A 
 
 A 
 
 
 
 
 
 3 
 6 
 8 
 
 6 
 8 
 
 
 5 
 
 %A 
 
 w>. 
 
 MMWMW 
 
 
 AT/1 
 
 *v ill -? - 
 
 
 4Qk 
 
 
 
 .^WPWMWWWWWW^^WWW** 
 
 i I 
 
 «#MWWMMfeMM«MAVWIII 
 
 .» *■»!»»» ■»»■»■ w »»■»»■» i " . i ww i > i»i >i w i<w »tww »i »i i»>ww>*»'iw»******<W 
 
 imtmm tn m
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE 
 
 OF 
 
 LOS 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 CALIFORNIA 
 ANGELES
 
 SEARCHING THE NET
 
 
 tut***.* ^^^ ) 
 
 /?^<j C^ 
 
 <?/U^< J-fcX^X c/cl^^U 

 
 SEARCHING THE NET 
 
 3 Uooli of Verses 
 
 By JOHN LEICESTER WARREN 
 
 AUTHOR OF ' PHILOCTETES ' 
 
 " Searching the net of sense which binds us in." 
 
 Old Play 
 
 STKAIIW & CO 
 g6, LUDGATE HILL, LONDON
 
 TR1NTED BY TAYLOR AND CO., 
 LITTLE QUEEN STREET, LINCOLN'S INN FIELDS.
 
 
 CONTEXTS. 
 
 1'AliE. 
 
 THE DEFEAT OF GLORY I 
 
 THE BIRD OF MY LOVE 22 
 
 \ MIDDLE-CLASS TRAGEDY 2 S 
 
 LOVE SHADOWS •; 
 
 AN OCEAN GRAVE A-i 
 
 OPHELIA -O 
 
 sk;h heart, break not r 4 
 
 IRATED FORTUNES 56 
 
 A RENINc [ATION eg 
 
 1 ID REDBREAST 62 
 
 RETROSPECT 64 
 
 AN AUTUMN SERENADl 
 
 A 1 \ki w 1 1 1 - 1 

 
 VI CONTENTS. 
 
 pa(;e. 
 THE CARDINAL'S LAMENT 76 
 
 MEDEA 92 
 
 nature's renewing 109 
 
 JAEL 112 
 
 a sketch at evening 1 28 
 
 nemesis 130 
 
 rural evening 137 
 
 one view of worship . 141 
 
 a meeting and advice 147 
 
 the two old kings 152 
 
 arrow of love 1 66 
 
 ode to the sun 172 
 
 a madrigal 1 82 
 
 the garden of delight 1 87 
 
 in sicily i90 
 
 the shepherd and the hireling . . . . 1 96 
 at the council 1 99
 
 THE DEFEAT OF GLORY. 
 
 Porphyry beams dull-rosy in their light, 
 With architraves of alabaster cold, 
 
 And column-heads expanding into slight 
 Long arabesques of intertwisting gold ; 
 
 Along the ceiling runs the giant war, 
 And Jove in lurid halo ; all his hand, 
 
 Poising to hurl Enceladus afar, 
 
 Red with the min of the Titan band. 
 
 So stately is the chamber, where a King, 
 Feeble, in dim eclipse of human power, 
 
 Lies, with dull orbs or slowly widening 
 Eyelids, to stare away the vacant hour. 
 
 B
 
 2 THE DEFEAT OF GLORY. 
 
 The couch of death is glorious where he lies ; 
 
 Its silver canopies forbid the rays. 
 Sun, shine not on his pillow till he dies, — 
 
 Time's tyrant once, and emperor of days ! 
 
 Though all his precinct glitter to its roof, 
 Tho' regal the surroundings of his end, 
 
 No palace-floors are ever phantom-proof 
 When shadows of a greater King ascend. 
 
 The pale hours of the dawning at his bed 
 Bend each in turn to pity him and pass, 
 
 Who drave his hook in nations. Now, instead, 
 Moans are the only edicts that he has. 
 
 Alone some weary sighing in his rest 
 
 Invades the calmness of his face asleep — 
 
 So, when day's beacon embers in red west, 
 An awful rumour heaves the wailing deep.
 
 THE DEFEAT OF GLORY. 
 
 Sleep, broken thing of glory, wreck of kings, 
 A dubious sleep of waning pulses bred ; 
 
 Sleep, as thou art, a scorn to living things, 
 Derision to the dumb and patient dead ! 
 
 Once at thy feet great princes crawled in mire. 
 
 Thy face for wonderment and worship was 
 To these as Phoebus, helmed with early fire, 
 
 Raying his intervals of ocean-glass. 
 
 i 
 
 O faded eyes untouched with royal light, 
 
 I earj lips without desire of wine or bread ; 
 ( > silent features folded with the night 
 Wherein is no man's deed remembered. 
 
 Thy gold i> (hanged to dross, thy rose to weed ; 
 
 Thy raiment is the grave's sepulchral sh 
 They push thee where no lute shall praise thy deed, 
 
 They fold thy yellow hands and parchment feet.
 
 4 THE DEFEAT OF GLORY. 
 
 In silk and silver blue thy reign begins , 
 
 Thine end is sore ; and surely stricken worse, 
 
 Than that goat limping to the sea of sins, 
 Sick with the burthen of a nation's curse. 
 
 If one keen ray thy lattice enters round, 
 
 Thy loathing eyeballs ache, are troubled, weep. 
 
 Thou groanest, tho' no man hath given thee wound, 
 And thou art drowsy yet for all thy sleep. 
 
 The orange urns around thy colonnade, 
 With heavy odour call the rover bee. 
 
 But thou art ague-broken, and afraid 
 
 Where no fear is ; what are such things to thee ? 
 
 Thine ears retain no murmur from the street ; 
 
 To thee dim rain is one with earnest noon ; 
 Thy dull brain cannot catch the perfume sweet, 
 
 When the field deepens into perfect June.
 
 THE DEFEAT OF GLORY. 5 
 
 The record of thy days becomes a blot ; 
 
 The yearling infant calls its sister's name. 
 O princely phantom, with thy fame forgot, 
 
 Move, if thou canst, thy lips and do the same. 
 
 Thy white hands only tremble on the sheet, 
 Tho' thy Praetorian legions watch around, 
 
 And under echoing archways in the heat 
 The feet of many sentinels resound. 
 
 All night the melancholy bugle calls, 
 
 All hours goes on the guardian soldier's pace. 
 
 Arms clash at dawn within the warrior halls, 
 And drums in thunder wake the market-place. 
 
 And chamberlains in muffled anteroom 
 Enter on velvet insteps, " Will he last ? " 
 
 The whisper goes, " Another week of gloom, 
 Must our horizon still be overcast ? "
 
 6 THE DEFEAT OF GLORY. 
 
 " Must this old darkness yet in heaven remain ? 
 
 New orb of gold ascend, the time is weak ; 
 Thy sweet young ray is ready and we are fain ; 
 
 On radiant feet these chaining vapours break ! " 
 
 " Shall this unworthy remnant of a throne 
 Perplex our statists with his lingering breath ? 
 
 Shall his heirs wait nor dare to clutch their own, 
 Watching a sire's most tedious feud with death?" 
 
 " Shall he entombed be emperor of them, 
 
 Shall this dust threaten and these bones command ? 
 
 Must his hoar brows usurp a diadem, 
 
 Shall he play tyrant with a palsied hand ? " 
 
 So runs upon their lips thine epitaph ; 
 
 The men whom thou hast benched and warmed 
 with meat, 
 These utter abjects hear thy name and laugh, 
 
 Mere river-flies hatched in thine empire's heat.
 
 THE DEFEAT OF GLORY. 7 
 
 And this disdain is fallen to thy last days, — 
 Who wast alone for glory, with thy throne 
 
 Built as a rock in sides of pleasant ways — 
 That all men tire of thee and wish thee gone. 
 
 Therefore, I hold the dead are more than kings : 
 They are not cold or hungry or dismayed. 
 
 They dwell together where no morning springs, 
 They waken to no toil, and are not paid 
 
 At even-tide with wage. No maiden's word 
 
 Hath given them mirth. At no lord's yoke they 
 weep. 
 
 The song of love their silence never heard, 
 Their feet are tangled in deep nets of sleep. 
 
 God hath discarded them as broken things ; 
 
 They shall not hear, descending from his throne, 
 Some angel with great amber sweep of wings. 
 
 He hath chidden them out as abjects from his own.
 
 8 THE DEFEAT OF GLORY. 
 
 Yea, earth is weary that they were at all, 
 
 And heaven remembers not that they have been. 
 
 The pale grass hangs above them like a wall. 
 Dim is their chamber and their hall unseen. 
 
 Therefore, old king, thy bed shall be seven-fold 
 More bitter, strewn with theirs ; because thou must 
 
 For all thy beaming gates and treasure-hold 
 Gain at God's hand some inches of red dust. 
 
 Yea, as dry boughs of some dismembered tree, 
 Numb from thy nape to thy heels buskin-shod, 
 
 Thy shrouded limbs and side-bound hands shall be 
 Crushed down in darkness from the face of God. 
 
 Yea, that white fluttered seraph-choir of his 
 Hate thy lean bones as terrors ; ay, they dread 
 
 To unbind the banded jaws, and eye-places 
 Where the balls wither inward at the head.
 
 THE DEFEAT OF GLORY. 
 
 And, ere this come, such toil of heavy breath 
 By this old royal phantom runs to worse 
 
 Than yon gaunt image of sepulchral death ; 
 Life is a garment burning like a curse, 
 
 When weary pulses flicker in disease, 
 
 And Pain draws tortured Reason from its seat ; 
 
 To anguish and an age of maladies 
 
 Is not the grave a rest supremely sweet ? 
 
 Better to sleep in barrows, where young lambs 
 Feed and repose in daisies o'er the dead, 
 
 Where, moving with a chime of necks, their dams 
 Graze round the belfry silent overhead. 
 
 Where in among the fleeces of the sheep, 
 
 Tike small and burnished rooks, the starlings call, 
 
 Between black crosses in the field of sleep, 
 And make the mild spring weather musical.
 
 10 THE DEFEAT OF GLORY. 
 
 Leave this bright dream ; return, with bated breath 
 Enter the shrouded palace where he dies ; 
 
 Say, can the splendid precinct of his death 
 Like one field daisy soothe thine aching eyes, 
 
 Sick with all human artifice of gold ? 
 
 The need of nature deepens in a breast 
 That, having laid its dead in hallowed mould, 
 
 Loathing at fame, finds nature comfort best. 
 
 All things are doomed and alter from their birth. 
 
 Man sighs at eve who rose at morn to sing. 
 Gaze on this couch, and answer ; is it worth 
 
 A loaf, a leaf, one feather to be king ? 
 
 O'er thee sour ^sculapian vultures stoop, 
 And heirs with greedy eyes peruse thy bed ; 
 
 And itching fingers feel each signet hoop, 
 And eager chins examine, "Is he dead ? "
 
 THE DEFEAT OF GLORY. II 
 
 He is not dead, if one lean lifted hand 
 
 Redeem him from thy nations, king of sleep — 
 
 As some brown sea-weed on the margin strand, 
 Torn from the inmost gardens of the deep, 
 
 Attains with earthly flowers no root or rest, 
 Rut lies and festers among sand and surge ; 
 
 The burnished breakers hither heave and crest, 
 
 There haggard darnels taste the east wind's scourge. 
 
 Life in blue armour, crowned with ardent hair, 
 
 Hath scorned this outworn wreck of human breath, 
 
 And flung him out beyond her temple stair 
 To wait the rising of the floods of death. 
 
 5 dying out, tho' under stately fanes, 
 The arch-priest wrestles for his monarch still 
 
 -litanies ; he is faint and wanes ; 
 He is meaner than the lizard on the hill,
 
 12 THE DEFEAT OF GLORY. 
 
 Who sniffs the early air with lithe grey throat, 
 Whose wild eyes taste the increase of the morn ; 
 
 Who sees her olive interspaces float, 
 In rims of ardent amber newly born. 
 
 God folds away his night and calls the red ; 
 
 The creeping thing hath pleasure in his deed. 
 In these dim eyes where reason's light is dead, 
 
 The rose-bud is one colour with the reed. 
 
 As some old branch neglects its foliage lost, 
 The hand of him forgets its early power. 
 
 As some grey garden-plot in utter frost, 
 
 Whence all is starved, except a bitter flower, 
 
 Which lingers in mid-winter's extreme cold, 
 When wholesome herbs are perished long ago. 
 
 So lives his lettered name, in imaged gold 
 His picture, his long titles in a row.
 
 THE DEFEAT OF GLORY. 13 
 
 Mock him with sounding pomp no more. In vain 
 Number to him no nations, where he is 
 
 By name as God incarnate. Ah, refrain 
 The irony of bending knees to this ! 
 
 The wear}' sunbeams crawl themselves away. 
 
 The walls are laned with shadow in the moon. 
 He is almost gone, each turn of night and day, 
 
 He wanes from swoon to sleep, from dream to swoon ; 
 
 As scribes are busy in great parchment scrolls 
 To set his acts and annals chronicled ; 
 
 And paint large letters all along the rolls, 
 Gold for his glory, for his warfare red. 
 
 They count the array of chariots, as he fought, 
 His wives, his tankards curious at carouse; 
 
 His captives, the wrought lions of his court, 
 His archers ; all the increase of his house,
 
 14 THE DEFEAT OF GLORY. 
 
 His chests of sewn work, armour arrow-proof, 
 His daedal girdles, and unwoven bales 
 
 Of crisp wool ready for his hand-maid's woof, 
 His hammered bowls, their topaz-headed nails ; 
 
 The woven strewings of his mirrored floors, 
 The keen root-dust, that, mingled in his wines, 
 
 Arose an incense over corridors 
 
 To ceilings made as heaven with twelve great signs. 
 
 And it ran in their writing, how the vines 
 Seemed ripened in the favour of his word. 
 
 He had goodly horse to lead in battle-lines, 
 Upon all nations he unsheathed one sword. 
 
 And bound his net on their imperious head, 
 And wound around them evil as a toil ; 
 
 And laid their rugged lips of laughter dead, 
 And meted out their empire into spoil.
 
 THE DEFEAT OF GLORY. 15 
 
 To the firm west he flung a blast of war, 
 On the light east he strengthened his array ; 
 
 " All men are foes, who yet unconquered are, 
 My faulchion holds a rebel world at bay," 
 
 He cried, almighty in his silver hall ; 
 
 Peace knew his smile, his frown concluded death. 
 At his approach the watch-tower on the wall 
 
 Trembled, the rampart melted at his breath. 
 
 Into the sun-death raught his empire bounds ; 
 
 Far to his foot-stool from the dawning place 
 Came orient kings to watch his eyes, as hounds, 
 
 Who whimper chidden before a master's face. 
 
 In virgin waves his mariners held oars. 
 His merchants traded in secluded fairs. 
 
 Strange Triton gods beheld thro' temple door- 
 I !. ils, as floated sea-birds, unawares.
 
 l6 THE DEFEAT OF GLORY. 
 
 His multitude of rowing sailors sate 
 
 Strong-handed in their benches. The black deep 
 In bitter furrows hoarse against them. Fate 
 
 Ready to whelm them in each water-heap. 
 
 Yet in the teeth of death with wrist and arm 
 
 They pushed a passage on. The blind wind died 
 
 Vexed at their masterdom. The surf ran calm, 
 Or washed faint edges on the galley's side. 
 
 Till, where the hungry deep wrought yesterday, 
 Are laid its morsels, violet water-shells, 
 
 And starry orange creatures of the spray, 
 
 And leathery bladder-weeds with egg-like cells ; 
 
 And washed mosaics out of wave-worn floors, 
 And limpet shells unanchored from rock root, 
 
 With small dried rearing horse-heads, on the shores, 
 By prickly balls of sea, like chestnut fruit ;
 
 THE DEFEAT OF GLORY. 1J 
 
 And drifts of nether ocean rough in thom — 
 All sea-wrack wafted harvest ; lord, for thee 
 
 The villagers gleaned coral-branches torn 
 In far deeps from the rosy mother tree. 
 
 And red-grey fisher-cities, terraced in 
 
 With bushes on some broken headland's face, 
 
 Drew dowrt each dawn their grating keels to win 
 The shell reserved for princes and their race. 
 
 So thou didst bathe thy mantle in its dyes ; 
 
 The bearded murex for thy purple bled : 
 Thou safest sanguine as the sunset skies, 
 
 With bands of burning jewels on thy head ; 
 
 ome were almost slain to gaze on thee, 
 In thy full royalty and glory seat ; 
 Strong men, in spirit melting utterly, 
 
 Beheld with failing knees and feeble feet.
 
 l8 THE DEFEAT OF GLORY. 
 
 All sea-deeps to thy pilots lay revealed, 
 As to a husbandman ; who, spring and fall, 
 
 Has ploughed and sown one sour unyielding field, 
 Noting each nook and corner of it all. 
 
 They learnt the secret teeth of every shoal, 
 
 The reef-guards round each treasure isle of main, 
 
 Whose mountain sides the miner like a mote 
 Enters to dig the beryl in his vein. 
 
 They sought sweet calamus in reedy wands, 
 And capes with spice-trees under their ravines ; 
 
 And orchard havens up in austere lands 
 
 To bring strange berries to delight thy queens. 
 
 Or thy slow mules toiled down some mountain stair 
 Where all the cliffs are broken, and with shocks 
 
 The ice-wind flaps the barren steep, in bare 
 Heaven and the lonely fields of tumbled rocks.
 
 THE DEFEAT OF GLORY. 19 
 
 Strange oil they brought thee from no olive tree ; 
 
 Where float the frozen islands thou didst man 
 Thy boats to row Cimmerian glooms of sea 
 
 And fling the barb against leviathan. 
 
 And from secluded gardens of the east, 
 
 They found thee singing children, blue at eyes, 
 
 Bright as the rain is, beautiful ; the least 
 Among them worth a city's ransom price. 
 
 They bought sleek girls with silver to thy will, 
 And thou didst take thy joy with each of these. 
 
 Their voices were as some low chiming rill. 
 Their stature as a hedge of almond-trees. 
 
 So like a moon thy soul shone lifted up, 
 
 Bj reason, of thy dainties, and it said, 
 " The incense of a world perfumes mj cup, 
 
 The wheat of empires ambers foi my bread.
 
 20 THE DEFEAT OF GLORY. 
 
 " God hath set morning lights for me in heaven 
 To quicken my uprising ; he unbinds 
 
 The sweet rain in my homage : mine the seven 
 Great northern stars, mine the four region winds. 
 
 " I yoke all nations on my wagon wheel ; 
 
 All fruit of earth is mine ; all bales as well 
 The strong ships carry ; all thou dost conceal 
 
 Their gray gigantic sea unsearchable. 
 
 " All toil and increase to my feet are brought ; 
 
 My palace is a cage, where each delight 
 Dwells ; as a bright bird hunted down and caught 
 
 To sleek her pretty feathers in my sight. 
 
 " All spirits, bond and free, are mine to use ; 
 
 I make all seasons sweet to my desire. 
 And when the hard frost lies, where lay soft dews, 
 
 In every winter-house a cedar fire
 
 THE DEFEAT OF GLORY. 21 
 
 " Lends gracious heat : you would not guess the year 
 That pushes icy shoulders at the doors 
 
 Of poor men's huts. A land of bloom is here 
 Weaving an ample summer on my floors. 
 
 " Against the ruddy lamp of my renown, 
 As some great Pharos light in stormy heaven, 
 
 The lesser princedoms shatter wildly blown. 
 
 And rend their helmless realms, as foam is riven. 
 
 " I am set for God, to rivet or unwind, 
 To establish or remove at my decree. 
 
 1 alter and abolish, break or bind ; 
 Shall any power perplex my deity? 
 
 " I am for ever ; no decay makes wan 
 
 The eternal crown that gleams against my brow 
 
 Death is my bondsman, Tain my wage-woman, 
 Age is at league with me." Behold thee now '
 
 22 
 
 THE BIRD OF MY LOVE. 
 
 Thou wilt not hearken, though I weep 
 Hot tears against thy folded hands ; 
 
 Though Love, this exile bird we keep, 
 Sits pining for his radiant lands ; 
 
 Sick of some tiny fleck or mote, 
 
 He never sings us now a single note. 
 
 He hangs his head, his eyelids close, 
 
 The gloss is faded on his wing ; 
 So broken down he seems with woes, 
 
 He may not pipe us anything. 
 I call ; his pale lips quiver loth j 
 Is then his song all over for us both ?
 
 THE BIRD OF MY LOVE. _'j 
 
 Thy captive, his were early chains, 
 
 The noose was laid of woven hairs ; 
 Thy tame bird, he would count the grains 
 
 Thy pity gave him unawares. 
 He was bound in with golden bars, 
 Till he forgot the weather and the stars. 
 
 All day he saw thee near his cage ; 
 
 To watch thee, moving or in rest, 
 Became the poor bird's only wage ; 
 
 When thy hand fed him he was best. 
 He gave thee every note and trill, 
 And piped his little welcome with a will. 
 
