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

The Poetical Works of George Barlow

In Ten [Eleven] Volumes

Barlow, George

Vol. I

II.

Vol. II A LIFE'S LOVE

III.

Vol. III

IV.

Vol. IV

Vol. V: LOVED BEYOND WORDS

VI.

Vol VI: THE PAGEANT OF LIFE

CHORUS OF SPIRITS OF LIGHT

VII.

Vol VII: FROM DAWN TO SUNSET

VIII.

IX.

XI.

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VI. Vol VI: THE PAGEANT OF LIFE

TWO CHRISTMAS SONGS

I. SONG OF THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM

Lo! this night the Lord descending
Comes on earth to dwell.
Evil's bitter reign is ending,
And the power of hell.

Neither Greek nor Roman poet,
Great-souled though they be,
Read God's secret.—Who shall know it?
Darkness, or the sea?

Greek and Roman, full of learning,
Full of strength and might,
Sought for God, their strong hearts yearning
Godward in the night.

Wise men worshipped God for ages;
Builded temples grand:
Graved their souls on deathless pages;
Wrought in many a land.

All these sought for God, and found him,
In a measure,—each:
Sought for God, and loved, and crowned him;
Secrets all could teach.

But to-night the love immortal
Through the gate of time
Passes: makes life's fleshly portal
Evermore sublime.

Woman now is pure for ever,
No more man's sad slave.
Let man's heart disdain her never
Whom God bends to save!

Through her sweet lips cometh sorrow
Sometimes—let that be!
When the bright dawn breaks to-morrow
Over land and sea;

When we weary stars are turning
Homeward to our rest;
When the golden sun is burning
On the mountain's crest;

Light yet nobler this shall presage:
For to-morrow morn
Through the world shall thrill the message
“Jesus Christ is born!”

II. SONG OF WOMEN-SPIRITS

God at last has heard our crying.
Through the ages past
We have sought him, groaning, sighing:
He has heard at last.

Man has mocked us through the ages,
Goaded to despair.
Poets, thinkers, soldiers, sages,
All have called us fair.

All have praised our lips and tresses,
Golden locks or black:
All have sought our love-caresses:
All have held us back.

All have checked our souls' aspiring:
All have dreaded this.
This has tired men, never tiring
Of the lips they kiss.

All have dreaded lest the morning
Which should find us free
Would be wild with note of warning
Rung by land and sea.

Not one noble soul has trusted;
Roman, Jew, or Greek.
Many and many a sword had rusted,
Had they let us speak!

Many and many a fierce old quarrel
Had been lulled to rest!
Ours the myrtle, man's the laurel,
Man's the battle-crest.

Half the spears that maddening hurtle
Through the loud rent air
Still had rested, had our myrtle
Seemed to man's heart fair!

Had man listened to our pleading,
To our agelong cry,
Battle-fields where he lay bleeding,
Waiting there to die,

Had been fields of corn and clover,
Full of peace supreme:
Had but man, our agelong lover,
Listened to our dream!

For our dream is sweet and holy,
Full of peace and grace.
Slowly, slowly,—slowly, slowly,—
We shall win our place.

We shall win man's adoration
In a nobler sphere,
Rule through him some future nation:
For our Prince is here.

God, in sending Christ, is sending
Woman victory.
God at last is mixing, blending,
Strength and purity.

Not their old song-god Apollo,
Bright of face and limb,
Is the god for us to follow:
Nay! we need not him.

Songs are sweet, and singers sweeter:
Full of charm was each
Old-world bard, and old-world metre,
Yet they fail to reach

Woman's soul as Christ's deep phrases
Reach her heart and ear.
Every word of his amazes:
Rings out pure and clear.

Woman loves at last—who waited
Through the ages long,
Weary, saddened, worn, ill-mated,
Void of heart for song.

God, who gave the generations
Of the past most dim
Unto man, gives future nations
Not, oh not, to him!

Woman's is the future season.
Christ's and woman's day
Dawns at last: the end of treason,
Swords and spears that slay.

Lord, we thank thee that thou hearest
Woman's piteous prayer.
Christ's chief word, his message clearest,
Sweetest and most fair,

Is the news that woman never
Now need dread man's scorn.
Woman now is safe for ever:
Jesus Christ is born!

MARY MAGDALENE

I fall, O Lord, before thy feet,
For thou hast taught me things most sweet,
Most pure, most grand.
Behold! I longed to conquer thee;
But am content—if this may be—
To kiss thine hand.

I dreamed of love, and passion wild,
But now, O Lord, am reconciled
To loveless hours.
Thou art so vast in purity!
I dreamed of sin; but, thanks to thee,
I dream of flowers.

Thou art my God: for thou hast taught
Truths reaching far beyond man's thought,
Deep truths and grave.
While other men defile, deflower,
Thou usest thine immortal power
To lift and save.

As man had made me, lo! I came,
A woman full of sin and shame
And woe and care;
With but one sweet thing left to show—
The endless glory and the glow
Of my gold hair.

This, therefore, Lord, I give to thee:
The one sweet pure thing left in me,
Golden, divine.
These locks that once were wanton gold
Around thy sacred feet I fold
For loving sign.

As man had made me, unto thee
I came: paths of iniquity
My feet had trod.
Shameless I was, and lost alas!
As thou hast made me, I can pass
Straight up to God.

THE CHILD

Before the child the world expands,
And dreams of green or sunny lands
Float in upon his soul from space.
Each child upon the planet born
Brings back that planet's early morn
In the sweet sunrise of his face.

The world for each is recreate,
And each may meet and conquer Fate,
And mould his life to woe or weal.
For each the sea again is blue:
For each the mountain-summits new;
For each the morning bugles peal.

For each God sheds his glory again
On hill and dell and lake and plain:
To each he brings his flowers anew.
He paints for each the lily white,
And hangs with lamps the dome of night,
And paints the sky's great ceiling blue.

Aye, through the heart of every child
Flows somewhat of the rapture wild
Which Adam felt, when first aware
At nightfall of the starry deep
From which the Lord God watched the sleep
Of flowers that bloomed in Eden's air.

In every child the race resumes
Its youth. Among the garden blooms
The young child wanders forth. It sees
With sinless eyes the snowdrop white;
The cornfield's blaze of golden light;
The round-head red anemones.

All is so new, all is so sweet.
The cold is glad, and glad the heat:
The wintry ice brings pleasant dreams.
What if the winds of winter roar?
Down to the pond the skaters pour:
They skate, till out the pale moon gleams.

Nature has lessons for the man:
With other eyes he learns to scan
The mountains, and the heights of space.

But never colour gleams so fair
As sunset hues in soft June air
Upon an upturned boyish face.

From out the air, within the sea,
The radiant sense of joys to be
Speaks to the boy's heart, or the child's.
The red-eyed roach, the banded perch:
The white trunk of the silver birch:
The purple heather of the wilds:

The spotted trout, that flashes down
Along the ripples golden-brown
Of the fern-bordered mountain-stream:
The woods, alive with cawing rooks:
The deep-blue weeded river-nooks
Where lie the barbel and the bream:

The butterflies, white, yellow, blue,
That haunt the woods, or flutter through
The clover-fields beside the sea:
The beetles flashing one by one
Across the gravel in the sun:
The azure sky's infinity:

All gather depth of meaning strange
From the boy's heart.—All shift and change
Their meaning with the growing years.
The whole of Nature seems to wait
On mankind; changes with his state,
And shares his hopes and shares his fears.

From out the air a message speaks
That flushes through the boy's bright cheeks;
The gates of wonder never close.
God whispers through the nights of June
Of something lovelier than the moon,
And something sweeter than the rose.

THE YOUTH

Life thrills me through with all its mighty power:
Lord of my darling's heart, I rule the whole.
I reach the golden heart of every flower;
I apprehend the starry night's deep soul.

Love touches all things into sweeter bloom,
Transfigures common things, till heavenly light
Gleams from the emerald moss on every tomb
And from the smallest blossom pure and white.

I love. And therefore heaven and God are true:
Christ's resurrection was no woman's dream.
Because I love, the sky is ever blue:
Because I love, the stars shall alway gleam.

Because I love, I understand the love
That led God's heart to suffer for the race.
God died for all, his love for all to prove,
As I would die for one belovéd face.

If I thus love, can God love less than I?
The Ruler of the spheres love less than man?
The God whose breath pervades eternity,
Can time-born Satan intercept his plan?

Nay! all shall end in joy. All troubles pass.
Did not I just now kiss my darling's hand?
Chirp, merrier cricket, from the tall green grass!
Break, bluer seas, upon a whiter land!

Sing, happier birds, from leaves more soft and dense!
O goldfinch, chanting from yon apple-tree,
God's love which made the heaven a nest immense
For all the stars, made thy small nest for thee!

For thee and for thy love he made the small
Sweet nest of moss and straw and twigs that holds
Your four eggs safe, as heaven's nest holdeth all
The gold stars safe within its cloudy folds.

And for my love and me he made the earth,
And all its azure skies, and all its flowers.
“Love on,” he said: “Rejoice with tenderest mirth,
And seek the fields while I hold back the showers.

“I set upon the hedge the scented may
That thou mightst pluck it. And I made some white
Some red: the red may for your wedding-day,
The white pure blossom for your wedding-night.

“I made laburnum, yellow, starry, fair,
That ye might gather this and be content;
Not craving for star-blossoms of the air,
But gathering here the golden bloom I sent.

“And I made lilac—purple flowers and white:
The silvery bloom for her, the deep for thee.
And I sent breakers dark and breakers bright
To be your coursers over the wide sea.

“All things in double forms I made for you:
The chestnut-blossoms red, the blossoms pale;
The crocus sunlike in its fiery hue,
The crocus white as thy love's wedding-veil.

“I made the golden sun to light your day:
I made the silver moon's less garish light.
I gave the nightingale his amorous lay,
And bade him chant it on your bridal night.

“When the first star lay, resting in my hand,
Poised, ere I hurled it forth upon the deep,
In my far-seeing thought your love I planned
And chose star-warders for your nuptial sleep.

“Before the first flower blossomed, I ordained
Within my soul the blossoms she should wear.
Ere time began, within my thought I stained
Deep-red the poppies for her deep-black hair.

“And, as time onward sped, through rose on rose
I poured the sweetness and the fragrant bliss
Which, quite perfected now, her lips disclose,
And culled from flowers the sweetness of her kiss.”

So God said, having us in his regard,
Us two, and us alone, my love and me;
As if the whole sublime heaven, golden-starred,
Were made to light one inlet of the sea.

As if the sun were for a single flower
Created,—for one blue-bell in a lane:
As if creation's every previous hour
Were preparation for our final reign.

So ever will we reign, my love and I:
The one thing deathless is a love like ours.
It gathers depth from the unmeasured sky:
It gathers sweetness from the whole world's flowers.

My love is mine for ever. I am hers.
Nought charms me save the royalty in her look.
At her least touch my being thrills and stirs
To-day, as at her first long glance it shook.

No love that changes is the love supreme:
No love that falters is the love divine.
Death would not wake me from my passionate dream:
No love that tires of love is love like mine.

For sooner could God's hand displace the sun,
Or hush the drum-roll of the stormy sea,
Or, having made stars countless, leave not one,
Than quench the unending fire of love in me.

THE POET

O artist dreaming thus thy life away,
There is a higher life than thou canst guess.
Art thou a poet? sweet love answers, “nay.”
Was Christ a poet? woman answers, “yes.”

The highest poethood is ever this:
To love as Christ loved, and to save the race.
Not to spend wild years, seeking kiss on kiss,
But to draw forth the soul in woman's face.

To aid the weary, and to lift the low:
To show God's pity in the human sphere:
Besought by sorrow, never to say “no”:
To lend the helpless heart a ready ear:

To honour woman, and, if woman slip,
To stand by ready, with strong outstretched hand,
As God sends starlight to the struggling ship,
Or the staunch life-boat pulling from the land:

This is true poethood.—Aye, not to love
The rose the less, but to love virtue more:
Not to love earth less in that, far above,
The poet sees the stars that sail or soar.

Hast thou God's vision? art thou part of him?
Can thine eye, steady, mocking at fatigue,
Traverse vast spaces where man's eye grows dim,
Pursuing phantom star-ships, league on league?

Canst thou through throbbing heart and thrilling nerve
Feel God's life tingle? canst thou, looking up,
Discern God's sculpture in the rainbow curve,
Or, glancing downward, in the tulip's cup?

Is woman unto thee past measure more
Than unto fools and grovellers of the race?
God's woman-nature sent us to adore?
One moment's glimpse of the eternal face?

Canst thou, beholding her, behold God's sense
Of form in every curve of neck and limb?
God's deep love, insupportably intense,
In the eyes that follow man and worship him?

Canst thou see what no common eye can see,
And, penetrating far past space and time,
Be clothed upon with God's eternity—
And, as he made the ebon night sublime

With countless stars, make generations bright
With songs that breathe through ages yet to be
The passionate fragrance of one summer night,
The scent of sea-weed on a mortal sea?

Then, being more than man in thought and frame,
Be more than man in noble act as well;
Be poet in thy deeds, not only in name;
Flash down song's sunshine to the depths of hell.

With all who love and struggle take thy part;
The gift most holy of all gifts is thine:
Pain never a weak soul, hurt no human heart
By one unworthy thought or heartless line.

CREATION

“And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.”
Genesis i. 31.

God made the earth exceeding good.
He clothed the hill, or clothed the wood,
In verdurous raiment fresh and fair.
He filled the earth with living things:
With flashing of innumerous wings
He filled the sunlit heights of air.

He filled the hollow sea with life.
Strange sea-flowers in the far depths thrive,
And wondrous fishes, scarlet-scaled,
Dart like small flying suns along;
And where the eager tides wax strong
Rushes the salmon, silver-mailed.

God made the day, and made the night.
He made the sun's engrossing light
To brighten all the daylight hours:

Then, lest the sun turn tyrant, made
The night to give soft rest and shade
To man, and solace to the flowers.

He made the stars that shine above
The earth, and speak to man of love,
And lead love's footsteps with their light:
The sweet and passionate stars that say,
“If man is sovereign of the day,
Woman is priestess of the night!”

He made the dawning sense of love
That seems a glory from above,
A rapture sent from very far.
Upon the lips of man he set
These words “I love you,” and he let
Those words be woman's guiding-star.

Upon the woman's lips he placed
A sweetness pure, a sweetness chaste,
A royal beauty, and a bloom
That never flower will quite attain.
He said to woman, “Love and reign.
For love there is not any tomb.”

One kingly right he gave to man;
His right it is since time began;
The right of passionate address.
“I die of love. Wilt thou not save?”
And then the Lord to woman gave
The right to smile, and answer “Yes.”

And then God gave the lips the right
To meet, and sent the dark-winged night
Angelic, to bring sleep and rest.
He bade the deepening twilight close
The secret whiteness of the rose,
But ope the flower of woman's breast.

THE YOUNG GENIUS

I.

God recreates the earth and air,
And makes the vast blue waters fair,
And makes the earth's wide meadows green
For every genius therein born;
For each regards the past with scorn
As if it had not been!

Each genius, by his birthright grand,
Inherits sea and sky and land;
For each God clothes all stars anew
In fiery splendour.—Shakespeare's dead!
But still the sun is golden-red,
And still the waves are blue.

The first white snowdrop is as fair
To genius, when Spring's soft hands bear
Her gentle early gifts to him,

As if no snowdrops ever leaped
Before above the mould, or peeped
Into the crocus-rim.

And unto genius most of all
Is woman ever new. Eve's fall
Made her perhaps less strangely fair
To Adam. But though Adam grieve,
His Eden holds an unfallen Eve
And genius finds her there.

Yes; ever to the genius-eyes
The tender light of Paradise
Beams forth from woman's perfect look.
Her lips are fragrant as the flowers
That in life's morning's golden hours
From Eden's banks she took.

God, that he might forget her fall,
Created genius most of all,
And set within the genius-brain
The power of worship passionate;
That woman he might reinstate,
And honour her again.

That God might constantly repeat
His own deep sense of wonder sweet,
The passionate awe, the joy sublime,
Which first he felt creating Eve,
He made the genius-heart achieve
The same work through all time.

Subordinate to his alone
He set the kingly genius-throne,
And bade his poet-souls receive
His thought anew; that every age
Might so repeat the Eden stage,
And shape its perfect Eve.

II.

So genius finding all things new,
Must recreate its kingdom too
And pay no homage to the past.
“Lo! God is in these hills and streams.
With miracle the present teems:
With wonder sweet and vast.”

But no man listens to his tale.
He seeks to draw aside the veil
That hides the solemn stars of space:
He seeks to represent to man
God undivulged since time began
Save through some human face:

But no, mankind will nought of him.
His own friends say, “How strange a whim!
We knew that poets lived of old;

We knew that prophets spake of God;
But this man do the same? How odd!
His heart is overbold.

“Poets have lived. The whole world sang
When Shelley's wondrous live harp rang,
And thrilled the height and thrilled the deep.
All nature in her joyous hours
For Keats' brow wove her fairest flowers;
Aye, lulled him soon to sleep.

“The whole of history spake indeed
Through Hugo. What soul can succeed
In adding aught to things once said?
Yea, God himself who made the sun
Was satisfied—he made but one.
Darkness! if that were dead.”

Darkness? O fools, the solemn night
Brims over with perennial light;
A hundred million suns in space
Flame round about the Eternal's throne,
And each sun guards and herds its own
Planets that wheel and race.

But ever genius must renew
The same old struggle, wrestle through
The same old thickets of dismay;
Be dubbed Beelzebub, when most
Inspired by that strong Holy Ghost
Who lives and speaks to-day.

Still must the son of God, the bard,
Find life's long battle bitter hard,
Meet envy, hatred, wrath and scorn;
Still will he, struggling hard to lift
Mankind, receive mankind's one gift—
Christ's battered crown of thorn.

III.

Moreover, genius never feels
Save in extremes.—Its whole brain reels
With wild delight, or rocks with woe.
From one extreme it plunges on
To other heights and depths that none
Save genius' self may know.

It worships God, it worships long
Within his house with prayer and song;
Then lo! his Temple's gold gates close:
The poet sallies forth, and finds
Lovely upon the summer winds
The soft breath of the rose.

Unstable? Yes, but even so
The thoughts and songs of genius grow
And eddy along their destined course.

All is extreme. All is superb
And strong and reinless; without curb;
Unfettered, full of force.

God speaks not only in one hour,
Not through the beauty of one flower,
But through the flowers of endless time.
When genius and the Lord collogue,
They speak not in the vulgar brogue
But in a tongue sublime.

The commonplace well-balanced fool
Who speaks by rote and lives by rule,
What shall he of God's glories see?
What shall he know of woman's heart?
Or of the mountain-range of Art
Or of Art's ecstasy?

But genius, wild, extreme, perverse,
With lips that bless, or lips that curse,
Brow-bound with thorns, with sorrow shod,
However man's heart may despise
The deep love-yearning in its eyes,
Is strangely close to God.

GROWING OLD

There is a holy joy in growing old,
If but the soul grows as the strength declines.
Life's winter need not freeze with flowerless cold,
Though spring's brave golden sun no longer shines.

Though passion's blossoms wither, are the stars
Not nearer, as our ripe souls yearn through space?
Heaven's far-lit windows gleam devoid of bars,
Wide open, on the upturned aging face.

We are more near to death, but nearer too
To countless loved ones who have gone before;
Who watched death's grey waves quickening into blue,
As sunlight reached them from the further shore.

This brings content,—aye, rapture. Perfect peace
Of spirit should be the sweet lot of the old:
A large trust that God's bounty cannot cease;
Hope that life's fairy-tale is not half told!

Hope that the Power which made so passing fair
Our earthly springs, made green leaves interlace,
Can bring with grand result its force to bear
On higher spheres—that hold some higher race?

Strive so to live that, when you come to die,
Sweet thoughts may follow you from all your land:
Thoughts that shall shine like stars within the sky
Of death, and make the sombre prospect grand.

Thoughts both of man and woman.—Let men say,
“He changed our souls to fire, to slay all wrong:”
Let women think, “He lifted sorrow away,
And made us stronger, being himself so strong.

“No woman was the worse—the better, all,
For loving help and helpful love he gave.
He lured no trusting weak one to her fall.
Our blessing reaches him beyond the grave.”

On one side clamour of our winds and waves;
Babble of voices; golden stars that burn;
Birds singing in the elm-trees over graves;
White tombstones couched amid the clustering fern:

White tombstones—yes! But bright life over all:
Above the graveyard skies of ceaseless blue:
The starlit heavens for canopy and pall:
This on one side. But, dead man, what of you?

Can your eyes now behold the summer skies?
Can your ears hear the summer birds that sing?
—Or is the silence where the dead man lies
Perhaps the noblest gift that death can bring?

For through that supreme silence that no voice
Of mortal penetrates, that starless gloom,
God's voice may sound; and it may say, “Rejoice,”
In accents thrilling through the fast-closed tomb.

“Rejoice: thy work is over. Take thy rest.
Of sweet peace drink thy fill. Thy strife is o'er.
Pillow thine head on the Eternal's breast.
Suffered thou hast? Thou shalt not suffer more.

“Are there no stars to light thee? Is it gloom
Within the grave? I am thy star, thy light.
Though death to every sun and star spake doom,
The Lord thy God is stronger than the night.

“There is no death, if thou art part of me:
No night, for I will be thy midday sun;
Pour at thy feet a new-created sea;
Before thy gaze make silver rivers run.

“The world with all its graves and flowers is mine,
And thou hast helped that world along life's way:
Fear not, though never glow-worm star should shine;
The God who made the stars is more than they.”

This I regret—this grieves me, growing old—
That, though maybe to heavenly fields I pass
I never more shall see the cowslip's gold
Sprinkle with glittering gems the green spring grass.

I never more shall see—whatever waits
Of glory and beauty far beyond the tomb—
One earthly sunset open crimson gates,
Or one wild crimson clover-field in bloom.

Moreover all the valiant deeds to come,
Great deeds in which my nation will take part—
Shall I behold them from some heavenly home,
And will they thrill to fire my heavenly heart?

The next great war! When Europe shakes again
Beneath opposing millions' battle-tread,
When Belgium is once more a battle-plain
Or the Swiss mountain-meadows reek with dead,

Shall I behold? Shall I be closed off quite
From all the stirring clash of things to come?
When England next arises in her might,
Shall I be barred behind the eyeless tomb?

When England breasts, upon some future sea,
The giant-armoured fleets men now prepare,
Will not her trumpet-voice reach even me?
Shall I not long, long madly, to be there?

When France and Russia force us, it may be,
To test our iron-plated darkling horde
Of monstrous vessels, churning up the sea
With Titan screw or fierce torpedo-sword;

Or when the red line, where far Indus flows,
Wrestles for India, on one mighty day,
Shall I be heedless how the battle goes,—
Silent for ever, wholly past away?

