Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress and Other Poems Read Online

I looked between

Its iron bars; and saw it lie,

My garden, mine, beneath the sky,

Pied with all flowers bedewed and green:

From bough to bough the song-birds crossed,

From flower to flower the moths and bees;

With all its nests and stately trees

It had been mine, and it was lost.

A shadowless spirit kept the gate,

Blank and unchanging like the grave.

I peering through said: 'Let me have

Some buds to cheer my outcast state.'

He answered not. 'Or give me, then,

But one small twig from shrub or tree;

And bid my home remember me

Until I come to it again.'

The spirit was silent; but he took

Mortar and stone to build a wall;

He left no loophole great or small

Through which my straining eyes might look:

So now I sit here quite alone

Blinded with tears; nor grieve for that,

For nought is left worth looking at

Since my delightful land is gone.

A violet bed is budding near,

Wherein a lark has made her nest:

And good they are, but not the best;

And dear they are, but not so dear.

 

SOUND SLEEP

SOME are laughing, some are weeping;

She is sleeping, only sleeping.

Round her rest wild flowers are creeping;

There the wind is heaping, heaping

Sweetest sweets of Summer's keeping.

By the corn-fields ripe for reaping.

There are lilies, and there blushes

The deep rose, and there the thrushes

Sing till latest sunlight flushes

In the west; a fresh wind brushes

Through the leaves while evening hushes.

There by day the lark is singing

And the grass and weeds are springing;

There by night the bat is winging;

There forever winds are bringing

Far-off chimes of church-bells ringing.

Night and morning, noon and even,

Their sound fills her dreams with Heaven:

The long strife at length is striven:

Till her grave-bands shall be riven

Such is the good portion given

To her soul at rest and shriven.

 

SONG

SHE sat and sang alway

By the green margin of a stream,

Watching the fishes leap and play

Beneath the glad sunbeam.

I sat and wept alway

Beneath the moon's most shadowy beam,

Watching the blossoms of the May

Weep leaves into the stream.

I wept for memory;

She sang for hope that is so fair:

My tears were swallowed by the sea;

Her songs died on the air.

 

SONG

WHEN I am dead, my dearest,

Sing no sad songs for me;

Plant thou no roses at my head,

Nor shady cypress tree:

Be the green grass above me

With showers and dewdrops wet;

And if thou wilt, remember,

And if thou wilt, forget.

I shall not see the shadows,

I shall not feel the rain;

I shall not hear the nightingale

Sing on, as if in pain:

And dreaming through the twilight

That doth not rise nor set,

Haply I may remember,

And haply may forget.

 

DEAD BEFORE DEATH

SONNET

AH! changed and cold, how changed and very cold,

With stiffened smiling lips and cold calm eyes:

Changed, yet the same; much knowing, little wise;

This was the promise of the days of old!

Grown hard and stubborn in the ancient mould,

Grown rigid in the sham of lifelong lies:

We hoped for better things as years would rise,

But it is over as a tale once told.

All fallen the blossom that no fruitage bore,

All lost the present and the future time,

All lost, all lost, the lapse that went before:

So lost till death shut-to the opened door,

So lost from chime to everlasting chime,

So cold and lost forever evermore.

 

BITTER FOR SWEET

SUMMER is gone with all its roses,

Its sun and perfumes and sweet flowers,

Its warm air and refreshing showers:

And even Autumn closes.

Yea, Autumn's chilly self is going,

And winter comes which is yet colder;

Each day the hoar-frost waxes bolder

And the last buds cease blowing.

 

SISTER MAUDE

WHO told my mother of my shame,

Who told my father of my dear?

Oh who but Maude, my sister Maude,

Who lurked to spy and peer.

Cold he lies, as cold as stone,

With his clotted curls about his face:

The comeliest corpse in all the world

And worthy of a queen's embrace.

You might have spared his soul, sister,

Have spared my soul, your own soul too:

Though I had not been born at all,

He'd never have looked at you.

My father may sleep in Paradise,

My mother at Heaven-gate:

But sister Maude shall get no sleep

Either early or late.

My father may wear a golden gown,

My mother a crown may win;

If my dear and I knocked at Heaven-gate

Perhaps they'd let us in:

But sister Maude, oh sister Maude,

Bide you with death and sin.

 

REST

SONNET

O EARTH, lie heavily upon her eyes;

Seal her sweet eyes weary of watching, Earth;

Lie close around her; leave no room for mirth

With its harsh laughter, nor for sound of sighs.

She hath no questions, she hath no replies,

Hushed in and curtained with a blessèd dearth

Of all that irked her from the hour of birth;

With stillness that is almost Paradise.

Darkness more clear than noon-day holdeth her,

Silence more musical than any song;

Even her very heart has ceased to stir:

Until the morning of Eternity

Her rest shall not begin nor end, but be;

And when she wakes she will not think it long.

 

THE FIRST SPRING DAY

I WONDER if the sap is stirring yet,

If wintry birds are dreaming of a mate,

If frozen snowdrops feel as yet the sun

And crocus fires are kindling one by one:

Sing, robin, sing;

I still am sore in doubt concerning Spring.

I wonder if the springtide of this year

Will bring another Spring both lost and dear;

If heart and spirit will find out their Spring,

Or if the world alone will bud and sing:

Sing, hope, to me;

Sweet notes, my hope, soft notes for memory.

The sap will surely quicken soon or late,

The tardiest bird will twitter to a mate;

So Spring must dawn again with warmth and bloom,

Or in this world, or in the world to come:

Sing, voice of Spring,

Till I too blossom and rejoice and sing.

 

THE CONVENT THRESHOLD

THERE'S blood between us, love, my love,

There's father's blood, there's brother's blood;

And blood's a bar I cannot pass:

I choose the stairs that mount above,

Stair after golden skyward stair,

To city and to sea of glass.

My lily feet are soiled with mud,

With scarlet mud which tells a tale

Of hope that was, of guilt that was,

Of love that shall not yet avail;

Alas, my heart, if I could bare

My heart, this selfsame stain is there:

I seek the sea of glass and fire

To wash the spot, to burn the snare;

Lo, stairs are meant to lift us higher:

Mount with me, mount the kindled stair.

Your eyes look earthward, mine look up.

I see the far-off city grand,

Beyond the hills a watered land,

Beyond the gulf a gleaming strand

Of mansions where the righteous sup;

Who sleep at ease among their trees,

Or wake to sing a cadenced hymn

With Cherubim and Seraphim;

They bore the Cross, they drained the cup,

Racked, roasted, crushed, wrenched limb from limb,

They the offscouring of the world:

The heaven of starry heavens unfurled,

The sun before their face is dim.

You looking earthward what see you?

Milk-white wine-flushed among the vines,

Up and down leaping, to and fro,

Most glad, most full, made strong with wines,

Blooming as peaches pearled with dew,

Their golden windy hair afloat,

Love-music warbling in their throat,

Young men and women come and go.

You linger, yet the time is short:

Flee for your life, gird up your strength

To flee; the shadows stretched at length

Show that day wanes, that night draws nigh;

Flee to the mountain, tarry not.

Is this a time for smile and sigh,

For songs among the secret trees

Where sudden blue birds nest and sport?

The time is short and yet you stay:

Today while it is called today

Kneel, wrestle, knock, do violence, pray;

Today is short, tomorrow nigh:

Why will you die? why will you die?

You sinned with me a pleasant sin:

Repent with me, for I repent.

Woe's me the lore I must unlearn!

Woe's me that easy way we went,

So rugged when I would return!

How long until my sleep begin,

How long shall stretch these nights and days?

Surely, clean Angels cry, she prays;

She laves her soul with tedious tears:

How long must stretch these years and years?

I turn from you my cheeks and eyes,

My hair which you shall see no more—

Alas for joy that went before,

For joy that dies, for love that dies.

Only my lips still turn to you,

My livid lips that cry, Repent.

Oh weary life, oh weary Lent,

Oh weary time whose stars are few.

How should I rest in Paradise,

Or sit on steps of heaven alone?

If Saints and Angels spoke of love

Should I not answer from my throne:

Have pity upon me, ye my friends,

For I have heard the sound thereof:

Should I not turn with yearning eyes,

Turn earthwards with a pitiful pang?

Oh save me from a pang in heaven.

By all the gifts we took and gave,

Repent, repent, and be forgiven:

This life is long, but yet it ends;

Repent and purge your soul and save:

No gladder song the morning stars

Upon their birthday morning sang

Than Angels sing when one repents.

I tell you what I dreamed last night:

A spirit with transfigured face

Fire-footed clomb an infinite space.

I heard his hundred pinions clang,

Heaven-bells rejoicing rang and rang,

Heaven-air was thrilled with subtle scents,

Worlds spun upon their rushing cars:

He mounted shrieking: 'Give me light.'

Still light was poured on him, more light;

Angels, Archangels he outstripped

Exultant in exceeding might,

And trod the skirts of Cherubim.

Still 'Give me light,' he shrieked; and dipped

His thirsty face, and drank a sea,

Athirst with thirst it could not slake.

I saw him, drunk with knowledge, take

From aching brows the aureole crown—

His locks writhed like a cloven snake—

He left his throne to grovel down

And lick the dust of Seraphs' feet:

For what is knowledge duly weighed?

Knowledge is strong, but love is sweet;

Yea all the progress he had made

Was but to learn that all is small

Save love, for love is all in all.

I tell you what I dreamed last night:

It was not dark, it was not light,

Cold dews had drenched my plenteous hair

Through clay; you came to seek me there.

And 'Do you dream of me?' you said.

My heart was dust that used to leap

To you; I answered half asleep:

'My pillow is damp, my sheets are red,

There's a leaden tester to my bed:

Find you a warmer playfellow,

A warmer pillow for your head,

A kinder love to love than mine.'

You wrung your hands; while I like lead

Crushed downwards through the sodden earth:

You smote your hands but not in mirth,

And reeled but were not drunk with wine.

For all night long I dreamed of you:

I woke and prayed against my will,

Then slept to dream of you again.

At length I rose and knelt and prayed:

I cannot write the words I said,

My words were slow, my tears were few;

But through the dark my silence spoke

Like thunder. When this morning broke,

My face was pinched, my hair was grey,

And frozen blood was on the sill

Where stifling in my struggle I lay.

If now you saw me you would say:

Where is the face I used to love?

And I would answer: Gone before;

It tarries veiled in paradise.

When once the morning star shall rise,

When earth with shadow flees away

And we stand safe within the door,

Then you shall lift the veil thereof.

Look up, rise up: for far above

Our palms are grown, our place is set;

There we shall meet as once we met

And love with old familiar love.

 

UP-HILL

DOES the road wind up-hill all the way?

Yes, to the very end.

Will the day's journey take the whole long day?

From morn to night, my friend.

But is there for the night a resting-place?

A roof for when the slow dark hours begin.

May not the darkness hide it from my face?

You cannot miss that inn.

Shall I meet other wayfarers at night?

Those who have gone before.

Then must I knock, or call when just in sight?

They will not keep you standing at that door.

Shall I find comfort, travel-sore and weak?

Of labour you shall find the sum.

Will there be beds for me and all who seek?

Yea, beds for all who come.

 

DEVOTIONAL PIECES

'THE LOVE OF CHRIST WHICH PASSETH KNOWLEDGE'

I BORE with thee long weary days and nights,

Through many pangs of heart, through many tears;

I bore with thee, thy hardness, coldness, slights,

For three and thirty years.

Who else had dared for thee what I have dared?

I plunged the depth most deep from bliss above;

I not My flesh, I not My spirit spared:

Give thou Me love for love.

For thee I thirsted in the daily drouth,

For thee I trembled in the nightly frost:

Much sweeter thou than honey to My mouth:

Why wilt thou still be lost?

I bore thee on My shoulders and rejoiced:

Men only marked upon My shoulders borne

The branding cross; and shouted hungry-voiced,

Or wagged their heads in scorn.

Thee did nails grave upon My hands, thy name

Did thorns for frontlets stamp between Mine eyes:

I, Holy One, put on thy guilt and shame;

I, God, Priest, Sacrifice.

A thief upon My right hand and My left;

Six hours alone, athirst, in misery:

At length in death one smote My heart and cleft

A hiding-place for thee.

Nailed to the racking cross, than bed of down

More dear, whereon to stretch Myself and sleep:

So did I win a kingdom,—share My crown;

A harvest,—come and reap.

 

'A BRUISED REED SHALL HE NOT BREAK'

I WILL accept thy will to do and be,

Thy hatred and intolerance of sin,

Thy will at least to love, that burns within

And thirsteth after Me:

So will I render fruitful, blessing still,

The germs and small beginnings in thy heart,

Because thy will cleaves to the better part.—

Alas, I cannot will.

Dost not thou will, poor soul? Yet I receive

The inner unseen longings of the soul,

I guide them turning towards Me; I control

And charm hearts till they grieve:

If thou desire, it yet shall come to pass,

Though thou but wish indeed to choose My love;

For I have power in earth and heaven above.—

I cannot wish, alas!

What, neither choose nor wish to choose? and yet

I still must strive to win thee and constrain:

For thee I hung upon the cross in pain,

How then can I forget?

If thou as yet dost neither love, nor hate,

Nor choose, nor wish,—resign thyself, be still

Till I infuse love, hatred, longing, will.—

I do not deprecate.

 

A BETTER RESURRECTION

I HAVE no wit, no words, no tears;

My heart within me like a stone

Is numbed too much for hopes or fears;

Look right, look left, I dwell alone;

I lift mine eyes, but dimmed with grief

No everlasting hills I see;

My life is in the falling leaf:

O Jesus, quicken me.

My life is like a faded leaf,

My harvest dwindled to a husk;

Truly my life is void and brief

And tedious in the barren dusk;

My life is like a frozen thing,

No bud nor greenness can I see:

Yet rise it shall—the sap of Spring;

O Jesus, rise in me.

My life is like a broken bowl,

A broken bowl that cannot hold

One drop of water for my soul

Or cordial in the searching cold

Cast in the fire the perished thing,

Melt and remould it, till it be

A royal cup for Him my King:

O Jesus, drink of me.

 

ADVENT

THIS Advent moon shines cold and clear,

These Advent nights are long;

Our lamps have burned year after year

And still their flame is strong.

'Watchman, what of the night?' we cry,

Heart-sick with hope deferred:

'No speaking signs are in the sky,'

Is still the watchman's word.

The Porter watches at the gate,

The servants watch within;

The watch is long betimes and late,

The prize is slow to win.

'Watchman, what of the night?' But still

His answer sounds the same:

'No daybreak tops the utmost hill,

Nor pale our lamps of flame.'

One to another hear them speak

The patient virgins wise:

'Surely He is not far to seek'—

'All night we watch and rise.'

'The days are evil looking back,

The coming days are dim;

Yet count we not His promise slack,

But watch and wait for Him.'

One with another, soul with soul,

They kindle fire from fire:

'Friends watch us who have touched the goal.'

'They urge us, come up higher.'

'With them shall rest our waysore feet,

With them is built our home,

With Christ.'—'They sweet, but He most sweet,

Sweeter than honeycomb.'

There no more parting, no more pain,

The distant ones brought near,

The lost so long are found again,

Long lost but longer dear:

Eye hath not seen, ear hath not heard,

Nor heart conceived that rest,

With them our good things long deferred,

With Jesus Christ our Best.

We weep because the night is long,

We laugh for day shall rise,

We sing a slow contented song

And knock at Paradise.

Weeping we hold Him fast, Who wept

For us, we hold Him fast;

And will not let Him go except

He bless us first or last.

Weeping we hold Him fast tonight;

We will not let Him go

Till daybreak smite our wearied sight

And summer smite the snow:

Then figs shall bud, and dove with dove

Shall coo the livelong day;

Then He shall say, 'Arise, My love,

My fair one, come away.'

 

THE THREE ENEMIES

THE FLESH

'Sweet, thou art pale.'

'More pale to see,

Christ hung upon the cruel tree

And bore His Father's wrath for me.'

'Sweet, thou art sad.'

'Beneath a rod

More heavy, Christ for my sake trod

The winepress of the wrath of God.'

'Sweet, thou art weary.'

'Not so Christ:

Whose mighty love of me sufficed

For Strength, Salvation, Eucharist.'

'Sweet, thou art footsore.'

'If I bleed,

His feet have bled: yea, in my need

His Heart once bled for mine indeed.'

THE WORLD

'Sweet, thou art young.'

'So He was young

Who for my sake in silence hung

Upon the Cross with Passion wrung.'

'Look, thou art fair.'

'He was more fair

Than men, Who deigned for me to wear

A visage marred beyond compare.'

'And thou hast riches.'

'Daily bread:

All else is His; Who living, dead,

For me lacked where to lay His Head.'

'And life is sweet.'

'It was not so

To Him, Whose Cup did overflow

With mine unutterable woe.'

THE DEVIL

'Thou drinkest deep.'

'When Christ would sup

He drained the dregs from out my cup:

So how should I be lifted up?'

'Thou shalt win Glory.'

'In the skies,

Lord Jesus, cover up mine eyes

Lest they should look on vanities.'

'Thou shalt have Knowledge.'

'Helpless dust!

In Thee, O Lord, I put my trust:

Answer Thou for me, Wise and Just.'

'And Might.'—

'Get thee behind me. Lord,

Who hast redeemed and not abhorred

My soul, oh keep it by Thy Word.'

 

THE ONE CERTAINTY

SONNET

VANITY of vanities, the Preacher saith,

All things are vanity. The eye and ear

Cannot be filled with what they see and hear.

Like early dew, or like the sudden breath

Of wind, or like the grass that withereth,

Is man, tossed to and fro by hope and fear:

So little joy hath he, so little cheer,

Till all things end in the long dust of death.

Today is still the same as yesterday,

Tomorrow also even as one of them;

And there is nothing new under the sun:

Until the ancient race of Time be run,

The old thorns shall grow out of the old stem,

And morning shall be cold and twilight grey.

 

CHRISTIAN AND JEW

A DIALOGUE

'OH happy happy land!

Angels like rushes stand

About the wells of light.'—

'Alas, I have not eyes for this fair sight:

Hold fast my hand.—

'As in a soft wind, they

Bend all one blessed way,

Each bowed in his own glory, star with star.'—

'I cannot see so far,

Here shadows are.'—

'White-winged the cherubim,

Yet whiter seraphim,

Glow white with intense fire of love.'—

'Mine eyes are dim:

I look in vain above,

And miss their hymn.'—

'Angels, Archangels cry

One to other ceaselessly

(I hear them sing)

One "Holy, Holy, Holy" to their King.'—

'I do not hear them, I.'—

'At one side Paradise

Is curtained from the rest,

Made green for wearied eyes;

Much softer than the breast

Of mother-dove clad in a rainbow's dyes.

'All precious souls are there

Most safe, elect by grace,

All tears are wiped forever from their face:

Untired in prayer

They wait and praise

Hidden for a little space.

'Boughs of the Living Vine

They spread in summer shine

Green leaf with leaf:

Sap of the Royal Vine it stirs like wine

In all both less and chief.

'Sing to the Lord,

All spirits of all flesh, sing;

For He hath not abhorred

Our low estate nor scorn'd our offering:

Shout to our King.'—

'But Zion said:

My Lord forgetteth me.

Lo, she hath made her bed

In dust; forsaken weepeth she

Where alien rivers swell the sea.

'She laid her body as the ground,

Her tender body as the ground to those

Who passed; her harpstrings cannot sound

In a strange land; discrowned

She sits, and drunk with woes.'—

'O drunken not with wine,

Whose sins and sorrows have fulfilled the sum,—

Be not afraid, arise, be no more dumb;

Arise, shine,

For thy light is come.'—

'Can these bones live?'—

'God knows:

The prophet saw such clothed with flesh and skin;

A wind blew on them and life entered in;

They shook and rose.

Hasten the time, O Lord, blot out their sin,

Let life begin.'

 

SWEET DEATH

THE sweetest blossoms die.

And so it was that, going day by day

Unto the Church to praise and pray,

And crossing the green churchyard thoughtfully,

I saw how on the graves the flowers

Shed their fresh leaves in showers,

And how their perfume rose up to the sky

Before it passed away.

The youngest blossoms die.

They die and fall and nourish the rich earth

From which they lately had their birth;

Sweet life, but sweeter death that passeth by

And is as though it had not been:—

All colours turn to green;

The bright hues vanish and the odours fly,

The grass hath lasting worth.

And youth and beauty die.

So be it, O my God, Thou God of truth:

Better than beauty and than youth

Are Saints and Angels, a glad company;

And Thou, O Lord, our Rest and Ease,

Art better far than these.

Why should we shrink from our full harvest? why

Prefer to glean with Ruth?

 

SYMBOLS

I WATCHED a rosebud very long

Brought on by dew and sun and shower,

Waiting to see the perfect flower:

Then, when I thought it should be strong,

It opened at the matin hour

And fell at evensong.

I watched a nest from day to day,

A green nest full of pleasant shade,

Wherein three speckled eggs were laid:

But when they should have hatched in May,

The two old birds had grown afraid

Or tired, and flew away.

Then in my wrath I broke the bough

That I had tended so with care,

Hoping its scent should fill the air;

I crushed the eggs, not heeding how

Their ancient promise had been fair:

I would have vengeance now.

But the dead branch spoke from the sod,

And the eggs answered me again:

Because we failed dost thou complain?

Is thy wrath just? And what if God,

Who waiteth for thy fruits in vain,

Should also take the rod?

 

'CONSIDER THE LILIES OF THE FIELD'

FLOWERS preach to us if we will hear:—

The rose saith in the dewy morn:

I am most fair;

Yet all my loveliness is born

Upon a thorn.

The poppy saith amid the corn:

Let but my scarlet head appear

And I am held in scorn;

Yet juice of subtle virtue lies

Within my cup of curious dyes.

The lilies say: Behold how we

Preach without words of purity.

The violets whisper from the shade

Which their own leaves have made:

Men scent our fragrance on the air,

Yet take no heed

Of humble lessons we would read.

But not alone the fairest flowers:

The merest grass

Along the roadside where we pass,

Lichen and moss and sturdy weed,

Tell of His love who sends the dew,

The rain and sunshine too,

To nourish one small seed.

 

THE WORLD

SONNET

BY day she woos me, soft, exceeding fair:

But all night as the moon so changeth she;

Loathsome and foul with hideous leprosy

And subtle serpents gliding in her hair.

By day she woos me to the outer air,

Ripe fruits, sweet flowers, and full satiety:

But through the night, a beast she grins at me,

A very monster void of love and prayer.

By day she stands a lie: by night she stands

In all the naked horror of the truth

With pushing horns and clawed and clutching hands.

Is this a friend indeed; that I should sell

My soul to her, give her my life and youth,

Till my feet, cloven too, take hold on hell?

 

A TESTIMONY

I SAID of laughter: it is vain.

Of mirth I said: what profits it?

Therefore I found a book, and writ

Therein how ease and also pain,

How health and sickness, every one

Is vanity beneath the sun.