 And so he sang till yesterday, — 
 
 Came to the bars with many a bend ; 
 His music made the old soft way, 
 
 Till sleep fell on him, and the end. 
 Laid in his sand now, cold and grey, 
 Interpret me his latest huney-lay.
 
 24 THE BIRD OF MY LOVE. 
 
 I think he sang, "I am only thine, 
 
 I am broken if thou leavest me ; 
 I faint if thou art gone, divine ; 
 
 This is no prison if near thee. 
 My heart floods out to thee in song, 
 And in thy smile my melody is strong. 
 
 " Take freedom, God's own gift on all, — 
 Remove Heaven's joy, and leave me none ; 
 
 Take light, life's highest festival, 
 
 And leave me blind beneath the sun 
 
 To do thy bidding, sweet, all day, 
 
 Take all except thy dearest self away." 
 
 We kept him caged, and he is dead. 
 
 We did unwisely, doing so ; 
 Between his prison wires was shed 
 
 A meadow breath, which laid him low. 
 He loved thee much, but pined unseen, 
 And brake his heart when woods grew tender green.
 
 THE BIRD OF MY LOVE. J5 
 
 Love is thy cage-bird, like to die ; 
 
 He mopes, is weary, must begone ; 
 He finds no favour in thine eye, 
 
 Or answer in thine altered tone. 
 Thy god will pine as pined the bird, — 
 Each gave free heaven away for thy sweet word. 
 
 O changeful queen of many wiles, 
 
 Why lure and tend me for a whim, 
 And waste thy hundred pretty smiles 
 
 A season, till the love grows dim 
 Between thy rose lips unawares? 
 Fickle, they change. Unaltered I am theirs. 
 
 Doth all love end in weariness ? 
 
 The music falters in his string ; 
 The arms grow faint in their caress, 
 
 Which bound me like a marriage ring. 
 What have I failed in then, my sweet, 
 That I must weep for pity at thy feet?
 
 26 THE BIRD OF MY LOVE. 
 
 At light offence Love opens wing, 
 
 For sorry reason he will go ; 
 At straws, which casual breezes fling 
 
 Against his feet, his angers glow. 
 In all my thought I cannot touch 
 One crime, save loving thee, my love, too much. 
 
 Bid me begone, but tell me why, 
 
 That I may mend what is amiss. 
 Love, I am patient ; earnestly 
 
 I will search out and alter this. 
 Reprove, and I will earn new praise, 
 Increasing due observance of love's ways. 
 
 Thy frown is like a winter house, 
 
 Laid eastward in a bitter land, 
 Whose roads are full of frozen boughs, 
 
 And rough in ruts of snow and sand ; 
 In white chains hangs the spider's woof, 
 Where keen winds freeze in ice-teeth at my roof.
 
 THE BIRD OF MY LOVE. 2J 
 
 There heaven is stayed from dew, and dry 
 
 The ice-sheet saws upon the reeds. 
 The wind is up with a wailing cry, 
 
 The deep has wrought and flung its weeds. 
 The blotted sun went long ago, 
 And the stained cliffs are keen in furrowed snow. 
 
 I have been weary with such days ; 
 
 Let this grey change to rose again. 
 Indeed, but it shall dim thy praise 
 
 To leave me out in sweeping rain. 
 My spring waits only thy command, 
 The seasons of my soul are in thy hand. 
 
 The iron day declines. The flower 
 
 Returns in seams of mountain grey ; 
 Fresh leaves adorn the faded bower ; 
 
 And Spring, who gave his lute away. 
 Above blue bands of wintry night 
 Arises in a fan of blinding light !
 
 28 
 
 A MIDDLE-CLASS TRAGEDY. 
 
 Lonely I went by a highway-road track 
 
 Threading a desolate level ; 
 Leafless the hedges, the herbage lay black, 
 
 Fit for swine flocks of the devil. 
 
 Nothing less evil such pasture could tread : 
 
 Drosses and dregs of the city 
 Broad-cast abolished the clover, and spread 
 
 In a vitriol scum without pity. 
 
 Here they had flayed the field-faces for brick, 
 Here the black sails of great mills 
 
 Flapped round in ruins, despondently sick, 
 Strident, rehearsing their ills.
 
 A MIDDLE-CLASS TRAGEDY. 29 
 
 Near them a woman sat making her moan, 
 
 Deep in the slow-creeping glooms. 
 A hedge at her back and her feet on a stone, 
 
 Pale as a tenant of tombs. 
 
 I was a penman without coin or birth, 
 Chained to a desk with a quill. 
 
 " Nobody needs me the least upon earth, 
 If I save her some one will. 
 
 " Some one I need to expect me at eve, 
 
 Some one to love me of right, 
 To drudge all the week for, that she may receive 
 
 A pound more on Saturday night. 
 
 "A weed! well, no matter: the weed bloom is sweet, 
 
 A stray ! who am I to complain? 
 So only she love me, I'll kneel to her feet, 
 
 1 orgetting their highway stain.
 
 30 A MIDDLE-CLASS TRAGEDY. 
 
 " Who without scorn there had passed thee ? Not one. 
 
 Faded, O love, was thine eye. 
 Frozen almost in the rain-blast alone, 
 
 Cherish her, lest she may die." 
 
 Past rode a banker, his hat-brim was wide ; 
 
 Sleek came a Levite in view, 
 Crossed at a trot to the opposite side, 
 
 Sniffing his tithe over-due. 
 
 Knaves, let them go ; their abhorrence is praise, 
 
 Scorning that greatens my prize. 
 Swine are these, folded with fat round their face ; 
 
 Sweet, O my pearl, then arise. 
 
 Let me recover this thing on my lips, 
 
 Utterly mine, loved of none. 
 Let my life cherish her dead finger tips ; 
 
 Let my blood make her pulse run.
 
 A MIDDLE-CLASS TRAGEDY. JI 
 
 Live for her only that she may have mirth, 
 
 1 )erelict, waif of the night ; 
 Birthright I've none like the choice of the earth ; 
 
 I )elicate things are their right. 
 
 Firm in one counsel I builded my nest, 
 Mine is she now, that was vile ; 
 
 Utterly mine, what she was matters least, 
 Let the world sneer, I can smile. 
 
 Love I had need of, and ever so great 
 Will to give love where I chose : 
 
 Training my fancy to baffle my fate, 
 Perfect she seemed as a rose. 
 
 Lovely I held her, tho' faded indeed. 
 
 Queen of all wifedom and love ; 
 On sweet delusion I feasted my need. 
 
 Till my soul freshened and throve.
 
 32 A MIDDLE-CLASS TRAGEDY. 
 
 Till a rich neighbour in mischievous play, 
 
 Satyr and exquisite, chose 
 Once, like a lurcher, to loiter my way, 
 
 Feeling his track by his nose. 
 
 Cried, " Who is she, that this boor of a clerk 
 
 Treasures so close in his nest ? 
 Of all sweet birds flocking in to my ark 
 
 Surely his ring-dove is best. 
 
 " Why should he smooth her sleek feathers alone, 
 
 Why this monopoly claim ? 
 Pipe to her, fowler, thy mellowest tone, 
 
 Tice her, then trample her tame." 
 
 So to her ear he trilled poison, till she 
 
 Said, " I am all that he sings ; 
 Coarse is my master, plebeian ; but he 
 
 Lovely, begotten of kings.
 
 A MIDDLE-CLASS TRAGEDY. 33 
 
 " Will he not love me in houses of gold ? 
 
 Hateful this hovel of clay ; 
 Here I sit penned like a sheep to my fold ; 
 
 Shall I mope longer a day ? 
 
 " New lover noble, my true lover strong, 
 
 Make me thine own till we die. 
 Let this old scarecrow to whom I belong 
 
 A\"histle, his cage-bird will fly. 
 
 " There you will wrap me in raiment and wreaths, 
 
 Feed me with beautiful flowers ; 
 1 >ays in this cabin are so many deaths, 
 
 Ashes and fetters my hours. 
 
 " Chained to his desk my love, ragged indeed, 
 
 Leans ; well he loved me at least. 
 Look at my lord on his wing-footed steed 
 
 Chasing in crimson the beast. 
 
 i>
 
 34 A MIDDLE-CLASS TRAGEDY. 
 
 " Is he not beautiful, utterly fair, 
 
 Carelessly sweet his caress ? 
 Is not my clerk out-at-elbows, threadbare, 
 
 Pinching to buy me a dress ? 
 
 *' Kind enough always, poor indigent soul ! 
 
 Ah ! but that other, a god, 
 Leads me, and loves me, and seems to control 
 
 Life with a finger, a nod ! 
 
 *' Grey love, adieu ! See, I wave you a hand ! 
 
 Drive on in patience your quill : 
 Life to a bountiful river expand ; 
 
 Here it ran cramped to a rill." 
 
 So, like a flash, she fled off to his towers, 
 
 Over the river-wood there. 
 Fed here awhile in his precinct of flowers 
 
 Queen, and immortally fair.
 
 A MIDDLE-CLASS TRAGEDY. 35 
 
 Lo, what befell in his palace of light ! 
 
 Love in a week became pain. 
 Till he cried, " Pack thee out, wench, to the night, 
 
 Rot in the ditch or the drain. 
 
 " Why, thou art ugly as Erebus seen 
 
 Near, plain as death to my view ; 
 Wasted thy cheek, and I thought thee a queen, 
 
 The other fool made such ado. 
 
 " Push her out hastily, night-chill begins ; 
 
 Stifle her petulant breath. 
 Forth as my scape-goat go freighted with sins 
 
 Crawl to the waters of death. 
 
 " Wise-working Nature ordains me scot-free ; 
 
 She for my sin dies ; it's well. 
 She is no firstling of kids sent by me, 
 
 Down salt dry reaches of hell. 
 
 d 2
 
 36 A MIDDLE-CLASS TRAGEDY. 
 
 "First? no, nor last. Tis an excellent game ; 
 
 This wise old world will have play. 
 So it transfers to her shoulders the blame 
 
 Out of a nobleman's way. 
 
 " World, on sweet hinges, run lightly and smooth, 
 
 Feed us, the poor ones will pay ! 
 Primest of pasturage beckon our tooth ! 
 
 Rot, thou jade, till the last day ! " 
 
 Out she was pushed by a varlet in black : 
 
 Warned it was penal to linger : 
 Feathers and lace on her head and her back, 
 
 Rings raying fire round her finger. 
 
 So, the tale runs, he has ruined my life, 
 
 For a week's pastime, it's clear. 
 He, a great nobleman, covets my wife, 
 
 Clerk on a hundred a year.
 
 37 
 
 "LOVE SHADOWS." 
 
 Soul of love, life's only light, 
 Near thee, clothed in thy delight, 
 
 The dreaming of one dream of pain 
 Hath wakened me unblest. 
 
 Ay, and rest is near thee sweet ; 
 But one dream-word will repeat 
 Sullen echoes, sad as rain, 
 In sorrow on my rest. 
 
 And a whisper comes and goes 
 As mine eyelids vainly close, 
 
 "Time thy darling's cheek will stain. 
 Years thy love may test."
 
 38 "love shadows." 
 
 " Love endures not locks of grey. 
 Time, my lovers, looks your way, 
 Angry that ye are so fain, 
 
 He creeps to spoil your nest." 
 
 Time is wroth because I steal 
 Waxen lips for my love's seal ; 
 That thy kisses are as dew, 
 As faint warm gales thy sighs. 
 
 Thou art lovely in each word, 
 With ways gentler than a bird ; 
 Thy delight is always new 
 As hunger or sun-rise. 
 
 Time the serpent lies concealed 
 In the city, by the field ; 
 
 We are clay beneath his hand 
 To leave and hate our joys.
 
 " LOVE SHADOWS." 39 
 
 Time an adder lurks and glides 
 In Love's pleasant pasture-sides, 
 
 He hears vows many as the sand, 
 Broken soon as toys. 
 
 Time and Farewell hand in hand, 
 As sighing reeds, grey shadows stand 
 And whisper, " life is not more dear 
 Than this nest they have strown ; 
 
 " Can he leave her ? " Farewell sighs, 
 " I will rend them tho' each dies ; 
 
 One boy's trouble, one maid's tear 
 Are nothing ; both mine own ! 
 
 " This girl is pretty as she lies 
 With the tear half in her eyes ; 
 
 And he seems, as if her breath 
 Made his own heart go.
 
 40 " LOVE SHADOWS." 
 
 "Time my brother, Death my friend, 
 Each relent ; I never bend ; 
 
 Tho' I seem less hard than Death, 
 I am utter steel and snow. 
 
 " I bring fair faces to grey dust, 
 I change to loathing maiden trust, 
 
 As pear-bloom crumbles under rain ; 
 I, Farewell, can do this. 
 
 " For Love I bargain ; he is sold. 
 I alter sweet lips into cold. 
 
 I rend as Death does, and my pain 
 Is terrible as his. 
 
 "I let live but I can teach 
 Two souls, aching each for each, 
 To live and never meet again, 
 To love and never kiss."
 
 " LOVE SHADOWS." 41 
 
 So the shadow seemed to say, 
 And melted on the morning ray, 
 
 And I turne 1, and found my Pearl 
 Sweeter for surprise. 
 
 Night is long and dreams are fleet ; 
 I will deem their visions, sweet, 
 Light as that least ripple curl, 
 That on thy temple lies. 
 
 Hold in mine thy rose lips fast ; 
 Who shall say which kisses last ? 
 
 What, tho' weeping-ripe, my girl, 
 Smile thro' rainy eyes. 
 
 Love me ; spring goes ; every hour 
 Beats out petals from the flower. 
 
 What, dear heart, if love be shed 
 Under foot as soon ?
 
 42 " LOVE SHADOWS." 
 
 Shall the rolling month lay mute 
 Honey word and tender suit? 
 Shall the discord of the dead 
 Alter all Love's tune ? 
 
 Ah, we know not ; but indeed 
 It may sweeten true Love's need, 
 Hearing near a phantom tread, 
 Black in golden noon.
 
 
 43 
 
 AN OCEAN GRAVE. 
 
 My Love lies in the gates of foam, 
 The last dear wreck of shore ; 
 
 The naked sea-marsh binds her home, 
 The sand her chamber door. 
 
 The grey gulls flap the written stones, 
 The ox-birds chase the tide ; 
 
 And near that narrow field of bones 
 Great ships at anchor ride. 
 
 Black piers with crust of dripping green, 
 
 One foreland, like a hand, 
 O'er intervals of grass between 
 
 Grey lonely dunes of sand.
 
 44 AN OCEAN GRAVE. 
 
 A church of silent weathered looks, 
 
 A breezy reddish tower, 
 A yard whose mounded resting-nooks 
 
 Are tinged with sorrel flower. 
 
 In peace the swallow's eggs are laid 
 
 Along the belfry walls ; 
 The tempest does not reach her shade, 
 The rain her silent halls. 
 
 But sails are sweet in summer sky, 
 The lark throws down a lay ; 
 
 The long salt levels steam and dry, 
 The cloud-heart melts away. 
 
 But patches of the sea-pink shine, 
 The pied crows poise and come ; 
 
 The mallow hangs, the bind-weeds twine, 
 Where her sweet lips are dumb.
 
 AN OCEAN GRAVE. 45 
 
 The passion of the wave is mute ; 
 
 No sound or ocean shock ; 
 No music save the trilling flute 
 
 That marks the curlew flock. 
 
 But yonder when the wind is keen, 
 
 And rainy air is clear, 
 The merchant city's spires are seen, 
 The toil of men grows near. 
 
 Along the coast-way grind the wheels 
 
 Of endless carts of coal ; 
 And on the sides of giant keels 
 
 The shipyard hammers roll. 
 
 The world creeps here upon the shout, 
 
 \nil stirs my heart in pain ; 
 The mist descends and blots it out, 
 And I am strong again.
 
 46 AN OCEAN GRAVE. 
 
 Strong and alone, my dove, with thee ; 
 
 And, tho' mine eyes be wet, 
 There's nothing in the world to me, 
 
 So dear as my regret. 
 
 I would not change my sorrow sweet 
 
 For others' nuptial hours ; 
 I love the daisies at thy feet 
 
 More than their orange flowers. 
 
 My hand alone shall tend thy tomb, 
 
 From leaf-bud to leaf-fall ; 
 And wreathe around each season's bloom 
 
 Till autumn ruins all. 
 
 Let snowdrops early in the year 
 Droop o'er her silent breast ; 
 
 And bid the later cowslip rear 
 The amber of its crest.
 
 AN OCEAN GRAVE. 
 
 Come hither, linnets tufted-red, 
 Drift by, O wailing tern ; 
 
 Set pare vale-lilies at her head, 
 At her feet lady-fern. 
 
 Grow, samphire, at the tidal brink, 
 Wave pansies of the shore, 
 
 To whisper how alone I think 
 Of her for evermore. 
 
 Bring blue sea-hollies thorny, keen, 
 Long lavender in flower ; 
 
 Grey wormwood like a hoary queen, 
 Stanch mullein like a tower. 
 
 O sea-wall mounded long and low, 
 Let iron bounds be thine ; 
 
 Nor let the salt wave overflow 
 That breast I held divine. 
 
 47
 
 48 AN OCEAN GRAVE. 
 
 Nor float its sea-weed to her hair, 
 Nor dim her eyes with sands ; 
 
 No fluted cockle burrow where 
 Sleep folds her patient hands. 
 
 Tho' thy crest feel the wild sea's breath, 
 Tho' tide-weight tear thy root, 
 
 Oh, guard the treasure-house, where death 
 Has bound my darling mute. 
 
 Tho' cold her pale lips to reward 
 
 With love's own mysteries, 
 Ah, rob no daisy from her sward, 
 
 Rough gale of eastern seas ! 
 
 Ah, render sere no silken bent, 
 That by her head-stone waves ; 
 
 Let noon and golden summer blent 
 Pervade these ocean graves.
 
 AN OCEAN GRAVE. 
 
 And, ah, dear heart, in thy still nest, 
 Resign this earth of woes, 
 
 Forget the ardours of the west, 
 Neglect the morning glows. 
 
 Sleep and forget all things but one, 
 Heard in each wave of sea, — 
 
 How lonely all the years will run, 
 Until I rest bv thee. 
 
 49
 
 5° 
 
 OPHELIA. 
 
 Lost in a wilderness of ill, 
 Wan with a yearning never still, 
 O tell me where, most tuneful rill, 
 Can I recover rest ? 
 
 Thy waves roll under meadows brown, 
 And draw the thirsty daisies down ; 
 It cannot hurt them much to drown, 
 In death's green water-nest. 
 
 Among the meads of daedal May, 
 Around the roots of aspens grey, 
 Thy ripple holds delicious way, 
 
 A couch where dreams are sweet ;
 
 OPHELIA. 51 
 
 Thy lilies shall my pillow be, 
 My coverlet the water free, 
 My sheet the white anemone, 
 My lullaby thy beat. 
 
 Gone without warning otherwhere 
 My lover leaves me to despair; 
 Sorrow and love are sore to bear, 
 Love goes and sorrow stays. 
 
 father dead ; O love untrue, 
 
 Lips at whose touch mine own grew new, 
 As pallid buds expand, if dew 
 Drop after droughty days. 
 
 My father in his -rave is fair, 
 
 The shroud is round his silver hair ; 
 
 1 lore the hand that laid him there, 
 
 And wrought my bosom's woe.
 
 52 OPHELIA. 
 
 O pale dead father laid in night, 
 My bud of spring is slain with blight, 
 My soul is weary of the light 
 And lonely ; let her go. 
 
 I weep indeed ; and both are gone — 
 Ah, most I love the cruel one, 
 Who loved me once, now loves me none, 
 Dear author of my fears. 
 
 And so I wander by the brim, 
 And gather buds to think of him, 
 And find their eyes are dewy-dim, 
 As mine are wan with tears. 
 
 The sad sweet avens as in dream, 
 Bends o'er the bosom of the stream, 
 And hangs her rosy head ; I seem 
 Like this deserted bloom.
 
 OPHELIA. 53 
 
 The fishes watch her, amber-eyed, 
 The tide-grass swims from side to side, 
 As sweetly will the river glide, 
 And kiss me in my tomb. 
 
 And he — God knows ! — when nestlings break 
 Their eggs next summer, and the lake 
 Is sown with snowy hawthorn flake, — 
 May wander one day here, 
 
 The darling of my troth and trust, 
 When he is crowned and I am dust, 
 May lean and weep — Ah, but he must — 
 At least one little tear 
 
 Into my river-urn, when bees 
 Are roving, and the skies at peace, 
 And love, my pain, at ease, at ease, 
 In my sweet water-bier !
 
 54 
 
 SIGH, HEART, BREAK NOT. 
 
 Sigh, heart, and break not ; rest, lark, and wake not 
 Day I hear coming to draw my Love away. 
 
 As mere-waves whisper, and clouds grow crisper, 
 Ah, like a rose he will waken up with day. 
 
 In moon-light lonely, he is my Love only, 
 I share with none while Luna rides in grey. 
 
 As dawn-beams quicken, my rivals thicken, 
 The light and deed and turmoil of the day. 
 
 To watch my sleeper to me is sweeter, 
 
 Than any waking words my Love can say j 
 
 In dream he finds me and closer winds me ! 
 Let him rest by me a little more and stay.
 
