THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 Hi
 

 
 THE RED FLAG 
 
 5Uto other $ocms

 
 THE RED FLAG 
 
 &ntr otijcr ^ocms 
 
 By the Hon ble RODEN NOEL 
 
 AUTHOR OF "BEATRICE, AND OTHER POEMS " 
 
 STRAHAN & CO. 
 56, LUDGATE HILL, LONDON 
 
 1872 
 
 \All rights reserved]
 
 LONDON 
 
 PRINTED BY VIRTUE AND CO. 
 
 CITr ROAD.
 
 5"MI 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 
 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Eed Flag 1 
 
 April Gleams 
 
 
 
 
 39 
 
 Song of Summer 
 
 
 
 
 42 
 
 En Early Spring: to my Sister 
 
 
 
 
 44 
 
 Harvest ..... 
 
 
 
 
 48 
 
 A Christian's Funeral . 
 
 
 
 
 51 
 
 A < ATARACT .... 
 
 
 
 
 61 
 
 At Court .... 
 
 
 
 
 . 71 
 
 A Vision of the Desert 
 
 
 
 
 74 
 
 The Waternymfh and the Boy 
 
 
 
 
 87 
 
 Allerheiligen 
 
 
 
 
 98 
 
 Come not very Soon, Love . 
 
 
 
 
 105 
 
 Death and Life 
 
 
 
 
 109 
 
 The Old Piano 
 
 
 
 
 120 
 
 On Richmond Hill— 1870 
 
 
 
 
 123 
 
 Was it Well? .... 
 
 
 
 
 130 
 
 Palingenesis .... 
 
 
 
 
 1S4 
 
 The Dweller in Two Worlds 
 
 
 
 
 152 
 
 "The Pity of it" ... 
 
 
 
 
 171 
 
 A Song at a Waterfall 
 
 
 
 
 174 
 
 81857 
 
 2
 
 IV CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Eric: a Dirge 177 
 
 A Lady to her Lover . . . . . .179 
 
 A Sick Mother to her Blind Child . . . . 1S1 
 
 War : 1870-1 183 
 
 The Children's (',il\ss 213 
 
 The Children by the Sea 218 
 
 Azrael : a Dream of Pleasure 224 
 
 San Rocco . .233 
 
 To the Queen 236 
 
 A Sea Symimiont 237 

 
 THE RED FLAG. 
 
 There is peace in London ! 
 
 Not here, as yonder, men blaspheming loud, 
 
 Begrimed with slaughter, cruelly aflame, 
 
 Drag some dishevelled woman through the crowd 
 
 To shoot her with a blundering blind aim : 
 
 She with her hopeless hunted face of fear 
 
 Grovelling falls, and to her dying ear 
 
 Pierce her foul fellows with inhuman jeer. 
 
 There, all along the fair arcaded street 
 
 "Where they are murdering, in sacks lie thrown 
 
 Dead men and women ; there the dainty feet 
 
 Were wont to loiter ; there the brilliants shown 
 
 Lured eyes that vied in lustre with their own. 
 
 But these are ghastly, whence the warm life-flood 
 
 Oozing hath stained the flags with human blood ! 
 
 B
 
 "A THE BED FLAG. 
 
 Alas ! among these women whom with spasm 
 
 Of righteous indignation men have slain, 
 
 Each fired with spirituous enthusiasm, 
 
 Order's disorderly Praetorian, 
 
 Among these Frenchwomen whom Frenchmen slew 
 
 I well helieve there may be more than few 
 
 Mothers and wives, who have sublimely stood 
 
 Waiting benumbed in snow for scanty food 
 
 Through that long winter siege unmurmuring, 
 
 Wearing away with want ; one little thing 
 
 'Neath Mont-Parnasse from hunger, and another 
 
 Cold clinging to the worn skirt of a mother, 
 
 Shrinking so close from Death, who tears it off, 
 
 And laughs "One vermin more!" with brutal 
 
 scoff. 
 Is there a mob-contemning silk aristocrat, 
 Who spits on man like Death the Democrat '? 
 Alas ! alas ! it was a baleful hour 
 When the great goddess Order hounded slaves 
 lir France's patriot daughters to deflower, 
 i spurn them into ignominious graves, 
 ering under smooth Parisian flags, 
 there in peace her delicate Agags
 
 THK RED FLAG. g 
 
 Might mince once more with high-born courtesans 
 
 O'er the dead people, weaving pleasant plans, 
 
 And praising her, then- cannibal god, the Mother, 
 
 Who loves one human child to fatten upon another. 
 
 Alas ! alas ! it was a baleful hour 
 
 When Frenchmen to the shrines of this grey Power 
 
 Dragged hero-souled sisters by the hair, 
 
 Slaking grim Orders thirst for vengeance there, 
 
 Revenging horribly that old despair 
 
 Wherewith the long-cowed, lashed, mad people flew 
 
 At Tyranny's withered throat to bite it through. 
 
 Some of these women, when imperial France 
 
 Collapsed confused before the foe's advance, 
 
 With famine-feeble hand sustained her glory, 
 
 Passing it flawless on to History ; 
 
 Bowed witb the awful burden, meekly giving 
 
 Their own, their very little children's living 
 
 For France's honour, for the Country's Cause. 
 
 None but these nobler victims the red jaws 
 
 Of Order, that great goddess whom the world 
 
 And this great city Paris worshippeth, 
 
 Greedily yawn to swallow ; these are hurled 
 
 With blind fiend-fury to a dishonoured death :
 
 THE EED FLAG. 
 
 Men who were fain to shrink before the foeman 
 Can hustle at least and mangle their own women ! 
 
 'o' 
 
 Thus in the world's gay capital to-day 
 Alva looks from the face of Galifet. 
 Arm in arm with the "World, her old ally, 
 See how the Church creeps forth to see them die ! 
 Emaciated here may she renew 
 Her sleek youth in a fresh Bartholomew. 
 She, while she sips warm blood from her full chalice, 
 Points with a supernatural smile of malice 
 Where feudal Bismarck and his master wait 
 To thrust yon fugitives upon their fate ; 
 Back to the flames that hurtle all abroad, 
 Back on the point of an insatiate sword : 
 She lifts to heaven her cruel falsetto voice ; 
 But 'tis the damned who hear it and rejoice, 
 Shrieking responsive to her jubilee, 
 " Amen ! so perish Man who will be free ! " 
 Priests, women, soldiers, children, all afire ; 
 Paris around them roars a funeral pyre, 
 Screaming, blaspheming ; are the corpses dumb ? 
 Verily here is Pandemonium !
 
 THE RED FLAG. 
 
 So fills itself another crimson page 
 Of human story ; so from age to age 
 Men reap the fruit of hate and wrath and Death 
 From the red seed they sowed, and with mad breath 
 Cherished for harvest : still they strew the same, 
 Mutual rancour, fear, and scorn, and shame ; 
 And still it breaks to fury and to flame. 
 Liberty watereth with many a tear 
 The growth maturing ; still she hopes to rear 
 Her own frail flower, but ever hides her eyes 
 When she beholds the infernal blade arise — 
 Ever a gory growth, a venomous thing, 
 Now named Mobrule, now Slavery to a King. 
 
 There is peace in London. 
 And in this peace I lately stood before 
 A mean brick housefront at a dingy door 
 In a foul street : the place was very near 
 "Where wealthy folk inhabit half the year. 
 One at an ale-house lounging reeled low-browed, 
 Whose face no fine humanities avowed, 
 A Pariah, whose human rights ignored, 
 We hold created for the hangman's cord ;
 
 I) THE RED FLAG. 
 
 A social outcast none have sought to tame, 
 
 Who hath an old inheritance — his shame. 
 
 Then at the base of narrow stairs arriving, 
 
 I raised my voice to ask if one were living 
 
 Here, a poor ailing woman whom I sought ; 
 
 Whereupon some sharp man's voice made retort 
 
 Through a bleared twilight: "Well, she's dying 
 
 here." 
 Oppressive weighed the reeking atmosphere, 
 And though the summer sun shone out above, 
 I for a time peered vainly while I strove 
 Aught to distinguish in the squalid gloom ; 
 Yet pushing some black door I found the room. 
 It was a bare room, void of garniture, 
 Where first the window did mine eyes allure, 
 Whose broken panes the grime of years defiles : 
 Never it feels pure air, nor how God smiles 
 In heaven ; the haggard eye of this dim den, 
 Of this foul prison for low-born Englishmen, 
 Looks on a court of miry walls well filled 
 With sherds and loathly refuse reckless spilled. 
 Yet by the window sits a ragged dwarf, 
 With wolfish, pinched pale features, and a cough :
 
 THE RED FLAG. 
 
 His nimble, skeleton, sallow fingers ply 
 
 At their incessant toil ; a vessel nigh 
 
 Smokes with some viscous glue, belike shellac, 
 
 Gear of his craft ; his labour-hunched back 
 
 Stoops over ; as he straightens it he looks 
 
 With eyes half fierce, half dull amid the shocks 
 
 Of matted hair grown prematurely grey : 
 
 A man yet young — but slaving day by day, 
 
 With sorrow and scanty nourishment, can slay, 
 
 Can age man early- — lo ! a wizened elf, 
 
 A weird small shadow of the man himself, 
 
 Creeps to the father's side, and takes the toy 
 
 He has been fingering : ah ! favoured boy, 
 
 A stone's throw distant, on thy birthday joy 
 
 Shall fly from here to thee ! no wistful eye 
 
 Cast thou, poor starveling — lay it down to dry ! 
 
 •• Where is she ? " I demanded : he was dumb, 
 
 And rose as though he heard me not ; for 
 
 numb 
 He surely was with long monotonous sorrow, 
 That knows no hope of any fair to-morrow. 
 A tame mechanical, abortive toil 
 Can all the rainbow from a life despoil,
 
 8 
 
 THE RED FLAG. 
 
 And leave it grey, like pining flowers that lose, 
 Shut from sweet sunlight, all their native hues. 
 So sullenly the man resumed his labour : 
 But now one pointed — some poor female neigh- 
 bour — 
 To something cowering in withered weeds : 
 Is it a "Woman's withered face that feeds 
 On what degraded light may wander through 
 Her Sudra vault from our palatial Blue ? 
 She lies upon some rags upheaped and coarse : 
 (Her very bed they lately pawned perforce) 
 She lies as though unbreathing, still as stone, 
 Save when at intervals she makes low moan. 
 " What ails her ? " to the neighbour soft I said : 
 " She will not ail long ; she will soon be dead," 
 The other whispered ; " she is very ill : 
 'Tis marvel what the man can earn may still 
 Keep her alive ; her ailing state required 
 She should be nourished well, nor overtired, 
 The doctor told her : why, she used to stitch 
 From dawn to night : you see it is the rich 
 Who can take rest with ample food, not we. 
 If ever one were starved, sir, it is she.
 
 THE RED FLAG. 
 
 I often shared my little with them — yet 
 
 Can ill afford my children to forget. 
 
 Parish allows them somewhat : surely ; yes, 
 
 But see the children, and his feebleness ! " 
 
 Four growing children with the parents here 
 
 Dwell, sleep, in one close room from year to year. 
 
 Three elder ones are helping the pale sire 
 
 At his life-drudgery — the fourth admire ! 
 
 It clings, an infant, to the neighbour's dress, 
 
 Blooming and hale : the Harpy of Distress 
 
 Hesitates to pollute so pure a child. 
 
 Once, when the mother looked that way, she smiled 
 
 Almost, I fancied, yet her infant shrank 
 
 Now from herself: how should it know she sank 
 
 More swiftly in drear unremembered death, 
 
 Because she gave it what sustained her breath ? 
 
 This, and the craftman's tiny glow of fire, 
 And one poor flower, help one to respire, 
 Sustain the heart's-breath in this woeful air 
 Of hopeless human suffering : a fair 
 Fragile geranium leans forth to breathe 
 There at the window ; half the mould beneath 
 
 9
 
 10 THE KED FLAG. 
 
 Droops from the broken potsherd, and the fine 
 
 Fibres denuded like the blossoms pine. 
 
 The wife's dim dying face is toward the flower, 
 
 And toward her husband ceasing ne'er to cower 
 
 Over his toil ; each fairer sight to her, 
 
 Whose was the wand of trust that may not err, 
 
 Was heaven's window : yea, the " home " so drear, 
 
 With these crushed lives, looked only not so clear 
 
 Crystalline God Himself hath troubled so, 
 
 For ends adorable she may not know. 
 
 But ah ! the pain, her weakness, the confusion 
 
 Born of her weakness, wrought in fell collusion 
 
 With woe of these her kindred to conceal 
 
 Often those gleams unearthly that reveal 
 
 God dwells with her in very visible glory, 
 
 Her soul a holier shrine than all cathedrals hoary ! 
 
 Nay, but this woman cowering in the gloom, 
 Dark, speechless, ghastly, starving, haunts the room 
 With horror — lowest sunken in the fate 
 That slowly whelms her kindred desolate ! 
 She lurks a silent corpse, and yet alive : 
 About her all her fainting family strive
 
 THE RED FLAG. 
 
 With bony fingers tightening their hold ; 
 
 While near thern lords and ladies drain the gold 
 
 That sparkles with exhilarating pleasure, 
 
 Fair, in fine raiment, wantoning at leisure. 
 
 To starve in London ! on the stones where wealth 
 
 Indifferent saunters, dull with food and health ! 
 
 Surely this infant healthful for an hour, 
 
 Surely the pining, pale geranium flower, 
 
 The puny glow that will anon expire, 
 
 Are but as little children's hands that tire 
 
 In piteous attempt to move some rock 
 
 That hath erased a household in the shock, 
 
 Wherewith the haughty Mountain-spirit scorning 
 
 Hurled it from icy palaces of Morning ! 
 
 So these can move not the dull Fate that rests 
 
 Like tons of stone upon crushed human breasts. 
 
 And yet from her, the woman dying there, 
 Who lately seemed to radiate despair 
 And darkness in the melancholy room, 
 I'.reaks forth a glory softening the doom, 
 Tinging this horrible embroilment even 
 With iridescent loveliness from heaven. 
 
 11
 
 12 THE RED FLAG. 
 
 The light of Faith ! a marvellous holy light 
 
 Breaking from simple souls that sink in night — 
 
 Power bursting barriers of woe and wrong, 
 
 Prisons wherein the mighty, cruel and strong, 
 
 In proud prosperity have pent the weak, 
 
 Eevealing the Deliverer they seek, 
 
 To blind faint lives that writhe beneath the curse 
 
 Opening fair vistas of the universe ! 
 
 While helpless under men's hard feet they groan, 
 
 A ray reveals the Father on His throne : 
 
 The oppressor trampling on His poor may still 
 
 Shout, " Who shall stay me when I work my will ?" 
 
 A voice peals through the echoing worlds : "I will ! " 
 
 And let them hearken, or let them forbear, 
 
 The poor have heard Him, and the Lord is there ! 
 
 But woe for him who toils without a hope ! 
 He in base mire of loathed life will grope, 
 With midnight's cold unconstellated cope 
 Weighing him grave ward : heed how ye despoil 
 A life, no earthly welfare's kindly soil 
 Nourishes, of a spiritual air, 
 Given to sustain a spirit leafing there.
 
 THE RED FLAG. IB 
 
 Hold ere ye quench a wavering hope that can 
 
 Save from despair a miserable man ! 
 
 Foes of old superstition ! Do ye knoiv 
 
 That God will never right the wrongs of woe ; 
 
 That there is ne'er a Lord of life and death, 
 
 Who giving, reassumeth every breath ? 
 
 What God hath bidden you shout to them that weep, 
 
 " God is a fable, death an endless sleep ; 
 
 Good news for thee who writhest in the curse ! 
 
 Thine earthly cage is all the universe." 
 
 Ye spurn our worn solutions : but may ye 
 
 Solve, by denying, all the mystery ? 
 
 Yourselves will help yourselves : alas ! we fall. 
 
 Where is our help if human help be all ? 
 
 And these were happy : they loved one another : 
 Now by the living corse of her the mother, 
 Of her the wife yet young, he sits and works, 
 And looks askance where in the shadow lurks 
 A ghastly Horror creeping, though he toil 
 To ban it from the children, innocent spoil, 
 So sweet to our Destroyer, whose low laugh 
 Mocks man, as wind mocks the lightheaded chaff !
 
 14 THE BED FLAG. 
 
 Are not this London's million ordured courts 
 Verily curst ineffable resorts 
 Of ghouls more horrible than Easterns feign ? 
 Do ye not note them yonder at the pane 
 Mopping and mowing, spectres foul yet dim 
 In subtle blue miasma mists that swim, 
 There at the dingy pane, with dull dead eyes, 
 Faces wormfretted, lank, with livid dyes, 
 And loathly trunk slow revelling in slime 
 Under the window — brood of folly and crime ! 
 Ye fearful Hydras, Cholera and Fever, 
 Batten on starving huddled slaves for ever ! 
 
 Yet Love Divine who yearns to them that weep, 
 Finding man's Torturers off guard, sent sleep ; 
 Stole to the wornout soul in guise of dream, 
 And soothed her with a sweet celestial gleam. 
 One night he dreamed of his lost childhood's mirth : 
 Love culled a leaf from off a happier earth. 
 A boy and girl beside a cool-toned brook 
 Bathe their feet laughing, bending oft to look, 
 Through delicate glumes of grasses and some sedge 
 That grows with willowherb upon the edge,
 
 THE BED FLAG. 15 
 
 Where ruined cresses with the sliding stream 
 Flow along fresh helow the watery gleam. 
 Near stoops' a hollow trunk wherein they played 
 At being men and women — unafraid ! 
 Singing birds in the leaves are not more glad 
 Than these two rustic children poorly clad, 
 Glowing with health, from some fair cottage nigh. . 
 The russet girl is beautiful, her eye 
 More blue than any fleeting butterfly. 
 Can it be he, the merry little boy ? 
 And that his sister in her innocent joy ? 
 
 She grew a maiden, very fair, but frail : 
 Some rich man wronged her — now what sounds 
 
 assail 
 A waking ear ? — a woman trolls a hoarse 
 Loose ditty : her young lineaments are coarse 
 With harlot hues ; she reels from yonder door 
 Flaring with harsh light out into the pour 
 On slimy pavements : how the gaudy dress 
 Clings to her slender, fevered feebleness ! 
 She and her brother have been severed long ; 
 And so she passes with her ghastly song
 
 16 THE BED FLAG. 
 
 Unknowing, while he sees her undefiled : 
 Love shows her to him as a little child. 
 
 Yet very nigh there often pace the street 
 Casual farers with indifferent feet : 
 And when the craftsman goes to breathe awhile 
 Upon the stair, he sees the cheery smile, 
 Hears happy snatches of a careless talk 
 From comfortable strangers in their walk. . . . 
 
 .... Now 'tis a Dean, who as he ambles by 
 Raises a question of church-millinery ; 
 Or in allusion to the squalid street 
 Observes that, howsoever God may mete 
 The lot of each, all should be docile, which 
 One may name " Gospel according to the rich." 
 If there were no starvation for the mean, 
 Supplies might fail us for a portly Dean. 
 Then this fine burst of pulpit eloquence 
 A threadbare Curate heard in rapt suspense : 
 " Tbis glorious old edifice of State, 
 Though finding-fault, black, croaking birds may 
 prate
 
 THE RED FLAG. 17 
 
 Around it " — (did the parson mean the rooks, 
 
 Rehels, or heretics, or naughty books ?) — 
 
 " Is founded on the broad backs of the people ; 
 
 Our middle-class the buttressed wall ; the steeple, 
 
 Or dome, our king and old nobility; 
 
 The Church, yon golden cross that meets the sky !" 
 
 He should have travelled lower than the stones, 
 
 Even to the charnel-vault of dead men's bones ! 
 
 Your grand colossal edifice to-day 
 
 Rests on a yawning darkness and decay ; 
 
 Beware ! for it is ready to vanish away ! 
 
 Yea, is it founded on the people's backs ? 
 
 Behold ! how as ye walk the sanguine trucks 
 
 Ye leave are slippery with human gore, 
 
 The life, the health, the souls of men your floor. 
 
 G-lance not below ; yield to the organ's pealing ; 
 
 Explore the lonely grandeurs of the ceiling ! 
 
 Ah ! but your tyrannous structure is atremble — 
 
 I who behold it dare no more dissemble : 
 
 God breathes upon it with the breath of doom : 
 
 Phantoms of empire summon from the tomb ! 
 
 Dominant o'er us glares the cross of gold, 
 
 And haughty hierarchies manifold
 
 18 THE RED FLAG. 
 
 Brandish the symbol for a flaming sword, 
 Kneel to the cross, and crucify the Lord ! 
 Friend of the lowly, fainting on the wood, 
 Behold thy poor upon a golden rood ! 
 
 .... The lonely toiler, gasping for some air, 
 Listens in shadowy poison of the stair. 
 
 Listens, a wounded beast within his lair 
 
 .... And there is Peace in London ! 
 
 Now trips a dame who lifts her skirt for fear 
 Of many a foul contamination here, 
 Bevealing delicate ankles to the friend, 
 Who (to assist) his manly arm may lend. 
 " Think what a desperate misery may slink 
 In these low neighbourhoods from whence we shrink ?' 
 In silver tones she whispers : " Look ! there prowl 
 Two terrible ragged ruffians with a scowl." 
 " Near our town-houses ! who could fancy it '?" 
 Drawls out the dandy with more birth than wit. 
 She, with a slight quick shiver, half a sigh : 
 " One's heart aches even to dream such poverty ! " 
 (It jarred her nervous sensibility.)
 
 THE EED FLAG. 19 
 
 " And yet, as Mister Glozenian said in church, 
 
 To make the vessel of the State to lurch, 
 
 To shake our ancient Order is the worst 
 
 Crime : it deserves the torture, 'tis accurst 
 
 Of God and man — he meant the Communist 
 
 Canaille in Paris." Then the dandy hissed 
 
 With panic fury, " Shoot the draff by millions ! 
 
 So may our scum here learn to make rebellions !" 
 
 To clear some stray defilement from her dress, 
 
 Bending she slightly on his arm may press ; 
 
 Then, as if breeding were a little at fault 
 
 In that last ardour of her friend's assault 
 
 Even on hereditary foes, the mob, 
 
 On swarms unclean, who sweat and starve and rob, 
 
 She waved aside the subject she had lent 
 
 Her glance in passing, drawling as she went, 
 
 " They say the poor are so improvident ! " 
 
 Half absently she spoke, to weightier themes 
 
 Turning anon — to cunning, lordly schemes 
 
 For stifling noxious popular low measures : 
 
 Then of refined aristocratic pleasures 
 
 They babbled — Hurlingham — the ducal ball — 
 
 Of a monstrous nobleman turned Radical,
 
 20 THE RED FLAG. 
 
 Of latest fashions out, a novel tie, 
 Or the last sweet thing in adultery. 
 
 The lonely toiler, gasping for some air, 
 Listens in shadowy poison of the stair, 
 
 Listens, a hunted beast within his lair 
 
 .... And there is Peace in London ! 
 
 It happened once two gentlemen were stayed 
 Here, waiting some companion delayed. 
 Sauntering to and fro they smoking walked, 
 Or leant against the house-wall while they talked. 
 One was an oldish man ; the other, he 
 Spake as one claiming great authority. 
 His dust-hued head was growing grey in part — 
 From tardy fellow-feeling with his heart. 
 " Not to admire " the only art he knew 
 To keep him comfortable as he grew. 
 What might have moved the vulgar to distraction 
 Moved him to limp distaste or satisfaction. 
 He viewed with very philosophic calm 
 All human ills — that did himself no harm. 
 But he had taken honours at his college, 
 And deemed himself a microcosm of knowledge.
 
 THE BED FLAG. 21 
 
 Outside he looked a thicket of stiff bristles ; 
 
 Inside he seemed a jungle of prickly thistles, 
 
 Which, though from them no figs for men be 
 
 reared, 
 Seem dainties to the stubborn race long-eared. 
 A sort of sour old maid the man was born ; 
 He could secrete but weak incontinent scorn ; 
 Sterile to foster, organize, produce — 
 Aught but sophistic pleas for some abuse. 
 Moreover, one might notice with surprise 
 The sort of things that made his gorge to rise ; 
 Always the wrong thing — for his heart would 
 
 bleed 
 If generous enterprise or kindly deed 
 Not failed, but seemed in danger of succeeding. 
 This turned him yellow, set his heart ableeding ! 
 So may base cruelty arouse the rage 
 In vulgar bosoms : yet methinks a sage 
 Should be more tolerant in middle-age. 
 Restless he itches till he settle in blight 
 On springing hopes with envious little spite ; 
 Yet nipping buds of generous resolve, 
 Should one survive his yearning to dissolve,
 
 2 2 THE RED FLAG. 
 
 Become respectable, accomplished thing, 
 
 He fulsome fawns on that beslavering. 
 
 Every frail human hope that pleads for air, 
 
 Wistfully peering generous and fair, 
 
 He burns to foul — to squat in mockery there. 
 
 He, a boy prig, once laughed at by a woman, 
 
 Became the sex's indiscriminate foeman : 
 
 He must have had a sister or a mother, 
 
 And yet insults, asperses every other. 
 
 Politely-cultured loungers at the club 
 
 Take for Sir Oracle the fluent cub ; 
 
 Anonymous in his periodical 
 
 Large, vague he looms ; who, dullard thoughts of all 
 
 Dishing up deftly, flatters each fool so, 
 
 It fondly fancies it may strut as though 
 
 Itself were some potential Rochefoucauld. 
 
 He could be lively only when he hated : 
 
 Pungent aromas all evaporated, 
 
 When he with heavy hand, with heavier face, 
 
 Apotheosized English commonplace ; 
 
 A Rubens' cherub cumbersomely squat, 
 
 Labouring to upheave some royal fat 
 
 Skyward — the whole falls marvellously flat !
 
 THE RED FLAG. 2 
 
 With ponderous platitude his smart review 
 
 Lumbers along when it proclaims the true 
 
 Plethoric gospel of the well-to-do. 
 
 Man of a petite culture, whose college culture 
 
 Is but a whited sepulchre sepulture 
 
 Of living manhood — his in sooth was small : 
 
 Only a castrate creature's after all. 
 
 His elder comrade, green as a vegetable, 
 Lives much as did the dogs in sacred fable ; 
 He picks up crumbs from off a rich man's table. 
 With tact he courts the upper ten for dinners, 
 No friend of publicans and bourgeois sinners. 
 While footmen hand you many a dainty meat, 
 And butlers pour you out some choice Lafitte, 
 He undertakes the dinner-wit to furnish ; 
 Which is a trifle flyblown, wants a burnish. 
 The saltcellar with warranted Attic grains 
 Serves for so many boards, the flavour wanes. 
 Less delicately now he spins the slander, 
 For toil wears even a fashionable pander. 
 Still when he speaks unwholesome simpers fly 
 Around the high
 
 24 
 
 THE RED FLAG. 
 
 Distinguished circle of mahogany. 
 
 Egyptians played with monkeys when they dined ; 
 
 Our kings kept jesters of a motley kind ; 
 
 We fit our cap and bells on " men of mind." 
 
 From condescension to humanity 
 (A piece of luck for Christianity), 
 These men their regis of sublime protection 
 Spread over Jesus and the Resurrection. 
 They with a crooked tongue in hollow cheek 
 Commend His Gospel to the poor and weak. 
 These, who have measured God with half an eye, 
 Damn with faint praise the blessed Trinity. 
 Faith relegated to the lower orders, 
 A panacea for popular disorders, 
 A pap for babes and women, once upheaved 
 Mountains and hurled them headlong, once achieved 
 The impossible, taught saviours on the cross 
 And in the fire to triumph in their loss ; 
 A flame by night, an awful cloud by day, 
 Guided Mankind on their eternal way. 
 Now it fulfils a somewhat humbler function : 
 From it sleek priests distil the pulpit unction ;
 
 THE BED FLAG. 25 
 
 While clever Barnmns 5 cleverer and stronger 
 
 Than all old heroes, needing faith no longer, 
 
 Reduce our gods to dolls wherewith a showman 
 
 Hoodwinks the rabble, and the babes and women. 
 
 Still the old creed is a propriety, 
 
 An heirloom, a respectability ; 
 
 One can conceive it true ; be civil to it ; 
 
 Were you uncivil you might come to rue it. 
 