My eyes will soon be dimmed.—God will behold
All stars for ever, and all suns of space.
In fiery rank on rank of glittering gold
Their hosts will charge and wheel before his face.

I shall not see the flowers: but God will see
The flowers of endless springs, through endless days.
He'll share the rose's own eternity,
And wander through the sealed years' hidden ways.

I shall not hear the thunder, or the roar
Of ocean.—God will hear the thunders roll,
And hear the huge waves plunge upon the shore,
And guide the flashing lightnings to their goal.

New moons will silver placid wastes of sea;
New suns will blaze above the golden sand:
New lovers—yes, to all eternity—
Will gaze in eyes that love and understand.

God will behold.—The glorious dark-brown hair
Of maid on maid he will caress and stroke.
Through spring on spring his palette will prepare
New soft green colours for each budding oak.

He will array each kingfisher in blue,
And robe the goldfinch—touch its cheek with red:
Crumble to dust the stars,—then make all new;
I shall be gone, but God will not be dead.

O living mighty Lord, into thine hand
I give myself, and all I may not see:
The green robes of the cliffs, the corn-clad land,
The thyme-tufts shaken by the summer bee.

Thou ever hast the past before thy gaze:
The present and the future are but one
To thee. We see all life through clouds and haze;
But thine eyes front and blench not at the sun.

YOUNG GIRL'S SONG

I.

Golden dawn is breaking
Over land and sea:
All the birds are waking:
Does my love love me?

See, the morning's sweetness
At the window-pane!
Summer's full completeness
Has returned again.

In my heart all flowers
Seem to blossom now:
Bloom of woodbine-bowers;
Buds of apple-bough.

Hardly can I fancy
What is most in bloom,—
Jasmine, purple pansy,
Rosebuds in the room,

Or my own young gladness
Bidding sorrow flee,
Sorrow, pain, and sadness,
Over leagues of sea;

Bidding sorrow leave me
For the good God says
Nothing ought to grieve me
In these summer days;

Nothing ought to sadden
Mine, a young girl's heart;
All hours ought to gladden;
All pangs to depart.

There are wars and troubles
In the world, I know
—There are white foam-bubbles
On the stream below:

Fierce and strong and rapid
Does its current gleam,
While the poplars vapid
Watch it in a dream.

But I see the blossoms
At the water's edge:
Lilies' golden bosoms,
Feathery bloom of sedge.

When the sun amazes
All the banks so green,
Then I count the daisies,
Tipped with crimson sheen.

Gold-crest, wren, and linnet,
These I watch and love:
God sends every minute
Music from above.

In the morning early,
Singing in the sky
'Mid the cloud-wreaths pearly,
Chants the lark on high.

When the warm sun blanches
Midday with its heat,
In the beech-tree branches
Sings the throstle sweet.

Then the blackbird whistles
From the holly-tree:
Tom-tits from the thistles
Chirp, and call to me.

On the river-border
Red-breasts cut a dash;
Stout knights of the Order
Of the crimson sash.

Then the singer rarer,
While the moonrays gleam,
Makes the world a sharer
In her deathless dream.

So God sends me singers;
Till night's darkness deep
On the river lingers,
And the bird-choirs sleep.

II.

Yet far sweeter fancies
Fill my heart at times;
Sweeter than romances
Of far Eastern climes.

Yes, I have a lover!
Does my love love me?
He's a sailor-rover,
Married to the sea.

Yet I know he's faithful:
Though the waters blue
(Fierce perhaps, and wrathful?)
Bore him from my view.

Wheresoe'er he wanders,
Nigh what alien shores,
Sure am I he ponders
On me, and adores.

Hourly from his pocket
Sure am I he takes
That small golden locket,
Clasped by silver snakes.

Sure am I he gazes,
Wheresoe'er he be,
On three small dried daisies
In it...and on me!

III.

God has given me gladness:
I must pass it on.
I must banish sadness,
Not be glad alone.

See the sun, how proudly
He bends down to bless:
Calls the daisy loudly
To his strong caress!

All on God dependent
Pass his blessings on.
Is the sun resplendent?
He creates the moon.

I must give my pleasure
To the world again.
Glad beyond all measure,
I must lessen pain.

Hear me, Father, hear me!
Thou hast bent to bless:
Sent the sun to cheer me;
Sent the air's caress;

Sent the rosebuds trailing
At the window-pane;
Sent these petals hailing,
Gold laburnum-rain;

Sent the fragrant breathing
Of the fields in May,
Blossoms interwreathing,
Lilac-branch and spray;

Sent the dark-green laurel,
Sentry at the gate;
Birds that chirp and quarrel
Lest they be too late,

To my window flying
For the bread-crumbs there—
Titmouse pert and prying,
Chaffinch debonair!

—Let me give the gladness
Thou hast given to me
To some soul in sadness,—
Change to ecstasy

Sorrow of some laden
Weary heart and brain:
I, a laughing maiden,
I would solace pain.

With my touch caressing
I would soothe the sad;
Fill man's life with blessing,
Make the whole world glad!

THE OLD MAID

She gave her life to love. She never knew
What other women give their all to gain.
Others were fickle. She was passing true.
She gave pure love, and faith without a stain.

She never married. Suitors came and went:
The dark eyes flashed their love on one alone.
Her life was passed in quiet and content.
The old love reigned. No rival shared the throne.

Think you her life was wasted? Vale and hill
Blossomed in summer, and white winter came:
The blue ice stiffened on the silenced rill:
All times and seasons found her still the same.

Her heart was full of sweetness till the end.
What once she gave, she never took away.
Through all her youth she loved one faithful friend:
She loves him now her hair is growing grey.

THE BLIND POET

Within a humble London room
A poet lived and wrought:
He saw the sweet spring-blossoms bloom,
But only in his thought.

His eyes were darkened. But his soul
Had power to see the skies:
Of Nature's lore he read the whole
With his heart's loving eyes.

A thousand spirits walk the earth,
Yet have no power to see:
They miss its sorrow, miss its mirth,
Its beauty. Not so he!

For him the sun was full of light,
And blue the clear sea-wave;
The wind-tost woods returned delight
For music that he gave.

The rosebud in his song was red;
The sun-kissed hills were green
The daisy to his door was led,
As proud as any queen!

For to each flower he gave a life
Beyond the life of time,
And by his music made the strife
Of wrestling storms sublime.

Aye, all hearts loved him. But the dead,
They loved him best, it seems.
They hovered round about his bed,
And drew him through his dreams.

They drew his spirit towards the land
Where all who love shall see.
They took the blind man by the hand:
He followed fearlessly.

They led him from this land of ours,
And promised him a boon:
“Thine eyes shall feast on heavenly flowers,
On heavenly sun and moon;

“Thou shalt see heavenly stars,” they said;
“Thou shalt breathe heavenly air;
Thou shalt know rapture 'mid the dead,
Who, living, knewest despair:

“Follow.”—He listened to the voice,
And left us here in gloom.
Yet has he made the wiser choice:
He has left his darkened room.

He saw on earth pale ghosts of stars;
But that dim life is done:
Death bursts his darkness' prison-bars;
To-day he sees the sun.

FOUR BALLADS

I. A SOUTHERN VENGEANCE

Under the bright room where they lay,
Deep in the stonework gaunt and grey,
I will build a dungeon grim.
She and her lover (I stabbed him dead,
And his blood-drops splashed her breast with red)
Shall rest in the darkness dim.
Under the bright room where they lay
They shall wait in the dark till the Judgment Day
Flames out upon her and him.

(How it goes ring, ringing, through my brain,
That foolish light old swift refrain
She was singing when we met in Spain;
“I love you, I love you—” again and again!)

My hands may tremble. I will not shrink.
Clink goes the trowel. Clink! clink! clink!
Clink! clink! clink!

Under the bright room where they slept
Till up from the sea the gold sun leapt,
In sunless darkness deep
They shall rest till the solemn trump of doom
Shakes the walls of their wedding-room
And summons their souls from sleep.
White by his couch her form shall stand,
And her lips shall struggle to kiss his hand
And her eyes shall strive to weep.

(How I remember the tinkling stream
And the night that passed in a maddening dream—
The room where we slept, and the pale moonbeam,
And her eyes with their wonderful passionate gleam!)

Death's cup is ready. Her lips shall drink.
Clink goes the trowel. Clink! clink! clink!
Clink! clink! clink!

Under the bright room where they lay
I will build a dungeon, and no day
Shall ever enter there.
I will take her, stately and lovely—so
That the heart of a god might madden and glow
With love of her thick black hair:

Then, brick by brick and stone by stone,
I will build her up in the vault, alone
With the man her eyes found fair.

(Darling—“the gnat has stung the white
Of your beautiful arm,” so I said in the night:
“Lay your arm in the moon's soft light;
Let me suck the poison out—my right!”)

I will not pause to remember or think.
Clink goes the trowel. Clink! clink! clink!
Clink! clink! clink!

Under the bright room where they lay,
The room that looks on the sunny bay,
I have built a sunless tomb.
There my darling and he shall be wed.
I stabbed him—curse him! He lies there dead,
Stark on a couch in the gloom.
Down in the dark she shall live with him:
They shall kiss in the dark, till their eyes grow dim
And their lustful limbs consume.

(I loved her so. Oh, my raven hair
And the beautiful throat I found so fair!

I loved you—a girl with shoulders bare—
And I love you still. That means despair.)

I work. I sever the past's last link.
Clink goes the trowel. Clink! clink! clink!
Clink! clink! clink!

Under their bright room, far below,
Where the grass spreads rank and the mosses grow,
She shall stand and feast her eyes
On the corpse of the man she loved so well,
Till she starves to a corpse in the vault's dim hell
And, grasping her dead man, dies.
Outside, the butterflies white will race,
And the girls will pass to the market-place,
Singing under the sunny skies.
Step into the tomb, my lady fair.
Your death-cold lover is waiting there
With a brave true kiss for the thick black hair,
Such a brave true kiss for the thick black hair.
(Clink! clink! clink!)

II. “YO HO! YO HO!”

Over the blue waves leaping
The eager vessel flies;
It laughs at the green isles sleeping,
And it smiles at the sunny skies.
But the pilot's song is of sadness,
For he knows in the midnight deep
That the white waves rise to madness,
And he knows where the drowned men sleep.
But “Yo ho! Yo ho!” sing the men below;
“We care not a fig what wind may blow,
Yo ho! Yo ho!”

The ships that are passing hail them,
Loud echoes the sailor's shout;
Did ever their bold hearts fail them,
While the flagons of wine held out?

The pilot dreams of the haven,
And the woman he loves ashore:
Black hair like the wing of the raven—
Will he never see it more?
But “Yo ho! Yo ho!” sing the men below;
“Give us wine, and the ship to the bottom may go!
Yo ho! Yo ho!”

The pilot thinks of his darling
By her grey-haired mother's side—
(“Yelp!” go the hoarse waves snarling)
His beauty, his heart's own pride.
He thinks of the Church so quiet
On the side of the old green hill
(The wind is beginning to riot,
And the ropes are never still).
“Yo ho! Yo ho!” sing the men below;
“Shall the wind's chirp frighten us. No, no, no.
Yo ho! Yo ho!”

The evening saddens and darkens,
And the roaring surges swell;
The pilot sighs, as he hearkens
To the sound he knows so well.

Yet in spite of the sea-waves' warning
There is hope in his song to-night,
For England's cliffs in the morning
May flash on the seamen's sight.
But “Yo ho! Yo ho!” sing the men below;
“When the bottle goes round, the fun will grow,
Yo ho! Yo ho!”

But the ship from her course is swerving;
On the sharp reefs howl the waves
With ponderous white crests curving,
And the green gulfs yawn like graves.
And the song of the pilot changes,
As he stands at the helm—still there—
While his eye o'er the black night ranges,
To the wild song of despair.
Still “Yo ho! Yo ho!” sang the men below,
For death can be drowned in the bowl, we know,
“Yo ho! Yo ho!”

III. THE BLACK FLAG

Would you know the life that is fair and free?
Climb the downs, and gaze o'er the open sea.
See you the schooner at anchor there,
And the black flag, strange in the sunny air?
That is the bark of the pirate king,
And this is the song the pirates sing:
“We scuttle a galleon every day,
And the blue sea washes the stains away;
Can drowned men rise from sleep?”

Yesterday morning, rank on rank
They stood, while a doomed man walked the plank.
Soon only a bubble marked the spot,
But the light-heart pirates heeded not;
They danced on deck, and they laughed and sang
Till the ship's old timbers echoed and rang—

“Though the deck run red with the signs of the fray,
The sea can wash all stains away,
And we are the lords of the deep.

“Men think they love, on the dull stale shore;
We love, where the billows plunge and roar.
We take our pick of the captured girls;
Some like black tresses, some love gold curls;
We take our pick, and the rest we drown,
And they tumble after their sweethearts down
To the blue clear depths of the Indian bay,
And the tide will carry them right away
While their sisters wail and weep.

“Then under the trees, if ever we land,
Close to the waves on the golden sand,
We spread for ourselves a royal feast;
The wine shall flow for a night at least!
And there by the firelight on the shore
Our jolly old chorus loud we roar,
‘Will the waves betray us? Nay, nay, nay!
For the sea can wash all stains away,
Though the prisoners die in a heap.’

“One of the captured girls we crown—
The one with the eyes of lovely brown.
She sorrowed at first. She is reconciled,
And there isn't a pirate heart more wild.
Bride she shall be of the pirate king,
And her bright red laughing lips shall sing
‘When the sea-king speaks the waves obey,
And they wash the blood of his foes away,
And their bones the green depths keep.’”

That is the life that is fair and free—
So the pirates think—on the fair blue sea.
But if ever a king's ship spies them out
They must sharpen their cutlas-blades, no doubt,
For the king's stout sailors will harry them then
And their one last chance is to die like men,
Die in a frenzy, fierce and gay,
And the sea will wash their blood away,
And the waves will over them leap.

IV. THE FAIRY BELLS

Of old at night, when the woods were bright
And the air was warm with the warmth of June,
The bells of the fairies tinkled light
And their eyes flashed under the summer moon.
Yes, then you might hear, when the moon shone clear
Through the woods, or over the purple fells,
Sometimes distant, and sometimes near,
The sound of the beautiful fairy bells,
The beautiful fairy bells.

Alas! men's hearts waxed selfish and hard,
And they only cared for gold and gain;
The ears of the fairies grew quite jarred
By the puff, puff, puff of the rattling train.

To deep dark forests the fairies fled,
And we all are sorry—though no one tells—
That the innocent sweet old days are dead
When we all could hear the fairy bells,
The beautiful fairy bells.

But still when lovers are fond and true,
If they listen within the woods of June
When the stars shine through deep skies of blue
And the white clouds kiss the shy-faced moon,
They may hear, they may hear, soft, sweet and clear,
A sound that rises, a sound that swells,
Sometimes distant and sometimes near—
The sound of the beautiful fairy bells,
The beautiful fairy bells.

A POET'S GETHSEMANE

Part I. THE AGONY OF YOUTH

I. IN LONDON.

“I love you not,” her letter says:
“You even insult me by the thought.”
Insult her!...I who had given my days,
My heart, my life, to please in aught
The woman who now writes to me
With a girl's perfect cruelty.

“My love is given to him whose wife
In some short weeks I am to be.”
Then why, in God's name, did she strive
To win my pure first love from me?
She found, no doubt, a light fierce joy,
Experimenting on a boy.

A boy's heart! Yes, she thought, no doubt,
That I could take the thing in jest:
Could serve her, follow her about,
And give some love,—yet not my best.
My love was sweet in summer-time.
It lasts till winter—that's a crime!

It pleased her in those summer hours:
The passionate worship that I brought
Was new to her.—We gathered flowers;
Her swift eyes searched for mine, unsought.
Her hand pressed mine. Its velvet touch
Thrilled through my palm,—and that was much.

It seems half lovely, as I look
With burning wild gaze back to-day
—The meadow-sweet beside the brook;
The broad sea-spaces, silver-grey;
The walks beneath the moon at night;
The boats' sails, brown or snowy white;

The stream that gurgled past the mill;
The arbour at the garden's end;

Our quarrel on the corn-clad hill:
Her laughing anger with her friend;
Her knife—with which (with skill sublime!)
I carved our names, to mock at time;

The very robin, perching near
In the wide low-branched apple tree
And craving largess without fear
Of bread-crumbs as we sat at tea
Within the bower beside the stream;
These things flash on me as I dream!

And yet I hold her letter—Yes,
It proves the former things were lies;
Her soft hand's touch,—like a caress!
Her glance,—like God's glance from the skies!
My castle of bright dreams must fall:
She never cared for me at all.

And yet she did care—there's the pang,
The viewless horror. That's the spear

That rends my heart with iron fang,—
The crowning shattering maddening fear
That, after all, the woman's heart
Is, always, of my own a part.

That is the terror. When a girl
So leads a youth's wild heart astray
God does not let her lightly curl
Herself to sleep for many a day
Within the bosom, or the bed,
Of him she now has chosen to wed.

No, God sends anguish. There's the fear:
She yet may rise and come to me;
Fierce passion yet may win her ear
And, murmuring therein constantly,
May make her hate the man for whom
She now consigns love to its tomb.

For, when her eyes met mine, I know
There was a something in their gaze
Which, though long years may come and go
And many an autumn strew the ways
With wild leaves shivering at the rain,
Will never flash through them again.

Never. He cannot draw her eyes
To his, as yesterday I drew
Their glance, and saw the tear-drops rise,
And laughed as through my soul I knew
That she who once those far shores trod
With me was given to me by God.

When once the soul has seen the soul,
The man and woman cannot part:
Another lover may control
The woman's body,—not her heart.
Of all things sad, I think that this
Sad thing by far the saddest is.

And this is ever a poet's fate!
To know the woman his indeed,
And then to know she knows too late:
To know that God's will has decreed
That she shall learn what love implies
By murdering love before his eyes.

A poet by his subtle force
Of soul and being can discern
The woman's nature still in course
Of being created; he can burn

With passion for the soul half born—
The soul her “husband's” soul will scorn.

The poet sees what she can see
Hardly at all—her nature true:
He feels this linked eternally
In sweet communion ever-new
To his true nature; feels her wife;
Rooted in him: his breath; his life.

And then he sees the woman swerve
And, knowing not her counterpart,
Give touch of body, shock of nerve
(Never the shock of heart and heart!)
To some man who can only see
What's evident externally.

This man becomes her “husband”: though
The poet feels with sweet divine
Strange agony, “Though this be so,
In God's sight still the woman's mine.
Aye, though he hold her, hold her fast,
Her soul will fly to mine at last.”

And then the Vision! Who sent that?
Was that some lying spirit's design?
—As in my lonely room I sat
(Her hand that day had thrilled through mine)
There came, one night, a sudden sense
Superb, engrossing, clear, intense,

A sudden sense that she was there,
Close by me in that very room;
Herself, proud, queenly. While the air
Grew fragrant as with summer's bloom,
Through this sweet air the woman came
And touched my lips with lips of flame.

Then, through the long miraculous night
I lay awake, yet slept it seemed
A slumber broken by delight,
And through my soul her strange eyes gleamed.
I clasped her in our marriage-bed:
“How beautiful you are!” I said.

And then her body, wondrous, white,
Pure, full of maiden strength and calm,
Seemed to transfuse me with its light:
Glad mouth to mouth, warm palm to palm,

Quite till the crimson dawn of day
Wrapt in our marriage-bliss we lay.

And night by night the woman came:
For some six nights the glory gleamed:
For some six nights all heaven aflame,
All earth aflower and fervent seemed.
Aye, night by night I seemed to rest
Triumphant on her very breast.

I closed my eyes each night,—and then
Unclosed my eyes, and she was there;
Ever the same: each night again
She seemed to watch me, noble, fair
Pure-wifely; and she laid her head
Beside mine in my lonely bed.

That was the Vision.—I believed
The living God had sent it me:
With joyous full heart I received
Its message of great ecstasy.
She was my wife. So God had said,
Who sent her angel to my bed.

And, now that God had done this thing,
Could any hold that God would lie?
That he would steal my wife, and fling
Deep into hell irrevocably
The soul who had believed his word?
Could God deny himself? Absurd!

Could God now prostitute my bride
By placing in another's bed,
Warm from the pressure of my side,
The form to mine but lately wed?
Could God thus rend her limb from limb?
Give soul to me—body to him?

Nay, never! For my Vision stood
Superb and strong, emphatic, clear.
If any dream of old held good,
If God once spake in Abraham's ear,
If he with Moses held discourse,
He had spoken to me with no less force.

In modern London just as clear
The Lord had spoken out to me
As where the heights of Sinai sheer
Rose in their grim austerity.

To me the Lord had spoken who spake
To fishers on the Eastern lake.

There were not visions two or three,
Gods two or three, but only one.
God spake to Christ: God spake to me:
And what he promised would be done.
God lied to me? He lied to all.
By this his truth must stand or fall.

So, full of faith, I went to her,
Believing that the Lord who sent
The sacred Vision could not err
And that his sovereign justice meant
That she should mar her mother's scheme
And bring fulfilment to my dream.

For, “surely now I see,” I said,
“She does not love him. She is mine.
Her white ghost slept within my bed:
Her ghost-arms round my neck did twine:
The woman's self must now fulfil
The high God's undisputed will.”

She would not see me. But instead
She wrote the pencil scrap I hold.
I read it,—and my heart fell dead:
I, who had been so strong and bold,
So full of faith—that this should be
The end of all God's pageantry!

“Leave me,” she said, “and be a man:
Yes, leave me and all thought of me.
I do not change: I never can.
To him whose wife I am to be
My love is given,—aye, all my heart.
For ever you and I must part.”

This on the Vision's very top!
This flung in God's face as reply!
My heart came to a sudden stop:
I did not reason, or ask why
So strange, so mad, an answer came,
Befouling her and God with shame.

I simply seemed turned quite to stone.
I left the house—I know not how—

Without a sigh, without a groan:
(I wonder at my calmness now)—
Crushed utterly; completely slain;
Too throughly stricken almost for pain.

II. AT OXFORD. SIX WEEKS LATER.

Six weeks ago! How long it seems
Since through the quiet London square
I walked, bereft of hopes and dreams,
And felt my whole life leafless, bare,
Barren for ever. Now to-day
The earth is gladdened. It is May.

I walk beside the river's marge;
I see the grey old Oxford towers;
Watch flashing skiff, and glittering barge,
And, on the banks, the same old flowers.
Town, river, fields—all are the same:
My only sameness is my name.

I feel as if I bore within
My frame a corpse. With living eyes
I see the quick foam-bubbles spin

Adown the weir; I see the skies;
I see the flowers; I see the oars
Sweep by the old thyme-scented shores.

And yet I know that I am dead
And that the horror of despair
Grips all my heart...They must be wed
By now—and does he find her fair?
And does he twine with tender hands
The sweet long loosened brown hair-bands?

