since I saw it, that clear token of our doom,
I have relived all the stages, seen the sunlight, felt the gloom,
Every scene and every trifle have endeavoured to recall.
I alone knew all the sorrow. Now the world shall know it all.

I will leave the story written, signed and sealed, within my desk,
Then will rise up fierce for action, calm no longer, statuesque
Now no longer—not a statue, but a living breathing frame
Wild for wrestle with the Author of the sin, the woe, the shame.

Even now I feel within me strange swift heart-throbs of relief,
Somewhat even of exultation, triumph born of deadliest grief;
Even now I see before me as it were with prophet's glance
All the future made the present, known, experienced, in advance.

I will steer into the Atlantic: Fate has wrecked and ruined me—
I will form a last alliance with the thunder of the sea.
Heaven has failed, aye God has failed me—Christ has failed me in my need;
But the sea's heart still is left me, with the sea's heart I will plead.

256

I will steer into the sunset: as that sunset years ago
Bathed the world for me and Annie in its loving golden glow,
As that sunset flashed before us with the radiance of a dream,
Now another spotless sunset shall deliver and redeem.

For this girl—another Annie—now another sunset waits:
Yea, the sunset shall receive her in its fiery golden gates.
All the fairy guards are waiting, far behind the walls of flame;
For long years they have been waiting for their queen who never came.

But their pure queen now is coming; let the fairy bugles blow!
Let the fairies line the roadway! let the news fly to and fro!
Let there be a stir, a bustle, through the fairies' wide domain,
For the queen they've lost for ages is returning home again.

Stately, noble, pure and queenly, full of girlish grace and charm,
With God's genius as a sculptor shown in curve of throat and arm,
With God's holier sense of sweetness in her maiden heart made known,
She is coming, she for ever is returning to her own.

257

She, returning, will be with us now for evermore, and bring
As the golden gates she enters such a sudden sense of spring
As on earth we feel when Winter with one foot yet on the wold
Starts and trembles, as the furze-shoots flash their sudden spears of gold.

She, returning, will be with us—lo! the golden sunset waits:
She will enter far within it, far beyond the golden gates.
She will traverse the old region, she its everlasting queen,
With a sovereignty of splendour never witnessed in her mien.

With a sovereignty of sweetness now within the queenly eyes
She will traverse the old region, see the mountain land that lies
Far beyond the fairy borders, which no eye of man has seen,—
She the eternal perfect ruler, she the eternal sinless queen.

Once again the golden sunset—once again, then never more—
Shall flash out with heaven's own brilliance all along the Cornish shore.
Here, where Tristram at Tintagel sinned with Iseult at his side,
To the sunset, to the Atlantic, I will bring a sinless bride.

258

Here, where Arthur's endless vigil of wild sorrow was begun,
I will end all mortal sorrow; it shall set as sets the sun.
It shall vanish in the sunset, it shall vanish in the sea;
It shall vanish in the radiance of the sky's immensity.

What the Lord God failed in doing when he placed upon the hand
Of the world her ring of wedding, and espoused the sea and land,
I a mortal, I so erring, will accomplish by my might:
I will end the pain of living, pain shall vanish in a night.

Pain shall vanish—for, a mortal, I can show the immortal road
That not even Christ's brave footstep in its fullest grandeur showed:
I can add to Jesus' gospel; I can follow where he went;
I can bring on earth the silence of a measureless content.

I can take this woman holding as it were within her womb
A vast power of sorrow endless, endless summers' dying bloom,
Endless souls unhinged by anguish, boundless agonies to be,—
I can plunge the mortal mother in the vast womb of the sea.

259

I can stay a million curses and avert a million pangs:
Grief, men fancied, was immortal—I can blunt grief's deadly fangs.
Men will follow where I lead them: I will lead them to the deep,
To the sea of vast oblivion, to the shores of endless sleep.

There all sorrow shall be ended, and the whole race shall atone
For the crime of its creation and revert without a groan,
Nay with one wild hymn of triumph, to the unconscious ecstasy
Of the fields no ploughshare furrows and the unfurrowed shipless sea.

That was joy and life unfailing, free from conscious life's despair;
Then the pale moon swam in silence through the sorrowless blue air:
Then the soul that gazes downward from the red depths of the sun
Watched the earth, yet saw no evil, for no human deed was done.

260

That was rapture for creation! then the golden lonely stars
Tilted not with rays immortal at our mortal prison bars:
Then they saw no prisoner dying on his silent couch,—they heard
Neither battle's shout of triumph nor the lover's whispered word.