 So at a possible future judgment you 
 
 May tell the Lord, you said it might be true : 
 
 Yea, should it menace — you have thought of 
 
 that— 
 And left yourself with ample room to rat. 
 Oh ! what an irony of secret fate ! 
 Oh ! what declension from a royal state ! 
 That Faith, who once God's favourite angel flew, 
 Now drudges for a Saturnine review. 
 Yet though they give two fingers to the Saviour, 
 Best clothes on Sunday and demure behaviour, 
 Men of the world on every working day 
 Put the old creed with childish things away. 
 Measure the infinite God on pain of hell ; 
 But do not heed Him when you buy or sell.
 
 26 
 
 THE RED FLAG. 
 
 Call Jesus Lord decorously on Sunday, 
 
 But treat Hirn as a genial fool on Monday. 
 
 Lift up your pious eyes at Darwin's creed ; 
 
 Yet try to prove him right ahout your breed, 
 
 Dear fellow-Christians ! who live as though 
 
 Not even now you'd struggled from below. 
 
 For beasts of prey with all their savage strife 
 
 Are still the cherished models of your life. 
 
 Ye war with all your fellows for existence, 
 
 And when you've thrown them, still with fierce 
 
 insistance 
 Grind them beneath you, crush them all to death, 
 That you may breathe a more luxurious breath. 
 Hail ! weaponed man of grand expanding brain, 
 Most formidable beast of all that stain 
 Our mother earth with fratricidal blood ! 
 Tigers but raven hungry for their food ; 
 But thou, to fling one shining bauble more 
 In coffers bursting with thy gold before, 
 Starvest the babes and women at thy door ! 
 
 How these two friends congenial conversed 
 Here, as the listener heard it, is rehearsed,
 
 THE RED FLAG. 27 
 
 As from his slightly varied point of view 
 
 It might have sounded to the speakers too. 
 
 " Shopkeeping England trades without obstruc- 
 tion ; 
 
 Early and late we're toiling at production. 
 
 If many starve to swell our opulence, 
 
 That's an arrangement due to Providence. 
 
 Who prates of wealth's more equal distribution, 
 
 Or generous masters, means the revolution. 
 
 Gravity's one law ; this another ; profit 
 
 Can never bear a farthing taken off it. 
 
 Perish the human race to verify 
 
 Our pet Political Economy ! 
 
 Men start not fair ; one weighted from the first 
 
 Must live and die, as he was born, accurst. 
 
 Yet who in social questions may go deeper 
 
 Than he that asked, ' Am I my brother's keeper ? ' 
 
 Though the well-taught indulges every whim, 
 
 A boor should know 'tis criminal in him. 
 
 Sharp lucky grandsires earned our life of play ; 
 
 The poor must pare their children's crumbs 
 away, 
 
 For storing up against an evil day.
 
 28 
 
 THE BED FLAG. 
 
 " How frail is human nature ! how will pity 
 Confuse a fool's heart in a crowded city ! 
 He would remove the squalor and distress, 
 Nay, makes a virtue of his feebleness — 
 Removing makes it more instead of less. 
 Let us with one vain luxury dispense, 
 The luxury of our benevolence. 
 We feel a fatuous longing to relieve 
 The culpable incapables who grieve : 
 (They're either drunk or stupid, all the cant 
 Can't alter facts, else why are they in want ?) 
 Track home the fatuous longing at your leisure, 
 You'll find (see Mill) 'tis only selfish pleasure 
 This lachrymose desire to benefit 
 Other men aims at, selfish every bit — 
 We virtuous men must learn to bridle it." 
 " It must have cost you many a prayerful 
 
 tear " 
 (His waggish friend interpolated here) 
 " Arriving at this holy consummation, 
 Last economic test of one's salvation : 
 You from a child have striven early and late 
 With this sad sign of the unregenerate.
 
 THE RED FLAG. 29 
 
 This corrupt passion more in you than others 
 Blighted sweet innocence ; for when your brothers, 
 Or any other baby, sought your toy, 
 You always gave it up with tears — of joy. 
 And then one's mother, she was much to blame : 
 Did she brand generosity with shame ? 
 She punished what she termed our ' selfish- 
 ness : ' 
 "With her old-world ideas she could not guess, 
 Poor thing ! our last discovery in mind, 
 That it is very selfish to be kind. 
 "We patronise, she lived, her Christianity — 
 Such saintship is a pestilent insanity ; 
 But what if some unshamed iconoclast, 
 Crumbling old fetish-raiments of the past, 
 Piouse from dead cerements the Christ at last ? 
 What if men take to following where He leads, 
 Weary of mumbling Athanasian creeds ? " 
 
 " Self-interest enlightened is our rule : 
 Perish the pauper, and the general fool ! — 
 Well for the luckier or shrewder man ! 
 For he, by Heaven's especial favour, can
 
 30 THE RED FLAG. 
 
 Lodge duller rivals in foul dens like these, 
 And feed them with rank garbage if he please. 
 Mercy is an exploded superstition ; 
 Men are but brutes in bloodier competition. 
 
 " The State ! what call has that to interfere ? 
 Are we not free-born Britons living here ? 
 If these like not then* scrofulous dens, you know. 
 They're free to change their quarters ; let them go. 
 Why one of these may struggle uppermost ! 
 Himself may trample on the writhing host. 
 They cursing him, he cursing from above — 
 Hatred and Hell are finer things than Love ! 
 The State forbids that paupers should be slain 
 With knives and guns ; but as for stench and 
 
 drain, 
 And putrefying styes they build so small, 
 'Tis suicide to breathe in them at all, 
 Breath turns to poison — that's another thing — 
 See Malthus on prolific littering ! 
 Children are luxuries — let these dispense 
 With offspring — we ourselves to save expense 
 Lop off the babes, and the benevolence.
 
 THE RED FLAG. 81 
 
 Mother ! with murderous unflinching eye 
 Gaze on your moaning babe about to die. 
 Ring in the rich man's child with jubilation. 
 And ring the poor man's out, happy nation ! 
 Woman, your babe is ' surplus population ! ' 
 Why take such constant thought about the body '? 
 Man shall not live by bread " — " but by his toddy, 
 Margcaux, and Bisque-soup rather," quoth the wag. 
 " Don't chaff, nor let your rapt attention flag," 
 Resumed the Gigadibs, who seemed offended, 
 •' ?.iy arguments will be the sooner ended. 
 What was I saying ? well these Radicals 
 Pamper the carnal part of pauper pals 
 Unduly ; why not teach them to endure 
 With fortitude these ills they cannot cure ? 
 Throw them a sop of wholesome moral saws — 
 (Ah ! pestilent ' education ' — that's the cause, 
 Which makes them cax'p at our existing laws) 
 The dogs are always yelping for a bone : 
 Fling them to bite a weighty moral stone ! 
 
 " A man must grab whatever he can get; 
 We human creatures are not angels yet.
 
 32 THE RED FLAG. 
 
 You must not stab, nor strangle, a poor neighbour ; 
 
 For, if you did, why you would lose Ms labour. 
 
 No ; take advantage of his cramped position 
 
 To mangle him with your cruellest condition. 
 
 Rob soul and body by superior wit 
 
 And fortune ; ignorant hunger will submit. 
 
 If he should gash you, that were ugly murder : 
 
 Dribble his life-blood slowly — you're in order. 
 
 Nay, surely 'tis a very venial vice 
 
 To buy one's workman at the market price. 
 
 He may impose his terms ; contract is free." 
 
 " True," says the other, " yet it seems to me 
 
 Manacled blacks, thrust huddled in the hold 
 
 Of a rotten slaveship, might as well be told 
 
 To bargain with the master of the slaver ; 
 
 They're slaves for all your plausible palaver ! " 
 
 " Nay, in free England every man may rise 
 
 To be Prime Minister before he dies ! " 
 
 Quoth the bon-vivant with a playful nudge, 
 
 " Blifil, for next week's copy keep that fudge ! " 
 
 .... The lonely toiler, gasping for some air. 
 Listens in shadowy poison of the stair,
 
 THE BED FLAG. 33 
 
 Listens, a wounded beast within Lis lair 
 
 .... And there is Peace in London ! 
 
 A Man grew God upon the shadowy cross, 
 And taught the world to triumph in love's loss. 
 Following Him they took for great and holy, 
 Men helped the weak, forbore to insult the lowly ; 
 The mighty made them ministers of woe, 
 Because the Lord had served us high and low : 
 Now Love and Chivalry lie done to death : 
 Stony- eyed monsters feed on human breath : 
 In Christ's forgotten grave we have buried weak- 
 ness, 
 Justice, and Mercy, and Righteousness, and Meekness ! 
 
 . . . Then fell the night : there rose a mighty roar, 
 As though I neared a thunderous ocean-shore : 
 Hoary old Ocean feels his bounds no more. 
 Rioting over earth a conqueror ! 
 Nay, these are human cries ! In sooth they sound 
 More wrathful, turbulent, than sea's rebound ! 
 Fire ruddies all the city ! towered Thames 
 Rolls like the Seine, a tide of eddying flames ; 
 
 n
 
 34 THE RED FLAG. 
 
 Vessel, and wharf, and every striding arch 
 
 Glows in the fire-fiend's victorious march. 
 
 Hark ! to the huge bell, whose portentous boom 
 
 Ponderous falling fills the soul with doom. 
 
 Lo ! surging human seas arise and fall 
 
 Around the lurid grandeur of St. Paul. 
 
 Torches illume their wild convulsive toils, 
 
 Windily flaring ; all around there boils 
 
 Vile human refuse, for the dainty spoils 
 
 They have wrung from others wrangling fierce and 
 
 hoarse. 
 Ah ! turn away ! with what a hideous force 
 They soil our beautiful, both body and soul — 
 Famished beasts bursting loose from our control. 
 They pour the life of venerable age ; 
 Infants and women perish in their rage ! . . . . 
 .... Then must avenging butchery begin : 
 Their sin we strangle with our stronger sin. 
 England must join the anarchic devil's dance, 
 That wilders and exhausts delirious France ! 
 
 "Who declared war '? for ye shall bear the blame ! 
 History seeks your insignificant name 
 To pillory with everlasting shame !
 
 THE RED FLAG. 35 
 
 Who declared war ? The man who dared to teach 
 
 That men are natural enemies each to each ; 
 
 Set in uncompromising battle array 
 
 Labour and wealth : the fruit you eat to-day 
 
 Glares very crimson, scribbling Galifet ! 
 
 What ! shall Wealth kneel upon the fainting forms 
 
 Of millions whom scarce a raiment warms, 
 
 Draining their very heart's blood leisurely, 
 
 And shall we wonder when with frenzied cry, 
 
 Beyond endurance urged, at last they leap 
 
 To murder gorged wealth as it lies asleep ? 
 
 The legal armed oppressor of his neighbour, 
 
 He who hath goaded overdriven labour, 
 
 A peaceful tyrant, the Red Flag unfurled : 
 
 He stands accurst of God, and of the world ! 
 
 " A man must grab whatever he can get : 
 We human creatures are not angels yet" — 
 So chuckle cynic Mephistopheles ! 
 Relish you violent replies like these ? 
 Bring forth your mitrailleuse ! but hypocrite, 
 It was yourself who nursed the need for it. 
 Yea, you may shoot them ! you may drown tbe people 
 In their own life-blood ; every Christian steeple
 
 86 THE BED FLAG. 
 
 May echo to the clang of jubilant bells 
 
 Eeeling, aflame with flags of joy for hells 
 
 Of cruel vengeance underneath the cross ! 
 
 Peal with Te Deums for a people's loss, 
 
 Cathedral organs golden in the gloom ! 
 
 Yet know that these from every vengeful doom 
 
 Arise more terrible ! their ghosts assume 
 
 More formidable forms, and multiply ! 
 
 Ah ! the red sea returns to whelm you horribly ! 
 
 Merciless mow them ! form the Holy Alliance ! 
 
 To ravening hungry brethren breathe defiance : 
 
 For weapons brandish, oh ye monarchs holy, 
 
 Dead hands of Him who living helped the lowly ; 
 
 Yea, in the name of Christ, the poor man's God, 
 
 Stamp down his carcase in the bloody sod ! . . . 
 
 . . . . There is War in London ! 
 
 . . . Then I cried, " Lord how long ? what hope 
 
 is ours ? " 
 There dawned a twilit winter morn of showers. 
 I heard not the artillery's loud roar, 
 Nor plunge of shrieking shells, nor any more 
 Horrible human screams of civil war.
 
 THE RED FLAG. 37 
 
 My soul bad but foreboded tbe fell riot : 
 
 In tbe foul alley reigned unbroken quiet, 
 
 Even as erst : tbrec figures made tbeir way 
 
 To wbere tbe unbappy starving woman lay : 
 
 Tbree mutual strangers from a different borne, 
 
 Each wondering why tbe otber one bas come. 
 
 Tbe first, an old and venerable man, 
 
 From whose grand countenance there falls a ban 
 
 On our vain follies, on our wallowing sin, 
 
 When we are blessed enough a glance to win ; 
 
 He seeks admittance, be will enter in. 
 
 The other is a woman past ber prime, 
 
 Still beautiful, although the wintry rime 
 
 Silvers ber forehead ; she is pure and calm, 
 
 And from ber loving visage heavenly balm 
 
 Falls for the sorrowful ; she bas lived ber sorrow. 
 
 Both of these angels faceligbt seem to borrow 
 
 From the same Jesus with the 3 T ounger one ; 
 
 Who smiles a sweet yet homely-featured nun. 
 
 I know not with what form tbe old man's thought 
 
 Invested his divine lore when he taught : 
 
 That elder highborn lady, as you list, 
 
 You may call Puritan, or Calvinist.
 
 38 THE BED FLAG. 
 
 The younger woman held the ancient creed 
 Of Christendom: in soul, and life and deed, 
 They differ little ; in explaining much : 
 One feels the Christ arisen when they touch. 
 Do they not bear a living love to her, 
 And him who darkens by the sufferer ? 
 I turned ; for in mine ears one spake with pity, 
 " If there be ten there, I will spare the city." . 
 . There is Peace in London !
 
 APRIL GLEAMS. 
 
 April gleams ! 
 Emerald upland pasture seems 
 A silent undulating sea : 
 Quietly 
 
 Twinkling, red as planet Mars, 
 A short shower's fallen stars 
 Gem the multitudinous blade ; 
 Daisy sprinkles every glade : 
 On a tree, 
 
 Rising silvern slenderly, 
 Young leaves, delicate as dreams, 
 Inhale the gleams, 
 
 April gleams !
 
 40 APRIL GLEAMS. 
 
 Thin and rare, 
 Every leaf, a flake so fair, 
 Single inlays a pale blue air, 
 Where the tree 
 Rises highest o'er the lea ; 
 Lower all his leafy form 
 Stirs upon a mild grey storm, 
 Moving soft impearled with rays 
 From a winglike fringe of blaze. 
 Yonder pool 
 
 Shrines a skiey fleece of wool, 
 Unravelling mist, azure and gleams, 
 
 April gleams. 
 
 Faint and grey, 
 Far below me, far away, 
 Fades the landscape like a sea 
 Tenderly : 
 
 Cuckoo answering cuckoo-call, 
 Long low notes arise and fall, 
 Soft grey voices all in tune 
 With the hushed and bloom} 7 swoon 
 Of the lea,
 
 APRIL GLEAMS. 41 
 
 Fading far, a harmony 
 Of leaf and flower, of innocent glee, 
 Of turtle-coloured cloud and stream, 
 And tender tones and loving dream, 
 And April gleam ! 
 
 Cuckoo-flowers, 
 Wet with slant of shiny showers 
 Rainbow-braided ! Very fair, 
 With a frail and fleeting air, 
 All the scene ! 
 
 We remember what hath been : 
 It hath promise for the young; 
 They who have lived over long 
 In the evanescent glory 
 Feel bewildering human story. 
 Love, with Friendship tender and true, 
 Hope and Life will vanish too, 
 Youth with Innocence ; all but seems ; 
 Glimmer a moment elfin dreams, 
 April gleams ! 
 L872.
 
 SONG OF SUMMER. 
 
 Sweeter seems to you the morning 
 
 Than the day ! 
 Dearer to your soul the delicate 
 
 Blush of May, 
 Than a glow of summer roses 
 
 On the heart of June : 
 Yea, the dewy star of morning 
 
 Conquers noon ! 
 Ah ! but Phosphor only fadeth 
 
 Into light ; 
 Spring will yield his breath to summer- 
 Day will wane to night ! 
 Summer, with his face to winter, 
 Leaves delight !
 
 SOXG OF SUMMER. 
 
 43 
 
 Hear the passionate Summer say, 
 " Love me a little while you may, 
 Ere I pass away ! "
 
 IN EARLY SPRING. 
 
 TO MY SISTER. 
 
 Darling, the winedark masses of our wood, 
 
 Under a travelling cloud surcharged with ram, 
 Have dim-green columned vistas, all imbued 
 
 With faint blue smoke from smouldering leaves that 
 wane, 
 Or kindling glow : 
 But as I rove along the yielding grass 
 
 Fringing the river, lo ! my musing eyes, 
 With mild swift force made captive as they pass, 
 Gladden, as when with sense of sweet surprise 
 A voice we know 
 Of one we love returning unaware, 
 
 Longed for, not looked for, summons like a dream ; 

 
 IN EARLY SPRING. 45 
 
 So seems yon willow touched with verdure rare, 
 Slanting slim lines of green rain, in a gleam 
 Of fleeting glow, 
 Athwart her stem ; another willow nigh 
 Springs foliaged fountainlike and falls on high, 
 Evanishing in drifts of spray, 
 Green exhalation thinned away, 
 
 While faint airs hlow. 
 Some pensile leaves play wanton with the river, 
 
 And graze each mantling ripple as it slides 
 Soft, shadow-bosomed, with a dainty shiver 
 Kissing the leaf, ere swooning it subsides ! 
 Yet hearken ! now 
 • In tones renewed the dear unboded call 
 
 Of nearing Spring enchants my willing ear ; 
 For as I pass, now furtive-breathed, now clear, 
 Coos the woodpigeon with a plaintive fall ! 
 
 Behold a flow 
 Of yellow daffodil salutes my sight : 
 First smile of Nature waking from the night 
 Of deadly winter ; fluent among boughs 
 Winds in and out bird-music, to arouse 
 Each budding bough ;
 
 46 
 
 IN EARLY SPRING. 
 
 For still the bronzy tracery so fine 
 
 Reveals amid their rich perplexity 
 Many a brown bird in the swift sunshine 
 
 Startling and fading ; when he dips to fly 
 You well may know, 
 Noting on intervals of emerald floors 
 
 In tender subtle mysteries of grass 
 His shadow, while he buoyant sinks and soars, 
 
 Now faint exhaling, now imbibing mass. 
 Still faint and low 
 Spring's witching voice, still hesitating, strewn 
 
 On desert distances : she moves in sleep 
 With eyes half open : wake her not so soon ! 
 
 While Winter lowers, may she laugh and leap, 
 Whose breath of snow 
 She shrinking feels ? to me it seems the Spring, 
 
 darling sister on thy bed of pain ! 
 Pauses for thee, her very queen, to bring 
 
 Thine own eternal joyance to sustain 
 Her, timid doe, 
 With calm assurance from thy spirit's home ; 
 
 Even as young maids on either hand deploy, 
 Lining a bride's path, waiting till she come,
 
 IN EARLY SPRING. 1 , 
 
 Then follow in the wake of her full joy, 
 Swelling its flow : 
 So, darling, come ! the year but waits for theo : 
 
 Dislustred else the sunniest Spring for me ! 
 Our Springs were wont to gather confidence, 
 
 Sounding thine eyes for sweet serenity ; 
 Skies, leaves and flowers, still wait to draw it hence ; 
 Linger not now ! 
 
 Kew, 1870.
 
 HARVEST. 
 
 Garner in the golden grain ! 
 
 He that fares immersed in wheat 
 Sees a russet mellow main, 
 
 Falling from the upland, meet 
 Lavender horizons warm, 
 
 Blent with opaline warm skies ; 
 Yerdure-isles of cloudy form 
 
 In descending meet his eyes ; 
 Eound them, like a sea at rest 
 Glassy sliding up the sand, 
 Simmers harvest, many a crest 
 
 Hither and thither drooping bland, 
 "Weighted every leaning ear. 
 With the treasure of the year.
 
 HARVEST. 19 
 
 Garner in the golden grain ! 
 
 Yonder shining sickle cleaves ; 
 Bronzy harvestmen sustain 
 
 Thwart one another golden sheaves, 
 "Whose luxuriant honours all, 
 
 Marrying, seem tawny toil 
 Of a foaming water-wall, 
 
 When wave meets baffled wave's recoil. 
 Nigh to one of these a child 
 
 In a little cart is laid, 
 Sleeping in the air so mild, 
 
 Where a linden with sweet shade 
 Softens all the radiance, 
 Within the reaping father's glance. 
 
 Garner in the golden grain ! 
 
 All, aglow upon the hill, 
 Unforeboding will remain, 
 
 Till the sickle gleams, until 
 All shall placidly resign 
 
 Pleasant homely life afield, 
 Where the youngling flowers twine. 
 
 Only now we saw them yield, 
 
 E
 
 50 
 
 HARVEST. 
 
 Lithe and blithe, and green when wind 
 Ruffled them to silky waves, 
 
 Playing merrily : so we find 
 Aged pilgrims near the graves, 
 
 Mellow and wise, and loving wait 
 Swift inevitable fate : 
 
 We weep who lose them ; they are still, 
 
 While One bears them where He will.
 
 A CHRISTIAN'S FUNERAL. 
 
 Slim boles of trees divide the purple haze 
 Of far-off mountain, and the range subsides 
 Into an ocean- azure of sweet bays, 
 "While over all, mingling with all, abides 
 A brooding influence of blessed spring 
 Newly returned, a blue light of warm air ; 
 And Earth lies, like a child awakening 
 In some sweet home familiar and fair, 
 Whereunto it has travelled unaware 
 In slumber, with a dimly happy smile, 
 That shall be rapture in a little while. 
 Against a wall of rustic church I lean 
 In a small graveyard, where the grass revives 
 Now from the restful unaspiring green 
 Wherewithal under winter snow it lives,
 
 52 a christian's funeral. 
 
 And stirs about the marble of two graves, 
 
 One large, one small white stone, two grassy waves. 
 
 One longer for a woman grey, and one 
 
 Small for a child who used to love the sun. 
 
 Nigh unto these a silent multitude 
 In sombre mourning garb hath gathered now, 
 One human cloud on earth's rejoicing mood, 
 About an open grave with shadowed brow ; 
 Many a cottager to see the end 
 Of one who was a master and a friend ; 
 Through a long life a just and righteous man, 
 A tender, human-hearted Puritan ; 
 With his own hands assuaging every need, 
 On his own faith inviting each to feed. 
 All we around him wore a seemly woe ; 
 But one upon her heart received the blow ; 
 And as she bent above her mother's tomb, 
 The while her sire we gathered to the gloom, 
 Now winter laid a hand upon her hair, 
 Full many a weeping peasant standing there 
 Averred that he, beholding her to-day, 
 Seemed to behold her mother passed away.
 
 a christian's funeral. 53 
 
 All this fair scene men called his property ! 
 Say will it veil its loveliness awhile 
 From all the world hecause the Master's eye 
 No more may answer any sunny smile ? 
 Though through long years his Spirit brooded here, 
 Presiding, guarding, moulding all the place ; 
 Any man now may ruin it with no fear 
 Of any frown on his imperial face. 
 When we returned within the house we knew, 
 How strange to find all things familiar 
 Unmoved without him, which the while we grew 
 In earlier years, like rays around a star, 
 Had ne'er a being sundered from his own ! 
 Now grim-ranged armour, portraits glowering 
 
 down, 
 Mellow ancestral figures from the past, 
 Assumed their proper awfulness at last — 
 Pathetic shells of withered human life, 
 Dumb presences, with blurred humanities too 
 
 rife, 
 Lavished in laughter and in tears, 
 With hopes and fears, 
 On bitter, restless rolling of the years !
 
 54 a christian's funeral. 
 
 Here every great and every trivial thing 
 Bore impress of his anxious ordering : 
 Now we may change it all, nor ever dread 
 Remonstrance from the venerable dead. 
 Even if the ancestral place he loved so well 
 Into cold alien hands the heir should sell, 
 He would not turn unrestful where he lies, 
 Rapt from our world and our fatuities ! 
 Yea, if the chapel where for many a year 
 His heart was lavished from this hour should hear 
 Proclaimed the very creed he most abhorred, 
 No moan of sorrow from his grave were poured. 
 
 Ruins deserted of long-lingering light, 
 Faces unsouled set in eternal night, 
 These bannered halls and corridors we knew, 
 Where innocent, winged the feet of childhood flew ! 
 For gone is he who welcomed us of old. 
 It seems as though, while musingly he told 
 Concerning some ancestral painted face, 
 Pausing before it, sorrowing for the race 
 Of men because they are transitory gleams 
 Along the ocean of eternity,
 
 a christian's funeral. 55 
 
 He unaware, as in confusing dreams, 
 
 Paled, looking awful ; left us bewilderingly, 
 
 To re-emerge himself among the ghosts 
 
 Up yonder, who with silent following eyes 
 
 Brood ever in mysterious dim posts ; 
 
 And since he joined their solemn, leagtiering hosts, 
 
 "We lie down wakeful, waiting a surprise ; 
 
 Life sounds all hollow, mined with mj'steries, 
 
 Read)' to crumble baseless into smoke, 
 
 To vanish in the moment of a look. 
 
 Is all then over ? is he only dust ? 
 Can it be, in the face of such a trust ? 
 No shadow of misgiving ever swept 
 The wondrous light of faith wherein he slept. 
 He knew, yea, toiled that all around should know, 
 The life of saints hath birth but when they go. 
 And in this faith dark, long-delaying death 
 But now he greeted, giving away his breath. 
 Ah ! did he waken even when he died 
 Upon the bosom of the Crucified '? 
 When hymns one sang him waned upon his ear, 
 Did angel hallelujahs peal more clear ?
 
 56 a christian's funeral. 
 
 Ah ! did he pass from trust that seerneth dull, 
 
 Beside the consummation beautiful ? 
 
 Or did the vision fade for ever away 
 
 When his poor pale lips might no longer 
 
 pray ? 
 When sick at heart I kneeling with the crowd 
 Heard him pour forth his fervent soul aloud 
 Nightly to God, as though he saw the Lord, 
 Yea, touched and held His very written word, 
 Ah was he sane, who saw the glory gleam, 
 Or I, foreboding all was but a dream ? 
 Foreboding there is none to hear us call, 
 Or lift us from the inevitable fall ; 
 That all this ardent longing he will lose 
 Then when the mortal weakness shall con- 
 fuse, 
 Dissolving all the human ? — we shall perish, 
 Though, kneeling in our dust, our children cherish 
 Our old illusion ! — 'tis a bleak denial, 
 Ruthlessly rolling in their hour of trial 
 The very solid earth from underneath 
 Weak feet that waver ; from a labouring breath 
 Stealing the air that hardly saves from death !
 
 A CHRISTIAN 's FUNERAL. ")T 
 
 And can ye doubt, believers, we would sbare 
 Ennobling hopes that save you from despair '? 
 Alas ! alas ! for he had seemed estranged, 
 Since old horizons of my spirit changed 
 In later years — no marvel this should be ! 
 Only a sorrow it was to him and me. 
 Now I remembered little save the days 
 Of his dear coming to my school with rays 
 Of never-failing, kindly happiness, 
 Beaming from all his countenance to bless 
 3Ie in the breezy, hill-built school, so dear 
 To many a boyhood, yet to mine a fear, 
 A very loathing — I may scarce recall 
 One face endeared to me among them all ! 
 Saving for Byron's grave, one boy beloved, 
 And some sweet lanes where arm in arm we 
 
 roved, 
 I would those years might fade from memory, 
 With but one space among them shining high ! 
 Cheeiy repasts in that small garden trim 
 Of the old tavern, whose adornment grim 
 Was many a wooden dragon blue and red, 
 Where we sat feasting, trellised overhead.
 
 58 a christian's funeral. 
 
 Nor these, nor golden gift at parting slid 
 Into my palm, in anywise lay hid 
 From me when I stood by the grave to-day, 
 With all the variance vanished far away. 
 