Was last night—yes?—their wedding night,
Or will it be to-night? Will he
Win from her lips unknown delight
And find her sweet exceedingly?
So soft to touch? so good to kiss?
And was my darling born for this?

And was I born to watch the oars
Flash by the thyme-sweet Isis' banks,
To pace these green sun-lighted shores,
To watch the tall reeds' dark-green ranks,
While, underneath the May-stars bright,
Such horror may take place to-night?

The days pass on. I hate this place.
I hate the country green and fair;
I hate the bright swift boats that race;
I hate the pure sweet-smelling air;
I hate the river broad and blue;
I hate these trees the sun gleams through.

I'll back to London! There, at least
I shall feel nearer to the past:
The distance will have then decreased
Between me and where I saw her last.
I shall be happier near the spot
Where she so loved, yet loved me not.

London! I died in town in March,
And I'll revisit town in May.
The flower-beds near the Marble Arch,
With hyacinths or tulips gay,
Are fairer than these country meads
Wherethrough the blue old Isis speeds.

I shall be near the house wherein
I saw her last; saw those strange eyes,

In which I fancied love had been,—
In which I saw the tear-drops rise.
I'll turn once more that old sad page
Of life, and make my pilgrimage.

III. LONDON. IN JUNE AND JULY.

I saw her face again at Lord's.
Her eyes met mine. She grew quite pale.
Her eyes' expression ill accords
With happiness. The same old tale
I think it is. The mothers sell
Their daughters, and so people hell.

I think she loves me.—Oh, her heart
Was sweet and grand and full of power!
She loved and worshipped all true Art:
She should have helped me tend to flower
The bud of poesy that she
Discerned and nurtured first in me.

In this strange age, when all is new,
When Thought arises from the tomb,

There was such glorious work to do:
But she shrinks back into the gloom.
What dulls for her Time's golden dawn?
The sunset o'er a Rectory lawn!

She might have held a poet's heart,
Held it for ever. She and I,
Wedded in love and love of Art,
Married most sympathetically,
Might nobly have helped the world along,
She by brave thought, and I by song.

The chance is over.—Though her eyes
Met mine at Lord's the other day,
They soon will meet the calm blue skies
In the green country, far away
From London smoke and London noise,
And far from action's rarest joys.

High thought will quit her heart and brain;
Aye, gradually the thought of me,
At first a pang, a passionate pain,
Will change to a faint memory.
Then the dull prose of daily life
Will make her—just a parson's wife.

She will read Keble on the lawn,
And talk of Keble to his friends:
Our hearts will far apart be drawn;
We shall be seeking different ends;
Her husband-priest will weigh her down,
And scatter to the winds her crown.

I loved her so! I would have died
To help her thought,—to lift it on.
Upon the forehead of my bride
Thought's fairest circlet should have shone.
I loved in early days to see
Her young thought's budding potency.

Now it is over. Day by day
Her thought must grow more dull and hard:
Winter will blight the blossoming spray;
The Church's keen frost will retard
The growth of blossom-thoughts and deeds
That would have widened past old creeds.

Yes, she is his. His—evermore.
Not only body, lovely face,

Sweet lips a god's heart might adore,
Shoulders a god's arms might embrace,
Not only this—the mind as well
Is prostituted. That is hell.

The mind and body both must go:
The head, the heart, the young pure soul:
All will be, by a process slow
But sure, diverted to a goal
Far other than our young hearts dreamed
When at our feet the bright waves gleamed.

The waves must all lament with me!
The flowers and sprays we gathered there;
The stars that shone above our sea;
The ferns I twisted in her hair;
How all must grieve, how all must weep,
That her young soul has fallen asleep!

Part II. THE AGONY OF MANHOOD

I. SUNLIGHT.

Thirteen long years have passed away
Since through those autumn woods we went:
It was a bright September day,
And I was full of sweet content;
So happy by her side to be—
In heaven, if she but looked at me.

The leaves were turning golden-red;
The swift stream splashed along the dale;
In the far distance, blue, outspread,
Boundless, with here and there a sail,
The sunlit sea gleamed, saying, “To-night
Reseek my green cliff's moonlit height.”

We were so happy, she and I!
There was no place for black despair
In all the world! clear was the sky,
The autumn flowers were sweet, the air
Was crisp and pure. In that green wood
It seemed to me God must be good.

I know she loved me then. Her eyes
Sought mine so constantly,—yet fell,
As if with maidenly surprise,
As if afraid their tale to tell,
When mine searched in their depths to see
If yet she was in love with me.

Ah! thirteen years. To-day in town
My head reels with the strangest sense
That that, my first love's long-lost crown,
May yet by God's omnipotence
Be quite restored, returned to me,
In all its pristine purity.

I am in love. I feel it now:
I feel the sweet sense through each vein.

I am in love: I know not how;
And yet I am in love again.
I am in love. Yes, ten times more
Even than I ever loved before.

I loved—those thirteen years ago—
With tenderest love. My love was slain.
I married, and I seemed to know
Some slight sweet respite from my pain.
I was beloved with passion wild,
And I,—I loved the gold-haired child.

But still through all my married life
The old fierce former dream prevailed,
And, though I loved my loving wife,
My heart was ceaselessly assailed
By memories strong. I loved; and yet
I could not stifle mad regret.

The old hands drew me, and the eyes
Still drew me,—and I seemed to see
Ever the pale-blue Northern skies
And heard the wild wind's revelry
Along the Northern shores, and dreamed
That as of old the white moon gleamed.

But now to-day I am in love,
In love again,—and now I know
(For this new fact has served to prove
Beyond dispute that this is so)
That never, since those early hours,
Has my heart loved with all its powers.

Strong manhood adds a newer force
To love to-day. I love at last
Once more with passion; gain of course
An added strength from all my past.
Past loves, like rivers, with their might
Swell the sea-passion of last night.

It seemed so strange—the girlish trust
Of her who met me, quite alone.
The wild Strand, thronged with painted lust,
Seemed heavenlike when I heard her tone.
She met me, trusted me. Quite pure
She was. Her first look made me sure.

And then I loved her. That, you see,
Was just God's mystery—very sweet.
Her simple girlish purity
Brought the worn poet to her feet.

In a wild world of wrath and crime
She seemed half sweet, and half sublime.

Then, at the play, I watched her face:
It seemed so strange—there, quite alone
With this girl full of girlish grace
And tenderest beauty, flower half-blown.
Alone,—no friend or guardian near;
And yet she seemed to have no fear.

I think that changed me. That drew out
Life's poison from my veins in part.
She was a pure girl, not a doubt,
With loving eyes and loving heart,
And yet she sat there by the side
Of one in whom all faith had died.

She sat there, knowing nought of me,
Yet trusting.—Then my whole heart grew
Softer: I loved her purity;
I felt it thrill me through and through.
I left her at her mother's door;
In love with her, for evermore.

The days are passing swiftly on;
Some happiness returns to me:
I feel as if some light had shone
From out the deep obscurity.
It may be God has watched my pain,
And will restore my love again.

How if God has led up to this?
If from the first he thus designed,
And robbed me of my first love's kiss
To pay me back in higher kind?
I love this girl; and can it be
That God may let her love—even me?

Even me—sad, care-worn, ill at ease,
At war with self, the world, and him;
Harassed by wild perplexities;
Weary with strife and suffering grim;
Can she—this young bright girl—be brought
To give my love one passing thought?

I am so old and weary. She
Is young, fatigueless. Death, it seems,

Were far more fitting bride for me
Than this young girl, whose dark glance dreams
Sweet dreams of spring, and spring's flowers fair,
While I dream only of despair.

Yet if it could be so? my prayer
Would then be answered, and I might
(I think I never saw such hair—
Coal-black: and then the brown eyes' light!)
—I might, perhaps, again believe
In God. The sun might shine at eve.

I think God lets me love her too.
Perhaps God brought me to her side
With a distinct great work to do,
A true man's work, before I died.
It may be so. She's on the stage,
So round her all the man-wolves rage.

Curse them! I know them. Just because
She's unprotected, poor and weak,
They'll glance around, and leer, and pause,
And think their game is safe, and seek
With one accord to steal this pearl.
They'll do their best to ruin the girl.

My dark-eyed darling! no, please God,
They shall not ruin you. I say “No.”
Your feet across my path have trod,
And you have made my tired heart glow:
Would any injure you, of these?
Across my body, if you please!

I stand, and God stands, in the way.
All London seems against you—yes?
They say you shall sink. But I say
That you shall not sink: nothing less.
I'll fight for you for endless time,
And make the battle-field sublime.

All London on one side, and this
The low and bad side? let it be.
Men proffering diamonds for your kiss?
Well, let them proffer. Trust in me.
Bribed managers may swear to wrong:
I'll save you,—and crown you with my song.

These men are devils. Day by day
They struggle to seduce anew
Poor foolish girls, their easy prey.

They make, themselves a hellish crew,
The stage a hell. They can't afford
To scorn the offer of a lord.

He wants a chorus-girl? My lord
May pick and choose. The manager
(Tipped by the youngling) will accord
His lordship leave without demur
To pass behind the scenes, and try
Girl-fishing with the golden fly.

Money's the question, that is all.
Just money—money. Can he pay?
He can? How soon the girl will fall!
How Satan hates enforced delay!
A bouquet—bracelet—supper—kiss—
And Miss S. is no longer “Miss.”

She has learned the secret; still a child,
It may be; ignorant indeed:
Yet ruined, lost, betrayed, beguiled,
And just to gratify the greed
Of managers, and lust of men
Who ornament the “Upper Ten.”

100

Not so in your case. I will step
Between you and the men who rove
Destroying. You a demirep?
You sell your beauty, and your love?
Never! I swear your soul shall be
Pure to the very end, and free.

At last I see a poet's work
Before me, worthy of the man,
And, please God, I will never shirk
The task, but carry out God's plan.
Some hound would fain destroy? Not he!
Unless his sword slips first through me.

Her beauty brings my youth again.
A girl's pure freshness can create
Spring's gladness in the heart and brain
And smooth the forehead grooved with Fate.
The young sweet brilliance of her eyes
Has changed life's sunset to sunrise.

Her magnetism is so good,
So pure, so sinless. When she came,

101

Up to my very waist I stood
Plunged in hell's waters, hot as flame:
But now I think that there may be
Perhaps a God,—yes, even for me.

I dare not dream it. Yet I hope;
I struggle with the old despair;
Drowning, I cling to this frail rope;
I worship her dark eyes and hair.
I long to die for her. I long
To make her deathless in my song.

II. TWILIGHT.

How strong my passionate love has grown!
How strange and sad and hard to-day
What once seemed easy seems! My own
She is, and yet I may grow grey
And she may never quite be mine:
Can such a method be divine?

Old doubt returns. Can God do this?
Fill all my heart with love of thee;

102

Put thy mouth to my own to kiss,
And let me feel its purity;
Make me each day discern thee fair,
And worship more thine eyes and hair;

Can he do this—did he inspire
When thou wast (as thou art not now)
In danger, my protective fire
Of passion—listen to my vow
That, come what would, thou shouldst be safe,
However heart and flesh might chafe;

O sweetheart, did God do this thing,
Send me to save thee—and can he,
The just great God, the mighty King,
Now ravish all thy soul from me?
Will some new hand approach, and reap
The corn I sowed in agony deep?

Aye, wilt thou marry? Shall I stand
And see the glory fade away
From this our own enchanted land?
Will darkness be too strong for day?
Is this what God demands at last?
More pain—I thought the worst was past.

103

Must I, who by those Northern streams
Saw autumn shed upon the air
Red leaves, and change the flowers of dreams
To flowerless wastes of real despair—
Must I, who saw my youth's sun set,
In manhood meet a worse thing yet?

And then she loves me. Yes, I know:
For, when I kiss her darling head,
It rises, ever so gently—so—
And meets my lips. No word is said,
And yet by that one simple sign
I know the girl's pure heart is mine.

Perhaps...and have I not the right?
What man has better right than I?
I've guarded her by day and night,
Been sunlight in her midday sky,
Starlight and moonlight through her sleep;
I sowed the corn. May I not reap?

I think I could reap, if I chose;
For I have made her life so fair:

104

Her every happiness she owes
To me,—each breath of summer air
That she respires, pure, sinless, free,
She owes, and knows she owes, to me.

Shall I not take her? Shall I stand
Doubting, reluctant? Though I'm bound
And wedded, would a God command
That I should never quite be crowned
By perfect love? This virgin's mine!
I feel it: and the gift's divine.

I've won her—surely? What can man
Do more than I have done indeed?
She needed succour. Lo! I ran
To succour,—saved her at her need.
Andromeda was rightly wed
To Perseus, when her foe lay dead.

I who the many-headed foe
Of London selfishness have slain,
Shall I in turn not surely know
Reward for all my love and pain?
Andromeda shall I not take,
And on her lips my long thirst slake?

105

A single monster Perseus slew:
But I have toiled from day to day,
Have fought beneath bright skies of blue,
Have battled through the fog-wreaths grey,
Have won for her wild countless fights
And overthrown a thousand knights.

Is she not mine beyond dispute?
Mine: and my dear one knows it too.
I kissed her fiercely; she was mute.
So little now remains to do—
To press my victory to the end,
Become a lover, not a friend.

Not friend!...Ah, would it be to lose
The deep sweet friendship? Would it be
To stain her pure mind, and confuse
Her simple trusting thoughts of me?
I cannot marry her. Would less
Be wronging her beyond redress?

Have I fought through a thousand fights,
Unhorsed black-armoured foe on foe,

106

Yet is there out of all the knights
One knight still left me to lay low?
Does one still bar me from the goal?
The lower side of my own soul.

Is, after all, myself the worst
Of all my enemies?—Have I slain
Thousands, and left their bodies cursed
And sword-split helmets on the plain:
Have I, with heart ready to break,
Fought London for the woman's sake?

And must I, having saved her now,
And standing face to face alone
With her, take on me a harder vow?
Must love's fruits to the winds be thrown?
Must I now with a stronger knight
—Myself—wage this last deadliest fight?

107

SONGS OF THE SEASONS

109

I. SONG OF SPRING

Very bright and very pure and very tender
Is the golden sunlight on the laughing leaves:
Very lovely is the early morning's splendour;
Sweet the lilacs smell beneath the cottage-eaves.
All things wake renewed to vigour and to passion.
Lo! the daisies paint their pink tips, one by one:
And the daffodils in their old shameless fashion
Dip their robes in colour stolen from the sun.

Lovers pass beneath the fragrance of the hedges,
And they pause, half wild with wonder and with bliss—
(While the river whispers, “See them!” to the sedges)
And their lips seem soft as velvet, as they kiss.
Blue the sky is, clear of cloud and free of sorrow.
Such a noble height of rapture has been won
That to-day's delight can dream not of to-morrow:
All things worship at the altar of the sun.

110

Yet the sweetness of the season gaineth sweetness
From the thought of loving Jesus in the sky.
Passion wins its utmost rapture and completeness
Realizing that a loving heart is nigh.
What is spring without the feeling that a Father
Watches, blesses, every noble action done?
—Sends the flowers of woman's love for man to gather!
Sends the daisies to be gathered by the sun!

111

II. SONG OF SUMMER

Grand and glorious is the season of the roses.
Spring has passed, but stronger sunlight gilds the corn.
On the silver stream the lily's head reposes,
And the ripple lifts it tenderly at morn.
Love has deepened, with the deepening of the season.
Love has strengthened, with the passing of the hours.
Love has grown beyond the fear of change or treason.
Love has stolen the glow and glory of the flowers.

Man and woman understand and love each other.
Through the silent leafy summer lanes they wend,
Hand in hand. The blue sky smiles down like a mother
And the gentle breeze of summer seems a friend.
For in spring the heart of man was full of gladness,
But in summer rapture gathers all its powers.
Who can dream of sorrow, who can think on sadness,
While the sky is full of stars, the fields of flowers?

112

Yet the summer and its glory overflowing,
Sun and moon and starlit height of purple sky,
Silver stream and forest deep and blossoms blowing,
All will pass. Yes, even roses have to die!
But the sweetness of the Christ grows ever dearer
As life's autumn strips the greenery of the bowers:
And the beauty of another land seems nearer
As the beauty of the summer quits the flowers.

113

III. SONG OF AUTUMN

When the leaves are whirling through the forest olden,
Grey and green and brown and crimson dying leaves,
Sodden leaves that only yesterday were golden,
While the autumn wind-swept foliage sways and heaves,
There are ghosts of lovers through the forest questing,
Seeking vainly as their weary footsteps stray,
Haunts they loved when all around the birds were nesting
And the air was sweet with fragrance of the may.

Weary ghosts they are of former happy lovers.
Now they find no mossy carpet for their feet
Spread within the oaken glades and hazel covers:
Pale and tearful, in the forest-depths they meet.
“Here was once a yellow primrose-bank,” they mutter.
“Here we built a golden cowslip-throne,” they say.
“From yon thicket, with a chirrup and a flutter,
Dashed the brown thrush thro' the white and crimson may.”

114

Is there any peace of mind for those who ponder
In the autumn on the summer's vanished bloom,
Save in hope that every blossom-spirit, yonder
Far in heaven, exults triumphant o'er the tomb?
Is there hope for human spirits pale and breathless
With the struggle and the strife of every day?
Just the hope that love's true flowers in heaven are deathless,
Though death withers all the sweetness of the may.

115

IV. SONG OF WINTER

Dreary snows are all around us in the gardens,
And the starlit frosty sky is chilly blue.
On the silent stream the stifling cold ice hardens:
The moon shivers at the air it travels through.
Yet the sweetest of the seasons is the winter:
Winter well may smile at summer's ardent scorn.
When the air was keen with many an icy splinter,
Love with summer at the heart of him was born.

Love hath summer in his spirit never dying.
Does it matter if the wild wind through the sprays
Dashes, leaving all the tossing branches sighing?
Does it matter if the snow-drifts pile the ways?
For in winter through a humble heart and lowly
God revealed himself to man. On Christmas morn
Jesus Christ the pure of soul, the Saviour holy,
Heedless of the bitter winter wind, was born.

116

And the winter of the spirit—bitter sorrow—
Who can banish, who can temper, if not he?
Who but Jesus can remind us that to-morrow
Shall be sunshine, though murk night is on the sea?
For in winter, in the season when the berry
Gleams, bright scarlet on the holly and the thorn,
Men may feast, the saddest spirits may make merry:
In the winter night the Prince of light was born.

117

CHRIST IN THE HEART

119

I. CHRIST, AND THE POET

Satan.

O poet, in whose brain and heart the sweetness
Of summer reigns and glows,
What bars thy life from rounding to completeness?
Where findest thou thy foes?

Thy foes are surely in the heavens above thee;
God gazes down with scorn:—
The golden stars and golden blossoms love thee,
And the bright clouds of morn.

Upon thy side thou hast the sunset-glory;
The clouds in fiery mail.
Each snowdrop whispers thee its pet love-story;
Each crocus brings its tale.

120

Thou wanderest singing by the river-edges,
And lo! the ripples pause,
And hush their love-song to the sighing sedges,
To learn thy music's laws.

Thou hast a power of endless loving-kindness,
A love of all things born.
But thee God hates. He'll close thine eyes with blindness!
He'll pierce thy brows with thorn!

The love of violets in the mossy hollows—
This, poet, thou shalt win:
The suffrages of the swift-wingéd swallows;
The worship of the linn.

The pure-souled snow-white lilies shall adore thee;
The autumnal forest-glade
Shall pour its gorgeous crimson foliage o'er thee;
The summer boughs shall shade.

Its rarest pearls the amorous sea shall fling thee,
Pearls gathered from its breast.
Strange priceless gems the humming-birds shall bring thee,
Trinkets of throat or crest.

121

The purple heather in the moorland regions
Shall nestle round thy feet.
The whole world's songsters, in their countless legions,
Shall own thy song more sweet.

And yet, thou poet, whatsoe'er thou doest,
Thy toil shall end in gloom:
When summer skies above thee beam their bluest,
Prepare thou for the tomb!

Poet.

I love the bright blue heights of air,
The sunlight in the morn:
I love to watch that diamond rare,
The dewdrop on a thorn.
I love the white clouds in the skies,
The blue waves by the land:
But bluer yet are woman's eyes,
And whiter is her hand.

Satan.

The morning's light shall pass away,
It shall be dark at noon:

122

And night shall lack the golden ray
Of friendly star or moon.
Thou lovest woman? She shall prove
Thy direst bitterest woe.
She loves thee? Yes: and she can love
Thy neighbour even so!

Poet.

My song shall reach the frail and weak:
The sad lost soul shall find
That Christ's sweet pity still can speak
To erring hearts and blind.
Of all the crowns that I can win,
This is the highest indeed—
To save one woman's soul from sin;
To guard her at her need.

Satan.

And having raised her quite from sin,
Watch how the affair will end.
The girl you spent your soul to win,
Your fortune to befriend,

123

Will—for a diamond brooch maybe,
Or for much less than this—
Barter the mouth your modesty
Did not presume to kiss.

Poet.

I'll win, please God, a noble name,
Do noble work indeed;
Speak words of thunder, words of flame,
Shake many a rotten creed.
My words shall ring from land to land,
And many a throne shall quake;
The sword shall flash from many a hand
For my strong singing's sake.

Satan.

Dream on, thou fool. The song wins less,
The nobler that it be,
The people's homage. Their caress
Is won quite easily.
Write folly, with a tinge of dirt:
You surely will succeed.
Bilge-water, through a penny squirt,—
That is the chrism they need!

124

Poet.

I'll write high poems. I will pour
Along my throbbing strain
The wild winds' wail, the thunder's roar,
The music of the main.
Though many a bard has lived and died,
Still golden sunrise gleams:
The stars shine through night's palace wide,
And fill my soul with dreams.

Satan.

A dream—that is the poet's life.
But every dream shall end.
The sweetheart changes to a wife
(And then the stars descend!)
The wife developes to a scold.
The songs in which you trust
Will mix with cabbages and mould,
With cinders and with dust.

Christ.

O poet-heart, despair not.—Know
That every song of thine

125

Has made some angel's spirit glow;
Yes: every noble line.
All earthly joys thou hast to miss?
Earth's hopes and passions end?
Yet is it not sufficient bliss
That Jesus calls thee “friend”?

126

II. CHRIST, AND THE LOVER

Satan.

Lovelier is she than a poet's dreaming?
Brighter are her eyes than starlight gleaming?
Is the sun less golden than her hair?
Did thy youth pass greyly and in sorrow?
Weary, didst thou sleep—and on the morrow
Didst thou wake, and find a goddess there?

Lover.

Lo! my soul was lost. Alone I wandered.
By the deadly river-waves I pondered,
Gazing in their dark and bitter flow.
But my heart was changed, for true love found me:
Took my weary life in hand, and crowned me:
Spread across the heavens a sunset-glow.

127

Satan.