Man walks in a vain shadow; he

Disquieteth himself in vain.

The things that were shall be again;

The rivers do not fill the sea,

But turn back to their secret source;

The winds too turn upon their course.

Our treasures moth and rust corrupt,

Or thieves break through and steal, or they

Make themselves wings and fly away.

One man made merry as he supped,

Nor guessed how when that night grew dim

His soul would be required of him.

We build our houses on the sand

Comely withoutside and within;

But when the winds and rains begin

To beat on them, they cannot stand:

They perish, quickly overthrown,

Loose from the very basement stone.

All things are vanity, I said:

Yea vanity of vanities.

The rich man dies; and the poor dies:

The worms feeds sweetly on the dead.

Whate'er thou lackest, keep this trust:

All in the end shall have but dust:

The one inheritance, which best

And worst alike shall find and share:

The wicked cease from troubling there,

And there the weary be at rest;

There all the wisdom of the wise

Is vanity of vanities.

Man flourishes as a green leaf

And as a leaf doth pass away;

Or as a shade that cannot stay

And leaves no track, his course is brief:

Yet man doth hope and fear and plan

Till he is dead:—oh foolish man!

Our eyes cannot be satisfied

With seeing, nor our ears be filled

With hearing: yet we plant and build

And buy and make our borders wide;

We gather wealth, we gather care,

But know not who shall be our heir.

Why should we hasten to arise

So early, and so late take rest?

Our labour is not good; our best

Hopes fade; our heart is stayed on lies:

Verily, we sow wind; and we

Shall reap the whirlwind, verily.

He who hath little shall not lack;

He who hath plenty shall decay:

Our fathers went; we pass away;

Our children follow on our track:

So generations fail, and so

They are renewed and come and go.

The earth is fattened with our dead;

She swallows more and doth not cease:

Therefore her wine and oil increase

And her sheaves are not numberèd;

Therefore her plants are green, and all

Her pleasant trees lusty and tall.

Therefore the maidens cease to sing,

And the young men are very sad;

Therefore the sowing is not glad,

And mournful is the harvesting.

Of high and low, of great and small,

Vanity is the lot of all.

A King dwelt in Jerusalem;

He was the wisest man on earth;

He had all riches from his birth,

And pleasures till he tired of them;

Then, having tested all things, he

Witnessed that all are vanity.

 

SLEEP AT SEA

SOUND the deep waters:—

Who shall sound that deep?—

Too short the plummet,

And the watchmen sleep.

Some dream of effort

Up a toilsome steep;

Some dream of pasture grounds

For harmless sheep.

White shapes flit to and fro

From mast to mast;

They feel the distant tempest

That nears them fast:

Great rocks are straight ahead,

Great shoals not past;

They shout to one another

Upon the blast.

Oh, soft the streams drop music

Between the hills,

And musical the birds' nests

Beside those rills:

The nests are types of home

Love-hidden from ills,

The nests are types of spirits

Love-music fills.

So dream the sleepers,

Each man in his place;

The lightning shows the smile

Upon each face:

The ship is driving, driving,

It drives apace:

And sleepers smile, and spirits

Bewail their case.

The lightning glares and reddens

Across the skies;

It seems but sunset

To those sleeping eyes.

When did the sun go down

On such a wise?

From such a sunset

When shall day arise?

'Wake,' call the spirits:

But to heedless ears:

They have forgotten sorrows

And hopes and fears;

They have forgotten perils

And smiles and tears;

Their dream has held them long,

Long years and years.

'Wake,' call the spirits again:

But it would take

A louder summons

To bid them awake.

Some dream of pleasure

For another's sake;

Some dream, forgetful

Of a lifelong ache.

One by one slowly,

Ah, how sad and slow!

Wailing and praying

The spirits rise and go:

Clear stainless spirits

White as white as snow;

Pale spirits, wailing

For an overthrow.

One by one flitting,

Like a mournful bird

Whose song is tired at last

For no mate heard.

The loving voice is silent,

The useless word;

One by one flitting

Sick with hope deferred.

Driving and driving,

The ship drives amain:

While swift from mast to mast

Shapes flit again,

Flit silent as the silence

Where men lie slain;

Their shadow cast upon the sails

Is like a stain.

No voice to call the sleepers,

No hand to raise:

They sleep to death in dreaming,

Of length of days.

Vanity of vanities,

The Preacher says:

Vanity is the end

Of all their ways.

 

FROM HOUSE TO HOME

THE first was like a dream through summer heat,

The second like a tedious numbing swoon,

While the half-frozen pulses lagged to beat

Beneath a winter moon.

'But,' says my friend, 'what was this thing and where?'

It was a pleasure-place within my soul;

An earthly paradise supremely fair

That lured me from the goal.

The first part was a tissue of hugged lies;

The second was its ruin fraught with pain:

Why raise the fair delusion to the skies

But to be dashed again?

My castle stood of white transparent glass

Glittering and frail with many a fretted spire,

But when the summer sunset came to pass

It kindled into fire.

My pleasaunce was an undulating green,

Stately with trees whose shadows slept below,

With glimpses of smooth garden-beds between

Like flame or sky or snow.

Swift squirrels on the pastures took their ease,

With leaping lambs safe from the unfeared knife;

All singing-birds rejoicing in those trees

Fulfilled their careless life.

Woodpigeons cooed there, stockdoves nestled there;

My trees were full of songs and flowers and fruit,

Their branches spread a city to the air

And mice lodged in their root.

My heath lay farther off, where lizards lived

In strange metallic mail, just spied and gone;

Like darted lightnings here and there perceived

But nowhere dwelt upon.

Frogs and fat toads were there to hop or plod

And propagate in peace, an uncouth crew,

Where velvet-headed rushes rustling nod

And spill the morning dew.

All caterpillars throve beneath my rule,

With snails and slugs in corners out of sight;

I never marred the curious sudden stool

That perfects in a night.

Safe in his excavated gallery

The burrowing mole groped on from year to year;

No harmless hedgehog curled because of me

His prickly back for fear.

Oft times one like an angel walked with me,

With spirit-discerning eyes like flames of fire,

But deep as the unfathomed endless sea

Fulfilling my desire:

And sometimes like a snowdrift he was fair,

And sometimes like a sunset glorious red,

And sometimes he had wings to scale the air

With aureole round his head.

We sang our songs together by the way,

Calls and recalls and echoes of delight;

So communed we together all the day,

And so in dreams by night.

I have no words to tell what way we walked,

What unforgotten path now closed and sealed;

I have no words to tell all things we talked,

All things that he revealed:

This only can I tell: that hour by hour

I waxed more feastful, lifted up and glad;

I felt no thorn-prick when I plucked a flower,

Felt not my friend was sad.

'Tomorrow,' once I said to him with smiles:

'Tonight,' he answered gravely and was dumb,

But pointed out the stones that numbered miles

And miles and miles to come.

'Not so,' I said: 'tomorrow shall be sweet;

Tonight is not so sweet as coming days.'

Then first I saw that he had turned his feet,

Had turned from me his face:

Running and flying miles and miles he went,

But once looked back to beckon with his hand

And cry: 'Come home, O love, from banishment:

Come to the distant land.'

That night destroyed me like an avalanche;

One night turned all my summer back to snow:

Next morning not a bird upon my branch,

Not a lamb woke below,—

No bird, no lamb, no living breathing thing;

No squirrel scampered on my breezy lawn,

No mouse lodged by his hoard: all joys took wing

And fled before that dawn.

Azure and sun were starved from heaven above,

No dew had fallen, but biting frost lay hoar:

O love, I knew that I should meet my love,

Should find my love no more.

'My love no more,' I muttered stunned with pain:

I shed no tear, I wrung no passionate hand,

Till something whispered: 'You shall meet again,

Meet in a distant land.'

Then with a cry like famine I arose,

I lit my candle, searched from room to room,

Searched up and down; a war of winds that froze

Swept through the blank of gloom.

I searched day after day, night after night;

Scant change there came to me of night or day:

'No more,' I wailed, 'no more:' and trimmed my light,

And gnashed but did not pray,

Until my heart broke and my spirit broke:

Upon the frost-bound floor I stumbled, fell,

And moaned: 'It is enough: withhold the stroke.

Farewell, O love, farewell.'

Then life swooned from me. And I heard the song

Of spheres and spirits rejoicing over me:

One cried: 'Our sister, she hath suffered long.'—

One answered: 'Make her see.'—

One cried: 'Oh blessèd she who no more pain,

Who no more disappointment shall receive.'—

One answered: 'Not so: she must live again;

Strengthen thou her to live.'

So while I lay entranced a curtain seemed

To shrivel with crackling from before my face;

Across mine eyes a waxing radiance beamed

And showed a certain place.

I saw a vision of a woman, where

Night and new morning strive for domination;

Incomparably pale, and almost fair,

And sad beyond expression.

Her eyes were like some fire-enshrining gem,

Were stately like the stars, and yet were tender;

Her figure charmed me like a windy stem

Quivering and drooped and slender.

I stood upon the outer barren ground,

She stood on inner ground that budded flowers;

While circling in their never-slackening round

Danced by the mystic hours.

But every flower was lifted on a thorn,

And every thorn shot upright from its sands

To gall her feet; hoarse laughter pealed in scorn

With cruel clapping hands.

She bled and wept, yet did not shrink; her strength

Was strung up until daybreak of delight:

She measured measureless sorrow toward its length,

And breadth, and depth, and height.

Then marked I how a chain sustained her form,

A chain of living links not made nor riven:

It stretched sheer up through lightning, wind, and storm,

And anchored fast in heaven.

One cried: 'How long? yet founded on the Rock

She shall do battle, suffer, and attain.'—

One answered: 'Faith quakes in the tempest shock:

Strengthen her soul again.'

I saw a cup sent down and come to her

Brimfull of loathing and of bitterness:

She drank with livid lips that seemed to stir

The depth, not make it less.

But as she drank I spied a hand distil

New wine and virgin honey; making it

First bitter-sweet, then sweet indeed, until

She tasted only sweet.

Her lips and cheeks waxed rosy-fresh and young;

Drinking she sang: 'My soul shall nothing want;'

And drank anew: while soft a song was sung,

A mystical slow chant.

One cried: 'The wounds are faithful of a friend:

The wilderness shall blossom as a rose.'—

One answered: 'Rend the veil, declare the end,

Strengthen her ere she goes.'

Then earth and heaven were rolled up like a scroll;

Time and space, change and death, had passed away;

Weight, number, measure, each had reached its whole;

The day had come, that day.

Multitudes—multitudes—stood up in bliss,

Made equal to the angels, glorious, fair;

With harps, palms, wedding-garments, kiss of peace

And crowned and haloed hair.

They sang a song, a new song in the height,

Harping with harps to Him Who is Strong and True:

They drank new wine, their eyes saw with new light,

Lo, all things were made new.

Tier beyond tier they rose and rose and rose

So high that it was dreadful, flames with flames:

No man could number them, no tongue disclose

Their secret sacred names.

As though one pulse stirred all, one rush of blood

Fed all, one breath swept through them myriad-voiced,

They struck their harps, cast down their crowns, they stood

And worshipped and rejoiced.

Each face looked one way like a moon new-lit,

Each face looked one way towards its Sun of Love;

Drank love and bathed in love and mirrored it

And knew no end thereof.

Glory touched glory on each blessèd head,

Hands locked dear hands never to sunder more:

These were the new-begotten from the dead

Whom the great birthday bore.

Heart answered heart, soul answered soul at rest,

Double against each other, filled, sufficed:

All loving, loved of all; but loving best

And best beloved of Christ.

I saw that one who lost her love in pain,

Who trod on thorns, who drank the loathsome cup;

The lost in night, in day was found again;

The fallen was lifted up.

They stood together in the blessèd noon,

They sang together through the length of days;

Each loving face bent Sunwards like a moon

New-lit with love and praise.

Therefore, O friend, I would not if I might

Rebuild my house of lies, wherein I joyed

One time to dwell: my soul shall walk in white,

Cast down but not destroyed.

Therefore in patience I possess my soul;

Yea, therefore as a flint I set my face,

To pluck down, to build up again the whole—

But in a distant place.

These thorns are sharp, yet I can tread on them;

This cup is loathsome, yet He makes it sweet:

My face is steadfast toward Jerusalem,

My heart remembers it.

I lift the hanging hands, the feeble knees—

I, precious more than seven times molten gold—

Until the day when from His storehouses

God shall bring new and old;

Beauty for ashes, oil of joy for grief,

Garment of praise for spirit of heaviness:

Although today I fade as doth a leaf,

I languish and grow less.

Although today He prunes my twigs with pain,

Yet doth His blood nourish and warm my root:

Tomorrow I shall put forth buds again

And clothe myself with fruit.

Although today I walk in tedious ways,

Today His staff is turned into a rod,

Yet will I wait for Him the appointed days

And stay upon my God.

 

OLD AND NEW YEAR DITTIES

1

NEW Year met me somewhat sad:

Old Year leaves me tired,

Stripped of favourite things I had,

Baulked of much desired:

Yet farther on my road today

God willing, farther on my way.

New Year coming on apace

What have you to give me?

Bring you scathe, or bring you grace,

Face me with an honest face;

You shall not deceive me:

Be it good or ill, be it what you will,

It needs shall help me on my road,

My rugged way to heaven, please God.

2

WATCH with me, men, women, and children dear,

You whom I love, for whom I hope and fear,

Watch with me this last vigil of the year.

Some hug their business, some their pleasure-scheme;

Some seize the vacant hour to sleep or dream;

Heart locked in heart some kneel and watch apart.

Watch with me blessèd spirits, who delight

All through the holy night to walk in white,

Or take your ease after the long-drawn fight.

I know not if they watch with me: I know

They count this eve of resurrection slow,

And cry, 'How long?' with urgent utterance strong.

Watch with me Jesus, in my loneliness:

Though others say me nay, yet say Thou yes;

Though others pass me by, stop Thou to bless.

Yea, Thou dost stop with me this vigil night;

Tonight of pain, tomorrow of delight:

I, Love, am Thine; Thou, Lord my God, art mine.

3

PASSING away, saith the World, passing away:

Chances, beauty and youth sapped day by day:

Thy life never continueth in one stay.

Is the eye waxen dim, is the dark hair changing to grey

That hath won neither laurel nor bay?

I shall clothe myself in Spring and bud in May:

Thou, root-stricken, shalt not rebuild thy decay

On my bosom for aye.

Then I answered: Yea.

Passing away, saith my Soul, passing away:

With its burden of fear and hope, of labour and play;

Hearken what the past doth witness and say:

Rust in thy gold, a moth is in thine array,

A canker is in thy bud, thy leaf must decay.

At midnight, at cockcrow, at morning, one certain day

Lo, the Bridegroom shall come and shall not delay:

Watch thou and pray.

Then I answered: Yea.

Passing away, saith my God, passing away:

Winter passeth after the long delay:

New grapes on the vine, new figs on the tender spray,

Turtle calleth turtle in Heaven's May.

Though I tarry wait for Me, trust Me, watch and pray.

Arise, come away, night is past and lo it is day,

My love, My sister, My spouse, thou shalt hear Me say.

Then I answered: Yea.

 

AMEN

IT is over. What is over?

Nay, how much is over truly!—

Harvest days we toiled to sow for;

Now the sheaves are gathered newly,

Now the wheat is garnered duly.

It is finished. What is finished?

Much is finished known or unknown:

Lives are finished; time diminished;

Was the fallow field left unsown?

Will these buds be always unblown?

It suffices. What suffices?

All suffices reckoned rightly:

Spring shall bloom where now the ice is,

Roses make the bramble sightly,

And the quickening sun shine brightly,

And the latter wind blow lightly,

And my garden teem with spices.

 

THE PRINCE'S PROGRESS, AND OTHER POEMS, 1866

THE PRINCE'S PROGRESS

TILL all sweet gums and juices flow,

Till the blossom of blossoms blow,

The long hours go and come and go,

The bride she sleepeth, waketh, sleepeth,

Waiting for one whose coining is slow:—

Hark! the bride weepeth.

'How long shall I wait, come heat come rime?'—

'Till the strong Prince comes, who must come in time'

(Her women say), 'there's a mountain to climb,

A river to ford. Sleep, dream and sleep;

Sleep' (they say): 'we've muffled the chime,

Better dream than weep.'

In his world-end palace the strong Prince sat,

Taking his ease on cushion and mat,

Close at hand lay his staff and his hat.

'When wilt thou start? the bride waits, O youth.'—

'Now the moon's at full; I tarried for that,

Now I start in truth.

'But tell me first, true voice of my doom,

Of my veiled bride in her maiden bloom;

Keeps she watch through glare and through gloom,

Watch for me asleep and awake?'—

'Spell-bound she watches in one white room,

And is patient for thy sake.

'By her head lilies and rosebuds grow;

The lilies droop, will the rosebuds blow?

The silver slim lilies hang the head low;

Their stream is scanty, their sunshine rare:

Let the sun blaze out, and let the stream flow,

They will blossom and wax fair.

'Red and white poppies grow at her feet,

The blood-red wait for sweet summer heat,

Wrapped in bud-coats hairy and neat;

But the white buds swell, one day they will burst,

Will open their death-cups drowsy and sweet—

Which will open the first?'

Then a hundred sad voices lifted a wail,

And a hundred glad voices piped on the gale:

'Time is short, life is short,' they took up the tale:

'Life is sweet, love is sweet, use today while you may;

Love is sweet, and tomorrow may fail;

Love is sweet, use today.'

While the song swept by, beseeching and meek,

Up rose the Prince with a flush on his cheek,

Up he rose to stir and to seek,

Going forth in the joy of his strength;

Strong of limb if of purpose weak,

Starting at length.

Forth he set in the breezy morn,

Crossing green fields of nodding corn,

As goodly a Prince as ever was born;

Carolling with the carolling lark;—

Sure his bride will be won and worn,

Ere fall of the dark.

So light his step, so merry his smile,

A milkmaid loitered beside a stile,

Set down her pail and rested awhile,

A wave-haired milkmaid, rosy and white;

The Prince, who had journeyed at least a mile,

Grew athirst at the sight.

'Will you give me a morning draught?'—

'You're kindly welcome,' she said, and laughed.

He lifted the pail, new milk he quaffed;

Then wiping his curly black beard like silk:

'Whitest cow that ever was calved

Surely gave you this milk.'

Was it milk now, or was it cream?

Was she a maid, or an evil dream?

Her eyes began to glitter and gleam;

He would have gone, but he stayed instead;

Green they gleamed as he looked in them:

'Give me my fee,' she said.—

'I will give you a jewel of gold.'—

'Not so; gold is heavy and cold.'—

'I will give you a velvet fold

Of foreign work your beauty to deck.'—

'Better I like my kerchief rolled

Light and white round my neck.'—

'Nay,' cried he, 'but fix your own fee.'—

She laughed, 'You may give the full moon to me;

Or else sit under this apple-tree

Here for one idle day by my side;

After that I'll let you go free,

And the world is wide.'

Loth to stay, but to leave her slack,

He half turned away, then he quite turned back:

For courtesy's sake he could not lack

To redeem his own royal pledge;

Ahead too the windy heaven lowered black

With a fire-cloven edge.

So he stretched his length in the apple-tree shade,

Lay and laughed and talked to the maid,

Who twisted her hair in a cunning braid

And writhed it shining in serpent-coils,

And held him a day and night fast laid

In her subtle toils.

At the death of night and the birth of day,

When the owl left off his sober play,

And the bat hung himself out of the way,

Woke the song of mavis and merle,

And heaven put off its hodden grey

For mother-o'-pearl.

Peeped up daisies here and there,

Here, there, and everywhere;

Rose a hopeful lark in the air,

Spreading out towards the sun his breast;

While the moon set solemn and fair

Away in the West.

'Up, up, up,' called the watchman lark,

In his clear réveillée: 'Hearken, oh hark!

Press to the high goal, fly to the mark.

Up, O sluggard, new morn is born;

If still asleep when the night falls dark,

Thou must wait a second morn.'

'Up, up, up,' sad glad voices swelled:

'So the tree falls and lies as it's felled.

Be thy bands loosed, O sleeper, long held

In sweet sleep whose end is not sweet.

Be the slackness girt and the softness quelled

And the slowness fleet.'

Off he set. The grass grew rare,

A blight lurked in the darkening air,

The very moss grew hueless and spare,

The last daisy stood all astunt;

Behind his back the soil lay bare,

But barer in front.

A land of chasm and rent, a land

Of rugged blackness on either hand:

If water trickled its track was tanned

With an edge of rust to the chink;

If one stamped on stone or on sand

It returned a clink.

A lifeless land, a loveless land,

Without lair or nest on either hand:

Only scorpions jerked in the sand,

Black as black iron, or dusty pale;

From point to point sheer rock was manned

By scorpions in mail.

A land of neither life nor death,

Where no man buildeth or fashioneth,

Where none draws living or dying breath;

No man cometh or goeth there,

No man doeth, seeketh, saith,

In the stagnant air.

Some old volcanic upset must

Have rent the crust and blackened the crust;

Wrenched and ribbed it beneath its dust

Above earth's molten centre at seethe,

Heaved and heaped it by huge upthrust

Of fire beneath.

Untrodden before, untrodden since:

Tedious land for a social Prince;

Halting, he scanned the outs and ins,

Endless, labyrinthine, grim,

Of the solitude that made him wince,

Laying wait for him.

By bulging rock and gaping cleft,

Even of half mere daylight reft,

Rueful he peered to right and left,

Muttering in his altered mood:

'The fate is hard that weaves my weft,

Though my lot be good.'

Dim the changes of day to night,

Of night scarce dark to day not bright.

Still his road wound towards the right,

Still he went, and still he went,

Till one night he espied a light,

In his discontent.

Out it flashed from a yawn-mouthed cave,

Like a red-hot eye from a grave.

No man stood there of whom to crave

Rest for wayfarer plodding by:

Though the tenant were churl or knave

The Prince might try.

In he passed and tarried not,

Groping his way from spot to spot,

Towards where the cavern flare glowed hot:—

An old, old mortal, cramped and double,

Was peering into a seething-pot,

In a world of trouble.

The veriest atomy he looked,

With grimy fingers clutching and crooked,

Tight skin, a nose all bony and hooked,

And a shaking, sharp, suspicious way;

His blinking eyes had scarcely brooked

The light of day.

Stared the Prince, for the sight was new;

Stared, but asked without more ado:

'May a weary traveller lodge with you,

Old father, here in your lair?

In your country the inns seem few,

And scanty the fare.'

The head turned not to hear him speak;

The old voice whistled as through a leak

(Out it came in a quavering squeak):

'Work for wage is a bargain fit:

If there's aught of mine that you seek

You must work for it.

'Buried alive from light and air

This year is the hundredth year,

I feed my fire with a sleepless care,

Watching my potion wane or wax:

Elixir of Life is simmering there,

And but one thing lacks.

'If you're fain to lodge here with me,

Take that pair of bellows you see—

Too heavy for my old hands they be—

Take the bellows and puff and puff:

When the steam curls rosy and free

The broth's boiled enough.