 Poor human differences ! at the grave 
 Our universal schemes that looked so brave 
 Hang the head silent, nebulous, and pale. 
 Beside the solemn truth, whose visions fail, 
 His, or my own ? the impalpable Beyond — 
 Both it for him lie curled within the bond 
 Of his imagining any longer ? nay ! 
 Nor less my blind denial faints away 
 Here by him, grown more awful than before. 
 Surely he doth abide for evermore ! 
 
 Poor human differences ! lapped in light 
 Some calm-lived angel may behold the flight, 
 The momentary flight of human things 
 Athwart their gleam with multitudinous wings- 
 To wise, grave eyes a melancholy scene ! 
 No buoyant wings serene, 
 Jubilant they for one brief hour may shine, 
 Warmly irradiate from the face Bivine !
 
 a christian's funeral. 59 
 
 Nay, but a clash of dissonant loud strife, 
 Where each his glimpse of the universal life 
 Shrieks forth, infuriate with a presumptuous brother, 
 "Who dares proclaim to the world his own or any other. 
 
 The while we laid him under earth I heard 
 Warbling within a laurel near a bird, 
 Who never ceased to warble clear and sweet, 
 For all the ghastly noise of shuffling feet 
 And grilling rope, with tumult ill-suppressed, 
 Or silent tears relieving hearts oppressed ; 
 Pealing methought with confirmation rife, 
 When " I am the resurrection and the life !" 
 A solemn human voice proclaimed aloud : 
 While vernal airs, with all relenting fountains 
 Among the eternal brotherhood of mountains, 
 And youngling flowers, and the everlasting sea 
 Made sweet accord in deep tranquillity. 
 
 His faith endures upon foundations wide 
 And firm as the universe, howe'er have ailed 
 The superstructure : evermore abide 
 Those well-beloved lives who may have failed
 
 60 a christian's funeral. 
 
 Our earthly vision in the Life of life ; 
 
 In some abysmal Peace profoundly veiled, 
 
 Where they await us, where we shall be one ; 
 
 As may be in the ineffable alone, 
 
 And never in the glory of the mortal strife, 
 
 However hearts may yearn for union. 
 
 I foolish, while he prayed, have felt the fear 
 
 There may be none in all the worlds to hear : 
 
 Surely the Life of life, whene'er we cry, 
 
 Fills our low springs with personality : 
 
 Surely, however lurid lower the gloom, 
 
 Surely, howe'er bewildering the doom, 
 
 All stands established from eternity, 
 
 Adorable, however it may be !
 
 A CATARACT,* 
 
 UNDER TWO ASPECTS. 
 
 In a cavern of a solitary mountain 
 
 Are thy waters born, 
 Wlierein, before tbe fiasbing of tby silver fountain 
 
 From tbe twiligbt like anotber morn, 
 We may bear an inward murmur from tbe glooming, 
 
 \Ye may feel a breathing chill ! 
 Impelled of a blind longing for a sunny air illumiug, 
 
 Witb a bubbling and a sliding still, 
 
 * Somewhere in Germany I have read that there is a cataract, 
 which has a marhle tablet on the rock by the side of it, record- 
 ing in gilded letters that his Majesty, the King of tho country, 
 was " graciously pleased " to visit the cataract on such or such 
 a day, and " condescended in his own person to admire the 
 of Nature." I know nothing about this individual 
 king as man ; but the point of the inscription is that it was 
 condcuctnding of him as a king !
 
 62 A CATARACT. 
 
 Glide thine infant river- waters ever flowing, 
 
 While the willow-leaves and flowers 
 Fill thy heart of innocent crystal with a glory 
 glowing 
 
 From their undulating airy bowers ! 
 There the children love to play about thy brightness 
 
 With a joy like thine, 
 With a guileless aimless unforeboding lightness, 
 
 And many a limpid laugh like thine. 
 With a beautiful bewilderment thy childhood, 
 
 Roaming in the forest, 
 Blends with another water of the wildwood ; 
 
 Till strong in youth mature thou pourest, 
 Where all the granite gorge resounding 
 
 Thunders 'and lightens evermore, 
 Reels with the terrible splendour of thy bounding, 
 
 And the plunge of wild white waters, and the 
 roar. 
 Immortal plunge ! terrifically daring, 
 
 Illumining the gloom with glory ; 
 Pines are holding wrung with frenzy, while impetuous 
 winds are bearing 
 
 All abroad the rumour and tumult of thy story !
 
 A CATARACT. G3 
 
 Lo ! the scare of mists that hurry from hell's cauldron 
 recoiling ! 
 
 Fall of a lucid ocean, all a flashing foam ! 
 Lo ! maidenhair and mosses midway above the boiling, 
 
 Wooing watery sunshine, love turmoil for a home. 
 
 In what primeval cataclysm 
 Thy glory erst was hurled into the abysm 
 Who may disclose ? but in a former time 
 So marvelled men before thy might sublime ; 
 So ghostly breathed thy shadowy cavern-fountain 
 From far within the solitary mountain, 
 So fresh and healing all thy wave, 
 A minister of life wherever it may lave ; 
 That on the height above the cave 
 A temple ruin fading into rock 
 We still may trace, though many a mouldered block 
 The gradual growth of gnarled oak divorce 
 Far from its fellow with unheeded force ; 
 While ivy and vine, lush eglantine and bramble, 
 In fair confusion o'er the ruin ramble. 
 Yet in a far-off long-forgotten day 
 Men with hushed voices hither came to pray.
 
 64 A CATABACT. 
 
 To thee, sacred stream ! they raised the shrine, 
 Deeming thee animate with life Divine. 
 How have their memories vanished now in air ! 
 We vainly ask what manner of men they were. 
 Our human generations fleeting wonder, 
 Passing along thine everlasting thunder ; 
 Shadows of earth, with shadows of the sky, 
 We fleet athwart thy sheeny foam and fly, 
 We are born, and thou remainest, and we die. 
 Children have played around thy playful spring, 
 And many lovers have loved wandering 
 In thy romantic gorge ; while lonely poets come, 
 Passionate for the voice of thy tumultuous home, 
 Laying to heart thy rush of light and sound 
 Voluminous, to sing in turn if they be worthy found. 
 Prophets of old in meditative mood, 
 Solitary dwellers with a salvage brood, 
 Nursed here a smouldering fire of indignation. 
 In vision received unearthly revelation : 
 Ever thy hanging sound stupendous wrought 
 Within their souls unfathomable thought, 
 Until aroused, inspired with thy tempestuous glad- 
 ness,
 
 A CATARACT. (j."> 
 
 They blew a people to flame with their own heroic 
 madness ! 
 
 All these have passed ! Hardly a human thing 
 Hath left a trace by thine eternal spring. 
 And yet in sooth what gleams upon the rock 
 Hard by the shattering of the water shock *? 
 A marble tablet with some gilded letters ! 
 Whereon the country folk inscribe them debtors 
 Of one who deigned to visit and to praise 
 Their parish waterfall in former days ! 
 Who then among the shades that came and went 
 Amid the centuries' evanishment, 
 Who then have names regilded year by year, 
 Lest the remembrance of them disappear 
 With other mortal memories from here ? 
 Lest the tradition of the wondrous fact 
 That these have seen, yea, praised the cataract 
 'Mong children's children be at length forgotten, 
 And even such magnanimity lie rotten ! 
 
 A few have seen thine awful face, youth 
 Ever renewed! a few with love and innocence and truth, 
 
 F
 
 66 A CATARACT. 
 
 Or splendid power of personality 
 
 May seem to claim a fellowship with thee, 
 
 To claim some solemn kindred with the sound 
 
 Imperial inhabiting the gulf profound ! 
 
 Yet these have ne'er a record carven in marble, 
 
 Or by the fall, or by the sylvan warble ! 
 
 What shadow more illustrious than all 
 
 Claims for itself such homage by the fall ? 
 
 Demands among the asons his day alone 
 
 From the awful hunger of pale Oblivion ? 
 
 I read — am I deceived ? — a common king ! 
 Among the waifs indifferent Time may fling, 
 Stranding them here — of kings there moulder many 
 No people without hereditary zany ! 
 But one of these, living his little hour, 
 Vouchsafed, it seems, to leave a royal dower, 
 With a decoration deigning to invest, 
 cataract ! thine adamantine breast ! 
 Glancing in sooth to what he stood before, 
 He deemed he saw thee, deafened with thy roar 
 He deemed he heard thee ; but his mind divided 
 Now wandered to the game the hills provided,
 
 A CATARACT. 67 
 
 Now to one surly, unconditioned hind 
 
 Who had not doffed his bonnet, nor inclined. 
 
 Howbeit the monarch, turning to the mayor, 
 
 Was pleased his satisfaction to declare, 
 
 Was gracious to the local waterfall ; 
 
 And the mayor took it as a personal 
 
 Compliment, bowing almost with an air 
 
 Of deprecating such distinction rare — 
 
 As if the king had patted his little boy, 
 
 And he could only wish that less alloy 
 
 Were mingled with the humble offering 
 
 He dared to set before so great a king. 
 
 For this in sooth was but the parish sight ; 
 
 They held it cheap who heard it day and night, 
 
 To every bumpkin from his earliest age 
 
 Familial ; but yonder in its cage 
 
 They kept the curious thing that brought them patronage. 
 
 Half proud of it, they felt it did them credit, 
 
 As if themselves, not God Almighty, fed it . . . 
 
 . . . Did a Prince really condescend to nod 
 
 Familiarly to this great work of God ! 
 
 Surely the cataract made a modest hush, 
 
 Became suffused with a retiring blush,
 
 G8 A CATARACT. 
 
 Yea, and the tittering fluttered cavern fountain 
 Convulsed with boastful bliss the tremulous old 
 mountain ! 
 
 Slave to courtly etiquette ! 
 
 Military martinet ! 
 
 Master of the ceremonies ! 
 
 If God with lightning couched your eyes, 
 
 Then might your dazed vision see 
 
 Inviolable Liberty ! 
 
 Hereditary puppet spangled gay, 
 Whom fullgrown babies being amused obey, 
 When some sardonic hidden ventriloquist 
 Speaks through you whatsoever he may list, 
 One must be more than common king to see 
 The glory of this immortal majesty ! 
 
 Tyrant with a narrow brain, 
 Taking holiest names in vain, 
 Suffered to sport with living joys 
 And living woes, in place of toys ;
 
 A CATARACT. 69 
 
 Ye of the wooden complacent royal faces, 
 
 Fumbling among live nerves of human races, 
 
 Clutching wormeaten hereditary places ! 
 
 Before your realm of human government 
 
 Ye stand imbecile, idle, impotent, 
 
 Not more unhealing this immortal chime 
 
 Than dark to your allotted sphere sublime ! 
 
 Deaf to the long, low wail funereal 
 
 In yonder gloom, from ruined lives that call 
 
 Some one to help ! Leave ye your vantage ground, 
 
 And toil among them till the light be found ! 
 
 Poor worms ! the fulsome sense of your pale marble 
 Contemptuous rains will insolently garble : 
 And if we flung the royal skeleton 
 (Forbid it loyalty !) with all your own 
 Carcasses in the welter, do ye think 
 Yon hurricane of waters wild would slink 
 Mild like a courtier from the sacred corse, 
 Or shatter all alike without remorse ? 
 
 Glory to God on his eternal throne ! 
 Give glory to the lowly Man, his Son.
 
 70 A CATARACT. 
 
 Some light reflected for a niornent shone 
 From holy men and mighty : they are gone : 
 And still we hear the water's mighty monotone 
 God reigns over the universe alone !
 
 AT COURT. 
 
 Beholding with a listless eye 
 
 A gaily- apparelled train 
 
 Of many ladies passing by, 
 
 With a delightful pain 
 
 My heart was taken unaware 
 
 In very sweet suspense ; 
 
 Amid the crowd unfair and fair 
 
 A hallowed influence 
 
 Stole on me, like some fountain sweet 
 
 That mantles in the brine 
 
 Of unrefreshing seas to greet 
 
 A mariner's lips that pine ; 
 
 Stole on me from a girlish face 
 
 That passed among the rest ;
 
 72 AT COURT. 
 
 Like hers whom I may ne'er embrace, 
 
 Hers who hath never blest 
 
 These many pallid latter years, 
 
 Nor may for evermore 
 
 Shine on my soul for all my tears, 
 
 As in the days of yore 
 
 Was it ever heard that a hallowed face 
 
 Of one whom hearts enwound 
 
 Faded slowly, and left no trace 
 
 In death's chill mist profound, 
 
 Yet later unto living eyes, 
 
 That yearned with mute despair, 
 
 Dawned faint again with sweet surprise, 
 
 And the old loving air ? 
 
 Because so warm a human love 
 
 With tremulous living breath 
 
 Had power to charm, and melt and move 
 
 Inviolable Death ! 
 
 Nay, that hath never, never been ; 
 
 She may not come again, 
 
 My sister, my long-lost Kathleen, 
 
 Into our world of pain ! 
 
 For well I know the girlish face !
 
 AT COURT. 
 
 73 
 
 Her child, her very own, 
 
 Left here, lest we whom she forsook 
 
 Might wither all alone ! 
 
 And so in sooth she blooms anew 
 
 To bless our later time, 
 
 Beautiful now as when she blew 
 
 About my boyish prime. 
 
 Fair child ! thou risest from a grave ; 
 
 To me thy silken hair 
 
 Seems radiant with flowers that wave 
 
 Above thy mother there. 
 
 Thy face is toward the dawning bright ; 
 
 And One will lead thee on, 
 
 Tranquil for ever in the light, 
 
 Until the day be done !
 
 A VISION OF THE DESERT. 
 
 Methought I saw the morning bloom 
 A solemn wilderness illume, 
 Desert sand and empty air : 
 Yet in a moment I was aware 
 Of One who grew from forth the East, 
 Mounted upon a vasty Beast. 
 It swung with silent, equal stride, 
 With a mighty shadow by the side : 
 The tawny, tufted hair was frayed ; 
 The long, protruding snout was laid 
 Level before it ; looking calm away 
 From that imperial rising of the Day. 
 Methought a very awful One 
 Towered speechless thereupon :
 
 A VISION OF THE DESERT. 75 
 
 All the figure like a cloud 
 
 O 
 
 An ample mantle did enshroud, 
 
 Folding heavily dark and white, 
 
 Concealing all the face from sight, 
 
 Save where through stormlike rifts there came 
 
 A terrible gleam of eyes like flame. 
 
 Then I beheld how on his arm 
 A child was lying without alarm. 
 With innocent rest it lay asleep ; 
 Awakening soon to laugh aud leap ; 
 Yet well I knew, whatever passed, 
 The arm that held would hold it fast. 
 Nor ever then it sought to know 
 Whose tender strength encircled so, 
 Living incuriously wise 
 Under the tei'rible flame of eyes. 
 In those sweet early morning hours 
 It played with dewy, wreathing flowers, 
 Drinking oft from a little flask 
 Under the mantle : I heard it ask : 
 Yea, and at other times the cooling cup 
 Gentle and merciful He tilted up.
 
 76 A VISION OP THE DESERT. 
 
 But when the sun began to burn, 
 I saw the child more restless turn, 
 Seeking to view the silent One : 
 Then, growing graver thereupon, 
 It whispered, " Father ! " but I never heard 
 If any lips in answer stirred. 
 Yet if no answer reached the child, 
 I know not why he lay and smiled, 
 Raising his little arms on high 
 In a solemn rapture quietly ! 
 
 The shadow moved, and growing less, 
 A blue blaze ruled the wilderness. 
 The child, alert with life and fire, 
 Gazed all around with infinite desire. 
 Erect he sat, contented now no more 
 To nestle, and feed upon the homely store : 
 He searched the lessening distance whence they came ; 
 He peered into the clear cerulean flame ; 
 His hand would mingle with the shaggy hair 
 Of that enormous Living Thing which bare, 
 Whose feet were planted in the powdery ground 
 With ne'er a pause, with ne'er a sound.
 
 A VISION OF THE DESERT. 77 
 
 Yon fascinating, wondrous Infinite 
 His clear young eyes explored with keen de- 
 light : 
 He gazed into the muffled Countenance, 
 Undazzled with the rifted radiance : 
 Then, giving names to all that he espied, 
 He murmured with a bright triumphant pride, 
 " I hold their secret : lo ! I am satisfied." 
 Oh ! it was rare to see the lovely child, 
 As with a gaze ecstatical he smiled, 
 Following with eager, splendour-beaming eyes 
 A bird magnificent, who sailed the skies 
 On vast expanded plumes of sanguine white, 
 Enamoured of transcendant azure light, 
 Higher and higher soaring to the sun ; 
 Claiming a share in his dominion ; 
 Elate with ardour, like unwearying youth, 
 Imperially at home in awful realms of Truth ! 
 
 But ah ! the sun beat fierce and merciless 
 Upon the boundless, barren wilderness. 
 Then soon, responsive to a slakeless thirst, 
 Behold upon his ravished sight there burst
 
 78 A VISION OP THE DESERT. 
 
 A vision of a far-off lake most fair, 
 
 Where many a palm was dallying with air, 
 
 And soft mimosa : how alluringly 
 
 Smiled the sweet water in a blinding sky ! 
 
 Can he not hear a gentle turtle coo 
 
 Among light leaves, yea, very wavelets blue 
 
 Lapping among green reeds upon the shore, 
 
 Calling him to abide for evermore ? 
 
 Ah ! how doth he impetuous entreat, 
 
 And chide the silent, never-lingering feet ! 
 
 Yet was it strange — for as the feet advanced, 
 
 The lake receded, and the waters danced 
 
 An eerie dance with all the belts of trees, 
 
 And mingled with them, till the sand with these 
 
 On the horizon made a marge that wavered, 
 
 And all blew sidelong, thin white flame that 
 
 quavered — 
 Then one low whispered, " 'Tis the Devil's 
 
 water!" 
 While in his ear there pealed cruel, unearthly 
 
 laughter. 
 On this the child fell ill with fever, 
 Made many a vain yet wild endeavour
 
 A VISION OF THE DESERT. 79 
 
 To fling himself from forth the grasp 
 That held -with ne'er-relaxing clasp, 
 Murmuring, " None holds me fast ; 
 I am a plaything of the blast." 
 But the Eider from the girdled store 
 Ministered to him as before. 
 
 And while the shadow veered by stealth, 
 A measure of his primal health 
 The boy resumed : an air that fanned 
 Blew veritably o'er the sand ; 
 And little birds before them flew, 
 Vested in a sober hue, 
 A paly brown, to suit the home 
 Where 'tis then- destiny to roam. 
 Yet I am sure that ne'er a bird 
 Fluting more soft and sweet was heard 
 Among the lawns of Paradise, 
 Than these in such a humble guise, 
 Who, without any rest or haste, 
 Travel warbling o'er the waste. 
 Moreover in the sterile soil 
 Some spots of verdure, while the travellers toil,
 
 80 A VISION OP THE DESERT. 
 
 Arise ; yea, even the sweet oases, 
 That vanished with the feigning, undulating graces, 
 Were fair and real delight, however fleeing, 
 With law distinct of transitory being ; 
 Only illusion for deluding eyes, 
 That yearn for what nor waste nor world supplies. 
 Some dim ideal of the soul, 
 
 That ever loves, and grows toward the illimitable 
 whole. 
 
 But ever, as they two solitary range, 
 And as the immeasurable horizons change, 
 Upon the child more burdensome doth lie 
 Sense of impenetrable mystery. 
 Erst he imagined that he chose to go ; 
 But now he feels, whether he will or no 
 One carries him : he joyed to be in life 
 For possibilities of boundless strife, 
 Wresting resplendent secrets bold from all : 
 Now the unmasked immensities appal, 
 Weighing incumbent on the sense and thought, 
 As on a dwindling grain of dust, as on a thing of 
 nought !
 
 A VISION OF THE DESERT. 81 
 
 A moment looking toward the shrouded Face, 
 Now is he fain his timid eyes to ahase : 
 " Father, unveil ! " he tremulously cries, 
 Fearing he asks impossibilities. 
 
 Yet hearken ! voices musical 
 Like dew upon the desert fall, 
 Fusing and falling, 
 Calling, calling ! 
 Very plaintive, sweet, and low, 
 As the lonely pilgrims go : 
 Are they spirits of the wild, 
 Calling, answering low and mild ? 
 Is it a voice of one departed, 
 Plaining gentle, unquiet-hearted, 
 Vainly hungering to enfold 
 His beloved as of old ? 
 Severed from our living kind, 
 In a feeble, wandering wind 
 Wandering ever ? none can tell 
 Whence the mystic murmurs well : 
 But oft an Arab, roaming far 
 Over sands of Sahara, 
 
 G
 
 82 A VISION OF THE DESERT. 
 
 Hears the sweet mysterious measure 
 With a solemn-hearted pleasure, 
 Saying, " No wind among the stones 
 Breathes the rare unearthly tones ! " 
 And howsoe'er it be, they tell 
 The soul of things ineffable, 
 Of a life beyond our death or birth, 
 Of a universe beyond the earth ! 
 
 Monotonously weary seemed the way, 
 
 While light declining faded slowly away. 
 
 Some haze obscured a gradual westering sun, 
 
 And all the oppressive firmament was wan. 
 
 In it voluminous appears to form 
 
 From the horizon a continent of storm, 
 
 A ponderous bulk of gathering indigo, 
 
 Tinged in its formidable overflow 
 
 With hues of livid purple poison-flowers. 
 
 In ghastlier whiteness for the night that lowers, 
 
 Strewing forlorn the desolate desert pale, 
 
 Some grinning skeletons of men assail 
 
 My vision ; while a monstrous bird of prey 
 
 From a putrescent corpse rends fierce away
 
 A VISION OF THE DESERT. s:; 
 
 The clinging flesh with horrid sound of tearing, 
 Its beak abruptly plunging, pulling, baring ; 
 Bald-headed, hideous neck low crouched betwixt 
 The pressure of strong talons curved, infixed : 
 Now the proud brain, like fearful Madness, 
 
 mangling, 
 Like Sin now with the reeking bosom wrangling ; 
 Like ignorance, disease, war, tyranny, starvation, 
 Eating the vitals of a noble fallen nation !. 
 This creature, as they pass, a moment glaring 
 Voracious-eyed, with vasty vans that cover — 
 A little further on obscene doth hover 
 A grey hyena, and he laughs a peal 
 Of beastly laughter, scraping up a meal 
 Loathsome from forth the sand : there is a howl 
 Dolefully borne from where the lean wolves 
 
 prowl ! 
 Then silence falls upon the deepening gloom, 
 And sultry air forebodes the smothering Simoom. 
 Looking toward the child with deep dismay, 
 I noted his fair ringlets grown to grey, 
 And sparse like withered bents upon his head : 
 His \>n\c, worn countenance was drawn with dread ;
 
 84 A VISION OF THE DESERT. 
 
 Yet in his eyes there burned a grand resolve, 
 No sights of terror lightly might dissolve. 
 And now I heard him murmur, " Mighty Father ! 
 I trust thee ; yea, to thee I cling the rather, 
 Albeit I may not see thine awful face ! " 
 Then I was sure he felt the strong embrace 
 Tighten around him, though a Skeleton 
 Came stalking from the night to lead them on : 
 A far-off murmur swelled into a wildering roar ; 
 A hurricane of flame and sand whirled like a con- 
 queror ! 
 And when the o'erwhelming terrible death-tempest 
 
 on them broke, 
 The shrinking child crept nestling close under the 
 Father's cloak. 
 
 Then darkness swallowed the portentous plain. 
 When faint it dawned upon mine eyes again, 
 Lo ! there was moonlight in a sky serene : 
 All lay at peace beneath the melancholy sheen. 
 No voice was heard, no living thing was seen. 
 Yet ere I was aware, that awful Apparition 
 Once more emerged upon my mortal vision —
 
 A VISION OF THE DESERT. 85 
 
 The shrouded, dim, unutterable Form, 
 "With eyes that flame as through the rifts of storm, 
 Mounted on that colossal Living Thing, 
 Bearing the child now, softly slumbering — 
 While all confused immeasurable shadow fling. 
 Peacefully lay the boy's pale, silent head : 
 And, looking long, I knew that he was dead. 
 Then all my wildered anguish forced a way 
 Through my wild lips : " Reveal, Lord, I pray, 
 Whither thou earnest him ! " I cried aloud : 
 No sound responded from the shadowy shroud ; 
 Only methought that something like a hand 
 Was raised to point athwart the shadowy land ; 
 And while afar the dwindling twain were borne, 
 I, gazing all around with eyes forlorn, 
 Divined the bloom of some unearthly morn ! 
 
 Where was he carried ? to an isle of calm, 
 Lulled with sweet water and the pensile palm ? 
 Vanishing havens on the pilgrimage 
 Surely some more abiding home presage ! 
 Or must the Sire attain always alone 
 The happy land, with never a living son ?
 
 86 A VISION OF THE DESERT. 
 
 ! awful, silent, everlasting One ! 
 If thou must roam those islands of the west, 
 Ever with some dead child upon thy breast, 
 Who would have hailed the glory, being blest, 
 Eternity were one long moan for rest ! 
 For do we not behold thee morn by morn. 
 Issuing from the East with one newborn, 
 Carrying him silently, none knoweth whither, 
 Knowing only all we travel swiftly thither ?
 
 THE WATERNYMPH AND THE BOY.* 
 
 I live in the heart of a limpid pool, 
 In the living limpid heart of a pool : 
 I lie in a flow of crystalline, 
 Where silvery fish with jewelled eyne 
 Float silent, and the ripple-gleam 
 With many a delicate water-dream 
 Moves the face of flowers to quaver, 
 Hanging where the wavelets waver ; 
 Daffodil, hyacinth, spring flowers, 
 Who slumber veiled from sunny showers, 
 That only trickle feebly through 
 Forest foliage from the blue. 
 
 "& v 
 
 * A legend tells of a lake in the Black Forest that Lathers 
 have been drawn down Ly water-spirits there.
 
 88 THE WATERNYMPH AND THE BOY. 
 
 My streamlet sparkles in the pines, 
 And here in lambent flame declines ; 
 For the sun has burst his leafy thrall, 
 Kissing it passionate in the fall. 
 I love to feel the water plash 
 Merrily into my pool, 
 With a swift reverberating flash 
 Of soft foam beautiful. 
 One brilliant surface shrines the sky, 
 Another young lit leaves on high, 
 While yet another shadowed o'er, 
 Below deep emerald, my floor 
 Reveals, all wavering below 
 My water's everlasting flow. 
 the beautiful butterflies 
 That flutter where the runnel flies ! 
 Silverly glistening over stones 
 Where yonder nightingale intones, 
 Where he flutes the livelong day, 
 Learning the water's liquid lay ; 
 A lovelier rendering is heard 
 Fresh from the genius of a bird ; 
 While emulous water vainly tries
 
 THE WATERNYHPH AND THE BOY. 89 
 
 To glisten like the glistening eyes 
 
 Of nightingales in vernal leaves, 
 
 Where yon rosebower softly heaves : 
 
 Soon will their mellifluent strain 
 
 Woo the rose to life again ! 
 But surely there are lovelier things 
 Than these are with their cinnamon wings ! 
 Whose grace hath more compelling spells 
 Than all mine azure damozels ! 
 For as I lay in my pool one day, 
 A cloud released a gleam, 
 And the jewel heart of my home grew gay 
 With a glorifying beam. 
 There came a rustle in the trees : 
 I deemed a silver doe 
 Would sip the ripple of the breeze, 
 Wandering to and fro ; 
 Listless I watched until he should 
 Arrive here from the shadowy wood. 
 
 It was no deer ; it was a boy 
 
 Assailed and took my heart with joy ! 
 
 Stealthily, daintily, he came, 
 
 Flooding all my sense with flame.
 
 90 THE WATERNYMPH AND THE BOY. 
 
 He was clad in a ruby dress, 
 That clung to his breathing loveliness, 
 While hose of opalescent silk 
 Revealed his delicate limbs of milk. 
 Shyly, timid as a doe, 
 He glanced if aught were near or no, 
 Then sought him out a pleasant spot 
 With clustering forget-me-not, 
 And leisurely upon the brink, 
 His jewelled raiment to unlink 
 Began ; that yielding made a way 
 For hungering eyes of mine to stray 
 In his fair bosom, velvet fine 
 Flushing it warmly as with wine, 
 Velvet and cambric lingering loth 
 To leave him, yet to faintness both 
 With warm white satiate, from whence 
 Stole overpowering my sense 
 Smooth boy-bosom, whose are twin 
 Rosebuds in a silky skin. 
 