Sweet she is; but time's track never changes;
Over all the golden fields he ranges,
Flower-destroying. Shall he spare thy bliss?
Pleasant are her lips; but time will chill them,
Not for ever will the old sweetness fill them,
Thou wilt tire before the thousandth kiss!

Lover.

I was lost and sad, and very weary.
Through the gloom of life, the darkness dreary,
Came the vision of a perfect thing.
Autumn was it. Through the forest-arches,
Underneath the October-yellowed larches,
Came a presence fairer than of Spring.

Satan.

And again, when thou dost wax quite olden,
Underneath the autumn foliage golden
Thou shalt wander—wander quite alone.
Death may love the lips thou lovest dearly;
Death's grim bugle-call may ring out clearly,
And her lips may answer with a moan.

128

Lover.

Surely God, who made this perfect creature,
Set the stamp of heaven in every feature,
Having given, will take her not away?
Can God steal from heaven the stars that glitter?
Slay the golden sun? Oh, that were bitter!
Can he pour wild darkness over day?

Satan.

Even if she lives, thou wilt not know her
When another fifty years shall show her
Changed and gaunt and wrinkled to thy gaze.
Hardly then thy changed heart shall remember
Her who made the dark woods one September
Sweeter than the woods of sunniest Mays.

Lover.

Darling! As the long years fleet and perish,
With a tenderer sweet love will I cherish,
Guard, protect, and tend, and worship thee.
Never will my strong love change one tittle!
Though the waves may eat away the brittle
Rocks that seemed so stalwart round the sea!

129

Satan.

Long before one iron-bound cliff has faltered,
Will thy love be changed in form and altered;
While the stern cliffs still resist the wave,
Passion will be but a distant glimmer.
Slowly next thy love-thoughts will wax dimmer,
Till at last they are ghosts around a grave.

Lover.

When we wandered in the golden morning
Through the fields, we watched the flowers adorning
Leaf and stalk and petal, every one.
“See,” we said, “the blossoms' hearts are jealous!
Each to outstrip her rival bloom is zealous,
Each desires her sovereign lord, the sun.”

Satan.

And at night-time over field and garden
Fall the moonrays, and the blossoms harden
Heart and leaf and petal in the cold.
When the sun arises in his splendour
Dead are all those blossoms over-tender,
Though he kissed them with his mouth of gold.

130

Lover.

Once I doubted all things, all things human;
Railed at God, and scoffed at man and woman;
Now I find a never dreamt-of bliss.
God has sent me blessing for my curses,
In his undeserved and priceless mercies
Given me heaven in one pure woman's kiss.

Christ.

Lover: hold thy noble faith unshaken!
Love her purely. If thy love be taken,
Know that she is safe with God and me.
Know that past the heavens, with angel sweetness
In her face, she waits thy soul's completeness;
Past the stars, the thunder, and the sea.

131

III. CHRIST, AND THE MAN OF GENIUS

Man.

In youth I thought the world was bright;
The starry fields were full of light:
The grassy fields were full of bloom:
But oh, how surely brightness goes!
Full of high hopes, my life arose:
Hopeless, it travelleth to the tomb.

Satan.

That is the end of all—to seek
God's love, to burn to unfold and speak
God's gospel to the human race,
And then to hear death through the air
Thunder his gospel of despair,
Or lose all for a woman's face!

132

Man.

Of all the curses God can shower
The heaviest surely is the dower
Of genius, burthening heart and brain:
To feel an ever-intenser woe
Than others, or a rapturous glow
So fierce it deepens into pain!

Satan.

That is your lot. For ever thus
To teach immortal truths to us,
Yet lonely through life's waves to steer.
That is the glory of the thing:
To carve, or write, or paint, or sing,
Yet never find an audience here.

Man.

If God be true, I can endure,
Struggle to be unselfish, pure:
Yet fear I, judging by the past,
Lest, like the brain of Talleyrand,
The noblest genius in the land
May mix with sewage at the last.

133

Satan.

That is the beauty of the thing!
To think that mighty brains, which sing
Of passionate joys and passionate pain
And flowers and stars and sunlit skies,
May serve, when once their owner dies,
To choke a gutter or a drain.

Man.

To love more deeply, hour by hour,
The simple beauty of a flower,
The stars God's conjuring hand forthshook
And yet to feel that all one's might
Can add no one star to the night
Nor one white lily to the brook!

Satan.

That is your helpless genius-dower.
Man's song cannot create one flower:
The mightiest sculptor time may send
To mould the marble, cannot flush
The white stone with the bright blood's blush;
Cold marble is it to the end.

134

Man.

To know so much! to feel the right
Far past the rampires of the night
To penetrate to God's high throne!
And yet to feel thought sinking back,
Defeated, on the same old track,
And to be left once more alone!

Satan.

Again the dower of genius, this.
To madden for Jehovah's kiss;
Right through the starlit rooms of space
To hunt his shadow, endless task;
To see God's eyes flash through his mask,
But never to discern his face.

Man.

Prisoned to be by time and space!
To long to have gazed on Jesus' face
And seen the royal kindness there!
The Churches tell us he arose.
But when or how? what preacher knows?
Their gods are ghosts, their words are air.

135

Satan.

You'll never know. And, when you die
And think a passage through the sky
Will open (as it oped for him!)
You will be shoved i'the ground instead,
And beetles round about your head
Will gather for their gambols grim.

Man.

To know what noble souls have died,
And what sweet women! to be tied
For ever to an English blonde.
Never to know the exact rich bliss
Which pulsed through Cleopatra's kiss!
This makes a passionate soul despond.

Satan.

Aye, God will let thy spirit dream:
But when it comes to facts, I deem
He'll not send beauty to thy bed.
Her whom thy lust would stretch out there
He'll marry to a green-grocer,
And send thee an ill-breath'd bride instead.

136

Man.

To yearn across death's solemn night
So thunder-dark, yet see no light
Of one dead well-loved starry face
Flash out for all one's yearning! this
Last sadness lurks within each kiss;
This coldness thrills through each embrace.

Satan.

Yes: when thy mother dies, thy friend,
Thy wife, thy sweetheart, that's the end,
The end of all—be sure of this.
Kiss while thou canst. Within the tomb
No widower wins a young girl's bloom.
Death proffers not a second kiss.

Man.

To peer between life's prison-bars
And watch those golden ships, the stars;
Yet never in life, or death maybe,
To board a single star-ship! no.
For ever through heaven's deeps we go,
Yet hail no consort on the sea.

137

Satan.

The same with life. The human soul
Is like your earth-ship. Though its goal
May lie beyond eternity,
Alone for ever it must steer
And never through all ages hear
One true voice hail across the sea.

Christ.

O genius-heart, be brave and strong.
When thou despairest, suffering long,
Think on my life, remember me.
Thy soul soars on, all stars of space
Sail on, before my Father's face,
And harbourage lies beyond the sea.

138

IV. CHRIST, AND THE POOR MAN

Satan.

All thou see'st of splendour and of sweetness,
Gulf and river, rock and wood and wave,
All that wealth can bring life of completeness,
If thou wilt but trust me, thou shalt have.

Man.

I am happy in my humble garden,
Happy 'mid the red geraniums there:
Happy, when the good God breathes his pardon
And his blessing down the starlit air.

Satan.

Pardon! not of God need'st thou crave pardon:
Rather let him pardon ask of thee.
Why should thine hands change to horn and harden,
While another lives in luxury?

139

Man.

Yet the unequal lot is God's appointing.
Happier am I in my humble sphere
Than the Pope, for all his proud anointing,
Or the king with courtiers at his ear.

Satan.

King thou art by right. The rich man's slumbers
One day shall thy legions rudely break.
True, the wealth is his. But thou hast numbers.
Strike! for thy seduced sad daughters' sake.

Man.

That thought maddens. That, and that thought only
Drives the avenging blood to heart and head—
That the rich man leaves his wife's couch lonely
While he wantons in a work-girl's bed.

Satan.

King thou art,—the sole true monarch, doubtless.
Had the myriads of the northern Czar
Seen this sooner, his red hand were knoutless,
And their hands had snapped each prison-bar.

140

Man.

Dreams of fierce and blood-stained revolution,
These are born of darkness and of thee.
We retain, through Europe's wild confusion,
Hearts made clear by sunshine and the sea.

Satan.

Yes: the sea is free. Its waves would cheer you
Onward to the final grim attack.
Think what boundless wealth is ever near you!
What a city London were to sack!

Man.

Yet the Thames, with its strong eddying waters
Curling downward to the sea's blue plain,
Seems to plead for English wives and daughters.
Shall we make it blood-red like the Seine?

Satan.

Wives and daughters! when did ever wealthy
Strong man, covetous of girl or bride,
Hesitate by violent means or stealthy
To abduct your weak one from your side?

141

Man.

Yet I look for days of equal measures,
Work for all men, healthy homes for each:
Laws to guard the poor man's best loved treasures—
Daughter, wife, and liberty of speech.

Satan.

These are going, unless you bestir you.
Sword and bayonet, truncheon, gag, and chain;
Workhouse-prisons wherein to inter you
Living; these the gifts are ye will gain.

Man.

If the end be this, not ever thunder
Through the midnight with such fury rolled
As will wild revolt, while weak fools wonder,
Through the long streets where they hide their gold.

Satan.

Grand! let every continental nation,
Awe-struck at the English workmen's might,
Watch the multitudinous devastation
And the balefires flashing through the night.

142

Man.

If it ever comes to such an issue,
Deadly, desperate, will the mad fight be.
Down will crumble walls like paper tissue,
When hoarse riot charges like the sea.

Satan.

Famous! I will head the workmen rallying
Through the Parks and Squares with banners red.
When the Life-Guards through their gates come sallying,
Whitehall shall be choked with cuirassed dead!

Man.

Never Paris saw so fierce a battle
Through its long and sanguine-tinted days.
When the Guards' drums through the dense fog rattle,
We'll reply by our revolvers' blaze.

Satan.

Princely! that will be a noble sample
To the nations round, and yet to be.
English artizans shall set the example.
Let the surging red flags follow me!

143

Man.

Then the rich man's foot within his garden
In his brother's blood perchance shall slip.
Stately duchesses shall sue for pardon,
Kneeling 'mid our ranks with ashen lip.

Satan.

Glorious! when the captured girls are waiting,
While their fathers' hot blood licks the sewers,
Splashing red down gutter and through grating,
I will whisper, “What of girls of yours?”

Man.

This is certain—If that day of thunder
Ever breaks on London, those who see
Will behold hell's barriers burst asunder,
Fiends unchained, and raging devils free.

Christ.

Satan, when the hell-gates leap asunder,
Dreading lest some flippant sword-edge scar,
Fearful lest some heedless bullet blunder,
Safe will lurk, observing from afar!

144

V. CHRIST, AND THE SOCIAL REFORMER

Reformer.

The world is perfect as God made
Its heights of sunlight, depths of shade:
God's image in it we restore.

Satan.

Your pupils daub the world with mud:
Or else will send a sea of blood
Circling along from shore to shore.

Reformer.

The world was perfect. Leaf and flower,
Starlight and moonlight, sun and shower,
Fulfil the high God's perfect will.

145

Satan.

And ye will add a starlight new
When, torch in hand, ye issue through
The portals, to consume and kill.

Reformer.

What lessons for the race are there—
In the heavenly depth of starlit air.
What truths the star-land has to teach!

Satan.

The proletariate little cares
About the lessons of the stars:
It has its dirty shirts to bleach.

Reformer.

Astronomy. What nobler lore?
Or from the sea-weeds on the shore
To educe the laws of life and growth.

Satan.

Nay! stuff your pockets full of sweets.
The children gathered from the streets
Like bull's eyes best, I'll take my oath.

146

Reformer.

Such small things teach, if man would learn—
The heather's bell, a tuft of fern:
God's signs are seen in every spot.

Satan.

The people's sign-boards point the way
To where, at foggy close of day,
The fieriest brandy can be got.

Reformer.

Ah! in the future we shall bring
To bear the lessons of the spring,
The teaching of the summer rose.

Satan.

And find that those you would uplift
Would rather you would let them drift
Straight to damnation, in repose.

Reformer.

A genius grand is in the poor.
Behold, we open Music's door
And let the poor man enter in.

147

Satan.

Try them with Beethoven, Mozart.
But don't be angry, do not start,
If Vance and short-skirt ballets win.

Reformer.

The picture-galleries we will ope
On Sundays. There, our leaders hope,
The working-man will take his wife.

Satan.

On Sundays, as a general rule,
The workman thumps her with a stool,
Or jobs her with the carving-knife.

Reformer.

The noblest singing they shall hear.
We'll train their fancy, train their ear,
The grandest thoughts to comprehend.

Satan.

And find that they—yes, one and all—
Would rather see at a Music Hall
The white-eyed Kaffir. Yes, my friend.

148

Reformer.

Christ was the first who understood
The people,—saw the undreamed-of good
Latent in heart and hand and head.

Satan.

And therefore on the cross he died,
And all the fickle people cried,
“Give us Barabbas in his stead!”

Reformer.

The whole world lies before us. Wide
Its wonders stretch on every side.
Vast are the truths life has to teach!

Satan.

The people you would lift so high
Would much prefer—though you may sigh—
To crack their nuts on Brighton beach.

Reformer.

The children shall make holiday
Among the flowers and fragrant hay,
And love the beauty of the flowers.

149

Satan.

They love the gutters and the mud.
I've seen a dead rat's skin and blood
Amuse a blue-eyed child for hours.

Reformer.

They'll leave the stifling town at morn,
And watch the sunshine on the corn
And butterflies with wings snow-white.

Satan.

Children pull off flies' wings, you know.
I've often watched them doing so,
And revelled in the dainty sight.

Reformer.

A long day by the sea's white foam!
They shall sing hymns, returning home,
And ever love the blue-waved sea.

Satan.

Sing hymns! Through Lambeth when I walk
The tiny children's filthy talk
Is really shocking, even to me.

150

Reformer.

If only we can educate
The shop-girls; force the sluggish State
To educate them, one and all.

Satan.

Men train them in such different ways:
Opinions differ in these days:
I think they're sweetest, when they fall.

Reformer.

Once educate—then all is well.
Love can redeem the lost from hell,
And shield the soul sin would destroy.

Satan.

Sin? That is such an ugly name.
A sealskin jacket means the same,
And sounds more delicate, my boy!

Reformer.

Work hard; keep sober; rule your tongue;
Love truly, chastely; marry young.
Domestic joys are joys which last.

151

Satan.

My work-girls dread domestic bliss.
Why sell your freedom, when you kiss?
Marriage is dying out quite fast.

Reformer.

I see the good in every one.
You count the spots upon the sun,
And in the fairest find a sin.

Satan.

My eyes are microscopic. Yes.
I stand by when the girls undress,
And count the blotches on their skin.

Reformer.

Is all life's labour then in vain?
Long effort, struggle, bitter pain.
Must evil still outbalance good?

Satan.

The great Reformer, Jesus, died
With ruffian-robbers at each side,
Nailed on a common cross of wood.

152

Reformer.

That seemed like failure—dismal, vast.
The bright stars must have gazed aghast,
When loving Jesus had to die.

Satan.

It was the death-blow of his dream.
The soldiers saw the blood-drops stream,
And laughed to see them. So did I.

Christ.

On every Church in Christian lands
To-day my cross as symbol stands
Of mine eternal victory.

153

VI. CHRIST, AND THE KING

King.

Leagues and leagues of rolling upland, leagues and leagues of mountain ground,
Leagues and leagues of stormy waters where the giant surges sound,
These are mine, and mine for ever. Through the farthest East I reign,
And the rivers wait my mandate ere they plunge into the main.

Satan.

Lord thou art of all things clearly, lord of day and lord of night.
In the morn the sun thy servant pays thee homage, brings thee light.
At the eve the stars thy servants cast their crowns before thy feet,
And thy women do thee service even softer and more sweet.

154

King.

Are there lands yet left to conquer? I am weary, though I reign
Over mountain, mead, and valley—over river, rock, and plain.
Are there hearts yet left to conquer? Are there women more divine
Than the girls whose golden tresses at my palace windows shine?

Satan.

Wealth and kingship last for ever, and all pleasures can be brought
To thy feet, O mighty Ruler! Thou need'st stint thyself in nought.
Plunge from pleasure into pleasure, as a bather in the sea
Leaps from breaker into breaker. Trust thy future unto me.

King.

Yet I dread the far-off future—sometimes wake up in my bed,
Pause from dallying with the glory of a woman's golden head,

155

Pause half frightened, with the sweetness of her kiss upon my mouth,
Hearkening as the thunder summons its loud legions from the South.

Satan.

Dream not of the far-off thunder. Death and thunder are so far.
Lo! to-night my slaves shall bring thee, when the evening's lonely star
Through the silence of the heavens drives its chariot wrought of pearl,
An untouched and trembling maiden. Take thy pleasure with the girl.

King.

Yet an end will come of pleasure. Through the desert monsters moan,
And the ghosts of those I've vanquished haunt the stairway of my throne.
Deep in blood my feet have waded. Must I wade for evermore
Through red waters? Must my footsteps in my palace slip in gore?

156

Satan.

Kings have need to stifle scruple. Kings must sweep their foes away,
As the current sweeps the sea-weed round the circle of the bay.
Lo! thou art a mighty monarch. Thou hast taken to thy bed
Wives of foemen without number, and hast laid their husbands dead.

King.

Star by star the high heaven opens, full of wonder is the night.
I am ruler in my palace. Here a million lamps are bright:
Here a thousand women wait me.—God is mightier, mightier far!
Lord he is of heaven's blue regions, far beyond the faintest star.

Satan.

Art thou envious of Jehovah? Canst thou never be content?
Lo! the whole wide earth I give thee—sea, and isle, and continent.

157

Thou hast served me, served me truly. Lord thou art of earth and hell.
Must thou lust for powers beyond thee, crave for God's high heaven as well?

King.

Nay, I drive the fancy from me. Bring me women, bring me wine!
Let the girls dance wanton measures till their smooth limbs seem divine!
Let the captives suffer torture! Let the tigers crowd the ring!
I will watch them tear the prisoners. I will live and die a king.

Satan.

That is better, that is braver. That is speech I love to hear.
The proud vaunting of a monarch rings like music in my ear;
And I love to see the captives drag their entrails in the dust,
For the sight of blood is pleasant, and it whets a monarch's lust.

158

King.

Yes, when all the sports are over and the fierce arena clears,
I feel joyous and feel tender. Then I weary of the spears
And the bleeding and the fighting, and I long for sleep and rest,
And to kiss the pale-pink nipple on a maiden's balmy breast.

Satan.

True: the glory of a monarch is to slay the husband first,
To watch anguish do his bidding, to see torture do its worst;
Then at night-time, past the turmoil and the throbbing of the strife,
To let passion do its utmost on the body of the wife.

King.

Bid the people throng together. They shall own me king and lord.
God may rule by loving-kindness. I will sway men by the sword.
I will light red fires of torment that shall leap between the bars
Of the prisons, and extinguish God's pale candle-light, the stars.

159

Satan.

Canst thou not devise a torment newer than the fires' old blaze?
Write in blood a noble poem that shall ring through endless days?
Mothers hast thou ripped in sunder, wrenched the babes from out their womb,
Tossed the infants on thy spear-points, closed the living in the tomb—

King.

There are fifteen hundred prisoners in the dungeons of the town:
There are fifteen hundred diamonds wanted for my royal crown.
Let the diamonds wait a little. I can scent a rarer prize.
There are fifteen hundred prisoners. Bring me fifteen hundred eyes.

Satan.

That is glorious, that is kingly. That is past expression grand.
Ruled there ever such a monarch o'er so fortunate a land?

160

His right eye each prisoner loses, but the left eye still remains.
See how mercy kisses judgment! See how just a monarch reigns!

King.

There are half a thousand captives in the fortress, prisoned deep.
They shall writhe amid their life-blood, twining in a tangled heap.
Break their legs, and hurl them living in the ditch beside the tower.
All who pass shall see them rotting, for a token of my power.

Satan.

Better still, aye even better! That is past all language fine,
And the genius that devised it in its greatness matches mine.
Judgment once more kisses mercy, and with tenderness is blent.
Break their legs, don't kill them outright. Give them five days to repent.

King.

Bid the people throng together. I will make a royal feast.
Let the lamps at night be lighted. I am king on earth at least.

161

If vast angel-hosts in heaven wait Jehovah's stern command,
Round about me fifty thousand of the desert's spearmen stand.

Satan.

Who shall wait thee in thy palace, when the feasting all is done?
When the lamps before the moon fly, as she flies before the sun.
When thy head with merry feasting and with laughter reels and whirls,
Who shall wait thee of thy smooth-limbed satin-bosomed supple girls?

King.

Let the girl to-night be ready, who last night upon my bed
Lay so snowlike on the velvet (Let the tigers wait unfed).
In the afternoon the circus, and the blood-stained combat's charms:
But at night the king's the captive, prisoned in a woman's arms!

162

Christ.

King, to-night when solemn darkness closes down on land and sea
Thou shalt meet the only Ruler who hath kingship over thee.
Thou hast made the pale stars tremble on their thrones within the sky;
But to-night thy soul shall tremble, for to-night thou hast to die.

163

VII. CHRIST, AND THE PHILOSOPHER

Philosopher.

Could the good without the evil ever hold out for an hour
Never!—Every lady strutting in her grand silk down the street,
Full of pureness like an angel, full of beauty like a flower,
Were it not for the poor harlot would be never half so sweet.

Satan.

True, the Force that moulded all things is dramatic at the core;
Has its due sense of proportion; sets the good beside the base;
Flings the millionaire his nuggets; plants the beggar at his door;
Shapes the cripple as a contrast to the young girl full of grace.

164

Philosopher.

Often, very very often, do I chuckle to myself,
Watching how the good souls struggle, thinking God is on their side.
God is far too good an artist to put evil on the shelf:
God's superbest Rembrandt-picture was when Christ was crucified.

Satan.

Yes, I watched with keenest pleasure that strange scene upon the hill.
Deeply would you have enjoyed it, could you only have been there.
Judas played his part divinely. Pontius backed him with a will.
Mary “made up” to perfection, purple robe and golden hair.

Philosopher.

People rail at crime and murder. Yet the pleasure these imply!
Christians sitting at their breakfast o'er their sausage and their toast,

165

Reading in the morning paper that a murderer is to die,
Feel a thrill of keen excitement. Murders have a charm for most.

Satan.

Strange it would be if Jehovah whom the people worship here
Should be like a Spanish maiden at a bull-fight, in her place.
As she needs its wild excitement, so he needs perhaps to peer
From the windows of his palace on the death-pangs of the race.

Philosopher.

Crimes have sprung from many causes—from the love of wealth and power,
From the lust of man for woman; yet beyond conception odd
Is it that the Inquisition, of iniquities the flower,
Sprang from lust of man for heaven, and from love of man for God.

Satan.