'Then take your choice of all I have;

I will give you life if you crave.

Already I'm mildewed for the grave,

So first myself I must drink my fill:

But all the rest may be yours, to save

Whomever you will.'

'Done,' quoth the Prince, and the bargain stood.

First he piled on resinous wood,

Next plied the bellows in hopeful mood;

Thinking, 'My love and I will live.

If I tarry, why life is good,

And she may forgive.'

The pot began to bubble and boil;

The old man cast in essence and oil,

He stirred all up with a triple coil

Of gold and silver and iron wire,

Dredged in a pinch of virgin soil,

And fed the fire.

But still the steam curled watery white;

Night turned to day and day to night;

One thing lacked, by his feeble sight

Unseen, unguessed by his feeble mind:

Life might miss him, but Death the blight

Was sure to find.

So when the hundredth year was full

The thread was cut and finished the school.

Death snapped the old worn-out tool,

Snapped him short while he stood and stirred

(Though stiff he stood as a stiff-necked mule)

With never a word.

Thus at length the old crab was nipped.

The dead hand slipped, the dead finger dipped

In the broth as the dead man slipped,—

That same instant, a rosy red

Flushed the steam, and quivered and clipped

Round the dead old head.

The last ingredient was supplied

(Unless the dead man mistook or lied).

Up started the Prince, he cast aside

The bellows plied through the tedious trial,

Made sure that his host had died,

And filled a phial.

'One night's rest,' thought the Prince: 'This done,

Forth I start with the rising sun:

With the morrow I rise and run,

Come what will of wind or of weather.

This draught of Life when my Bride is won

We'll drink together.'

Thus the dead man stayed in his grave,

Self-chosen, the dead man in his cave;

There he stayed, were he fool or knave,

Or honest seeker who had not found:

While the Prince outside was prompt to crave

Sleep on the ground.

'If she watches, go bid her sleep;

Bid her sleep, for the road is steep:

He can sleep who holdeth her cheap,

Sleep and wake and sleep again.

Let him sow, one day he shall reap,

Let him sow the grain.

'When there blows a sweet garden rose,

Let it bloom and wither if no man knows:

But if one knows when the sweet thing blows,

Knows, and lets it open and drop,

If but a nettle his garden grows

He hath earned the crop.'

Through his sleep the summons rang,

Into his ears it sobbed and it sang.

Slow he woke with a drowsy pang,

Shook himself without much debate,

Turned where he saw green branches hang,

Started though late.

For the black land was travelled o'er,

He should see the grim land no more.

A flowering country stretched before

His face when the lovely day came back:

He hugged the phial of Life he bore,

And resumed his track.

By willow courses he took his path,

Spied what a nest the kingfisher hath,

Marked the fields green to aftermath,

Marked where the red-brown field-mouse ran,

Loitered a while for a deep-stream bath,

Yawned for a fellow-man.

Up on the hills not a soul in view,

In the vale not many nor few;

Leaves, still leaves, and nothing new.

It's oh for a second maiden, at least,

To bear the flagon, and taste it too,

And flavour the feast.

Lagging he moved, and apt to swerve;

Lazy of limb, but quick of nerve.

At length the water-bed took a curve,

The deep river swept its bankside bare;

Waters streamed from the hill-reserve—

Waters here, waters there.

High above, and deep below,

Bursting, bubbling, swelling the flow,

Like hill torrents after the snow,—

Bubbling, gurgling, in whirling strife,

Swaying, sweeping, to and fro,—

He must swim for his life.

Which way?—which way?—his eyes grew dim

With the dizzying whirl—which way to swim?

The thunderous downshoot deafened him;

Half he choked in the lashing spray:

Life is sweet, and the grave is grim—

Which way?—which way?

A flash of light, a shout from the strand:

'This way—this way; here lies the land!'

His phial clutched in one drowning hand;

He catches—misses—catches a rope;

His feet slip on the slipping sand:

Is there life?—is there hope?

Just saved, without pulse or breath,—

Scarcely saved from the gulp of death;

Laid where a willow shadoweth—

Laid where a swelling turf is smooth.

(O Bride! but the Bridegroom lingereth

For all thy sweet youth.)

Kind hands do and undo,

Kind voices whisper and coo:

'I will chafe his hands'—'And I'—'And you

Raise his head, put his hair aside.'

(If many laugh, one well may rue:

Sleep on, thou Bride.)

So the Prince was tended with care:

One wrung foul ooze from his clustered hair;

Two chafed his hands, and did not spare;

But one held his drooping head breast-high,

Till his eyes oped, and at unaware

They met eye to eye.

Oh, a moon face in a shadowy place,

And a light touch and a winsome grace,

And a thrilling tender voice that says:

'Safe from waters that seek the sea—

Cold waters by rugged ways—

Safe with me.'

While overhead bird whistles to bird,

And round about plays a gamesome herd:

'Safe with us'—some take up the word—

'Safe with us, dear lord and friend:

All the sweeter if long deferred

Is rest in the end.'

Had he stayed to weigh and to scan,

He had been more or less than a man:

He did what a young man can,

Spoke of toil and an arduous way—

Toil tomorrow, while golden ran

The sands of today.

Slip past, slip fast,

Uncounted hours from first to last,

Many hours till the last is past,

Many hours dwindling to one—

One hour whose die is cast,

One last hour gone.

Come, gone—gone forever—

Gone as an unreturning river—

Gone as to death the merriest liver—

Gone as the year at the dying fall—

Tomorrow, today, yesterday, never—

Gone once for all.

Came at length the starting-day,

With last words, and last last words to say,

With bodiless cries from far away—

Chiding wailing voices that rang

Like a trumpet-call to the tug and fray;

And thus they sang:

'Is there life?—the lamp burns low;

Is there hope?—the coming is slow:

The promise promised so long ago,

The long promise, has not been kept.

Does she live?—does she die?—she slumbers so

Who so oft has wept.

'Does she live?—does she die?—she languisheth

As a lily drooping to death,

As a drought-worn bird with failing breath,

As a lovely vine without a stay,

As a tree whereof the owner saith,

"Hew it down today."'

Stung by that word the Prince was fain

To start on his tedious road again.

He crossed the stream where a ford was plain,

He clomb the opposite bank though steep,

And swore to himself to strain and attain

Ere he tasted sleep.

Huge before him a mountain frowned

With foot of rock on the valley ground,

And head with snows incessant crowned,

And a cloud mantle about its strength,

And a path which the wild goat hath not found

In its breadth and length.

But he was strong to do and dare:

If a host had withstood him there,

He had braved a host with little care

In his lusty youth and his pride,

Tough to grapple though weak to snare.

He comes, O Bride.

Up he went where the goat scarce clings,

Up where the eagle folds her wings,

Past the green line of living things,

Where the sun cannot warm the cold,—

Up he went as a flame enrings

Where there seems no hold.

Up a fissure barren and black,

Till the eagles tired upon his track,

And the clouds were left behind his back,

Up till the utmost peak was past,

Then he gasped for breath and his strength fell slack;

He paused at last.

Before his face a valley spread

Where fatness laughed, wine, oil, and bread,

Where all fruit-trees their sweetness shed,

Where all birds made love to their kind,

Where jewels twinkled, and gold lay red

And not hard to find.

Midway down the mountain side

(On its green slope the path was wide)

Stood a house for a royal bride,

Built all of changing opal stone,

The royal palace, till now descried

In his dreams alone.

Less bold than in days of yore,

Doubting now though never before,

Doubting he goes and lags the more:

Is the time late? does the day grow dim?

Rose, will she open the crimson core

Of her heart to him?

Take heart of grace! the potion of Life

May go far to woo him a wife:

If she frown, yet a lover's strife

Lightly raised can be laid again:

A hasty word is never the knife

To cut love in twain.

Far away stretched the royal land,

Fed by dew, by a spice-wind fanned:

Light labour more, and his foot would stand

On the threshold, all labour done;

Easy pleasure laid at his hand,

And the dear Bride won.

His slackening steps pause at the gate—

Does she wake or sleep?—the time is late—

Does she sleep now, or watch and wait?

She has watched, she has waited long,

Watching athwart the golden grate

With a patient song.

Fling the golden portals wide,

The Bridegroom comes to his promised Bride;

Draw the gold-stiff curtains aside,

Let them look on each other's face,

She in her meekness, he in his pride—

Day wears apace.

Day is over, the day that wore.

What is this that comes through the door,

The face covered, the feet before?

This that coming takes his breath;

This Bride not seen, to be seen no more

Save of Bridegroom Death?

Veiled figures carrying her

Sweep by yet make no stir;

There is a smell of spice and myrrh,

A bride-chant burdened with one name;

The bride-song rises steadier

Than the torches' flame:

'Too late for love, too late for joy,

Too late, too late!

You loitered on the road too long,

You trifled at the gate:

The enchanted dove upon her branch

Died without a mate;

The enchanted princess in her tower

Slept, died, behind the grate;

Her heart was starving all this while

You made it wait.

'Ten years ago, five years ago,

One year ago,

Even then you had arrived in time,

Though somewhat slow;

Then you had known her living face

Which now you cannot know:

The frozen fountain would have leaped,

The buds gone on to blow,

The warm south wind would have awaked

To melt the snow.

'Is she fair now as she lies?

Once she was fair;

Meet queen for any kingly king,

With gold-dust on her hair.

Now these are poppies in her locks,

White poppies she must wear;

Must wear a veil to shroud her face

And the want graven there:

Or is the hunger fed at length,

Cast off the care?

'We never saw her with a smile

Or with a frown;

Her bed seemed never soft to her,

Though tossed of down;

She little heeded what she wore,

Kirtle, or wreath, or gown;

We think her white brows often ached

Beneath her crown,

Till silvery hairs showed in her locks

That used to be so brown.

'We never heard her speak in haste:

Her tones were sweet,

And modulated just so much

As it was meet:

Her heart sat silent through the noise

And concourse of the street.

There was no hurry in her hands,

No hurry in her feet;

There was no bliss drew nigh to her,

That she might run to greet.

'You should have wept her yesterday,

Wasting upon her bed:

But wherefore should you weep today

That she is dead?

Lo, we who love weep not today,

But crown her royal head.

Let be these poppies that we strew,

Your roses are too red:

Let be these poppies, not for you

Cut down and spread.'

 

MAIDEN-SONG

LONG ago and long ago,

And long ago still,

There dwelt three merry maidens

Upon a distant hill.

One was tall Meggan,

And one was dainty May,

But one was fair Margaret,

More fair than I can say,

Long ago and long ago.

When Meggan plucked the thorny rose,

And when May pulled the brier,

Half the birds would swoop to see,

Half the beasts draw nigher;

Half the fishes of the streams

Would dart up to admire:

But when Margaret plucked a flag-flower,

Or poppy hot aflame,

All the beasts and all the birds

And all the fishes came

To her hand more soft than snow.

Strawberry leaves and May-dew

In brisk morning air,

Strawberry leaves and May-dew

Make maidens fair.

'I go for strawberry leaves,'

Meggan said one day:

'Fair Margaret can bide at home,

But you come with me, May;

Up the hill and down the hill,

Along the winding way

You and I are used to go.'

So these two fair sisters

Went with innocent will

Up the hill and down again,

And round the homestead hill:

While the fairest sat at home,

Margaret like a queen,

Like a blush-rose, like the moon

In her heavenly sheen,

Fragrant-breathed as milky cow

Or field of blossoming bean,

Graceful as an ivy bough

Born to cling and lean;

Thus she sat to sing and sew.

When she raised her lustrous eyes

A beast peeped at the door;

When she downward cast her eyes

A fish gasped on the floor;

When she turned away her eyes

A bird perched on the sill,

Warbling out its heart of love,

Warbling warbling still,

With pathetic pleadings low.

Light-foot May with Meggan

Sought the choicest spot,

Clothed with thyme-alternate grass:

Then, while day waxed hot,

Sat at ease to play and rest,

A gracious rest and play;

The loveliest maidens near or far,

When Margaret was away,

Who sat at home to sing and sew.

Sun-glow flushed their comely cheeks,

Wind-play tossed their hair,

Creeping things among the grass

Stroked them here and there;

Meggan piped a merry note,

A fitful wayward lay,

While shrill as bird on topmost twig

Piped merry May;

Honey-smooth the double flow.

Sped a herdsman from the vale,

Mounting like a flame,

All on fire to hear and see,

With floating locks he came.

Looked neither north nor south,

Neither east nor west,

But sat him down at Meggan's feet

As love-bird on his nest,

And wooed her with a silent awe,

With trouble not expressed;

She sang the tears into his eyes,

The heart out of his breast:

So he loved her, listening so.

She sang the heart out of his breast,

The words out of his tongue;

Hand and foot and pulse he paused

Till her song was sung.

Then he spoke up from his place

Simple words and true:

'Scanty goods have I to give,

Scanty skill to woo;

But I have a will to work,

And a heart for you:

Bid me stay or bid me go.'

Then Meggan mused within herself:

'Better be first with him,

Than dwell where fairer Margaret sits,

Who shines my brightness dim,

Forever second where she sits,

However fair I be:

I will be lady of his love,

And he shall worship me;

I will be lady of his herds

And stoop to his degree,

At home where kids and fatlings grow.'

Sped a shepherd from the height

Headlong down to look,

(White lambs followed, lured by love

Of their shepherd's crook):

He turned neither east nor west,

Neither north nor south,

But knelt right down to May, for love

Of her sweet-singing mouth;

Forgot his flocks, his panting flocks

In parching hill-side drouth;

Forgot himself for weal or woe.

Trilled her song and swelled her song

With maiden coy caprice

In a labyrinth of throbs,

Pauses, cadences;

Clear-noted as a dropping brook,

Soft-noted like the bees,

Wild-noted as the shivering wind

Forlorn through forest trees:

Love-noted like the wood-pigeon

Who hides herself for love,

Yet cannot keep her secret safe,

But coos and coos thereof:

Thus the notes rang loud or low.

He hung breathless on her breath;

Speechless, who listened well;

Could not speak or think or wish

Till silence broke the spell.

Then he spoke, and spread his hands,

Pointing here and there:

'See my sheep and see the lambs,

Twin lambs which they bare.

All myself I offer you,

All my flocks and care,

Your sweet song hath moved me so.'

In her fluttered heart young May

Mused a dubious while:

'If he loves me as he says'—

Her lips curved with a smile:

'Where Margaret shines like the sun

I shine but like a moon;

If sister Meggan makes her choice

I can make mine as soon;

At cockcrow we were sister-maids,

We may be brides at noon.'

Said Meggan, 'Yes;' May said not 'No.'

Fair Margaret stayed alone at home,

Awhile she sang her song,

Awhile sat silent, then she thought:

'My sisters loiter long.'

That sultry noon had waned away,

Shadows had waxen great:

'Surely,' she thought within herself,

'My sisters loiter late.'

She rose, and peered out at the door,

With patient heart to wait,

And heard a distant nightingale

Complaining of its mate;

Then down the garden slope she walked,

Down to the garden gate,

Leaned on the rail and waited so.

The slope was lightened by her eyes

Like summer lightning fair,

Like rising of the haloed moon

Lightened her glimmering hair,

While her face lightened like the sun

Whose dawn is rosy white.

Thus crowned with maiden majesty

She peered into the night,

Looked up the hill and down the hill,

To left hand and to right,

Flashing like fire-flies to and fro.

Waiting thus in weariness

She marked the nightingale

Telling, if any one would heed,

Its old complaining tale.

Then lifted she her voice and sang,

Answering the bird:

Then lifted she her voice and sang,

Such notes were never heard

From any bird when Spring's in blow.

The king of all that country

Coursing far, coursing near,

Curbed his amber-bitted steed,

Coursed amain to hear;

All his princes in his train,

Squire, and knight, and peer,

With his crown upon his head,

His sceptre in his hand,

Down he fell at Margaret's knees

Lord king of all that land,

To her highness bending low.

Every beast and bird and fish

Came mustering to the sound,

Every man and every maid

From miles of country round:

Meggan on her herdsman's arm,

With her shepherd May,

Flocks and herds trooped at their heels

Along the hill-side way;

No foot too feeble for the ascent,

Not any head too grey;

Some were swift and none were slow.

So Margaret sang her sisters home

In their marriage mirth;

Sang free birds out of the sky,

Beasts along the earth,

Sang up fishes of the deep—

All breathing things that move

Sang from far and sang from near

To her lovely love;

Sang together friend and foe;

Sang a golden-bearded king

Straightway to her feet,

Sang him silent where he knelt

In eager anguish sweet.

But when the clear voice died away,

When longest echoes died,

He stood up like a royal man

And claimed her for his bride.

So three maids were wooed and won

In a brief May-tide,

Long ago and long ago.

 

JESSIE CAMERON

'JESSIE, Jessie Cameron,

Hear me but this once,' quoth he.

'Good luck go with you, neighbour's son,

But I'm no mate for you,' quoth she.

Day was verging toward the night

There beside the moaning sea,

Dimness overtook the light

There where the breakers be.

'O Jessie, Jessie Cameron,

I have loved you long and true.'—

'Good luck go with you, neighbour's son,

But I'm no mate for you.'

She was a careless, fearless girl,

And made her answer plain,

Outspoken she to earl or churl,

Kindhearted in the main,

But somewhat heedless with her tongue

And apt at causing pain;

A mirthful maiden she and young,

Most fair for bliss or bane.

'Oh, long ago I told you so,

I tell you so today:

Go you your way, and let me go

Just my own free way.'

The sea swept in with moan and foam

Quickening the stretch of sand;

They stood almost in sight of home;

He strove to take her hand.

'Oh, can't you take your answer then,

And won't you understand?

For me you're not the man of men,

I've other plans are planned.

You're good for Madge, or good for Cis,

Or good for Kate, may be:

But what's to me the good of this

While you're not good for me?'

They stood together on the beach,

They two alone,

And louder waxed his urgent speech,

His patience almost gone:

'Oh, say but one kind word to me,

Jessie, Jessie Cameron.'—

'I'd be too proud to beg,' quoth she,

And pride was in her tone.

And pride was in her lifted head,

And in her angry eye,

And in her foot, which might have fled

But would not fly.

Some say that he had gipsy blood,

That in his heart was guile:

Yet he had gone through fire and flood

Only to win her smile.

Some say his grandam was a witch,

A black witch from beyond the Nile,

Who kept an image in a niche

And talked with it the while.

And by her hut far down the lane

Some say they would not pass at night,

Lest they should hear an unked strain

Or see an unked sight.

Alas, for Jessie Cameron!—

The sea crept moaning, moaning nigher:

She should have hastened to begone,—

The sea swept higher, breaking by her:

She should have hastened to her home

While yet the west was flushed with fire,

But now her feet are in the foam,

The sea-foam sweeping higher.

O mother, linger at your door,

And light your lamp to make it plain,

But Jessie she comes home no more,

No more again.

They stood together on the strand,

They only each by each;

Home, her home, was close at hand,

Utterly out of reach.

Her mother in the chimney nook

Heard a startled sea-gull screech,

But never turned her head to look

Towards the darkening beach:

Neighbours here and neighbours there

Heard one scream, as if a bird

Shrilly screaming cleft the air:—

That was all they heard.

Jessie she comes home no more,

Comes home never;

Her lover's step sounds at his door

No more forever.

And boats may search upon the sea

And search along the river,

But none know where the bodies be:

Sea-winds that shiver,

Sea-birds that breast the blast,

Sea-waves swelling,

Keep the secret first and last

Of their dwelling.

Whether the tide so hemmed them round

With its pitiless flow,

That when they would have gone they found

No way to go;

Whether she scorned him to the last

With words flung to and fro,

Or clung to him when hope was past,

None will ever know:

Whether he helped or hindered her,

Threw up his life or lost it well,

The troubled sea for all its stir

Finds no voice to tell.

Only watchers by the dying

Have thought they heard one pray

Wordless, urgent; and replying

One seem to say him nay:

And watchers by the dead have heard

A windy swell from miles away,

With sobs and screams, but not a word

Distinct for them to say:

And watchers out at sea have caught

Glimpse of a pale gleam here or there,

Come and gone as quick as thought,

Which might be hand or hair.

 

SPRING QUIET

GONE were but the Winter,

Come were but the Spring,

I would go to a covert

Where the birds sing;

Where in the whitethorn

Singeth a thrush,

And a robin sings

In the holly-bush.

Full of fresh scents

Are the budding boughs

Arching high over

A cool green house:

Full of sweet scents,

And whispering air

Which sayeth softly:

'We spread no snare;

'Here dwell in safety,

Here dwell alone,

With a clear stream

And a mossy stone.

'Here the sun shineth

Most shadily;

Here is heard an echo

Of the far sea,

Though far off it be.'

 

THE POOR GHOST

'OH whence do you come, my dear friend, to me,

With your golden hair all fallen below your knee,

And your face as white as snowdrops on the lea,

And your voice as hollow as the hollow sea?'

'From the other world I come back to you,

My locks are uncurled with dripping drenching dew.

You know the old, whilst I know the new:

But tomorrow you shall know this too.'

'Oh not tomorrow into the dark, I pray;

Oh not tomorrow, too soon to go away:

Here I feel warm and well-content and gay:

Give me another year, another day.'

'Am I so changed in a day and a night

That mine own only love shrinks from me with fright,

Is fain to turn away to left or right

And cover up his eyes from the sight?'

'Indeed I loved you, my chosen friend,

I loved you for life, but life has an end;

Through sickness I was ready to tend:

But death mars all, which we cannot mend.

'Indeed I loved you; I love you yet,

If you will stay where your bed is set,

Where I have planted a violet,

Which the wind waves, which the dew makes wet.'

'Life is gone, then love too is gone,

It was a reed that I leant upon:

Never doubt I will leave you alone

And not wake you rattling bone with bone.

'I go home alone to my bed,

Dug deep at the foot and deep at the head,

Roofed in with a load of lead,

Warm enough for the forgotten dead.

'But why did your tears soak through the clay,

And why did your sobs wake me where I lay?

I was away, far enough away:

Let me sleep now till the Judgment Day.'

 

A PORTRAIT

I

SHE gave up beauty in her tender youth,

Gave all her hope and joy and pleasant ways;

She covered up her eyes lest they should gaze

On vanity, and chose the bitter truth.

Harsh towards herself, towards others full of ruth,

Servant of servants, little known to praise,

Long prayers and fasts trenched on her nights and days:

She schooled herself to sights and sounds uncouth

That with the poor and stricken she might make

A home, until the least of all sufficed

Her wants; her own self learned she to forsake,

Counting all earthly gain but hurt and loss.

So with calm will she chose and bore the cross

And hated all for love of Jesus Christ.

II

They knelt in silent anguish by her bed,

And could not weep; but calmly there she lay.

All pain had left her; and the sun's last ray

Shone through upon her, warming into red

The shady curtains. In her heart she said:

'Heaven opens; I leave these and go away;

The Bridegroom calls,—shall the Bride seek to stay?'