 By slender fingers, where the pale 
 • Moon rises in a rosy nail,
 
 THE WATEENYMPH AND THE BOY. 91 
 
 Cleared from all the lordly dress, 
 
 He shone with native loveliness ! 
 
 Then pressed the grass with shrinking foot, 
 
 Strawberry blooms that promise fruit, 
 
 Windfiower, violet and moss, 
 
 And taller flowers that love the loss 
 
 Of all their living gold upon 
 
 Those limbs unheeding any one : 
 
 And yet anon, 
 
 As he long blades of grassy gloss 
 
 Perplexed daintily disjoins, 
 
 A locust leaps upon his loins ! 
 Now finding near a shelving rock, 
 Behold ! he cowers before the shock ; 
 Yet heated how he longs to lave 
 His beauty in my cooling wave ! 
 His rounded ivory arms have met 
 Over locks of glossy jet : 
 Gracefully curls the form so fair 
 Now upon my yielding air ; 
 Cleaves my laughter-flashing wave, 
 Delighted one so soft and suave 
 To gulf within her glassy grave.
 
 92 THE WATERNYMPH AND THE BOY. 
 
 Lo ! many a clear aerial bubble 
 
 Tells the water-heart's sweet trouble ! 
 
 He lips the ripple, pants and flushes, 
 
 Thrusts out white buoyant limbs, and pushes 
 
 With turning palm, a snowy swan 
 
 Lavishing his bosom upon 
 
 My mantling water in the sun ! 
 
 Now hath he climbed beside the stone, 
 
 With filmy lichen overgrown, 
 
 Where small swift globes of water twinkle : 
 
 There among the periwinkle 
 
 Creeping, sidles with a shoulder 
 
 Pressed upon the verdured boulder, 
 
 Along a narrow ledge, to wet 
 
 His shining head within the jet 
 
 Of foam that skirts my clear cascade, 
 
 Leaning under, half-afraid. 
 
 All my close-clinging vision grew 
 Over him leaping forth anew : 
 He dives ; he rises ; I refrain : 
 He floats upon the shine again. 
 Luxuriant he lies afloat,
 
 THE WATEENYMPH AND THE BOY. 93 
 
 Half his form, and half his throat, 
 Clear from crystalline that sways 
 Him gently, with alluring haze 
 Veiling some of him from sight, 
 Filming less or more of white 
 Wrist or shoulder, as he moves 
 Fair on wavering water-groves, 
 Hearing a sweet long croon of doves. 
 Flying pansies, butterflies, 
 Moths aflame with crimson dyes, 
 Haunt his vague and violet eyes : 
 Odorous shadow of the trees, 
 Drowsy with a drone of bees, 
 Amorous nightingales enkindling 
 At intervals the air and dwindling, 
 Slim grey waterfall in plashing, 
 On my stone the wave in washing, 
 Sweetest music never ending, 
 Blending, never-ending, 
 Fulls him in his water-wending. 
 
 Why, boy-lover, tell me why 
 I was doomed to see thee lie,
 
 94 THE WATERNYMPH AND THE BOY. 
 
 I was doomed to see thee die, 
 
 Tell me why 
 
 Even I 
 
 Am singing now thy lullaby ! 
 
 Hear my water sing thee now 
 
 A lullaby ! 
 In thy jasmine throat meander 
 Tender lines of dimple, 
 And 'tis haunted where they wander, 
 AVhile the waters wimple, 
 With a shy blue as from veins. 
 Where soft throat subsiding wanes 
 Into billowy bosom dreaming 
 Faintly of the roses ; 
 Whose dim dream a bud discloses 
 In the gleaming 
 Undulating almond skin, 
 Roses nascent soft therein. 
 
 Ah ! the quiet music of thy beauties undulating ; 
 Ah ! to feel, to feel, thy gentle warmth of bosom 
 
 palpitating : 
 AVhat breath from heaven was breathing behind the 
 fairy flower,
 
 THE WATEEXY3IPH AND THE BOY. 95 
 
 "Whose ample one white petal thy body had for 
 
 dower. 
 Blowing so unerringly to mould thee as thou art, 
 Even so waving waist and limb, and the snow about 
 
 thy heart ? 
 And if my hands were ne'er to thrill, my beautiful, 
 
 my boy, 
 As they filled them with thy bosom, the treasure and 
 
 the joy. 
 Why along the ideal limit heaved thy delicate form, 
 So, nor any otherwise, languid, white and warm ? . 
 
 I flung me round him. 
 
 I drew him under ; 
 
 I clung, I drowned him, 
 
 My own white wonder ! . . . 
 
 Father and mother. 
 Weeping and wild, 
 Came to the forest, 
 Calling the child, 
 Came from the palace, 
 Down to the pool,
 
 96 THE WATEB>TirPH AXD THE BOY. 
 
 Calling my darling, 
 My beautiful ! 
 
 Under the water, 
 Cold and so pale ! 
 Could it be love made 
 Beauty to fail ? 
 
 Ah ! me for mortals : 
 
 In a few moons, 
 
 If I had left him, 
 
 After some Junes 
 
 He would have faded, 
 
 Faded away, 
 
 He. the young monarch, whom 
 
 All would obey, 
 
 Fairer than day ; 
 
 Alien to springtime, 
 
 Joyless and grey, 
 
 He would have faded, 
 
 Faded away, 
 
 Moving a mockery, 
 
 Scorned of the day !
 
 THE WATERXYMPH AND THE BOY. 
 
 Now I have taken him 
 
 All in his prime, 
 
 Saved from slow poisoning 
 
 Pitiless Time, 
 
 Filled with his happiness, 
 
 One with the prime. 
 
 Saved from the cruel 
 
 Dishonour of Time. 
 
 Laid him, my beautiful, 
 
 Laid him to rest. 
 
 Loving, adorable, 
 
 Softly to rest, 
 
 Here in my crystalline, 
 
 Here in my breast !
 
 ALLERHEILIGEN.* 
 
 An abbey in a forest old, 
 A forest old of pine, 
 
 Slowly arose where bills enfold 
 Not very far from Rhine : 
 
 And lower a stream that swept the walls 
 
 Fell into silver waterfalls ; 
 
 Seven slender falls in a gorge of grey, 
 
 Where the willowherb was wet with spray ; 
 
 The rock wore glossy grass like hair, 
 
 And a birch-tree shimmered in soft air ; 
 
 Nor yet stole sweetly over the cool 
 
 Wave, as it glided into a pool, 
 A vesper hymn 
 From the forest dim, 
 Nor bells from Allerheiligen ! 
 
 * A ruin in the Black Forest.
 
 AIXEEHEILIGKN. 99 
 
 Flew twenty summers ; the monks were there 
 
 In a cloistral solitude : 
 How few that heard the chaunted prayer 
 
 Divined the worldly feud 
 'Mong lives monotonous and pale, 
 Whom weariness would oft assail ! 
 Yet holy-hearted, gentle men 
 Paced the echoing cloister then, 
 Learned, and kindly to the poor ; 
 Some sorely worn who sought to lure, 
 Rest to a weary wounded heart ; 
 And where the mountain cleaves apart, 
 Such an one, ere the day's decline 
 Like an illumined vellum fine, 
 .Mused oft upon the sombre green, 
 Beyond the fluttering watersheen, 
 Of piny hills, toward the sky 
 Receding with a softer dye, 
 And ever with an airier bloom, 
 Till they are fading to a fume : 
 Now at eve stole o'er the cool 
 Wave, as it glided into a pool,
 
 100 ALLERHEILIGEN . 
 
 A vesper hymn 
 
 From the forest dim, 
 
 And bells from Allerheiligen ! 
 
 Seven hundred summers ; the monks are gone ; 
 
 Then abbey in the wood 
 Resigns in every mouldered stone 
 
 A human brotherhood ! 
 Meekly disclaims, a ruin wild, 
 Being any more than Nature's child : 
 Taken of yore from mother Earth, 
 Loves dreaming o'er the time of birth : 
 In its old age the interval 
 Remembering little, hears a call 
 From ministers of earth and sky, 
 Wooing ever alluringly. 
 Yet in the sylvan raiment rare 
 That soothed a desolate despair, 
 The fading ruin seems to know 
 Memories that come and go ; 
 Memories that float and fly, 
 Like a flower's breath bewilderingly ;
 
 ALLEKHEILIGEN. 
 
 Of when at eve stole o'er the cool 
 Wave, as it glided into a pool, 
 A vesper hymn 
 From the forest dim, 
 And bells from Allerheiligen ! 
 
 Closes around an odorous shade 
 
 Of solemn pillared pines, 
 Breathing sea-murniurs, being swayed, 
 
 "When musing one reclines. 
 Ivy and vine and roses vie 
 With old flamboyant tracery : 
 Lo ! the carven corbel where 
 Hangs a tiny garden fair ; 
 Birds have sown it as they pass 
 With fairy mosses and with grass : 
 A wild bee in a dim chapelle, 
 Hovering near a flowerbell, 
 With a drowsy murmur droning, 
 Imitates a priest intoning, 
 Witb bis lowly eyes intent 
 Upon the Holy Sacrament ! 
 
 101
 
 102 ALLEEHEILIGEN. 
 
 Wild geranium and fir 
 Perfume the air, in place of myrrh, 
 Breathing from a thurifer : 
 Winds are jubilant, wail, complain, 
 Where many a blaze of jewel-pane 
 Heard the tempestuous anthem heave and wane ! 
 Winds intone a wondrous hymn 
 In yonder aisles of forest dim ; 
 But a frail harebell 
 Is the only bell, 
 Hangs now in Allerheiligen ! 
 
 There is a human savour still 
 
 Faintly lingering here, 
 
 Like a melody about a hill 
 
 In a shining summer air ; 
 
 A savour only, a flower scent 
 
 Of wilding thyme concealed and blent 
 
 With mingling marjoram or mint — 
 
 So many human lives intense 
 
 Dwindled long to an influence, 
 
 Pervading flower and tower and tree 
 
 With a hallowed melancholy !
 
 AL.LERHEILIGEN. 
 
 108 
 
 All honour would the abhot claim ; 
 To-day you scarce may read his name, 
 Once gleamed over with altar-flame. 
 Though you may note a crozier 
 On worn grey marble in a blur ! 
 This lovely place is a very shrine, 
 "Where reverent spirits all incline 
 Before the mystery Divine . . . 
 
 . . . But, lo ! upon the apsidal wall, 
 Unseen till now, a monster scrawl — 
 Some graceless living creature's name 
 Sprawling portentous, and the same. 
 When you look nearer, far and nigh 
 Defiling all the sanctuary ! 
 Ah ! many a life's all-hallowed spot, 
 Deep with dewy forget-me-not ; 
 Many a heart's elysian bower, 
 Dearly alive with passion-flower, 
 Knows the intrusion of a stare, 
 Feels foul feet of a common care : 
 " Mene, mene," scrawled with fire, 
 Insults our saintliest desire ;
 
 104 ALLERHEILIGEN. 
 
 Our holiest hopes are desecrate 
 With the world till they lie desolate ! 
 Yea, many a shrine 
 Where souls incline 
 Lies waste like Allerheiligen !
 
 COME NOT VERY SOON, LOVE. 
 
 Come not very soon, love, 
 
 To the quiet place ; 
 Let it be in June, love, 
 
 In the grace 
 
 Of a summer day, 
 
 Very calm and fair, 
 Let our Mabel play 
 
 Merry there ! 
 
 Look between the trees, love, 
 
 Into airy bloom, 
 When the summer breeze 
 
 Wafts the fume
 
 106 COME NOT VERY SOON, LOVE. 
 
 Of many a summer flower ; 
 
 Songs from near the nest ; 
 My memory shall have power 
 
 To invest 
 
 Earth with subtler grace, love, 
 
 And a rarer joy ; 
 Who knew me face to face, 
 
 From a boy. 
 
 I would not have thee weep 
 Hopeless in thy woe ; 
 
 Only from my sleep 
 Let there flow 
 
 Through the summer light 
 Shadow of a loss, 
 
 Mellowing delight 
 
 In my mound of moss ! 
 
 For the land revealed 
 All her heart to me, 
 
 Nor will keep concealed 
 Aught from thee. . . .
 
 COME NOT VERY SOON, LOVE. 107 
 
 Now my fault may stain not 
 
 Cheek of thine with tears ; 
 Bloom of love may wane not, 
 
 Envied of the years. 
 
 Gaze into the distance ; 
 
 Mellow lies the earth ; 
 God with sweet insistance 
 
 Held our hand from birth ; 
 
 Led us from the far light, 
 
 Where He only knows, 
 From the silent starlight, 
 
 Where the souls repose. 
 
 He from everlasting 
 
 Led us docile here, 
 Joined our hands unhasting ; 
 
 Now recalls me, dear ! 
 
 Darling, He is yonder 
 
 Wheresoe'er I go; 
 Life nor death may sunder 
 
 From his heart I know.
 
 108 
 
 COME NOT VERY SOON, LOVE. 
 
 Therefore, do not weep, love ; 
 
 He is calling home ; 
 Still the day is deep, love : 
 
 In the evening come !
 
 DEATH AND LIFE. 
 
 i. 
 Death who is our awful master, 
 Death, secure of our disaster, 
 Awhile allows our wandering. 
 
 Life is a disdainful playing 
 With a victim ere the slaying, 
 Though he murmur merrily. 
 
 Merry children laugh amaying ; 
 But the men and women playing 
 Feel dead eyes environing. 
 
 Dare we turn our backs upon him ? 
 Death, for that dishonour done him, 
 Aims a blow to mangle us.
 
 110 
 
 DEATH AND LIFE. 
 
 Very babes, wbo cannot cower 
 Before annihilating Power, 
 Writhe beneath his malison. 
 
 Yet the hero-souls defiant 
 
 Baffle, yea, conquer, the pale giant, 
 
 Smiling while he slayeth them ! 
 
 ii. 
 
 I seem to be dissolving slowly away, 
 Senses and spirit, fading from the day, 
 Drawn slowly into darkness and decay. 
 As in dull stupefying fumes, amid 
 Some dim chill waters where I shall lie hid 
 For evermore, my failing sight discerns 
 The face of my beloved, how she yearns 
 Over me with her tearful eyes, and turns 
 Impotent arms toward me : long she held 
 Me to her side heroical, compelled 
 Now in the end to feel me torn from her 
 By some dull strength of One who is mightier. 
 
 And I must leave her in the world alone, 
 Albeit I know there is not any one
 
 DEATH AND LIFE. Ill 
 
 To love her as I love her, so to gaze 
 Into her sweet eyes as I used to gaze, 
 So with a touch love-light to hold the child, 
 Yielding and leaning, mother, yet a child ! 
 I leave her with our little ones, I leave 
 Her in the bosom of One who will not 
 
 leave, 
 Who led us to one another, and will cleave ! 
 So musing tearfully I faintly smiled, 
 Falling asleep, foreboding all was over, 
 All over with the singer and the lover. 
 
 in. 
 
 Lo ! I awaken into lovelier life, 
 Into a lovelier celestial life. 
 For I am lying on what seems a sea, 
 Some opal undulation of sweet sea, 
 Gentle and buoyant, full of all delight, 
 Nebulous heaving, all a pearly light, 
 Freshly alive with air of keen delight, 
 Full of a spiritual divine release, 
 Resolving all the strain of life to peace, 
 Soothing and satisfying souls with peace ;
 
 112 
 
 DEATH AND LIFE. 
 
 Relaxing all the weary stress and strain 
 
 Of human hearts disquieted in vain, 
 
 Stealing into an overwrought wrung brain, 
 
 Sweeter than any anodyne for pain, 
 
 Or deep nepenthe of oblivion 
 
 Fallen from shadowy wings on any one ! 
 
 So the dear Saviour stilled the waves when He 
 
 Rose in the storm by night on Galilee. 
 
 And when I opened wondering faint eyes, 
 I felt above me wonderful wide eyes 
 Of one from whom exhaled the heavenly calm, 
 All light and harmony, and joy and balm ! 
 But they were wide with wondering surprise ; 
 For this sweet angel knew mine earthly life, 
 My longing, wavering, turbulent blind life ; 
 Had seen a helpless, haggard face that pored 
 Beyond the gravestone; she who knew the 
 
 Lord, 
 From her own flawless love, familiarly, 
 Felt half impelled to smile, and half to cry, 
 Moved with incredulous bewildered wonder 
 How any poor thing like this lying under
 
 DEATH AND LIFE. 113 
 
 Should so the Father of our life mistrust. 
 
 Foreboding He may leave it iu the dust ! 
 
 N i sound she breathed ; only in her clear eye 
 
 Compassion dimmed the sweet serenity. 
 
 No anger moved her, only deep compassion ; 
 
 And she looked on me in very tender fashion, 
 
 Even as a tender-hearted woman may 
 
 Look on a wounded bird in sore dismay, 
 
 Whom hunting beast or hunting men may follow. 
 
 And whom she cherishes in her bosom hollow. 
 
 Nestling, how tremulous, in her bosom hollow ! 
 
 Nay, rather 1 was like a little child 
 
 Found numb by night where mountain snows are piled, 
 
 Long lying in fever with delirium wild, 
 
 ■\Yho now, reviving to a tranquil health, 
 
 Wakes very feeble ; he the tender stealth 
 
 Of softened footfall in the silence hears. 
 
 While in a twilight over him appears 
 
 A lovely, loving face that smiles and weeps : 
 
 Be dimly knows his mother; then he sleeps. 
 
 This angel is exceeding fair and tall : 
 Soft as a dew, -with tender heave and fall, 
 
 i
 
 114 DEATH AND LIFE. 
 
 Harmony undulates aerial ; 
 We were wont to name this air the Pastoral. 
 I know not if she sings the air at all ; 
 Flowing it floats aerial wings for all ; 
 I see she swings rare fumes etherial, 
 As from a censer nebulously golden, 
 Wherein it seems light, odour, and sounds are holden ; 
 Nay, all the peaceful influences flow, 
 From her pure bosom heaving to and fro, 
 From her deep bosom more pure than any snow ! 
 Flow from her tranquil eyes that do with glory 
 glow! . . . 
 
 . . . How ! doth it wane, the Vision '? will it 
 
 wane ! 
 It wanes ! and yet I hear as erst a strain, 
 A strain of ravishment arise and fall, 
 A heavenly symphony, the Pastoral ! . . . 
 I am awake, and still the music flows ; 
 I am alive, and ever clearer grows 
 The form of a sweet woman whom I love ; 
 Over some ivory keys her fingers move : 
 Hers was the sound ! she plays the Pastoral !
 
 DEATH AND LIFE. 115 
 
 Dear death relenting leaves me by her side, 
 Dragged erst like moaning shingle with the tide, 
 Drawn out adrift upon the lethal tide ! 
 For while by night she roamed the paly sand, 
 Searching with mournful eyes afar from land, 
 Listless she heard the homeless ocean beat, 
 Till from the gloom a foamy flicker fleet 
 With ghostly whisper laid me at her feet. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Soon was I carried into sunny air, 
 
 And she was by me, very near me there. 
 
 Athwart the little bridge of stone we went, 
 
 Where darkened houses with wood balconies leant 
 
 Over a stream of purest chrysolite, 
 
 And women kneeling laved their linen white : 
 
 There from far piny mountains drifted down 
 
 Innumerable logs of gleamy brown ; 
 
 And while the tinted walls are fraught with vine, 
 
 Figs of full foliage with planes incline 
 
 Shadowy bowers from the sister side ; 
 
 Along their ever-softening narrowing line 
 
 Mine eyes are wooed, how tenderly, to glide
 
 116 DEATH AND LIFE. 
 
 Till they are lost in yonder mountain bloom, 
 Immeasurable majesty of gloom ! 
 Where lonely pine-forests primeval loom 
 Among scarred crags and gorge and precipice, 
 Labouring toward untravelled realms of ice. 
 
 Ye, gleaming plains, ye, silver spires, abide 
 Ever in your own glory with no pride, 
 Albeit ye dwell so far above the world ! 
 For when your opalline rare mists are curled 
 Athwart you wandering, your forms appear 
 Fair fleeting phantoms from a heavenlier 
 
 sphere. 
 Once more my soul saluting you may rise, 
 With awful rapture filming her meek eyes, 
 To worship you, ye throned Divinities ! 
 And you, ye autumnal fairy woodland flowers, 
 Who smile irradiate with sunny showers, 
 And you, ye leaves who flutter in the breeze 
 On all your faintly mellowing full trees ! 
 Thou, dimpling stream, ye, twinkling blades of 
 
 grass, 
 Tenderly suave, salute me as I pass !
 
 DEATH AND LIFE. 11" 
 
 Thou, little robin, russet in apparel, 
 Sprinkling my faint heart with thy dewy carol, 
 Mazily singing in thj T fair apparel, 
 A labyrinth of fantasy thy carol ! 
 Is it a fond delusion, fond and sweet, 
 That so ye welcome long-delaying feet ? 
 
 Ah, mother Nature ! surely well she knew 
 That of her children there are very few 
 To love her as I love her: she forbore, 
 While in the act to lay me dumb and frore 
 In her dark bosom ; gave me a little more 
 Time to throb with her glory, and dispense 
 To all some feeling of her influence, 
 Feeling of her immaculate excellence. 
 
 Howe'er it be, there is enchanted light, 
 There is a magic of supreme delight 
 Upon the blessed face of Her to-day, 
 A light I scarce remember since I lay 
 A listless boy in a sweet wood alone : 
 Sunlight was in the happy leaflets blown : 
 Tender pulsation of a turtle flown
 
 118 DEATH AND LIFE. 
 
 From twilight green into blue open summer ; 
 A purple thymetuft, haunt of many a hummer, 
 Revealed Her : there unveiling fair She burst 
 On me unworthy, dazed and breathless first, 
 Lowly adoring now, nay, passionate as erst ! 
 
 So from the mortal weakness I awoke, 
 And on me, fresh like Heaven, Nature broke. 
 Yet, ah ! when Death indeed shall seal mine 
 
 eyes, 
 Surely it were a very sweet surprise 
 If I might open them in such a wise, 
 Under those eyes ! 
 
 v. 
 
 Death is but a shadowy master, 
 Breathing shadowy disaster, 
 Whom to front is Victory ! 
 
 One there is that ruleth over 
 Man the hater, man the lover, 
 Universal Deity ;
 
 DEATH AND LIFE. H9 
 
 Life and Death to all divideth : 
 Though one hopeth, one derideth, 
 Yet I know that each abideth 
 In his own eternity ! 
 
 Man and woman, mountain, sea, 
 Living creature, flower and tree, 
 Founded in Eternity !
 
 THE OLD PIANO. 
 
 In the twilight, in the twilight, 
 Sounding softly, sounding low, 
 
 Float some cadences enchanted, 
 Eerie songs of long ago. 
 
 In the gloaming, in the gloaming, 
 Sits our child with lips apart 
 
 Near her mother who is singing, 
 Near the woman of my heart. 
 
 how thinly, and how feebly 
 Rings the ancient instrument ! 
 
 When it opened, slowly yielding, 
 What a weird unwonted scent !
 
 THE OLD PIANO. 
 
 Plaining wildered all forlornly, 
 As it were surprised from death ; 
 
 On a plate of faded ivory 
 
 Some lost name faint wavereth. 
 
 Wildered sorely, wildered sorely, 
 
 In oblivion mouldering, 
 To be challenged now for music 
 
 That the dead were wont to sing ! 
 
 Are they rising, are they rising, 
 As I gaze through mist of tears, 
 
 In the savour, in the music, 
 Vanished visions of the years ? 
 
 Stilly stealing, stilly stealing, 
 Glide the dead in companies ; 
 
 Thinly flow their words and laughter, 
 Faintly radiant their eyes. 
 
 And they mingle, lo ! they mingle, 
 With my living wife and child, 
 
 Seem to thrust them from then- places 
 And confuse their presence mild. 
 
 121
 
 122 THE OLD PIANO. 
 
 See a maiden, a fair maiden, 
 Vestured in a garb of yore, 
 
 Singing yonder while her lover 
 
 Pleads with longing eyes for more ! 
 
 Then a mother, a young mother, 
 With her child, in guise of eld, 
 
 She appears ; full blown to woman 
 Now the maid whom I beheld. 
 
 Then a widow, a grey widow, 
 See her now ! before he died 
 
 Love lay withered — worn and faded, 
 Lo ! she plays where played the bride 
 
 ... In a moan of wind they vanish, 
 
 Dead and living ; I alone 
 Hear old Time insanely mumble 
 
 In the sea's low monotone ! 
 
 Lynmouth, 1869.
 
 ON RICHMOND HILL— 1870. 
 
 Among fresh, innocent, leafy bowers we gaze, 
 
 With moveless fountains of white bloom embossed, 
 
 Infinite bowers blending in blue haze 
 
 Afar, to slumbrous woodland waves untossed. 
 
 These in one region yonder shine with rays 
 
 Of some uncertain lustre warm, that may 
 
 Be the sweet river's ; opallescent beams 
 
 Faintly athwart the tender turtle-grey 
 
 Of heaven slant ; the violet shy gleams 
 
 Forth from sere fern ; earth lies this April day 
 
 Waking from winter sleep to fair day dreams 
 
 Of summer happiness and early love, 
 
 Such as were hers in Eden when a bride. 
 
 With cuckoo-call and tender crooning dove 
 
 She murmurs joy ; until in her soft side
 
 124 
 
 ON EICH1IOND HILL. 
 
 The wound where man a keen, cold anguish 
 
 drove 
 Reopens — man her offspring and her pride ! 
 Ah ! for that morning when the youthful Sun 
 First saw the face of his beloved one, 
 Arose from sleep to find her by his side, 
 To woo her and to win her for a bride ! 
 
 For, lo ! a knell all unexpectedly 
 
 Breaks from the leafy lowland slow and deep, 
 
 Wailing to heaven a long heart-broken sigh. 
 
 One moment Earth forgot that she must weep, 
 
 And gazed abroad with visionary eye, 
 
 Was young once more — yet pitilessly creep 
 
 Into their wonted lair within her heart 
 
 The loathsome, venomous old memories : 
 
 Now unavailing long-drawn wails impart 
 
 Her grief to careless unresponding skies : 
 
 They knell like drops of blood from forth the 
 
 heart, 
 Slow falling to suffuse with taint of blood 
 All opening summer's fair felicities 
 Of sunny air, of song-resounding wood.
 
 ON RICHMOND HILL. 125 
 
 It fills and loads with umbrage of fell blight 
 
 All burdened space ; a cancer merciless, 
 
 It heaves and throbs through all the summer 
 
 light ; 
 And on my soul the heavy tollings press. 
 I may not see the mournful human sight 
 Beneath the hill, concealed among the trees, 
 "Where rests a homely village in the plain ; 
 But the knell says a balmy summer breeze 
 Blows idly there upon a human pain ! 
 One leaves there some loved life beneath the sod. 
 Half longing with the lifeless to remain, 
 And meekly bleeds, or idly curses God ! 
 
 Earth, our mother ! was it well or ill, 
 
 To chafe so restless in thy natal home 
 
 Of sweet unconscious innocence, until 
 
 There dawned in thee the glory and the gloom 
 
 Of human vision and of human will ? 
 
 Then was revealed to thee that thou art fair ; 
 
 Afloat in some sublime immensity : 
 
 Then in thy heart immeasurable despair 
 
 Awful arose : to love, and yet to die !
 
 126 ON RICHMOND HILL. 
 
 Thirsting for God to faint upon void air ! 
 To fall with throes of infinite desire 
 On phantom bosoms with a baffled cry — 
 Feed with illusions ever-ravening fire ! 
 
 But Earth made answer, Surely it is well ! 
 
 Divine Desire creative moves in all ; 
 
 And in man's soul heaves with an ocean-swell, 
 
 Restless, impetuous, imperial, 
 
 That forms a glory and gloom wherein to dwell. 
 