 SIGH, HEART, BREAK NOT. 55 
 
 Ah, mine eyes close not : and, tho' he knows not, 
 My lips on his be tender while you may ; 
 
 Ere leaves are shaken, and ring-doves waken, 
 And infant buds begin to scent new day. 
 
 Fair Darkness, measure thine hours, as treasure 
 Shed each one slowly from thine urn, I pray ; 
 
 Hoard in and cover each from my lover ; 
 I cannot lose him yet ; dear night, delay. 
 
 Each moment dearer, true-love, lie nearer, 
 My hair shall blind thee lest thou see the ray ; 
 
 My locks encumber thine ears in slumber, 
 Lest any bird dare give thee note of day. 
 
 He rests so calmly ; we lie so warmly ; 
 
 Hand within hand, as children after play ; — 
 In shafted amber on roof and chamber 
 
 Dawn enters ; my Love wakens : here is day.
 
 56 
 
 SEPARATED FORTUNES. 
 
 Dearest, beholding thy poor married tears, 
 Since thou hast made thy choice and chosen ill ; 
 
 And I must watch the slow pathetic years 
 
 Far from that hearth where thou art lonely still. 
 
 The cradle of thy sorrow claims thy care, 
 
 patient mother ; on this mate of thine 
 Smile, if one careless word he has to spare ; 
 
 Crouch, if his hand be heavy with the wine. 
 
 I am slain with pity of thy doom to be. 
 
 1 pray ; but easier shall this mountain gate 
 Unlock its roots and drench them in the sea, 
 
 Than I could loose one rivet of thy fate.
 
 SEPARATED FORTUNES. 57 
 
 Live ; and thy child will grow to love thee right, 
 The blighted years will rust themselves away ; 
 
 Till to thy spirit weary for the night 
 Sleep shall unroll the prison-doors of day. 
 
 I hear a noise of autumn round again ; 
 
 A few more seasons and we shall not weep. 
 We lived divided in our living pain ; 
 
 We shall lie sundered in our latest sleep. 
 
 Thou shalt repose where that Italian sea 
 
 Rolls, without tide, more lucid than our waves. 
 
 By northern H umber's foam my rest shall be ; 
 The deep shall sound between us in our graves. 
 
 The moon at full will beam on either tomb ; 
 
 The stars at morn will hide themselves away. 
 No step will come more sadly for thy doom. 
 
 No lark will sing less gaily in the grey.
 
 58 SEPARATED FORTUNES. 
 
 Love in his end shall falter as did ours ; 
 
 The true shall lose him and the traitor win. 
 Time as of old among life's garden flowers 
 
 Shall pull as weeds the choicest buds therein. 
 
 Worn with her sentence of eternal blight 
 Earth's seasons will not alter or rebel ; 
 
 While up above the shining zenith-light 
 They tell me Mercy sits — and all is well !
 
 59 
 
 A RENUNCIATION. 
 
 Light of love and cold of brain, 
 Shall I trust thy ready tears ? 
 Shall I touch thine hand again 
 As in light and childish years ? 
 
 Never ! Ah, but this was sweet, 
 To sigh worship at thy feet. 
 
 Lips as ripe have made men dust, 
 
 Falsely gentle, many a one ; 
 Adders I will sooner trust 
 
 Than thy breasts ; they cover stone. 
 This is instinct with your sort. 
 Ye must injure souls in sport.
 
 60 A RENUNCIATION. 
 
 Prosper, while thy game is sure : 
 
 Silly fishes haunt thy net. 
 Birds are busy round thy lure ; 
 Curses will not catch thee yet. 
 
 Run thy day ; inconstant thing, 
 Dove in eyes and asp in sting. 
 
 Light thy lamp of fen-fire love ; 
 
 There are fools enough to drown — 
 Me its ray shall never move, 
 I at least have sat me down ; 
 
 Proud is wrong ; I nurse my wound ; 
 Leave me ; let the times roll round. 
 
 Wearied of thy glossy smile, 
 
 Thro' its mask I seem to trace 
 Stern lips, cruel all the while 
 On an artificial face, 
 
 Dimpled over with death-snares, 
 Whose eyes slay men unawares.
 
 A RENUNCIATION. Gl 
 
 Plough the rock and reap the sand. 
 
 Wear thy sickly smiles for gain. 
 Blight the lips that touch thy hand ; 
 Years thy hireling cheek will stain : 
 Love will lay thee on his shelf, 
 Left, mean torment, to thyself !
 
 62 
 
 THE RED-BREAST. 
 
 My red-breast, continue thy song beyond seasons 
 When the passage bird's mad lay is over and past ; 
 
 Pipe sweet to my lady and trill her my reasons ; 
 Be thy note weak as dew she will harken at last. 
 
 Alder droops and the aspen rocks as the year closes, 
 The daisy roots shiver expecting the snows. 
 
 As autumn and equinox alter the roses, 
 Reason with her, pretty bird, as it blows. 
 
 Tell her the emblem of leaves as they wither ; 
 
 Lay at her feet broken buds, perished fruit ; 
 Whisper my darling, that all things drift thither, 
 
 Where the lips of the queens of Love's garden are 
 mute.
 
 THE RED-BREAST. 63 
 
 For the wood-bee has garnered his cells with bloom- 
 harvest, 
 
 And among his sweet wealth he is drowsy and dumb. 
 For the squirrel has hidden, ere weather bite sharpest, 
 
 His acorns and beech-nuts as latter rains come. 
 
 O my child, there is age, there is death j each a spectre; 
 
 One will wither, one whiten thy cheek's elfin rose ; 
 Garner then, as a wise bee, some store of Love's nectar 
 
 To cherish thy heart in its seasons of snows !
 
 6 4 
 
 RETROSPECT. 
 
 If we have pondered on a face, 
 
 In yonder age of simple days, 
 If burning lips of first embrace 
 
 Sealed us as pilgrims in love's ways — 
 
 The silly chains became us well, 
 When rosy lay the orchard roods, 
 
 And April buds began to swell, 
 
 And starlings thought about their broods. 
 
 The easy fetters bound us sweet ; 
 
 The shrill lark dwindled overhead. 
 The land lay incense at our feet. 
 
 We did not dream upon the dead !
 
 RETROSPECT. 65 
 
 With ardent cheek and earnest breath 
 
 We plighted unenduring vows ; 
 And bound, instead of amaranth wreath, 
 
 Deciduous roses round our brows. 
 
 Bud after bud descends to dust j 
 Those rare years sigh and go their way. 
 
 We leave our garlands, since we must, 
 When heads begin to gather grey. 
 
 Then farewell, Love, for other skies, 
 We laud thee now we need thee least. 
 
 We will not be as guests, who rise 
 And, risen, chide against a feast. 
 
 1 1 1 tainted we will always save 
 
 The sweet of thy memorial joy; 
 Let fools thy royal table leave 
 
 And soil the 1 with alloy.
 
 66 ' RETROSPECT. 
 
 Go, harpy, with thy loathsome wing, 
 Go, cynic, with thy touch of mire ! 
 
 We hold it an ignoble thing 
 
 To laugh against our old desire ; 
 
 Ye seem to scorn Love's richer hour, 
 In envy half, but more in craft, 
 
 And wholly sullen : since your flower 
 Is withered on its autumn shaft. 
 
 We least will ape this dotard's part, 
 Who sneers at love in aspen tone, 
 
 Who jests on his once wholesome heart, 
 And cheapens all who still have one. 
 
 He hardens in his selfish crust ; 
 
 His blear eyes only understand 
 Three things as comely — wine, and lust, 
 
 And greed which guides the palsied hand.
 
 RETROSPECT. 67 
 
 Irreverent, isolated thing ! 
 
 Old scare-crow on the field of vice, 
 Some rags of youth around thee cling 
 
 To flutter in a land of ice ! 
 
 Leave in his shrine, veiled round and sad, 
 
 The Amor of thy tender days. 
 
 Thank Heaven that once thou couldst be triad. 
 Be silent, if thou canst not praise. 
 
 All, crush not in with tainted feet : 
 Is thy thought cankered, keep away. 
 
 Tho' idols snap, and fair things fleet, 
 Leave one spot pure wherein to pray. 
 
 Some day indeed, before thy last, 
 
 When all life's boughs are bare of fruit. 
 
 When mock and sneer arc o\ 
 And every shallow laug': 
 
 i 2
 
 68 RETROSPECT. 
 
 Come to this haven, and unveil 
 
 The imaged face thy youth held best, 
 
 Kneel down before it, have thy wail, 
 And crawl the better to thy rest.
 
 6 9 
 
 AN AUTUMN SERENADE. 
 
 Before the tears of autumn shed 
 All leaves away at winter's door, 
 
 My queen, across the foliage tread 
 Of yellow gusty woodland floor ; 
 
 And watch the squirrel overhead 
 In stories of her pine-trees hoar. 
 
 When only redbreast chirps thee on, 
 And fingered chestnut leaves are cast ; 
 
 And gaudy greenwood gathers wan 
 On lime and beech, and sickens fast ; 
 
 And acorns thicken paths upon, 
 
 And shrew-mice treasure winter mast.
 
 70 AN AUTUMN SERENADE. 
 
 When plovers tremble up to cloud, 
 And starling legions whirl apace ; 
 
 And redwing nations restless-loud 
 Are over every fallow's face ; 
 
 And barren branches like a shroud 
 Blacken the sun-way's interspace. 
 
 The winds, all summer idly dead, 
 Give prelude to their winter tune. 
 
 Grey hoar-frost hears them, from his bed 
 Lays out white hands, and wakens soon. 
 
 He laughs as soughing elm-trees shed 
 Old homes of breeding rooks in June.
 
 7i 
 
 A FAREWELL. 
 
 Since thy lips hunger to pronounce farewell, 
 And a pale mist makes bitter both our faces, 
 
 Tear down the banner on Love's citadel, 
 Lead up the rabble to his pleasant places. 
 
 Go to thy Siren, she is fresh and white ; 
 
 My love is worn ; oblivion is its meed. 
 Let her ray darken mine with ampler light ; 
 
 I, in her zenith dwindle and recede. 
 
 Let her round arms be as the sun-way is, 
 More sweet than all old kisses her last one ; 
 
 Lest 1 should weep, I will consider this, 
 
 Love once came in our dreams ; he is well gone !
 
 72 A FAREWELL. 
 
 And yet my thought is busy on one dream, 
 Now I am stranded past the reach of tide, — 
 
 Imagine, whither, had I held the stream, 
 
 Love would have helmed us in his boat to glide. 
 
 Again the rocking current draws our keel, 
 The sun is nearer and the moon more fair, 
 
 Our pilot Love, beneath whose rosy heel 
 As dust are laid empire and time and care. 
 
 Arcadian spaces of great grass arise ; 
 
 Crisp lambs are merry : hoary vales are laid, 
 Studded with roe-deer and wild straw-berries : 
 
 In one a shepherd tabours, near a maid, 
 
 Who teazes at the button of his cloak, 
 
 Where rarely underneath them grows the herb ; 
 
 A squirrel eyes the lovers from an oak, 
 And speckled horses pasture without curb.
 
 A FAREWELL. J2> 
 
 In a fair meadow set with tulip heads ; 
 
 A water-mill rolls little crested falls 
 Of olive torrent, broken in grey threads, 
 
 A grave-yard crowds black crosses in square walls. 
 
 Quaint pastoral Arcadia, where are set 
 Thy rainy lands and reddish underwoods ? 
 
 Earth hath not held thy fabled sunsets yet, 
 Though lovers build their palace on thy roods. 
 
 My Love in dream was changeless : he of earth, 
 A changeling god unstable as the sand, 
 
 Reckons his gifts and reasons in his mirth : 
 His kisses ! a child counts them on one hand. 
 
 Under his instep once arose light flowers, 
 
 Now dead and curled, as leaves in caverns dry, 
 
 Where heedless gusts have lost them at odd hours ; 
 So out of sight time pushes loves gone by.
 
 74 A FAREWELL. 
 
 Time held Love's daughter fair a little while ; 
 
 Wept at her feet and died at her desire ; 
 He would have bartered heaven for one sweet smile, 
 
 But now her roses are as highway mire. 
 
 child of change, thy refuge is " farewell ; " 
 
 The dumb slow days teach many, may teach thee. 
 
 1 shall not lure Love back with any spell ; 
 Soiled are his feet, his hand rough, let him flee ! 
 
 Leave to the kingdom of thy new delight, 
 A land of vines and apples overhead ; 
 
 Where the great golden stars move out at night, 
 And the air burns with love when day is dead. 
 
 Let her await thee, thy new Siren, there, 
 This garden-empress, thy most beautiful ; 
 
 Whose robe is red as sun-death, and her hair 
 Gleams as the rippled eve-cloud wonderful.
 
 A FAREWELL. 75 
 
 Seal up thy past with kisses, lest a cry, 
 A shape, a phantom, in thy lightest hour 
 
 With dead sad eyes and wandering arms go by, 
 And turn the vintage of thy passion sour. 
 
 Till on thy lips the red wine savour blood, 
 And garlands grind as ashes on thy head ; 
 
 And loathly tastings taint thy banquet food, 
 
 And marriage guests seem mourners of the dead. 
 
 Ah, for Remorse is mighty, blind thy soul, 
 And hoop thine heart with iron to forget, 
 
 I )rown Record under ocean's tidal roll, 
 And deeper than an oak-root hide Regret. 
 
 Wind rough acanthus round thy burning cup, 
 
 Let white arms soothe thee and fresh lips of son^. 
 
 Lie sweetly down and rise in gladness up. 
 
 Quench — if thou canst — the echo of my wrong !
 
 7 6 
 
 THE CARDINAL'S LAMENT. 
 
 ROME: EASTER DAY, 1872. 
 
 O perfect bride of God, renew thy tears • 
 "Waken, my Rome, my chosen ; feel the chains 
 Around thy sacred limbs ; the iron weighs 
 Thy sweet hand earthward : lonely art thou bound, 
 In fetters, Rome, a mighty broken queen, 
 Staring with wild eyes at the Easter dawn — 
 Thro' all the night most patient till the ray — 
 The awful dumb dead night, wherein the Lord's 
 White body lay, with red wounds of the nails, 
 
 Waiting the resurrection touch to move ; 
 
 And all the watcher angels o'er his shroud 
 
 Held awful silence, dim among the gloom, 
 
 Nor dared to stir or rustle any wing !
 
 THE CARDINAL'S LAMENT. JJ 
 
 In hope they waited ; we have watched in none. 
 Lo ! yonder sailing mist of signal rose 
 Is Easter, our celestial rising-day — 
 Easter in Rome, where Easter meant so much, 
 And drew the world a pilgrim ; where men deemed 
 Her gorgeous consecrations here on earth 
 Some foretaste of the festival in Heaven. 
 
 Beautiful sleeps the city in her mist. 
 Still are the fountains, calm her mighty squares, 
 Untrodden all her labyrinth of ways. 
 The very doves are silent and asleep 
 That build about St. Peter's. All the trees 
 In the Pope's garden seem blurred heads of cloud. 
 The great dome looms dull brown, unburnished yet ; 
 Beneath whose soundless aisles in glory sleep 
 The dead Popes in their order, pale and still 
 And patient till the coming of their Christ ; 
 That Easter of all graves, when Christ shall call 
 To his doom-angel, " Blow, the hour is ripe, 
 And ended is the sorrow of my own.
 
 78 the cardinal's lament. 
 
 And ready is my sentence on the dead ; 
 I have completed all my saints, and come. 
 Gather the nations. I will judge and end !" 
 
 Come ! for the earth is heavy, and we mourn. 
 Ah, spare us many Easters like this last ; 
 For now the ungodly chide at us, and say, 
 We have no Christ this Easter to arise, 
 We watch corruption by some common grave, 
 Our Christ is in the ground, he will not hear. 
 We are dreamers, how in some old fabled tale, 
 A good man died unjustly, lay in earth, 
 How soldiers sealed the cavern of his rest ; 
 How lovely dawned that Easter, when of old 
 The Galilean women came to weep, 
 Loving the gentle prophet that was gone. 
 So far the tale is credible : but now 
 We hear of certain angels, when indeed 
 Philosophy has settled there were none. 
 We hear of how the cold dead Christ arose—
 
 THE CARDINAL'S LAMENT. 79 
 
 But one wise Frenchman wrote a pretty book, 
 And proved that dead men always fell to dust. 
 
 So they blaspheme the watchers at thy grave — 
 
 Ah, God, the infidel is master here. 
 
 Here in thy Rome, thy last Jerusalem, 
 
 Thy righteous rose, the city of thy priests. 
 
 Is it well seen, O God ? The abominable 
 
 Hath circled us weak fishes with his net. 
 
 His chain is on thy vicar, lord of stars ; 
 
 The prisoner father droops in lonely halls, 
 
 The purple princes of the conclave weep. 
 
 While northern vermin, exiles, Piedmontese, 
 
 Scum of the alp-root, turn the holy town 
 
 To one vast barrack-yard of noisy war ; 
 
 Set sentinels, have beacons, order camps, 
 
 Clatter along our squares, blow horns, beat drums ; 
 
 Until the voices of our rhythmic bells 
 
 Arc shamed to silence in a place of siege, 
 
 And mighty Rome lies dumb without a word.
 
 80 THE CARDINAL'S LAMENT. 
 
 Behold a trumpet from the Capitol 
 
 Calls through the shallow vapour of the dawn. 
 
 " The night in heaven is done, but not in Rome, 
 
 Her eyes are tender to sustain the sun — 
 
 She loves her prison-shadows more than day." 
 
 A bugle answers from the Palatine, 
 
 " Great Rome is vanquished, fallen. We have come 
 
 And conquered the impregnable, the joy 
 
 Of God, the lamp of nations. At her gates 
 
 We rode, and blew a careless blast and won. 
 
 She is bound, we have bound her, we ! " 
 
 And who are these, 
 Who call so proudly out of Caesar's nest ? 
 " We are Italians and have conquered Rome." 
 If ye indeed be sons of Italy, 
 Ye are risen against your mother, with foul hands 
 Ye have smitten upon your parent's holy face, 
 Ye have bruised her sacred lips until they bleed : 
 Your hands are red : ask pardon on your knees.
 
 THE CARDINAL'S LAMENT. 8l 
 
 " She turned a tyrant, therefore is she bound ; 
 Turin hath conquered Rome." O deed of shame ! 
 The weazel triumphs in the wolf-cub's lair. 
 Shall Rome hew Piedmont's wood, go to the well 
 For Piedmont j fetch and carry, as she's told, 
 Take buffets in the service of this thing? 
 Rome with her grand commemorative past, 
 Searching her annals, reading on her tombs, 
 Hath only heard of Piedmont yesterday ; 
 As pasture of some hunger-bitten cows 
 Fed in the misty alp-heart up in heaven ; 
 A realm of neat-herds, frozen in the cold. 
 Are these thy spoilers, city of the sun, 
 At whose great royal breasts the baby mouths 
 ( )i emperors drew nurture? Is this thou, 
 Whose mother-vein abounding gave to these 
 Their after strength to bruise and break the world? 
 Thy power was on them and they overcame, 
 A d mi ted out the immeasurable earth 
 Auk m- the purple nurslings of their loins.
 
 82 THE CARDINAL'S LAMENT. 
 
 Thy yesterdays, my Rome, are wonderful, 
 
 But awful change hath snapt thee in its snare, 
 
 With iron edge of strange calamities. 
 
 Bring down, my queen, thy bosom on the dust, 
 
 Shame thy bright hair with ashes ; be their slave, 
 
 This hungry tribe of ragged mountaineers, 
 
 Who drape themselves in robes that Brutus wore, 
 
 And say, " We are Italy ! " Return, keep cows, 
 
 Bring fodder in. Ye are herdsmen, brutish, boors ! 
 
 Our common earth is nobler than your lives, 
 
 Our soil is mingled with imperial dust, 
 
 Our city is one catacomb of kings. 
 
 Begone ! your feet defile your masters' grave. 
 
 But your realm rose a mushroom in the night, 
 
 Sardinians. "Nay," ye answer, "we are risen, 
 
 Being the sons of progress in the south ; 
 
 Ours is the ' liberal ' kingdom, typifies 
 
 The new emergence of the baby-world 
 
 To ampler knowledge. Turin with her heel 
 
 Upon Rome's neck, means old theology
 
 THE CARDINAL'S LAMENT. 83 
 
 Prostrate before philosophy's new dawn ; 
 Victor in Rome means light in the human soul— 
 But you, who blame our Piedmont, have good heed, 
 You with the tonsure, teacher of the folds, 
 Priest, prophet, in whatever name or robe, 
 You lead God man-ward, and raise men to God — 
 Behold, to all your sort the crucial hour 
 Arrives, the world-child strengthens out its limbs, 
 The papmeat season never can return. 
 Cleanse your religion clean of mythic lore, 
 Heave out old forms and fables to the deep. 
 The peoples roar for reasonable meat, 
 Keen they discern the draff among the food ; 
 Humour their fancies else they will away ; 
 The sheep will crawl for pasture to the wolf; 
 And leave you droning mass in empty fanes, 
 And tear the titles to your revenues. 
 Therefore, O priest, chop science with the best, 
 ( 'run us with reason, demonstrate, convince, 
 Avoid all dogma, or apologise 
 
 G 2
 
 84 THE CARDINAL'S LAMENT. 
 
 If gritty Athanasian bits protrude. 
 