Then low upon her breast she bowed her head.

O lily flower, O gem of priceless worth,

O dove with patient voice and patient eyes,

O fruitful vine amid a land of dearth,

O maid replete with loving purities,

Thou bowedst down thy head with friends on earth

To raise it with the saints in Paradise.

 

DREAM-LOVE

YOUNG Love lies sleeping

In May-time of the year,

Among the lilies,

Lapped in the tender light:

White lambs come grazing,

White doves come building there;

And round about him

The May-bushes are white.

Soft moss the pillow

For oh, a softer cheek;

Broad leaves cast shadow

Upon the heavy eyes:

There winds and waters

Grow lulled and scarcely speak;

There twilight lingers

The longest in the skies.

Young Love lies dreaming;

But who shall tell the dream?

A perfect sunlight

On rustling forest tips;

Or perfect moonlight

Upon a rippling stream;

Or perfect silence,

Or song of cherished lips.

Burn odours round him

To fill the drowsy air;

Weave silent dances

Around him to and fro;

For oh, in waking

The sights are not so fair,

And song and silence

Are not like these below.

Young Love lies dreaming

Till summer days are gone,—

Dreaming and drowsing

Away to perfect sleep:

He sees the beauty

Sun hath not looked upon,

And tastes the fountain

Unutterably deep.

Him perfect music

Doth hush unto his rest,

And through the pauses

The perfect silence calms:

Oh, poor the voices

Of earth from east to west,

And poor earth's stillness

Between her stately palms.

Young Love lies drowsing

Away to poppied death;

Cool shadows deepen

Across the sleeping face:

So fails the summer

With warm, delicious breath;

And what hath autumn

To give us in its place?

Draw close the curtains

Of branched evergreen;

Change cannot touch them

With fading fingers sere:

Here the first violets

Perhaps will bud unseen,

And a dove, may be,

Return to nestle here.

 

TWICE

I TOOK my heart in my hand

(O my love, O my love),

I said: Let me fall or stand,

Let me live or die,

But this once hear me speak—

(O my love, O my love)—

Yet a woman's words are weak;

You should speak, not I.

You took my heart in your hand

With a friendly smile,

With a critical eye you scanned,

Then set it down,

And said: It is still unripe,

Better wait awhile;

Wait while the skylarks pipe,

Till the corn grows brown.

As you set it down it broke—

Broke, but I did not wince;

I smiled at the speech you spoke,

At your judgment that I heard:

But I have not often smiled

Since then, nor questioned since,

Nor cared for corn-flowers wild,

Nor sung with the singing bird.

I take my heart in my hand,

O my God, O my God,

My broken heart in my hand:

Thou hast seen, judge Thou.

My hope was written on sand,

O my God, O my God:

Now let Thy judgment stand—

Yea, judge me now.

This contemned of a man,

This marred one heedless day,

This heart take Thou to scan

Both within and without:

Refine with fire its gold,

Purge Thou its dross away—

Yea, hold it in Thy hold,

Whence none can pluck it out.

I take my heart in my hand—

I shall not die, but live—

Before Thy face I stand;

I, for Thou callest such:

All that I have I bring,

All that I am I give,

Smile Thou and I shall sing,

But shall not question much.

 

SONGS IN A CORNFIELD

A SONG in a cornfield

Where corn begins to fall,

Where reapers are reaping,

Reaping one, reaping all.

Sing pretty Lettice,

Sing Rachel, sing May;

Only Marian cannot sing

While her sweetheart's away.

Where is he gone to

And why does he stay?

He came across the green sea

But for a day,

Across the deep green sea

To help with the hay.

His hair was curly yellow

And his eyes were grey,

He laughed a merry laugh

And said a sweet say.

Where is he gone to

That he comes not home?

Today or tomorrow

He surely will come.

Let him haste to joy

Lest he lag for sorrow,

For one weeps today

Who'll not weep tomorrow:

Today she must weep

For gnawing sorrow,

Tonight she may sleep

And not wake tomorrow.

May sang with Rachel

In the waxing warm weather,

Lettice sang with them,

They sang all together:—

'Take the wheat in your arm

Whilst day is broad above,

Take the wheat to your bosom,

But not a false false love.

Out in the fields

Summer heat gloweth,

Out in the fields

Summer wind bloweth,

Out in the fields

Summer friend showeth,

Out in the fields

Summer wheat groweth;

But in the winter

When summer heat is dead

And summer wind has veered

And summer friend has fled,

Only summer wheat remaineth,

White cakes and bread.

Take the wheat, clasp the wheat

That's food for maid and dove;

Take the wheat to your bosom,

But not a false false love.'

A silence of full noontide heat

Grew on them at their toil:

The farmer's dog woke up from sleep,

The green snake hid her coil.

Where grass stood thickest, bird and beast

Sought shadows as they could,

The reaping men and women paused

And sat down where they stood;

They ate and drank and were refreshed,

For rest from toil is good.

While the reapers took their ease,

Their sickles lying by,

Rachel sang a second strain,

And singing seemed to sigh:—

'There goes the swallow—

Could we but follow!

Hasty swallow stay,

Point us out the way;

Look back swallow, turn back swallow, stop swallow.

'There went the swallow—

Too late to follow:

Lost our note of way,

Lost our chance today;

Good bye swallow, sunny swallow, wise swallow.

'After the swallow

All sweet things follow:

All things go their way,

Only we must stay,

Must not follow; good bye swallow, good swallow.'

Then listless Marian raised her head

Among the nodding sheaves;

Her voice was sweeter than that voice;

She sang like one who grieves:

Her voice was sweeter than its wont

Among the nodding sheaves;

All wondered while they heard her sing

Like one who hopes and grieves:—

'Deeper than the hail can smite,

Deeper than the frost can bite,

Deep asleep through day and night,

Our delight.

'Now thy sleep no pang can break,

No tomorrow bid thee wake,

Not our sobs who sit and ache

For thy sake.

'Is it dark or light below?

Oh, but is it cold like snow?

Dost thou feel the green things grow

Fast or slow?

'Is it warm or cold beneath,

Oh, but is it cold like death?

Cold like death, without a breath,

Cold like death?'

If he comes today

He will find her weeping;

If he comes tomorrow

He will find her sleeping;

If he comes the next day

He'll not find her at all,

He may tear his curling hair,

Beat his breast and call.

 

A YEAR'S WINDFALLS

ON the wind of January

Down flits the snow,

Travelling from the frozen North

As cold as it can blow.

Poor robin redbreast,

Look where he comes;

Let him in to feel your fire,

And toss him of your crumbs.

On the wind in February

Snowflakes float still,

Half inclined to turn to rain,

Nipping, dripping, chill.

Then the thaws swell the streams,

And swollen rivers swell the sea:—

If the winter ever ends

How pleasant it will be.

In the wind of windy March

The catkins drop down,

Curly, caterpillar-like,

Curious green and brown.

With concourse of nest-building birds

And leaf-buds by the way,

We begin to think of flowers

And life and nuts some day.

With the gusts of April

Rich fruit-tree blossoms fall,

On the hedged-in orchard-green,

From the southern wall.

Apple-trees and pear-trees

Shed petals white or pink,

Plum-trees and peach-trees;

While sharp showers sink and sink.

Little brings the May breeze

Beside pure scent of flowers,

While all things wax and nothing wanes

In lengthening daylight hours.

Across the hyacinth beds

The wind lags warm and sweet,

Across the hawthorn tops,

Across the blades of wheat.

In the wind of sunny June

Thrives the red rose crop,

Every day fresh blossoms blow

While the first leaves drop;

White rose and yellow rose

And moss-rose choice to find,

And the cottage cabbage-rose

Not one whit behind.

On the blast of scorched July

Drives the pelting hail,

From thunderous lightning-clouds, that blot

Blue heaven grown lurid-pale.

Weedy waves are tossed ashore,

Sea-things strange to sight

Gasp upon the barren shore

And fade away in light.

In the parching August wind

Corn-fields bow the head,

Sheltered in round valley depths,

On low hills outspread.

Early leaves drop loitering down

Weightless on the breeze,

First fruits of the year's decay

From the withering trees.

In brisk wind of September

The heavy-headed fruits

Shake upon their bending boughs

And drop from the shoots;

Some glow golden in the sun,

Some show green and streaked,

Some set forth a purple bloom,

Some blush rosy-cheeked.

In strong blast of October

At the equinox,

Stirred up in his hollow bed

Broad ocean rocks;

Plunge the ships on his bosom,

Leaps and plunges the foam,—

It's oh! for mothers' sons at sea,

That they were safe at home.

In slack wind of November

The fog forms and shifts;

All the world comes out again

When the fog lifts.

Loosened from their sapless twigs

Leaves drop with every gust;

Drifting, rustling, out of sight

In the damp or dust.

Last of all, December,

The year's sands nearly run,

Speeds on the shortest day,

Curtails the sun;

With its bleak raw wind

Lays the last leaves low,

Brings back the nightly frosts,

Brings back the snow.

 

THE QUEEN OF HEARTS

HOW comes it, Flora, that, whenever we

Play cards together, you invariably,

However the pack parts,

Still hold the Queen of Hearts?

I've scanned you with a scrutinizing gaze,

Resolved to fathom these your secret ways:

But, sift them as I will,

Your ways are secret still.

I cut and shuffle; shuffle, cut, again;

But all my cutting, shuffling, proves in vain:

Vain hope, vain forethought too;

That Queen still falls to you.

I dropped her once, prepense; but, ere the deal

Was dealt, your instinct seemed her loss to feel:

'There should be one card more,'

You said, and searched the floor.

I cheated once; I made a private notch

In Heart-Queen's back, and kept a lynx-eyed watch;

Yet such another back

Deceived me in the pack:

The Queen of Clubs assumed by arts unknown

An imitative dint that seemed my own;

This notch, not of my doing,

Misled me to my ruin.

It baffles me to puzzle out the clue,

Which must be skill, or craft, or luck in you:

Unless, indeed, it be

Natural affinity.

 

ONE DAY

I WILL tell you when they met:

In the limpid days of Spring;

Elder boughs were budding yet,

Oaken boughs looked wintry still,

But primrose and veined violet

In the mossful turf were set,

While meeting birds made haste to sing

And build with right good will.

I will tell you when they parted:

When plenteous Autumn sheaves were brown,

Then they parted heavy-hearted;

The full rejoicing sun looked down

As grand as in the days before;

Only they had lost a crown;

Only to them those days of yore

Could come back nevermore.

When shall they meet? I cannot tell,

Indeed, when they shall meet again,

Except some day in Paradise:

For this they wait, one waits in pain.

Beyond the sea of death love lies

Forever, yesterday, today;

Angels shall ask them, 'Is it well?'

And they shall answer, 'Yea.'

 

A BIRD'S-EYE VIEW

'CROAK, croak, croak,'

Thus the Raven spoke,

Perched on his crooked tree

As hoarse as hoarse could be.

Shun him and fear him,

Lest the Bridegroom hear him;

Scout him and rout him

With his ominous eye about him.

Yet, 'Croak, croak, croak,'

Still tolled from the oak;

From that fatal black bird,

Whether heard or unheard:

'O ship upon the high seas,

Freighted with lives and spices,

Sink, O ship,' croaked the Raven:

'Let the Bride mount to heaven.'

In a far foreign land

Upon the wave-edged sand,

Some friends gaze wistfully

Across the glittering sea.

'If we could clasp our sister,'

Three say, 'now we have missed her!'

'If we could kiss our daughter!'

Two sigh across the water.

Oh, the ship sails fast

With silken flags at the mast,

And the home-wind blows soft;

But a Raven sits aloft,

Chuckling and choking,

Croaking, croaking, croaking:—

Let the beacon-fire blaze higher;

Bridegroom, watch; the Bride draws nigher.

On a sloped sandy beach,

Which the spring-tide billows reach,

Stand a watchful throng

Who have hoped and waited long:

'Fie on this ship, that tarries

With the priceless freight it carries.

The time seems long and longer:

O languid wind, wax stronger;'—

Whilst the Raven perched at ease

Still croaks and does not cease,

One monotonous note

Tolled from his iron throat:

'No father, no mother,

But I have a sable brother:

He sees where ocean flows to,

And he knows what he knows too.'

A day and a night

They kept watch worn and white;

A night and a day

For the swift ship on its way:

For the Bride and her maidens

—Clear chimes the bridal cadence—

For the tall ship that never

Hove in sight forever.

On either shore, some

Stand in grief loud or dumb

As the dreadful dread

Grows certain though unsaid.

For laughter there is weeping,

And waking instead of sleeping,

And a desperate sorrow

Morrow after morrow.

Oh, who knows the truth,

How she perished in her youth,

And like a queen went down

Pale in her royal crown:

How she went up to glory

From the sea-foam chill and hoary,

From the sea-depth black and riven

To the calm that is in Heaven?

They went down, all the crew,

The silks and spices too,

The great ones and the small,

One and all, one and all.

Was it through stress of weather,

Quicksands, rocks, or all together?

Only the Raven knows this,

And he will not disclose this.—

After a day and year

The bridal bells chime clear;

After a year and a day

The Bridegroom is brave and gay:

Love is sound, faith is rotten;

The old Bride is forgotten:—

Two ominous Ravens only

Remember, black and lonely.

 

LIGHT LOVE

'OH, sad thy lot before I came,

But sadder when I go;

My presence but a flash of flame,

A transitory glow

Between two barren wastes like snow.

What wilt thou do when I am gone,

Where wilt thou rest, my dear?

For cold thy bed to rest upon,

And cold the falling year

Whose withered leaves are lost and sere.'

She hushed the baby at her breast,

She rocked it on her knee:

'And I will rest my lonely rest,

Warmed with the thought of thee,

Rest lulled to rest by memory.'

She hushed the baby with her kiss,

She hushed it with her breast:

'Is death so sadder much than this—

Sure death that builds a nest

For those who elsewhere cannot rest?’

'Oh, sad thy note, my mateless dove,

With tender nestling cold;

But hast thou ne'er another love

Left from the days of old,

To build thy nest of silk and gold,

To warm thy paleness to a blush

When I am far away—

To warm thy coldness to a flush,

And turn thee back to May,

And turn thy twilight back to day?'

She did not answer him again,

But leaned her face aside,

Weary with the pang of shame and pain,

And sore with wounded pride:

He knew his very soul had lied.

She strained his baby in her arms,

His baby to her heart:

'Even let it go, the love that harms:

We twain will never part;

Mine own, his own, how dear thou art.'

'Now never teaze me, tender-eyed,

Sigh-voiced,' he said in scorn:

'For nigh at hand there blooms a bride,

My bride before the morn;

Ripe-blooming she, as thou forlorn.

Ripe-blooming she, my rose, my peach;

She wooes me day and night:

I watch her tremble in my reach;

She reddens, my delight,

She ripens, reddens in my sight.'

'And is she like a sunlit rose?

Am I like withered leaves?

Haste where thy spicèd garden blows:

But in bare Autumn eves

Wilt thou have store of harvest sheaves?

Thou leavest love, true love behind,

To seek a love as true;

Go, seek in haste: but wilt thou find?

Change new again for new;

Pluck up, enjoy—yea, trample too.

'Alas for her, poor faded rose,

Alas for her, like me,

Cast down and trampled in the snows.'

'Like thee? nay, not like thee:

She leans, but from a guarded tree.

Farewell, and dream as long ago,

Before we ever met:

Farewell; my swift-paced horse seems slow.'

She raised her eyes, not wet

But hard, to Heaven: 'Does God forget?'

 

A DREAM

SONNET

ONCE in a dream (for once I dreamed of you)

We stood together in an open field;

Above our heads two swift-winged pigeons wheeled,

Sporting at ease and courting full in view.

When loftier still a broadening darkness flew,

Down-swooping, and a ravenous hawk revealed;

Too weak to fight, too fond to fly, they yield;

So farewell life and love and pleasures new.

Then as their plumes fell fluttering to the ground,

Their snow-white plumage flecked with crimson drops,

I wept, and thought I turned towards you to weep:

But you were gone; while rustling hedgerow tops

Bent in a wind which bore to me a sound

Of far-off piteous bleat of lambs and sheep.

 

A RING POSY

JESS and Jill are pretty girls,

Plump and well to do,

In a cloud of windy curls:

Yet I know who

Loves me more than curls or pearls.

I'm not pretty, not a bit—

Thin and sallow-pale;

When I trudge along the street

I don't need a veil:

Yet I have one fancy hit.

Jess and Jill can trill and sing

With a flute-like voice,

Dance as light as bird on wing,

Laugh for careless joys:

Yet it's I who wear the ring.

Jess and Jill will mate some day,

Surely, surely:

Ripen on to June through May,

While the sun shines make their hay,

Slacken steps demurely:

Yet even there I lead the way.

 

BEAUTY IS VAIN

WHILE roses are so red,

While lilies are so white,

Shall a woman exalt her face

Because it gives delight?

She's not so sweet as a rose,

A lily's straighter than she,

And if she were as red or white

She'd be but one of three.

Whether she flush in love's summer

Or in its winter grow pale,

Whether she flaunt her beauty

Or hide it away in a veil,

Be she red or white,

And stand she erect or bowed,

Time will win the race he runs with her

And hide her away in a shroud.

 

LADY MAGGIE

YOU must not call me Maggie, you must not call me Dear,

For I'm Lady of the Manor now stately to see;

And if there comes a babe, as there may some happy year,

'Twill be little lord or lady at my knee.

Oh, but what ails you, my sailor cousin Phil,

That you shake and turn white like a cockcrow ghost?

You're as white as I turned once down by the mill,

When one told me you and ship and crew were lost:

Philip my playfellow, when we were boy and girl

(It was the Miller's Nancy told it to me),

Philip with the merry life in lip and curl,

Philip my playfellow drowned in the sea!

I thought I should have fainted, but I did not faint;

I stood stunned at the moment, scarcely sad,

Till I raised my wail of desolate complaint

For you, my cousin, brother, all I had.

They said I looked so pale—some say so fair—

My lord stopped in passing to soothe me back to life:

I know I missed a ringlet from my hair

Next morning; and now I am his wife.

Look at my gown, Philip, and look at my ring,

I'm all crimson and gold from top to toe:

All day long I sit in the sun and sing,

Where in the sun red roses blush and blow.

And I'm the rose of roses says my lord;

And to him I'm more than the sun in the sky,

While I hold him fast with the golden cord

Of a curl, with the eyelash of an eye.

His mother said 'fie,' and his sisters cried 'shame,'

His highborn ladies cried 'shame' from their place:

They said 'fie' when they only heard my name,

But fell silent when they saw my face.

Am I so fair, Philip? Philip, did you think

I was so fair when we played boy and girl,

Where blue forget-me-nots bloomed on the brink

Of our stream which the mill-wheel sent awhirl?

If I was fair then sure I'm fairer now,

Sitting where a score of servants stand,

With a coronet on high days for my brow

And almost a sceptre for my hand.

You're but a sailor, Philip, weatherbeaten brown,

A stranger on land and at home on the sea,

Coasting as best you may from town to town:

Coasting along do you often think of me?

I'm a great lady in a sheltered bower,

With hands grown white through having nought to do:

Yet sometimes I think of you hour after hour

Till I nigh wish myself a child with you.

 

WHAT WOULD I GIVE?

WHAT would I give for a heart of flesh to warm me through,

Instead of this heart of stone ice-cold whatever I do;

Hard and cold and small, of all hearts the worst of all.

What would I give for words, if only words would come;

But now in its misery my spirit has fallen dumb:

Oh, merry friends, go your way, I have never a word to say.

What would I give for tears, not smiles but scalding tears,

To wash the black mark clean, and to thaw the frost of years,

To wash the stain ingrain and to make me clean again.

 

THE BOURNE

UNDERNEATH the growing grass,

Underneath the living flowers,

Deeper than the sound of showers:

There we shall not count the hours

By the shadows as they pass.

Youth and health will be but vain,

Beauty reckoned of no worth:

There a very little girth

Can hold round what once the earth

Seemed too narrow to contain.

 

SUMMER

WINTER is cold-hearted,

Spring is yea and nay,

Autumn is a weathercock

Blown every way:

Summer days for me

When every leaf is on its tree;

When Robin's not a beggar,

And Jenny Wren's a bride,

And larks hang singing, singing, singing,

Over the wheat-fields wide,

And anchored lilies ride,

And the pendulum spider

Swings from side to side,

And blue-black beetles transact business,

And gnats fly in a host,

And furry caterpillars hasten

That no time be lost,

And moths grow fat and thrive,

And ladybirds arrive.

Before green apples blush,

Before green nuts embrown,

Why, one day in the country

Is worth a month in town;

Is worth a day and a year

Of the dusty, musty, lag-last fashion

That days drone elsewhere.

 

AUTUMN

I DWELL alone—I dwell alone, alone,

Whilst full my river flows down to the sea,

Gilded with flashing boats

That bring no friend to me:

O love-songs, gurgling from a hundred throats,

O love-pangs, let me be.

Fair fall the freighted boats which gold and stone

And spices bear to sea:

Slim, gleaming maidens swell their mellow notes,

Love-promising, entreating—

Ah! sweet, but fleeting—

Beneath the shivering, snow-white sails.

Hush! the wind flags and fails—

Hush! they will lie becalmed in sight of strand—

Sight of my strand, where I do dwell alone;

Their songs wake singing echoes in my land—

They cannot hear me moan.

One latest, solitary swallow flies

Across the sea, rough autumn-tempest tost,

Poor bird, shall it be lost?

Dropped down into this uncongenial sea,

With no kind eyes

To watch it while it dies,

Unguessed, uncared for, free:

Set free at last,

The short pang past,

In sleep, in death, in dreamless sleep locked fast.

Mine avenue is all a growth of oaks,

Some rent by thunder strokes,

Some rustling leaves and acorns in the breeze;

Fair fall my fertile trees,

That rear their goodly heads, and live at ease.

A spider's web blocks all mine avenue;

He catches down and foolish painted flies

That spider wary and wise.

Each morn it hangs a rainbow strung with dew

Betwixt boughs green with sap,

So fair, few creatures guess it is a trap:

I will not mar the web,

Though sad I am to see the small lives ebb.

It shakes—my trees shake—for a wind is roused

In cavern where it housed:

Each white and quivering sail

Of boats among the water leaves

Hollows and strains in the full-throated gale:

Each maiden sings again—

Each languid maiden, whom the calm

Had lulled to sleep with rest and spice and balm.

Miles down my river to the sea

They float and wane,

Long miles away from me.

Perhaps they say: 'She grieves,

Uplifted, like a beacon, on her tower.'

Perhaps they say: 'One hour

More, and we dance among the golden sheaves.'

Perhaps they say: 'One hour

More, and we stand,

Face to face, hand in hand;

Make haste, O slack gale, to the looked-for land!'

My trees are not in flower,

I have no bower,

And gusty creaks my tower,

And lonesome, very lonesome, is my strand.