 A man grows god who may be loved and love ; 
 
 Yet fades and faints, thronged round with shadow} 
 
 ghosts, 
 Menacing from the night, who till he move 
 Wait for their life- — to bloom among their hosts, 
 Luxuriant from broken hearts of Love. 
 Yet will their dust inflate a meaner crew ! 
 Therefore ye fair and wise forbear your boasts — 
 Misgrowth and pain inevitable as you. 
 
 My weary heart responded, it may be 
 Some ardent spirits in the stars may deem
 
 ON RICHMOND HILL. 
 
 127 
 
 Our weal and woe harmonious pageantry 
 
 Of light and shadow on a stately stream ! 
 
 When I rejoice, it seemeth so to me. 
 
 But some crushed lives can only feel the pain 
 
 Absorbing all, or fellow-worm's unrest. 
 
 And there arrives an hour when we are fain 
 
 To leave the alluring visionary quest 
 
 For a friend to fill our need, endure the strain 
 
 Of our so wayward leaning feebleness — 
 
 (Truth, cruel feigning she may be possest, 
 
 Cajoles but amorous boys with her caress !) — 
 
 To slip the neck from under yokes of toil, 
 
 Where like dumb beasts unwondering we tread ; 
 
 Weighed upon with a languor of recoil 
 
 Toward that abysmal Peace wherein the dead 
 
 Dissolve to purify them from the moil. 
 
 Then would we be the children chosen of 
 
 Earth, 
 Unto the holy Silence whence she came 
 To bear her tribute — she in solemn mirth 
 Moves ever with immortal eyes aflame — 
 To freshen life with morning dews of birth, 
 Lose it in deep oblivion of death !
 
 128 ON RICHMOND HILL. 
 
 Here might I quiet pass to whence I came, 
 Here to the songful summer yield my breath ! 
 
 Here on the pleasant growing grass to lie ; 
 Here on the innocent heart of spring to fail ! 
 Over a life's confusion draw the veil 
 Of turf and daisies and the summer sky ! 
 Repenting of the clamorous hot fever, 
 And blindly inharmonious endeavour, 
 Wherewith my clashing life presumes assail 
 Our mother Nature's pure serenity. 
 With shamefast eyes, behold ! I meekly bring 
 My life's confusion, a slain offering, 
 Saying to Nature — Lo ! thine own again ; 
 Take for remoulding in a happier vein ! 
 Woe for the lambs who trusted them to me, 
 Lambs whom I love, yet doom to misery ! 
 Woe for the lovely lands were mine to bless, 
 For they are left a desolate wilderness. 
 Behold ! I cower at thy sacred feet, 
 There let my turbulent being dissolving fleet, 
 A tremulous foam blown inward from the wave 
 All lives receive thy blessing on their grave 
 
 t
 
 ON RICHMOND HILL. 129 
 
 . . . Nay, let me rest here all alone awhile, 
 
 Feeling the balmy summer softly blow. 
 
 As on a cloud, upon my mood of woe, 
 
 Until it vanish in the clear sun-smile. 
 
 Yon singing bird avails to reconcile 
 
 Me with sweet life : take me not at my word, 
 
 Offended Love ! for thou hast many a bird ! 
 
 Such song the dark self-slayer might beguile, 
 
 With ecstacy of life made eloquent 
 
 In the green twilight ; only an open ear 
 
 And a brown bird have made this ravishment ! 
 
 Still may I love, and still one holds me dear ; 
 
 Still may I joy to march with hosts of light, 
 
 Conquering kingdoms from the formless night ; 
 
 Still may I pour some wine of sympathy 
 
 For brothers lying in a sorer strait than I. 
 
 There is work to do — arise ! let the bedridden die !
 
 WAS IT WELL ? 
 
 Was it well, was it well ? 
 When at evening shadow fell 
 In the great cathedral square, 
 With a gable-roofing fair, 
 And the only glimmer there 
 Was a flutter of a dress, 
 Ever waning less and less, 
 As my gaze enamoured clung, 
 Till the moving masses rung 
 It earthward and it fell ; 
 Was it well ? was it well ? 
 
 Was it well ? was it well ? 
 Where a fragrant azure fume
 
 WAS IT WELL ? 131 
 
 Pervades a Gothic gloom, 
 And jewelled gleams illume, 
 With a melody of lights, 
 Marble slumber of the knights, 
 Till their stony bosoms bloom 
 Warm to flowers on the tomb : 
 There the morrow at a shrine 
 On thy kneeling form Divine 
 Mine eyes to worship fell : 
 Was it well, was it well ? 
 
 Was it well, was it well ? 
 Where a bubbling water fell 
 From the snakes in carven stone, 
 Grasses fine about them blown ; 
 In the greenwood lying prone 
 At thy feet, a boy in love 
 Murmured idle rhymes he wove : 
 While we mingled flame of eyes, 
 In leaf-lattices the skies 
 With soft suffusion fell : 
 Was it well, was it well ?
 
 132 WAS IT WELL? 
 
 Was it well, was it well ? 
 
 Now the holy glamour fell 
 
 Upon every living thing 
 
 From the spirit of the spring : 
 
 Birds in yielding sweetly sing : 
 
 Flowers have innocent confest 
 Soft allurements of the West ; 
 Leaves and herhs benumbed in death 
 Feel and bless the living breath, 
 Gladden hill and dale and dell : 
 Was it well, was it well ? 
 
 Was it well, was it well ? 
 
 Only we defied the spell : 
 
 We were timid, we were wise, 
 
 Maimed the wings of Love that flies, 
 
 Putting out his dovelike eyes, 
 
 Tamed with prudence hearts that yearned, 
 
 Cooled with caution breasts that burned ; 
 
 Bosoms dreams of love made tingle, 
 
 Limbs afever till they mingle, 
 
 Only they defied the spell : 
 
 Was it well, was it well ?
 
 WAS IT WELL '? 133 
 
 Was it well, was it well ? 
 
 Ask no more ! I cannot tell 
 
 Spring confused her lovers all 
 
 Each obeyed the sacred call ; 
 
 Only we refused to fall, 
 
 Sanely, calmly self-incurled 
 
 "Mid such sweet madness of the world ! 
 
 O'er twain that trembled into one 
 
 Love's own sweet month hath vainly blown, 
 
 Futile his golden tide hath flown, 
 
 Henceforth for ever passing on, 
 
 And we are still apart, alone ! 
 
 Might our clashing kindle Hell ? 
 
 Ask no more, I cannot tell ; 
 
 Was it well, was it well ?
 
 PALINGENESIS. 
 
 In solemn precincts of the forest aisles 
 
 There is a wondrous gathering of life ; 
 
 And all the vacant dull monotony 
 
 Of netted wood softens mysteriously 
 
 To tender inarticulate prophecy, 
 
 A boundless budding, fluttering anon 
 
 As with green wings unfolding for a flight. 
 
 Now all my soul rejoices reverently 
 
 'Mid cool diffusion of a greening dim, 
 
 Kneels hearkening the still small voice of God ; 
 
 Nature from mouths of myriads new born 
 
 Anew revealing her eternal youth. 
 
 Lo ! all the champaign saturate with light, 
 Softly alive with magical green flames,
 
 PALINGENESIS. 135 
 
 Grass blades commingling multitudinous 
 With daisies clustered, scattered, like to stars, 
 And kingcups floating buoyant everywhere ; 
 Now loose-limbed lambs push nestling to their 
 
 mothers ; 
 Haunts of primrose and frail windflower rejoice ; 
 Till later, wandering by the brimming river, 
 I view horse-chestnut massy-foliaged 
 Lift, as with eager hands innumerous, 
 Up the blue morn an offering of flowers, 
 While hawthorns near, sunsmitten to the core, 
 Froth over in dumb ecstasy of bloom. 
 Silverly winds the river from afar, 
 Dim-frosted from its currents here and there, 
 With hazy tree-clusters impalpable 
 Rolled as a border ; nigh me vivid turf 
 Gleams to the edge, but fringing fair the path 
 Wave pliant sword-like rushes o'er the flood. 
 Feasting the eye with gliding opal light 
 Of water 'mong green pennons at their play ; 
 And there full soon the water-hen will brood 
 On rushes pulled and woven to a nest 
 In a rich twilight of mild emerald,
 
 136 PALINGENESIS. 
 
 Feeling sweet motions under the warm breast, 
 Lulled with soft flicker of the wave below, 
 And gentle whispering of airs above. 
 
 Yet later, lo ! the frail acacia, 
 Steeping in light her soft, luxuriant hair, 
 Sensitive flushes like a lovely woman, 
 All conscious when a cloud moves off the sun ; 
 Her leafy clusters delicate as down 
 Seem self-sustaining, buoyant in blue air, 
 Move, as informed with some sweet sister spirit 
 Yielding a gentle unimperious will 
 To every mood of zephyr-fantasy ; 
 Obtrudes not her soft presence on the sky, 
 Inlaying it with tender tracery ; 
 Seems there to dwell by loving sufferance, 
 Or primal right of native harmony 
 With mild dominion of warm summer air. 
 
 And now I walk in fields of sheathed corn, 
 Sprent with the chamomile and scarlet poppy, 
 Through meads profound with grasses all aflower, 
 And sorrel hanging like a sanguine mist
 
 PALINGENESIS. 
 
 137 
 
 Thwart tender-grey horizons leagues away, 
 Broken by cumbrous cumulus of trees ; 
 In coppices where roses float like moons, 
 Breathing warm air we breathe a breath of flowers, 
 Instinct with sunny songs of summer bird, 
 Dartling innumerous intertangling lines 
 From vernal glooms, or sparkling in a spray. 
 
 A rugged stile, with upper bar made smooth 
 And polished from how many horny hands 
 Of passing peasant, leads me to a slope 
 That lapses quietly, all pasture land 
 And wood and grain, save where upon my left 
 On level space abides a little church, 
 With golden vane aglister in the sun, 
 Ancient, grey-walled, a pent-roof in dusk tile 
 Rich red, and weatherworn upon the tower, 
 A brow that shadows over slumbrous eyes 
 Of narrow window droused with eld and heat. 
 Thither I passed, and came where sleep the dead ; 
 Stonecrop and moss were on the buttresses, 
 And hart's-tongue sprouted in the creviced wall ; 
 Over the rude old woodwork of the porch
 
 138 PALINGENESIS. 
 
 A dial 'mid the crumbling masonry- 
 Shadowed the hour. 
 
 Upon a sunk headstone 
 Lichened, awry and low, with graven words 
 Worn wavering indefinite with time, 
 A very aged man, mute, motionless, 
 Reclined ; he leaned against another grave 
 That seemed less ancient ; in some withered leaves 
 His withered limbs were drooping heavily ; 
 His eyes were toward the heavenly distances, 
 Where ever and anon a paler wave 
 Passed over silky grasses of the field, 
 While tracts of land imbibed soft shadowing 
 From clouds that travelled in a gentle wind, 
 Effacing from the sight in yonder valley 
 His sober-vestured cot among the elms, 
 Restored awhile at unawares and still 
 With shining of warm sunlight in the place ; 
 So dawn to fade faint memories of his mind ! 
 
 Then I approaching spake, addressing him : 
 " A lovely spot ! often you linger in it ? " 
 Vacant he looked as hearing not the words,
 
 PALINGENESIS. 139 
 
 Or vaguely conscious of the sense they bore. 
 
 Then at the moment broke upon the air 
 
 A laughter of some children from the wood. 
 
 They came, their tiny hands full filled with flowers ; 
 
 The boy flung down his nosegay on a grave 
 
 In eager chase of some blue butterfly ; 
 
 The little girl for life and ecstasy 
 
 Twirled, leapt, and gushed with pleasure like a bird. 
 
 Then at the sight of these and at the sound, 
 Intelligence lit all the countenance 
 Of the old man ; he gazed and murmured low, 
 •• Mine were like these, about the age of these." 
 These little children straying here to play 
 Seemed like unconscious sunbeams of the Lord 
 To rouse dim memories in a human soul 
 Where all grew shadow, even as yonder beams 
 Revealed the nested village in the vale ; 
 Yet speedily the darkness closed again. 
 
 But now that wicket where I lately passed 
 Clicked and swung open, rendering access 
 To a young man and maiden in their prime ;
 
 140 PALINGENESIS. 
 
 But he first coming closed and held it shut 
 In sport against her, fastening the latch, 
 Insisting she must mount the neighbour stile 
 And he receive her into stalwart arms ; 
 So, coyly pleading, very soon she did, 
 Both laughing, crooning, and embracing close 
 When she was landed ; then with faces near, 
 He leaning with his arm about her waist, 
 She yielding fondly, blushing o'er with bliss, 
 These lovers, went all bright and beautiful, 
 Threading their way among the grassy graves, 
 Here and there heedless treading over them, 
 Conversing, nor observing him who leaned 
 Upon the headstone facing them the While, 
 That very aged man, nor seeing me. 
 
 But once again these human lovers twain 
 Became unconscious sunbeams of the Lord 
 To rouse remembrance in a slumbering soul. 
 He gazed and murmured, " She and I like these 
 Passed here in other years — the very gate 
 We came by from the village ! this the church 
 Where twelve months after she and I were wed ;
 
 PALINGENESIS. 141 
 
 And some few happy years we spent together ; 
 
 For she was very good — she lies below 
 
 Here where I sit ; 'tis warm and pleasant here ! " 
 
 After, I heard his uneventful tale 
 From others in the village where he dwelt. 
 He tilled these fields, or drove these laden wains, 
 Brown-chested in the sweltering hot summer : 
 Mounted on stacks he forced a long bright blade 
 Through dense hot hay, then trussed it for the mart ; 
 She came from Orchard, but a mile from hence, 
 Noted for flavour of its teeming apples. 
 
 Small store of learning cottagers may boast, 
 Yet well they love their gardens and their homes ; 
 And in their scanty intervals of toil 
 Not all unheard, unheeded doth our mother, 
 Nature, the holy mother of us all, 
 Speak to her children in their heart of hearts. 
 What though ye, Fortune's favourites, may deem 
 Them as the maimed and deaf and dumb and blind 
 Of Nature's family, will ye profano 
 Presume to map and measure all the love,
 
 142 PALINGENESIS. 
 
 Trickling through secret channels infinite, 
 Wherein a mother may impart herself, 
 Yearning out most to her unfortunates ? 
 They feel her fold, though they can ill explain 
 Aloud with finished phrasing what she means. 
 Ah ! not from callous heart or shallow soul, 
 Only from organ helpless with disuse, 
 Their filial love is inarticulate ; 
 While you, with your light pity and dull scorn, 
 Flout in them faults your very selves impose, 
 Listless disdaining to alleviate 
 By one least finger-touch the weary load 
 Of doom the Father lays upon the sons, 
 That we may win free range of one another, 
 Nor live unloved in loveless solitude. 
 
 Behold these children sporting in the wood, 
 Stooping for flowers, inhaling all the summer ! 
 Doth nature never call the little ones, 
 Lay ne'er a tender hand upon their hearts ? 
 Behold these lovers when they sit and dream 
 In yonder hollow, with the gambols light 
 Of woodland elves, men name sunshine and shadow,
 
 PALINGENESIS. 143 
 
 Sliding about thero iu the fanning breeze, 
 All bis clear future roseate with ber, 
 And all ber future melted into him ! 
 Hath nature ne'er a message unto these '? 
 Only the world's inhuman votaries, 
 The dead-alive, the arrogant, the cold, 
 Are reprobate exiles and pariahs, 
 Shut out for aye from her maternal heart ! 
 Since even the very dead she takes and hides — 
 Though these may never look upon ber face ! 
 Deep in ber bosom, changing them to flowers 
 And foodful corn, and dear remembrances, 
 Refreshing hallowed life in many a soul, 
 Feeding as meadows feed from secret springs. 
 
 And yet 'tis human to lament awhile 
 Over the lapse of man's bewildering life ! 
 Nature the mother to this ancient man 
 Called as she calls the little ones to-day ; 
 Nature the mother to this ancient man 
 Spake as she speaks to yonder lovers now ! 
 And when the children of himself and her 
 Left them alone, bow oft on sabbath eves,
 
 144 PALINGENESIS. 
 
 When hymns were silent in the rustic church, 
 
 He and she came to trim the little graves, 
 
 To pick germander and forget-me-not, 
 
 That bloomed about the children laid to sleep ! 
 
 So when she left him verily alone, 
 
 And he to prayers came wearily without her, 
 
 When all were gone he knelt upon her sod, 
 
 Or dreamed with misted eyes in distances 
 
 Their guileless gaze had visited together. 
 
 Now sole survivor of his family, 
 
 Surviving all who loved him, all he loved, 
 
 Surviving even Love, yea, very Sorrow, 
 
 Sister to Love, survivor of himself, 
 
 He sits long summer hours upon the tomb, 
 
 Her lovely form long faded in the dust, 
 
 Her name faint wavering from the mossy stone, 
 
 Her memory nearly faded from his heart — 
 
 His heart that loved her — and he little feels 
 
 Save a mere sense of comfort from the sun 
 
 About those piteous impotent shrunk limbs. 
 
 Only when these new shadows of an hour, 
 
 These children and these lovers, fleeting fly, 
 
 They rouse a momentary memory,
 
 PAUXGEXESIS. 145 
 
 As one designless may awake some sound, 
 Brushing a lyre long disused in dust. 
 
 Still Nature speaks as when he was a child, 
 Still speaks as when he was a youthful lover ; 
 But these are vanished, yea, the man that was 
 Moulders away ; now little hut the name 
 Bemains of him — these remnants of a man, 
 How shall they heed, all bloodless dull and cold, 
 Her awful rapture of immortal youth ? 
 So all about the stricken wife of Lot, 
 A living woman stiffening to stone, 
 Amid the glare of cities rolled in fire 
 And shocks of thunder subterranean, 
 In loud confusion swept the cavalcade 
 Of urgent richly vestured fugitives, 
 Husband and brother, camel-mounted slave, 
 Dwindling in her to murmur meaningless. 
 
 The banquet, and the lovely guests of youth 
 With dewy coronal on smooth white brows, 
 And mirth and song, and goblets of rich wine, 
 Have vanished from his soul, and all the lights, 
 
 L
 
 146 PALINGENESIS. 
 
 Save only one abortive, piteous 
 
 Fitful illuming dimly storied wall, 
 
 Still struggling with an incubus of Gloom, 
 
 That feeds secure, encroaching evermore, 
 
 Devouring slow the pale remains of life. 
 
 Ah ! God hath lent to us the loveliest thing 
 Of all rare splendours in his treasury, 
 And we poor senseless children of a day 
 Take it how lightly, toss and trample it, 
 Until He whispers, Gire it me again ! 
 Now will I lend it to another life. 
 Then first we look upon the thing we hold, 
 And lo ! it is the jewel of our youth. 
 Ah ! then we clutch it with a miser's clutch, 
 We peer within it, lift it up to light, 
 Search out some golden casket for the gem ; 
 Turning all cold to hear His awful voice 
 Quiet repeating, Give it me again. 
 
 Behold we dally in a dreamful doze, 
 Afloat in listless splendour of a water, 
 That loves inhaling glory from fan- isles
 
 PALINGENESIS. 
 
 147 
 
 Sunnily laving ; when we closed our eyes, 
 Our boat still floated in its own mild gleam, 
 Among white swans and balmy breathing airs ; 
 Yet now we pale reluctantly to note 
 That we have drifted in our summer dream 
 All unforeboding among scenes of change : 
 Some chilling shadow ruffles the sweet river, 
 And troubles clear serenity of heaven. 
 We rouse affrighted — lo ! the current flies ; 
 Yonder the shores lie dubious in haze ; 
 Yonder a cold mist smothers all the stream ; 
 Pale while we peer, there ominously booms 
 From forth the gloom some roaring of a fall ! 
 
 Arise my soul ! adore the inevitable ; 
 For Death is that inevitable shadow, 
 That ever follows in the ways of life. 
 Yea, we who live are needed as we are, 
 Nor in aught vary from our destiny ; 
 And they who die are needed as they are, 
 Fulfilling uses more mysterious, 
 Yet alike necessary and Divine. 
 Brothers arise ! leave wails effeminate ;
 
 148 
 
 PALINGENESIS. 
 
 Confront and praise the inevitable law ; 
 
 To-morrow travails with a doom Divine ; 
 
 Glory and triumph in Humanity : 
 Stand by your guns, make sharp your cut- 
 lasses ; 
 Do battle for the brotherhood of man ! 
 
 Full soon shall Life with gliding lips Divine 
 Blow through a fresher, greener reed than ours, 
 And fling us to the earth well worn with use. 
 So be it, Lord ; yea, teach us to rejoice ; 
 Some human music never shall be mute ; 
 Yon spheres can roll thee vaster harmonies ! 
 Yea, if Thou breathe but on a point of dust, 
 The same shall thrill and falter into Man ; 
 Yea, from the clash of systems and of worlds 
 Shall flame a superhuman light of souls, 
 Innumerable motes from gloom to gloom 
 Passing alive in one white beam from Thee ! 
 
 Nature, refreshed, unwearied, every spring 
 Awakes to bodings inarticulate, 
 As from a myriad mouths of budding boughs,
 
 PALINGENESIS. 149 
 
 Tuning her instrument, and preluding 
 
 Her full triumphant symphony of summer, 
 
 And autumn's deep tempestuous ocean hymn ; 
 
 Her prean hymeneal of blent lives 
 
 Of sea, and mountain- storm, and swinging pine ; 
 
 Forest that rings with acclamation rare 
 
 From beast, and bird, and myriad living things, 
 
 Tumultuous leaves and ecstasies of bloom ; 
 
 "With man, a reed through whom the Hidden 
 
 One 
 Breathes forth this anthem of the Universe ! 
 
 Lead then, year, thy bright procession forth, 
 Light clouds along caerulean clear skies, 
 And revels of fair flowers along the earth, 
 Dancing to softest music of mild airs, 
 Simmer of rills in sunny summer showers, 
 Mingled with flutes and flageolets of birds ! 
 Roll tides of glory round about our dead, 
 Dead in the deep recurrence of thy smile, 
 Dead in the rhythmic breathing of thy breast ! 
 O season ! as with blare of trumpet-call 
 Shock all the blood of every youthful thing
 
 150 PALINGENESIS. 
 
 To bound for battle and sublime emprise ; 
 Prick to endeavour, gird us to endure ; 
 Inform with winged seeds all ambient airs, 
 Inform all creatures witb a hallowed heat, 
 Dissolve them languorous in sweet desire, 
 Yea, flush them full with dear delicious fire 
 Inform the spiritual ah of souls 
 With serviceable knowledge and device, 
 With germs of generous impulse and resolve, 
 With deed the fruit, and fantasy the flower ; 
 Speed the career of human destiny ! 
 Abase, Lord ! vain individual wills ; 
 Our puny aims, our lives ephemeral, 
 Replunge them in Tby calm Eternity ! 
 We kneel abashed in Thine immensity, 
 Who revelled erst within Thy light Divine. 
 Still for a few more years insatiate 
 Of living, loving, learning, suffering ; 
 Hungry for all thy wondrous loveliness 
 In earth and air, in woman and in man ; 
 When we are old, or weary and well spent, 
 Letting thy rush of racers thunder by, 
 And cower in thy smile perennial,
 
 
 PALINGENESIS. 1 .") 1 
 
 Draw troubled breath regarding in Thy face 
 Of never to be moved serenity, 
 Resume our being, Thou who art alone, 
 And live for ever in the lives of all !
 
 THE DWELLER IN TWO WORLDS. 
 
 A man stood pondering at twilight hour, 
 
 Still in the bloom of life's unfaded flower ; 
 
 Upon a narrow mossy ledge he stood, 
 
 Starred with some blossoms like to sprinkled 
 
 blood, 
 Upon a mountain slope precipitous, 
 Gloomy with pines and olive cavernous. 
 Yonder, a stone's throw from him, was a grove 
 Where once the ruined temple proudly throve, 
 Ilex or vine-festooning terebinth 
 Veiling it now from cornice unto plinth. 
 Deep down a gorge tremendous fronting him, 
 Winding immeasurable, seemed to climb
 
 THE DWELLER IN TWO WORLDS. 153 
 
 Slow into heaven, all its gloom below 
 
 Filled with wan clouds, like leagues of mounded 
 
 snow 
 On rolling upland, densely thronged, and crowned, 
 Where it met heaven beyond the latest mound, 
 With a vast solemn, dusky-crimson sun, 
 Robed round in mist voluminous and wan — 
 Which yet relaxed anon above his head 
 Into a melancholy bloom of red — 
 Grim ramparts pinnacled of ragged stone, 
 Beared either side the vapours lying prone. 
 
 Methought I knew no living Sun was there ; 
 Only his phantom in astonished air 
 Rises again, though he hath set and died — 
 As in some rare concurrence may betide. 
 The youth stood dreamily beholding all 
 Bathed in the weird glow funereal, 
 Darkly ensanguined wall of crumbling fane, 
 And tottering pilasters that remain ; 
 A >nowy mountain in north-eastern skies ; 
 Cedar and pine in their obscurities. 
 Is it the wind, or any ghostly thing,
 
 154 THE DWELLEE IN TWO WOELDS. 
 
 That talks with these dim boughs low murmur- 
 ing? 
 Passing above from darkling tree to tree, 
 Tbat each in turn may whisper secretly 
 His tale of half- articulate despair, 
 Yet find no hope nor absolution there- 
 Fragrant from pine tears and from cedar wood, 
 Yet seems the sultry atmosphere imbued 
 Beside with odour indefinable, 
 Whether of musk or blood I cannot tell — 
 With age-long sheddings from the firs embrowned, 
 And dank with dripping of their boughs, the 
 
 ground — 
 Murmur sonorous from a torrent far, 
 With plaintive hooting of some owls that are 
 Hid in the forest, more oppressive only 
 Weighs down deep silence on the pilgrim lonely ; 
 While ever and anon there rustles by 
 Some indistinct thing swift and stealthily ; 
 But whether wolf or jackal by me ran, 
 Or somewhat with affinity to man, 
 A nameless loathsome presence, my desire 
 Led me not then more nearly to inquire —
 
 THE DWELLER IN TWO WORLDS. 155 
 
 No vestige of blest human neighbourhood 
 To cheer the solitary where he stood ! 
 
 And yet I knew a mighty pilgrim host 
 Athwart this drear deserted realm had crossed, 
 Men, women, children, in full light of day, 
 Replete with life, rejoicing in tbe way ! 
 But they have gone to other lands from here — 
 Nay. ncit the very travellers that were ! 
 Hath the red dust, that mingles here so well 
 With withered pine-leaves, ne'er a tale to tell ? 
 Yea, as in this wise pines and cedars shed 
 Their quiet lives, in this wise do the dead 
 Of human forests lose then joys and tears, 
 Their longings and their fervours and their fears ! 
 
 Later, considering the youth, methought 
 
 He seemed not unfamiliar ; I sought 
 
 How this mysterious land's dim denizen 
 
 I should have known ; it dawned upon me then 
 
 That in the waking world of every day 
 
 The very same in different array
 
 156 THE DWELLER IN TWO WORLDS. 
 
 I had beholden, surely in a mood 
 
 Mating but strangely with such solitude — 
 
 Now in some every-day pursuit immersed ; 
 
 Now among dallying idlers gay dispersed 
 
 On some park-sward ; yet oftener by the gate, 
 
 Where starving men with scowling looks of 
 
 hate 
 Toil out their lives, he ministers in pain, 
 Till he devise the riving of their chain. 
 Often when summer air was warm and mild, 
 I saw him resting with his wife and child 
 Hard by the shadow of a village spire, 
 With veering vane that glistered like a fire, 
 Where quiet sleep the meek and mossy dead, 
 Some simple words of hope above their head. 
 They mid ripe orchards of their humble croft 
 Reposing on the grass beheld aloft 
 How round the leaves and mellowing apples 
 
 ran 
 A luscious glory, warm, casrulean. 
 
 I marvelled much if this indeed were he, 
 The lover of a sweet tranquillity !
 
 THE DWELLER IN TWO WORLDS. 157 
 
 Yet I remembered noting with surprise 
 His sudden gleam of visionary eyes, 
 As of a soul transported otherwhere, 
 Even from the heart of common wonted care, 
 Or from the haven of a home most fair. 
 