 Lead us in roads historically laid, 
 
 Well lamped at intervals, without a rut 
 
 To jog the queasy conscience into doubt. 
 
 Then quietly thy sheep in tribes shall come, ' 
 
 And tinkle after with obedient bleats 
 
 Him with the crook, the triple cap, and keys. 
 
 Hold to the causeway Reason ; Faith's a slough 
 
 On either hand. One tread, you're ankle-deep, 
 
 The next inextricably over-ears. 
 
 The flock forbade its pastor to diverge, 
 
 So far as hoof bit rock it followed him ; 
 
 Here it tried footing, sniffed, and halted dead ; 
 
 He blundered on, the quagmire sucked him in ; 
 
 His woolbacks move without him ; serve him righ' ! 
 
 Which is a parable ! and comes to this, — 
 An evil people, greedy of a sign, 
 Must comprehend to worship, analyse 
 Ere they adore. Each individual soul
 
 THE CARDINAL'S LAMENT. 85 
 
 With his small lanthorn walks the world alone ; 
 
 He lifts no eyes on heaven's high fitful stars ; 
 
 Indeed he cannot kindle or relume 
 
 Those large white lamps of God ; a rush-light's best, 
 
 Whose feeble sputtering insignificance 
 
 You trim yourself to grapple with the gloom. 
 
 Ye blind and lonely feelers in the dark, 
 Ye halt men arrogant, ye wise run mad, 
 Who shall provide such gropers with a god, 
 Before what essence will ye bend your knees ? 
 Believe in Euclid, worship axioms, 
 Trust in triangles, to a cube sing hymns ! 
 I see no other worship for the fools. 
 
 Have ye not understood, ere time began 
 Reason and Faith have been unreconciled? 
 Their feud is old as ocean, keen as fire ; 
 As oil and acid mingle so do the\ . 
 You cannot build a reasonable faith.
 
 86 the cardinal's lament. 
 
 Vain is your labour, if you rear a wall 
 And smear no mortar in between the chinks. 
 Ah, teacher, build thy little tower of cards. 
 Try ! Meet all views, prune, sift, avoid old sores, 
 Tread upon no man's theologic corns ; 
 Frame some mild creed with neither back nor bones, 
 A mist of genial benevolences 
 To please all round, Budd, Calvin, Moses, Comte. 
 Fair bodes the scheme in its first fluid stage, — 
 It makes a tidy pamphlet, well reviewed, — 
 But crystallize it can't, except around 
 Some little tiny notion of a god, 
 Some germ organic in the central haze 
 To vivify and quicken the inert ; 
 Someatom-grain of personality 
 To sweeten and begin a crust of rays. 
 
 Here your dilemma rises, man of mind. 
 
 Either ignore your god-mote, leave your scheme 
 
 A vapid thing to fester on grey shelves,
 
 THE CARDINAL'S LAMENT. 87 
 
 Limp, theoretic, leprous, flat, inane ; 
 Or accept something which transcends your rules, 
 And promulgate your germ-god's attributes ; 
 Till by degrees your wary pen grows warm, 
 And the third column of your monograph 
 Lands you in purest dogma half-way down-; 
 Then the pace strengthens, acrid, on you flow 
 TiWjinis dubs you scientific pope, 
 Damning opponents all to left or right, 
 As idiots or as rascals. Rome herself 
 Ne'er fulminated deeper. Hold, my friend : 
 Remember where we started ; reason and sight, 
 All else you rolled away. Where are we now ? 
 
 Your fairest hope is, you may frame at best, 
 
 An almost credible theology. 
 
 Alas, wise man, that " almost " ruins all, 
 
 It means you postulate one thing on trust ; 
 
 Be it the least division of a hair, 
 
 One fibre in a gnat ; confession's made
 
 88 the cardinal's lament. 
 
 That some faith's wanted. Faith, say, in a midge. 
 Concede me this — I answer, then believe 
 In Juggernaut and all his monstrous heads ; 
 Size is no test to the deductive brain ; 
 In each the mental process is the same. 
 Neither the gnat nor idol can be proved, 
 You took the midge on trust, accept the god ! 
 
 The nations are as children, after all ; 
 Some blind, some blinkard. You or I of these 
 See by some inches further than our nose. 
 I grant our reason's keener, but what then ? 
 The contradictions in the simplest creed, 
 The reasonablest revelation known, 
 Are to our wits and those of country clods 
 An equal wall of nonsense. We are lithe, 
 And they are lame, but Atlas intervenes, 
 And neither can o'erleap his barrier rocks. 
 Inform a drayman two and two are five, 
 He stares and lounges on. Repeat the lie
 
 THE CARDINAL'S LAMENT. 89 
 
 To some great thinker gravely, he growls out, 
 
 " Disturb me not ; return, O dunce, to school." 
 
 Suppose God said, " Believe that two straight lines 
 
 Could hedge a space in ; be convinced of this, 
 
 Or miserably perish. On this truth 
 
 My church is founded. All who contradict 
 
 Are lost throughout the abysses of all time." 
 
 Will reason help you here ? You shudder. No. 
 
 Dismiss the fancy, and compare the fact. 
 
 How hath the just God spoken ? He hath bound 
 
 All nations at their peril to receive, 
 
 That perfect God was also perfect man. 
 
 Digest this truth by reason, if you may ; 
 
 Reason won't aid ; at faith arrive you must 
 
 Sooner or later ; and if you take in 
 
 One grain by faith which reason cannot chew, 
 
 You may as well swallow a mountain down, 
 
 And lay all doubt asleep, and rest your brains 
 
 And conscience in a comfortable church ; 
 
 Nor let the devils lash you out to the hills
 
 go THE cardinal's lament. 
 
 To chop dry logic in the barren cold, 
 Beneath the stern inexorable stars. 
 
 What follows ? Has God left the world quite dark ? 
 
 Have all the ages tumbled men to hell 
 
 Along the lampless ledges of the past ? 
 
 Pitiful souls, whose reason led them wrong. 
 
 Is there no beacon ready till the dawn, 
 
 No light his love hath saved us ? Blind, behold 
 
 His affluence dwells among us ; and ye turn 
 
 And answer, " Show us God and it's enough." 
 
 Lo, Peter's chair, and God in flesh thereon ! 
 
 Refuse the truth, hale down his vicar's throne, 
 Lead back the lees of Rome to mock and spit 
 At the old venerable saint, whose locks 
 Are white with many winters of long prayer, 
 Whose hand is weak with blessing men so long, 
 Whose kind eyes sadden at your ruffian deeds. 
 Are ye come up with tumult to destroy ?
 
 THE CARDINAL'S LAMENT. 91 
 
 To quench our only light and leave the world 
 Eyeless and dark — as here our Easter is. 
 Destruction is so easy. God allows 
 The fiends to overturn, that they may feel 
 Horrible hell around them when all's done, 
 And awful isolation from their deed. 
 
 But, ah, ye errant peoples of God's fold, 
 How would this holy foster-mother Rome, 
 Have gathered you between her ample wings, 
 And called you in beneath her silken plumes, 
 And yet ye would not. Her sweet house and ours 
 Is surely left unto us desolate ; 
 And God's own chosen flower, celestial Rome, 
 Is chained lamenting in her Easter dawn.* 
 
 * The sentiments expressed in this monologue arc those of the 
 Cardinal and not of the writer. Surely, such an intimation is un- 
 necessary : yet a critic with some experience of our reading public 
 thinks otherwise.
 
 9 2 
 
 MEDEA. 
 
 A TRAGEDY OF JEALOUSY. 
 (dramatic fragment.) 
 
 Medea. 
 
 Why dost thou wrong and shame me more each day ? 
 
 What have I done to merit this disdain ? 
 
 Declare the measure of my injuries ; 
 
 Publish my fault, O perjured ; ere I cry 
 
 To Zeus, that presently he cleave thy brain 
 
 With one keen hissing bundle of blue fire ; 
 
 And Artemis may heave her spear on me, 
 
 If I be found unfaithful in her sight 
 
 By one least errant thought to this hard man ! 
 
 Thine answer, king, thy reason ; say them soon.
 
 MEDEA. 93 
 
 The King. 
 Nay, for I will not answer ; get her in, 
 Who was a queen and is a Mrenad now, 
 A raving woman smitten with wild gods ; 
 A Pythoness in wreaths of sulphur fume, 
 Perplexed with inward voices terrible — 
 Is this a royal fashion to bewail, 
 To ring out curses wildly in the air, 
 To entreat and clench numb fingers in the dust ? 
 Roll up thy Bacchanalian hair ; begone ! 
 
 Chorus. 
 In ashes she has laid her shining head ; 
 Give her the answer of a little word ; 
 Leave wrath to Zeus and to his gods revenge : 
 Indeed, she is angry, broken, dumb with sighs ! 
 
 Medea. 
 With sighs I think that I have nearly done, 
 With grief and seed of sighs and fruit of tears, 
 I >one with the earth crowned over with blown wo< 
 Done with her shadowed vales and sleepy fields,
 
 94 MEDEA. 
 
 With the wave rocking and high glorious stars — 
 
 I have concluded surely with them all ; 
 
 And in my distance only one dark gate, 
 
 Rent in the rock and fringed with deadly yew, 
 
 Invites my lonely feet. I will descend, 
 
 Laden with many curses at thy hand, 
 
 Along its blind and miserable road, 
 
 Hollow, uneven, rugged, arduous, 
 
 Into that realm, where Love and wrong of him 
 
 Seem like our tears in childhood. I will go ; 
 
 Let railing cease and trivial anger fall. 
 
 I will obey my tyrant and depart. 
 
 Yet one small bitter word I mean to speak 
 
 Under my breath, not very loud or wild, 
 
 Yet some far god will hear it in his heaven ; 
 
 And see thou to it, king, if answer come. 
 
 Chorus. 
 Revere, O king, her curse and answer it ; 
 Curses are strong ; they climb as ravens up 
 Vexing the easy and complacent gods,
 
 MEDEA. 
 
 To feed them and fulfil them ; inmost heaven 
 Is weary with their wail and sounding wings ; 
 The drowsy brows of the eternal ones 
 Move in their rest to frown and sleep again ; 
 Till the great angry Zeus shall prop himself 
 Wide-eyed upon his elbow, roused at last, 
 And toss a plague upon thy realm and thee, 
 To have about him quiet heaven again. 
 Therefore, O king, be mild and give reply, 
 Nor stand apart with dull eyes on the ground, 
 And dumb hard lips. But royally she comes 
 To speak and raises out her angry arms. 
 
 Medea. 
 Ye damsels of this land, when I am dead, 
 Search me some grave secluded ; where the step 
 Of that light foolish woman, whom he loves, 
 May never beat mine ashes. Here engrave 
 Around my tomb in yellow characters 
 The fair deeds of this hero to his spouse. 
 How for a season with man's fickle love 
 
 95
 
 96 MEDEA. 
 
 He gave me adoration as his queen ; 
 
 And loved me fairly once — as these men love ! 
 
 The sorrow of my kingdom faded me ; 
 
 To be at once a mother and a queen 
 
 Is care enough, and beauty wanes in care. 
 
 Then he began to scorn my haggard eyes, 
 
 And found their light no longer eloquent ; 
 
 For many watchings at the cradle head 
 
 Drew dimness, where love's glory used to burn — ■ 
 
 As least he said so once. All that is gone ! 
 
 So, of this pale face weary, he found one 
 
 More rosy to his mind, a captive wench, 
 
 Silly enough and fresh enough to please 
 
 The veering tyrant. Folded in my robes, 
 
 She struts about the palace at his side, 
 
 Aping the queen with gestures of the plough ; 
 
 And my unstable hand-maids bow to her 
 
 When he is near, and mock her when he goes ; 
 
 Help as they are to none, weak water-waves, 
 
 That point their heads as each wind pushes them.
 
 MEDEA. 97 
 
 And me they counsel to wink hard at this, 
 Ignoring my desertion, to look sweet 
 And speak him smooth, and, hypocrite, refrain, 
 Until this alien fancy's turn is done ; 
 And then to kiss and make it up again. 
 Ah, God, not so. I will be all with him 
 Or nothing ; no dumb slave with pleasant lips, 
 ■\Yhile glowing embers at her bosom's core 
 Eat out her heart. O perjured husband, nay, — 
 I, firm in this my wife-hood, a chaste bride, 
 In old love blameless, choose not to survive 
 This infamy of wedlock ; so I wend 
 Beneath the mighty darkness all alone, 
 Unreconciled and homeless. As my home 
 Is the new. Love's to rule in, and my lord 
 Glooms on his children as a step-father 
 Turned by thi.s rose-re 1 fool against his own ; 
 And I pray Zeus to bri i my brain 
 
 Strong words and hi Iter potency of curse, 
 Against my marriage bed and its ill fruit, 
 
 H
 
 98 MEDEA. 
 
 That I may blare them out and die at ease. 
 
 Chorus. 
 Strong is thy seat, O monarch, as the sun ; 
 And what is weaker than a woman's tear ? 
 Yet rear her from the ground. The ancient gods 
 Are fickle if one prosper overmuch ; 
 Calamity has broken many thrones. 
 
 King. 
 Why this is brave ; must I a king endure 
 The windy ravings of a woman's ire, 
 Must I teach reason to her, mad with whims ? 
 Must a king bend his eyes into his cloak, 
 And give no maiden greeting in the street ? 
 Must he go dumbly, tied to one queen's heels, 
 Where she in strings may lead him up and down, 
 A craven laughter to the market-wives 
 Above their baskets? Threat me not with Zeus, 
 He has a railing queen to curb at home ; 
 Call thou on Here ; Zeus will help thee none, 
 He is well sick of married jealousies.
 
 MEDEA. 99 
 
 Medea. 
 
 Thy word is well, and so shall rise my prayer, 
 I will indeed entreat this Zeus no more ; 
 I will call up beyond him to a god 
 Mightier than he, a shadow dimly known, — 
 
 Chorus. 
 Refrain, O queen, for awful words as these; 
 I veil my head in fear as they are said. 
 
 Medea. 
 O thou beyond the darkness and the cloud, 
 How can I make my call, how bring my prayer ? 
 Can I appeal, strange even to thy name ? 
 Are not these very weak words that I speak 
 Wrung from my heart like blood, tear after tear? 
 Wilt thou, O terrible, hear any one? 
 Are our tears pleasant, is our bleeding, sweet 
 Before thee? Are the striving, and the void. 
 The throb, and this blind reaching out of hands. 
 Excellent music or unheeded noise? 
 Thxi ha.it made Love, else hadst thou nothing ma 
 
 H
 
 100 MEDEA. 
 
 Else had the unformed silence still endured, — 
 Is not Love rightly cruel as thyself? 
 Love thou hast made, and beautiful it is, 
 A dream of many lights and shaken waters, 
 Excellent, unenduring, human Love ! 
 
 Chorus. 
 It is a dreadful daring to beat out 
 New roads of prayer. So many gods are known, 
 Eager of knees, of kine insatiable. 
 In every field a flameless altar stands 
 Greedy of sacrifice. Ah, kindle one. 
 Numberless temples glisten in the groves, 
 The thrones in roomy heaven are full of gods ; 
 Choose and invoke one hand of many arms 
 Able to pluck thee from thy coil of storms. 
 Let some god of thy fathers oar thy soul 
 To haven. Hold thy fingers on thy teeth ; 
 Offer no incense to this nameless one. 
 Dumb lips indeed were aid as good as his, 
 And silence the best censer in thy palm.
 
 MEDEA. 101 
 
 Fate and not God has made thy path to bear 
 Flint at thy soles and at thy instep briers. 
 
 King. 
 She is full of dreams and rumours and reproof, 
 She is folded in the bands of bitter pride ; 
 Hard-eyed as death, as unpersuadable, 
 Deaf to the deaf winds let her wail aloud — 
 In this thy storm remember thou art queen. 
 The fury of thy anger overthrows 
 Thine honour and my patience. Are thy wrongs, 
 If any, sweeter for unrolling them 
 Here in broad day before a herd of slaves ? 
 If thou be wounded tend thy hurt at home. 
 If woe be come on thee, it rightly came ; 
 Yet here I tell no reasons why it grew, 
 Being a king and guarding my reserve. 
 Then, on thine honour, which, O queen, is mine, 
 Control this common phrenzy, and return 
 Indoors ; upon thy duty as a spouse, 
 By thy maternal love, I charge thee — Go !
 
 102 MEDEA. 
 
 Medea. 
 Let me be very patient and most meek — 
 Consider this, ye women, mark it well ; 
 He, even this man perjured, prates of love, 
 Is wounded in his honour, finds me slack 
 In wifely duty ; come, complete my wrong 
 And make it perfect j bring thy paramour 
 Here in my face to teach me how I fail. 
 This toy of milk and rosebuds, this new girl 
 Without a purpose and without a soul, 
 Save to live sleek and whiten her smooth skin, 
 The slavish plaything of a banquet hour. 
 Why she would never stand an hour in the rain 
 To serve the man who loved her ; ay, and men 
 Have fallen to such loving, pure men too — 
 If she presume to school me in my love, 
 My soul, let us be patient even in this. 
 The shadow of the blood which I have shed, 
 The tumult of the years that I have ruled, 
 Have never touched her in her rose-garden.
 
 MEDEA. 103 
 
 She cannot dream the woman that I am, 
 This doll fit only to be kissed and fed, 
 To chide and chatter, pout and start aside 
 At the first trumpet-note of danger and death, 
 Screaming and useless, tossed as lumber by. 
 Then, as thou reachest for thy spear, my Lord, 
 Wilt thou find counsel at her pretty lips ? 
 Toss her away till thou hast stemmed the storm 
 Then, if thou wilt, return and kiss again 
 Her cheeks to colour. Surely she is meet 
 To be a hero's wife. O stars of god, 
 I have known many women brave and pure, 
 Worthy of kings and wifedom, true and leal ; 
 And in their number she will never come ; 
 Slave, if thou wilt, and concubine enough, 
 Not wife nor near it. Else this feeble trash 
 Would shame us out of wifehood with her fears. 
 Yet, my lord, my only Love, my King, 
 Altho' the light I found in thy dear eyes 
 Wanes, and thou standest ever coldly apart;
 
 104 MEDEA. 
 
 Tho' to my dumb entreating hands and eyes 
 I gain no answer. Tho' the father's face 
 Harden against our children. Tho' I lose 
 Thy presence day by day, and evermore 
 Thou makest any pretext to begone— 
 Still let me nurse once more my child to rest, 
 As in old days beside thee ; one swift hour 
 Endure me ; make pretence that all is well, 
 Lest the child suffer ; sit with me a little 
 Just now and then. I am old, I know, and faded, 
 I never had much youth ! Our years have been 
 So stormy ; husband, how you loved me then ! 
 How sweet it was to tread the brinks of death, 
 One will between us. O we went so firmly : 
 I felt thy hand upon my hand, and fear 
 Became a laughter. Thro' the smoke of death, 
 The dragon land, the fiery deeps of blood, 
 I saw one face — my husband's — and went on, 
 As tho' I felt the daisies at my feet 
 In meadow places under quiet woods.
 
 MEDEA. 105 
 
 It is my glory to have been thy mate, 
 
 Not idle, but another living brain 
 
 Building thy throne beside thee, night and day ; 
 
 In rumours of conspiracy, in hours 
 
 Of chidden armies, still at thy right hand 
 
 Undaunted ; when rebellion, bolt by bolt, 
 
 Played round our royal heads to tear us down ; 
 
 Did I quail then, did I seem pitiful ? 
 
 Not so, men said, this woman is all steel, 
 
 But they were wrong, I was all love ; no more. 
 
 My husband was my law and law-giver, 
 
 And righteous any deed that helped him best. 
 
 I bathed my hands in carnage and was glad ; 
 
 For every stain of blood upon my robes 
 
 Had seated him securer on his throne, 
 
 Who was my sun in heaven, my oracle, 
 
 My breath, my soul, my justice. Hear me now, 
 
 When the long dark is ready for my feet ; 
 
 Love, husband, master, king, almost my God, 
 
 In whose dear service my whole life a slave
 
 106 MEDEA. 
 
 Has bent herself adoring. I required 
 Only a little love as my reward ; 
 On this my soul was nourished, only on this — 
 Now he despises, scorns, and spits at me ; 
 Smiles on that other woman, whom he loves, 
 And clothes her in all glory, once my own ; 
 Whereby I weep all night, and only rise 
 To tears — tears — tears ; and I discern no end, 
 Save the cold common grave where I descend. 
 
 Semi-chorus. 
 The sullen king turns roughly on his heel, 
 Whirling his regal mantle round his eyes, 
 And so departs with slow steps, obstinate. 
 Ah, but the queen, the pale one, beautiful, 
 Prone, in the dust her holy bosom laid, 
 Mingles her out-spread hair with fallen leaves, 
 And sandal-soil is on her gracious head. 
 Ah, lamentable lady, pitiful ! 
 On to an altar in the palace court 
 She, crawling, interlaces nerveless hands.
 