Therefore is there need most urgent that a newer creed be taught:
That the gospel of pure reason should be preached, with all it brings:

166

That mankind should be instructed that God only lives in thought
And that he himself is sovereign, the sole living king of kings.

Philosopher.

Day by day to feel more self-poised, day by day to grow more grand:
Day by day to learn new secrets of the silent starry lore:
To feel ever the brain strengthening in its power to understand;
That is worth the pain of living, though the pain of life be sore!

Satan.

All the skies are sundered for thee, all the secrets of the deep
Blue tremendous heaven are opened to thy keen and searching look.
Thou canst count the murky portals, whence the fiery thunders leap.
Thou canst enter the wild comets, name by name, within thy book.

167

Philosopher.

This is life's end, this is rapture. This is man's sufficient goal.
Far away in bygone ages the great Roman poet saw
That the secret of true godship is within the human soul,
And that all the worlds together move by never-changing law.

Satan.

Yes. Lucretius, whom I aided in his godlike labour, knew
That man's dreams of God were baseless—that the only God indeed,
Strong, eternal, self-sufficient, deathless, vast, triumphant, true,
Is the soul of man transcending every form of every creed.

Philosopher.

Prayer has ever been a weakness. Self-sufficient life is grand.
When the soul of man is strengthened, when the soul of man is free,
He will grow by law eternal, like the blossoms of the land;
He will move by changeless impulse, like the tides within the sea.

168

Satan.

Through the ages I have wrestled with the dreamers of each race,
With the poets, with the thinkers, with the lords of prose and rhyme;
Teaching that the glory of manhood is for ever thus to pace,
Prayerless, faithless, creedless, godless, on the foam-swept shores of time.

Philosopher.

Once I prayed: but that is over. Once I hoped: but that is past.
It was but a moment's weakness. Now my inmost soul is strong.
I have won the perfect endless philosophic calm at last.
I have conquered in the struggle, though the strife was fierce and long.

Satan.

Teach the people thy strong secret. Teach the uselessness of prayer.
Teach that man's sufficient godship in his own soul he must find.

169

Teach that faith in God is harmful; both a weakness and a snare.
To the doubting bring assurance, and bring light unto the blind.

Philosopher.

I can see—my reason shows me—that of all the faiths of man,
Faith in God is most degrading! The soul shivers at the thought.
What! an Eye has followed history since our history first began.
What! no deed in noble silence and in darkness has been wrought.

Satan.

If an Eye eternal follows, through the sunlight and the shade,
Ye are like the prisoners followed by the warder's sleepless eye.
Night and day your God observes you through the peep-holes he has made
In the heavens, flashing on you his star-lanterns from the sky.

170

Philosopher.

Yes, the thought is most degrading. If we marry, even then
Not a moment free from spying, though the darkness may be deep!
Every kiss by God is counted—fifty, twenty, thirty, ten—
For the Eye eternal watches man and woman when they sleep.

Satan.

Not one deed is wrought in private, if the Christian creed be true.
Not a man can kiss in private, not a young girl can be got.
For the Eye eternal pierces all the cloudland, flashes through;
And it fathoms every secret, and it searches every spot.

Philosopher.

Oh far nobler is the silence, as Lucretius felt and saw,
Of the boundless starlit heavens, and the silence of the sea,
And the silent sure progression of unalterable law.
Let the Christians crown their Jesus. Give the godless void to me!

171

Satan.

Yes, for free from wrath and tumult may the soul of man abide
Where no gods can ever harass, where no gods can ever slay.
Unobserved save of the starlight then a man may hold his bride.
Followed only by the sunlight may a man pursue his way.

Philosopher.

Then the soul in its completeness stands for evermore alone.
Could it steer its thought-ship boldly to the farthest shores of space,
Never would its keel encounter one rock-fragment of God's throne:
Never would the darkness open and reveal the Eternal's face.

Satan.

That is strength: to steer right onward, seeking nothing from on high—
Neither guidance, love, nor counsel. Do the star-ships, when they steer

172

Never failing, never foundering, through the storm-shoals of the sky,
Say “God help us!” or “God guide us!” If they said so, would God hear?

Philosopher.

No: they sail their course eternal through the darkness of the night,
And they strike not one another, though no helmsman's hand there be!
Twilight draweth back for darkness, darkness giveth place to light,
Morning brings its golden sunshine, yet no wrecks are on the sea!

Satan.

Ever o'er the airy waters will the star-ships sail secure,
For the force that leads them onward is but matter's restless hand.
If a living God convoyed them, could their pathway be more sure?
If a conscious helmsman guided, could their course be better planned?

173

Philosopher.

Worse it would be, worse in all ways. For the conscious God might sleep.
Constellations might be kindled! starry clusters might consume!
If he left the helm a moment, half a million suns might leap
Down the breathless airy cliff-sides and plunge ages into gloom!

Satan.

Rest in peace. Believe and doubt not, for the truth I tell to thee.
Godless was the primal darkness, and the first waves felt no hand
Rein them when they charged with rapture o'er the green floor of the sea,
Nor was God within the sunlight when it first caressed the land.

Philosopher.

That is all I crave for—freedom from the oppressive sense of One
Ever gazing through the myriads of the stars that gem the sky,

174

Ever speaking in the sea-waves, ever shining in the sun;
Just to handle my own soul's helm, and to feel that I am I.

Christ.

Not in all the pride of reason can my Father take delight;
Not in genius does he glory, not in stubborn force of will;
But he hears the sad soul praying through the silence of the night,
And he speaks in solemn sweetness to the childlike spirit still.

175

VIII. CHRIST, AND THE LOST WOMAN

Woman.

Of old the river-banks were sweet.—
The waves played round my girlish feet,
As in the brook I gathered cress.
I stooped. Then, quicker than a thought,
The wicked ripples laughed and caught
The bright skirt of my Sunday dress.

Satan.

And who came through the wood that day,
With face so handsome, step so gay,
And eyes in which no evil seemed?
And who, found standing in the brook,
Blushed childlike at his laughing look
And then went home, and cried, and dreamed?

176

Woman.

It was a dream, and nothing more.—
I see him standing on the shore:
I see the blossoms by the stream:
I hear my mother ask me why
That night I seemed so strange and shy,
Pacing the house as in a dream.

Satan.

Was it a dream that followed—town;
Long rows of houses, smoky brown;
And then one night a dainty bed
In the grand house he took you to;
Wild kisses all the long night through,
Till morning flamed out rosy-red?

Woman.

A dream, a wicked sinful dream!
My mother's stern words ghostlike seem,
Which warned me when I fled away:
His kisses on my lips are ghosts:
Grey phantoms are that bed's tall posts,
And spectral is that dawn of day.

177

Satan.

And was the blue-eyed child a dream
Who, like a moment's sunny beam,
Flashed o'er your life one golden spark?
You loved the father in the child,
And half with fate were reconciled.
God stole your darling. All was dark!

Woman.

God took the baby. Better so.
He had his father's glance, I know.
I would not that my womb should bear
A child who, in the days to come,
Might lure the heedless to their doom
And goad some girl's heart to despair.

Satan.

Nay, had the child become a man
And ended what his sire began,
That would have been dramatic, great.
He might have seen some other girl
At play where the blue waters curl
Beside your mother's cottage gate!

178

Woman.

Thank God, he died! The poor thin child—
I loved it with a passion wild,
The only love-power left in me.
And yet I hardly cared to groan
When I was wholly left alone,
A wreck upon life's tossing sea.

Satan.

And yet he would have spared you gold,
Had you but written. But you sold
Your honour, sank so foully low.
What can a man of character
(The best-intentioned) do for her
Who fancies profligacy so?

Woman.

Love once and lose, then all is lost
For woman. Man can love a host
Of women, so he fancies—yes.
Our love is agony or bliss.
We give one man an angel's kiss:
We give the rest a fiend's caress.

179

Satan.

An over-subtle point to me
That seems, and quite a travesty
Of amorous joys and love-delight.
No: on the whole I hold with man
That every girl's the same who can
Be sweet companion for a night.

Woman.

A man can love a thousand girls.
Smooth black soft tresses, yellow curls,
Blue eyes, fierce dark eyes,—all are one.
Man finds a thousand faces fair;
Loves all the stars that fill the air.
Woman is faithful to the sun.

Satan.

Woman loves once, and that's the end!
Then, when her lover, or her “friend,”
Forsakes her, what is left to seek?
The river.—Which makes clear to me
The folly of her theory,
And proves her reasoning false and weak.

180

Woman.

The river? Yes. It flows along:
Not as of old with sweet soft song
Near Oxford, past my mother's door.
There is no may-bloom on its banks;
No tall green reeds in rustling ranks;
This moonlight gilds a flowerless shore.

Satan.

Plunge in, and get it over.—You
Keep dreaming of the old waves of blue
That once you watched with girlhood's eyes.
The moon that parts yon cloudy rack
Peers down from heaven on wavelets black
To-night. You are in town. Arise!

Woman.

My life is dark as is the stream.
It once was bright with flash and gleam
Of love's own sunlight, like the wave.
But now the stream and I are one:
We have bade farewell to the sun:
The moon shall light us to our grave.

181

Satan.

Man cares not. God? He does not care.
One moment's flash of golden hair
Upon the surface of the stream,
Then all is over. You make way
For a new suicide next day,
And pass from man's sight like a dream.

Woman.

I wonder, is the water cold?
Drowning is pleasant, I've been told.
The morning sun is far-off yet.
I wonder, is it hard to die?
Others have drowned—and so can I.
One plunge—and then I shall forget!

Satan.

Not one soul loves you. Quick, my girl!
How pleasantly the waters curl:
The moon is shining nicely, too.
My spirits are leading from the Strand
Another young girl by the hand:
Hurry—or she may jostle you!

182

Woman.

Just let me fold this poor old shawl
And lay it down behind the wall,
And hat and gloves and necktie. There...
The water looks so cool and deep—
If I can pluck up heart to leap,
There will be no more pain to bear!

Christ.

Pause: for thou art not quite alone.
Far-off in heaven I heard thee moan,
And through the starlit silent sky
I hastened, as of old, to save.
My love is stronger than the grave,
And mightier than man's enmity.

185

A VOICE FROM HEAVEN

Each evening on the ethereal canvas wide
I paint new sunsets, colouring all the air.
When Turner failed and flung his brush aside,
I touched the heaven,—the longed-for tint was there.

Yet who will gaze each evening at the sky?
Who cares to contemplate my work supreme?
Unnoticed, shade by shade, the bright tints die.
Man lusts for gold, while God and poets dream.

When my sonorous thunder-pæans sound,
What audience have I in the heights of space?
When my stars fill the air for leagues around,
Frail man is staring in some harlot's face.

Alone I travel o'er the shoreless sky;
Alone in labour, and in pain and strife.
I cross the surges of eternity
While man sails round the land-locked bay of life.

186

What genius-loneliness is like to mine?
Man shapes one statue, or he paints one face;
A poet's soul lives in one single line,
A woman's beauty in one curve of grace:

Upon one earth ye suffer and ye groan:
Your Jesus for one suffering sad world died:
But I—for ever past my lonely throne
Sweeps the great stars' illimitable tide.

I rule new nations in vast star on star:
My thought creates new eras, one by one.
I steer across the blue sky's harbour-bar
Daily the giant ship ye call the sun.

Nor only one sun. Through the waves of space
Millions of sun-ships plunge upon their way.
I am the sole spectator of their race:
My touch upon the helm they all obey.

And yet my love can pulse through space and time.
Does one sad woman in the wintry gloom,
Despairing, maddened through another's crime,
Wait, while the dark waves tempt her to her doom?

187

Does one frail heart of woman long to die,
Hurling her sorrow deep into the wave?
There is the God of all things. There am I.
There is the love that even yet can save.

There is the love that from the central throne
Listening can hear the accents of despair:
Can hear through all the stars a woman's moan;
Answer the strong man's agony of prayer.

Aye, if hell's ocean seeks to swallow one
Frail human sinner, blood-stained though he be
The love of God will bid the mighty sun
Rescue the sinner, and dry up the sea.

189

NATURE AND HUMANITY

191

I. NATURE

193

I. SONG OF THE FLOWERS

Spring, risen and light-crowned, touched the slumbering flowers
In deep green bowers:
They bloomed and loved and sang, and praised their King.
“Rise from your rest, O sisters sweet, for soon
It will be June,
The world will need our fragrant comforting!”

So spake the rose;
And from repose
The countless hosts of sister-roses woke.
They filled the air
With fragrance rare,
As morning after summer morning broke.

Then came the violets in their myriads too,
Arrayed in blue,

194

Save some, the tenderest, who were robed in white.
All sang to heaven their song of perfect praise,
And filled the ways
With scent divine by day, though most by night.

Yes, most by night,
For then the light
Of the enchantress moon is over each:
And then you hear,
Low, silver-clear,
The tender murmur of the flowers' soft speech.

Then rose to rose, lily to lily speaks.
Then by the creeks,
Whereover pours a flood of moonlight pale,
Gentle forget-me-not and iris bold,
Blue, streaked with gold,
Converse, and love lifts from their hearts its veil.

“Lo! God is good”—
In the green wood
Thus spake a wild rose to its sister nigh:
“See'st thou up there
Those star-flowers fair?
Those are what roses come to, when they die!

195

“Yes, sister, roses die,—and then they light
The whole wide night;
They change to what men call the ‘stars’ above:
And then for endless ages they shine through
The endless blue,
And thrill the souls of men to dreams of love.

“No blossoms die:
The whole wide sky
Receives, and turns to stars their silvery bloom.
The fields of air
That gleam up there
Receive us, sister, in their azure tomb.

“Just for one little moment here we dream,
And then we gleam
For ever set upon the brow of space:
Aye, then with exultation we shall find
—God is so kind!—
Another and a deathless dwelling-place.

“Here we delight
For one sweet night
One pair of lovers with our breath most sweet:

196

But when we die
We shall supply
Light to a thousand fond hearts when they meet.”

So spake to a sister-flower the pale pink rose,
Like one who knows
The secrets of the stars and of the night.
And then two lovers came, and plucked the rose—
And now it glows
Doubtless amid the stars, and gives man light.

What once was breath
Most sweet, in death
Has been transfigured into higher bloom:
The rose once flowered,
But now is dowered
With light, to gleam across the purple gloom.

Praise, love and praise. This ever was the word
The flower-souls heard:
They caught no distant note of Satan's psalm.
The fragrant wondrous flower-world's vast content
With joy was blent,
And infinite repose, and ceaseless calm.

197

“O sun gold-red,”
The daisy said,
“Thou art so grand, and yet thou copiest me!
My heart of gold
I now behold
In the blue waves, reflected back from thee!”

The violet whispered, as it gazed on high,
“O deep-blue sky,
Thou steal'st my hues. I love thee for the theft!”
The sky laughed out to hear the violet's speech;
Pure love filled each:
“Love,” sang the green ferns in the granite-cleft.

“Love,” sang the sun;
And from his throne
To fill the daisy's heart he sent down rays,
Till it became
One golden flame,
A golden sunflower flashing back his gaze.

And then a lily in the garden-bed,
Lifting her head,
Said to her sister, “Happiness is ours,

198

Indeed. We live but for a little while,
And yet our smile
Is deathless. Yes: the good God loves his flowers.

“In pale sick-rooms
Some lily blooms:
The sufferer's sad eye kindles as it sees
The dainty stem,
White diadem,
And fragrant heart that maddened once the bees.

“Nothing is lost.—We bloom but for a day,
And yet we stay
For ever in the soul that found us fair.
We lift and comfort; we redeem and save:
Yes, even the grave
Grows beautiful, when lilies enter there.

“The ghost-moths white
That flit by night
Around our stalks, and through the grass-blades dry,
Were lilies. Now
From bough to bough
Their white wings carry them. We shall not die!

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“Nothing can die. All things but shift and grow,
With progress slow:
The lovers we have seen beside us stand
Will grow to angels—as the lilies change
To ghost-moths strange—
And win their gold wings in another land.

“Praise God, who makes
The hills and lakes;
Whose hand can guard whate'er his heart hath given:
The golden air,
The sun up there,
The stars that whisper, ‘We are flowers of heaven.’”

200

II. SONG OF THE RIVERS

I.

With ripples tuned to silver song
Our current foams and leaps along.
On either hand the green reeds close:
We see the brown bee rob the rose.

Upon the hedge its petals gleam:
The red rose closed its eyes to dream.
Into its heart the quick bee goes,
And sucks its sweetness from the rose.

Within our safe strong-timbered locks
The painted shallop sways and rocks:
Beneath our waves the pike darts by,
And all the timorous grey roach fly.

201

The white-sailed ghostly cutters glide
Along our curves and reaches wide:
And now the river-steamer too
Cuts with keen keel the waters blue.

Fleet racing-boats with eager force
Along our current steer their course.
Past piers and London wharfs we flow:
We lap stone walls with ripples slow.

We hear love whispered on the breeze,
And underneath our neighbouring trees.
White hands lean from the boat's bright edge,
And draw up lilies draped with sedge.

The spotted trout flash through the deep,
And up the weir great salmon leap.
The angler's fly says, “If you dare,
Snap at me!” to the dace down there.

Along the stream gold fields of corn
Shine underneath the sun at morn:
And in the afternoon they seem,
Mist-clad, like cornfields in a dream.

202

We, rivers light of heart and gay,
Chant through the whole long summer day;
And, when the harvest moon is up,
We make love to the cowslip cup.

The ragged-robin on our edge
Whispers “Good evening” to the sedge.
The red kine come to cool their feet
In our clear waves in August heat.

The country girls wash clothes, and laugh,
And hollowing hands, our waves they quaff.
A thousand slight things fill the day—
Then, when the sunset fades away,

The yellow moon above our banks
Rises, discerned through tall green ranks
Of rushes on the water-line:
Then one by one the bright stars shine.

All is so lovely in our life:
So free from labour, sorrow, strife.
We thank the God who gave his streams
Their day of toil, their night of dreams.

203

Dreams very tender,—seldom sad.
We watch the eyes of lovers glad:
We hear the maiden's whispered “I
Shall love you, darling, till I die.”

We hear the strong man answer: “Love,
Our love will last till heights above
Receive us. True love cannot die:
It shares the stars' eternity.”

We hear, and we are glad. We float
More buoyantly the lovers' boat.
With tender thoughts we watch it gleam
Adown the darkness of the stream.

II.

The memories of our mountains still
Are with us.—Each was once a rill,
Swift, foaming down some mountain's edge,
And tumbling on from ledge to ledge.

Then large the greatening river grew,
And deeper yet, and yet more blue.
Great towns it passed,—and then began
To carry out the schemes of man.

204

The white-sailed ships pursued their course
Along the river,—used its force.
It floated lilies in past hours,
But now it floated ships for flowers!

Yet, deepening ever in our flow,
As we bear commerce to and fro,
We feel, if youth's first dreams are lost,
The gain is worthy of the cost.

In countries many, mighty and great,
We aid man's tasks, we share man's state;
Where were the glory of the Thames
Without its steamers' iron stems?

What were the grandeur of the Seine,
Unshadowed by the historic fane?
Highly the Seine 'mid rivers ranks,
For Notre Dame is on its banks.

And Westminster's grey stately towers
Are worth the loss of early flowers
That Nuneham flung, or Oxford threw,
From golden fields on waters blue.

205

III.

Thus, deepening onward, carrying ships,
Kissing the air with statelier lips,
Stream after stream must ever tend
On towards its God-appointed end.

The end is grand, the end is sure:
In front, a heaven of waters pure
And vast and stainless waits the stream—
A waste wherein its soul may dream

Dreams kinglier far than dreams that sped
About it in the days long dead;
Old dreams of mountains robed in mist,
Far meadows by the sunlight kissed.

This waits us when our work is done:
A night wherethrough can pierce no sun;
A depth no starlight from the air
Can traverse,—nor can moon gleam there.

This waits us. Deep our souls shall rest
Within the mighty ocean's breast.
Rill, river, stream—We all shall be
Lost in the greatness of the sea.

206

III. SONG OF THE SEA

I.

Bright sunsets come and go
Above my waters' flow:
The gold stars rise and set:
But I am young as yet.

I saw the first star gleam
Above my grey-blue stream:
Before the race of man
I, the great sea, began.

When man's race dies away,
My green waves still will play
Round granite echoing shores
That echo not to oars.

207

God dwells upon his throne,
And I on mine, alone.
Though all things else should die,
We could not,—he and I.

The sun has amorous hours
With golden plains of flowers.
He flashes through the trees:
He gilds the emerald leas.

His are the inland nooks,
The birch-trees, and the brooks:
The orchids, white or pied,
The daisies, golden-eyed.

His are the birds that sing
His praises in the spring:
The larch is his,—the fir,
The rainbow-gossamer.

His is the hazel-copse;
His are the mountain-tops,
And valleys green and sweet
Where flocks in thousands bleat.

208

His heart can find repose
In kissing the red rose.
He fills with love-desire
The newly blossomed briar.

The gemlike humming-bird
Is gladdened at his word.
What birds and flowers love me,
The ever-ravening sea?

Only the sea-weed red
Upon my wild floors spread:
The sea-bird fierce and strong
That loves the billows' song.

Strange, through the murky night,
Glitter my storm-birds white:
My gulls and petrels flit
Above my waste, moonlit.

Moonlit, or lightning-rayed:—
When strong men pale, afraid,
Then all my heart delights,
In the mad winter nights.

209

Sweeter than grass to me
Is tangle of the sea:
The rough brown weed that floats
Among the spars of boats.

Sweeter than fields of corn
The sea-gull's cry forlorn,
As on the wave he rests
Or rises on its crests.

A giant ship is tossed
Upon my waves and lost.
To-night its course is done:
I greet to-morrow's sun.

Or, with a laughing smile,
I greet some coral-isle.
Weary of dripping ghosts,
I kiss its golden coasts.

In depths that were a grave
My crimson sea-fronds wave
Most gently. In a rill
The star-wort is less still!

210

Then, when night sinks again
Upon my boundless plain,
I chase the glimmering ships,
Foam flashing from my lips.

Where all was peace before,
My white-maned lions roar:
The ships' planks part and crack,
And spot their manes with black.

II.

When first God made me, he
Set peace upon the sea.
My waters all were calm,
Like windless isles of palm.

But soon my strength arose;
I sprang up from repose:
And now two giants fight—
God, and the ocean's might.

Daily I gain more strength:
It may be I at length
Shall overwhelm and merge
The whole earth in my surge.

211

God's angels shall despair
When the tornadoes bear
My angels, through the night
Glittering,—my sea-birds white:

Above the dying ship
Fast in the black rock's grip
They hover, and they shine,
These angel-hosts of mine.

Lo! at my mad waves' shriek
Blenches the sailor's cheek.—
To-night is dark. The shore
Will never see him more.

His wife may wake and pray,
And watch the waste of spray:
I thunder to her prayer
One answering word—“Despair.”