 Alas ! alas ! he was no demon foul ; 
 But a poor mortal sprighted with a soul 
 Bisexual, conflicting ; nay, with two — 
 One childlike and affectionate that grew 
 Rooted a creeper clinging round a home ; 
 And one a restless spirit prone to roam 
 In far forbidden lands mysterious, 
 Dear unto haughty moods adventurous — 
 Thin airs where eagle-reason loves to breathe, 
 "Which to the feeble and timorous were death ; 
 Ideal realms more glorious than day, 
 "Where lovely visions falter from decay 
 With waving wand of wizard fantasy : 
 Awful forbidden regions of the dead, 
 Where wild lost souls of living men have fled 
 To cast them on the violated floors 
 Of gods reviled and disinherited,
 
 158 THE DWELLER IN TWO WORLDS. 
 
 Where life o'er dusky stains new crimson 
 
 pours, 
 While each lost soul delirious implores 
 For violent sinful joys the gods can give, 
 In these to agonize, then cease to live. 
 These are the haunts of that perturbed sprite, 
 Who will not bend him to a tame delight. 
 Yea, for the ghost of some of ancient time 
 Lingered until it entered into him. 
 While oft with tears the tender soul implores, 
 A troubled spirit wafts him from the doors 
 Into yon fascinating solitudes ; 
 Though often here a formless fear intrudes, 
 Lest, if he slide upon the slope too rash, 
 He whelm his well-beloved in the crash. 
 
 Ah ! ye who sit in winter by the fire 
 About your old hearthstone, nor feel desire 
 To wander from it, do not curse your child 
 Gone with unquiet spirits of the wild, 
 Who sits no longer with you — pray for him, 
 And weep ! for when the window-pane grew 
 dim
 
 THE DWELLER IX TWO WORLDS. 159 
 
 With rain llung flying from a maniac blast, 
 Did ye behold a seared white face that passed, 
 Yet peered a moment out of the wild weather 
 Into the warm glow where ye rest together '? 
 That was your lost one wistfully beholding 
 The quiet faith of your serene enfolding ! 
 If God hath gifted you with hallowed ease, 
 Think ye He hath no care for such as these '? 
 He leads unseen lone feelers after truth ; 
 On all blind blown wayfarers hath He ruth ! 
 
 Yea, God inhabiteth both hell and heaven, 
 Love in the maybeam, Fury in the levin ; 
 From steadfast suns He squandereth life and light, 
 In death's pule mask He scattereth them by 
 
 night; 
 Peals in the hallelujah of a saint, 
 liaves in a rebel's blasphemous complaint, — 
 Yet art Thou holy before whom we fall, 
 Profound Unnamed who reconcilest all ! 
 
 iJehold ! the temple seemed as though on fire, 
 While heaven glowed as from a burning pyre.
 
 1G0 THE DWELLER IN TWO WORLDS. 
 
 Suddenly shadow muffled noiselessly- 
 All feet of rocks and pines and cedars nigh : 
 Then o'er that mouldered cornice which 
 
 impends 
 Over the huge stones of the wall ascends 
 A fringe of very flame, that grows more large, 
 Silently soft expanding on the marge, 
 Till imaged like a huge new-risen moon, 
 Ruddy it rests upon the temple soon. 
 
 Then in the mystic luminous new night. 
 One of those prowling things, I with affright 
 Had noted nigh, noAV paused in its career, 
 Rising upon two legs, a shape of fear ; 
 Shaggy and clumsy, with half human face, 
 And filthy gesture pointing to a place 
 Behind the temple, where I now heheld 
 Laurel and cypress, while among them welled 
 Waters delightful, bubbling, musical, 
 And a more soul-dissolving madrigal 
 From bulbul amorous among myrtle blooms ; 
 There over grove and emerald sward there 
 looms,
 
 THE DWELLER IN TWO WORLDS. lbl 
 
 As from the temple, enkindling mist of myrrh, 
 Mingling with liquid lute and dulcimer. 
 
 Yet lo ! a scene unnoted earlier — 
 For look, beneath yon inner ruin wall, 
 Shadowed till now, the moon a spectacle 
 Most hideous reveals — an altar square 
 Of massy stone, and over it a bare 
 Obscene grey idol, phallic, horrible, 
 Collared and braceleted with carbuncle. 
 Beneath, upon the horizontal stone 
 A human body beautiful lay prone, 
 A body of ideal-moulded youth — 
 Weep, holier lovers, o'er her in your ruth ! 
 Her lower limbs, yet warm, hung helplessly 
 Over the verge ; along the ivory 
 I saw a slender rill of crimson glide 
 From a small gash within her tender side. 
 
 Stands, crimson-robed, the sacrificial priest, 
 And gloats upon her form, as on a feast 
 For eyes that seem to smoulder and to smoke 
 With lust unglutted in the slaughter-stroke. 
 
 u
 
 162 THE DWELLER IN TWO WORLDS. 
 
 A gleaming gory knife is in his hand ; 
 He wears on features, noble once, the brand, 
 Like a fallen angel, of the wrath of God, 
 All lightning-scarred ; his vitals are the food 
 Of an undying worm ; once golden hair 
 Hangs disarrayed ; his colour once most fair 
 Shows deadly livid ; one may note the drip 
 Of sanguine horror slowly down his lip ; 
 Hatred and scorn writhe ever there awake, 
 Like some foul life of convoluted snake. 
 
 In these dread natures dwells no rivalry 
 Of two strong souls that grapple unto death : 
 One only reigned since these have drawn a 
 
 breath ; 
 Or else one soul hath proved so powerful, 
 There lives none now to challenge the dark rule 
 Of that usurper ; never anxious care 
 Possesses them for other men's despair, 
 Lest weaker lives be trampled in the crush 
 Where eagerly for ends of ours we push ; 
 Their sweetest music is a victim's moan ; 
 With breaths of dying men they feed their own.
 
 THE DWELLER IN TWO WORLDS. 163 
 
 Never they sweep the infinite of time, 
 Wistfully peering for a hope sublime ; 
 They scorn the innocence of kindly ties, 
 And common cares, and pure felicities ; 
 For them no heaven of love, nor sacrifice 
 Of heroes for a cause ; their halls of ice 
 Sunder from human sympathy ; they dwell 
 Palaced alone in flame unquenchable, 
 A prison gorgeous, whose walls of fire 
 Are fed and fuelled with insane desire ! 
 
 Alas ! my pilgrim's gaze appeared to range 
 O'er all the scene with fascination strange. 
 Yet hearken ! what new message floats from far, 
 Melodious from where the living are ? 
 'Tis like a peal of mellow village bells, 
 With muffled interval, that sweetly wells, 
 While early memories of childish times 
 Answer the faint pulsation of the chimes. 
 Mother and sister tender tones have twined 
 With that old hallowed music in the wind,. 
 Even as one may send a loving word 
 Nestled within the plumage of a bird.
 
 164 THE DWELLER IN TWO WORLDS. 
 
 He dimly hears them pleading by the cross, 
 " 0, Jesus, save him from an utter loss ! " 
 He dimly sees them kneeling, earnest, mild, 
 There where he worshipped with them when a 
 child. 
 
 He vacillates upon the slope of fear 
 With misted eyes ; but louder and more near 
 Strains of the revel captivate the ear, 
 And still he moves ; — yet speedily methought 
 Yon bells with lovelier melody were fraught ; 
 For now they ring a hymeneal peal, 
 And ringing to his bleeding heart reveal 
 A vision of a childlike woman crowned 
 With orange-blossom, beaming o'er a ground 
 Children have strewn with lilies and with roses, 
 While she, serenely confident, reposes 
 On a man's arm, who leads her from the 
 
 porch — 
 He knows himself, he knows the village 
 
 church ! 
 Innocent hymnals of the children call 
 Vengeance upon him if he let her fall !
 
 165 
 
 THE DWELLER IN TWO WORLDS. 
 
 Winged with miraculous anguish of her love, 
 Even through shadows of this alien grove 
 An image of herself appears to move 
 With streaming eyes and long dishevelled hair 
 Imploring, and she brings then- infant fair. 
 then he paused, reaching a hand to grasp 
 The hand that, woe is me ! it cannot clasp, — 
 Vision adored and holy, yet a vision ! 
 
 But shouts of laughter pealed as in derision 
 Clear from the revel ; clash of dulcimer, 
 Mingled with ravishment of musk and myrrh, 
 And lute and marrying music from below, 
 Swam cloudlike o'er him; in the glimmering 
 
 grove, 
 Rained on with roses, youths and maidens move, 
 All blooming with a rare voluptuous bloom ; 
 Now languidly they glow athwart the gloom, 
 Dissolved with breathing some narcotic fame, 
 In pliant somnolence of yielding grace 
 Faintly repelling many a lewd embrace 
 Of things half-brute, half-man, that wind among 
 The bare-limbed mazes of their foamwhite throng.
 
 166 THE DWELLER IN TWO WORLDS. 
 
 Now, like a smouldering fire that springs to 
 
 flame 
 With a libation of poured oil, the tame 
 Assemblage, unaware to frenzy stung, 
 Bacchanals bounded, reeled, and kissed, and 
 
 clung ! 
 Slowly, more swiftly, see the pilgrim move, 
 Until his feet seem flying to the grove ! 
 Lust, loathly monster, fiercely folds him round : 
 And on the scene there falls a night profound. . . . 
 
 .... Silence : anon a mighty storm arose 
 Oceanlike in the pines uproarious. 
 Their haughty heads all agonizing swayed ; 
 They wailed, and rent, and wrestled, sore afraid. 
 Till in a lull methought I was aware 
 Of wings that clanged innumerous in air 
 Assembling, of a trample and a crash : 
 Then, in an awful livid lightning flash, 
 A myriad bounding bristling backs I viewed 
 Horribly hustling, crashing through the wood ; 
 And peals of mocking diabolic laughter 
 Clutched at my heart in closely following after.
 
 THE DWELLER IN TWO WORLDS. 167 
 
 All the black forest, cliff and cleft and peak, 
 
 Reiterated that infernal shriek, 
 
 Rebounding and rebellowing for ever : 
 
 Hearing such hell's glee hardest hearts may shiver : 
 
 Flash followed flash ; among those hoofs obscene 
 
 Lay the white form of him who once had been 
 
 Pure, happy, generous, of kingly mind : 
 
 May they be hoofs of fiend, or human kind ? 
 
 For cruel moral jubilations fall 
 
 From men when off its lonely pedestal 
 
 Genius tumbles with a loud undoing : 
 
 Maniacal they leap in his warm ruin ! 
 
 Lo ! pines colossal cumbered with the snow, 
 Heavily falling from rent members now, 
 Or skeleton trees of humid shrouded head, 
 With lank grey parasitic growth long dead. 
 Above, the forest mounteth stern and steep, 
 Where in a boulder-chaos cataracts leap, 
 Resounding in the abyss a muffled thunder. 
 Behold ! where livid icy seas up yonder 
 Stare from a sterile snow ; but higher yet 
 Huge solid flamelike crag with many a jet
 
 168 THE DWELLER IN TWO WORLDS. 
 
 Springs in the vaporous void : it glares a vast 
 Condor abnormal in the storm aghast, 
 With many a ragged neck and baldest pate, 
 Scarred from remorseless torturing of Fate. 
 grand Promethean visage marred with fire, 
 Hail, flood and frost, and blasts that never tire, 
 Power's age-long insult ! dost thou still aspire ? 
 Lo ! now the dazzling violet serpents dart 
 To maim your grandeur ! and you cleave 
 
 apart : 
 Hark ! how stone tears do ponderously roll 
 Down the torn flank — so slides a human soul 
 Little by little, grates and lingers, holds, 
 Falls ; bounding clutches at some awful folds 
 Of God's precipitous drear robe, and falls, 
 And crashing to perdition all around appals ! 
 The spectral brotherhood of mountains round 
 From one to another toss the terrible sound ; 
 And after murmurous pause the wrack beguiles 
 Some hoar mount, far a desolate hundred 
 
 miles, 
 Out of his wintry swound to answer slow, 
 Moaning a baffled human soul laid low. . . .
 
 THE DWELLER IN TWO WORLDS. 169 
 
 Then, save for solemn sound of waterfalls, 
 And sobbing wind subsiding, nothing calls : 
 Over the marred white youth snow softly silent 
 falls. 
 
 Yea, silence shed a healing chrism around : 
 Then lifting heavy eyes that sought the ground, 
 I saw cloud-phantoms pale confusedly, 
 Bewraying presence of a light on high. 
 Till unaware they stilly rend asunder, 
 Revealing a fair Empyrean wonder. 
 A snowy peak illumes a violet air, 
 And a clear star serene reposes there, 
 Partling all colours : surely all is well ! 
 Doth not the crimson sparkle shoot from Hell ? 
 
 Last, while the clouds from all the mount were 
 torn, 
 In desolate lower roots of it a horn 
 Resounded harsh and loud : but higher rocks 
 Multiplied into more etherial shocks 
 Of melody the sound, which as it passed 
 To loftier shining regions ever amassed
 
 170 THE DWELLER IN TWO WORLDS. 
 
 A more ideal spiritual tone ; 
 Till, like a delicate subtle flame, it won 
 Its way to yonder battlements of ice, 
 Exhaling there in silver paradise, 
 As from some luminous aerial places, 
 And sweet serenely-modulated faces ; 
 Dissolving now, an overblown faint flower, 
 Into a perfumed stillness evermore.
 
 THE PITY OF IT." 
 
 If our love may fail, Lily, 
 If our love may fail, 
 What will mere life avail, Lily, 
 Mere life avail ! 
 
 Seed that promised blossom, 
 Withered in the mould, 
 Pale petals overblowing, 
 Failing from the gold ! 
 
 When the fervent fingers 
 Listlessly unclose, 
 May the life that lingers 
 Find repose, Lily, 
 Find repose !
 
 172 "the pity of it." 
 
 Who may dream of all the music 
 
 Only a lover hears, 
 
 Hearkening to hearts triumphant 
 
 Bearing down the years ? 
 
 Ah ! may eternal anthems dwindle 
 
 To a low sound of tears ? 
 
 Room in all the ages 
 For our love to grow, 
 Prayers of both demanded 
 A little while ago : 
 
 And now a few poor moments, 
 Between life and death, 
 May be proven all too ample 
 For love's breath ! 
 
 Seed that promised blossom, 
 Withered in the mould ! 
 Pale petals overblowing 
 Failing from the gold !
 
 il THE PITY OF IT." 17*> 
 
 I well believe the fault lay 
 More with me than you, 
 But I feel the shadow closing 
 Cold about us two. 
 
 An hour may yet be yielded us, 
 Or a very little more — 
 Then a few tears, and silence 
 For evermore, Lily, 
 For evermore !
 
 
 A SONG AT A WATERFALL. 
 
 Athwart the voice of a wild water, 
 
 Falling for ever, 
 Do I hear some song of the foam's daughter 
 
 Fairily quiver ? 
 Is it song of a naiad, or bee, 
 Or a breeze from the tree, 
 Haunting the cave of the wild water ? 
 
 For evermore leapeth the fall plashing 
 
 Into a pool, 
 And nigh me, away from the foam flashing, 
 
 Quiet and cool 
 Lies a hyaline gulf olive-green, 
 Where ferns overlean, 
 And boughs embower the wave washing.
 
 A SONG AT A WATERFALL. 17o 
 
 In a clear hyaline, lo ! the leaves waver, 
 
 While, as a cloud, 
 Stones below melt in the pool-quaver : 
 
 And with the loud 
 Shout of the waters blithe 
 Mingles, airy and lithe, 
 A tune, like a lingering flower-savour 
 
 Fearless fronteth the sound-ocean, 
 
 Even as a bird 
 Breasting the resonant storm-motion : 
 
 Low is it heard, 
 Sundering soft the cold 
 Roar, like a gleam of gold, 
 Wandering warm with a mild motion : 
 
 Visiting every flower-blossom, 
 
 A humming-bird ; 
 Floats and falls on the wind's bosom 
 
 Many a word. 
 'Tis ne'er a naiad who sings, 
 Nor aught with wings, 
 But a maiden fair as the foam blossom !
 
 176 A SONG AT A WATERFALL. 
 
 For now, disentangling the tree-cover, 
 
 Resteth she fair 
 On a stone, a mere child ; and her own lover, 
 
 All unaware 
 Of a heaven in her, laughs free ; 
 While blithe as a bee 
 Singing she roameth the world over. 
 
 Ah ! sweeter far than the fall roaring, 
 
 Or any wild sound, 
 Is the carol of thy young life pouring 
 
 Joyance around ! 
 Yet a vanishing voice of the spring, 
 With a fleeting wing, 
 Is thine in the realm of the long roaring ! 
 
 For the bee will go from the wild water, 
 
 With blossom and breeze ; 
 And thou, more fair than the foam's daughter, 
 
 Even as these, 
 Wilt fade with the hours away 
 From the weary play, 
 And the wildering roar of the wild water !
 
 ERIC: A DIRGE. 
 
 Eric, the beautiful, is gone to sleep : 
 
 Soft, lest he wake ! 
 Eric, thy slumber is so very deep, 
 We may not ruffle it, howe'er we weep, 
 
 Never awake thee ! 
 
 Morning, the beautiful, will soon arise 
 
 Out of her sleep, 
 Feel for the dawn of thine auroral eyes 
 Answering hers ; nay, thou wilt not arise, 
 
 Whoever weep thee ! 
 
 Thy mother tearless kneels beside her boy 
 
 Eric, awake ! 
 Thy sisters fading, thou wert all her joy : 
 Eric, thou vanishest, her last, her boy : 
 
 Let her awake thee ! 
 
 N
 
 178 ERIC. 
 
 We yield thee to the tender earth to-morrow, 
 
 Eric, my love : 
 Lo ! how the wind wails ! ours are wrong and 
 
 sorrow : 
 No fear, nor sin, nor storm, to-day, to-morrow, 
 
 Nor ever move thee ! 
 
 I would be with thee by the warm South Sea, 
 
 Lulled into rest ! 
 Yet the World-Soul abideth even with me, 
 Here in the life- storm, whose dim anarchy 
 
 May ne'er molest thee ! 
 
 Eric, my beautiful, lie thou asleep, 
 
 Vanishing blossom ! 
 Our mystic Mother will inviolate keep 
 Thee with her buried seeds, until ye leap 
 
 Blithe from her bosom !
 
 A LADY TO A LOVER. 
 
 If the sun low down in the West, my friend, 
 
 Filled Earth with fiery wine, 
 
 If a hand were on my breast, my friend, 
 
 And lips were laid on mine, 
 
 And we together 
 
 In summer weather 
 
 Lay in a leafy dell, 
 
 Could the weariness, 
 
 Or the long distress, 
 
 Or any fiends from hell, 
 
 Wipe out that hour of rest, my friend, 
 
 And the rapture all divine ? 
 
 Then if thy blade were buried deep 
 
 Within this heart of mine, 
 
 From tbe warm whiteness fierce would leap
 
 180 A LADY TO A LOVER. 
 
 My fiery blood like wine ; 
 
 Earth all about the West, my friend, 
 
 After orgies of rich wine, 
 
 Wan lying in the sun's decline, 
 
 And I in arms of thine, my friend, 
 
 In dying arms of thine !
 
 A SICK MOTHER TO HER BLIND CHILD. 
 
 my loveladen 
 Own little maiden, 
 Though it is night to thee, 
 Yet is it light to me. 
 Sweetly appealing, 
 Movest thou feeling 
 
 All the way nigh to me, 
 Me who can see. 
 
 1 may not fly to thee, 
 Only reply to thee, 
 Asking of me, 
 
 " Pray, mother, teach me 
 How I may reach thee ! " 
 Only come merrily : 
 Feel the way cheerily !
 
 182 A SICK MOTHEK TO HER BLIND CHILD. 
 
 A little more prayerful 
 
 Faltering careful 
 
 Surely will bring to me, 
 
 Lead thee to rest : 
 
 Then shalt thou cling to me, 
 
 And I will sing to thee, 
 
 Laid on my breast !
 
 WAR: 1870-1. 
 
 Chkist. 
 
 Of all portrayals of the Son of Man 
 
 I love the dim portrayal at Milan, 
 
 Where among those few friends He sits apart, 
 
 With the burden of a world upon his heart. 
 
 The Man of Sorrows ! doth He year by year 
 
 Fade from the world's heart, as He fades from here '? 
 
 Ah ! but the sorrow, the sorrow will not fade, 
 
 Though the Consoler in the grave be laid ! 
 
 Doth He not seem rather to make long pause 
 
 In this dim place, waiting until his cause 
 
 Triumph at last, yet evermore to fade 
 
 Under this agelong disappointment laid 
 
 On Him, because the victory is delayed ?
 
 184 
 
 WAR. 
 
 Hence the mute woe his countenance yet wears : 
 
 "Is it not more than eighteen hundred years ? 
 
 And still I see my children bathed in tears ; 
 
 Still with tbeir greed for gain, their lust for power, 
 
 Men in high places do my little ones devour. 
 
 Was it for nought the life of loneliness, 
 
 Lacerate all with alien distress ; 
 
 This tenderest heart of me, the human lover, 
 
 Wrung for men's cruel selfishness all over ? 
 
 Was it for nought the unutterable agony 
 
 Among those olives of Gethsemane ? 
 
 For nought that hour supreme upon the cross, 
 
 When all the desolation of their loss 
 
 Rose a wan cloud before me, dying alone, 
 
 Hiding the Father even from the Son ? 
 
 Yet in the end, ' It is finished ! ' was my cry, 
 
 Yielding my spirit how confidingly 
 
 Into His hands, because I knew that He 
 
 Would yield my holy, happy kingdom birth, 
 
 For which my heart was broken upon earth."
 
 WAR. 185 
 
 Siege. 
 
 Maternal veins unnourished may yield them now 
 
 no more 
 Their needful food, and they are carried from the door, 
 Cold in little coffins, fresh flowers in their breast, 
 "With pale, starved mothers giving thanks that they 
 
 are gone to rest. 
 Last Christmas eve a father talked with such a mother 
 Of how next year their youngest born, the tiny baby 
 
 brother, 
 Would be ready, like his sister now, to have the tiny 
 
 shoes 
 Put out before the nursery door, as little children use ; 
 To be filled with dainty trifles, tokens of parental love, 
 Which are innocently feigned to be mysterious trea- 
 sure-trove, 
 Brought while they sleep for babes by Jesus, holy 
 
 child above. 
 Alas ! before this Christmas came, the merry girl and 
 
 boy 
 Both vanished from the humble hearth ; and all the 
 
 mother's joy
 
 186 WAR. 
 
 Dwindled into a laying wreaths on each fresh-mounded 
 
 grave, 
 Hoping that she may join them soon, and her 
 
 slaughtered soldier brave. 
 
 Kulers. 
 
 Ye who prefer loud claim to lead mankind, 
 Those armies labouring ever weary and blind ! 
 When they have seemed to win some miles of 
 
 way 
 For all their errors and circuitous delay, 
 For all long anguish of their multitude, 
 And piteous bones of impotent heroes strewed 
 Along the ages, is it a light thing ye 
 Would thrust them backward many a century ? 
 Is it a small thing ye have nursed the fire 
 Malign of blind inherited desire, 
 If so ye may reinstate Fraud with Force 
 On their old thrones, and miserable man divorce 
 From life, from light, from Liberty the bride, 
 A holy love, and a celestial guide ?
 
 1«7 
 
 Ye trouble otir slowly clearing airs of Peace, 
 Lest in the strengthening sunlight may increase 
 Shy human happiness, and men mature release 
 From shameful fumefed slumbers ye impose, 
 That human souls may grovel for you, your pillows of 
 repose ! 
 
 Behold the vessel of Human Destiny, 
 A hull dismasted, flounders pitifully ! 
 Though on a foaming sea by night she drift, 
 A few pale stars fly hurrying in the rift, 
 And she floats onward : lo ! some sheltering port 
 Hath lit the beacon : here may she resort 
 Awhile ; she hails the light— she grates the rock- 
 And shuddering staggers shattered with the shock ! 
 Ye, ye, the wreckers, lit your specious lie 
 To lure lost men to this extremity ! 
 Now, like infernal fiends, ye scour the shore, 
 To plunder and slay the drowning mid the roar : 
 Some shall escape your treacherous royal hands, 
 And sail anew, and find the far-off lands : 
 Shall not their fierce free children yet embrue 
 Their hands, crowned pirates ! in the blood of you ?
 
 188 WAE. 
 
 A moment only front the fearful sight : 
 Do not all angels, shrinking with affright, 
 Turn from our world then wounded heavenly faces, 
 To find in stars remote more hopeful dwelling-places, 
 Where never sound may reach them more from our 
 lost, ruined races ? . . . . 
 
 .... An Empire floats a banner, 
 Sable and white and red, 
 Dyed with ravine and famine and plague, 
 And blood of the innocent dead : 
 Black with pestilence, white with famine, red with 
 the innocent dead ! 
 
 Franc-Tireurs. 
 
 I see three boys of very tender years, 
 Shoeless and ragged, trembling, shedding tears, 
 Hurried along by a ferocious guard 
 Of foreign soldiers to their meet reward. 
 Are they not criminals of deepest dye ? 
 These have arisen for hearth and family !
 
 WAR. 189 
 
 Tis wan cold morning : hark ! the musket rattle : 
 These murdered innocents are not slain in battle ! 
 I do not love to hear a gentle hare 
 Scream when, arising from her flowery lair, 
 The sportsman wounds her with his cruel gun, 
 And the wood crimsons wheresoe'er she run : 
 Yet less endure to view the barrels gleam 
 Yonder, to hear the sickening human scream 
 Of those three patriot children biting dust, 
 While agonizing forest boughs are thrust 
 Athwart the glare of a red rising sun, 
 As they would hide from him the dastard infamy 
 done ! 
 
 Under some trees not very far from there 
 Lies an old man with soiled silver hair : 
 Here all alone the patriot fired for France 
 Upon the foe ; two strive to wrench the lance, 
 Wherewith they have bored him, from the frame 
 
 that quivers : 
 Yet sec in very labour of death he shivers 
 With his good gun the German skull of one ! 
 ]• more fierce bullets, ere the work be done,
 
 190 
 
 WAR. 
 
 In blundering fury must the hordes discharge, 
 Ere they may set this rampant soul at large, 
 The formidable tortured ghost within, 
 Which all in darkening smiles upon the sin, 
 That shall be wrought for vengeance in Berlin 
 
 The Village. 
 
 Rests on the meek head of a pastoral hill 
 A village whence, when summer skies are still, 
 You see a lapse of wandering silver glance 
 Near and afar among fair meads of France, 
 Along her poplar-lines and pasture-lands : 
 Here in the hamlet many a cottage stands, 
 The little all of simple country folk, 
 Who sow the seasonable seed, who yoke 
 Slow oxen to the ploughs or laden wains, 
 Who bind in sheaves the mellow, foodful grains. 
 Here in their native soil their lives are rooted, 
 Like their own trees all rosy and purple fruited : 
 To them their humble church is heaven on earth ; 
 The hoary priest received them at their birth
 
 WAB. 191 
 
 Into the world, God's minister, and he, 
 
 Their friend through life, at the end of life will 
 
 be 
 Their angel, smoothing all the perilous way 
 Into the realms of everlasting Day. 
 Under a bowered porch on summer eves 
 Knits a blithe housewife, while among the leaves 
 Of pleasant orchards near two children laugh, 
 Pierrot and Marie ; in the swing they quaff 
 Delightful breezes, and the father hears, 
 Returning 'mid the simmering barley ears. 
 
 Alas ! their village feels the winter snow 
 Soiled, thawing, whitening her roadway now ; 
 And round her walls chill winds of winter blow. 
 Around her walls ! ah ! gazer, what of these ? 
 They are more piteous than leafless trees ! 
 Ruins unroofed, begrimed with flame and smoke, 
 On either side the one wide way invoke 
 With dumb, unconscious eloquence of woe 
 His pity, who knew them three brief moons ago : 
 Dreary from forth a dreary mist they loom, 
 Each, as he nears them, silent with one doom,
 
 192 WAR. 
 
 A cheery home, now wrecked and tenantless, 
 Like a marred face grown vacant with distress. 
 Yet hearken ! there are cries upon the air — 
 Pause, lover of our race, pause, and despair ! 
 Where lately bloomed a garden full of flowers, 
 On the wet, trampled ground a woman cowers ; 
 A woman with a baby at her breast 
 Weeps with low wailing : chin upon his chest, 
 With folded arms the man against a wall 
 In moody silence leans ; from forth a pall 
 Of snow three rudely-carven wooden crosses 
 Mark in yon field where moulder many corses : 
 There waved a harvest ! yet befouled in mire 
 Sweet human food lies, where the hosts of 
 
 fire 
 Went devastating with remorseless tramp : 
 Yonder thin snows are thawing ; all the damp 
 Earth has been torn to many a ragged pit, 
 Where each fire-entrailed, moaning, mangling bolt 
 
 alit. 
 Two children in the neighbouring orchard go ; 
 Yet young full meaning of their loss to know, 
 But solemnized with all their elders' woe
 
 WAR. 
 