 

THE GHOST'S PETITION

'THERE'S a footstep coming: look out and see,'

'The leaves are falling, the wind is calling;

No one cometh across the lea.'—

'There's a footstep coming: O sister, look.'—

'The ripple flashes, the white foam dashes;

No one cometh across the brook.'—

'But he promised that he would come:

Tonight, tomorrow, in joy or sorrow,

He must keep his word, and must come home.

'For he promised that he would come:

His word was given; from earth or heaven,

He must keep his word, and must come home.

'Go to sleep, my sweet sister Jane;

You can slumber, who need not number

Hour after hour, in doubt and pain.

'I shall sit here awhile, and watch;

Listening, hoping, for one hand groping

In deep shadow to find the latch.'

After the dark, and before the light,

One lay sleeping; and one sat weeping,

Who had watched and wept the weary night.

After the night, and before the day,

One lay sleeping; and one sat weeping—

Watching, weeping for one away.

There came a footstep climbing the stair;

Some one standing out on the landing

Shook the door like a puff of air—

Shook the door, and in he passed.

Did he enter? In the room centre

Stood her husband: the door shut fast.

'O Robin, but you are cold—

Chilled with the night-dew: so lily-white you

Look like a stray lamb from our fold.

'O Robin, but you are late:

Come and sit near me—sit here and cheer me.'—

(Blue the flame burnt in the grate.)

'Lay not down your head on my breast:

I cannot hold you, kind wife, nor fold you

In the shelter that you love best.

'Feel not after my clasping hand:

I am but a shadow, come from the meadow

Where many lie, but no tree can stand.

'We are trees which have shed their leaves:

Our heads lie low there, but no tears flow there;

Only I grieve for my wife who grieves.

'I could rest if you would not moan

Hour after hour; I have no power

To shut my ears where I lie alone.

'I could rest if you would not cry;

But there's no sleeping while you sit weeping—

Watching, weeping so bitterly.'—

'Woe's me! woe's me! for this I have heard.

Oh, night of sorrow!—oh, black tomorrow!

Is it thus that you keep your word?

'O you who used so to shelter me

Warm from the least wind—why, now the east wind

Is warmer than you, whom I quake to see.

'O my husband of flesh and blood,

For whom my mother I left, and brother,

And all I had, accounting it good,

'What do you do there, underground,

In the dark hollow? I'm fain to follow.

What do you do there?—what have you found?'—

'What I do there I must not tell:

But I have plenty: kind wife, content ye:

It is well with us—it is well.

'Tender hand hath made our nest;

Our fear is ended, our hope is blended

With present pleasure, and we have rest.'—

'Oh, but Robin, I'm fain to come

If your present days are so pleasant,

For my days are so wearisome.

'Yet I'll dry my tears for your sake:

Why should I tease you, who cannot please you

Any more with the pains I take?'

 

MEMORY

I

I NURSED it in my bosom while it lived,

I hid it in my heart when it was dead;

In joy I sat alone, even so I grieved

Alone and nothing said.

I shut the door to face the naked truth,

I stood alone—I faced the truth alone,

Stripped bare of self-regard or forms or ruth

Till first and last were shown.

I took the perfect balances and weighed;

No shaking of my hand disturbed the poise;

Weighed, found it wanting: not a word I said,

But silent made my choice.

None know the choice I made; I make it still.

None know the choice I made and broke my heart,

Breaking mine idol: I have braced my will

Once, chosen for once my part.

I broke it at a blow, I laid it cold,

Crushed in my deep heart where it used to live.

My heart dies inch by inch; the time grows old,

Grows old in which I grieve.

II

I have a room whereinto no one enters

Save I myself alone:

There sits a blessed memory on a throne,

There my life centres.

While winter comes and goes—oh tedious comer!—

And while its nip-wind blows;

While bloom the bloodless lily and warm rose

Of lavish summer.

If any should force entrance he might see there

One buried yet not dead,

Before whose face I no more bow my head

Or bend my knee there;

But often in my worn life's autumn weather

I watch there with clear eyes,

And think how it will be in Paradise

When we're together.

 

A ROYAL PRINCESS

I, A PRINCESS, king-descended, decked with jewels, gilded, drest,

Would rather be a peasant with her baby at her breast,

For all I shine so like the sun, and am purple like the west.

Two and two my guards behind, two and two before,

Two and two on either hand, they guard me evermore;

Me, poor dove, that must not coo—eagle that must not soar.

All my fountains cast up perfumes, all my gardens grow

Scented woods and foreign spices, with all flowers in blow

That are costly, out of season as the seasons go.

All my walls are lost in mirrors, whereupon I trace

Self to right hand, self to left hand, self in every place,

Self-same solitary figure, self-same seeking face.

Then I have an ivory chair high to sit upon,

Almost like my father's chair, which is an ivory throne;

There I sit uplift and upright, there I sit alone.

Alone by day, alone by night, alone days without end;

My father and my mother give me treasures, search and spend—

O my father! O my mother! have you ne'er a friend?

As I am a lofty princess, so my father is

A lofty king, accomplished in all kingly subtilties,

Holding in his strong right hand world-kingdoms' balances.

He has quarrelled with his neighbours, he has scourged his foes;

Vassal counts and princes follow where his pennon goes,

Long-descended valiant lords whom the vulture knows,

On whose track the vulture swoops, when they ride in state

To break the strength of armies and topple down the great:

Each of these my courteous servant, none of these my mate.

My father counting up his strength sets down with equal pen

So many head of cattle, head of horses, head of men;

These for slaughter, these for breeding, with the how and when.

Some to work on roads, canals; some to man his ships;

Some to smart in mines beneath sharp overseers' whips;

Some to trap fur-beasts in lands where utmost winter nips.

Once it came into my heart, and whelmed me like a flood,

That these too are men and women, human flesh and blood;

Men with hearts and men with souls, though trodden down like mud.

Our feasting was not glad that night, our music was not gay:

On my mother's graceful head I marked a thread of grey,

My father frowning at the fare seemed every dish to weigh.

I sat beside them sole princess in my exalted place,

My ladies and my gentlemen stood by me on the dais:

A mirror showed me I look old and haggard in the face;

It showed me that my ladies all are fair to gaze upon,

Plump, plenteous-haired, to every one love's secret lore is known,

They laugh by day, they sleep by night; ah me, what is a throne?

The singing men and women sang that night as usual,

The dancers danced in pairs and sets, but music had a fall,

A melancholy windy fall as at a funeral.

Amid the toss of torches to my chamber back we swept;

My ladies loosed my golden chain; meantime I could have wept

To think of some in galling chains whether they waked or slept.

I took my bath of scented milk, delicately waited on,

They burned sweet things for my delight, cedar and cinnamon,

They lit my shaded silver lamp, and left me there alone.

A day went by, a week went by. One day I heard it said:

'Men are clamouring, women, children, clamouring to be fed;

Men like famished dogs are howling in the streets for bread.'

So two whispered by my door, not thinking I could hear,

Vulgar naked truth, ungarnished for a royal ear;

Fit for cooping in the background, not to stalk so near.

But I strained my utmost sense to catch this truth, and mark:

'There are families out grazing like cattle in the park.'

'A pair of peasants must be saved even if we build an ark.'

A merry jest, a merry laugh, each strolled upon his way;

One was my page, a lad I reared and bore with day by day;

One was my youngest maid as sweet and white as cream in May.

Other footsteps followed softly with a weightier tramp;

Voices said: 'Picked soldiers have been summoned from the camp

To quell these base-born ruffians who make free to howl and stamp.'

'Howl and stamp?' one answered: 'They made free to hurl a stone

At the minister's state coach, well aimed and stoutly thrown.'

'There's work then for the soldiers, for this rank crop must be mown.'

'One I saw, a poor old fool with ashes on his head,

Whimpering because a girl had snatched his crust of bread:

Then he dropped; when some one raised him, it turned out he was dead.'

'After us the deluge,' was retorted with a laugh:

'If bread's the staff of life, they must walk without a staff.'

'While I've a loaf they're welcome to my blessing and the chaff.'

These passed. The king: stand up. Said my father with a smile:

'Daughter mine, your mother comes to sit with you awhile,

She's sad today, and who but you her sadness can beguile?'

He too left me. Shall I touch my harp now while I wait,—

(I hear them doubling guard below before our palace gate—)

Or shall I work the last gold stitch into my veil of state;

Or shall my woman stand and read some unimpassioned scene,

There's music of a lulling sort in words that pause between;

Or shall she merely fan me while I wait here for the queen?

Again I caught my father's voice in sharp word of command:

'Charge!' a clash of steel: 'Charge again, the rebels stand.

Smite and spare not, hand to hand; smite and spare not, hand to hand.'

There swelled a tumult at the gate, high voices waxing higher;

A flash of red reflected light lit the cathedral spire;

I heard a cry for faggots, then I heard a yell for fire.

'Sit and roast there with your meat, sit and bake there with your bread,

You who sat to see us starve,' one shrieking woman said:

'Sit on your throne and roast with your crown upon your head.'

Nay, this thing will I do, while my mother tarrieth,

I will take my fine spun gold, but not to sew therewith,

I will take my gold and gems, and rainbow fan and wreath;

With a ransom in my lap, a king's ransom in my hand,

I will go down to this people, will stand face to face, will stand

Where they curse king, queen, and princess of this cursed land.

They shall take all to buy them bread, take all I have to give;

I, if I perish, perish; they today shall eat and live;

I, if I perish, perish; that's the goal I half conceive:

Once to speak before the world, rend bare my heart and show

The lesson I have learned which is death, is life, to know.

I, if I perish, perish; in the name of God I go.

 

SHALL I FORGET?

SHALL I forget on this side of the grave?

I promise nothing: you must wait and see

Patient and brave.

(O my soul, watch with him and he with me.)

Shall I forget in peace of Paradise?

I promise nothing: follow, friend, and see

Faithful and wise.

(O my soul, lead the way he walks with me.)

 

VANITY OF VANITIES

SONNET

AH, woe is me for pleasure that is vain,

Ah, woe is me for glory that is past:

Pleasure that bringeth sorrow at the last,

Glory that at the last bringeth no gain!

So saith the sinking heart; and so again

It shall say till the mighty angel-blast

Is blown, making the sun and moon aghast

And showering down the stars like sudden rain.

And evermore men shall go fearfully

Bending beneath their weight of heaviness;

And ancient men shall lie down wearily,

And strong men shall rise up in weariness;

Yea, even the young shall answer sighingly

Saying one to another: How vain it is!

 

L. E. L.

'Whose heart was breaking for a little love.'

DOWNSTAIRS I laugh, I sport and jest with all:

But in my solitary room above

I turn my face in silence to the wall;

My heart is breaking for a little love.

Though winter frosts are done,

And birds pair every one,

And leaves peep out, for springtide is begun.

I feel no spring, while spring is wellnigh blown,

I find no nest, while nests are in the grove:

Woe's me for mine own heart that dwells alone,

My heart that breaketh for a little love.

While golden in the sun

Rivulets rise and run,

While lilies bud, for springtide is begun.

All love, are loved, save only I; their hearts

Beat warm with love and joy, beat full thereof:

They cannot guess, who play the pleasant parts,

My heart is breaking for a little love.

While beehives wake and whirr,

And rabbit thins his fur,

In living spring that sets the world astir.

I deck myself with silks and jewelry,

I plume myself like any mated dove:

They praise my rustling show, and never see

My heart is breaking for a little love.

While sprouts green lavender

With rosemary and myrrh,

For in quick spring the sap is all astir.

Perhaps some saints in glory guess the truth,

Perhaps some angels read it as they move,

And cry one to another full of ruth,

'Her heart is breaking for a little love.'

Though other things have birth,

And leap and sing for mirth,

When springtime wakes and clothes and feeds the earth.

Yet saith a saint: 'Take patience for thy scathe;'

Yet saith an angel: 'Wait, for thou shalt prove

True best is last, true life is born of death,

O thou, heart-broken for a little love.

Then love shall fill thy girth,

And love make fat thy dearth,

When new spring builds new heaven and clean new earth.'

 

LIFE AND DEATH

LIFE is not sweet. One day it will be sweet

To shut our eyes and die:

Nor feel the wild flowers blow, nor birds dart by

With flitting butterfly,

Nor grass grow long above our heads and feet,

Nor hear the happy lark that soars sky high,

Nor sigh that spring is fleet and summer fleet,

Nor mark the waxing wheat,

Nor know who sits in our accustomed seat.

Life is not good. One day it will be good

To die, then live again;

To sleep meanwhile: so not to feel the wane

Of shrunk leaves dropping in the wood,

Nor hear the foamy lashing of the main,

Nor mark the blackened bean-fields, nor where stood

Rich ranks of golden grain

Only dead refuse stubble clothe the plain:

Asleep from risk, asleep from pain.

 

BIRD OR BEAST?

DID any bird come flying

After Adam and Eve,

When the door was shut against them

And they sat down to grieve?

I think not Eve's peacock

Splendid to see,

And I think not Adam's eagle;

But a dove may be.

Did any beast come pushing

Through the thorny hedge

Into the thorny thistly world

Out from Eden's edge?

I think not a lion

Though his strength is such;

But an innocent loving lamb

May have done as much.

If the dove preached from her bough

And the lamb from his sod,

The lamb and the dove

Were preachers sent from God.

 

EVE

'WHILE I sit at the door

Sick to gaze within

Mine eye weepeth sore

For sorrow and sin:

As a tree my sin stands

To darken all lands;

Death is the fruit it bore.

'How have Eden bowers grown

Without Adam to bend them!

How have Eden flowers blown

Squandering their sweet breath

Without me to tend them!

The Tree of Life was ours,

Tree twelvefold-fruited,

Most lofty tree that flowers,

Most deeply rooted:

I chose the tree of death.

'Hadst thou but said me nay,

Adam, my brother,

I might have pined away;

I, but none other:

God might have let thee stay

Safe in our garden,

By putting me away

Beyond all pardon.

'I, Eve, sad mother

Of all who must live,

I, not another

Plucked bitterest fruit to give

My friend, husband, lover—

O wanton eyes run over;

Who but I should grieve?—

Cain hath slain his brother:

Of all who must die mother,

Miserable Eve!'

Thus she sat weeping,

Thus Eve our mother,

Where one lay sleeping

Slain by his brother.

Greatest and least

Each piteous beast

To hear her voice

Forgot his joys

And set aside his feast.

The mouse paused in his walk

And dropped his wheaten stalk;

Grave cattle wagged their heads

In rumination;

The eagle gave a cry

From his cloud station;

Larks on thyme beds

Forbore to mount or sing;

Bees drooped upon the wing;

The raven perched on high

Forgot his ration;

The conies in their rock,

A feeble nation,

Quaked sympathetical;

The mocking-bird left off to mock;

Huge camels knelt as if

In deprecation;

The kind hart's tears were falling;

Chattered the wistful stork;

Dove-voices with a dying fall

Cooed desolation

Answering grief by grief.

Only the serpent in the dust

Wriggling and crawling

Grinned an evil grin and thrust

His tongue out with its fork.

 

GROWN AND FLOWN

I LOVED my love from green of Spring

Until sere Autumn's fall;

But now that leaves are withering

How should one love at all?

One heart's too small

For hunger, cold, love, everything.

I loved my love on sunny days

Until late Summer's wane;

But now that frost begins to glaze

How should one love again?

Nay, love and pain

Walk wide apart in diverse ways.

I loved my love—alas to see

That this should be, alas!

I thought that this could scarcely be,

Yet has it come to pass:

Sweet sweet love was,

Now bitter bitter grown to me.

 

A FARM WALK

THE year stood at its equinox

And bluff the North was blowing,

A bleat of lambs came from the flocks,

Green hardy things were growing;

I met a maid with shining locks

Where milky kine were lowing.

She wore a kerchief on her neck,

Her bare arm showed its dimple,

Her apron spread without a speck,

Her air was frank and simple.

She milked into a wooden pail

And sang a country ditty,

An innocent fond lovers' tale,

That was not wise nor witty,

Pathetically rustical,

Too pointless for the city.

She kept in time without a beat

As true as church-bell ringers,

Unless she tapped time with her feet,

Or squeezed it with her fingers;

Her clear unstudied notes were sweet

As many a practised singer's.

I stood a minute out of sight,

Stood silent for a minute

To eye the pail, and creamy white

The frothing milk within it;

To eye the comely milking maid

Herself so fresh and creamy:

'Good day to you,' at last I said;

She turned her head to see me:

'Good day,' she said with lifted head;

Her eyes looked soft and dreamy,

And all the while she milked and milked

The grave cow heavy-laden:

I've seen grand ladies plumed and silked,

But not a sweeter maiden;

But not a sweeter fresher maid

Than this in homely cotton,

Whose pleasant face and silky braid

I have not yet forgotten.

Seven springs have passed since then, as I

Count with a sober sorrow;

Seven springs have come and passed me by,

And spring sets in tomorrow.

I've half a mind to shake myself

Free just for once from London,

To set my work upon the shelf

And leave it done or undone;

To run down by the early train,

Whirl down with shriek and whistle,

And feel the bluff North blow again,

And mark the sprouting thistle

Set up on waste patch of the lane

Its green and tender bristle,

And spy the scarce-blown violet banks,

Crisp primrose leaves and others,

And watch the lambs leap at their pranks

And butt their patient mothers.

Alas, one point in all my plan

My serious thoughts demur to:

Seven years have passed for maid and man,

Seven years have passed for her too;

Perhaps my rose is overblown,

Not rosy or too rosy;

Perhaps in farmhouse of her own

Some husband keeps her cosy,

Where I should show a face unknown.

Good-bye, my wayside posy.

 

SOMEWHERE OR OTHER

SOMEWHERE or other there must surely be

The face not seen, the voice not heard,

The heart that not yet—never yet—ah me!

Made answer to my word.

Somewhere or other, may be near or far;

Past land and sea, clean out of sight;

Beyond the wandering moon, beyond the star

That tracks her night by night.

Somewhere or other, may be far or near;

With just a wall, a hedge, between;

With just the last leaves of the dying year

Fallen on a turf grown green.

 

A CHILL

WHAT can lambkins do

All the keen night through?

Nestle by their woolly mother

The careful ewe.

What can nestlings do

In the nightly dew?

Sleep beneath their mother's wing

Till day breaks anew.

If in field or tree

There might only be

Such a warm soft sleeping-place

Found for me!

 

CHILD'S TALK IN APRIL

I WISH you were a pleasant wren,

And I your small accepted mate;

How we'd look down on toilsome men!

We'd rise and go to bed at eight

Or it may be not quite so late.

Then you should see the nest I'd build,

The wondrous nest for you and me;

The outside rough perhaps, but filled

With wool and down; ah, you should see

The cosy nest that it would be.

We'd have our change of hope and fear,

Small quarrels, reconcilements sweet:

I'd perch by you to chirp and cheer,

Or hop about on active feet

And fetch you dainty bits to eat.

We'd be so happy by the day,

So safe and happy through the night,

We both should feel, and I should say,

It's all one season of delight,

And we'll make merry whilst we may.

Perhaps some day there'd be an egg

When spring had blossomed from the snow:

I'd stand triumphant on one leg;

Like chanticleer I'd almost crow

To let our little neighbours know.

Next you should sit and I would sing

Through lengthening days of sunny spring:

Till, if you wearied of the task,

I'd sit; and you should spread your wing

From bough to bough; I'd sit and bask.

Fancy the breaking of the shell,

The chirp, the chickens wet and bare,

The untried proud paternal swell;

And you with housewife-matron air

Enacting choicer bills of fare.

Fancy the embryo coats of down,

The gradual feathers soft and sleek;

Till clothed and strong from tail to crown,

With virgin warblings in their beak,

They too go forth to soar and seek.

So would it last an April through

And early summer fresh with dew:

Then should we part and live as twain,

Love-time would bring me back to you

And build our happy nest again.

 

GONE FOREVER

O HAPPY rose-bud blooming

Upon thy parent tree,

Nay, thou art too presuming;

For soon the earth entombing

Thy faded charms shall be,

And the chill damp consuming.

O happy skylark springing

Up to the broad blue sky,

Too fearless in thy winging,

Too gladsome in thy singing,

Thou also soon shalt lie

Where no sweet notes are ringing.

And through life's shine and shower

We shall have joy and pain;

But in the summer bower,

And at the morning hour,

We still shall look in vain

For the same bird and flower.

 

UNDER THE ROSE

'The iniquity of the fathers upon the children.'

OH the rose of keenest thorn!

One hidden summer morn

Under the rose I was born.

I do not guess his name

Who wrought my Mother's shame,

And gave me life forlorn,

But my Mother, Mother, Mother,

I know her from all other.

My Mother pale and mild,

Fair as ever was seen,

She was but scarce sixteen,

Little more than a child,

When I was born

To work her scorn.

With secret bitter throes,

In a passion of secret woes,

She bore me under the rose.

One who my Mother nursed

Took me from the first:—

'O nurse, let me look upon

This babe that costs so dear;

Tomorrow she will be gone:

Other mothers may keep

Their babes awake and asleep,

But I must not keep her here.'—

Whether I know or guess,

I know this not the less.

So I was sent away

That none might spy the truth:

And my childhood waxed to youth

And I left off childish play.

I never cared to play

With the village boys and girls;

And I think they thought me proud,

I found so little to say

And kept so from the crowd:

But I had the longest curls

And I had the largest eyes

And my teeth were small like pearls;

The girls might flout and scout me,

But the boys would hang about me

In sheepish mooning wise.

Our one-street village stood

A long mile from the town,

A mile of windy down

And bleak one-sided wood,

With not a single house.

Our town itself was small,

With just the common shops,

And throve in its small way.

Our neighbouring gentry reared

The good old-fashioned crops,

And made old-fashioned boasts

Of what John Bull would do

If Frenchman Frog appeared,

And drank old-fashioned toasts,

And made old-fashioned bows

To my Lady at the Hall.

My Lady at the Hall

Is grander than they all:

Hers is the oldest name

In all the neighbourhood;

But the race must die with her

Though she's a lofty dame,

For she's unmarried still.

Poor people say she's good

And has an open hand

As any in the land,

And she's the comforter

Of many sick and sad;

My nurse once said to me

That everything she had

Came of my Lady's bounty:

'Though she's greatest in the county

She's humble to the poor,

No beggar seeks her door

But finds help presently.

I pray both night and day

For her, and you must pray:

But she'll never feel distress

If needy folk can bless.'

I was a little maid

When here we came to live

From somewhere by the sea.

Men spoke a foreign tongue

There where we used to be

When I was merry and young,

Too young to feel afraid;

The fisher folk would give

A kind strange word to me,

There by the foreign sea:

I don't know where it was,

But I remember still

Our cottage on a hill,

And fields of flowering grass

On that fair foreign shore.

I liked my old home best,

But this was pleasant too:

So here we made our nest

And here I grew.

And now and then my Lady

In riding past our door

Would nod to Nurse and speak,

Or stoop and pat my cheek;

And I was always ready

To hold the field-gate wide

For my Lady to go through;

My Lady in her veil

So seldom put aside,

My Lady grave and pale.