212

IV. SONG OF THE STARS

Across the solemn purple plains of night
The starry light
Falls in a million gold and silver rays.
Within the arch of heaven the star-flowers sing:
Yes, these too bring
Their ceaseless tribute of deep love and praise.

God sowed the fields with daisies—so they say:
With many a ray
Of golden light he sowed the heavens on high.
We are the blossoms of the purple air:
We blossom there,
The buttercups and cowslips of the sky.

213

One law pervades our being. We arise
Upon the skies
In sudden fiery light and fervent heat:—
Then grass and herbs upon our surface grow,
And after lo!
The varied countless life we find so sweet.

Some stars are tulips of the deep-blue sky,
And others vie
With snowdrops in their whiteness as they gleam.
There are fierce warrior-hosts of ardent stars,
Decked out like Mars;
But other orbs are gentle as a dream.

All are swayed justly by the high God's hand.—
Our sea and land
Are duly parted, and our living things
All render homage unto God who made
The sun and shade,
And gave the fish its scales, the bird its wings.

All, all is good.—The viper in the fen,
The worst of men,
Can bring to pass the high God's perfect will.

214

No single ray of light from any star
Can wander far;
Each has some fruitful purpose to fulfil.

Storm, thunder, terror, blood-red war, white peace,—
Hopes that increase,—
Fears that wax strong, or passionate joys that wane,—
These all achieve their end: Fierce pain and woe,
Sunshine or snow,
Thin fields of corn, or leagues of golden grain.

On each star at its great appointed hour
God sends the power
Of some redeeming saviour-soul indeed.
All stars shall know in turn a saviour's face,
And woman's grace
In each to woman's serfdom shall succeed.

On one small star that swings in dark-blue air
A saviour fair
Was born in a far Eastern land, they tell.
Great marvellous deeds he did with loving hand
In that far land,
And lifted souls from sin, and saved from hell.

215

But ah! small star, in regions past thy dream
Star-legions gleam;
Thy resurrection-tale is also ours.
In every star Christ died: in each Christ rose.
Each planet knows
Its Saviour crowned with thorns,—then crowned with flowers.

All stars move slowly towards their destined fate,
Small stars and great:
Each star was born, and each shall find its tomb.
Yes: the Eternal power whom we obey
Shall sweep one day
All stars and strong suns into lampless gloom

Then He, the Eternal power, shall build again
The dark night's fane,
And fit the dome of heaven with lamps quite new
Just as earth's blossoms wither in a night,
So all our light
Shall pass, and fresh lamps burn against the blue

A million, million years are but a day
To God, one ray
Of wandering sunlight thrown against the dark.

216

And yet the Eternal power shall never lose
One white star-rose,
One pale moon-petal, or one red sun-spark.

The tiniest flower the living God's hand made
In the first glade
In the first star he flung upon the sky
Is living yet in some unknown fair mode
In some abode:
God hears the hidden violet's faintest sigh.

Beyond all highest poets' highest dreams
The sweet truth gleams,
Gleams out resplendent. Nought can pass away.
What God has once inspired with living breath,
This knows not death:
Sunset predicts another golden day.

The sunset of the stars when all things end,
This doth portend
Another sunrise on the seas of space;
Another vision of more stars than ours,
And fadeless flowers,
And deathless beings of a lordlier race.

217

So, ever, living God, we worship thee.
Each galaxy
Of moons and suns and stars that veer and change
Worships with endless worship at thy shrine:
For they are thine,
And thou art theirs, in union sweet and strange.

219

II. HUMANITY

I. VOICES OF HUMANITY

221

I. CHANT OF POSITIVISTS

I.

We know our own true home at last:
The gorgeous dreams of heaven are past:
No angel's harp sounds on the breeze.
Gold wings are gone. We mark instead
White wings above the dahlia bed,
And blue wings o'er the clover leas.

These are our angels.—Butterflies,
Blue as the cloudless azure skies,
Or white-winged as the clouds at morn,
Dance o'er the garden-beds, and gleam
Above the hedges. Now we dream
Of other crowns than that of thorn.

222

This earth is all.—Then add new worth
To our one home, our fair old earth:
Love every flower in every vale.
The fancied flowers of heaven were grand.
Yet pause: look round. Stretch out thine hand.
Gather that snowdrop pure and pale.

Was ever heavenly bloom so white?—
Did great stars glitter through the night
Of heaven, as on our earth they gleam?
Had heaven a million lamps, as we?
Or white birds on a dark-blue sea?
This is the truth. Heaven was the dream.

Heaven was the dream.—But now we know
How man is made, where man must go:
We seek no opening to the tomb;
Content to pass, content to be
At rest for all eternity
Within the deep and flameless gloom.

The flameless gloom—for once hell-fire
Roared up to heaven, aye flickered higher
Than heavenly towers that rose sublime.

223

If heaven we've lost, we've lost as well
The flamelit under-realm of hell:
We cannot either sink, or climb.

The earth is left.—We can adorn
Her beauty,—drape with fields of corn
The plains that fill her ample breast.
Now heaven has past, our souls are free
To love the green earth and the sea:
Now hope is dead, we are at rest.

II.

And woman too is left to love:
She brings us dreams of things above
The common daily life she scorns.
Woman makes all things beautiful;
For from the hedge her hand can pull
The blossoming rose, and leave the thorns!

Our angel stands beside us. She
First made man of a certainty
Dream of a life beyond the tomb.
And, now we seek that life no more,
Woman is left us to adore,
And woman's worship to resume.

224

The force we wasted on the sky
Returns to earth. We put it by;
We store it up for better things.
The noblest angel after all
Is woman: sweeter if she fall
At times, for very want of wings!

Great were Isaiah, Peter, Paul:
Our poets can transcend them all;
And, now they sing of earth alone,
They'll rise to lordlier heights of song.
Yes, man himself shall reach ere long
The steps of the Eternal's throne.

For that eternal force is ours:
It brings forth man, it brings forth flowers
And life and death, in it, are one.
It shines in stars: in man it lives:
Its colour to the rose it gives,
And gives its red flame to the sun.

One force through all things works its way:
Through joy and sorrow, night and day:
Is gentle in the blue-bell's breath:

225

Is soft within the snow-flake white:
Fierce-hued within the lightning's light:
One power speaks “Life,” or whispers “Death.”

But all beyond is wrapped in gloom.
Nought answers from beyond the tomb:
No starlight travels from that sky.
No eye can pierce the solemn veil:
Each soul exploring comes back pale
From contact with eternity.

III.

Therefore the earth is ours alone:
The sun sits on its flame-red throne;
The stars sit on their thrones in space;—
We have this earth whereon we stand:
We have the thrill in woman's hand:
We have the love in woman's face.

We have the force to win a flower
Of love, and wear it for an hour,
And for an hour to find it sweet.
Aye, sweeter is our love for this—
In that there is no second kiss,
And even the first is over-fleet.

226

In that to-morrow's frost will slay
The violets, passing sweet are they!
Life is so short. Let it be grand!
Let every deed of man be true:
There is no heaven in which to do
The noble deeds we only planned.

Great peace is ours; a peace beyond
The reach of those who hope, despond,
And snatch at heaven, and shrink from hell;
The peace of those who hope for nought
Save what each long day's toil has brought,
And, hopeless, feel that all is well.

227

II. CHANT OF CHRISTIANS

I.

He brought no flowers, he brought no gems,
No jewels of earth's diadems;
Within a stable he was born.
With us he suffered day by day;
Upon his brow no gold crown lay,
But only mocking points of thorn.

Not on divine soft banks of rose
Where souls of lovers may repose
Rested the Lord of earth and air.
He found not where to lay his head;
Was cradled where the oxen fed;
A rock-tomb was his sepulchre.

228

No gifts of love, or power, or fame,
Or earthly rank, were his who came
To lift the humble soul on high.
Though not one star without him shone,
Uncrowned he came, he came alone,
He brought no star-wreath from the sky.

Though, long before the first star gleamed,
Within God's bosom Jesus dreamed,
He was content that dream should pass.
He entered, here, a woman's womb,
And let her sacred flesh entomb
All that he felt, all that he was.

The maiden's womb by God so blessed
Bare Jesus, and the maiden's breast
Suckled the living King of kings.
The infant Mary brought to birth
Was king of heaven, and lord of earth
And air, to where the last star swings.

This was God's condescension great:
To enter by that sacred gate
The land of woe, the land of pain.

229

And, having reached this land of ours
Where thorn-points peer from fairest flowers,
What was the fashion of his reign?

He reigned in sinful hearts and weak:
The sinner's soul he came to seek;
He came to dry the sufferer's tears.
He came to tell the worn-out heart,
“Be of good cheer. Lo! mine thou art,
And shalt be through the endless years.”

He came to bid the harlot rise:
To pour God's sunlight through her eyes,
And bid her dark night wane and flee.
He came to bid the whole wide earth
Partake with man, a second birth;
To soothe to rest the restless sea.

He came to bid the waters sink
To quiet on the blue lake's brink;
To say to wild waves, “Peace. Be still!”
He came, that wind-tossed souls might find
A haven for the weary mind:
He came to do the Father's will.

230

The will of him who sends the rain
To touch to green the parched-up plain,
Or sends the sun to charm the air:
The will of him through whom night's hours
Glitter with ceaseless starry flowers
That make the boundless dark fields fair.

The will of him through whom began
The cycle of life that leads to man,
And who is Jesus ended all:
Making in Jesus man complete;
Devising evil's full defeat
Through him, and Satan's abject fall.

The will obeying which he died
Thorn-crowned, a spear thrust through his side
And red nails through his feet and hands:
The will of God through which he rose
And passed into supreme repose,
Peace God's Son only understands.

II.

He came to make the blind eyes see;
To show that human will is free;
That God's will underlies the whole:

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That, past all weary winds that roar,
Sweet sunlight gilds a golden shore
Where harbourage waits the storm-tossed soul.

He came and suffered here on earth
That man might win the second birth:
His spotless flesh and blood he gave
That man, partaking, might be fed
With heavenly wine and heavenly bread,
And, haply, so elude the grave.

He healed disease that man might know
That pang and torment, throb and throe,
Are not to last for ever such;
That God, who works in every place
Through his own laws of time and space,
Can change those strait laws at a touch.

God binds the laws. They cannot bind
The Lord of nature and mankind.
Can God's own star-crown bruise his head?
Can God, who made both life and death,
Who breathes through dust a living breath,
Not raise the righteous from the dead?

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Can God, who makes the storm arise
And hurls the thunders through the skies,
Change not, at will, his mode and style?
God, who controls the lightning's fire,
Can he not change, if he desire,
Winter to summer by a smile?

Can he not change man's March to May?
Weave jessamine in December grey
Around his temple-porch at will?
Change ice that stiffens into blue
Calm water, where the reeds renew
Their whispering courtship of the rill?

This is what Jesus came to teach:
That God's sure hand is over each;
That waves may rise, and winds may roar,
But God the King is Lord of all,—
Nor shall a single sparrow fall
From his safe hand for evermore.

Our hairs are numbered—so he said:
Each bright ray of the sunset red
God paints with thoughtful conscious hand.

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The sunset, be it gold or rose,
Just as he wills it, shines and glows,—
And every wave he leads to land.

Not endless law, but ceaseless will.
This is Christ's gospel-message still:
Will at the heart of all things made.
Not Chance at the world-vessel's helm,
But loving Will throughout the realm
Of life, eternally obeyed.

III.

So he who, ere the world began,
Was God, became in all points man:
God's Son was of a woman born.
God took account of woman then,
And honoured the sweet slave whom men
Have lowered and saddened with their scorn.

God honoured woman.—None can say
Since that far-off first Christmas-Day
That woman hath no share nor part
In God's eternal great designs.
Woman and man God's thought combines:
They dwell together in his heart.

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So, thus this stormy world of ours
Was entered. Christ's hand gathered flowers;
He watched the sunset and sunrise:
He wandered by the inland sea,
The blue calm Lake of Galilee;
Earth spread her gifts before his eyes.

God, who had made, in epochs long
Anterior to the first bird's song,
Our fiery bright home spin through space,
Appeared, himself, to test the whole:—
The unexplored vast cosmic soul
Was obvious in a human face.

God came himself, his work to try:
To test his sunlit dome of sky;
To see that all had turned out well.
Through Jesus' searching eyes he viewed
The desert waste, the green-leafed wood,
The rocky height, the watered dell.

Through Jesus' eyes he gazed on man:
And here he chiefliest found his plan
Primordial marred and wrenched awry.

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Man whom he made divinely free,
Ruler of earth, lord of the sea,
Was veriest slave beneath the sky.

And woman, whom God made so sweet,
Was trampled by tyrannic feet:
The queen was harlot now, and slave.
The love that God designed of old
Man's love should win, the women sold;
They bartered now what once they gave.

So, looking on this world of sin,
God saw no hope without, within,
Nought left save only, dying here
At man's own hands, so to restore
Woman—that man's heart might adore;
And man—that woman might revere

Christ,—having entered by the gate
Of birth the world he made so great,
He found so small, so dark, so sad,—
By one path could return to God:
The grim cross pointed out the road,
And Jesus saw it, and was glad.

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By woman Christ was born. Through men
He reached his Father's home again,
The realm corruption may not see.—
When woman's God so longed to save
That he assumed the flesh she gave,
What was man's answer? Calvary.—

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III. CHANT OF POETS

Sweeter than dreams of moon or star,
Or dreams of heaven,—aye, fairer far,
The dreams of woman's beauty born!
God, when he toiled in heaven alone,
Grew weary. Now she shares his throne
And brings him rapture, night and morn.

What was the whole of heaven most fair
Without the love of woman there—
Without her eyes, without her look?
In heaven the soul of woman grew,
And still her eyes retain the blue
Of that deep heaven which she forsook.

Still something sweet, and something strange,
Is in her eyes that gleam and change,—
A something not of earth or sky:

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A something maddening hearts that gaze;
Requickening thoughts of ancient days,
Dreams of a past eternity.

Half angel she—and yet not quite:
Woman,—with neck and bosom white;
Woman—who gives, gives overmuch.
An angel's heart: a woman's frame;
She brings us peace; she burns with flame;
Destroys a life's work at a touch.

Within the sick-room dark and dread
The glory of her golden head
Brings sunlight. Nigh the grave she stands;
And man forgets the flowers they bring
In gazing at that sweeter thing,
The heavenly lilies of her hands.

Yet passion fierce and passion strong
She wakes. She thrills all hearts to song:
She crowns the poet with the bays.
In dreams of her his life goes by;
Her glances fill with stars his sky,
And fill with thoughts of fire his days.

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God made her soul. Then Satan took
The sweet thing and he changed her look
And set some light of evil there.
She who was wholly angel then
Is half a temptress now to men;
Aye, half a fiend, and wholly fair.

But wholly fair,—for ever fair.—
The mere slight fragrance of her hair,
The least soft thrilling of her hands,
Has served ere now, again will serve,
To make the course of history swerve,
And ruin souls, and ruin lands.

Aye, God and Satan well may fight!
She is so sweet, she is so white;
She is so good to touch and hold.
Love is the only thing that well
May outlive heaven and outlive hell:
This one joy never groweth old.

Still fresh as in the early day
When Eden heard the first rose say,
“A sweeter mouth than mine is born,”

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She treads the earth. Since time began
She has given herself away to man,
With rapture half, and half in scorn.

The magic in her voice and gaze
Is still the same as in old days
When Eden found her very fair.
Till time itself shall change and die
Some marvel past man's speech shall lie
Within the sweetness of her hair.

The sympathizing world has worn
On its own brow Christ's crown of thorn
For nigh two thousand years to-day:
But, ages ere he lived and died,
Woman could lure man to her side;
Her mouth could melt man's will away.

A mere girl's eyes of hare-bell blue
Can thrill a strong man through and through
Whom Jove's own thunders would not bend.
And man will win a world, and this
In turn will barter for a kiss:
And so it will be to the end.

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IV. CHANT OF WOMEN

I.

Man brings us flowers and brings us grief;
He twines for us love's myrtle leaf,
And wreathes about our brows the thorn.
We crave for love? Man gives us this?
Nay, he bestows but passion's kiss,
And tinges passion with his scorn!

Ten thousand years have passed away,
Or more years yet, the wise men say,
Since history on this earth began.
In all those years, what have we gained?
Deceived, misunderstood, disdained,
What shall we render back to man?

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Love.—This our great prerogative,
Eternally we gain and give:
We bring God's sunlight from on high.
The earth was dark until we came;
We fill the earth with love's bright flame,
And steal the gold dawn from the sky.

By love we grow; by love we gain
The right to live, the right to reign:—
When man's wild wayward course is done
We then shall say to man: Behold,
While thine hand delved amid the mould
Our souls caught glory from the sun!

While thou wast watching earth with eyes
Most dim, we watched God in the skies
With gaze that daily grew more clear.
To conquer earth was all thy dream:
To build thy mills on every stream;
Through unconjectured waves to steer!

Where once were fields made bright with flowers
Grew grimy towns and sullen towers:
By river-banks great wharfs arose.

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Where once were alder green and oak
Black factories loom, and chimneys smoke,
And engines break the morn's repose.

O maker of all hideous things,
'Twas well God sent us without wings
To dwell upon thine earth with thee—
Else, long ere this, our souls had fled
Beyond the waste of sunset red,
Beyond the green-blue waste of sea:

Else some remembrance of our home
Had lured us forth to soar and roam
Through silent leagues of star-sown air,
Compelling us to search for flowers
In airy fields and heavenly bowers,
Man having stripped earth's meadows bare!

II.

How couldst thou, having hid with steam
And smoke the skies where sweet stars gleam,
Discern the starlight in our look?
How couldst thou, having choked all flowers
In fields and woodlands, care for ours?
What cares the boulder for the brook?

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Thou, slave of thine electric light,
Hast even invoked perennial night
To brood above thy city's spires;
Lest one vast arrow of the sun
Should pierce the fog, and leave not one
Unquenched, of thine ephemeral fires!

But we, who dreamed of higher things,
Were happy where the brown lark sings
Above the fields of golden grain.
At peace with God, we saw the showers
Rejoice the pale sun-stricken flowers,
And blessed God for his bounteous rain.

The poor fish panting out of reach
Of the cool water, on the beach,
With death's hues glittering on his side,
Him would we save: him back we threw,
And, smiling, saw the water blue
Receive him safe.—You would deride.

What pity for the tortured horse
Has man? He goads him on his course:
There is no mercy in his soul.—

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God, when he made the dumb things, erred.
If he had let them speak one word,
Just to repudiate man's control!

And God, who made our womanhood
And made it at the outset good,
Erred too, in that he made us weak.
The strength was man's: the soul was ours.
God should have guarded his pale flowers
In heaven, and let man come to seek.

And yet...God hardly could have known
That man would claim us for his own;
Would hound the thought of God away:
Would change the form God made so sweet
Into the harlot of the street;
Teach those to curse, who once could pray.

Ah, piteous story of our wrongs!—
And yet to God the whole belongs:
We give to God and Christ the whole.
We trust God, till all sufferings end:
We have in Christ a deathless Friend,
An helper sweet, a kindred soul.

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Christ by his perfect womanhood
Hath power to make all women good:
The fallen to lift, the sad to save.
Women who met his glances knew
That here at last was manhood true:
Fearless, to him their hearts they gave.

They called him “God;” for God was here.
The Godhood in a man makes dear
The man to woman. Woman's kiss
Is never given as mankind deems,
Absorbed in its own narrow dreams.
God in man—woman worships this.

Not all the flowers man brings to her
Make her forget Christ's sepulchre.
She whispers, “Lord, remember me!”
In every crown her brow has worn
Woman in secret plants a thorn,
In homage to Gethsemane.

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II. BALLADS OF HUMAN LIFE

249

I.

251

I. BLUE-BELLS

“One day, one day, I'll climb that distant hill
And pick the blue-bells there!”
So dreamed the child who lived beside the rill
And breathed the lowland air.
“One day, one day, when I am old I'll go
And climb the mountain where the blue-bells blow!”

One day! One day! The child was now a maid,
A girl with laughing look;
She and her lover sought the valley-glade
Where sang the silver brook.
“One day,” she said, “love, you and I will go
And reach that far hill where the blue-bells blow!”

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Years passed. A woman now with wearier eyes
Gazed towards that sunlit hill.
Tall children clustered round her. How time flies!
The blue-bells blossomed still.
She'll never gather them! All dreams fade so.
We live and die, and still the blue-bells blow.

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II. THE TOURNAMENT

The trumpets' blare
Rings through the air:
The glittering lists are bright with sword and shield.
A hundred gallant knights,
Known in a thousand fights,
Mix and engage upon the mimic field.
But one towers o'er them all,
A noble knight and tall,
With giant form in armour black concealed.

In vain, in vain,
The thick blows rain,—
He dreams of her whose heart has wrought him wrong.
With little heed of all,
He lets the swift strokes fall:

254

His war-horse steers a way with onset strong.
He gazes up above:
Where is his lady-love?
He marks her not amid the courtly throng.

And yet at last,
When hope was past,
Flashed on his eyes the wondrous eyes he sought.
She wore his colours too,
White, twined with tender blue—
“She loves!” His strength rushed on him at the thought.
Then knight on knight fell low:
Aye, always it is so!
By woman's hand a true knight's sword is wrought.

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III. CHRISTMAS FAIRIES

Ah! dear old Christmas-tides of long ago.
Around the creaking roof-tops roared the blast:
The streets and hills and fields were draped in snow;
Across the ice the glittering skates shot past.
Youth was not dead!
Bright green and red
The holly-leaves and holly-berries gleamed.
The merry church-bells rang;
Our young hearts laughed and sang;
Of joyous years to come our spirits dreamed.

But years to come bring trouble and despair.
If childhood brings its simple dream of joy
Youth brings love's holier dream, a dream more fair
Than dreams which haunt the bright heart of the boy.
But all dreams melt
As soon as felt,—

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They fade into the mist of things unseen.
Youth's dream of love, alas!
Must likewise pale and pass:
Sweet love must be as if it had not been.

And yet—the holly-berries still are bright;
The bells chime merrily across the snow:
A thousand Christmas-trees will give delight,
Green as the Christmas-trees of long ago.
Why are we sad?
The young are glad;
They dance around the fir-tree hand in hand.
Outside, white miles of snow:
Inside, the red fire's glow
And children's smiles and dreams of fairy-land.

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IV. TWO NIGHTS

Last night he kissed my hair, and kissed my face,
And laughed, and praised my figure's supple grace.
My soul was dazzled as with sudden flame:
Star behind star my sweet star-bridesmaids came:
To-night, to-night,
No soft starlight,
But gloom profound that veils the heaven and sea.

Last night the world was full of light and fire:
Star throbbed to star, and burned with sweet desire
There was no heaven—for earth was heaven instead!
No immortality,—for death was dead!
To-night, to-night,
Dead is delight,
And pain awakes and lives eternally.