 193 
 
 And all the melancholy scene, they try 
 Among charred fruits and branches to descry 
 Where hung so lately their own favourite swing, 
 Finding, poor babes ! a pleasure in wondering. 
 Not now one views the river glancing far 
 Among fair meadows, like a scimitar ; 
 But nearer, over sodden, sullen soil 
 Somewhat, like one interminable toil 
 Of worm uncoiling, dusk, appears to wind 
 Slow through the mist, impalpably defined, 
 Along a hedgerow line, obscure and dank : 
 It is the serried foeman's cruel crawling, rank ! 
 
 Sedan. 
 The looms are broken, the looms are hushed, 
 
 And a broken, weary man 
 Sits near a child, with fever flushed, 
 
 In a cottage of Sedan. 
 
 The mother starved with him, the weaver, 
 
 To feed their little child, 
 Who lies now low with famine fever, 
 
 That slew the mother mild. 
 
 o
 
 194 WAR. 
 
 The room is desolate ; the store 
 
 Has dwindled very low ; 
 All a poor housewife's pride of yore 
 
 Was plundei-ed of the foe. 
 
 And a father cowers over grey 
 
 Wood-ashes barely warm ; 
 He feels the child is going away 
 
 In the pitiless, pale storm. 
 
 He knows an emperor lost a crown 
 
 Here in his own Sedan ; 
 And he knows an emperor gained a crown, 
 
 The solitary man. 
 
 He hears the voice of a world that sings 
 
 The spectacle sublime ; 
 Yet only heeds one life that clings 
 
 To his own a little time ! 
 
 1 wonder, if the Christ beholds 
 
 With eyes divinely deep, 
 Whom to his heart He nearest holds, 
 
 The kings, or these that weep ?
 
 WAR. 195 
 
 Who seem more royal and more tall 
 
 In calm, pure light from God, 
 These crowned colossal things that crawl, 
 
 Or lowly soids they trod '? 
 
 These purple, laurelled kings we hail 
 
 With banner and battle-blare, 
 Or him who writhes beneath their trail, 
 
 A pauper in despair ; 
 Conquered and conquerors of Sedan, 
 Or a dying child and a starving man ? 
 
 The Wounded. 
 
 In one dim church, after a bloody fray, 
 Lie wounded men with swathed limbs, and grey, 
 Wan, fainting faces, down the solemn nave : 
 Women are ministering all they crave, 
 Sisters of Mercy, daughters of the Lord ! 
 Many will die, for all they may afford 
 Of refuge ; though the healers with sharp pain 
 Have .striven to heal them, all will be in vain !
 
 19fi WAR. 
 
 Feebly in sinking cling their hearts to some 
 Afar, who wait them in a beloved home, 
 Who with pale cheek, with blanched, quivering lips 
 Will tear the letter dim with life's eclipse. 
 Mournful the sufferers that eve foresee, 
 Not far from now, when dear ones with a tree, 
 There in the fatherland, in Germany, 
 Glistering toys and trinkets will entwine ; 
 With twigs of fir, where coloured tapers fine 
 Glisten less lovely than the children's eyes, 
 Who with sweet exclamations of surprise 
 Find out new blisses ; widows worn the while 
 Melting a rising sob into a smile ; 
 For well they know that, lying yonder, he, 
 On whom the nightly snow falls quietly, 
 Would love to feel their little mutual treasure 
 Passed even this Christmas with an all unclouded 
 pleasure ! 
 
 Ah ! but the church — it is a ghastly scene : 
 Consoling ministers of mercy lean 
 Over confused shapes by candle gleam : 
 These have rent clothing soiled, with dull red stream 

 
 WAK. 
 
 i ( .r 
 
 Of ebbing life discoloured ; while some die 
 In silence, others with a tortured cry- 
 Rend the foul air : yet others near the door, 
 A variegated medley, strew the floor 
 (Teuton with Frank, turban with helmet blent. 
 In diverse garb and war-accoutrement), 
 Conversing, grimed with battle smoke, and dust 
 Of toilsome march ; they munch the wheaten crust. 
 Or moodily exhale a soothing mist, 
 Or drink from glimmering metal as they list. 
 But yonder, over the faint sufferers, 
 Half in dim shining, half in shadow, stirs 
 With wandering wind some painted canvas, torn 
 In that blind havoc of mad battle born : 
 Surely it is the Sufferer Divine 
 Upon the cross ! while under Him recline 
 These last inheritors of agony. 
 Behold, the piteous portraiture on high 
 Hath in that very heart of Christ a rent, 
 That tells of where one erring bullet went !
 
 198 WAR. 
 
 A Vision of War. 
 
 I stood by night upon a reeking plain 
 Among stark, stiffened hecatombs of slain, 
 Who blankly stare into the sullen skies 
 With glassy, sightless, widely-open eyes. 
 The night was moonless, dense with stormful cloud, 
 And muffled all, nor aught to sight allowed, 
 Save in large livid lightning's ghastly glare 
 Over the dead men with their awful stare. 
 Upon a rising ground some ruins riven 
 Of a burnt village, whence the dwellers driven 
 Fled from a ravening fire with ne'er a home, 
 Stand in the cold flame desolate and dumb. 
 Some curl in attitudes of mortal anguish ; 
 Some with a burning thirst low moaning languish 
 In their own life-blood, helpless underneath 
 A heavy horror that hath ceased to breathe. 
 This form that feels hath hair and beard of grey ; 
 The overlying corse fair curls, but they 
 Ave marred with crimson : this was a fair boy, 
 Stay of a widowed mother and her joy ;
 
 WAR. 
 
 I'M) 
 
 A tender girl awaits the comely youth, 
 
 To whom is plighted a pure maiden troth — 
 
 These two, late locked in a death-grapple wild, 
 
 Might they not be a father and his child, 
 
 Lying together very still and mild ? 
 
 While many a fearful, formless, mangled thing, 
 
 That once was human, blends with Uttering 
 
 Of tumbril-wheel, of cannon- carriage wrack, 
 
 Rifle with sword, and soldier's havresack. 
 
 But what are these portentous Phantoms tall, 
 That rise before my spirit to appal ? 
 One rides upon a pale colossal horse 
 Which, with its head low, sniffs before a corse, 
 And shakes with terror : but the Rider swart, 
 Of supernatural height, of regal port, 
 Inhales the tainted air with nostrils wide, 
 And face hard set in a right royal pride. 
 One strong, red hand a blade that he has bathed 
 In a warm, living heart, holds reeking ; swathed 
 With giant folds imperially red 
 His huge, mailed body ; on his grizzly head 
 A brazen helm ; he dark surveys the dead ;
 
 200 WAR. 
 
 Dilate with cruel, unwholesome arrogance 
 
 The dictatorial form, the countenance 
 
 Swollen with glutted vengeance ; things unsweet 
 
 As fumes that bloat yon corpses at his feet. 
 
 Whence hath the robe drunk purple ? there is hung 
 
 A collar of torn hearts that he hath wrung 
 
 About his neck, for royal collar slung ; 
 
 Chains of wrought gold that blaze with many a 
 
 gem 
 In snaky twine contorted over them : 
 His martial plume, a swath of foodless grain, 
 Trodden, or scorched, or sodden with late rain. 
 Tear-blotted letters from far homes are strown 
 Under his horse-hoofs, or inanimate blown 
 Of gusty winds, the words upon them traced 
 Well nigh, like lives of those who wrote, effaced. 
 He looks the incarnation of old War, 
 Resembling an imperial Conqueror. 
 
 Low thunder with rare intermission growled, 
 Wherein were mingled cries of wolves that howled. 
 I saw one straining, gaunt and fiery eyed, 
 Held by the King in leash ; whose awful side
 
 WAR. 201 
 
 It sprang anon away from, fiercely hounded ; 
 
 And woe is me ! who witnessed where it bounded. 
 
 A little child in sad astonishment 
 
 I had beheld, who with a woman went : 
 
 She sought distracted on the fearful plain 
 
 One special soldier among all the slain : 
 
 That famished wolf was hounded on the pair ; 
 
 And with fire-fangs it healed a lorn despair ! 
 
 An Empire floats a banner, 
 
 Sable and white and red, 
 
 Dyed with ravine and famine and plague, 
 
 And blood of the innocent dead ; 
 
 Black with ravine, 
 
 White with famine, 
 
 Red with the innocent dead ! 
 
 Yet a more hideous Phantom than the other 
 Leaned on the War-shape, like its own twin brother. 
 A wan blue mist it seemed to emanate 
 From where the dead most thickly congregate ; 
 A crawling exhalation, yet anon 
 A lank, tall body with the graveclothes on.
 
 202 
 
 WAR. 
 
 It trailed and sloped o'er many miles of dead. 
 Until it reached with a most fearful head 
 The bosom of the Warrior on the horse ; 
 There leaned, fraternal, like a month-old corse ; 
 Nay, somewhat otherwise : rather methought 
 It wore aspect like one most loathsome, fraught 
 With such disease as by beleaguered Metz 
 Some saw w T ho passed among the lazarettes. 
 Surely this was incarnate Pestilence ! 
 Yet, as I shrank with shuddering from hence. 
 It wore a face pale History shall remember 
 For his who slew his country one December. 
 He holds in skeleton semblance of a hand 
 A distaff broken, for symbol of command. 
 
 Not the eagle, but the vulture 
 Wheels above him, screaming now, 
 " I will yield my foul sepulture 
 To the murdered men below ! " 
 Hoarsely croaks a carrion crow, 
 ' ' Thou wert as a Pestilence : 
 Rot abhorred in impotence ! "
 
 WAR. 
 
 203 
 
 The Roses of Bazeilles.* 
 
 Do the roses bloom, roses bloom 
 
 In lost Bazeilles, 
 
 Where shrilled a terrible human wail 
 
 In the blasting blaze of a living tomb ? 
 
 There they bloom 
 
 In lost Bazeilles ! 
 
 Where men, like fiends, with frenzy fraught, 
 
 In a fiery street, 
 
 In a whirl of bullets and flaming sleet, 
 
 In a welter of falling ruin fought, 
 
 While women sought 
 
 With wavering feet, 
 
 Scared children clutching close their dress, 
 
 Babes in their arms, 
 
 Wildly to fly from hell's alarms ! 
 
 Who if they 'scaped the Beething press 
 
 Of mnrdering swarms, 
 
 Felt fiercer harms — 
 
 * According to a letter from Mr. Bullock, in the Daily 
 .Sues, when he visited Bazeilles a month or two after the 
 burning, roses were blooming there.
 
 204 
 
 WAK. 
 
 A horrible doom of scorching breath 
 
 From flame that clung, 
 
 To mother and child devouring hung, 
 
 Till all fell smouldering, heaped in death, 
 
 Charred heaps of death 
 
 Encumbering flung ! 
 
 May roses bloom, roses bloom 
 
 In lost Bazeilles ? 
 
 Where flame, to stifle the human wail, 
 
 Leapt, fuming, roaring over the doom 
 
 Of a living tomb, 
 
 And the sun turned pale 
 
 Over lost Bazeilles ! 
 
 Yea, roses blow, roses blow, 
 
 White rose with red, 
 
 From yon charred fragments of the dead, 
 
 Crumbling chaos of friend and foe, 
 
 In a burnt-out woe, 
 
 With ruin fed ! 
 
 A rose shall blow, roses blow 
 In the heart of France, 

 
 WAR. 
 
 Though demons in their orgies dance, 
 And a hectoring, insolent, rude foe 
 Insult with a blow 
 Vanquished France ! 
 
 Red rose of valour, rose of truth 
 
 And of purity, 
 
 Deep-bosomed rose of integrity. 
 
 Sweet white rose of innocent youth, 
 
 A celestial growth. 
 
 Bloom holily ! 
 
 Rose shall be rife, roses blow rife 
 
 From a fallen throne, 
 
 Under whose shadowy shame lay prone 
 
 Nerveless a nation's nobler life ; 
 
 From manful spiritual strife, 
 
 From healthful use of stalwart limbs, 
 
 Wherewith a soul or body climbs, 
 
 Debarred : her stronger sons in chains, 
 
 A slow-souled vampire drained her veins : 
 
 Pampered with shows and shames she lay, 
 
 Poured out until this earth-convulsing day : 
 
 205
 
 206 
 
 WAR. 
 
 Then with the shock, 
 
 That made her throne to rock, 
 
 She rose dishevelled from her gory clay ! 
 
 France lies in ashes : the nations pale 
 
 Behold dismayed 
 
 Over the earth an awful shade : 
 
 Tyranny stalks in feudal mail 
 
 O'er hearts that fail, 
 
 And faiths that fade ! 
 
 Deep in a mountain's caverned hall,* 
 
 It is whispered low, 
 
 Waits in a weird, sepulchral glow 
 
 An armed phantom, crowned and tall, 
 
 Whose hoaiy beard of centuries 
 
 Grows on the grey stone where it lies ; 
 
 While jewelled knights with glittering eyes 
 
 Glower round 
 
 In trance profound. 
 
 * The legend affirms that the Emperor Barbarossa waits 
 in a cavern of the Untersberg, near Salzburg, for the recon- 
 stitution of the German Empire.
 
 WAR. 
 
 Anon, at agelong intervals, 
 
 The ghostly king 
 
 Sends a raven of sable wing 
 
 From his stupendous prison-walls, 
 
 To learn how near the fated hour, 
 
 When he may reassume the power .... 
 
 Behold ! no raven comes again 
 
 . . . Behold ! the raven devours the slain ! 
 
 Vaults asunder 
 
 Burst in thunder ! 
 
 Lo ! in the hall of mirrors yonder, 
 
 In a palace consecrate to all 
 
 Age-long glories of the Gaul, 
 
 A German wears imperial 
 
 Purple : Barbarossa lives ! 
 
 The ghost of a dark age revives, 
 
 And the heart of every freeman dies, 
 
 Seeing him rise ! 
 
 Yet roses flower, roses flower ! 
 
 And liberty, 
 
 I rlorious, ardent, springs to the sky, 
 
 207
 
 208 WAR. 
 
 With breath as of morning, to overpower 
 Slaves that cower 
 In apathy ! 
 
 Yea, roses bloom : a rose shall bloom 
 
 In the grave of France, 
 
 Whose breath, as of morning, may re-entrance 
 
 The spectre, till he slink to the tomb, 
 
 His eternal doom 
 
 Breathed from France ! 
 
 She in her lingering agony 
 
 Dooms her tyrant with an eye 
 
 Charged with the light of liberty ! 
 
 Ode to England. 
 
 Arm ! England, arm ! for all men point the finger 
 Toward thee with scorn they little care to veil : 
 " Doth not the mouldering hull of England linger 
 Upon her sea of gold, with idle sail ? 
 Once she was other ! once we shrank dismayed
 
 WAR. 209 
 
 Before the lightning of her baring blade ; 
 Once through the storm her ocean glory burst, 
 She, stormy petrel, she the ocean-nurst, 
 Upon her foes, who pale beheld the stream 
 Of her bright ensign, like Aurora, gleam 
 Over foam-billows bounding wild : hurrah ! 
 England is drowsier than at Trafalgar ! " 
 
 Arm ! England, arm ! the halcyon hour must wait 
 When Love and Righteousness shall vanquish Hate. 
 Jesus of old was royal hailed in scorn : 
 Now the world crowns Him — still it is with thorn ! 
 Nobles and kings go armed to the teeth : 
 Lo ! where thy loving sister bleeds beneath 
 Their haughty feet : she calls thee to her side : 
 They clank their swords at thee with insolent pride. 
 " Old England, mumbling, paralysed, and cold, 
 Shrinks closer clutching at her hoards of gold ! " 
 Why should the mailed sons of tyranny taunt 
 Thee, champion of the free, with windy vaunt ? 
 Arm ! England, arm ! they mouth at Liberty, 
 Who with a mother's impulse turns to thee ! 
 Fair is our dream of universal peace ; 
 
 p
 
 210 WAE. 
 
 But there be wolves, and lambs of tender fleece. 
 
 Tyranny summons all her swarms of slaves, 
 
 Horrent with weapons : daughter of the waves ! 
 
 Is it a time for thee to loll and bask, 
 
 And murmur at the burden of thy casque ? 
 
 Yea, thou art sedulous to nurse thy health, 
 
 Kesentful of a menace to thy wealth : 
 
 But in the hour of thine extremity, 
 
 Look for no pitying tear to cloud one eye 
 
 Among the sister nations loitering by ! 
 
 Now that thy faithful friend is in the dust, 
 
 Whose features fair may next inflame the lust 
 
 Of her inexorable conqueror, 
 
 Or of his mailed kinsman emperor ? 
 
 If thou, the hope of Freedom, lie supine, 
 
 Indifferent beyond thy belt of brine, 
 
 While Freedom wrestles with a libertine, 
 
 Beware for thine ! 
 
 Shall not God judge the race that cannot feel 
 
 Itself a member of one living commonweal ? 
 
 That nation dies ; elects to be alone ; 
 
 Severed in sooth, dead lumber, shall be thrown 
 
 Among bare buried piles of bone !
 
 WAR. 211 
 
 Canst thou, then, fear to arm thy children free, 
 
 Who cradled lay upon the hosom of Liberty ? 
 
 Whom from herself she nourished, whom with motion 
 
 And lullabies of the everlasting ocean 
 
 She soothed from earliest infancy, 
 
 While, in loud winds and waves careering, she 
 
 Sings to her mariners who rule the sea ! 
 
 Arm all thy children ! not a caste of drones : 
 Then shalt thou see those anarchs on their thrones 
 Abase their domineering front — behold 
 Helvetia, splendid, blithe, and bold ! 
 The sons who breathe her liberal mountain air, 
 The men who scale her precipice and dare 
 All dangers of her bleak eternal snows, 
 A race of hardy hunters, who repose 
 Fearless beneath her sparkling stars, nor blanch 
 To dream their bed may prove a thunderous avalanche, 
 Whose spirits with their native eagle soar, 
 Whose kindred souls dilating love the roar 
 Of icy cataracts, the Aar, the Rhine, 
 The Rhone that foams among the murmuring pine — 
 Are these not armed? Yen, every man will bleed
 
 212 WAK. 
 
 For the fair land of Arnold Winkelried ! 
 
 France waved the banner of the free, 
 
 When it fell from the hands of Italy : 
 
 Alas ! she fails — but England, thou 
 
 Hast a Daughter of starry brow, 
 
 Whose arms receive thy setting sun ; 
 
 She, in a forest vast and lone, 
 
 With awful gladness hears intone 
 
 Niagara, and the Amazon ! 
 
 Freedom before her mountain citadel 
 
 Placed you, two giants, each her wakeful sentinel !
 
 
 THE CHILDREN'S GRASS. 
 
 i. 
 
 Where the twinkling river pushes 
 
 'Thwart the dipping swan, 
 
 All his ruffling down 
 
 Very softly blown, 
 
 Lustrous blue reflects the rushes 
 
 Where the coot is gone ; 
 
 Thames, an innocent heart of childhood, 
 
 Buoying lovers from the wild wood, 
 
 Hearing boyish laughter chime 
 
 Where the flashing oars keep time, 
 
 Where they quiver 
 
 In the river : 
 
 In a sunshine sown with song 
 
 Of many a merry bird, 
 
 Three sunny children bound along,
 
 214 the children's grass. 
 
 With many a merry word. 
 
 Their eyes blue fountains of delight, 
 
 And every cheek a rose, 
 
 Their dimpled hands with grasses light 
 
 So full, they hardly close. 
 
 One fawn-like little maiden falls 
 
 Breathless upon her mother, 
 
 Telling how yonder elf who calls, 
 
 Her tiny wavering brother, 
 
 Chose to pull the tender stems 
 
 Where the dew-drop lingers, 
 
 And marvelled when the limpid gems 
 
 Fell upon his fingers. 
 
 She tells a soft-eyed rabbit brown 
 
 Near a wimpling runnel 
 
 Eyed them askance, then hurried down 
 
 Through a plantain tunnel. 
 
 In the woodland sweetly smell 
 
 Fairy grass and clover, 
 
 Sensitive in the woodland dell, 
 
 Where the bees hum over ; 
 
 " ! I love the summer well ; 
 
 Mother, will it soon be over ? "
 
 THE CHILDREN'S GRASS. 215 
 
 II. 
 
 Where the unholy river gleameth, 
 Deep, and cold, and dun, 
 Hiding secrets from the sun, 
 As an awful dream one dreameth, 
 As Oblivion : 
 
 Three little children in the reek 
 
 Of the monster town, 
 
 With a woman worn and weak, 
 
 Ere the sun goes down, 
 
 Toil by flare of ghastly light 
 
 In a dingy fume : 
 
 Two young children carry bright 
 
 Grasses in the room : 
 
 An elder sister with her mother 
 
 Decks the blades with glass, 
 
 Sprinkles one and then another, 
 
 As with dews of grass. 
 
 How the vivid verdure gleams 
 
 In the child's old face ! 
 
 Starved and very pale she seems,
 
 216 the childeen's grass. 
 
 With a hollow place 
 
 Dark beneath her eyes, how wearied, 
 
 Lashless looking on the bleared 
 
 Mimic grass, 
 
 Dewed with glass ! 
 
 Hark ! she gives a feeble cough, 
 
 And the withered mother 
 
 Glances where some paces off 
 
 A coffin holds another 
 
 Maiden very cold and white, 
 
 Not yet hidden out of sight. 
 
 " Mother, I am very weary ! " 
 
 So she moans with accents dreary ; 
 
 " Mother, make my bed ! " 
 
 " Child," the woman answers, " finish ! 
 
 Dare not from your task diminish 
 
 Aught, for fear a watchful neighbour, 
 
 Bidding lower for the labour, 
 
 Seize our bitter bread ! " 
 
 Ladies in a lustred hall 
 
 Wear them gaily for a ball 
 
 In their fair 
 
 Wavy hair.
 
 THE CHELDBEN's GRASS. 217 
 
 " Mother, I can toil no longer ; 
 
 After sleep I shall be stronger !".... 
 
 .... After sleep, the child was dead. 
 
 There the unholy river gleameth, 
 Deep, and cold, and dun, 
 Hiding secrets from the sun, 
 As an awful dream one dreameth, 
 As Oblivion : 
 
 Are not these thy children, Father ? 
 These — or only those ? 
 Are we all lost orphans rather ? 
 Of whom — none knows
 
 THE CHILDREN BY THE SEA. 
 
 Ah ! merry children on the smooth sea sand, 
 
 Floating toy-navies, with your spades of wood 
 Delving until the salt sea-water stand 
 
 In moat-like hollows, with a mimic flood 
 Girdlicg a mimic fort ; or gathering shells 
 
 And briny delicate sea-weed ; how the air 
 Blows in glad faces, and the wave compels 
 
 Your flight with laughter, leaving a crystal rare 
 
 Upon the ripple-pencilled sand ! how fair 
 Life seems, the very weary life we know, 
 
 In your exuberant play, that loves to feign 
 Age has arrived ! Ah ! life will never glow 
 
 For you as now when you are old ; remain 
 Children for ever ! common things ye deem 
 
 Miraculous joy ; battle and storm and death 
 With swift bright gesture, eager eyes, ye dream !
 
 THE CHILDREN BY THE SEA. 219 
 
 Breeze blows bright hair of curled blue billows too ; 
 But sparkling waves less merrily dance than you ! 
 
 Apart from these one little boy, 
 Listless fingering a toy, 
 With dim dull eyes and darkened face, 
 Seemed a cloud upon the place. 
 Sitting on a stone, there lowered 
 Some black-vestured man who showered 
 Shameful words upon the child, 
 And later, when he feebly smiled, 
 Struck him with a cruel oath : 
 Him and my heart : he wounded both. 
 That was his father ; tears fell slow ; 
 I heard his bitter crying low. 
 Dwindled all the shouts of joy 
 To the sobbing of a boy ; 
 Death fell over sky and ocean, 
 Paralyzing happy motion. 
 A helpless child, behold it cower ! 
 Yet, ah ! the desolating power ! 
 Withering green earth I trod, 
 A small hand shook the throne of God.
 
 220 
 
 THE CHILDREN BY THE SEA. 
 
 Day and night it clings to me, 
 
 A child's low wail of misery : 
 
 I see the faded purple dress, 
 
 The little steps of weariness 
 
 Wavering home in their distress. 
 The blow falls I may not arrest ; 
 The child hangs on my helpless breast. 
 Death take all of us to rest ! 
 Sea and sky glow around that form ! 
 Cease, idle breeze ! his tears are warm : 
 Fall on us, giddy cliffs ; we are born 
 For a fiend's ghastly mockery and scorn 
 
 Man, forbear ! 
 Before this arid waste of human life, 
 Before the illusive glory, and the strife, 
 With Fate that baffles, with a stifling coil 
 Of Sin that conquers ; ere the weary toil 
 For food which turns to ashes in the mouth ; 
 Before our darlings vanish, and the drouth 
 Of souls athirst for Truth and Bighteousness, 
 Beauty and Love, who only feign to bless ; 
 Ere feeling no expense of passionate breath
 
 THE CHILDREN BY THE SEA. 221 
 
 Stays the stern Hand that never faltereth, 
 
 Pushing us nearer to the abyss of death — 
 
 For little children shines one happy hour 
 
 In youth's fair morning land, a land in flower, 
 
 Tended of angels, folded from the world, 
 
 A haven where the stainless sail is furled : 
 
 A realm of faery, a delicious place, 
 
 Fresh with young dews of love and human grace : 
 
 Here, like soft lambs, in the everliving sun 
 
 Innocent children leap, and laugh, and run ; 
 
 Here a perennial fountain springs to light, 
 
 And with a misty silver rainbow-dight 
 
 Woos an eternal verdure from the earth ; 
 
 Where in a gleam of ever-murmuring mirth 
 
 Bathe pure white children, they who seem to borrow 
 
 Bliss from sweet lower lives, that fear no morrow ; 
 
 "Whom if a momentary pain annoy, 
 
 Tis but a breezy ruffling of the joy. 
 
 All holy generous human spirits bend 
 
 Lowlily here, with looks of light that lend 
 
 Warmth and fresh lustre to the home of Youth, 
 
 Wonder and Faith, and Ecstasy and Truth : 
 
 Jesus, the child, the Lord of Love and Ruth,
 
 222 THE CHILDREN BY THE SEA. 
 
 Reigns over all, Love's lacerated Lord ; 
 And till the demon with a flaming sword 
 Drives one and then another to the wild, 
 We bless the Saviour for a little child. 
 
 Man, forbear ! 
 Nay ! not for every little child we praise : 
 For what is yonder cloud upon the blaze ? 
 Among the happy lies one little thing 
 Weeping, and over him a torturing 
 Fiend men call Father : all are happy here, 
 Saving this one who feels the mortal fear, 
 And agonizes ; all before the gloom 
 Of life have respite, but one suffers doom 
 From dawn to sunset ; even this holy ground 
 Is not for innocence inviolate found ! 
 Even the charmed Eden Love hath fenced from evil, 
 Insolently desecrated by the Devil ! 
 Even his small birthright of dissolving bliss 
 Torn from a tiny helpless child like this, 
 Ghastly reflecting in a babe's despair 
 Cain's brand of wrinkled infamy and care ! 
 Child ! thou arraignest on His throne sublime
 
 THF CHILDREN BY THE SEA. 223 
 
 Him whom our fathers trusted, for the crime 
 That smote thee flaunts triumphant in His face ; 
 And Love may only tearful eyes abase, 
 "While Fate o'erwhelms His glory with disgrace ! 
 