I often sat to wonder

Who might my parents be,

For I knew of something under

My simple-seeming state.

Nurse never talked to me

Of mother or of father,

But watched me early and late

With kind suspicious cares:

Or not suspicious, rather

Anxious, as if she knew

Some secret I might gather

And smart for unawares.

Thus I grew.

But Nurse waxed old and grey,

Bent and weak with years.

There came a certain day

That she lay upon her bed

Shaking her palsied head,

With words she gasped to say

Which had to stay unsaid.

Then with a jerking hand

Held out so piteously

She gave a ring to me

Of gold wrought curiously,

A ring which she had worn

Since the day that I was born,

She once had said to me:

I slipped it on my finger;

Her eyes were keen to linger

On my hand that slipped it on;

Then she sighed one rattling sigh

And stared on with sightless eye:—

The one who loved me was gone.

How long I stayed alone

With the corpse I never knew,

For I fainted dead as stone:

When I came to life once more

I was down upon the floor,

With neighbours making ado

To bring me back to life.

I heard the sexton's wife

Say: 'Up, my lad, and run

To tell it at the Hall;

She was my Lady's nurse,

And done can't be undone.

I'll watch by this poor lamb.

I guess my Lady's purse

Is always open to such:

I'd run up on my crutch

A cripple as I am,'

(For cramps had vexed her much)

'Rather than this dear heart

Lack one to take her part.'

For days day after day

On my weary bed I lay

Wishing the time would pass;

Oh, so wishing that I was

Likely to pass away:

For the one friend whom I knew

Was dead, I knew no other,

Neither father nor mother;

And I, what should I do?

One day the sexton's wife

Said: 'Rouse yourself, my dear:

My Lady has driven down

From the Hall into the town,

And we think she's coming here.

Cheer up, for life is life.'

But I would not look or speak,

Would not cheer up at all.

My tears were like to fall,

So I turned round to the wall

And hid my hollow cheek

Making as if I slept,

As silent as a stone,

And no one knew I wept.

What was my Lady to me,

The grand lady from the Hall?

She might come, or stay away,

I was sick at heart that day:

The whole world seemed to be

Nothing, just nothing to me,

For aught that I could see.

Yet I listened where I lay:

A bustle came below,

A clear voice said: 'I know;

I will see her first alone,

It may be less of a shock

If she's so weak today:'—

A light hand turned the lock,

A light step crossed the floor,

One sat beside my bed:

But never a word she said.

For me, my shyness grew

Each moment more and more:

So I said never a word

And neither looked nor stirred;

I think she must have heard

My heart go pit-a-pat:

Thus I lay, my Lady sat,

More than a mortal hour—

(I counted one and two

By the house-clock while I lay):

I seemed to have no power

To think of a thing to say,

Or do what I ought to do,

Or rouse myself to a choice.

At last she said: 'Margaret,

Won't you even look at me?'

A something in her voice

Forced my tears to fall at last,

Forced sobs from me thick and fast;

Something not of the past,

Yet stirring memory;

A something new, and yet

Not new, too sweet to last,

Which I never can forget.

I turned and stared at her:

Her cheek showed hollow-pale;

Her hair like mine was fair,

A wonderful fall of hair

That screened her like a veil;

But her height was statelier,

Her eyes had depth more deep;

I think they must have had

Always a something sad,

Unless they were asleep.

While I stared, my Lady took

My hand in her spare hand

Jewelled and soft and grand,

And looked with a long long look

Of hunger in my face;

As if she tried to trace

Features she ought to know,

And half hoped, half feared, to find.

Whatever was in her mind

She heaved a sigh at last,

And began to talk to me.

'Your nurse was my dear nurse,

And her nursling's dear,' said she:

'I never knew that she was worse

Till her poor life was past'

(Here my Lady's tears dropped fast):

'I might have been with her,

But she had no comforter.

She might have told me much

Which now I shall never know,

Never never shall know.'

She sat by me sobbing so,

And seemed so woe-begone,

That I laid one hand upon

Hers with a timid touch,

Scarce thinking what I did,

Not knowing what to say:

That moment her face was hid

In the pillow close by mine,

Her arm was flung over me,

She hugged me, sobbing so

As if her heart would break,

And kissed me where I lay.

After this she often came

To bring me fruit or wine,

Or sometimes hothouse flowers.

And at nights I lay awake

Often and often thinking

What to do for her sake.

Wet or dry it was the same:

She would come in at all hours,

Set me eating and drinking

And say I must grow strong;

At last the day seemed long

And home seemed scarcely home

If she did not come.

Well, I grew strong again:

In time of primroses,

I went to pluck them in the lane;

In time of nestling birds,

I heard them chirping round the house;

And all the herds

Were out at grass when I grew strong,

And days were waxen long,

And there was work for bees

Among the May-bush boughs,

And I had shot up tall,

And life felt after all

Pleasant, and not so long

When I grew strong.

I was going to the Hall

To be my Lady's maid:

'Her little friend,' she said to me,

'Almost her child,'

She said and smiled

Sighing painfully;

Blushing, with a second flush

As if she blushed to blush.

Friend, servant, child: just this

My standing at the Hall;

The other servants call me 'Miss,'

My Lady calls me 'Margaret,'

With her clear voice musical.

She never chides when I forget

This or that; she never chides.

Except when people come to stay,

(And that's not often) at the Hall,

I sit with her all day

And ride out when she rides.

She sings to me and makes me sing;

Sometimes I read to her,

Sometimes we merely sit and talk.

She noticed once my ring

And made me tell its history:

That evening in our garden walk

She said she should infer

The ring had been my father's first,

Then my mother's, given for me

To the nurse who nursed

My mother in her misery,

That so quite certainly

Some one might know me, who . . .

Then she was silent, and I too.

I hate when people come:

The women speak and stare

And mean to be so civil.

This one will stroke my hair,

That one will pat my cheek

And praise my Lady's kindness,

Expecting me to speak;

I like the proud ones best

Who sit as struck with blindness,

As if I wasn't there.

But if any gentleman

Is staying at the Hall

(Though few come prying here),

My Lady seems to fear

Some downright dreadful evil,

And makes me keep my room

As closely as she can:

So I hate when people come,

It is so troublesome.

In spite of all her care,

Sometimes to keep alive

I sometimes do contrive

To get out in the grounds

For a whiff of wholesome air,

Under the rose you know:

It's charming to break bounds,

Stolen waters are sweet,

And what's the good of feet

If for days they mustn't go?

Give me a longer tether,

Or I may break from it.

Now I have eyes and ears

And just some little wit:

'Almost my lady's child;'

I recollect she smiled,

Sighed and blushed together;

Then her story of the ring

Sounds not improbable,

She told it me so well

It seemed the actual thing:—

Oh, keep your counsel close,

But I guess under the rose,

In long past summer weather

When the world was blossoming,

And the rose upon its thorn:

I guess not who he was

Flawed honour like a glass,

And made my life forlorn,

But my Mother, Mother, Mother,

Oh, I know her from all other.

My Lady, you might trust

Your daughter with your fame.

Trust me, I would not shame

Our honourable name,

For I have noble blood

Though I was bred in dust

And brought up in the mud.

I will not press my claim,

Just leave me where you will:

But you might trust your daughter,

For blood is thicker than water

And you're my mother still.

So my Lady holds her own

With condescending grace,

And fills her lofty place

With an untroubled face

As a queen may fill a throne.

While I could hint a tale—

(But then I am her child)—

Would make her quail;

Would set her in the dust,

Lorn with no comforter,

Her glorious hair defiled

And ashes on her cheek:

The decent world would thrust

Its finger out at her,

Not much displeased I think

To make a nine days' stir;

The decent world would sink

Its voice to speak of her.

Now this is what I mean

To do, no more, no less:

Never to speak, or show

Bare sign of what I know.

Let the blot pass unseen;

Yea, let her never guess

I hold the tangled clue

She huddles out of view.

Friend, servant, almost child,

So be it and nothing more

On this side of the grave.

Mother, in Paradise,

You'll see with clearer eyes;

Perhaps in this world even

When you are like to die

And face to face with Heaven

You'll drop for once the lie:

But you must drop the mask, not I.

My Lady promises

Two hundred pounds with me

Whenever I may wed

A man she can approve:

And since besides her bounty

I'm fairest in the county

(For so I've heard it said,

Though I don't vouch for this),

Her promised pounds may move

Some honest man to see

My virtues and my beauties;

Perhaps the rising grazier,

Or temperance publican,

May claim my wifely duties.

Meanwhile I wait their leisure

And grace-bestowing pleasure,

I wait the happy man;

But if I hold my head

And pitch my expectations

Just higher than their level,

They must fall back on patience:

I may not mean to wed,

Yet I'll be civil.

Now sometimes in a dream

My heart goes out of me

To build and scheme,

Till I sob after things that seem

So pleasant in a dream:

A home such as I see

My blessed neighbours live in

With father and with mother,

All proud of one another,

Named by one common name

From baby in the bud

To full-blown workman father;

It's little short of Heaven.

I'd give my gentle blood

To wash my special shame

And drown my private grudge;

I'd toil and moil much rather

The dingiest cottage drudge

Whose mother need not blush,

Than live here like a lady

And see my Mother flush

And hear her voice unsteady

Sometimes, yet never dare

Ask to share her care.

Of course the servants sneer

Behind my back at me;

Of course the village girls,

Who envy me my curls

And gowns and idleness,

Take comfort in a jeer;

Of course the ladies guess

Just so much of my history

As points the emphatic stress

With which they laud my Lady;

The gentlemen who catch

A casual glimpse of me

And turn again to see,

Their valets on the watch

To speak a word with me,

All know and sting me wild;

Till I am almost ready

To wish that I were dead,

No faces more to see,

No more words to be said,

My Mother safe at last

Disburdened of her child,

And the past past.

'All equal before God'—

Our Rector has it so,

And sundry sleepers nod:

It may be so; I know

All are not equal here,

And when the sleepers wake

They make a difference.

'All equal in the grave'—

That shows an obvious sense:

Yet something which I crave

Not death itself brings near;

Now should death half atone

For all my past; or make

The name I bear my own?

I love my dear old Nurse

Who loved me without gains;

I love my mistress even,

Friend, Mother, what you will:

But I could almost curse

My Father for his pains;

And sometimes at my prayer

Kneeling in sight of Heaven

I almost curse him still:

Why did he set his snare

To catch at unaware

My Mother's foolish youth;

Load me with shame that's hers,

And her with something worse,

A lifelong lie for truth?

I think my mind is fixed

On one point and made up:

To accept my lot unmixed;

Never to drug the cup

But drink it by myself.

I'll not be wooed for pelf;

I'll not blot out my shame

With any man's good name;

But nameless as I stand,

My hand is my own hand,

And nameless as I came

I go to the dark land.

'All equal in the grave'—

I bide my time till then:

'All equal before God'—

Today I feel His rod,

Tomorrow He may save:

Amen.

 

DEVOTIONAL PIECES

DESPISED AND REJECTED

MY sun has set, I dwell

In darkness as a dead man out of sight;

And none remains, not one, that I should tell

To him mine evil plight

This bitter night.

I will make fast my door

That hollow friends may trouble me no more.

'Friend, open to Me.'—Who is this that calls?

Nay, I am deaf as are my walls:

Cease crying, for I will not hear

Thy cry of hope or fear.

Others were dear,

Others forsook me: what art thou indeed

That I should heed

Thy lamentable need?

Hungry should feed,

Or stranger lodge thee here?

'Friend, My Feet bleed.

Open thy door to Me and comfort Me.'

I will not open, trouble me no more.

Go on thy way footsore,

I will not rise and open unto thee.

'Then is it nothing to thee? Open, see

Who stands to plead with thee.

Open, lest I should pass thee by, and thou

One day entreat My Face

And howl for grace,

And I be deaf as thou art now.

Open to Me.'

Then I cried out upon him: Cease,

Leave me in peace:

Fear not that I should crave

Aught thou mayst have.

Leave me in peace, yea trouble me no more,

Lest I arise and chase thee from my door.

What, shall I not be let

Alone, that thou dost vex me yet?

But all night long that voice spake urgently:

'Open to Me.'

Still harping in mine ears:

'Rise, let Me in.'

Pleading with tears:

'Open to Me that I may come to thee.'

While the dew dropped, while the dark hours were cold:

'My Feet bleed, see My Face,

See My Hands bleed that bring thee grace,

My Heart doth bleed for thee,

Open to Me.'

So till the break of day:

Then died away

That voice, in silence as of sorrow;

Then footsteps echoing like a sigh

Passed me by,

Lingering footsteps slow to pass.

On the morrow

I saw upon the grass

Each footprint marked in blood, and on my door

The mark of blood for evermore.

 

LONG BARREN

THOU who didst hang upon a barren tree,

My God, for me;

Though I till now be barren, now at length,

Lord, give me strength

To bring forth fruit to Thee.

Thou who didst bear for me the crown of thorn,

Spitting and scorn;

Though I till now have put forth thorns, yet now

Strengthen me Thou

That better fruit be borne.

Thou Rose of Sharon, Cedar of broad roots,

Vine of sweet fruits,

Thou Lily of the vale with fadeless leaf,

Of thousands Chief,

Feed Thou my feeble shoots.

 

IF ONLY

IF I might only love my God and die!

But now He bids me love Him and live on,

Now when the bloom of all my life is gone,

The pleasant half of life has quite gone by.

My tree of hope is lopped that spread so high;

And I forget how summer glowed and shone,

While autumn grips me with its fingers wan,

And frets me with its fitful windy sigh.

When autumn passes then must winter numb,

And winter may not pass a weary while,

But when it passes spring shall flower again:

And in that spring who weepeth now shall smile,

Yea, they shall wax who now are on the wane,

Yea, they shall sing for love when Christ shall come.

 

DOST THOU NOT CARE?

I LOVE and love not: Lord, it breaks my heart

To love and not to love.

Thou veiled within Thy glory, gone apart

Into Thy shrine, which is above,

Dost thou not love me, Lord, or care

For this mine ill?—

I love thee here or there,

I will accept thy broken heart, lie still.

Lord, it was well with me in time gone by

That cometh not again,

When I was fresh and cheerful, who but I?

I fresh, I cheerful: worn with pain

Now, out of sight and out of heart;

O Lord, how long?—

I watch thee as thou art,

I will accept thy fainting heart, be strong.

'Lie still,' 'be strong,' today; but, Lord, tomorrow,

What of tomorrow, Lord?

Shall there be rest from toil, be truce from sorrow,

Be living green upon the sward

Now but a barren grave to me,

Be joy for sorrow?—

Did I not die for thee?

Do I not live for thee? leave Me tomorrow.

 

WEARY IN WELL-DOING

I WOULD have gone; God bade me stay:

I would have worked; God bade me rest.

He broke my will from day to day,

He read my yearnings unexpressed

And said them nay.

Now I would stay; God bids me go:

Now I would rest; God bids me work.

He breaks my heart tossed to and fro,

My soul is wrung with doubts that lurk

And vex it so.

I go, Lord, where Thou sendest me;

Day after day I plod and moil:

But, Christ my God, when will it be

That I may let alone my toil

And rest with Thee?

 

MARTYRS' SONG

WE meet in joy, though we part in sorrow;

We part tonight, but we meet tomorrow.

Be it flood or blood the path that's trod,

All the same it leads home to God:

Be it furnace-fire voluminous,

One like God's Son will walk with us.

What are these that glow from afar,

These that lean over the golden bar,

Strong as the lion, pure as the dove,

With open arms and hearts of love?

They the blessed ones gone before,

They the blessed for evermore.

Out of great tribulation they went

Home to their home of Heaven-content;

Through flood, or blood, or furnace-fire,

To the rest that fulfils desire.

What are these that fly as a cloud,

With flashing heads and faces bowed,

In their mouths a victorious psalm,

In their hands a robe and a palm?

Welcoming angels these that shine,

Your own angel, and yours, and mine;

Who have hedged us both day and night

On the left hand and on the right,

Who have watched us both night and day

Because the devil keeps watch to slay.

Light above light, and Bliss beyond bliss,

Whom words cannot utter, lo, Who is This?

As a King with many crowns He stands,

And our names are graven upon His hands;

As a Priest, with God-uplifted eyes,

He offers for us His Sacrifice;

As the Lamb of God for sinners slain,

That we too may live He lives again;

As our Champion behold Him stand,

Strong to save us, at God's Right Hand.

God the Father give us grace

To walk in the light of Jesus' Face.

God the Son give us a part

In the hiding-place of Jesus' Heart:

God the Spirit so hold us up,

That we may drink of Jesus' cup.

Death is short and life is long;

Satan is strong, but Christ more strong.

At His Word, Who hath led us hither,

The Red Sea must part hither and thither.

At His Word, Who goes before us too,

Jordan must cleave to let us through.

Yet one pang searching and sore,

And then Heaven for evermore;

Yet one moment awful and dark,

Then safety within the Veil and the Ark;

Yet one effort by Christ His grace,

Then Christ forever face to face.

God the Father we will adore,

In Jesus' Name, now and evermore:

God the Son we will love and thank

In this flood and on the further bank:

God the Holy Ghost we will praise,

In Jesus' Name, through endless days:

God Almighty, God Three in One,

God Almighty, God alone.

 

AFTER THIS THE JUDGEMENT

As eager homebound traveller to the goal,

Or steadfast seeker on an unsearched main,

Or martyr panting for an aureole,

My fellow-pilgrims pass me, and attain

That hidden mansion of perpetual peace

Where keen desire and hope dwell free from pain:

That gate stands open of perennial ease;

I view the glory till I partly long,

Yet lack the fire of love which quickens these.

O passing Angel, speed me with a song,

A melody of heaven to reach my heart

And rouse me to the race and make me strong;

Till in such music I take up my part

Swelling those Hallelujahs full of rest,

One, tenfold, hundredfold, with heavenly art,

Fulfilling north and south and east and west,

Thousand, ten thousandfold, innumerable,

All blent in one yet each one manifest;

Each one distinguished and beloved as well

As if no second voice in earth or heaven

Were lifted up the Love of God to tell.

Ah, Love of God, which Thine own Self hast given

To me most poor, and made me rich in love,

Love that dost pass the tenfold seven times seven,

Draw Thou mine eyes, draw Thou my heart above,

My treasure and my heart store Thou in Thee,

Brood over me with yearnings of a dove;

Be Husband, Brother, closest Friend to me;

Love me as very mother loves her son,

Her sucking firstborn fondled on her knee:

Yea, more than mother loves her little one;

For, earthly, even a mother may forget

And feel no pity for its piteous moan;

But thou, O Love of God, remember yet,

Through the dry desert, through the waterflood

(Life, death), until the Great White Throne is set.

If now I am sick in chewing the bitter cud

Of sweet past sin, though solaced by Thy grace

And ofttimes strengthened by Thy Flesh and Blood,

How shall I then stand up before Thy face

When from Thine eyes repentance shall be hid

And utmost Justice stand in Mercy's place:

When every sin I thought or spoke or did

Shall meet me at the inexorable bar,

And there be no man standing in the mid

To plead for me; while star fallen after star

With heaven and earth are like a ripened shock,

And all time's mighty works and wonders are

Consumed as in a moment; when no rock

Remains to fall on me, no tree to hide,

But I stand all creation's gazing-stock

Exposed and comfortless on every side,

Placed trembling in the final balances

Whose poise this hour, this moment, must be tried?—

Ah Love of God, if greater love than this

Hath no man, that a man die for his friend,

And if such love of love Thine Own Love is,

Plead with Thyself, with me, before the end;

Redeem me from the irrevocable past;

Pitch Thou Thy Presence round me to defend;

Yea seek with piercèd feet, yea hold me fast

With piercèd hands whose wounds were made by love;

Not what I am, remember what Thou wast

When darkness hid from Thee Thy heavens above,

And sin Thy Father's Face, while thou didst drink

The bitter cup of death, didst taste thereof

For every man; while Thou wast nigh to sink

Beneath the intense intolerable rod,

Grown sick of love; not what I am, but think

Thy Life then ransomed mine, my God, my God.

 

GOOD FRIDAY

AM I a stone and not a sheep

That I can stand, O Christ, beneath Thy Cross,

To number drop by drop Thy Blood's slow loss,

And yet not weep?

Not so those women loved

Who with exceeding grief lamented Thee;

Not so fallen Peter weeping bitterly;

Not so the thief was moved;

Not so the Sun and Moon

Which hid their faces in a starless sky,

A horror of great darkness at broad noon—

I, only I.

Yet give not o'er,

But seek Thy sheep, true Shepherd of the flock;

Greater than Moses, turn and look once more

And smite a rock.

 

THE LOWEST PLACE

GIVE me the lowest place: not that I dare

Ask for that lowest place, but Thou hast died

That I might live and share

Thy glory by Thy side.

Give me the lowest place: or if for me

That lowest place too high, make one more low

Where I may sit and see

My God and love Thee so.

 

MISCELLANEOUS POEMS, 1848–69

DEATH'S CHILL BETWEEN

(Athenaeum, October 14, 1848)

CHIDE not; let me breathe a little,

For I shall not mourn him long;

Though the life-cord was so brittle,

The love-cord was very strong.

I would wake a little space

Till I find a sleeping-place.

You can go,—I shall not weep;

You can go unto your rest.

My heart-ache is all too deep,

And too sore my throbbing breast.

Can sobs be, or angry tears,

Where are neither hopes nor fears?

Though with you I am alone

And must be so everywhere,

I will make no useless moan,—

None shall say 'She could not bear:'

While life lasts I will be strong,—

But I shall not struggle long.

Listen, listen! Everywhere

A low voice is calling me,

And a step is on the stair,

And one comes ye do not see.

Listen, listen! Evermore

A dim hand knocks at the door.

Hear me; he is come again,—

My own dearest is come back.

Bring him in from the cold rain;

Bring wine, and let nothing lack.

Thou and I will rest together,

Love, until the sunny weather.

I will shelter thee from harm,—

Hide thee from all heaviness.

Come to me, and keep thee warm

By my side in quietness.

I will lull thee to thy sleep

With sweet songs:—we will not weep.

Who hath talked of weeping?—Yet

There is something at my heart,

Gnawing, I would fain forget,

And an aching and a smart.

—Ah! my mother, 'tis in vain,

For he is not come again.

 

HEART'S CHILL BETWEEN

(Athenaeum, October 21, 1848)

I DID not chide him, though I knew

That he was false to me.

Chide the exhaling of the dew,

The ebbing of the sea,

The fading of a rosy hue,—

But not inconstancy.

Why strive for love when love is o'er?

Why bind a restive heart?—

He never knew the pain I bore

In saying: 'We must part;

Let us be friends and nothing more.'

—Oh, woman's shallow art!

But it is over, it is done,—

I hardly heed it now;

So many weary years have run

Since then, I think not how

Things might have been,—but greet each one

With an unruffled brow.

What time I am where others be,

My heart seems very calm—

Stone calm; but if all go from me,

There comes a vague alarm,

A shrinking in the memory

From some forgotten harm.