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Last night I thought before God's throne I stood
And knew, knew once for all, that God was good.
To-night how vast a darkness clothes me round:
I madden for love's footfall. Not a sound!—
Last night, last night,
My love took flight:
Cloud sobs to cloud, and whispers, “Where is he?”

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V. LOVE'S ETERNITY

Love's early honey-moon is passing sweet.
The enraptured lovers wander hand in hand
Through the wild roses and the golden wheat,
And passion's glamour clothes the sea and land.
Her eyes outvie
The starlit sky:
Love is so full of light that nought else gleams.
Love would give light,
Were the world black as night!
Love would create its heaven of stars and dreams!

Then come maturer days. Glad children glance—
Upon the tree of life love's blossoms blow.
And yet some element of old romance
Has vanished, melted in the long ago!
The husband says,
“Think of the days

260

When hand in hand we wandered, you and I;
The nights of June;
The marvel of the moon:
In later days must love's old glory die?”

But with the voice that charmed his heart of old
And made the whole of life one moonlit dream
The true wife answers, “Life's tale is not told:
In front of us new starlit skies will gleam.
When toil is o'er,
Love as before
Will find us, sweetheart, claim us for his own.
Love's autumn day,
Aye! though our hair be grey,
Shall match the sweetness of our summer flown.”

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VI. MIDNIGHT AT THE HELM

“What see'st thou, friend?
The frail masts bend,
Thy ship reels wildly on the tossing deep;
Thy fearless eyes
Regard the skies
And this broad waste wherethrough white chargers leap;
See'st thou the foam?”

Pilot.—

“I see my home,
And children on a white soft couch asleep.”

“What see'st thou, friend?
The tiller-end
Thou graspest safely in thy firm strong grip;
Thine eyes are strange,
They seem to range

262

Beyond sea, sky, and cloud, and struggling ship,
Beyond the foam.”

Pilot.—

“I see my home,—
Brown cottage-eaves round which the swallows dip.”

“What see'st thou, friend?
Black leagues extend
On all sides round about thy bark and thee;
Not one star-speck
Above the deck
Abates the darkness of the midnight sea;
The waves' throats roar—”

Pilot.—

“I see the shore,
And eyes that plead with God for mine and me.”

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VII. THE GHOST AT THE WHEEL

Off Beachy Head the vessel wrestles hard:
In vain the captain's eyes would pierce the gloom.
The great grim cliffs, foam-belted, iron-barred,
Through the wild wreaths of scudding sea-fog loom.
No stars shine out.
Put helm about?
Nay! this one ship will hold her lonely way!
Though death be near,
Her captain's deaf to fear:
His voice out-thunders wind and hissing spray.

Yet at the rudder, see this lurid light!
A form takes shape amid the wind and spray:
A white face glitters through the jet-black night.
Why falls the captain on his knees to pray?
His brother's form
Shines through the storm,

264

His brother drowned where these same mad waves flow
Round Beachy Head:
The strong man shakes in dread:
When dead men steer, where will the doomed ship go?

The dead man steered. The labouring ship veered round.
The awe-struck sailors watched without a word.
The waves and threatening thunder ceased to sound:
You might have caught the carol of a bird.
Then slowly grew
The sky pale-blue;
Morn showed that when the spectre took command,
Ten yards away
Were deadly reefs and spray:
Love outlasts death, and aids with living hand.

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VIII. THE SENTRY

Along his path the sentry paces slow;
Above the field of battle soars the moon:
The night is silent, save for wailing low
Of wounded men who will be silent soon.
The sentry stands
With ready hands
And eyes that peer far out into the gloom.
The hostile hosts,
Like groups of ghosts,
Upon the distant shadowy hill-tops loom.

But not on these the soldier's gaze is set;
His heart is gazing elsewhere than his eyes.
He sees a garden sweet with mignonette;
He hears a voice that to his own replies.
O'er leagues of sea
In thought flies he;

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He stands beside a window wreathed with rose.
Sweet eyes of blue,
Pure, soft, and true,
Gaze in his own, till his heart overflows.

Ha! guns flash out. The dream is over then.
The vision vanishes. It melts away.
Lo! plumes, and neighing steeds, and throngs of men,
And rattling rifles, in the morning grey.
No cottage door—
Mad guns that roar!
No tender glance from maiden's loving eyes.
Yet pity not
A soldier's lot:
He well has loved, who for his country dies.

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IX. THE ENGINE DRIVER

Through sleet and snow
The wild wheels go:
Across waste wolds with purple heather bright,
O'er many a bridge,
Through tunnelled ridge,
Flinging weird fires along the startled night,
The engine flies,—
And one man's steady eyes
And hands must guide the thundering force aright.

What trust we place
In that one face,
In those stern lips and dauntless hands that steer:
Bridegroom and bride
Sit side by side,

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And trust their lives to him without a fear.
Through sun and snow
The flashing wild wheels go:
He guides those flashing wheels from year to year.

Through storm and sun
The wild wheels run;
Blue skies o'erhead, or murky midnight gloom:
Through summer showers,
Past woodbine—bowers,
Past steep banks yellowed with soft primrose-bloom.
Yet one man's skill
Makes the end good or ill:
He holds the keys of pleasure—or the tomb!

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X. ON THE RAMPARTS

The gold sun sets above the solemn sands;
The strained sight aches across the yellow sea:
In front, around, the solitude expands,
Grim, terrible, devoid of flower or tree.
The waste seems dead;
No line of red
Upon the horizon brings the city cheer.
Fierce foes surround;
Their trumpets sound;
No answering English bugle-note rings clear.

Upon the ramparts lo! one paces slow;
From time to time he gazes o'er the sands:
If morning brings not help, all hope must go.
He lifts to silent heaven strong urgent hands.
Is help not nigh,
O starlit sky

270

And Eastern moon whose white orb glitters past?
Black looms the night.
No help in sight!
Must the beleaguered city fall at last?

Morning! The thin mist rises in the air:
Not yet the great sun flashes from the sky.
That grim and silent watcher still is there.
To-day must bring relief, or all must die.
Gaze once again
Across the plain:
One last wild look, for now the sun shines clear.
Ha! bayonets gleam;
It is no dream;
Our England's help can reach us even here!

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XI. THE EXPLORER

Through forests deep,
Where serpents creep,
The fearless strong explorer threads his way:
'Neath tropic moons,
Past dim lagoons,
Depths where the sun can never send a ray.
His life is in his hand:
He treads the burning sand:
His labour ceases not from day to day.

And yet at night
His soul takes flight:
He seeks another country in his dreams.
He wanders through
Lanes fresh with dew

272

And cornfields where the scarlet poppy gleams.
He sees the spotted trout
From the dark bank flash out:
He sees green willows fringing English streams.

At morn he wakes:
His road he takes:—
Upon mud-banks vast crocodiles repose.
The trout's quick gleam
Was but a dream:
The poppy was a dream, a dream the rose!
Yet England's viewless might,
Stretching through day and night,
Follows wherever English valour goes.

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XII. THE BURNING SHIP

The transport ship pursues its lonely way
Across the purple moonlit Indian deep.
Above, the stars shine out with tender ray:
The waveless far-spread ocean seems asleep.
All, all was well,
When evening fell,
And well at sunrise all shall surely be.
There's nought to fear!
Steer, keen-eyed helmsman, steer,—
Steer the great ship across the silent sea!

But ah! what piteous sudden cry rings out?
“Fire!”—“Fire!” again.—Oh, can this dread thing be?
Yes, once again the wild heart-rending shout
Troubles the bosom of the peaceful sea.
“Fire!”—Red flames rise
And stain the skies:

274

The fire spreads o'er the sails, and licks the mast.
The ship's consumed!
The passengers are doomed:
Each agonizing moment seems their last.

But ah! the steady soldiers form in lines:
Athwart the fire the regiment's old flag floats.
The fire upon men's fearless faces shines:
The sailors pass the women to the boats.
The boats recede;
Wild eyes give heed—
Their death-watch on the deck the soldiers keep.
One strange last cheer,
Which England's heart shall hear—
And then the sun rose on a sail-less deep.

275

II.

277

I. THE SONG OF ABOU KLEA

Our English manhood's still the same
As in the days of Waterloo;
The sons uphold their father's fame,
Beneath strange skies of burning blue.
The race is growing old, some say,
And half worn out and past its prime;
But English rifles volley “Nay,”
And English manhood conquers time.
Then fear not, and veer not
From duty's narrow way:
What men have done, can still be done,
And shall be done to-day!

The broad wild desert stretched away
For many and many a weary league;

278

Our soldiers suffered day by day,
Enduring hunger, thirst, fatigue.
But still, when their fierce foes they met,
They fought and conquered as of old:
The sun of England has not set;
Our nation's story is not told.
Then blench not, and quench not
High hope's glad golden ray:
What men have done, can still be done,
And shall be done to-day!

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II. ENGLAND HO! FOR ENGLAND

A FEDERATION SONG

Old England needs her children,
She needs them every one,
From India's morning-bugle
To the last sunset-gun:
North, East, and South, she needs them,
And in the furthest West,
And where the Channel waters
Storm round her rocky breast.

The day is surely coming
When all alike she'll need,
All far-off true descendants
Of the old island-breed.

280

The day is surely coming
When all may have to strike
For England, ho! for England—
So all must fare alike!

“For England, ho! for England”—
The great deep-throated cry
Rings far across the waters;
A million mouths reply,
“For England, ho! for England,
Till England's work be done,—
And England's work is timeless
And measured by the sun.”

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III. THE WORKMAN-KING

I'm only a working man, my boys,
I toil in the London smoke,
But when a holiday comes, my boys,
I cease to grind and choke.
The garden of England's mine, my boys,
Its valleys and woods and plains,
For the people rules the whole, my boys,
The people votes and reigns!

The democrat rules the whole, my boys,
The forests of larch and oak;
We never need cough and sniff, my boys,
In the great towns' soot and smoke.
The heather-bud swells on the moors and fells
And the sea is blue and wide;
Do you know how sweet the country smells?
You never can tell till you've tried!

282

A noble heritage this, my boys,
To possess and rule and sway!
Now the people votes and reigns, my boys,
We speak, and our lords obey.
The garden of England's ours, my boys,
But to rule ourselves remains,
For the man who governs and rules himself
Is ever the man who reigns—
The man who can govern and rule himself
Is ever the king who reigns!

283

IV. RETROSPECT

“O conquering poet, thou that hast
The whole world at thy feet,
What laurel-garlands crown thy past!
Is not the present sweet?

Poet.

“I'd fling away my crown of bay,
Lose it without one throe,
To feel beside my own to-day
The tender heart I flung away
Long, long ago!

“O statesman, thou that guidest things
With godlike strength of will,
Thou art more regal than earth's kings;
They hear thee, and are still.”

284

Statesman.

“I shape the world continually,
I lay its monarchs low,
And yet I'd give the world to see
The dead eyes smile that smiled at me
Long, long ago!”

“O warrior, thou that carriest high
Thy grey victorious head,
What pæans echo to the sky
At thy war-horse's tread!”

Warrior.
“I heed them not. I long to hear
The child's speech, soft and slow,
That used to sound upon mine ear,
So sweet, so pure, so silver-clear,
Many and many and many a year
Ago!”

285

V. TWO NESTS

In the leafless sycamore
Lo! a winter nest.
Round it all the ceaseless roar
Of the storm's unrest.
Here love's palace once was seen
Swinging to the breeze,
Roofed and guarded by the green,
Full of melodies.
Here the sunset loved to rest,
Smiling on the thrush's nest.

In yon London attic room
Once a painter wrought;
All our dense November gloom
Darkened not his thought.

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Woman's love was here as well;
Woman's loving eyes
Met the painter's when they fell
From the pictured skies.
Love forsook his fiery quest,
Pausing at the painter's nest.

Both are changed alike to-day.
When the thrushes flew,
Sorrow turned the green leaves grey,
Robbed the heaven of blue.
Painter, sweetheart, both are dead,
But the room remains,
And an easel smeared with red,—
Dusty window panes.
Death destroys with equal zest
Painter's bower, or thrush's nest.

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VI. THE PATHWAY OF LIFE

In every heart a story;
In every heart a grief;
The sorrow of a lifetime;
A pain or rapture brief.
Old hearts and young together,
All hearts alike, are one;
All harden in black weather,
All soften at the sun.

All hearts have had their burden;
Romance has come to most,
Has entered life with trumpets
And vanished like a ghost.

288

Each heart is like an album
With blossoms therein dried;
Sweet blossoms, pure love-blossoms,
That bloomed a day, then died.

Oh! brothers, Oh! strong brothers,
And sisters sad and sweet,
Wives, daughters, fathers, mothers,—
In suffering all can meet.
The path of pain in common
We all alike have trod,—
May that one pathway lead us,
Lead all alike to God!

289

VII. THE PILOT'S WIFE

“The moon shines out with here and there a star,
But furious cloud-ranks storm both stars and moon:
The mad sea drums upon the harbour-bar;
Will the tide slacken soon?
O Sea that took'st my youngest, wilt thou spare?”
—And the Sea answered through the black night-air,
“I took thy youngest. Shall I spare to-night?”

“The thundering breakers sweep and slash the sands;
To westward lo! one line of cream-white foam:
I raise to darkling heaven my helpless hands;
I watch within the home.
O Sea that took'st my eldest, wilt thou save?”
—And the Sea answered as from out a grave,
“I slew thine eldest son for my delight.”

290

“The giant waves plunge o'er the shingly beach;
The tawny-maned great lions of the sea
With pitiless roar howl down all human speech;
Is God far-off from me?
O Sea that slewest my sons, mine husband spare!”
—The Sea's wild laughter shook and rent the air:
Lo! on the beach a drowned face deadly white.

291

VIII. THE DEAD CHILD

But yesterday she played with childish things,
With toys and painted fruit.
To-day she may be speeding on bright wings
Beyond the stars! We ask. The stars are mute.

But yesterday her doll was all in all;
She laughed and was content.
To-day she will not answer, if we call:
She dropped no toys to show the road she went.

But yesterday she smiled and ranged with art
Her playthings on the bed.
To-day and yesterday are leagues apart!
She will not smile to-day, for she is dead.

292

IX. THE SHADOW AT THE DOOR

What adds a beauty to the rose?
The thought that, when the night-wind blows,
The petals white or petals pink
At his cold touch may fail and shrink.
This gives its beauty to the flower—
That it but blooms and lives one hour.
The sun gives charm. What gives it more?
The Shadow waiting at the door.

The sweetest hour may swiftly pass:
Brown are these blades, that once were grass.
Blue eyes, gold hair, they are but shows;
Death takes them, as it takes the rose.
Love draws such eager passionate breath
Because he's followed fast by death.
What makes us value Love's kiss more?
The deathlike Shadow at the door.

293

O love, our bower of love is sweet;
The white rug nestles round your feet.
Your brown eyes watch the bright fire's glow;
I watch your eyes. I love them so!
The pictures watch us from the wall:
I'm king, and you the queen of all.
Does aught else watch? Aye, one thing more:
That ghostlike Shadow at the door!

294

X. SADNESS AND GLADNESS

Our tired hearts gather sadness, as we grow
In care and thoughts and pain.
The sweet spring sunlight that once charmed us so
Will never gleam again.
The grey mists thicken as the sun declines:
A deepening shadow clothes the mountain pines.

But our tired heart sees not the whole of things.
Still over the brown stream
Flashes the kingfisher with rapid wings,
One sudden azure gleam.
Because our souls are weary or are sad,
We quite forget that half the world is glad!

295

Some lover just has won his lady's smile,
As we won long ago:
The wild hedge-blossoms cluster by the stile,
Gold buttercups a-row:
The silvery minnow darts along the stream:
Life is not all a trouble or a dream.

296

XI. NEAR AT HAND

The dead are with us through our nights and days;
They have not journeyed far,
Beyond the clouds, beyond the golden haze
That shrouds the furthest star.
Our earthly flowers
Are still to them most dear,
And still they hear
The songs of merry birds in hawthorn bowers.

Friends who have passed are never far away,
Beyond the warmth of June,
Beyond the sights and sounds and scents of May,
Beyond our waters' tune.
They linger still
To watch the white moon rise
Behind the hill,
And still take pleasure in the sunlit skies.

297

They nearest are, just when we need them most.
They help with living hands;
No spectral shape, no fruitless pallid ghost,
Peers from the unseen lands.
They watch and heed;
Their legions fill the air;
They never speed
Beyond the cry of pain, or reach of prayer.

298

XII. LOVE AND DEATH

An angel watched the world rejoicing:
The flowers sang in the morning light;
The blue sea sang its tender love-song
To golden-girdled stars at night.
All seemed so full of peace and gladness—
Till lo! a sudden ice-cold breath
Passed over hill and wave and meadow:
A stern voice whispered, “I am Death!”

Alas! in all that angel's dreaming
His loving heart had never dreamed
That only for one single moment
The fairy blossoms sang and gleamed.
He turned, and in despairing sadness
Would have resought the heavens above,
When, softly sounding through the shadows,
A sweet voice whispered, “I am Love!”

299

And then the angel saw that fairer
Than heaven with all its strifeless calm
Is earth, for Love makes sorrow lovely,
And plucks from grief the victor's palm.
Aye, Love with its undying sweetness
Can soothe the weary, cheer the lone:
If Death's voice threatens through the darkness,
Love whispers, “Death is overthrown!”

301

III. LYRICS OF LOVE AND PASSION

303

I. COCK MILL

Upon the bridge beside the mill
Two lovers paused, and watched the stream:
The golden autumn woods were still
With all the stillness of a dream.
They gazed into each other's eyes;
They loved—they felt that life was sweet;
So still the woods, so calm the skies,
They almost heard their own hearts beat,
While flowing, ever flowing,
The clear stream sought the sea,
As love-sweet moments going
Mix with eternity.

Beside that grey old Yorkshire mill
A hundred hearts have paused to dream:

304

Have watched the shadows on the hill,
And watched the foam-bells on the stream.
And all have found the present fair,—
Have found the future—who can say?
But still that same old mill stands there,
And still the stream goes day by day
Flowing, for ever flowing,
Bearing dead hopes along
Like dead leaves, all unknowing,
And changing not its song.

And in the future hundreds more
Will pause and watch the rippling stream,
And hope as others hoped of yore,
And dream as dead hearts used to dream.
A sadness hangs about the mill
And broods above the waters' flow;
So many hearts must now be still
Who watched those bright waves long ago,—
Those bright waves ever flowing,
Singing to hill and sky,
“Seize each love-moment going,
For even love must die!”

305

II. A LOST LOVE

I would have died to win her:
I loved her past a dream.
Ah! hand in hand we wandered
Beside the mountain-stream.
I kissed her raven tresses:
I kissed her gentle hand:
I was the proudest lover
In all the wide wide land.

But ah! the rich man sought her;
He bribed her with his gold.
He changed her heart. He bought her.
Her love for me grew cold.
And now my life is over—
In vain the sun may rise;
I never loved the sunshine,
I only loved her eyes!

306

Ah! my lost love, my darling,
Will your heart one day see
That when you won your heaven
You purchased hell for me?
Ah! my lost love, my beauty,
His soul is fierce and mean.
He loves you like a plaything:
I loved you like a queen!

307

III. A SUMMER DAY

The broad blue sky above me,
The sunshine on the corn
(Oh, had I you to love me,
This perfect August morn!)
Green tall trees overslanting,
With sunlight flashing through
(And yet one thing was wanting;
My heart cried out for you!)

Oh, were you with me, darling,
This perfect summer day,
Its glory were completer
Than tongue of man might say.
The green trees of the forest,
The bright flowers of the dell,
All longed for you, my darling;
And oh, I longed as well!

308

And then the eve came slowly:
Soft moonlight glittered down
With tender light and holy
Upon the seaside town.
(Oh, were you only with me,
All longing, love, would cease:
The day that dawned in sadness
Would close its eyes in peace!)

309

IV. THE DANCE

Weary I am this winter night,
Sleep presses on my brain;
But you will dance till morning light
Gleams at the window-pane.
Yes, you will dance, while I shall sleep—
So it must ever be!
This winter night is starry-bright
For you, but dark for me.

Yes, you will dance, while I must sleep,
And many a heart will thrill
As through the dance your Spanish glance
Flashes its magic still.
Yes, you will dance, while I shall rest,
And so it ought to be;
For you the night, ablaze with light!
The lampless dark for me!

310

And ah! I read the lesson through;
I read and grasp it all.
The day may come when sleep more deep
May on my spirit fall.
I shall be sleeping very sound
And very still, maybe,
While life is yet one merry round
Of dance and song for thee.

311

V. “WILT THOU REMEMBER?”

Dost thou remember me? It matters not!
My heart revisits every spot
Which, sweetheart, we have trodden together
In this blue perfect summer weather.

Dost thou remember me? Wilt thou forget?
Mine is the deep regret;
Mine is the undying pain. It sometimes seems
That love comes only in dreams!

Wilt thou remember? Will thy girl's heart keep
Treasured in store-house safe and deep,
Soft memories of the days soon-dying
Before love's laughter changed to sighing?

Wilt thou remember? Must it only be
That I shall think on thee?
Ah! through my heart shoots swift an arrowy pain..
We shall not meet again!

312

VI. FOR EVER YOUNG

The wild world hastens on its way;
The grey-haired century nears its close;
Its sorrow deepens day by day;
The summer blush forsakes the rose.
But, darling, while your voice I hear
And while your dark-brown eyes I see
Sad months and sunless, seasons drear,
Are all the same, all glad, to me.
Despair can never reach me
While your soft hand I hold:
While your eyes love and teach me,
I never shall grow old!

They say that love forsakes the old;
That passion pales and fades away;

313

That even love's bright locks of gold
Must lose their charm and change to grey.
But, darling, while your heart is mine
And while I feel that you are true
For me the skies will ever shine
With summer light, and tenderest blue.
Yes, let old age deride me!
I scorn his mocking tongue.
Dear love, with you beside me,
I am for ever young!

314

VII. AUTUMNAL LOVE

Fair is love whose footstep wanders
'Mid the sunny meads of spring;
Love that smiles and laughs and ponders
While the swallow's on the wing;
Fair and tender,
Full of splendour,
Full of thoughts the roses bring
—Full of dreams the roses bring.

Sweet is love when fervent summer
Fills the fields with flowers and fruit;
When strong passion, swift-winged comer,
Wakes wild echoes with his lute;
Songs of sweeter
Note and metre

315

Make spring's softest music mute
—Make spring's sweetest music mute.

Yet life's autumn brought my treasure.
I was sad and tired and old,
Worn and weary beyond measure,
When thy face I did behold:
Sweet love found me,
Saved and crowned me,
When the corn was turning gold
—When the corn was turning gold.

316

VIII. “GIVE ME THAT ROSE!”

Give me that rose!
It rests, it blows,
Next to your heart, my sweet.
That flower to which such favour has been shown
Amid Song's deathless flowers shall win a throne
From which to watch the baffled years retreat;
Give me that rose!