Love was waiting to destroy us,—but love had not dawned on earth.
All the sea laughed out unconscious, through its voice rang thoughtless mirth:
Not the mirth it caught from Venus when she sprang from waves that smiled;
Not the laughter of the lover, but the laughter of the child.

Love was waiting to destroy us,—but as yet the world was free.
Lovers loved not on the ocean for no ships sailed on the sea:
Lovers loved not in the forests, and the lone hills watched the moon
Trodden not by feet of lovers; loveless were the fields of June.

261

That was peace and pleasure perfect; that great peace I will restore.
Love shall vanish from the mountains, love shall die out on the shore.
I, the preacher of the gospel of despair and boundless gloom,
Will restore the world its silence, and its empire to the tomb.

Men shall follow my example: step by step the world will cease
To run madly after pleasure, and will long alone for peace.
Then the cornfields will be weed-grown: who will care to reap the corn
When man views himself with hatred and the whole of life with scorn?

Man shall wreak at last his vengeance—as I wreak my vengeance, I,
Steering out into the darkness, for the sun has left the sky;
Bearing with me this one woman—would Fate lower her and deprave?
Her at least he shall not conquer—her at least my hand shall save.

262

Though I could not save the mother, is not she the mother now,
With the same young strange pure sweetness in the eyes and on the brow?
All the long sad years have vanished—Lo! love rises from its grave:
I may save from black pollution her I would have died to save.

Not in London shall she perish: now our bridal couch shall be
Pure and sweet and holy and stainless, even the holy and stainless sea.
She whom once I loved in London, where I loved her for an hour,
Shall be mine in love immortal, far beyond Fate's lurid power.

This is nobler, this ends better than the sad old tale began;
This is worthier of my passion, this is worthier of a man.
Now the tender night is coming, and the stars will light our way
To the room where death is bridegroom, not the room where once we lay.

263

I am death her perfect bridegroom, we are on the lonely deep:
Now the night eternal waits us, we have many an hour for sleep;
Sweet long hours for sleep, my darling—there's no footstep at the door!
Nay, the winds and waves shall guard us, we are many a league from shore.

We are lonely at last together, we have left the adulterous land:
Lo! our solemn marriage-chamber, lo! our spotless couch at hand.
You and I are all alone, love—mortal sounds have died away;
Hear the stars' song to the ocean! hear the wind's voice to the spray!

Lest our deep calm should be troubled, lest our marriage should be marred,
God has sent the unnumbered armies of the deathless stars to guard:
That our rapture may be endless and our souls past waking one
He has darkened earth for ever, he has slain the intrusive sun.

264

Lest I find you all too lovely, he has sent the moon to show
With her soft light for the first time your uncovered breast of snow:
Lest I scorn all flowers for ever when your first kiss startles me,
He has left the flowers on land, love—he has set us on the sea.

Lest the roses all be envious, he has made your mouth a rose;
He has left a thousand blossoms on the cliff-sides in repose,
He has given ephemeral fragrance to the flowers, ephemeral bliss,
He will make the rose eternal in the sweetness of your kiss.

Lest the thought of an invasion of our joy should e'er intrude,
Any thought of old dead cities, he has given us solitude:
Lest a dream of other beings should bring sadness to your face,
He has ended other life, love, he has slain the human race.

He has had at last great mercy, he has given us bliss divine,
Perfect death for you and me, love—life in death, for you are mine.

265

Ours will be the last embrace, love: on this white-waved ocean-plain
One last rapture superhuman shall end superhuman pain.

All the rapture of the passion that from Eve's first soft kiss ran
Like a torrent, like a fire-flood, through the throbbing veins of man,
All the raptures of old history, shall be gathered into ours,
As the rose resumes the fragrance of a million nameless flowers.

That is mightiest compensation—thus to loose within our veins
The full torrent of past passion, and to fix the past in chains:
Thus to bind the world for ever, but to set two lovers free,—
Then to send a world's kiss pressing through your single mouth to me.

This is noblest compensation—to put out the human race,
But to leave the love-light burning through your eyes and in my face
—Thus to let us feel our oneness, I with you, and you with me,
And your oneness with the starlight, and my oneness with the sea.

266

Place this once, my stainless darling, your pure lips upon my own:
These at least are wholly sinless, these at least are mine alone.
Now let sweet death seal the marriage! when two souls are one at last
Then death's darkness is not darkness, for the power of death is past.

Not to-morrow shall we, waking, hear the wheels of London roll,
You with sin's kiss on your whiteness, I with madness in my soul:
Nay, for ever now around us let the vast night's curtains be!
We are safe within the darkness; we are safe within the sea.