 MEDEA. I07 
 
 Attend, her lips are twitching into prayer ; 
 
 Listen, indeed there is no sound in them, 
 
 Only a choking murmur unlike words. 
 
 Bring out her children here, unclasp her arms 
 
 And raise her. It is done. The babies lie. 
 
 Smiling up into her hard vacant eyes, 
 
 One playing with her hair. But she stares on 
 
 In ecstasy, and cannot tell her own. 
 
 miserable mother bring her in ; 
 
 Since I discern the storm-drops on these flags, 
 
 And clouds are rough with thunder overhead. 
 
 Chorus. 
 
 Sweet are the ways of death to weary feet, 
 
 Calm are the shades of men. 
 The phantom fears no tyrant in his seat, 
 
 The slave is master then. 
 
 Love is abolished ; well, that this so ; 
 
 We knew him best as Pain.
 
 I08 MEDEA. 
 
 The gods are all cast out, and let them go 
 Who ever found them gain ? 
 
 Ready to hurt and slow to succour these ; 
 
 So, while thou breathest, pray. 
 But in the sepulchre all flesh has peace ; 
 
 Their hand is put away.
 
 iog 
 
 NATURE'S RENEWING. 
 
 The genial year awakening, 
 
 When mellow air begins to burn, 
 
 Arises in a robe of spring 
 
 From ruined winter's hoary urn ; 
 
 Whom hearing, all dumb birds must sing. 
 
 The sacred earth in her delight 
 Steams under April's wheeling sun. 
 
 The king-cup gathers amber might, 
 The clouds in triumph melt and run. 
 
 The grey lark trembles out of sight. 
 
 And here and there a fervid bud, 
 The restless herald of the year,
 
 no nature's renewing. 
 
 When vernal currents move its blood, 
 
 Expands in painted petals clear. 
 The flushed merle screams along the wood. 
 
 The rain is tender on the ground. 
 
 Smooth-headed robins ruffle out 
 Their plumage. Spring, in every sound 
 
 Divine and sudden, sheds about 
 Her green dilation at a bound. 
 
 The sap in old blind things is warmed : 
 The eager palm outruns its leaves. 
 
 The peering crocus, turf-embalmed, 
 In gardens under cottage eaves 
 
 Comes now the hollow winds are calmed. 
 
 Those faint red boles with many a line, 
 
 Those peeling sides, the ring-dove's perch, 
 Which white in darkened coppice shine 
 
 Are silver clusters of the birch ; 
 They seem bright woodland ladies fine !
 
 nature's RENEWING. Ill 
 
 The larch has blushing finger-tips ; 
 
 As tho' love-whispers of the spring 
 Had reached her on the March-winds' lips, 
 
 Or she had heard them in the ring 
 Of rain-drops down the forest slips. 
 
 And in the wasted snow-drop's room 
 
 Come daffodils abundantly, 
 The treasure of the violet's gloom 
 
 Dividing with her. Can they be, 
 Those steady purples aspen bloom ? 
 
 O glory of the dim green bough, 
 O April floors of primrose zone : 
 • It seems as if the grey world now 
 Had laid asleep her ocean moan, 
 And barren drifts of windy snow.
 
 112 
 
 JAEL. 
 
 So then their hymn of victory is done. 
 
 Thank God for that. Home are the soldiers gone. 
 
 The garlands of the triumph wither brown, 
 
 The singing-girls are sleepy, the hoarse crowd 
 
 Murmurs itself away. Night rises fast. 
 
 The shadows on the canvass of my tent 
 
 Deepen, and Jael in her lonely home 
 
 Begins to think it over, now the blare 
 
 Of clarions do not hail her longer blest. 
 
 O lying voice ! Methought, I found a crown 
 
 Of glory, silvern : out I held my hand 
 
 And drew a burnished adder off her nest, 
 
 Who stung me redly first, and, when blood dried, 
 
 In one small pit of poison deadly-blue. 
 
 The name of that ill worm is Infamy. 
 
 So the moon comes and silence in her train ; 
 
 There will not be a many stars to-night. 
 
 The wind begins his circuit with a wail.
 
 JAEL. II3 
 
 He tastes am ! touches at each little peak, 
 And in the broken furrows like a bird 
 Sings out in i .arkness. Why art thou so sad ? 
 " O blessed among women " — So they sang 
 With brazen lips to God. But he knows more 
 And with one great chain binds my heavy soul ; 
 I do not think that God will ever reach 
 His finger down and ease it. He hates me ; 
 You see, I cannot weep. Does that sound well ? 
 How many evil women can find tears, 
 Sinning all day. My one great deed of blood 
 Outweighs, as Horeb, in the scales of God 
 Against some petty sand-grains. He sees that, 
 Insists upon it, keeps it in his books 
 In plain red flaring letters that endure. 
 These women have a hundred petty ways 
 Of sinning feebly. He forgets them all. 
 They sin as ants or flies. He cannot praise 
 Or blame such creatures, simply lets them be. 
 1 feel all this alone with my own heart.
 
 114 JAEL. 
 
 The solitude is busy with God's voice 
 Speaking my sin. I am worn and wearied out ; 
 A mere weak woman, after all is said ; 
 Searching the intense dark with sleepless eyes, 
 Huddled away by the main-pole in the midst, 
 A curled crushed thing, a bluured white heap of robes, 
 Moaning at times with wild arms reaching out. 
 While on my canvass walls the rain-gush comes, 
 And the ropes scream and tighten in the blast. 
 
 So I must watch until my lord return ; 
 The camp of Israel holds to-night carouse, 
 And Heber sits at Barak's own right hand ; 
 Because I have risen against a sleeping man, 
 And slain him, like a woman. No man slays 
 After this sort. The craven deed is mine, 
 Hold thou its honour, Heber ; have thy wine, 
 Among the captains claim the noblest seat ; 
 And revel, if thou hast the heart, till dawn, 
 Brave at the board and feeble in the field !
 
 JAEL. II: 
 
 As the sun fell this eve I felt afraid, 
 For in his fading, as he touched the haze, 
 I saw in heaven one round ripe blot of blood. 
 And all the gates of light, whereby he died, 
 Were wasted to one drop, a crimson seed ; 
 I turned away and made mine eyelids fast ; 
 But deep down in my soul I saw it still 
 The single reddish clot. The blood was pale ; 
 They say pale blood is deadlier than the red, 
 And pallid this one drop. I think it came 
 Out of his forehead underneath the nail. 
 I had been told that slain men bled so much, 
 I nerved my soul for rivers and none flowed. 
 Somehow, his bloodless death was awfullest. 
 There seemed no reason, why at one swift blow 
 Of my cleft hands this warm flushed sleepy man 
 Should cease into a statue, as he did, 
 At one shock of the hammer on his brow. 
 (I heard a fable once,— a trader's tale, 
 \V!i ) sailed from Javan's islands hawking vei 
 
 i a
 
 Il6 JAEL. 
 
 How with a mallet one struck stone to flesh ; 
 He was a cunning carver, if he did ; 
 But I smote flesh to marble. That's no skill, 
 Requires a devil only.) He turned once — 
 Twice — with a sort of little heaving moan, 
 A strange sad kind of choking under-sound ; 
 And opened at me full great piteous eyes, 
 Already glazing with reproachful films ; — 
 As with one gasp — I fancy he gasped twice — 
 He lay there done with, that great goodly man ; 
 And in his sidelong temple, where bright curls 
 Made crisp and glorious margin to his brows — 
 So that a queen might lay her mouth at them 
 Nor rise again less royal for their kiss — 
 There, in the interspace of beard and brow. 
 The nail had gone tearing the silken skin ; 
 And, driven home to the jagged head of it, 
 Bit down into the tent-boards underneath ; 
 And riveted that face of deadly sleep ; 
 As some clown nails an eagle on his barn,
 
 JAEL. II7 
 
 The noble bird slain by the ignoble hand, 
 So slept the lordly captain at my feet ; 
 His lovely eyes were hardly troubled now ; 
 Yet in his keen grey lips a certain scorn 
 Dwelt as indignant, that a deed so mean, 
 Treason so petty, woman-guile so poor, 
 Should ever stifle out their glorious breath. 
 As I leant o'er them their serene disdain 
 Was eloquent against me, more than words, 
 And easy was the meaning of their scorn 
 To render and interpret into this — 
 " Better to be as we are earth and dust 
 Than to endure, as Jael shall live on, 
 In self-contempt more bitter than the grave. 
 Live on and pine in long remorseful years. 
 Terrible tears are sequel to this deed ; 
 Beat on thy breast, have ashes in thy hair, 
 Still shalt thou bear about in all thy dreams 
 One image, one reproach, one face, one fear. 
 Live, Jael, live. We shall be well revenged.
 
 Il8 JAEL. 
 
 This woman was a mother, think of that ; 
 
 A name which carries mercy in its sound, 
 
 A pitiful meek title one can trust ; 
 
 She gave her babe the breast like other wives, 
 
 In cradle laid it, had her mother heed 
 
 To give it suck and sleep. You would suppose 
 
 She might learn pity in its helpless face ; 
 
 A man asleep is weaker than a child, 
 
 And towards the weak God turns a woman's heart 
 
 Hers being none. She is ambitious, hard, 
 
 Vain, would become heroic ; to nurse babes 
 
 And sit at home, why any common girl 
 
 Is good enough for that. She must have fame ; 
 
 She shall be made a song of in the camp, 
 
 And have her name upon the soldier's lip 
 
 Familiar as an oath. And when she dies 
 
 She must write Jael on the years to come ; 
 
 Oblivion only terrifies her heart, 
 
 And infamy is almost twin to fame ; 
 
 But rusting unremembered in the grave
 
 jael. ng 
 
 I> worst of all. Let Jael rest secure, 
 That, if the reprobation of all time 
 Fall sweetly on her ashes, hers shall be 
 Perpetual condemnation. Ah, vain heart, 
 Thou shalt not lie forgotten, till the stars 
 Fall black into the pathways of the brine. 
 
 Can time efface a deed so wholly vile ? 
 She stood, the mother-snake, before her tent, 
 She feigned a piteous dew in her false eyes, 
 She made her low voice gentle as a bird's, 
 Her one hand beckoned to the fugitive, 
 Her other felt along the poniard's edge 
 Hid near the breast where late her baby fed. 
 She drew the noble weary captain in ; 
 Her guest beneath the shelter of her home, 
 He laid him down to rest and had no fear. 
 The sacred old alliance with her clan, 
 The trustful calm immunity of sleep, 
 Sealing se urity each more secure.
 
 120 JAEL. 
 
 Ah, surely, he was safe if anywhere 
 Beneath the mantle which she laid on him. 
 He was too noble to mistrust her much 
 His fading sense felt her insidious arm 
 Folding him warmly. Then he slept — she rose, 
 Slid like a snake across the tent — struck twice — 
 And stung him dead. 
 
 God saw her, up in Heaven. 
 The lark outside went on with his old song. 
 The sheep grazed, and the floating clouds came past- 
 Yet it Avas done. Sleep, guest-right, given word, 
 All broken, each forgotten. She had lied 
 Against these holiest three and slain him there. 
 Bonds were as straw ; if once she thought of them, 
 They only gave new keenness to the nail, 
 And made her right hand surer for the blow. 
 Pah ! she will come to slay her children next 
 For glory and a little puff of fame ; 
 And so they crowned her, but her myrtle roots 
 In strange red soil were nurtured, and their leaves
 
 JAEL. . 121 
 
 Are never wet with rain, but fed on tears. 
 
 Then Israel came with many cymbal-girls 
 And clashed this noble triumph into odes, 
 Great paeans full of noise and shaken spears, 
 Loud horns and blare of battle, dust, and blood. 
 Then shrilled that old lean shrewing prophetess, 
 Grey as a she-wolf on some weaned lamb's track, 
 Her song of death and insult on the slain ; 
 Then Israel's captain holding by her skirt, 
 Sang second to her raving with loud words 
 And hare-like eyes that looked on either side, 
 As if in dread dead Sisera should rise 
 And drive him howling up the vale in fear 
 With nimble heels. This captain who declared 
 To this old scolding woman Deborah, 
 " Except thou goest with me I remain. 
 I dare not face great Sisera alone, 
 Unless some female fury hound me on." 
 The brave words of a captain brave as they,
 
 122 JAEL. 
 
 A leader chiefly bold against the slain, 
 Fit jackal to the tigress which I seem, 
 Worthy to share the triumph of her deed, 
 That makes her almost viler than himself, 
 The craven hound tied to an old wife's strings. 
 
 My marvel is by what insidious steps 
 The will to slay him ripened in my mood. 
 For on that morning I had risen at peace, 
 And all my soul was calmer than a pool 
 Folded in vapour when the winds are gone. 
 Wholly at peace, I watched the ray new-born 
 In blessed streaks and rapid amber lanes 
 Run out among our vale-heads, low in heaven 
 One great star floated rolling yellow light. 
 For all night long my baby would not rest, 
 Till the dawn drifted, at whose coming sleep 
 Drew down his eyelids to my slumber song. 
 He could doze cradled now beyond my arms ; 
 And, as the day was instant everywhere,
 
 JAEL. 123 
 
 I came and made my station at the door 
 To draw the glory in and make it mine. 
 When suddenly a kind of weary mood 
 At all my mother life and household days 
 Clouded my soul and held her from delight. 
 It seemed such petty work, such wretched toil, 
 To tend a child and serve a husband's whims ; 
 Meek, if my lord return with sullen eyes, 
 Glad, if his heart rejoice ; to watch his ways, 
 Live in his eye, hoard his least careless smile ; 
 Chatter with other wives, manage and hoard. 
 Quarrel and make it up — and then the grave, 
 Like fifty thousand other nameless girls, 
 Who took their little scrap of love and sun 
 Contentedly and died. Was I as these ? 
 My dream was glory and their aim delight ; 
 Should I be herded with their nameless dust ? 
 Achievement seemed so easy to my hand 
 In that great morning. All my heart ran fire. 
 And turning I beheld my cradled child,
 
 124 JAEL. 
 
 And caught the coming footstep of my lord 
 Crisp in the grass. My waking life resumed 
 Its fetter as he came. Content thee, drudge, 
 Here is thy lot ; fool not thy heart on dreams. 
 Then with a little weary sigh I rose 
 To welcome him ; and hastily put by 
 The vision of the morning. As a girl, 
 Draping herself in secret with fine webs, 
 Starts at a sudden step and flings them down. 
 Restless he entered, gloomy, ill at ease, 
 Then shook himself and laughed his humour off 
 With an ill grace, relapsing to a frown. 
 And pushed about the tent arranging robes, 
 Searching old chests long undisturbed in dust ; 
 Then glancing at the wonder in my face, 
 Carelessly glancing, roughly he began, — 
 " You help me none, but marvel with big eyes 
 At one in household lumber elbow-deep ; 
 Hiding is better than the surest key. 
 A fight there will be ; ay, a game of blows,
 
 JAEL, _ 125 
 
 Arrows and wounded men and broken wheels, — 
 
 No further than a rook flies out to feed 
 
 From this tent door. An hour remains to hide 
 
 The ore of our possessions, let the dross 
 
 Remain and sate the spearman if he comes." 
 
 " A battle," my lips faltered ; all my soul 
 
 Flushed out into my face on hearing it. 
 
 AYas my dream come at last ? He made reply, 
 
 Misreading my emotion, " Do not fear ; 
 
 We will stand by and let them fight it out. 
 
 We have some friends at court in either camp : 
 
 Neither will harm us, let the strong prevail. 
 
 We can await the issue and declare 
 
 For him who wins ! " He laughed, and I was dumb 
 
 With bitter scorn against him in my soul, 
 
 Loathing my husband. But I tried him more — 
 
 " O lord," I said, " let me arise and arm thee. 
 
 The cause of Israel is the holy one. 
 
 These heathen are as dust upon the earth. 
 
 Let us strike in for Israel, tho' we die ! "
 
 126 m JAEL. 
 
 " Ay, dame," he muttered, " he is right who wins, 
 
 And Israel may be right for all I care ; 
 
 Yet Sisera is strong, and wise ones hide 
 
 When arrow sings to arrow in the air. 
 
 If right is weak, why then the God of right 
 
 Ought to be strong enough to help his own, 
 
 Without molesting one more quiet man. 
 
 But, while we chatter on, the morning ebbs, 
 
 I shall sweep off our treasure to the hills. 
 
 You and the babe may follow, as you please. 
 
 Safe is the upland, perilous the plain ; 
 
 How say you ? " But in scom I turned away, 
 
 And cried, " Begone, feeble heart." He went 
 
 Laughing and left me. 
 
 Then the battle shocks 
 Deepened all morning in the vales, and died 
 And freshened ; but at even I beheld 
 A goodly man and footsore, whom I knew ; 
 And then my dream rushed on my soul once more ; 
 Saying, this man is weary, 'tice him in,
 
 JAEL. I2 7 
 
 And slay him ; and behold eternal fame 
 Shall blare thy name up to the stars of God. 
 I tailed him and he came. The rest is blood, 
 And doom and desolation till I die !
 
 128 
 
 A SKETCH AT EVENING. 
 
 The whip cracks on the plough-team's flank, 
 The thresher's flail beats duller. 
 
 The round of day has warmed a bank 
 Of cloud to primrose colour. 
 
 The dairy-girls cry home the kine, 
 
 The kine in answer lowing ; 
 And rough-haired louts with sleepy shouts 
 
 Keep crows whence seed is growing. 
 
 The creaking wain, brushed thro' the lane, 
 Hangs straws on hedges narrow ; 
 
 And smoothly cleaves the soughing plough, 
 And harsher grinds the harrow.
 
 A SKETCH AT EVENING. 129 
 
 Comes, from the road-side inn caught up, 
 
 A brawl of crowded laughter, 
 Thro' falling brooks and cawing rooks 
 
 And a fiddle scrambling after.
 
 130 
 
 NEMESIS. 
 
 Who may rebuke a monarch bent on wrong ? 
 
 If he be rough and resolute and strong, 
 
 And tyrant of the time and fenced with master 
 
 sway; 
 If, like a god, to him belong 
 The Hours to bring him sweetness on his way, 
 The meek Hours at his will and footstool chained all 
 day; 
 
 To waft a little perfume of keen song 
 
 To make their lord his joy; 
 
 To smooth his brow from fold, and light 
 
 The brooding royal eyes an instant with delight ; 
 
 A king who may forbid ?
 
 NEMESIS. I^j 
 
 The man-god in his glory, crowned and calm, 
 
 Rises to reach his arm in purple hid 
 
 Towards his desire ; 
 
 While in his face a hunger beams like fire ; 
 
 His eyes are fate, his lips severe as death, 
 
 So that men hold their breath, 
 
 As like a whirl-wind on his wish he goes. 
 
 Who shall confront him in his deed? And say, 
 
 " Lord, thou hast wrought a shameful thing to-day ; 
 
 The curse of whose misdoing may descend 
 
 To vex thy ungrown race ; 
 
 Because thine iron vengeance would not bend 
 
 Or give to mercy place. 
 
 Thy lips have curled against the widow's cry, 
 
 Have sneered in some dead adversary's face ; ' 
 
 Tyrant, assuage thy fury and amend !" 
 
 Will he not frown reply? — 
 
 " Lover of death and greedy of thy fate, 
 
 Prate not of woes to me. 
 
 Worse curses on thine int. > n wait. 
 
 K 2
 
 132 NEMESIS. 
 
 Thine instant, mine shall be 
 
 Hereafter ages hence, when earth is grey. 
 
 This one worm at my feet, 
 
 Let him writhe on and wither into clay ; 
 
 His agony is sweet. 
 
 I will not stay my hand for any fears, 
 
 The old gods slumber long ; 
 
 They are grown childish with their weight of years, 
 
 They are blind and love the strong." 
 
 Therefore are all men mute ; 
 
 He rules and will not care. 
 
 No plagues of heaven refute his impious boasting there; 
 
 He reigns, and honour clothes his years supremely fair. 
 
 So of his crime he sucks the sweet, and dies 
 
 With the full savour of it in his mouth, 
 
 And keen delightful eyes. 
 
 While yet his lips a cunning laughter keep 
 
 At fools who fear the gods. So turns he to his sleep. 
 
 And all the simple people muse and say, 
 
 " His crime is surely done, and clean and passed away.
 
 NEMESIS. I33 
 
 Can god account with these dry bones for wrong, 
 
 Or make them live asrain ? 
 
 His vengeance is not wakeful, and this one 
 
 Hath made his rest, and done 
 
 His full of pleasure, and escaped god's pain." 
 
 Not so, ye fools and vain ; 
 
 Heap up his grave and listen : from the ground, 
 
 From the grey bones, when years have greened his 
 
 mound, 
 Within its circuit of sepulchral stones, 
 An Ate vengeance rises ; soft as rain 
 Her footprint on the plain, 
 And like the fluttered leaf her lucid robe. 
 Wan as a dream she goes, 
 A floating shadow grey, 
 Pale-eyed, without repose, 
 Patient to bide the coming of her day ; 
 Nursing her ire, till time across her path, 
 Fling down the helpless thing, that she may slay 
 The bleeding lamb delivered to her wrath.
 