Give me that rose:
Our moment goes;
What now might chance, again may never be!
If I have loved you with a love supreme,
For just one wild mad moment let me dream
(And die within the dream) that you love me!
Give me the rose!

317

IX. A TUFT OF MEADOW-SWEET

A tuft of withered meadow-sweet,
Just that and nothing more:
And yet what hosts of memories fleet
The dry old fronds restore!
A tuft of withered meadow-sweet,
No gaudy pink or rose;
And yet the dried-up leaves I see,
Long scorned of butterfly and bee,
Are holier, dearer, unto me
Than any flower that blows—
Than any flower that blows, my love,
Than any flower that blows!

For once—ah heaven! how long ago—
You have forgotten quite—
Where over the blue waters' flow
Wild sea-birds' wings shine white,

318

You picked a tuft of meadow-sweet
(This very tuft I hold):
You plucked the flower and quite forgot
The flower, the scene, the youth, the spot;
You chose to share another's lot,
And share another's gold;
You scorned the flower, but I did not,
And do not, though I'm old!

319

X. A HEART IN ARMOUR

I show the world my armour,
All marred and bent with blows.
Let men complain!—I never deign
My true thoughts to disclose.
I show the world my armour,
Clinched close in every part.
To you I show my weakness:
To you I show my heart.

I show my strength to others;
My tenderness to thee:
An ironbound rock I stand the shock
Of life's tempestuous sea.

320

But at thy touch, my darling,
All hardness melts away;
Tears stain my cheek, if you but speak,
And lo! the rock can pray.

How little mankind knows me!
All chained and barred in steel
They find my heart. Then they depart,
And think I cannot feel.
Yet heights and heart-depths hazy
Are sometimes clear to one:
The sun's one favourite daisy
Can understand the sun!

321

XI. AT REST

Your dark eyes win a glory
From every passing day;
The longer grows love's story,
The sweeter 'tis, I say!
We conquer Time together;
For every flower we've seen
Has passed into our kingdom,
And made you ten times Queen!

We win the wealth of summers;
We rob the winter days;
You're Queen in your fur tippet,
Queen of the fireside blaze.
Strong love defies all weather:
While you and I are one,
While we walk on together,
We always see the sun!

322

More beautiful and holy
You are to me, my Queen:
Life's vistas lengthen slowly,
And scene melts into scene.
But life's old strange heart-hunger
Has ceased—I am at rest:
And daily you grow younger,
And I more deeply blest.

323

XII. LOVE THE CONQUEROR

O love, if life should end to-night,
How short our life would seem!
One little flash of summer light;
One brief and passionate dream;
One glimpse of roses on the wall,
Or blue-bells in the lane,
Then, love, the end, the end of all—
Aye, buds might swell, and leaves might fall,
But not for us again!

The stream we used to watch and love
Would ever onward flow;
From the dark pines the grey wood-dove
Would call—we should not know.

324

Ah! not for us the pines would wave,
For us no stream would run;
We should be silent in the grave,
Unable even to hoard and save
One little glimpse of sun.

Yet is not this a sombre view
Of life and all it brings?
Thank heaven, the bright waves still are blue,
And still the throstle sings!
And oh, before love's conquering song
Death's voice sinks quite away;
For life is short, but love is long,
And death is fierce, but love is strong,
And love shall win the day!

325

XIII. “MY ALL!”

Thou art my all! The golden sun
Runs on its course by day,
Till sombre clouds and vapours dun
Fold round its chariot gay:
Yet without thee the world were dark,
The sun would never shine;
It would be just a wandering spark,
Were not thy hand in mine!
Yea, even the golden sun above
Owes all its glory to thy love.

Thou art my all! The flowers are fair
When summer comes to reign:
But bind the sweet buds in thy hair;
What sweetness new they gain!

326

The rose is rich, the lily white,
Yet sweeter each one grows
For soft communion with thy bright
Soft mouth, that richer rose.
Thou art indeed the loveliest thing
That passionate summer steals from spring.

Thou art my all upon this earth;
And thou wilt surely be
My all, when heavenly stars shine forth
On heavenly shores and sea.
My all on earth, my all in heaven,
My earthly summer's rose,
My perfect flower in that strange hour
When earthly summers close—
My light on earth, be still, sweet soul,
My light when life has reached its goal.

327

XIV. “LOVERS STILL!”

From lands where Love for ever dreams
Thy soft eyes took their light;
No moon with quite such magic gleams,
Nor any star by night.
There is a light that from the soul
Flows forth, and that is thine;
The only light that can control
So wild a heart as mine!

Thou bindest all my heart in chains,
Sweet chains, as sweet as strong;
Love sometimes for one moment reigns,
But thou hast reigned so long!

328

In truth I now begin to see
That we shall never part,
But that God's vast eternity
Will link us, heart to heart.

The thought is strange and solemn, love,
Yet sweeter than 'tis strange:
Grand is the love time cannot move
And life's cares cannot change.
Love me with changeless love like this—
Then let time work its will,
It cannot steal or mar our bliss
If we be lovers still!

329

XV. “AH! ONCE I THOUGHT I LOVED THE ROSE”

Ah! once I thought I loved the rose
And once I loved the sky,
Its calm yet passionate repose,
Its blue eternity,—
But now I love thy lips and eyes,
Thy beauty I adore,
I worshipped flowers and summer skies
But thee I worship more.

I know not whether love is pain:
It sometimes brings despair:
Then blooms the summer rose in vain;
In vain it scents the air.

330

If thou dost wrap my soul in doubt
And bid bright hope fly far,
Though all night's countless stars shine out
I never see one star.

And yet with pain I would not part,
Not even with despair,
If only I may win thine heart
And find my solace there.
A thousand faces meet my eyes,
And yet I see but one,—
As silent leagues of starlit skies
Dream only of the sun.

331

XVI. “WHY SEEK FOR LOVE BEYOND THE SKY?”

Why seek for love beyond the sky,
In stars that swim through space?
Behold! sweet love is very nigh,
And very close his face.
On purple fells, by forest-wells,
By our blue ocean's side,
Love lives and smiles, and dreams and dwells;
He lords it far and wide.

Not in the shining distant space
Where faint star-clusters gleam
Does Love reveal his sovereign face,—
Nay, here he loves to dream.
Our dim old earth can hear his mirth
Through forest-arches ring;
Aye, English lake and Scottish firth
Have heard Love's red lips sing!

332

But most of all, O love of mine,
Does Love reveal through thee
His look superb, his touch divine,
His matchless sovereignty.
All stars may die in depths of sky,
All dreams fade even as flowers,
Earth will be heaven if thou art nigh:
Why search, when heaven is ours?

333

NOCTURNE

SLEEP

335

I.

Not for joy and fiery pleasure
Would our spirits ask:
Weary past all mortal measure
With our ceaseless task,
All too weary even to weep,
All our inmost grief confessed,
All we ask is rest and sleep,
Sleep and rest.

Surely, if the world-wide nations,
If these spake as one,
Endless sorrowing generations,
All beneath the sun,
North and South and East and West,
All alike in anguish deep,
All would yearn for sleep and rest,
Rest and sleep.

336

Lovers who loved on undaunted,
Till they met Despair:
Poets, dreamers, ever haunted
By the spectre Care;
If the truth be told indeed,
One prayer throbs through every breast—
“Give our weary souls for meed
Sleep and rest.”

II.

In the far-off heavenly places
Lo! God hears man's cry
Piercing through the starry spaces
And the untroubled sky.
To the sufferer's restless pillow,
To the sailor tossing on the deep,
To the weary sea-bird on the billow,
God to all his creatures sendeth sleep.

When the golden sun is banished
At the word of night,
When the glare of day has vanished,
With reposeful light

337

Gleam the stars upon the ocean,
Soothing all the hearts and eyes that weep:
Rest succeeds to daylight's fierce emotion.
Even the murderer God can rock to sleep.

Even the soul, whom on the morrow
The black gibbet waits,
God can visit in his sorrow.
Through the prison-gates
Passing unopposed and fearless
God can touch his eyes with slumber's wing;
Make that one last sleep most sweet and tearless;
Wander with him through the fields of Spring.

III.

To the lark that nestles 'mid the clover,
After daylong worship of the sun;
To the brown thrush when his song is over,
To the swallow when his flight is done;
To the eagle on his eyrie,
To the robin in his nest,
When the wings of each grow weary,
God sends rest.

338

To the happy bride and bridegroom lying
In the first long love-sleep side by side;
To the aged, when life's hopes seem dying
And when death is longed for like a bride;
To the heart of Summer darkening
Slowly at the Autumn's breath,
God, from his far blue skies hearkening,
Sends his angels, Sleep and Death.

To the heart that starts with happy dreaming,
When the first long days of summer shine;
To the soul that sees the red sun gleaming
Through the autumnal groves of larch and pine;
To the heart of Winter wailing,
When no corn is left to reap,
God with tenderness unfailing
Sends twin angels, Death and Sleep.

IV.

Grey-grown nations, when they weary,
When their course is run;
When their shortening days grow dreary
For the lack of sun;

339

Hebrew, Roman, Carthaginian,
Syrian, Grecian, when their day is past,
God removes to Death's dominion;
Even the longest record ends at last.

As the sacred night descending
Covers all the sky,
Its vast purple robe extending
Downward from on high,
So the night of time has swallowed
Endless nations, cities, one by one.
Greece passed first, the Roman followed.
England too will pass beyond the sun.

All the towns that press and hustle
In the modern maze:
London with its stormy bustle;
Paris' gaslit blaze:
All will pass:—till, leaning lastly
From his throne within the heavenly deep,
God will work once more, more vastly,
Sending on the whole earth rest and sleep.

341

ADAM AND EVE

THE FIRST NIGHT IN PARADISE

[_]

TIME, B.C.—

343

Adam.
O Eve, the darkness deepens. Yet I see
Through the tall branches of this flowering tree
Faint streaks of light. 'Twas there the sun sank low.

Eve.
Adam, the sunshine made the sweet earth glad,
But now I tremble. Darkness makes me sad:
I thought the golden sun would never go.

Adam.
And yet, as fades the sun, the tender light
In thine eyes, Eve, seems ever to grow bright:
The sun is little, so that I have thee.

Eve.
Thou art my lord and king. I cannot fear:
The deepening darkness draws our souls more near:
The day was sweet, and sweet the night will be.

344

Adam.
See—from the branches of the trees depend
Lamps many-coloured, glowing without end
From branch and branch,—or are they in the sky?

Eve.
I know not. Now, behold, a ghostly sun,
White in the darkness, rises there alone,
And, flashing into silver, floats on high.

Adam.
O Eve, the flowers were sweet, the day was bright:
But is not darkness sweeter than the light?
For now our lips seem nearer. Let them meet!

Eve.
My limbs feel heavy with the sultry day.
There's mystery in that white lamp's glittering ray!
Why does my heart at your lips' pressure beat?

Adam.
I call these small lamps, stars—that lamp, the moon.
Rest in my arms: the sun may rise up soon;
More golden than all sunshine is thine hair.

345

Eve.
I love this darkness better than the light:
I feared to touch thee then. But now 'tis right
In thine embrace to rest. I'm happy there!

Adam.
And, Eve, I worship thee, and not the light.
This darkness, which I call our bridal night,
Is sent by God that I may treasure thee.

Eve.
I love the darkness better than the day.
The fruits my red lips fondled fade away,
And now thy lips assert their sovereignty.

Adam.
Let us pray God the sun may never rise!
I never looked before deep in thine eyes:
I never felt that thou wast wholly won.

Eve.
Adam, God took the sun away for this,
Lest it should wax quite jealous of my kiss:
But, Adam, I love thee and not the sun.

349

CHRIST

I.

O Satan, thou art strong, and yet behold!
Thou shalt not snatch one sheep from out my fold,
Nor one star from the star-bright air.
Wherever thou canst pass, God goes before:
Seek thou the lonely heart, or lonely shore,
And thou shalt find my Father there.

The saddest soul is his.—The loneliest rose
That all unloved upon the hill-side blows
He guards and tends with loving hand.—
The least frail rose-pink shell is in his care,—
Though it be least of all the shells that were
Tossed last night on the golden sand.—

All sinful souls are his.—He can redeem
The tiger-heart and tiger-eyes that gleam:
The hands that seek for human prey.

350

Plunge down to deepest hell. Yet God is there.
He passes unscorched through its burning air,
And turns its lurid night to day.

From evil blossoms good. The God who fills
With flowers the hollows of the green-robed hills
And fills with bloom the lap of spring
Is the same God who at the helm presides
When the wild vessel plunges through white tides:
The reckless waters own their King.

Through me the thought of God that underlies
The hills and vales and woods and clouds and skies,
That, ever unseen, works its will,
Became just for one moment plain and clear:
God spake once, so that every soul might hear:
Judge of the ocean by the rill.

The ocean, deep, eternal, rolls along:—
Lifting its billows, foaming, stormy, strong,
It plunges on from shore to shore.
But yet the silver rill that all men see
Has its own waves. God's image was in me,
The human God whom ye adore.

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II.

Nor, Satan, hast thou learned with all thine art
The subtle secret of one woman's heart:—
She serves, thou deem'st, the tyrant best?
She yields herself,—as freely as the snow
That lets the passers by tramp to and fro
Above it, baring its white breast?

Thou deem'st that true love fails, and lust succeeds?
That love may whisper to the river-reeds,
But cannot reach a woman's ear?
Thou deem'st the tyrant's plan the plan that wins:
That woman courts man for his very sins,
And worships best in abject fear?

But for a moment she shall love the base:
Nor is this true love. Then her sweet sad face,
Divine through deepest agony,
Shall seek the presence of a heavenly friend:—
Who suffers anguish to the very end
Must, ere that end comes, worship me.

I win her love by my own wreath of thorn.
O Satan, thou canst hate, and thou canst scorn;
Thy vaunting words are fierce and strong:

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This thou canst never do—by love redeem
One woman; change wild passion's sin-stained dream
Into an angel's sinless song!

I yielded up the tender marriage-kiss,
The common lot of love, content with this—
That in far days beyond my dream
All women of all nations should agree
That man's most noble love sprang first from me:
The stars I lighted, daily gleam.

No flower of love in your wild world to-day
Blossoms, save for love-seeds I flung away
Upon the breeze of Palestine.
New life to woman—this it was I gave.
She passed with me the portals of the grave,
And rose with her white hand in mine.

Never she weeps to-day, but I too weep.—
I send the stars to guide true lovers' sleep.
I make the bright sea blue for these.
The Father hath put all things in my hand:
I make the emerald grass adorn the land,
And gem with ruby fruit the trees.

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O Satan, Satan, thou shalt pass away!
A million years are but one single day
Before high God's eternal gaze.
Two thousand years have passed since Calvary's gloom
Deepened around me,—still thy sins consume
Thyself, and all who seek thy ways.

O lonely spirit, who hast no power to see
The deathless spirit of love that shines in me
And in the Father of all things;
O spirit, who feedest on thine own despair
And see'st alone the shadow in the air
Of thine own form and sombre wings:

O spirit, who see'st in woman just a flower,
White, fragrant, sweet to pluck in pleasure's hour,
And who wouldst have man share thy creed;
O spirit, who on the blood-red battle-plain
See'st nought but wet heaps of the newly slain,—
In cornfields see'st alone the weed:

O spirit, to whom the stars are blots on space;
Who tarriest in thy dreary dwelling-place,
Despairing, doubting, and alone:

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How would it be if from the highest air
A voice said: “Thine ineffable despair
Is ended. Thou too hast a throne.

“Thou hast a throne, but not the lonely seat
Whereon thou sittest while the storm-winds beat
Around and o'er thee through the vast.”
How were it with thee if the high God said:
“O Satan, raise unto the stars thine head;
Thy woes and sins lie in the past.”

There is a loneliness divinely sweet,
My Father's; his in whom all spirits meet,
And yet who dwells apart, alone.
In every petal of each new-born rose
His sweet creative bounty blooms and glows:
All seas make music round his throne.

The purple depths of the eternal space
Serve him for home and boundless dwelling-place;
Yet dwells he in the humblest heart.
His loneliness is ever unlike thine,
For Love creates the loneliness divine,
And Hate is regnant where thou art.

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The eyes of Love are those alone which see.—
When the great English warrior followed me
And passed into the land divine,
What sawest thou, Satan, with thy lurid eyes?
Thou thoughtest death came like a fell surprise;
That Gordon's thoughts were even as thine.

Thou sawest his body flung into the wave.
“The Nile,” thou thoughtest, “is this soldier's grave.
He toiled. God hath rewarded well.
His faith in God,—what was it but a dream?
Soon will his corpse grow rotten in the stream.”
Such was thy thought, when Gordon fell.

But I, the spirit of God beyond the gloom,
Knew that for love there is no grave, no tomb:—
God dies not. Those who live in him
Share the eternal life that was before
The first wave rippled on earth's first green shore;
That will be when all stars wax dim.

This is the eternal life I came to show:—
The life all men may share in here below,
And carry out in heights above:

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The life that through God's veins with great throbs burns;
The life whose rapture thrills him when he turns
Weakness to strength, and hate to love.

This, God's own life, was, ere one sea-bird flew
Above the primal ocean faint and blue
And dull and lifeless, stretching far:
Before the deep primordial dark was lit
By the first golden fire-spark piercing it
With flame that gathered to a star.

And this the life of God beyond all creeds,
Beyond the thoughts of frail men and their deeds,
Beyond their stars, and dreams of space,
Extends for ever towards the eternal gloom
Where solar systems plunge into their tomb
As cataracts plunge, and end their race.

When over the last purple steep of sky
The gold star-cataracts plunge themselves, and die,
When heaven is left again alone,
God's heart will still be starful, and supreme:
Across his soul's sky still the stars will gleam,
And through his thought the winds will moan.

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The heart that said, “Let light awake and be!”
That bade the first blue billows of the sea
Arise and laugh in dawn's bright air:
The heart that said, “Let golden sunrise flame:”
Will still abide unchangeably the same
When suns nor moons nor waves are there.

The heart that bade the storm-winds wail or roar
Along the rocks of many an iron shore
And summoned thunders from the deep
Will still abide the same, when the last breeze
Dies in a whisper in the dying trees,—
When the tired thunder sinks to sleep.

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CHORUS OF SPIRITS OF LIGHT

I.

However sad man's lot,
Despair should enter not
The suffering heart of man.
God by one single stroke
Can heal the heart he broke,
So carrying out his plan.

For no man sighs in vain:
The humblest creature's pain
Is known to God on high.
He hears the horse's neigh;
He hears his red-breasts pray;
He hears his throstles sigh.

He hears his violets plead,
And on the thirsty mead
He sends the gladdening rain.

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The golden buttercup
That sighs its sweet heart up
To heaven, sighs not in vain.

No bright marsh-marigold
Is withered by the cold
Of late tempestuous May
Without a pitying thought
Of God, who hastening brought
At last the warm sun-ray.

The trefoil owes to him
(Just as the cherubim
Receive from him their crowns!)
Its crown of fairy gold
That lights the wind-swept wold
Or glitters on the downs.

The daisy once was white
—Until it caught a sight
Of angels in the air.
Such rapture flushed the flower
That, ever since that hour,
Its glad pink blush is there!

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So with the sons of men.—
God often and again
By sudden stroke can change
The most unequal lot:
Aye, oftentimes his thought
Takes roads and courses strange.

How often has he sent,
To bring some soul content,
An angel all in white—
When on the window-sill
A snowdrop by his will
Has blossomed in the night!

How often has he brought
From sorrow beyond thought
A peace exceeding praise.
Though daylight bring despair,
There shall be starlight fair
And hope in the moon's rays.

Above the weary town
The silver moon smiles down:
The towers and turrets shine.

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The fog-clouds roll away
In banks of sullen grey
Along the river-line.

Though man's vast cities breed
Deep misery indeed,
They yield their joys as well.
Not all the city life
Is one long round of strife,
Or one grim coign of hell.

With song and laugh and shout
The children sally out,
Poor hoarse-throat London rooks!
They leave the streets dull-grey,
And seek the meadows gay
Where gleam the silver brooks.

We follow where they go:
Pale faces all aglow,
And hearts no longer sad.
See! one child's fingers hold
A kingcup. Crown of gold
Would make a queen less glad.

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They paddle in the brook:
They strive—in vain—to hook
With crooked pins and thread
The minnows flashing through
The waters clear and blue,
Or roach with eye-rings red.

Their laughter is divine!
Their merry glances shine!—
Oh, God is good to these.
They make grand holiday
Amid the fragrant hay
And under the elm-trees.

What could an angel need
More than this grassy mead
Which buttercups enstar?
The blue sky shines out clear:
Heaven seems so very near,
And hell so very far!

Their London life is hell
Maybe. To-day this dell
Where white wild roses bloom

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Is heaven indeed, and God
Is in the golden-rod
And in the yaffle's plume.

God speaks to children thus:
And he commissions us
To guard them as they go.
In God's great endless park
From daylight until dark
They wander to and fro.

Then, when the night sinks down
The white moon o'er the town
Shines out and points the way
The children's feet have trod
Sweet country roads with God
For one long summer day.

II.

Moreover things men dread—
War's reckless sword, stained red,
And trumpet-bearing hand,—
The thunder of the seas,—
Swift arrows of disease,—
The thirsty wastes of sand,—

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Blue leagues of glittering ice
That crushes in a vice
The ship that tempts its grip,—
All evil things and strange,—
The loves that pale and change,
That once lay lip to lip,—

All these things God includes
In his vast rule. Man broods
On ceaseless plan and plot;
But under and above
Is the eternal love,
The God who changes not.

God does not dread the storm
That shakes the ship's frail form:
He sees beyond the night.
The sailor fears, for he
Sees darkness whelm the sea—
But God's eye sees the light.

The lover's broken heart
Sees all sweet dreams depart,
For all his dreams were one.

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He sees to-day's black gloom,
And thunder-clouds that loom—
But God's eye sees the sun.

God hears to-morrow sing,
And voice of birds that wing
Through future boughs their way.
Man only marks and sees
The chill and leafless trees;
Man only sees to-day.

Man only sees the earth
To-day. God marks the birth
Of blossoms yet to be.—
Man sees the storm-drum swing.
God sees the white gull's wing
Upon a stormless sea.—

Man sees the earthquake's shock
Rend house and tower and rock,—
Feels horror over all.
God, 'neath to-morrow's sun,
Sees the green lizard run
Along the shored-up wall.—

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Man worships in one star.
In globes that near and far
Whirl in their maddening race
God brings forth ever-new
Life, thrilling the strange blue
Unsounded depths of space.

God, in that he is God,
Upon the winds hath trod
And rested on the storm.
The stars are in his fold;
Nor plunges from his hold
One comet's angry form.

And yet the God who counts
The stars on the dark mounts
Of heaven, nor loses one,
Will let no frail heart break;
And for one daisy's sake
He would create a sun.