 .... Man forbear ! 
 Who withers hearts around him with his frown 
 Creates a parching desert for his own. 
 Yea, all good angels, when thou art athirst 
 In flame, shall fly from thee, man accurst ! 
 Lo ! the avenging little children run 
 Out of then- sea and land graves, wicked one : 
 Moan thou beneath the body of thy son ! 
 Ah ! let us hope that Jesus yet may fold 
 Within His bosom the lamb lost and cold, 
 Lead him to rest where sunny pastures lie, 
 And where still waters flow eternally !
 
 AZRAEL : 
 
 A DREAM OF PLEASUEE. 
 
 " Azrael, the angel of death." 
 
 Mourn for Annabel ! 
 The village bell is tolling, and she will 
 Never arise from where she lieth still, 
 Cold and so lovely, flowers white and red, 
 Old dames and tender damozels have shed 
 Tearful, all over her, in shadowy air 
 Alive with perfume curling blue and rare, 
 Jewels and gold and jasper glowing deep 
 As in a dreamland of a solemn sleep, 
 With solemn music plaining while the mourners 
 weep. 
 
 Fair Azrael, with Annabel the child 
 
 Of Southern suns, a panther supple and wild,
 
 AZEA.EL. 
 
 225 
 
 Mellow and beautiful, the while one tarried 
 Far hence, a man she never loved but married, 
 Wandered in sweet communion day and night 
 Within her garden, shielded from the light 
 Of suns too violent, under pensile palm, 
 And aromatic, glossy-leaved calm 
 Orange, with lemon wedding boughs above ; 
 In whose green twilight bridal blooms of love 
 Bud, and expand their petals, till they shed 
 Lavish white coronals on either head, 
 On lustrous ebony and golden head. 
 They wandered where a soft .Eolian sea 
 Fills far off with profound tranquillity 
 Half of the interval, which lies between 
 Shadowy cypresses and pines that lean 
 Over the sunlight ; half is filled with air 
 Azure as ocean ; near, a fountain fair 
 Singing springs ever thwart blue air and main, 
 A shifting snowcloud, twinkling into rain, 
 Drifting to fume that feeds earth's emerald : 
 Anon their dreamy vision is enthralled 
 With scintillating of a ruffled ocean 
 Among thin olive-foliage in motion : 
 
 Q
 
 226 AZRAEL. 
 
 Seaward from flowers around their feet a 
 
 lawn 
 Slopes ; all the greenery's a haunt of fawn, 
 Or nymph marmoreal : from shade to shade 
 On the sea-lustre glows and glides to fade, 
 Swiftly and silent, many a wing-like sail 
 Of bark aerial ; never seems to fail 
 Some new surprise of freshly-flowing joy, 
 Wafting young lives afar from all annoy. 
 Eros and Psyche in white marble embrace, 
 Whom lustrous-leaved camelias enlace : 
 In light and shadow of a terebinth, 
 Elsewhere, upon a myrtle -inwoven plinth, 
 Heavenly Hebe her perennial charm 
 Unfolds ; young Dionysos a lithe arm 
 Curls over lovelocks, and a rounded form, 
 In fair profusion of lit vine-leaves warm. 
 When either Phidian image glows in roses 
 Lavish around them, or at eve reposes 
 Flushed with a glory, breatheth every one 
 Alive, a new bride of Pygmalion. 
 Sweet Mitylene, isle of love and song, 
 Two fair young lovers for an hour prolong
 
 AZRAEL. 
 
 227 
 
 Reverberate modulations from the lyre, 
 
 Whose soul still haunts thee with voluptuous fire ! 
 
 Sappho, Arion, and Terpander breathe 
 
 O'er hill and valley ; lawny mists enwreathe 
 
 Faintly before all lovers oversea 
 
 A mountain, hued like flowers of memory ; 
 
 Where Aphrodite, born of Paphian foam, 
 
 Found the fair shepherd in his piny home, 
 
 And where, on Ida, an imperial Bird 
 
 Ravished a fairer from his pipes and herd. 
 
 They read or sang sweet songs, and oft a 
 star 
 Thrilled in a roseate eve to her guitar. 
 She wore pomegranate crimson in her hair, 
 Around her waist and shoulders only rare 
 Silk from Olympian looms, like gossamer ; 
 While languid pearls lay heavingly on her 
 Virginal bosom ; ambergris and myrrh 
 Enkindling breathe from ocean-blue enamel, 
 Whose misty fervours golden lids entrammel : 
 And while they taste a bright Methymnian wine. 
 Amber-inhaled ambrosial fumes entwine
 
 228 AZRAEL. 
 
 Delicious dream around them : fingers fine 
 Fill often his half-laughing, amorous lips 
 "With pleasant, garnet-hued pomegranate pips, 
 Or luscious, lucent dainties that her skill 
 Can from sweet, crimson-hearted fruits distil. 
 If with his wanton mouth he gently bite, 
 But very gently will she feign to smite. 
 Three interlaced half-moons of diamond 
 Thrill for rich ecstasy to link, with frond 
 Of fernwrought rubies, on her balmy breast 
 Her silk translucency of filmy vest. 
 He wore a slumbrous oriental gold 
 Dusky with silk inwoven, half unrolled 
 From a white bosom of ideal mould. 
 
 Once when a silver-clanging chime 
 Told the stealthy flight of time, 
 They left a cedar-raftered chamber, 
 Where oil in opaline and amber 
 Gleamed, as mildest lamps are able, 
 Over furs of lynx and sable ; 
 Crimson wools, Iranian fur 
 Of panther, pard, or miniver.
 
 AZEAEL. 229 
 
 And while they went, some drowsy doves 
 In holm and laurel flew like loves 
 Over them ; the mild fireflies 
 Gleamed before then happy eyes . 
 
 Fair was the night when youth and lady stept 
 From where their lemon-tinted villa slept, 
 "With balustrade and roofing palely grey, 
 Laved of the moon, beneath a grove that lay 
 Under enchantment, to a hushful bower 
 Of bay and asphodel, with passion flower 
 Inwoven : it was warm and dusk therein, 
 And delicate foliage made a shadowy thin 
 Lacework suspended in aerial blue 
 Silvery twilight, over where they two, 
 Muffled in mossful secrecy, reclined 
 Nigh one another, Azrael behind. 
 
 ' ' In the tree 
 A murmur, as of indolent shed sea 
 On sands at midnight ceasing slumbrously ! 
 Through dim, uncoloured leaves 
 An elfin glimmer cleaves 
 A varying way from realms of mystery."
 
 230 
 
 AZRAEL. 
 
 So sang she softly to her soft guitar, 
 
 And ceased; and both were silent, hearing 
 
 far 
 The bubbling fountain, and a nightingale, 
 That seemed to flow at intervals and fail. 
 Her face for him was pencilled pure and fine 
 Athwart the gloaming ; and, " lady mine," 
 He whispered, " how adorable are you 
 To-night ! forgive me!" till there softly grew 
 A tender arm around her form, and she 
 Yielded and leaned on him responsively, 
 Until his blood ran fire when she pressed 
 Her dewy, ripe young lips upon his breast, 
 Moonwhite in moonlight ; for a ray had come 
 To nestle in the fair, congenial home. 
 Then mouth burned mouth, her undulating 
 
 charms 
 Yielding to his luxurious young arras. 
 Later, in sweet confusion's disarray, 
 Hand in hand stole they to a little bay, 
 Where a pale foam stole out of a grey sea, 
 And kissed the pale rock ever murmurously. 
 Cypress leaned mournful over, and a throng
 
 AZEAEL. 231 
 
 Of kushful inoonwhite houses lay along 
 Yon circling shoreside, minarets, how fair ! 
 Arising tall and slender into air : 
 A chaunt was wafted from a fisher's boat, 
 Dozing upon the pearl with nets afloat. 
 Shadowy, folding mountains from the sea 
 Rise to enclose the bay's chalcedony: 
 Ida beyond, dim silvered of the moon, 
 Soars with her snow in some enchanted swoon : 
 Delicate shells with whorl, and valve, and spire 
 Gleam in a rhythmic phosphorescent fire. 
 Silently dreams near yonder myrtle brake 
 An egret, plumed as with a soft snowflake, 
 Like a pure soul by some celestial lake. 
 Lo ! now the lovers dainty limbs will lave 
 In the delicious coolness of the wave. 
 
 " I with thee, 
 By fringes of the pale, enamoured sea, 
 On the shore's bosom dying dreamfully, 
 Singing in the leaves, 
 Love it is who weaves 
 Around our hearts a heavenly mystery !"
 
 232 AZRAEL. 
 
 Then as they neared their villa, in a tunnel 
 Of oranges where purls a crystal runnel, 
 A rustle in the trees she thought she heard, 
 And deemed she saw a shadow ; " 'Tis a hird," 
 He whispered, after pausing : " all's a dream ! " 
 She murmured, " Ah ! how heavenly a dream ! " . . . 
 .... Out of the shadow flashed a steely gleam : 
 Her own death- shriek awoke her, and she fell 
 At the feet of her angel Azrael. 
 
 Mourn for Annabel ! 
 The village bell is tolling, and she will 
 Never arise from where she lieth still, 
 Cold and so lovely, flowers white and red, 
 Old dames and tender damozels have shed 
 Tearful, all over her, in shadowy air 
 Alive with purfume curling blue and rare, 
 Jewels and gold and jasper glowing deep 
 As in a dreamland of a solemn sleep, 
 With solemn music plaining while the mourners weep.
 
 SAN ROCCO. 
 
 There is a little chapel rude 
 
 On a terraced hill, 
 With cypress round the solitude 
 
 Of a platform still ; 
 
 Cypress flames of darkling green, 
 
 Rich athwart the blue ; 
 Fair among them ocean-sheen 
 
 Softly twinkles through. 
 
 Within one open end, in line, 
 
 Vessels rudely made 
 Hang, with perils of the brine 
 
 On either wall, displayed. 
 
 Each unskilful picture shows, 
 
 On the marge, a form 
 Of Her who, when the whirlwind blows, 
 
 Saveth men from storm.
 
 234 
 
 SAX EOCCO. 
 
 There a lamp of silver gleams, 
 
 Like an evening star ; 
 O'er a spangled altar beams, 
 
 In twilight cool afar. 
 
 Home-bound sailors from the deep, 
 
 \Vhen the belfry small 
 Of San Eocco on the steep 
 
 First appeareth, fall 
 
 At our Lady's feet of grace : 
 
 When a woman old, 
 Gaunt and homeliest of her race, 
 
 Falteringly told 
 
 The story of her son to me, 
 
 A bold young mariner, 
 How once he sailed, and from the sea 
 
 Came ne'er again to her ; 
 
 And how he vowed before he sailed, 
 
 If ever he returned, 
 His votive vessel should be nailed, 
 
 And in the lamp be burned
 
 SAN EOCCO. 235 
 
 His votive amber oil above, 
 
 At yonder mountain shrine, 
 Where perilled sailors prove their love 
 
 To Mary the Divine ; 
 
 "Where every pious mariner 
 
 Leaves a lowly gift for Her ; 
 Fair the mother was with tears, 
 
 For all her homeliness and years. 
 
 Nervi.
 
 TO THE QUEEN. 
 
 Dear loyal lady, tender and brave and true, 
 
 Dear lady of our loyal hearts are you ! 
 
 Who will dethrone a kindly human grace, 
 
 To crown the bloodless huckster in your place ? 
 
 There is a canker in the social core : 
 
 And some would fain persuade us that no more 
 
 We need than civil change of name and form : 
 
 Ah ! specious pleading of the cankerworm !
 
 A SEA SYMPHONY. 
 
 Tempest. 
 
 Ocean, eternal mother of the free ! 
 Thine uproar is the sound of Liberty. 
 Shout forth a clarion-call tempestuously ! 
 "England, though comfortable sleep be sweet, 
 Whispering emperors ominously meet : 
 "What if they murder Freedom, murder man ? 
 Shall not thy rent red flag inflame the van 
 Of battle as erst ? Arouse thee unto war ! 
 Hearken how thunderpeals from Trafalgar, 
 Nile, and the Baltic, thine heroic past, 
 Fill loud my clarions of surge and blast ! 
 Awake ! for fear thy lethargy may prove the last ! "
 
 238 A SEA SYMPHONY. 
 
 Grand lion-leap of billows ! how they fall, 
 Plunging with hunger to devour the shore ! 
 Hurled mountain of blown billow thwart the wall 
 Of cliff precipitous bursting with stupendous roar ! 
 Cavernous halls of hoaiy mountains under 
 Shake with a shock of subterranean thunder, 
 Rumble with roll of long reverberate thunder ! 
 Crushed all the turbid water-mountain toils, 
 Whose slain, immense, pale, shadowy ghost is thrown 
 High among hurrying storm-cloud, and recoils 
 Seethingly, limply plashing on the stone. 
 "While underneath a baffled field of foam, 
 Poured out disorderly, retreats to rise 
 One fulvous mass of spume upon a dome 
 Of wave colossal threatening the skies : 
 Lo ! as it sweeps imperial, the curl 
 In toppling hangs arrested by a swirl 
 Refluent baffled ; rears aloft to hurl 
 All, one grim rampart perpendicular, 
 Bodily heavenward, whose wrestling froth, 
 In terrible welter of tumultuous wrath, 
 Flickers to momentary crags of spar ; 
 Headlong to ruin charges with an ocean jar, 
 A headlong ruin of water, heard inland afar !
 
 A SEA SYMPHONY. 
 
 289 
 
 Terrific hurricane of howling wind and sea ! 
 Cower from the whirlwind, lest in scorn it scatter thee ! 
 Or fling thee in the ravening cauldron there — 
 Cling to the rock — let tawny salt seafoam flakes tear 
 Hissingly o'er thee from a turbulent despair ! 
 Shout forth thy drowned and feeble human shout 
 
 of joy, 
 In fellow-feeling with the elements, a toy 
 Of the blind Titans, yet a toy that knows. . . . 
 
 .... But what is this at hand that reels, and 
 drifts, and bows ? 
 Not helpless chaos of a huge oarweed, 
 Torn up and strewn far, senseless rage to feed — 
 A ship ! a ship ! a horrible vision here ! 
 One snapt mast with its tangling cordage-gear 
 Overboard flounders ; on the flooded deck 
 Three scared men desperate clinging strain the 
 
 neck 
 To look for any help toward the rocky roar ; 
 Whom Death alone confronts upon the awful shore ! 
 A small black dog i' the hatchway yelping pitoously — 
 I see it still — a crash — anon victoriously 
 Climb maniac cataracts upon rent planks and corpses 
 
 clamorously !
 
 240 A SEA SYMPHONY. 
 
 II. 
 
 Calm. 
 
 After two days I lay reclined in peace 
 
 Near the sea margin ; delicate soft fleece 
 
 Of cloud lay poised above me, and the sea 
 
 Slumbered about her shores, how tranquilly ! 
 
 Gentle as a child, she opened her blue eyes 
 
 In murmurous foamsmile of a faint surprise, 
 
 Touching the strand : yon vaporous headlands are 
 
 Suffused with mellow sunlight, while afar 
 
 A nebulous isle half fades into the sky, 
 
 Like some dear hoped-for possibility. 
 
 Hushful sea-murmur lulls all pain to sleep, 
 
 Breathing enchantment from the Holy Deep — 
 
 One feels so happy here, one fain would weep ! 
 
 Among fair silver labyrinths a stain 
 
 Of solemn purple on the lonely main 
 
 Long from one cloud lies ; in still mother o' pearl 
 
 Yonder no white sail will a vessel furl 
 
 To-day, among the " innumerable smile " 
 
 Of one who hides no wrath, nor harbours guile ; 
 
 Zephyr with his soft seaplume fans the while.
 
 A SEA SYMPHONY. 241 
 
 Quietly wander by the quiet shore, 
 
 To find enrapturing wonders more and more ! 
 
 Here, ankle-deep in valv£d shelly shingle. 
 
 Merry young children, with white limbs atingle, 
 
 Leap laughing, while a playful ripple blue 
 
 Merrily laves them ; ah ! how fair the hue 
 
 Of azure sea set by a doYelike tone 
 
 Of boulders, where I wander all alone ! 
 
 Now and then their prevailing hue will bring 
 
 Aerial colour, soft as seamew wing, 
 
 On water, modulating mirrored sky 
 
 To filmy pureness of chalcedony. 
 
 In still sea-waters of a cove will grow 
 
 Slim growths of plashing crystal, when there flow, 
 
 Oceanward tinkling, rillets from above, 
 
 Born among hazels, while with ocean love 
 
 Glisten low-lying rocks in many a cove. 
 
 "Weird block of waveworn labyrinthine grey, 
 
 Hollowed out, with small opening for day 
 
 Somewhere concealed as one explores, a fairy 
 
 Or mermaiden may haunt thee, little wary 
 
 Of man's intrusion on her lonely spot, 
 
 Or sleepy seal may use thee, twilit grot ! 
 
 R
 
 242 A SEA SYMPHONY. 
 
 But many a wondrous cavern richly hued 
 Quavers in delicate waterlight, imbued 
 Their dim recesses with a dusk maroon. 
 Mossgreen or lilac, all a quiet tune 
 Of heaving water hearing, while sea-flowers 
 Crimson or wavegreen bud in all the bowers. 
 This lofty cave's a gorgeous palace-gate, 
 Where some Sea-Genius holds royal state : 
 Surely the stillness may invite to float 
 Pensively hither in a slender boat, 
 And pore upon the faint seagroves remote ! 
 Where now thy terrible moods, sea ? . . . 
 
 .... But this ? 
 In yon dark fissure where an ocean-kiss 
 Tenderly falls in music, a dim mass 
 Sways with a nigh impalpably-heaved glass : 
 Creep near ... it wears a horrible human 
 
 shape ! 
 An eyeless head is nodding from the nape. 
 Poor ghastly mockery of a human form, 
 Jammed here in fierce delirium of storm ! 
 And look ! a shadowy monster in tbe deep 
 Looms huge and hungry near the awful sleep !
 
 A SEA SYMPHONY. 243 
 
 Yonder a board swims rusty-nailed and rent. 
 Four painted letters "with the tangle blent. 
 There is a mellow, dark-eyed maid in Spain, 
 AVho waits a token from a foreign main. 
 
 in. 
 Twilight. 
 A little wandering child has lost his way 
 On a hushed mountain at the close of day, 
 On a brine-bitten w r aste that slopes to grey 
 Abrupt cliffs, where a melancholy sea 
 Expands a far, slow-wrinkling mercury: 
 One cold, dim gleam, with three dark shadows vast. 
 From clouds immense in faded blues amassed, 
 Shadows that in a dreary twilight brood 
 Portentous phantom Presences, imbued, 
 Silently awful, with a life not ours ; 
 While on the seashore formidably lowers 
 A corrugated monster bulk of stone ; 
 Some huge, unwieldy monster left alone, 
 Slumbrous aware, with face toward old Ocean, 
 Si] ce some pre-human age when such as he had 
 motion.
 
 214 A SEA SYMPHONY. 
 
 Rude, sarnphired, pinnacled, great crags arise 
 Sheer from dull seas into low, dusky skies ; 
 And one, a ghostly giant, leans athwart 
 Twilight, to watch him wandering, huge and 
 
 swait ! 
 Through one wild arch in yonder cape wave- 
 
 v/orn 
 Expands a dreary infinite forlorn. 
 Infinite, pale, and dim and desolate, 
 Monotonous Ocean, with the Voice of Fate 
 Breathes homeless, helpless, and disconsolate. 
 Some sere, sparse mountain-bents moan shivering, 
 As the gust wearies them, and withered ling. 
 Near a path, pale with night that deepens round, 
 A ruinous gate stirs with an eerie sound. 
 Ah ! were it she who came to seek the child. 
 His mother ! with a piteous gesture wild 
 He turns and calls : alas ! she will not come ; 
 Dead mother knows not he is lost from home ! 
 Dusk flaps a heavy-flighted cormorant, 
 Whereat the timorous breast begins to pant : 
 "What dwarfed old man distorted threatens him ? 
 'Tis but a dry tree with blast-writhen limb !
 
 A SEA SYMPHONY. 215 
 
 Now, chill at heart, the little wanderer weeps. 
 And stumbles pale among the rugged steeps. 
 
 But God hath pity on a babe's despair : 
 For now he gains a summit ; unaware 
 There breaks upon his poor, tear-misted sight 
 A blissful vision of supreme delight ! 
 Cheery near lights of houses in the town ; 
 And cheery murmuring human tones are blown 
 Upon the wind towards him ! then the child 
 Thanked God who led him hither from the wild ; 
 Brushed ^Yith his hand the tears, and ran so fast ; 
 Clasped in his father's happy arms at last ! 
 
 IV. 
 
 Bbeeze. 
 
 Climb upon yonder ivied neck of rock, 
 
 Flanked with twin chasms, and hear unrestful shock 
 
 Of tidal water in the caves rebuffed, 
 
 "With fierce, impatient contumely cuffed, 
 
 Along the front of stern embattled coast, 
 
 Spal forth in spray from sombre innermost
 
 21G A SEA SYMPHONY. 
 
 Hollows ; and ever heaving blindly under, 
 
 Blundering in with subterranean thunder ! 
 
 Stumbling and fumbling, water in the caves, 
 
 Like a strange, sullen beast, assaults and braves 
 
 The rocky scorn for ever ; chafed to froth, 
 
 Bellowing snorts in impotent dull wrath ; 
 
 So famished beast prowls ever, thrusting snout 
 
 Under his bars, in pain till he break out. 
 
 Yea, this immortal, subtle, importunate Sea, 
 
 Conquers our stolid Earth implacably. 
 
 Though round our ruined shores He laugh and 
 
 dally, 
 Chafing for war his proud battalions rally. 
 See how the simmering wash of swelling wave 
 Feels all alive along rich ooze of cave ! 
 Yon grand expansive green hath belts to-day 
 Of blue and tawny, flecked with sparkling spray 
 By the brisk breeze that blows with cheerful play, 
 Wafting a merry crest in snowy smoke, 
 Glassed in the billow while it tossed and broke ! 
 And there is evermore a restless wreath 
 Around the innumerable sharp shark's teeth, 
 Black flames rough crusted, threatening fangs of 
 
 death.
 
 A. SEA SYMPHONY. 21" 
 
 Yonder, lo ! the tide is flowing ; 
 Clamber, while the breeze is blowing, 
 Down to where a soft foam flusters 
 Dulse and fairy feathery clusters ! 
 While it fills the shelly hollows, 
 A swift sister billow follows, 
 Leaps in hurrying with the tide, 
 Seems the lingering wave to chide ; 
 Both push on with eager life, 
 And a gurgling show of strife. 
 the salt, refreshing air 
 Shrilly blowing in the hair ! 
 A keen, healthful savour haunts 
 Sea-shell, sea-flower, and sea-plants. 
 Innocent billows on the strand 
 Leave a crystal over sand, 
 Whose thin ebbing soon is crossed 
 Of a crystal foam-enmossed, 
 Variegating silvergrey 
 Shell-ernpetalled sand in play : 
 When from sand dries off the brine, 
 Vanishes swift sbadow fine ; 
 But a wet sand is a ghiss 
 Where the plumy cloudlets pass,
 
 213 A SEA SYMPHONY. 
 
 Floating islands of the blue. 
 Tender, shining, fair, and true. 
 
 "Who would linger idle, 
 
 Dallying would lie, 
 
 When wind and wave, a bridal 
 
 Celebrating, fly ? 
 
 Let him plunge among them, 
 
 Who hath wooed enough, 
 
 Flirted with them, sung them ! 
 
 In the salt seatrough 
 
 He may win them, onward 
 
 On a buoyant crest, 
 
 Far to seaward, sunward, 
 
 Oceanborne to rest ! 
 
 Wild wind will sing over him. 
 
 And the free foam cover him, 
 
 Swimming seaward, sunward, 
 
 On a blithe sea-breast ! 
 
 On a blithe sea-bosom 
 
 Swims another too, 
 
 Swims a live sea-blossom, 
 
 A grey-winged seamew !
 
 A SEA SYMPHONY. 2-i'J 
 
 Grapegreen all tlie waves are, 
 
 By whose hurrying line 
 
 Half of ships and caves are 
 
 Buried under brine ; 
 
 Supple, shifting ranges 
 
 Lucent at the crest, 
 
 With pearly surface-changes 
 
 Never laid to rest : 
 
 Now a dipping gunwale 
 
 Momently he sees, 
 
 Now a fuming funnel, 
 
 Or red flag in the breeze. 
 
 Arms flung open wide, 
 
 Lip the laughing sea; 
 
 For playfellow, for bride, 
 
 Claim her impetuously ! 
 
 Triumphantly exult with all the free, 
 
 Buoyant bounding splendour of the sea ! 
 
 And if while on the billow 
 
 Wearily he lay, 
 
 His awful wild playfellow 
 
 Filled his mouth with spray, 
 
 Reft him of his breath.
 
 250 A SEA SYMPHONY. 
 
 To some far realms away 
 He would float with Death ; 
 Wild wind would sing over him, 
 And the free foam cover him, 
 Waft him sleeping onward, 
 Floating seaward, sunward, 
 All alone with Death ; 
 In a realm of wondrous dreams, 
 And shadow-haunted ocean gleams ! 
 
 North Devon. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 V 
 
 LONDON : PRINTED BY VIRTUE AND CO., CITY ROAD.
 
 £Jp tftf same &utf)or. 
 
 BEATRICE, 
 
 AND OTHER POEMS. 
 
 Fcap. 8vo, 7s. 
 
 OPINIONS OF THE PRESS, &c. 
 
 "... La distinction de votre Muse, soit qu'elle se developpe dans des 
 drames touchants, soit qu'elle se complaise a. de charmants paysages et a 
 des pieces exquises comme les June Roses, vous sentez tendrement la nature 
 et vous la rendez d'une maniere bien vive. II y a dans votre volume un 
 morceau a part et que des amis a qui je l'ai montre preferent a tout, e'est 
 ce petit chef-d'oeuvre de ' Ganymede' " — Sainte Benve. 
 
 " We confess to great pleasure in perusing this volume of poems. They 
 display very rare excellence, pregnant suggestions and ethereal beautv. The 
 delicate manipulations yet free movement of the true artist's pencil are seen in 
 all the writer's references to natural beautv. Great freshness and originality 
 characterize the hues which he has chosen to depict, the tone of the light, the 
 undertones and half-tones and vanishing lines of his pictures. But Mr. Noel 
 has not taken mere natural beauty as his theme. It is always made the clothing 
 to some strong human interest, often of intense and passionate feeling ; and it 
 is long since we have seen a volume of poems so full of the real stuff of which 
 we are made, and uttering so freely the deepest wants of this complicated age." 
 — British Quarterly Review. 
 
 " Every page is flooded with light and tint; even,- poem is a posy of vari- 
 coloured flowers. Few people will remain long in doubt that we have among 
 us another young writer of great originality and sweetness, whose specially 
 poetic faculty is as unmistakable as the taste of good Falernian or the smell of 
 a musk rose. . . . ' Ganymede,' an idyl thoroughly Greek, a bit of work which 
 reads like Theocritus in the original. Artistically a finished gem, it remains in 
 the eye like a small Turner." — Athen&um. 
 
 "It is impossible to read 'Beatrice' through without being powerfully 
 moved. There are passages in it which for intensity and tenderness, clear 
 and vivid vision, spontaneous and delicate sympathy, may be compared with 
 the best efforts of our best living writers." — Spectator. 
 
 " Mr. Noel is an original poet of a high order, possessing in addition to 
 imaginative insight, a lyrical faculty of exceeding depth and sweetness, and 
 a sensitiveness to mere colour which is perhaps unexampled among recent 
 writers. . . 'Pan' and 'Ganymede' alone entitle Mr. Noel to a place among 
 living poets." — London Review. 
 
 " Beatrice is the heroine of a true love story of great delicacy, power, and 
 passion, in which the author shows his entire mastery of many different kinds 
 of verse, and his intimate acquaintance with the broader workings of human 
 nature. It is a story of power and beauty, told as a poet only can tell it." — 
 Standard. 
 
 " Mr. Noel must be recognised as endowed with that delicacy of perception, 
 that peculiar power of receiving and imparting ideal impression, which are 
 marks of the born poet. He excels in delicate colour, floating suggestiveness, 
 and dreamy imaginative beauty. The following lines from ' Summer Clouds 
 and a Swan ' are probably as exquisite as any word-picture in the English 
 language. . . ."—Guardian. 
 
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