 134 NEMESIS. 
 
 Years are to her the shadows of one night, 
 
 Such certainty of her revenge she hath ; 
 
 That, tho' they roll and roll again 
 
 And ruin all things fair, 
 
 Blood only can erase the enduring stain ; 
 
 For which she watches one accursed race : 
 
 The seed of him, who ruled, 
 
 And prospered his disgrace, 
 
 Who made his laughter at the gods befooled ; 
 
 And ended full of days, 
 
 Sleek and secure of fate ; 
 
 Above whose resting-place 
 
 Her phantom outlines wait. 
 
 She knows, that vengeance waxes good 
 
 For keeping, as old wines ; 
 
 And, tho' her veins are fire, 
 
 And all her being pines 
 
 In pain, in pain, 
 
 For the good great hunger of blood, 
 
 And the scent of the fresh sweet slain i
 
 NEMESIS. 135 
 
 Yet pale in her wild want she curbs desire ; 
 
 The sluggard years are slow ; 
 
 Days long, hours infinite, 
 
 She bides her time to strike the blow — 
 
 And surely at last, as a flash in the night, 
 
 The signals of Nemesis sound ; 
 
 At a leap, at a bound, red her hand is, and bright 
 
 Is the gash of her wound. 
 
 Strange is the vengeance of our lords on high, 
 Who harm the child and pass the guilty sire ; 
 Give him fat lands and let him calmly die 
 Full of sweet bread and lord of all desire. 
 And men look sadly as they close his eyes, 
 And wind him round in purple for his rest ; 
 And, save a little murmur in the land, 
 They say he sleeps with the eternal blest. 
 Ay me, for that man's children ; and again 
 A triple wail for those who call him sire ; 
 Cry for the old hereditary stain,
 
 136 NEMESIS. 
 
 Bemoan the Ate that can never tire. 
 Hope not, thou blameless son, she will refrain ; 
 Sprinkle with ash thy head and thine attire : 
 Thou shalt not turn her steps, nor mitigate her ire.
 
 *37 
 
 RURAL EVENING. 
 
 When frogs pipe out in dripping dykes, 
 And autumn wolds are sallow ; 
 
 When pigeons leave the stubble spikes, 
 And homeward oxen bellow. 
 
 Then, as the dun air dims the blue, 
 
 The ditcher and his fellow 
 Come drenched knee-deep in pasture dew, 
 
 And foot-clogged from the fallow : 
 
 The black frost in the white frost's wake 
 Drops apples ere they mellow. 
 
 The pale sun dies behind the brake, 
 The vapour rises yellow.
 
 138 RURAL EVENING. 
 
 A lass against the mill-pool gate, 
 Where dips the latest swallow, 
 
 Has set her basket down to wait 
 Some sheepish country fellow. 
 
 Her rosy cheek is ripe to kiss, 
 But ours are lank and hollow ; 
 
 Her sun is high, ours low as this 
 That ebbs o'er glooming fallow. 
 
 Our life as this fair day departs ; 
 
 Our rusty bones will follow, 
 Where hoary heads and weary hearts 
 
 Rest on a churchyard pillow. 
 
 With her the wine of youth is bright, 
 Death's potion we must swallow. 
 
 Time tires the soaring eagle's flight, 
 Time plumes the nestling callow.
 
 RURAL EVENING. 139 
 
 And some a wind-bound course must keep 
 
 In shoal and glassy shallow ; 
 While one must sail the central deep 
 
 Where turmoil tears the billow. 
 
 One wooes in calm the vocal nine, 
 
 One lives a genial fellow ; 
 One bristles like a porcupine 
 
 Or prickly rock-set aloe. 
 
 The glory of the garden rose 
 
 Exceeds the wayside mallow. 
 The swan arrayed in pearly snows 
 
 Outvies the russet swallow. 
 
 Who can predict each mortal's goal, 
 
 A throne-step or a gallow ? 
 But we will save a merry soul. 
 
 And leave our judgment fallow.
 
 140 RURAL EVENING. 
 
 Age shall not sour us into sneers, — 
 As yields a wave-washed willow, 
 
 We to his weight of tidal years 
 Will bend our branches sallow. 
 
 When ways are dim and daylight spent, 
 When cold wind whistles hollow, 
 
 Come, where bright faces and content 
 My ingle-corner hallow. 
 
 There logs increase the heat, old friend, 
 
 There ale runs amber-yellow. 
 A waning light is ours to spend, 
 
 A guttered end of tallow. 
 
 Come, link in mine thy hand and drink, 
 And let this sentence follow, — 
 
 That sweeter tastes the bowl, whose brink 
 The lips of friendship mellow.
 
 i4i 
 
 ONE VIEW OF WORSHIP. 
 
 Seven times a day in groanings manifold, 
 I bend with one petition as thy slave, 
 My great prayer leaving lesser wants untold ; 
 Thrice in each night I kneel out in the cold. 
 
 To this one apple in the grove of prayer 
 My thought, my life, my pulses turn and crave. 
 Earth doth not yield another boon so fair, 
 Hope of my youth, dream of my silver hair ! 
 
 All other gifts are barren as the sea. 
 My field of time will only ripen weeds, 
 If tliis fruit perish unenjoyed by me. 
 Hearken, because I cry continually !
 
 142 ONE VIEW OF WORSHIP. 
 
 Men ask such vain and empty things at best, 
 Health, children, coin, a fair wife, merry deeds ; 
 While these with many paltry needs molest, 
 Single and easy is my sole request. 
 
 Men kneel and mutter over forms by rote, 
 They are content with any gabbled word ; 
 But I, with broken voice and burning throat, 
 On one distinct entreaty dwell and gloat. 
 
 My seething thought inclines to one desire ; 
 A want that vexes as a grinding sword 
 Marrow and bone ; whose abstinence to fire 
 Changes the common air which I respire. 
 
 Are fervid lips and idle ones the same, 
 Is k as one to pray or hold our peace ? 
 If one neglect confound my words of flame 
 With their chill drivel, will no heart exclaim, —
 
 ONE VIEW OF WORSHIP. 143 
 
 " Let worship die ; entreat not Zeus again 
 Hard in his cms* of apathetic ease ; 
 Control thy tears, thy bleeding heart refrain, 
 He never solaced any in their pain. 
 
 " Curl up no more vain incense to his skies ; 
 Beat not thy breast, and eat thy bread in peace. 
 Rend not thy robe, since he alone is wise 
 Who sips the cup of pleasure till he dies. 
 
 " God's equal dealing differs from thine own ; 
 His justice is not weighed in human scale. 
 He hardly hears thee bless, or heeds thee moan 
 Thy hoard of curses climbing to his throne. 
 
 ' Why wilt thou weary him ? Thy voice ascends 
 Weak, yet persistent ; as an insect's wail, 
 It trickles up for ever, and offends 
 
 Where daylight into god-light rushing blends.
 
 144 0NE VIEW OF WORSHIP. 
 
 " It beats the porches of eternal beams, 
 Importunate it will not be denied ; 
 A weary echo in a land of dreams, 
 Marring the tender chime of sleepy streams. 
 
 " It will not fail or be denied or sleep, 
 Or cease or gather silence ; as a tide 
 That breaks, recurs, and breaks along the deep ; 
 Until a dreamer on the shore could weep, — 
 
 " So irksome is its iteration grown, — 
 To get the sound away and have his rest. 
 So may at length one prayer win access, thrown 
 Against heaven's gate as feeble foam is blown ! " 
 
 So men will change thy glory into worse, 
 And idle lips will censure thee, most blest. 
 I ask no miracle ; that thou reverse 
 The seasons, or descend in some great curse.
 
 ONE VIEW OF WORSHIP. I45 
 
 Nature is stronger than thou art divine ; 
 I pray not foolish for her overthrow ; 
 That snow-time hang ripe clusters on my vine, 
 That rain refresh my field and only mine. 
 
 I ask not, that in spheres of ether grey 
 The blackened stars be torn and hurled below ; 
 That the round sun ride eastward on his way, 
 That Luna draw the deeps three times a day. 
 
 But all ray being withers in the want 
 Of one ripe, excellent, and righteous thing, 
 For which the sources of my nature pant 
 And dwell in bitter thirst until thou grant. 
 
 Wilt thou endure, while changeful seasons roll, 
 To wat< h my changeless hunger riveting 
 
 * amest eyes on one eternal goal ? 
 O lord, I ask thee to complete my soul ! 
 
 L
 
 I46 ONE VIEW OF WORSHIP. 
 
 Count over, king, my multitude of prayers, 
 Number them all, if number's feeble wing 
 Can rise to comprehend that host of theirs ; 
 Which holds thee, god, my debtor unawares, 
 
 For praises unreturned, unheeded vows, 
 Cries in the night which had no answering, 
 For many moanings and unnumbered woes — 
 Hear, for a man gives payment where he owes. 
 
 Ah, deal not falsely, as a merchant may, 
 Who taketh merchandise and doth not bring 
 Coin to reward its use for many a day- 
 Nay, thou wilt hear and, if thou canst, repay !
 
 H7 
 
 A MEETING AND ADVICE. 
 
 True heart, under grey-green arches 
 Where the crimson cones of larches 
 
 Bud in bristle leaves ; 
 Print thy feet in dewy places, 
 Where, amid the king-cup faces, 
 
 The mead-spider weaves. 
 
 < )n the down thy raiment glistens, 
 In his nest the wheatear listens, 
 
 From thee Hows a lay ; 
 Doves refrain to pipe their trouble. 
 
 of hill fountains bubble ; 
 
 Give thee, love, good day. 
 
 L 2
 
 I48 A MEETING AND ADVICE. 
 
 Art thou cold, because I follow 
 Up the wood-way, in whose hollow 
 
 Bluebells haunt the rills ? 
 Wind-flowers carpet all the cover, 
 And there come, now March is over, 
 
 Shoaling daffodils. 
 
 Ah, my love, thy shadow only 
 Warms the folded dew-drop, lonely 
 
 In secluded dells. 
 Hear my April prayer unchidden, 
 One which birds in nest-down hidden 
 
 To their consorts tell. 
 
 Young and lonely hold no measure, 
 Youth's a mint of sterling treasure ; 
 
 If we hoard, we lose. 
 Age a coin, which Love refusing, 
 Out of date and out of using, 
 
 Takes not as his dues.
 
 A MEETING AND ADVICE. 149 
 
 Rose-buds, in a land of roses, 
 W 'ither ere they come to posies ; 
 
 Maiden roses mourn. 
 Sweet mouths many are not tasted, 
 Or their kisses won are wasted, 
 
 Hour and year forsworn. 
 
 Though all ends in loveless sleep, 
 When the ripe hour beckons, reap — 
 
 Reap, nor sourly say, — 
 •' Fresh cheeks wear not weeping-stain ; 
 Love is spoil and wedded pain 
 
 Taint their rose away. 
 
 " Wisest he who can despise 
 Cupid's evanescent dyes, 
 
 Passion's brittle prime ; 
 He shall revel long and well 
 In a careless citadel. 
 
 Monarch of his time."
 
 150 A MEETING AND ADVICE. 
 
 Answer, Dove, " tho' Love's best sweet, 
 Like an angel's glorious feet, 
 
 Flash and pass no more." 
 Answer, sweet, " Love may not last, 
 Yet the perfume of his past 
 
 Lives in riper store. 
 
 " He, who wavered long at noon, 
 Sits alone in darkness soon, 
 
 White with dusty snow. 
 Eyes can answer, hands as well, 
 Rusting years unlearn their spell." 
 
 Answer, dearest, so — . 
 
 Fortune plays not twice the giver, 
 Leave it once and lose it ever, 
 
 As we speak, 'tis flown. 
 Bind Love, ere the child-god spread 
 Gauzy wings above his head, 
 
 And fickle leave his throne.
 
 A MEETING AND ADVICE. 151 
 
 So that when thy merry weather, 
 Loses heart and changes feather, 
 
 And Time's hearth is grey ; 
 Love will save one fervid ember, 
 That wild east or bleak December 
 
 Will not quench away.
 
 152 
 
 THE TWO OLD KINGS. 
 
 A SKETCH AFTER KAULBACH. 
 
 Once two ancient kings and comrades, princes of a 
 
 kindred line, 
 Held high wassail until midnight in a castle on the 
 
 Rhine. 
 
 There around them sate their vassals, peers and pages, 
 
 knights and squires ; 
 There they long replenished beakers in the glare of 
 
 pine-wood fires. 
 
 As they feasted they remembered deeds and faces 
 turned to dust, 
 
 Days, that as sepulchral armour long had lain be- 
 smeared with rust.
 
 THE TWO OLD KINGS. 1 53 
 
 In that hall forgotten faces rose above each feasting 
 guest, 
 
 Dim hands trailing phantom garments, dim eyes long 
 consigned to rest ; 
 
 And one royal toper rising to his cousin reached the 
 
 cup, 
 And the other pledged his brother as he drank the 
 
 Rhenish up. 
 
 In his sluggish veins the vintage glowed as fire and 
 
 nobly ran ; 
 Till his trembling hands grew stronger, and new 
 
 courage flushed the man, 
 
 Then he spake — " O brother, brother, we are met in- 
 deed at last 
 
 In this grey old keep, uhere-under roars the Rhine and 
 howls the blast ; 
 
 Sixty years of rolling water this great river of our land 
 Hath returned to father Ocean since I held thy kindred 
 hand.
 
 154 THE TW0 0LD KINGS. 
 
 We were each then boyish princes ; time ran merry ; 
 
 life was gold, 
 And our fathers held the sceptres that our sons shall 
 
 shortly hold ; 
 
 Beardless boys, clear-lipped as maidens then, now see 
 
 this hoary fell, 
 Whiter than the seven mountains, fleeces down for 
 
 half an ell ; 
 
 Flowing over throat and breast-plate, as a broken 
 
 streamlet full 
 Freezes over some rock's shoulder in a triple icicle. 
 
 Cousin, thou art clothed with winter underneath thy 
 
 golden crown. 
 Many lines of many sorrows seam thy temple, track 
 
 thy frown. 
 
 Old dear face with heavy eyebrows brooding o'er its 
 
 buried joy; 
 As I search its saddened outlines hardly can I trace 
 
 the boy ;
 
 THE TWO OLD KINGS. 155 
 
 As I left him in his April, as I find him in his fall, 
 Here where ice-bound heights are frozen in a rolling 
 vapour's pall. 
 
 Care — we care not ; nature ripens, nature renders back 
 
 to clay ; 
 Shall we, weighed with eighty winters, whine ignobly 
 
 for delay ? 
 
 Rather chide the tardy summons, heroes harnessed for 
 
 the gloom ; 
 Shall we linger, soured faces, carping at a grandson's 
 
 bloom, 
 
 Envious of his heyday prowess ? — We have memories 
 
 full as fair, 
 We were young and we will tell it, gloating in a half 
 
 despair. 
 
 Smiling at the vanished fancies, tho' our eyes are al- 
 most wet ; 
 
 Scorning at the withered rosebuds, tho' we love their 
 perfume yet.
 
 156 THE TWO OLD KINGS. 
 
 In the dry rose of remembrance yet one petal is not 
 
 grey; 
 May the month was, woods were greening, birds were 
 
 choral, meadows gay. 
 
 On the labyrinthine pine-woods rosy clots of dawn 
 
 rode high ; 
 There were hunters in the forest, on that morning, 
 
 you and I ; 
 
 Then no hart, gigantic quarry, lured us thro' the 
 
 echoing green, — 
 I believe, since God made woman, bluer eyes have 
 
 never been 
 
 Than her own, my pretty wood-dove's ; as we found 
 
 her singing there, 
 On her brow unrisen morning, pearls of night among 
 
 her hair. 
 
 O my love, my perished beauty, tender lamb of moun- 
 tain fold ; [gold ; 
 Little brow too wild and humble to sustain the queenly
 
 THE TWO OLD KINGS. 1 57 
 
 How they rent me from thy bosom ; when my royal 
 father found, 
 
 That thy kisses were my empire ; and all glory empty 
 
 sound 
 
 To the joy of being near thee ; thy least sigh was 
 
 worth a throne ; — 
 • Take. sire, this hateful glory, so thou leave me to 
 
 mine own ; 
 
 Let my brother have mine heirship — ' But they tore 
 
 me from thy mouth, 
 Linked me to a frigid princess from the olives of the 
 
 south. 
 
 We were wed ; she bare me children ; side by side in 
 
 time to come, 
 
 Crowned we sate and clothed in purple up above the 
 people's hum. 
 
 When I rode to fight she kissed me coldly ; and, when 
 
 I returned. [earned 
 
 Gave tne duteous salutation as a wife should, greeting
 
 158 THE TWO OLD KINGS. 
 
 By the victory I brought her. So we lived, and so 
 
 she died. 
 She was not my love, ah, never; tho' she slumbered at 
 
 my side. 
 
 At my side in every pageant moving with a stately 
 
 mien ; 
 Me she never loved, but only much she loved to be 
 
 my queen. 
 
 Ah, my wood-girl, doth the rain beat rudely on thy 
 
 cloister grave 
 In the little Saxon village ? Doth the night as wildly 
 * rave, 
 
 As up here, with drops of tempest, rushing mist, and 
 
 sailing cloud ? — 
 Thro' the turmoil, lo, it rises one sweet still face in a 
 
 shroud — 
 
 Comrade, pledge to my beloved ; drink, my brother 
 
 in renown, [ments down. 
 
 Drink and dash the crystal beaker in a thousand frag-
 
 THE TWO OLD KINGS. 159 
 
 Hail ! sweet ashes — it is spoken — on to me the goblet 
 
 pass; 
 All is said — the cup lies broken — no vile lips shall 
 
 touch this glass." 
 
 As he ceased his cousin o'er him reached a cheering 
 
 arm and spoke, 
 Pointing thro' the oriel casement at the dawning where 
 
 it broke ; 
 
 " Love is well, O royal brother; nothing is more sweet 
 
 in grace, 
 Than the tear-drop which an old man sheds upon 
 
 dead memory's face. 
 
 Love is well, regret is lovely; but and if our day is 
 
 done, 
 See, there rises ampler promise to new men with yonder 
 
 sun. 
 
 When our years that ripened roses only send sepulchral 
 
 greeds, [deeds? 
 
 Shall we find no consolation thinking on our famous
 
 l6o THE TWO OLD KINGS. 
 
 Strike a sterner chord, to music heroes let us march 
 
 along ; 
 Let us to the grave go pacing with a sturdier battle 
 
 song. 
 
 Drink we to our dead dear comrades, loyal men, of 
 
 iron might ; 
 Who with us in front of onset felt the ecstasy of 
 
 fight 
 
 Brace their sinews ; for the sweetest love that ever 
 
 yet was won, 
 Pales beside this, as a taper wan before the regal sun. 
 
 Drink we to our high ambition ; drink the triumph of 
 
 our throne ! " 
 But the other aged monarch answered in an altered 
 
 tone. 
 
 " Five fair kingdoms left my father ; two the conquest 
 
 of his spear ; 
 I have seen their vines uprooted and their cities, rtfd 
 
 with fear,
 
 THE TWO OLD KINGS. l6l 
 
 Lurid heaps of smoke and cinders. I have heard the 
 
 orphan's wail ; 
 I have seen the giant Famine sitting roofless in the hail. 
 
 Of my father's laurel chaplet I have let two bay- 
 leaves fall, 
 
 I have lost two realms, whose banners flout me in 
 my vacant hall. 
 
 And the three remaining kingdoms seem to scorn my 
 
 feeble sway ; 
 And I hear a palace murmur, that they count my life 
 
 delay. 
 
 Here my huge sons stand and whisper, ' Surely he has 
 
 reigned too long ; 
 There his armour hangs rust-eaten, there his bugle, 
 
 mute from song, 
 
 Never more shall waken echoes. Surely he has ruled 
 
 enough ; 
 Mark the leather of his gauntlet, how the worms are 
 
 in the stuff; 
 
 M
 
 l62 THE TWO OLD KINGS. 
 
 How the moths have marred his mantle ! There his 
 
 empty baldric lies. 
 Shall we longer make obeisance to an old thing we 
 
 despise ? ' 
 
 Wistful each one nods and gazes, as along the down- 
 ward gloom 
 I descend with feeble paces to the children of the 
 
 tomb." 
 
 " Nay, my brother," spoke the other, " these things 
 
 are an old man's due ; 
 Faces come and faces perish and old races cede to new. 
 
 Comrade, cheer ; tho' disappointment every year 
 
 remaining brings, 
 Shall we die faint-hearted soldiers, shall we pass 
 
 despised kings ? 
 
 Friends may fail and Love forsake us, Hope may 
 
 falter, Faith decay, 
 And our pleasant dreams may open wings whereon to 
 
 flee away.
 
 THE TWO OLD KINGS. 163 
 
 Wine can stir the languid pulses to the ripeness of 
 
 their youth, 
 Flashing back an old man's mistress in her radiance, 
 
 in her truth ; 
 
 Wine can make us half immortal : — nay, the years are 
 
 out of tune, 
 Since the whispering meadows heard us whispering in 
 
 the ancient June. 
 