And often through the long, long night,

Waking when none are near,

I feel my heart beat fast with fright,

Yet know not what I fear.

Oh how I long to see the light,

And the sweet birds to hear!

To have the sun upon my face,

To look up through the trees,

To walk forth in the open space

And listen to the breeze,—

And not to dream the burial-place

Is clogging my weak knees.

Sometimes I can nor weep nor pray,

But am half stupefied:

And then all those who see me say

Mine eyes are opened wide

And that my wits seem gone away—

Ah, would that I had died!

Would I could die and be at peace,

Or living could forget!

My grief nor grows nor doth decrease,

But ever is:—and yet

Methinks, now, that all this shall cease

Before the sun shall set.

 

REPINING

(Art and Poetry [The Germ, No. 3], March 1850)

SHE sat alway thro' the long day

Spinning the weary thread away;

And ever said in undertone:

'Come, that I be no more alone.'

From early dawn to set of sun

Working, her task was still undone;

And the long thread seemed to increase

Even while she spun and did not cease.

She heard the gentle turtle-dove

Tell to its mate a tale of love;

She saw the glancing swallows fly,

Ever a social company;

She knew each bird upon its nest

Had cheering songs to bring it rest;

None lived alone save only she;—

The wheel went round more wearily;

She wept and said in undertone:

'Come, that I be no more alone.'

Day followed day, and still she sighed

For love, and was not satisfied;

Until one night, when the moonlight

Turned all the trees to silver white,

She heard, what ne'er she heard before,

A steady hand undo the door.

The nightingale since set of sun

Her throbbing music had not done,

And she had listened silently;

But now the wind had changed, and she

Heard the sweet song no more, but heard

Beside her bed a whispered word:

'Damsel, rise up; be not afraid;

For I am come at last,' it said.

She trembled, tho' the voice was mild;

She trembled like a frightened child;—

Till she looked up, and then she saw

The unknown speaker without awe.

He seemed a fair young man, his eyes

Beaming with serious charities;

His cheek was white but hardly pale;

And a dim glory like a veil

Hovered about his head, and shone

Thro' the whole room till night was gone.

So her fear fled; and then she said,

Leaning upon her quiet bed:

'Now thou art come, I prithee stay,

That I may see thee in the day,

And learn to know thy voice, and hear

It evermore calling me near.'

He answered: 'Rise, and follow me.'

But she looked upwards wonderingly:

'And whither would'st thou go, friend? stay

Until the dawning of the day.'

But he said: 'The wind ceaseth, Maid;

Of chill nor damp be thou afraid.'

She bound her hair up from the floor,

And passed in silence from the door.

So they went forth together, he

Helping her forward tenderly.

The hedges bowed beneath his hand;

Forth from the streams came the dry land

As they passed over; evermore

The pallid moonbeams shone before;

And the wind hushed, and nothing stirred;

Not even a solitary bird,

Scared by their footsteps, fluttered by

Where aspen-trees stood steadily.

As they went on, at length a sound

Came trembling on the air around;

The undistinguishable hum

Of life, voices that go and come

Of busy men, and the child's sweet

High laugh, and noise of trampling feet.

Then he said: 'Wilt thou go and see?’

And she made answer joyfully:

'The noise of life, of human life,

Of dear communion without strife,

Of converse held 'twixt friend and friend;

Is it not here our path shall end?'

He led her on a little way

Until they reached a hillock: 'Stay.'

It was a village in a plain.

High mountains screened it from the rain

And stormy wind; and nigh at hand

A bubbling streamlet flowed, o'er sand

Pebbly and fine, and sent life up

Green succous stalk and flower-cup.

Gradually, day's harbinger,

A chilly wind began to stir.

It seemed a gentle powerless breeze

That scarcely rustled thro' the trees;

And yet it touched the mountain's head

And the paths man might never tread.

But hearken: in the quiet weather

Do all the streams flow down together?—

No, 'tis a sound more terrible

Than tho' a thousand rivers fell.

The everlasting ice and snow

Were loosened then, but not to flow;—

With a loud crash like solid thunder

The avalanche came, burying under

The village; turning life and breath

And rest and joy and plans to death.

'Oh! let us fly, for pity fly;

Let us go hence, friend, thou and I.

There must be many regions yet

Where these things make not desolate.'

He looked upon her seriously;

Then said: 'Arise and follow me.'

The path that lay before them was

Nigh covered over with long grass;

And many slimy things and slow

Trailed on between the roots below.

The moon looked dimmer than before;

And shadowy cloudlets floating o'er

Its face sometimes quite hid its light,

And filled the skies with deeper night.

At last, as they went on, the noise

Was heard of the sea's mighty voice;

And soon the ocean could be seen

In its long restlessness serene.

Upon its breast a vessel rode

That drowsily appeared to nod

As the great billows rose and fell,

And swelled to sink, and sank to swell.

Meanwhile the strong wind had come forth

From the chill regions of the North,

The mighty wind invisible.

And the low waves began to swell;

And the sky darkened overhead;

And the moon once looked forth, then fled

Behind dark clouds; while here and there

The lightning shone out in the air;

And the approaching thunder rolled

With angry pealings manifold.

How many vows were made, and prayers

That in safe times were cold and scarce.

Still all availed not; and at length

The waves arose in all their strength,

And fought against the ship, and filled

The ship. Then were the clouds unsealed,

And the rain hurried forth, and beat

On every side and over it.

Some clung together, and some kept

A long stern silence, and some wept.

Many half-crazed looked on in wonder

As the strong timbers rent asunder;

Friends forgot friends, foes fled to foes;—

And still the water rose and rose.

'Ah woe is me! Whom I have seen

Are now as tho' they had not been.

In the earth there is room for birth,

And there are graves enough in earth;

Why should the cold sea, tempest-torn,

Bury those whom it hath not borne?'

He answered not, and they went on.

The glory of the heavens was gone;

The moon gleamed not nor any star;

Cold winds were rustling near and far,

And from the trees the dry leaves fell

With a sad sound unspeakable.

The air was cold; till from the South

A gust blew hot, like sudden drouth,

Into their faces; and a light

Glowing and red, shone thro' the night.

A mighty city full of flame

And death and sounds without a name.

Amid the black and blinding smoke,

The people, as one man, awoke.

Oh! happy they who yesterday

On the long journey went away;

Whose pallid lips, smiling and chill,

While the flames scorch them smile on still;

Who murmur not; who tremble not

When the bier crackles fiery hot;

Who, dying, said in love's increase:

'Lord, let thy servant part in peace.'

Those in the town could see and hear

A shaded river flowing near;

The broad deep bed could hardly hold

Its plenteous waters calm and cold.

Was flame-wrapped all the city wall,

The city gates were flame-wrapped all.

What was man's strength, what puissance then?

Women were mighty as strong men.

Some knelt in prayer, believing still,

Resigned unto a righteous will,

Bowing beneath the chastening rod,

Lost to the world, but found of God.

Some prayed for friend, for child, for wife;

Some prayed for faith; some prayed for life;

While some, proud even in death, hope gone,

Steadfast and still, stood looking on.

'Death—death—oh! let us fly from death;

Where'er we go it followeth;

All these are dead; and we alone

Remain to weep for what is gone.

What is this thing? thus hurriedly

To pass into eternity;

To leave the earth so full of mirth;

To lose the profit of our birth;

To die and be no more; to cease,

Having numbness that is not peace.

Let us go hence; and, even if thus

Death everywhere must go with us,

Let us not see the change, but see

Those who have been or still shall be.'

He sighed and they went on together;

Beneath their feet did the grass wither;

Across the heaven high overhead

Dark misty clouds floated and fled;

And in their bosom was the thunder,

And angry lightnings flashed out under,

Forked and red and menacing;

Far off the wind was muttering;

It seemed to tell, not understood,

Strange secrets to the listening wood.

Upon its wings it bore the scent

Of blood of a great armament:

Then saw they how on either side

Fields were down-trodden far and wide.

That morning at the break of day

Two nations had gone forth to slay.

As a man soweth so he reaps.

The field was full of bleeding heaps;

Ghastly corpses of men and horses

That met death at a thousand sources;

Cold limbs and putrefying flesh;

Long love-locks clotted to a mesh

That stifled; stiffened mouths beneath

Staring eyes that had looked on death.

But these were dead: these felt no more

The anguish of the wounds they bore.

Behold, they shall not sigh again,

Nor justly fear, nor hope in vain.

What if none wept above them?—is

The sleeper less at rest for this?

Is not the young child's slumber sweet

When no man watcheth over it?

These had deep calm; but all around

There was a deadly smothered sound,

The choking cry of agony

From wounded men who could not die;

Who watched the black wing of the raven

Rise like a cloud 'twixt them and heaven,

And in the distance flying fast

Beheld the eagle come at last.

She knelt down in her agony:

'O Lord, it is enough,' said she:

'My heart's prayer putteth me to shame;

Let me return to whence I came.

Thou who for love's sake didst reprove,

Forgive me for the sake of love.'

 

SIT DOWN IN THE LOWEST ROOM

(Macmillan's Magazine, March 1864.)

LIKE flowers sequestered from the sun

And wind of summer, day by day

I dwindled paler, whilst my hair

Showed the first tinge of grey.

'Oh what is life, that we should live?

Or what is death, that we must die?

A bursting bubble is our life:

I also, what am I?'

'What is your grief? now tell me, sweet,

That I may grieve,' my sister said;

And stayed a white embroidering hand

And raised a golden head:

Her tresses showed a richer mass,

Her eyes looked softer than my own,

Her figure had a statelier height,

Her voice a tenderer tone.

'Some must be second and not first;

All cannot be the first of all:

Is not this, too, but vanity?

I stumble like to fall.

'So yesterday I read the acts

Of Hector and each clangorous king

With wrathful great Æacides:—

Old Homer leaves a sting.'

The comely face looked up again,

The deft hand lingered on the thread:

'Sweet, tell me what is Homer's sting,

Old Homer's sting?' she said.

'He stirs my sluggish pulse like wine,

He melts me like the wind of spice,

Strong as strong Ajax' red right hand,

And grand like Juno's eyes.

'I cannot melt the sons of men,

I cannot fire and tempest-toss:—

Besides, those days were golden days,

Whilst these are days of dross.'

She laughed a feminine low laugh,

Yet did not stay her dexterous hand:

'Now tell me of those days,' she said,

'When time ran golden sand.'

'Then men were men of might and right,

Sheer might, at least, and weighty swords;

Then men in open blood and fire,

Bore witness to their words,

'Crest-rearing kings with whistling spears;

But if these shivered in the shock

They wrenched up hundred-rooted trees,

Or hurled the effacing rock.

'Then hand to hand, then foot to foot,

Stern to the death-grip grappling then,

Who ever thought of gunpowder

Amongst these men of men?

'They knew whose hand struck home the death,

They knew who broke but would not bend,

Could venerate an equal foe

And scorn a laggard friend.

'Calm in the utmost stress of doom,

Devout toward adverse powers above,

They hated with intenser hate

And loved with fuller love.

'Then heavenly beauty could allay

As heavenly beauty stirred the strife:

By them a slave was worshipped more

Than is by us a wife.'

She laughed again, my sister laughed,

Made answer o'er the laboured cloth:

'I rather would be one of us

Than wife, or slave, or both.'

'Oh better then be slave or wife

Than fritter now blank life away:

Then night had holiness of night,

And day was sacred day.

'The princess laboured at her loom,

Mistress and handmaiden alike;

Beneath their needles grew the field

With warriors armed to strike;

'Or, look again, dim Dian's face

Gleamed perfect through the attendant night;

Were such not better than those holes

Amid that waste of white?

'A shame it is, our aimless life:

I rather from my heart would feed

From silver dish in gilded stall

With wheat and wine the steed—

'The faithful steed that bore my lord

In safety through the hostile land,

The faithful steed that arched his neck

To fondle with my hand.'

Her needle erred; a moment's pause,

A moment's patience, all was well.

Then she: 'But just suppose the horse,

Suppose the rider fell?

'Then captive in an alien house,

Hungering on exile's bitter bread,—

They happy, they who won the lot

Of sacrifice,' she said.

Speaking she faltered, while her look

Showed forth her passion like a glass:

With hand suspended, kindling eye,

Flushed cheek, how fair she was!

'Ah well, be those the days of dross;

This, if you will, the age of gold:

Yet had those days a spark of warmth,

While these are somewhat cold—

'Are somewhat mean and cold and slow,

Are stunted from heroic growth:

We gain but little when we prove

The worthlessness of both.'

'But life is in our hands,' she said:

'In our own hands for gain or loss:

Shall not the Sevenfold Sacred Fire

Suffice to purge our dross?

'Too short a century of dreams,

One day of work sufficient length:

Why should not you, why should not I

Attain heroic strength?

'Our life is given us as a blank;

Ourselves must make it blest or curst:

Who dooms me I shall only be

The second, not the first?

'Learn from old Homer, if you will,

Such wisdom as his Books have said:

In one the acts of Ajax shine,

In one of Diomed.

'Honoured all heroes whose high deeds

Thro' life till death enlarge their span:

Only Achilles in his rage

And sloth is less than man.'

'Achilles only less than man?

He less than man who, half a god,

Discomfited all Greece with rest,

Cowed Ilion with a nod?

'He offered vengeance, lifelong grief

To one dear ghost, uncounted price:

Beasts, Trojans, adverse gods, himself,

Heaped up the sacrifice.

'Self-immolated to his friend,

Shrined in world's wonder, Homer's page,

Is this the man, the less than men,

Of this degenerate age?'

'Gross from his acorns, tusky boar

Does memorable acts like his;

So for her snared offended young

Bleeds the swart lioness.'

But here she paused; our eyes had met,

And I was whitening with the jeer;

She rose: 'I went too far,' she said;

Spoke low: 'Forgive me, dear.

'To me our days seem pleasant days,

Our home a haven of pure content;

Forgive me if I said too much,

So much more than I meant.

'Homer, tho' greater than his gods,

With rough-hewn virtues was sufficed

And rough-hewn men: but what are such

To us who learn of Christ?'

The much-moved pathos of her voice,

Her almost tearful eyes, her cheek

Grown pale, confessed the strength of love

Which only made her speak:

For mild she was, of few soft words,

Most gentle, easy to be led,

Content to listen when I spoke

And reverence what I said;

I elder sister by six years;

Not half so glad, or wise, or good:

Her words rebuked my secret self

And shamed me where I stood.

She never guessed her words reproved

A silent envy nursed within,

A selfish, souring discontent

Pride-born, the devil's sin.

I smiled, half bitter, half in jest:

'The wisest man of all the wise

Left for his summary of life

"Vanity of vanities."

'Beneath the sun there's nothing new:

Men flow, men ebb, mankind flows on:

If I am wearied of my life,

Why so was Solomon.

'Vanity of vanities he preached

Of all he found, of all he sought:

Vanity of vanities, the gist

Of all the words he taught.

'This in the wisdom of the world,

In Homer's page, in all, we find:

As the sea is not filled, so yearns

Man's universal mind.

'This Homer felt, who gave his men

With glory but a transient state:

His very Jove could not reverse

Irrevocable fate.

'Uncertain all their lot save this—

Who wins must lose, who lives must die:

All trodden out into the dark

Alike, all vanity.'

She scarcely answered when I paused,

But rather to herself said: 'One

Is here,' low-voiced and loving, 'Yea,

Greater than Solomon.'

So both were silent, she and I:

She laid her work aside, and went

Into the garden-walks, like spring,

All gracious with content,

A little graver than her wont,

Because her words had fretted me;

Not warbling quite her merriest tune

Bird-like from tree to tree.

I chose a book to read and dream:

Yet all the while with furtive eyes

Marked how she made her choice of flowers

Intuitively wise,

And ranged them with instinctive taste

Which all my books had failed to teach;

Fresh rose herself, and daintier

Than blossom of the peach.

By birthright higher than myself,

Tho' nestling of the self-same nest:

No fault of hers, no fault of mine,

But stubborn to digest.

I watched her, till my book unmarked

Slid noiseless to the velvet floor;

Till all the opulent summer-world

Looked poorer than before.

Just then her busy fingers ceased,

Her fluttered colour went and came;

I knew whose step was on the walk,

Whose voice would name her name.

Well, twenty years have passed since then:

My sister now, a stately wife

Still fair, looks back in peace and sees

The longer half of life—

The longer half of prosperous life,

With little grief, or fear, or fret:

She loved, and, loving long ago,

Is loved and loving yet.

A husband honourable, brave,

Is her main wealth in all the world:

And next to him one like herself,

One daughter golden-curled;

Fair image of her own fair youth,

As beautiful and as serene,

With almost such another love

As her own love has been.

Yet, tho' of world-wide charity,

And in her home most tender dove,

Her treasure and her heart are stored

In the home-land of love:

She thrives, God's blessed husbandry;

She like a vine is full of fruit;

Her passion-flower climbs up toward heaven

Tho' earth still binds its root.

I sit and watch my sister's face:

How little altered since the hours

When she, a kind, light-hearted girl,

Gathered her garden flowers;

Her song just mellowed by regret

For having teased me with her talk;

Then all-forgetful as she heard

One step upon the walk.

While I? I sat alone and watched

My lot in life, to live alone,

In mine own world of interests,

Much felt but little shown.

Not to be first: how hard to learn

That lifelong lesson of the past;

Line graven on line and stroke on stroke;

But, thank God, learned at last.

So now in patience I possess

My soul year after tedious year,

Content to take the lowest place,

The place assigned me here.

Yet sometimes, when I feel my strength

Most weak, and life most burdensome,

I lift mine eyes up to the hills

From whence my help shall come:

Yea, sometimes still I lift my heart

To the Archangelic trumpet-burst,

When all deep secrets shall be shown,

And many last be first.

 

MY FRIEND

(Macmillan's Magazine, Dec. 1864.)

TWO days ago with dancing glancing hair,

With living lips and eyes:

Now pale, dumb, blind, she lies;

So pale, yet still so fair.

We have not left her yet, not yet alone;

But soon must leave her where

She will not miss our care,

Bone of our bone.

Weep not; O friends, we should not weep:

Our friend of friends lies full of rest;

No sorrow rankles in her breast,

Fallen fast asleep.

She sleeps below,

She wakes and laughs above:

Today, as she walked, let us walk in love;

Tomorrow follow so.

 

LAST NIGHT

(Macmillan's Magazine, May 1865.)

WHERE were you last night? I watched at the gate;

I went down early, I stayed down late.

Were you snug at home, I should like to know,

Or were you in the coppice wheedling Kate?

She's a fine girl, with a fine clear skin;

Easy to woo, perhaps not hard to win.

Speak up like a man and tell me the truth:

I'm not one to grow downhearted and thin.

If you love her best speak up like a man;

It's not I will stand in the light of your plan:

Some girls might cry and scold you a bit,

And say they couldn't bear it; but I can.

Love was pleasant enough, and the days went fast

Pleasant while it lasted, but it needn't last;

Awhile on the wax, and awhile on the wane,

Now dropped away into the past.

Was it pleasant to you? To me it was:

Now clean gone as an image from glass,

As a goodly rainbow that fades away,

As dew that steams upward from the grass,

As the first spring day, or the last summer day,

As the sunset flush that leaves heaven grey,

As a flame burnt out for lack of oil,

Which no pains relight or ever may.

Good luck to Kate and good luck to you:

I guess she'll be kind when you come to woo.

I wish her a pretty face that will last,

I wish her a husband steady and true.

Hate you? not I, my very good friend;

All things begin and all have an end.

But let broken be broken; I put no faith

In quacks who set up to patch and mend.

Just my love and one word to Kate:

Not to let time slip if she means to mate;—

For even such a thing has been known

As to miss the chance while we weigh and wait.

 

CONSIDER

(Macmillan's Magazine, Jan. 1866.)

CONSIDER

The lilies of the field whose bloom is brief:—

We are as they;

Like them we fade away,

As doth a leaf.

Consider

The sparrows of the air of small account:

Our God doth view

Whether they fall or mount,—

He guards us too.

Consider

The lilies that do neither spin nor toil,

Yet are most fair:—

What profits all this care

And all this coil?

Consider

The birds that have no barn nor harvest-weeks;

God gives them food:—

Much more our Father seeks

To do us good.

 

HELEN GREY

(Macmillan's Magazine, March 1866.)

BECAUSE one loves you, Helen Grey,

Is that a reason you should pout,

And like a March wind veer about,

And frown, and say your shrewish say?

Don't strain the cord until it snaps,

Don't split the sound heart with your wedge,

Don't cut your fingers with the edge

Of your keen wit; you may, perhaps.

Because you're handsome, Helen Grey,

Is that a reason to be proud?

Your eyes are bold, your laugh is loud,

Your steps go mincing on their way;

But so you miss that modest charm

Which is the surest charm of all:

Take heed, you yet may trip and fall,

And no man care to stretch his arm.

Stoop from your cold height, Helen Grey,

Come down, and take a lowlier place,

Come down, to fill it now with grace;

Come down you must perforce some day:

For years cannot be kept at bay,

And fading years will make you old;

Then in their turn will men seem cold,

When you yourself are nipped and grey.

 

BY THE WATERS OF BABYLON

B. C. 570

(Macmillan's Magazine, October 1866.)

HERE where I dwell I waste to skin and bone;

The curse is come upon me, and I waste

In penal torment powerless to atone.

The curse is come on me, which makes no haste

And doth not tarry, crushing both the proud

Hard man and him the sinner double-faced.

Look not upon me, for my soul is bowed

Within me, as my body in this mire;

My soul crawls dumb-struck, sore-bested and cowed.

As Sodom and Gomorrah scourged by fire,

As Jericho before God's trumpet-peal,

So we the elect ones perish in His ire.

Vainly we gird on sackcloth, vainly kneel

With famished faces toward Jerusalem:

His heart is shut against us not to feel,

His ears against our cry He shutteth them,

His hand He shorteneth that He will not save,

His law is loud against us to condemn:

And we, as unclean bodies in the grave

Inheriting corruption and the dark,

Are outcast from His presence which we crave.

Our Mercy hath departed from His Ark,

Our Glory hath departed from His rest,

Our Shield hath left us naked as a mark

Unto all pitiless eyes made manifest.

Our very Father hath forsaken us,

Our God hath cast us from Him: we oppress'd

Unto our foes are even marvellous,

A hissing and a butt for pointing hands,

Whilst God Almighty hunts and grinds us thus;

For He hath scattered us in alien lands,

Our priests, our princes, our anointed king,

And bound us hand and foot with brazen bands.

Here while I sit my painful heart takes wing

Home to the home-land I must see no more,

Where milk and honey flow, where waters spring

And fail not, where I dwelt in days of yore

Under my fig-tree and my fruitful vine,

There where my parents dwelt at ease before:

Now strangers press the olives that are mine,

Reap all the corners of my harvest-field,

And make their fat hearts wanton with my wine;

To them my trees, to them my gardens yield

Their sweets and spices and their tender green,

O'er them in noontide heat outspread their shield.