 Let them go : we pass to silence, and our deeds are 
 
 dream and nought — 
 Nought ? Yet dreams whose recollection holds us 
 
 heroes, heart and thought ; 
 
 Hark, our veterans there below us talk the same 
 
 refrain as we, 
 I larping on a faded love-song every soul in his degree ; 
 
 Draining out an old experience, how an angel's 
 
 golden wan 1 
 Struck the rock, and found the waters at the thirsty 
 
 soul's command. 
 
 M J
 
 164 THE TWO OLD KINGS. 
 
 Then how purely came the torrent, till the devil 
 
 changed the draught ; 
 And the drinker rose up poisoned, with a wordling's 
 
 iron craft. 
 
 How the broken years of passion cast him into sterner 
 
 mould, 
 How the icy frost of fashion turned each genial 
 
 impulse cold ; 
 
 King and peer and mailed captain, equal manhood, 
 
 diverse grade, 
 All imperfect, hardly trembling on the skirts of 
 
 lengthened shade ; 
 
 Bound together, king and soldier, onwards to the land 
 
 unseen, 
 Where the ancient heroes slumber with grey faces, 
 
 cold and keen. 
 
 And, tho' we shall part to-morrow, ne'er on earth to 
 
 meet again, [Southern plain — 
 
 I beyond the Northern mountains, thou along the
 
 THE TWO OLTX KINGS. I 65 
 
 See ! that morrow of our parting breaks upon our 
 
 wassail feast, 
 Flooding on the wreathen archways early splendour 
 
 from the East — 
 
 Yet still drink we our next meeting, drink it deep in 
 
 beakers seven, 
 Brother, ended is our banquet, we will hold the next 
 
 in heaven !"
 
 1 66 
 
 ARROW OF LOVE. 
 
 Arrow of Love, is thy wound small, 
 Or can it slay men after all ? 
 Dart of Desire, is thy hurt brief, 
 Or does its pain crown human grief? 
 O lip of Eros,' is your breath 
 Gentle as sleep or harsh as death ? 
 Ah, Love, but why in after years 
 Must thy son bring us burning tears ? 
 A scar recalls thy touches bland, 
 Their pressure deepens to a brand. 
 And he, the deity of pain, 
 Sits pining, as a moon in wane.
 
 ARROW OF LOVE. 167 
 
 His eyes are failed with despair, 
 
 The violet sickens in his hair. 
 
 And lonely in a land of reeds 
 
 He weeps his vanished days and deeds. 
 
 For ashes stain the gracious hea 1 ; 
 
 The garment of his glory dea I 
 
 Is rent with sighing " well-a-day !" 
 
 His wings are dusty, flakes of clay 
 
 Harden upon his comely feet ; 
 
 His voice is shaken and unsweet, 
 
 Hollow and thin his answer, low 
 
 As some lamb's bleating in the snow. 
 
 Against a spit of tawny Ian 1 
 
 Love sits lamenting. On each hand 
 
 The water of a tarn is still ; 
 
 The dead clouds hang without a will. 
 
 One solitary rose-bush near, 
 
 With cankered bloom and leaves gone s< 
 
 Is in his sight, and moves his breath
 
 1 68 ARROW OF LOVE. 
 
 To sing about this rose's death ; 
 And, as his thoughts are rough and few, 
 They make his measures rugged too. 
 One only cadence hears his grief, 
 The dry fall of each broken leaf. 
 
 The Lament. 
 
 O my fresh rose, my rose of dew, 
 Thy heart is stained and old ; 
 Thy petals are no longer new, 
 No incense fills each purple fold. 
 At thy best who held thee dearer ? 
 But June is gone and snows are nearer. 
 
 O my rose, my rose of June, 
 
 Faded daughter of the field, 
 
 Save thy perfume for a noon 
 
 Longer, and endure to yield 
 
 A little more delight, ere I am lonely 
 
 Over my dead rose, who loved one rose only.
 
 arrow of love. j 69 
 
 The Answer. 
 
 my love, my queen of May, 
 The light of youth is gone. 
 
 Thy pretty tresses gather grey, 
 
 Thy rosy lips are wan. 
 Will thy grey eyes alter yet, 
 And their nuptial smile forget ? 
 
 ( ) my love, will Time deceive, 
 
 Will he alter true Love so ? 
 There is more in Love, believe, 
 
 Than the silly nations know ; 
 More in Love when bloom is dead 
 Than the roses round his head. 
 
 ( I my love, and if thou need 
 
 Harbour when the north-winds blow ; 
 
 If thy tender foot-prints bleed 
 < m the flints among the snow ; 
 
 1 >ve will raise a sheltered cot, 
 Where the ice-blast enters not.
 
 170 ARROW OF LOVE. 
 
 O my true-love, we are wise ; 
 
 When snow whitens all our land, 
 Underneath the cloudy skies 
 
 We will travel hand in hand. 
 Since we have not far to go 
 To our rest beyond the snow. 
 
 Conclusion. 
 
 So Love lamented by the brim, 
 And I arose and answered him. 
 Until his rainy eyes became 
 Divine once more with subtle flame. 
 And down he leant to glean again 
 His arrows scattered on the plain ; 
 And hitched his shoulder-quiver right, 
 And felt his loosened bow-string tight ; 
 And shook the tresses from his eyes, 
 And gave a few short dreamy sighs ; 
 Until a sunbeam smote his wing ; 
 He shivered lightly at its sting ;
 
 ARROW OF LOVE. 171 
 
 And with a slow smile then arose, 
 But in departure one fair rose 
 Fell from his crown ; and so he past ; 
 While o'er the sullen mere-waves fast 
 Beams numberless in golden beads 
 Rocked on the ripples and the reeds.
 
 172 
 
 ODE TO THE SUN. 
 
 With sound thy car ascends from ocean soundless, 
 
 In horns of light ; 
 Beyond, around, beams enter into boundless 
 
 Grey halls of night. 
 
 Thy wheels roll over regions thunder-wasted, 
 
 Blue fields divine 
 On giant mountain clouds, whence none have tasted 
 
 The berry of wine. 
 
 The ray-gloss on thy wings is amber, shaken 
 
 To rosy showers ; 
 Thy voice is on the waters, and they waken 
 
 Like a field of flowers.
 
 ODE TO THE SUN. 1 73 
 
 Thy word is as a lyre-beat or the laughter 
 
 Of loves unseen ; 
 Thy gleam as one sweet tear that gathers after, 
 
 When joys grow keen. 
 
 Thou sayest, I have no lot or hand in slumber ; 
 
 I am Light, supreme. 
 My robes of glory quench the planet number, 
 
 As Day pales Dream. 
 
 The soft Moon is my sister and my shadow j 
 
 Her torch is mild, 
 Among the globe-flowers of my heavenly meadow 
 
 She moves a child. 
 
 She has stolen a drop of incense at mine altar, — 
 
 Some light I leave 
 To make Heaven fair around her, when I falter 
 
 In lines of eve.
 
 174 ODE TO THE SUN. 
 
 She is given a little reign between my splendours \ 
 
 Her intervals 
 Sustain with rest each soul, who homage renders 
 
 At festivals 
 
 Of me, great Phoebus, pinnacled in ardours ; 
 
 Whose tyrant throne 
 Burns in blown cloud behind the ocean harbours, 
 
 As ruby stone. 
 
 In the dimness of my regent anguish strengthens 
 
 The sick man's sighs ; 
 The miser shudders as the shadow lengthens, 
 
 The raven cries. 
 
 The sap of leaves, the blood in birds, of fishes, 
 
 The world's pulse, wane. 
 The doors of sense are barred with sleepy wishes 
 
 And phantom pain.
 
 ODE TO THE SUN. 1 75 
 
 Till in the garden of the grave the nations 
 
 Discern my beam ; 
 And rise up heartened with my consolations 
 
 From nets of dream. 
 
 I refresh all things, save the blind dead faces 
 
 With lips at peace. 
 These dead are mighty in their charnel places, 
 
 I cheer not these. 
 
 Their lips are unrefreshed with drops of thunder; 
 
 Their eyelids worn 
 Are never lifted to my way in wonder 
 At eve or morn. 
 
 But bitter dust is in their teeth to swallow ; 
 
 Their heart is stone ; 
 What Lord is he whom these blind dreamers follow? 
 
 1 know not one !
 
 176 ODE TO THE SUN. 
 
 But dim dry roots shall bud ; on fallows poorest 
 
 Sour bents shall shine ; 
 And wasted wrinkled heights be clothed with forest ;- 
 
 These are my sign ! 
 
 In grass-land shall arise a sound of heifers, 
 
 A voice of herds ; 
 I bathe my glowing hands in breathing zephyrs, 
 
 I call the birds. 
 
 In ripple and perfume and deep breezy lustre 
 
 My flame-feet tread ; 
 My girdle sprinkles moons in many a cluster, 
 
 As sand is shed ; 
 
 Prodigal beams, and flakes, and ardent arrows 
 
 Are my Light's tide ; 
 A mighty flood, whose channel never narrows 
 
 Or waves subside.
 
 ODE TO THE SUN. 177 
 
 I am the gates of life. My dawn is burning 
 
 With foam of stars, 
 Bright as the margin of a wave returning 
 
 In refluent bars. 
 
 The rain wails not around my palace chamber ; 
 
 There day-long glows 
 Increase and deepen from Auroral amber 
 
 To Vesper's rose. 
 
 The planets veil their burning faces near me ; 
 
 The green world's ends 
 Flash up through miles of ether that uprear me ; 
 
 Pale vapour blends 
 
 In underneath, unfolds itself or closes, 
 
 Divides, dilates ; 
 The Sea, my path-way, spreads her deep with roses 
 
 To my red gates. 
 
 N
 
 178 ODE TO THE SUN. 
 
 When Ocean's rocking floors are wrought with anger, 
 
 When sore the sea ; 
 The heart of Earth is heavy in her danger, 
 
 Her cry for me. 
 
 She rears her regal head, as my orb passes, 
 
 With weary eyes ; 
 Her long hands fruitful thro' the roots and grasses 
 
 Yearn at my skies. 
 
 " In travail of great seas I faint surrounded," 
 
 She wails distressed ; 
 " Too long have billows beaten in and wounded 
 
 My patient breast. 
 
 " Too long the wasteful waves eat out mine islands, 
 
 Pluck at my sides, 
 Draw down my sea-board cities into silence 
 
 With barren tides.
 
 ODE TO THE SUN. 179 
 
 •■ With rain and rush of breakers hath contended 
 
 My hollow form ; 
 Am I, God's daughter, to endure unfriended 
 
 The lash of storm ? 
 
 ' Ray out and quench, the furious deep will hear thee; 
 
 Ah, lord, descend ! 
 Curl) those wild horses of -the foam ; they fear thee; 
 Their riot end ! " 
 
 Earth cries ; her eyes are dim with sand ; her mournful 
 
 Dumb hands bewail, 
 Naked, in mute appeal against the scornful 
 
 And haggard hail. 
 
 Till I unfold my glory as a mantle ; 
 
 Till my red ami 
 Lull down the 1 hidden breakers into gentle 
 
 Ripples of calm.
 
 l8o ODE TO THE SUN. 
 
 Then Earth curls up her incense to my palace ; 
 
 Her fanes are full. 
 The Flamen rolls libations, and his chalice 
 
 Is crowned with wool. 
 
 The rows of altar-girls with ringing voices, 
 
 And youths with lyres, 
 Sing to the radiant father, who rejoices 
 
 To hear their choirs. 
 
 The wafted echo of their measure answers 
 
 To the sun-steeds' hooves ; 
 The rhythmic limbs and raiment of the dancers 
 
 Flash in far groves. 
 
 What words are these, that, rolled around me driving, 
 
 Proclaim me blest ? 
 Sweet as the wrestle of my reins arriving 
 
 In, fields of rest, —
 
 ODE TO THE SUN. iSl 
 
 " All hail, eternal Phcebus, king of ether, 
 
 Ruler of rays ; 
 Storm and the deep thou bindest in thy tether, 
 
 God of Heaven's ways ! "
 
 l82 
 
 A MADRIGAL. 
 
 LOVE GIVES ALL AWAY. 
 
 " And what is Love by nature ? " 
 
 My pretty true-love sighs. 
 And I reply, in feature 
 A child with pensive eyes, 
 
 An infant forehead shaded 
 With many ringlet rings, 
 
 And pearly shoulders faded 
 In the colour of his wings. 
 
 His ways are those of children 
 Who come to be caressed ; 
 
 Or, as a little wild wren 
 
 Who fears to leave her nest, —
 
 A MADRIGAL. I S3 
 
 He is shy ; if one shall beckon ; 
 
 He hides, will not obey ; 
 He spends, and will not reckon, 
 
 For Love gives all away. 
 
 He hoards to lavish only, 
 
 And lives in miser way. 
 Now hermit-like is lonely, 
 
 Now gallant-like is gay. 
 
 Slay Love, he is not broken ; 
 
 Wound him, his hurt will heal. 
 More than his lips have spoken 
 
 His cunning eyes reveal. 
 
 His sighs the still air sweetdh, 
 
 As primrose woods do May. 
 
 His locks are pale, as wheaten 
 
 Fields in the wan moon-ray.
 
 184 A MADRIGAL. 
 
 His palm is always tender ; 
 
 His eyes are rainy grey. 
 His wage-return is slender ; 
 
 For Love gives all away. 
 
 His aspect, as he muses, 
 Is paler than the dead ; 
 
 He weeps more when he loses, 
 Than he laughs when he is fed. 
 
 Love at a touch will falter, 
 Love at a nod will stay ; 
 
 But armies cannot alter 
 
 One hair-breadth of his way. 
 
 He trembles at a rose-leaf, 
 And rushes on a spear. 
 
 A thorn-prick and he shows grief. 
 But Death he cannot fear.
 
 A MADRIGAL. 185 
 
 The tyrant may not quench him, 
 He laughs at prison bars ; 
 
 The water-floods may drench him, 
 The fire may give him scars. 
 
 Though thou lay chain and fetter 
 On ankle, wrist, and hands, 
 
 He will not serve thee better, 
 But soar to unknown lands. 
 
 He follows shadow faces 
 Into grave-yards unawares. 
 
 He reaps in sterile places, 
 And brings home sheaves of tares. 
 
 ( )ne tear will heal his anger ; 
 
 He will wait and watch all day; 
 lie scuffs at toil and danger, 
 
 His last crust gives away.
 
 l86 A MADRIGAL. 
 
 He will strip off his raiment 
 To make his dear one gay j 
 
 And will laugh at any payment, 
 Having given all away. 
 
 When care his heart engages, 
 And his rose-leaf gathers grey, 
 
 He will claim a kiss for wages, 
 And demand a smile for pay.
 
 1 87 
 
 THE GARDEN OF DELIGHT. 
 
 Slumber, child, sweet-heart of Eros, and dream in thy 
 
 lover's own garden, 
 Where the sweet apple abounds and the myrtles are 
 
 many and deep ; 
 Rest, he has watch at thy pillow of rose-petals shed 
 
 ere they harden ; 
 Rest, if a harsh wind arise then his wing shall be round 
 
 thee in sleep. 
 
 If a sunbeam alight on his darling, the god will arise 
 
 and give shadow ; 
 If a droning importunate bee loiter, he makes it go In ;
 
 l88 THE GARDEN OF DELIGHT. 
 
 Tho' it seek to no flower that is sweeter than this 
 
 sleeping one in its meadow ; 
 No honey-bloom equals his own in the lands where 
 
 the asphodels lie. 
 
 Dream, therefore, love's child-love, serenely, thy suitor 
 will helm thee sweet vision ; 
 
 Some shadows are baleful of night ; he will heed that 
 he guide them away. 
 
 He will breathe on thine eyelids a dream drawn down 
 from the valeheads elysian, 
 
 Painted with rainbow and set to the music of mur- 
 muring spray. 
 
 Lest thy soul pine for his in the absence of sleep, lest 
 
 another be near thee, 
 He will send thee his glorified form, more a god than 
 
 he dares be awake.
 
 THE GARDEN OF DELIGHT. 189 
 
 O my child, the intense very Eros with beams of his 
 
 presence would sear thee ; 
 Therefore he softens his rays ; his effulgence he dims 
 
 for thy sake. 
 
 Ah, slumber is well, but the rising is better, my queen, 
 
 as the shaken 
 Pictures of orchards in waves echo back the gold 
 
 apples less clear ; 
 So 'tis sweeter, if Eros with burning lips over thee t 
 
 whisper, to waken ; 
 Then arise for his doves are around and no ravens of 
 
 Anteros near.
 
 190 
 
 IN SICILY. 
 
 Yonder is y£tna purple with one cloud. 
 
 Below us the enduring water-sound 
 
 Arises, broken where the vineyard men 
 
 Sing in their houses ; under and below 
 
 The long Tyrrhenian islands meet the foam ; 
 
 Then the illimitable sea rolls in, 
 
 Where the lights pass ; until the rosy space 
 
 Of ether deepens into olive grey ; 
 
 And rays the floating purple like a hand, 
 
 Or holds the gates of light in violet waves. 
 
 Why art thou silent, voice of my desire ? 
 Be pitiful and answer, lest I feel
 
 IN SICILY. igi 
 
 This mighty dream unreal as the touch 
 Of thy sweet hand that lulls my soul asleep. 
 Bend thine eyes, beautiful with all their light, 
 Full on my face ; let thy lips follow them ; 
 Lest I should fear delusion, and awake 
 Hereafter weeping for a phantom joy. 
 
 What have I done to merit love of thine, 
 How shall I rise up worthy of mine own ? 
 Honour enough for any lips of mine 
 To kiss the little broken cistus bud 
 Slain by thy rosy feet at some cliff edge. 
 
 Wonder of Eros, this and thus was I j 
 
 The dull weak thing, whose instinct at thy face 
 
 Drave him to fall in adoration prone. 
 
 He saw thy beauty terrible as fire, 
 
 His feeble nature faltered as in pain. 
 
 M rvt-1 of love, whose empire alters all, 
 
 Since thou hast deigned to raise me to thy smile ;
 
 ig2 IN SICILY. 
 
 As the moon calls a low and earth-born cloud 
 To ascend and glisten in her glorious arms, 
 Till in his vapour all her form is lost ; 
 But he who veils her round glows more and more. 
 
 As in a silence of warm air the lark 
 
 Sings, in thy love my spirit is content ; 
 
 As in a waste of many buds the bee 
 
 Is busy with much perfume, till it tire ; 
 
 I am broken with the sweetness of my love. 
 
 I feel thy spirit brooding in serene 
 
 Completeness, deep as ether, pure as dew. 
 
 The still hours come and watch us and depart. 
 
 At length, beyond the glory of a star, 
 
 Thou dost arise ; and, in thy leaving me, 
 
 Soothest my burning forehead with thy hand. 
 
 Or, in caress that runs before farewell, 
 
 I watch thee gather back thy heavy curls 
 
 Disordered ; leaning in a silent care 
 
 To smile, before thy lips are moved to mine ;
 
 IN SICILY. 193 
 
 Lest I should lose thy smile, as intense light 
 Is lost if men consider it too near. 
 So leaning drink my soul into thine own ; 
 Have thy sweet arm about me, and begin 
 A murmuring breath in whisper, as the talk 
 Of mated swallows when their nest is laid. 
 My flower of dawn, my bud with timid folds, 
 My lily, (mailing ere the light is laid 
 Or rain goes on thy petals ; O my song 
 Borne brokenly as a moth in perfumed air ; 
 My silver cloud of spices consecrated, 
 O incense of my altar ; last, my love ; 
 Rest in that name of all the number best ! 
 Ah, but to rest with thy sweet serious eyes 
 Above my slumber ; that were lovely dream, 
 Worthy a lord of heaven, whose stately joy 
 Immortally continues. Whisper me 
 In living silence : thy smooth cheek on mine : 
 And let thy ringlet flakes efface the day 
 With clustered ripples from my glowing eyes. 
 
 And so remain as radiant as of yore, 
 
 1 1
 
 194 IN SICILY. 
 
 Mysterious in thy beauty ; till this heart 
 
 Dissolve to equal thine and pulse with thine, 
 
 In larger beatings, as a god's that loves, — 
 
 Until arterial ichors change the stream 
 
 Of puny life within me. Till I drain 
 
 Enormous inspiration at thy lips ; 
 
 For surely they who love become as gods 
 
 Knowing all wisdom ; and thy love shall draw 
 
 My faltering soul invested in its power, 
 
 Out and beyond this tumult we call Time. 
 
 Where the loud fruitless billows heave themselves, 
 
 Where the long heedless clouds roll and are lost — 
 
 Where one year's blossom is the next one's dust. 
 
 And summer's wife may fade to winter's dead. 
 
 The infants of her love surround her urn 
 
 Year after year with unenduring wreaths ; 
 
 The dim sweet face fades from them. Children's eyes 
 
 Weep nothing long, and she shall be forgot 
 
 Out in the lonely grasses of her rest. 
 
 Across the- silver lyre-beat of my love, 
 Intrudes a chord of death ! a moaning wire
 
 IN SICILY. I95 
 
 Changes the honied cadence at its close. 
 Let the song cease. Ah, me, my beautiful, 
 Let us be very busy with our joy, 
 While there is light above us and sweet air. 
 I question not beyond thee. Love is more 
 Than Time : thine eyes are on me, and thy palm 
 Is wound with mine : thy lucid orbs resume 
 Old tenderness, and wean me from the thought 
 Beyond thine arms : thine instant, love, is more 
 Than all hereafter, when the immeasurable 
 Cycles of darkness brood above our graves 
 For ever. Leave me this, that I may hear 
 The breathings of thy bosom, hear thy sighs 
 Drawn out in long suppression from thy soul, 
 To tell me more than language all thy love. 
 Leave this, I question not while this endure : 
 Beautiful dream, be patient and delay 
 A little while ; and leave us hand in hand 
 To watch the daedal changes of the woods, 
 The wave, the vineyard, ami the floating heads 
 Of /Etna, islanded in amber cloud.
 
 196 
 
 THE SHEPHERD AND THE 
 HIRELING. 
 
 A MONKISH DOGGREL. 
 
 Who keepeth his sheep in the wattled fold ? 
 A wise man godly, merry, and old. 
 His own is the flock and he loves it well, 
 As the grey wolves under the forest can tell ; 
 When a rough one comes he stands very fast, 
 With his staff and his hounds and his stones to cast, 
 
 For his sheep, safe sheep ! 
 
 Who foldeth his sheep on the hill that is red ? 
 A sleepy, hireling fellow instead. 
 His sheep are another's ; he careth none 
 Tho' the wolves are rending them one by one. 
 When the grey beast comes, he fleeth away 
 Down the hill like a feather ; ah, well-a-day 
 
 For his sheep, poor sheep !
 
 THE SHEPHERD AND THE HIRELING. I97 
 
 Who tethers our flock in the Church her yard ? 
 
 A merry good saint who is honest and hard. 
 
 His sheep know the Bishop, he knows his sheep, 
 
 So, when a lean heretic tries to creep, 
 
 He raises his crook and his gold hoop-ring 
 
 And scares him away, while the choristers sing 
 
 For their souls, safe souls. 
 
 Who foldeth his swine in the city of sin ? 
 The bloat brown Satan burning within. 
 He pushes on each to his trough with a prong 
 And away to perdition goads them along. 
 When an angel hovers, he shouts him away 
 And gathers them muck till the judgment day. 
 
 Well-a-day, poor souls. 
 
 He pastures them well in a forest tall, 
 
 And beats on the boughs till the acorns fall ; 
 
 In each of their snouts he rivets his ring, 
 
 And drags them in where the old nettles sting ; 
 
 On each of their withers right plain to see 
 
 He brands them deep with a gothic D, 
 
 Poor swine, poor souls '
 
 I98 THE SHEPHERD AND THE HIRELING. 
 
 Now sing we together for souls, and sheep 
 Who sit on the hills where the night lies deep. 
 May they gain a good grass that is sweet to feast, 
 And never be scared by a prowling beast. 
 This is my carol, God help us, Sirs, 
 And keep you each clean of such evil curs ; 
 
 In seternum, Amen.
 
 199 
 
 AT THE COUNCIL. 
 
 I stood to-day in that great square of fountains ; 
 
 And heard the cannons of St. Angelo 
 In many echoes towards the Alban mountains 
 
 Boom over Tiber's flow. 
 
 I saw the nations throng thy burnished spaces, 
 Cathedral of the universe and Rome ; 
 
 One purpose held those earnest upturned faces 
 Under the golden dome. 
 
 Tumult of light rolled on that human ocean ; 
 
 Climax of sound replied in organ storms ; 
 And shook those altar Titans into motion, 
 
 Bernini's windy forms.
 
 200 AT THE COUNCIL. 
 
 They seemed to toss their giant arms appealing 
 Where Angelo with mighty hand has striven 
 
 To paint his angels on an earthly ceiling 
 Grander than those of heaven. 
 
 Mid-air among the columns seemed to hover 
 Incense in clouds above that living tide. 
 
 Whence are these come, who tread thy courts, Jehovah, 
 In raiment deep and dyed ? 
 
 " We are gathered thine elect among all races ; 
 
 As at God's birth with Magian kings, afar 
 Thy whisper found us in our desert places, 
 
 Where we beheld thy star, 
 
 " Ninth Piety of Rome ; with whom the keys are, 
 Regent to hold God's house, to feed his flock 
 
 Where Ceesar ruled ; and thou, supplanting Csesar, 
 Art firm on Peter's rock.
 
 AT THE COUNCIL. 201 
 
 " Nioea's thunders yet are fresh as morning 
 
 Beams in whose light the church has gone and goes, 
 
 To-day Niaea peals in Rome her warning ; 
 Pontiff to curse thy foes 
 
 " We come, Armenia, Gaul, Missouri, Britain ; 
 
 The chosen of the chosen priests are there. 
 To all men hath gone out his mandate written, 
 
 Who fills St. Peter's chair. 
 
 "Grey heads have waves Atlantic wafted scathless 
 Weak feet have toiled o'er Libyan hills in fear, 
 
 Old Bishops from the regions of the faithless 
 Have crept on crutches here. 
 
 •■ To far Canadian meres of ice-bound silence, 
 
 To cities lost in continents of sand, 
 To shoaling belts around Pacific islands, 
 
 The Pontiff raised his hand. 
 
 P
 
 202 AT THE COUNCIL. 
 
 " Then with one mind they came, the Bishop leaders, 
 The outpost Captains of the Church at fight, 
 
 From uplands clothed with Lebanonian cedars, 
 From realms of Arctic night ; — • 
 
 " Lo, we are ready at thy summons, father ; 
 
 Loose, and we loosen, bind and we will bind. 
 The conclave princes at thy blast shall gather 
 
 As red leaves after wind. 
 
 " Thunder the doctrine of this last evangel, 
 Clear as the note of doom its accents sound ! 
 
 While men regard thine aspect, as an angel 
 In the sun's orb and crowned ! 
 
 " At thy reproof let nations quail in terror, 
 And tremble at the pealing of thy word, 
 
 For God has made thy mouth his own, and error 
 In thy voice is not heard.
 
 AT THE COUNCIL. 203 
 
 " Let all be doomed on whom thy curses thunder, 
 Let none be righteous whom thou dost withstand ; 
 
 The priesthood of a word we kneel in wonder, 
 And kiss thy sacred hand." 
 
 " Hear, shade of Calvin, ghost of Luther, hearken, 
 Ye renegades of northern yesterday ; 
 
 Infidel bones, which years of silence darken, 
 Turn and salute our ray ! 
 
 " Leave vain philosophies, old dreamer Teuton, 
 Great drowsy fly in webs of logic weak ; 
 
 We silenced Galileo, menaced Newton, 
 And Darwin shall not speak. 
 
 " behold a sign, ye sceptic sons of evil, 
 
 The dogma ; raising which, as Michael, brave 
 
 Our pope, confront their scientific Devil 
 Over each unclosed grave :
 
 204 AT THE COUNCIL. 
 
 " Till Death and Doubt be thy tame sheep, O pastor, 
 Pontiff of souls and vicar of God's choice, — 
 
 Infallible ; in whom the spirit-master 
 Hath breathed his spirit voice, — 
 
 " Explain our Faith ! All faithful hear thy mandate, 
 Emperors watch in dread our world debate ; 
 
 Thy fear is on all peoples ! " (but the bandit, 
 Who plunders at thy gate.) 
 
 Rome, November, 1869. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 PRINTED BY TAYLOK AND CO., 
 LITTLE VUEEN STREET, LINCOLN'S INN F1KLPS,
 
 BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
 PHILOCTETES; a Metrical Drama, after the 
 Antique. Crown Svo, 4s. 6d. 
 
 OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. 
 
 " This is a fine poem, beautiful in detail, powerful as a whole; 
 leaving the same sort of impression of sad majesty upon us as many 
 of the finest Greek dramas themselves : combining the self-re- 
 trained and subdued passion of the antique style, with here and 
 there a touch of that luxuriance of conception, and everywhere 
 that wider rage of emotions and deeper love of natural beauty, 
 characteristic of the modem, . . . all these elements form together a 
 poem of the noblest kind, in which a subject truly Greek is just 
 illuminated with the dawn of that which still lay below the horizon 
 of Snphodes. It is not that the poet assumes any thoughts abso- 
 lutely invisible to the great poets of the great age of Greece, but 
 that knowing as he does the clear and brighter faith to which these 
 thought-- were tending, he gives them a greater emphasis and a 
 richer glow than was possible to the great Greek poet." — The Spec- 
 tator, June 30//1, 1866. 
 
 ' Philocter.es,' a drama after the antique, which took hold of all 
 readers having any pretension to taste and scholarship on its first 
 appearance.'' — CONTEMPORARY Review, October, 1867. 
 
 " ' Philoctetes,' a poem so tz< ■< >< I that many were anxious I 
 know by whom it was written." — Examiner, December lyth, 
 1870. 
 
 " Equally fine arc some of the choric passages in the ' Philoctetes'* 
 Hon. J. Leicester Warren, one oi the first of our young poets." 
 — St. Paul's Magazine, September, 187Z. 
 
 In writing ' Philoctetes ' the author has proved himself capable 
 i>t a really admirable imitation of the Greek drama.'' London 
 I.' 11 w, July ; . 1 S67. 
 
 "Theauthorol ' Philoctetes ' has been well known among all 
 lovers ot poetry." — Westminiter Review, Jam .. 1871. 
 
 " rhere is fine poetry in ' Philoctetes,' but it is the -pair." 
 
 — Rbaoi h. '< . 1 366. 
 
 "The classical field is open and unrifled. Let the author pursue 
 Ins amongst its treasui aera- 
 
 tion with In 'from the am truthfullj 1 
 
 ceived as his ' P m>\\ Review, i it i$U>,
 
 " An unknown writer who chooses as the subject of a ' metrical 
 drama, after the antique,' the sufferings and deliverance of 
 Philoctetes, and so challenges comparison with all but the noblest 
 of the extant works of Sophocles enters on a task of no common 
 magnitude . . . We may add to that plea that the enterprise, bold as 
 it undoubtedly was, has issued not in failure but in success. The 
 modern ' Philoctetes' will be read with pleasure by those who have 
 loved and admired the old. It deserves to the full as high a place 
 in the liteiarure of our time as Mr. Arnold's ' Merr pe,' or Mr. 
 Swinburne's ' Atalanta in Calvdon.' " — Contemporary Review, 
 June, 1866. 
 
 REHEARSALS ; a Book of Verses. Crown 8vo, 6s. 
 
 OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. 
 " The author has found his gift; and its presence is visible more 
 or less in every piece on which he has now tried his hand. This 
 gift we take to be a compound of rich fancy and imagination, 
 fostered by a keen and loving insight of nature, and kept in cheque 
 by a sustained and observant study of the antique models which, 
 better than any later examples, supply lessons of form and chaste - 
 ness to modern verse-writers. In ' Rehearsals ' the impress of this 
 may be traced throughout ; on some of the poems it is so deeply 
 and successfully set that, unless the taste for poetry is extinct, they 
 cannot fail to suivive the ephemeral notice which may be drawn to 
 them by magazines and reviews, and to hold their own amidst 
 those samples of the English muse of the nineteenth century which 
 are worthv to live.'' — Saturday Review, December 10th, 1870. 
 
 " Mr. Warren, whom we may be allowed to congratulate on 
 claiming in his own per-on the honours which he has won under 
 the name of ' William Lancaster,' expresses with uncommon energy 
 and passion the spir t of ' revolt' which is so common among our 
 young poets, we may say, among our young thinkers. . . . Mr. 
 Warren has in no small measure the gifts of the poet, but we 
 cannot hope or even wish for him the highest success till he can 
 come to believe in light." — Spectator, February q.th, 1871. 
 
 "'Rehearsals' not merely justifies all the praises which have 
 bten bestowed upon the previous poems, but shows that Mr. Warren 
 is capable of still greater achievements. His present volume reveals 
 a sustained power of thought, a ripeness of judgment, and an artistic 
 beauty, for which we were quite unprepared." — Westminster 
 Review, January, 1871. 
 
 " Mr. Warren has an exquisite ear; and his verse dwells on the 
 cat of the reader with a whisper as of evening wind stealing through
 
 woodbine, always too with a shade of melancholy in its sweetness. 
 What could be tenderer, sweeter, more rapt in self-nursed despair 
 than this from ' The Children of the Gods? '. . . ' Pandora ' is an 
 exquisite restoration. It is instinct with the Greek spirit. The 
 severe simplicity and beauty of the old life speaks through the swell 
 of the rhythm, which pulses steadv and calm, like the waves of 
 a summer sea round rocks." — Nonconformist, Dec. 14th, 187c. 
 " We cannot help recognizing in ' Rehearsals ' the mature work 
 of a ripe poet. The promise of his ' Philoctetes' and ' Orestes ' 
 made us sure that, in the course of a few years, their author would 
 produce poetry worthy to take its place amidst the more memorable 
 out-pouring of contemporary verse-weavers." — Literary Church- 
 man, January $th, 1871. 
 
 " Mr. Warren has a quick eye and ear for the sights and sounds 
 of external nature; and a warm, sympathizing heart with the most 
 tragic as well as the most tender emotions of human nature. His 
 genius takes many forms, and is equallv well sustained in its multi- 
 form versatility. His chief poems in this collection are all written 
 on subjects as different and as distinct in their character as can well 
 be imagined, and vet they are all remarkable for high finish, vigour, 
 and poetical insight. . . Of all the pieces in the volume, we gi\ethe 
 palm ol excellence to ' Expostulation,' which is a pa sionate appeal 
 of the God of Israel to the people who have forsaken him. We 
 have space to quote only a few lines of this very beautiful poem. — 
 The Graphic, February, i8'/i, 1871. 
 
 "Mr. Warren's ' ReHearsals' consists of forty-four poems, all of 
 them short, many terse almost to abruptness. Nevertheless, each 
 poem is pleasant to read, for they are all carefully composed and 
 well put together. . . . 'An Ode' is one of the finest poems m 
 ' Rehearsals. 1 The following as the three closing stanzas oi it. . . . 
 A land ol a rest and sleep is here so powerfully shown to be the 
 tor which alone it is wise to long. ... It ('The Prodigal Son') is 
 a poem ol only three \erses, but it is powerful in its simplicity and 
 terseness. With it we may close this short review ol Mr. Warren's 
 book, but not without expressing a hope that before long lie will 
 give us more of Ins work, which, we have tan grounds 1-1 ho| 
 will fulfil tin- promise he has undoubtedly shown in these poems 
 and 5< iiisNMS, May 2$th, is 1 . 
 
 "lbs (the author's) descriptions oi nature are remarkably faith- 
 
 and thei ■ finish in all that he writes." — Wmem Re- 
 
 ,1871. 
 
 "We have ali ' 'hit the music of the vei <• n ex- 
 
 ..n :!v chaim n.'. nid withoui close studv in several ol the poems, 
 
 admiral d --kill ol the ai t induce th<
 
 reader to overlook the strength of the thought so elegantly and 
 tersely expressed." — Manchester Examiner and Times, March 
 
 2 2)1(1, I 87 I. 
 
 " There is no mistake whatever about the genius and ability of 
 Mr. Warren. ... It is possible that the introduction which we 
 propose to give our readers to this remarkably fine volume may as 
 well begin with this horribly beautiful poem. (The Strange Pa- 
 rable) ... If Mr. Warren write a little slower he will leave marks 
 behind him." — Daily Review, December \<)ih, 1870. 
 
 " So long as poems like this can be written in the nineteenth 
 century, so long may we say that the warmth and spirit of the old 
 classic religion did not expire with Goethe. . . . The most biting 
 sarcasm, and tne tendere t feeling, the keenest sensibility to natural 
 beauty, the utmost freedom from coarse sensuousness, the deepest 
 inspiration and the highest aspiration, the saddest undertone and the 
 sweetest melody, all lie between the covers of this book. — The Il- 
 lustrated Review, 1870. 
 
 ORESTES ; a Metrical Drama. Crown 8vo, 4s. 6d. 
 
 OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. 
 
 " In ' Orest:s,' he (the author) has at least proved himself capable 
 of producing an admirable piece of English composition. Some of 
 the blank verse in this poem is almost Shakesperean in its forcible 
 expression, in its power of clearly realizing the subtleties of the 
 thought of which it is the vehicle, in its freedom from affectation, 
 in its freedom from weakness. . . . When we meet such poetry as 
 this book contains, the temptation to quote is irresistible. — " Lon- 
 don Review, July 20th, 1867. 
 
 "The present work, like its predecessor, • Philoctetes,' contains 
 many passages, especially in the choruses, the force and beauty of 
 which are not to be denied. . . . Viewed merely as a dramatic 
 poem, it often demands high praise for the force of its dialogue, and 
 for the fervid spirit and beauty of description evinced in the choruses. 
 There is the true throb of passion in the reproaches which Orestes 
 addresses to his mother, whom he still believes guilty of seeking his 
 life" — Athen/eum, July I'jth, 1S67. 
 
 " Altogether, this ' Orestes ' is a fine conception, powerfully 
 wrought out and calculated, unless we greatly err, to sustain its 
 author's well-won place among the foremost imitators of the ancient 
 drama." — Contemporary Review, October, 1867. 
 
 Strahan & Co., 56, Ludgate Hill, London.
 
 NEW BOOKS. 
 
 REVELATION CONSIDERED AS LIGHT; a 
 
 a Series of Discourses. By the Right Rev. ALEXANDER 
 EWING, D.C.L., Bishop of Argyll and the Isles. Post 8vo. 
 
 WHITE ROSE and RED. By the Author of 
 
 ' Saint Abe and his Seven Wives.' Crown 8vo. 
 
 NATIONAL EDUCATION and PUBLIC ELE- 
 
 MKNTARY SCHOOLS. By JAMES H. RIGG, D.D. 
 Crown 8vo. 
 
 The CHARACTER of ST. PAUL. By J. S. HOW- 
 SON, D.D., Dean of Chester. Crown 8vo. 
 
 OLD MASTERS and THEIR PAINTINGS. By 
 
 SARAH TYTLER, Author of Papers for Thoughtful Girls.' 
 Crown 8vo. 
 
 MODERN PAINTERS and THEIR PICTURES. 
 
 By SARAH TYTLER, Authcr of 'Papers for Thoughtful 
 Girls.' Crown 8vo. 
 
 OULITA : a Tragedy. By the Author of ' Friends 
 
 in Council.' New Edition. i8mo. 
 
 THE GAOL CRADLE — WHO ROCKS IT? 
 
 Crown 8\o. 
 
 I A UTERDALE : a New Story. 3 vols. Post Svo. 
 
 LARS: a Pastoral of Norway. By BAYARD TAY- 
 LOR. Small 8vo. 3s. 6d. 
 
 The TRAGEDIES of yESCHYLOS. A New Trans- 
 lation; wuh iy,andan Appendix ol Rhymed 
 Bj E. II. I'l UMPTRE, M. V. Professoi ol D - 
 Mintv, King's College, London. Popular Edition. In 1 vol. 
 
 D S\<>. ;.*. 'ul. 
 
 Straham v\; Co., 56, Ludgate Hill, London.
 
 NEW BOOKS. 
 
 MEMORIALS of a QUIET LIFE. By Augustus 
 J. C. HARE, Author of ' Walks in Rome.' With Two Steel 
 Portraits. Seventh Edition. 2 vols, crown 8vo. 21s. 
 
 The SOUL'S LEGEND. By DORA GREEN- 
 WELL. Crown 8vo. 2s. 
 
 POLITICAL PORTRAITS. Characters of some ot 
 
 our Public Men. Reprinted from the Daily News. Revised, 
 and with Additional Sketches. Third Edition. Crown 8vo. 6s. 
 
 SOME TALK ABOUT ANIMALS and THEIR 
 MASTERS. By the Author of ' Friends in Council.' Crown 
 8vo. 75. 6rf. 
 
 WALKS in FLORENCE. By SUSAN and JOANNA 
 
 HORNER. With Illustrations. Second Edition. 2 vols, 
 crown 8vo. zis. 
 
 SEEN and HEARD. By the Author of ' Occu- 
 pations of a Retired Life.' 3 vols, post 8vo. 315. 6d. 
 
 The TRUE HISTORY of JOSHUA DAVIDSON. 
 
 Fourth Edition. Crown 8vo. 5.S. 
 
 HINDOO TALES ; or, the Adventures of Ten 
 
 Princes. Freely translated from the Sanskrit of the Dasakuma- 
 racharitam. By P. W. JACOB. Crown 8vo. 6s. 
 
 GOLDEN LIVES: Biographies for the Day. By 
 
 H. A. PAGE. With Illustrations. Second Edition. Crown 8vo. 
 cloth extra, 5s. 
 
 OUR NEW MASTERS. By THOMAS WRIGHT 
 
 (the " Journeyman Engineer"). Post 8vo. 9s. 
 
 WANDERINGS in SPAIN. By AUGUSTUS J. C. 
 
 HARE. With Illustrations. Third Edition. Crown 8vo. 
 1 os. 6d. 
 
 MEN of the THIRD REPUBLIC. Reprinted, with 
 
 large Additions, from the Daily News. Crown 8vo. 6s. 
 
 Strahan & Co., 56, Ludgate Hill, London.
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
 Los Angeles 
 
 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. 
 
 rm L9-100m-9,'52(A3105)444
 
 A