Yet these are they whose fathers had not been

Housed with my dogs, whom hip and thigh we smote

And with their blood washed their pollutions clean,

Purging the land which spewed them from its throat;

Their daughters took we for a pleasant prey,

Choice tender ones on whom the fathers doat.

Now they in turn have led our own away;

Our daughters and our sisters and our wives

Sore weeping as they weep who curse the day,

To live, remote from help, dishonoured lives,

Soothing their drunken masters with a song,

Or dancing in their golden tinkling gyves:

Accurst if they remember through the long

Estrangement of their exile, twice accursed

If they forget and join the accursèd throng.

How doth my heart that is so wrung not burst

When I remember that my way was plain,

And that God's candle lit me at the first,

Whilst now I grope in darkness, grope in vain,

Desiring but to find Him Who is lost,

To find Him once again, but once again.

His wrath came on us to the uttermost,

His covenanted and most righteous wrath:

Yet this is He of Whom we made our boast,

Who lit the Fiery Pillar in our path,

Who swept the Red Sea dry before our feet,

Who in His jealousy smote kings, and hath

Sworn once to David: One shall fill thy seat

Born of thy body, as the sun and moon

'Stablished for aye in sovereignty complete.

O Lord, remember David, and that soon.

The Glory hath departed, Ichabod!

Yet now, before our sun grow dark at noon,

Before we come to nought beneath Thy rod,

Before we go down quick into the pit,

Remember us for good, O God, our God:—

Thy Name will I remember, praising it,

Though Thou forget me, though Thou hide Thy face,

And blot me from the Book which Thou hast writ;

Thy Name will I remember in my praise

And call to mind Thy faithfulness of old,

Though as a weaver Thou cut off my days,

And end me as a tale ends that is told.

 

SEASONS

(Macmillan's Magazine, Dec. 1866.)

OH the cheerful Budding-time!

When thorn-hedges turn to green,

When new leaves of elm and lime

Cleave and shed their winter screen;

Tender lambs are born and 'baa',

North wind finds no snow to bring,

Vigorous Nature laughs 'Ha, ha',

In the miracle of spring.

Oh the gorgeous Blossom-days!

When broad flag-flowers drink and blow,

In and out in summer-blaze

Dragon-flies flash to and fro;

Ashen branches hang out keys,

Oaks put forth the rosy shoot,

Wandering herds wax sleek at ease,

Lovely blossoms end in fruit.

Oh the shouting Harvest-weeks!

Mother earth grown fat with sheaves

Thrifty gleaner finds who seeks;

Russet-golden pomp of leaves

Crowns the woods, to fall at length;

Bracing winds are felt to stir,

Ocean gathers up her strength,

Beasts renew their dwindled fur.

Oh the starving Winter-lapse!

Ice-bound, hunger-pinched and dim;

Dormant roots recall their saps,

Empty nests show black and grim,

Short-lived sunshine gives no heat,

Undue buds are nipped by frost,

Snow sets forth a winding-sheet,

And all hope of life seems lost.

 

MOTHER COUNTRY

(Macmillan's Magazine, March 1868.)

OH what is that country

And where can it be,

Not mine own country,

But dearer far to me?

Yet mine own country,

If I one day may see

Its spices and cedars,

Its gold and ivory.

As I lie dreaming

It rises, that land:

There rises before me

Its green golden strand,

With its bowing cedars

And its shining sand;

It sparkles and flashes

Like a shaken brand.

Do angels lean nearer

While I lie and long?

I see their soft plumage

And catch their windy song,

Like the rise of a high tide

Sweeping full and strong;

I mark the outskirts

Of their reverend throng.

Oh what is a king here,

Or what is a boor?

Here all starve together,

All dwarfed and poor;

Here Death's hand knocketh

At door after door,

He thins the dancers

From the festal floor.

Oh what is a handmaid,

Or what is a queen?

All must lie down together

Where the turf is green,

The foulest face hidden,

The fairest not seen;

Gone as if never,

They had breathed or been.

Gone from sweet sunshine

Underneath the sod,

Turned from warm flesh and blood

To senseless clod,

Gone as if never

They had toiled or trod,

Gone out of sight of all

Except our God.

Shut into silence

From the accustomed song,

Shut into solitude

From all earth's throng,

Run down tho' swift of foot,

Thrust down tho' strong;

Life made an end of

Seemed it short or long.

Life made an end of,

Life but just begun,

Life finished yesterday,

Its last sand run;

Life new-born with the morrow,

Fresh as the sun:

While done is done forever;

Undone, undone.

And if that life is life,

This is but a breath,

The passage of a dream

And the shadow of death;

But a vain shadow

If one considereth;

Vanity of vanities,

As the Preacher saith.

 

A SMILE AND A SIGH

(Macmillan's Magazine, May 1868.)

A SMILE because the nights are short!

And every morning brings such pleasure

Of sweet love-making, harmless sport:

Love, that makes and finds its treasure;

Love, treasure without measure.

A sigh because the days are long!

Long long these days that pass in sighing,

A burden saddens every song:

While time lags who should be flying,

We live who would be dying.

 

DEAD HOPE

(Macmillan's Magazine, May 1868.)

HOPE new born one pleasant morn

Died at even;

Hope dead lives nevermore.

No, not in heaven.

If his shroud were but a cloud

To weep itself away;

Or were he buried underground

To sprout some day!

But dead and gone is dead and gone

Vainly wept upon.

Nought we place above his face

To mark the spot,

But it shows a barren place

In our lot.

Hope has birth no more on earth

Morn or even;

Hope dead lives nevermore,

No, not in heaven.

 

AUTUMN VIOLETS

(Macmillan's Magazine, November 1868.)

KEEP love for youth, and violets for the spring:

Or if these bloom when worn-out autumn grieves,

Let them lie hid in double shade of leaves,

Their own, and others dropped down withering;

For violets suit when home birds build and sing,

Not when the outbound bird a passage cleaves;

Not with the stubble of mown harvest sheaves,

But when the green world buds to blossoming.

Keep violets for the spring, and love for youth,

Love that should dwell with beauty, mirth, and hope:

Or if a later sadder love be born,

Let this not look for grace beyond its scope,

But give itself, nor plead for answering truth—

A grateful Ruth tho' gleaning scanty corn.

 

'THEY DESIRE A BETTER COUNTRY'

(Macmillan's Magazine, March 1869.)

I

I WOULD not if I could undo my past,

Tho' for its sake my future is a blank;

My past, for which I have myself to thank

For all its faults and follies first and last.

I would not cast anew the lot once cast,

Or launch a second ship for one that sank,

Or drug with sweets the bitterness I drank,

Or break by feasting my perpetual fast.

I would not if I could: for much more dear

Is one remembrance than a hundred joys,

More than a thousand hopes in jubilee;

Dearer the music of one tearful voice

That unforgotten calls and calls to me,

'Follow me here, rise up, and follow here.'

II

What seekest thou far in the unknown land?

In hope I follow joy gone on before,

In hope and fear persistent more and more,

As the dry desert lengthens out its sand.

Whilst day and night I carry in my hand

The golden key to ope the golden door

Of golden home; yet mine eye weepeth sore

For the long journey that must make no stand.

And who is this that veiled doth walk with thee?

Lo, this is Love that walketh at my right;

One exile holds us both, and we are bound

To selfsame home-joys in the land of light.

Weeping thou walkest with him; weepeth he?—

Some sobbing weep, some weep and make no sound.

III

A dimness of a glory glimmers here

Thro' veils and distance from the space remote,

A faintest far vibration of a note

Reaches to us and seems to bring us near,

Causing our face to glow with braver cheer,

Making the serried mist to stand afloat,

Subduing languor with an antidote,

And strengthening love almost to cast out fear,

Till for one moment golden city walls

Rise looming on us, golden walls of home,

Light of our eyes until the darkness falls;

Then thro' the outer darkness burdensome

I hear again the tender voice that calls,

'Follow me hither, follow, rise, and come.'

 

THE OFFERING OF THE NEW LAW, THE ONE OBLATION ONCE OFFERED

(Lyra Eucharistica, 1863.)

ONCE I thought to sit so high

In the Palace of the sky;

Now, I thank God for His Grace,

If I may fill the lowest place.

Once I thought to scale so soon

Heights above the changing moon;

Now, I thank God for delay—

Today, it yet is called today.

While I stumble, halt and blind,

Lo! He waiteth to be kind;

Bless me soon, or bless me slow,

Except He bless, I let not go.

Once for earth I laid my plan,

Once I leaned on strength of man,

When my hope was swept aside,

I stayed my broken heart on pride:

Broken reed hath pierced my hand;

Fell my house I built on sand;

Roofless, wounded, maimed by sin,

Fightings without and fears within:

Yet, a tree, He feeds my root;

Yet, a branch, He prunes for fruit;

Yet, a sheep, these eves and morns,

He seeks for me among the thorns.

With Thine Image stamped of old,

Find Thy coin more choice than gold;

Known to Thee by name, recall

To Thee Thy home-sick prodigal.

Sacrifice and Offering

None there is that I can bring,

None, save what is Thine alone:

I bring Thee, Lord, but of Thine Own—

Broken Body, Blood Outpoured,

These I bring, my God, my Lord;

Wine of Life, and Living Bread,

With these for me Thy Board is spread.

 

CONFERENCE BETWEEN CHRIST, THE SAINTS, AND THE SOUL

(Lyra Eucharistica, 1863.)

I AM pale with sick desire,

For my heart is far away

From this world's fitful fire

And this world's waning day;

In a dream it overleaps

A world of tedious ills

To where the sunshine sleeps

On th' everlasting hills.

Say the Saints—There Angels ease us

Glorified and white.

They say—We rest in Jesus,

Where is not day nor night.

My Soul saith—I have sought

For a home that is not gained,

I have spent yet nothing bought,

Have laboured but not attained;

My pride strove to rise and grow,

And hath but dwindled down;

My love sought love, and lo!

Hath not attained its crown.

Say the Saints—Fresh Souls increase us,

None languish nor recede.

They say—We love our Jesus,

And He loves us indeed.

I cannot rise above,

I cannot rest beneath,

I cannot find out Love,

Nor escape from Death;

Dear hopes and joys gone by

Still mock me with a name;

My best belovèd die

And I cannot die with them.

Say the Saints—No deaths decrease us,

Where our rest is glorious.

They say—We live in Jesus,

Who once dièd for us.

Oh, my Soul, she beats her wings

And pants to fly away

Up to immortal Things

In the Heavenly day:

Yet she flags and almost faints;

Can such be meant for me?

Come and see—say the Saints.

Saith Jesus—Come and see.

Say the Saints—His Pleasures please us

Before God and the Lamb.

Come and taste My Sweets—saith Jesus—

Be with Me where I am.

 

COME UNTO ME

(Lyra Eucharistica, second edition, 1864.)

OH, for the time gone by, when thought of Christ

Made His Yoke easy and His Burden light;

When my heart stirred within me at the sight

Of Altar spread for awful Eucharist;

When all my hopes His Promises sufficed,

When my Soul watched for Him by day, by night,

When my lamp lightened and my robe was white,

And all seemed loss, except the Pearl unpriced.

Yet, since He calls me still with tender Call,

Since He remembers Whom I half forgot,

I even will run my race and bear my lot:

For Faith the walls of Jericho cast down,

And Hope to whoso runs holds forth a Crown,

And Love is Christ, and Christ is All in all.

 

JESUS, DO I LOVE THEE?

(Lyra Eucharistica, second edition, 1864.)

JESUS, do I love Thee?

Thou art far above me,

Seated out of sight

Hid in Heavenly Light

Of most highest height.

Martyred hosts implore Thee,

Seraphs fall before Thee,

Angels and Archangels,

Cherub throngs adore Thee;

Blessed She that bore Thee!

All the Saints approve Thee,

All the Virgins love Thee.

I show as a blot

Blood hath cleansed not,

As a barren spot

In Thy fruitful lot.

I, fig-tree fruit-unbearing;

Thou, righteous Judge unsparing:

What canst Thou do more to me

That shall not more undo me?

Thy Justice hath a sound—

Why cumbereth it the ground?

Thy Love with stirrings stronger

Pleads—Give it one year longer.

Thou giv'st me time: but who

Save Thou shall give me dew;

Shall feed my root with Blood,

And stir my sap for good?

Oh, by Thy Gifts that shame me,

Give more lest they condemn me:

Good Lord, I ask much of Thee,

But most I ask to love Thee;

Kind Lord, be mindful of me,

Love me, and make me love Thee.

 

I KNOW YOU NOT

(Lyra Messianica, 1864.)

O CHRIST, the Vine with living Fruit,

The twelvefold-fruited Tree of Life,

The Balm in Gilead after strife,

The valley Lily and the Rose;

Stronger than Lebanon, Thou Root;

Sweeter than clustered grapes, Thou Vine;

O Best, Thou Vineyard of red wine,

Keeping thy best wine till the close.

Pearl of great price Thyself alone,

And ruddier than the ruby Thou;

Most precious lightning Jasper stone,

Head of the corner spurned before:

Fair Gate of pearl, Thyself the Door;

Clear golden Street, Thyself the Way;

By Thee we journey toward Thee now,

Through Thee shall enter Heaven one day.

I thirst for Thee, full fount and flood;

My heart calls Thine, as deep to deep:

Dost Thou forget Thy sweat and pain,

Thy provocation on the Cross?

Heart-pierced for me, vouchsafe to keep

The purchase of Thy lavished Blood:

The gain is Thine, Lord, if I gain;

Or if I lose, Thine own the loss.

At midnight (saith the Parable)

A cry was made, the Bridegroom came;

Those who were ready entered in:

The rest, shut out in death and shame,

Strove all too late that Feast to win,

Their die was cast, and fixed their lot;

A gulf divided Heaven from Hell;

The Bridegroom said—I know you not.

But Who is this that shuts the door,

And saith—I know you not—to them?

I see the wounded hands and side,

The brow thorn-tortured long ago:

Yea; This Who grieved and bled and died,

This same is He Who must condemn;

He called, but they refused to know;

So now He hears their cry no more.

 

'BEFORE THE PALING OF THE STARS'

(Lyra Messianica, 1864.)

BEFORE the paling of the stars,

Before the winter morn,

Before the earliest cockcrow,

Jesus Christ was born:

Born in a stable,

Cradled in a manger,

In the world His hands had made

Born a stranger.

Priest and king lay fast asleep

In Jerusalem,

Young and old lay fast asleep

In crowded Bethlehem:

Saint and Angel, ox and ass,

Kept a watch together

Before the Christmas daybreak

In the winter weather.

Jesus on His Mother's breast

In the stable cold,

Spotless Lamb of God was He,

Shepherd of the fold:

Let us kneel with Mary maid,

With Joseph bent and hoary,

With Saint and Angel, ox and ass,

To hail the King of Glory.

 

EASTER EVEN

(Lyra Messianica, 1864.)

THERE is nothing more that they can do

For all their rage and boast;

Caiaphas with his blaspheming crew,

Herod with his host,

Pontius Pilate in his Judgement-hall

Judging their Judge and his,

Or he who led them all and passed them all,

Arch-Judas with his kiss.

The sepulchre made sure with ponderous Stone,

Seal that same stone, O Priest;

It may be thou shalt block the holy One

From rising in the east:

Set a watch about the sepulchre

To watch on pain of death;

They must hold fast the stone if One should stir

And shake it from beneath.

God Almighty, He can break a seal

And roll away a Stone,

Can grind the proud in dust who would not kneel,

And crush the mighty one.

There is nothing more that they can do

For all their passionate care,

Those who sit in dust, the blessed few,

And weep and rend their hair:

Peter, Thomas, Mary Magdalene,

The Virgin unreproved,

Joseph, with Nicodemus, foremost men,

And John the Well-beloved,

Bring your finest linen and your spice,

Swathe the sacred Dead,

Bind with careful hands and piteous eyes

The napkin round His head;

Lay Him in the garden-rock to rest;

Rest you the Sabbath length:

The Sun that went down crimson in the west

Shall rise renewed in strength.

God Almighty shall give joy for pain,

Shall comfort him who grieves:

Lo! He with joy shall doubtless come again,

And with Him bring His sheaves.

 

PARADISE: IN A DREAM

(Lyra Messianica, second edition, 1865.)

ONCE in a dream I saw the flowers

That bud and bloom in Paradise;

More fair they are than waking eyes

Have seen in all this world of ours.

And faint the perfume-bearing rose,

And faint the lily on its stem,

And faint the perfect violet

Compared with them.

I heard the songs of Paradise:

Each bird sat singing in his place;

A tender song so full of grace

It soared like incense to the skies.

Each bird sat singing to his mate

Soft cooing notes among the trees:

The nightingale herself were cold

To such as these.

I saw the fourfold River flow,

And deep it was, with golden sand;

It flowed between a mossy land

Which murmured music grave and low.

It hath refreshment for all thirst,

For fainting spirits strength and rest:

Earth holds not such a draught as this

From east to west.

The Tree of Life stood budding there,

Abundant with its twelvefold fruits;

Eternal sap sustains its roots,

Its shadowing branches fill the air.

Its leaves are healing for the world,

Its fruit the hungry world can feed.

Sweeter than honey to the taste

And balm indeed.

I saw the gate called Beautiful;

And looked, but scarce could look, within;

I saw the golden streets begin,

And outskirts of the glassy pool.

Oh harps, oh crowns of plenteous stars,

Oh green palm-branches many-leaved—

Eye hath not seen, nor ear hath heard,

Nor heart conceived.

I hope to see these things again,

But not as once in dreams by night;

To see them with my very sight,

And touch, and handle, and attain:

To have all Heaven beneath my feet

For narrow way that once they trod;

To have my part with all the Saints,

And with my God.

 

WITHIN THE VEIL

(Lyra Messianica, second edition, 1865.)

SHE holds a lily in her hand,

Where long ranks of Angels stand,

A silver lily for her wand.

All her hair falls sweeping down;

Her hair that is a golden brown,

A crown beneath her golden crown.

Blooms a rose-bush at her knee,

Good to smell and good to see:

It bears a rose for her, for me;

Her rose a blossom richly grown,

My rose a bud not fully blown,

But sure one day to be mine own.

 

PARADISE: IN A SYMBOL

(Lyra Messianica, second edition, 1865.)

GOLDEN-WINGED, silver-winged,

Winged with flashing flame,

Such a flight of birds I saw,

Birds without a name:

Singing songs in their own tongue

(Song of songs) they came.

One to another calling,

Each answering each,

One to another calling

In their proper speech:

High above my head they wheeled,

Far out of reach.

On wings of flame they went and came

With a cadenced clang,

Their silver wings tinkled,

Their golden wings rang,

The wind it whistled through their wings

Where in Heaven they sang.

They flashed and they darted

Awhile before mine eyes,

Mounting, mounting, mounting still

In haste to scale the skies—

Birds without a nest on earth,

Birds of Paradise.

Where the moon riseth not,

Nor sun seeks the west,

There to sing their glory

Which they sing at rest,

There to sing their love-song

When they sing their best:

Not in any garden

That mortal foot hath trod,

Not in any flowering tree

That springs from earthly sod,

But in the garden where they dwell,

The Paradise of God.

 

AMOR MUNDI

(The Shilling Magazine, 1865.)

'OH, where are you going with your love-locks flowing

On the west wind blowing along this valley track?'

'The downhill path is easy, come with me an' it please ye,

We shall escape the uphill by never turning back.'

So they two went together in glowing August weather,

The honey-breathing heather lay to their left and right;

And dear she was to doat on, her swift feet seemed to float on

The air like soft twin pigeons too sportive to alight.

'Oh, what is that in heaven where grey cloud-flakes are seven,

Where blackest clouds hang riven just at the rainy skirt?'

'Oh, that's a meteor sent us, a message dumb, portentous,—

An undecipher'd solemn signal of help or hurt.'

'Oh, what is that glides quickly where velvet flowers grow thickly,

Their scent comes rich and sickly?'—'A scaled and hooded worm.'

'Oh, what's that in the hollow, so pale I quake to follow?'

'Oh, that's a thin dead body which waits th' eternal term.'

'Turn again, O my sweetest,—turn again, false and fleetest:

This way whereof thou weetest I fear is hell's own track.'

'Nay, too steep for hill-mounting,—nay, too late for cost-counting:

This downhill path is easy, but there's no turning back.'

 

WHO SHALL DELIVER ME?

(The Argosy, Feb. 1866.)

GOD strengthen me to bear myself;

That heaviest weight of all to bear,

Inalienable weight of care.

All others are outside myself;

I lock my door and bar them out,

The turmoil, tedium, gad-about.

I lock my door upon myself,

And bar them out; but who shall wall

Self from myself, most loathed of all?

If I could once lay down myself,

And start self-purged upon the race

That all must run! Death runs apace.

If I could set aside myself,

And start with lightened heart upon

The road by all men overgone!

God harden me against myself,

This coward with pathetic voice

Who craves for ease, and rest, and joys:

Myself, arch-traitor to myself;

My hollowest friend, my deadliest foe,

My clog whatever road I go.

Yet One there is can curb myself,

Can roll the strangling load from me,

Break off the yoke and set me free.

 

IF

(The Argosy, March 1866.)

IF he would come today, today, today,

O, what a day today would be!

But now he's away, miles and miles away

From me across the sea.

O little bird, flying, flying, flying

To your nest in the warm west,

Tell him as you pass that I am dying,

As you pass home to your nest.

I have a sister, I have a brother,

A faithful hound, a tame white dove;

But I had another, once I had another,

And I miss him, my love, my love!

In this weary world it is so cold, so cold,

While I sit here all alone;

I would not like to wait and to grow old,

But just to be dead and gone.

Make me fair when I lie dead on my bed,

Fair where I am lying:

Perhaps he may come and look upon me dead—

He for whom I am dying.

Dig my grave for two, with a stone to show it,

And on the stone write my name:

If he never comes, I shall never know it,

But sleep on all the same.

 

TWILIGHT NIGHT

(The Argosy, Jan. 1868.)

I

WE met, hand to hand,

We clasped hands close and fast,

As close as oak and ivy stand;

But it is past:

Come day, come night, day comes at last.

We loosed hand from hand,

We parted face from face;

Each went his way to his own land

At his own pace,

Each went to fill his separate place.

If we should meet one day,

If both should not forget,

We shall clasp hands the accustomed way,

As when we met

So long ago, as I remember yet.

II

Where my heart is (wherever that may be)

Might I but follow!

If you fly thither over heath and lea,

O honey-seeking bee,

O careless swallow,

Bid some for whom I watch keep watch for me.

Alas! that we must dwell, my heart and I,

So far asunder.

Hours wax to days, and days and days creep by;

I watch with wistful eye,

I wait and wonder:

When will that day draw nigh—that hour draw nigh?

Not yesterday, and not, I think, today;

Perhaps tomorrow.

Day after day 'tomorrow' thus I say:

I watched so yesterday

In hope and sorrow,

Again today I watch the accustomed way.

.